Instagram is today one of the fastest growing social networks in the world. Between 2014 and 2017, the number of daily active users has grown from 200 million to 500 million. The time spent on Instagram too has been growing at a rate of nearly 80 percent each year.
While these impressive numbers present a terrific opportunity to marketers, it also presents a challenge. Over 70 percent of American businesses are on Instagram today and the need to stand out has never been greater.
On the positive side, Instagram users are extremely receptive to marketing messages. According to one survey, more than 80 percent of Instagram users follow at least one business account. Engaging with your audience, growing your followers and achieving your marketing objectives is then a matter of adhering to the best practices showcased in this infographic below.
In addition to the tips above, here are a few other tips that can help a marketer increase engagement on their accounts.
Understand the algorithm: Social media marketing is a numbers game. The more people view your content, the more engagement you could expect to see. But more importantly, the way Instagram algorithm works is to study your post’s engagement among a small subset of your followers in the first few minutes of your submission. The engagement benchmarks gathered from here influence the scope of your post’s visibility among other followers. In essence, focus on timing your post to extract maximum engagement.
Follower demographics: The level of engagement is not equal among all followers. Your engagement metrics are determined by how targeted your audience is, and how active they are on Instagram. In short, build an audience persona that is most likely to engage with your account and work on growing followers who fit into this persona.
Instagram marketing is influenced by a wide array of factors and engagement is just one part of it. However, given the influence it has on the platform’s ranking algorithm, it is important for marketers to study their account’s engagement related metrics and work towards improving it.