How To Increase Engagement On Instagram (18+ Proven Tips)
Have you been posting on Instagram for a while now but still aren’t sure how to increase your engagement on the platform?
Increasing Instagram engagement is difficult, especially when the Instagram algorithm is so hard to master and the app itself does not allow users to see content from people they follow easily.
In this post, you will learn how to increase engagement on Instagram as well as what Instagram engagement rate is.
The most efficient ways to increase Instagram engagement
1. Use a high-quality smartphone camera
Video quality and audio quality are very important to your success as a social media influencer with audio quality being more important than video quality.
While you don’t necessarily need to record your content with a DSLR camera and a RODE mic, you should at least upgrade to the highest quality smartphone you can afford.
Typically, you can’t go wrong with the latest flagship iPhone, Samsung or Google Pixel device.
2. Study your competitors’ content
Your competitors’ content are treasure troves of information that’ll know what’s working in our niche and what isn’t.
It may also let you see which forms of content or topics your competitors are ignoring as well as which needs they aren’t fulfilling for your audience.
Look up Instagram influencers in your niche, and see what forms of content are working for them, how often they post and what topics they cover.
Pay attention to what they’re not covering as well. These are gaps and needs you can fulfill with your own content.
3. Engage with the audience you already have
You likely already have a few active audience members, and while you may not be hitting the numbers you’d like to see, those few audience members still represent viewers who like your content and can’t wait to consume it.
You can do a lot to boost your engagements overall by simply engaging with those audience members more often.
Respond to comments and direct messages (DMs) regularly, and use the question features available for Instagram Stories to ask your audience questions and request feedback.
4. Host a Q&A session in Instagram Stories
Instagram Stories have a sticker type your audience can use to ask you questions.
Each answer you provide will be added as a new story to your Instagram profile.
You can engage your audience in real time by hosting regular Q&A sessions.
5. Create more short videos with reels
In our post on video marketing stats, we explained how data collected by Wistia demonstrates how much more engaging short-form videos are over long-form videos.
Their data states that videos that are less than one minute long, such as Instagram reels, have an average engagement rate of 50%.
This rate drops to less than 40% once a video’s runtime reaches the five-minute mark, less than 30% at the 30-minute mark and less than 20% at the 60-minute mark.
Furthermore, our stats on Instagram include a case study in which sports leagues, such as the NBA and the NFL, received as much as 67% more engagement from reels than video posts.
This means you’re likely better off focusing on posting reels over other types of content, especially when you’re still trying to grow your audience on Instagram.
Here are content types you can create with Instagram reels:
- Short vlogs
- Funny videos
- Entry for a viral trend
- Short tutorials and guides
- Product showcasing
- Short discussion
- Answer to a question
6. Create video posts when necessary
Instagram Reels have a maximum runtime of 90 seconds. If you have a topic that needs a longer runtime, create a video post instead.
Content that may be longer include tutorials, guides and discussions.
These are engaging content types that will fill your Instagram account with valuable content for your audience to consume.
7. Keep your audience in the loop with stories
Stories display at the very top of the Instagram app. They scroll in a horizontal format rather than vertically.
The app shows stories from whomever the user follows, and they’re ordered by whomever the user engages with most.
Stories are temporary posts. They disappear 24 hours after they’re posted. For this reason, Instagram Stories are perfect for short content that’s under 60 seconds as well as temporary images and promotional posts.
Promote your latest Instagram posts and content from other social media platforms in your stories, and post niche-related updates throughout the day.
Here’s an example from Celina Meyers, known as @celinaspookyboo on Instagram and TikTok:
In this story, Celina teases her upcoming YouTube video by showing a product that will feature in it.
8. Use viral hooks in image carousels
After analyzing 21 million Instagram posts from 125,000 accounts, SocialInsider discovered that carousel posts have an average engagement rate of 0.50%, reels 0.45% and images 0.40%.
This means you’re better off posting more image carousels than image posts.
When you post image carousels, use viral hooks. These are engaging phrases you say or actions you make to captivate your audience from the very first slide in your carousel.
Here are a few viral hooks you can use in your carousels:
- For recipes and tutorials, display an image of the finished product with text overlay that lists every ingredient/material you need to make it. Then, use the rest of the carousel to demonstrate the steps.
- State your solution in the first slide, such as “this salad spinner replaces three gadgets in your kitchen.”
- Tease your best slide in the first slide.
- Show your best slide in the first slide.
- Show the end result (good or bad) in your first slide, and use the rest of the carousel to take your follower on a journey to that result.
Here’s the viral hook from @chrisolsen’s carousel post for his attendance to the Wicked movie premiere:
The image captures Chris’ most intense emotion throughout the night with the carousel including additional highlights from the event.
The post received about 45,000 more likes than the majority of Chris’ carousel posts do.
9. Use image posts sparingly
Because image posts receive the lowest number of engagements on Instagram, it’s best if you don’t make them your primary post type on the platform.
Instead, only create image posts for images you know your audience will love or find surprising.
10. Publish when your audience is most active
The analytics available for your Instagram account has a section that shows you which days of the week your audience is most active on as well as what times of their most active.
Use this as your posting schedule for whatever posting frequency you decide to use, and stick with a consistent posting schedule once you decide.
An Instagram scheduling tool will help you create this schedule in a way where you can set up multiple posts for Instagram and have them release on a schedule you choose.
Pallyy is a fantastic scheduling tool that specializes in Instagram, but SocialBee is great as well. Both allow you to publish to additional social media platforms, including Facebook, Twitter and TikTok.
11. Publish multiple times a day
Be careful with this suggestion. It’s mostly recommended that you choose a posting schedule that allows you to be consistent in post quality.
Sure, you may be able to push out a dozen or so posts a day, but will each one have the potential to go viral or will you skimp on post quality just to hit an arbitrary post quantity?
At the same time, the unfortunate reality is that the more posts you publish in a week, the higher the likelihood of your posts ending up in your audience’s feeds.
Here are some statistics about posting frequency from Later:
Instagram Feed Posts*
- Nano accounts (0 to 10,000 followers) publish 2 feed posts per week
- Micro accounts (10,000 to 100,000 followers) publish 3 feed posts per week
- Mid accounts (100,000 to 500,000 followers) publish 5 feed posts per week
Instagram Stories
- Nano accounts post 3 Instagram stories per week
- Micro accounts post 4 Instagram stories per week
- Mid accounts post 15 Instagram stories per week
*Feed posts include image posts, video posts, carousel posts and reels.
This shows a direct correlation between how many posts an Instagram account publishes per week and the number of followers they’re able to obtain.
12. Follow up on your most popular content
Unless you have a built-in audience, you have a higher likelihood of having a single post go viral than you do of receiving a decent number of engagements from every single post you publish.
For this reason, you’re better off following up on your most popular content.
What I mean is, if you have a post go viral, your next post should follow up on the topic. Expand on it, come up with a new way of covering it, or if the video is simple enough, such as a viral trend you took part in, do it again!
Social media is all about meeting audience expectations and exceeding them, so be ready to change course if a “throwaway topic” you only intended to cover once goes viral.
13. Be controversial on purpose
There’s a social media strategy called “rage bait.” It describes an action or a phrase an individual does or says in a social media post incorrectly or unconventionally on purpose with the intention of irritating viewers to the point where they feel they have to comment on it.
In the same vein, you can share a controversial opinion you have in your niche to encourage a discussion, or more often than not, rage!
14. Host giveaways
This is a tried and true social media strategy and a fantastic Instagram engagement strategy.
This is due to tools you can use that ensure giveaway participants interact with your profile in order to enter a giveaway.
You can host a giveaway in one of two ways:
- Host the giveaway directly on Instagram
- Host the giveaway somewhere else (blog, email list, other social media platform, etc.), but make interacting with your Instagram account an entry requirement
There are plenty of social media giveaway tools you can use to host the giveaway on your blog, but our favorite is SweepWidget.
Their app is packed with features and they have a solid free plan. Click here to sign up for an account.
To cut down on costs, try collaborating with a brand for your giveaway. If you’ve got a decent sized audience already, you’ll be able to have them donate a product and help promote the giveaway.
If you can’t convince any to join, you’ll need to purchase a product yourself.
Choose something niche-specific or at least something you know your audience would enjoy.
Here’s an example of a giveaway Instagram influencer @linda.sza hosted:
The reel earned 962,000 views, 43,400 likes, 10,300 comments and 316 shares when most of her reels earn around 150,000 views, 2,700 likes, 57 comments and a small handful of shares.
15. Collaborate with other influencers
This is another tried and true strategy for boosting your Instagram engagement.
By collaborating with another influencer, you harness the power of both of your audiences to improve engagement for both of you.
There are multiple ways to collaborate with other influencers these days.
The first is obvious. Find a fellow influencer in your own niche or a related niche, plan content together, record it, then release it.
Another way to collaborate with influencers would be to use part of another influencer’s content in your own content.
You can answer a question another influencer has, critique something they did or give your take on a point they brought up.
16. Create Easter Eggs for upcoming releases
If you have an active audience, no matter how small, you can tease upcoming content and releases by creating what are known as “easter eggs.”
Easter eggs are hints your audience has to unpack on their own in order to discover what you’re teasing.
For instance, if your niche is cars and you’ve been teasing a car you’re building yourself but haven’t made a video about it in a while, drop an “easter egg” about it by featuring its frame, an engine component you’re planning to install, the wheels you’re going to use, etc., in the background of a video.
Most viewers will view this addition as innocuous, just things most car enthusiasts would have lying around, but faithful viewers will recognize it as something that may be related to the car you’ve been teasing, which will encourage them to comment on it.
17. Use engaging captions
While your post content should be interesting enough to encourage your audience to engage with it, you can also encourage your audience to engage by using engaging captions.
Instagram post feed captions don’t need to be descriptive.
You can give additional information, tell a joke or even include a call to action, such as the ever popular “link in bio” call to action that instructs users to click the link in your bio to learn more about what’s featured in your post.
18. Use Boost App Social to come up with content ideas
Boost Social App is only available in the App Store, but many influencers use it to come up with content ideas and create better content.
It clues you in on trending sounds and relevant hashtags for your niche and helps you create more engaging posts.
Honorable Mentions
Here are a few tips that didn’t make our official list but still deserve a mention:
- Cross promote your Instagram account from other platforms.
- Take part in viral trends.
- Include the same people in your content regularly, such as family members, friends, significant others, colleagues, employees and even your boss.
- Use the right hashtags for your niche.
- Create memes related to your niche.
- Discuss viral content in your niche.
- Host Instagram lives.
- Share user-generated content.
- Cross-post your most popular tweets and threads to Instagram.
- Review your Instagram analytics regularly, and make adjustments to your content accordingly.
- Avoid boosting posts if you don’t have the budget to continuously boost posts. Some Instagram users who had success with boosting posts say their engagements dropped lower than they were before once they stopped boosting.
What is Instagram engagement rate?
Instagram engagement rate is a metric that represents how much of your audience interacts with your Instagram content. Engagement metrics include likes, shares and comments.
Here’s the formula for calculating your engagement rate on Instagram:
engagement rate = (total interactions/total reach) x 100
So, if your total interactions were 530 and your total reach was 21,200, your engagement rate would be 2.5%. This means you can expect 2.5% of your audience to interact with your content.
You’ll find your number of interactions in the Engagement section of your profile’s analytics.
Both the Reach and Engagement sections are broken down to showcase your reach and the number of interactions you received for reels, posts, videos and stories, so you can figure out your engagement rate for each.
An easier way to determine your account’s engagement rate would be to use a third-party Instagram analytics tool, such as Social Status.
This tool showcases your engagement rate for every social media profile you integrate with it.
What is a good Instagram engagement rate?
According to Social Status’ data, the average Instagram engagement rate between December 2023 and November 2024 was 0.72%.
However, Hootsuite’s data says the average Instagram rate of 12 industries was 5.0% in Quarter 3 of 2024 and 4.9% in Quarter 2 of 2024.
RivalIQ’s data says the median engagement rate per Instagram post among 14 industries was 0.43% in 2023 when total number of followers was used in place of total reach.
The average engagement rate was 0.63%.
These numbers prove how unpredictable Instagram is as a social media platform and that you’re better off paying attention to and improving your own engagement rate rather than trying to meet an industry standard that likely doesn’t exist.
Reasons why your Instagram engagement rate might be low
Your engagement right might be low on Instagram because you…
- Don’t have a niche
- Target a niche that’s too competitive
- Don’t have enough followers
- Don’t post enough reels
- Don’t use niche-specific hashtags
- Don’t cross promote from other social media platforms
You can implement every tip we mentioned in our list on how to increase engagement on Instagram, but it won’t help if there’s something fundamentally wrong with the way you run your own Instagram account.
For starters, you may simply post about anything you like or you may post content that targets a niche that already has a few influential Instagram profiles within it.
This makes it harder for your audience to find your content.
Find a niche that’s not as competitive on Instagram instead and stick with it before branching out into other topics.
You may also not have enough Instagram followers, which means your engagement needs to come from Instagram users finding your content organically.
To increase your follower count, post more reels since they perform better on Instagram, use the right hashtags for your niche, and make sure you promote your Instagram profile on other social media platforms you publish to.
This means inserting a link to your Instagram profile on your TikTok profile or including a link to it in your link-in-bio page.
You should also say something along the lines of “follow me on Instagram @” in YouTube videos and podcasts.
Increasing your social media engagement rate
The phrase “don’t put all your eggs in one basket” doesn’t just apply to revenue streams. It also applies to digital marketing strategies.
A lot of influencers make the mistake of focusing on a single social media platform, but there’s a lot of reasons why this is almost never recommended.
For starters, each social media platform has their share of threats, such as Twitter being bought by Elon Musk and receiving radical changes as a result or TikTok facing bans from multiple jurisdictions around the world.
Even a simple update to a platform’s algorithm can do a lot to impact your engagements.
However, if you can build an audience on multiple social media platforms, including Instagram, you have a much higher likelihood of sustaining hits from changes to a single platform.
And if you can grow an active fanbase, your audience will move wherever you move. That includes your audience moving from TikTok to Instagram to find your content if the platform gets banned in a particular region.
Final thoughts
Building an audience and getting engagement on Instagram isn’t easy. Their algo is not very forgiving.
But with enough time and effort, you can make it happen with the help of all of the tactics we’ve discussed above.
Disclosure: Our content is reader-supported. If you click on certain links we may make a commission.
