How to grow your engagement in easy steps and make your Instagram profile VIRAL in 2019

A good Instagram engagement rate is essential for growing your account, and it is the number one goal for many Instagram users and social media marketers.

The algorithm changes could make this difficult but there are key factors that are never changing and can make your life easy.

The main idea is you have to be truly passionate about others instead of letting them interested in you. And if the things are going well people will tend to do business with the ones that they like, and if the things are not going well they will still do business with the people that they like. So whenever you are honest in your attempts to connect with others there will be always more chances to create important connections.

So let’s dive in:

The best thing to use this list is to test every strategy…see what has the best yield for you and make them count.

Use the 80/20 principle... what steps are bringing you the best results and multiply the actions.

ENGAGE WITH SIMILAR ACCOUNTS IN YOUR INDUSTRY OR NICHE EVERY DAY

STICK TO YOUR NICHE - Before you post your next photo on Instagram, take some time to engage with the content that other accounts are posting: specifically, accounts similar to yours which are part of your niche. By doing this you increase your chance of being seen.

For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction…so as much you engage,  you to grow the chance of being seen and discovered.

Be sure you make quality engagement and interaction with people and be as genuine as you can ….don’t do this for the sake of doing.

WRITE BETTER AND LONGER CAPTIONS

Instagram posts with captions generate more engagement and encourage users to spend more time looking at your post, which is believed to be an advantage with the current algorithm as it prioritizes content by engagement and time spent on it.

Other tricks of how you can make your audience spend time and engage with the content are to Use high definition quality picture and make a post that has a 4:5 ratio…this way you will keep people seeing your post for more time when they scroll.

You don’t know what to post? Here are some short tips:

Check what content is performing to bigger influencers try to emulate the best performing posts from their accounts.

Also, you can research your explore page - see what is performing there and don’t forget to search the explores page featured hashtags.

Post viral content - search for the posts that had tons of likes and comments in the past and repost them in your profile but stick to your niche.

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USE LONG-TAIL, STRATEGICALLY SELECTED HASHTAGS (and mix them up across your posts)

Selecting the best hashtags for your Instagram posts can mean the difference between appearing as a top post or sinking to the bottom of the feed without a trace.

Long-tail hashtags are specific and detailed, which means they more accurately reflect the context of your post.

You can use more general hashtags with a large amount of associated content — you never know, you might get some engagement through these if you have a great post!

But make sure you mix them in with your long-tail, less popular tags with a ratio of around 80:20 to long-tail tags.

Also, you will have to use targeted niche related hashtags.

USE GEOTAGS THAT PEOPLE ENGAGE WITH - like big cities

 

When your brand shares a video or photo on Instagram, it could potentially be seen by people in New York to Australia, and everywhere in between. While that amount of reach is great, what if you want to get more granular and specific with who you target? Well, that’s when Instagram geotags come into play.

You can use them in an Instagram post and in the story with hashtag or geolocation tag.

REPLY TO COMMENTS ASAP AND TRY TO START A CONVERSATION

Replying to comments is vital to keep that conversation going and help push your post to the top of more of your followers’ feeds. As people respond to you more and more, Instagram recognizes your post as a valuable piece of content that will probably also be interesting to others. Take the opportunity to draw other people into the conversation where you can, tagging their account so that they get a notification you’ve mentioned them. You can start here to make new friends and followers that will engage when you make the next posts.

 

POST MORE OFTEN and post when your followers are the most active

 

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YOU HAVE TO BE ACTIVE

According to studies, the sweet spot is a consistent 1-2 post a day.

Knowing when the best time to post on Instagram is also critical especially when dealing with Instagram’s algorithmic timeline.

Recommended post times can vary wildly depending on which expert you listen to. With some advocating 8 AM – 9 AM or 2 PM – 5 PM.

 

TRY TO TELL A STORY – inspire from the coffee table books

To increase engagement rates, become a storyteller instead, offering ‘micro-stories’ via your captions, videos, Instagram Stories, and profile. Or try sharing user-generated content that resonates with your brand.

You can tell a story using the carousel post or you can make even carousel videos.

Also, you can post emotional content this is working great in the baby niche or in pet niche.

 

MAKE  STORIES AND LIVES

Consider Instagram Stories’ live video option for big reveals about new products or services or use a prerecorded ad to offer up authentic, behind-the-scenes stories to your followers to increase Instagram engagement.

 

USE VIDEOS SUBTITLES AND CLOSED CAPTIONS

With video increasingly dominating the online space, audio has become a poor cousin with the majority of users preferring not to enable sound when viewing a video. It’s why subtitles have become so essential for marketers, enabling core messaging to be delivered on-screen alongside visuals.

Facebook research shows that captioning videos increases average video view times by 12%.

Messaging effectiveness is also boosted massively, boasting a success rate of 82% compared to 18% with sound on and zero captions.

Auto-captioning is offered by Facebook (though be sure to check any captioning for errors) or, alternatively, you can create your own dedicated captioning file.

 

START INVESTING IN ADVERTISE

You can simply boost a post but you can also invest in video ad formats:

single video ads offer the opportunity to create up to 60-second commercials, ‘carousels’ allow more message space by enabling followers to swipe across for additional images or videos, and Instagram Stories offers a vertical full-screen format where images and videos can be spliced together to create visually-arresting ads.

 

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START POSTING GIFs – They are fun to watch and almost every time they bring us to smile

Celebrating its 30th anniversary in 2017, the GIF format is more appealing than photos – GIFs are shared more than either JPEG or PNG formats – and are more cost and time effective than producing videos.

POST MEMES - They have crazy engagements

Offering relatable and hilarious content, memes appeal to the masses and are quickly becoming one of the trendiest content formats on social media. Similar to their Facebook meme page counterparts, top Instagram meme accounts have upwards of 10 million followers and are growing by the day.

Some meme accounts focus on specific topics, like relationships or childhood memories, while others focus on targeting specific demographics, such as the millennial female.

USE INSTAGRAM FILTERS AND THIRD-PARTY APPS – the awesome tool that you can use is adobe lightroom

The extensive range of Instagram apps and filters available to marketers can be an awesome advantage.

Inevitably, because the platform is visually-driven, Instagram’s most popular feature among marketers is the filter options that give your images and videos a distinct look and identity if used consistently.

Also if you want to take your content to the next level use adobe lightroom.

 

HOST A CONTEST OR A GIVEAWAY

Despite this, they’re regularly overlooked by brands, with only 2% of accounts hosting contests and a mere 0.6% of posts actually offering them in the first place. This means there’s a huge, relatively untapped resource for marketers to capitalize on.

How to run an Instagram contest requires planning, from partnering with another brand to increase reach and identifying contest rules and goals – for instance, ‘enter to win’, ‘like to win’ or ‘follow to win’ – to the creation of the attention-grabbing contest post.

Once ready to post, strategize the contest’s promotion; along with Instagram ads, think email blasts, website banners, social network plugs and more.

POST INSTAGRAM OPTIMIZED STORIES

-    Add links

-    Use geotag

-    Ad #

-    Use pols, questions, and any other stickers etc

-    Use call to action - give them a call to action...people just love it and do it

 

USE EMOJI EFFECTIVELY

The power of images over words extends to emojis—, especially on Instagram. Nearly 50% of comments or captions on the platform feature emojis.

Critically, these are searchable—users can seek posts that include specific emojis.

With over 2,623 emojis available (and growing), it is essential to create a strategy on how to use emojis that captures your brand without looking too informal.

Remember emojis cut both ways, reflecting what followers think about your posts, so monitor comments for emojis to use as sentiment indicators.

 

ADD A COMPELLING CALL TO ACTION

Followers may love your Instagram ads, but be sure that all that love actually leads somewhere by using a powerful Instagram call to action.

While CTAs can be introduced into images or caption copy, the most direct way to increase interaction rates and push followers in a certain direction is to make use of the official CTA buttons that Instagram makes available.

These appear below your post and are ideal for delivering short, punchy CTAs such as ‘Learn More’ and ‘Call Now’ that snare followers’ attention.

Last but not least advice: DO NOT SPAM

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