INSTAGRAM ENGAGEMENT SECRETS (GROW YOUR INSTAGRAM FOLLOWING)

The Instagram algorithm

 Decides what content to show on people’s home feed.

 Just because someone follows you doesn’t mean your content will be on their ig feed.
 On average, you will reach 10% of your followers  1000 followers = reach around 100 of
them.
 Goal: be seen on as many Instagram feeds as possible
 What does Instagram want? Instagram wants high quality content that people love and that
will make them use the app more!
 How Instagram determines, if a content is high or low quality?
 Micro test: They take your post and show the post for example to 100 people, who
already follow me and measure the engagement (views, likes, comments, shares, time
on post = do people stop scrolling?). So, if we take 100 people and 10 of them will
interact with it = low quality content, however if 60 people engage with it = high
quality content. It is more like a scale; they don’t just say high quality content, but
they say how high quality.

  We need to get as much engagement as possible on our content within the first couple
of hours.
How to boost engagement?

 Using captions, caption = a text that accompanies your image or video posted on
Instagram. A caption has a word limit of 2200 words.
o How to optimize your captions? 3 strategies
1) Story- telling a story in the caption. Why? Increases time on posts.,
boosts trust and affinity. How? Break up paragraphs (no one wants to
read 1000 characters of text.
2) Questions – It will get people commenting. Don’t complicate it, for
example: Do you agree? Red or Blue Pill? Which door? 1, 2 or 3? What
is your favourite smth?
 3) CTA = call to action – for example: TAG someone (TAG your better
half), Double tap (if), Follow (tag yourself). Make it visible (emojis,
spaces etc.).
o Keep your captions relevant to your brand.
o Test to see what works.
 Using hashtags = a hashtag is a way of categorizing content on Instagram to make it
discoverable to the whole platform. Maximum 30 hashtags per post. For each hashtag,
there’s a gallery and the gallery ranks all the posts based on its popularity and will display
only the best and most popular post first. So, on the top is the best and most popular.
Number 1 mistake in using hashtags is using the king hashtags (all these are popular 
hard to stand out). First start with using the lower ranked hashtags, rank the highest there
and slowly build up (30k,115k, 250k, 350k, 1mil., 8 mil., 50 mil.). PUT THEM IN THE
COMMENTS.
o How to search for the right hashtags? Search your king tags, then look at the
suggestions. Also look at the competitors tags. Use hashtag apps. If you have less
than 10k followers = 5000-150k posts tags, if you have 10k to 50k followers =
5000 - 2M.
 Content stacking
o Remember that photos are the lowest engagement type of content.

o We can leverage our story or our live Instagram features to double the engagement
we get during the micro testing phase.

o After posting a photo, post story/LIVE curiosity post. Blur the content of the post!
Make sure you get people curious. TAG YOUR POST IN THE STORY.
o Do LIVE 1 in 5 posts. 60 seconds, tell people about your post.
Trends for content discovery

o How many people are seeing and discovering your content?

o How many people are in phase 1?
o 1 in 100 posts is usually viral  viral content can get you up to 100k followers
overnight.

o How can I increase the chances of having viral post?

1) Post about topics that already have high levels of demand = trends.
 Trends can be long term (sustainable, people want more and more of
it), seasonal (relevant to certain time of the year, occur repeatedly),
short term (slowly dies of).
 Examples of seasonal: Umbrella, Beach, Christmas, Olympics
 Examples od short term: Bottle flip, Ice bucket challenge…
 Examples of long term: Instagram, Travel
 Start with short term and seasonal trends.
o How to find them before the peak?
1) On Instagram itself.
 2) Google trends – explore what the world is searching.
3) Other social media: TikTok etc.
4) Reddit homepage
2) Creating more content.

3) The more you post = the more chances you have to move people up your
affinity ladder, increases the chance of a viral hit, increases the rate of
your smaller hits.
o How to create how quality pieces of content efficiently?
o What is high quality for you? A post that takes 20 seconds to
make and gets 60% of your audience to engage with it.
1) Motivational
2) Viral
3) Behind the scenes
4) Long From Content
5) Batching and Outsourcing
4) Consistency is key!! – increases affinity