How to Increase Your Instagram Engagement in 2021

Are you experiencing a dip in Instagram engagement? Here are a few tips on how to increase your Instagram engagement in 2021.

With more than a billion active monthly users on the app, there’s millions of photos, stories, and videos being shared on Instagram. While it might seem daunting to get some of the eyes on your content and your profile, it is still possible to grow on Instagram and increase your Instagram engagement in 2021 with a clear strategy, consistency, and a clear brand identity.

If you’re frustrated with how your engagement has dipped over the past year or even past few years, this blog post is for you. I’ll be sharing a series of questions for you to reflect, adjust, and hopefully implement on your Instagram in the new year.

1.Are you creating content that your audience CARES about?

Step one to figuring out your Instagram strategy is to figure out if you’re creating content that your audience cares about. If your Instagram photos, Instagram stories, reels, and IGTVs:

Solve a problem
Provide inspiration
Educate or inform
Provide entertainment

And your audience is responding positively by liking, commenting, and sending you DMs back, then you are creating content that your audience cares about.

While it might sound harsh to say that you aren’t creating content that people care about…. If your goal is to build a community or even take content creation full-time one day, you have to deliver value to your audience.

Some people choose to create value by creating aspirational travel photos that provide a few seconds of escapism to their audience. While other people choose to create value by providing comfort food recipes that give their audience ideas of what to make this holiday season.

2. Have you ASKED your audience what they care about? Or want to see from you?

If you have no idea what your audience cares about, ask them! I highly recommend using the Instagram story “Ask me a question” sticker to ask your audience what they want to see from you. You can also directly ask your audience on an Instagram caption, “what do you want to see from me?”.

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3. Are you creating SHAREABLE content?

What is “shareable” content? Shareable content is any video or photo that has been reposted or re-shared by your audience.

If you’re creating content with delivering value to your audience in mind, it’ll be much easier to create shareable content.

Shareable content might look like:

Fun graphics
Artwork and quotes
Aspirational photos and videos (think beautiful landscapes, city shops, and other #travelgoals)

The more your audience re-shares your content, the more people you reach. When your audience takes that extra step (beyond commenting and liking your photo) and the re-share your image, reel, or IGTV, onto their stories, you’ve reached a new level of engagement.

One of Instagram’s main factors in explore feed ranking is “Relationship” (source: Buffer). If your audience is normally commenting, liking, re-sharing your content, your photos and videos will rank higher in-feed. When you create content that your audience is excited to engage with and even-reshare, you help your content as seen as valuable or relevant to your audience. Instagram will continue to show your posts in feed instead of getting lost in the shuffle.

4. Are you creating SAVABLE content?

Similar to creating shareable content, are you creating content that your audience is saving? You know if you audience is saving your content by looking at the analytics of each posts.

Creating savable content might look like:

Sharing a healthy snack recipe with the list of ingredients + steps
Sharing a few workout ideas, you can do at home
Sharing a delicious sushi or sandwich shop in your city
Sharing a meme (think Barstool sports – they have a highly engaged audience who loves saving and resharing their memes and videos)

Whether you are a foodie, fitness or yoga instructor, or travel blogger, you can lean into the strategy of creating savable content. The more your audience saves your content, the more you know you’re creating content that your audience values.

5. Are you taking the time to ENGAGE with your audience?

While you’ve probably heard before to not “post and ghost”, I’m bringing back this phrase again for 2021. If you’re looking to increase engagement on Instagram, please do not post a photo and exit the app. I recommend taking 15-30 min to engage back to your audience after you’ve posted. Engaging with your audience can look like:

Commenting back to those who have commented on your photo
Going to people’s profiles and leaving a meaningful comment on their pages
Engaging on Instagram stories

You can’t expect your audience to be engaged if you personally are not engaging with your audience! I highly recommend taking the time schedule in 30 min to 1 hour a day to engage back with your audience on Instagram.

6. Are you driving CONVERSATIONS in-feed or in Instagram stories?

If you want to increase your Instagram engagement in 2021, you need to figure out how you’re going to create conversations with your content. Conversations help your audience get to know you. If your audience is coming back to your post to have a conversation with you or responding back to your Instagram stories, you are creating more than one touch point with your audience.