How to improve your engagement on Instagram.

It’s not uncommon to hear people complaining about Instagram lately. We are continuously being screwed over by its algorithm. If only the popular social media app would give us the choice to display our feed in chronological order, we could go back to living in harmony. Right?

Mais non, if posts were in chronological order, why would people pay to promote posts to get them in their followers feeds? The money-making tactic that killed Facebook pages a long time ago is now doing the same for Instagram. I knew as soon as Facebook bought Instagram that it would be a terrible idea.

The issue is that everyone is too invested in the photo-sharing app to move to those newer apps that are trying to do Instagram right.

What’s a blogger to do when brands are wanting to work with more and more Instagrammers than ever?

Well, two things we should not be doing is following and unfollowing accounts or joining comment pods.

I’ve vowed to care less about followers and more about comments and likes. What looks better? An account with 20k followers and 50 likes with no comments, or an account with 5k followers with 200 likes and 20 comments?

So that’s what we are working towards here and I’m going to show you some of the things I am doing to try and cultivate this.

My goal is to enjoy my feed and have two-way relationships with my followers.

Here’s how.

Follow your fans back and TALK TO THEM.

When you have people who regularly comment on your Instagram posts, follow them back and do the same for them. It’s frustrating to keep putting the effort in to engage with someone and get zero in return. I mean, you don’t have to do follow them back and engage with them, but they’ll give up and stop if you don’t. They’re already interested in you and your content. Do not lose them.

Follow similar accounts.

I will follow around 10 new accounts a week that are either similar to mine or something I like. A few fitness accounts and some lifestyle ones.

I will then engage with their content an hope to start a relationship.

You should do.

Keep posting regular content.

I personally post once a day and try to have a photo of me in every other photo. I try to put up photos I really love and work on new ways to take photos of myself that aren’t just gym selfies.

Work on captions.

Sometimes I feel super lazy and want to just post my photo with a stupid love heart or something.

Try to put some effort into your captions. I sometimes even write them earlier in the day ready to cut and paste into my Instagram when I want to post!

Try writing something inspirational, funny or asking questions to your followers.

Hashtags aren’t all that.

We’re taught to use hashtags to get more likes and comments. The truth is that it’s those accounts that are using bots that will like and comment. There is one hashtag I use that always gets a comment from a fitness clothing company saying ‘great pic eye my profile now’.

Hashtags are alright but you’ll just get crap accounts liking them. So I wouldn’t worry too much about them. Not many people actually use them to find content!

Have fun.

If you’re forcing yourself to like and comment on posts, you’re doing it wrong. For the little you get in return it’s just not working. That’s why it’s important to ensure your feed is full of accounts you love and people you know so engaging on there is pretty effortless! Just think how much easier it is to post on your best friends pictures – you want 30 or so people in your feed that you feel like that towards. Then it’s fun and rewarding!

Good luck! Instagram sucks but you don’t have to cheat your way to the top 🙂