Wondering how to increase Instagram engagement in 2020? You’re not alone!
With an ultra-smart algorithm and tons of creative brands competing for people’s attention, it’s harder than ever to increase Instagram engagement.
Thankfully, Instagram is still one of the best places to market your brand online, gain a loyal following, and build a community that supports your business. So don’t be disheartened by a little competition!
Here are 11 ways that you can level-up your Instagram strategy and increase Instagram engagement in 2020:
It’s Time to Reframe How You Think About Instagram Engagement
Instagram is one of the best places to reach your target audience and build a community of engaged fans.
But knowing how well your content is resonating can feel like a bit of a challenge. Especially when there’s more than one way to measure your engagement.
do any of my social friends feel very strongly about the *right* way to calculate your IG engagement rate? lmk, writing a blog post about it and want your opinions!
— taylor loren✨ (@taylrn) August 29, 2018
Up until recently, we looked at the number of likes on a post as a strong indicator of its performance. The more likes a post got, the more we judged it as a “good” piece of content.
Since Instagram started to hide likes, it’s harder to gauge what content performs best. While you can see how many likes your posts get, your followers can’t, so there’s no bias in getting a double-tap on a post just because it looks like a popular content.
Today brands need to look further into their performance metrics and track comments, saves, Instagram Stories views, shares, and even DMs to understand how their content performed.
So with a shift in how we measure engagement, it’s only natural that we change how we try to improve engagement on our feeds. It’s not just about likes anymore — Instagram engagement is going to become a lot more holistic in 2020!
To help you improve your Instagram strategy, we’re sharing our best strategic tips to boosting engagement on your posts, videos and stories.
And to get you started, here they are in a nutshell — Later’s top 11 ways to increase Instagram engagement in 2020:
- Create “savable” content for your feed
- Start conversations with Instagram Stories stickers
- Regularly test & analyze new content types
- Add an element of fun
- Encourage Instagram Stories shares
- Open up about your brand and business
- Write longer captions
- Share data your audience will love
- Create more video content for your grid
- Schedule your Instagram Stories to get more views
- Pay closer attention to your hashtags
Ready to jump in and start improving your engagement in 2020? Let’s dive into the details!
Increase Instagram Engagement Tip #1: Create “Savable” Content for Your Feed
As we mentioned, how we measure Instagram engagement is going to change in 2020 since likes are now hidden on posts.
Now, Instagram comments and saves are more important than ever. So the best way to improve your engagement for this year is to create more content that encourages your audience to tap that save button!
“Savable content” is anything you know your audience will want to read back again at a later time.
For example, Girlboss shared this post on #LatinaEqualPayDay to encourage and empower their audience to support the cause:
By including a checklist design, Girlboss has created a resource that their followers can refer back to when they want to act on the tips.
Similarly, travel accounts are seeing success from creating mini-blog style posts using carousel posts to share more info about their destination:
If you’re trying to think of “savable” content for your feed, think about what’s important to your audience and what will they find value in. This can be anything from an infographic to funny memes or quotes that you know will resonate.
TIP: Add a call to action to save your post in your caption! With a prompt, your audience might be reminded to use the feature.
Increase Instagram Engagement Tip #2: Start Conversations with Instagram Stories Stickers
500 million Instagram accounts use Instagram Stories every day, and we’re expecting to see that number rise in 2020!
Because of this, Instagram has been innovating by finding new ways for brands to engage with their followers, in the form of different engagement stickers for stories.
Instagram Stories stickers are a great way to encourage your followers to chat and share their opinions and experiences with you, which, in turn, will help create a loyal following that feels connected to your brand.
Here are a few ways you can get started with stickers to increase Instagram engagement:
The Question Sticker
Nothing sparks conversation more than a good AMA (Ask Me Anything) on Instagram Stories.
And while influencers have been known to use the Instagram Stories question sticker to help their followers get to know them more, there’s no reason why you can’t do the same for your business.
It’s a great opportunity for your followers to get to know your brand better, or get more information about your products.
On the flipside, it’s a great place for you to ask your followers some questions. You could spark a conversation about your next season’s color palette, or what product lines they’d like to see more of.
It’s engagement, conversation, and customer feedback all wrapped up in one great post!
Get more ideas on how to use the Instagram Stories questions sticker here.
The Quiz Sticker
The interactive Instagram Stories quiz sticker lets you share trivia-style multiple-choice questions with your followers and track the results.
When one of your followers “votes” on your quiz, they’ll be able to see whether they got it right — and you’ll be able to see how many votes each option received and how each person voted.
Find inspiration on how to use the Instagram Stories quiz sticker for your business here.
The Countdown Sticker
If you want to pique the interest of your followers and get more traction with your events and sales, the countdown sticker on Instagram Stories is perfect for your posts!
When you share a story about an upcoming something (like an in-store sale, product launch, or event), you can add a countdown sticker that counts down to a date and time that you set.
@wornbylittles
Your followers can then subscribe to your countdown event, which will send them a reminder when the time is up and your countdown is complete!
This is a great strategy for engaging with your Instagram followers and getting your audience to opt-in to exciting special events or promotions.
Want to learn how to use the new Instagram Stories countdown sticker? Here’s everything you need to know!
Instagram Stories have released a ton of new features that can be used to your full advantage to boost your engagement and build a stronger community for your brand.
If you want to learn more, check out our free video training to find out how to successfully use Instagram Stories for your business!
Increase Instagram Engagement Tip #3: Regularly Test and Analyze New Content Types
Some of the best content plans on Instagram come from experimentation!
Testing out new forms of content can feel daunting on Instagram, especially if you feel like you’re onto a good thing and seeing good engagement on your current content strategy.
But trust us: trial, error, and content experiments are key to being ahead of the curve and having a stronger strategy.
For example, on Later’s Instagram profile, we’d previously been using workdays as our core posting schedule. But with a bit of testing, we realised that Sundays were our best days for engagement as we were able to hold our audience’s attention for longer!
So now we choose to share important content and tease out announcements on Sundays, instead of the work week when we know our audience will have other things on their mind!
Not sure where to start? Here’s a couple of ideas you can try out this month:
#1: Try new content types! Memes, quotes, user-generated content, mini-infographics or even a selfie-style video could be great on your grid or stories!
#2: Experiment with video length on Instagram Stories and IGTV, some brands work well with long-form content on IGTV, while others still favor the short and snappy clips. Try something outside of your norm.
#3: Test out different Instagram Stories filters and see if they improve your engagement. AR filers can be a real asset to holding your audience’s attention so test our some of our favorites here!
Most importantly, don’t forget to regularly check in on your analytics and measure how they performed!
With Later, you can track and measure all your Instagram content, including up to 3 months’ worth of Instagram Stories!
Increase Instagram Engagement Tip #4: Add an Element of Fun
Instagram Stories take time, effort, and planning to get right. But that doesn’t mean you can’t have a little fun with it!
We’re seeing more and more brands add elements of humor and pop culture references to their posts by adding memes and trending topics to their content.
And we think that might be down to the rise of TikTok in 2019! The new video platform is known for it’s fun and informal video style, and we think it’s a trend that’s trickling into Instagram too.
At Later, we’re actively injecting some fun into our Instagram Stories, and it turns out, you guys love it!
From including AR filters in our stories, to adding memes and GIFs to our feeds, our engagement rates saw a huge uptick when we post something quirky and fun!
Of course, you need to honor your brand’s overall theme and tone — if memes don’t fit in with your Instagram aesthetic, then it’s better to leave them out of your strategy and not compromise on your look and feel.
But if you can include some fun moments into your strategy, get ready to see some real returns in your comments, shares, and likes!
Increase Instagram Engagement Tip #5: Encourage Instagram Stories Shares
Did you know that you can repost a feed post to your Instagram Stories?
It’s a handy feature from Instagram that allows your audience to share your content with their followers. Which in turn, will help you reach even more people without you having to lift a finger!
The key is making content you know your audience will want to repost!
Similar to creating savable content, shareable content needs to be highly related to what your audience likes and needs. Think about infographics and never before seen data that could shock or spark intrigue, relatable quotes, or fun memes:
Plus, now you can track and measure how many times your grid post has been shared to stories, making it even easier to track and measure what content is performing the best!
Increase Instagram Engagement Tip #6: Open Up About Your Brand and Business
Authentic content was a major trend for 2019 — and it’s set to become even stronger in 2020!
We’re seeing tons of brands and businesses getting on board and showing a more honest, real, and vulnerable side to their brand and business, and getting huge engagement returns from it!
A high level of authenticity can go a long way in building a stronger connection to your audience.
When you can showcase the good with the bad, the struggles along with the wins, your brand will be more relatable to your audience.
Later chatted to Sarah Nicole of @thebirdspapaya on how she naturally started to integrate long-form captions into her Instagram feed:
“The last couple of years have brought about a new way of me using Instagram as my creative outlet,” Sarah Nicole explains.
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I need to talk about this week. Not because it was all that extraordinary or horrific, but because I learned a lot. Years ago under a fresh diagnosis of PTSD I found out my brain had this amazing ability of hiding pain. Protecting me, guarding my heart. Eventually, it was too much and I had my first taste of what it’s like when you hold it all in. So this week came as a surprise when *one thing* became a million little things. Sending me into a spiral of uncontrollable crying and frustration. I was upset about things a week ago. Two weeks ago. 6 months ago. Things people had said, words I had carried, lack of action, lack of acceptance or respect, my discomfort for the sake of others comfort, my silence in the face of disagreement, and so much more. I was letting it all out. And I hated it. Every single moment of it. I hated it. Yet, I could not stop it. Many thanked me for being so real about it and I don’t think anyone even realized how impossible it’s become for me to be anything less. I’m riding a high season of life, and I’m so appreciative of it. And yet, I still feel pain, I still suffer at the actions of others, and the lack of care for myself at times too. Emotional alchemy or even self love is a healing journey, and not everyone is willing to admit that it includes uncontrollable sobs, pain and sadness too. Because it has to pass through. If you consider your mind and heart as a gateway, it has to pass though. Holding it at the gate just builds pressure, builds stress, and ultimately can burst open even at happy times in life. There’s part of me that’s frustrated that I let this happen, clearly not dealing with my sh*t as it’s been happening. But I’m also glad. Because I allowed it to overcome me. I allowed it to take me down. I allowed it the opportunity to be dealt with. I allowed myself the opportunity to let it go. To pass through. Strong people are not built on grinning and bearing. Strong people are built upon messes, sadness, happiness, frustrations, difficulties, heartbreak, anger and the ability to move through it all. That is strength. And it’s beautifully uncomfortable.
By switching her thought process to “caption first, and image second,” it allowed Sarah Nicole to be more journalistic in her approach, while being able to share more vulnerable and authentic moments of her life with her followers.
“I think we are craving human connection more and more,” she notes. “When someone else feels connected to something, they want to share it! So the combination of longer-form posts, and the ability for others to share those posts on Instagram Stories, helped me grow organically.”
And micro-blogging in captions has really paid off for Sarah Nicole — over the last year, @thebirdspapaya account has grown from 80k to 740k followers!
But it’s not just influencers getting on board with the trend!
Brand and businesses are taking to Instagram Stories to share more about their company mission, their struggles, open positions, and more background info to why they do what they do!
Take for example Everlane’s Transparency Tuesday posts on Instagram Stories — the team is there each week to answer your questions about the brand, products and future of sustainable fashion:
And it’s important to remember that in this case, presence trumps perfection — lots of big accounts are relaxing their aesthetic to deliver a more authentic and “in the moment” post for their audience.
This year, you’ll start to see more business leaders and founders take to Instagram Stories to share the inner workings of the company, hosting live Q&As or just “popping in to say hi”.
So now’s the time to jump on the bandwagon and start sharing more with your followers to increase your Instagram engagement.
Increase Instagram Engagement Tip #7: Write Longer Captions
Did you know that your Instagram caption can be up to 2,200 characters long? That’s a whole lot of space to share with your audience.
One of the factors that affects how your Instagram post performs in the algorithm is “time spent on post.”
So one of the easiest ways of improving your Instagram engagement is simply writing longer captions!
We teamed up with influencers marketing platform Fohr to crunch the numbers and determine just how much caption length impacted engagement.
According to Fohr, the average caption length has more than doubled since 2016, and those with longer captions got the most engagement!
And by 2020, our feeds will be filled with an average caption length of 405 characters — which averages out to be 65-70 words!
Not sure what that looks like? Check out how Knix has nailed the perfect caption length with the help of a strong call to action to watch their stories and a nod to a cute cultural moment that their target audience would love!
Now, we’re not saying that every caption has to be thousands of words long, but even writing a full sentence instead of just a few emojis could help you increase Instagram engagement.
So how can you write Instagram captions that will increase Instagram engagement?
Instagram expert Jenna Kutcher says: “There is always an opportunity to say something meaningful, so ask yourself: why does this post matter? How is it serving anyone other than me? Am I doing the story justice?”
“Your captions shouldn’t just be adjectives strung together but more lines of a captivating story that leaves your followers eager for more,” says Jenna.
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If I had a uniform, this would be it. 💁🏼♀️What’s your go-to look? As a woman-led company, I’ve made an effort to find other businesses that are supporting the efforts of talented women in more sustainable ways! Enter @livefashionable. I laughed the other day as I packed for a few days in New York City and I looked at what I had grabbed: my leather bag, my wallet, the ring on my finger, my belt, AND my sneakers were all from ABLE. Not only are they some of my favorite, timeless pieces, (like this backpack that we’ve used as a diaper bag this past year) but they also are challenging the fashion industry by creating transformative economic opportunities for women to end poverty. That’s something I can def get behind! They are giving you 25% off for 48 hours only, so head to the link in my profile or check out my stories to see my fave pieces and use JK25 at checkout! What’s your fave?! 🙌🏻 #ABLEpartner
Last year, we saw a great new trend of brands and businesses really taking advantage of this character count and writing longer, more in-depth captions. Some even had to continue their caption into the comments section!
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HUNGER DIRECTED EATING IS NOT THE SAME AS INTUITIVE EATING// 👏 IT’S 👏 A 👏 DIET 👏 Ok folx, I’ve been getting a lot of questions about this HDE situation – loads of people in my DMs asking me what the deal is. 🧁 I know everyone has been losing their shit over that GD cupcake book all over Insta and there seems to be heaps of confusion over its relationship to Intuitive Eating. And here’s the short answer: there isn’t one. 🤔 So WTF is Hunger directed eating (or HDE?). Well, it’s a concept that at the core suggests that you eat ONLY when hungry and has some other weird rules like eating the thing you like most on your plate first (which is cool if that’s what you prefer, but it’s also totally fine to save it for last!). 🧐 On the surface it might look like HDE and IE are the same, it seems as though the principles have been hijacked and coopted (without crediting the IE framework). 👉 The HDE book claims not to be a diet, but it literally says the words ‘thin’ and ‘skinny jeans’ on the front so it’s not really up for debate. You can roll shit in glitter but, well, you know… HDE is, ‘the hunger and fullness diet’. 👉 The HDE book is fatphobic and shames bodies – if your whole raison d’être is to shrink bodies and make them smaller, you are reinforcing the cultural thin ideal, you are saying (albeit inadvertently) that fat is bad (it’s not). It’s also selling the lie that once you reach some arbitrary dress size or number on the scale, that your whole life will be magnificent, you’ll be worthy, loveable, cool, and deserving. Well, like I tell my clients, even Beyoncé shits. Diet culture is designed to make you feel bad about yourself, prey on your insecurities and vulnerabilities and then sell you the solution. We have the choice to unsubscribe. 👉 This is critical because rejecting the diet mentality and the pursuit of the thin ideal is really the crux of the healing your relationship with food and your body. I appreciate this is a difficult step, but it’s also worthwhile remembering that we didn’t come out of the womb hating our bodies – we learned that shit, we can unlearn it too. 👉 Continues in comments…
This is a great opportunity to open up to your audience and keep them informed about your brand and business goals, your products, your business mission or anything else that can’t be said in a one-liner and a few emojis!
Want to learn how to plan your Instagram content like the pros? We teamed up with Puno, founder of ilovecreatives and Peoplemap.co to show us how to put a personal spin on your content. Check out our free video course:
Increase Instagram Engagement Tip #8: Share Data Your Audience Will Love
Posting personalized and data-driven content is a big trend prediction for 2020 and we think it will really help drive engagement too.
Brandon Perlman, founder and CEO of Social Studies, Inc. explains that machine learning and personalized content isn’t going anywhere:
“I foresee quite a bit more data-driven analyses and infographics being shared from real brand advocates, consumers, and fans,” Brian predicts.
A great example of this is what Spotify launched in mid-December — “their Spotify Wrapped campaign was brilliant, informative, personal. utility-driven, custom, shareable, and just slick.”
In 2019, Later teamed up with influencer marketing platform Fohr to create a data-driven report for our audiences. And a welcome side product of that report was information-rich graphics for out Instagram feed and stories:
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Instagram used to be all about the visuals, but now captions are taking the limelight! ✨ According to some serious data-mining from our friends @fohr.co, the average caption length has more than doubled since 2016. 📈 And by *2020, our feeds will be filled with an average caption length of 405 characters — which averages out to about 65-70 words. 😲 ⠀ ⠀ And if you’re still reading this, well, case in point! 🎯⠀ ⠀ For 2020, we expect to see the long-form Instagram captions trend grow, with influencers turning to their feed posts to create mini-blog entries for their audience. Because these in-depth captions are successfully competing with bite-size snippets, it gives you are opportunity to tell a deeper story, have a follower spend a little time with you (which doesn’t hurt your odds with the algorithm), and get more personal to build👏that👏brand👏affinity! ⠀ ⠀ Want more insight into all the juicy info @fohr.co dug up? 🍊 From changes in caption length and hashtags, to post frequency and which types of influencers get the best engagement, we’re revealing all in our State of Instagram Influencer Marketing Report. Did we mention it’s free? 💥⠀
Ready to try out the trend? Start by looking at your own data. For example, if you’re an online retailer, can you see when people like to shop the most? What made the biggest sale of the month? What percentage of your audience voted for a new product?
From this data, are you able to build a story about it to share with your audience or is there one key stat you know your audience will love?
While producing data-driven content does take some extra time and preparation to execute, it’s well worth the effort when you see your engagement rates rise!
Increase Instagram Engagement Tip #9: Create More Video Content for Your Grid
2019 was a big year for Instagram video, and it shows no sign of slowing down. Which is great news for your Instagram strategy and engagement rates.
By incorporating more video content into your content plans, you’re almost guaranteed to get more engagement across your profile.
Firstly, when you post a video on your grid or IGTV, that video takes up more space on your viewer screen, so you’re instantly able to fill the screen and grab their attention.
Secondly, if your IGTV video appears on the Explore page, it gets 4x more space on the page than a photo post — so all eyes will be on your videos!
But creating video doesn’t need to feel daunting — in fact, video content can be really easily produced for Instagram Stories, IGTV and your grid!
For example, look at this “video” post that Later shared:
By using the Enlight Pixaloop app, we created a video sequence of the clouds passing over the image. This simple tweak transformed a still image into a dynamic video which would get more traction on the grid.
Even the humble boomerang can be really useful for creating a video-post for your feed! Check out how Taylor Loren did it for her feed:
Finally, if you’re getting into IGTV for 2020 (hint: you should be!), don’t forget to share a 60-second preview of your IGTV video to your feed too!
That way, you’ll be able to double down on your video content and make sure you’re capturing engagement both on IGTV and your grid!
Looking for more ways to edit videos for Instagram? Check out our favorite apps to use in this blog post!
Increase Instagram Engagement Tip #10: Schedule Your Instagram Stories to Get More Views
Instagram Stories views are also a form of Instagram engagement, and acquiring more loyal viewers of your stories is a great goal to have for 2020 if you want to increase Instagram engagement.
But did you know that you could be really limiting your Instagram engagement by posting at the wrong time, or just not regularly enough?
To get around this, spend some time monitoring and tracking your Instagram analytics to learn when the best time to post is for your audience.
Start by checking your Instagram Insights by tapping the bar chart icon in the top right corner of your profile page. Anyone with an Instagram Business account will have access to their profile’s analytics.
Under the Audience tab, you’ll find a whole host of information about your followers, including when your audience is most active on Instagram broken down by day and by hour.
When you know your best times to post on stories, you can then batch edit all of your Instagram Stories for the week, and schedule them for your most optimized times using Later!
If you’re currently struggling with coming up with ideas of what to post on Instagram Stories, or you don’t have a lot of time to commit to stories, a good tip is to post your stories at the same time each day.
This way, if you were to schedule 3-5 stories for every day at noon, that would ensure that you always had active Instagram Stories running for your followers to engage with.
Instagram Stories scheduling is available now on all Later paid plans, starting at $9/month.
Increase Instagram Engagement Tip #11: Pay Closer Attention to Your Hashtags
We’ve spoken about the importance of having a strong hashtag strategy on Instagram on this blog before. But are you really paying attention to how they’re impacting your content?
If you want to increase your Instagram engagement, understanding which hashtags are driving more people to your posts is really important.
Start by categorizing your hashtags. For example, if you’re a business that targets female business owners, you may have multiple hashtags that you use on different topics.
Some may be specifically for women in business, while others might be about startups and business leadership. The key is to collate and categorize them so that when they are used in a post, you can easily tell which pulls in the most engagement on your post.
Later’s Saved Captions is a great way to keep all your hashtags in one place, plus you can search for hashtags and see their popularity right in the caption editing box!
Once you’ve honed in on your hashtag collections, it’s time to check in on your Instagram analytics to see how effective they are.
You can go to your Instagram Insights for each post by tapping the blue bar underneath your post. From there, you can see how many impressions you gained from hashtags under the Discovery section. The stronger your hashtag game, the more impressions you can expect!
There’s no denying that Instagram is a competitive place, but there are still tons of ways that you can creatively increase your Instagram engagement.
So next time you’re planning and strategizing your Instagram content, try to incorporate these tips and see how your audience responds!
Ready to increase Instagram engagement in 2020? Sign up for Later to write better captions, post at your best times, track your analytics, and more – it’s free!
