Did you notice I didn’t say “How to get more followers on Instagram?” That was intentional. This is a blog about how to have QUALITY followers not QUANTITY. The number under your name is not as important as your engagement rate. Having a successful social media account is more about building relationships, earning the trust of your audience, having an important message or a unique offer that draws people to engage with you. I will share with you 7 Tips to Build a Community around your Social Media with an audience that cares and is invested in what you have to say.
First of all, how do you quantify engagement and why is this number important to brands?
You can quickly calculate your engagement rate manually if you take the number of likes/comments/saves you have on your photo & divide it by your number of followers:
For example- if I have a photo that has 1,000 likes + 15 comment +15 saves: 1,030 engagement
Next You Divide 1,030 (engagement) / 24,000 followers x 100= 4.2% is the engagement rate.
You can take the time to do that with your last 10 posts, but I recommend you go to https://hypeauditor.com/en/ and check your average engagement for free. My engagement rate is 5.63% which you can see on the top right corner.
What is a Good Engagement Rate? According to Scrunch:
- Less than 1% = low engagement rate
- Between 1% and 3.5% = average/good engagement rate
- Between 3.5% and 6% = high engagement rate
- Above 6% = very high engagement rate
It is important to note that the more followers you have, the engagement rate tends to drop so you have to work hard at maintaining your community engaged with you.
Source: Hypeauditor.com
Why do you want an engaged community? There is A LOT of competition. Everyday, nano and micro influencers are cropping up. Everyone is posting quality photos. You can find so many videos on how to “Get more Followers” and it is becoming increasingly harder to make a name for yourself when there are millions of others doing what you are doing.
Brands are no longer just looking at your numbers. They are looking at Quality of Engagement/ Authenticity & Personality – Not Quantity of Followers
HOW TO GROW AN ENGAGED COMMUNITY WHO GIVES AN ISH ABOUT YOU
1. CAPTIONS- Micro-blogging on captions is vital if you want to elicit engagement from your audience. You can post a beautiful photo with a caption “Moody days” or “Epic sunrise” and you will get comments. However, the quality of the comments might be a bunch of smiley faces, thumbs ups or “Great Shot” or “Nice Work”. Yes it counts as engagement, but you are not starting a conversation with your audience. You are not eliciting compelling responses. I would rather have 5 thoughtful comments than 20 one word comments like “Amazing” on my post. If you struggle with writing captions use the following conversation starters:
- Ask A Questions “Have you ever? What you would recommend? Would you rather? How do you?” Engage your audience- get to know them by asking a question and build those relationships.
- Provide Useful Information- Use this opportunity to provide something of value. It can be something as simple as “My 5 best hikes” “How to take a long exposure photo” “Tips for taking Great Portraits”
- Tell A Story about the Post – If you have a funny or inspirational story about the photo- share it!
2. INSTASTORIES-
According to skedsocial.com in 2019 over 500 million users watched stories every single day.
And most brands are posting as many posts as they are stories. Use your stories to showcase your personality, conduct polls, provide information, ask questions and be more accessible to your audience. Brands don’t just want you for the quality of your images- they want to work with the person behind the account. I personally enjoy watching stories of people I follow and getting to see what they are really like or how they created a specific image.
Another hack about stories- ADD CAPTIONS. Almost 85% of users watch stories in silent mode because they could be at work or a public area, so adding captions to videos immediately grabs the interest as it quickly lets the viewer know what your message is. It increases the retention rate by 15%. You can add quick highlights on what your topic is or you can download Clips by Apple app which will add captions to your videos.
3. DIRECT MESSAGES-
Have meaningful conversations with your audience. Thank them for participating in polls, reach out, spend time asking and answering questions. These private conversations are key in building relationships and they also tell the Instagram algorithm that the people engaging with you are interested in your content and therefore it is most likely to show up on their feed.
4. CAROUSELS-
According to Socialinsider.io Carousel posts tend to have a higher engagement rate per post – between 1.65% and 5.13%, depending on the profile size. Carousel posts perform better than images or videos – an average of between 0.25% – 0.51% higher engagement. Surprisingly, images actually have the lowest engagement rates.
5. POSTING TIMES-
When you post is extremely important as you want to post during the times that your audience is most likely to be on their mobile device. If you post at 10pm just as everyone is going to sleep, you might get a couple of likes and comments by night owls but you have most likely cut your exposure by a good 80%. Personally, I recommend posting between 11am – 1:00pm when you know your audience is awake and during their lunch break if they are working. On weekends, I will usually post between 9am-10am after I figure people have gotten out of bed, have had their breakfast and are mindlessly laying on their couch scrolling through their feed. And this is not my personal opinion, I use Later.com which has created a graph that analyzes the times that my audience is more active- the dark purple squares shows the times my audience is on Instagram:
6. HASHTAG-
I would say that at least 50% of likes/comments/new followers are a direct result of properly using hashtags. Hashtagging and geotagging allow for feature pages to find your work and reshare it- and users looking for locations such as “Banff” under Places on Instagram will check out your account if your photo jumps out on the home page. Below is an analytics screenshot on how incredibly effective hashtags are in having my work discovered:
HOW TO PROPERLY USE HASHTAGS-
- Have a mix of global generic hashtags, regional/national accounts and international accounts. A global generic one would be “#Landscapephotography”, a regional would be “#travelalberta”, National “#Explorecanada”, International “#Natgeo”. This will allow you to target local and international accounts that are always searching for photos to feature. The only way they will find you is if you have used their hashtags. The bigger the account, the harder it will be to get featured, but when you do- your following will spike overnight.
- Research the hashtags relevant to you: Coming up with the tags can be daunting as there are millions you can use. You can start by seeing what hashtags popular Instagrammers in your industry are using. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel.
- Once you have a list, type them on your phone’s notepad so all you have to do is copy paste into your caption. Nobody has the time or memory to write 30 tags from scratch every time you post a photo.
- DO NOT use original hashtags for the sake of being funny or creative. Nobody is searching “Ilovephotographyyyyyysomuch”. All you are doing is wasting a precious #hashtag that won’t give you any kind of exposure. Keep it simple, relevant, and properly spelled.
7. AUTHENTICY AND ORIGINALITY-
It is so tempting to want to copy or recreate successful images you see on social media. However, the most successful creators on Instagram are those who bring unique perspectives, visions, voices and stories to the platform. When I first started on Instagram, I experimented with moody and cinematic images because that is what I thought was cool at the time and that’s what “would do well” on the Gram. However, I realized that I love colour. I love bold, loud colours. I am also a story teller- I like writing. I like being silly on my Stories. The biggest compliment I can receive now is “I knew that was your photo before I even saw who it was from”. If you think outside the box, bring unique perspectives, tell stories, share your failures as much as your successes – it will resonate with your audience.
Follow all these 7 Tips and you will notice a dramatic change in your engagement. Remember- Quality Engagement is KEY if you want to work with your Dream Brands and make money on Social Media.
If you are interested in How To Work with Dream Brands when you are a Small Influencer- I highly recommend you watch my YouTube Video:
Keep Shooting and Sharing!
Robin
