If you've been wondering how the heck do I increase my Instagram engagement, today's your lucky day because today we're going to break down the four main engagement pillars to increase Instagram engagement. This way you can futureproof your engagement strategies. As always, timestamps are below.
Let's jump in. For clarification, when I refer to Instagram engagement, I'm specifically talking about audience interaction with your content, not growing your followers. We're talking likes, comments, saves, shares, etc.
Your growth strategy might look completely different than the engagement strategy that we're going to be talking about today. Pillar number one is connection. Connection is probably the most important pillar because it is Instagram's main focus of their app to bring you closer to the people and things you love.
Even on this article where Instagram explains how their algorithm or algorithms work, they share that it looks for signals to decide how to rank content. Now, there's lots and lots of different signals, but two key signals that they look at are closeness and your history of interacting with someone. First, let's dive into closeness.
Now, what do you think is going to be the easiest way that Instagram will understand that you're close to someone? Talking in the DMs. DMs are your number one engagement engine that you have access to.
Like if I could tell you to do one thing and implement one thing after watching this video, it would be to increase the number of people you're talking to in the DMs. I am all for sliding in the DMs. I mean, that is how me and my husband met.
So DMs, they come in pretty handy. I like to think that the algorithm counts DMs as like a super signal. When you're talking to somebody in the DMs, you are communicating to the algorithm that you're close to that person.
So, how do you implement DMing someone and do that organically or not come across as like weird, creepy, or salesy? One way to do this organically is to go to any of your recent posts and then look under the comments. Anyone who has commented on your post and has an active story bubble, I want you to watch their stories and reply to something that they have posted in their stories.
This is going to be the most authentic way of starting a conversation. And then it's up to you again to keep that conversation going. Now, there are some other ways to increase DM activity.
You could use broadcast channels in your stories. Include a call to action like reply to this story if blah blah blah blah blah. Reply to the story with du.
If you posted your morning coffee, you could say reply to this story with your go-to coffee order or your go-to coffee mix up in the morning. You could build out your close friends. Again, another signal that you're close to someone.
When someone comments on your post, you could always reply to their comment via DM for a more indepth explanation. You could offer freebies via DM keywords like comment chat and I'll send you d or reply to this story with chat and I'll send you d. Again, encouraging conversations happening in DMs.
And finally, you could always DM your new followers. This is something that I used to do when I first started growing on Instagram. Anytime a new person would follow me.
I would simply send them like a thank you message thanking them for following me and then asking how I could support them or asking them what are some things that they're currently struggling with right now in their creator journey so that I can make a video about it. Now, I'm not saying you need to manually DM every single person who follows you, but it could be a good strategy again to hone in on that closeness signal. So, if that's something that you wanted to do, you could always set up an automation with ManyHat because they have a new tool called the follow to DM automation.
Basically, this is going to send a direct message to someone immediately after they follow your Instagram account. You could even set up a delay where you send them the DM an hour after they follow you or 24 hours after they follow you. Now, for clarification, this is not like a cold pitch of your offer, like sign up for my coaching or here's a freebie, get on my email list.
This isn't a way to like increase sales. This is supposed to be utilized as a tool to create a genuine conversation with somebody who has followed you and a genuine connection because the moment somebody follows you, that is the moment they are the most engaged with you and your content. So to just jump on that opportunity and connect with that person is going to be such a power move of you standing out among all the other creators they're following.
This is an example of the DM that you could send to somebody after they follow you. As you can see, it's just a simple how can I help you on your journey right now? And all they have to do is take 60 seconds to fill out a form.
Pillar two, conversation. We know that the second signal Instagram looks at when deciding who to show your content to and how to rank your content is your history of interacting with someone. So if you want your content to reach your followers, you need to be connecting with your followers.
Okay, so two ways to carry on conversations on Instagram are DMs and comments. Now, we've already talked about DMs, so let's focus on comments and what sort of engagement strategy you could have there. Because Instagram rewards content that encourages discussion and interaction.
How do I know this? Here are two separate videos. Both are on the same topic, same length, filmed in the same location even, but this one got way more views and reach.
Why? Why do we think that is? When you look at the stats of the two, there are some strong stats here, but you can see that the standout ratio is the fact that it got 35 times more comments.
So, here are two ways to leverage comments. One, reply to every comment on your post. If you got five comments, your responses makes it 10 comments.
If you got 10 comments, replies gives it 20. You can easily double engagement by replying to comments. My dog decided to join our video, so she will be on my lap if you see a little head popping up and down.
Now, number two, you can simply create content that sparks conversation in the comments. To spark conversation in the comments, you can lean into different video types or simply use call to actions that encourage engagement. Some videos that spark comments are videos like vulnerable storytelling moments.
This is showing up raw, authentic, and sharing something about your life. people relate to that raw authenticity and showing that vulnerable side of you definitely encourages more people to share their experience with something you're going through or even send extra encouragement your way. Sharing any life changes if you're moving, if you're pregnant, any life change is going to definitely increase engagement.
If you have a strong opinion about something in your industry or a confession, like I'm somebody that believes toilet paper should roll over, not be under, and that's a strong opinion that I have. And some people might disagree. It might be super controversial.
So sharing those strong opinions or controversial opinions can be great ways to spark engagement. You could share a problem that you're currently having and ask for your audience to give input. Or even a post all about community input, saying, "Hey, I'm launching this product.
Would love your feedback on this, this, this. " Like asking for your audience's opinion is going to invite them to share their opin. People love sharing their opinions.
And when you give them a reason to and a purpose to, they're going to speak their mind. And then my personal favorite is a value exchange with a DM automation. These are typically the posts where you say comment email pitch and I'll send you my free pitch templates to land brand collaboration.
So that's when you teach something and then you give a call to action for a resource towards that topic. And then we have call to actions for increase engagement. What sort of call to action could you add to your videos to increase engagement?
It could be things like save this video for later or send this video to yourself as a reminder. Or you could ask for recommendations. Does anybody have a podcast recommendation about true crime?
Let me know in the comments. After you share a story, you could say, "Has anything like this ever happened to you? Love to hear your story in the comments.
" If you shared tips or advice, you could say something like, "What more questions do you have on brand collabs? Let me know down in the comments. " And a comment keyword for a link to blank.
Now, for me, the post that got 35 times more engagement, and honestly, just any post that gets extra comments and engagement, it's always either a life moment post, like when I had a baby, I like didn't announce that I was pregnant and I was just like, "Surprise, we had a baby. " So, of course, that one popped off. And then the other ones that perform really well for me are a value exchange post layered with a DM automation or a call to action.
So, on this post, it was an educational post and at the end, I used a comment call to action. So if a person were to comment with a specific keyword, they would then get the main resource for free in exchange for their comment. So there's a value exchange happening there.
Now to set this up, you would use a DM automation through many chat so that anytime somebody comments that keyword, they would automatically get the link to the resource that you promised sent to them. You don't have to go in and do it manually. Manyhat is a tool that I personally have been using and paying for as a loyal customer since 2022.
So, I'm thrilled that they're sponsoring today's video. Now, after I had the DM automation set up to basically slide in their DMs, you know, that closeness signal, I took it a step further and also set up a secondary automation to reply to every commenter that comments that keyword. This basically is a setup of a snowball effect of comments just continuously rolling on that post, even if I don't have the time to manually reply to every comment.
Again, the more comments that are being thrown on that post means that Instagram is just going to push it out to more people. Now, the best part about doing these sort of automations through ManyHat is that their tool is approved by Meta themselves. So, you can set up all of these automations with 100% confidence that it's not going to hurt your reach or engagement.
So, if you want to try out ManyHat Pro for free for 30 days, I'll leave a link down in the description below. Use that link with code modern Millie and you could start your free trial today. Now, pillar three is going to be retention.
Instagram has said that while they do have the top three signals to determine posts reach, when it comes to reals, the most important for distribution is watch time. If people watch reals longer or stay on your video for longer, you're getting them to stay on the app for longer. So, of course, Instagram's going to love that and show your content to more people.
Four ways that you can increase retention are going to be having a solid hook, teasing the ending of your video, creating some sort of series, and maybe even dabbling with some FaceTime content, or using like casual nonhookie hooks. Let's talk about each of these. The initial hook is going to determine if somebody's going to stay and watch a little bit more of your video.
It might not guarantee they'll watch the whole thing, but understanding the hook and leveraging that will at least get somebody to not immediately skip past your video. I do have a video where I break down exactly what goes into a solid hook layering strategy. But basically, there's three elements that you want to have on every single one of your videos.
That is the text hook, the visual hook, and the audible hook. The text hook is going to be what someone reads to capture attention. The visual hook is what's happening in the actual shot, in the video.
Is there movement? It did you spill your water? What is the visual hook that's going to have somebody intrigued or interested?
And then the audible hook is like, what is the person hearing that's going to capture their attention? Is it a trending audio? Is it what you say in your voice over or to the camera?
This might sound complicated, but if you're able to plan this out ahead of time before filming, it's going to help the improvement of your videos so so so much. And I have again I have a whole breakdown of how to do this and even a complete miniourse that I'll link below too that gives you the tangible practical research for how to apply this to your niche in your videos. My husband actually used this last week when he was researching some short form content and I was like just watch this miniourse and he actually really liked it.
Here's screenshots of our texts. Now we have teasing the ending of your video. Now, this can be as simple as saying, "Now, be sure to stay till the end because the last tip is the one that's going to actually move the needle.
" You know, you could say things like that or something like, "If you're only going to take one thing from this video, it's going to be my final point. " We'll get to that in a second. You know, so you could do something like that where you're verbally teasing that outro.
If that's too on the nose for you, if you're doing like a storytelling, you could say something like, "Honestly, this was a plot twist that I just did not see coming. " or even with like vlogs or day in the life stuff. If you start with a montage of what's to come, it's teasing what's in the video.
Or even if you start with like the biggest moment, let's say you're shopping and you drop a candle in Ross and you break it and it shatters everywhere and that's like 2 minutes into the vlog. Start with the most compelling clip. Again, teasing what's to come.
Then you have bingeable content. It could be something like, "Welcome to part one of my becoming a CEO series. I've been loving it.
" So, it could be something like that. You could do a whole transformation. Welcome to day five of my 30day gut reset challenge.
People love series type of content because they love that whole like start to finish. Let me track the progress here. Let me binge.
Oh, I found episode five or real five came up on my for you page. let me go back to this person's profile and watch 1 2 3 and four. And so when you commit to, let's say, a 7-day, 30-day, 75 part series, it's not expecting to go viral on the first one.
That's not the intention. It's I'm going to commit to this for however many days it is with the hopes that one of these if one just one outperforms the others. Anyone who watches that one is going to binge and that snowball trickle down effect will start to take place naturally increasing your engagement.
And then we have like the FaceTime style content. This format is something I see a lot of on Tik Tok and I feel like people are starting to really connect with it on Instagram. I think most of the time people see Instagram as like this aesthetic content platform, but we're starting to see more of it onto Instagram because it feels so personal, unscripted, it's emotionally engaging.
You could think like not showing up perfect, messy bun, no makeup in your natural environment, direct eye contact to the camera, just having a conversation with your best friend. The great thing about FaceTime content is that it feels like you just happened upon the middle of the conversation with somebody or you just like you kind of accidentally fell into somebody's Snapchat or someone's FaceTime to a friend. And the hook could be something like be honest, do you struggle with this too?
Or this might be a controversial opinion, but now if you've learned something new so far, be sure to give this video a thumbs up. And if you learn two new things by the end of this video, I'd love if you consider subscribing since it's a simple way to support my channel and it allows me to continue to create free content like this every single week on my YouTube channel. Now, pillar number four is adaptation.
Adaptation is something that I've been talking about from the very very very beginning of teaching Instagram and that is to always jump on the new new trends if relevant to your industry, new Instagram features. Anytime Instagram launches a feature, being one of the first adapters is going to give you such a huge advantage and even new uses of AI and automations. When you're somebody who is fast adapting to any new updates in such a fast changing industry, it gives you such a huge advantage because it's putting you ahead of the curve compared to everyone else who is choosing not to adapt to new features, trends, AI tools, resources, you name it.
Some tools that you might not be leveraging on Instagram now are broadcast channels, collab posts, trial reels, turning on closed captions on your reels, and not only that, but turning on translations so Instagram's AI can auto translate your reel into other languages, creating a close friends list, and again any of their AI updates. I feel like when I think of Instagram AI, I think of like their little avatar and you could like, oh, you could turn your avatar into this or you could upload your photo and it'll change you to this. And so like it's silly, but using it, implementing it, practicing it puts you ahead of the curve and ready for any changes that they build on top of it.
Plus, that one strategy of adaptation is going to futureproof your Instagram engagement strategy because you are staying ahead of the game every single time. Here's the thing. I know Instagram changes every single second and it seems like every week Moseri is putting out another announcement like, "Hey, we new a feature.
Hey, new this, new that. " So, I'm not saying like you have to stay on top of all these things and you need to update this and play that. No, no, no, no.
Pick and choose. Maybe one thing a month that you're going to adapt into your current Instagram strategy. That way, it feels more attainable and more realistic for you to keep up with.
At the end of the day, you want to think of Instagram as a relationship platform, not just a posting and ghosting platform because Instagram is going to be prioritizing creators who treat their platform as a community instead of just a megaphone and launching random updates. So, which of these pillars are you going to start implementing first? Let me know down in the comments below.
And was there anything that I touched on in this video that you'd love to see more of a deep dive on? cuz I'm taking requests. I'm taking video requests always.
I always am. If you've made it this far, watch this video next because YouTube thinks you'll like it. Thank you so much for watching.
I'll see you in the next one. Bye.
