How to grow on Instagram: the importance of engagement

How to grow on Instagram

Increasing the number of your followers and increasing your engagement are 2 totally different strategies.

How to increase Instagram followers?

Speaking of growing on Instagram, our suggestion is to focus on frequency of publication.

Publish stories daily; Post 3-5 times a week; Reel 4-7 times a week; You can find several tips online, but they all have 2 common factors:

The platform wants you to focus on stories and reels; He wants you to use all of his features. Think of Instagram as a pet. The more you feed him, the happier he will be. If you don't feed him he'll be hungry, if you always feed him the same thing he'll get tired and start not wanting it anymore.

How to improve engagement on Instagram stories?

Stories are Instagram's only semi-chronological feature. You may have noticed that the profiles who have posted stories most recently will appear first in your stories bar at the top of the home page.




Once you have chosen how to proceed, set a timer on your mobile that runs out in 2 hours, for example. When this rings, post whatever you are currently doing, reset the timer and start again.

Another factor that determines who appears first in your story bar are the profiles you interact with the most. Give it a try, open Instagram. It is likely that the people you usually interact with will appear first in your Stories section. Specifically, these are the people you text most frequently.

Noting these factors is essential if you too want to be positioned at the forefront of the home of as many users as possible. To do this, you need to start interacting with people outside your usual group.

What should you do?

Tell Instagram that you and that person are related, then the platform will show them what you post. Create a real connection with your audience, which is what engagement really is all about. In the long run you will be able to create a community of people who feel connected with you and want to support you. It should also be noted that Stories are similar to posts, in the sense that Instagram measures how long a person stays on your story and whether they are interacting with it.

The more people stay on your story, the more they are engaged by it, the more Instagram will put your stories in the top positions of other users' sections.

Why are watch time and interactions important?

Let's move on to examples to understand this. Let's say your average coverage is 100 views per story: maybe these are stories that do not contain any interactive content, so there are no stickers that encourage people to take certain actions, such as answering a survey, or a question.

Start testing the trend of the various labels that Instagram offers you and see how the situation changes. For example, the trend works a lot: “this or that”: This is an interactive game that consists of putting up photos and, through a survey, letting followers choose which of the two options they prefer.

It's better a scented candle or a diffuser? Pizza or sushi? These are simple questions, but they are very tempting to interact. In this case, the coverage of your stories could reach a thousand users. It is a question of going from an average of 100 to a thousand, thanks to an interactive game alone.



Credit: Pexels.com Under Easter you could propose another similar interactive game, regarding films, a battle to see which is the best family film. In this way you will duplicate the views, using a simple sticker for a survey.

Try to put our advice into practice and you will have the confirmation that this strategy works. There are tons of ideas to take advantage of stickers and entice users to interact. You could also propose to your followers to guess things about you, again using the survey.

Now let's move on to another fundamental factor. At the beginning of the article, we stressed that publication frequency is important, but it is also important to let your stories expire every now and then. You could, for example, post all week, then let the stories run out over the weekend. This refreshes the Instagram algorithm in a way.

How to improve engagement on Instagram posts?

You may have already heard that you need to increase your engagement first. to post and after, to give the post a boost, but how do you do it?

Here are some tips to do it.

You already know that, when you post a photo, you have to respond to all comments ? The first trick is not about your answers, but about liking the comments you receive. Don't like those comments right away! The next time you post a photo, go back to the previous post and, only then, like all the comments received, even if you have already replied.

By liking the comments of your previous post, people who have commented will receive a notification reminding them of the opportunity to interact with you. It will be natural for them to open your profile and also interact with the most recent post.

The second trick to increase engagement is to find someone in your niche and interact with their followers. For example, choose an Influencer you like, who deals with the same topic as you. Open one of his posts, go to the comments section and interact with the people who, in turn, interact with his content. Like some of their posts and leave some comments. It is about interacting with people who like content similar to yours.

The next step is to interact with the people you are already following. If you follow someone, don't be a ghost follower. Support the people you are following, because they will appreciate it and interact with you in response. They will understand that you care about them and will want to give you the same treatment back. Interact with those you already follow, show your support just as you would like others to show you theirs.

The last tip is to go into the analytics and study the results. Go to the post statistics section, set the time as the last 3 months and see which posts fared better. Open them and interact with the people who commented on those posts, or even who liked them. Scroll down the list and interact with them.

In this way you can use the analytics of the posts that have performed better, as a tool to interact with others, but not only. You can consider them as a basis for studying what content to create in the future. Do not underestimate analytics, because they are very important.

The last topic we want to touch on today is the algorithm. We must stop blaming the algorithm for your lack of engagement, growth or whatever else you blame it for. Blaming the algorithm means thinking that you are doing everything right. You need to start taking responsibility.

When it comes to things that you have control over, you may not be doing everything right. Maybe there is still room for improvement. Always look for a way to improve and to better show yourself to your audience.

And stop blaming the algorithm when you are a ghost follower. How many people are you following? Are you supporting them the way you would like your followers to support you? Start showing that you are there, spreading support!

We know the algorithm is frustrating, but there are many other areas we can focus on to improve. Instagram can be a happy place. Let's stop focusing on the negative aspects and start showing the positive ones.



These were all our strategies to improve the engagement rate on Instagram, very important data because it measures the interaction you receive from other users. This is the statistic that most interests companies, so it should not be underestimated.

Now that you know what to do to get better results in terms of interaction, you just have to put them into practice!

But it doesn't stop there, because in reality the most important thing is not even engagement if your goal is to enter into relationships with companies and receive from these free products and a remuneration for your content. The most important element is you and your attitude, the way you connect with brands.

But this topic deserves a separate guide! We will talk about it in the next guide dedicated to how to get in touch with brands.

But if you want to immediately learn all the techniques to transform your social networks into your best business, if you want to immediately learn how to make money with your posts and receive free products from companies… Come and meet in-Sane! Academy, the only Academy in Italy led by Roberto Buonanno, manager of the most famous web stars.