How To Engage On Instagram: Instagram Engagement Strategy

You’ve heard you need to engage on Instagram in order to grow, but you don’t know how to do it strategically? This post will teach you when, where, and how to engage on Instagram in a way that will help you connect with your ideal audience, grow your account, and build a community.

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It’s crucial you don’t forget to actually be social on social media. It’s one of the most common mistakes I see people make when trying to grow on Instagram – they focus on all of these strategies, hacks, tips, and tricks, but they forget the most important part of social media – the social aspect.

So, let’s get into learning how to engage on Instagram.

The importance of engaging on Instagram

Engaging strategically on Instagram will help you:

get your name seen by the right people,
grow your audience,
be known as the expert,
reach more of your target audience,
get engagement yourself,

and more.

All of that is important both for your business goals, and for the algorithm.

So, if you want to know how to engage on Instagram with other accounts in a strategic way that will help you grow, keep reading to find out.

When should you engage?

You can and should engage whenever you have time.

However, engaging right before and right after you post will get more eyes on the new piece of content you posted, immediately after it’s been published.

That will get you engagement as soon as you post, which will make the algorithm push your post more. When you post a piece of content, it gets shown to a certain amount of people. The algorithm then looks at how well the post has performed with those people, and if it did well, it gets shown to more. So, it’s a great idea to engage before and after you post.

On the days you post, I recommend engaging for:

10 minutes right before you post
15 minutes right after you post

On the days you don’t post, engage for:

10-15 minutes in the morning
10-15 minutes in the afternoon

However, don’t take this too strictly – this is just a suggestion and what I see results with for me and my clients. Engaging should be a genuine thing, so if you’re not able to engage right before & after you post, it’s not a huge deal (if you schedule out your content, I know you might not always be there when it gets posted). Just don’t forget to do it when you have time.

The most important thing when it comes to growing on social media is to create great and valuable content. If you do that, you’ll eventually grow even if you don’t engage right before and right after you post – but it does help, so do it when you can.

Also, it goes without saying, but if you have time to engage more than the suggestions I listed above, by all means, do that!

How should you engage?

Okay, now that we covered when to engage, let’s cover what engaging even means.

By engaging, I mean:

liking posts,
leaving meaningful comments,
replying to stories,
responding to DMs.

One of the main tips is to leave meaningful and helpful comments – engaging should always be genuine.

Don’t just write “Great post!”.

Take the time to actually write something that provides value, or states your opinion.

The “Great post!” comment will be seen as something you write just for the sake of engaging – you hear you need to engage, so you’re copying and pasting the same comment on all posts you come across. People will not see that as genuine, they will not engage back, and it won’t do you any good.

Instead, give a more genuine compliment, provide some additional value, or write your thoughts – something genuine and valuable. While this post is teaching you how to engage on Instagram the right way – the only “right” way to do it is to do it genuinely.

Where and with who should you engage?

Here’s where & with who you should engage:

engage with larger accounts
engage with your followers
engage with posts on hashtags you use
engage with your target audience

Now let’s cover how to engage with each of these groups.

Engaging with your followers

Engaging with the followers you have is a crucial part of having an engaged audience that loves your content and supports you.

To engage with your followers:

like their posts,
comment on their posts (remember – only meaningful & valuable comments!),
like their stories,
reply to their stories.

What to write:

a helpful tip related to their post,
something from your personal life related to their story,
a meaningful comment stating why you like their post and find it useful.

Engaging with larger accounts in your niche

Find some larger accounts from your niche that have the same target audience as you. It’s important that they have the same target audience as you, because it will help you get seen by the right people.

Follow them and leave meaningful comments on their posts.

Provide value in those comments – that will help you get seen by their audience (which is also your target audience), and be recognized as the expert.

What to comment:

if they shared a tip, add another related tip,
share your opinion,
share your point of view,
answer a question they wrote in the caption,
reply to someone else’s question to be helpful.

You can also engage with others who commented on the same posts by replying to them, helping them out if they asked a question, or sharing your own thoughts.

Engaging on hashtags

This is a strategy that gets great results if done properly.

Choose some hashtags you use in your posts (assuming you did your hashtag research the right way).

Go to recent posts that used those hashtags.

Find recent posts that you like and have something meaningful or useful to say about, and then like & comment on those posts.

If you did your hashtag research the right way, that means you’re using hashtags that are related to your niche, your target audience, and you. So posts that use the same hashtags will either be from people that are a part of your target audience, or people from your niche – it’s great to engage with both of those!

You can go even deeper, and go to profiles of people who commented on those posts you’re commenting on, and engage with them as well.

Engaging with your target audience

I’m assuming you know who your target audience is – if you’re growing your business, you need to know that.

On Instagram, here’s where you can find your target audience to engage with:

in the comments of larger accounts that have the same target audience as you,
on hashtags that your target audience uses,
by searching for keywords that describe your target audience.

Find some accounts of your target audience, and engage with them by:

liking their posts,
following them,
leaving meaningful & valuable comments,
replying to their stories.

Now that you have learned how to engage on Instagram strategically – when, where, and how… it’s time to actually start implementing what you learned.

However, if all of this seems too much for you, and this whole social media thing isn’t your cup of tea but you know your business needs it… we can help.

If you want strategic AND aesthetic content, and a professional social presence tailored to your business and goals, apply to work with us.