If you’re looking at your Instagram insights, panicking, and thinking, “Is Instagram engagement down for everyone?” - you’re not alone.

TLDR; Yes.

But you’ll want to keep reading to gather more information on why Instagram engagement is vital for your brands and how to increase it or keep it up when there’s a dip.

What Is Instagram Engagement All About?

Instagram engagement encompasses all the actions taken by your followers and users interacting with your content. These actions include likes, comments, shares, saves, and clicks on your posts. 

High engagement indicates that your content resonates with your audience, leading to increased visibility and brand awareness. That being said, it's not just about the numbers. It's about building a community of loyal followers who actively engage with your content because they genuinely want to.

Is Instagram Engagement Down?

If you think you or your brand are safe from low engagement, you’d be wrong. At one time or another, your numbers will inevitably take a hit. Why? Only the algorithm truly knows. What you can be in control of is understanding ways to combat low numbers for when that day comes!

How to Calculate Instagram Engagement

Engagement Rate (%) = (Total Engagements / Total Followers) x 100

Total Engagements: The sum of likes, comments, shares, saves, and clicks on your post.

Total Followers: The number of people following your Instagram account.

How to Increase Instagram Engagement ↓

#1. Utilize Instagram Story Interactive Stickers

Story stickers are a quick and easy way to get your audience engaged fast. Plus, there is no way your use of these stickers will get stale with so many options.

You can use polls, questions, quizzes, and countdowns in your Instagram Stories in a rotation to keep it fresh. The latest “Add-Yours” sticker is another excellent way to get your audience to participate in your strategy! 

#2. Create Relatable Memes

Everyone loves a good meme at the right time in the right place. Being quickly adaptable and tying your brand to the trending memes is a surefire way to spark a conversation with your audience. Humor often sparks engagement, so playing your cards right and creating memes your audience can’t help but relate to is gold for engagement.

#3. Create Informational Carousels

Another easy way to get people engaged and keep them engaged if Instagram engagement is low is to create informational carousel posts.

If you can hook your audience in with a great first slide (visually and conceptually), they will be more likely to swipe through the carousel to see what it’s all about. The more value you’re dishing out, the more you can count on swipe-throughs.

Use these carousels to share industry insights, tips, or tutorials.

#4. Leverage Short-Form Video Content

Our attention spans may be small, but this could work in favor of your engagement if you play your cards right. 

By creating short-form video content (i.e. between 5-10 seconds long) that is entertaining and still packed with value, you’re creating bite-sized nuggets of information that your audience can actually digest. And if they can digest it, they’ll watch it and maybe even share it! 

#5. Give Your Audience a CTA

If Instagram engagement is low, you want people interacting with your post, not simply looking at it, or worse, scrolling on by. 

Include compelling calls to action in the captions of your posts to facilitate conversation or even just to let people know what they should do with your post.

Sometimes as humans, we need to be told what to do! If you want people to like, comment, save, or share your post it’s ok to tell them that! The payoff will be fantastic.

#6. Participate in Giveaways

If it’s appropriate for your niche, participating in giveaways ia a great way to boost engagement. You can collaborate with influencers or other businesses to host giveaways on one or both of your pages. 

This may increase your reach and engagement as participants often tag friends and engage with your content to enter.

#7. Collab on Instagram

If you’re trying to boost engagement, you don’t have to do it alone! Collaborative posts are a mutually beneficial way for brands and influencers to reach a whole new scope of followers.

Team up with influencers or other businesses in your niche for collaborative posts to expose yourself to their followers and grow the amount of people interacting with your page and content.

#8. Post at High Engagement Times for Your Audience

In the Instagram app itself, you can view basic insights, one of these being engagement times. Analyze your audience's activity patterns and post when they are most active. This ensures your content reaches them when they are most likely to engage.

#9. Utilize Relevant Hashtags and Keywords

Forget the hashtag vs. keyword debate and incorporate them both into your posts. Truly, having them both can’t hurt! 

Research and incorporate trending and relevant hashtags and keywords in your captions for improved discoverability. 

#10. Quality Over Quantity

Quality content stands out. And if content stands out, people are going to engage with it! Take a page from the Scott Social book and remember quality over quantity.

Invest time creating visually appealing, informative, and engaging posts that captivate your audience. If you churn out content every day that doesn’t provide any value, it will quickly become clear as those engagement numbers drop.

What’s Next

With these strategies in your toolkit, you can work towards not only improving your Instagram engagement but also building a loyal and active community around your brand. Remember, social media is dynamic, so continuously monitor and adjust your approach based on the evolving preferences of your audience.

Still lost? Leave it to the pros.

At Scott Social, engagement is basically our middle name. We've successfully helped clients in various industries, including real estate, e-commerce, blogging, and the hotel industry, boost their social media engagement, and we can do the same for you and your brand. 

If you're ready to stop constantly asking yourself if Instagram engagement is always down, let us take the ball into our court. Contact us today to learn more about how we can prepare your business for the lowest of engagement lows and the highest of engagement highs (because your numbers are bound to grow with us on your side).