If you’re reading this article, then you’re probably like us and on the endless journey reading endless tricks on how to boost Instagram engagement rates. For those of you who don’t know or need clarification, your engagement rate is the percentage at which your audience is liking, commenting, viewing or saving your posts in comparison to your overall followers.
Instagram engagement rates are incredibly important for bloggers and Instagram influencers whose engagement rates determine things like brand collaborations and profitability, but it’s just as important for non-influencers like brands who are focused on getting their products and services seen. An Instagram account with higher engagement rates not only is more likely to have their content end up on their followers’ feeds, but is also more likely to have it end up on the Explore Page and Top Post Page.
You’ve heard us mention many times that the first 60 minutes of engagement is vital to break that initial reach barrier; the more engagement you get, the more people see your content for an extended period of time, and chances are visit your Instagram feed.
Just as a rule of thumb, or a benchmark we’ve outline engagement rate ranges to help you compare your engagement rate to see where you stand overall:
- Low Engagement Rate: 0% to 1.64%, or between 0 and 16.4 likes/comments per every 1,000 followers
- Good Engagement Rate: 1.64% to 3.48%, or between 16.4 – 34.8 likes/comments per every 1,000 followers
- High Engagement Rate: 3.48% to 6.67%, or between 34.8 and 66.7 likes/comments per every 1,000 followers
Also note that the above “standard” rates are averages taken from the industry. Everyone will dispute and claim that what their “perfect engagement rate” is, but these are a general guideline on what’s out there. It’s also important to note that Instagrammers with smaller followings like micro-influencers tend to have higher engagement rates, whereas larger accounts have may have smaller rates. For example, on average as of April 2017, accounts with under 2,000 followers had an engagement rate of almost 10.7%, whereas the standard rate for influencers and Instagram accounts with over 1 million followers was only 1.5%. It’s like finding a pebble in a pond, the bigger the pond the harder it is to find a specific pebble.
Navigating engagement rates hasn’t always been easy, and that’s why we came up with our new Wolf Analytics too. This new feature provides amazing insight into how your audience is engaging with you. We built this tool based on feedback from our community of amazing members, but also by looking at what is already available out there – like Instagram’s built in statistics available for anyone with a Business Profile for example. You can use the information gained from Wolf Analytics in combination with Instagram’s statistics to boost your overall engagement rate, which in turn, will even further boost engagement and help you with account growth! Now that you fully understand engagement rates, we’ve outlined an easy to follow, step-by-step guide below on how to boost Instagram engagement rates using Instagram statistics and Wolf Analytics.
- The first step is finding your current engagement rate. There’s a complicated math equation to figure this out, but thankfully with Wolf Analytics we do all the calculating for you. Once you have your engagement rate, you’ll be able to use it as a benchmark to monitor the improvements after following this guide. If you don’t know how to use the Wolf Analytics tool, you can learn all about it in the “Wolf Analytics 101” channel on Telegram, or you can read more about it in one of our previous posts here. After you’ve found your engagement rate using Wolf Analytics, the next step is to look at the other metrics provided by the Analytics bot. In addition to giving you your engagement rate, it also provides you with your Total Follower Count, Average Likes per Post, and Average Comments per Post.
- Now that you have the Average Likes per Post and the Average Comments per Post, you can then turn to Instagram’s statistics to figure out which of your posts have likes and comments below your Average provided by Wolf. This is probably the most important step in the process of boosting your engagement rate. Because your engagement rate is calculated from an average, your posts with engagement lower than that average number will drag your engagement rate now. For example, let’s say that your Average Likes per Post is 250 and your Average Comments per Post is 10. If your post from a few days ago only has 160 likes and 4 comments, it will ultimately lower your overall engagement rate.
- This will be how you will decide which of your posts you should be dropping links to in the Wolf Engagement Pods. You can take that post with only 160 likes and 4 comments (the one that’s lowering your engagement rate) and drop that link into one of Wolf’s many engagement pods to bring that up to, or ideally, above your average of 250 likes and 10 comments. By doing so, your overall engagement rate will improve. You can continue to do this with older posts that have less likes and comments in your feed until you are satisfied with your engagement rate.
- Once you’ve worked on older posts that can use some beefing up with engagement, you now want to focus on future post engagement, so you don’t have to constantly go back and play catch-up with your Instagram content. This is where that 60 minute method we live by comes in to help with boosting your engagement and potentially getting a viral post. Look at dropping your content first in our faster moving groups built to boost your engagement, like our Viral, Power Likes and Turbo series groups. Shorter cycle groups also get you engagement faster because they’re easier to catch up in so those are good to drop in second, then you can move onto dropping in the longer cycle groups such as our 24 hr engagement pods.
Now that you’ve reworked your Instagram engagement strategy, it’s time to put it to work to boost Instagram engagement and monitor your success. Instagram Business Profiles can look to their reach and impressions statistics, while also pulling their engagement rate from Wolf Analytics to see if this new method is helping or hindering your Instagram engagement. And if boosting engagement and growing your Instagram account are top of mind, then be sure to check out some of the other amazing posts available thought the Wolf Blog for more tips and tricks to boosting your engagement!
