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Prior to social media invention, businesses had to solely worry about the customer base around them. Although some businesses relied on advertisements to grow their business, business growth largely depended on word of mouth, meaning people recommending the business to friends and family.
Nowadays, word of mouth has grown immensely with the use of social media. Businesses not only have the older fashioned style of growing a business to rely on, but they also have to be aware of the ins and outs of social media. Most importantly, businesses need to be fully aware of Instagram.
Seeing as Instagram is arguably the most vital social media page for businesses, it makes sense why so many businesses want to understand how they can utilize it correctly. After all, the importance of Instagram engagements is essentially what drives the success of a business page. A low number of likes and comments shows that a business doesn’t have a big audience, while many likes, saves, and comments show the contrary.
Still, there is a lot to Instagram, and hyper-focusing on the like count isn’t the only aspect tied to the platform that businesses need to be cognizant of. Thus, why so many experts mention the catch-all term of engagement numbers and, more specifically, engagement rates.
Nevertheless, if you're interested in learning more about engagement rates, look no further. Below will take an in-depth look at why engagement rates are vital to an Instagram business page while discussing how a business can improve them. Keep in mind, not one of these points is the sole answer, and it's largely dependent on the implementation of everything.
What are Instagram Engagement Rates?
Think of Instagram engagement rates as the catch-all term for people interacting with your profile. Rather than single out comments, likes, followers, and shares, an engagement rate is a simple way to look at the broader term of how people are interacting with your profile and how you can improve it.
As you can imagine, social media interaction is primarily what drives a specific business page's success. If a business page has a million followers, but only gets 100 likes on every post, obviously, that isn't a reasonable engagement rate for the page. At the same time, a business page with 1000 followers that gets 100 likes on each post is fantastic.
How to Calculate Instagram Engagement Rates?
Besides knowing that the phrase engagement rate is a catch-all term for everything having to do with people interacting with a profile, it’s also helpful to know how to calculate Instagram engagement rates. After all, being able to calculate your own engagement rate can allow you to see the potential success of your business.
Calculating an engagement rate is extremely straightforward and only requires you to divide your account’s likes and comments by your follower count times 100. So, if you average 5 comments and 20 likes on a page that has 100 followers, then your engagement rate would be 25 percent (20 + 5 = 25, 25 / 100 = 0.25, 0.25 x 100 = 25). There are other ways you can calculate your engagement rate by utilizing impressions instead of followers, but most people determine it this way.
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How to Know a Good Engagement Rate
To understand what a reasonable engagement rate is, it becomes indispensable to know the average engagement rate. On the broader scope of Instagram, the average Instagram rate is 1.22 percent, but keep in mind, this rate is for the entire scope of Instagram and not your specific niche.
For example, fashion brands tend to be much lower than the average 1.22 percent, whereas education-oriented pages are much higher. Thus, it becomes especially vital to examine your specific industry to know its good engagement rate. Even if you find out your rate is okay, there is always room for improvement.
Also, be mindful of your brand’s perspective and how much potential it has. If you’re only hoping to keep it local and nothing more, you might not need to worry about this as much as someone who wants to constantly grow their business. Either way, implementing engagement rate knowledge correctly can significantly help your business.
Utilizing Instagram Insights
As a way to help you determine your engagement rate, be sure to take a trip to your Instagram insights. To do so, open up the Instagram app, and venture over to the insights tab. Once there, you should be able to see interactions, profile visits, website clicks, follows, reach, and much more.
Although not all of these stats will be utilized for your engagement rate, they're still helpful to know since it shows how your page is doing. Profile visits are especially vital since they can show if your page is attractive enough to cause people to follow it. If not, you should consider changing it for it to grow correctly.
Recent Trends
As broad as a notion as it might seem, the most significant way to grow an Instagram business page is to be mindful of recent trends. Most people typically go viral or gain a large following by jumping on board with what’s trending soon than later. As you can imagine, waiting to follow a trend can be a waste of time.
Thus, it’s imperative to be aware of what’s make the rounds of popularity. Obviously, you don’t want to overuse your energy in this regard, but be mindful of how beneficial it can be to follow recent trends. You’d be surprised at how much your followers will appreciate you taking part in what’s trending.
There is also the assertion of following trends concerning Instagram itself. Not necessarily from a popularity standpoint, but with what’s going on with the app. A good rule of thumb is to on Instagram’s blog page every few days to keep you updated with what’s being added and anything else that’s new with the app.
Third-Party Apps
As you can imagine, with a platform as big as Instagram, there are plenty of third-party apps that can help you grow traffic to your page. Obviously, these apps won’t solely pick traffic up for your page, but they help get a more in-depth vision regarding your insights, which can be highly beneficial to you to know.
Keep in mind, most third-party apps require a minor payment to unlock all of their features. Still, as long as the features are worth it, you shouldn't find any issue investing in it. Thus, do what you can to take the time to take a close examination at the app reviews. Reviews are there for a reason, so use them!
Demonstrating Audience Appeal
The most significant benefit tied to having an Instagram business page is the ability to look at your audience and see what they want. Unless you have friends or family strictly following your page, complete strangers following the page are following it for a reason, meaning you must be doing something right.
Before giving yourself a high-five, you should try to determine why they're following you in the first place. It could be as simple as they like one of your products, but there's a good chance someone only followed the page because they liked its aesthetic. Either way, it's worth being mindful of.
Brand Trendiness
Going back to the idea of recent trends, there is also the idea of brand trendiness. Staying relevant is a large part of having a successful business today. Whether it’s how your Instagram page actually looks or it’s something more specific like following a trend that’s going on, all of it is worth being aware of.
As for business, you should look at trending businesses in a similar caliber to your own to see why they're at the specific status they're at. Some businesses solely become successful due to luck but realize there’s a path for business pages to gain success, so try to take a look at what that means.
Showing Social Proof to Potential Collaborations
Besides understanding engagement rates for your own benefit, there is also the benefit of showing social proof to potential collaborations. For example, a sponsor may reach out to your page and wonder what your average engagement rate is. Although they can calculate it themselves, if you can manage to tell them your rate, it’ll go well for potential collaborations.
In fact, many influencers charge a specific price due to their engagement rate. The same thing happens with businesses that become interested in having their product sponsored by another business or brand. All of it is connected, and having an idea of what your page is worth can allow you better control for potential collaborations.
Tracking Engagement.
Although earlier touched upon the idea of keeping up with insights and what it means for your page, you also need to be cognizant of tracking engagement. Try to do what you can to read into daily, weekly, and monthly growth engagement-wise since this can do wonders for actually growing your page.
If you can manage to stay on top of this, you'd be surprised at how well it can be for your business' longevity. A good way to track your engagement is to have a document or notebook that jots down your numbers. Although Instagram can show you insights whenever writing them down allows you to mentally remember them.
Posting at the Right Time
Believe it or not, the time you post it on Instagram can greatly affect how well the post will be. Obviously, if you post at 3 am, that post isn’t going to do as well as a post from 5 pm. As a result, be mindful of when it’s okay for you to post and if it’s too late or too early for a specific post.
Although every page is different with the best time for posting, take a close examination of some of the broader ideas of when you should post. Generally speaking, most experts recommend posting between 10 am and 3 pm, with high-priority posts being best matched for Wednesdays.
Implementing Instagram Stories
As great as it is to post at the right time, there is also the notion of Instagram stories. Instagram is much more than making a post, seeing as more users use Instagram stories more than anything else. Plus, your followers are more likely to see your story and interact with it than a post.
Thus, be aware of how you can implement Instagram stories for your page. Examples can include making announcements, showing behind-the-scenes work, or just following an ongoing trend. Either way, definitely take the time to implement Instagram stories correctly for your page.
Hashtags? Do You Use Them?
There is some debate amongst professionals in the social media game over the use of hashtags. The real question being, should you use hashtags? The answer is completely up to you since using a few hashtags can be beneficial, but not sticking to hashtags on Instagram isn’t the biggest deal in the world.
Engaging with Your Audience
Every Instagram page has an audience, meaning you should take the time necessary to actually engage with your audience. Obviously, this doesn’t mean you need to answer every message that floods your inbox, but you should have polls and reply to comments when you can. Doing so will show your audience that you appreciate them.
Collaborations and Their Use
Collaborations are especially vital for the growth of a specific Instagram page since it crosses both participants in the collaboration. Try to think outside the box of who would be willing to work with you, but understand that not every business, brand, or influencer is a good fit for a collaboration.
Having Great Captions
Captions refer to the actual wording you’ll have for a post. Having a great caption can do wonders for your post's engagement rate compared to not having the right caption. Try not to overthink it, but realize there is a level of professionalism expected for your caption.
