Instagram may be a platform with over 500 million daily users who hit the likes of button a mean of 4.2 billion times each day .
For a business looking to urge more likes and increased engagement, those statistics look promising. But the matter isn’t getting likes, it’s getting enough likes to spice up your visibility in order that more people engage, follow and invest in your brand.
To get more likes on Instagram you would like to approach content tactically.
Top Tip: This post assumes that you’ve already created an Instagram business profile, understand the fundamentals to Instagram marketing and have learned the way to reach your audience on the platform. If not, learn the fundamentals in our beginner’s guide to Instagram marketing for little businesses 📸
Before we explore the following pointers in-depth, let’s check out how Instagram has recently amended the likes feature and why generating likes still matters.
Why Instagram likes still matter
In 2019, Instagram began an attempt phase of hiding likes for users in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Brazil, Japan, Ireland, Italy and therefore the US. The goal is to decrease competitiveness and recognition contests, thus motivating a shift in posting behaviour toward creativity, storytelling and spontaneity.
As Instagram’s CEO, Adam Mosseri put it, “The idea is to undertake and depressurise Instagram, make it less of a contest , give people more room to specialise in connecting with folks that they love and things that inspire them.”
By hiding likes it means people viewing your posts won’t be ready to see the amount of likes they need . Subsequently, people may interact more frequently with brands they need a real reference to , instead of being drawn to brands with high like-counts.
For brands, it means every such as you get has been earned from a true fan. therein sense, though hidden publicly, likes become more influential than ever.
Although likes are concealed, you’ll still access the numbers within the rear . This way, you’ll still track how a post is performing and tweak content to please the Instagram algorithm – which continues to favour likes as a ranking signal.
Whether it’s unrolled permanently within the UK or not, likes remain a key measure of success and getting them requires quality content.
With those things in mind, let’s get into the ideas .
1. Use high-quality photos
Over 95 million posts are uploaded to Instagram a day . whenever you post, you’re competing for attention with other brands, influencers and followers’ friends and family. You can also buy real Instagram likes.
To stand out, your content must stop users in their tracks. this suggests no blurry, pixilated or poorly lit photos.
Instagram post from Lush cosmetics
Fortunately, modern smartphones have cameras that are quite capable of manufacturing a top quality shot.
Whenever you’re taking a photograph or shoot a video on your phone:
Shoot in HDR mode
Use a smartphone tripod to stay the phone steady
Make photos 1080 pixels in breadth
Expert Photography has some great tips for getting the foremost out of your phone camera.
When you’re able to upload photos, choose a filter that appeals to users. A study by TrackMaven found that the Mayfair filter is best for interactions, followed by no filter in the least – which puts more emphasis on the standard of your original shot.
TrackMaven study showing the affect on Instagram filters
2. Use hashtags strategically and generously
Hashtags have the potential to place your Instagram posts ahead of an entire new audience. And there are popular terms for each niche.
The easiest thanks to find the proper hashtags is to A few words associated with your image or business into the Instagram search bar.
List of popular hashtags around food
Alternatively, you’ll enter # followed by your keywords within the caption. This brings up the foremost popular Instagram hashtags.
Another way to seek out relevant hashtags is to use a hashtag generator site like All Hashtag. Enter a keyword into the search field and therefore the tool will generate the best-related hashtags.
Screenshot of hashtag generator “All Hashtag”
To reach as many of us as possible together with your post, use the foremost popular hashtags in your niche.
To reach people in your local area, use location-based hashtags. to seek out these, search Google for ‘popular Instagram accounts + [your city]’ and see what terms the foremost followed accounts near you’re using.
Here’s an example from one among the foremost popular Instagram accounts in Bristol.
Screenshot of
Source: Jess Siggers
How many hashtags do you have to use?
Instagram allows you to spend to 30 hashtags per post, but which will be overkill. Hashtag strategy research from Sprout Social shows that the majority brands use between one and five hashtags, but the sweet spot for engagement is nine.
Hashtag engagement study from Sprout Social
3. Embrace video content
According to Mention, posts containing videos receive about 38% more Instagram engagement than those containing images. And generally , video gets the simplest return on investment (ROI) for social media marketing efforts on the entire .
Video Marketing – Social Media ROI Statistic
There are several ways to make good videos on a budget, using your smartphone, screen capture software, animated videos or user-generated content.
We’ve taken a glance at each of those methods intimately in our guide the way to grow your small business using video marketing. The guide also covers sorts of video content you’ll use to interact your audience, including:
Product demos
Events
Case studies
Behind-the-scenes videos
Interviews
According to wibbitz, how-to tutorials are the foremost popular sort of Instagram video content. That’s something in touch in mind if you’ve got anything you’ll teach your audience.
Something else in touch in mind is that the technical specs:
Format: MP4
Length: 3-60 seconds
Video file size: Up to 512MB, but it’s best to stay them under 50MB for a quicker upload
Aspect ratio: 1.91:1-4:5
Orientation: Square, portrait or landscape
4. Run a contest or giveaway
Contests are one among the simplest ways to extend engagement on Instagram. to extend likes, you’ll make the barrier of entry something as simple as ‘like-to-win’.
To boost involvement, you’ll up the stakes by asking entrants to also follow you and tag a lover , as demonstrated during this giveaway by Diala’s Kitchen.
Example of an Instagram contest from Diala’s Kitchen
To make your Instagram contest or giveaway engaging, confirm that the prize has relevancy to your brand and target market, and specific enough to draw in long-term fans.
For example, if you run a restaurant, a present of|gifting away|giving for free|freely giving|giving freely”> making a gift of a free meal for 2 or a gift card are some things that real fans would have an interest in. making a gift of an iPad or holiday to Disneyland, on the opposite hand, may only attract opportunists that haven’t any real interest in your brand.
Before running any contest or giveaway, read through Instagram’s Promotion Guidelines. It’s not the foremost exciting thing to try to to , but it’ll keep you on the proper side of the platform’s moderators.
5. Write compelling captions
Captions provides a voice to your visual content. They allow you to expand on photos, boast your personality and provides followers instructions.
To nail the right caption:
Get the tone right. Instagram is fun and lighthearted, so your posts should reflect this. If your tone of voice tends to be more corporate or formal, inject some personality for a more human and authentic touch.
Put important details first. Caption text is stop within the Instagram feed after two or three lines. While you would like people to click ‘more’, assume that they won’t. Get your most vital message in early and save hashtags for the top .
Tide Instagram post demonstrating text cut-off
Write a call-to-action. If you would like your followers to try to to something, ask them. for instance , ‘click on the link within the bio’ or ‘like if you’d do this’ or ‘comment together with your favourite XYZ’.
Use emojis. Emojis add personality, but they also work to catch the attention and hack text. If the compatible emojis are available, you’ll also use them to exchange text.
How long should your Instagram captions be?
Instagram captions have a personality limit of 2200, which provides you many space to urge your point across.
That said, a recent study of over 8.9 million Instagram posts by Quintly found that brands with a million followers or less got the foremost interaction from posts with 1-50 characters. And Sprout Social suggests the perfect length of a caption is 138-150 characters. So keeping it concise could also be best.
6. Share content across social media
If you’re active on other social platforms, use them to market your Instagram content.
Top Tip: If you’re not on other social networks, you ought to be. quite half the 97% of digital consumers that have used social media within the past month have used it to research products. Social media marketing are often an economical and dynamic approach to brand marketing, but it takes a clearly defined strategy to determine your brand online. to find out more about the way to do exactly that, read our 7-step-guide to making a social media marketing strategy for your small business📱
Instagram allows you to automatically share your posts to Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr. It’s not something you ought to do with every post, as it’s good practice to share original content to every platform. However, reminding followers of other channels where you’re active is differently to get views and likes on Instagram without much effort.
As well as automatic sharing, you’ll ask people to follow you on Instagram in posts, email newsletters or, because the FSB has done here, in your social media bios.
FSB Twitter account with Instagram call-to-action
You can also cross-share content without leaving Instagram using the Stories feature, which allows you to point people at your organic posts.
500 million people use Instagram Stories a day and 62% of users say they need become more curious about a brand or product after seeing it in Stories. This makes it a strong feature for getting more eyes on the posts in your feed.
Diala’s Kitchen used Stories to great effect to market the competition we showed you earlier.
7. Tag relevant people and makes
Tagging another brand or person may be a thanks to give them the credit they deserve and point your followers in their direction.
But there are benefits in it for you too.
A tag notifies others of your new content. It also helps your Instagram photos show abreast of their profile, because of the ‘tagged in’ section.
Example of tags utilized in Instagram posts
Also, supporting another brand makes them more likely to point out love back (more on this within the next tip).
When tagging people in your Instagram posts, tag them in both the photo and therefore the caption. do that when you’re:
Working on a project with another business
Shouting out a customer, fan or associate
Announcing a contest winner
Thanking someone for a case study
Answering customer questions
Sharing someone’s content on your feed
Only tag people when it’s relevant to try to to so. and check out to avoid tagging an equivalent people whenever so as to not encounter as being spammy.
8. Engage with others
Instagram may be a community and if you’re a lively member that takes time to love and discuss content that interests you, people will return the favour.
You can follow these steps to drive engagement rates:
If someone follows you, follow them back. Obviously, you would like to avoid following spam accounts.
If someone comments on your photo, reply with a comment directed toward them. Mention them, using @, within the comment.
Like the photos that have hashtags that you’re curious about .
Comment on the photos that contain hashtags you’re curious about .
Like other people’s comments on photos that you’re curious about .
Send direct messages to people that you’re curious about , or who provide tons useful .
In your photo, tag users who you recognize personally, or with whom you’ve formed a relationship on Instagram.
Ask questions or invite feedback in your posts.
More followers mean more eyes on your posts, which ultimately means more likes.
9. Post content at the proper time
To maximise your Instagram likes, you would like your posts to be seen by as many of us as possible. For this to happen, you would like to publish content at the days your audience is online.
We’ve gone into great depth on this in our guide the simplest times to post on Instagram within the UK, but here’s an summary based on 12 million posts analysed by Later:
Monday: 6 am, 10 am, and 10 pm
Tuesday: 2 am, 4 am, and 9 am
Wednesday: 7 am, 8 am and 11 pm
Thursday: 9 am, 12 pm, and 7 pm
Friday: 5 am, 1 pm, and 3 pm
Saturday: 11 am, 7 pm, and 8 pm
Sunday: 7 am, 8 am, and 4 pm
The overall best day and times to post for engagement, consistent with Sprout Social is Wednesday at 11 am.
10. invite likes
The last tip is probably the only of all: If you would like people to love your posts, ask them.
When Socialbakers analysed 350,283 tweets from 3,792 brands on Twitter, it found that asking people to “RT” a post earned a mean of 73 retweets, while asking to “Please Retweet” earned a mean of 64 retweets.
HubSpot found an identical trend when watching Facebook posts. Posts that include the word “Like” get more likes.
HubSpot study showing the impact of including call-to-action for likes
Data source: Hubspot
Twitter and Facebook are different from Instagram, but people’s behaviours are an equivalent . If the call-to-action is obvious , followers are more likely to oblige.
Ask your Instagram followers on to engage together with your posts:
Like if you agree
Like if you’ll relate to the present
Tag a lover who would really like this
Instagram post asking followers to tag a lover
Image: the great Quote
Wrapping up
Likes on Instagram are a symbol that your content is resonating with followers. Getting more of them puts your content ahead of a bigger audience, which suggests more eyes on your message and increased interest in your brand.
Following the ideas during this post as a part of your social media strategy will assist you create the content that Instagram users want to ascertain whilst making it easy for them to seek out .
The best part is that the following pointers are all free and straightforward to implement. Introduce them gradually into your posts and measure how your likes grow over time. this may assist you see which tactics work best together with your followers for long-term success.
I hope you enjoyed the article of postingtree.
