3 Ways To Increase Engagement on Your Facebook & Instagram Posts

Getting people to engage (like, comment, share etc) with your posts can seem like a real challenge sometimes, right?

It's the number one struggle I hear from clients when we start working together.

Here's what usually happens; you spend time crafting good captions, choosing the right images, you post, and only get a couple of likes.

Feels like a total waste of time and you just can't get more eyes on your content. Sound familiar?

In this blog post I'm going to teach you three things you can do to increase the engagement on your posts.

The time that you choose to post at, is important.

Are you posting when it's convenient to you, or are you taking into consideration when your audience will be able to sit down and have the time to engage with your content?

To post when it's best for your audience there are two things you need to do:

1. Go to your insights (on either Facebook or Instagram) and check what times your audience is actively online. It may be different for each platform so check both. (If you don't know how to do that you can follow the steps in this blog post).

2. Schedule your posts to post at that time your audience is most active. You may find that your audience is sitting down to scroll through Instagram at the very same time you put the kids to bed. That's why scheduling your posts is your new best friend. Great for your business and your sanity!

On Facebook: schedule your posts using their native scheduling tool. You'll find this under your 'publishing tools'.

On Instagram: I use Later Media to schedule my Instagram posts. You can sign up for a free trial with them to get started.

Do you post the content that you feel like posting or are you tapped in to the content your audience wants to see?

Stay relevant by researching the kind of posts that are doing well in your niche at the moment and then creating your own version of similar content.

Staying connected with what content your audience wants to see should be your main focus with every piece of content you post. If you don't, you'll become irrelevant and your engagement will suffer.

Do a quick search on Instagram for a big account in your niche. View them on your desktop so you can see which of the last couple of posts got the most engagement (likes and comments). Open up that post and see what the content was about. Do this with a few accounts until you start to see relevant trends emerging. Then you have loads of content ideas to work with that you know your audience are interested in.

The final piece of the engagement puzzle is in the relationships you create on social media.

The Facebook and Instagram algorithms prioritise posts from the accounts we have relationships with. That's why when you open up your Instagram account you will notice that you are seeing content from people/accounts you know and engage with (if you're seeing content related to Brad Pitt and puppies on your business account, you may need to spend your time...differently on the platforms!).

It's important to remember that Instagram and Facebook are social platforms too. To grow, you need to connect with your audience in a real way. That means you need to reach out to them and start conversations in an authentic and meaningful way.

This is why knowing your audience is so important (if you've worked with me, you'll know how much I go on about this!). You need to be able to find your target audience on Instagram and Facebook and talk to them.

How? By liking their photos, leaving a meaningful comment on a post, following them and sending them a private message. But not in a pushy salesy way, in a human way.

Prioritise spending time fostering and nurturing real relationships with your audience. That's where the real magic happens.

Pay Attention to Time - check your insights to post at the most active time for your audience

Stay Relevant - know what your audience wants to see and create content around that

Build Real Relationships - the magic wand to your social media; be human, reach out to people and connect with them in a genuine, human way