This is one of the most common questions that people ask me. “Why is my Instagram engagement so low?”
And all I can say is that it depends. There are actually many reasons why is your Instagram engagement low.
And that is why in this blog post I am going to share with you some of the biggest ones so that you can fix them and get incredible results.
So, are you ready to begin? If so let’s dive in…
Your Content Is Bad
This is the main reason why your engagement is so low. If your content is bad there is absolutely no reason for people to engage with it. Even if you get your post in front f one million people, chances are that nobody is going to engage with the post.
That is just the way it is.
Imagine that you are scrolling through the explore page and you’re a vegan. And suddenly you see a piece of content about how killing pigs and eating raw pig butts is great for health.
Would you engage? Probably not. In fact, if you would then it would be hate. (Yes, that counts as engagement, but whether it is better than no engagement is pretty arguable.)
So, what is the thing that you have to do if you want to be successful? Well, your content needs to do 3 main things:
- It has to be valuable
- It has to be well presented
- It has to be relevant
And here we go. When I shared the example about the vegan, the content clearly wasn’t valuable to the vegan as it was absolutely irrelevant. When that happens, your content is going to suck.
You miss just one of the pillars and your content will never do well.
Whereas if you get all of these 3 right then your chances of the content performance and getting a lot of engagement on the post are going to go through the roof.
That is because your content is 80% of your success. Not engagement strategy, not ads, nothing. JUST CONTENT.
You can comment for hours, respond to messages, reply to one thousand stories and still get less than 10 likes on your own posts.
That is simply because if it is bad, nothing is going to help you.
So, pay a lot of extra attention to the content that you share, make sure that it follows the 3 content pillars, and create content that your dream customers are going to absolutely love.
Broad Engagement Drop
This is happening quite often and it is absolutely fine. In fact, it seems that it happened now as well, and this is one of the reasons that have nothing to do with you.
For example, in the northern hemisphere Summer is currently happening, and that means a lot of people are outside, they spend less time on their phones, etc.
What does that result in? Exactly, a broad engagement drop.
Even if you are in the B2B industry like I am. Almost every entrepreneur that follows me goes on a vacation. There are only a few badasses like me who don’t and work instead because they are freaking obsessed and take a vacation for example in winter or other time in the year (when there is time for it), or even though they go on a vacation they work on it because they can’t help themselves (like me as well.)
So, what is that obviously going to result in? YES – broad engagement drop.
There is basically nothing you can do with it. But you shouldn’t use it as an excuse for why is your Instagram engagement so low, and instead, you should try hard to improve it despite the drop happening.
´That means, better your content, engage with more people, engage better, and on and on.
When you adopt that mentality, then you are going to make massive improvements and once it gets back up, your engagement will go so high that you’ve never seen it before.
You’re Not Social
I already talked about that one of the reasons why is your Instagram engagement so low is that you are not engaging with other people in return.
And that is simply because Instagram is a social media and people love to engage with those that they have relationships with.
And the way you are going to build relationships with your audience and get exposure (especially in the beginning stages of Instagram marketing when your audience isn’t that big) is by engaging with them.
Reply to comments, comment on their posts, ask questions, do lives, etc.
These are all forms of engaging your audience and they result in incredible boosts in your own engagement.
You Don’t Tell People to Engage
This is for some reason something that most p)people forget. If you want people to engage with your content, then simply tell them to engage with it.
Adding a simple call to action at the end of your carousel or at the end of your video can make wonders.
I’ve seen posts (and some of them were my own) when adding a simple call to action doubled or even tripled the engagement.
It’s just crazy and it works.
Just remember that you must ask for only one thing at a time, and keep the call to action simple. If the thing you are taking is to share your page, follow you, save the post, and dance in the process, not many people will take action.
Just tell them to drop a comment or double tap, and your engagement is going to increase.
Definitely try it out.
Filip Konecny 