Social media has changed the way we communicate with others, with over 2 billion active users worldwide in social media; it’s an essential must-have tool to be using for your business today. While there is various social media channels to choose from, Instagram, an easy photo-sharing app, has more than 500 million daily users and sky-high user engagement levels.

Instagram is quite the tool when managing your own personal or business accounts; while gaining a massive following might be on your mind, an active engaging audience is the main core and is what you need the most in order to run a successful business, I mean how else will you get those followers?

Whether you’re growing your own personal account or working on behalf of a company, read on and find out the six main tactics (via Neil Patel, Forbes), that will instantly improve your Instagram engagement:

1. Stay Active On Instagram

You can’t expect to get a ton of engagement if you’re not doing it back. If you want to boost your engagement, then you have to go after it. Spend a good 5 to 10 minutes each hour on Instagram to like and comment on other user’s pictures and pages, including your audience’s.

It’s a treat others how you wanted to be treated type method, if you engage in someone’s page, they will more than likely check out your profile and engage back.

This tactic is a great way to not only increase engagement but maybe gain more followers as well.

2. Use #hashtags

Using hashtags is a great way to find like-minded people or overall just have the ability to expose your image to a large and targeted audience.

Instagram only allows up to 30 hashtags per post, so make sure you study it up and find out what hashtags work best with what you’re posting!

3. Experiment with Captions

The most engaged photos are the ones that had a well-thought, brilliant story-telling caption. Be creative, get personal! Your followers want to hear the real you, the one that they can most relate to! Plus writing a longer and well-thought caption allows more conversations to happen, as well as genuine comments from your followers.

Don’t forget to leave behind a call-to-action link to your website; it’s a great tactic to drive more traffic!

4. Promote your Instagram on Your Other Networks

Don’t forget to connect your Instagram with your other channels such as Facebook and Twitter. This way you can let your Facebook and Twitter followers know you also have an Instagram page that they can follow.

5. Post at the Right Times

This is very important and makes all a difference. Think about when people are on social media the most, for instance, during the week, people are mostly on before work, on their way to work, during lunch breaks and before they go to bed.

Instagram recently came out with a feature where you can switch your personal account into a business profile. This new feature allows you to view your metrics of engagement and followers. It’s a pretty handy tool, especially when figuring out when you should post next!

6. Tag Your Photo

When showcasing for instance an outfit or tasty meal, make sure you are tagging the appropriate businesses. This way your followers can see where to go or shop, and the business or brand will get notified and chances are they might just repost your photo!

If you’re lucky, this brand/business might have millions of followers and you are in no doubt going to gain a ton of engagement and followers.

If you implement these 6 tactics, you’ll notice an immediate increase in your engagement. Whether you’re running your own account or working on behalf of your company, Instagram is a great tool to use in order to build and be successful with your business.

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Image Credit: Mobile Marketing Magazine

Article Written by Charles Crawford of Social Media Week