If you are struggling with Instagram engagement you are not alone my friend. Getting people to engage with your posts whether it’s throwing you a comment, a heart or a save can seem like a losing battle most days. But what if I told you it didn’t have to be that way? What if you stopped viewing Instagram as a way to get business and started seeing it as something else entirely? I know I know, right about now you’re ready to click away because “pah-lease! Instagram for fun? Who are you kidding Melanie! I’m a realtor and Instagram is all about getting leads” (Time to drop that word too but that’s a story for another time!)
The truth is, I started to see a tremendous change in engagement once I dropped the idea that I was on Instagram to just get eyeballs on my business, I started to just take it easy and began asking very intentional questions about who I wanted to be on Instagram rather than who I wanted to catch in my honey trap. I asked myself “How do I want to show up today? How can I serve my audience today? And how can I connect with people today?” The answer to those questions is how I approach social media each and every day and let me tell you it makes a HUGE difference! Approaching Instagram from a point of service rather than sales will get your audience to see you as more than just a realtor and that’s exactly what you want! So if you’re ready to put in some work and start falling in love with the ‘gram, here are three tried and tested tips to get your engagement levels up today!
ONE| STORIES
Stories are one of the best ways you can authentically engage with your audience. You can drop the manicured look of your feed and have more fun in stories in a way that invites your audience in and makes them want to participate in your life. A great way to get engagement though is to use stickers – those cute engagement tools like question boxes, sliders and polls! And this allows your audience to engage with you without a lot of effort on their part. Now once people have engaged, that’s where the real magic can happen. If someone answers your question sticker, shoot them a DM to continue the conversation. Someone answered your poll about Spring Cleaning Woes and suggested it’s not their favourite thing to do? Send them your freebie on spring cleaning made simple. The point here is to start a conversation, connect and give the engagement you want to receive without EVER asking for a sale or sound salesy! Seriously, we are so over being sold to, instead, think of each engagement you get as an opportunity to connect with a real human being.
TWO | CTA’S
CTA’S or Call to Actions are a great way to tell your audience EXACTLY what you want them to do or how you want them to participate in your post. You can start your post with a question you’d love your audience to answer like “which would you rather be a renter or a homeowner?” Or you can ask them to double-tap if they agree with something, ” Winter blues are real! Double tap if you’re feeling a little blah lately!” You have got to invite your audience to action, if you don’t then you are missing a key opportunity to get your audience to engage. As you’ve probably already noticed, asking doesn’t necessarily mean a response, BUT i want to assure you that the more you ask and the more you respond to each and every comment that comes your way the more your audience will trust that you are the type of person who responds and that means they will be more likely to leave comments. CTA’s are also a great way to get people off of Instagram and into an email list. So if you have a great freebie that you’re sitting on, make sure to share it often and ask your audience to go grab it, “Hey y’all spring has sprung and I don’t know about you but spring cleaning is one of my love/hate events of the season. On the one hand, I love purging! On the other, I always feel overwhelmed by what to do and how to really do a good spring clean. If you’re anything like me, head over to the link in my bio, I’ve created a killer checklist (based on my numerous years of spring clean brain fog) that you can grab for free. Hope it helps, come back later and let me know!
THREE | GIVE GIVE GIVE
Reciprocity is a real thing my friend and that definitely includes the world of Instagram. This means that if you want to get likes you have to give them, if you want to get comments you have to give them. Here’s what you don’t want to do – randomly like and lame-o comment on people’s posts with a thumbs-up emoji, please don’t do that, I beg you! They look spammy and bot-like and just don’t do anything to start a conversation. The name of the game here is intention, you want to intentionally comment on posts, intentionally like posts that speak to you and intentionally engage with stories. I like to set goals for myself (hello all my fellow enneagram 3’s!) with real numbers to hit each day, so I might push myself to like 20 posts a day, comment on 5 posts and stories, and follow 3 accounts…again all these actions are done with so much intention. Also, you want to reply to every single comment and DM intentionally as well, don’t just shoot people a heart, if they took the time to comment, you should take the time to respond, especially when you have a smaller audience. A good tip here is to start paying attention to what you like to get on Instagram, whether it be thoughtful comments or replies or engagement with your stories and then go out and give 10 times that amount.
there you have it, my proven strategies for more Instagram engagement, I hope you’ve noticed by now that in order to get the engagement you want you have to drop the selling pretext and just focus on connection, trust me showing up as a human instead of just a realtor looking for leads, will change not only how your engagement stats but also how you feel about the platform completely. This is your opportunity to shine my friend, and I 100% you have everything it takes to kill it on my favourite place to hang out, the ‘gram!
