Engagement is everything! Fact is, if your Instagram posts/stories fail to generate reactions (e.g. likes, comments, views, and so forth), from IG’s perspective, your content simply isn’t worth distributing.

Ouch! Frankly, you work entirely too hard on your content for it to end up shelved like that.

So here are 3 tactics to implement to fan the fire 🔥 of engagement on Instagram.

1. ASK FOR IT! In your post caption try adding a call-to-action, like: “If this post hits home, please share it to your Stories.” Don’t muddle your caption with multiple asks — pick one per post: save this post, like this video, comment below, tag or share w/ a friend.

2. It’s important to time ⏱ your posts as the bulk of your followers are logging in for the day. Instagram monitors and predicts when its users “use the app.” The trick is, you want to publish just before the crest point—i.e., just as the the majority of your followers are logging in for the day. It’s kind of like riding a wave🏄. If you jump too late, you’ll miss the wave and have to wait for the next one. If you jump too soon, the wave will crash over you 🌊. In other words, by the time your audience would’ve logged in to engage with your post, IG might’ve already called it a bad job, due to lackluster levels of engagement. Remember, more engagement (especially when it comes quickly after you publish) incentivizes Instagram to distribute your content to a broader audience.

3. You wanna try and keep people parked on your content as long as possible. Try beefing up the substance of your captions so viewers will wanna read. Try adding subtitles/captions to your videos so, if the sound is off, for instance, viewers will continue watching nonetheless. Try posting more carousel posts whereby viewers can swipe through multiple images or videos. Point is, if your content causes a viewer to stop scrolling, that’s a win for Instagram, which means, your post is gonna get the love!

What are your best ideas for sparking engagement?