How To Increase & Improve On Instagram Engagement

As one of the most popular social media sites around, Instagram is a hub for online engagement – it is therefore a site businesses need to begin taking notice of. According to a recent infographic from HubSpot, as published on Ragan.com, there are a number of scientific formulas to follow which will encourage more engagement for businesses on the site.

First off, calls-to-action (CTAs) were found to be incredibly effective when included in the caption for a photo shared on the site; in fact, the research found that images with a clear CTA – such as inviting the user to ‘like’ the image – saw an increase in likes of 89% compared to those without. Including the word ‘comment’ led to a 2,194% increase in likes. It was also found to be particularly important to include faces in images, as those with a human element also achieved 35% more likes.

Colour also plays an important role in the amount of engagement a photo generates, with yellow, orange or pink images achieving less ‘likes’ and comments than blue, grey and green pictures – or ‘cool’ coloured images.

Funnily enough, despite filters being one of the key selling points of the site (giving the users the ability to personalise their photos), the infographic found that photos with no filter actually created more likes-per-follower out of them all. No filter was followed by three others that scored higher engagement levels than average: Willow, Valencia and Sierra.

It was also found that ‘busier’ images and brighter images were more successful in generating engagement than those with fewer edges and low luminance – busier images saw a 125% difference in ‘likes’ and high luminance actually led to a 592% difference in ‘likes.’