Hundreds of thousands or even millions of followers alone do not guarantee a high Instagram engagement rate. To liven up your following, you should focus on building an active community of people who are loyal to your brand. Engagement on Instagram includes all the ways users interact with content, such as liking, commenting, sharing, and saving. 

Active engagement means viewers are likely to feel connected enough to your brand. Boosted Instagram engagement also helps your content get prioritized by the Instagram algorithm. This means you can reach more of the right people who care about your brand.

In this article, we’ll present five advanced strategies for creating Instagram content, to elevate your Instagram engagement. Start by setting social media marketing goals until you get an understanding of what and how to create Instagram content that will boost Instagram engagement.

Define Your Social Media Goals to Create Great Instagram Content

Creating advanced content strategies to increase your Instagram engagement need a few steps to take. The very first step is defining your social media goals: make sure to make specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound type goals.

Determine what you want your Instagram account to do for your business. These are a few common examples; lead generation and brand awareness. However, your goals can be as unique as your company's. Find out how to set effective social media goals that directly connect to your marketing strategy. Your Instagram marketing goals will guide you on what kind of content you need to create.

Use Instagram Analytics to Analyze the Metrics

Unless you track views, shares, and growth, it will be hard for you to understand which types of posts or content marketing strategies are working or not. Some of the important data that you can obtain and analyze are:

• Insights on your Instagram followers' demographics; gender, age, location, days, and times.
• Impressions and reach of your photos, videos, and stories.
• Your profile analysis; the number of followers, unique accounts that viewed your posts, website, phone and email clicks from each post, etc.
• Track your Instagram engagement; you can find the metric you're looking for in the Overview section, including a detailed breakdown based on what you're looking for. These Instagram posts, story, reel, live, and feed engagement metrics are essential to understanding where you stand before committing more to your account.

Instagram offers free analytics tools that you can use to get some insights. However, the data provided by Instagram analytics is not detailed compared to Instagram analytics tools such as Analisa.io. This Instagram analytics tool offers a lot between price and value. While most Instagram analytics tools focus on simplicity and ease of use, Analisa.io presents a different concept, offering more comprehensive and accurate data compared to others.

Generate Valuable Content to Entertain, Educate, Inspire, or Convince Your Audience  

Generating valuable content for your Instagram audience is one of the most important stages of your Instagram content strategy. As you create your content, keep in mind the issues your audience is facing. Your Instagram content should entertain, enlighten, inspire, or persuade, depending on the stage of your target audience's journey. Here are a few stages;

• Consciousness

At this stage, you want to build brand awareness and build trust with your audience. Your audience will love fun quizzes, educational articles, or free guides.

• Consideration

At this stage, you need to cultivate your audience and keep things on track. Post branded videos, behind-the-scenes videos, and FAQs that answer customer objections.

• Decision

This is the case when advertising an offer or launching a new product. Customers are ready to buy, read reviews from past customers, learn more about product features, and look forward to receiving promotional codes.

Continuously Interact with Your Instagram Followers and Audience

Well-crafted Reels surely can bring in new viewers, but you have to do more than that, you need to turn them into your long-term Instagram followers. One of the easiest ways to turn your audience into Instagram followers while gaining more Instagram engagement is to like, reply, and re-share—having real interaction with them. 

Replying increases your chances of receiving more comments, which will increase Instagram engagement. People are much more likely to interact with you when they see that you've taken the time to reply to people who have previously commented. You can also use Instagram Story question stickers, to keep the conversation moving while laying the groundwork for new content.

Co-create Content with Instagram Influencers

Co-creating content with Instagram influencers is still one of the most effective ways to boost your online presence and make your brand noticed by many. It's a way to get your brand out there in front of a highly targeted and engaged audience while discovering new content ideas and opportunities.

While looking for the right Instagram influencers to collaborate with, don't forget that audience size is not always the most important factor in achieving Instagram engagement and growth. Instead, look for well-engaged Instagram influencers who are already creating content that is highly relevant to your brand.

Instagram influencers co-created branded content should not feel like advertising (but should be appropriately labeled as such). It's always best to work with creators who are passionate about your brand and can make sure you share your message with your followers.