E is for… Engagement
When I am writing about engagement I mean the relationship between you and your content. As
You can’t grow your network and community by sitting back and waiting for people to come and find you. You must take the initiative to reach out and engage with other people. If you reach out and engage with others it is likely that they will engage back. The more you do this, and the more others engage with you means that you will begin to master the algorithm and gradually start to appear in other people’s feeds and Explore pages.
If you are serious about using Instagram for networking and growing your community you need to spend a minimum of 20-30 minutes a day engaging with other followers. Pick a relevant hashtag and spend some time liking and commenting on images in that hashtag. However, it is very important to only do this with relevant content or content that you personally like or that inspires you.
A large part of engagement is about building relationships. This also means engaging with and building relationships with users that would like to see. As well as users that engage with you – that choose to network with you.
It works both ways.
Much like you do for regular networking you should build into your strategy a list of priority contacts and people you want to notice you/get to know.
5 Comments
AJ Blythe
It feels odd to comment on strangers posts. Is liking them enough?
networkingtips
Liking certainly goes a long way. It depends what your goals are. In relation to showing engagement, and helping the algorithm learn what you like (and helping others find you) liking does help. It also helps people find you and many people will reciprocate by checking out your profile in return (much like blogging).
Where comments can help is opening common conversation with people with similar interests (much like blogging) and people are more likely to check out your profile or engage in conversation with you. However, many comments on instagram can feel unauthentic (as there is often a limit to what you can say on a strangers posts). Go with what feels authentic/right.
Noor Anand Chawla
I could do with help on Instagram! Checking out your other posts.
#AtoZChallenge
networkingtips
Thanks for dropping by – hope you find some useful tips.
Arlee Bird
I’m on Instagram and often I will add images to my boards, but I can’t say that I am active in an engagement sort of way. Perhaps eventually I’ll take the time to learn more about how to use it, but for now I’ve been curtailing a lot of my time on line.
Your series is excellent however and I can see how it would be very useful.
Thanks for being a part of the 2019 Challenge.
Arlee Bird
Tossing It Out