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10 Tips to Increase Instagram Engagement and Grow Your Brand
Instagram is a visual platform, but creating engaging content requires more than just good photos. As a business, you need to get your audience to interact with your posts—whether that’s through likes, comments, or shares. Instagram posts with higher engagement have a better chance of being featured on the Explore page, dramatically increasing your visibility.
With 90% of Instagram users following at least one business, the opportunity to engage is huge. The challenge is finding ways to stand out and make those interactions count. Whether it’s using polls, posting eye-catching visuals or encouraging user-generated content — the key is to post with a purpose.
In this blog, we’ll offer actionable strategies to boost Instagram engagement. We'll also highlight the benefits of meaningful engagement and provide tips on tracking and optimizing performance effectively.
What is Instagram engagement?
Instagram user engagement refers to the interactions users have with a brand’s content, such as likes, comments, shares and saves. A high engagement rate indicates that your audience is actively connecting with your posts, which boosts visibility and helps create deeper relationships with potential customers.
What are the top benefits of a good Instagram engagement rate?
What truly matters is building an online community of people who are genuinely invested in your brand and eagerly anticipate your content. Here’s how meaningful engagement can drive real value for your business:
- Maximizing visibility: Higher engagement means more opportunities for your content to appear in additional user feeds, expanding your reach and putting your posts in front of a larger, more relevant audience.
- Building loyalty: Engaging with your followers consistently helps establish a strong rapport, turning casual followers into long-term brand advocates.
- Gaining insights: Engagement provides valuable feedback on what your audience enjoys or dislikes, allowing you to refine content strategy for greater relevance.
- Boosting sales: An engaged audience is more likely to convert into customers. The stronger the customer connection, the higher the likelihood of influencing their purchasing behavior.
10 tips to increase Instagram engagement in 2025
Achieving optimal engagement on Instagram requires a strategic approach. Here are a few tips on increasing Instagram engagement:
1. Understand your audience through insights
Before you develop a powerful Instagram strategy, it's essential to align your brand voice, business objectives and audience profile. Think of it like constructing a bridge — you need a clear understanding of your starting point and destination. Once you have this foundation in place, you can create content that truly resonates with your audience.
Instagram’s Audience Insights feature provides access to critical data, including demographics (age, gender, location), peak engagement times and top-performing posts. You can track the content that not only meets but exceeds your audience’s expectations by using the right Instagram metrics.
Pro tip 💡: While Instagram’s native tools are highly useful, they lack deeper insights such as advanced audience segmentation and sentiment analysis. This is why more companies are adopting AI-powered listening tool.
For example, Sprinklr’s Audience Insights is one such tool. It uses AI to analyze numerous data signals, helping you understand what your audience truly wants. You can create custom segments to narrow down your audience based on their likes, dislikes and behaviors. You can also identify the right influencers and find partnership opportunities to grow your brand.
Keen to learn more?
Also read: 3 effective ways to improve customer engagement on social media
2. Craft captivating visuals for initial impact
First impressions last longer. If your Reel or post doesn’t immediately capture a viewer's attention, chances are they will scroll past it without a second thought. Here’s how you can ensure your Instagram aesthetics standout amidst the noise:
- Start with a visually appealing design — prioritize clean, organized layouts that are easy to digest.
- Avoid overwhelming your audience with excessive information and make strategic use of white space to allow the eye to focus on key elements.
- Color plays a significant role in conveying emotion and setting the tone. Warm hues like oranges and reds can create an inviting atmosphere, while cooler tones such as blues and greens tend to evoke a sense of calm.
- While a single image can communicate a lot, using carousels or reels that tell a cohesive story through a sequence can be even more captivating.
- Ensure your social media visuals are consistent with your brand’s identity, whether it’s playful, minimalist or sophisticated.
Take a look at the Instagram page of the skincare brand Glossier. Its feed is clean, minimalistic and highly aesthetic. This visual consistency reinforces the brand's identity as approachable, modern and beauty focused.
3. Maximize engagement through strategic captions, subtitles and mentions
Captions, subtitles and mentions are essential tools for driving engagement and building a deeper connection with your audience on Instagram. Well-crafted captions go beyond just describing your content; they ignite conversations, prompt action and reflect your brand's voice.
Subtitles enhance accessibility by allowing your content to reach a broader audience, including individuals with hearing impairments and users who prefer watching without sound. Mentions on Instagram can significantly boost engagement by increasing brand visibility and encouraging interaction.
Incorporating these elements effectively can significantly enhance your engagement, creating a dynamic space for followers to connect with your brand and each other. By consistently fostering conversation and accessibility, you invite your audience to be part of your brand narrative, driving long-term loyalty and growth.
Learn more: Social media engagement examples for inspiration
4. Connecting with audiences through storytelling
Social media storytelling is a powerful tool for connecting with your audience on a deeper level. You can use different content formats to make your audience feel more connected and invested in your brand.
Instagram Stories offer a more intimate, temporary way to engage with your audience. They’re less formal and offer a behind-the-scenes look, which humanizes your brand. Plus, with interactive features like polls, quizzes and questions, you can create direct engagement with your followers.
Sephora, for example, often uses Stories to offer behind-the-scenes glimpses of product launches and events. This type of content makes followers feel more involved.
Reels can boost Instagram engagement by offering dynamic, short-form content that captures attention quickly. They increase visibility, encouraging more interaction, shares and wider reach among users and followers. Between 2023 and 2024, engagement on Reels saw a notable increase, rising to 6.92% in 2024, up from 4.5% in 2023.
Nike effectively uses social media storytelling through Reels. It often features famous athletes or sporting events, highlighting empowerment and achievement.
5. Align post timing with audience activity
Posting at the right time is one of the easiest ways to boost engagement on social media. If you post during peak times, your content won't get lost in the shuffle. Hence, knowing the best times to post on Instagram is essential.
With data-driven insights, you can identify when your audience is most active, ensuring your content reaches them at the optimal moment for higher interaction and impact.
A study examining social media posts from top news organizations found that successful posts align with biological patterns, specifically targeting times when the audience has the highest cognitive capacity. It also highlights a new framework that could help publishers increase social media revenue by 8%, all without needing an extra budget.
Pro tip💡: By strategically scheduling Instagram posts, a brand can maximize visibility and boost engagement rates with higher likes, comments and shares. This data-driven approach ensures your posts reach the right audience at the optimal moment, increase the likelihood of meaningful interactions and build stronger connections with followers.
AI-driven tools like Sprinklr’s Social Media Scheduler & Publisher make this easier by automatically recommending the most effective posting times for maximum engagement. It also helps you schedule and publish content for Instagram and other major social platforms from a single dashboard.
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6. Utilize user-generated content for deeper engagement
Encouraging active participation from your audience is a key indicator of Instagram engagement. User-generated content (UGC) is a powerful tool to foster a sense of inclusion and value.
When your audience generates content around your brand, it not only amplifies your reach but also provides authentic, relatable content that resonates with your followers. This creates a mutually beneficial dynamic — your brand gains high visibility while cultivating deeper, more meaningful connections with your target audience.
Encouraging your audience to share photos, videos or testimonials about your product or service not only builds community but also boosts trust. A report by Nosto mentions that individuals are three times more likely to perceive UGC as authentic. This is a sentiment echoed by 88% of consumers who prioritize authenticity when choosing brands to support.
GoPro is an excellent example of a brand that successfully uses UGC to drive engagement on Instagram. The company encourages its customers to share photos and videos captured using GoPro cameras through hashtags like #GoPro and #GoProFamily. The brand often reposts these experiences on its Instagram page, fostering a sense of community.
7. Create seamless connections across multiple social channels
Multichannel social advertising boosts customer engagement because it creates a smooth, integrated experience across all platforms. When brands integrate their social media channels, such as Instagram, Facebook, X (formerly Twitter) and WhatsApp, with other platforms like email signups and websites, it simplifies the customer interaction process, allowing users to engage through their preferred channels.
For instance, sharing a link to a newsletter signup within an Instagram post encourages seamless subscription. Additionally, using Instagram Direct Messages (DMs) to guide customers directly to your website enhances traffic flow and drives conversions, creating a more efficient path to business growth.
Must-read: How to manage multiple social media accounts
8. Drive relevant engagement with targeted hashtags
Strategically using keywords and hashtags enhances content visibility, driving increased likes, comments and shares. By leveraging the right branded or trending hashtags, brands not only increase engagement but also gain valuable insights into audience interests, enabling the refinement of marketing strategies.
Instagram allows up to 30 hashtags. However, research suggests that using 3-5 relevant hashtags gets the highest engagement. It is important to use a combination of both niche and brand-specific hashtags to increase your reach.
Free Tool: Find Trending Hashtags Instantly with Sprinklr!
Sprinklr’s Hashtag Generator delivers powerful hashtags in seconds, helping you reach the right audience—effortlessly.
Take a look at this post by Dove. It uses a branded hashtag (#Dove) along with generic ones (#Siblings, #Sisters, #Deodorant) in a relatable Reel.
9. Conduct contests and giveaways
Consumers are highly responsive to contests and giveaways. The mechanics of these contests are straightforward — participants typically engage by liking, commenting or tagging friends. This exercise drives increased interaction and fosters a sense of community among participants.
A prime example is Lay's #DoUsAFlavor campaign, where the brand invited customers to submit flavor ideas. The three winning flavors were then produced and launched in stores. Such contests not only boost engagement but also create a valuable feedback loop between brands and consumers.
Bonus 🎁 : Keen to understand how contest and active user participation can significantly grow both engagement and sales? Check out these 7 effective ways of social media contest ideas
10. Partner with influencers
Influencer marketing has become a multi-billion-dollar industry, with companies worldwide investing heavily in these partnerships. In 2022, the industry reached a market size of $16.4 billion, highlighting its growing impact.
Gymshark, a fitness apparel brand, is a successful example of influencer marketing. It partners with popular fitness influencers and leverages its vast social media reach to drive engagement, boost visibility and generate sales. The brand has thus fostered a loyal community, creating authentic connections with consumers and enhancing its market presence.
Final thoughts
Engagement is key to growing your brand on Instagram. More likes, comments and shares mean increased visibility, which leads to a larger, more engaged follower base and stronger brand recognition. High engagement also improves your content’s reach through Instagram’s algorithm, ensuring that your posts are shown to a broader audience.
Engaged followers are more likely to convert into loyal customers, further enhancing brand loyalty and advocacy. Additionally, consistent engagement provides valuable insights into your audience's preferences and behaviors, enabling you to refine your content strategy and drive even higher levels of interaction.
Monitoring this engagement is critical. Tools like Sprinklr's Social can provide actionable insights to optimize your Instagram strategy. By tracking performance metrics in real time, Sprinklr enables brands to refine content, improve audience targeting and boost overall interaction.
Book a demo to see Sprinklr in action.
Frequently Asked Questions
Timing is crucial for Instagram engagement. Posting when your audience is most active increases the chances of your content being seen and interacted with. Use Instagram Insights or tools like Sprinklr Social to find your optimal posting times.
Brands can use Instagram’s interactive features to engage users directly. Polls, quizzes and questions prompt users to respond, providing valuable insights into their preferences while also driving more engagement.
Beyond the engagement rate, businesses should monitor metrics like reach, impressions, saves, shares and click-through rates to get a holistic view of their Instagram performance. These metrics offer deeper insights into how users are interacting with your content.
Employee advocacy can amplify brand engagement by encouraging employees to share company content, post about their work experiences and interact with the brand’s content. This humanizes the brand and boosts engagement from a more authentic perspective.
To re-engage dormant followers, businesses can run targeted campaigns, create engaging content that resonates with past followers, or use Instagram ads to reintroduce their brand. Posting exclusive offers or limited-time promotions can also drive interest and interaction from inactive followers.
