Instagram is a social platform that lives through the engagement of its users. Interaction and engagement are super important to grow on Instagram and are rewarded accordingly with increased reach and visibility.
But to really encourage interaction, you should do more than just post a nice picture from time to time and to invite your followers occasionally to leave a comment.
Instead, do something that your followers actually really enjoy doing and can actively participate in.
I’ll show you how to do that with 7 Instagram post ideas to boost your engagement on Instagram.
What to expect
Instagram Post Idea: Community Challenge
Maybe you’ve already stumbled upon a community challenge on Instagram and thought about starting one yourself!? This Instagram post format is perfect to connect with your audience, but also a great way to let your followers connect with one another.
Basically, through a community challenge you invite your followers to participate in posting content to a topic you’ve chosen for your challenge.
What you need to start a community challenge on Instagram:
- Your focus topic, e.g. “Working from home during a global pandemic”
- A hashtag for your community challenge, e.g. #homeofficehustle
- A certain period of time, e.g. 5 consecutive business days (Monday to Friday)
- Various sub topics for your focus topic, e.g. Home Office Workplace, Home Office Outfit, Home Office Food, Home Office Entertainment, Home Office Quirks
The sub topics will be the topics to which you and everyone who participates in the challenge is going to post a photo or story on Instagram.
A community challenge is a creative and effective way to increase your reach on Instagram and interact with your followers.
Tips to make the best out of your challenge:
- In order to achieve the greatest possible reach, you should make sure that as many users as possible know about the challenge before it begins. Send invitations to people who might be interested, for example via, direct message, your e-mail newsletter or a post on Instagram that announces the challenge.
- Another way that will help you get more reach is to not host your challenge alone, but to team up with one or more accounts.
- Once the challenge started, make sure to keep in touch with the participants. Check out their posts, interact with them and share your favorite posts from other accounts in your Instagram Stories.
Introduce yourself
New faces who have discovered your account recently don’t know anything about you yet. Introduce yourself to your community in an Instagram post and encourage your followers to introduce themselves as well.
In this way, your community also gets to know each other, and your followers can network with like-minded people.
The benefits:
- This type of post makes it easy for you to introduce yourself from time to time to new followers.
- Introductory posts strengthen the “community feeling”.
- These kinds of posts give you a lot of information about your active followers, e.g., where they come from, which topics they are interested in etc.
- Your community can network with one another and benefit from getting to know other like-minded profiles.
Vote/Poll Post
We all like to vote on something and to express our opinions from time to time, right? Or at least read about other opinions on Social Media 😉
In a voting post, you can provide your followers with two choices of a specific problem or topic and then encourage them to participate in sharing their opinion on that topic in the comments.
Of course, it’s best to choose a specific question that goes well with your business area. But just for fun, sometimes simple questions like “Coffee or tea?”, “Are you dog person or a cat person?” or “What do you prefer: Beach or Mountains?” work as well.
Benefits:
- You get to know your followers a little bit better.
- It’s quite fascinating for me to see, how well these vote postings work. It just sems like people really like to participate in these kinds of postings and to share their opinions on a specific topic.
- It’s fun and not complicated at all for your followers to participate in a simple Question-Answer-Poll.
Boost your Instagram Engagement with Quizzes and Games
Okay, this type of engagement booster postings for Instagram is one of my favorites: Quizzes and Games! They’re just fun to create and even more fun to participate in.
Create a quiz or game for your followers and wait for their awesome answers.
Some examples for Quiz posts on Instagram:
- Word search
- Which answer is correct?
- Which one of the 10 facts about me is wrong?
- Word Scramble
- Would you rather?
Engagement Booster Post Idea: Opinion post
Pick up some ridiculous myths related to your area of expertise and express your clear opinion about them in an Instagram post.
And the most important part: Don’t forget to ask your community for their opinion or for another funny myth they would like to share.
Particularly well suited are topics that are controversial and therefore get a lot of attention. But you can of course share something that suits you and your business best.
Promote other accounts
Instagram is a social platform that allows you to connect with many incredible like-minded people. For me it’s just awesome, how many talented creators are out there, and I think we should support each other even more often.
Do you know some other Instagram profiles that you absolutely love and love to follow? Let your followers benefit from that as well and share your favorite accounts!
Think about three to five different topics (e.g. lifestyle, fashion, travel, business, etc.) and write down your favorite accounts that match these topics.
By dividing them into different topics, you have the possibility to publish several of these account promotion posts throughout a longer period of time. Or you could even make a regular out of it (e.g. a format you are going to post once a month or so).
Tips:
- Link to the accounts you recommend. This way you will also attract their attention and they may share your post.
- Ask your followers to name their favorite accounts on the topic you mentioned in the comment section.
Ask your community for tips
Use the diversity of your community and bundle knowledge in one place.
Ask your community for their tips, ideas and recommendations on a specific topic, e.g. best tools to plan social media content, book tips, low carb recipes etc.
Present your tips on the specific topic in your post and then ask your community to write their tips in the comments.
Benefits:
- Your community is contributing to a valuable collection of tips for a specific topic.
- Your followers can save your post and access the tips again and again.
Instagram Post Idea: Personal story
People remember information better when they associate it with a story or an emotion. A personal story also makes you more approachable to your community and builds trust.
Of course, you decide how much personal information you want to share with your community. But sometimes sharing a small personal anecdote is enough to connect with your followers without having to get too personal.
Tell something about yourself that no one knows about or would never have guessed – and ask your followers if they would like to share something similar about themselves as well.
Instagram Engagement Booster Templates
Providing valuable content on Instagram can be difficult, I know. Especially when you want to grow your Instagram you not only need content with added value for your audience, but also content that thrives engagement.
Bring your Instagram Engagement Rate to the next level with my premade Canva templates.
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