Instagram engagement plays an instrumental role in driving your presence and building a community of loyal and dedicated followers on the platform. It enables you to keep track of your performance and, determine whether your strategy is paying off on the app. However, driving engagement on Instagram is a multi-faceted process that entails unique strategies and steps to conquer.
This article explores the labyrinth of Instagram engagement, defining what it is and how to calculate engagement rate on Instagram. It also provides proven tips to help you to boost Instagram engagement in 2025.
What is Instagram Engagement?
Instagram engagement refers to all the ways that users interact with your content. Those ways may include likes, comments, shares and saves. Direct Messages or DMs could also count as engagement. Whenever your followers and fans interact with your brand on IG, it indicates that your content is relatable and adding value into their lives. Thus, driving engagement on Instagram is essential to growing your reach and building your brand on the platform.
What is Engagement Rate on Instagram?
Instagram engagement rate is a metric that enables you to know how people are interacting with your content on the app. It takes into account details such as likes, comments, shares and saves along with your follower count. The Instagram engagement rate allows to gauge how well your content resonates with your target audience.
To calculate Instagram engagement rate for your posts, divide the total number of likes, comments and saves by the number of followers then, multiply the figure by 100. That will give you a percentage for the rate.
According to Adobe Express, an Instagram engagement rate of between 1% to 3% is good. However, a percentage above 3 is an excellent engagement rate that proves people are indeed enjoying your content.
Why you Need a Strong Engagement Rate on Instagram
You may be wondering; why do I need a strong Instagram engagement rate? Well here are the main reasons why you should boost your engagement rate on Instagram.
Increased visibility
The Instagram algorithm uses a range of factors to rank and display content to users. Although relevance is an essential element, engagement is equally crucial. Relevant posts that receive lots of engagement are highly likely to show up in users’ Explore pages. Thus, having a good Instagram engagement rate is essential to improving your visibility on the platform.
Grow your Following
A higher visibility on Instagram significantly increases your chances of attracting new followers. Instagram will show your content to people who are most likely to be interested in it. If those users are moved by your content, they may want to check out your account and even start following you.
Brand Authenticity
A post that has lots of engagement means several people are enjoying the content. Therefore, a strong engagement rate serves as social proof and reflects positively on the authenticity of your brand. Users may feel more comfortable to trust your brand because so many others are also engaging with it.
Proven Tips to Drive Instagram Engagement
Boosting engagement on IG is a multi-faceted process that requires a mix of strategies. The following are proven ways to help you to drive Instagram engagement in 2025.
Engage with your Audience
Instagram engagement is not a one-way street and you must meet your audience half way to ensure success. You must acknowledge your followers if you want to build lasting relationships and a significant following. You need to interact with your audience and make them feel valued if you want them to return the favor.
Remember every like and comment you receive means someone took their time to stop, read or view your post and share their thoughts. So, it would be prudent that you also do the same to encourage more interactions. Responding to comments, answering questions, liking witty replies and even sharing great comments are some of the ways you can engage with your audience.
Thanks to comments threading, you can easily know the ones that you have responded to and those that you may have missed. It is true that you may not always respond to all the comments but, that does not mean you should just let them pass. You could also simply like the comments and try to respond to as many as possible.
For example, a brand like GoPro that has more than 20 million followers on IG often receives thousands of comments on its posts. That makes it almost impossible to reply to every comment on their page. However, they usually take time to respond to comments that ask questions or highlight important issues.
Create High Quality Content
Content is always king on social media. There are various ways to ensure quality content for Instagram. One of them is by creating content that adds value to your audience. Emphasize content that users will find useful and want to repeatedly reference and share with their friends. While content can take various forms, Instagram marketing favors great visuals regardless of the context.
Eye-catching graphics offer a simple way of giving insightful facts and helpful tips. You can also create a visual breakdown of step-by-step processes or design bold graphs and charts. Then, use the caption feature to highlight specific facts and give more context.
On the other hand, Instagram carousel post is the best way to go if you have lots of information to highlight but, need to keep the caption simple. Carousel posts allow you to break down information into multiple graphics without cluttered text. They are the most engaging types of Instagram posts.
The main elements to give precedence when creating content for IG include visual appeal, relevance, consistency, engagement, storytelling and hashtags. Focus on content that informs, entertains, inspires, teaches and tells a story. Instagram offers plenty of useful tips to help you master the art of creating engaging content.
Buy Instagram Metrics
Driving Instagram engagement is a process that could take time to start generating results. However, there is one way that can enable you to generate quick results effectively. Buying Instagram metrics is the best way to go if you want to boost engagement on Instagram fast and organically. At Superior Social Boost, we can help you to achieve that.
We offer tailor made packages for creators and brands to easily buy Instagram likes, comments and shares in Kenya at their convenience. All the metrics that we provide are generated from genuine accounts with real and active Instagram users. That will enable you to significantly boost your presence and engagements on the platform over a short period.
Apart from Instagram, we can also help you to grow your reach and interactions on Facebook, X, TikTok, YouTube and Google Business more affordably and conveniently.
Leverage Interactive Features
Instagram continually introduces new features that improve user engagement. For example, you can add interactive stickers to your stories to conduct quizzes and polls. Question stickers are some of the most engaging features that allow you to have direct conversations with your audience. It prompts them to ask questions, thereby boosting engagement on Instagram.
Emoji sliders are also an incredible way for people to interact with your Instagram Stories. The ‘’Add Yours’’ sticker is one of the latest trends that many creators are using today. You can use it to start a challenge and get people to engage with your brand. Share the challenge and encourage people to take part by sharing their own content. You could also take part in trending ‘’Add Yours’’ challenges to enhance visibility.
A good example is Glow Recipe. They shared series of IG Stories with interactive stickers to engage its followers in a discussion about Retinol. The creators began with a poll asking people if they have used Retinol. They added more strickers with questions asking people to share their experiences using it or why they have not tried it.
Post at peak Times
While people generally spend a lot of time on social media today, it does not mean that they are engaged on the platform at all times. Like with other tasks, people cannot sustain concentration for very long periods. So, it is important that you publish your content when the majority of your target audience is online and ready to engage with your posts.
While it is not always cast in stone, the best times to post on IG are 2 pm and 3 pm on Thursdays, 11 am on Wednesdays and 10 am on Fridays. Tuesday is the best overall time to post on Instagram. Posting at these times can enable you to boost engagement on Instagram but, you should also consider your audience and experiment with different schedules to know what works best for you.
Create More Short-form Videos
A 2024 Content Benchmarks Report established that consumers want to see more short-form videos from brands. About 42% of the respondents said they preferred videos shorter than 15 seconds. Other statistics have also shown that short-form videos between 15 and 30 seconds are the second most preferred content format.
These revelations mean your Instagram marketing strategy should shift towards creating more short-form videos. One of the best ways to do it is through Instagram Reels. Create captivating Reels to give your audience behind-the-scenes processes, how-to tricks and tips. They can also be informative, offering a list of things that your followers might want to know.
Reels do not have to always be fancy and all glitters. Instead, opt for short-form videos that relate to your audience and encourage them to react by commenting, liking or sharing the posts. Remember, you can also turn to your community of followers for inspiration.
For example, home and personal care products brand, Grove Collaborative, heavily relies on user-generated Reels to keep its feed engaging and fresh. The short-form videos feature relatable humor and household hacks, as shared by its followers and other users.
Collaborate with other Creators
Instagram has a feature that allows you to create Collab posts with other creators on the platform. You can create Collab posts with influencers, brand partners and industry leaders for maximum engagements. The posts show up in the Feeds of both your followers, significantly expanding your reach on the platform.
Collab posts allow you access to the followers of the creators that you partner with. As a result, it could also boost your authority and credibility on Instagram. Besides, collaborating with other creators is also a source of inspiration, offering new ideas for fresh and engaging content in future.
Use Trending Hashtags
Trending hashtags are a great way to boost the visibility of your content. Using them makes it easier for people to see your posts whenever they search for hashtags. It is an ideal strategy for getting your content in front of users who already have related interests. However, you must be careful to choose hashtags that can give your posts maximum visibility.
The best hashtags should be relevant to your audience and not saturated with posts. Instead of broad hashtags, go for niche and specific ones that can target your audience more closely and boost engagements. Your Instagram search bar can help you to determine the trending hashtags to integrate in your posts.
Drive Engagement on IG with Superior Social Boost
At Superior Social Boost, we help creators, brands and businesses to increase their reach and engagements on social media. We offer custom packages to enable you to increase your visibility and engagements in real time organically. Get in touch with us today to choose the perfect package to drive engagement on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, X, YouTube and Google Business.