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For them to really think about because people are just going to keep swiping through. Same with the quiz sticker. Make it something fun and engaging that they want to answer for the question sticker. I have had some clients before who have used the question sticker and just say they get crickets. So if that is you, then you're not asking the right questions. So I would do something fun like maybe they could say something like tell me what you think of a first impression of me. And then they give you, you're not so much asking a question, you are, but you're not. You're asking them like, what's your first impression of me? And so people can then say, oh, you look like you love naps. I've used that one before and someone has said that about me. Or you could do something like ask me anything personal, ask me anything business related. Just be very specific with what you want them to ask you and they will more so do it for you. If you're just really generic, they're probably going to keep scrolling because again, people don't want to think too much when they're on social. They want it to be really easy for them. So try to stick to things that are like something they could easily participate in and not have to think too hard on. The next tactic I have for increasing engagement is to focus on shareable content. So in case you are new to Instagram or maybe you've been on Instagram but you've been sleeping under a rock, right now the algorithm is pushing shares. So any type of content that is getting shares, people are sending it to the DMs, maybe they're sending it to their stories. All of that is being watched by the Instagram algorithm. So if you're getting more shares on your content, that means that people are, are liking our content, they're finding it share worthy, they're engaging with it, they're connecting with it. So the algorithm is going to keep pushing that. So right now we're focused here at the agency on shareable content. But a lot of people when I say that, they're kind of like what, what does she mean by shareable content? So there's a couple different ideas here for you guys. Here are my top three share worthy content ideas for you to try this week. The first one is a meme. Make it relate to something in your industry. That will get people that are like minded, like you, that will think it's funn and maybe share it to their own stories. Then the next one is humor. Do something kind of funny, crazy, something that your audience has never seen before. I would probably try to do it with a reel just to really get that human connection going. And then if you want that third little trick here you can go to my podcast. The third engaging type share worthy content that you can post is that motivational hit him in the heart emotional type content. So sometimes people are having a bad day or they're just needing some type of encouragement. Think about like motivational Mondays or you see like those really powerful quotes that really resonate with you. Those are things that people are gonna read and be like, oh my God, this is what I'm going through. Let me send it to my stories. So again, that's share worthy content that can be motivational quotes that can be like just connective type quotes. For example, like I've seen like the Twitter screenshots or even like people writing in the notes app and they'll say something about like this is going to be your best week ever. Abundance is coming. Like, you know, like those like superstitious type ones, I always send those to my story just to give myself some extra luck. I don't know if it really works, but those are the type of share worthy type content that you can focus on and test for your own account and see how your audience resonates with it. Post it and then go back in like 14 days and just see like did it get shares? Did it get comments? Did it get lights likes? How was the engagement on that type of content? So share worthy content again just to kind of go back over that. It was the memes. Those are always fun. Kim Kardashian, Taylor Swift. Those always do very, very well. There was the humor. So be funny, show your human side. And then the third one was motivational inspiring type quote. All of these can either be posted as a reel or as a carousel. Do be careful. If you are doing memes, don't just steal something off of Pinterest or take a screenshot of a celebrity photo and upload it because you could get in trouble for copyright. So you want to make sure you're doing it the right way. If you, if you go into Cap Cut, Cap Cut actually has a lot of really good meme share worthy type content and that would fall over into this category as well. So Capcut is free. So just head over there and you can kind of look through and see what's going viral right now. What's the most, like, trendy, most popular post right now, and then you can use that for your own content. The third way on this list today to increase your engagement is obviously reels. Reels are still number one when it comes to driving traffic to your profile, getting engagement on your content, likes, comments, shares, all of that. That is what reels are. Reels are there for you to blow up on Instagram. Truly, like, the algorithm is still favoring them. I can still play around, at least with my own account. I'll still play around with carousels at some point, maybe a still image, but it just is not getting the traction that a real would. So for example, yesterday I posted an infographic and made it into a carousel, so it was like swipeable. And back in like early 2021, I could post those and get like thousands of likes. Yesterday when I posted it, it reached like 200 people and I had maybe five likes. So within like two hours, I ended up archiving the post just because I know I tell you guys not to delete posts, but I am that type. Just as a content creator at this point, with as many followers as I have, if something is not performing for me right away, I tend to take it down and redo it. And I'm glad that I redid it, because I did end up removing it and posting a reel instead. And like, within the first two minutes, I had reached 200 people. So it's like post a carousel and only reach this amount of people, or post a reel and reach the same amount of people again. It's going to be different for different accounts. So, for example, Lucas O'Keefe is a creator friend of mine. He really focuses in on carousels, and his carousels perform very good. But for me, I focus on reels. My reels do way better than carousels or still images do. So again, I think it's the type of content you post. We're still both in the social media marketing space, but he kind of grew his big following from carousels. And my account started blowing up and growing when I started posting reels. So I think it also could be like an audience thing too. Like, how does your audience learn? What do they prefer? That's where you're going to get the most engagement. So if you're new to this, test it out. Start. Start playing around with like 50, 50, 50% carousels, 50% reels. See what works the best. If you're not new to Instagram and you've been doing this for a while and you're still just haven't got much traction on your page. Then maybe focus on a reels only strategy for the next two weeks and see kind of how that plays out for you. If you don't know what you should be posting when it comes to reels, I do have a reels challenge in my stand store. It's 60 days of reels. It uses hooks that I've used on my own account that have garnered me millions of views and there's also like how to's editing features in there. Basically it's like a guide for you to utilize reels the correct way and some ideas for you to record reels for the next 60 days. So definitely check that out. I will link it in the show notes for you guys too. For today, the next engagement tactic is creating shareable graphics. Now that plays into the carousel. So I know I just told you guys carousels don't perform as good for me as they do for others. But I do still think they're like a really great format for Instagram. Now the thing with carousels and the reason they perform so well, maybe it's like an informational carousel where you're teaching someone something. You have to think they're going to be like scrolling through, reading it. It's going to take them a while. They're going to go slide by slide and they're spending more time on that carousel. Now Instagram is watching that time that people are spending on your posts. And if they're spending a lot of time on that post, the algorithm is going to keep pushing it out to more and more people to see how it performs. So that's the thing about carousels. That's why they work. If people are ever like, well, why does a carousel work over a static image? A static image they can read and keep scrolling. A carousel. They kind of have to scroll through the carousel to get all the information and then they can continue going through it. Some carousel ideas for you guys obviously is like teaching them something like maybe it's how to grow 10k followers guide and then they scroll through and and read how to grow 10,000 followers. Or maybe you do something like you round like a roundup. So maybe you do like top 10 podcasts I'm listening to right now or top 10 books I'm reading this quarter or top five tools I'm using in my business. All of those are very informational. They're also share worthy too. Because if I in fact me and Low were Kind of brainstorming the other day, like, what type of content we could post to promote the podcast. And I saw really good Carousel where this girl had kind of said something like, top podcasts that are making me that girl this fall. And I was like, oh, what is this? So I ended up scrolling through and looking at all of the podcasts that she recommended. But I know I spent a lot of time on that, that carousel, and now I'm getting more carousels in my newsfeed, now that I think about it. But those are just some little ideas for you to test out on your own. If you don't know how to utilize carousels the right way, the next tactic for increasing your engagement on Instagram is to in on your call to action. What are you actually telling your followers and your audience to do? Are you telling them to do anything? Are you just posting and hoping that they'll comment? This is where you have to be very specific with your audience and tell them like, hey, if you resonate with this post, leave me a heart emoji. Hey, if you like what you're reading, share it to your stories for other people to land on. I don't know, you just have to be very specific with what you want your audience to do next. Now, there are a couple different ways to make this really work for you. The first one might be telling them to respond to you somehow using an emoji. So maybe you ask them like a question at the end of the post and they could say, drop a green heart for yes or a red heart for no. And then that's kind of fun for them, like, oh, let me read. Let me see what I'm going to say to them and let me drop my emoji. The next one is maybe you posted something very funny or emotional, thought provoking, like a reel, and you want them to share it with someone that can relate. So I don't know if y'all have seen these reels, but there's some that are like, if you miss your sister, send this to her right now. And then it. I mean, it's telling you what to do. It just said, send this to my sister. Okay, so the other day I posted a reel on my personal account and it said it was very specific with the call to action. It ended up getting 5,000 views and that account only has. So I said, send this to your one friend that matches your energy without even questioning it. And it was like a dancing video of my friend. So that one ended up getting pretty good traction. Let me just look up. Oh, I can't see. Cause I'm logged. I'm not logged in as myself, but if I can remember correctly, I looked at the insights on that like a couple days later and it had a lot of shares. And I think it's because I was very specific with telling my audience, like, hey, share this with your friend. That fill in the blank. So you can do that with stuff that's like relatable to you, makes sense for your business. You can either put your head in to the minds of your audience or to the mind of people that are in your industry. So kind of decide who do I want to attract here? Do I want to attract other industry experts? Are they going to relate to this or do I want to attract my target audience? Are they going to relate to this? So that kind of tells you who you are talking to and who they can send the post to, if that makes sense. The next tactic I have for you guys for increasing your engagement is to post at the right time. Now I know that some people will fight me on this and tell me that it doesn't really matter when you post, but I truly believe that it matters. When I post, I will test it out just to see how things perform. If I'm posting at like 7am, I will cross my fingers, post it, and go back to it in a few hours and I'll see it didn't get much traction. But if I post, if I were to post that same reel again, maybe at the end of the day, around 7:30pm when my target audience is in their bed scrolling their phone, it's probably gonna get a lot more traction because people are online at that moment. Truly, like, you have to. This is where it's super important for you to really nail down who your audience is and think about like, okay, who is my audience? What are their social media behaviors? Like, are they on their phone in the morning or are they checking in at lunchtime or are they spending more time in the evening? So if you really, really know who you're talking to, you will then know when to post. Now, Instagram tells you, like, there's some insights on there that tell you when your audience is online. But as a social media agency owner, we have seen that a lot of our clients have the same exact posting, suggested time in there as everyone. So I will say we use metrical for scheduling now and metrical actually gives us different analytics based on different clients. So I kind of trust that a little bit more. So if you are using something like metricool, I would trust that. But don't trust what Instagram tells you because again, they. They be telling everybody the same thing. I first, before I ever invested in a social media tool or anything like that, I would first just try testing it myself and writing things down. I know in the beginning stages of my own creator journey, I was posting stuff and writing down the time that I posted it so that when I went back to it two weeks from now, I'd know, like, okay, this post on Wednesday performed really well, but what time was it posted? Because Instagram won't give you a timestamp as far as the time goes. It'll tell you the date, but it won't tell you the time. So if you want to start off the freeway, then I would maybe just start journaling what you're posting, what time, what it was about, and then going back to it and then seeing how it performed. Now, hashtags, hashtags, hashtags. I still use them for my post. I don't use all 30, but I will use like 5ish hashtags that make sense to the post that I'm posting. Now, some people have asked me, is it true if you copy and paste the same hashtags on every post, is that bad for your account? I personally believe, yes, that could be bad because you're going to come across as spammy to the algorithm. So I would kind of like maybe make a document with all kinds of hashtags that you can use, but then just pick and choose like five of them every other time for your post and just take turns posting different hashtags based on what your post is about. There's two things with hashtags as well. One, if you look at your insights on a post inside of Instagram, it will actually tell you how many people found that post using hashtags. Now, the one thing is, it won't tell you what hashtags pulled them in. It'll just say, like, oh, a hundred people found this post from hashtags. So you kind of gotta look at your hashtags and be like, which hashtag brought them all over here? Another tool that you can use, which I mentioned earlier, was Flick Social. They actually will watch hashtags for you and rank your posts like, hey, you ranked for social media agency this year. This, this post this week. And so basically it's telling me that my hashtags, social media agency helped my post get more traction. So if you want to really get nitty, nitty gritty with your hashtags and find out which ones are actually working. You can use a tool like that. I know Flick does charge you, but there might be a free trial. I'll get some more information there for you guys. I might have an affiliate link for y'all to try a free trial, so if I do, I will put it in the show notes for you. If not, you can always just go to Flick Social and kind of look at how much it is. I think truly it's like 15 bucks a month. So it's very inexpensive. And if you're a first timer or a newbie to Instagram, it really could be beneficial for you to at least use it maybe for a couple months until you start seeing what hashtags are working for you. And then you can always cancel it after that. Okay, the last engagement tactic I'm going to give you guys is the 555 rule, which is what we use here at Influence Marketing Studio. So we will spend about five minutes scrolling through their newsfeed and commenting on posts that we connect with. And it doesn't have to be anything crazy. You can just leave a genuine, authentic feeling comment to these people in your newsfeed. Then we'll go and watch stories up at the top and we'll reply back to any that, like, stand out at us. And then after that, we will go to the Explore page and find content that pops out to us and then spend five minutes there. The 5:5:5 rule is just that, five by five by five, five minutes in feed, five minutes in stories, five minutes and explore. That ends up being like 15 minutes a day. Now, if you really want to get jiggy with it, you could double that time and maybe do like the 5:5 5 in the morning and then the 5:5 5 in the evening. But I have tested this and we see a increase in engagement when we follow the strategy. I will say for my Call Her Creator account, it's very hard to balance the Caitlyn Rhodes and Call Her Creator. So I ended up pulling in one of my employees to help me kind of manage it over there. So she's helping me post over there, but she also helps me do engagement over there. And once we started implementing a true engagement strategy, I have seen our followers are slowly going up. Now, that could be because there's really amazing people like you guys listening to my podcast and then following me over there. But I, I do think that the engagement that we're doing over there is actually helping. And I'm seeing a lot of very authentic, authentic and fun conversations pop up in the dms because of our engagement strategy. So that is what I will leave you guys with as far as boosting your engagement. Now, some things I want to talk about with you guys. 1 I said this in last episode, but engagement is a little bit down for everyone right now and I do foresee that being the thing until the election is over. You guys also have to remember that the holiday season is over and big brands and companies are about to start spending the rest of their ad spend for the year. So you're probably going to be competing with paid promotions versus your organic posting. So keep that in mind. So you've really got two big things that are happening with this timeframe that we're in. So don't get down on yourself too hard if you are seeing low numbers. If you try to implement at least maybe one to two things from this list that I just gave you, you should see still see some traction going on there. But don't be afraid to spread yourself out on some other apps right now. Like you know, focus on Instagram but also be posting to your Facebook page or pick up TikTok or maybe share on Threads or LinkedIn. I wish I was a little bit more active over on threads because I just like it's more personable over there. It's really people just sharing their inner thoughts and it's not like polished and perfect like Instagram reels are. But yeah, if you're seeing like low numbers and it's really getting to you, then don't be afraid to go pick another channel and start amplifying your voice over there as well. If you like today's episode, please download the podcast, call her creator and leave me a review. I am going to get back to shouting you guys out. During each episode, I like to highlight a specific review or a testimonial. So I'd love to see new testimonials coming in. And if you like this episode, let me know too. Send me a dm. I'm on Instagram the Kaitlyn Rhodes. Or you can DM me on call her creator. That's all for now. Thank you so much. See y'all next week.
