You’ve created an epic post or reel, come up with a clever caption, and even found the perfect hashtags to complement your post. You hit share, sit back, and wait for the engagement to come flooding in but instead, you hear crickets…

If you relate to this, you’re not alone. There’s a mistake you’re making that’s really common and that I myself have been guilty of too and that is; your post and ghost! Instagram is a social network and as such, you need to actually be social on the platform if you want to get impactful results. So, with all that being said, here are 5 actionable things you can do after each post to boost your Instagram engagement. 

1. Share your post to your story

Each time you share a post to Instagram, you should always share that post to your Instagram story and here’s why:⠀

Firstly, stories help drive more traffic to your post. This is because not everyone who follows you will see your posts in their feed. When you share your post to your story you’ll be directing traffic to your post for 24 hours while the story is active, giving your followers more opportunity to see your content and engage with it.

⠀Secondly, stories feature at the top of the Instagram feed, making it easier for people to see and access them. The more people that see your story, the more people you can direct to your new post which will in turn help to increase your engagement and reach.

2. Actively engage with your community

After sharing your post you should aim to spend some time on the app engaging with your community. Now, I get it, you’re busy running your business and don’t have all day to spend on Instagram. That’s totally OK. If you can aim to spend between 5 and 10 minutes on engagement after you post, that will make a difference and certainly be better than posting and ghosting!

Ways you can engage with your community is first, looking at followers who have previously liked and commented on previous posts. These are your most engaged followers and by actively engaging with them, you’ll increase rapport and the likelihood that they will continue to engage with you. 

You can also spend time engaging with accounts that have used the same hashtags you’ve used in your post. If you click on the recent tab for the hashtag, you can engage with people who recently posted. The reason I like this strategy is that the people behind these accounts are likely to still be active on the app and engage back with you in return. Remember to leave meaningful comments that are relevant to the content shared. The higher the quality of your engagement is, the more likely that the user will return the favour!

3. Reply to comments on your new post

The next thing you should do after posting to Instagram is spend time replying to comments on your new post. As soon as someone leaves you a comment, reply to them and where appropriate, ask questions that will lead to further discussion. For example, if someone comments saying, “Thanks for sharing, these tips were really helpful” You could respond by asking what their favourite tip was. This will increase comments on your post and signal to Instagram’s algorithm that people are enjoying this piece of content resulting in them showing your post to more people. 

4. Update your link in the bio

This one is super important. You want to make sure the link in your bio is directly relevant to the call to action in your new post. It’s 2022. People have short attention spans and if they have to go on a goose chase trying to find the relevant link, they’ll lose interest and you’ll lose a potential lead!

5. Share your post to other platforms 

Cross-posting your Instagram post to other platforms like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and even to your email list is a great way to get additional eyes on your content. This is a great strategy to boost engagement but can also help you get new followers! 

Here’s some extra tip!

6. Avoid editing your Instagram post right after sharing it. 

As a perfectionist, I get it. Seeing a typo in the post you just shared is mortifying. 

But before you rush in and hit that edit button, consider this. Many experts say that when you edit your post, your engagement ranking is reset. This means that the comments, likes, saves and shares you previously received won’t count toward your ranking. Since the majority of engagement typically happens within the first couple of hours after you post, it’s advised to avoid editing within this time frame to give your post the best chance of ranking highly. 

Instagram hasn’t directly come out to confirm this so my recommendation is to test this out and see how your engagement is affected. There have been instances where I’ve noticed typos within a minute of posting and I’ve been able to edit them immediately, without any detriment but this is likely because there was minimal engagement in that short time period. If you don’t notice your mistake until 10 minutes after posting, it might be best to hold off your edit for a few hours, just to be safe!

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