The COVID-19 pandemic has caught us all off-guard, so we need to improvise and come up with alternative ways to stay in touch with our colleagues, business partners, and customers. Social networks play a major role in this process because you can use them to expand your reach and approach brand new audience groups.

As the fastest-growing social media out there, Instagram gives you a perfect opportunity to engage and boost your digital marketing strategy. A study shows that people spend more than 50 minutes on Instagram every day, but it’s reasonable to assume that the number grows during the quarantine.

The time has come to refresh your Instagram marketing, so keep reading to see seven credible tips to increase Instagram engagement during the COVID-19 outbreak.

7 Practical Ways to Maximize Instagram Engagement

The power of Instagram is immense, so it’s only up to you to make the most of the platform and impress the target audience. You can do it using the following Instagram engagement tactics.

1. Share accurate information only

Coronavirus is so omnipresent that you probably cannot avoid mentioning it in your Instagram posts from time to time. In such circumstances, you must be very careful not to write anything suspicious, alarming, and inaccurate.

People are stuck in their homes reading news stories about COVID-19 minute after minute, so the last thing they need is panic. Your job is to treat every coronavirus-related information with all due attention and double-check everything before going online with it. Extra caution is necessary if you want to protect the reputation of your business and establish your account as a trustworthy source of information.

Fake news seems to be just as dangerous as the virus itself as international media outlets report that “a range of bogus stories and half-baked conspiracy theories concerning COVID-19 have gained considerable global momentum.”

What can you do about it?

First of all, don’t believe everything you read online. Look for official documents and medical reports instead because these are the only credible sources of information. That includes public institutions, state officials, and the World Health Organization.

Secondly, you can consult with key opinion leaders and medical experts, epidemiologists in particular. You can publish their quotes and instructions on Instagram while leaving the rest of the content for other social media or your website. That way, you can raise interest in your content and become a highly authoritative information resource in the age of COVID-19.

2. Focus on indoor activities

The coronavirus pandemic forces people to stay home, so you better concentrate on Instagram content related to indoor activities. It’s a type of content most users can relate to easily these days, which means they will be glad to like, share, or comment on your posts.

How you approach this task mostly depends on the nature of your Instagram strategy and your professional creativity. However, you don’t need to be an Instagram marketing guru to notice some of the most popular trends such as:

• Remote work: You can publish images related to remote work and give some tips on how to stay productive while working from home.
• Product teasers: Of course, you can share announcements about your future plans and new products. This will boost anticipation and interest among loyal customers.
• Training and exercise: How to stay fit in quarantine? One of the most common questions these days deserves a good answer, so do your best to come up with practical tips and ideas for your Instagram followers.
• Favorite music and literature: There’s also the option of sharing reading suggestions and your favorite tunes.
• Cooking lessons: Some fans will definitely appreciate your cooking suggestions and meal images.
• Travel plans: The COVID-19 pandemic will be over sooner or later, which means you can inspire people to talk about their travel plans and favorite destinations.

3. Write perfect captions and share inspiring stories

Most Instagram marketers will tell you to keep the captions short and concise. It’s a useful suggestion, but you don’t have to stick to it strictly now that users have more than enough time to read your stories.

Now is the right time to impress the audience with engaging captions and mind-boggling tales, so do your best to exploit the new possibility. How can you do it?

The first thing is to find an eye-pleasing photo and augment it by giving it additional layers of fresh context. You can describe the history of a given image or explain the background story hiding behind it.

Secondly, you can connect it to other important events or individuals that really matter to your Instagram followers. If possible, try to add a simple tweak to make the story even more amusing. These and many other tricks will help you to write amazing captions and win over the audience using a combination of textual and visual content.

4. Use the best Instagram marketing tools

A great thing about Instagram marketing is that you can find a wide range of automation platforms and simplify your online activities. Such tools give you the chance to eliminate a large portion of manual work, while you can also increase efficiency and reduce time-waste.

Now, the biggest problem for digital marketers is how to choose the right Instagram tools for their business accounts. There is no simple answer to this question because different strategies require different toolkits, but we can give you a few interesting ideas here:

• Jarvee: Jarvee is the most complete social media assistant. It has all of the needed functions to help you automate your Instagram marketing. You can schedule, follow, like and a lot more!
• Viral Race: More Instagram fans lead to greater engagement. Viral Race can help you to identify and connect with new followers almost instantly.
• Later: The platform enables users to visually plan, schedule, and analyze posts for Instagram, but you can also use it for Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter marketing.
• BuzzSumo: It’s a well-known tool that assists you in finding the best content formats and pinpointing the right Instagram influencers.
• Link Tree: If you need a comprehensive Instagram marketing platform, Link Tree is the right choice for your brand.
• AR filters: Instagram filters powered by Augmented Reality have become extremely popular recently because they allow users to add all sorts of details and decorations to their images.

5. Publish behind the scenes posts

Another useful Instagram marketing tip is to show fans what you do back home and how your days look like during quarantine. It’s an excellent way to add a slight touch of personality to the business as customers probably want to know who’s hiding behind your Instagram account.

Behind the scenes content gives you the opportunity to share exciting stories and reveal the background of your business, which is always a good way to hook the audience and strengthen relationships with loyal fans.

Furthermore, it will probably lead to additional word of mouth marketing. Some of your fans will share behind the scenes stories and probably earn you a lot more Instagram followers. In other words, you are going to generate more fans and turn loyal followers into brand advocates.

6. Emphasize a CTA

If your main goal is to increase Instagram engagement (and it must be as you are reading this article), then it’s time to rethink your call-to-action (CTA) strategy. These are genuine engagement drivers, so don’t forget to add a straightforward CTA to each post.

Instagram is very strict when it comes to engagement capabilities because it only allows one URL per account. This link can be found in your bio section, so you better make sure to adjust it in a way that suits your CTA. The vast majority of marketers add a link to the well-tailored landing page.

But what about your CTA buttons?

There are some basic principles you should follow here. Rule number one is to use an actionable voice with lots of power words. Such terms and phrases proved to be highly engaging and you should always exploit words like get, buy, register, click, follow, discover, learn, and similar.

You should combine power words with emojis and emotional statements. It’s a frequent Instagram solution that looks appealing and inspires a lot of fans to take action. Besides that, bear in mind the most popular Instagram CTA phrases:

• Buy this product
• Only 20 items left
• Can you guess what it is?
• Tag your friend
• Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, etc.
• Sign up for a free course
• Call for a free consultation
• Leave a comment

7. Prepare a long-term Instagram strategy

After everything you’ve done so far, it is time to focus on future activities. The coronavirus pandemic won’t last forever and we recommend you to concentrate on designing a long-term Instagram marketing strategy. You have enough time to do it now, which means it won’t bother you once the business goes back to normal again.

A long-term Instagram marketing plan demands a fair share of data research and content analysis, so you’ll definitely need to dig deep and discover the strengths and weaknesses of the current strategy.

At the same time, you should try to identify the forthcoming trends in the post-quarantine era. How are your fans going to react to it? Do you expect their engagement to grow or decrease? Is your business going to change in the meantime?

You should answer all these questions accurately and use analytics insights to craft a sustainable strategy for your Instagram account.

Bonus Instagram Engagement Tips

Although highly practical, the tips we discussed above are not the only Instagram engagement techniques. There are many other interesting solutions to check out, but we will briefly mention a few bonus tips here:

• Take advantage of the most popular hashtags such as #coronavirus to maximize the visibility of your posts.
• Don’t run away from user-generated content as it helps you to build a stronger relationship with the audience.
• Feel free to experiment with new solutions like AR filters.
• Analyze your biggest competitors, try to identify their weaknesses, and craft content that will make you stand out in a given niche.
• Mix textual content with emojis to create a better visual effect.
• Play with alternative content formats such as GIFs, memes, and animations.
• Of course, you should always promote your Instagram account on other social networks.

The Bottom Line

We cannot promise you too many things, but we guarantee that people spend much more time on Instagram during the COVID-19 pandemic. Although coronavirus is seriously undermining business efforts all over the world, you can at least take advantage of it to increase Instagram engagement.

We showed you seven credible tips to do it quickly and efficiently. Do you have other useful ideas on how to boost Instagram engagement during quarantine?

About the author

Tobias Foster is a journalist and a blogger at the research paper writing service. As a part-time member of professional writing services, he writes about philosophy, marketing, business, and technology. Tobias is the father of two kids and a passionate long-distance runner.