Instagram favors long captions that look more like short blog posts than captions of a few sentences. Long captions can increase engagement because Instagram has become a place for storytelling more than just a photo-sharing platform.
For what ? Audiences on Instagram want to know more about the people they follow. Longer captions help grow and build an audience that feels like they know you personally, making you more real to your community and, in turn, potentially driving engagement.
Don’t forget the keywords
Like blog posts and articles on websites, Instagram can benefit from the use of keywords. It’s the same basic idea as search engine optimization (SEO) that drives traffic organically to your profile. However, it is not your articles that need keywords, but your profile.
Your Instagram bio is searchable, so using keywords in it is a good idea to help people find you if they search for relevant keywords. For example, Instagrammers looking for pet bloggers to follow might search for phrases like dog blogger or pet expert . If your bio contains these phrases, you could send these searchers directly to your followers account.
Instagram offers several ways for users to boost their following beyond their feeds. IGTV, Reels, and Lives are video-based options that create a more interactive and engaging Instagram. Here’s how to use them:
Lives: Lives have the highest engagement potential because your followers can participate and comment in real time. The interaction between you and your followers can generate a large number of views and comments.
Make your Instagram interactive
Stories allow your followers to go behind the scenes of your account. Users post photos and videos of their day, polls, questions, and other highly engaging and interactive content. Instagram even claims that Instagram users respond to about one in three Instagram Stories via direct message.
Organize a contest
Contests and Instagram giveaways can grow your account quickly because they tend to get high engagement. Often contest participants ask people to follow their account, tag their friends and like the post in order to win. These three tasks can lead to growth.
Engage with other accounts
When you like and comment on posts from other accounts, you also increase the chances of increasing your engagement. Not only will the Instagrammer see that you liked and commented and possibly do the same for you, but their followers can also see it. Engage with Instagrammers who have a similar audience to yours, and their followers might become yours too.
Participate in collaborations
As you grow, you might have the opportunity to collaborate with brands on Instagram. When this is the case, you will usually need to post content from the brand to your account, but the brand can also repost your content to their account. Brands that do it right will tag you in their collaboration posts, which will hopefully earn you lots of new followers.
Plus, if you’re looking for even more ideas on how to grow your Instagram follower count, we’ve also created a series of free Instagram resources, including: our guide to… Post character limit Instagram our guide on how to share someone’s Instagram post and our guide to choosing the perfect Instagram profile picture .