Is anybody out there? Getting engagement on Instagram.
One of the things I am asked most often about Instagram is, “How can I increase engagement?”
**engagement refers to interactions with social media content. This could include likes, comments, new follows, profile visits, website clicks etc.
There are a few techniques you can use, but in this piece, I am going to share a case study on an Instagram ‘challenge’ that increased engagement for my client by nearly 250%.
SKINIRVANA
When Mary-Rose Lobo, the Founder of SKINIRVANA was in her 20s, she hated her skin. She had rosacea and acne and the condition of her skin impacted every aspect of her life. Looking in the mirror was the first thing she did, every day. Her skin-condition determined whether she chose to go out or not, her confidence when she spoke to others and how she felt about herself. Her wellness, her mental health.
Mary tried everything to ‘fix’ her skin and when nothing worked, she decided to conduct her own research. Through adjusting her diet, focussing on her general wellness, mental health and crucially, developing her own facial oil and facial massage techniques, she was able to heal her skin.
Now, Mary sells her facial oil and promotes wellness amongst her following on Instagram.
L-R: Gabby Briscoe & Mary-Rose Lobo, SKINIRVANA facial oil, Mary-Rose Lobo
Engagement Challenge
Mary’s product is a facial oil, but she has always understood the importance of telling her brand’s story. This includes her personal story, but also being a voice on topics relevant to the audience that might buy her product. With this in mind, we chose to run an engagement challenge on sleep, the #BeautySleepChallenge.
Comparing the week of the challenge with the week before I took over the SKINIRVANA Instagram account, these were the results:
Reach: 160% increase
Engagement: 249% increase
Profile visits: 602% increase
Website visits: 38% increase
How to run an Instagram engagement challenge
1.Create teaser content
Find ways to get your followers excited about the challenge without revealing it in full.
For SKINIRVANA I created a video of Mary telling her story and describing why she felt sleep was so important for her wellness and her skin. Tip: on Instagram, if you want a video to reach more people, make sure it is less than 1 minute long so that it can feature on your grid.
I also created a series of stories containing sleep tips that Mary had curated from experts. These were shared sporadically in the lead up to the challenge.
2. Challenge your followers
Choose a challenge that is relevant to your product, service or what you believe in. It should be relatively easy for existing and new followers to engage with and it shouldn’t cost them anything to take part. The challenge duration should be around 5-7 days.
For SKINIRVANA, Mary created videos of facial massages (less than 1 minute) for 7 days that followers could do as part of their bedtime routine, to help them wind down for sleep. They didn’t need to buy her oil to participate, they could use a high-quality olive oil. They only needed to join in and learn the benefits of facial massage.
3. Collaborate
To extend the reach of your challenge beyond your existing following, collaborate with ‘influencers’ or bloggers in your industry by asking them to be involved with the challenge.
It’s really important to build a genuine relationship with bloggers and influencers before approaching them to ask about collaborations.
Mary already had good relationships with a number of influencers who agreed to take part in the challenge. As part of the ‘ask’ she offered to gift them a bottle of the SKINIRVANA oil blend of their choice. This means that any content had to be marked ‘gifted’, but definitely increased enthusiasm for getting involved!
4. Create additional content to add value to the challenge
Think about other content you could create to engage people taking part in the challenge and anyone following it. This could include blogs, an Instagram live from a relevant ‘real-life’ event that you organise or attend or perhaps a video conversation with an expert.
Mary and I also collaborated with Gabby from Human and Human to create an IGTV video for the SKINIRVANA challenge. The video was a conversation between Mary and Gabby about sleep cycles and how meditation can help with sleep. Gabby also created a sleep meditation specifically for the challenge, which could be downloaded from her website.
Want to learn more?
If you would like to learn more about how to get engagement on Instagram or have a conversation about working with me on an engagement challenge for your organisation, you can reach me on +44 (0)7791 334 364, seashellsocials@gmail.com or @seashellsocials on Twitter, Instagram or Facebook.
