Organic content strategies for Instagram

In this video, you’ll learn how to use organic content strategies to increase reach & engagement on Instagram:

Measure the top engagement metrics. This will help you understand what your audience wants to see more of.
Stay active on Instagram stories.
Share quality content by creating visually striking images, and sharing valuable info.
Write compelling captions that encourage responses from your audience.
Engage with your audience. Reply to direct messages and respond to comments.
Watch out for scams, like huge giveaways where you have to follow a bunch of people. These are not valuable to you as the users aren’t engaged followers.
Use a combination of targeted hashtags.
Keep to a posting schedule that is sustainable, without compromising the quality of your content.

Hi everyone, my name is Hayley Dasovich. I'm a YouTuber and social media coach living in San Francisco. And today I want to share with you eight strategies you can start implementing right now on Instagram that will increase your reach and engagement organically. According to Instagram, straight from the source, the engagement that is most important to feed ranking are: likes, comments, shares and views for video. Looking at this data will help you to know what your audience wants to see more of.

You also need to post at the optimal time when your followers are most active. The Instagram stories that show up in the beginning of your feed are typically accounts that you engage with the most. Staying active on stories, gives your audience a speedy way of engaging. And this helps you because your stories will keep popping up. Set a reminder to upload a story every two to three hours. And make sure to use the tools that Instagram gives you on stories to boost your engagement: like polls, questions, GIFs, location features and hashtags.

There's no denying that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but having this in mind, we know that the money most liked content and shared content on Instagram is often visually striking. Or sharing valuable pieces of information. So think about creating eye-popping content, like bold colors or dramatic landscape. Even if you think you are in a boring industry, add in some high quality professional looking photos, more often than not.

There are a ton of free apps out there that you can use to edit your photos or videos and give it more of a professional look, even if you're on a budget. Your Instagram captions don't have to be profound, but you should try encouraging interactions. And it's as easy as asking your followers a question so that they reply in the comments. Again, the goal here is to keep your followers on your posts as long as possible and continue interacting and engaging with them on those posts.

How many times have I said the word engage in this video? Well, I'm going to say it three more times. Engage, engage, engage. When you have direct messages, reply to those messages. When you have comments on your posts, try and respond to every single one of those comments. All comments are taken into account, even if it's just a single emoji. If you get messages asking to be a part of an engagement group. Or a huge giveaway, where you have to follow a million different people.

Steer clear, I'm saying this because I've done this before and it really only hurt my engagement. Those followers will only follow you for the giveaway and not for your content. So they will most likely not interact with any of your posts. And inevitably, they will unfollow you. Hashtags only help your posts to be seen by new users. So make sure to use a combination of brand product and community hashtags.

Keep to a posting schedule that is sustainable for you. The best posting frequency is one that you can maintain literally forever. And it's important to stick to a schedule that fits your workflow. Even if you're posting three times a week, make sure that you're strategizing those posts. So you're not compromising the quality or posting just for the sake of posting. Quality over quantity.

Social media is not a one-way street. So I can't stress this enough, how important it is to engage with your followers as if you would a friend. So make sure to follow these steps, to boost your reach and engagement.