Instagram doesn’t have a chronologically arranged newsfeed anymore. Posts are now organized based on engagement. If your posts get more engagement in the form of comments and likes, they will appear higher in the newsfeed.
Appearing higher in the newsfeed will boost your engagement further.
More comments can also indicate the effectiveness of your social media strategy. On all social media, you mainly have two types of engagements. One of them is very easy to execute. This includes likes, shares, repins, retweets, etc. All they require is one or two clicks.
While the other type, comments, requires a bit more of a thought process and time investment from the follower. So, if you get more comments, it shows that your followers like your content a lot.
Therefore, today I am going to show you the various techniques you can implement to get more comments on Instagram…
Ask For Comments in the Caption
Calls to action have always had a positive effect on social media updates. Dan Zarrella found that tweets with the words ‘Please ReTweet’ and ‘Please RT’ got more retweets than those that didn’t have them.
He also found that Facebook posts that contained the word ‘Like’ got more likes than those without the word.
And those with the word comment got more comments than those without.
Therefore, if you want to see similar results on Instagram you can add a caption like ‘Please comment’ or ‘Leave a comment’. If you prefer not to ask for comments directly, you can just ask questions instead.
An example can be seen in this post from Sumome. Instead of directly asking people to comment, they just asked the question ‘What do you choose?’, as the overlay text on the post image mentions the two choices people have when they wake up every morning.
This helped the above post get a lot of comments as you can see.
Ask Questions with Text Overlay
If you want your questions to trigger a stronger response, you should add them as overlay text to your Instagram post image instead of just writing it in the caption.
Instagram is all about visuals. People mainly use it to look at beautiful images. This social network is designed to drive more attention towards the images in the posts too. Look at the above post from Sumome for example. The image occupies most of the space while the caption occupies only a fraction.
Hence, if you want even more people to read the question and respond with comments, you should add it to the image itself. You can expand on this question and write a longer version of it in the caption.
Note: Only do this if adding the overlay text will improve the image and get you more comments. If the overlay text ruins the image, you should not add it.
Respond to Comments
As previously mentioned, when people leave a comment, it takes a bit of effort. They need to think and come up with a good answer and then spend a little time typing it.
So, you should appreciate their effort by responding positively. Thank them for their comment and provide answers if they too ask questions. If you respond to comments, it will encourage them to leave more in the future. This will only strengthen your relationship with your followers.
If you don’t have the time to respond to all of them. Respond to a few at least.
Stella Parks of Bravetart regularly responds to comments made on her Instagram posts. This is one of the reasons why she gets a lot of comments.
Run Comment and ‘Tag to Win’ Contests
If you are struggling to get more comments on your Instagram posts, you should run ‘comment to win’ or ‘tag to win’ Instagram contests.
To take part in these contests, all people need to do is leave a meaningful comment on one of your Instagram posts or tag a friend in the comments. Both these contests can instantly get you a lot of comments – especially the tag to win contests, as some of the people who are tagged in the comments will check out your post and leave a comment too.
An example of a tag to win contest can be seen in this post from Cactusclubcafe. To take part in the contest, people needed to follow Cactus Club Cafe on Instagram and tag a shopping buddy. As you can see the post got over 2,700 comments. It actually got more comments than likes.
They must have also gained a lot of followers.
Work on Getting More Likes
A study by track maven found that on average you get 1 comment for every 33 likes. Therefore, if you work on getting more likes, you will naturally get more comments. So, here are some other stats from the above study to help you get more likes…
Mayfair and #nofilter work best: The study found that images using the Mayfair filter on Instagram get the most interactions.
Those with no filter get the second highest number of interactions and those with Inkwell get the third highest.
Use 11 or more hashtags: You get more interactions on Instagram when you use 11 or more hashtags.
So, don’t be afraid to add several of them. The hashtags you use should be both popular and relevant to get the best results.
If you are posting a general image that a lot of people will find interesting, you can use some hashtags from this list of 100 best Instagram hashtags for likes researched by Oberlo.
To find very specific hashtags, you can use a tool like Keyhole.
Publish on Sunday: The study also found that the best day to post is Sunday. If you have a new account or haven’t posted much in the past, you should publish your most important updates on Sunday. But if you have been posting for a while and have plenty of data, you should analyse your updates using an Instagram scheduling tool and find your best time and days.
After that, begin scheduling your posts to go out at the best times and days.
Now Implement These Tips and Get More Comments
These are the top methods you can implement to get more comments on Instagram. All of them are very easy to execute and shouldn’t take up too much of your time. After you start getting more comments, you should analyse your posts to see which techniques are getting you the most responses. Once you know the results you can take the number of comments you get to another level.
Any Comments?
How do you get more comments on Instagram? Do you use any techniques that are different from the ones listed above? Please leave your comments below.
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