Massive INCREASE in engagement using videos

Instagram Marketing
#1

Hey guys,

I’ve been a long time lurker here but I can’t seem to find Any posts about my experience so I figured it’s about time to make a post.

Over the last few months I’ve been experimenting with my biggest IG page. +100k

At the start of 2019 my reach was terrible. I had over 100k followers but only 1500 profile visits.

I figured I was either shadowbanned or something else was going on because all my engagement was from followers. Less that 1% were non followers.

So,

I knew I had to do something to try and salvage my page, so I started to experiment a bit.

First,

I turned off all automation. I was only running likes and DMs but after turning these off, for some reason this helped the account in the long run.

Second,

USE HASHTAGS!

I found myself never using hashtags. I don’t know why but there was something about how I wanted to solely use my own hashtag and keep it looking more professional and clean.

Screw that!

With using hashtags on the first few posts I could already see the difference.

But the reach still wasn’t there. I still wasn’t satisfied with my results.

So I figured it must be my content. My content must suck if no one is engageing. So I switched it up.

I went from posting only photos while very rarely posting videos, to posting videos while rarely posting photos. I try to post at least 1-2 times a day but sometimes won’t post at all.

This helped me immensely. I don’t know what it is with videos, but my reach / followers / engagement has all sky rocketed.

With the mixture of the 3 things above I’ve managed to now get:

  • 100k+ views on almost every video I post
  • 300-400 new followers daily
  • on the photos I do post my engagement has increased by 8 times.

In the last 13 days I’ve managed to gain 7k organic followers.

image

Sorry if this post seems rambley and formatted terribly. I’m still half asleep.

But basically TL;DR Use related hashtags to your niche, the majority of your posts should be videos, profit.

10 Likes
#2

Good info, are your reposting videos or uploading new vids?

#3

Reposting.

The account I have is one of the bigger ones for the niche that I’m in, so I have a ton of people sending me their content.

Or,

If I see something I’d want to repost, I’ll contact the original poster and get their permission.

1 Like
#4

Do you think the drop in engagement in january was due to experimenting or did it just happen suddenly? It’s always interesting to see how engagement changes when you move away from the content your followers expect.

#5

My engagement was down even before January. There definitely was a dip in the new year but my overall engagement was down before hand.

Now my engagement still wasn’t TOO bad. A photo posted before the new year still pulled maybe 2-4K likes with no hashtags. In the new year it dipped to like 1-1.5k likes.

After experimenting and getting it right, I’m pulling 10-20k likes and videos are getting 100k+

The content I’m posting is still pretty much identical to what I was posting before it’s just now in video format.

What I think is most interesting though is how many followers I’m gaining now. Hitting the explore page every post helps an insane amount.

1 Like
#6

I normally post pictures, so I downloaded a video making app, and turned the picture into a video, my only problem is when I upload it to Instagram, the quality of the video is bad! Is there a way to make the video the same quality as the picture ?

#7

this feed is nuts. ER up 50 percent but follower growth same or dropping …I seen no real rise with ER up.

#8

Is automation still turned off on the account?
Also so hashtags and videos

#9

You’re right the trend to videos in the last years is big and will go on in the future.
But it really depends on the niche. I would say in the most niches videos will work better, but there are some were I experienced photos still make the better job. For example: fashion, travel
Trying out different things is still the best to figure out what works best for the account.
And yeah Hashtags definitely use them, not as much as possible but as relevant as possible.

#10

Im confused. Are you referring to your own experience?

I find my follower growth staying steady at around 3-400 but if a video or picture goes “viral”, my follower growth doubles for about a week after

If you can post consistently and get a well performing post at least once a week, you’ll grow your followers and ER exponentially.

I just posted my first photo in awhile a few days ago following a viral video and the picture did 10x the engagement. All my posts after up to today have also had 85% higher insights.

#11

Hashtags and videos, correct.

And no automation. I’m not sure having automation on would effect anything but I wanted to see if I could grow organically and so far so good.

#12

Remember people talking about stoping automation then their account start to grow like crazy

#13

What app are you using? I use PicPlayPost. Brilliant. No distortion or degredation.

#14

I just copy the links of the post and run it through an IG downloader

#15

Thank you for the response! I was using an app called splice!

I just used the app you recommended, it’s a nice app, and when I save the video to my phone it looks great, but same problem as other apps, once uploaded to Instagram, quality is lost! I wonder if there is a setting in Instagram I can tweak to fix this… I can’t find anything though!

#16

that’s that lovely instagram compression. if you’re doing it from mobile there isnt much you can do. you can try tweaking your settings inside your video app to render a smaller file that fits with suggested file sizes for ig video, that may lessen the compression instagram applies to your video but in my experience no matter what you do there will still be some compression on the videos and thus quality loss.

#17

Have you AB tested to see the different effect of hashtags vs. video content. What is the improvement by only adding hashtags? What is the improvement by only adding more videos but no hashtags?

I have a larger account that isn’t growing that well anymore and I removed hashtags a while back because there was ‘consensus’ here that large accounts using hashtags get penalized more… I’m curious to see whether hashtags still work for 6-figure accounts.