How To Boost a Post on Instagram

Instagram is one of the more popular social media apps today. The Facebook-owned company tends to millions of users every day. Some users only want to show off their adventures and memories with a few close friends, while others want to be the next big influencer.

With so many people posting on Instagram at the same time, how do you boost your posts to reach more people? In this article, we’ll tell you all about how to boost your posts on Instagram.

Understanding Social Media Success

You probably aren’t new to social media in 2021, but you may be new to public accounts that gain traction among millions of followers. Boosting your posts takes a lot more work than simply hitting the ‘Post’ button or even adding hashtags.

Think of your Instagram account as its own business. You’ll need to understand your target audience, your mission, and how to post content that keeps people coming back for more. While you’ll most certainly gain followers, you’ll need to learn how to keep those followers while also gaining more.

Successful influencers who reach a lot of users have mastered the art of social media marketing by understanding a few things:

• Post content regularly
• Finding a niche that people enjoy
• Posting at certain times when people are more likely to be online
• Instagram’s tools to upload better posts
• Instagram’s algorithm

We’ll go into these points in detail below. But you may want to start with understanding your pages’ purpose. Is it to sell your products? Is it to become a social media influencer and catch the eye of advertisers? Is it to educate and inform other users?

Once you understand the purpose of your page, you’ll need to work up a plan to achieve your goals. Also, you may want to create a Professional account on Instagram. It offers more features and provides analytics to better understand what is working and what isn’t. If you aren’t sure how to convert your Instagram account to a Professional account, check this article out.

How to Boost a Post – Promotional Feature

If you have a business profile, boosting a post is easy. You can use the Promote feature to turn it into an ad to generate more interest. Your post will then appear in your target audience members’ feeds. It will look the same as any other post from the accounts they follow, so they won’t immediately be able to tell it’s an advert.

Promotional posts are similar to advertisements, and therefore, you will need to pay for them. This is especially useful if you’re trying to sell products, but it can really help you reach Instagram stardom too.

To boost your Instagram post, follow these steps:

Note: You will need a Professional account to do this.

1. Log into the Instagram app and visit your profile. Then, tap on a post you want to boost.
   
2. Tap ‘Boost post’ under the post you want to advertise.
   
3. Select your goal out of the three options available. Then tap ‘Next’ to move forward.
   
4. Select your target audience. If you aren’t sure, leave ‘Automatic’ checked and tap ‘Next’ at the bottom.
   
5. Choose your budget. Although you may not be ready to spend money to boost your posts you should consider the return on your investment. Think of how many people you can reach with one post in a few days.
   
6. Add a payment method and process your payment. Then, tap ‘Boost post’ at the bottom.
   

To make things a little easier, you can create a promotional post from scratch too. All you need to do is start a post as you normally would. On the final page, before you tap ‘Post,’ toggle the switch to ‘Create Promotion.’ You’ll then make the same selections as we’ve done above.

Some smaller influencers may want to see what they can do before paying for promotions. Fortunately, there are other ways to gain traction on social media sites. Keep reading for more tips.

How to Get the Most Out of Your Posts

To boost a post on Instagram, it is best to use more than just one method. In fact, unless you want to run a post as an ad, using a combination of a few proven methods is your only option.

1. Posting Time

You’ll want to start by figuring out the best posting times based on your following. This should help you generate more engagement directly from your followers. Another directly related result of using optimal posting times is that it prompts the Instagram algorithm to work in your favor and award a higher priority for those posts on your follower’s feed.

Figuring out the optimal posting times is a lot easier from an Instagram Business Profile. That’s because you can make use of the Instagram Insights feature to check your follower’s activity information. The graphs should help you figure out at which hours of the day you have the opportunity to reach a wider audience.

If you have a broad target audience, it’s worth posting early in the day or late afternoon, considering work and school schedules. However, if you’re targeting high school-age kids in the summer, the early afternoon to late night may be better. Either way, play around with your posting times and check the Instagram analytics to see which ones gain more traction.

2. Encourage Engagement

Keeping your audience entertained and engaged are two different things. If you want to squeeze as much feedback as you can from one of your posts, then one of the most important things you can do is to engage your followers directly.

There’s no right or wrong way to do this. If you’re looking for likes and comments, simply try to offer your followers a chance to be a part of your post. Make it interactive by proposing a poll, asking for feedback, or even putting up a giveaway.

Don’t forget to use call-to-action techniques too. Ask your followers to share, vote, or tag someone else to maximize the number of people you draw in.

3. Live Content

Going live is another great way to boost a post, especially if you’re doing it during peak activity hours. It also helps a lot of other people or businesses similar to yours are not doing the same thing at the same time.

This helps because your audience will feel both entertained and engaged as using the live feed feature is less impersonal and thus makes your followers feel more connected to you and your story.

Another benefit of doing this is that, once you go live, your profile will usually get a high priority when featured in the stories feed.

4. Create High-Quality, Instagram-Focused Content

Twitter and Facebook give you plenty of ways to impress people with your writing skills. On the other hand, Instagram is a visual platform, which means that if you want to boost engagement, you have to create high-quality visual content.

Unless you’re doing a giveaway or a poll, try to keep your captions short and easily scannable so that your followers can focus more on the visual content and not feel distracted by all the text.

Sometimes it’s better to post less if you want to keep your followers satisfied and constantly growing. If you really want to boost a post, don’t make the mistake of flooding your feed with photo after photo.

Pick a post that means a lot to you or start fresh with a new one and run with it for a while. Keep in mind that one great post beats 30-40 average or mediocre ones any day of the week when it comes to Instagram.

The same goes for picking your photos and videos. Unless you’re a celebrity that people obsess over and everything you do on a daily basis is considered news-worthy, make sure that all your posts are sleek, polished, and of high visual quality. Not every blurry video you make needs to appear on your feed unless it has a really good story behind it. The same goes for photos.

Frequently Asked Questions

As you can see there is a lot of aspects to boosting a post. If you have more questions, keep reading.

How will I know if my post is reaching a lot of people?

The more obvious way to see how your post is doing is by the likes, comments, and shares. If you have a lot of likes, comments, or shares then your post is probably doing pretty well. But, there’s a better way to get more insight.

If you have a Professional account you can view engagements, impressions, and more. Instagram’s insights will let you know how many people each post is reaching, and how many are interacting with it. For those who want more insight, follow these steps:

1. Open Instagram and go to your profile.

2. Tap on the three horizontal lines to access the sub-menu.

3. Tap on ‘Insights.’

4. Use the filter in the upper left corner to choose a date selection.

5. Review your Instagram Insights.

Do I have to pay to boost a post?

Not necessarily. While you do have to pay to advertise your post, you don’t have to pay to reach more people. You can use other marketing techniques to boost your posts such as timing, relevancy, and hashtags. Also, the more you post, the more people will see it. Just be sure that every post is engaging and interesting.

Final Word

Short of investing in advertising, the best way to boost an Instagram post is to get some details down before you post it. This involves working out a posting schedule tailored to your followers’ browsing habits, finding ways to boost engagement, and ensuring that you always have top-quality content. Doing this will allow the Instagram algorithm to work in your favor, and the rest will pretty much happen on its own.