The Secret Formula for Instagram Success in 2022

Part #3: Build Community on Instagram

The final part of our formula for Instagram success is to cultivate a strong and engaged community.

You’ve successfully reached new users and converted them into followers, now you’ve got to make sure you keep them.

Plus, the more engaged your audience is, the stronger your profile will be – which in turn will help you reach more audiences going forward. It’s the perfect recipe for growth. 

Fortunately, Instagram is packed full of features that are great for encouraging a sense of community and driving engagement. Here are the top five to focus on in 2022.

Instagram Tactics for Community Building:

• Instagram Stories: Stories are designed to be informal and interactive, making them the perfect channel for conversational content. Use interactive stickers (such as polls and emoji sliders) to entice as many engagements as possible, and show up on camera to help humanize your brand. Experiment with Close Friends lists to serve exclusive content to hyper-engaged users.

• Comments: When it comes to fostering community, listening is just as important as speaking. Take time to reply to comments and encourage conversations – add a call to action to your Instagram captions and use the Pinned Comments feature to help shape the dialogue.

• Instagram Live: Live broadcasts are direct and unedited, making them the perfect channel to connect with your audience on a more personal level. Plus, you can now schedule Instagram Lives, which is great for building hype and boosting view counts.

• Memes: If you still think memes are reserved for joke accounts, think again. In 2022, memes are key for connecting with your community and generating engagement. From cute animals to funny TV show clips, the meme reigns supreme. If you’re looking for inspiration, think about what your audience really loves – or hates – and consider how these sentiments could play out as text overlays on trending visuals.

• Guides: Instagram Guides is a relatively underused tool in the Instagram arsenal, but one that is great for community building. Guides can be used to provide a valuable service to your community – from travel guides and product picks, to curated lists of educational posts. 

And that’s it! 

It may feel like a lot of different content types to manage, but you don’t have to cover everything at once.

You can split deliverables into weekly and monthly requirements for a more digestible Instagram strategy.

For example, you could aim to deliver the following every week: 

And then deliver the following at a lower frequency, perhaps monthly:

• 1 x Live broadcast 

• 1 x Guides 

• 1-2 x Collabs 

If this feels like too much, you can dial it down to fit your capacity. Alternatively, if you have more time to dedicate to content creation, you could scale up each output.  

Whatever approach you take, the most important element is to focus on quality, community-focused content that supports your niche.

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