How to Interact on Instagram

How to Interact on Instagram

Admin Media

Now that you are familiar with how to use Instagram to share your own photos and videos, I think it’s also important to talk about how to interact with others on this platform. As with any social media site, there are certain expectations and standard practices for engaging on the site. When you scroll through your feed, you can see all the recent posts shared by those you follow. Instagram is a very active site (much like Twitter) with updates posting regularly. Your feed will constantly be updating with new posts.

 

How to Interact on Instagram

  • Liking Posts

Be active on Instagram. Like more posts and you’ll get more likes in return. To “like” a post, you can click on the heart icon beneath the post or you can simply double tap the image. You will see a watermark heart appear (and quickly disappear) on the post image and the heart icon beneath the post will turn red when you’ve successfully liked a post. If you would like to remove your “like” simply click on the red heart icon and the heart will return to gray.

Every time you like someone’s post, they will receive a notification that you have liked their image and your name will appear in the list of people on the post who have liked it. A post will display the names of the first 10 likes on a photo. Once an eleventh like has been received, the post will show the actual number of likes, rather than the names. If you would like to see the names of everyone who has liked a post, simply click on the blue number of likes and a new page will open will a complete list.



  • Commenting

Similar to liking posts, the more often you comment on someone’s post, the more often you will receive comments. Comments are also the best way to cultivate real relationships with other igers. Comments are expected to be appropriate and related to the post. Do not spam others’ posts and ask them to check out your gallery or follow you. Engage in real conversation.

To leave a comment on someone’s post, click on the little comic-style comment bubble next to the heart button. Type in your comment and click “send”.



  • Responding to Others

If people comment on your posts, please respond back! Conversations go two ways! Be prepared to answer questions, or just respond with a thank you when someone compliments your post. In order to ensure that the other user sees your response use an @ mention in your comment. At any place in your comment, include their username with the @ symbol in front (I would be @jennherman31). This way they will receive a notification that you have mentioned them and they can see your response.

  • Search

The search function is one feature that I think Instagram really needs to improve upon. In the search page (the magnifying glass from your profile page) has two tabs – one for users and one for tags. If you are looking for a specific user or person, click on the Users tab. You need to know the exact spelling of their name (as they registered it on Instagram) or the exact name of their username. Searching for “keywords” doesn’t really work. Instead Instagram will look for that word in the person’s name or username, not their bio or description.

You can search via tags (hashtags) to find all posts tagged with a specific hashtag. If, for example, you wanted to find people who had an interest in the same hobby as you, you could search for hashtags related to that hobby. However, your results will be all posts with that hashtag. If it’s a popular hashtag, you’ll find a lot of posts – and not necessarily a good distribution of users with a similar interest.



  • Explore

The navigation star on your bottom navigation menu is the Explore button. This page shows you the current, trending posts on Instagram. There are strict criteria to get on this page (including having at least 1000 followers and accumulating at least 20% of your fan count likes within the first couple hours of posting). If you want to see what’s popular right now, check out the explore page!

  • News

The News page is the comment bubble with the heart in your bottom navigation menu. This page has two tabs: Following and You. When you open this page, it will always default to the You tab. This is your list of notifications. You will see who has liked your posts or left you comments. You will also see if someone new has followed you. I always recommend checking out their profile and seeing if you’re interested in following them back.

The other tab, the Following tab, is a list of activity for those users you follow. You can see what posts they’re liking or who they’ve started to follow. If you are looking to grow your fan base, this is a good place to hang out! You can find a lot of new people to follow by following the actions of those who you follow.



  • Check Your Notifications Regularly

Because Instagram is a mobile application primarily, you do not get email (or other) notifications of interactions on your posts. The only notification you will receive is a little Instagram icon on your phone.

When you see this notification icon, I recommend you access your Instagram account and check for new notifications. It may be a new follower, or someone commenting on your post. See who is engaging with you and in what way. Then you can respond accordingly. I also recommend you do this frequently because, as far as I know, Instagram only shows you your last 80 notifications. So, if you have a highly engaged audience, you don’t want to miss out on opportunities to respond.

 

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Originally posted 2022-02-19 22:00:22.

Digital Marketing