Instagram engagement tips/advice needed ?

Hey lads, this is my first post on this forum,so i apologize.

Basically around January i started a page in the car niche for fun and a few days ago i realized and saw that you can make money of instagram by shoutouts/ads etc. I did quite a lot of research and i learned a lot from just reading this forum, so thank you. I am with around 13k followers atm. but my engage seems dead af. I have around 400 - 450 average likes per picture, which seems incredibly low to me. I see pages with 10k followers that have 1k - 1.5k engagement per photo and sell a sh*t ton of shoutouts. :O I mean I started this for fun and still upload car photos for fun, because I enjoy it but if i could make even 5 - 10 quid a day, it would be amazing especially since i am only 16. xD I have tried a lot of hashtags, but that didn't really make a difference for me, I tried different upload times, but not really a difference. Atm i have been unfollowing and following for the past 2 months, I follow 50 per hour and when i got to around 1000 - 1200 people then i unfollow them and repeat the process. Of course i can't do this every single hour, but I do it i guess 7 to 8 times daily. You've probably been asked these questions lots of times and i do apologize again, but I didn't find that much on specifically this topic. Any advice is much appreciated, thank you very much! :}

P.S: I do have a few photos with 800-900 and i have like 9 - 10 with 1.5k likes. I try and keep the quality high with almost all my pictures, so ...

To be transparent I'm pretty new to IG specifically but I run big data and analytics for many different types of clients and have just started on my own IG journey. That being said these are my takeaways over the last 60 days or so and best 3 tips I can give you:

1. Only compare your numbers to the exact same niche, and research your competitors to try and figure out which are botting and which aren't for TRUE numbers on engagement. Hell, even DM them and ask them questions, some are chill enough to even respond with insight.
2. Pay attention to your audience/niche. Each will be slightly different as to when THEY actually login. The trick is to find YOUR optimal time to post (takes a lot of trial and error)
3. Comment on others stuff and actually ask people to tag their friends in your posts when you put them up, seems simple but I assure you the more you talk to people and ASK them to engage, the more they do especially if you have strong content.

Last month I got almost 5k more followers doing exactly these things and my engagement went from 1% to about 3.5% i'm in the business marketing/entrepreneur niche so your results may vary.

Listen to ndnstyl , I did exactly what he's saying minus the blatantly asking account owners how they do it part and I'm at 7k followers with between 1.5k and 1.7k likes consistently. That's around 22-24% engagement.. Ridiculously high.
I also live by one other rule.... NEVER SACRIFICE QUALITY!

Thanks for the reply! I'm running out of sources for high quality images, I get most of my photos from a few facebook pages and some out of instagram. I've heard people say that instagram itself is a great source for quality photos, what are your thoughts on that ? Thanks again !

If you are doing follow/unfollow to grow your account in the beginning, your engagement will be lower sjmply because you will hve a lot of followers who do not follow you for content but because you followed them, so they won't like your post. Comparing engagement at these low follower numbers is pointless imo. Later on, when about 90-95% of your followers are organic, it will make sense to try and really increase your engagement ratio.


edit: about the content thing, shoot me a PM. Too tired now but I will reply.

Take a look at my post: http://imristo.com/tips-increase-engagement-instagram/

TsarBomba61 said:

Listen to ndnstyl , I did exactly what he's saying minus the blatantly asking account owners how they do it part and I'm at 7k followers with between 1.5k and 1.7k likes consistently. That's around 22-24% engagement.. Ridiculously high.
I also live by one other rule.... NEVER SACRIFICE QUALITY!

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That's insane mate .. 7k with 1.5k likes on average... WHAT?

Update: Guys i spoke to a guy that has an account with 22k followers in the cars niche and averages 1k per photo. He even told me that daily he sells on average 2 shoutouts and charges 10 quid per shoutout, do the math that's 600 a month easy, which is what I would make working part-time and killing myself haha. I think an important thing that he said is that when trying to get more likes and engagement, trying to target smaller hashtags around 200k and getting top post, he told me that if i put 30 hashtags and i get at least top post for one hashtag the engagement starts flowing. What do you think on this guys? Any tips or advice again is very helpful.

johnsmth , i cannot PM, because i don't have enough posts. x:

supercarenthusiast9 said:

That's insane mate .. 7k with 1.5k likes on average... WHAT?

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You read right mate...

supercarenthusiast9 said:

Update: Guys i spoke to a guy that has an account with 22k followers in the cars niche and averages 1k per photo. He even told me that daily he sells on average 2 shoutouts and charges 10 quid per shoutout, do the math that's 600 a month easy, which is what I would make working part-time and killing myself haha. I think an important thing that he said is that when trying to get more likes and engagement, trying to target smaller hashtags around 200k and getting top post, he told me that if i put 30 hashtags and i get at least top post for one hashtag the engagement starts flowing. What do you think on this guys? Any tips or advice again is very helpful.

johnsmth , i cannot PM, because i don't have enough posts. x:

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Seems like solid advice.

supercarenthusiast9 said:

That's insane mate .. 7k with 1.5k likes on average... WHAT?

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It depends on the niche. I have two accounts which almost have the same number of followers, they are in different niches and the engagement is not comparable. The better one is out-performing the above account easily, while the other one is not even near.

Damn you guys seem to be doing work ... That amount of engagement is pretty sick.. I would be glad if i had 1k per photo

hmm..nice info i found here about engagement for instagram.

I mean i been working for quite a few months and stuck at 400 likes average.. I must be something wrong ? Do you guys want me to link you my page and maybe check it out and see if im doing something wrong ? Thanks.

follow/un follow method is trash. as i have said before, they only follow back because they are happy someone followed them. They can care less about the page. Try asking questions with your post too. "Yes or no?" "Red or black".

brothers said:

follow/un follow method is trash. as i have said before, they only follow back because they are happy someone followed them. They can care less about the page. Try asking questions with your post too. "Yes or no?" "Red or black".

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I can vouche for that.I do the follow/unfollow method and i get around 100-150 likes at around 8k followers.I post only high quality pictures and i also post car specifications,wich is pretty rare in the car niche.My follow back ratio is pretty good,but my engagement is horrible.I post around 25 hashtags also.