I Tried Micro-Blogging on Instagram: Here’s What Happened

I recently tried micro-blogging on Instagram as a way to increase engagement and add value to my current followers. I was always a culprit of writing short and sweet captions and in a recent Instagram engagement slump, I wanted to try new ways of reaching my existing audience, but also potential followers. Before I share the results from a couple recent micro-blogs, let’s address a few common questions first.

What is micro-blogging? If you’re not familiar, it’s writing short blogs or long captions that accompany a photo on Instagram (or any social network) and add value to your audience. Micro-blogging doesn’t require you to have an actual blog or website to drive people to.

Why should I try micro-blogging? You'll likely see your engagement rate increase as people will want to interact more with content they find valuable. One of the most important measures of engagement are saves. If people are saving your post, you're providing information to them they will want to come back to in the future. Also, when you look in analytics and see the number of sends increase you also know your audience likes your content enough to share it with a friend.

Should all my posts be micro-blogs? I try to mix in micro-blogs when I can provide value to a specific topic. Not every post I share is a micro-blog and I think that’s perfectly fine. Because I have a blog and I do want to drive people to my website too, I try to micro-blog on topics that I know are helpful, but maybe don’t need to be a 600+ word blog on my website.

Tips for writing a micro-blog:

- Encourage people to engage or comment in the post itself by asking a question or reminding your audience to "save these tips for later"

- Hook your audience with your first sentence

- Share tips people will want to bookmark for later

- Keep it clean and add spaces to make it easier to read

- Get personal and share how you really feel about topics with your audience

- Don't forget your hashtags and to tag any accounts you mention

Now let’s jump into some examples! Here are screenshots from a few recent attempts at micro-blogging. With micro-blogging I noticed I have much higher saves, sends and interactions than posts with short and sweet captions.

Have you tried micro-blogging? I would love to read your next micro-blog. Tag me in a post!

Cara