10 Steps to Get More Likes and Engagement on Instagram 2026

10 Steps to Get More Likes and Engagement on Instagram 2026

How to get more Instagram likes?
Instagram is a platform with more than 500 million users daily, who press the Like button an average of 4.2 billion times per day.

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For a business looking to get more likes and increase engagement, these statistics look promising. However, the problem is not getting likes, but getting enough likes that will increase your visibility so more people engage, follow your brand, and invest in it.

To get more likes on Instagram, you need to approach content tactically.

In this post, we will show you ten ways to increase the number of likes on Instagram:

Contents

1. Use high-quality photographs
2. Use hashtags strategically and generously
3. Leverage video content
4. Run a contest or giveaway
5. Write compelling captions
6. Share content across social media
7. Tag relevant people and brands
8. Engage others
9. Post content at the right time
10. Ask for likes

Some tips require only minor adjustments, while others require a bit more work. However, all of them can help improve your content so more people double-tap the heart button.

Best tip: This post assumes that you have already created a business profile on Instagram, understand the basics of Instagram marketing, and have learned how to reach your target audience on this platform. If not, learn the basics in our guide to Instagram marketing for small businesses for beginners?

Before we dive into these tips in depth, let’s look at how Instagram recently changed the likes feature and why generating likes is still important.

Why Instagram Likes Still Matter

In 2019, Instagram began a trial phase of hiding likes for users in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Brazil, Japan, Ireland, Italy, and the USA. The goal is to reduce competition and fighting for popularity, thereby encouraging a change in posting behavior towards creativity, storytelling, and spontaneity.

As Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri said: “The idea is to try to de-Instagram, make it less of a competition, give people more space so they can focus on connecting with the people they love and the things that inspire them.”

Hidden likes mean that people viewing your posts won’t be able to see the number of likes they have. Subsequently, people may engage more often with brands they have a genuine relationship with rather than being attracted to brands with high like counts.

For brands, this means that every like you get is deserved by a real fan. In this sense, likes, though publicly hidden, become more influential than ever before.

Although likes are hidden, you still have access to the numbers in the backend. You can still track how your post is performing and adjust your content to appeal to the Instagram algorithm – which continues to prioritize likes as a rating signal.

Whether or not likes are permanently implemented in the United Kingdom, they remain a key measure of success and obtaining them requires quality content.

With these things in mind, let’s dive into the tips.

1. Use high-quality photographs

More than 95 million posts are uploaded to Instagram every day. With each post, you’re competing for attention with other brands, influencers, and followers’ friends and family.

To stand out, your content must stop users in their tracks. This means no blurry, pixelated, or poorly lit photographs.

An Instagram post from Lush cosmetics
Fortunately, modern smartphones have cameras that are more than capable of creating quality shots.

Whenever you take a photo or record a video on your phone:

• shoot in HDR mode
• Use a smartphone tripod to keep your phone stable.
• Create photographs 1080 pixels wide

Photography experts have several great tips for getting the most out of your phone’s camera.

When you’re ready to upload photos, select a filter that will engage users. A study by TrackMaven found that the Mayfair filter performs best for engagement, followed by no filter – which puts more emphasis on the quality of the original image.

2. Use hashtags strategically and generously

Hashtags have the potential to get your Instagram posts in front of a completely new audience. And for every niche, there are popular terms.

The easiest way to find the right hashtags is to enter a few words related to your image or business in the Instagram search bar.

List of popular food hashtags
Alternatively, you can enter # followed by keywords in the caption. This will display Instagram’s most popular hashtags.

Another way to find relevant hashtags is to use a hashtag generator page, such as All Hashtag. Enter a keyword in the search field and the tool will generate the most related hashtags.

Screenshot of “All Hashtag” hashtag generator
To reach as many people as possible with your post, use the most popular hashtags in your industry.

To reach people in your area, use location-based hashtags. To find them, search Google for “popular Instagram accounts + [your city]” and see what terms the most-followed accounts in your area use.

How many hashtags should you use?
Instagram allows up to 30 hashtags per post, but that can be overkill. A hashtag strategy survey by Sprout Social shows that most brands use one to five hashtags, but the sweet spot for engagement is nine.

3. Embrace video content

According to Mention, posts containing videos have 38% higher engagement on Instagram than posts containing images. And generally speaking, video achieves the best return on investment (ROI) in social media marketing activities overall.

There are several ways to create quality videos on a limited budget, using a smartphone, screen capture software, animated videos, or user-generated content.

We’ve taken a detailed look at each of these methods in our guide to growing a small business through video marketing. The guide also covers the types of video content you can use to engage your audience, including:

• Product demo videos
• Events
• Case studies
• Behind-the-scenes videos
• Interviews

According to Wibbitz, how-to guides are the most popular form of video content on Instagram. This is something to keep in mind if you have something you can teach your audience.

Something else to keep in mind are the technical specifications:

• Format: FORMAT: MP4
• Length: 3-60 seconds
• Video file size: File size: up to 512 MB, but for faster uploading it is better if the file size does not exceed 50 MB.
• Aspect ratio: 1.91:1-4:5
• Square, portrait, or landscape

4. Run a contest or giveaway

Contests are one of the easiest ways to increase engagement on Instagram. To increase the number of likes, you can set the entry barrier as simply as “like to win”.

To increase engagement, you can raise the stakes by asking participants to also follow you and tag a friend, as shown in this giveaway from Diala’s Kitchen.

Example of an Instagram contest from Diala’s Kitchen
To make your Instagram contest or giveaway stand out, make sure the prize is relevant to your brand and target market and specific enough to attract long-term fans.

For example, if you run a restaurant, giving away free food for two or gift cards is something that real fans would be interested in. On the other hand, giving away an iPad or a vacation to Disneyland might only attract opportunists who have no real interest in your brand.

Before running any contest or giveaway, read Instagram’s promotional guidelines. It’s not exactly thrilling, but it will keep you on the right side of the platform’s moderators.

5. Write compelling captions

Captions give voice to your visual content. They allow you to expand on photos, show off your personality, and guide followers.

To write the perfect caption:

• Get the right tone. Instagram is fun and lighthearted, so your posts should reflect that. If your tone of voice tends to be more corporate or formal, add a bit of personality to it to make it feel more human and authentic.
• Put important details first. The caption text is cut off in the Instagram feed after two or three lines. Even if you want people to click “more”, assume they won’t. Put the most important message at the beginning and save hashtags for the end.
• Instagram post feed showing text truncation
• Write a call to action. If you want your followers to do something, ask them to do it. For example “click the link in bio” or “like if you would do this” or “comment your favorite XYZ post”.
• Use emojis. Emojis add personality to posts, but they also serve to grab attention and break up text. Where compatible emojis are available, you can even use them to replace text.

How long should your Instagram captions be?

Instagram captions have a limit of 2200 characters, which gives you plenty of room to express your thoughts.

Still, a recent study of more than 8.9 million Instagram posts conducted by Quintly found that brands with one million followers or fewer get the most engagement with posts that are 1-50 characters long. And Sprout Social says the ideal caption length is 138-150 characters. So the best approach is to keep it brief.

6. Share content across social media

If you are active on other social platforms, use them to promote your Instagram content.

Best tip: If you’re not on other social networks, you should be. More than half of 97% of digital consumers who used social media in the past month used it to research products. Social media marketing can be a cost-effective and dynamic approach to brand marketing, but you need a clearly defined strategy to establish your brand online. To learn more about how to achieve this, read our guide to creating a social media marketing strategy in 7 steps for your small business?.

Instagram allows you to automatically share posts on Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr. You shouldn’t do this on every post, as it’s good to share original content on each platform. However, reminding followers of other channels where you’re active is another way to generate views and likes on Instagram without much effort.

In addition to automatic sharing, you can ask people to follow you on Instagram in posts, email newsletters, or, as FSB did here, in social media bios.

FSB’s Twitter account with a call to action on Instagram
You can also share content cross-platform without leaving Instagram by using the Stories feature, which allows you to direct people to your organic posts.

500 million people use Instagram Stories every day and 62% of users say they became more interested in a brand or product after seeing it in Stories. This makes it a powerful feature that allows you to draw more attention to posts in your channel.

Diala’s Kitchen used Stories with great effect to promote the contest we showed you earlier.

7. Tag Relevant People and Brands

Tagging another brand or person is a way to give them the recognition they deserve and direct your followers their way.

However, the benefits also come to you.

Tagging will alert others to your new content. The “Tagged” section also helps display your Instagram photos on their profile.

Example of tags used in Instagram posts
Also, supporting another brand increases the likelihood that they will show you love in return (more on that in the next tip).

When tagging people in Instagram posts, tag them both in the photo and in the caption. Do this when you are:

• working on a project with another company
• Shouting out a customer, fan, or collaborator
• announcing a contest winner
• Thanking someone for a case study
• Responding to customer questions
• Sharing someone else’s content on your channel
• Tag people only when it’s relevant. And try not to tag the same people every time so you don’t come across as spam.

8. Engage in Communication with Others

Instagram is a community, and if you are an active member who takes time to like and comment on content you’re interested in, people will reciprocate.

Following these steps, you can increase your engagement rate:

• If someone follows you, follow them back. Clearly, you want to avoid tracking spam accounts.
• If someone comments on your photo, reply to them with a comment directed at them. Mention them in the comment using @.
• Like photos with hashtags that interest you.
• Comment on photos that contain hashtags that interest you.
• Like comments from other people on photos that interest you.
• Send direct messages to people you’re interested in or who provide great value.
• Tag users on a photo that you know personally or that you have built a relationship with on Instagram.
• Ask questions or call for feedback in your posts.
• More followers means more eyes on your posts, which ultimately means more likes.

9. Post content at the right time

To maximize the number of likes on Instagram, you need your posts to be seen by as many people as possible. For this to happen, you need to post content when your audience is online.

We covered this in great detail in our guide to the best times to post on Instagram in the UK, but here’s an overview based on 12 million posts analyzed by Later:

• Monday: 6:00, 10:00, and 22:00
• Tuesday: 2 a.m., 4 a.m., and 9 a.m.
• Wednesday: 7, 8, and 11 a.m.
• Thursday: 9, 12, and 19:00
• Friday: 5 a.m., 13:00, and 15:00
• Saturday: 11, 19, and 20:00
• Sunday: 7, 8, and 16:00
• Overall, according to Sprout Social, the best day and time to post in terms of engagement is Wednesday at 11 a.m.

10. Ask for likes

The last tip is perhaps the simplest of all: If you want people to like your posts, ask them to.

When Socialbakers analyzed 350,283 tweets from 3,792 brands on Twitter, it found that asking for “RT” of a post netted people an average of 73 retweets, while asking “Please retweet” netted an average of 64 retweets.

HubSpot found a similar trend when examining posts on Facebook. Posts that contain the word “Like” get more likes.

HubSpot study showing the impact of including a call-to-action to get a like.
Data source: Study on the number of “likes” on a page published in 2012: Hubspot
Twitter and Facebook differ from Instagram, but people’s behavior is the same. If the call-to-action is clear, followers are more likely to follow it.

Ask your Instagram followers directly to engage with your posts:

• Like if you agree
• Like if you relate to it
• Tag a friend who would like this
• Instagram post asking followers to tag a friend
• Image: Good quote

Summary

Likes on Instagram are a sign that your content resonates with your followers. When you get more of them, your content reaches a larger audience, which means more eyes for your message and greater interest in your brand.

Following the tips presented in this post as part of your social media strategy will help you create content that Instagram users want to see, while making it easier for them to find it.

The best part is that all of these tips are free and easy to implement. Introduce them to your posts gradually and measure how your likes increase over time. This will help you find out which tactics work best with your followers and bring long-term success.

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