Don’t be sad, dear small business owner! There are many reasons why your followers might not be liking and commenting your posts like they used to…

Remember the ‘good old days’ of Instagram (Valencia filter included!) when you shared a photo from your weekend and 90 of your 100 followers liked it? The algorithm has changed a lot since then and, not to blame the algorithm, but it hasn’t favored static posts for a few years now.

When they’re ready to make a purchase, they’re more likely to think of you.

Back to the issue at hand now, what do you do when your followers don’t interact with your content?

1. Use Story stickers. The more people interact with your Stories, the more likely they are to see your feed posts (and more of your Stories) as well. Try to make it fun and engaging by appealing to people’s natural urge to vote in a poll or share their opinion.

2. Interact differently. Check out the “least interacted with” accounts you follow and, well, interact with them! This might awaken some stale accounts which haven’t seen your content in a while.

3. Clean it up! You’re working hard to gain followers, so why should you remove any of them? Truth be told, you don’t want just any followers. The bots and fake accounts aren’t helping your engagement, so just get rid of them.

4. Call-to-action. Do your followers know you want them to save, share, comment etc? You would think so, but they’re probably caught up with their own stuff. Always include a call-to-action in your captions as a gentle reminder. If you notice none of those calls-to-action are working, consider starting fresh with a new approach.

5. Focus on your business goals. Not every season has the same business goal. Engagement is important when you’re working on building awareness, but when you’re focusing on conversion, you may not see such obvious, loud signs. If conversion is currently your goal, don’t worry about engagement and focus on providing high-quality, salesy content instead. Be certain about your current marketing goals before you decide your next steps.

Here are more things you can do while engagement is low, but also: take a break! You deserve it.