Low Engagement on Sponsored Instagram Posts? Here’s Why
Every time I’ve done a sponsored post on my Instagram, it has got less likes than usual. It’s been shown to less people, there’s less comments, less engagement, everything is down from my usual average. Sure, this also happens if I post a photo of anything other than me or my cats. My audience know what they like and I can clearly see that in my analytics, which is why I figured the only way to find out what was going on, was to actually ask them. I have a nice bunch of people following me, I rarely get any hate, they send nice messages when I’m having flare ups, and I talk to a lot of them. I knew they’d be more than happy to talk about what was going on and I ended up with some really interesting results.
I’ve talked to a lot of people who think it’s simply Instagram who don’t show our sponsored posts to as many of our followers as they normally would. Putting this to one side and the most popular responses were that it depends on what you’re advertising. Instagram works by first showing our post to a few people, depending on how quickly and if, they do like and comment, it’ll then show it to even more people. If your post doesn’t get a good reaction, then it’ll be shown further down the feed and therefore less people will see it. It seems that different niches and audiences will be more responsive to sponsored Instagram posts than others. Some bloggers reading this may not have noticed this at all, they may even have the opposite and their sponsored Instagram posts do amazingly well.
If you see an #AD / #SponsoredPost, are you sure to like it? Or do you ignore it? Feel free to tell me why either way, or what types of accounts make you support/not support
— She Might Be Loved (@GeorginaGrogan_) October 16, 2018
What are sponsored Instagram posts?
This is where a brand has paid for the blogger/influencer to create content promoting that brand’s product/service. That could be a video, photo, Instagram stories, or all of them mixed together. Bloggers/Influencers usually get paid for sponsored posts when they have a couple thousand followers and produce good content.
Usually there is a brief sent, perhaps hashtags that are meant to be used, but most of the time the content creation is up to the blogger and the guidelines are very open. If they aren’t, this is where the problem of ‘overly staged’ ads that ‘don’t sound like the blogger’ come from.
How do bloggers get them?
Depending on the blogger they could use an App to apply for sponsored posts (Tribe), blogging outreach websites, direct emails from brands, or maybe even their management.
It’s Not Them, It’s You
So, how come some sponsored Instagram posts aren’t getting as many likes as usual? To put it simply, some people just don’t TRUST any kind of advert, but that’s not the only reason.
Not Relevant
Sometimes bloggers decide to do sponsored Instagram posts on things that aren’t relevant to their niche or audience at all. We get that sometimes people need money, but this is a sure way to switch your audience off. If you see someone advertising something they’ve never talked about before and it’s their ‘favourite thing ever’, then you know something is off. Most of the responses talked about how they won’t like a post if they don’t agree with the brand, whether it’s because of ethics, or something else, bloggers need to make sure they’re working with brands with a good reputation to avoid lower engagement.
Doesn’t Sound Like You
Noticing the same text from 10 different bloggers promoting the same thing? This will definitely annoy some of your audience. Sure there’s a brief and guidelines, but if you have nothing more than that to say on the advert, then more work is definitely needed. This comes across as overly staged and that isn’t what people want or trust at all.
Not Your Usual Style or Quality
Do you usually post mobile photos and then suddenly you’ve got a high resolution photo of a product advert? Your audience notice these things. If something is a completely different style to your usual, your audience won’t like it. That’s not what they’re following you for, you’ve built up your audience doing one thing, don’t change that because you’re getting paid. Lowering your quality on sponsored Instagram posts is just as bad as being overly professional. Showing a lack of effort with the content, perhaps even using stock photos really won’t go down well with your audience. Some of the worst sponsored posts are definitely those than you can see when looking at their full grid, if you can easily spot every ad, that’s not great or in their style at all.
Not Disclosed At The Top
Quite a few people mentioned how they hate reading a caption and then finding out half way through or right at the end that it’s a sponsored post. Some bloggers use #AD at the beginning, some use it at the end, and some really naughty bloggers, use it mixed up in another 20 hashtags so it’s really hard to see. Declaring at the top of the post may put some people off from reading the post completely, but for your audience that trusts you, they’ll hopefully read on and support your post. Either way, they’ll trust you more overall for declaring at the start of the post.
It’s Not You, It’s Them
I point blank asked, do some people just avoid every single sponsored Instagram post, no matter what? A shocking 40% said yes. When I talked to them more about how some bloggers do this for a living and need to take on Sponsored Instagram posts, and that most good bloggers would only work with brands they know and love, that percentage went down to 15%. It turns out, at least for the people who follow me, that some people just won’t like your paid content no matter what. Why?
Jealousy
This could be other bloggers and content creators not wanting to support a competitor’s work. Maybe they missed out on that campaign, or really wanted to work with the brand. It’s well known how competitive blogging can be so I don’t find this hard to believe at all.
Lack of Understanding
Some people genuinely don’t understand how ads work, and don’t know if you’ve spend hours creating the content because it’s a brand or campaign that means a lot to you, 51% of people said they’d be more likely to like a sponsored instagram post if they knew why you were working with the brand. Is it a brand you’ve bought from for years? Does the brand mean something to you? Being completely transparent with your audience could help engagement.
How Can We Change This?
I personally only take on sponsored Instagram Posts from brands that I know and trust, or from brands that I would write about anyway. I recently reviewed a new mirror that’s being launched and I got paid to do so, I would have wrote about it anyway, the only difference is now I was able to pay some bills. My other sponsored Instagram post this month was a plus size fashion brand, being a plus size fashion blogger, that was obviously a good match. I really do think my engagement problems are down to a lack of support, and I can now back that up from my Instagram poll results. Hopefully now that we’ve had this conversation, things will change.
Staying true to your niche and open and honest with your audience is incredibly important and it seems like that’s the way forward. There were a few comments on how you shouldn’t expect your audience to like your sponsored posts, but I don’t think anyone does expect, they just hope that they will. Because they genuinely like the content, and because they want to support that blogger. Even if it’s just your friends liking away as soon as you post, that’ll still help the post be seen be a wider audience and therefore it’s great for the blogger who posted.
If you still really don’t trust a blogger’s sponsored Instagram posts, then I’d suggest you take a look at why you’re following that person. There are definitely bad, dishonest bloggers out there, but there’s also people like me that are just trying to earn an honest living. So, let me know if the comments what you think about sponsored Instagram posts? Will you start supporting them more now?
