Are Instagram Saves Important?By Sophie

Instagram is Changing

The days of caring about Instagram post likes are slowly fading into the realm of irrelevancy. Nowadays, comments, shares, and saves are what really boost engagement rates. New features on Instagram, including the ability for only the uploader to view the amount of likes their post has received, have only reinforced this.

When planning your Instagram strategy, it’s essential to create saveable content to encourage your audience to interact with it long after it’s gone live.

What Exactly is ‘Saveable’ content?

Saveable content is simply content that your audience wants to view again. People saving your Instagram post is a strong indicator that your content has resonated with them, and that they found it valuable enough to save it for later.

This type of content often includes lists, tips, recipes, tutorials, infographics and videos. When it comes to Instagram saves, perhaps a user liked your content but wasn’t ready to consume it when it was served to them, so they bookmarked it for later, or perhaps your content resonated with them enough that they want to keep viewing it again and again. Either way, the save will boost your engagement rate, telling Instagram your account is a popular one. This means your content is more likely to be served up organically by the algorithm.

Swwim’s Top Tips for Generating More Instagram Saves

We’ve got four tips to help you create saveable content for your audiences:

1. Long, rich captions

Writing longer, more in depth captions is a great way to make your post saveable. If you can't add the saveable content you want into the feed image, add the detail to the caption instead. They are essentially then saving the caption to come back to and read, not necessarily the image itself.

2. Engage with your audience

Encourage your audience to save the post with a call to action in your captions! Phrases like, ‘save this for later’, or ‘come back and tell us...’ are great ways to get your audience engaging with your posts.

3. Evergreen content

Evergreen content is content that retains its relevance over time. Things like motivational quotes, calendar events for the year or checklists are great ways to get your audience to save content that will be relevant to them for weeks or months to come. See our blog post on Evergreen Content to find out more!

4. The content itself

For your actual feed post to be more saveable, use formats like infographics, lists, tutorials and tips to make content that your audience wants to come back to. For example, if we turned these tips into an Instagram post, it would be a great way to get our audience saving!