Social media is the key platform for brands and influencers hoping to engage an audience of loyal followers and customers. As such, the most innovative creators are constantly reinventing their social strategies in hopes of finding new ways to increase engagement and boost conversion rates. In the past, they’ve been early adopters of the Story feature, pioneered the incredibly popular #GRWM hashtag, and recorded remarkable follower growth with giveaway contests. Now they’re embarking on a new frontier: incentivizing comments and direct messages from their followers.

How Brands & Influencers Use DMs

If you’re active on Instagram, you may have noticed a rise in creators prompting their followers to comment a particular word to receive a DM with a link to a product. For brands and influencers trying to sell products, this has become an increasingly common and effective approach to audience communication. It provides their followers with an easy-to-use link in their inbox for an item they’ve indicated interest in, which makes them more likely to convert to a sale.

Of course, you might wonder how accounts with hundreds of thousands of followers can keep up with all the DMs they need to send at all hours of the day. Creators usually outsource this task to a service called LinkDM, which can track custom trigger words and auto-send pre-written messages to users once they comment the required phrase. For example, many fashion influencers will ask their followers to comment a word like “SHOP” on their post to receive a DM with the affiliate link to the items they’re promoting.

The increased use of DMs and ability to auto-respond has also recently helped brands and influencers increase engagement on their popular giveaway contests. Creators can now use native Instagram features or services like LinkDM or Customers.Ai to auto-reply to users who tag their account in their Instagram Story, providing them with a direct URL to a contest entry form. This boosts overall contest conversion rates by allowing users to access the form immediately, rather than taking an extra step to click on the profile and find the link attached in the bio. When users tag the account in their Story, it also puts the brand in front of new potential followers, extending the total reach and impact of the campaign.

Why DMs are So Important

For brands and influencers, engagement is the most important metric that drives success on social media. To have an effective social media presence, it’s not enough to have a large number of followers anymore. Those followers must also be highly engaged and interacting with your posts on a regular basis.

Now that the most-used social media sites have been around for more than a decade, most users follow hundreds or even thousands of accounts. The social algorithms are designed with this knowledge in mind and recognize that a like or follow may not be an indication of the user’s interest in the content. Instead, algorithms place a higher value on interactions like comments and DMs, because those actions require greater effort and show a high degree of interest. This engagement informs the algorithm that many people enjoy the account’s content. As a result, the site continues sharing that brand’s posts, which keeps more people using the platform. That’s why savvy influencers and brands have been finding new ways to incentivize their audience to complete the most valuable actions. Asking their followers to “comment for a DM” accomplishes two of the most important forms of engagement at once.

From a more holistic perspective, DMs are also an effective way to form lasting one-on-one relationships with followers. Receiving a DM can feel distinctly different to a follower than looking at a regular post or even a Story. A DM – even one that is automated – feels like a more personal, one-on-one conversation than a post in the main feed that is obviously made for the masses.

Building a more personal relationship with individual followers is important for brands and influencers who want to build a sustainable community. According to Zendesk, 75% of consumers prefer to engage with brands using private messaging channels rather than traditional channels. If you can provide your followers the connection they’re looking for, they’re more likely to continue following your account, engage with your content again in the future, and ultimately purchase your products.