The Instagram Algorithm is the one that everyone wants to crack, in a world where having a large following can lead to income generation, why not grow your community and start getting your influencer on?
Sadly not everyone knows or takes the time to understand the Instagram Algorithm. Like with any social media platform, if you understand the algorithm it will help your brand or personal social media content strategy. At the end of the day, we want more eyes on our content, to get people to follow you and opt into buying your products or services.
There are a few major factors that you need to understand to influence the Instagram algorithm.
Interest
It’s not just who and what you follow on Instagram anymore. The Instagram algorithm also takes into account what you like. The more the Instagram algorithm thinks that you “like” something, the more likely it will appear in your feed. (I have been wondering why I always see the cutest Panda and Sausage Dogs pics on Instagram. Thank you Instagram!).
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Basically Instagram is a collection of your Instagram behaviours. It takes into account who’s pictures you have liked, who has tagged you in pictures, the friends you engage with the most and who’s stories you watch first.
Relationship
What relationships do you have or have you been building with your followers? The Instagram algorithm cares about this, like a lot.
Instagram wants to make sure that you see the posts from the accounts you care the most about. That is friends, family and your fav accounts (in our case: Humans of New York, What is New York and Influencers in the Wild)
Thomas Dimson, an Instagram software engineer shared how the Instagram algorithm figured out who you cared about the most, based on how you use the app. Instagram considered things like:
- What content you engaged with the most
- Who’s DM’s you are blowing up on the ‘gram
- Who are you searching for (they know you are searching for your crush)
- Who do you know IRL
How often are you posting and when
The Instagram algorithm takes notice of not only how often you open the app and engage with content, but also how long ago you posted to the app. Seems obvious right? The more you post, the more followers you will get. It is also important to note that if you go from posting every day to once every 3 weeks, the Instagram Algorithm will pick that up. So you need to post consistently with a schedule you can maintain for the rest of your Instagram life (and you thought being an Influencer was easy).
When is your audience online? You wouldn’t rock up to the club at 3 pm on a Tuesday, no one would be there. The same applies to Instagram. You need to do an analysis of when your audience is online and the most active, and that is when you should be posting your content.
Post regularly, when people are online. Winner winner.
Frequency
How often do you open up the Instagram App? Hourly? Daily? Weekly? The more you use the app, the more likely it is that content will be shown to you chronologically. If you don’t open it a lot, it is more likely that you won’t see the most recent posts, the Instagram algorithm will then show you posts that it thinks you will like and wouldn’t want to miss out on.
We all think that doing a “Digital detox” and removing yourself all of all social media for a while is a good thing, (and it is for your personal accounts) but as a brand or influencer, you just can’t afford to. That is why hiring a social media manager is so beneficial.
It seems so simple really when you put it down on a blog post, but the reality is that it isn’t. If you want Instagram to be your main platform, building an engaged, authentic audience on Instagram takes a lot of time. The elements mentioned above are a huge part of the Instagram algorithm, but there are so many more things to consider, for example, Hashtags, DM’s with your followers, promoted content, IGTV and more. It’s a skill and one that takes time to acquire.
I hope this post helped a little bit and if you enjoyed it, share it with people. Sharing is caring, after all.
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