The Instagram Change & What it Means for you (and how to save your account)

What is the Change:

Today, Instagram has announced that they will officially be changing their algorithm affecting the way posts are displayed on your feed. Since it’s inception, Instagram has always shown photos in chronological order (thus the name INSTAgram). Now, rather than showing you the posts in chronological order, the new algorithm will sort the posts for you based on the “the likelihood you’ll be interested in the content, your relationship with the person posting, and the timeliness of the post”.

In short, Instagram is now deciding what to show you and when to show you it (if at all). Hmm…this sounds a lot like what Facebook did a few years ago before they turned into a “pay to play” platform.

How this will effect you:

I don’t care who you are, big or small account, this change will impact your engagement negatively. This means less likes, less comments and less people seeing your photo. Even if you have thousands of followers, it won’t ensure that every single person is going to see your photo (like they could before). Unfortunately, the hard truth is, it will effect the smaller accounts (including small business) on a much larger scale.

My prediction is that in a few short months, Instagram will introduce a more wide-spread “sponsored post” program similar to Facebook. This will unfortunately make you, pay to ensure your post is seen by more people.

What you can do:

You’ve probably seen an influx of your friends asking you to turn on their post notifications so they can see your posts every time you update (I was even on that bandwagon for about 5 minutes). While this might be a quick fix to pick-up a couple of your super dedicated followers, the chances are, those people would probably see your photos anyways since they are really engaged already. It’s also going to get really annoying for them when they start getting notifications from all the people the followed.

Instead, in order to succeed, you need to start being more strategic about your posts and work with Instagram’s algorithm than trying to beat it with quick fix schemes.

Here is what we should be focusing on in order to ensure our posts are being seen as much as possible:

1. Analyze your content to see what people like and play into that. Take a look at your last 3 months of posts (you can use a program like Iconosquare to synthesize the data faster). Once you figure out the types of posts that have the highest engagement, make sure you use those types of photos whenever you’re trying to get a message across.I get it, obviously you don’t want your whole feed to be babies, puppies and donuts. My point is, when you have an important sales/marketing message you are trying to get across, make sure you are creating your image strategically so that it will be seen.
2. Post Daily. If it’s one thing we’ve learned from the Facebook algorithm is that you need to be posting on a daily basis in order to be successful. The reason is simple. The more you post, the more opportunity you have for people to like your photo. Since Instagram’s new algorithm is based on people engaging on your photo, you are more likely to be seen by someone if they’ve already engaged with your photos. If you miss a day or two of posting, chances are, other people have moved to the top of the list and you will have to build that engagement up all over again.
3. Time your posts strategically. If there were ever a time to look at your statistics, it is now. Using Iconosquare (or another data app of your choice), find out when your engagement is the highest and post during that time (since you know a large proportion of your audience is on during that time). For me, I find between 8-9am, 12-1pm and 8-10pm are the best times.
4. Continue to grow your audience. You must work a little harder to ensure that your audience is growing. A bigger audience means a bigger chance to be seen. This means engage, engage, engage!Side-note: There are lots of easy tactics to grow your following fast and I am here to help! If you want to learn more about my Instagram Growth Consulting, shoot me an e-mail at erica@everythingericacom. I’ve grown my following at @everythingerica to over 45k (real engaged followers) in under 2 years.

So there you have it. Instagram is changing and we just have to change with it. Fighting it, signing petitions and begging for your followers to turn on notifications just isn’t going to work. Bottom line, Instagram is doing this as a long-term play to make money and there is no petition in the world that is going to change their minds, I promise.

Do you have any tactics you would use to help beat this algorithm? Comment them below!

Love always,
Erica