We’ve all been there – liked one single picture of a cute dog on Instagram and now your whole feed is covered in animal videos, pet memes and celebrity pets who somehow have more followers than the population of Iceland. Now you’re looking at these posts and warming to their little furry faces, and end up making the biggest mistake – another like. That’s it, now you won’t ever be able to get away – who needs to see photos of your friends on their fancy holidays and eating from posh restaurants with tiny portion sizes anyway?
Rest assured, you’re not the only one being roped into this. All rise to the wake of the NEW (and ever-changing, so bear with me) Instagram algorithm, and how it really works.
Let’s be honest, the new algorithm sucks. Staying present even in your own social group’s feeds seems almost impossible, but the fact is, if you are a business then you’re in luck, because as long as you work with the algorithm and not against it, you will inevitably see massive success at very little cost.
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Just to make clear – If you do take anything from this article, let it be this – even if you have the same following as another user, the posts you will see on your feed will most definitely be different, as the algorithm takes into consideration the amount of interaction with other posts, hence creating an individual feed for each user. Therefore, if you want to move away from viewing certain pages, simply don’t interact with them!
Let’s go back two years, when social media itself was a lot easier and apparently working too well for our liking. Businesses didn’t have to worry about optimising their content for their viewers as Instagram’s feeds appeared in chronological order, which meant as long as you posted regularly, you could pretty much get away with it.
Nowadays, it’s a whole different story. Did you use the right combination of hashtags? But did you ensure there’s not too many as to clutter the post? Is the image itself attractive and not overly branded? Is the caption strong and witty enough? I could go on.
Ok now you’re panicking. But don’t. I’m about to give you a whole new lease on your social media life.
5 TOP tips on making an impact
- ENGAGE with more Instagram stories
The influence of Instagram on buyer and consumer behaviour is massive, and continues to increase. According to Delmondo, a social media analytics platform, 75% of consumer decisions are influenced by Instagram itself. This means there is huge potential, but if you really want to get up there – ENGAGE in other similar content! Join an instagram pod, post on a celebrity photo, comment on related stories – and most importantly make sure your competition isn’t doing it better.
2) Hashtag sparingly and intuitively
There’s nothing worse than seeing a brilliant image with a quirky caption followed by a sea of hashtags; some so irrelevant to the image of the new office that #foodie is included? How did we get to this? It isn’t just about randomly throwing together a few words and hoping for the best. By including more unrelated words you are actually decreasing the worth of your image, meaning that same image of your business’s swanky new office now can be found on a food search, making it look so unprofessional.
3) PLAN the layout of you Instagram page
One of the most important things to remember is no matter how well you engage with other Instagram accounts, if the content you are posting on behalf of the business is not visually appealing, your post will be disregarded.
The same rules applies when marketing for the business. Showing your brand’s uniqueness, your Instagram account should be just the same; conveying your brand’s message with a clever display of imagery with not too much ‘branded’ information to avert the reader’s attention. By sticking with a theme, such as a certain layout or strong colour running through your posts, you will inevitably allow the images to be instantly recognisable and hence related to your business.
4) Find the perfect timing
It may not seem important, but the time that you actually post an image on Instagram can also affect the amount of interaction and impact it has, even if the previous tip was followed. Posting at a time when your target audience are most active is key. It’s all well and good to create a platform for interaction on your business account’s behalf by engaging with content ready to post an image, but if it’s 3am on a Wednesday night and the majority of your audience are asleep you probably won’t get a lot of interaction with it.
Luckily Sprout Social created a heatmap of the time of day and day of the week where you are most likely to get the most interaction with an Instagram post – hence it might be good to invest in an app which helps organise and plan your posts in order to get maximum outcome.
5) Get PERSONAL
It may be simple business initiative to make sure social media pages look professional and orderly, just as you would like your audience to view the business. However, by constantly posting business content of glossed up and styled product images you can easily lose the authenticity of the very same product or service you are trying to promote. Instead, try for a more relaxed approach and give readers an ‘insight’ into the very life of the office, and any behind the scenes information which can easily create a buzz around the topic if marketed effectively, meaning more people are likely to engage with the content.