It’s true. We’ve been showing Instagram a little extra love. C’mon, remember yesterday’s Carnage? We made up a little jingle just for the ‘gram.
But in our defense, it’s the fastest growing social platform and is becoming more e-commerce friendly. How can we not talk about it? The hosts at Science of Social Media agree and are helping us crack down on Instagram’s algorithm. Plus, they reveal other need-to-know updates.
We got the timestamps all ready for ya, fam!
- (02:50) Instagram relies on machine learning based on past behavior to create a unique feed for everyone. So, feeds are based on interaction, not what you follow.
- (03:33) There are three main factors to determine what you see in your Instagram feed, which is interest, recency, and relationships. Interest stems from predicting how much you will care about the post. Recency is prioritized by time, of course. Relationships is determined by how close you are to the person who shared it.
- (04:45) Businesses need to keep the recency factor in mind. Be aware of time-sensitive content because people may or may not see it. Stories bring on new advantages.
- (05:40) Other factors that are considered are frequency, following, and usage
- (06:40) Conspiracy theories:
- Instagram is not, at this time, considering an option to reverse to the old chronological feed.
- Instagram does not hide posts in the feed.
- Feed ranking does not favor photo or video format universally but users feed is based on interaction. So if you react more to video than you’ll be shown more video.
- Instagram does not give preference to business versus personal accounts.
- Shadow banning is not real. Instagram does not hide people’s content for posting too many hashtags.
- (08:25) An experiment with hashtags on the Buffer account. They went back and added hashtags to older posts and got an increase in followers, comments, and engagement.
- (08:50) As more users/businesses join Instagram and post more often, the average post will get drowned out. Focus on quality content and engagement!
- (09:35) Instagram could soon allow users to post long-form video up to an hour long. Say whaaaaaaaaaat??
- (11:05) Instagram will expand on shopping beyond the feed and into Stories.
That ain’t all. Take the jump for the rest…
