When it comes to getting your post in front of the eyes of as many followers as possible, knowing how to accurately game the feed is essential. Here we look at the three main factors which determine what appears in an Instagram user’s feed, and how you can use them to your advantage.
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Guest post by Bobby Owsinski of Music 3.0
We all want the maximum number of followers to see our posts, but that’s not always easy. The guardian of the feed on any social network is its algorithm, which selects the posts that it believes will be relevant to each user. Knowing how that algorithm works, then tailoring your posts accordingly, is the secret to more people viewing your posts. Here’s how the algorithm on Instagram grades works.
According to Instagram, the algorithm uses 3 main factors based on your past actions and behaviors to determine what’s in your feed. They are:
1. Interest: Based on your past behavior, Instagram makes a prediction on how much you’ll care about a post.
2. Recency: This is based on how recent the post was published and how recently the post was shared.
3. Relationship: The people that you interact with the most, or the ones that react to your posts, are the ones that are most likely to see a post.
There are other factors that go into building the feed as well, like:
• The frequency that you open Instagram
• The number of people that you follow
• How long you spend on each session
There are also a number of myths that were busted by Instagram’s team:
- Instagram’s feed doesn’t favor users who use Stories, Live, or other special features of the app.
- Instagram doesn’t downrank users for posting too frequently or for other specific behaviors, but it might swap in other content in between someone’s if they rapid-fire separate posts.
- Instagram doesn’t give extra feed presence to personal accounts or business accounts, so switching won’t help your reach.
- Shadowbanning is not a real thing, and Instagram says it doesn’t hide people’s content for posting too many hashtags or taking
The rules of the algorithm are basically the same as most other social networks, but the results are a lot better. Instagram’s 800 million users are now seeing 90 percent of their friends posts as a result, which is impressive.
This means that it basically comes down to posting interesting content and using Instagram a lot to make sure that your followers will continue to see your content.
You can read more social media tips from Social Media Promotion For Musicians and my other books on the excerpt section of bobbyowsinski.com.
