- What's going on guys.
My name is Chris Hau, and this week we are talking
about that darn Instagram algorithm.
So, I'll be sharing with you a few processes and tips
that you can start implementing today so your account
can start growing organically.
So, let's get right into it, woo.
(energetic music)
So I'll be sharing with you 10 tips today.
Tip number one is called grid OCD/feed consistency.
This is where your page has a theme to it,
and people know what to expect from you.
So for example, my page is all about travel.
So if you come to my page, you'll be seeing photos
from around the world, and people know what to expect
from me because they're overly saturated travel pics.
So people who are interested in the travel space
will come to me consistently,
and that's ultimately a good thing,
because that's how you'll build an audience
and land up on the Explore page more often.
It's important to keep colors scheme,
subject matter, and copy in mind
with your post.
You don't want to have something that's like,
"Here's a baby picture. Now here's a food picture,
"now here's a travel picture," 'cause people
don't know what to expect from you,
and that will ruin your brand.
So stay on brand, and that sticks
with even your colors, to your photographs,
to everything that you post,
make sure it's the same, and consistent.
A little helpful tip in regards to this,
before you post your final photo on your
Instagram page, the one that you're building ultimately
is create a fake dummy account.
Now you can make this private,
and then you can kind of upload the pictures
and see what you're feed will look like
previous to you uploading it on your final page.
Tip number two, account cleanup.
Now, in the past, a lot of people like to do the
follow, unfollow routine, and they would grow
a lot of followers this way, but ultimately
these accounts weren't genuine,
people were just following you back
because you followed them.
Now, this was a good technique
for the previous Instagram algorithm,
but for the new one, it just straight up
doesn't work anymore.
So you need to clean up your account.
In this case, you need to get rid
of inactive users/bot accounts,
or anybody else that you may have purchased in the past.
That means you'll lose a lot of followers,
but what it's going to do for you
is going to actually make sure that you have
good, consistent followers so that when you
upload an image, let's say it only goes to 20%
of the people out there, that's kind of like
the general rule of thumb, it goes out to 20%
of your audience.
Imagine 20% of your audience, or the audience
that Instagram picks are just inactive accounts
that no one will ever see it.
Well no one's ever going to double tap on that,
or comment on it, which means that it's not going
to end up on the Explore page.
Make sure you go through and block any inactive accounts.
Now here's a helpful tip.
You can go on your phone, and you can download
an app called Cleaner, now make sure you pay
for the pro version of this,
which allows you to kind of batch remove
a bunch of people.
So let's go right into our phone to figure out
how exactly to do this, shoo.
As you can see right here,
I have the cleaner app,
we're going to open that up.
Cleaner for Instagram.
You're going to login to your account,
and here you have a whole bunch of different options.
Click on the Followers icon at the bottom.
You're going to go to Quick Select,
and now you're going to go to Advanced Quick Select,
and now you're going to go Select Inactive Users,
click that, boom.
Now I've only loaded 200, you can see that
in the bottom there.
What I would suggest is you load
maybe 1000 or 2000 at a time,
or however many people you're following,
so you can follow all the inactive users.
Our processing is done.
Now I have 18 users who are inactive.
I don't even know, 'cause these are the most
recent who have followed me.
So did they just follow me and then they went inactive?
None the less, you can go the Actions tab
here in the corner.
You're going to go to Block.
So we're going to start that now,
and it's going to go through.
It completed.
Completed 18 actions.
Now, my account has gone down by 18 people,
but it doesn't matter, because those 18 people
are fake, and we don't care about them,
because we want this to go to real people
who will actually engage in our content.
That was account cleanup.
Tip number three, the accounts you engage with.
Now this is a very, very critical step.
Now I know, a lot of you have multiple, multiple interests,
and you don't want to just have to be like,
"I'm only following travel accounts."
Well, if you want to make a business out of your
Instagram account, and you want to start making money,
and you want to start growing organically,
well, you're going to have to start following only
people in your niche.
For me, I only follow people in the travel niche,
and I comment and engage with those people
so that we get lumped together,
and then maybe I end up being a suggested person
on Peter's account, or Maddy's account.
It's very, very important who you follow,
so start going through the people that you follow,
and unfollow any irrelevant accounts.
Now, remember in tip one where I mentioned
that you can make a private account?
Well, on that account why don't you start following
the other interests that you might have,
let's say it's fitness or cars,
you can follow as much as you want there,
and you can get the notification in that space.
Make sure you only follow people in your niche,
very, very important.
Tip number four, hashtags.
Now this is obvious, I'm sure a lot of you
are already starting to use hashtags at this point,
or have been using hashtags in the past,
but since the Instagram update,
it's important to know exactly which hashtags to use
in your niche.
Specifically, I would only recommend using
up to 25 hashtags.
Now I know there's a max of 30,
I would say 25 or less.
Now, actually one of my best photos
only ever had 10 hashtags on it,
and that was like an aerial photo,
because I made sure that it was very specific
and it only grew in that space,
and there was no other irrelevant hashtags
associated with that post.
Be specific on the ones that you attach.
I would recommend searching for specific hashtags
that work for your photo.
I would look for all the hashtags
at 500,000 submissions or less,
group all those first, and then five big ones,
and ultimately hopefully that will allow you
to grow really quickly in the medium sized ones,
and maybe you'll jump into the bigger ones.
That'll create a tipping point for your post to go viral.
Lastly, with these hashtags, I would also
tag the accounts that are associated with them.
Let's take for example, #shotsdelight, I believe,
that's what it's called.
Well, I would tag the account in the bottom,
and I would also use the hashtag,
so that I have a higher chance of being featured
on this page, and that will increase your chances
of going viral, because that's
how the Instagram algorithm works.
So hashtags and tagging accounts.
Tip number five is engaging with posts
on your feed/the searched hashtag.
When you're searching for the hashtags
that you're going to use on your post,
start going through and commenting
on other photos that are out there,
because ultimately Instagram is going lump
you together with these different accounts,
and you're going to end up on the Explore page
a lot quicker, which allows you to get seen
by more people, which will allow you to gain
more followers and grow quicker.
So very important, start engaging with different people
who are also using the same hashtags as you.
Posting time.
Now this seems obvious, this is very important,
because everybody checks Instagram
at different times during the day,
but there are key moments when people are checking,
but when people are sleeping, they're not on Instagram,
so that's not a good time for you to post your photo.
What I would suggest, is that if you
have a business account, or a pro account,
go into the Insides tab at the top,
and you can actually see the optimal time
for you to post your photos.
What I would suggest, is that you post
the photo 10 to 15 minutes before the optimal time,
so that it allows it to kind of gain some momentum,
and then it will end up right on their feed,
right when they're checking it,
so very, very important.
Now for all of you that don't
have a pro, or business account,
what I would suggest is that you consistently
post your photos at the exact same time.
Now let's say you've noticed that 1 pm
has been a very good time for you to post your photos,
well stick to 1 pm, because that's ultimately
when you're going to grow an audience who is
up at that time checking your photos.
Posting time is very, very important, stay consistent,
and find the optimal times to post your photos.
Tip number seven, warming up before posting.
Now I would suggest that you get on to Instagram
about a half an hour before you're going to post your photo,
and start engaging with the different accounts
that you already follow.
This way, when you actually post your photo,
the accounts that you follow, are going to hopefully
share the love back.
This is a community, ultimately you don't want to just
post a photo and be like,
"Well everyone's going to comment on it hopefully."
Well you want to me a part of that community
who's also commenting.
Make sure that you share the love before
people start sharing the love back with you.
Arrive on Instagram about a half an hour early,
and comment on different people that you follow.
Tip number eight is replying to comments,
and making sure they're actually genuine.
That's way to long of a tip, we'll call it
tip number eight, replying to comments
within a reasonable time.
That's also another very long title.
Tip number eight, replying to comments.
We don't want to just post content
and assume that everybody's going to be wanting
to enjoy it, and you're not going to be a part
of this community.
Because think about it in real life,
if you brought a photo to someone,
and just showed it, you'd be like,
"Look," and then the person would be like,
"Well that's a great photo, great job,
"I really like what you did there."
Would you just not respond to that in real life?
So, take the same principals, if someone posts a comment
on your photo, make sure you reply back,
and especially if someone's taken the time
to write a genuine comment that's not just like,
lit, lit, lit, lit, lit, fire, fire, fire,
and they actually say, "Great photo,
"really like the dog sledding photo that you posted,
"the trees like wonderful, and I think it was
"probably a beautiful day."
Well actually respond and say,
"Well you know what Geraldine?"
That's one of the people that follow me is Geraldine,
"Geraldine thank you so much for commenting,
"I really appreciate you stopping by.
"And yes, it was an incredible day."
Make sure you actually put some time into your
responses, because people want to hear from you,
it's a community where conversations can happen,
and I would highly encourage that you continue that,
just like you would in normal life.
In addition to that, what is extremely
important for the Instagram algorithm,
is to make sure you're engaging with your content
within the first hour of posting it.
When you post your photo, don't just dip,
and be like, "Peace Instagram, hopefully it gets
"as many likes and comments as I want."
So make sure you stick around,
'cause this will increase your chances
of ending up on the Explore page,
because Instagram validates your piece of content
as an actually engaging piece of content.
If you're engaging with it back, and let's say
it gets a hundred comments, and now you've commented
back a hundred times, well that's 200 comments,
which kind of tells Instagram this is
actually a pretty popular post, we should throw
this on the Explore page, which will ultimately
get you more views and more followers.
Don't just dip afterward, reply back to comments.
Tip number nine, build a squad.
Actually build real relationships with people,
don't just have a group or a pod,
because those things aren't real,
those are people just trying to cheat the system.
Actually have a group of people who believe
in what you're doing, and you believe in what
they're doing so that you can reply to their comments.
Turn post notifications on for your friends
in your niche, and comment on them
right when they go live, so that they can
comment back on yours.
I would find about five to 10 people
that you actually believe in,
and create this little network
so that ultimately all of you grow together.
So that's finding a little squad
slash lit fam network jam.
That's not the official name,
but now it is.
Lit fam network jam.
Tip number 10, be a part of the Instagram community.
Don't just use it to grow a brand and make money from,
actually be a part of this platform.
This is what's so special about Instagram
is that you can actually communicate
and be a part of a community where everyone's
just sharing their love for photography.
Stay active, comment on accounts, check it regularly,
use it as a platform for you to share your work,
but also to enjoy others.
It's extremely important, so stay active in your community.
I want to take a quick minute to do a shout-out
to one of my good friends @Througmywickedlenses
on Instagram.
He worked with me so that we could develop
these tips to share with you,
so that you can start growing your page organically.
Highly recommend you go check him out,
he has a wonderful travel page.
He's known as the algorithm whisperer.
His link's below.
On that note guys, if you like this video,
and you saw value in it,
please press like, subscribe, I would love
for you to join along.
We'll catch you next time.
Peace out everybody, woo.
(uplifting music)