So how do you use that to your advantage?
You have to know when your audience ... The Instagram algorithm, it can feel overwhelming,
and clearly you're trying to understand it, so I thought I'd make an updated video on
the Instagram algorithm.
I'm going to dive into the three major ranking signals that determine how many people actually
see your posts and how you can use them to your advantage to grow faster and reach more
people.
Plus, I'm going to dive into the myths that keep your account stuck and small, and are
just not true, but people seem to think that they are.
And keep in mind, this is coming from someone who went from stagnant growth to over 100,000
followers on her account in six months.
So grab yourself a cup of coffee or a tea and let's do this.
Cheers, Boss.
Okay, so I basically went full detective mode and did all of the research on how Instagram's
algorithm really works.
And the thing is, Julian Gutman, who is the product lead for Instagram ... Gutman, Gootman,
Gotman, I'm not sure how to say his name.
It doesn't really matter.
But he hand delivered all of the information that you need to know about the algorithm
to a bunch of reporters over a year ago.
It's just, not a lot of people were paying attention.
So here's what you need to know.
Everyone on Instagram, whether it's your mom, your grandma, your best friend, your boyfriend,
whoever, we all have a unique feed.
Even if you're following the exact same accounts as somebody else, your feed is still going
to be different.
Why?
Because the algorithm on Instagram is based on machine-based learning.
So that's why it's called an algorithm.
It bases what you see on your past behavior.
It learns about you and understands what you like, what you don't like, what you want to
see more of, and what you don't want to see at all, and your feed is curated to fit that.
Or basically, what you see in your feed is exactly what you've liked in the past.
So how do they figure all this out?
It's based on three major ranking factors.
And this is what you have to know about the Instagram algorithm in order to actually get
seen and get engagement and stop feeling like you're being hidden by the algorithm.
Ranking signal number one is interest.
What does this mean?
Well, based on past behavior, Instagram will predict what you're going to like in the future.
Also, using image recognition technology, they will read the contents of what's in a
post, a photo, or a video, and they will gauge and predict if you're going to like that post
in the future, which basically creates the feed that you see.
So how can you use this to your advantage?
Pretty simple.
Let me put this in real-world terms.
So if I have an account and on my account, whenever I see something in my feed that looks
like a sunset, I'm liking that sunset, you best believe that basically all I'm going
to see in my feed is sunsets, or anything that looks like a sunset.
So how you use this to your advantage is you want to pay attention to which posts on your
account are getting the most engagement.
For example, on my Instagram account, I noticed that whenever my face was in my posts, I tended
to get more engagement.
And images of skylines, or scenery, or sunsets, or whatever it may be just didn't get as much
engagement.
This could be totally different for everybody else.
The other thing that I noticed in my account that got a ton of engagement was any kind
of text graphic with a quote on it.
So posting more of those.
So paying attention to what is being liked and engaged with on your account more than
other pieces of content is an amazing way to start really increasing your reach with
your posts, because you know that, in your audience's feeds, you can pretty much guess
what kind of content they engage with most because that's the content on your account
that they engage with the most, if that makes sense.
So you want to cater to how their feed is curated, because Instagram is going to say,
"Okay, this person who is in your audience always likes text graphics.
So if you create a text graphic, we're going to show it to them."
Make sense?
It's actually pretty simple when you break it down.
So the things that get the most engagement in your account, or on your account when you
post them, you want to pay attention to those and post more, because those are the things
that people in your audience are actually prone to engage with.
Plus, they're the things that Instagram is actually going to show them in their feed.
Ranking signal number two, recency and timeliness, meaning that new posts, this newest post on
my feed showed up five minutes ago, it was posted five minutes ago.
New posts always show up at the top of your users' or your audience's feed.
So how do you use that to your advantage?
You have to know when your audience is active.
How do you do that?
Let me show you.
Inside of Instagram, all you want to do is go to insights, and that's on the top right
corner.
You click on insights, and you click on audience on the right.
You scroll down and you can see a lot of good information about your followers.
But what you want to know right now is when they're online.
Why?
Because if you know when your audience is online, that's when you want to post, because
the feed is curated and created by the most recent and timely posts.
So if you're posting when your audience isn't actually online, you're going to get buried
by all of the posts from people they also follow who were posted more recently or more
timely in their feed.
So if someone else is posting something one minute ago, and you posted something 10 minutes
ago, you're going to show up lower.
So it's really, really advantageous to you to post when your audience is actually active
and online.
So you can see that for me, let's say it's a Tuesday, my audience is most active at 9:00
AM and 12:00 PM.
So those are good times for me to post.
The other app that I showed you in another one of my videos, which I'll link to at the
end of this, is called When To Post, and it tells you, down to the minute, exactly when
you should be posting your Instagram photos or videos.
Now, this is on iPhone, I'm not sure about an app for this for Android, but if you know
of one, put it in the comments below.
And this thing works like magic.
It'll tell me when not to post, and exactly which three times of the day to post.
And it's amazing how much more engagement I get when I follow this.
So knowing when your audience is online is how you play to this ranking signal and make
sure that your audience and your followers actually see your content, and therefore,
you get more engagement.
Ranking signal number three is relationship.
So Instagram, the algorithm shows content to followers and to users from accounts that
they actually interact with.
To tactically show up in your users' feeds and your followers' feeds more often, there's
some really simple things that you should be doing on a daily basis that will highly
increase your engagement and your reach of every single post that you put out there.
So in order to increase engagement and actually show up for your followers in their feed,
here's a couple of things that you want to do right now.
In your captions on Instagram, you want to have a call to action at the bottom of every
caption for people to comment on your photo or your video, because a comment is seen as
a signal to Instagram that that person is actually engaged with your content.
Therefore, they're going to show more of your content to that follower.
So the more comments you get, the more your posts are going to be seen by those followers.
Second thing is you have to remind your followers to turn on post notifications.
Post notifications will notify your followers when you have new content out.
And it will allow you to get a boost of engagement in the first 30 minutes ... for 30 minutes,
which is most important, and can lead to you showing up on the explore page.
So how do you turn on post notifications?
Let me show you.
To tell your followers to turn on post notifications, all you need to do is tell them to click on
follow.
So they need to follow you.
And then underneath that, there's a little dropdown, and you just want to click on notifications,
and you want to turn them on for posts.
You want them to turn them on for all of them, posts and stories, but you definitely want
them to turn them on for posts so you can get a boost of engagement really quickly every
time you post a new piece of content.
Now, the other really cool little trick here is when you do this, you also want to click
on the dropdown beside the message and it'll give your followers similar accounts, but
it'll also give you similar accounts to find a target audience that you want to attract
to your account to get more followers and engagement.
So what I mean by this is let's say I click on Boss Babe.
I know that Boss Babe has an audience that is very similar to who I want to attract.
So, like I said, a ranking signal that we want to pay attention to is relationships.
So a little trick here is you go to the most recent post, and you go to the newest comments,
and you want to engage with them in a real way.
So you want to give them a heart or you want to give them a little comment back.
So I would do that here, "So true."
And this is putting me in a sphere with people who I know are in my ideal audience.
I'm building a relationship with them.
Therefore, if they decide to follow me, my content is going to show up higher in their
feed.
The next thing you want to do to build relationships and show up in the feed of your followers
is to take five minutes a day and send DMs to new followers and also to people who you
want to build relationships with.
You have to be active and social on social media in order for people to actually engage
with you.
So this is a really quick little way of building relationships, so therefore, you have more
followers to show up in their feeds, and therefore get more reach and more engagement on your
posts.
And the other tactic here to build relationships, and that Instagram in the algorithm considers
a factor to showing up in people's feeds is tagging appropriate accounts.
So if you have an image with someone who follows you in it, you want to make sure that you
tag them, because this tells Instagram, "Oh, they actually have a real relationship.
We should put more of your content in their feed."
Do not spam and tag everybody and take irrelevant accounts, because that actually will work
against you.
Now, the other piece of this is hashtags.
You want to use relevant hashtags on your posts so that you can show up in categories
where your ideal audience would be looking.
And I have a whole video where I talk about my hashtag research strategy and how to find
the right hashtags for your content.
I'm going to link to that at the end of this video.
So stay tuned.
All right, now let's bust the myths that are keeping your account small.
First and foremost, Instagram does not hide posts.
It's just not true.
It's not real.
What it does do is it takes note of what your followers are interested in, takes note of
what's most timely, and it takes note of, if there's a relationship or not.
And that is how the feed is created.
So that's why these three ranking factors are so important.
So if you feel like your posts are being hidden and you're not getting seen, it's because
you're not paying attention to these three ranking signals.
Because if your followers scroll down long enough in their feed, they're going to see
every single post from every single account that they follow.
But of course not everybody does that, and you want to show up towards the top of their
feed.
And the only way to do that is to pay attention to these three ranking signals.
The feed does not favor photo versus video.
But if your followers tend to engage more with videos or tend to engage more with photos,
that's what's going to show up in their feed based on that interest ranking signal.
Shadow banning, according to Instagram, isn't a real thing.
But the thing to pay attention to here is, what shadow banning is, or what people assume
that it is, is if you're posting too many hashtags on your content and all of a sudden
you just get no reach or engagement on that post.
But that's not necessarily true.
What is true is, if you're using hashtags that aren't relevant to the content of your
posts, then it is considered confusing in the algorithm, and Instagram doesn't know
where to put it, therefore you're going to get less reach.
So you have to use hashtags that are actually relevant.
And you definitely need to pay attention to Instagram's spam guidelines and community
guidelines so you know what works and what doesn't work.
Check out more Instagram Ninja Secrets in this video right here.
Hit that subscribe button and the bell to get notified when we post new videos every
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And this video is going to show you my Instagram hashtag research strategy and how to post
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Bye.