In this episode I'm going to be pulling back the curtains and revealing exactly
how the Instagram algorithm works, so you can stop wasting your time and money and
energy of ineffective strategies and bad advice and start leveraging proven
principles to grow your brand and business on Instagram.
Let's get to it!
Hey there my name is Adam Earhart, marketing strategist and
welcome to The Marketing Show, where we help you grow your business and generate
more leads, customers and sales. So, if you're interested in learning the latest
and greatest marketing strategies, tools, tips, tricks and tactics, well, you may
want to consider subscribing and hitting that notification bell so you don't miss
a future episode. Alright, let's talk Instagram and specifically, the Instagram
algorithm because there's a lot of mystery and a lot of so-called secrets
and hacks and tricks and tactics that a lot of people are talking about in order
to try to game the system and sort of beat Instagram at their own game. Now, I
love strategies and I'm a big fan of tactics and tricks and the occasional
hack as well, but I do have a problem when people try to essentially beat the
system rather than simply learning the rules of the game and abiding by them,
it's a far shorter and way more effective strategy. After all, why would
you try to beat the system when you could just learn the system, essentially
play by the rules which in the end is gonna get you a lot farther, a lot
quicker. In fact, for everybody that actually tried and successfully did
manage to beat the system, well, there's dozens and dozens who failed and either
didn't get anywhere or actually have their accounts banned or shut down or
got completely kicked off the platform. This is why the key to success with
Instagram or Facebook or YouTube or pretty much any other social media
network out there is really understanding the science and the
strategies and essentially the practicable principles behind the
networks and behind the algorithms. The better you understand and can learn and
leverage those, well, the better your results are going to be. Okay, rent and
lecture over, let's dive right in with tip number one which is, essentially, that
Instagram is a bit of a black box and we'll never really truly understand how
the algorithm actually works. Wow! I can almost hear some of you asking: "How could
you title an episode How the Instagram algorithm works and then make your first
tip that will never really know how the algorithm works?" But stick with me,
because we're gonna uncover this all in this episode and that all starts with
having a really clear and really firm understanding that anyone who claims to
have mastered the algorithm and completely figured it out and really
dialed in on the exact details and the exact strategies that you need to follow
in order to have success, well, the kind of full of it and here's why. You see,
whether we're talking about Instagram or Facebook or Google or YouTube well their
algorithm is really how they make their money
and they can't really afford to let all their secrets out and allow their system
to be gamed, certainly not in the long term. You see, these aren't tiny little
companies, these are massive corporations. Bloomberg estimates that Instagram is
worth a hundred billion dollars. Yes, that's billion with a B. Their algorithm
is largely responsible for that hundred billion dollar valuation, so they're not
about to just let it out there or let anybody figure out just for the fun of
it. Fortunately, the writing is on the wall
and this is where people like you and me can really start to study and learn and
implement much of what we're seeing is actually happening in the real world so
we can start to discern what strategies, what tactics and what sort of tricks and
hacks we can use to understand and then leverage the power of the algorithm. You
see, well the algorithm is a black box and well nobody can really claim with a
hundred percent certainty exactly how it works and exactly what kind of content
they're prioritizing, well, the results are publicly visible right there on your
feed. What this means is that by learning and by studying and by analyzing the
content and other people's accounts, well, you're able to discern what principles
and what strategies got them there so you can adopt and apply those in your
account. Alright, so now that we've got that covered, the next important
principle that you really need to understand and that governs the
Instagram algorithm is how Instagram makes money. This principle is so
incredibly important to talk about when we're talking about any kind of
algorithm because at the end of the day Instagram is a business and Instagram
needs to make money. So, the best way to have them help you is by you helping
them. So to help them, well, you first need to understand what they want from you so
you can give them more of that and less of what they don't want and what do they
want well money, of course, but how do they get money? Well, that's the secret.
First off, it's important to note that Facebook owns Instagram, so much of the
strategies and much of the secrets behind the algorithm that we're talking
about here on Instagram, well, they apply equally to Facebook and seeing his
Facebook was their first we're able to take a lot of what we learned from
Facebook and apply it directly to Instagram, which means the Facebook
business model is essentially the Instagram business model as well and
what's the Facebook business model, that's simple, it's ad revenue basically
Facebook makes its money by leveraging advertising and allowing businesses to
advertise on its platform to its users and the same goes for Instagram. What
this means, is that for Instagram to make more money they need to keep people
happy and engaged and on the platform as long as possible, so they can serve the
more ads and make more money. It's not right, it's not wrong, it's just business
and it's good business and it's good for you because now that you understand that,
essentially their goal is to make money and the way they do that is by keeping
users happy and engage and present on the platform as long as possible well
you can use this in your favor to understand and leverage the principles
behind the algorithm. Once you understand that, well, understanding the entire
algorithm and how to essentially master it and use it in your business makes it
a whole lot easier. But enough of that, let's get into the nitty-gritty and some
of the specifics on how you can deploy this for your account. One of the keys
behind the Instagram algorithm and how it works to essentially keep people on
the platform as long as possible, is making sure that good quality content is
going out to its users and how they determine this? All starts with a small
sample size of users that they're going to first test your content out with
before sending it to everyone. Basically, anytime you create a post, they're going
to show it to a small sample size of your audience and gauge it in relation
to kind of what kind of engagement it gets back and how well the post performs
overall. If it does well, we're going to show it to more people, if it does bad,
well, they're gonna tank it. This is where a lot of people get really mad at the
algorithm and say my stuff's never getting shown to anyone but in reality
they probably did show it to a small sample size and maybe people just didn't
react that well to it. This is why as cliched and as overused and has generic
and as broad and as almost borderline terrible advice as it is, one of the keys
to success with the algorithm really is to create better content. I'm sorry, I
really wish I had something better for you there, but the reality is is that you
do need to create better content so that you can get better reactions and better
engagement so they can show it to more people.
All that said, well, even if you put out great content it still doesn't guarantee
success because there are some other factors that you need to be aware of and
to leverage in order to really leverage and maximize the power of the algorithm
in your favor. So, let's get to those now. The algorithm looks at a number of
different factors in order to determine if your content is going to be a
to keep people on the platform longer, if so, they're gonna show it to more people
and if not, well, they're gonna throttle that reach. Because remember, and this
perks really important, the goal of the algorithm is to keep people on the
platform as long as possible so they can keep their users happy and they can
generate more ad revenue. It's not good, it's not bad, it's just business. I said
that already. When deciding what content to show they look at a few different
factors including interests, like what are the interests of your audience and
your users, what other kind of content do they follow, what styles, what themes and
what other influencers are they following, recency: how current or how
recent was your last post and especially in regards to your users or your
audience's behavior but more on that in just a minute,
frequency: how often are you posting is it hourly, daily, monthly, yearly, you have
you ever posted? There is going to be a sweet spot of probably around one to
three times a day but it's going to vary widely depending on your business and
your industry and your market and essentially, how much and how good a
content you can put out there consistently and engagement, how engaged
is your audience with your content? How engaged are you with your audience? Do
you have a high ratio of likes and comments on your posts? do you respond to
comments and begin conversations in the comment section? Are DM is being
responded to? Well, the algorithm tracks all of that and it uses it to assign a
score and essentially prioritize which content is going to appear higher. All
that said, two of the most important metrics and ones that are really easy to
track and monitor and measure for your business are: Recency and Engagement, so
let's look at both of those quickly now. When it comes to recency, we want to look
at things like: How recent was your last post? What kind of schedule are you on?
But the bigger question is: How long is the gap between when you post and when
the bulk of your audience is online? See, if that gap is too big, well Instagram is
likely to prioritize all the other posts that occurred between them over yours.
Your best plan here is to really nail down exactly when your target market and
the bulk of your followers are online so you can prioritize accordingly and the
way to find that is right through your analytics. The other metric you really
need to pay attention to here is Engagement and again, remember and I know
I've said this a lot, but the goal of the platform is to keep people on it as long
as possible and one of the best ways to do this is to encourage and foster
relationships on the platform, meaning encouraging commenting and getting those
conversations going in the DMS as well as on your post
and essentially, just trying to build real relationships right there on
Instagram. The algorithm looks at all of these things and it will prioritize
those heavy users and those that are really fostering and building
relationships, that again, are keeping people on the platform as long as
possible. Alright, so now that we've broken down the nuts and bolts of the
algorithm, let's head into the lightning round with some of my top Instagram
marketing tips and tricks that you can use immediately to leverage the power of
the Instagram algorithm in your favor. Number one is: Hashtags, and I know this
has been said time and time again but the reality is hashtags are still
important and they provide valuable cues to the algorithm in order to properly
align keywords with interests that your audience has. So hashtags, we've got to
use them. Number two is: Consistency. As we already talked about, recency is
important but so is consistency, so finding a schedule that you can stick to
that your audience can begin to count on and so can the algorithm, well, these are
both important factors. Number three is: Be congruent. What this means is making
sure that your feed and your profile in general sticks to one kind of niche, one
kind of topic, one kind of theme. If people are following you for say fitness
advice, well you're gonna lose a lot of them when you start posting about
fashion or food. Be congruent stick to one theme. Number four is: Leverage
off-site traffic. Now, Instagram is one of those platforms that can benefit heavily
by sending traffic to it from other platforms. If you're in the business to
business or B2B space, well, then you're obviously gonna want to take a look at
LinkedIn. If you like making videos and you've got search friendly content, then
YouTube's gonna be a great place to start. If you've got a broad market with
mass market appeal, then obviously, you're gonna want to double down on something
like Facebook and of course if you have a website or a blog or an email list,
well, these are all great resources to direct traffic towards Instagram from.
Number five is: Advertising and no episode on Instagram would be complete
without at least a quick shout out to what I believe is one of the single most
effective forms of online marketing available today: Instagram Ads. Basically,
when it comes to Instagram ads, well, many of the strategies if not all of the
strategies that I talked about here today
well they apply equally as well. Again, the goal of the Instagram algorithm,
whether we're talking about organic or paid content, is to keep people engaged
and on the platform as long as possible. This is why the Instagram algorithm
rewards good ads, so the better you're able to create an effective and engaging
and visually appealing ad, well the better you're going to
do. The goal when it comes to advertising is obviously not to annoy people which
would have them leave but rather have them stay on the platform engage with
the content and really just have a good experience overall. Alright, the next
thing you're gonna want to do is check out this video I have linked up right
here which is part of this Instagram marketing series. It's going to provide
you with even more strategies and tactics and tools to help you up your
Instagram marketing game and get even better results from the platform. So, make
sure to check that out right now. Thanks so much for watching and I'll catch you
next time, on The Marketing Show. The promote button on the other hand, is what
I call random acts of marketing...