- I'm gonna be real.
Today, I'm covering outdated Instagram tips
you should not be doing anymore.
And I'll admit I've done most, if not all of these things
♪ These are my confessions ♪
So I speak from experience when I share
what you shouldn't be doing and what actually works today
when it comes to using Instagram for your small business.
It's no longer 2016, folks,
so out with the old and in with
what's actually working today.
My name is Elise Darma, and I'm an elder millennial
here to bridge the gap for you
between the pre-internet world, the corporate world,
and today's digital marketing world.
And today we're talking outdated Instagram strategies
you can drop.
♪ Drop it like it's hot ♪
The first outdated Instagram tip is
putting your hashtags in the first comment of your post.
Now, I'll admit I've done this for years
but today we have a small hint from Instagram
that we shouldn't do it anymore.
For our post to get its best shot
at getting seen through hashtags,
we should really be putting them in the caption.
Now we haven't been told explicitly from Instagram
that by putting them in the first comment,
they're not gonna help your post
but we have got an update from Adam Mosseri.
And in this update,
he highlights to put your hashtags in the caption.
The second outdated Instagram tip,
and this one might cause a little controversy.
Controversy she.
Like Sean Connery.
- James Bond.
- Is to only use three to five niche hashtags.
Now this tip does come
from Instagram's own Creators' account
where it says to only use three to five hashtags.
However, Instagram's never really been consistent
on its recommendations.
We have its Creators account saying only use three to five
and yet the tool gives us the option to have 30,
so, what gives?
To answer the question of how many hashtags
we should actually use?
I turned to Later and they actually dug into the data,
and what they found out was that posts that use
between 20 to 30 hashtags perform the best.
So, for me, I follow the data.
I'm actually ignoring the Creators account recommendation
and I'm following what Later says,
which is to use between 20 to 30 hashtags in your post
to give it its best shot at the most reach.
So instead of just sharing three to five niche hashtags,
I recommend that you share between 20 and 30.
The next outdated Instagram tip that no longer works
is something called follow for follow.
Now, if you were on Instagram back in 2016, 2017,
even 2018, you probably heard of this
and this is how it worked:
everyday, you would follow a certain amount of accounts,
maybe 50, maybe a hundred,
and the idea was to give those accounts
that notification that you followed them.
And then the thinking was
is that they would see that notification
and follow you back.
But you being a stealthy Instagram marketer
were actually going to unfollow everyone who you followed
like three or four days later.
So basically it meant tricking people into following you
because they thought,
"Oh, this person's interested in my content.
I'll follow them back."
But then three days later you unfollow them
so that you could grow your followers
and actually not follow too many people.
Some people consider it a little scammy, a little unethical,
I don't know if I would call it that.
But the truth is the Instagram algorithm
knows when you're playing games like that.
Instagram's algorithm is powered by machine learning
which can easily recognize
when you do these sort of behaviors.
That's why when you follow too many accounts at once,
your account might be blocked or limited,
it's because the algorithm is onto you.
- They're onto me, dude.
- So follow for follow is absolutely not worth it.
Plus the entire nature of the app has evolved
where it's really less about looking popular
and having a ton of followers,
and it's really about engaging with people
in a real way as you grow.
And that's honestly how my students earn five figures
or more from Instagram,
even with less than a thousand followers.
You don't need to be insta-famous to make real money
back to your business.
The next outdated Instagram tip that no longer works
is repurposing your TikToks for your Instagram feed.
So back in 2020, when TikTok really exploded
with us millennials and everyone else,
people would then save a copy of their TikTok
to their camera roll
and then repost it to their Instagram Feed.
Usually, that video had the TikTok watermark on it.
And this worked for a while,
people were still able to go viral on Instagram
but today, Instagram has officially said
that it won't push out content that has watermarks
from other apps, AKA TikTok, their biggest competitor.
- K.O.
(screaming)
- What you should do instead of posting a video
with the TikTok watermark is to remove it completely.
And I've covered how you can do this for free
in this video right here.
Your other option is to make videos
in Instagram Reels natively.
So don't repurpose your TikToks,
just make your videos within the Instagram app.
For me, I like hitting two birds with one stone,
although that is an awful saying when you think about it,
but I like making one video and publishing it on two apps.
So, I'm still a fan of making TikToks,
removing the watermark,
and republishing them to my Instagram.
The next outdated Instagram app that is no longer relevant
is this idea that you can't edit your caption after posting.
Where did that even come from?
A couple years ago, there were rumors,
especially in the Instagram influencer space,
that if you published your post
and then you dare to edit your caption after,
apparently, it would reset the engagement
that your account had accumulated.
So the algorithm wouldn't know that your post
was popular with your followers.
I don't know where this came from, but it was always a myth.
It doesn't make any sense that Instagram
would literally give us a button to edit our caption
if we were gonna be penalized for doing that.
So, instead of following this outdated tip,
what you should do instead is
if you need to edit your caption, just go ahead and do it.
It's fine.
The next outdated tip that is so old
and so 2016, but people are still doing it
is engagement pods.
I have been in an engagement pod.
In fact, that's how I was growing in 2016.
Now, if you're not familiar with what this is.
What an engagement pod is, is an agreement between accounts,
it could be 10, even 20 accounts.
It's an agreement for all the accounts to come together
and consistently give engagement
or feedback on each other's posts.
- Those in favor.
- So, depending on your engagement pod,
you could all agree to post at the same time every day.
So let's say everyone posts at 12 noon every day.
What you would then do is then go through a list
of everyone who's in your pod,
go to their new post, and like, comment, and save that post.
The idea was that you could kinda game the algorithm
so that every time you posted,
it had this flurry of activity from other accounts
which would then tell the algorithm,
"Ooh, this is a good post,
I'm gonna show it to more people."
This did work back in 2016, I'm not gonna lie,
but it was honestly so much work.
Like, everyday at the same time I had to post
and then spend like 30 minutes commenting
the same comments on other people's posts,
like, it was a big commitment, it was worth it at the time,
but today the algorithm knows
when you're doing activities like this.
And, in fact, my account might have even gotten penalized
for doing an engagement pod back in the day.
Sometimes my reach is really low
and sometimes that happens
when your account has been downgraded by the algorithm.
So, I don't know, I don't know what happened in the backend
but I do know that I used engagement pods
and I don't know if it really helped me
more than it hurt me.
Instead of engagement pods,
what you should do is naturally engage
with accounts in your niche
and with accounts that could be
your future potential customers.
That's it, just treat Instagram like a social platform
that it is where you can socialize with others
and you don't have to try to game this
or be manipulative or strategic here.
In fact, we know that the algorithm
looks at your engagement history between accounts.
And so, if you and another account engage naturally
by commenting or DMing with each other,
the algorithm is going to make sure
that you see more of each other's content.
So just be cool.
- Just act natural.
- The next outdated tip is to post square photos only
and not horizontal.
So back in the day,
the recommendation was do not post horizontal
or landscape photos because they don't take up
enough real estate in the feed.
Today, that's an outdated tip
because today, you should be posting portrait photos
or be posting Reels
because they take up the most real estate.
Reels cover your screen from top to bottom,
and that's what you want.
If you're posting a photo or a carousel post,
try not to make it square
but try to make it tall or portrait.
So that's 1080 by 1350.
What this means is it's gonna take up more space
in someone's feed and therefore,
has a higher chance of being checked out.
The next outdated tip is
to choose a personal account setting for your account
and not a business account so that your reach isn't limited.
I'm guilty of doing this one myself.
For many years, I kept my Instagram as a personal account
because I didn't want it to be labeled as a business account
and therefore downgraded in its organic reach.
The reason why this was a prevalent thought
was because this is what's happened on Facebook.
Facebook pages used to get a lot of reach,
and then when they got categorized as business pages,
their reach went down.
So the thinking was, is that the same thing would happen
with your Instagram accounts.
Since then I've changed my whole stance on this
and here's what you should do instead:
don't be a personal account.
Don't be a business account.
Choose the creator account option.
I've done an entire video on this exact topic
for Instagram and Reels,
you can check it out right here.
But another pro tip of choosing a creator account
is by doing so,
you're gonna get access to the entire music library.
You wouldn't have access to the full library
as a business account.
And that's because of music copyright issues.
You can't technically use Whitney Houston's song
if you're a business
because you would actually have to pay her
for the rights to do that.
But, if you're a creator and you're not using it
for business purposes, you can use her song.
So, that's why I'm currently a creator account
for both Instagram and TikTok, and it works well for me.
- We do Whitney Houston songs, okay?
- The next outdated tip that we no longer need to do
is tagging other accounts in your post
who might be interested in your content.
I don't know how many posts I've been tagged in
that have nothing to do with me and my business
but people are looking for that added visibility,
that extra reach by tagging me in their posts.
In fact, one of my students recently asked me this question
and was wondering,
"Is it still cool to tag people in posts?"
In this case, she was looking to pitch story ideas
to producers and so she wanted to tag these shows
in her posts.
The odds of that account seeing
that you've tagged them in a post are pretty low these days.
So I wouldn't recommend doing this at all,
I think it's pretty much a waste of time.
You may as well spend your time cultivating a relationship
with that account.
So follow them, reply to their stories,
create a DM thread, comment on their posts,
create that relationship,
and then go ahead and find them on other platforms too.
LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube, all those great places
but just become a name in front of their channels,
and then when you email them your pitch, for example,
they might recognize you
and you already have that relationship established.
It's just a better way to go about it
than randomly tagging people in your posts.
So now that I've aired out my dirty laundry
and you know all the mistakes I've made,
continue to learn from my mistakes
by checking out this next video right here
where I cover my Instagram Reel mistakes, specifically.
I'll see you there.