If you're a handmade business that's struggling to get your
Instagram content seen then watch this video today.
I'm breaking down the Instagram algorithm how it affects your
posts and my top four tips for making the algorithm work for you.
Hi, my name is Mei Pak and I help makers artists
and designers make a consistent income from selling their handmade products online.
Okay, I know that algorithm sounds like a scary word,
but it's actually something that we need first.
Let's start by breaking down
what an algorithm actually is basically an algorithm makes sure we don't get completely overwhelmed
as users.
So I follow a couple thousand people on Instagram
and if I saw every post from every one of those People my mind would explode right?
So what Instagram does along with most social media platforms is screen the post
so that the user is seeing more of what they want.
They want users to be happy
because happy users stay on their platform for longer and it makes sense.
Right? But we just have to make sure as business owners that our content is in that mix.
So how does it work? The algorithms are always changing and we can't possibly know everything.
Thing about them but the basics have always been the same from the beginning
when a user shows interest in some content.
The algorithm takes note of it its goal is to show that user more of that kind of content.
Now Instagram can't tell that that's a photo of a
dog or your house or something in Germany or whatever.
All it can do is use the information that you put in.
So what kind of information is that? Well,
it knows who the post was from it knows the location tags it The hashtags
and so it's using all of that information.
So it might be saying O mais liking posts from her friend Stacy.
I'll show her more posts from Stacy or it might say,
oh May likes the hashtag makers going to make hashtag.
So I'll show her more of posts that use those hashtags.
It's taking notes on the stuff that you like.
It's also looking at the stuff you comment on and also how long you spend looking at an image.
Even if you don't like it
or comment on it because sometimes you're like I've never even
liked any of these posts from this person,
but they keep showing up. Yeah,
it's because he's spent longer lingering on those posts.
Don't worry. We'll talk about this in a second
but it is important as a business owner to use hashtags location
types and anything that helps tell the algorithm
what you're posting about so that that information can be shown to more users.
So you might be wondering what the Algorithm means for your business.
This is the million-dollar question, isn't it? This is where it gets tricky.
So like I said, the algorithm is tailored to help normal people normal people use the
app and be satisfied while using it on a daily basis.
It's not really targeted at helping us promote our products and to be totally honest with you.
It's not very happy at all.
When we just promote promote promote our products what Instagram would love is for you.
Ooh to be buying ads so it can make money off of you.
So we need to do our best to engage with Instagram users like a normal person
and to have users liking our stuff and commenting with us s if we're their friends,
so we want to be using engagement based marketing which basically just means that the
users engage with our brand like we're just another person.
Okay. So here's an example of how it works.
Think about a grandma liking a photo of Our grandkids,
right? The algorithm is going to show her every single photo that her daughter posts
and the grandma's going to like them every single time
and then Instagrams just like young those two people are besties.
They are always liking each other stuff. Right?
And so we want to be so engaging
and so captivating that we're providing that kind of content for our audience.
That's the goal. Okay. So how can we succeed in doing that?
I have a few tips for you. So let's dive into them tip number.
Number one post engaging content.
I know that doesn't sound groundbreaking but it's true as handmade businesses.
We need to be posting content that our audience finds interesting
and this is going to depend on who your audience is.
Remember that you need to be posting content that your audience likes not necessarily
what you like or the content that someone else's audience likes use your Instagram
insights to evaluate which posts are getting the most likes
and comments then post more of that kind of Ten.
If you find that a certain category of posts
for example quotes or work in progress photos aren't getting the same amount of
Engagement then pull back on how many of those you post right?
So one way in which this plays out really easily
for most of us is lifestyle photos these tend to be a lot more
engaging than white background photos.
And because they're showing an item in action.
It doesn't feel like the user is being promoted to for a sale.
It's more authentic. But having said that just do your own testing
because for my jewelry business photos of my jewelry on a white background or say in my hand,
like I'm taking a selfie where it looks like a very low
production photo both of these actually do better
than photos of my jewelry on models that's considered lifestyle photos.
That's because my jewelry is
so small and the details of
what makes my jewelry fun for other people get lost when it's not a close up shot of my product.
Tip number two use hashtags that are relevant and perfectly sized.
Okay. So there are two parts to that. Right? The first is relevance to your ideal customer.
You may have read that using the hashtag like pick of the day is what all the cool kids are doing.
But if that isn't specifically attracting your ideal customer,
then it's completely useless to you. You are most successful by using hashtags that put your
products in front of your ideal customers that you know will enjoy your posts
and products.
And therefore engage with them now
as far as size goes it is best to not use hashtags that are huge like for example,
hashtag fashionista or something that just has millions and millions of posts in it.
You also don't want to use something that's just itty-bitty super teeny tiny like hashtag.
May loves hiking because no one is searching for that.
So my rule of thumb is in the five to six digits.
I mean, there's no real perfect number.
It's all relative. Of and it really depends on your Niche and if you can compete in larger hashtags,
you want to pick hashtags you can win in right
but generally speaking something that's in the tens of thousands.
Maybe the low hundreds of thousands number of posts are great hashtags to be using to find out how
many posts are using a particular hashtag just search the hashtag
and Instagram and the number of posts will pop up in the search bar.
These midsize hashtags are the ones where your post has.
Two important features one it is likely to be seen because there are people searching for it.
So don't go with hashtags are too tiny
and to it's not so big that your post is going to get completely lost.
Right? So these midsize hashtags are also places where you will
have a good probability of becoming one of the top
posts and that's a goal you should have especially if the hashtag you got top posts poor is not
so competitive because that means you'll hang around there in the top.
Post for a while and that's one great way people will find you
and get more followers and hopefully more sales tip number three is also about hashtags.
I encourage you to find a core set of hashtags.
So let me give you an example. Let's say my account is all about a day in the life of
May and in the morning I post about my breakfast in the afternoon.
I post about my new running shoes. Then after dinner.
I post about a hockey game that I liked watching.
And along the way I research the hashtags
for breakfast and used all the right cereal hashtags same for lunch and dinner.
What's Instagram going to think about my account?
The truth is Instagrams not going to love my account because I am not the best running shoe account.
I am not the best cereal account. I am not the best hockey account.
It looks like I'm just posting random whatever right?
I can't compete with someone who posts only about running shoes.
I can't compete with someone who posts only about hockey.
So my account has no direction
and I see people with their businesses doing this it's not
as obvious looking at this but How it looks for a lot of businesses.
So let's say you make jewelry
and one day you post about a big statement piece you use the
hashtags statement piece acrylic rainbow
and hashtag bird because it has a bird
and Rainbow on it and all of these hashtags are really about that one piece of jewelry,
right? Then the next day you're posting about this blue dog necklace that you made.
Okay. So you use hashtag Blue Dog.
Hashtag corgis. He's and all of these related hashtags to that specific necklace
while from Instagrams perspective that looks the
same as the serial hockey and running shoes example.
I just gave you it doesn't know that all these things are something that like a cool mid-20s person
and then Urban environment would want to wear it.
It can't tell unless you explicitly tell it this is what it is.
So what I like to do is identify a core group of That you're always using consistently.
So this is an example where you may want to use bigger hashtags and make core set of hashtags,
like 10 15 20 of those that you use on a lot of your posts obviously switching some in
and out from time to time because you don't want to look like your account is all over the place,
right? That is the moral of this tip. I have a core set of hashtags
for each of my accounts and they're all different
and I like to save them in my Instagram scheduling app whether that's later or Cannoli,
whatever you're using to organize and schedule your posts.
So save them in your app.
So it's easy for you to add to your post and it can help you stay consistent tip number four,
which is crucial to using Instagram successfully
for your business is to go out
and engage Instagram is tracking everything about you and every action you take on their app,
it knows how often you log on and it can tell how much time you spend on the app.
And even though we don't know a hundred percent for sure how it all.
It's into the algorithm and
what actions and behaviors have what weight when it comes to the algorithm.
We do know that it does count.
And so if you just schedule some posts set it up
and never look at it again Instagram can tell
and it's going to affect how the algorithm ranks your posts.
So log in and engage with people this engaging is the way people know you exist right?
Like if you had a store and you didn't put up a sign
or go out and say hi to people and never told anyone about it.
But how would they know about you? Right?
So you go to Instagram login
and hop around a little bit leave comments on people's posts like their posts not
only is that introducing yourself to your neighborhood
and at the same time those people will take notice
and wonder who you are and they the people who are interested might click onto your
profile go to your feed notice that you have really great pictures
and then start to follow you the more that you can behave like a real person like chitchat.
with another person like in content then the more favorably the algorithm will treat you
because the algorithms ideal fantasy is that you're on for like 6 hours a day on Instagram now,
I don't recommend that because that's not an efficient use of any of our
time but from a business perspective if you can
spend 5 or 10 minutes on when you're doing something else just
flicking through liking posts leaving a few comments
and on relevant posts then
and that's just going to really help with building up really great engagement for your brain.
Okay. So I hope you've enjoyed those few tips about how
you as a business can Crush Instagram and make some sales for your shop.