Instagram - don't get the algorithm

[thetiger2015]

So, for the last 3 months, I've been playing around with Instagram to see if I can build some kind of audience but I simply don't understand it.

According to Instagram, they want you to post relevant, high quality images with good captions and accurate hashtags - if posted at peak times, this will ensure good exposure etc.

That seems to be complete nonsense though. In 3 months, I've managed to acquire a few hundred followers. I've experimented with posting 2 or 3 times a day, then just 3 times a week, at peak times as suggested by various guides - this has achieved the grand total of nought. The most success I've had, is following other accounts and they follow back.

I've experimented with Ads but again, seem to be useless to me. £30 spend in 3 days and I've amassed the grand total of 5 new followers and a couple of likes on various posts.

The content I'm posting is related to my niche and seems to be relatively popular looking at other peoples content but for some reason, my posts just don't get any visibility.

What makes even less sense though, is the other accounts that seem to acquire thousands of likes and comments on a post where they've simply taken a picture of a bag of crisps in the local supermarket. There's one account that seems to have 40k followers and lots of interactions, he literally goes to B&M and takes pictures of the sweet aisle...that's it....a slightly out of focus picture of a bag of chocolate on offer....3,452 likes and 500 comments with people demanding to know where they can also buy a bag of chocolate.

Can anyone explain how the algorithm works or what it's looking for? Clearly, professional photos make zero impact. I am going to experiment with taking pictures of empty bags of crisps in the street, as that seems to be the content people demand at the moment.

 

[zigojacko]

Ah there are so many factors to this, impossible to just write about it all in one forum reply.

What's your niche? What are you posting and why would your following engage with it?

Think about "what's in it for me". Unless you're in a niche where images/photos would just naturally relate to it's audience (sports, celebrities, food, landscape, semi-naked bodies etc), you're gonna have to deliver what YOUR target audience want to see - and this, could be literally anything.

As for what you're seeing on other accounts, there could be any one of about 100 different reasons why what they do works hence my first line above.

With regards to the algorithm though, good quality photos/videos perform better in general but it all comes down to reach vs engagement => visibility.

 

[Phil Sproson Photography]

We use Instagram lots but riding the algorithm is still a bit of a mystery to be fair, a key for us are the interactions, so we take it in turns in following and commenting on hashtags within our spheres, and we have our own brand related hashtag in order for others to request features, that exposes our commenting across lots of other accounts, and those accounts do then come and comment on the content we share.

Featuring others in stories works for us, and we are a little tactical too, as we know which other accounts will share our stories as stories of their own. Networks of networks in my bubble have started to emerge naturally over time because of this.

Some others, for little reason have posts that go stellar on a regular basis, and they're posting very similar content. What is your niche / area of expertise? does it lend itself to larger followings, would the masses follow your account for daily updates and inspiration?

 

[fisicx]

Instagram works when combined with other marketing. For example if you get lots of visits from Google images you can push people from your landing page to Instagram to see more.

But the question should really be: what are you hoping to achieve from Instagram? If you are just chasing likes you can buy these.

 

[Phil Sproson Photography]

Instagram works when combined with other marketing. For example if you get lots of visits from Google images you can push people from your landing page to Instagram to see more.

To a point, but not for the virality I think @thetiger2015 was getting at. The algorithm pushes content in front of more users when you hit a number of criteria things like number of likes and comments within the first moments of posting etc... that is why Instagram "pods" exist (if they're still a thing) whereby groups coordinate their postings over Whatsapp etc, and support each other, primed ready to like and comment in those first seconds... that just lights the touch paper for others to notice the post. I see your point about what are you chasing, but business does land from Instagram.

I would be doing it to get all over - Stories - these are great for mentions that are transient and take up no space in the feed, yet are still massively viewed... combine that with swipe up actions on stories to any link on the web for accounts that have 10K or more following, and this can be a good traffic source, especially when you have something you want to highlight on your website. Good for drawing attention to a store item for instance. Good for a virtual fist bump with your friends in business and locals who're on the platform if you need good local exposure, or beyond.

With Instagram, it is the whole, not just the individual posts, they will flux at how they're engaged with, it is the being there, and being part of it and diving into it with some faith that it will work.

 

[fisicx]

Good post @Phil Sproson Photography - but a lot depends on what you are selling and to whom. My Little Pony will have a large fan base and lots of sharing. If you are selling concrete fence posts you will struggle to get much traction.

 

[Phil Sproson Photography]

@fisicx totally... it is a place that will work for some and not others. @thetiger2015 has peers that seem to be doing well, but it does depend on his end goal and why he is there like you said.

Social networks are daunting at first, I want to tackle Pinterest, but I know there would be months of inertia to get over, so I don't do it... I am guessing this guy is at that point with Instagram.

 

[Paul Norman]

I cannot pretend to have conquered algorithms.

But at the early levels, it is hard, and I would recommend pushing people to your instagram and asking them to like. For example, in a retail business, every order goes out with a thank you letter which encourages clients to follow us in Instagram.

 

[Paul Norman]

@fisicx totally... it is a place that will work for some and not others. @thetiger2015 has peers that seem to be doing well, but it does depend on his end goal and why he is there like you said.

Social networks are daunting at first, I want to tackle Pinterest, but I know there would be months of inertia to get over, so I don't do it... I am guessing this guy is at that point with Instagram.

This is important, of course. I found that two of my businesses did OK with Instagram, a third did not.

On the subject of Pinterest, I have a very different report. Without knowing why, I randomly generated half reasonable outcomes from it!

 

[DontAsk]

T that is why Instagram "pods" exist (if they're still a thing) whereby groups coordinate their postings over Whatsapp etc, and support each other, primed ready to like and comment in those first seconds... that just lights the touch paper for others to notice the post.

Just confirms my scepticism of anything I see on social media.

 

[fisicx]

I had a SMM expert tell me he could get me lots of leads from social sites. Offered them a cut from each lead that converted. 3 months later, not one lead. Social media doesn’t work for everyone.

 

[thetiger2015]

But the question should really be: what are you hoping to achieve from Instagram? If you are just chasing likes you can buy these.

Brand awareness and ultimately, some revenue from the platform.

Our niche is home decor/furnishings/accessories and our competitors seem to do very well in terms of engagement, followers etc. They put a post up, they get sales, people in the comments tag their friends and you'll see a few people comment things like "Just bought 2 for my new house..they're fab"

I have dabbled with ads, which does improve visibility but the CPA is awful. The action being a 'follow' - it usually works out at 25p per follower but that's dreadful, because the conversion rate through socials is very low anyway.

It's the randomness of the visibility that I don't quite understand. How some accounts seem to achieve thousands of followers in a short space of time, with limited effort and no ads. These are genuine accounts, they're just ordinary people who put pictures of their pet ferret on or a picture of a hat they've knitted for a cousin but they seem to attract hundreds of likes and lots of positive comments. They haven't bought followers, they wouldn't know how to and they're not selling anything but instagram seems to show their account to lots of people.

I've removed Hootsuite from the account today, as I've read that scheduling posts can impact your visibility, as Instagram doesn't know if you're genuine.

I will also start commenting more on other peoples accounts, to try to increase interactions. Perhaps Instagram just isn't sure how genuine our accounts are and, as it's a business account, we may be limited to just using ads for visibility. Which is ludicrously expensive.

 

[Dillon Lawrence Ltd]

Brand awareness and ultimately, some revenue from the platform.

Our niche is home decor/furnishings/accessories and our competitors seem to do very well in terms of engagement, followers etc. They put a post up, they get sales, people in the comments tag their friends and you'll see a few people comment things like "Just bought 2 for my new house..they're fab"

I have dabbled with ads, which does improve visibility but the CPA is awful. The action being a 'follow' - it usually works out at 25p per follower but that's dreadful, because the conversion rate through socials is very low anyway.

It's the randomness of the visibility that I don't quite understand. How some accounts seem to achieve thousands of followers in a short space of time, with limited effort and no ads. These are genuine accounts, they're just ordinary people who put pictures of their pet ferret on or a picture of a hat they've knitted for a cousin but they seem to attract hundreds of likes and lots of positive comments. They haven't bought followers, they wouldn't know how to and they're not selling anything but instagram seems to show their account to lots of people.

I've removed Hootsuite from the account today, as I've read that scheduling posts can impact your visibility, as Instagram doesn't know if you're genuine.

I will also start commenting more on other peoples accounts, to try to increase interactions. Perhaps Instagram just isn't sure how genuine our accounts are and, as it's a business account, we may be limited to just using ads for visibility. Which is ludicrously expensive.

What’s the quality of your follower count? We’ve worked with clients in home furnishings in the past and it’s really the quality of your content and quality of your followers that’s key. Otherwise your follower count is just a number.

If you drop me a DM with your Instagram username I’ll have one of the team look at it to give you some pointers on what you can be doing better.

 

[Gavin Foley]

So, for the last 3 months, I've been playing around with Instagram to see if I can build some kind of audience but I simply don't understand it.

According to Instagram, they want you to post relevant, high quality images with good captions and accurate hashtags - if posted at peak times, this will ensure good exposure etc.

That seems to be complete nonsense though. In 3 months, I've managed to acquire a few hundred followers. I've experimented with posting 2 or 3 times a day, then just 3 times a week, at peak times as suggested by various guides - this has achieved the grand total of nought. The most success I've had, is following other accounts and they follow back.

I've experimented with Ads but again, seem to be useless to me. £30 spend in 3 days and I've amassed the grand total of 5 new followers and a couple of likes on various posts.

The content I'm posting is related to my niche and seems to be relatively popular looking at other peoples content but for some reason, my posts just don't get any visibility.

What makes even less sense though, is the other accounts that seem to acquire thousands of likes and comments on a post where they've simply taken a picture of a bag of crisps in the local supermarket. There's one account that seems to have 40k followers and lots of interactions, he literally goes to B&M and takes pictures of the sweet aisle...that's it....a slightly out of focus picture of a bag of chocolate on offer....3,452 likes and 500 comments with people demanding to know where they can also buy a bag of chocolate.

Can anyone explain how the algorithm works or what it's looking for? Clearly, professional photos make zero impact. I am going to experiment with taking pictures of empty bags of crisps in the street, as that seems to be the content people demand at the moment.

Hey all, super new here, day 1 just saw this and wanted to help..

There is a lot going on behind the scenes at the moment at IG and Facebook. I read an article recently that has started to have some results for me. Generally speaking the launch of Tik-Tok has caused a massive issue with FB and IG not wanting to loose users.

They have changed direction and are giving more reach and visibility to people creating reels, IGTV, and carousels. I have changed direction, and now base my content on video / carousels and have seen an increase in reach, engagement and followers.

As an example, I wrote a blog on Social Media Strategy.. To drive traffic to it, I ( Unwillingly ) made a tik-tok account, and made a 30 second video.. did all the faf and posted it. At the same time, it saved to my phone so I uploaded to my IG reel, and do you know what happened??

It had 700 views in the first 2 hours.. insane!

You can still post pictures, but I would post a group of them in a carousel and see how you get on.

 

[fisicx]

@Gavin Foley - all well and good but how many of those 700 views resulted in a conversion?

And it’s only going to work if you have a product or service people are looking for on those platforms.

 

[Gavin Foley]

@Gavin Foley - all well and good but how many of those 700 views resulted in a conversion?

And it’s only going to work if you have a product or service people are looking for on those platforms.

This is where strategy comes in to play, and deciding what each channel is for. Probably less than 0.01% will buy straight from an Instagram post.

My Instagram page is designed to provide value to my followers. Granted it's less than 400, but you shouldn't chase vanity metrics, that video lead to say 100 people clicking on my bio, probably half clicked on my linktr.ee link, from there I had a number of newsletter sign ups ( which I can funnel through my email campaign, 2 booked a discovery call, where I sent a proposal for services ( they may or may not convert ) and some people just downloaded my free guides, the majority of time it ends up in traffic to the website, which is a big win in itself for me.

Like I said, my Instagram Strategy is to provide value, show up consistently with content that matters to my followers, and then hopefully they converts further through the funnel.

 

[fisicx]

Sounds way too much like hard work. I’ll stick with my current strategy as that makes money without all the SM faff.

 

[zigojacko]

Sounds way too much like hard work. I’ll stick with my current strategy as that makes money without all the SM faff.

You're right, it is hard work.

This is why serious social media management is only really suitable for sizeable businesses with the necessary budget. Those people selling social media packages like x posts per week on x networks, x of this and x of that etc, is just useless fluff in the same way that SEOs try selling packages like x guest posts, x high DA/PR backlinks per month etc is all useless garbage that won't make a blind bit of difference to an online business.

A deep understanding of how the network's algorithms work and all the features along with what works and what doesn't is required to put together a strategy that will actually deliver something beneficial.

 

[Paul FilmMaker]

You're right, it is hard work.

This is why serious social media management is only really suitable for sizeable businesses with the necessary budget. Those people selling social media packages like x posts per week on x networks, x of this and x of that etc, is just useless fluff in the same way that SEOs try selling packages like x guest posts, x high DA/PR backlinks per month etc is all useless garbage that won't make a blind bit of difference to an online business.

A deep understanding of how the network's algorithms work and all the features along with what works and what doesn't is required to put together a strategy that will actually deliver something beneficial.

I 100% agree and second the hard work thing. One of the guys who works for me is a YouTube expert. You want 50,000 views in your target demographic and geography from YouTube that will result in sales? It's a lot of hard work.

On Insta, we see it as getting the right demographic, i.e. actual buyers, means posting a sh!t ton of engaging content, marketing it and of course, Insta is pay-to-play. We talk about filming 40 or 50 vids over a couple of days and then pumping them out. It's a ton of work.

Where I think social can work for smaller businesses is Linkedin. My own focus in the team is Linkedin and it's more cost effective and small-business friendly. It's a lot of work but it's not 'crazy' amounts of work. It's OK.