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I’ve worked with Brands like Apple & Adobe For Instagram Strategies. Here’s My Insights on Instagram Growth In 2023
#Building A Feed Identity
You recognise your friend from a mile away because you constantly see him in the same outfits and looks. Instagram uses photo-recognition to analyse the visual identity of your content.
That’s why keeping a constantly similar content design and format will help you a lot to reach explore page faster than others.
A consistent brand design posting format also helps you to differentiate from content from low quality content.
#Understanding What Reels Stand for
From an Investors perspective, Instagram in first place invested in reels because the format would bring more revenue to advertisers.
I’ve analysed 4,000+ reels as my work to understand how this algorithm works. The algorithm loves short content and also informs you about Audios that trending.
And most of the trending audios tend to be less than 15 seconds. Pointing at the algorithm loves short content easy and fast to consume.
On Average reels after consuming 3-5 taking 1.5-3 minutes of users, the platform served an Ad. While on Tiktok the number was 6-10 TikTok videos taking 7-10 minutes of your time and then an Ad.
That’s how I came to the conclusion of keeping reels short and being early on trending sounds.
#hashtags aren’t what they mean!
Instagram constantly tells on their blogs and Adam Mosseri (CEO) through IG live that hashtags aren’t for likes.
Yes, Hashtags don’t derive engagement. Keywords do, how instagram structure works an average user wants to see new content around a topic. The search the keyword and scroll all the way to “Hashtags” and scroll through selected hashtags to find new content. Sometimes they even follow hashtags to keep seeing new content.
That’s how influencers and businesses end up getting reach from hashtags. This proves the hashtag count and size doesn’t matter. What matters is the structure, is the hashtag structured in a way that when someone searches:
How to Grow on Instagram?
Will the hashtags show up, is it searchable and keyword friendly? If yes, use those hashtags to represent your posts.
#The Instagram Engagement that matters
This Advice applies to both brands working with Instagram influencers and the others doing organic marketing.
Don’t track your explore reach or how many non-followers you are reaching. **Track your Home Page reach, Here’s Why:**
Every Creator and Business have a growth phase on Instagram where you will have viral content helping you grow to a peak of your business on IG. When it stops, your engagement will fall.
Because you never kept of how your existing followers responded to your content. You were reaching lesser and lesser followers as your following grew because you were too focused on trends.
That’s for long term try to keep track of your Home reach and how your existing followers are responding to content. If it’s bad, you should revamp your content strategy.
For Brands, work with Influencers that have good Home page reach to have better results from your campaigns.
#The Alt Text is a Bonus
Instagram introduced Topics for reels to filter reels better but does it mean you will reach your target audience immediately? No. It’s a bonus feature to help you.
The same is with Alt text, it gives algorithm more context about your post. Some people say it’s for users with special needs.
It stands for that, but algorithm overall is going to use that information to understand the post. That’s why its good to write Alt text for your posts.
#Understanding How Stories Work
It’s pretty simple to understand how Stories work and what you need to share to constantly get more views.
Go to your current IG story insights, You will see a Section called “Navigation”. Here’s what it means!
* Back- means the follower swiped back to see your last story or someone else’s story they saw before!
* Forward- means the follower clicked to see your next story
* Next story- the follower moved to see someone else’s story
* Exited- means the follower left the stories.Analyse which story has the most forwards and lesser exists, then try to create that type of stories because IG wants to keep the user on the stories tab but you made them exit. A huge mistake.
#State of Instagram Photos
Last week of November 2022, Instagram CEO announced they have balanced the photos reach but nothing is changed.
The state of Instagram Photos is different based on various niches. Ask yourself: What percentage of your industry is actually creating photos? There is a shift to reels and Instagram will prioritise reels as promised. While some niches I studied like UI/UX have a majority of users posting photos and consistent posters grow on IG with photos too in that niche.
But the Advice is to shift to Instagram carousels because you have a second chance of showing up on your followers home page. As Instagram previews your second slide to the follower if they skipped first time.
#A Word from Previous Instagram Employee
In a recent newsletter Interview with Rachel Karten, A Designer that worked as Instagram employee mentioned that jumping on using new Instagram feature is always beneficial to grow your account.
My Advice, Instagram doesn’t regularly launch features directly linked to help you grow.
But the recent “Instagram notes” feature can be helpful to businesses because it’s more personal and you can inform your followers about new launches through notes.
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**Thanks for reading You can subscribe through link in my bio to receive social media news and marketing reports launched by IG, Tiktok and others!**
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Do you have an Instagram account I can follow?
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Honestly giving up on Instagram. I was stupid enough to pay for ads for my artwork and ever since then I stopped getting views. It’s like they know I’ll pay for ads and shadow ban my content. It’s sad we have to dish out money nowadays just for our content to be seen. I got way more likes back in 2014-15 when my content wasn’t even good JUST by using hashtags. Now, those are useless too.
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was this written by AI?
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Building a feed identity is key! I’ve had several reels hit 1M, 2M, 3M & one hit 9.2M since focusing on this! Doubled my following in a little over a month!
Thanks for the other tips! Great advice!
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only real way to grow on instagram is to be a big corporation or a woman showing her big butcheeks and linking her only fans on her bio
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Alt text meant the text incorporated in reels and/story via IG app creation feature and it is being used for algorithms too?
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Thank you so much for the information!!
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