I
can’t deny that Instagram is a different place
than it was just 6 months ago, before the complete roll out of the algorithm. However, I’m
often surprised at how negative a lot of the chatter
is. “Instagram isn’t a good place for businesses
anymore,” or “You just can’t get new followers on
Instagram like you used to be able to.” I don’t believe this is true. As a business owner, I also don’t
believe in whining and excuses. Let’s figure out
how to forge forward instead!
The bottom line is that savvy business owners
that truly understand and follow social media best
practices are affected very little by algorithms, and
in some cases may even be helped by them. I’ve
seen evidence of this with my own account, where
engagement has not dropped, and my rate of new
followers has actually increased!
If you feel like you are struggling in this post-algorithm Instagram world, the great news is that it
doesn’t have to be that way. Here are four things
you can do to up your Instagram game and maximize your content in the news feed.
SHARE QUALITY CONTENT
Blah, blah, blah. You’ve heard this before, I know.
But let’s do a deep gut check here: do you really
know what “posting quality content” means? It
means posting stuff that your fans actually care
about. It’s about creating content that your fans
literally can’t wait to get to the next day. It’s so
valuable that they might even go directly to your
account to check and make sure they haven’t
missed a post. Creating this kind of content is not
the easiest thing to do.
A simple test to run before you hit the publish
button is to ask yourself, “Why should they (your
ideal client) care about this?” If your answer has
anything to do with yourself, like, “because it’s my
best work!” or “because I spent so much time on
this!” or “because I had a great idea!” you should
try again. Great content is always about your customer.
USE HASHTAGS
One thing the algorithm hasn’t changed is the
importance of hashtags. There is still a lot of traffic
to be won by using well researched, highly targeted
hashtags. For now, the Explore tab in Instagram,
where you would go to search hashtags, has the
best of both worlds. At the top are nine “Top Posts”
which are decided by, you guessed it, an algorithm.
However, under that are all of the photos on Instagram that have been tagged with a particular
hashtag, appearing in reverse-chronological order.
Meaning, the most recent images with a given
hashtag appear first.
People are searching for things that are important to them on Instagram. Follow my “Two-Word
Hashtag Rule” to create targeted hashtags. In general, hashtags that include two words are more