As usual, social media is forever changing. Facebook recently announced its big changes in an effort to make Facebook a “more positive place” (see blog post here). Now, here are some very important Instagram changes that can and will impact the visibility of your posts. If you are using Instagram to promote your brand (which you should be), you have to stay up-to-date on these constant changes.
Engagement is NECESSARY to be seen.
Only about 10% of your followers will initially see your posts. The only way to stretch this reach organically is to get active engagement on your posts, especially within the first 60 minutes of posting it.
And you know how you get those pages that just leave an emoji or a comment like, “great pic”? These are being seen as robot posts. Pages that do this are considered spam or “bots” and are being filtered out by Instagram one by one. So comments with about 3 words or less will not be counted as real engagement. Instagram’s algorithm is searching for real engagement from real people who genuinely have something to say about your post. The more comments you get on a post, the more likely the algorithm will make your post visible to the remaining 90% of your followers. Without engagement, your visibility is likely to actually decrease.
Hashtags & Captions
Hashtags need to be in your caption, not your comments!
Ugh, I know right! We all got in the habit of posting our 30 hashtags in the comment section to keep our captions nice and clean. But now, Instagram is starting to not include posts in hashtag searches that do not have the hashtags in the actual caption. No worries, you can still keep the caption clean. Many times, you will see captions like this:
“Here is my super cool caption!”
.
.
.
.
Using those periods or some other mark will separate your caption from your hashtags but still keeps the hashtags in the search engines. However you choose to write it, just make sure the hashtags are in your captions if you want to pop up when others are searching that hashtag.
Switch up your hashtags so that you don’t appear as a bot.
We all have those few hashtags that we use to identify ourselves, but you want to be careful not to make all 30 possible hashtags the same on every post. Instagram is starting to recognize such repeat activity as a bot page and will shadow ban you (decrease your visibility).
Following your favorite hashtags could increase your visibility with that hashtag.
If you haven’t noticed, you can now follow hashtags the same way that you follow people. And rumor has it, if you are following a specific hashtag and you also use that hashtag, you could be more visible to others following that hashtag as well.
Don’t edit your caption within 24 hours of posting it!
Doing so could decrease that post’s visibility. The same goes if you delete a post and repost the exact same one. So make sure that before you press “Share” you have proofread your caption, included your hashtags, got your filters and whatever else just the way you want them. Once you post it, leave it!
There are constant changes being made to social media platforms, which is also why you can’t put all your eggs in one basket. Using only one social media site to promote your brand is not recommended if you want good online visibility. And using ONLY social media to expand your brand isn’t good either.
If you are looking for more ways to be visible online, book a session with me and I can help you gain the reach and visibility you need in order to grow your brand and collect your coins.
