Did you know that on average, a measly 10% of your total Instagram followers see the content you post on their feed? Do you tend to notice posts from 3+ days ago while you mindlessly scroll down your home page? With this madness, it was only a matter of time until influencers and marketing gurus would dig up how to hack their way up your feed! After all of the speculations that we have come across, Power On Marketing is ready to drop five tips for beating the aggravating algorithm, in no specific order.

01 MEANINGFUL INTERACTIONS

As the story usually goes – quality is more important than quantity in life and on Instagram. One of the best ways to hike up your Instagram feed positioning starts with genuine engagements with your followers and who you are following.

Likes are out, saves are in! While any Instagram user appreciates a like on their post, it has become apparent that likes do not really matter. Some accounts cannot even see the number of likes any given post has. Therefore, saving a picture to your collections has become an extremely helpful tracking metric. Not only that, but the more saves a post has, the more likely it is to appear on more of your follower’s feeds, higher up on the feed, and perhaps even make it to the explore page.

Use your words. Friends love to drop a simple emoji under your pictures to show support, but the devil is in the details! Word on the street is that comments that contain more than four words will prove to the insightful algorithm that your content is worthy of more views.

Connect with your community! Interacting with your followers goes beyond saving their posts. There is no harm in direct messaging someone if you like their story. If you are totally impressed with a non-conflicting post, go ahead and share it to your story or send it to someone via DM’s. Shares are like saves in which they can really boost engagement and post placement!

02 POST MORE VIDEOS

IGTV Series, Reels, and other video-friendly amenities are available to Instagram users, so why not get the most out of these free materials and tools!

Social media is all about brand exposure and trend-setting. Instagram video content allows for exactly that, in a shorter time frame than most.

Video content like a reel is storytelling at its finest, and your brand should see it as an opportunity to pitch your services.

Consumers appreciate realistic ideas of products before making their purchase, and data shows that a buyer is much more likely to check a company’s social media before heading
to their site. That means your page could make or break that sale!

03 CREATE EPHEMERAL CONTENT

How often do you post stories or go live? Ephemeral content is only available for a limited time, but it can make a huge difference in your brand’s Instagram presence.

Posting content that is only available for 24 hours at a time lets users know that you are present on the platform.

Try to create stories with relevant and exciting topics that promote the use of questions and polls. This encourages more one on one interactions that could form into leads for your company. These short and sweet interactions also increase your personability, which will build trust between you and your clients so they will never second guess if they are in good hands.

Ephemeral content moves quickly, so you must keep up! Try to post at least a few stories a week, if not each day, to keep your audience active.

04 CONSISTENCY IS KEY

The more you visit the app, the more chronological your feed will become. We recommend scrolling all the way through your feed until you see the “You’re all caught up!” message. While it can mean viewing the same posts a couple of times, your feed will be more likely to reflect the most recent content.

As we touched on earlier, quality is better than quantity. However, if you are sharing more <STRONG>high-quality</STRONG> content, your followers will inevitably see more of you on their feed.

Life Hack: you can also go to the “Go Live” tab to see how many of your followers are currently online. This creates a better understanding of popular times for you to post and engage!

Play around with optimal posting periods for your niche; you want to post when your audience is most active. Going back to our trick to see how many users are online, once you find a time frame that works for your business, try to post future content around that time as well.

05 SCREEN TIME MATTERS

Just like Apple is tracking what you spend so much of your time doing on your phone, Instagram does this within their app! Like most companies, they are more interested in how to monetize from their app than anything.

The easy answer is advertising. People are more likely to see ads if they spend a lot of time snooping around. The longer you keep people on the app, the higher your insights will be.

Get creative – unique content will naturally draw more attention. Sharing more than one photo at once with carousel posts can extend a user’s stay on your page as well!

Again, the longer you can keep your viewers on the app, watching your stories, IGTV series, and creeping down your feed, the more Instagram will reward you!

Conquer the Instagram algorithm in 2021!