Recently, in its official blog, Instagram explained how it ranks posts and how the algorithms work, why some posts have better reach than others, and how to get into recommendations.
Reach
In short, reach depends on content. Instagram looks at the post you published — the volume of the text, and if it is a picture, photo, or video. It analyzes what you have posted — the quality of the content, photo quality, and where you got them. Then it studies your audience.
It is not so important that once a person liked you, reacted to a story, or followed you. What matters is the long-term history of the relationship between you and your followers. Instagram analyzes whether a person follows you, reads your posts or not, puts likes, leaves comments, how often they react to your posts or stories, how much time they spend on the account, whether they read posts until the end or just look at the picture, click ‘Like’, and swipe further.
The current interest of the follower is considered. Specifically, now, this week, this month, the follower is interested in what you write about or not. If Instagram algorithms suggest that your post might be interesting to them, they show it, and the post gains higher reach.
It is vital not only to have followers but also to make them follow you, read your posts, give you comments, like your pictures, and spend as much time with you as possible. You can be sure to get great reach only in this case.
We can conclude that activity chats, cheating, buying followers, contests, giveaways do not work because there is no history of the relationship between you and your followers. An active audience is what works the best.
Another crucial point that Instagram emphasized in its publication is that too much content reduces reach. The more content you make — the lower reach you will get. First, users get bored. Second, you cannot make a lot of quality content. You do not need to run after the number — the quality of the content is more important.
Stories
If you want your stories to have a good reach, it’s vital that people not only interact with your Stories but also share them. Think about whether you have Stories that people want to share when you make a story content plan.
Recommendations
A post must go viral to get to the recommendation page. It should quickly diverge among your audience and gain engagement indicators: likes, comments, reposts, saves. Instagram sees that the post is viral and shows it to those who interacted with the account.
Which posts are not recommended?
Instagram downgrades content related to violence, weapons, smoking, and alcohol. Also, Instagram tries to show less nudity and naked people.
Instagram marks as unwanted everything related to changes in appearance and similar content — body modifications and enhancements, surgical procedures, cosmetics, and discriminatory content that compares and evaluates people by appearance.
Instagram does not like contests and challenges. Avoid clickbait on a picture, photo, video, and do not encourage people to give likes to such posts. Instagram understands, reads, and considers negative all bypass mechanics that force people to react.
Instagram tracks non-original or modified content. Even if you have changed something, made a collage, or overlaid text, Instagram algorithms understand this perfectly.
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Blocking of advertising accounts
If your ad account often gets blocked, Instagram understands that you are doing something wrong and reduces your reach. It seems to be things not related to content but affecting your performance. Be careful with ads, what you run, what posts you promote. Instagram will take into account whether your ad account is blocked or not. Try to avoid blocking ads and advertising accounts.
If people complain about your content, your account got blocked, you exceeded some limits, used wrong promotion schemes (for example, cheating), or if there is a strange activity in your account, Instagram takes all this into account and reduces reach.
