One of the key things that we at PS Digital believe in and practice is engaging regularly with our clients …and of course potential clients, through our website and on Social media. We believe, as we have so often touted, that it builds relationships and through building relationships we attract and retain loyal customers.
Our articles have spoken about this in relation to LinkedIn, the biggest direct business platform and of course Facebook, where in one article we pointed out that the new algorithm highly favoured content that elicited favourable and more ‘engaging’ responses.
As it is fast becoming one of the largest brand building platforms, we now for this – and the next couple of articles – turn to look at Instagram. We will review its news algorithm and recent revolutionary releases and progressions that are important for those utilising this platform for their marketing to be aware of.
The new algorithm
In the past Instagram showed the user the latest post to be received in standard chronological order. Regardless of who it came from or who your favourites were, you just saw the latest post.
Now, with the new algorithm, which by the way was hotly rebuked when it was introduced, if you follow the same accounts as someone else, but you interact with the content in different ways, the Instagram algorithm will make different predictions about what content you want to see. Essentially this means your feed is always unique to you!
Without going into too much detail (obviously you can speak to your Digital marketing experts to learn more) we look at just the three main changes that have taken place, exactly what each change means to your business …and why we say you need to now engage and relate to make an Instagram impact!
Engage
Now, as a post is received, Instagram assesses how you’ve interacted with similar posts in the past and can even be based on the content of the post itself. So what this means to your brand is that you need to ‘engage’ more! When users engage with you, they signal to the algorithm that they want to see more of your posts. So, once again you need to get people to respond and interact with you through more engaging visuals and creative headliners that capture the imagination, forcing a response!
Relate
Instagram, amazingly can now analyse the extent of the relationship someone has with your brand based on how often they engage with and how well they relate to your posts! When people have responded to you more, they will see more of your posts in their feed – not just the last thing they were sent.
Apparently ‘Recode’ has reported that the new Instagram algorithm might even be using some information from Facebook to determine relationships! So all the more reason that you, as a brand, engage consistently across all platforms!
Stay fresh
The third important change and one to which we should take cognisance, is that although they have reversed the chronological order of the feeds, the algorithm does take into account that people prefer to see more recent posts each time they log in!
Newer posts are more likely to appear first, so as a brand you need to ascertain the best time to post for your brand, to make sure your posts are ‘fresh’ when your followers are online.
This will require some testing with’ Instagram insights,’ which is used to track which posts perform best.
Use professionals!
We hope you now know a bit more about how to engage and relate to make an Instagram impact! Although we believe it is important that you stay informed of the developments in the industry that affect the marketing of your brand, you can also save yourself the headaches of trying to keep up with what we, as trained Digital marketing professionals, have to know to ensure we make your brand an online success.
Contact us today to learn more and the many areas of Website development and hosting and Digital and Social Media marketing that we competently and professionally handle!
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