Navigating The Instagram Algorithm

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Let's take a moment to discuss when you are posting information about an event or a sale on your social media feeds. With the current algorithm if people are not constantly interacting with your feeds they will not see your updates right away.  In fact, they might not see your updates for up to 5 days later! When you are creating that great post that says, " Today only, buy one get one free" you are hardly reaching any of your following.  Let me rephrase if you have an amazing engagement rate consistently on every post this number is obviously higher. However, if you're hovering around a 5% engagement rate and looking for a good ROI of your invested time in that post you will barely see any the day of the post.  You need to give ample notice on whatever it is you are wanting people to know, way more notice than the day of. 

I am bringing this up now because over the holiday season, I personally viewed so many posts about things that I would have wanted to take advantage of but I didn't see the original post until 3 days after it happened.  I am personally guilty of not spending my 20 minutes a day every day engaging on Maven's Instagram. Which is why I do not see stuff from people I follow right away on the day they post because I may have liked or commented on something from them a week ago. Since Instagram now filters what they think you want to see based off of what you have interacted with it's harder to stay in your followers feeds every since day right when you post. Don't believe me just check your search and scroll through all of those suggested photos. Do they look like things you've been searching in Google or on Facebook, as well as photos you've been interacting with more consistently on Instagram? 

Moving Forward

To make this transition easier for your future sales or events consider adding to your story what will be happening and snippets of what is happening in "real time" if it's an event at your business. Remember a story post is live for 24 hours but you are now able to save it to your highlight reel. Also, post about an event at least 3 days in advance on your grid, as well as on your other social platforms, and in your email blasts.  Hashtag those posts and story snippets correctly and you will begin to see a better ROI on your time and efforts promoting whatever it is you want to be promoting.