Extra, Extra read all about it the Instagram updates. I'm going to break the changes down into three categories; post exposure, engagement, and hashtags.
Post Exposure
If you've been following along, you know that when you post something to Instagram, it may only be getting exposed to 10% of your audience. If your brand new post gets engagement right out of the gate, you're in luck because then the post will be released to the other 90% of your audience relatively soon. You've certainly seen posts from up to 12 hours to an entire day before showing up in your feed out of order.
Remember those comment pods that everyone was going crazy for in 2017? If you are still a part of these pods, they are not doing your account or the people that comment on your post any favors. They are hindering you and here's why, Instagram keeps track of who is messaging your photo and when you message your own photo then you get a blow up of comments, well they know something is up. Authentic engagement is what matters, not solicited but we'll get to that.
If you are posting like a business and thinking like a business why aren't you, in fact, a business account? Seriously, if you are in any way shape or form promoting your business but haven't moved on from a personal account, you are sabotaging yourself. The time is now to switch over, there are so many perks, you have access to so many statistics to make sure that you are reaching your target audience.
Engagement
Engagement is by far my favorite topic. I will never understand how accounts can post and post and post and never talk to their followers or another account. This is a social network in 2018 it is no longer an option to post without engaging with others. In kindergarten, we all learned the golden rule of playing well with others. Let's think of your new golden rule is to engage well with others. One of the most frequent questions I get asked is if it's ok to engage once a week? No, you should be commenting and chatting for at least 20 minutes every day with your following and other accounts that are using your hashtags. 20 minutes is vital because you want to raise your exposure and engaging with others helps this so much,
In your 20 minutes of engaging, please do not leave comments such as, "great pic" "love this" or just a single emoji. It's a waste of time because with comments like this the algorithm will think that you are a bot. Instead, write a complete sentence or at least four words before an emoji.
Storying is another excellent way to bump up your engagement and pop up more in peoples feeds. The stories that appear first in your feed are the accounts that you engage with the most. Story more often and give people a reason to see you first.
Hashtags
I know how you love to keep your caption aesthetically pleasing and post the hashtags in the comment. Well, I'm sorry to say that based on my own experience the reach is better when hashtags are posted in the caption. Include hashtags in the body of your caption if you want to be seen by more than 10% of your audience. This change has been fluid for about a year. To make this work for you instead of against you, write your epic caption, six dots than your hashtags.
While you can use 30 hashtags in a post, don't do it every time. If you do, make sure that you are switching them up. Instead, consider three sets of ten hashtags and alternate them with filler tags relevant to your photo.
What could be seen as spam comments= shadow banning which = little to no business which = little to no money.
New Features
There are also some awesome new features that will work in your favor. You've seen the explore feed, the specially curated collection of posts based off of your interests and the people you follow. Well, people that you do not follow that share interests with you will begin to show up in your feed. Yep, that's right strangers will begin popping up in your feed, which in turn means that you will be popping up others feeds. This is great because when you comment on these photos you will be exposed to a new following of people.
At the end of last year, it was rolled out that you could begin to follow hashtags. This is one feature that totally brings me so much joy because gone are the days of typing certain hashtags into the search bar to interact with. The rumor is that your account will be favored if you follow hashtags. Start small, consider following your top five favorite hashtags.
That's all I got for you so far, I am working on the Facebook update post because there are so many things about to change over there.