For the past few months, I’ve heard many business owners complain about how the Instagram algorithm hates them. Then they start “dressing” up their posts all fancy and out of character to impress some mystical human entity sitting at a wall of monitors somewhere in Silicon Valley that is swiping left on you. As if to deliberately doom your success because you just aren’t “fancy” enough.
People, that is NOT what is happening!
The algorithm is not this human entity gatekeeper holding you back from hitting all of your business dreams and goals. The hard pill to swallow is that your tiny piece of content is competing with 60 million other tiny pieces of content. Twenty million of which are dog/animal videos, and we all know how much joy falling down the rabbit hole of animal videos brings to our day.
Here’s the deal instead of focusing on getting all glammed up and impressing the algorithm, why aren’t you putting that time and attention into getting all glammed up and keeping the attention of the actual humans who are following you, purchasing from you, telling their friends about you, and overall resonating with you?
There has been so much talk and hype lately about the Instagram algorithm going back to having the option to choose a chronological feed. While this could be beneficial, I want you to remember that this current type of algorithm also serves new people who’ve interacted with posts and brands similar to yours, your little slice of content. Don’t get me wrong; I am pumped that a chronological feed option is coming back, but we aren’t going back in time; I’m sure there will be a catch with most things that are Free to use.
For example, Mosseri (head of Instagram) did an Instagram Live about how there will be three different options to curate your feed.
You will have three feed options at some point here in 2022:
Home: Your default and algorithm-based feed, which he says should have more recommendations in the future as in accounts you don’t always follow-hello Tik Tok based.
Favorites: You will create a list of all the accounts you don’t want to miss.
Following: This is the chronological feed you all have been asking for.
My predictions:
The hottest call to action at some point this year will be “Add us to your favorites.”
You will have absolutely no idea which feeds your customers favor using and where you fall into that, so you will have to figure out how to get scroll stopped on them all.
The hottest story poll is going to be “ What feed do you scroll most, Home, Favorites or Following.”
This will take up much more time because now people have three feeds to scroll.
Stories will become even more critical because it sounds like they will live on all three feeds, but who knows.
If you were complaining about engagement before, these changes would possibly negatively affect it. Content that stops the scroll will be even more clutch.
If you need any more of a reminder that the algorithm is not human, here you go, you are working against a machine.
Like any new changes, we will have to wait and see when it gets out of the test phase and adapt when implemented. But the one thing that I know works through the eight years I have been doing this, communicating to the other humans in a way that resonates.