To understand how the Instagram algorithm works, it’s important to understand how Instagram works:

Instagram wants to show you content that excites you, because delicious content will keep your attention on the app for a longer time and increase the likelihood that you will return to the app more often.

Their attention is what they sell to advertisers to earn money, so every part of the application is designed to maximize the attention they receive from you, and their algorithm is no different.

How the Instagram Algorithm Works

The Instagram algorithm evaluates the participation metrics, which they see as an indication of how nice part of the content is. This is how it works with every upload of a new publication:

Your new publication will appear to a small percentage of your entire audience.

Measure how quickly and how often this small percentage of your target audience (see, like, comment, share, and save) decides to publish.
Compare the commitment of your new publication to the commitment of your previous releases on similar dates and times.
If you attend less than your average, the publication will appear at a lower percentage of your audience and will appear at the bottom of your homepage. Fewer people see your posts and discover your page.

If you get more exposure than your average, then a higher percentage of your audience will see it and higher will appear in users’ start feeds, in addition to a higher chance of appearing in other Explorer pages = more people will see your posts and discover your page

People “pirate” the algorithm because they know which engagement metrics they value (ie, how fast and how often viewers view, like, comment, share, and save their new publications). Therefore, they change the way they use the application to favor those metrics and “trick” the algorithm into believing that their content is more pleasing. In this way, they take up more space in people’s home and browser pages, which means more eyes see their content and discover their page. This does not mean that their content is necessarily “delicious”, they only understand how the algorithm evaluates the content and uses it to be published in more people. If you are an Instagram company that has an income, if it is discovered by more people, this knowledge can be very valuable.

Now that you know how the algorithm works, what should you do about it?

Sometimes your target audience is actively using the application:
If you post at random times during the day, and fewer of your followers are on Instagram, your content will be less likely from the start, and the algorithm is likely to outnumber you.The most effective free tool I have found to help you find out when your audience is in use is Squarelovin. This is what your analysis looks like:

Maximize your visual value and your content value:
People rate their publication based on a) how big it looks and b) how informative / entertaining / enlightening / sweet / careful is the content. To increase the participation of your posts, which position you higher in the algorithm, you should always post EXCELLENT photos and create content that adds value to your audience. Every audience and every account is unique, so what’s valuable is different for everyone, but an objective way to measure it is via their Instagram Insights participation page. That’s how you do it:

Go to your Instagram Insights page, touch the POSTS section and touch the Filter section at the top of this page.

At the top of this feed, you’ll see the publications that get the most engagement from your audience. These are the publications for which your target group has the greatest possible visual and content value. You should improve these publications and do more in the future. You can also scroll to this feed to see the content your audience is the least interacting with. This is the kind of content you probably want to suspend or do less in the future because your audience is not responding so loudly.

The better you achieve the execution of content that your audience considers valuable, the greater your engagement, and the better the classification of your publications by the algorithm.

Create human content, not brand content.
When was the last time you were really excited about commercial page publishing? Brands and companies have the lowest share of 25% on Instagram. Are you surprised? What has traditionally been considered good marketing content does not work on Instagram. The buzzwords, brilliant editorial photos, expensive marketing campaigns, and publications about how good your brand or business is sound like a sales robot, and few of us enjoy interacting with a sales robot. Create content that adds value to your audience, not content that values ​​them. The most important thing is to be empathetic, to put yourself on the skin of the audience at the next post-up. Your participation values ​​show you what people enjoy.

Here you can objectively measure which new test publications perform better and, over time, identify trends in the type of content that will be most beneficial.

Do not use bots!
Instagram is very incentivized to reduce the number of people who use bots to “stalk” the algorithm, so they’ve developed technology to distinguish between the use of the robot and real engagement. In fact, it is likely that the algorithm is already mining accounts that use traditional bot tactics (such as automatic tastes and bot account comments) to increase their participation numbers. Like empty calories, empty commitment is something you want to avoid.

Know that the algorithm is changing, but Instagram is not.
Instagram has one thing in common: Maximize the time you spend on Instagram. The algorithm changes if you think it has new / better metrics to measure people’s satisfaction based on content. The more satisfied the content is in the application, the more likely it is that it will be used longer, follow back. more often. Each time you change, you continue to measure your metrics, paying close attention to the differences between the publications the algorithm prefers (more achieves) and those that do not (less range). These differences are likely to be excellent first clues to understanding how the new algorithm evaluates pleasure.