In the most recent news in the world of entrepreneurial social media, Instagram has announced their newest update: customizing your feed within an algorithm based on what you may like, and not by the most recent posts. This is good for some who already have established themselves and their brand and their best-selling products. But if you’re just starting out, this is going to be a problem. What going to happen is this: all of the accounts you visited in let’s say – the last five days, are going to appear than most of the accounts you follow. The first thing you’ll see if the post with the most likes, the most shares and the most engagement. You’re going to see algorithm generated content, no longer in chronological order.
So for those of you who have a specific time of day to post things where you are most likely to get interactions from people you feel are online at the time, that’s no longer going to work that way – but there’s a way to work around it.
First, is to encourage your followers to turn on post notifications once a week. It’s a feature long since established by Instagram but was grossly underutilized, until now. Turning on post notifications keeps your followers updated with the things that you want to offer them.
Next is to post sharable content. Instagram is a highly visual social media environment – the more visually pleasing your content is, the higher the likelihood of it getting shares, reposts and engagements from your followers so your offers don’t get buried under their feeds.
Another way is to start an email list. A lot like what happens when they have post notifications on, an email newsletter is the next best way to keep your followers posted on your offers and services. This also helps build a community of your followers and your business – and should be done proactively regardless of the Instagram update.
To further build your community, create a Facebook Group. If you feel like you’re not ready for this you can start a Facebook Group, build a community of people with the same interests and goals.
Other than sharable content, you could also make a trend with your posts through your profile’s overall aesthetic. A lot of people are starting to do Instagram patterns something that they are putting in to their visual strategy. Sometimes you see they have a certain color going down in a line or they might do white post it, purple post-it, some type of visual pattern that they’re doing on their Instagram page. This will not, should not, affect your pattern. The way you put out your photos it should still look the same when people go to your profile. This change is affecting your feed that is when you first go on your Instagram and you see everyone’s photo like 2 seconds ago the last person that post that’s what you see first that is the only part this should be affected by this change. So your visual strategy should still remain the same, there shouldn’t be any problems, I hope there isn’t but if there is that should be okay because patterns is not what making us money.
Last but not the least, optimize your use of hashtags. This is a way to organize your posts into the same interest or categorical tags that help in re-targeting the general audience into the posts you want them to see. With hashtags, you could reach out to people in the same bigger social community your business is into and filter them into your niche.
That’s all I have to make up for Instagram’s change and still have your business running smoothly despite the recent dynamic. Have fun using these tips and comment below: do you think this was a good move on Instagram’s part? Do you think they should stick to posting chronologically? Do you have other loopholes to the update? Discuss with us!
