Did you know what Instagram was, 10 years ago? Chances are, like most people, you didn’t, which makes it even more impressive how, in the past few years, Instagram disrupted the marketing industry. Althought it is a fairly new form of marketing, Instagram is used extensively by businesses to promote their services or products and it can be difficult to stay competitive and stand out.
In this post, you will find 3 tips for optimizing your posts; thus having a more effective marketing.
1. Understanding the Algorithm
A good place to start when trying to optimize your posts on Instagram is to understand how it works. Briefly, the app uses a ranking system to decide in which order posts will appear on the user’s feed.
Instagram will prioritize posts from accounts that seem to be close to the user. This is decided in function of the interactions that happen between both accounts. Think of comments, direct messages, likes and tags in photos.
Then, the app will use AI to decide what posts the user will find interesting, based on their usage of the app. For example, it will show posts that are similar – or from similar accounts – to the ones the user usually interacts with or spends a lot of time looking at.
Finally, Instagram will put newer posts higher in the feed, which makes post scheduling important. We will dive further into it later on.
2. Instagram for Businesses
Since 2014 it is possible for businesses to have a ”business profile” that unlocks several tools. Among these, you will find analytic tools that will give you useful insights: demographic information about your audience, the times your followers are active on Instagram, follower growth and many more. These informations will give you great insight on how to manage your profile and create content in order to optimize your Instagram posts.
3. Timeliness
As mentioned previously, the times at which you post impact your publications’ success. Optimizing your Instagram posts requires you to publish when your target audience is online. It is useless to publish content at times where your followers don’t use the app since your post will get burried behind more recent ones. You can also make sure that you appear on your followers’ feed by posting frequently. Analyze your business profile insights to find the best times to post and use an Instagram scheduling software to make sure you never forget a post. Otherwise, you can use this schedule to plan your posts.
Sources
Cave Social (2021). How to Optimize Your Instagram Profile & Posts in 2021. Cave Social. Found on november 10th from https://cavesocial.com/optimize-instagram-posts/.
Meta (2021). About Instagram Insights, Instagram Help Center. Found on november 10th from https://www.facebook.com/help/instagram/788388387972460.
Thomas, Monique(2021). This is How the Instagram Algorithm Works in 2021, Later Blog. Found on november 10th from https://later.com/blog/how-instagram-algorithm-works#feed.
Wikipedia. Instagram, Wikipedia. Found on november 10th from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instagram#Impact_on_businesses.
