Transcripts
1. Course Introduction: The Instagram algorithm is this thing that many just don't seem to understand. Because when we hear the word algorithm, it sounds really confusing. But because people who don't understand things about it, that makes assumptions which then spiral out of control and people just begin to believe anything they hear about it. So in today's skill share costs aren't going to be debunking nine or so Instagram algorithm myths. So you could just get a greater understanding on how the Instagram algorithm actually operates. Hi guys. My name is Ethan bridge. I'm host of the social media marketing School podcast and the guy behind the Instagram page at the marketing, Ethan. And as I said today, I am going to be debunking nine or so Instagram outbreak myths that have just been taken out hand over an extended period of time. And now lots of people just don't know what to believe. So by the end of this Kosher class, I hope you do have a greater understanding. Your mind will now be at ease and you can now begin to work with the Instagram algorithm to boost your engagement and following on your Instagram page. So without any further ado, I hope to see you in the first module.
2. Myth 1: Ranking favours certain content types: So myth number one, and you often hear people say the Instagram algorithm favors certain types of content on the fade. Now, I'm going to start off by saying, this is completely wrong. No matter what type of content you produce, the Instagram algorithm, it doesn't care. It doesn't care at all. You could post a carousel, you could post a video, you could post a single image. You could post an IG TV. As long as they are of high quality and they get good engagement from your audience, it doesn't matter what type of post you create. You aren't going to rank differently because you create a carousel over a single image, or the Instagram algorithm cares about is keeping people on the platform. If your video is keeping people on the platform and it's getting good engagement, it will push it out to a wider audience. The same goes for your carousel, that Sanger's your single image pose the same goes for your HGTV. As long as they are keeping people on the platform, which is the goal of the Instagram algorithm. It will favor whatever content type. Now the only time a Content-Type may be favored is when a brand new content_type comes onto the platform. Instagram rails at the moment is a perfect example. Now they will only do this because they want to really, really promote this new aspects of the platform that they have just brought in. And they want more and more creators to start using them. So they will encourage people to create them by increasingly engagement they actually get when they create using that certain content type. So as soon as you see a new Content-Type come out on Instagram, you should really, really take advantage of this. I'm fully taking advantage instagram rails at the moment, they've only been out for a few weeks now as of when this skill share class is being released. But I can already see the amount of engagement they are getting. So I'm going to continue producing videos until that fall off eventually happens, and then it goes amongst the rest of the content types on the platform. So myth number one, know it really, really doesn't matter what type of content you produce because the ranking system doesn't favor one over the other.
3. Myth 2: Short comments don't count: So myth number two and myth number two is that you often hear people say that short comment don't count. And by short comments, I may just mean a single emoji or two words such as Great Post. And people often say this because it goes to reinforce the fact that engagement groups do not work. But I'm going to talk about that in a later point, so I won't go into too much detail on it, but short comments do count as long as you don't have a substantial amount of them, which indicates you are part of an engagement group. Every single comment, no matter how long or shorter is, does count. However, you often see the if you have a following that is incredibly engaged and I mean incredibly engaged in the fat that they leave paragraphs worth of comments on your post. This goes to show that your post is keeping people on the platform. It's getting people to genuinely engage with it and spend more time on it and really, really consume it than that of another person's post. So although short comments do still contribute towards your overall engagement score, longer comments to indicate to the algorithm that people are spending more time on your post and consequently on the platform. So don't go about and go and delete short comments because you think that may flag up to the Instagram algorithm that you're part of engagement group and lots of different people are spamming your posts and therefore, it won't get pushed out to a wider audience. It still counts because there's a lot of people out there that do simply, just common great post as they think this is gonna get them page visits because they're being noticed within your comments section. You should still take this as a good thing. You should reply to it still and say thank you. That's still doubles the amount of comments. But what I would recommend is you actually reply to these comments, asking these people a question, say, thank you so much. What was your favorite point about the post? Because even though they have only left a fire emoji or to a two-word comment. You can then bring them back to your post and get them to leave another comment. And this time it's going to be a longer response to the question that you have actually asked them. And again, this indicates people were spending even more time on your content and your engagement score. Because again, you can then reply to that comments. You've essentially turned one or full emoji or to, or comment into a for common conversation. So don't go about and go deleting these short comments because they do still count.
4. Myth 3: Engagement in the first 30-45 minutes matters most: So moving on to myth number three. A myth number three is that the first 30 to 45 minutes matter most when it comes the engagement on your post on Instagram. And I'm going to be the first one to say that this isn't true. I've experienced my post go viral four or five days after I've actually posted them. They're not gonna go viral within the first 30 to 45 minutes. Some people's do, and that is just a common indicator. And I think, oh, that's because I got great engagement within the first 30 to 45 minutes. But you've always gotta think back to what the Instagram algorithm is actually trying to do. All is trying to do is keep as many people on the platform for as long as they possibly can. Because that means they can show these individuals more ads. The more ads they can show, the more they can charge the companies that are using their ads platform, which means Instagram make more money. So it's just one big cycle. And so it's going to continuously look at the performance of your post over a week or so, you'll see a drop off at some point, obviously because you're going to post more content, which is then going to override what the algorithm looks at, is obviously going to look at your new content over your old content. But I'd say mine have gone viral three or four days after the day. Yeah, I actually posted the piece of content and that's because it just performed consistently over that four day period. And not just really well in the first 30 to 45 minutes, I've had posts, if done awfully within the first 30 to 45 minutes, because I've posted them at a random time where my audience isn't on the platform. So I may have posted it in the evening. I normally post around lunchtime, but then the following day rolled around. And when people started waking up because they engage my content on a regular basis, I was still popping up at the top of their fields because That's the way the algorithm works. The creators that you engage with most their content is going to be the content that goes to the top of your feet when you first open the app. And because I have those sort of followers, I was showing up the next time they open the app. So we're still getting good engagement when they next. So my post and then the algorithms was still looking at this performance, even though those first 30 to 45 minutes didn't really work out too well for me. So although you do want to have your post posted at a time when all your followers are active. Because obviously you want to give yourself the best opportunity possible and getting that highest amount of engagement. And you're going to do that by posting at an active time. So you want to be posting at a time whether it's first 30 to 45 minutes, all going to be really good, even though the engagement within that time doesn't really matter to the fact that your post may go viral in the long word. So don't be worried if you don't get your engagement, because you can still counteract that by getting good engagement for the following 24 or 48 hours.
5. Myth 4: Engagement groups work (they don't): So moving on to myth number for a myth number four is that people say engagement groups work. And this module is going to be a bit of a random. So I do apologize because I'm going to start off saying out and out. Instagram engagement groups do not work. Never, ever use an Instagram engagement group. I've seen courses on this website, the promote the use of Instagram engagement groups. And I think they should be taken off the platform because they do not work. And these people are promoting something that is going to damage someone's account in the long run. Now, if you don't know what an engagement group is, it's essentially a group that you join. And when you post a piece of content, you let the rest of the group know and they just come along to your posts that you've just put up. They click like and they leave a short little comment or whatever's most convenient for them. The Instagram algorithm is smart. It knows that these people were doing this. It knows that these people consistently engaging them a small group of other individuals and only leaving a very short comment and the like. That's it. They don't engage with this person over time. They don't DM them. They don't view their stories, they don't react to their stories. None of that. All they do is every now and again, jump onto their post as soon as it's been posted and leave a little bit of engagement. That is what an engagement group is. Now, the Scrum algorithm notices that if flux that and when it sees that you are part of engagement group, it's kinds of flag your account and then consequently, it's going to reduce your reach for the long term. It's as simple as that. So you don't want to join one of these groups in the short run and hope that it's going to help boost your growth because it won't, it may give you that satisfaction that you're getting likes and comments. But they were only vanity metrics. And in the grand scheme of things, their force, because they aren't a true audience there people that are just part of this engagement group. They're not people who have stumbled across your content and genuinely enjoy consuming your content. So in other words, you're almost lying to yourself. You must lying to the fact that you are getting likes and comments because they aren't real likes and comments. It's like buying likes and buying followers. Again, I shouldn't have to tell you this, but never, ever do that. Again, the Instagram algorithm notices that and its limits your reach and it's just damages your account for the long-term Back to the engagement group point. You know you aren't getting good engagement, so don't try and boost it by the facts. You join an engagement group to get an increased engagement on your post. You need a good engagement strategy. You need to be engaging with other creators in your niche for at least three hours a day consistently, every single day when you first start an account, your engagement is arguably more important than that of your content. Obviously, your content still needs to be of a certain quality because that is what people follow you for. But what use is that content if no one's seeing it in the first place, to get people to see your content, you engage with other creators. They see that you are a valuable member of the community. They in turn visit your profile, they give you follow, they engage with your content to get something you've got to give it. So don't try and just boost your engagement rate. Boy, join in and engagement group because it will harm your account in the long run. So myth number four, no engagement groups do not work, never join one. I never want to hear of an Instagram engagement group. Again, rant over, sorry, no more ranting modules. That was the only one.
6. Myth 5: Your account type affects your reach: So moving on to myth number five. A myth number five is your account type affects your reach. Now if you didn't know on Instagram, there are three different account type. You have a personal account, you have a creator account, and you have a business account. Now the difference between these is with the personal account, you don't have any access to your insights as soon as you switch to either creator or a business profile, you have access to insights. With a business profile, you can connect your business Facebook page, you name it all of that jazz, and it becomes more of a business hub. A creative profile is normally used by personal brands and influences because they don't have that business essence hub to add alongside their profile. So a benefit of having a business or create a profile is definitely that you get those insights. And for those of you that have a personal profile once your insights anyway, I would just recommend you switch to a creator account. You might think, oh, but I've got that little like Entrepreneur bar or influence about that little line that appears on your display name. You can actually hide that now so you don't even have to have that. You can switch to a creator town, ghetto your insights, even if you've just got a personal page. Now moving back to the myth, know, the algorithm doesn't favor any of those account types. Again, it doesn't care. All it cares about is keeping people on the platform. If you post a piece of content and it gets great engagement as a personal page, fine. It's going to push that out to a wider audience by ranking Yuan hashtags and the Explore page because it wants more people to see it, because it's already keeping people on the platform. If you do that on a create page, same again, if you don't want a business page, same again, it doesn't care what type of page you have. All it cares about is the quality of your content and whether people are engaging with it, whether people are staying on the platform because they are viewing it. So if you have been using a personal account for a while now and you've only just noticed that you could have switched your profile to a Create Account or business count. Do not worry, because switching to that previously wouldn't have helped you grow any quicker. It would have given you the option to possibly promote your posts. But if you wanted to grow organically and didn't want to actually spend any money on your growth in the first place, it wouldn't have made any difference. So myth number five, know the algorithm does not prefer a specific account type.
7. Myth 6: Instagram is penalizing your story views: Now moving on to myth number six. And a myth number six is that a lot of people think that Instagram, we're penalizing the story views. If you cast your minds back about six or seven months ago, the date of recording this is the 26th of September 2020. So around March at the beginning of the pandemic, that is something that you can relate to. If you think back to that time, you might see, you might have thought you got a lot more story views than you do now and know the algorithm wasn't actually penalizing your account specifically. All is been doing over this period of time and it's probably going to continue to do it. You will probably see huge spikes in huge lows in your story views. And it's because the algorithm is seeking out accounts that are using third party platforms to view other people stories. There was a point in time where there was no safeguarding by the algorithm to filter out accounts that were using these third party platforms. And these platforms were making people's accounts view around a 100 thousand to 500 thousand stories a day. And if you think about this, because a lot of people actually see who's viewed their stories. If they've seen someone unfamiliar or they seen someone with a lot of followers viewing their story, you actually tend to go on that person, see what they're about and you may end up following them. And if you do that with 500 thousand people a day, that's a hell of a lot of people. So essentially what these accounts are trying to do was to increase their following by viewing other people's stories. But over time, the Instagram algorithm has caught up on this, and it's beginning to notice the accounts that are doing this. And then what it's doing is it banning them and stopping them from viewing other people's stories or just deleting their accounts altogether for using third party platforms that are authorized by themselves. So know the Instagram algorithm hasn't actually been penalizing your account. It's just been clearing out accounts that had been using the platform and authentically in order to boost their following that. So don't worry, your Instagram story reach will go up and down day anyway, one day I will get a ton of story views. The next day, I'll have next to none. And I literally do not know the process behind it. It's not something that I've managed to wrap my head around J or find anything or test out for myself. So I can't actually pinpoint that. But if you do think you have been penalized in the past six months or so, don't worry, you haven't. It's just the algorithm clearing our accounts. They've been using story views on authentically to boost their account growth.
8. Myth 7: You need to post daily to grow: So moving onto myth number seven. A myth number seven is that you need to post daily in order to gain a following on Instagram. Now, I do strongly recommend, I'm constantly promote posting on Instagram on a daily basis. But do you need to post daily to grow a following in the long-term? No, you don't. The algorithm, what it does, it rewards consistency. So you need to have a consistent posting schedule, and it also rewards quality over quantity. It's much better to post three times a week with content though is ridiculously high quality, opposed to seven days a week, but with very mediocre quality. Because obviously people want to see that higher quality content opposed to mediocre content daily. So if you don't have time to post seven days a week at a high level of quality. Don't reduce it to a consistent posting schedule of four times a week or three times a week? One time a week, arguably, in my opinion, is not enough. You have to be posting multiple times a week if you do want to grow your account, if you think about it this way, the more you post, the more people you reach, the more people you reach, the more profile visits you get, the more profile visits you get, the more followers you get. So the more you can post, the higher your reach will be. So if you do post daily or even twice a day, you will grow at a faster rate assuming that the content you post is of a high quality level. But again, you can't just rely on your content to grow. There are a ton of other aspects you have to take into account. You have to engage, you have to reply to DMZ. You have the postal stories, and you have to post across all different content types. You can't just post a piece of content every single day with 30 hashtags and hope to grow. Because it doesn't work like that. Because if you don't have the engagement in the first place, you want rank on those hashtags so you won't grow using hashtags. You can't rely on hashtags as your soul growth strategy. A lot of engagement is evolved, a lot of relationship building is involved, and a lot of backend content creation is also involved. So although you don't need to post daily, that is the myth. You do not need to post daily in order to achieve Instagram growth. I do strongly recommended get into the habit of it. If you can get into the habit of posting daily, people will want to see your content daily. You want people to be addicted to your content. You want them to stop posting. Feel like they miss it. Imagine if you were posting every single day for three mumps and you're getting a really, really high engagement rate. And you grew to around 56 thousand followers and you had high engagement, call, really solid community. And then all of a sudden you vanished. People would be concerned. They'd be like are with, Where's he gone? I want to see their content. So you need to do that. You need to get people at feeling as if they need your content. And you do that by posting consistently. Consistent posting schedule is key. So if you can't post daily, just be consistent and have said upload days that you will upload each week. Your audience needs to be familiar with this schedules. They know when to check in with you. And that way you can still grow because you will still get high engagement on each post because your audience is still familiar with your content strategy. But if you want to grow quicker, post daily with the high-level quality, because you will reach more people, which in turn brings more profile visits, which in turn brings more followers. So that was myth number seven. No, you don't need to post daily to grow in Instagram following, but I do encourage it.
9. Myth 8: Your posts are only shown to 10% of your followers: So moving onto myth number eight, we're almost there. We're almost at the end. Myth number a is the Instagram only shows your post to 10%. Or if you're following. Again, This is wrong. If you've had Instagram for a while now, I'd like you to cast your minds back to the point that Instagram didn't have an algorithmic based feet. It was chronological. So that essentially what that means is that your posts on your feed would appear in the order that they had been posted by your followers. So if one was posted yesterday, but you hadn't been on Instagram yesterday, it was likely that you missed it because you'd just be going through posts that have only been posted within the past day. And it may have been a case that you just didn't get down to that photo and I could have been something really important. So what the developers at Instagram did is they decided to implement the algorithm. And what the algorithm was able to do was able to show you the content that you loved most every time you open the app, the posts that would appear at the top of your feed would be those from the creators that you engage with most that way, let's say you had a family member, you always engage with their content. Say they had a wedding or they'd had a baby and they post a baby photos, you would have missed that because U engages them all the time and you like all of their content, that post would appear at the top of your feet when they posted it, if it was still the chronological order and you went on Instagram a day after they actually posted this photo, it's likely that you would miss it because you wouldn't actually scroll down to the point of where that photo would show up. So the algorithm was able to actually show more people the content that they enjoyed. An Instagram sailor on average, you will post actually gets shown to more people than it did when the feed was chronological. So back to the point of the myth being Instagram only shows your poster 10% off your following. If you have an engaged audience and the majority of your followers engaged with every single piece of your content, then those people will all see your content. It won't just pick a random 10% because of how the algorithm works. It's going to show each individual your piece of content because they love you and engage with your content, doesn't just pick 10%, show it to everyone. And even so, if people were to continue scrolling all the way through their feet, they would eventually see your post no matter whether they consume your content or not. Because if you scroll down far enough, it just gets to the point where it shows you content from people that you're not interested in, because it still obviously wants to keep you scrolling through Instagram. So it continues to show you that content. Now, if you scroll to the very bottom, it then begins to show you content from the Explore page. Now, I don't know if any of you have ever got to that point with the amount of time I actually spent on Instagram, I have got to that point, which is something I shouldn't really be admitting. It's got a sad, but I have got to the point and because it wants to continue to keep you on the app, it shows you the Explore page. So to answer the question, no, Instagram algorithm actually will end up showing your post to more than 10% if you have an engaged audience. So that brings up another point on why you need to have a really, really engaged audience. You've won all of your followers that you have to be authentic if you have the time and you see a spam or Borda Count following you. Remove it. Remove it. It doesn't matter that you all go into lose a follower, remove it. Because at the end of the day, what use is that followed by anyway, it's not going to engage with your consent. So it went actually helped you at all with the algorithm. All it's going to do is remove one from your follower count, which at the end of the day is a vanity metric. Would you rather have 10 thousand followers with 200 being loyal? Or would you rather have 1000 photos with 950 of them being real people? I know I'd pick odd pick the 10000 every single day because I would have 900 people that I could rely on to engage with my content, opposed to only 200. But I have this cool, Kay, next to the ten on my page. I don't really care. You shouldn't either. That is simply a vanity metric. It's much, much more important to have that really, really engaged audience that you can always rely on them to engage with your content, which helps you with the algorithm, which will then push you to the Explore page and rank on hashtags, which gets you more profile as it, which gets you more followers that are real. So to round up my point, the Instagram algorithm does push your post to more than 10% of the people. If you have a highly engaged audience.
10. Myth 9: You need 10k followers before you can make money: And the final myth I want to talk about, and this is one that I strongly talks about all the time on my page. And it's something that is said time and time again, and I don't really understand, and that is you need ten K followers before you can start monetizing your page. And this couldn't be further from the truth. People think you need ten k because that is the point at which you get the swipe up feature on your stories and people believe it's the point that you suddenly just gain will this authority because you've got a K'nex, your name, that couldn't be further from the truth. You could monetize your page at 50 followers. You could monetize your page and a 100 followers. Or you've gotta have is just one person that has a need for your product or service. You could be brand new to Instagram, but you could be the best designer in your niche. Let's say you are a content creator and you want to have a product or service where you sell that content creation service. Your Instagram page is essentially your portfolio, if you will post or a macular. And you have that really, really, really high-quality of content. No matter the amount of followers you have. If someone is looking for someone to create their content and they come to your page and they see that your content is this high level of quality. They're going to ask you to create their content for them. It doesn't matter how many followers you have. If you've got 40-50, doesn't matter, your content is phenomenal. So why would people go or this person's Article 50, I'm not going to go with them. They won't, they'll still go with you. So the fact that when people say, oh, you need ten K followers because that's when you get the swipe up feature and you get all this authority is wrong. But there is one thing I would say, there comes a point where you should monetize. You shouldn't just get to 100 followers and go right. I've got an EPA, I've got a course. It doesn't really work like that. You can monetize until you have the demander. And that's like I said with the content creation part, if someone stumbles across your count, that is your portfolio already there, just gonna come to you and request the fact that you create content for them. If you're selling a product or service, you have to build that trust yourself. First. You have to get to a certain level Wave establish that authority. But that doesn't mean you have to get to ten K. This could happen at 1, ten hundred, two thousand, three thousand followers. You get to a point where people begin to DMux. They comment on your post asking lots of questions. They ask you your opinion, they DMux, asking for help. When you see this happening consistently, you can clearly see that there is now a demand for your expertise and your knowledge. This is when those light bulbs should turn on and you should think right now is the time I can monetize. I've built this level of authority. People clearly love what I'm talking about and want to know about more for me. They're keen to pick my brain on regular occasions because I've proved my knowledge at this point. Now you have the demand. So now you can monetize through an e-book, through a course, through coaching service, you name it. So if you have a product or a service that you want to sell before you monetize, you need to make sure that demand is there. If the demand isn't there, you could be jeopardizing your growth in the long term because you will saturate your audience in the short term. So let's say you try and monetize it 400 followers. And those people, although they'd like your content, you haven't established that authority with them. You are already saturating the audience there with a product or service. Now that may seem spammy on their part, they may begin to dislike the fact that you are doing so that they don't engage with your content and that will hold your growth because you aren't getting that engagement. So you need that demand there first before you can actually monetize. So back to the myth, No, you definitely do not need ten K followers in order to monetize your page. You can do it at any point, but make sure the demand is there.
11. Course Conclusion & Your Project: So that does wrap up the skill share class and I cannot thank you enough if you have made it to this point, the listening to the whole class, it's been an absolute pleasure teaching you. And I hope you've learned a thing or two about the Instagram algorithm. Now for your class projects, I want you to actually test one of these things that I've spoken about. There may have been a myth that you commonly believed was true, but now I've debunked that and it's proved what you actually thought was wrong. And because it's wrong, I want you to test it so you can see that proof for yourself. So when you to go onto Instagram and test one of the things that I've deepened. And in the project section, I want you to tell me which one you have debunked and the results that you actually achieved from you testing it. So that is your course project. Test, one of the myths and see how it performs for you. But if you have enjoyed today's Gil Chicago, I just wanted to let you guys know that I am the host of the social media marketing School podcast. You can find it on pretty much any platform openness screenshot of the podcast here you can find on pretty much any podcast platform, Apple, Spotify, Google, anchor stitcher, you name it, all of them. Just search social media marketing school and you should find me there. But if you have any questions with regards to anything I've mentioned in this crochet clause, you can either leave a discussion point or you can reach out to me on Instagram at the marketing, Ethan, send me a DM and I'll get back to you no matter what. Now, if you've got any other questions with regards to social media marketing, again, just reach out to me on Instagram and I will be more than happy to answer any of your questions. But I just want to finish up by saying if you have made it to this point, thank you all for tuning into this Usha class and I hope to see you in one of my other classes over in future classes, I create.
Ethan Bridge, Social Media Marketing Coach
