Social media platforms are an important tool in every digital marketing manager’s arsenal. Taking full advantage of them, however, requires more effort than just producing and publishing quality content. No one can successfully drive a social media business profile blindfolded – by which we mean without analytics. In this article, we’ll show you the true meaning of reach and engagement algorithms on Instagram and teach you how to benefit from tracking them. Reach and Engagement on Instagram became a means of profit and trade and an impressive, massive and easy way for commercial advertisements and bloggers to benefit from it.
How does the Instagram algorithm work?
According to digital account Manager, Omar Moussa, “the Instagram algorithm decides which content gets seen. Every single time a person opens the app, the algorithm instantly matches your interests with which posts go to the top of the newsfeed and which posts are featured in the Explore tab, as well as which order Stories, Live videos, Reels and IGTV videos show up, and their respective tabs, etc.”
Basically, it looks at the user’s past behavior, sweeps all the available posts or pieces of content, and then evaluates each one to predict how interesting it is to that user. The most interesting content goes to the top.
So, how does the Instagram algorithm decide what content to show people?
According to programmer, Mahmoud El-Omda, Instagram algorithms pick content to show users based on some factors, as follows:
Interest: What you see in your Instagram feed is a result of all of your Instagram activities. The higher a post appears in your feed, the more the Instagram algorithm believes you will "like" it.
Relationship: Instagram's algorithm analyzes your interactions to determine who is closest to you. As soon as you follow someone, Instagram will attempt to calculate this relationship (and your level of interest) by serving you their content and monitoring how you interact with it.
Timeliness: Instagram's algorithm considers how much engagement your post receives. It also considers how recently the photo was posted. You can get around the algorithm by determining your personal best time to post on Instagram.
Frequency: If you're a frequent scroller, your feed will look more chronological, since Instagram tries to show you the best posts since your last visit.
Following: How many people do you follow on Instagram? If you follow a lot of people, then Instagram has more options to choose from, so you probably won’t see all of the posts from every account.
Usage: If you spend a lot of time on Instagram, you'll notice more posts as the app searches deeper into its archive. If you only spend a few minutes per day, the algorithm will only show you the highlights of the day.
How do you develop reach & engagement on Instagram?
Digital marketing specialist, Mohamed Sameer, said that there are two things in social media to develop reach and engagement on Instagram. The first thing is organic advertisements, it is an unpaid advertisement used by social media specialists to develop their reach through Stories, comments and Competitions. The second thing is paid advertisements, social media specialists should get a campaign budget for a month to make promoted advertisements on Instagram. However, Paid advertisements are better than Organic advertisements to develop reach & engagement.
Sameer added that Bloggers or Influencers are now developing their pages using Tiktok videos, comedy videos, posts, Stories to save reach from breaking down. When influencers publish posts or stories to advertise a product, they receive a high engagement rate and therefore the product as well receives more followers. This means that influencers rely on organic advertisements.
In Addition, HijabBlogger Hadeer ElMaghraby mentioned that she Develops reach and engagement on instagram by posting more than 10 stories per day. As well as communicating directly with her audience in stories, making reels, IGTV videos and publishing posts everyday by finding the audience’s best personalized time to post on Instagram.
It is worth mentioning, the Instagram algorithm is the set of rules that controls your content’s organic reach. It is a topic of controversy debated by many social media enthusiasts, where some would like the old algorithm to make its return, “bring back reverse-chronological”. However, Instagram says that before the algorithm was implemented in 2016, people used to miss 70% of the posts, and 50% of their friends’ posts.
