The “Post” apocalypse of Instagram is upon us and it’s at the hand of the machines. We can expect a wasteland of spammy meme recycling and brand plugging accounts. We need to make sure we are adapting to these changes if we intend to survive this feed fallout. Let's all think clearly before falling victim to the Instagram Notifications armageddon
Turning on Instagram Notifications
Instagram recently announced it would be featuring a Facebook like algorithm to change the order we see posts. This announcement caused an Internet wide frenzy last week. We’ve all seen accounts doomsday prepping by begging users to “turn on notifications”. There’s no need to bombard your phone with a notification on every picture or video posted; instead embrace the update.
Our Instagram feeds currently show posts in reverse chronological order. The coming changes will be rearranging the way we see these posts. The order of photos and videos in your feed will be based on the likelihood you’ll be interested in the content, your relationship with the person posting and the time it was posted. Facebook, who purchased Instagram in 2012, made a similar change to it’s feed in 2014, met by a lot of the same resistance. All it’s really doing is throwing what we authentically want to interact with closer to the top of our feed.
Fear not, we won’t be missing any Internet breaking posts.
People opposing these changes have a fear of missing out on all the posts they follow once this update happens. Fear not, we won’t be missing any Internet breaking posts. These changes are actually more about ensuring that we don’t miss what’s important to us. As Instagram is growing it’s becoming harder to see all videos and pictures shared by the many accounts we follow. According to Instagram we are missing on average seventy percent of what’s on our feed. This is their way of taking all the congestion and filtering it into something more entertaining for us.
The change is mostly going to affect the accounts with large amounts of followers who are endorsing products. So many accounts are getting away from the original appeal of their posts to endorse a product or even their latest account for users to follow. Instagram has become a wasteland of useless accounts and robots that we have forgotten to unfollow. The algorithm update is going to lessen the visibility of these accounts and force them to revaluate what or how they’re posting. This is really going to change the value these users will have to companies trying to advertise.
The Marketing Shift is Upon Us
We are most likely going to see advertising shift from using specific accounts by way of influencer advertising, to placing ads direct on the platform. There’s no longer a need for companies to throw money to specific users if they’re not sure how visible those postings are. Even now Instagram has introduced a count on number of views videos receive once posted. We are really starting to see the impact of each post. This update will give Instagram a way of guaranteeing companies that advertise directly through them that they’re reaching their desired audience. Instagram advertising, just like Facebook, will soon require a bit more strategy from brands looking to fill their marketing funnels with app users. The gain to be realized in the metrics and direct performance reporting.
Pro Tip:
Use your profile link wisely. Connect your Instagram Traffic in Google Analytics ➞
Visibility is a huge concern for everyone on Instagram. It doesn’t matter if your account is promoting yourself or your business. To survive the visibility battle we need to take a more strategic approach to posting. It’s important to make sure we are posting at a high traffic time of day. We need to make sure we are using hashtags that are relevant to the audience we are trying to reach. We need to find ways to be interactive with users. Calls to action to the viewers might be asking for a double tap, a comment or to tag a friend. The more users are interacting with our accounts the higher up we will move in the feed.
This change will be the death of irrelevance within Instagram. To thrive in this update will require posting value to our audience. If we can’t adapt we will slowly slide down the feeds and remain unseen.
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