For those who use Instagram by now you've probably heard the big news!
For those not yet in the know, Instagram announced this week that it will be ordering your timeline very differently.
Instead of seeing posts in chronological order, like you do now; you will now see posts according to:
1. What Instagram thinks you’d be most interested in,
2. Your relationship with the person posting (accounts that you follow, like and comment on), and
3. The timeliness of the post.
If this sounds familiar, it should because it’s the way Facebook and Twitter currently work.
Instagram’s premise is that as it has grown, the amount of content shared on its platform has exploded in tandem and many users are missing an average of 70% of posts.
The upside to this change is that if you now miss a post from your favourite account or miss a giveaway post from your favourite seller for example, you will find that post front and centre on your timeline when you wake up.
For sellers this means no longer having to worry about the best time to post. (Sorry Iconosquare!)
On the flipside however, sellers will now be competing with other popular accounts for users attention. Popular accounts (those that have many followers liking and commenting) are likely to show up first on your followers’ timeline, pushing your posts to the bottom.
This is what happened to Facebook’s timeline and is now causing alarm around the Instagram community especially for small businesses. Instagram has said that it is currently testing this new change and is taking feedback from users before sitewide rollout.
Given however that Facebook does OWN Instagram, it is more than likely that this change will stick.
As change is ultimately inevitable, this is what you can do to ensure that your followers are still seeing your posts.
1. Engagement is now going to be extremely critical. Great pictures, a cohesive feed and hashtags are still important to draw in followers but you need to ensure your followers are staying long enough to like and comment on your posts. A few tips to get that going:
- Ask questions
- Tell your business story. One example would be participating in the #MarchMeettheMaker series
- Give value with every post – educate, teach, humor, etc
- Include clear call to actions in every post. Ask them explicitly, where appropriate, to comment, like, tag, etc
- Run contests and giveaways
Posts with hashtags only are no longer going to fly!
2. Ask your followers to turn on the “Post Notification” button so that they are notified when you post. The Post Notification button is available on the drop down list at the top right corner of a users account. (The 3 little buttons on the top right. You can only see the feature if you are following a specific account)
What do you think? Should Instagram keep or discard this proposed change?
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Many have gone online to sign a petition to request Instagram to keep the feed in chronological order. For those so inclined, atleast to request that they give everyone an option to opt in and out of this feature, the link for the petition is here:
www.change.org/p/keep-instagram-chronological
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More Instagram tips at
https://www.etsy.com/teams/27245/instagram-marketing
