Instagram is one of the most popular social media apps in which many users share photos and videos to their following and utilize the algorithm to boost their content to a wider audience with hashtags and engagement. The idea of Instagram is a dream for influencers and business. A platform that holds a loyal audience, give users control of their image and profile theme, and sociability features like Instagram Stories with many interactive features for the audience to engage with. As the market of social media continues to take over, many users are able to capitalize off Instagram and find a way to curate income through sponsored stories and posts, discount codes and partnerships with big brands.
Social media platforms have to constantly push out updates to improve their app and Instagram is no exception. The problem with Instagram is that they have made changes that work against smaller artists and businesses, such as switching from chronological to an algorithmic feed. After this shift in the app, many users noticed the engagements from their audience dropped. Under the new algorithm, whenever a user posts a photo or a video to the timeline, Instagram will show that post to about 10% of their followers and they will measure the engagement that post received as a test run to compare how successful that particular post was to the users’ other content engagements. From that, Instagram will determine if their page is relevant enough to push their content to an increased number of a users following or if to decrease that number. As of Sept. 7, 2021, Instagram has not released any comment or statement about the algorithm issue.
It did not take long before users started using other social media platforms, such as Twitter and TikTok, to build a community where they don’t need to rely on an algorithm like Instagram’s. An alternative way users found to succeed on the app is joining Instagram pods. It is supposed to connect similar niche users, so they can boost each other content, which is suppose to ‘trick’ Instagram to deem everyone in the pod’s content relevant to release their content to a bigger audience on the explore page and to their following. Another solution users have found that will increase their engagement is posting during the feed’s most active hour. Sprout, a social media company, has shown the best time to post on Instagram and when will people be the most interactive to avoid a users content being hidden.
While there seems to be no changes coming to Instagram algorithm any time soon, these temporary solutions seem to help for now.