As we have seen, social media has changed tremendously over time and continues to change over time. Different platforms will come and go, but one social media platform that continually changes is Instagram. Personally, Instagram is my favorite platform that exists. I have seen this platform change so much with the structure and features that have been introduced. Most recently, there has been a change in the algorithm. The algorithm is no longer structured on the number of likes that a post gets. The posts that now gets pushed to more viewing is a post that gets more saved. To me, this is something that I enjoy. This past year we have seen how educational, social media can be. Instagram is no longer a place to show pretty fun things. It has been the place where people can learn about new topics and find resources. I love the save feature. I continually have a post that I want to go back to. I have all my saved posts organized by type of content. This new switch brought the idea and thought that it is time to start creating valuable content now more than ever.
Now more than ever, I think it is essential for brands and influencers to create content with value. What do you or your brand add to your following lives via social media? What is something in your post that your following may want to refer to later? To determine that, I think it is essential to sit down and look at the purpose of using Instagram as a brand or influencer. Structure Instagram almost as a resource hub, where the following can come and learn something. Look at what insight your brand can provide to your following. The Instagram platforms that are gaining a big following are the ones such as “So you want to talk about” or even “we are not strangers” these are handles that have a strict purpose for each of the content they post and add value to their followers. I have worked for different types of companies, and I can see how valuable content can help increase not only following but engagement. For example, I work on social media for the financial wellness center at the University of Oregon. This is not glamourous social media content, and one might even wonder how you grow a social media following for an account like this. We have grown our platform in the past five months by at least 30 new followers a week. Our team posts a bunch of different content for Instagram, but the content that does the best and grows a following is the content that has value. For example, we will make a post all about credit, a carousel of graphics about building credit, the basics of credit, and where to get a credit card. A post like this will have varying from 30 to one of our posts in this format had 189 saves on Instagram. Because this post has such valuable information, these posts will also have at least 20 to 30 shares. People are sending it all around, so not only is our following seeing the post, but it is expanding beyond our following, resulting in more followers. With updates comes restructuring, so structure your content to add value and see your Instagram growth.