Put in the work and learn to nurture

Well, it may not be the equal of the great Instagram purge of 2014, but the times they are changing for users of the social juggernaut. In January word began spreading of an algorithm change for Instagram, and it seems it’s finally hitting home for a lot of users, namely influencers.

Being knee-deep in the social media muck for many years has provided me with numerous gifts such as showing me how not to dress like I’ve been shacked up in a cabin for the past 20 years, introducing me to countless hours of cat videos and being able to spot gimmicky, hacky tactics and users of said tactics a mile away.

Let’s boil this down, shall we? If Instagram were capable of expressing it’s deepest desires it would want its users to have a fulfilling human experience through imagery and video.

How? Less spam, fewer gimmicks, less blatantly half-assed product promotions from influencers, more genuine interaction, more in-the-moment moments, more responsiveness and more thoughtfulness.

Now we rehydrate with some details.

It’s highly speculated that Instagram will now be penalizing users for the following:

Too many #’s

5 or less is optimal
make sure those 5 are relevant to the brand and the image
don’t always use the same #’s
Using banned #’s

https://thepreviewapp.com/list-of-banned-instagram-hashtags-2018/
Editing your posts after the initial publishing

wait 24 hours before doing so
Unresponsiveness

show your commenters some love in 60 minutes or less
No half-assing it

respond to your commenters in a meaningful way, e.g. in 5 or more words
Take caution using Comment Pods

This should be a straight forward and wholly beneficial implementation for brands and influencers alike. These changes come as Instagram moves from a stance of amassing MAUs to creating a place where users spend ungodly amounts of time on their platform.

Now, there will always be people that want to game the system and not put in the hard work and genuinely invest themselves in the profound relationship building possibility on these platforms, but this is a step in the right direction.

I will end with a conceptual and actionable take-away; if you want visibility, take the time and make an effort to earn that visibility. For a health/fitness client, I set up a dashboard on Hootsuite (**FREE**) monitoring posts with location tags of 90 gyms (9 streams with 10 gyms each) and day after day engaged with those that frequented the gym. Boom!

Platforms change, algorithms change but being human is never the wrong strategy.