I have the exactly same problem, i am @kdallasteppa on ig, a simple photographer that want to skyrock instagram! in January i was under 10k follower and any of my post coulded easily get 1500 likes. i was pretty happy because i was still learning photography! Now that i am pretty good at this art and that my followers are almost 20k the likes are dropped like death. Now i will try all this suggestion and to remove all my least liked media to increase the er
doesnāt matter and doesnāt work. You canāt adjust your ER by deleting low-performing posts. It will look better to the outside but the IG algorithm will still know whatās up.
And what should i do?
Interesting. I have an account with 19k followers, also with low reach & engagement. All real human non paid for followers.
When it was under 10k engagement was high. At this time, there wasnāt any insights, so I assume posts had high reach as well. I looked around at other accounts at the time and noticed that when your account is very small you get lots of engagement (and probably exposure to get that engagement), and as the account grows in size this drops off. That is the pattern I observed a few years back, and I put it down to the fact that people have a different relationship with a āfriendā or even āsmall businessā, but feel less comfortable commenting on something more publicly.
Since then I left the account inactive for a year, and Facebook bought instagram and started messing around. I now have 19k followers, but I also have a reach of about 3-4k per post, and of that about 3-400 likes and a few comments. Iām not using hashtags (which this post has reminded me that I should), and if lack of engagement is keeping me in a loop of low reaching posts than I should probably try out those engagement groups or at least do some posts which encourage commenting to boost this.
Interesting idea to start a secondary account as a back up planā¦
I wonder how much of this is due to the previous inactivity of the account, how much is due to Facebook buying IG and wanting to push ads, how much of it is a cycle of low reach = low engagement = low reach, and how much is down to the pattern of drop of engagement that occurs as accounts growā¦ Any ideas?
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Also curious if others share this view -This is what i previously thought and it helped me see if posts were performing well or also when interacting with other accounts I could get a sense if their audience was real.
Health Check for IG Posts
less than 100 followers = 20% engagement rate
less than 1k followers = 15% engagements rate
1k - 100k followers = 10% engagement rate
100k + followers = 5% engagement rate
What do you guys think? It is a rough guide obviously.
Hi Adnan, wich level i need to read this threads?
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You will need to be one more level above to read āprivateā posts. Just continue to read, add value via information or relevant topics etc, and you will be there soon.
OK, thank you 
5% engagement for 100k seems quite high to me. Would that be on average 5%? A lot of the same niche accounts Iām scraping has average 3-5k engagement per photo, posting only once a day
For 100k followers, Iād say that 3-5k engagement per photo is pretty low. I think for that size of account having somewhere between 7k-10+k is good engagement
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thank youā¦
Yeah, itās kinda low.
For my smaller accounts (1500-3000 followers) I regularly get 200-300 likes. But less comments, which annoys me. This is definitely a thing I want to improve soon.
Good information here, thanks!
we live in a new instagram. i have 3 100k accounts. quotesā¦2-3 percent is norm without eg groupsā¦
different niches have different rates alsoā¦there is no general rule anymore.
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@BrandonBerner great reply post. Can you expand on āImprove your targetingā. How do you target? Are you putting there username in the description, comments, or sending a DM?
He is not posting on this forum anymore.
Try to like and comment on the accounts that are in your niche and have good engagement. This way your account will get exposure and the accounts you engage with, will start engaging with your content.
Hey thanks for the links, just curious how do I access these threads?
lots of god info here guys
same problem here! Low reach on my 80k account ( ranging from 3k - 8k, so ridiculous)
I guess ill give growing a new account a try instead.