Some of you have probably heard about this or figured it out but since September 1st a lot of people’s engagement and reach has dropped drastically (including accounts with hundreds of thousands of followers.) People think it’s because IG wants people to be using Reels more so they are pushing Reels content more to followers instead of regular posts. I still see some people not being affected by this and getting good engagement on their posts, so I was wondering if anyone has any recommendations for getting my posts to reach more of my followers.
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If that’s true, that would be (another) terrible decision made by Instagram. You can’t force Instagram to be like TikTok.
The first point why this isn’t working is the age of the platform. The reason why TikTok gives their users so much organic exposure is because it’s fairly new and in the beginning stages. At the beginning they are attracting users to signup, create and engage just like Facebook and Instagram did. For TikTok it will take some time until paid ads will be established on the platform, but FB/IG went already through the process of bringing the users into the platform. Now they’re heavily optimized for paid ads.
Secondly Instagram started as a photo sharing platform. Even though video gets more popular over the years there are a lot of users on Instagram who are more likely to post photo content. What Instagram is trying to do here is the same as when Nike would start selling suits. But that’s just my opinion.
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I doubt they are killing anything,they just try to push a new feature like they have been doing with every new feature.
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I agree.
Some people said that the same thing that is happening now happened to them when IG first released IGTV, but I don’t remember a lot of people complaining about their reach dropping due to that.
I don’t have a Tiktok account and I personally find Reels annoying on my feed, it’s just a copy of Tiktok but unfortunately if Tiktok gets banned in the US it might just become the new platform for posting that type of content. We all saw how IG took over stories from Snapchat (I honestly can’t remember the last time I’ve posted a story on Snapchat.)
Don’t know what exactly changed during the new update, however from personal experience I have over a 100k on my personal account and I saw a drastic drop in engagement on my 2 posts since sept 1st. Going to post again today and see if it’s still as bad. If this helps…
One thing I have noticed, maybe it’s already changed, but you can’t prevent Reels content from showing up in your Explore feed. You can mark other things as not relevant, but not Reels videos, you can only hide them but random trash keeps showing up no matter what.
They’re definitely forcing it onto users, but that’s a given since it’s a new feature and they want to desperately compete with Tok. That being said, there’s always an engagement drop around this time of year when school starts. However with covid stopping school from starting in the US at least, my expectations were that things wouldn’t be as reduced as previously… doesn’t seem to be the case, engagement has plummeted and follower loss is at a major high point that I can’t seem to counter.
All I see on Explore now is a Reel of some random girl flashing her booty doing some shit dance for 1M views… definitely the same as TikTok now LOL
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Please stop with these ‘reach drop’ threads it’s nothing new or groundbreaking.
Instagram pushes new features all the time, it’s logic that the amount of real estate and space will also be reduced for other forms of content like feed posts.
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- Wait until the Reels push is over and it becomes a normal part of insta, after that they probaly will push IGTV as was mentioned start of this year.
- Better content.
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Has anyone ever stopped to think that engagement suffers because people are tired of liking mundane posts of you and your dog? Or strangers you grew your account with do not know you and although they followed you, will not like posts because they simply have no connection to you? People love to bitch about IG throttling engagement, but the bottom line is if you do not have a connection or add value to someone, they aren’t going to like random posts. At scale (meaning IG wide) engagement is and always will be fucked as accounts grow.
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In some cases you may be right, but thats pretty naive really. Of course people will get bored, thats without question. I made lots of AB tests to prove myself, that if your account has good trust score, content will be displayed to those who interacted previously. If you did something wrong, it will be displayed to someone else. Same content, 30 accounts for tests, average of 30k followers, similar follower base, none bought, completely different results. Good content is a must and there is no question about that, but there is much more about how algorithm steers your posts to specific users what gives different results.
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About loosing followers and dropping engagement I agree that it’s the job of the profile holder / account manager to prevent this from happening even when the algorithm is not at favour. But what I see now is Instagram cleaning their platform like never before. The US elections are just 2 months away from now. I think this will get better after November 3rd.
I wrote this on facebook last night
“It amazes me – Be it Insta, Tiktok, Facebook or any other social platform.
Everybody wants growth. They search under rocks, over the moon, in 'Guru’s, in EG groups, in bots – even paid likes or fake followers, THEY LOOK ALL OVER EXCEPT ONE PLACE WHERE IT COUNTS,
Their content.
If you work on that to give what your followers like – you will grow 99.99999 percent of the time.
Goodnight”
Folks, ER problems? As long as your account ‘trusted’ and healthy – look at content… not the crystal ball
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But good content is so subjective man. It’s an never ending trap of bs. You need to provide value for someone at a specific point of time. It’s not always IG’s fault.
Straight up. 99% will not honestly get their head out of their asses and objectively look at their accounts. Most content is mundane shit, mine included.
My friends and family always like my shit, but not the 25K strangers I grew my account with. Here and there, sure…
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I think it’s important to focus on unleashing the emotion in your audience.
Does it make them feel:
-Surprised? Angry? Happy? Shocked? Amazed? Intrigued?
Emotions are what drive engagement.
We also do not engage with posts that are too similar to what we have seen before. So having something VERY DIFFERENT triggers emotion of “That’s interesting” or “That’s New”
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