Hello, friends! Instagram’s strange behaviour probably has not escaped you: most familiar methods for reaching the top results are less effective than they were just 2-3 months ago. Completely new ranking mechanisms and algorithms are responsible, and few people in the Russian-speaking web know about them.
Our clients confirm that purchased likes on photographs and videos no longer produce the breakthrough they once did in reaching the top results. The old promotion methods have simply become ineffective!
Today we examine Instagram’s latest changes. We spent dozens of hours analysing updates and features and collected detailed statistics from thousands of client profiles. There was enough information to organise into nine distinct points. Let us begin!
1. Target-audience reach is especially important
Most Instagram business users will know advanced analytics. To assess promotion, you can and should use target-audience reach. It also matters for top positions in tag and location search, although the rate at which likes and views arrive remains more important there.
The advice is simple: keep boosting the statistical indicators at the same pace as before. They affect how well you reach the target audience!
Why did Instagram’s administrators introduce this mechanism? The aim is clear: protection against cheap artificial boosting. If hundreds or even thousands of real followers open your posts, reach improves. If you use primitive API-request boosting, forget high reach! This factor may soon become central: Instagram’s creators are actively promoting target-audience reach and testing and refining the new features.
Conclusion: order automatic likes and views ONLY when they genuinely improve target-audience reach. The boosting procedure remains the same: ordered likes and auto likes should be activated IMMEDIATELY when new photographs or videos are added to your account.
2. Top lists on different Instagram devices and profiles can be different!
Are you familiar with how YouTube recommendations are formed? The video platform analyses keywords in descriptions of the videos a user watches. Suppose you are interested in styling blonde hair in strong wind (an abstract example — the principles of #hashtag analysis are broadly similar). After each video, the bot collects information about your interests. YouTube then forms a recommendation list containing videos with closely related or matching search keywords in their descriptions. Simple and effective!
What does this have to do with Instagram’s new measurement methods? Its top-list ranking algorithms also keep changing. At present, these lists include posts with #hashtags closely matching those of your followers. Confusing, illogical and inconvenient — yet this mechanism has not been activated! Instead, other changes were made: the lists include photographs and videos from users Instagram considers at least indirectly connected to your profile. Likes on the same popular bloggers’ posts, following the same accounts and shared followers are the data the bot uses to build recommendations.
Have you noticed photographs from complete strangers appearing in the top-post lists? Unfortunately, this system is already running — we can only accept it and learn how to use it!
Conclusion: do not trust the apparent authenticity of Instagram’s top-post lists after the latest update. They include content from people you follow, even though those posts have no actual chance of reaching the top!
3. Current lists of TOP publications in the Instagram app are no longer available
The previous point raises a question: how can you assess the chances of reaching the top results? A normal web browser still works, on a computer or smartphone. Open Instagram’s official website and DO NOT LOG IN — this matters! Then open #hashtag search. The lists appear without follower recommendations and other clutter; these are the top results you can and should use as a reference.
Conclusion: monitor the positions of ALL your posts when promoting content into the top results. If the profile’s statistical indicators, or those of an individual post, are insufficient, Instagram may replace your content with recommendations that simply do not interest your target audience.
4. Clearing the search history is no longer useful — the TOP list is formed without taking into account user requests
Do you browse Instagram in the official app? Unfortunately, recommendation blocks in the top lists are now unavoidable. Even if your profile follows nobody (which is not sensible for SMM promotion), simply linking it to Facebook will be enough. The top lists will almost certainly be filled with unrelated “junk” rather than genuinely good content — those are the new rules!
Conclusion: When performing a comprehensive analysis of competitors and the effectiveness of SMM promotion, you should not use the original Instagram application.
5. Promotion in the TOP by hashtags does not mean the overall success of promotion!
These changes do have a positive side! Suppose your content has reached the top results for search tags and a location (using a location is ESSENTIAL!). Promotion performance will depend on the tags: if you selected nothing but high-volume search terms, there will be practically no follower growth.
Current and prospective business coaches and SMM instructors can skip this point. Almost every training session and seminar teaches the same thing: “every post must reach the top for high-volume keywords…” and “content must also rank highly by location…”. It is complete nonsense. The purpose of these tales is obvious: to sell another low-quality Instagram promotion service!
What actually happens? Reaching the top results for high-volume tags produces just one result — 200-300 BOTS FROM USERS RUNNING MASS FOLLOWING. Think about it: have you EVER used #hashtag search to find genuinely interesting content? Exactly — nobody uses this mechanism!
As you can see, reaching top results for high- and medium-volume keywords is pointless. Low-volume keywords are the most effective approach; posts also stay near the top longer, and promotion costs less!
Conclusion: use low-volume search keywords in post descriptions and location tags on every post. This gives you a narrower audience of potential customers genuinely interested in your services, while promotion for low-volume keywords also costs much less.
Practical advice: use at least 10-20 search tags under each post: 2-5 medium-volume keywords, 2-5 high-volume keywords and suitable, relevant low-volume terms for the rest. Choose actual locations where your target audience spends time. Broad labels such as New York City, NY or Red Square make little sense: your post will drown among millions of similar ones!
6. Now the search tags in the comment block are taken into account!
We are sure that SMM promotion specialists will argue for a long time about the effectiveness of this method of promotion. Recall that Instagram has a “floating” method of accounting for hashtags, because of which the “conditions of the game” are constantly changing. But at the moment, such a promotion brings its fruits!
An important point: #hashtags in the comments are just as important as those in post descriptions! If promotion is effective enough, you can use both placements to push posts into the top results.
Conclusion: Put 10 to 20 keywords in the photo or video description. Do not stuff it with queries: experiments show very poor results with 30 or more keywords. You can add another 10-20 unique keywords in the comments, where they also count towards top-result placement.
7. The speed of gaining likes and views takes priority
Are you worried you cannot make sense of all these changes? The good old promotion methods still work. If you doubt it, read point 8: it should settle the question!
Most readers will already have experience with combined Instagram SMM promotion. Continue using those methods, but account for points 1-3 of this article. Put simply, the promotion principles remain relevant, but choose each method carefully. For better results, use basic SMO principles; if the term is unfamiliar, read the relevant Wikipedia article.
Conclusion: consider how quickly your posts accumulate likes and views. If content rapidly receives reactions from REAL users, good reach among your target audience is guaranteed! We also recommend supporting the boosting with regular purchases of likes and views, which substantially improve reach.
8. Be sure to take into account the ER indicators when fighting for new subscribers!
ER (Engagement Rate) shows how interested followers are in your posts. As Instagram’s promotion algorithms change, the importance of this measure keeps increasing. ER may soon become the key indicator determining an account’s popularity among its followers.
This index is divided into two types: public and internal. Let’s understand their meaning in more detail:
- Public ER. Approximate calculation of its value is available to all Instagram users. To do this, you should take into account the ratio of four indicators: likes, reposts, comments and views of video publications of your profile. This method is quite inaccurate, but this is how Instagram calculates the ER score.
If your account already has 1000 “live” followers, at least 100 likes, up to ten comments and up to 200 video views (under each post, of course!), the ER coefficient will be quite high. Another type of ER calculation was implemented recently and is available only to the Instagram administration - it will be much more difficult to take into account such indicators.
- Internal ER. The key difference from public ER is that Instagram calculates the ENGAGEMENT (INTEREST) OF ALL FOLLOWERS IN YOUR POSTS. Calculating this ER manually is practically impossible.
Internal ER filters genuinely interesting content from thousands of profiles with cheaply inflated statistics. Remember that most bots do not follow their target audience but immediately attack users with irrelevant comments and likes.
Now Instagram takes into account only the public ER index, which is used to form TOP lists by hashtags and geo-tags. For the block of recommendations, the indicator of internal ER is calculated! During the testing of our customers’ profiles, we noticed one strange feature constant jumps in social activity in some accounts. The reasons and consequences of their appearance are in our subsequent publications!
9. Can you really increase ER? A brief digression!
For our part, we will give some practical tips that will help improve the quality of your promotion:
- all bot followers should be blocked. Clean up the list regularly!
- unfollow accounts that have not followed you back;
- avoid services offering bot-follower boosting;
- IN EVERY POST, WITHOUT EXCEPTION, ask unobtrusive questions that encourage feedback from followers. Give your target audience something to engage with!
- under every post — up to five high- and medium-volume keywords and up to ten low-volume ones. Take time to find search terms: this really matters for reaching the top!
- remember tags on your photographs. Tag people genuinely relevant to the post; do not spam!
- any like boosting should be prompt and reach as much of the target audience as possible;
- order boosted likes every 2-3 posts, even if the top results are still far away!
- If you have your own “personal” hashtag use it on all publications. For example, the name of your company or institution;
- Stay in constant contact with subscribers. Moreover, we should not ignore their questions!
- Again, ask questions! “What do you want to see in the next posts, my friends?” Remember, people like to communicate with people, not with bots!
- Do you represent the field of SMM promotion? DO NOT post boring posts about promotion on Instagram or other social networks! All products or services should be published as a price list - so much more convenient for subscribers. We advise you to post more posts “from life”: beautiful photos, interesting places or videos. In the comments to such publications - your offers or services. Verified - this method is the most effective!
- geo-tags are mandatory for all publications;
- a separate point for readers who think a 9-piece Instagram grid mosaic is cool: at least 1-2 times a month, publish a standalone filler post and promote it into top #hashtag results. Delete it afterwards if you wish, restoring space for the mosaic. Otherwise, forget good ER!
- Live Streams are a great promotion tool! Now they are not used by almost any of the competitors (for the purpose of promotion, of course). Efficiency is tested!
P.S. We will not explain every tip in detail RIGHT NOW: each recommendation deserves its own article! For now, benefit from our experience — as always, entirely free for readers.
Finally, we wish you to quickly understand the innovations and use them as efficiently as possible!
Good luck, friends!
To learn more about social media promotion methods, we recommend training at the BoS Technologies SMM school. Follow this link: Detailed information about SMM school.
