I'm going to go ahead and admit it. I have a love, hate relationship with Instagram.
Instagram used to be the platform I’d visit to see incredible photography. In fact, the photographers of Instagram are who inspired me to get into photography and photo editing so I could showcase my lash art in it’s best light. And because of that, I’ve received a lot of compliments about the quality of the photos I share on Instagram throughout the years and as recently as a few days ago.
So when Instagram made recent changes to the algorithm in favor of video content such as eels and stopped showing love to photos, I wasn't too thrilled about it. My first thought was, "I spent all this time mastering photography and photo editing and now I have to learn to be a videographer too? Sigh…"
This may come as a surprise but as much as I talk about embracing change and trying new things, I really have a hard time making the adjustment to change. Especially if I feel like things are fine as they are and it’s a change that I don’t really like.
It’s frustrating to feel like I’ve spent so much time learning a skill that’s no longer even relevant. And on top of that, now I have to learn yet another skill in order to continue promoting my business, videography. I just wonder what the next thing will be and how long it will take before that skill becomes irrelevant.
It’s taken me a while to wrap my head around my approach to this but I finally caved and I’m starting to post reels to my Instagram page. Today, I want to share what I’ve discovered. Some of this I’ve learned from a handful of social media managers and experts. And some I’ve learned from simply trying out their advice and watching the results.
WHAT ARE INSTAGRAM’S GOALS?
The first thing I’ve learned is that when it comes to the current Instagram algorithm, Instagram’s goal is to keep people engaged and on the platform as long as possible. I don’t know if they’ve ever said this outright but Instagram makes money from advertising.
In order to be an attractive platform to advertise on, they need a lot of active users that are actively engaged on their platform. The more advertisers paying Instagram, the better. So as much as we hate seeing an ad after each post we see, it’s how Instagram pays it’s employees and keeps the platform going.
With this in mind, your goals as a lash artist need to align with Instagram in that you create content that they are more likely to show, one, and two, content that is engaging and keeps people on the platform longer.
This means that unless you already have a massive following, a post about your upcoming calendar openings and current availability will likely not get seen because it’s just not interesting or engaging to the general population of the Instagram community. It’s highly likely that a post like that won’t be seen or get much love with the algorithm.
These days, Instagram has moved towards videos a.k.a, reels on their platform. So you have a better chance of getting seen by your audience if you post reels and if those reels are interesting and get people engaging with your content, the more likely it is that Instagram will push your content out to more people similar to those that engage with your content.
HOW INSTAGRAM DECIDES WHO SEES YOUR CONTENT
Back in the day, it was pretty easy to get your content seen on Instagram. All you had to do was attach relevant (or irrelevant) hashtags to your posts and get seen by a lot of people. But these days, the algorithm is a lot smarter and more complex than it used to be. You could make a post with little to no hashtags at all and still be seen by a ton of people with the right strategy. The key is to create content that your audience likes and will likely engage with and write captions that explain what they’re looking at.
What I’ve learned recently is that Instagram prioritizes new, fresh content. So in saying that, don’t expect a post from a few weeks ago to continue getting traction on Instagram. Instead, you need to be consistently posting fresh, new content for users to see.
But not just any ol’ new content. It has to be engaging. But how does Instagram know if your content is engaging or not?
Here’s what I’ve recently discovered. When you post a reel, Instagram will only show your reel to a small percentage of people. If you get good engagement from that small group, it tells the platform that the content is good and Instagram will show it to another small group of people. If that next group engages with your content, again, that’s an indicator to Instagram that their users will like your content and they’ll show it to more and more people. This is how you get your content seen on the Instagram explore page. They’ll keep sending your stuff out to test groups and based on the way people engage with your content, that will determine how many people they show it to.
This is exactly what happened to me one morning. I shared a reel about how to pick up adhesive and since my engagement is low these days, I anticipated I’d get only a couple hundred views and a handful of likes over a period of a few days. So I posted, hopped off of the platform and when I jumped back on 30 minutes later, My post had been seen over a thousand times.
I assumed there was a glitch or I somehow got lucky with my timing but nope. I came back to the platform an hour later and the numbers had shot up to over 5 thousand views. By the end of the day, I had over 16,000 views and a bunch of likes, comments and saves.
For about a week or two after that, I continued getting engagement from people I didn’t know and a bunch of followers that were lash artists. 'What I learned from that is that Instagram trickles your content out initially. But if it’s good and people like it, your content will explode. All you have to do is create content that people want to see.
