“Is it true that posts in the feed are now shown differently?” - I get another question at a webinar on SMM. The new principle of ranking news has made life more difficult not only for specialists, but also for entrepreneurs promoting their projects. How to deal with the fact that records are now shuffled like cards in a deck, and how to increase coverage - in this material.
After Instagram officially announced a new “smart” feed, some KPIs and principles of working with the social network changed: now the race for the number of subscribers, but systematic work to increase reach, came to the fore. They are now fighting to increase engagement in all ways: not only officially permitted, but also “gray”. Bloggers unite in closed chats to which they add their posts. They share publications and then mutually comment on each other’s posts.
In addition to such attempts to increase your involvement, there are services with paid account boosts: Google returns more than a million results for the query “Instagram boost.”
So which posts are winning in the new search rankings?
- Posts from people with whom you are corresponding, you know in real life or you are friends on Facebook.
- Posts from people whose content you react to with views, likes, saves and comments.
- Posts from people you searched for in general social network searches.
- Posts from real users (they are given priority for display compared to commercial pages and business profiles).
- Posts that are promoted using targeted advertising.
- All other posts.
Comment by Ivan Danilchenko (head of the social dating agency GetFame Agency):
Recently there has been a fashion for a new feature: a sanitary day in the account. This is when you block accounts that have at least 1000 subscriptions to other accounts that have Arabic and Turkish letters. I was subscribed to 150 accounts, but per day I viewed a maximum of 20-30 profiles in my feed. Guys who have 1000 or more subscriptions obviously won’t see your profile, but they greatly spoil the statistics.
As we found out, the algorithm randomly shows your photo to some of your subscribers and if they like it, it moves the photo up in everyone’s feed, which gives a strong increase in likes. If the algorithm randomly selected accounts that have a lot of subscriptions, and you did not receive any reactions, then your photo or video will remain in the footer of the feed.
Allowed ways to boost your post in the feed without resorting to dubious methods:
Repeat and remember
The new principle of ranking posts is not clear to all specialists. The algorithm is designed to make the feed more interesting, useful and of higher quality, but on the contrary, it has made the work of many more difficult. What to do in the new conditions?
- Forget about illegal methods of cheating, mass following and mass liking, remove hashtashes: they will not help.
- Remember the golden rule: high-quality, engaging content is shown first.
- Use advertising, actively implement new features, block all inactive subscribers.
Everything flies, everything changes and Instagram is no exception. If previously, to promote a page, you could limit yourself to mass following, but now everything is much more complicated. Instagram algorithms do not sleep and only allow content that “enters” into the feed. How do they determine this? According to the audience's reaction. In this article we will look at mechanics that will help increase engagement.
Why is this useful?
- Coverage increases. If the user liked, commented and was otherwise active on your page, then your posts will be shown to him more often.
- The probability of getting to the top increases, which also leads to an increase in coverage.
How to increase engagement?
It's probably your content. Ask yourself: “Is our content interesting for the audience?”, “Are the photos and text beautiful enough?” If everything is ok with the filling, then we move on.An Instagram user is a lazy user. He doesn’t want to strain, doesn’t want to think, he just wants to consume. Let's consider specific techniques that will push our user to be active on our page.
2. Questions and surveys. The easiest way to get a response in the comments is to ask a question or get an opinion in a post. It shouldn't be too complicated. To make your subscriber's life easier, you can offer response options. And in order to show your interest, express your opinion first.
Example for a cinema page:
“Friends, which of the September new products did you like best and why?”
“The following premieres await you in October (list of films), which one would you like to attend most?”
3. Offer to ask. People sometimes have questions, but they are embarrassed to ask because they think that they will be ignored. Give them the opportunity to ask.
4. Call to action. So ask your subscribers: “Like it, write a comment.”
5. Live consultation. Live broadcasting is a very useful format, thanks to which you can introduce your audience to yourself and your product, communicate and receive feedback. This makes your subscribers more loyal to you.
6. Ask for advice
Example:
"Suggest a good hairdresser in the center" or “Where is the best place to go with the kids on the weekend?”
7. Dating post. Invite your subscribers to tell about themselves, their hobbies, activities, and services provided.
8. Post condition
Example:
“If this post gets 200 likes, I will make a video about instant messaging on Instagram.”
Audience opinion. Find out what people would like to know about in your next post.
Competitions and sweepstakes. There are various competition mechanics. For example, you can give away a prize for the most comments. You can come up with a task: “complete the sentence...”, “the funniest comment”, etc.
Today we want to turn to the social network Instagram. On the pages of our website you will find information about tools that make it easier to work on this network, but now I would like to touch on the sore subject for many of subscribers’ involvement in the life of the account, about activity and any actions that prove it (likes, comments, targeted actions ). We will discuss this topic with designer and SMM specialist, Evgenia Ashirova.
Post ranking
At the moment, on Instagram, the same situation is emerging that we could see several years ago on Facebook, when initially the publication had a very high organic reach and this allowed promotion for free. With a good viral post, you could gain up to five hundred subscribers, if not more, easily and completely free of charge.
But after Facebook turned on the smart feed and ranking of posts, the organic reach of posts began to fall sharply, and the fall was forced. On Instagram we are now seeing the same changes. The era of pure organic reach is gone and we now have to overcome smart feed rankings.
Organic reach on Instagram has been dropping quite significantly, especially in the last three weeks, and everyone has noticed this drop. The number of likes and comments has sharply decreased, that is, people simply don’t see your posts. Only some accounts that have very good engagement and a good connection with their followers have escaped this fate. That is, you can make the smart tape work for you, but to do this you will first have to work for yourself. So today we’re going to talk about exactly what things are making your posts pop up in your feed. Let's look at this in the order of interaction with the subscriber.
Increasing subscriber activity:
1. The quality of the post is important
It is very important to get a good reaction from your subscribers in the first hour after publication, then your post will last longer in the feed and will provoke a reaction for a longer time.
This indicator is affected by:
- Photo quality (never publish low-quality, blurry photos, in this case less is more). This rule can only be broken if your audience has come to read you and is already loyal, that is, it is not the photo that is important to them, but the content.
- At the beginning of the post, include catchy information that will provoke reading of the post.
- Be sure to divide your text into paragraphs: the text should be “combed” and readable.
- At the end of the post, you can and even should ask provocative questions in order to stimulate communication with subscribers.
2. Don’t forget to communicate with subscribers
Be sure to communicate with your subscribers, encourage them to continue the dialogue, since comments greatly influence the eventual reach and visibility of a post.
That is, having asked a question, you do not just wait for comments, but communicate, and you must give an answer to all comments.
3. Function “Save post by subscriber”
The next item, which appeared recently, but also has a significant impact on the ranking of a post in the feed, is saving the post (you won’t see the saved information from your friends, but this is taken into account by the application itself). Share useful information so that your subscribers keep it for themselves.
4. Remember that mentioning your friends in the comments matters.
One of the most difficult interactions with your account is when subscribers indicate their friends in the comments. You've probably noticed that giveaways with reposts are now being replaced by giveaways with your friends listed in the comments.
For example, when conducting a drawing, subscribers are asked to indicate from 1 to 5 of their friends in the comments (there may be several comments or friends of your choice), and the drawing is based on these comments.
This way you kill two birds with one stone:
- firstly, a certain number of people will see your giveaway and also participate in it, accordingly, the number of Instagram subscribers in your account will increase (virality),
- secondly, you will increase the Instagram engagement rate - your reach and activity will increase, and therefore your next posts will be ranked higher.
These can be not only pranks, but also any activity you can think of - use your imagination!
5. Remind your followers to like and comment
The method that some accounts use is to simply ask or remind them for likes and comments. True, there is information that the presence of such a sentence in the text automatically reduces the rating of a post in the smart feed, but this does not prevent many large accounts from using this method of increasing activity.
You can arrange an auction, for example: if a post gets a certain number of likes, you will reveal some interesting and hot topic in your post. Try this option and see how effective it is for your theme. The main thing is to remember to ask for the number of likes commensurate with your account. I think there’s no need to explain that if you have 1000 subscribers, you shouldn’t ask for 1000 likes on a post.
6. Use stories
You can publish an announcement of your post in stories to encourage people to go to your account and see the information, that is, interact with the post. Ranking does not yet work on stories, but unfortunately, not everyone has the opportunity to view them. And be sure to show interesting moments from the life of your project: tell, make you laugh, surprise, intrigue. Then people will be active in your posts. 
To summarize, I want to say that if you start working on an account for your project, then in these realities you need to do this actively from the very first day.
- Try to publish posts constantly (1-2 per day, at least 4 times a week).
- Use high-quality photos and texts.
- Communicate with your subscribers, keep in touch.
- Conduct engaging activities.
- Use stories and live broadcasts.
By the way, I will definitely talk about the latter in the next article.
Happy promotion!
Making money on various social platforms has long become not even commonplace, but practically an obligation. Not in other similar projects, unless you are lazy or someone who is absolutely not interested in the opportunity to make money on the global network. Many users are interested in the question of how to make money on Instagram from subscribers. Instagram has long turned into an excellent platform for monetization, and some participants are very successful in using all the opportunities available to earn money.
In one of my articles, we looked at the issue of making money on Instagram from likes, but now we’ll figure out how you can make money from your subscribers.
How to make money on Instagram from subscribers
To solve the question of how you can make money on Instagram from subscribers on your own, you can use several methods. Later in this article we will take a closer look at each of them separately for a more complete analysis.1. Affiliate programs
This method is one of the most common and profitable. It is widely used among owners of their own websites or blogs, but also demonstrates good effectiveness when working on Instagram.The main principle of PP is the promotion of goods on the Internet through affiliate links. There is no need to purchase and sell goods yourself; you just need to find a seller who needs intermediaries. The user and the seller enter the affiliate program, where the intermediary receives the corresponding link. By distributing it on his resources, in particular through Instagram, the intermediary can receive a percentage of purchases made by others. The main condition for calculating rewards is that the buyer must be real, pay in full and receive the order. In addition, he must get to the seller's page directly through the intermediary link.
Many profiles on Instagram are thematic and profiled on a specific, specific topic. Of course, it is better for the owners of such pages to focus on products from a category similar to the profile’s topic. For those who do not specifically focus on specific topics in their content, you can pay attention to general goods, as well as trending products.
On the global network, there are many exchanges operating on the principle of affiliate programs, where sellers and performers can find each other and begin cooperation. The seller and the exchange are indifferent to how and on what resources the link is distributed as long as the intermediary does not engage in spam or black PR.
2. Selling advertising
Advertising is another popular option for solving the question of how to make money from Instagram subscribers. is still an underdeveloped phenomenon and is mainly implemented under the guise of advertising posts. With this approach, you receive a financial reward immediately from the advertiser. The main advantage of this is that the page owner is not puzzled by subsequent sales volumes, because he has already received his fixed reward. The page owner immediately receives money for placing a post and links in it, and not for the interaction of his audience with these links. The greatest effect, of course, is achieved by matching the topics, but on large live pages, in principle, a sponsored post of any category will work well.At the same time, there is one drawback, which is that the user’s page must have many subscribers. Of course, we are talking about an active audience, and not fake bots. As a rule, such posts are marked with a special mark and are called sponsored posts. This approach allows you to increase the loyalty of a live audience and at the same time realize your own commercial interests.
3. Selling your goods or services
Some of those who decide the issue on subscribers are themselves sellers of their own goods or services. In this case, they need to personally engage in their business and promotion. Of course, with the right approach, this can be the most profitable type of activity, because the cost is regulated by the user himself, and there is no need to share profits with anyone.Main advantage- you can start promoting even with a small number of subscribers. The most important point is the correct design of the photograph and text for it. They should not be openly selling, but at the same time, their main task is to encourage action, i.e., purchase a product or order a service. To achieve greater effect, you can use the resources of already more popular portals by purchasing advertising from them or by concluding a partnership agreement and hiring an intermediary. On my blog I have already made a detailed publication on the topic of goods and services.
4. Selling photos
It is known that on Instagram, photography is one of the main types of content, because the original purpose of this network is the mutual exchange of photos between participants. Many professional photographers, as well as amateurs, can promote their products or services. This allows you to avoid the need to work with photo stocks, which, as a rule, have fairly strict rules and selection, and are also characterized by monstrous competition.In order to protect their products from unauthorized use, photographers put their own watermark on the image, with an offer to purchase this photo for money. In the Russian-language segment of the Internet, this direction is poorly developed and practically does not find a response from the audience. However, there are every opportunity to promote your photos among Western users on Instagram.
5. Selling an account
This method is rarely used on Instagram at the moment, but similar offers can be found if desired. The main principle: the account owner promotes his profile to a certain level and activity rating, and then sells it. The buyer can repurpose an already promoted account to suit his own needs for further promotion or monetization. Many people quite rightly ask the question, how many followers do you need on Instagram to make money from selling accounts?Of course, this is an important question, because the cost is influenced by the following factors:
- Number of subscribers;
- Follower activity level;
- Content quality;
- Subject;
- Payback;
- The potential profitability is either statistical, if the account has already been monetized.
6. Likes, reposts, subscriptions
Our other article is devoted to this topic, but this option can be briefly mentioned separately. If we talk specifically about making money from likes, reposts, and subscriptions, then such options are easily implemented on specialized task exchanges, boxes and projects focused on making money on social networks.In this case, you will need an additional or fake account so as not to clutter up your main page with unnecessary material. By registering on the task exchange and linking your Instagram account, you can take tasks to subscribe to specific pages, repost their posts, or like them. These tasks are checked by the customer and, subject to compliance with all points, will be paid.
Among the methods discussed in this article, this is the least profitable, but also less labor-intensive. It's great for beginners and those who don't want to bother promoting their profile.
7. Smm promotion
Many members of the social network Instagram need promotion for various purposes. Often it is difficult for them or they are simply too lazy to engage in this process and delve into its features. In such situations, they will need the help of a specialist who knows all the intricacies of promotion, SMM technologies and other aspects. Those who have mastered SMM promotion can actually make money by promoting and promoting accounts.This type of work has a number of advantages:
- The ability to independently set the price of services;
- Potentially high income;
- Great demand;
- Low competition.
Where to start
It’s not at all difficult to start making money on Instagram from subscribers. To do this, you only need to create and design a page, which is absolutely free and will not take much time. It is also recommended to create and configure wallets in several popular payment systems so that you can always receive the money you earn from an advertiser, seller, project or other source.The next step is to get ready for regular, systematic work to promote your account, promote it, and fill it with original and thematic content. It is advisable to decide on the topic in advance, and only then select earning options for the chosen niche. Further actions will depend on the chosen monetization method, because each of them implies a different work scheme.
How many followers do you need on Instagram to earn money?
When answering the question of how many followers you need on Instagram to make money from followers, it is difficult to give a definite answer. Depending on the chosen monetization method, the requirement for the number of people subscribed to the page who are active and interact with the content will differ.How much can you earn from Instagram followers?
It should be understood that the level of profitability directly depends not only on the chosen earning option, but also on the efforts a person makes. There is no way to earn passive income on Instagram yet, because even links and sponsored posts must be correctly written and formatted. Those who sell their own services and goods, as well as SMM providers, can claim maximum profits commensurate with the level of the average metropolitan salary.With affiliate programs, everything depends on sales volume. As a rule, with a serious approach you can earn up to a thousand rubles a day.
Conclusion
This article discussed the question of how to make money on Instagram from subscribers and what is needed for this. The profitability of this method was analyzed and the main features of this process were given.
Sincerely, Dmitry Tretyakov
Attachments:
We've released a new book, Social Media Content Marketing: How to Get Inside Your Followers' Heads and Make Them Fall in Love with Your Brand.
For a commercial Instagram account to be useful, you need to constantly engage with it and create vibrancy in it. Promotion on this social network using pictures and hashtags is outdated. Even just to find your audience, you need to think through and implement a whole strategy. It includes the external design of the profile and live communication with readers, interactive activities, paid and free advertising.
To maintain popularity, you also need to perform routine and creative tasks regularly. In this article we will tell you what to do if sales have decreased and there is no return on promotion.
How to view page activity on Instagram
Such serious work certainly requires adjustments to the process. To do this, it is important to check the statistics on time. There is no way to see indicators on a regular blog, so it’s better to connect a business account right away.
How to do it:
- Go to settings (gear or three dots in the upper right corner).
- Click on "Switch to Business Account".
- Next, follow the instructions of the application. You will need to register on Facebook and provide contacts or location.
Information can be viewed by selecting the icon in the top row. She looks like this.
There you will find the number of impressions of a particular publication, reach (the number of unique profiles that saw any post) and views - how many people visited your page. There is also a section with statistics on Stories and data on readers (available for an audience of more than 100 people). It can be accessed from any entry. You will find the icon between the photo and the text.
This was the answer to the question of how to find out user activity on Instagram. There are services where you can see more detailed indicators of other blogs. Depending on the functionality of each specific program, it is possible to collect information on the time of day, days of the week, coverage by type of content, number of likes, comments, popularity growth graph, etc. Some applications evaluate the effectiveness of not only your own, but also someone else’s Instagram. This is necessary in order to analyze the actions of competitors. It also helps to carefully select advertising platforms: with a target audience that is suitable for you.
List of services:
How to increase activity on Instagram
So, you find that sales have dropped, engagement growth has stopped, and your profile looks empty and lifeless. Note that we are talking about the case when the account is registered correctly. This means that you regularly post beautiful, bright photos, write interesting texts that are easy to read. And under your avatar you have a short, catchy description of the company. Look at Instagram through the eyes of your target audience. Do you want to subscribe to it, is it enough? If yes, you can start working with statistics.
Let's figure out which posts are currently ranking well.
- Those posted by the user’s followers, those with whom he corresponds, and is friends with other social networks.
- Publications of pages on which a person left likes or comments.
- Notes from people the reader searched for in the general search.
- Posts promoted using targeted advertising.
How to increase account activity on Instagram without mass following and mass liking
The main thing that is important to remember is that illegal methods and services will not only not bring any benefit, but will also contribute to blocking your profile. Use only approved methods. They take longer when it comes to free ones, but are more reliable.
- Remove high-frequency hashtags. Even if you appear in the search for them, you will very quickly fall down the stream of spam. The maximum catch is a dozen or two likes.
- Block inactive subscribers. This includes spam and advertising pages. This will increase your engagement (the ratio of the total number of users to their responses) and Instagram will give the green light to your blog.
- Turn off comments if they contain a lot of spam or clean them up. In the settings, you can enable an automatic or manual filter to hide inappropriate and offensive phrases.
- Reply to questions and other messages from people. There should be lively dialogues underneath the note.
- If you write useful instructions, offer to save them. This also improves stats.
- Let's give you as many reasons as possible to write to you personally and under the photo.
These three points are the easiest and fastest to implement. But there are also more labor-intensive methods of increasing visitor activity.
Interactives
Conduct surveys, add appeals at the end of the text. For example, ask readers what topic they are interested in or what they think about your project. Do it appropriately and unobtrusively. And also launch competitions. People get bored with the same formats, so show your imagination and diversify your competition programs. Remember that the simpler the conditions, the more users will participate.
- Quizzes. Ask a moderately complex question about a product or service. The answer shouldn't be easy to Google.
- Description of the dream. Announce a good prize and ask subscribers to write a reason why they will be the winner.
- Poetic. Have a competition to come up with a rhyme for a word.
- Reviews. Come up with an interesting gift for the person who talks about you the most creatively.
- Last comment. The competition is suitable for those who already have a large audience. The winner is the one who left the last message by the time you specified.
Stories
This is a very convenient tool for developing any account. It has the ability to create polls with stickers. They look unusual and, if used correctly, will resonate with readers. This will increase your reach and you will be able to gather opinions from potential customers. After receiving the answers, you can see the statistics - which one received more votes. You can also see who exactly answered. In what form will all this be accomplished?
- Voting-rating. The simplest method. You ask questions and check the “yes” and “no” buttons. Example. “Do you like our new design?”
- Research of target audience. Find out what your subscribers choose. For example, what do they prefer for breakfast and give two options. You can do several surveys in a row. The topic depends on the focus of your business.
- Create a fun quiz on several slides based on your audience's interests.
- Pre-sale. Place 2 products side by side and ask them to vote for the one you would like to buy more. In the next picture, leave one of these products and offer a discount for it.
- Organize quizzes with or without prizes.
Targeted advertising
This is a good way to attract people interested in your products or services. They will see the ad that you will promote even if they are not subscribed to your account. Setting up an ad is done either through your personal account on Facebook or through Instagram. In the second case, a business profile must be connected.
Use all of the above methods comprehensively to achieve an ideal result.
User activity time on Instagram: what hours are best to post?
Now you know what and why you need to post on your blog to increase your reach. All that remains is to figure out what time to create records. For promotion, it is very important to know when your target audience is on social networks. Each person can have a wealth of information in their feed. If you post a note at 8 a.m. and your follower doesn’t start scrolling until 11 a.m., you’re guaranteed to fail.
If you already have an audience, the time period of their involvement can be found in special services, the list of which we provided above. In the case of a new profile, conduct an experiment by preparing several materials and posting them at different times. Then, in the same programs or Instagram statistics, look at the result.
There are general recommendations that mainly relate to days of the week and types of content. So, on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, marketers do not recommend publishing serious posts. Something entertaining, light and unobtrusive will do. Thursday, Wednesday and Tuesday are the time for the best and most meaningful notes. On Monday, people are usually busy and you can post small tips and motivational photos.
We told you what to do if activity on Instagram has dropped and how to track user engagement indicators. Apply the tips we gave in this article, track the results using statistics and do not stop working on your blog. Remember, the main thing is high-quality, engaging content that prevents subscribers from getting bored and you from losing positions.
