Why the Social Media Algorithms Hate You

Social. Media. Algorithms. 

Back in the day, your feed was organized based on publish time. This allowed brands and companies to reach a higher percentage of their target audience solely by being consistent with their posts. If you wanted to reach more people, you posted more. Simple as that!

But when the horribly scary and terrifyingly hard to understand algorithm was introduced, feeds started to be organized by relevancy instead of time. And while this has confused countless people since its inception, our question is why? Instagram themselves have laid our their algorithm as plain as day, “What shows up first in your feed is determined by what posts and accounts you engage with the most, as well as other contributing factors such as the timeliness of posts, how often you use Instagram, how many people you follow, etc.”.

We can 100% guarantee (okay, maybe 95% guarantee) that if you’ve raised your hand and gave a ‘curse you, algorithm!’ shake of your fist, that you were exhibiting one of the following behaviors:

You Only Share Photos

Photos are great! Videos are great! Links are great! But only if you’re varying them. Different types of media help keep your audience interested – they’ll never know what helpful, interesting or fun information will be coming at them next!

You Write Boring Captions

Here’s my post, here’s what I’m doing in it, the end. If you’re writing boring captions, you’re not giving anyone a reason to engage! Try ending your caption with a call-to-action, or CTA, asking people to leave a comment or share.

You Don’t Post Insta Stories

Showing up on Insta stories provides a safe space to be real and authentic. Are you in sweats, with no makeup and a messy bun and don’t want to get done up to take a picture for your perfectly curated feed? Insta stories it is! It also ups your chances of reaching a different portion of your audience. The portion that jumps on Instagram and immediately clicks on the little bubbles at the top as opposed to scrolling.

You Post During the Wrong Times

Since everything alllllllways comes back to engagement, making sure you’re posting when your audience is online is critical! If they’re not online to see your post, they’re not going to engage with it. Luckily, social platforms provide you with this information for your current audience. Check it out in your Insights!

You Aren’t Using the Right Hashtags

Hashtags make your posts searchable! Like a big ol’ social media-specific search engine. When you’re choosing the hashtags for your post, make sure to think like your target audience as opposed to your peers. What types of things are they searching for that relates to your business? Go ahead and #hashtag that.

Moral of the story is – love it or hate it, the algorithm is here to stay! So you can either jump on the bandwagon and learn how to stay ahead of it or hire a super awesome marketing agency to do it for you. And we just so happen to know a great one!

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