How to Win with Instagram's New Algorithm

Published in

Adam Marc Williams

5 min readMar 29, 2016

As I’m sure you’re aware by now, Instagram have announced that they will be introducing their new algorithm over the coming weeks to tackle the overcrowding on our feeds.

Here’s a snippet from the official announcement Instagram put out:

“To improve your experience, your feed will soon be ordered to show the moments we believe you will care about the most.”

For now, unlike Facebook’s algorithm they promise that all of your posts will still be there, simply in a different order optimized by what you like which will be determined from your own engagement & interactions.

Whilst I warned about this in a previous article here, I do believe it’s the right move for Instagram as we apparently already miss on average 70% of the images on our feeds due to the sheer quantity of content posted.

But not everybody agrees:

And my personal favourite…

In fact, there are so many people outraged by this that there is a change.org petition to Keep Instagram Chronological that has already surpassed 200,000+ votes.

What a waste of energy! Instead of crying over spilt milk lets instead look at ways we can improve our Instagram strategy to ensure we thrive in a post-algorithmic world.

Less is More

The accepted norm for Instagram until now suggests that more is more when it came to post frequency with most brands settling on around 3–4 each day, spread out to reach the maximum number of their followers.

This update should come as a welcome relief for those clients of mine that complain about having too little time to keep up with their Instagram accounts as the new algorithm will encourage a less is more approach, possibly even a single post each day which will be sat waiting in your followers feed whatever time they decide to check it.

So what’s the catch?

It puts all the focus on quality!

“Algorithms were made to cut out the clutter, so it urges brands to ‘cut the crap’ in terms of content, too.”

— Kevin Del Rosario, Associate Director of Social at Huge

If you create low-quality or irrelevant content that few people engage with then your posts will get buried.

You can read my article on The Context of Social Media for Fashion Brands for a little more insight on the type of content that performs well on Instagram but in a nutshell it should feel native to the platform.

Product shots should be artistic.
Lifestyle shots should feel indie, not over-produced.
User Generated Content over-indexes, so encourage more.
Your wall as a whole should have a consistent theme/aesthetic.

Encourage Engagement

Once your satisfied that the images or videos your posting are of high enough quality the second hurdle is to increase your posts engagement.

Whilst great content should be half the battle won, there is more you can do to increase the level of interactions with your followers to ensure Instagram knows how much they love you.

Firstly, Instagram users are pretty liberal with the likes as a quick double tap is all it takes to heart something, so it stands to reason that Instagram’s algorithm will place greater weight on comments as this shows a much greater level of engagement.

Ask Questions?

A quick method would be to pose a simple question in your photos caption that encourages your fans to answer in the comments.

Here is a great example from an L.A based restaurant brand:

Notice also how the content it’s self is of very high quality and relevance to the brand as well as the question being resonant with their audience.

Hashtags still Matter

Whilst comments will count for more than likes, those little hearts will still be an important metric in the algorithm and there is no better way to increase this than a solid hashtag strategy.

You don’t want your posts to appear spammy though so keep your image caption clean of any that don’t add value and use your hashtags in the first comment instead.

For a good recipe try 5 x popular tags, 5 x industry tags, 5 x long tail tags & 5 x post specific.

If you’re putting out great content then you should still pick up plenty of new followers with this too.

Post User Generated Content

“User-generated content is 35% more memorable than branded content…
55% shoppers trust customer photos more than brand and professional photos”

— Adweek Report (2015)

UGC also has an inherent engagement factor built into it as the creator, who is your avid brand advocate, is highly motivated to comment on the image and tag their friends to show off.

Spend time interacting yourself

This is probably the most important tip (after creating quality content) but one that’s so often skipped over.

The best way to encourage engagement is to be active in your community. It goes without saying you should reply to every comment but I would go one step further.

If somebody spends a moment of their valuable time on you, then head on over to their wall and check out what they share. Like a few images and if there is something you can add an insightful comment on then do so.

While your at it, do the same with a few of your fans that simply like your images and return some love their way too. If you do this they will be far more likely to continue interacting with your content in the future and quite possibly entice a few of their friends along too.

Remember, marketing is no longer about interrupting people, it’s about providing value and building community around a brand. So make sure you get to know yours!