What the heck Instagram?

What lies beneath the new Instagram algorithm.

While everyone seems to be going on and on about influencer marketing, anger seems to be brooding among those who made this trend: the so-called “influencers”.

The cause? Instagram’s ever more demanding algorithm.

Small shift, big consequences

Over the last 6 months, Instagram has casted a shadow over the influencer landscape. Impressions on influencers’ posts have decreased dramatically,and it has been reported that users miss over 70% of the content in their feeds. At Lefty, our influencer profiling technology has clearly highlighted the main downside of this change: the average engagement rate has been plunging for all influencers.

And this shift has not gone unnoticed. In all influencers Stories, you now see polls asking audiences whether they have seen the latest post in their feed, whether there is a particular reason for them being less engaged…Even big names such as @rosielondoner are asking their community whether they’d like to see more or less of a topic to make sure that their content is as engaging as possible (see below).

So how did this happen? The reason is simple — just like its social parent Facebook, Instagram is now operating on a mechanism which sorts publications not by chronological order anymore but by preference, number of impressions, number of likes, comment.

At first, the promise held by this new algorithm seemed great though: show you less but more relevant content. So why is everyone hating? The negative consequences of this change are numerous and it seems that most of Instagram users have lost something in the process.

Users, like you and me, who are fed the same kind of content over and over again, undermining the platform’s first purpose: discovery.

On the influencer side, everyone is concerned, including the big names (+1M followers). However, macro-influencers have managed to overswim thanks to their large communities and high engagement figures which propel them at the forefront of your feeds. The first victims are mid- and micro-influencers who are progressively disappearing from their followers’ feed and are unable to engage the community they fought so hard to create, or to even gain new subscribers. In this context, influencers have expressed a mounting growl against their previously darling social network as the testimony @kathennessey attests.

Wave goodbye to fake influencer profiles

On the bright side, the new algorithm is helping to purge Instagram from fake influencers. These profiles typically have large communities of cash-earned followers which conceal a low, not to say non-existent, engagement rate. They have been marketers’ pet peeve, wasting precious marketing budget with posts which generate no ROI, but are very difficult to isolate. A brownie point to Instagram for making their lives more difficult and yours easier!

The way forward — strategies to enhance your visibility

So has Instagram nipped influencers in the bud after all? The answer is “no”, of course. And the future of influencer marketing remains brighter than ever (check out our article on the topic).

In fact, there are many ways to boost your reach — the Instagram way, and the smart way. Lefty gives you two options to survive when you are David against Insta-Goliath.

Option 1: Play by the book.

The platform is increasingly suggesting influencers to pay to promote their posts. A bit of cash can go a long way to earn you media space thus allowing you to sustain the relationship with your audience.

Option 2: Go commando.

Influencers have shown a great deal of inventivity when it comes to outsmarting Instagram, follow their tricks:

• Calls to comment: the more comments you have, the more likely you are to emerge so ask questions to your followers, organize contest games…anything that will get them commenting.

• Tease in Story: just published a new post — tease your community about it in Story and encourage them to go like your last picture.

• Ask your followers to “turn their notifications on”: Instagram gives you the option to “turn on notifications” on the profiles of influencers you are really keen to follow. Want your followers to remain loyal? Ask them to do so

With these developments in the Insta-sphere, you might have found your job as a marketer more difficult — finding new influencers is an increasingly painful, time-consuming task as you spend days scrolling through the “explore” tab in the quest for gems now hidden by the new algorithm.

Our influencer marketing platform Lefty smoothes your way into new discoveries thanks to our 5 million influencer profiles which can be easily searched by hashtags, keywords and demographics. Find out more on https://lefty.io/