Algorithms Are Coming for Instagram!

This week, Instagram announced it will be rolling out an algorithm to prioritize the order of your feed. Much like Facebook, posts that you’re most likely to engage with will appear toward the top of your feed, regardless of the time in which it was posted.

This comes as Instagram reports that users “miss on average 70 percent of their feeds.” We’ve all been in this boat: we’re scrolling through a friend’s account and see a photo from three days ago that we missed. You don’t want to double tap and draw attention to the fact that you missed the 3 a.m. post, so you don’t engage and your friend may or may not resent you for not contributing to their “like” count. Instagram’s update will hopefully help to minimize situations like this from occurring. This change will also benefit brands that receive high Instagram engagement as social media managers no longer need to nail down the perfect post time.

From a social advertiser standpoint, this change means that brands will need to increase spending. While Instagram advertising objects do not yet include post engagement or page likes, you can optimize for clicks to website, app installs and video views.

Instagram confirmed they won’t hide posts from those that you follow (we’re looking at you Facebook!) they will just be served in a different order. The roll-out for when these changes will take effect has not been announced, but I’m excited for the change both personally and professionally!