One of the most discussed subjects when it comes to Instagram has to be ‘How does the algorithm work?’ and ‘How I can ensure I’m maximising my business’s presence on Instagram?’ In simple terms ‘Why am I seeing what I’m seeing on my Instagram feed?!’
The million dollar question right?!
Just recently, Adam Mosseri, CEO of Instagram, released information on their algorithm with a video (link at the bottom of this blog) to try and explain why and how Instagram feed, stories, explore and reels are ranked.
If you don’t have a spare 15 minutes to view it, or perhaps aren’t interested enough to spend the time to watch it (time is precious right?) then I’ve tried to paraphrase Adam’s words here!
What is the Algorithm?
It just means a process! There is no ONE algorithm, there are a multitude of algorithms to try and predict what you’re interested in at that moment you pick up your phone and start scrolling!
Adam says in his blog “When we first launched in 2010, Instagram was a single stream of photos in chronological order. But as more people joined and more was shared, it became impossible for most people to see everything, let alone all the posts they cared about. By 2016, people were missing 70% of all their posts in Feed, including almost half of posts from their close connections. So we developed and introduced a Feed that ranked posts based on what you care about most.”
Do how does it work - how does Instagram select what you see?
Adam says “it always starts with, first let’s see what’s available – for feed and stories, say, once you open up Instagram we look at all stories you haven’t seen by people you follow, and try to assess how interested you might be in each and every one. The second step is to collect all the information we have about the stories, about the people who posted those stories, about you, what you seem to be interested in in the past and we use that to assess or create a score for each one that is supposed to represent how interested you are in each and every one of those posts."
So in essence, the algorithm takes into consideration “...information about the post, your history of interactions with the author, information about your activities and information about the person who posted it in the first place.” They then can predict how likely you are to engage with a post or tap on the user’s profile in order to determine what shows up in your feed.
Adam goes into more detail about the different functions of Instagram and their algorithm, including Reels, Explore, stories and posts. Do check out his blog for a more in depth look:
What doesn’t Instagram rank?
Adam talks about ‘Shadow Banning’ in his video, a term you may or may not be familiar with!
In short, it’s a term which is used by Instagram users when they believe that Instagram is no longer showing their posts in the news feed. Adam says “We cannot guarantee that you’re always going to reach the same number of people” and goes on to explain that so much in the world is constantly changing, so even if it the ranking isn’t, everything else around us is.... “What people are interested in changes, what else you’re competing with changes’. He also explains that like many other social media platforms, Instagram does, of course, have it’s own community guidelines in place to keep it a safe and fun place to hang out.
The last part of Adam’s video is about how you can influence what you see on Instagram! Of course it’s fairly obvious that if you interact with posts and people you like, then you will see more of this type of content. But you can also:
“Pick your close friends” in stories: By selecting your close friends in stories, Instagram will then prioritise this content for you.
“Mute people you’re not interested in”. Instead of unfollowing them, simply mute the account, and people will be none the wiser!
“Mark recommended posts as ‘not interested.’ Ensuring you don’t see more of this type of content in the future.
If you do have a spare 15 minutes, do check out Adam’s video below for more information, it's an insightful watch!