Unleash the power of the Instagram reel algorithm to drive your success

Instagram Reels are the way to go 

The quickest and most effective way to grow your following is to post three reels a day.  with the arrival of TikTok and YouTube shorts, the battle is on for attention in the short video sector so this is where you need to play.

The Instagram Algorithm feeds on relevancy

 

Instagram Reels algorithm determines the relevance of content to target audiences by analysing

 

Niche – You’ve selected a niche, and you must stay within it. If you talk about fishing, you could stretch to a recipe involving fish but not a dance technique, for example.

 

Original – be original rather than reposting others or recreating the reels or posts of others. By all means, convey a similar message, but do it your way.

 

Lighting – make sure you have good lighting – avoid fuzzy images or lots of shadows.

 

Hashtags – research and find the best one(s) that fits your content. Don’t be tempted to. Use more popular hashtags when they do not relate to your content

Audio – voice-over, music and film audio – the words you say! – are all clues for Instagram that you are producing relevant content. Music should be current and have plays under 2000 – preferably under 1000. Invest in a good mic – low-quality audio is a killer for engagement.

 

Past interactions – who you have interacted with – i.e. followed, commented. Even look at your followers, so you should audit your followers and remove any bad followers.

An example here would be a follower who has made zero posts, follows a lot of people and has no followers. Probably a spam account!

 

Frame size – When compiling a reel from images or other video, you should make sure that it all conforms to guidelines and is the same frame size

 

Comments, likes and shares are all-powerful signals

 

Part 1 – Who you follow matters

Follow people in your niche and your target audience. This tells the algorithm what you do and are interested in. Avoid following a huge variety of people from different niches and random people. Otherwise, you will confuse it.

Part 2 – Encourage comments 

You can encourage comments by posing questions or asking people to comment with a particular word or phrase.

Part 3 – Comment and like on relevant content 

Go ahead and comment on posts, reels etc, from people in your niche, and this will provide another sign to Instagram that you are a lively content producer within that sector 

Part 4 – Engage with related accounts

Engage with people who your audience would be interested in and that you are interested in Example: your audience is mums, so maybe you also engage with accounts you like, who are talking about parenting, fitness, home-schooling etc.

Part 5 – Saved reels matter

The reels you save form another strong signal to Instagram as to the kind of person they should show your account to so it’s really important that you stay within your niche even in the reals you save

Consider the time of day

The Instagram Reels algorithm considers timeliness and popularity when deciding which Reels to boost. Creators should publish Reels when their audience is online. The algorithm is complex, but new creators can still succeed by following a few basic rules. I find posting three times daily to be the best result with the reel algorithm: 9 am, 2 pm and 7 pm

 

You want viewers to watch it all

A viewer completing a short reel as a viewer is a much more powerful signal than watching one minute of a 10 minute film so make sure your reels are short and capture attention from the word go and make me want to stay till the end. 

This is IMPORTANT

Think about setting up a powerful hook at the start, such as ‘ Will I be able to drive my car across this frozen lake?’. We all want to know what happened!

 

Popularity is a vicious/virtuous circle

The most frustrating thing about starting out on social media is that to be popular, you need to be popular, and when you’re unpopular, you don’t get boosted!

The only way to break out of this is to consistently post, following all the ideas in this article and to keep showing up and doing the work.

 

If Instagram is part of your wider marketing efforts as a business then we have a range of programs that can make sure not just your Instagram but your whole content program is massively more effective and delivers the sales you need. 

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