The Secret to Knowing Which Engagements Will Break The Algorithm
Foodie Tribe team member, Rev Ciancio, has cracked the secrets of the Instagram algorithm and we are going to share it with you. Read below for his full explanation and experiment!
Which engagement activities have the highest effect on your posts performance in the instagram algorithm?
Read this and not only will you have the answer, but you’ll learn how to figure it out for yourself.
In mid-September of this year, I noticed engagement on my Instagram content saw a major drop. After checking with some other influencers and doing a little research, I soon realized it wasn’t me, it was happening across the social network.
I immediately started down a path of trying to figure out what happened and moreover, what I could do to earn as much real engagement as possible from my followers. I was determined to find some clues about which types of engagements resulted in more impressions, more reach and more engagement.
I started by running a 30 day comparison on my content of the top engagement metrics vs impressions and then separately also vs reach.
RESULTS: Reach & impression results were nearly the same. Meaning, my top posts in each category were very similar.
CONCLUSION: Whatever drives impressions also drives reach and vice versa.
Next I compared the top engagement metrics for my content against reach and impressions.
likes
saves
comment
follows
shares
RESULTS: My most liked and saved content almost exactly matched reach and impressions.
[LIKES]
[SAVED]
Follows were close.
Shares were similar.
[SHARES]
Comments were completely different.
[COMMENTS]
CONCLUSION: From what I can tell order of value per engagement type is as follows:
Likes
Saves
Follows
Shares
Comments
SUMMARY: Likes & saves on your Instagram content correlate with higher impressions and reach.
If this is the case for your content as well, the question is, what can you do to inspire people who see your content to both like & save your post?
ANSWER: First of all, outstanding quality in photos or videos. Make sure your visual content is engaging, whether that’s a beautiful photo or a unique moment of emotion.
Then give people a reason to care. Maybe your content / story is really funny, really helpful or really inspirational.
Ask for likes and saves.
Why not? You’re putting it out there for consumption and you want the most amount of people to see it. People respond well to direction.
WHAT SHOULD YOU DO?
Run the test yourself. Analyze your content. See if you get the same results or if yours differ. Whatever you discover, find a way to genuinely earn more of that from your followers.
Here’s how to run the results yourself to see how support from the algorithm responds to engagements on your content.
Hamburger menu
Insight
Content > See all
Change middle column to “30 days”
Toggle right column for metrics.
Best of luck!
In my last post I claimed to have cracked the secrets of the Instagram algorithm and shared how I got to that conclusion.
In this post I claimed to have cracked the secrets of the Instagram algorithm and shared how I got to that conclusion.
Based on the amount of messages I received, this hit a hot button for a lot of you. I received lots of great questions and replies, including requests for examples of how I came to my conclusion.
Ask and ye shall receive.
SUMMARY: Likes & saves on my Instagram content correlate with higher impressions & reach ... as compared to comments, shares & follows.
3700 likes, 95 comments.
903 likes. 87 comments.
Look at the two posts. That’s a difference of 8 comments.
Insights from image 2: 560 saves, 99,000 impressions.
Insights from image 3: 90 saves, 19,000 impressions.
In the comparison you can see that comments had almost no correlation with impressions received. So if you’re asking me, for my content, saves & likes > comments.
This is a quick example of how to look into your content to see if you have similar results. The algorithm is different for everyone so you may not.
THEORY: Why is this? A Like is gateway engagement metric, you have to like something before you want to go deeper.
A save shows intent. When you save you’re sending a signal to Instagram that this content is super valuable.
A comment would seemingly have more value than a like but if it doesn’t turn into additional conversation and more comments, it really only has slightly more value than a like and doesn’t show a lot of intent.
CONCLUSION: I’m not saying that likes + saves are the key to beating the algorithm! Based on investigation of my content performance, this appears to be the case for MY CONTENT
I’ve had others test this and tell me they learned something similar about their content.
I’m advocating that if you care about engagement, run the results for yourself. Once you know which engagement actions result in more impressions, more reach and more engagement, find a way to earn more of that from people who come across your content on Instagram.
Rev Ciancio is a Senior Marketing, Branding and Digital Strategist with 20 years of experience, specializing in hospitality marketing, content and local SEO. He has led many clients to new levels of local, national and international success in the hospitality, financial service and entertainment sectors.
He is also former agency owner as well as a former New York City bar owner. Rev is an “expert burger taster” and pens hospitality and marketing tips on his Instagram @revciancio as well as his LinkedIn Profile.