Recommended Instagram Posts Depend on AI
For many businesses, the goal of a platform like Instagram is exposure. You may not make direct sales off of a post about a product or a service, but you can generally reach people who are interested in what you offer. You create more brand awareness, and you can get direct followers whom you can interact with in the future. It’s a dream situation for businesses, as they can then market to people who already like their products and are far more likely to make a purchase. That can increase your conversation rates dramatically.
The other side of this, though, is that you need to expand your reach in some way. You have to get your content in front of new users. One easy way to do this is by having Instagram recommend your page to people who use the Explore feature. You can also use ads, and you may want to do a mix of both, but the Explore feature puts you in front of people who are actively seeking out new content.
An Algorithm
What drives this whole process is not a team or an individual, but an algorithm. In this sense, Instagram doesn’t have anyone who is solely responsible for what gets discovered or what makes it to the top of the page. They trust the computer to do it. The algorithm is designed to give users the best possible experience. That’s always been the goal, and your efforts have to fit into it.
It seems to be working. They report that over 50% of users check out the Explore tab on a monthly basis.
To simplify, the way that the algorithm works is first by looking at what type of content users already enjoy. It looks at posts you save, posts you like and posts you comment on. It looks at the other accounts you follow. It’s not hard to determine what types of pictures and content resonate with a specific user. They will naturally engage with that type of content the most.
From that data, the AI can then choose 500 different accounts that it sees as “candidates” — accounts you may be interested in. It pares them down from there, cutting the 500 to 150, the 150 to 50 and then the 50 to a mere 25. These are deemed to be the highest quality pages — not just in terms of their actual quality, but in terms of how they connect to you as a user.
When you go onto the Explore tab, the top 25 accounts that you see are the ones that the AI selected.
High-Quality Content
To get on this list, the key is to offer high-quality content that users want to engage with. That’s true for any social media campaign. On top of that, you want content that converts. Getting onto the Explore tab is the first step, but you need people to like your content, follow your page and engage with your brand. Remember that every single thing you post has to have this end goal. It’s very important to know how to set your campaign up for success, and we can help here at Content Customs. Trust our experience and professionalism to increase your reach and to use social media to its full potential.