Dead Souls

I'll start with the most common mistake many people make. Usually, everyone is chasing numbers and wants to get as many followers as possible at any cost. However, those who are professionally engaged in promotion know that the number of followers is becoming less important for one simple reason: content is now shown according to algorithms, which are quite complex. Because of this, a smaller percentage of your real followers will see your posts if you don't work on your content but instead buy followers. Now, there are many accounts with 10,000 or 20,000 followers, yet they have very few likes and negligible reach. In fact, all these "thousands" are a completely dead, harmful asset that hinders genuine progress. They are associated with all kinds of cheating, boosting, and other activities that have nothing to do with real marketing. It's more like fooling ourselves!

Fortunately, justice has begun to prevail, and the good times for those who cheated are over. The algorithm works in such a way that everyone who bought followers and used various cheating methods, without going into details, found themselves in an unenviable position.

How to Promote Your Account Competently, Effectively, and Honestly

Analyze It

First and foremost, you need to connect business analytics, which will help you see the real reach of your posts and how many people have saved them. That's what you should always focus on. By the way, the number of saved posts positively affects future reach. Instagram has changed its algorithm to weed out all those who try to cheat and reward those who work honestly on their content.

Golden Words

The number of comments under a post is also important. However, comments from spam accounts and bots do not count. So the lines “Wonderful photo,” “Beautiful,” and all sorts of emojis no longer count! Therefore, friends, we need to learn to write complete sentences again and switch from emojis to normal human language. If there are at least four words in the comment, your post will start to gain momentum. Such a comment becomes much more significant—it means people want to share their observations. This leads to serious content, and the post is rewarded with additional reach.

Dear Editors...

Did you know that if you edit a post within 24 hours, its reach collapses? Personally, I find it unclear why people who correct a typo in their text should suffer... But alas, this is how it works. Therefore, I strongly advise you to triple-check the text before posting. By the way, if you publish a post, then delete it and republish it, this manipulation also reduces the reach to almost zero.

Without Further Ado

It is better to use a photo without text, as algorithms lower the reach of posts with text in pictures. Many people like to publish photos with text and logos on them, but there's a catch: photos with logos, especially if they are in every post, always have lower reach. Pay attention to this. Don't you already have an account name and a round avatar? So why remind followers who you are and what you do? It is best to use a "clean" photo, without text, as algorithms lower the reach of posts with text in pictures. However, when you upload videos with text, the algorithm does not penalize you, and the reach of the post increases because it's a video. Therefore, I recommend creating as much video content as possible.

Hashtags: Instructions for Use

Algorithm changes do not favor those who create "walls" of hashtags. Each additional hashtag reduces reach significantly! They are a strong limiting factor. Don't believe it? Try posting without hashtags for a week, observe how the reach of your posts changes, and draw conclusions.

You might think that new customers find you through hashtags? I'm afraid I'll disappoint you: it's a drop in the bucket. If someone says they found you via a hashtag, that's at best 2% of your audience.

But hashtags can still work. Let me explain how. First, create your own unique hashtags, perhaps several for different topics, so that people can subscribe to specific posts and see, for example, only promotional offers or useful news. This way, a person may not follow your account but stay updated with your news as it will appear in their feed.

Second, use hashtags for events in your city. Photo reports are often made at such events and posted on social networks with corresponding hashtags. If they fit your subject and audience, include them in your posts. Event visitors and participants searching for their photos may see your post, find it interesting, and perhaps even follow your account.

How Much to Post?

Let's focus on the number and frequency of posts. Often, clients are asked to publish almost five posts a day. The question is, why? And most importantly, about what? Do you know what they answer? "Just wish users a good morning sometimes" or "Tell us that our employee likes to eat cottage cheese in the morning." Um... who cares? In fact, two to five posts per week are enough, but they should be useful or entertaining!

Do You Have Recommendations?

The "recommendations" section shows what your friends like most often, so it's useless to buy likes from like farms. You understand why, don't you? Let's say 300 Malaysian schoolgirls and 200 teenagers from Uzbekistan liked your posts. What will happen? That's right: your post will be included in the recommendations for people who are friends with those Malaysian and Uzbek schoolchildren. Elementary, Watson!

And the Clock is Ticking

Publication time is becoming less and less important. Someone might check Instagram very often, say, every hour—they will see the top posts for the hour. Someone else might check once a month and see the top posts for the month. These are completely different top posts. Surely you've noticed sometimes seeing a friend's post that was published two days ago? Now you understand that the posting time is not important!

If it was possible to determine the "right" hour and day of the week for publishing before, now you can post even at 4 am and still get good reach and enough likes, as long as the post itself is of high quality.

Time for Entertaining Stories

On Instagram, three out of five users regularly watch stories. Therefore, if you don't publish stories, you miss out on a significant part of your reach. But creating "stories" is easy, fast, and fun! Additionally, if users react to your stories (click on the transition to the group, click on stickers, answer questions, write direct messages), the reach of your regular posts also increases!

To fix the situation with cheating and hashtags, start posting as many short videos as possible—gradually, the reach of your posts will increase.

I See the Goal

And (here's the most important thing) to increase reach and for sales, use targeted advertising aimed specifically at your target audience. Instagram and Facebook reward you for this. If targeted advertising is well done and people respond to it: wow, you're doing great, you have a great result, here's more reach for you!

Let's Summarize

• Do not use services to cheat likes, comments, or followers.
• Connect business analytics.
• Communicate with your audience: it is important that people write comments consisting of four or more words and save your posts.
• Do not edit posts; carefully check the text and photos before posting.
• Avoid putting a lot of text and logos on photos; it's best to use clean photos or videos.
• You don't need to post very often: preferably two or three times a week, but very high-quality.
• There is no need to think about the publication time; it's better to focus on good content.
• Use stories. By the way, you can publish at least 10 of them a day.
• Use targeted advertising. Here is a good guide on it.