Looking to have a deeper understanding of the important aspects that influence the reach of your Instagram posts? Instagram gave an in-depth breakdown of the many parameters company considers when selecting how to rank feed posts, Stories, and Reels in each user’s feed last year. Instagram has now released some concise summaries of those variables, so you can keep them in mind as you develop your platform strategy.
To begin, we’ll look through the most important ranking indicators for feed posts and Stories:
Information about the post – These are signs about how popular a post is — for example, how many people liked it – as well as more basic information about the content itself, such as when it was uploaded, how long it is if it’s a video, and what location, if any, was associated with it.
Information about the author – This helps Insta figure out how interesting the person is to you, and includes things like how many times people have interacted with them in the last several weeks.
Your activity – This includes indications like how many posts you’ve liked, which helps Instagram figure out what you might be interested in.
Your history of interacting with someone – This tells the company how interested you are in seeing postings from that individual in general. If you don’t comment on each other’s postings, for example.
As Instagram competes with TikTok, Reels has its own algorithm. The TikTok algorithm is finely tailored to user interests, and as you scroll around the app, it will swiftly adapt to show you more of what you’re interested in, similar to how Instagram’s Reels algorithm is expanding. The focus elements have been re-ordered for Reels, so that your participation in the Reels stream takes precedence above information about the post and its author, as it does in the main feed. Based on Insta’s research these are the most important indicators for Reels:
Your activity – Instagram keeps track of things like which reels you’ve recently liked, commented on, and interacted with. These signals assist them in determining what content may be of interest to you.
Your history of interacting with the person who posted – Just like in Explore, it’s likely that the video was created by someone you’ve never heard of, but if you’ve interacted with them before, it tells the company how interested you are in what they’ve shared.
Information about the reel – This includes indications regarding the video’s content, such as the audio track, video comprehension based on pixels and full frames, and popularity.
Information about the person who posted – Instagram uses popularity to help find engaging material from a diverse range of people and to offer everyone an opportunity to reach their target audience.
With these fast overviews, Instagram hasn’t released any new information, but it’s worth noticing the differences, and it can be useful to keep these lists available while you contemplate ways to improve the performance of your Instagram material.
