The Instagram algorithm is something that forever haunts social media marketers, content creators and small business owners! Sometimes it will show your content to people and other times it won’t. So, how exactly do you maximise your reach on social media?
Let’s start with what is reach. Reach is often used in the same sentence as impressions, but they are in fact, different. Reach is the number of accounts that have seen your content, whereas, impressions are the number of times your content has been seen. You might have reached 1000 accounts, but if some of those accounts have seen your content more than once, for example, they saw it in their feed and then went back to look at it later, then your impression rate/statistic is going to be higher.
Both statistics are important, but for this article, we’re going to be solely looking at reach and how to maximise that.
Hashtags
Firstly, you can use hashtags to maximise your reach on Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn in particular. If hashtags are not in your social media strategy, they absolutely should be. With Instagram moving towards an SEO model for posts, hashtags are going to tell Instagram what your post is about and to who they should be showing the post. Hashtags are the new keywords of the Instagram platform.
They not only tell Instagram what the content is about but they’re also searchable. People looking to support small businesses may search the hashtag #SupportLocal or if they’re looking for a particular service they may search #DigitalMarketing. People looking to connect with like-minded people may search for things like #LegoFan, for example. Therefore, there is not only the opportunity to reach new people but also to gain loyal, engaged followers.
To ensure that you’re maximising your reach on Instagram via hashtags, you want to use a variety of hashtags. Ask yourself, who is your target audience (#SmallBusiness), what are you selling (#SocialMediaManager), what is your target audience looking for (#SocialMediaTips) and where are you or your target audience located (#DigitalMarketingPerth). Be sure to use a mixture of different size hashtags as well, though try to avoid anything over one million uses, as your post will just get lost in a flood of posts.
Reels
Reels play a massive part in the future of what Instagram looks like, as it moves towards full screen, video-based content (as CEO Adam made us aware of last week). They’ve also important to consider with the new Instagram chronological feeds.
With reels being prioritised by Instagram, the algorithm is more likely to push this type of content to new people, helping to increase your reach. If you post at the right time according to your analytics and get good engagement on the golden hour (the first hour of posting), then your reel may end up in the reels explore tab of Instagram, which will help your reach even more.
As always with reels, getting shares is most important, as it puts your content in front of a new audience, therefore, increasing your reach. Tips to getting shares is creating “shareable” content. This is content that is entertaining, relatable or interesting/informative. Based on personal experience, using transitions and trending audio while creating reels that are relatable tend to do the best when it comes to shares and reach.
Engagement
Outside of posting content, engagement can help you maximise your reach (and this can be done on all types of social media platforms).
To maximise your reach, you want to engage with accounts that don’t follow you. You want to put yourself and your content out there for the world to see. This is where hashtags come into play as well.
Use hashtags to find accounts that are in your industry or your ideal client/customer. Be sure to leave meaningful comments on their content and start to build those relationships. Maybe in return, they’ll follow you or share your content and this will help increase your reach.
A few tips to spending your engagement time wisely is to spend at least 5 minutes every day engaging with accounts you follow and 5 minutes engaging with accounts you don’t follow. Don’t forget to reply to your messages and comments too. If you have more time, half an hour of engaging each day is ideal!
Posting consistently
Lastly, posting consistently is the hardest one when it comes to maximising your reach, but it is worth it.
After experimenting on my personal page, I found the more consistently you post (with content that gets good engagement), the higher your chances are of getting on the Instagram explore page and this helps with reach. If Instagram doesn’t think you’re active, then it’s not going to push your content out there. It’s also not a good look when other accounts come to engage with your content or when potential clients/customers come to learn more about your business and they see that you don’t post a lot.
The thing is, consistency looks different for everyone. Ideally, you want to be posting one reel and three posts a week. If you have enough content and time to be posting every day then go for it! Look at your analytics to see which content does the best and what your audience likes to share (again, coming back to that shareable content).
Hopefully, these four tips help when it comes to maximising your reach on social media. It can take time, but once things get going, you should start to see a snowball effect. These tips are great at potentially gaining new followers as well, which is only going to increase your reach too.
Need help with your social media content, get in touch today!
