While cruising Instagram lately, you’ve probably noticed a bunch of posts claiming that the platform has been limiting reach to only 7 per cent of followers. The Facebook-owned company has officially denied these claims, stating that a “feed is determined by what posts and accounts you engage with the most”.
[jwplayer 9XIhCin2]
The posts – which ask followers to like and comment on them to boost reach – have been around for a little while, but recently picked up steam again for some reason. A lot of these are from small businesses who say the effectiveness of their posts has been stunted due to algorithm changes.
“We’ve noticed an uptick in posts about Instagram limiting the reach of your photos to 7% of your followers, and would love to clear this up,” Instagram wrote via its Twitter account.
“What shows up first in your feed is determined by what posts and accounts you engage with the most, as well as other contributing factors such as the timeliness of posts, how often you use Instagram, how many people you follow, etc.”
In other words, algorithm changes have affected post visibility in some way, but not in the way many are claiming. What is right, however, is that engaging with an account will boost its reach, but probably not through a single post. The announcement has also reignited requests for the company to return a chronological feed to the app rather than the algorithmically dictated one.
Instagram also made it very clear that they don’t hide posts and that if you scroll long enough, you’ll eventually see everything.
We have not made any recent changes to feed ranking, and we never hide posts from people you’re following – if you keep scrolling, you will see them all. Again, your feed is personalized to you and evolves over time based on how you use Instagram.✌️
— Instagram (@instagram) January 22, 2019
Yeah, because we all have enough time to scroll through absolutely everything. Anyway, it’s good to know the platform isn’t actively hiding anything, I guess. I will admit, I much preferred the old days of the chronological feed.
