Instagram Ranking update
Social networks control our fate with their algorithms. Every time they make an update we need to adapt if we want to be seen.
This week Instagram boss Adam Mosseri announced an update to Ranking, which is the Instagram algorithm. The new update will favour original content over reposts. What does this mean?
Mosseri says if you create the content yourself, even if it’s edited off Instagram and brought in from the camera roll, you may see a boost in reach. If you repost unoriginal content consistently you could see your posts demoted in the feed.
It’s thought that this is a move to tackle aggregated content accounts.
Instagram tests removing recent from search
Hashtags will have less relevance in the future if a new feature being tested by Instagram is rolled out broadly. The test removes the ‘recent’ tab from hashtag pages. Instead, you’ll only see Top and Reels.
The top tab will feature more recent content than it does currently, making it more dynamic and interesting.
To stay visible on tag pages you’ll need to either make a Reel or be highly popular, which means more work for you.
Instagram hashtags don’t get you more views
You may remember that Instagram boss Adam Mosseri made a head-scratching announcement recently. He said that hashtags don’t really get you more impressions on Instagram.
Turns out it’s true. Social Insider analysed 75,361,233 accounts and discovered that hashtags have only a small impact on views. With 3 – 5 hashtags being the magic number if you want any impact at all.
What does this mean? Keyword search is becoming more important on Instagram, so spend more time on your captions. Use 3 – 5 hashtags to categorise your content without an expectation of extra reach.
https://www.socialinsider.io/blog/instagram-hashtags-dont-affect-post-views/
Is Social Audio dying already
Is social audio on the way out? Should you hastily remove it from your strategy?
I don’t think so, but some of the big platforms that launched competitors to Clubhouse have taken their foot off the pedal.
Spotify Greenroom will still exist but they are no longer bribing users with a creator fund. Meta is moving resources away from its audio rooms.
But on Twitter this week we saw 165k people tune into a Space started by Imran Khan, former president of Pakistan. We’ve also seen big spaces around other news events like the war in Ukraine.
Could Twitter be the big winner from the audio trend?
LinkedIn and web scraping
It’s legal to scrape public information from the web.
LinkedIn has been pursuing this issue in court and has lost its case again. The court believes that when someone publishes their info publicly they have an expectation that it can be accessed.
So why is LinkedIn pursuing this case?
It says:
“We will continue to fight to protect our members’ ability to control the information they make available on LinkedIn. When your data is taken without permission and used in ways you haven’t agreed to, that’s not OK. On LinkedIn, our members trust us with their information, which is why we prohibit unauthorized scraping on our platform.”
It sounds like a good thing that LinkedIn want to protect our data, but does it have another motive? The case has been taken against a competitor who is scraping data, could this be them trying to shut down that competitor and any others who try the same thing?
Instagram tests topics for Reels
Instagram is working on topics for Reels. The function will allow you to add categories when you upload your Reel.
Spotted by reverse engineer Alessandro Paluzzi, we can’t yet see if you’ll need to choose from set topics or add your own. This could be a good way to make your Reels more discoverable in search.
Is this yet another signal that the hashtag is on the way out? It seems like it could become a replacement for them.
Twitter edit – how might it work
One of the reasons Jack Dorsey said there’d never be an edit button was that it could be abused, people could change their tweet and subsequent retweets and conversations would be affected.
But the Twitter edit button will address this, we’re seeing different tests being run, some will show all the previous versions of the tweet in the feed and in this version from reverse hacker Jane Manchun Wong it looks like there’ll be a whole page where you can view edits.