New Instagram changes - To switch on notifications or not?
I'm sure you've seen it - the bombardment of Instagram accounts and businesses alike asking to turn on notifications recently in order to see the images of your favorite IGers. Why is everyone panicking and going crazy? Well unless you've been living under a social media free rock recently, you will have seen that Instagram made an announcement that all brands and businesses took a sharp intake of breath at.
Changes to how your IG feed will appear are coming. The app plans to change to algorithmic timelines. No more chronological order, just images from your 'favorite' IG accounts. This shift caused IGers to take to IG with posts that read 'Turn on Notifications!' 'You won't see us unless you press the 3 dots above!'. Are we panicking for no reason? Are we going about this in the right way?
The reality is, the IG user will turn on notifications for all their favorite accounts. Where does it stop? Do they turn them on for lots of accounts and risk being bombarded with constant notifications? I know I wouldn't. So without the risk of the constant IG spam on your screen, how can we make sure our well cultivated and carefully grown business accounts are seen by a highly engaged audience?
We don't want to see our years of hard work of building a great platform fizzle out due to a simple algorithm change so we need to move with the changes. The key to any successful business. We don't want to subvert the effect of the new IG algorithm so let's consider the audience who will no doubt become tired of push notifications then reassess their all their 'switched on' accounts. They'll go through their accounts and switch you off if your posts have not inspired them, stood out or appealed directly to them. Is this the worst thing? Well it's definitely worse for the algorithm than those who are simply 'impartial' and don't turn them on or off. It will effectively reduce your future reach. Basically, you ask them to switch on and they may just switch off entirely. Not the result we all want. So how do we make sure our audiences stay with us?
ENGAGEMENT! That's right, continuing to make sure your images and content are engaging your key audience is the way forward. In fact, we should have been working in this way all along to ensure we're not just full of spam bots and no likes/comments. If you haven't, now is the time to start. Encourage your audience to 'like', 'repost' and comment. The more they interact with you, the more they will see your posts and the more engaged your audience will become. You know what they say, an engaged and vocal follower in your hand is worth two in the silent spam bot bush...
Will you be making any changes to your IG methods? Feel free to share your thoughts below with us!
DON'T FORGET! WE MANAGE MULTIPLE SOCIAL MEDIA ACCOUNTS FOR WEDDING INDUSTRY CLIENTS. GET IN TOUCH IF YOU NEED HELP GROWING YOUR PLATFORMS...
Comments
Saw so many of them these past weekend and Monday.. I’m not too happy with the changes since I barely starting out but it’s expected that Instagram would want to make money out of they’re amazing platform! I don’t want to work for free, so why would they?
Agree with the notifications, unless you turn on notifications to ALL the people you follow; it’s a bit selfish to ask other to do that just for you..
In the end of the day, it’s all about engagement… In Instagram and even in real life! People tend to forget about the second part, but I tend to interact more with people that I have a more personal connection with. Meet other like minded people for coffee, do in person collaboration, and so many other way to actually make your insta-friend a real friend…
It is no surprise that Instagram finally made that change to monetize a platform that has helped so many to build a targeted audience, and sign some concrete business out of it. For free.
I was surprised to see so many people asking for the ‘turn on notification’ button. Personally I didn’t turn on any as I absolutely don’t want to be bombarded by Instagram notifications as I know at the end this will annoy me and I’ll just end up unfollowing the account.
I don’t really believe in begging for likes or following, But I believe in embracing change and turning it into opportunities. Maybe it’s time to be smarter in the # we use, to be more consistent in the content we post… to keep on building a great Instagram audience.
I believe in generating attraction to an audience, instead of pushing content - that maybe they don’t want to see - in their face. I think people will find a way to still see what they love, and they’ll still find us if they want to find us. If they don’t, maybe it’s because they didn’t have their place in our following audience in the first place!
