Our brand has seen a massive 40% drop in organic reach over the last few months despite posting high-quality images daily. I’ve heard the new algorithm is pivoting heavily toward "Shares" and "Saves" over "Likes." How are you all adapting your content strategy to encourage more saves? Is it time to pivot strictly to Reels, or is there still a place for carousels in a growth-focused strategy?
3 answers
The shift is definitely real. We’ve found that "Educational Carousels" are currently our highest-performing asset for saves. If you provide a checklist or a "how-to" guide that users want to refer back to later, your save rate skyrockets. For reach, Reels are still king, but they act as the "top of funnel" to find new people. Once they visit your profile, the carousels convert them into followers. We also started using "Collab" posts with micro-influencers in our niche, which effectively doubles the initial reach by tapping into two audiences simultaneously. Focus on the first 3 seconds of your Reels to stop the scroll!
Are you seeing a difference in engagement between your Reels that use trending audio versus original audio? I’ve noticed that while trending audio gets quick views, original audio tends to build a more loyal community.
Don't ignore the power of SEO on Instagram. Optimizing your captions with relevant keywords instead of just a wall of hashtags has helped our searchability significantly this year.
Exactly, Sarah. Instagram is behaving more like a search engine now. Putting the key terms in the first sentence of the caption and using Alt-Text on images has been a game changer for our discovery.
Kevin, that is a fantastic observation. We actually tested this last month. The trending audio gave us a 20% boost in views from non-followers, but our original "expert tip" videos with talking heads resulted in a much higher comment-to-view ratio. It seems like the algorithm prioritizes original audio for "community building" while trending sounds are better for "viral discovery."