Instagram remains one of the most vibrant, addictive social media platforms on the planet.
However, during the last few months of 2019, a troubling trend began to materialise - the drop in organic reach. In fact, it was so dramatic that hundreds of Instagram users and agencies began to complain that the image sharing platform was ‘killing’ organic reach.
When it comes to social media platforms like Instagram, there are two ways you can get your posts seen by people.
The first is to pay for the privilege. And, for many businesses and influencers, this makes perfect sense; you simply indicate the audience you want to reach, set a price for each impression, click, or some other form of interaction, and away you go.
However, if you don’t want to spend money to attract engagement with your posts, you need to rely on organic reach. This is when your posts filter into the Instagram ecosystem naturally, based on the algorithm which includes hashtags you use, the content itself, how widely liked it is by your current followers, as well as many other factors. It’s a long game, unless you happen to hit the jackpot with a particularly viral-ready post.
When social media services first arrived, the ability for posts to grow organically was far greater, partly because the user base was smaller, but also because the platforms wanted to attract content creators and users.
However, services like Instagram now arguably have plenty of users; billions, in fact. This is why, inevitably, organic reach begins to shrink.
The result? Businesses and content creators are encouraged to spend on ads, instead.
The same thing happened with Facebook a few years ago - and Instagram, which is owned by Facebook, appears to be going the same way.
For instance, organic reach on Facebook (from our experience) tends to sit at around 3-6% for most typical posts. Therefore, for every 100 people that like your post, just 3-6 of them probably see it organically.
Facebook’s goal is to increase their revenue by selling ads, and it’s the same for Instagram. We therefore shouldn’t be surprised at their desire to slow organic reach.
It isn’t all doom and gloom if you’re an Instagram creator though; you can still ensure your posts are seen organically by a wide audience. You just need to get smarter with your content.
Great images and video with the right hashtags and descriptions can still perform well organically, but it’s important to focus on quality rather than quantity.
However, many Instagram users are trying another tactic by moving some of their efforts to the TikTok platform, instead. This social media site is growing faster than any other social platform, and for good reason; its users love the flexibility it gives them, and the excellent way it enables organic reach to flourish.
This is no surprise at a time when Instagram users are undoubtedly getting fed up with adverts appearing every five or so posts. It isn’t a great experience - particularly given the low quality of many ads. It’s why so many people are spending more time on TikTok now, where (at the time of writing) there are barely any ads on display.
Of course, we have no doubt that eventually, organic reach on TikTok will also start to shrink, so it's best to get in early while you can!
