Instagram hacks you may not know about

29 April 2022 | Abby Leach

Are looking to improve your Instagram performance?

Whether you’ve just created your Instagram account or you are looking to improve one you already have, here are some tips to help grow your Instagram account that you may not know about.

First thing is, Instagram wants you to be on the app for as long as possible and it will reward you if you help them achieve this. Instagram pushes certain post types more than others, reels being the one it currently pushes the most since its trying to compete with TikTok. The order at the moment is the following:

Reels > Videos > Carousels > Normal Post

Reels and videos make people spend more time on the app, as people are watching something. Carousel posts are also pushed more as there is more than one image, and the more images a carousel has the better.

Instagram punishes you if you use the same hashtags

Never copy and paste hashtags on your posts because Instagram might think you’re a bot and shadowban you. When you get shadowbanned, Instagram will limit who your posts reach by just showing them to your followers and they will not appear on the explore page, which will really affect your reach and visibility.

What hashtags should you use?

You can use upto 30 hashtags for which I would recommend using all 30. Stay away from big hashtags, for example the ones that have over 1M posts in them as your post will likely get lost with all those posts. Maybe use 2 or 3, but medium sized hashtags are the best. Medium hashtags have between 100K-300K posts. Using location hashtags such as ‘edinburghdentist’ ‘edinburghbusiness’ and ‘edinburghdentaloffice’ really helps people in your local area to find you and also other local businesses.

Use your stories

You are more likely to reach more people on your stories than on your feed. And the more stories you post the better. This will make your account show up at the front of people’s stories menu and again, it keeps people on the app, which Instagram will reward you for. Whenever you post something, make sure you repost it onto your stories!

Interactive stories are also great as followers love to participate in these! Make the most of the features that Instagram Stories offers, such as polls, Q&A’s, ask me a question, etc.