THE INSTAGRAM ALGORITHM EXPLAINED | The only video you need to understand how the algorithm works

everything you need to know about the Instagram algorithm is going to be in this video you're welcome what's up everyone I'm Millie I'm an influencer coach and welcome back to my channel where you get weekly videos from me teaching you the most upto-date tips tricks and strategies for how to grow your brand online as always time stamps and resources are going to be linked down below because I all your time and you already know why you're here so let's get into it first things first what is the algorithm the almighty all ever present ever changing

algorithm the biggest misconception about the Instagram algorithm is that there's only one of them but there isn't there's actually multiple algorithms and processes that Instagram uses behind the scenes to personalize a user's experience on the app the most common algorithms that we're going to be talking about today are algorithms for feed and stories search and explore and reals first let's talk about your feed right now there are three ways that you can view your feed you have your following favorites and default when you you switch to the following feed you will see the most recent

posts from the people that you follow meaning these will show up in chronological order when you switch to your favorite feed you will see the latest from accounts that you chose to be your favorites to add someone as your favorite all you have to do is go to their profile select little like following drop down arrow and select favorites or if you come across a user's post that you really like and you want to add them to your favorites select the three dots on the top right corner of that post and then add to favorites

if you haven't already added me as one of your favorites on Instagram you can practice using my account you can add up to 50 people to your favorites list Now default is the main view that you see when opening up your Instagram app when you're on the default feed the algorithm will suggest posts that it thinks you'll like based on multiple factors noting that accounts that are on your favorites list will show up higher in your feed how the algorithm ranks your default feed is similar to how it ranks your story bubbles up top so

let's talk about how Instagram ranks your feed and stories first Instagram says that they assume your default feed and stories are places where people want to see content from their friends family and those they are closest to I think that's the biggest differentiation between your default feed search and explore and the reals tabs is Instagram is predicting hey we think you're the closest to these people so they're going to rank higher in your feed and on your stories so how do they determine who you're closest to it's not like you can like tag accounts as

like I'm in a relationship with this person this is my mom this is my brother so it's not like you have those tags so how are they determining who you're closest to Instagram uses something called signals there are thousands of signals that Instagram uses for example you have the information about what was posted the people who made the post your personal preferences what you enjoy to interact with what time a post was shared whether you're using your phone or the web browser how often you like videos compared to photos and even who your favorites are

so that's just a few signals but like I said there's there's thousands that Instagram uses to try to guess what you'd be most interested in in an article shedding more light on how Instagram Works they rank the order of importance of signals so the most important signals across feed and stories roughly in order of importance are information about the post information about the person who posted your activity and your history of interacting with someone now when it comes to information about the post they're looking at signals like how popular a post is but also more

mundane things like the content itself the information about the post who posted it how long is it if it's a video was there a location attached to it all of the things and then they look at information about the person who posted because they want to predict how interesting that person or account might be to you so they'll look at signals like how many times you've interacted with that person in the past few weeks what that person's posts are typically about or what that person's profile is typically about the next thing is just your activity

on the app what sort of posts have you liked in the past and then finally your history of interacting with someone so this gives Instagram a sense of how close you are to that person how interested you might be in seeing their content for example whether or not YouTube comment on each other's posts from there Instagram will then try to predict How likely you are to spend a few seconds on a post comment on it like save tap share go to the person's profile the more likely you are to take an action on a post

the higher you'll see that post up in your feed the more likely Instagram thinks you are to take an action on a post that post will rank higher in your feed something that's really cool is you can see this in action happening right now on your profile literally open your app the first post that's there select the three dots on the top right corner there's a often that says why you're seeing this post Instagram will literally tell you why they ranked that post higher on your feed I love this sort of transparency it helps us

understand okay why is this video getting recommended to me and you could always tell Instagram hey don't recommend me this type of stuff now let's talk about ranking for search and explore explore was designed to help users discover new new things the grid is made up of recommendations that Instagram has gone out and found for you how do they select all of these posts or to find like the pool of photos and videos they think you'll like they look at signals again so how does Instagram pick and choose what they think you'll enjoy seeing on

your Explorer how do they select that pool of photos and videos again they'll look at signals like posts you've liked and saved and commented on in the past and then they'll try to recommend content that's similar to the post that you've liked in the past going back to the shedding light on how Instagram Works article for explore ranking the signals that Instagram weighs roughly in order of importance are information about the post here they're looking at how popular a post might seem so they are taking into account how quickly other people are liking commenting sharing

and saving that post these types of signals matter more on search and explore than they do in feed and stories next is the history of interacting with the person who posted again these posts might not be from people you've ever interacted with but when you interact with a certain profile it tells Instagram hey this type of content or this type of profile is stuff that I would typically like so they try to find similar profiles next is your activity we kind of already touched on this it's signals like what you've liked commented shared saved but

more specifically it's signals an activity that you've made on the Explorer page in the past when you're on Explorer what type of posts capture your attention which posts you actually click to and engage with that's what they're taking a closer look at and then finally information about the person who posted to talk a little bit more about that one there was an article that was posted that talks about Instagram's Ai and deeper look into their algorithm and in this article they said because Instagram has a large number of Interest focused accounts based on specific themes

they created a retrieval pipeline that focuses on account level information rather than media level so by building account embeddings they're able to more efficiently identify which accounts are topically similar to each other did you did you understand I know that was a lot of like mumbo jumbo word vomit but did you did you understand that they use account level embeddings so it's not just like oh this post is about this this post is about this account level embeddings to help recommend content to users that's topically similar to each other other so let's say you've recently

liked a number of photos from Barnes & Noble me Instagram will take a look at the Barnes & Noble account and other people who interact with Barnes Noble from these people they'll then look and go hey what other accounts that are topically similar to Barnes & Noble do these people interact with and then they'll get results like oh book of the month owl crate so because all these other accounts are topically similar to each other then they'll be able to recommend that type of content onto your search and explore page this is why having a

niche on Instagram is so important do you have to have a niche in order to grow on social media period yes and no like it absolutely helps if your goal is rapid growth yes have a niche but for Instagram specifically that platform you want to have a niche I know on Tik Tok it's it's different ball game it is a different ball game there's so much more creative freedom you don't have to be in like a niche you could do some lifestyle talking casual Trends blah blah blah there's a lot more options there but the

algorithm on Instagram is specifically saying you need to be topically consistent because when you're topically consistent then we know who to show your profile to we know who to show your content to so that's why I'm always saying to pick a niche not because oh you have to do this it's good business practice not because of that but because Instagram's algorithm was designed to benefit people who have a defined Niche okay and rant sorry had to go there okay next we have ranking for the reals page Instagram says reals were designed to entertain you much

like the Explorer the majority of what you see on your reals tabs come from accounts you don't follow so the process of picking videos for the feed is a very similar process first they'll go out and find a bunch of videos they think you'll like and then they'll rank them in order of what they think you might be most interested in with an eye towards smaller creators yes Instagram has literally said with an eye towards smaller creators they're trying to adapt their algorithm similar to the Tik Tok algorithm where it's so easy for smaller creators

to blow up over there and that's a strategy they're trying to implement with reals specifically again another reason why all the advice you hear everywhere is like oh make reals make reals if you want to grow make reals it's because Instagram is literally telling you the secret sauce they're literally saying hey our algorithm was designed to benefit Niche creators and if you're a small Creator posting consistent reels that are topically similar to each other you're going to have a grand old time growing okay now the signals they look for roughly in order of importance are

your activity so they look at reals that you've engaged with in the past and which ones you've liked and commented on most recently recently your history of interacting with the person who posted like an Explorer it's probably a video from somebody you've never heard of before or never interacted with but if you've interacted with similar accounts it helps them gauge whether or not they'll think you'll be interested in their content did I say that I hope that made sense information about the real itself so the content that's within the video the soundtrack The caption they

use video understanding based pixels to scan kind of your real and see the shots that are there and try to interpret oh this is a travel type video so the video itself as a whole gives more information to Instagram and then finally information about the person who posted they do consider popularity to help find compelling content from a wide array of creators and to help give everybody a chance to find Their audience now all this is great good stuff Millie but how can I trigger the algorithm to work in my favor now we know how

we can trigger the algorithm to affect what we see but now how do you reverse engineer it so that you trigger the algorithm for your stuff to go on other people's feed catching my drift know what I'm saying three things one sticking to your Niche two setting up your account to be SEO friendly and three engaging with the right accounts I don't need to do my Niche rant anymore we already got that we get it we're good but setting up your account to be SEO friendly I'm not going to spend too much time on this

because I do have a full video here explaining all the places that you can set up your account to be the most SEO friendly if you don't know what SEO is don't let that scare you away I let that word scare me away for so long I hated that word intimidated my brain shut down my brain would shut down anytime I heard it SEO is a strategy to organically get in front of your audience's eyes that's SEO it's a strategy to increase your reach easy peasy it stands for search engine optimization so the strategy is

to show up in search results Instagram does have a search bar and they do recommend for their users to start using it as a search engine with key words key phrases to show up in these search results make sure that you have key words and key phrases jam-packed throughout your entire Instagram in your name plate in your bio in every single post that you post because again that's the information that you're feeding to the algorithm to tell them hey this is how to increase your reach on reals you know if you're typing those words into

the caption Instagram's going to see oh this is real tips let's show it to people who likes reals tips again they have those account level embeddings so when your entire account is topically consistent and you have those key words and phrases plugged in everywhere it makes it that much easier for Instagram to quickly scan your account they know exactly what your profile is about and they can recommend you to similar users and then finally engaging with the right accounts notice a lot of the triggers or the signals that they look for is people that you've

engaged with in the past so yes it's important who you're engaging with but also who's engaging with you if you want to reach more people you need to go out and find your people engage with them so that you trigger the algorithm to be like hey I've engaged with this person maybe you should start showing them my content right you can't be a ghost follower you can't be a ghost user where you're just posting and ghosting and hoping oh I'm going to blow up on Instagram no you have to feed the algorithm all the juicy

goodness boom that's what I'm saying when I say engage with the right accounts be strategic with the accounts you're engaging with so that it's either a your competitors or your Niche neighbors people that are in the same industry as you or B your target audience maybe people who follow your competitors people who follow people in your industry so that's kind of the bubble of people you want to engage with I have two separate accounts on Instagram I have my personal Instagram and my it's Modern Millie Instagram it's Modern Millie engages with my follow followers engages

with my Niche neighbors engages with potential new followers that's who I'm circling and surrounding myself with and then my personal profile that's where I'm liking book of the month that's where I'm engaging with Barnes & Noble and coffee Mr Coffee Starbucks you know all my personal interests I try to keep them separated so that Instagram knows who to show my content to if you've made it this far be sure to comment the secret phrase that was loaded cuz this video was loaded and if you're not already subscribed be sure to hug the Subscribe button and

turn on the Bell notification so you don't miss future posts like this I keep you up to date on all the latest Instagram tips tricks and influencer tips and tricks so be sure to subscribe like and do all of the things thank you so much for watching I'll see you in the next one follow your joy bye