This post contains affiliate links.
Let me preface this post by saying that I LOVE Instagram. I am a very visual person and I love looking at all of the beautiful photos on IG. It’s my favorite form of social media. I used to be a Facebook fanatic and while I still love it, IG is my number one these days.
That being said I hate the “new” Instagram algorithm. I say “new” because it’s not new, it’s been around for a while now and it sucks. I miss the days of looking at all of my friend’s photos in chronological order. There is nothing that makes you feel more stalker-like than liking a photo and then realize it’s from 4 days ago. UGH.
I also hate that Instagram has paid ads now and wants those who use social media for business purposes to pay to “promote” the amount of people who see their photos. I feel like I see the same photos each and every time I log in and I’m tired of being forced to look at those same promoted images over and over again.
I have never paid to promote a photo on Instagram but for pure research purpose for this post I clicked the little “promote” button on the bottom of my most recent Instagram photo…
and here’s what I got (I have a business IG profile, I’m not sure if personal accounts have the promote button??)…
Good question Instagram…however I have no idea what my goals would be so I clicked each one and here’s what I got…
Now my question is what kind of sorcery is this? I really want to know how Instagram is able to deliver these specific results?? I would love to go “behind the scenes” the scenes at IG one day and see how they know where to direct paid promotions and what the specific algorithms are.
And here’s the kicker- once you pay to promote an image on Instagram you won’t ever get that same engagement again and so it forces you to keep paying for promotion time and time again. I mean, why give your photos free promotion when they know you will pay? Right? Facebook works the same way guys. Sad, but true.
I got so tired of seeing the same images over and over again that I manually went through all 4000+ people/businesses that I was following and unfollowed everyone I didn’t personally know or whose account didn’t inspire me in some way. Basically if I didn’t recognize the name I unfollowed the person/business. I unfollowed 3000+ people over the course of a week and I haven’t looked back.
Now when I log onto Instagram my feed is full of photos I want to see. It’s full of my friends, brands I genuinely love and boutiques I actually shop at. I love Instagram now. I feel like I’m getting new images each time I log on and my personal photo engagement has actually gone up! Weird how that works…Instagram you are a mystery to me. I love you. I hate you. But no matter how I feel about Instagram I will keep using it because I love looking at all the beautiful images my friend create.
Do you love Instagram??
Or do you hate it??
Its a business and sadly, they get you hooked to keep paying to promote a post. I would rather see more organic visits because that is what is more pleasing to advertisers. I understand your actions regarding the people/businesses you have unfollowed.
I am so with you! I want to see photos from friends and family, but they are always buried by ads and such like that. I hope mine goes back to friends and family photos as well. I just never know what goes on over there these days. I just try to use proper hashtags and hope for the best.
It’s just so sad isn’t it? The constant changes to the algorithm and everything else. You’re right about paying for the post to get good traffic, once you start doing that, you won’t get the same results as before for your other posts without the “help”. It’s also been driving me crazy!
It makes sense that Facebook works the same way as what you’re describing, since they own Instagram. I haven’t paid to promote anything on Insta, I like it but like any other app won’t die without it.
I know some love instagram. I laughed about the love hate relationship. Not something I really use. Others seem to love it
I really don’t like Instagram or Facebook. I have to use them for my blog/business but if it were up to me, I’d never use either one of them.
I think we can all relate to this. I haven’t opted for any of their paid services as IG just doesn’t generate a lot of business for me. I enjoy connecting with some via IG but it doesn’t yield the results other social media platforms do. I’m keeping my coins.
Thanks for doing this little experiment. It is enlightening. What a great idea to go through your following. I had not thought about that. I want to get to the people I actually know and like following. Going to try this tonight!
I love instagram more than facebook myself. I always encourage some of my family back home to create one so we can just share each other stuff on IG rather than FB.
I think every bloggers understands your struggle. Instagram has been crazy and so is Facebook. It’s definitely not easy to adjust to all the new things all the time.
I hate the ads on Instagram!! I also hate that I see photos from days ago, because oops I liked it, and it’s a week old. haha. I also don’t like the way the numbers role with the promotions. I have read so many times to not promote on Instagram because you’ll have to pay for engagement going forward.
Ohh, I super agree with you! I have been wondering about the changes and it’s just now that I just realized that everything you said is true. Well, my questions has been answered through this post. I hope instagram will do more improvements.
I have never done any kind of promoting through Instagram, but that’s good if it actually works. I enjoy using instagram overall, both sharing and browsing :)
Instagram is my absolute favorite social media. I hated the algorithm changes, but they have changed things up a bit again. They aren’t 100% back to chronological order, but they are close and I like it a lot.
I miss the old days of Instagram with no ads and actually seeing posts without having to setup notifications the same day and not five days later.
I can totally understand where you are coming from. Instagram is also one of my favorite platform to check lovely photos and updates from my friends and families which is from the other side of the world.
Instagram used to be my favourite platform but after the algo change, I sort of abandoned it and I post sometimes once a month and I stay away from liking photos from my feed because I used to find like 5 posts from one person in my feed and felt like a stalker if I liked their posts.
I haven’t been focusing much on instagram but I feel the same thing on facebook. The ever changing algorithms are also driving me nuts, I prefer not to care for most of it anymore because it tends to become stressful.
It really has to be a love hate relationship with the Gram. I have some great luck and sometimes it is trash.
Instagram can be a fickle thing for sure. I love running promotions with it though.