Why Don't My Instagram Followers See My Posts?

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In this episode, I answer a listener question which is:

If I have 200 or so followers on my IG, how come only a certain amount of people can see my stories or my feed?

Skye

This next question is from my lovely girlfriend, Miriam.

@Mimithedreamer on Instagram. She also runs @veganing.co you vegans out there. Go and check that page out.

It gives me food envy every single day of the week. My dieting has just completely gone to shit because she's posting good vegan food every day. So, yeah, this questions from her.

And by the way, if you didn't see the video she made for me yesterday. She showed it to me at one minute past midnight on my birthday. And I'm not saying I cried, but there was some wet eyes. It was probably the nicest thing anybody's ever done for me. And I just loved that. And I love you, babe. So let's hear your question. Let's get into it.

Miriam

My question is, if I have 200 and some people on my IG, how come only a certain amount of people can see my stories or my feed? And so usually the same people are always like my post. Am I doing something wrong? And that's the reason why other people can see my feed.

Skye

So this one is about what's known as Instagram's organic reach. So firstly, The gram is owned by Facebook, and what people are finding on Facebook. And now more recently Instagram, is that people used to see your posts when you just do a post on your feed. And now less people are seeing it. And what you have to understand is, you know, Facebook is an advertising platform.

So I don't know if they're doing it purposely to make money conspiracy theory that we don't know. But what I do know is organic reach the number of people who see your posts in your feed is absolutely dropping. So if you have, you know, 300 followers, if you go into your insights in your Instagram account, what you're probably going to find is only a proportion, a small proportion of that audience actually sees your post. So a couple of things you can do.

One is you can pay for an ad, and that's not feasible for everybody. The costs are low, but it is the easiest way to get organic reach, which is people seeing your stuff. Now if you don't want to do that or you're not in a position to do that. There are a couple of other things you can do. Here's some things that I've been working with recently that are absolutely making a difference. So the first thing is you post your stories more frequently.

People typically when they open Instagram, they go to the stories first and start watching them. And then they probably go to their notifications to see who's like their stuff. And you know, then they start scrolling through their feed. So if you're posting just to the feed your third choice, and they're probably going to get distracted. If you think about how many other accounts, the average Instagram user follows, the chance of you being seen is less. So posting to stories makes a difference. I recommend about 10 posts per day. The reason I do that is Instagram will show the most recent story, first in somebodies feed.

So just in that top left hand corner, if I post right now and then you come online A few minutes later, you're most likely to see my post now and might be behind the people Instagram knows who you're in. You know, your friends and family that you interact with regularly.

But in terms of those accounts that you know, they've just started following, you want to be as far left as possible on that story feed. And by posting, you know, multiple times a day to a story, you're going to show up in there a lot more often. If you are running ads, Instagram story, ads make a big difference. You may have noticed every three stories you see an ad is actually really, really cheap to be seen there. And that's definitely one way to get more attention.

Now, in terms of the feed posts, what happens with Instagram is they kind of like dry test how good your content is. So when you do a post to Instagram, what happens is it shows that post to around 7% of your audience, and it sees do they comment? Do they like do they save?

Do they share these what are called social signals, they are signs of engagement. And Instagram looks at that and says okay, how many people engage with that post, and if it's a positive engagement, then they expect How many people see that post so it goes from 7%, upwards to another number, we don't know what that is. And then if those people also engage with it, it starts showing it to more and more people. So the key here is not to create more content is to create better content. So fewer posts, but great, and I would recommend about three to five posts per day.

The next thing you're going to do is, it's really about when do you post so look into your insight, see, when your audience is online, and time those posts to when they're online so that, you know 7% of people that are seeing it, they're online, they're going to see it and it gives them an opportunity to engage with the post immediately. At a time when they're online. It doesn't make sense to post it. When half your audience are asleep.

You might be in Europe, but if your audience are all in America, you need to be posting in American time zones, not what's convenient for you. And you know, just going back to Andrews question, there are various tools that can do that that can automate the social posting for you. Like lighter Hootsuite buffer, etc.

The next thing I would tell you, this is a new strategy I've been working with, and it's working really, really well. And that is to be on Instagram, engaging with your audience for one hour before your post, and after your post. So for me, for example, my time when my audience is online is 3pm until midnight, and it kind of peaks from 6pm till 10pm. So my posts going out from 3pm onwards, and I'm online, round about four o'clock onwards for my peak time.

And here's what I'm doing. I'm commenting on around 30 posts a day. And more importantly, I'm dming people, and I'm just creating value for them. I'm just sending them you know, positive messages, or, hey, here's something you might like or I really like that post. I'm just engaging with people. And why I'm doing that Instagram sees me engaging with those people and it sees that they reply, I am now more likely to be seen In their feed. So when I post Instagram says hey sky talks to Sandy feet messy hair, show that post in their feed because they have a relationship.

So Instagram prioritizes relationships over promotion and over just pushing out content. So I definitely definitely recommend do that dming thing every day. Actually that's just being social and you know guys it's called social media. Let's be social Don't be the dude at the party trying to push Herbalife or you know, multi level marketing stuff and I'm not dissing that stuff. There's some good stuff out there. But be social, ask questions.

How do you start a conversation at a party? You start by asking questions. So in a lot of those comments, I'll ask a question that give somebody the opportunity to sound like an authority or a hero. So for example, let's just say, you know, they are a digital nomad and they've been a lot of places.

I'll ask a question like, you know, what do you recommend for somebody who's never been to Vietnam for the first time, they get to look like an authority and Here in front of the audience, so they're definitely going to respond. Instagram sees that as engagement.

And if that person has a big following, well, that's somebody who Instagram recognizes as an authority figure, and they're responding to you. And when you do that again and again every day, it starts to show your posts to more people, your organic reach starts to increase. That's really for Instagram. When it comes to you know, the most amount of people seeing your content. A shout out Gary Vee LinkedIn makes a difference.

My post how my life changed after quitting my nine to five, that got something like 80 comments, 2000 3000 views a hell of engagement. And I just posted it on my personal LinkedIn. So if it works for your audience, LinkedIn makes sense. I probably wouldn't post it to your personal page if it's not completely relevant. So if I had you know, like veganism as a food page, I would create that as a company page on Instagram and post there, but the organic reach is absolutely amazing in LinkedIn, So try to differentiate yourself and try some of these tips on Instagram. And I think you're gonna see that it makes a big difference.