It is no secret that at this very moment Instagram is the leader in growing your brand awareness. Heck, one in every four feed posts is a Sponsored Ad. The masses pretty much got used to consuming and accepting advertisements as part of the Instagram experience. That is an advantage as much as it is a disadvantage for you as a music artist. With that being said, if you suddenly see that you’re getting shockingly low numbers of eyeballs to your stories, here are 7 reasons why that might be happening.
7. You’ve used a triggering hashtag.
If you use hashtags such as #ad, #sponsoredad, #commercial, #newproduct, #newmusic, #website, #bio, Instagram’s algorithm will automatically limit the visibility of your stories because it gets flagged as promotional content. Avoid as much as possible using words that intrinsically sound or resemble selling something.
6. The location you’re using is not a popular one.
Yup, discrimination exists even at algorithmic levels. If you got your geolocation turned on at all times and Instagram registers your post as coming from an uncool spot, they’ll yet again, limit your visibility. It’s best to turn off your GPS location completely when uploading a story or post from a less popular location. The algorithm, at best, will only push that content to people from that area only.
5. You got too much text going on.
Instagram, like every other social network, DOES NOT like taking people off their platform. They promote native content that is not salesy. So when you fill up your video/photo with text, especially if it says click the link or swipe up, you’ve automatically reduced your organic exposure. There’s no way around this one. Simply put up amazing content so that when people come across your product, they feel like they owe you one and click without you telling them to do so.
4. Your story is low quality or shot in a poorly lit place.
Yup, they’re as smart as judging the quality and resolution of your video/static content. Simply put… the older your phone, the poorer the resolution, the less exposure you get. That’s why Samsung made an entire pledge to their consumers to release new models with integrated Instagram so that the photos and videos don’t lose from their definition when uploaded on Instagram. Just think about it. A company with a market capitalization worth a whole $326 billion dollars, PROMISED and acted upon adapting their bread and butter to the likes of Instagram integration. You can’t make this sh*t up.
3. You’re using a link along with the story.
Sister to number 5, if you attach a link to your story, Instagram gets upset pretty much at you trying to take their people elsewhere and they put a cap on how many eyes get to see your story. A worry that accounts with over 10k followers have to deal with on the daily. We advise you post first a regular story that’s non promotional and immediately follow it up with a story with a link. It just might do the trick.
2. You’ve used cuss words.
Of course Instagram’s algorithm is intelligent enough to hear what you said. Instagram aims to attract back a young audience. We say back as those who once were the main audience, has now grown the F up and moved on to… Tik Tok or have gotten off social media completely. So now they’re going gaga over making Instagram a more child/teenage-friendly experience. That means that cuss words are not allowed. Or better said, they let you think you have freedom of speech whereas they drastically reduce the number of profiles seeing your update.
1. You’re using unofficially censored terms.
Take cues from YouTubers. When in doubt, use synonyms of the highly banned words across the entire globe. This sh*t is getting outta hand but… we gotta work with what we got. Use Rona instead of… you know what we mean! Here’s a more comprehensive detailed explanation on the nature of this phenomenon: https://www.insider.com/youtubers-identify-title-words-that-get-videos-demonetized-experiment-2019-10 and don’t think it doesn’t apply on Instagram. These social networks think alike, work alike, and even have the same CEOs and engineers rotating between them. You understand one, you’ll get at the hang of most of them.
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