4 Tips to Improve Your Instagram Post Reach
So you’re creating great content, but how do you get your Instagram posts seen by more people?
If you were to just post to Instagram without any hashtags or using these tips, your post reach (ie. how many people actually see it) is going to be limited to the number of people following your account. And then there’s also the algorithm, which will only decide to show your post to the people it thinks are most relevant, so this can limit your reach even further.
You can find out your post reach in your Instagram Insights, either in your Account area or by tapping on a post and selecting the ‘View Insights’ tab. Typically, your reach will be more than the number or likes or comments your post received, because reach means how many people have seen it, rather than engaged with it.
However, in order to have people engage with your post, they have to see it first! So how can we give our Instagram posts a better chance of being seen (ie. improving our reach)?
Prefer to watch? Check out the video with tutorials below 👇🏼
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1. Tag your location in your Instagram posts
When you go to upload your post and write your caption, you’ll see a tab underneath asking if you’d like to ‘Tag Location’, and I’d recommend always doing this! Even if you’re just posting a graphic, and even if you’re not checking in to a place or if you don’t have a physical location-based business- you should still always tag a location!
Don’t choose your home address or any location you don’t want people to see (obviously), but you could select your nearby town or even just your county or state. By doing this you’re giving your post more chance of being found because people can actually search for posts from specific locations!
You’ll see this if you go to the Explore page, type in the name of a place and you’ll see you can choose to search for this in the ‘Places’ tab. Then a feed of all the posts that have used this location tab will show up, and you don’t want to miss out on that.
2. Tag ‘sharer’ / ‘feature’ / ‘fan’ accounts in your Instagram posts
A ‘sharer’ or ‘feature’ account is an account that is set up specifically to just share other peoples’ content. These accounts typically have huge audiences because they are able to curate and post content constantly because they are using other peoples’ - but don’t worry, they’re not stealing it, they will always credit and tag the original poster and will usually ask permission too.
The benefit of these accounts sharing your posts is that your post will then get seen by their huge audience and you’ve got a high chance of people clicking through to your account via the tag in the ‘sharer’s post. This obviously improves your post reach but also can help your account to grow too if this audience then chooses to follow you!
Here’s how to be featured on these accounts:
Check out the account first to check that the content is relevant to yours, their audience is the same as your target audience, and that they actually credit and tag accounts properly
Check their bio to see whether they want you to use a hashtag or tag them in your posts
When you go to upload your post, be sure to use their brand hashtag OR tag them under the ‘Tag People’ button
It’s not guaranteed that they will share your post, but if they do, remember to comment and thank them!
3. Share your Instagram posts to your ‘stories’
The algorithm might decide not to show your grid post to some of your followers in their post feed, but if you click the little aeroplane symbol on your post once you’ve published it, and share it to your Stories, this can mean that people will end up seeing it on their Stories feed instead.
It’s also important to remember that some people actually watch Instagram Stories way more than they scroll through their feed nowadays! So you want to make sure your post is reaching those people too.
Generally being active on Instagram Stories is fantastic for your overall account engagement and reach because Instagram likes to see accounts that are making a lot of use of its platform.
4. Engage in post hashtags just before you publish
Instagram’s algorithm will prioritise showing posts to people in their feeds if the post is relevant to the viewer, posted relatively recently, if the account has some kind of relationship or ongoing engagement with the viewer, and if the account is actually active.
By taking time (even just 10-20 minutes) before publishing your Instagram posts to engage with people on the platform, you are showing Instagram that you are active and developing relationships with other accounts. If you specifically look to engage within the hashtags that you’re about to use in your upcoming post, this will also help send ‘relevancy’ signals to Instagram too.
Then when you do come to post, the algorithm is more likely to serve up your post to the people you’ve been engaging with and accounts that are relevant, and those people will have something new to engage with when they reciprocate your comment or come to check out your account.
