Have you been trying to grow your Instagram Page but always hitting a dead end?

Following your targeting audience, using Power Like groups to increase engagement…

Trying to be authentic with your content and collaborate with your niche…

Literally going all over the internet to find the perfect strategy that will last you a lifetime… just to find out that weeks later something has changed and you’re wasting your time!

Worry not, today in the following article we’ll dive deep into the fundamental principles that Instagram values the most…

The things that never change and will keep you on track until you’re satisfied with your growth.

There are exactly 5 Principles that if you follow at all times will keep at the TOP of the Instagram algorithm.

What If Instagram Knows How Much You Care About The Posts You Engage With?

If you’re on Instagram for a while you might have noticed that your feed is not only based on people who you follow, It also shows you what you like and engage with.

This is based completely on “past behaviour on similar content and machine vision that is analyzing the actual content of the post.”

This is important because if you’re able to understand this principle and research your audience throughoughtly, you can predict how your content will perform:

When it comes to your Feed Performance, the Instagram algorithm prioritises posts that receive the most engagement.

Well then, you could ask which are the most important Engagements?

According to the platform, the most valuable engagements for feed ranking are comments, reshares, likes starting from the most to the least important. 

It’s important to state that not all comments are equally valuable. 

Let’s assume that you have comments from what is called ‘Ghost Followers“.

This may be the most detrimental kind of Engagement you could get and unfortunately may result in a “Shadow Ban”.

Luckily, there is a completely safe and automated software that can help you identify and remove all ghost followers so that your Growth stays optimal.

Check it out here: mvrq.co/ghost

And for video posts, views are the most important one, which is helpful to know if you plan your content and captions in advance.

Now, let us ask another question:

What Is The Relationship You Have With Your Followers?

The Instagram algorithm 2020 wants to show relevant content from your friends, family and account you really care about.

So in order for you to use this principle to your advantage and show your followers what they really want (your content), you must make them feel like they’re closest to you.

Let me give you an example: 

If you comment a lot on someone’s photos and are even tagged with them, this signals Instagram that they probably fall into the “friends and family” category.

So, it’s a good idea to ask yourself the question “How can I make my followers comment on my posts?” or even better “How can I entice them to tag me in their photos?”

Maybe you could do a Giveaway, create a really engaging challenge or just write persuasive Call To Actions. Be Creative!

One of the former software engineers at Instagram, Thomas Dimson, shared how the platform could figure out who you care about the most, based on your behaviour on the app:

• People whose content you like (possibly including stories and live videos)

• People you direct message

• People you search for

• People you know in real life

If you’ve experienced low reach by showing up on Instagram consistently is the best thing you could do to increase it.

There’s a difference between Instagram reach vs impressions.

So if you want to make sure that your followers keep you on top of their mind by following what Thomas said you can keep your impression high all the time.

That being said, let’s get to the 3rd principle:

What Can You Do To Spend More Time Posting On Instagram Stories?

You might have seen that typically the Stories that appear closest to the beginning of the row are from accounts that you engage with the most, no matter if it’s their posts or stories.

So no surprise here, the Instagram Stories algorithm puts a lot of importance on timelines because it wants to show you the latest stories from your favorite accounts.

If this is so, by being regular at your posting schedules your stories will appear at the top of your followers’ feeds so that they can watch and engage with them.

By posting to Stories more often, you give your audience multiple chances throughout the day to tap into your content.

Not only that, but this also signals the latest Instagram algorithm update that you’re frequently posting quality content your followers are interested in.

If you’re lacking Instagram stories ideas, check out this video I made for you.

How Does The Instagram Algorithm Work On The Explore Page?

Instagram is working really hard to make the explore page more personalized to each user.

If you compare your Explore page to your best friend’s Instagram Explire Page, you will notice that it looks completely different. 

The reason being is that the Explore Page is specifically tailored to help you find new content that you’ll enjoy, based on what you already engage with.

Luckily, getting your posts there is not rocket science.

If you focus on optimizing your Instagram Marketing Strategy, especially if you leverage hashtags, create niche-related content, you’re continuously progressing to get featured on the Explore Page.

That’s where the real Growth begins!

However, you can’t do that if your page is flooded with Ghost followers…

If you want to understand more about that check this article (link to related article).

I’ve talked a little bit about the importance of #s, but let me dive deep and show you how you can optimize them for maximum reach.

How To Optimize Your Hashtags To Reach Relevant Communities 

With the proper # Strategy you won’t just reach more people — you’ll reach the people relevant for your specific niche, and who are most likely to engage with your content.

And you don’t really have to create the strategy yourself, there are brands out there who are already doing a great job.

So the best way to optimize your hashtags is to reverse-engineer what other successful brands in your network are already doing.

Look at every brand with similar content or target audience and carefully investigate their hashtag strategy.

Focus on their top-performing posts and highlight the hashtags that could be applicable to your Page for future posts.

The limit that the Instagram algorithm has is 30 #s for a single post.

What’s important to note here is that at first you should choose low-competition #s with under 200,000 posts in them so that you can rank faster.

It’s also good to remember that if you’re able to rank for 15+ nihce hashtags your chances for being featured on the Explore Page exponentially increase.

Now if you want to know more about Why Your Instagram Is Not Growing you can check out this video here.

That being said, I want to summarize everything and let you know that you’re on the right track if you’re reading this article.

Summary

Growing an Instagram Page is of huge importance nowadays.

Omnipresence is what you need if you want your audience to Trust and Respect you.

You want to make sure that your content is great, reaches your perfect audience and people LOVE it.

By using these 5 principles you’re good to go.

Make sure that you don’t get lost in following the Shiny Object Syndrome by reading infinite amounts of information on how you can grow properly.

Remember, at last it always comes down to how much action you take.

Now you know the 5 Fundamental Principles that never change on Instagram, create a content marketing strategy, make sure you clear your Ghost Followers (www.mvrq.co/ghost), if you’ve screwed things up and grow your business effortlessly.

If you feel like this article has helped you, comment down below which of these 5 principles is your favorite one so that you can help others with your opinion.

Thank you,
Dominik