Have you heard the news?  Instagram is changing their news feed!  Before you hit the panic button, let’s walk through the changes so you can capitalize on them.  

Did you know approximately 65% of people miss what is in their Instagram feed?  This makes sense if you look at your Instagram page and see where most engagement drops off significantly 1-2 hours after the post!  In order to help solve this issue, Instagram is moving toward an algorithmic feed.  
​
On the Instagram official blog, they say, “Instagram has grown, and it’s become harder to keep up with all the photos and videos people share.  This means you often don’t see the posts you might care about the most.  To improve your experience, your feed will soon be ordered to show the moments we believe you will care about the most.”  

• Instagram will test the new feed prior to rolling it out to the entire user base.  
• There is no timeline, but they say we can expect to see the algorithm “in the coming months.”
• It’s not shocking that this change is coming since Facebook owns Instagram.  This is very similar to how Facebook shows your News Feed to you and, as we recently blogged about, Twitter is trying to replicate it as well.  
  

So how will this work, you might ask. Let’s take a look:  

• If you’re a CrossFit junkie (we say that with all the love as we are too!), as an example, and you like 80% of all of the CrossFit page photos.  
• You typically check your Instagram before you go to bed, you may not see a post they make at 12AM if you don’t log in until the following night.  
• The new Instagram feed will make sure these types of posts are at the top of your feed no matter when you log in so that they can ensure you see the content that is most important to you.  

Finally, we know you want to understand how this translates to your business page.  It will be important now to have a concentration on content your followers will like or comment on, rather than say, general information posts.  Frequency and focusing on when your followers are online will become less relevant.  It will be important as these changes occur to continue to closely monitor your page activity, engagement and growth to make sure you’re changing your strategies to match how your followers are interacting with your brand.