Instagram is one of the most used social networks that offers plenty of promotional opportunities to brands and marketers. Knowing the pattern of a network can help us plan our marketing campaigns.

HubSpot columnist Caroline Forsey has shared an informative article highlighting how the Instagram algorithm works.

Forsey says, “First off, let’s take a look at what happens the moment you post a picture on Instagram. Why do some of your posts stay at the top of your audience’s feeds for hours, while others, seemingly identical in quality, disappear from everyone’s feeds within minutes?

The answer is engagement.

How Instagram’s Algorithm Uses Engagement to Evaluate How Many People See Your Post:

  1. When you first post a picture, it’s shown to a small percentage of your audience.
  2. Instagram measures how quickly that photo is engaged with, commented on, and liked.
  3. Instagram will compare the engagement your picture is getting to other posts you’ve shared at similar times and days. For example, is this Monday 10 a.m. post getting more or less traffic than last Monday’s 10 a.m. post? It would be unfair of Instagram to assume your post is less popular if it compared your post to another one you posted at a more popular time of day, so it compares similar times to ensure accuracy when it’s evaluating the quality of your post’s engagement”.

How Does the Instagram Algorithm Work?

HubSpot

Sharing is caring