Instagram's New Algorithm: What It Could Mean for Small Businesses & Bloggers

On 15th March 2016, Instagram confirmed via an official post on their blog, that they will be making tweaks to their algorithm to re-order what we (users) see in our Instagram feeds. It said..

The order of photos and videos in your feed will be based on the likelihood you’ll be interested in the content, your relationship with the person posting and the timeliness of the post. As we begin, we’re focusing on optimizing the order — all the posts will still be there, just in a different order.

What this means?

This means with the introduction of Instagram’s new algorithm, it is going to suppress the organic reach of content and basically going to decide for us what we would like to see and what is ok for us to miss.

Currently when you log into your Instagram account you see the latest posts at the top and the further back you scroll, the posts get older. When the change is rolled in, the current reverse chronological order feed will no longer be in use. Instead, Instagram will show posts it thinks you will most want to see.

Its parent company – Facebook’s organic reach is almost dead, with less than 5% organic reach for bigger pages and less than 23% organic reach for smaller pages. (Full study here)

Seeing Instagram getting on the same boat is alarming. It’s even more distressing for small business owners, entrepreneurs and bloggers, who highly reply on and use Instagram as a part of their branding strategy.

So exactly what happens to your Instagram accounts and how can you escape the algorithm bubble?

Well, bad news is no one can escape this bubble. When the algorithm starts rolling in:

You will see posts only from accounts you interact with most.
Similarly, if you have a business Instagram account, your posts will be seen only by a limited number of followers who have interact/ed with your posts or visit your account frequently. There are high chances that your potential target audience will not see your posts unless you pay to beef up your reach
The average monthly engagement/ follower rate will decrease
As a user of the app yourself, you may not see posts from people you care about only because you haven’t interacted with them for a while on Instagram.

Instagram has not yet announced the date it is going to roll out the changes but New York times, where the news was first published stated that the changes will roll out slowly and would not be quick or jarring. Instagram would start the shift in a series of small tests with a single-digit percentage of user groups before deciding whether to introduce the changes broadly.

To a large extent, It was but natural that Instagram would adopt the algorithm similar to facebook sooner or later due to the rapidly growing number of users and enormous amounts of content posted on Instagram each day.

But the one thing is clear, Instagram’s new algorithm will definitely change the user experience, and not for good.

How do you feel about these changes? Exploited?