Remember what it took to blow on Instagram about 5 years ago? Well, keep that work discipline, but switch up a few things. In recent times, especially since the start of 2023, Instagram has been going through updates almost every other day. You’ve probably noticed it yourself, the addition of Notes, the placement changes for shares and saves, the ability to find videos you’ve interacted with in your viewing history, and more.
Well, that’s just for the average user experience. As a musician on Instagram, your goal (apart from creating awesome music) is to get your music heard by the masses as well as have an engaging and loyal fan base. You need to start treating your account as a business and flow with an algorithm to get the best results for your Instagram promotion.
With the many changes that are happening to the average user, there are just a ton more for the creators’ side of things. Let me narrow it down for you. Here are a few updates to Instagram’s algorithm as of July 2023.
Instagram’s Adoption Of AI Changed Hashtag Efficacy
Remember how hashtags were everything? There were posts with 10 related hashtags and another 15 unrelated ones that made it to the public and Explore pages, raking in hundreds and thousands of views.
Well, you should probably stop doing that now. The advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been showing no signs of slowing down and Instagram has adopted it into its system. Instead, Instagram is rewarding or pushing posts with a maximum of 5 related hashtags. You could, however, prioritize the length of every single hashtag and make it somewhat a niche within the popular space. For instance, you could change #music to #bestlatinomusic.
AI is now tracking down content and captions to recommend your content to users who are engaged to similar topics. By using said niche hashtags, not only will your content have a higher chance of appearing on the Explore pages to potentially interested viewers, but it also ensures its ongoing relevance.
Flow With The Algorithm By Using Instagram’s In-App Video Editing Feature
Instagram is now rewarding creators that post content that is created using their in-app video editing feature. This means that the AI integrated into the platform’s algorithm will be able to detect if your video was edited using Instagram’s editing feature or from external software.
Especially if you’re importing videos from Capcut or TikTok (Instagram’s rival) and have their watermark, chances are that your video will not perform as well as it should in terms of publicity.
As an artist, you’ll probably require heavy software to create your music as well as your music videos. The in-app video editing feature on Instagram can be a pain to deal with due to its limited capabilities and many flaws.
You could however work around this. Create 90% of your content using your usual ways and simply add in some finishing touches, cuts, or at least include some of Instagram’s in-app video editing features into your videos. This way, you get to create your best work as well as flow alongside Instagram’s algorithm.
