Instagram Doesn’t Want Your Photos Anymore
There has been a noticeable change in the way Instagram shows photos in your timelines. If you’ve noticed, you can scroll your timeline for several seconds before ever reaching one photo. And that’s because Instagram doesn’t want your photos anymore. This is a wild concept for a social media platform that was built around the idea of sharing photos with friends, family and the world. But that’s where Instagram is headed; the algorithm no longer favors your photos. They don’t want to see a picture of your church fellowship, the pastor preaching, or what the kids are doing in youth church; they want videos! They are trying to compete in the ever-increasing climate of short-form video and sadly, Instagram wants to be TikTok.
So what does this mean for churches and organizations with social media strategies designed for sharing photos on Instagram? Honestly, I’m not sure! Instagram has thrown many tech experts and content creators into a frenzy with its recent algorithm changes. But here are a few ideas that serve as my best effort to help individuals, organizations, and especially churches navigate this new terrain.
Post for engagement
Create post that ask questions, but do so in the form of video. How can we pray for you? What are your reading for your devotional time? What’s your go to snack? You can often do this in your Instagram stories. Instagram provides wonderful creative tools that will help you create stories and reels from scratch that use words. You’d be surprised by how much post engagement a simple question can get; and the more engagement your post has the more the algorithm will push it.
Post at the right times
Understanding when your audience is interacting with your content is often the difference between your content being seen or being completely overlooked. If you have a business account/profile with Facebook or Instagram (which is free and easy to sign up for), you have access to tools and analytics that tell you what time of the day your audience engages with your content the most. This is an invaluable tool and will prevent you from posting during unproductive times of day.
Post your photos inside of reels
Since Instagram is so committed to focusing on short-form video (more on that here), why not give them short-form video. Posting your photos inside of a video reel is a great why to get traction. Instagram’s algorithm is going to push reels…so post reels! I’ve seen some accounts on Instagram go all in on this concept (and I intend to as well). Content creators and organizations that only post reels on instagram continue to see exponential growth on their accounts.
I hope these three suggestions help and will get you moving in the right direction. In the meantime, one can only hope that Instagram will tweak their algorithm and begin to show more photos on timelines again, but for now…when in Rome…!
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