Tips to maximise your Instagram Reach

With over 2 billion users on Instagram, it's becoming harder and harder to reach your audience. Meta / Instagram have shared some useful tips to help you improve your organic reach on your profile.

WATERMARKS

Are you guilty of repurposing content from a different app into Instagram? When you download the video from CapCut or TikTok, the app automatically puts their watermark on the video. This tiny watermark on the video and within the data could be impacting your reach.

To avoid this, create your content natively on the app - use Reels to create your Instagram Reels.

KEEP IT ORIGINAL

You're an original and so should your content be. Okay, so that's a little cheesy but it's absolutely true. Meta / Instagram has shared how the algorithm and systems will detect duplicate content and will automatically prioritise the original content. Great news if someone is repurposing your content, but if your strategy is to repost other users, be sure to put your own spin on the content using the Remix or Collab functions available within Instagram.

FIND YOUR SWEET SPOT

Although the functionality is there, don't be tempted to create long-form video content on Instagram. Audience retention data and your own insights will show that the sweet-spot for your reels are 30-90 seconds for both followers and non-followers.

This duration also has the best engagement .

If you do have long-form content, look at cutting it up into smaller clips that showcase the key moments.

STICK TO THE GUIDELINES

To maximise your reach, make sure that your content sticks to the guidelines set out by Meta / Instagram. Content that violates these guidelines will be filtered out and your account could be penalised. These guidelines include:

• Don't post content that discusses self-harm, suicide or eating disorders, as well as content that depicts or trivialises themes around death or depression.

• Don't post content that may depict violence, such a people fighting (Meta / Instagram will remove graphically violent content).

• Don't post content that may be sexually explicit or suggestive, such as people in see-through clothing.

• Don't post content that promotes the use of certain regulated products, such as tobacco or vaping products, adult products and services or pharmaceutical drugs.

• Don't post engagement / click bait posts.

Learn more about the Community Standard for Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and Threads online here.