Instagram is cleaning house. The king of feed-based social media is adjusting its ranking algorithms to better surface relevant content. And in the process, it’s creating a more level playing field – good news for SMBs and small creators who otherwise get drowned out by big brands and influencers.
Taking these measures one at a time, Instagram has announced that it will downrank duplicate content and posts from content aggregators. In that way, it’s starting to sound like Google’s ranking factors in prioritizing original and relevant content. And like Google, it positions this as a user-centric move.
Instagram is also taking the opportunity to throw a bone to smaller accounts such as SMBs and creator-economy players. Here it wants to rank original content from these smaller players higher than repurposed or reposted content from larger accounts. The latter currently gets lots of play on Instagram.
For example, a phenomenon often seen on Instagram is that creators with large followings get a great deal of traction for low-effort fodder, such as reposted content. Conversely, smaller players with fewer followers get less love, even if the content they’re posting has greater value or originality.
Course Correct
The latest updates are meant to change all that by prioritizing the content itself, rather than the prowess of the entity posting it. Of course, there’s a level of exposure that large accounts will naturally get, given that posts are seen by all their followers (that won’t change), but there’s also a discovery component.
For the latter, users discover content regardless of whom they follow, such as the Reels tab and recommended posts in the Home feed. And that’s where these new measures will apply. Meta emphasizes that there won’t be much difference in the content seen from accounts you actively follow.
Beyond the contents of the posts themselves, additional ranking factors will hinge on engagement. For example, as content percolates through the social graph – first to followers of a given entity, then to others – its levels of engagement can further propel and uprank it. This again has Google ranking vibes.
In addition to algorithmic tweaks, Instagram will take a few other measures to prioritize original and high-value content. For example, it will display labels on content that has been reposted. This isn’t necessarily a punitive designation (such as misinformation labels), but just a small note to contextualize things.
Beneath the Surface
Meanwhile, there’s another factor at play, just beneath the surface. The move towards ranking content based on its individual merits versus the social prowess of the entity posting it follows the playbook of another social giant: TikTok. It’s always been known as more of a meritocracy-driven feed.
If this is a factor in Instagram’s latest (our speculation), it puts it in a long line of moves from social giants to follow each others’ practices. Put more bluntly, copying features has become accepted tradecraft in the social media wars – from Instagram cloning Snapchat Stories to everyone cloning TikTok.
But in fairness to Meta, this move also likely results from listening to users. Indeed, there’s been ample hand wringing from creators who claim that their reach has been diminished by Instagram’s ranking algorithms. These complaints have surfaced all over Threads over the past several months.
As for the timing and rollout plan, Meta says that it will integrate all of these changes in phases over the next few months. We’ll be checking the Reels tab and the Home feed to see if there’s any noticeable impact. Will it contain more SMBs? Will it look more like TikTok? Let us know if you see a difference.
