The article has been updated. First published December 26, 2019.

Perhaps the main question today for most bloggers is how to increase their reach on Instagram? The competition continues to grow, and those who follow the statistics closely will see that something has gone wrong: this year, coverage is regularly falling.
Blogger Ruslan Zakharkin, in frustrated feelings, even sued Instagram for canceling likes and falling coverage. He estimated the moral damage from the losses at 500,000 rubles.

Today we will find out what it is all about – coverage, why they are needed and how to increase them. We will reveal little-known nuances that will allow you to outwit the social network and not lose your subscribers and their attention.

What is coverage?

Instagram reach refers to the number of users who viewed a post. The system equates two or more views from one person to one coverage. This, in fact, is the difference between coverage and display.

That is, the number of impressions will always be more than the reach, since one person can revise your post at least a hundred times, and all of them will be counted. This means that the reach is more about the audience, the number of users interested in you.

Yes, both impressions and reach are winding up. Together with likes. But here it is important to remember a nuance: for real promotion, for further work with advertising, you will need live statistics, real views and sales. Otherwise, you can forget about cooperation with major brands and bloggers.

Secret Tricks to Increase Reach

Here are a few tips to help you increase your reach. You may have guessed about some, and some will become a discovery.

Content plan

Irregular posting leads to the fact that you disappear from the feed for some of your subscribers. Instagram’s policy is such that bloggers and business profiles are always a priority, who are often liked and commented on. Now let’s look at what’s what, with a simple example.

There is a certain blogger Petya, who published 8 posts in a week and received 4 likes from one of his subscribers. And there is a conditional blogger Nikita, who posted only 2 pictures and saw only 1 like. So the Instagram algorithm thinks that that subscriber likes Petya’s content more than Nikitin. Then in the tape Nikita will be somewhere at the very bottom, and Petya is much higher. So the former will have a drop in coverage, and the latter will increase.

This is why our recommendation is: Don’t dismiss your content plan. You should not blindly post strictly at a certain time and not a minute later, but you still need to draw up an approximate publication schedule. And SMMplanner is always ready to help with this. It will not be possible to juggle. Took a week’s respite – be prepared to see disastrous coverage, and along with them, problems with Instagram’s earnings.

Increase in likes

And even if soon none of your subscribers will see the number of likes under the photo, they still play a big role. How to convince a user to click on a heart?

• Write about hot and hot topics.
• Don’t forget about selfies (users are always interested in seeing the face of the person they are reading).
• Publications in the style of “before / after”, “was / is” (still often included in the recommendations).

• Ask subscribers to like it. Think of a way not to look like a beggar, but asking always has a positive effect.
• Keep track of statistics, analyze what content is the best for your audience. Focus on such publications.
• Spend like times. Attract subscribers to the activity and do not forget to thank them with hearts for their interest and involvement.
• Contests with prizes, where the main condition is to like the last few posts.

Combine different methods, experiment and choose the most working ones for you.

Increase comments

Reach is built not only on likes, but also on comments. It is important to respond to them within 1 hour. If you ignore your followers, Instagram punishes with lower reach.

And one moment. Now Instagram no longer accepts comments that look like unsubscribing from bots. All these “Cool!”, “Cool photo”, “Like”, etc. are no longer a sign of engagement. The comment must contain at least four words so that the algorithm does not consider the real user a bot.

Ask a question at the end of a post, take a poll or poll to attract subscribers to the discussion.

Stories

If you haven’t become a frequenter of stories yet, then it’s time to become one. Now more and more users, instead of scrolling down, prefer to simply scroll through the stories feed. So be sure to remind yourself in every possible way.

Answer questions in stories, announce a post, play games, invite to chat. The more interactivity, the more user interest.

Try to post stories on an ongoing basis: at least 1-6 stories every day.

Hashtags

Promotion with hashtags is a thing of bygone days, but it can still bear fruit. So there are a few nuances that can increase your reach:

• Do not put a maximum of 30 hashtags under one post at once. Sometimes Instagram can perceive this as spam. It is better to use 5-6 of the most accurate and capacious ones.

• To avoid being blocked for spam, do not use the same hashtags under all your posts.
• Recently, hashtags in comments do not work: they need to be added to the post itself.
• We recommend choosing frequently used hashtags (from 10,000 to 100,000), but avoiding those that are added to posts every second.

Keep in mind that the first three points are just observations and assumptions. There is no exact data on this from Instagram. So try to test them and see how it works for you.

Direct

Instagram assumes that a subscriber likes you if he writes to you in Direct. So you will have to try to lure him there. Ask questions, conduct polls and polls in stories, leave a window for answers, provoke a conversation with various stickers: it is from stories that it is easiest to get to your Direct.

You’ve probably noticed that some bloggers ask users for completely banal, sometimes absurd things. And all then to get a reaction in Direct. So Instagram increases the position in the feed, which means it increases the reach.

Leah Canary, SMM specialist

To increase reach, you should analyze the set of likes on posts in the first 4 hours after publication. It is in this interval that Instagram algorithms evaluate the popularity of a post and actively spread it among users. After that, the best posts should be launched for promotion through the Facebook advertising account – both among their subscribers and on the audience of competitors.

I also advise you to upload videos and IG-TV more often, release at least 6-7 Stories per day: announce your posts from the feed 3-4 hours after publication, add polls to your posts in Stories, stimulate more engagement through the Stories section. A good trick is to play quests / quizzes with conditions in which users have to read your new posts and Stories every day, subscribe to notifications so as not to miss. In the description, use situational hashtags (but try not to be outside the topic of publications) – in order to go to the top, you need to gain likes among your subscribers.

From the topical – place stickers “Support business” and “Thank you doctors” for greater coverage. To hide stickers, use SMMplanner.

In general, the main conclusion is this: attract real active subscribers to yourself in all possible ways. Communicate with them in the comments and in Direct, create engaging content to get feedback. And you will be happy in the form of high coverage!

Register now in SMMplanner and schedule posts on Instagram and Instagram Stories.