Reach on Instagram: what is it and how to increase? 6 working ways

Guess the main headache of all Instagrammers? It's not the posts or even the ads, but the reach on Instagram, which is peaking every month. It's time to talk about such a tricky metric.

A couple of days ago, I was looking at the stats and was sad - the reach of the posts was down almost 40%. Thought it was just me. I felt like I was the only one in my class who hadn't done their math homework and they asked me. And then there were chats and Instagram posts about how many people had noticed the decrease in activity and reach.

What are reach, displays and engagement?

Reach is the number of unique accounts that have viewed a post or Stories. Unfortunately, with Instagram's growing popularity and new ranking mechanisms, it's impossible to achieve 100% coverage. The social network itself is cutting the numbers, they say, so that more people and bloggers would use the official advertising.

Personally, I both believe in this and not. It's clear that the management of the social network wants to monetize their project. The ad market for bloggers is growing every year, and Instagram isn't getting that ad money. It's logical to assume that they're going the way of Facebook, where you have to pay for coverage.

To see the reach in a post, click on "View Stats" below the photo.

Views - how many times users have viewed your post. This number includes your subscribers as well as those who saw the post in recommended or clicked through from a search. A user can view a post or story several times, so the impressions count is always higher than the reach count. You can see the number of impressions in the same place as the coverage, but a little lower.

Engagement Rate (or ER) is the number of users as a percentage who like, comment on, save posts or reply to direct messages. The more engagement, the better. Because reach and impressions don't mean anything on their own, what's important now is that subscribers interact with your content.

You can only see the reach of posts and storizas if you have a business or author account. If you have a personal profile, statistics are not collected.

How do I connect stats to Instagram?

• Go to your account settings, to do this, click on the menu in the upper right corner of your phone.


• Find the "Settings" column.

At the end of the list will be a link to "Switch to a professional account." If this link isn't here, you'll find it under "Account". Select a category, this option does not affect anything and you can not show it. If you switch to a professional account, it will become a public account, that is, open to other users.

At this step you can choose the type of profile: business or author. The account of the author is available basic statistics, the number of subscriptions and unsubscriptions, the division of dialogs in the Director into two folders, you can set up quick responses, but the targeting options are limited here. Therefore, if you earn in Instagram, it is better to choose a business account. The same statistics, the same quick responses and plus there are no restrictions in targeting.

What's more important: reach or engagement?

You can't put coverage and impressions on bread or take a vacation on them. Since you're reading my blog, let's get our priorities right, shall we? If you do not know how to do so that the invested ruble to get two, then kill on coverage early.

So first I advise to build a strategic account base and then think about what to do with outreach.

Why is there a decrease in coverage on Instagram?

There are several reasons:

You. Look closely at your content - is it interesting to your audience? How does it respond to it? Feed ranking is arranged as follows: the more people interact with the post, the higher the reach. If Instagram sees that the content isn't very interesting to the audience, it shows the posts less and less. Also you can use onstagram stalker for watching activity.

Instagram. I've noticed that before big updates, the coverage of posts gets small. This was the case with the introduction of the new ranking algorithm, with Stories updates. So if you're sure the content is on point, just wait. Perhaps Instagram is preparing a big update.

Failure to participate in a gif or mass unsubscribes. In Instagram's eyes, it looks like people aren't interested in your account and it starts dropping coverage. Don't get into givas if you don't know how to work further with this audience, how to warm it up and make it fall in love with you. The number of subscribers in 2021 is only important for your ego.

Narcotics bots. They don't like posts, don't comment, don't direct mail, your reach goes down the drain.

Cleaning your account of "inactive subscribers. Again, what Instagram sees: people unsubscribing from you, the number of followers decreasing. What does it do? Yes, it's decreasing coverage.

How to increase your reach? Ironclad tools.

Do a target audience analysis. See how easy it works: you know what's bothering readers + give them solutions to problems in the content = they respond and the reach goes up. There are mechanical ways to raise your reach like interactives or games, but you can't drag your coverage up on mechanics in the long haul. Do some audience analysis, for crying out loud!

Publish at popular times. Look at the stats to see when subscribers are most active. If you don't have that data yet, target prime times: 8-10am and 7-22pm.

Train your subscribers to read your posts and watch your stories all the time. To do this, make a content plan and stick to regularity.

Promote content through targeting. Set up targeting ads to promote key publications. For example: your case studies, customer testimonials, helpful posts. Start setting aside 10% of your orders for your advertising fund. Then you'll thank yourself (well, and me).

Talk to readers in the comments. Build a community of like-minded people, respond to subscribers, be open.

Engage your subscribers in dialogue. For example, ask questions in stories and posts, do polls, contests, write about provocative topics.

Friends, the work of developing an Instagram account is a lot of work. Have patience and think several steps ahead. Coverage is going to go down, so I wish all of us the patience.