In the Insights of each post you can see the number of people who discovered this post through the Explore page. This section is a golden influx of new people who are interested in or engaged with similar accounts or content to what you are posting.
If you are not satisfied with the number of Instagrammers who discover your content organically, not from their feed or ads, there must be reasons for it. In the next section of this article, we offer tested and proven ways to grow your content reach from the Explore section. Let’s begin!
Accounts and content that don’t get in the IG recommendations
In the help center of this social network, an explanation of the algorithm appears. The algorithm is responsible for the selection of content in Explore, and it aims to highlight interesting IGTV and accounts that you might like.
In addition to a general description of the system's operation, the information provides details on the types of content that are allowed on the network but will not get into the recommendations for various reasons.
So, the types of content listed below are not prohibited on this social network. But they will not appear as recommendations for your potential followers:
- Self-harm, suicide, eating disorders.
- Violence, fights, and similar.
- Sexual or provocative content, such as images of people wearing see-through clothing.
- Content subject to legal regulation: tobacco, electronic cigarettes, services and goods for adults, narcotic medicinal products, etc.
- Content promoting or showing beauty treatments.
- Content that contains exaggerated health claims, such as a “magic pill.”
- Content that uses health-related claims to promote products or services, such as nutritional supplements for weight loss.
- Content that promotes misleading or false business models, such as micro-loans or "zero risk" investments.
- Content containing clickbait.
- Content promoting contests or giveaways.
- Unoriginal or modified content from other sources with no added value.
- Content that has not been fact-checked.
- Misinformation about vaccination.
As you see, some forms of content you might consider as driving likes and engagement will not have a chance to be listed on the Explore page. So, certain accounts will not be shown as recommended by the Instagram app. For example, those accounts that:
- Have recently violated Instagram community guidelines.
- Have repeatedly and/or recently shared content that is prohibited in recommendations.
- Have lost the ability to advertise on the social network.
- Belong to organizations that are associated with violence.
So, if you wonder why some of your engaging posts may result in few on zero views from Explore, make sure they don’t get into the above categories.
Now we’ll overview legal and tested ways that will help your content get higher exposure by showing in the recommendations of target users.
6 Tips to explode your reach via Explore
ENCOURAGE COMMENTS
Well, yes – it is the comments that help the Instagram algorithm to understand that the community likes you. If users are not just spending half a second to like, but are also taking time to leave comments, then it is worth showing this post to many more people. Thus, Instagram benefits from more people spending time on the app. Therefore, your task is to come up with the ideas for how you can hook people. This can be a very cool visual in itself, or you can directly ask them in the caption to leave a comment or tag friends. As mentioned in the first section, most often posts with contests will no longer be promoted by Instagram in the Explore section.
Therefore, you need to think of more creative methods. For example, you may ask to share the most creative comment and reward the person with some kind of prize (you will let them know later). The trick with carousels listing several options (let’s say movies) is the question “Which do you like more?” It works perfectly. Many people like to share their opinion comments.
ENCOURAGE SHARES AND SAVES
Posts that are saved and shared in the DM increase the chances that your content will be explored by more users organically. To stimulate these actions, you can directly motivate followers to share the post with their friends who can relate. Mention in the caption you want them to save this valuable content post so that it remains at hand. If you clearly write in the copy that you want them to save it or resend it, people will be more likely to do it. So, close your captions with a CTA.
What posts are more often sent to friends or saved? Usually, this is something personal that you can relate to a person to whom you send it. For example, why do you think horoscope accounts have become so popular? Because Instagrammers DM to their friends funny personal facts and memes that may relate to them.
USE CAROUSEL POSTS
Instagram algorithm perfectly understands how much time users spend scrolling or viewing posts. If it is actually engaging, according to the algorithm, users will explore the publication for as long as possible. This is basically Instagram's goal: to increase the time users spend on social media. Therefore, when you upload a carousel post in which there are up to 10 photos and videos included, it will require more time to investigate them fully compared to when they see only one photo.
USE TRUSTED HASHTAGS
Proven hashtags, especially those that are related to a certain contest or an ongoing trend will likely lead your post to the top. You should remember that many users follow certain niche tags – these must be explored for your growth. If you use such tags, all the media posted with it will automatically arrive in the feed of users.
Therefore, it is very important to research a database of tags by which you want to promote and which reflect the interests of your target audience. Hashtags will really increase the chance of organically hitting the tops and getting into your audience's feeds.
It can be extremely time-wasting to select or search for tags manually using the app – there’s not even any option to copy. So, special tools like the Inflact Hashtag Generator are a great opportunity to research hashtags suggested by Instagram and copy them for easy use. It’s simple to enter one or several keywords, and the service will show you all semantically close ideas.
POST MORE VIDEOS
It’s quite obvious that clips and TikTok-like Reels take a lot more time and attract users more than a single photo. The same can’t be said about IGTV – fewer users find it really engaging.
Of course, there are exceptions, but according to statistics, users are more captured by videos. It doesn’t mean you shouldn’t post images, but if you have never used video content in your feed until now, start doing so to please the Instagram algorithm.
If you think it's difficult and time-consuming, read our guide on how to create videos for Instagram.
EXPERIMENT WITH LONGER CAPTIONS
They say that people have begun to read a lot less, but this is not the case. The Instagram audience is fed up with thoughtless pictures that simply broadcast trends and carry no information with them. Especially if you want to promote yourself as an expert in a particular niche, you need to publish longer (but let’s also say meaningful) posts.
When promoting Instagram as an expert that people can trust, you need to share information that people can’t just google. It could be your personal experience, your personal story, or just your thoughts on any topic.
Feel free to write a lot and share every detail, even if it seems insignificant to you. While people are reading, the Instagram algorithm starts thinking that your content is actually attention-grabbing. In order to attract attention quickly, focus on the headline – it is what they first view when scrolling the feed. The main rule is that important information should always be in the beginning. Check out the guide on how to create captions for Instagram and become a pro at it.
