Preparing Your Social Strategy | Changes to Instagram Feed 2022

Instagram will be reverting back to the chronological user feed in 2022, allowing better growth for smaller brands & accounts.

In case you have not heard the news, Instagram’s Head (Adam Mosseri) has announced that they will be reverting back to the original chronological user feed the app had first before they made the change to the algorithmic feed.

Instagram will be reverting back to the chronological user feed in 2022, allowing better growth for smaller brands & accounts.

What does this mean for you? This means you should be preparing your Instagram Social Media Strategy for this change in 2022, that way you will be able to have a competitive advantage when it launches.

What is a Chronological Feed?

A chronological feed, similar to what Twitter currently allows users to sort their timeline by, organizes posts by the latest-first at the top. So this means when you pull up Instagram and start scrolling down your feed, you’ll first find a post from a follower from 5 minutes ago, then 1 hour ago, then a few hours ago, etc. – showing the most recently posted content first.

How is this beneficial for you as a brand/account?

1. You no longer are going to be penalized for not posting as actively on Instagram (or at least as penalized as you would with the current feed). Currently, the feed uses algorithms to display you posts from creators that the system finds “your best fit” – which is not always accurate. In addition, Instagram currently rewards you for posting as frequently as possible (with quality in mind), therefore skipping a week or two could penalize your brand account as less people would be actively engaging with your content. While it’s not confirmed that you won’t be penalized for not posting with these new changes in 2022 – you will definitely have better luck having your content shown in front of more followers by default whenever you post – as long as you’re following some of these practices I will be diving down into below.
2. Your content will statistically be shown to more followers again, rejoice! Instagram has claimed that the algorithmic feed showed content to users based on what they determined they liked the best – however this has fault. Because their current feed is designed to show the “best” first, brands tend to have a less likely chance to show up on a user’s feed vs. a friend – as users tend to engage more with users > brands overall on Instagram. With this new update, no longer is feed going to try and be limiting what posts are shown – and therefore if you’re posting at a peak time, you’ll see more of your audience engaging / seeing your post.
3. Smaller brands & accounts are going to have a better chance of growing in this new change. As larger creators are prioritized in the current feed because they receive more engagement on their posts, this new change will allow smaller brands & accounts to grow more quickly – as their content will be shown more to their follower base.

Practices to Start Preparing

1. Develop a Social Media Calendar & Schedule: First off, you are going to want some sort of a social media calendar and schedule for you & your team to be able to see your upcoming content at a week at a glance. Whether you’re using a service like Hootsuite to actually schedule your posts (free/premium), or something simple like Notion, Trello, or Google Sheets – even just outlining content ideas and categories for each day of the week can save you tons of time & relieve a lot of stress from trying to post the day-of.

2. Find Your Best Posting Times. With the feed being chronological soon, your posting time is going to be absolutely crucial. Find what time(s) work best throughout each day for your audience. Are they students, do they tend to sleep in longer on the weekends? What timezones is your audience in? When is your audience most likely to go on lunch break to scroll through Instagram? Are you posting about an event happening later today – consider sharing in the morning so people can see it before they leave the house! Finding your peak posting times can come from trial and error, A/B testing is going to work best FOR YOU!! And of course, the Internet is your friend! Don’t be afraid to look for guides & help – but staying true to your account and following.

3. Have a queued social media post vault. Thinking of ideas on the spot can be hard, tiring, and sometimes you just might not be in the mood to think of copy! Practice having a place (as if you had a whiteboard) to write down all of your ideas, captions, etc. Even categorize things by organizing your captions in one column, ideas in another, photos in one folder, and graphics in another as well! You can totally knock out a week’s worth or even a month’s worth of content by doing this. That way, if you’re needing content to post on a dry day – you can refer to your post vault.

4. Utilize all mediums & formats on Instagram. Instagram has moved away from just being a picture-post type of platform. You now have posts, stories, reels, and videos (formally IGTV). General rule of thumb: curate content for each type of medium to see which works best for your audience. For example, your stories and videos might be more engaging with your followers as they come off more personable, meanwhile your posts could have more shares as they’re more informative. See what works best with your brand, and utilize each medium if possible.

This article will be updated with new tips & pieces of advice as more information from Instagram is announced. In the meantime, feel free to check out other marketing articles I’ve written about growing your personal brand or TikTok account!

Have a question or want to drop an idea? Email me at [email protected] or tweet me at @erictigerawr!