As an Instagram user, you might be well aware of the explore page. This is where you can find some contents that are new to you. So getting your content on an explore page gives you more reach and exposure. It is instrumental in gaining a new set of audience.
Why, because around 200 million people go through the Instagram explore page.
Mad numbers right? So this is why people love to get featured here. People who don’t follow you also can see your posts on the explore page.
So how to get there? There aren’t exact steps but there are some ways that help Instagram algorithms to recognize you and put you there.
HOW IT WORKS
Before getting into something, you need to understand it. Usually, Instagram feeds show posts from the accounts you follow but in the explore page it’s different, you can find posts from the accounts who you don’t even know. Explore pages differ for every user. The posts that display on your Instagram explore page are based on the content you most see on Instagram. If you see content about food mostly, your explore page displays content related to food but from the accounts, you don’t follow or interact with before.
Maybe it sounds weird at first, but when you think your posts can also reach the explore page of random users, it’s actually cool.
There are some things you should know to get featured on explore page
RANKING
Instagram explore uses some ranking factors before allowing posts to display on the explore page. Understanding it will give you a clear-cut idea of what you should do.
User end
At first, Instagram analyzed the user based on their engagement on posts. It comes to know which kind of post the user is interested in and then proceeds to display personalized content.
Context of the posts
The Instagram algorithm also understands the context and information about the posts by examining the captions, hashtags, location, likes, comments, etc.
Creator end
Here the algorithm looks at the nature of the post, the creator’s profile, and the engagements in the posts. It also checks what type of content you usually post and also about your follower’s interests.
By combining these factors the algorithm works to offer the user a personalized explore page. Based on the user’s interests, Instagram selects many seed accounts and it will rank the most relevant one to the user by applying above mentioned factors. Then, the user will get content on the explore page from these accounts.
FIND YOUR NICHE
What’s that? You may post many contents in your account, but the thing is, not all have the same type of reception. Some may have higher engagement and some others have poor reception comparatively. This means people actually liked something about the content which had higher engagement
.
For example, consider you post content about movies and sports, if the posts about movies often get more engagement than that of sports, it means the audience loves your content on movies. So obviously it shows your niche is posting content about movies.
This is important because there is no point in posting content that doesn’t bring enough engagement.
CONTENT OPTIMIZING
You might have good content but it isn’t enough. You have to convert it into a good-quality post. It’s like implementing an idea into a form that is appealing to people.
These are some tips to improve your post quality
- Always post good-quality pictures. Because that’s the first thing a viewer sees while scrolling through the feed.
- Using templates might attract viewers. This also improves the quality and looks rich.
- Captions are the next thing that improves your content. You can put as much creativity as you can here.
ENGAGEMENT
Engagement is the key to everything on Instagram. The Instagram algorithm is designed in such a way that if your posts don’t get enough engagement the possibility of them appearing in feeds becomes less. If it’s not even reaching the feeds of your followers, then you can’t think about the Instagram explore page. So, increasing engagement will help you reach the explore page. It might be easy when you can get likes on Instagram automatically or by creating opportunities to increase engagement in your posts. These are some ways to create engagement for your posts.
Stories
Stories always have a higher possibility of getting engagement than posts and reels. It has many specific stickers such as ask a question, quiz, poll that create engagement.
Captions
Another way to increase engagement in your post is to make full use of captions. You can add a caption as questions such as ‘like this if you did this at least once in your life’ or ‘give your comment on opinions’ will drive viewers to engage more.
Live
Going live can help you to be familiar with your followers. It will create more interactions and help you to know more about your followers and what they like. You can also host any other big account in live that will help you to receive more viewers. This can actually help you to feature in the explore page of the followers of that big account.
POST AT RIGHT TIME
You need to find the best time to upload your posts. Best time in the sense, the time when your followers are most active. If you have a business account these data can be seen in the insights tab in your profile. You can analyze when most of the people are active, when they interact more, and can post accordingly. There are some other analytic tools that are available which can give you a detailed report about your audience and their active hours.
These are some ways that can guide you into the Instagram explore page. If you follow this effectively, you can hit gold soon.
