What is up Instagram?? Why are you keeping us from reaching our own followers on @thetravelbook? Why do we have to pay to boost our posts to reach people, who genuinely want to communicate and engage with us? This post is gonna be a peek into the struggles we are experiencing right now with Instagrams insane algorithm money game.
Instagram you money greedy piece of… :-* !
This week has honestly been such a rollercoaster for us. We’ve been so motivated to push through and work day and night to make our travel blog dream come true. However, no matter how much sweat, tears, and motivation we put into our work, one thing is holding us back: Namely the Instagram algorithm, which you might have heard other Instagrammers moan about. We’ve come across several Instagrammers who have mentioned the negative effects they have experienced with the algorithm, but until two days ago, we never experienced the drop in engagement ourselves. As you can see in the screenshot above, our engagement the two past days is so so much lower than our average engagement (the black horizontal line).
What is happening right now ist that the algorithm is keeping us from reaching our own followers and new followers if we don’t pay Instagram to boost(advertise) our posts. This is so heartbreaking and frustrating for us since we have worked so hard the past year to reach as many interested people as possible and to engage with our followers.
Above we have attached two screenshots. The first is of a post from 2019, and the second is of a post from 2017. We actually have to go all the way back to the posts from 2017 on Instagram to see a similar engagement from our followers as we experience on our profile now. In 2017 we just started our Instagram account and we only had like 500 followers. Today we have 11.600+ active followers. What is the meaning of this madness?
Another really strange thing is, that our own private accounts @rasmuslythcke and @kapowkaro, which has fewer followers and less frequent posts, gains much more engagement these days. This is due to the fact that the Instagram algorithm favors private profiles and sees money potential in business profiles… And @TheTravelBook is a business profile… So we have to pay Instagram to make our posts on @thetravelbook reach our followers the same way our private profiles organically reaches people! How rude is that?
If you look at the screenshot above, it shows that our followers have increased by 30 amazing people from July 12 – 18. So our number of followers is actually increasing these days, but the engagement we receive has never been so low(as you saw in the first screenshot)? It honestly doesn’t make any sense.
As you can see in the screenshot above, we tested what results would come from an Instagram ad, that we paid Instagram for. You can see we have double the engagement on this post as we have had on our normal (and un-advertised) posts the past two days. However, it’s still like 75% less engagement than on our average posts. Its ridicules that we have to pay Instagram to reach you guys.
Sorry for the bad vibe! But…
We always try to keep a positive tone on our platforms, because generally, we are super positive people, who see opportunities rather than threats. Right now we are just so shocked about how disloyal Instagram is handling our profile, and so frustrated about what to do to reach you guys that we truly want to connect with!
However, we won’t give up the fight and will keep trying to engage with you. Thanks for staying with us.
Much love from Rasmus & Karoline
TheTravelBook