How You’re Discovered on Instagram — A Basic Framework That Can Unlock Instagram Growth
By: Eduardo Morales
Tags: Social Media Marketing, Instagram Marketing, Small Business, Instagram, Small Business Marketing

Instagram’s Reach Channels

On Instagram, someone who doesn’t already know you can come across your username and discover your account only through one of the following screens.

The Home feed

People come across your username here when someone they already follow tags your username on their photo or caption.

Activity that surfaces your username on this channel: To show up on the Home Feed of people you don’t know you you need to be tagged by accounts they already follow. Although difficult and potentially expensive, finding the most valuable influencers and getting them to respond to you is a way to achieve that. Another strategy here is to provide real incentives for anyone to tag you. The more effective the incentives, the more people will tag you. For example, in my @potteryforall account, I incentivize ceramics accounts to photo tag me in exchange for the possibility of being featured on my account to a large audience.

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The Explorer, Reels, or shopping pages

These three pages are grouped together because they all work on the same principle. People come across your username through these channels when the Instagram algorithm selects your content to be surfaced on them. The only difference is that each of them is focused on different types of content. The explorer page shows people photos, videos, Reels, and shopping content, the reels page is focused exclusively on Reels and the shopping page is focused exclusively on shoppable content.

Activity that surfaces your username on this channel: To get your username surfaced on the Explorer, Reels, or shopping pages as much as possible your content needs to be selected by the algorithm as much as possible. Instagram exists to maximize profits by maximizing the amount of attention they can get from us. The algorithm is built to keep us on the app as much as possible by showing us the most engaging content first. So, to be selected by the algorithm as much as possible you need to have the most engaging content possible. It’s hard to do, but achievable through using a simple process to systematically increase your engagement.

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The Hashtag feed

People come across your username through these channels when the Instagram algorithm selects your content to be surfaced on the Top Posts of whatever Instagram hashtags you tag on your content.

Activity that surfaces your username on this channel: First, make sure to use the hashtags that people that are likely to be interested in your content are checking. Then, know that the algorithm also selects the Top Posts based on their engagement so to get your username surfaced on the Hashtag feed as much as possible you also need to have the highest engagement possible.

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The Activity feed

Interactions are shown on this feed so people come across your username here whenever you interact (follow, like, comment, or are tagged in) with their account.

Activity that surfaces your username on this channel: To show up on other people’s Activity feeds as much as possible you need to interact (follow, like, comment, or are tagged in) with people who are likely to find your content interesting as much as possible.

One way to do that is by hand, every day, or you can automate that with an Instagram bot (which can be dangerous for your account). If the people you interact with aren’t likely to be interested in your content, you’ll waste your interactions and your time because once they discover your account they’ll find it irrelevant and they won't follow you or check out your products or services.

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The DM inbox

People come across your username here when they receive a DM from you or whenever someone else shares your content with that person through a DM.

Activity that surfaces your username on this channel: To show up on other people’s DM inbox as much as possible you need to DM people as much as possible, which I wouldn’t recommend because you’ll eventually get blocked, or get your content shared through DM’s as much as possible. Usually, the more engaging your content is, the more it’s shared, so having high engagement is ultimately the most effective activity you can do to be shared on DMs.

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And that’s it! That’s all of the channels through which people can discover you on Instagram.