You're Not Getting It - Instagram Engagement

Are You An In(stagram)Cel?

If you've found yourself opening Instagram less frequently and posting content more rarely you're not alone. For many people it was the force-fed video content, explosion of ads, and the way the platform stripped photographers of engagement overnight. But, Adam Mosseri, the Head of Instagram, acknowledged the problem and said change is coming soon. On his weekly Q&A with users, Mosseri admitted “I think we were overfocused on video in 2022 and pushed ranking too far and basically showed too many videos and not enough photos.” He said that Instagram has since worked behind the scenes to restore a more even balance, and internal metrics show that it’s working.

Even the most casual users can recognize the decline in engagement, quality of content, and overall enjoyability on the platform. While there have been countless changes in the past few years, one of the most recurring themes is the shift away from photography that Instagram has made. This could be seen in not just the addition of video tool after video tool, but also the way the platform adjusted engagement and viewership on photos with its algorithm.

Get Reel...s.

One of the more notable and less enjoyed version of this has been Reels. In recent years, Instagram has become somewhat known for attempting to take the best parts of other social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and Snapchat and meld them into a Frankensteinian amalgamation ends up feeling more like the Wish.com version of the platforms the concepts were derived from. When Instagram rolled out Reels, the "we have TikTok at home" video aspect of the platform, people started out skeptical and quickly soured on the constant barrage of video-focused changes. From making the feed full screen, financially incentivize content creators to make more Reels, to forcing a merge of all video content onto Reels, which ended up pushing even Kylie Jenner and Kim Kardashian to the breaking point. Amusingly, days later Adam Mosseri would post an apology on Twitter, a non-Meta platform, and walk-back some of the changes Instagram made regarding Reels.

Limited Time Offer

When you look at time spent on Instagram in 2022, you see that the average user spends about 30 minutes on the platform per day.

Both Meta and Instagram have increased the add revenue year after year. Instagram knows how long each user is on the platform and it knows that to generate ad revenue, it needs to serve an x-number of ads to each user in that amount of time. So, unfortunately but understandably, this means hiding photos and showing more videos, due to their ability to hold users attention slightly longer.

If we then look at a sample of average Instagram feed post formats and engagement rates year over year, we see a fairly grim picture of where engagement rates are headed, if nothing changes.

Let's Chat About Snaps

Obvious to most long time Instagram users, the decline in priority and engagement of photos exists as a counterintuitive presence to the very thing that the photo-sharing platform was built around. While there are plenty of stats floating around about when the algorithm shifted and what caused it, speaking anecdotally on behalf of a community of photographers (~90k at the time), it was a night at day difference. Photo posts went from getting around 7k-9k social signals, to barely breaking 1k. Brand partnerships started to dry up, as engagement decreased and accounts started shutting down, as the feeling of frustration and hopelessness with how Instagram was forcing people to shift their art to play into the algorithm grew.

I am part of this statistic.

As a creator, I scaled down my engagement and went from daily posts, an engaged community, and an inbox full of sponsorship offers, to weekly posts, to then monthly, and now zero posts. I've watched many of the more prolific photographers and content creators in our community struggle with trying to adapt their work to video and most end up giving up on content creation. While some influencers have thrived with being able to pivot from medium to medium, many creators and small businesses have been left feeling despair at the prospect of investing more time and resources into Instagram.

Now What('s Next)?

While Instagram supposedly gave up on its TikTok-like redesign, users are leery of what is to come for the platform, as we have heard/seen this cycle of abuse before. Mosseri himself, previously?claimed that the platform is “no longer a square photo sharing app”. While it may have been meant to convey that Instagram’s other efforts like Stories, Reels, and direct messages have grown hugely popular?alongside?photos, it has not helped the community's growing distrust and disillusionment in the platform.

Earlier this week, Instagram rolled out?Quiet Mode?and the ability to flag posts on the Explore page that you’re not interested in, which theoretically is meant to help tune and improve recommendations that you see. Anecdotally, I have been doing this for a while and my Explore page still skews to topics and subjects I have continuously hidden and don't engage with.

They say that admitting you have a problem is the first step. While that is a line that is more common within the recovery community, it may be apt here as well. If Mosseri is at the point where he is publicly acknowledging the issues on Instagram, we may have some hope for what is to come.

Rather than offer you a thousand rabbit trails to go down, regarding content creation or increasing your engagement, I will simply suggest you take in the data and adjust your expectations appropriately.

You might not be Kylie Jenner and you might just need to accept that.

Since Mosseri's comments were released on an Instagram Story that is taken down after 24 hours, here is the transcription:

We definitely have a number of photographers who have been upset. I want to be clear: though we are leaning into video, we still value photos. Photos will always be a part of Instagram.

I think we were overfocused on video in 2022 and pushed ranking too far and basically showed too many videos and not enough photos. We’ve since balanced, so things like how often someone likes photos versus videos and how often someone comments on photos versus videos are roughly equal, which is a good sign that things are balanced. And so, to the degree that there is more video on Instagram over time, it’s going to be because that’s what’s driving overall engagement more.

But photos are always going to be an important part of what we do. And there are always going to be people who love and are interested in finding photos on Instagram and elsewhere. And I want to make sure that we’re very clear about that.