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My wife has about 10k followers and over the past month or so total engagement (number of likes and follows) has dropped considerably, and most of the time her

My wife has about 10k followers and over the past month or so total engagement (number of likes and follows) has dropped considerably, and most of the time her photos don't show up in any hashtags. Her "impressioned" engagement rate (percentage of people that saw the post that then liked or commented) hasn't really changed noticeably. Instagram just shows her photos to fewer people (and often never shows them to anyone but existing followers - no considerable Explore or Hashtag views). I've clicked around many "influencers" photos recently and followed their hashtags and often their photos don't show there. Fun anecdote: the less clothes the person (man or woman) is wearing the less likely the photo is to appear in the hashtag feed. My conspiracy theory: Instagram is favoring personal relationship and smaller accounts, or maybe trying to encourage small accounts to become "addicted to engagement" in order to pull more wannabe influencers into the platform. None of my findings are by any means thoroughly researched or done in a scientific manner. Just casual and curious browsing. I'm curious if anyone else has seen any odd hashtag behavior lately. It's possible Instagram just tailors my version of a hashtag's "Recent" feed to me.

macspoofing 7y ago
I don't think you need any conspiracy theory to explain anything. The 'influencer market is becoming saturated. With low barriers of entry, you have millions of people joining and trying to squeeze out every penny of value. This is the end result of 'perfect competition' or 'long tail' - depending on what your dance is.
- Darkphibre 7y ago
  How would that explain not showing up in search results for keywords in the post?
errantmind 7y ago
If you aren't seeing your posts show up in the hashtag's 'recent' section then you are likely shadow-banned from that hashtag due to a lack of engagement / relevance
- davidmurdoch 7y ago
  Could be. But it's not "that hashtag". It's any and all hashtags used on the post. That's what I was thinking at first, but it's not just my wife's posts. It looks like lots of others have this issue, too. I've only reached out to one "influencer" (a photographer) with 60k+ followers and he didn't care and said he doesn't ever check on these things. And one bikini brand (55k+ followers) who did notice; their own brand's hashtag often won't "work".

macspoofing 7y ago

I don't think you need any conspiracy theory to explain anything. The 'influencer market is becoming saturated. With low barriers of entry, you have millions of people joining and trying to squeeze out every penny of value. This is the end result of 'perfect competition' or 'long tail' - depending on what your dance is.

Darkphibre 7y ago
How would that explain not showing up in search results for keywords in the post?

errantmind 7y ago

If you aren't seeing your posts show up in the hashtag's 'recent' section then you are likely shadow-banned from that hashtag due to a lack of engagement / relevance

davidmurdoch 7y ago
Could be. But it's not "that hashtag". It's any and all hashtags used on the post. That's what I was thinking at first, but it's not just my wife's posts. It looks like lots of others have this issue, too. I've only reached out to one "influencer" (a photographer) with 60k+ followers and he didn't care and said he doesn't ever check on these things. And one bikini brand (55k+ followers) who did notice; their own brand's hashtag often won't "work".