How Do People Discover Your Account on Instagram?
Now, given the millions of accounts competing with you for people’s attention on Instagram, getting people to discover your account is easier said than done, but it can be done when you break down the discovery process into its most basic elements.
To do this, you can ask yourself two simple questions.
How can people who don’t know me yet discover my account on Instagram?
Unlike the “real world”, Instagram, where people who don’t know your business can find you through an almost infinite number of ways, people can however find your account by coming across your first name. There is no other way for someone who doesn’t know you to find you in the app (which this article will not dwell on) than through advertising. Period.
Therefore, to get people to discover you on the platform, you need to figure out how to get as many people as possible to your Instagram username. This leads us to the second question.
How can people who don’t know me yet get to my username on Instagram?
When you go through all the screens of Instagram, you realise that there are actually a very limited number of screens on the platform where someone can discover you. These screens where people can come across a username are what I refer to as Instagram’s reach channels, and understanding what they are and how to surface through them is key to maximising the number of people discovering you on the app.
Instagram’s Reach Channels
Someone who doesn’t yet know you on Instagram may come across your username and discover your account through just one of the screens below.
Home page feed
People come across your username here when someone they already follow tags your username in their photos or captions.
Activity showing your username on this channel: To appear in the Home Feed of people you don’t know, 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 one way to achieve this. Another strategy here is to provide real incentives for everyone to tag you. The more effective the incentives, the more people will tag you. For example, on my @potteryforall account, I incentivise ceramic accounts to photograph me in exchange for the possibility of being shown to a large audience on my account.
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 content to be shown on them. The only difference is that each of them is focused on different types of content. The traveller page shows people’s photos, videos, Reels, and shopping content, the reels page focuses only on Reels, and the shopping page focuses only on shoppable content.
Activity that reveals your username in this channel: To ensure that your username appears 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 maximise profits by maximising the attention they can get from us. The algorithm is built to keep us in the application as much as possible by showing us the most engaging content first. Therefore, you need to have the most engaging content possible to be selected as much as possible by the algorithm. It’s hard to do, but it can be achieved by using a simple process to systematically increase your engagement.
Activity flow
Interactions are shown in this feed, so people will see your username here when you interact with their account (follow, like, comment or tag).
Activity that reveals your username on this channel: To be as visible as possible in other people’s Activity streams, you need to engage (follow, like, comment or get tagged) with people who are likely to find your content as interesting as you do. possible.
One way to do this is manually every day, or you can automate this with an Instagram bot (which can be dangerous for your account). If the people you interact with are unlikely to be interested in your content, you’re wasting your interactions and time because when they discover your account, they’ll find it irrelevant and won’t follow you or check out your products or services.
DM inbox
People come across your username here when they receive a DM from you or when someone else shares your content with them via a DM.
The activity that exposes your username on this channel: You need to DM people as much as possible to get as much exposure as possible in other people’s DM inbox, I wouldn’t recommend this because you will end up getting blocked or having your content shared from DM as much as possible. Usually, the more engaging your content is, the more it will be shared, so having high engagement is the most effective activity you can do to ultimately get shared in DMs.
