In past few weeks Iāve noticed that my posts on instagram had less likes, comments or views. I got a bit worried because even my worst photos were having more likes, more everything. I googled to see what is a problem and at first few links couldnāt find solution. After few articles that Iāve read I realized instagram changed itās algorithm.Ā
In past year Iāve been sticking to one process of uploading photos. First I would download the photo from my google drive (I edit all my photos on computer). After looking at the photo I would come up with some caption or even a story how it was made, while thinking about name all sort of hashtaghs would come to my mind so I would write them down in my notes. I now have hashtags for each photography genre (I only adjust them to fit the photo). I would upload photo to instagram, add the caption, location, tag feature accounts. I would put hashtags in the comment section because I wanted my feed and my posts to look neat. Or I would put dots in each line so people have to click āsee moreā to see the actual hashtags. And everything worked fine until 2018. First change is that you canāt put hashtags in comments, they wonāt work. You have to have unique hashtags, if you use same hashtags all the time instagram will address you as a bot/spammer (and they have to be inside caption). Also, if your photo didnāt recieve enough likes in first few minutes after uploading, it wonāt be shown to the rest of the followers (on their feed). Itās like instagram is filtering out the bad photos and only wants people to see your best work (which is not good in my opinion because I think likes donāt prove if a photo is high quality content). Short comments like:Ā āBeautiful photoā etc. are marked as bots. If you want your comment to be valid it has to have more than five words. Something in the comment section also changed; the reply system...You can only reply to your comments within 60 minutes (starting from when that person commented). And knowing that stuff really made me happy because now I know what the problem was. But it also made me angry because If I didnāt notice it earlier. I hope this helps to anyone with similar problems.Ā