5 Secrets to Boosting Your Instagram

Oh Instagram, the app we are all trying to maneuver with grace and ease but behind the scenes we’re pulling out our hair, spending way too much time Googling things, and agonizing behind every image and caption — and don’t even get me started about things like hashtags and IG stories, am I right? You guys LOVED our episode last week where we compiled all of our top Instagram tips into one show and so if you haven’t gotten to listen to that one yet, go tune into Episode 241 and then come back to this one!

As someone who has educated thousands of people on how to use the app better, I wanted to take a little time to tell ya the three trends that NEED to stop because they are hurting you, not helping you on the platform. So trust me when I say, this isn’t an episode telling you to do MORE, it’s one shedding a light on some frightening trends that are robbing you of actually seeing results on Instagram. Are you ready? Let’s talk about the 3 things you need to stop doing on Instagram.

INSTAGRAM PODS

Trust me when I say: Instagram pods are NOT helping your business, in fact, I believe they are HURTING IT… Like it’s in my bone marrow how much I believe that and for some reason, I keep seeing people doing them. So hear me out: I did a FULL episode on this, episode number 65 from a few years ago and still, every single day I watch people in Facebook groups try to form new pods and it makes me want to pull my hair out because guys, this is NOT the way to beat the algorithm. They first came on the scene when the algorithm dropped two years ago because people thought they could outsmart it — but word to the wise: you can not outsmart Mark Zuckerberg, okay?

An Instagram pod is typically a group of 10-20 accounts that have similar businesses and interests. These accounts then join together and agree to promote or engage with one another’s posts by committing to liking one another’s content by leaving comments when each others posts go live. Before I explain why this doesn’t quite work, let’s unpack how the algorithm works (and recognize that it’s constantly changing and evolving the parameters it uses to rank posts and decipher which posts will be seen!)