We had all just got our heads around searching using hashtags on Instagram when as usual they decided to change things up and developed more keyword-rich search options. Here are few things that will help you achieve good search skills on Instagram.,
They say ‘the search’ function is a place for “Discovery and Inspiration” so let’s see how you can use it to your best advantage.
Instagram state that using the search function will help you to find accounts and areas of interest. It varies from what you see in the Feed, Stories, Reels and Explore as the information you out in allows Instagram to work out what they should show you! It helps Instagram to improve that search service for you to get the most out of Instagram every time.
For example:
If you’re interested in finding pictures of space. When you tap the search bar on the Explore page, the first thing you see is your recent searches. As you begin typing “space,” Instagram shows you accounts, audio, hashtags, and places that match the text of your search. In this case, results like @space and #space show up because “space” appears in their name.
So as well as showing you accounts that rank under your search words, it will also offer you hashtags, places and other ‘signal’ Instagram feels is relevant to your search.
In order of importance, Instagram ranks these as:
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Your text in Search. The most important signal. They will try to match what you type with relevant usernames, bios, captions, hashtags and places.
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Your activity. Which accounts you follow, posts you interacted with and viewed before, so more accounts and hashtags are shown here.
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Information about the search results. Finally, there are the more popular searches that work around your chosen search criteria, these include the number of clicks, likes, shares and follows for a particular account, hashtag or place.
How can you show up in searches for your business?
As well as looking for topics on Instagram, we also want our business page to be found, so what can we do to help with this?
Make sure your handle and bio reflects your company name as well as it can. The Searches match by text so making sure your handle is as close to your business name as possible will certainly help.
If this proves a little difficult to get exactly right, make sure you use relevant and matching keywords in your bio about who you are and what you do.
And this is BIG NEWS from Instagram for their final point –
Use relevant keywords and hashtags in your caption NOT in comments, these will then be picked up in the Insta searches,
For the future, Instagram hopes to improve on this search function, helping people to get further inspired on Instagram and use it more. They plan to introduce full search result page experiences to make it work even better for you.
So get adjusting your profile and get using your search function and make it even easier for your potential customers to find you.
If you want to know more about how to get the most out of your Instagram for your business, please get in touch and we can look at training opportunities or maybe just a POWERHOUR to get you on the right path. Drop me an email at [email protected] or find me on social media every day.
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