Every week Adam Mosseri, Head of Instagram, does a Q&A series in his stories. We follow it closely for updates, news and answers to FAQ’s about the app. and we wanted to add our thoughts as well as summarize it for you here.
HERE are 6 highlights from this Week’s INSTAGRAM Q&A with the head of IG…
QUESTION 1: Do I have to post reels if my followers like photos?
SUMMARY OF ADAM’S RESPONSE
It depends on your audience. Every audience is different and they enjoy different things. Get to know them and stay true to your voice.
OUR TAKE ON IT
The short answer is NO. There is nothing you HAVE to do on this platform if you do not want to. That being said, we strive to teach our client’s and audience to keep their content diverse. Mix it up, because there will be people within your audience that repond best to photo content, whereas other’s will respond better to video content. Keep these 3 things in mind when planning content type (1) your goals (2) your audience (3) your messaging.
QUESTION 2: How many stories is too many stories per day?
SUMMARY OF ADAM’S RESPONSE
There is no “silver bullet”. Some creators post tons, and have has success with that, and others post few. Make it easy for people to tap through (Adam says he posts a couple a day).
OUR TAKE ON IT
Stories are a GREAT place to hang out. We have seen more success with posting throughout the day, every day (without overdoing it), than by only posting one or two every few days. Stories are where you can show up on the fly and in a very casual (less niche-specific way). It is where you will build most of your connections, and where you can let your audience get to know you. SO, our general rule of thumb is to show up every day in your story, with a daily goal of 5-10 stories, again depending largely on your audience.
QUESTION 3: what are main ways creators make money on Instagram?
SUMMARY OF ADAM’S RESPONSE
Branded content. With the creator marketplace, we help creators and brands find each other. There are also subscriptions, gifts where audiences can pay creators directly.
OUR TAKE ON IT
We are always exploring ways to monetize on this platform. It is a great place to directly drive sales in your business. Our focus with making money on Instagram is with teaching businesses effective marketing strategies for their offers, using links, and optimizing story selling. We do not work directly in the realm of brand partnerships, but do agree that there is huge opportunity for creators in this area. Gifts and subscriptions are both relatively new features, which we are seeing show up more and more on this platform.
QUESTION 4: what’s the best thing to do to improve reach?
SUMMARY OF ADAM’S RESPONSE
Every audience is different. Try things out, get to know YOUR audience, and keep an eye on how their interests are changing over time.
OUR TAKE ON IT
We absolutely echo Adam here – you HAVE to know your audience. In that, we do not just mean knowing their demographic, but also knowing what types of content they engage. You cannot simply follow every single thing that the experts tell you to do, without CHECKING whether it works with your audience. You have to learn what problems they have, what solutions they’re looking for, what they’re inspired by, what entertains them. You have to speak their language.The more your audience engages, the further your content will travel to new audiences who have similar interests.
QUESTION 5: What feature is doing best on IG?
SUMMARY OF ADAM’S RESPONSE
Most people spend time in feed, but for teens it seems to be DM’s. A new feature that is really being utilized lately is notes.
OUR TAKE ON IT
We cannot answer this from the broad view of what is working best for everyone, and we feel that, again, it largely depends on your audience and their demographic. Our take home here, is that, until you try it, you will never know When new features are released, try them, see if you and your audience like them. Generally speaking, if you asked us where to spend most of your time and energy on the platform, we would say in feed, on your content and your relationship building through stories.
QUESTION 6: What is the most important part of page insights to look at?
SUMMARY OF ADAM’S RESPONSE
Reach is a good measure of how well you are doing on IG. Also look at ratios – likes per follower, or likes per reach. These ratios are more important than absolute values like follower count.
OUR TAKE ON IT
We take a deep dive into this in our Instagram Basics digital course within our Academy, so we won’t spill too much here, but in general, you should not only be looking at the reach of your content, but the interactions that your content elicits. If the post reached a lot of people, but very few engaged on it, this gives you information that something (perhaps an effective call to action) is missing. It lots of people are seeing your carousel posts, but you are not attacting any new followers from it, perhaps something in your bio is missing or your profile is not optimized.
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