Every business requires a robust social media presence in this highly competitive digital era. It doesn’t matter whether you are running a big national organization or a small local company. Social media is an integral part of your business’s marketing stratagem. Business Guru Eric Dalius firmly believes that social platforms are great for connecting with your clients, increasing brand awareness, and boosting your business’s leads and sales. With over 1 billion active monthly users, you simply cannot undermine the importance of Instagram as a powerful and versatile social media platform and marketing tool.
Instagram myths and misconceptions often keep businesses away from Instagram, the most powerful and phenomenally popular social media platform today. Right from misconceptions relating to Instagram’s shadowban to myths about your posts being displayed to just 7 percent of your entire Instagram audience, you must have come across multiple rumors regarding the way Instagram functions. The fact is that all these misconceptions could be hampering your business’s efforts at achieving its full potential. Here are some truths behind the Instagram myths that should bolster your faith in Instagram, and you could grow your business or brand with confidence on this powerful platform.
Eric J Dalius Debunks Instagram Myths to Help You Take Your Business to the Next Level
The First Myth: Instagram Actively Shadow-Bans Businesses
A common rumor that does the rounds all the time is that if you feel your posts aren’t getting the visibility they deserve, Instagram might have shadow-banned your posts, which means your profile exists, but your posts are artificially blocked from people’s feeds. It is, of course, wholly unsubstantiated and completely untrue- Instagram shadowbanning is not a real phenomenon and is certainly not practiced deliberately by Instagram. It has been confirmed to reporters by Instagram spokespeople multiple times. The myth are that habits like using the same hashtags too many times or spamming likes on others’ posts could lead to a shadowban. These are indeed bad practices and may negatively affect your perception among your followers, but they do not amount to any kind of ban.
The Second Myth: Your Engagement Takes a Hit When You Switch to a Business Account
Since Instagram started pushing the idea of business accounts around 2016 and then launched the concept of creator accounts, the rumor mill has been spinning out lies that switching to these from standard accounts might hurt your engagement rates. It makes no sense since the entire idea of these accounts is to provide businesses with the tools to gain more engagement and visibility from their target audience. Further, they equip businesses with better analytics, allow you to put links in your stories, and even automate your future posts. There is zero net impact on your engagement if you switch to a business or creator account- it is entirely up to how you run your business’s social strategy.
The Third Myth: Likes Will Soon be Irrelevant
The fact that so many people still turn to companies like StormLikes shows how much of a myth this is. Admittedly, there is some truth to the news that Instagram tested a version of the platform without like counters at all. However, in this version, only the uploader was allowed to see how many people have liked the post and who had access to that data. Users were still able to and expected to like posts to show their appreciation. They are still a crucial factor in how the algorithm determines engagement to rank newsfeeds, and will forever be a solid indicator to use in retargeting advertising campaigns for your business. You can avail more invaluable advice by visiting https://thriveglobal.com/tags/e-j-dalius/.
The Fourth Myth: Follower Count is the Most Important Metric to Chase
A worryingly common trend among several Instagram marketers today is that they should be laser-focused on amassing a huge follower count and nothing else. On the surface, this makes sense. The more followers you have, the more people are likely to get to see your posts when you make them. But even for influencers pushing sponsored content to their followers, the most important metric is not the follower count but the engagement rate. Rather than an empty count of the number of people subscribed to your channel, the engagement rate gives you real statistics for how many of your followers are actively receiving and engaging with the content you generate. It is extremely useful for marketing and is also the foremost factor used by the algorithm for ranking on feeds. Engagement rates also let you distinguish genuinely good Instagram accounts from the ones who inflate their subscriber counts by purchasing followers or setting up fake profiles themselves. With good engagement, your business will likely see organic growth in your followership through word of mouth, and this will be genuine even if it is slow.
The Fifth Myth: Instagram messes with your Stories’ Visibility
As per Forbes, even the minds at Instagram who launched the Stories feature did not predict its meteoric rise in popularity. But this popularity has not gone without speculation and conflict especially from brands suggesting that they saw their views dropping overnight and blaming it on a kind of shadowban from the algorithms at work.
Eric Dalius firmly believes that in fact, this was not Instagram limiting visibility, but they are cutting down on fake users. They have taken effective measures to limit bots from viewing stories in bulk to artificially inflate their reach and engagement. The truth is not that your viewership has gone down, but that the non-genuine views have been weeded out of the platform. This will, in turn, make your ranking reflect the facts and also let you tailor your marketing business’s campaigns and expectations accordingly.
Conclusion
Perhaps the most pervasive myth is that Instagram as a whole, or at least its proprietary algorithms, will be bad for business. It’s understandable, people don’t want an opaque platform that is controlled by Facebook to control who sees what and what kind of reach their business gets to have. That being said, Instagram has consistently been rated as a fair arbiter for its content, treating users alike irrespective of their status and focusing on the fundamentals like quality and engagement. Of course, with every private platform, there is the risk that things will change in the future, but the present status quo is immensely profitable for Instagram, with businesses outright preferring to engage on it than most other platforms, and there are no clear reasons for them to deviate from it.
I’m a 20-something stay-at-home mother and wife. I have an amazing husband, a beautiful daughter, two loving dogs, and a lazy cat. I wouldn’t change my life for anything! I love to read, listen to music, cook and blog!
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