A little over a year ago Instagram updated to an algorithmic feed rather than the chronological feed we all knew and loved. This change caused an uproar in the social marketing community, and left many managers scratching their heads wondering how they would reach their audience.
Well this move appears to have payed off big. The platform’s “growth rate spiked, sharing per user increased, and Instagram has added 200 million monthly active users since to reach 700 million.” said TechCrunch’s Josh Constine.
The algorithmic feed was designed to show viewers content that is most relevant to them based on browsing habits. If you comment or like a user’s photos frequently, then the algorithm will show you their content more frequently. If you stop commenting or liking their content, that user will slowly disappear from your feed.
The algorithm also takes in to account popularity and timing. If a user you follow posts a photo that receives a lot of comments and likes quickly from the time it was posted, the algorithm will make the assumption that this is popular content and will show it to more of their followers. This of course has a snowball effect with the algorithm showing the photo to more and more people sometimes squashing other posts from being seen at all.
This tactic is taken directly from the Facebook playbook. When they rolled out their algorithmic feed, the change in user experience was met with some resistance, but has now become the way of life. It has also become hugely profitable to the company, so why not apply it to the other property they own, Instagram.
From a marketer’s perspective, it has become a pay-to-play ecosystem. If you want your posts to be seen, you’ll either have to create amazing content that goes viral, or pay for placement.
As you can imagine the algorithmic feed is not popular among marketers. What was once a level playing field where all individuals, celebrities, and brands had an equal opportunity to get their content seen by their followers, has now become a battleground between popularity contests and big budgets.
The algorithmic feed is here to stay, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube all use it and the pay-to-play model has become an intricate part of their businesses.
Don’t let the ever changing landscape of social media discourage you from using these technologies. With a little effort, creative content and some strategic planning, you will see results for your business.
Current Media Group provides Social Media Consulting services for businesses of all sizes. Whether you want to learn for yourself, teach your staff, or have us do it for you, we will custom build a solution specifically for you.
Give us a call at 973-862-8687 to discuss your social media needs.
We’ve seen a few updates to the WordPress core over the last several months, but version 4.8 will be the first major release in 2017. The focus of this update is to refine existing features and prepare for the new Gutenberg editor. Additional features planned for this release include:
If you’re not a coder, just trying to add some formatted text to a sidebar can be a pain. How do you format a link? How do you make text Bold? Many people just create a Post or Page and use the Visual Editor to create their content and then copy the code in to a standard Text Widget. In version 4.8 there will be a simple visual editor built-in to the Text Widget where you can do some basic formatting. This will be so much more user friendly to the non-coder.
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It’s official, Matt Mullenweg, founding developer of WordPress, posted that WordPress will be ending support Internet Explorer versions 8, 9, and 10 starting with WordPresss 4.8.
Safe web browsing and internet security is more important today than it has ever been. Everyday we hear about another major website being hacked and their service going down, or customer data being compromised. It happens to the best of them, Amazon, Twitter, Facebook, they have all experienced these problems, and the sad truth is, it could happen to your website too.
is the most popular shopping cart plugin for WordPress powered websites and is used to sell everything from physical products, digital downloads, memberships, subscriptions, and much more.
When a user visits your Apple Pay enabled store from their compatible device, they simply click the Buy with Apple Pay button and are then prompted to Pay with Touch ID. The system will automatically send the required shipping and billing information and process the payment, making the entire buying process much faster and easier. If the user’s device is not Apple Pay compatible, the Buy with Apple Pay button will not be displayed.
WordPress issued a security release, version 4.7.3, and is now available for update.
A Content Management System or CMS, is a web-based application that enables users to create, edit, organize, and publish websites using their web browser. Content Management Systems are perfect for non-technical users and gives them the ability to update content on their website without knowing how to code or having to rely on a website developer.
There are many Content Management Systems available and among the most popular are 
WordPress is an open-source platform, which means the source code used to create the application is made available to the public for free. Hundreds of volunteers from all around the world are constantly creating and improving the WordPress core, and there is a thriving community of developers creating both free and paid Themes and Plugins to expand the software’s capabilities.
