Instagram Is More Focused on Original Content Than Ever

Instagram Is More Focused on Original Content Than Ever

News
Apr 2022
Credit
Alice Mclean

Instagram Is More Focused on Original Content Than Ever

Instagram is making updates to the way it ranks content, in order to put more focus on original work and its creators.

“If you create something from scratch, you should get more credit than if you are resharing something that you found from someone else. [As such] we’re going to do more to try and value original content more, particularly compared to reposted content.” - Adam Mosseri, Head of Instagram 

So what does this mean for your content? 

Here’s our summary of the key points and things to keep in mind going forward on the platform. Take note!  

  1. This new algorithm’s purpose is to give more credit to original creators.

Instagram has made this change to encourage people to create more unique content, and reduce the amount of aggregators on the platform. So, if part of your content strategy is to repurpose other people’s content, then this is a good time to revisit that strategy. The time is now to start working on creating your own content.

  1. Content you create outside of Instagram won’t be penalised.

Producing and editing content off of Instagram won’t be marked down by the algorithm thankfully - but if it has that recognisable TikTok watermark it still will be. Instagram is focused on driving original content sharing, no matter where it was edited. Phew!

  1. Content aggregators will get hit the hardest. 

If your content strategy is re-sharing funny memes you see somewhere else, you will get down-ranked. Posting history will also come into play here, meaning that Instagram will be able to tell if you’ve been sharing other people’s content previously. Time to clean up the feed!

  1. This algorithm change isn’t perfect though.

Even Mosseri admits that the algorithm has its flaws and is focused on predicting how likely something is to be original. This means that fake accounts of people will be harder for them to detect. What the algorithm will be picking up are things like: who’s in the video, how long did it take for them to upload and post it and how many replicated posts are there.

  1. Expect more original content in your Explore Feed.

With this change, we anticipate that the content they’ll be pushing organically across the explore feed will be focused on original content as well. Duh. Since Instagram is recommending posts to users now, this could help the content feel fresher and more diverse. This is also likely a plea to encourage users to stay on Instagram (rather than TikTok). 

Unfortunately some accounts will suffer as a result from this change - these being media and news partners, brands that rely on user-generated content and other businesses that repurpose content.

UGC content in particular will be interesting to monitor and see how the algorithm change effects brands using UGC, versus their own content. This feels like quite a grey area still.

But, if you’re an original creator already, like an artist, you likely don’t have anything to worry about - and only eyeballs to gain!