If you’ve scrolled through Instagram in the last few days, you may have noticed a bit of a frenzy going on.

Instagram recently announced that it is changing it’s algorithm – which will be similar to how Facebook’s newsfeed works – and people are freaking out.

In an effort to ensure they’re not losing their audience, many brands and people on Instagram are asking their followers to turn on “post notifications.” Essentially, this ensures that any time that brand or person uploads a new post to Instagram, all of those followers who turned on the notifications for that profile will be automatically notified of the new image or video.

This strategy seems to have a lot of people jumping on the bandwagon, although we’re not sure if it will last all too long. Depending on how many accounts a user follows, these notifications could prove to be far more annoying and intrusive than scrolling through a curated feed.

One point to make is that Instagram has not announced an official date that this changed will be implemented. They are simply releasing the news that the update will be implemented gradually. Nevertheless, Instagram seems to be overflowing with pleading posts for followers to turn on post notifications and boycott the upcoming change.

But before we get all hot and bothered about the upcoming change, let’s dive a little deeper into what’s really happening and how it will affect user’s feeds.

What is the New Instagram Algorithm?

First and foremost, it’s important to understand that while Instagram seems to be modeling it’s new algorithm off of it’s owner, Facebook, this doesn’t necessarily mean that you will miss any posts. No posts will be removed by the new feature, they will simply be rearranged in the feed.

What’s the reason for this you may ask?

According to Instagram, people currently miss about 70% of their feeds. With it’s growing audience, people are following more and more profiles, making it harder to keep up with each and every post. Instead of arranging the feed in chronological order, Instagram feeds will now be ordered by what Instagram thinks matters most to you.

How Will Posts be Ordered in the New Instagram Feed?

That last part is important – it’s not that the biggest brands with the most followers will now take over your news feed, as many of the small businesses and artists are concerned about. Instead, Instagram wants to show you content in order of what is relevant and important to each individual user.

This new algorithm will factor in things like the timeliness of the post, your previous engagement with the person posting, and the likeliness that you would be interested in the content.

So ideally, the people and brands that you care most about will be the posts that you see first.

Like all new things in social media, this may take some time to perfect. But as we shared above, Instagram will be rolling out these changes gradually and continuously improving the algorithm to best serve its users.

What Does Instagram’s Change Mean for Small Businesses and Brands?

When laid out by Instagram, this change certainly sounds like it’s more attuned to providing the best experience for its users. For many artists, brands, and small businesses, however, people are concerned about how the change will affect their presence, and therefore their business success.

One key thing to note here: your social strategy should always be about engagement and value.

If you have the right audience following you, and you’re continuing to share engaging and relevant content to them, then this change should actually work in your benefit.

If you have bought fake followers and have a very low engagement ratio, then you are probably (okay, definitely) in the need of a new social media strategy anyways.

At the end of the day, it couldn’t hurt to have your followers turn on their post notifications, but we certainly wouldn’t rely on that to combat Instagram’s new changes. Instead, we suggest taking a step back to review your Instagram strategy, ensuring you’re sharing the right content with the right audience, and working hard to make that content timely, relevant, and engaging.

If you have any additional questions about Instagram’s new change, or you’d like to learn more about creating solid social media strategies, please feel free to reach out!