What to do to increase your reach in Instagram

If you have created multiple Reels, then you might have noticed that some of them don’t have the same reach as others. You might even have observed that some of your Reels had a drop in views. This drop might be due to the fact that you are shadow banned. In this blog post we will walk you through the steps to determine whether you have been shadow banned and we will discuss on how to calculate and increase your reach.

What is reach

Before we are going into what you need to do to increase your reach, we need to be sure that there is a mutual understanding of what reach means. Reach is the amount of people who have seen your content. If you are new to this you might have seen impressions show up here and there, however, the difference between the two is that with impressions it’s the amount of times your content was displayed on someone’s screen, but wasn’t necessarily seen by the user.

Calculating your current average reach

There are a couple of things you need to know if you are interested in increasing your reach. But the first and most relevant thing you need to know is the quantity of your current average reach. This can be calculated by going to your Instagram insights and clicking on the accounts reached section. Navigate to your Top Reels and select your desired time frame. Now you need to add up all the reach from all your reels and divide them by the number of created reels. For example, if you have a total of 60.000 reach and you have created 10 Reels, then you need to divide 60.000 by 10, which will bring you to an average reach of 6000. You can also apply the same method to other content types like Posts, Stories etc.

Why is reach relevant

By understanding your average reach, you can create a target for your business. Your goal should be to increase your reach over time, and by knowing the numbers, you can factually evaluate if the taken steps increased your reach. While you are aiming to increase your reach don’t make the frequent mistake of comparing your content to other creators or businesses. That your competitor has a reach of 200k per reel does not mean that should be your aim as well. We all have different profiles, purposes, target groups, hard/soft skills, experiences, niches, interests, and the age of a brand. Multiple factors can have an impact on the average reach.  

Evaluate content that does and does not work

Now that you understand your average reach, you want to focus on all the contents that are above and below your average reach. You need to try to recreate the contents that are performing effectively and readjust the contents that are not. Reels that use audio of other creators have great results. We advise you to use audios that are trending and adapt them to your niche to create content that fits your audience needs.

Collaborating with other creators

Joining forces with other creators is a great way to increase your reach because it will allow you to introduce your business to the audience of another business. And it supports expanding your network for potential partners for future content. You can collaborate by contacting other creators or businesses that are operating in your niche and discuss some concepts on how you might be beneficial to each other.

Recycle your content

There is no need to constantly brainstorm or reinvent what you will post daily or every week. You can use one content in multiple ways. For example, if you have created a YouTube script, you can transform the script into a carousel post, the carousel post can be translated into a short video that you can use for reels, TikToks, and YouTube shorts.

Cross promoting channels

Giving content that worked before a new purpose, is a great way to increase your reach. And if a specific content does not give the expecting results on a certain platform, it might be that it will work on another platform. This approach is also called cross-promoting. By cross promoting your content across multiple platforms, you can generate more traffic to the social media platform you like. For example, if you dominantly create content on Instagram, and you are widely discussing matters about your TikTok and YouTube account, it naturally creates an increase of engagement for the account that you are promoting. By cross promoting your channel your viewers can find you and interact with your content on whatever platform they are using.

Shadow banning

Your Reels might not be reaching their highest potential due to an obstacle called shadow banning. Shadow banning goes by a variety of names, stealth banning, ghost banning, or comment ghosting. All those varieties of names have the same definition. It is a practice that completely or partially blocks a user account or its contents. It is done in such a way that the owner is unaware that the account has been shadow banned. Instagram is not calling it shadow banning; however, Instagram has enforced measures if a user account or content goes against their terms of service and community guidelines, which are similar to shadow banning.

Where to check if you are shadow banned

If you want to know If your account is shadow banned, you need go to your settings and navigate to the account section. From there you can go to your account status section. If you have posted anything that goes against Instagram community guidelines, it will be shown in that section.

Your target group

In events of no violation against the Instagram community guidelines, it might be possible there is another obstacle that is keeping your content away from attaining its most potential reach. If you have recently rebranded, and have been posting different types of content, then your current followers have low interest in your content. In this case, you need to rebuild your audience that fits with your rebrand. Also, accounts that grew their Instagram account inorganically by buying likes, follows, participating in group giveaways, being involved with engagement groups, have experienced a dip in their reach. The reason for this is that their audience is not interested in their services or content. And if your content is not in alignment with your audience's interest, Instagram will stop pushing your content to that target group. To avoid this, you can stay with your niche, and continue posting and creating content that is in alignment with your audience.

It might also be possible that your Reels are not attaining their maximum reach because of some of the frequent mistakes creators make when creating Reels. Read our Frequent mistakes to avoid when creating Reels to create better Reels and get better results.

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