Is your Instagram reach low right now? Try this

Low reach and the summer? Never 😂 (cough: almost always!)

How many times have you looked at your post and thought: “shit, that didn’t go the way I wanted it to?”

I have my hand up.

It’s happened to me more times than I could shake a stick at - you create a post, you have a feeling it’ll do well, you dream about the shiny lights of that orange notification button flashing up on our Instagram home feed and it just… well, flops?

The thing about Instagram - the sting in its tail, is it feels like it’s just US that feels these things, especially when it comes to reach.

Enter the “spotlight effect”

When I read about this a couple of years ago, it really helped me so I wanted to share it with you.

The spotlight effect is something we’ve all experienced at some point of another - when you feel like everyone is paying attention to you, and only you, usually in a circumstance where you feel a little insecure or self-conscious (for example, when a post of yours doesn’t do 'that well’ and you feel like everybody around you JUST knows).

But, that’s the thing about reach - it’s not always down to us and our content but the season Instagram is in.

Generally low reach happens:

• When lots of new features launch

• January into February

• Across the summer months (and depending on where your audience are based, these months will shift)

Here are the three steps I’d look at:

1. Learn what looks like an “average day” across other accounts too

The more you use Instagram, you’ll see which creators post at a similar time of day to you.

Before you know it, you’ll learn their averages - what looks normal, what looks off and from there, I can immediately see whether Instagram is having a good reach day or a “bloody ‘ell not againnnn’ low reach day.

Now you can’t just look at one creator’s posts because they might have just posted content which didn’t resonate that day - but there are around 7-10 creators I follow that post the same time of day as me and over time, I’ve learnt where their engagement usually sits. I find this helpful from a short term reach perspective - BUT, I try not to focus on the short term when it comes to reach.

2. Focus on the long term.

What has your reach looked like over the last 2-4-6 weeks? If your reach is ‘bad’ across two weeks, don’t be hard on yourself or spend time worrying about what you’re not doing. It’s normal for every account to go through ups and downs.

3. Check out ‘Progress’ - a new feature on Insights

A newish feature which shows you the impressions of your content over a six month period. (Impressions = the number of eyes that have seen your content). Expect the graph to look very up and down (you can check out my graph on the reel I shared here) but being able to spot trends is important and know roughly where your averages sit. My Progress feature seems to disappear then appear again so if you don’t have it right now, don’t worry.

Depending on your niche, whether you’re a creator or a business and the content you post, I have more points to my checklist I’d run through. If you’d like me to take a look at your account to see how things are, I’d love to chat through things with you. (You can find out more about my 1-2-1 calls just here)

I promise you’re not alone

Low reach effects everybody at some point on Instagram, nobody is ever constantly on the up.

Being kind to yourself, adaptable and accepting that not all weeks are going to look positive and that’s OK will really help you on Instagram (I can’t stress this enough!)