Looking for ways to increase your reach on Instagram?

This might or might not help.

Responding to a question asked in his latest Q&A on Instagram about how to enlarge reach in the app and what is the top consideration factored into the algorithm currently, IG Chief Adam Mosseri has this:

What is more important than watch time or like and comment counts is send rates, [and] generally, I think the rate is more important than the count. So the number of sends per reach, the number of likes per reach, the number of comments per reach. But sends per reach correlate more, in my experience, with overall reach than anything else, because we're looking to help people discover content that they want to connect with friends over, and so sends is a great proxy for that sort of connection over creativity.

So the likelihood that users will like or comment on your post overtly is what the present IG algorithm appears to be fixated upon, not watch time, nor indeed any other engagement metric.

While I'm not entirely content with this response. "In my experience?" My friend, you're in control of the platform, you would know what drives higher performance.

It's slightly different from the advice lately about entertainment over engagement, though pretty much the same emphasis.

Not so long ago, social networks were exactly the opposite: comments and likes of users meant everything, but having moved their attention to video, and in particular to entertainment from the format of short videos, watch time has become a factor of greater importance. For you probably will watch, even if you don't comment on every old clip from every old TV show that happens to turn up in your Instagram feed.

That shift is probably the most important currently happening within the social media landscape, out of interaction in-stream-that's peaked and now going into decline-to how long they can keep you watching video clips.

That is what's driving all this growth on Facebook and Instagram, though Mosseri's saying what they really prioritize is share rate as opposed to watch time.

And so it's not just how long you watch, but how likely you are to share a clip that will amplify it further.

Which makes sense, but I still think share rates in general would low compared to overall watch time, in that people are likely watching way more videos than they're forwarding on to others.

But even so, if you're going to hit share, it stands to reason that this also is a strong ranking signal.

I actually suspect the algorithm drivers are now ranked in this order:

Share rates
Watch time
Comment rates
Like rates
The last two could flip-flop, but the reality is that there are fewer people posting and commenting, and as such, Meta needs to focus on other elements to maximize engagement.

So how can you drive more shares of your content?

Entertainment, and what is likely to make people want to show others that clip or post.

Easier said than done, of course, but think about what would make someone want to share your post, what kinds of things stand out to you in this regard, and what makes you feel compelled to forward a clip to somebody else?

Entertainment, which elicits emotional response (mainly happiness on Facebook and IG, considering Meta's departure from divisive politics), and surprise. Those appear to be the major levers for maximizing your reach on IG.