I heard the news the other day and I took a few days to really think about what this means. See the official announcement on the Instagram blog. According to Instagram, “most users miss on average 70% of their feeds.” So they’ll be using a similar algorithm to their parent company Facebook to change the chronological feed to one that appears based on the likelihood you’ll be interested in the content and your relationship with the person posting.

You can Google it but I thought the Buffer blog did a good job of expanding on the topic. The change isn’t immediate. They are currently testing it and have said it will be rolled out in the coming months. I love all things social media so this won’t change how I use Instagram but from my experience with the algorithm on Facebook I actually miss a lot of posts so I’m hoping they can figure out a way to allow users more flexibility with how they want to view their feed.

As a small business marketer this is tough but like the blogs have said, it’s inevitable as they roll out advertising with brands. I hope the algorithm is as helpful as they think it will be. With the small business clients I have worked with I always focus on social media and it’s a bummer that those brands that don’t have a large marketing budget can’t utilize social media to it’s fullest potential unless they pay to play. That’s life.

Now I’m curious to see how this new feed will look.

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