Is Instagram Not Showing Your Content?

While most of us have Instagram accounts for a fun hobby, it is still interesting to understand how it all works on the back end. While my Instagram is also a hobby, I put a lot of time into creating content and would love to know that all of you are seeing it! Unfortunately, it seems that Instagram is preferring posts that show more skin. Before we dive into my evidence, you have to understand some Instagram analytical tools: see info-graphic!

So…if you have a “business account” you’ll be able to get analytics for all of your posts and stories. This allows you to see things like reach, impressions, how many users saved your post, etc. The overall analytics page looks like this:

The post analytics page looks like this:

When looking at post analytics, I noticed that the reach differed based on the content in the photo. Specifically, how much skin was showing. In this first photo, I'm wearing a sweater and jeans...it was taken with my DSLR camera so it has really nice photo quality. Only about 5,000 people saw it. And 19% of those people were not following me so only about 4,000 of my followers saw it.....weird.

Now when you look at another photo of mine that shows much more skin.....its a bit different. This photo is really low quality, bad lighting taken on my phone yet look at the reach! This time, 26,000 people saw the post! Whats even crazier is that 60% of those 26,000 were not following me so only 10,000 of those were my followers.

This discrepancy is even worse when you compare photos that do not have faces in them. Instagram is prioritizing photos that show more skin and faces. While I do not mind showing my face, a lot of people choose not to. That should not impact the amount of people that see the content that they put a lot of time and thought into.

I would like to preface that my frustration with this does not come from being upset about not getting likes. I couldn’t care less about likes, I just would like to know that people are able to enjoy the content that I put so much time and thought into creating. The visualization of my work should not depend on how much skin is showing in my photos. Unfortunately I don't think there's any way around this unless you actually remember to go to your favorite 'grammers page and look for new content.

I hope you've enjoyed my little Instagram algorithm PSA.