Wildcard Wednesday #1 - A Rant

What a surprise - another rant.

This is actually two rants. First, a short one about how I tried to write this on the Wix mobile app about 2 hours ago. And every time I got about 3 paragraphs in, it deleted the whole thing. Needless to say, I deleted the app. Wix has always had some issues, but thankfully they seem isolated to the app now. The website is working well enough, and their web builder is easier to use as well.

Main rant:

Instagram. Thankfully today is Wildcard Wednesday where I get to choose the topic, because not only am I a bit overwhelmed at work at the moment, I am frustrated with Instagram. Long gone are the days where I could post some random picture with some hashtags and get 200 likes. Is it vain of me to want that? Sure. But also, engagement on Instagram is valuable for promoting my personal brand. The higher the engagement, the more views I'll get here as well, and the more resources I'll have to dedicate to making valuable content for people.

I'd completely understand if I was being shadowbanned for suddenly posting a bunch. Maybe it seems spammy. But the quality of the pictures is higher than before, and I'm using hashtags sparingly. I'm not doing any follow-for-follow or like-for-like nonsense. I'd also understand if it weren't a shadowban and it was just an honest attempt by Instagram to get relevant content in front of people.

But here's the thing. I can barely see posts from my friends. I need to go search for that content, and even after searching, it doesn't lock it in. I see more posts from people I don't know than those that I do know. So if that's happening to me (and several of my friends - confirmed with them), where is my content actually going? Is there just so much junk out there that the algorithm can't sort it all?

I don't have an answer here (other than getting back towards a simple map of connections and engagement frequency). But something is up with the algorithm and it's noticeably harder both to share, and view, content on Instagram these days.

I'll follow up with if I'm able to figure things out.