I didn't realize how often I use social media to communicate until I started answering calls from my Instagram profile. Communication is an unavoidable aspect of life and even when we don't think we are talking to someone, we put our thoughts and ideas out for our followers to see.
Instagram has shaped the audience that I draw by boosting my posts with potential accounts who they think would interact with me the most. I have noticed that generally the same forty to sixty people that react or comment on my posts live in the same area as me or share and post similar content to me. It seems like out of my one thousand followers only about three hundred actually view my posts or pop up as engagements. I think the biggest way that it had chosen to shape who you interact with is by the people that you communicate with or interact with their stories.
In a way Instagram's algorithms have taken the boundless possibilities the internet offers and narrowed my account into its own social niche. I think that this is interesting because you can see the change in audience depending on the location of where the post is or when you use certain hashtags or key phrases. It has made me hyper aware of wanting to cater to or post for my specific niche audience that seems to interact with my page the most.
Ways that I could change this audience exposure would be by changing the main theme or purpose of my page. Say that I begin to start posting more cooking and recipes, along with a couple of hashtags and locations I could potentially change my target audience from like minded locals to foodies, amateur chefs and influencers. The same could go for if I chose to share more fitness bits on my story and post work outs that my followers could move along with, I would ultimately be shifting the attraction of my page to people looking for motivation, routines, and lifestyle or health tips.
This is really important to pay attention to because although Instagram has the capability of shaping the may in which we communicate and who we communicate with, we ultimately retain that control when we begin to understand how the algorithms work and the audience that we are looking to invoke through it.
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