Hashtags are not important
The social network has denied that it is necessary to use popular hashtags to "get to the top". There is no general "top": everyone sees their own section called "Recommendations" (Explore), which is also constantly updated.
You won't be able to cheat on Instagram with fake news: their AI makes 90 million predictions per second. Maintaining such a capacity costs Instagram a lot of money. a lot of money.
Likes and shares are important
Artificial intelligence consists of 3 layers of neural networks. They pass the posts through the following funnel: billions of posts ⟹ 500 500 candidates ⟹ 150 ⟹ 25 "finalists" who are included in the section.
The mathematical model selects content based on two indicators: "High quality", i.e. the speed and quantity of reactions, and "Freshness".
Instagram accounts that publish nudity, aggressive sales, posts about plastic surgery, misinformation (for example, about the dangers of vaccinations or Overton's window) get 0 chances to be included in Explore.
Words are more important than pictures
Surprisingly, Instagram's algorithms don't care about visuals. They focus on the combinations of words that appear in your posts.
An Instagram engineer gives an example: if the words music and festival posts contain the words music and festival, you fall into the category "Music Festivals" category and are shown to those interested in Flow, Sonar, and Picnic Posters".
Hence the conclusion: if your blog "wanders" on topics - either psychology, or travel, or elderberries in the garden, you won't get "Recommendations".
Individual posts are not important. What matters is the overall "karma" of the blog.
The Instagram system makes decisions about your account at the level of of an entire account, not individual posts. In addition, Explore now includes now includes not only posts, but also stories, IGTV videos, and shopping posts.
You can control Explore
If the neural network made a mistake, click on the upper right corner of the post and tap "See fewer posts like this".
If you want to tell the algorithm what you really like, like or add to your Favorites a lot of posts on the same topic in one session. the same topic in one session.