2 Dogs and the Cat

A while back, I got really good at Instagram. I quickly built up my small business, and used it as a tremendous sales and lead tool.

One of the biggest IG methods I used was “photo bumping.” It’s not scamming or spam, it’s creating new hashtags to bring a photo back to life. When posting a photos, I always posted hashtags in a comment. This reason was two-fold: 1) It just looks neater, and 2) I could delete the comment, add another with different tags, and revive the photo under new tags.

New hashtags added in the comment

This morning, I was helping out my favorite band, Ashlyn Maine, when I noticed that my “new” hashtags weren’t showing at the top of the photos with the same tags. I thought it was a glitch in their account, so I switched to my own business account and tried it. Nope, the “new” tags weren’t showing at all! Tags were, however, showing with newly posted photos.

I inquired in a social media Facebook group, and sure enough, someone pointed out that IG had made a change. Hashtags now appear in the order the photo was originally posted, not in order of when the hashtag was added.

So, what does this mean? No more photo bumping. I assume IG made this change due to spammers, but I’m a wee bit uncomfortable with it myself. One of the perks of IG is the controllability – it’s very easy to control reach and interaction. What will this mean for reach? For businesses using IG as a sales and lead tool?

Any thoughts on this new IG change?