here is 17 Instagram settings that if you're not using or don't know about it will be affecting your growth I made a new account and used these strategies and gain 15,000 followers in the first month by making sure I understood and applied all of these settings they are in no order whether you're zero followers 50,000 followers or 2 million followers you can start using them today let's jump into number one the Instagram schedule option we would all love to be using the inbuilt Instagram schedule which allows us to create our posts schedule them and post it later automatically but the issue is is that this stops you getting reach I've tested this spoken to tons of people and every time we use it the reach never really goes far you're set yes and more often than not we see a decline in views instead what I recommend is using the draft feature and actually posting manually right now the best thing to do is to post manually obviously if you need to post at a certain time then just prepare your caption earlier prepare all the elements earlier and just go and spend 2 minutes and actually post that content trust me the reach will be far greater and you'll be getting more views do not use the schedule in Instagram and don't allow it to automatically post for you have you heard of ghost followers so these are followers that follow you which never interact or engage with your content useless essentially telling the algorithm that they don't like your content now often these can be bot accounts dead accounts and it's a pain to get rid of them but Instagram have released a new setting which we all need to be aware of and be using all we need to do is go to our followers so on your profile press your followers and at the top you'll see creators and flagged accounts the flagged for review accounts are the ones that you probably need to get rid of sometimes there might be some mistakes but I would suggest especially if your account is pretty small to get rid of these dead followers as they're not helping you at all and this is a really good feature that Instagram have introduced as before we'd have to do it manually check each account whereas now Instagram is basically telling us who's not useful next up is the keyword trick editing screen now Instagram and most other platforms love it when you use their inbuilt editors but most of us are editing outside Instagram we're using platforms like canva cap cut Adobe After Effects wherever it might be and we want to be using those cuz they're better but here's a trick that you can do and is going to help you get more views and everything now let's say I've got a video right here you know it's already been edited I'm simply go to post it here's what I want you to do instead I want you to press next once you're on this screen right here where you see all the icons at the top what I want you to do is to actually press the text button at the top and start putting in key words either related to your audience or what the video is about so for example you know this video right here is about nature so I'm going to go up there and I'm going to type in nature and what I'm going to do is actually really minimize that bit of text I'm going to do the same again I'm going to do plant you know if my audience was like you know nature lovers I could type that in but essentially what we're doing is we're telling the algorithm that this is the content you know this is nature content plant content but we're also using the inbuilt editor and you know this is speculative but some people think by using the editor you get pushed out more so we're basically you know tackling two birds with one stone by using the keywords and also using the editor and I recommend especially if you're you know under 100,000 followers to try using this sometimes and you could see an increased amount of reach definitely start applying this every time you post a real how to use Instagram so it tells you whether your account is optimized properly and the algorithm understands your Niche do you know who I am what you need to do is go on your computer or your phone and go on incognito mode go onto your account and you should see the suggested accounts button press it now here is the trick or the Insight if you are seeing competitors or accounts that are very simil similar to yours then your account is optimized if you are seeing random celebrities or football teams or completely different accounts yes sorry where am I then the algorithm does not understand who to show your content to or what your page is about and you need to optimize it further I will be going more into optimization techniques using settings Etc later on in the video so stay tuned for that but this is a clear indicator to whether the algorithm understands who we are the next one is account status now everything in this video is super super useful but if you have an issue with your account anything you apply you could create the best rule in the world but it probably won't get any views to check your account status is simple go to your settings scroll right to the bottom near where the logout button is and you should see account status once you're there if your account is in good standing you should see three ticks if you have any red or any exclamation marks you need to look into that as this could be restricting your growth restricting your reach and it might be worth starting a new account or getting in touch with Instagram to see you know what is going on here so make sure you would check your account status as I want you to be able to apply everything else in this video and actually utilize it today if you don't have this setting on then I don't know what you're doing you need to enable the suggested account feature essentially your profile becomes visible to people or to followers of your competitors or accounts are similar to you so the exact same way I showed earlier on the video you will then appear in other people's suggested accounts to do this it's simple go onto your desktop log into your Instagram go to edit profile and just make sure that this is ticked welcome to discoverability your name settings now this is something that I see a lot of people not using properly we need to optimize our account Instagram is prioritizing accounts which are searchable which actually appear in people's search feeds optimizing your profile is critical for Reaching Your Potential audience and for extra exposure now many people get confused with this and your username or your handle is different to your name so in settings or where you can change your profile you'll see username and you'll see name your username is your handle so if your account is you know Nike then you're at the Nike account now here's the difference your username cool put that as your brand put that as your business put that as your name but in your name you need to put your brand or name whatever it is also you need to add keywords so if you look at some of the bigals like vog for example you know they've put their name but they've also put business and motiv ation because this is the style of content that they create anytime anyone types in business or motivation they will appear on the feed so guys if you are a gardener if you make nature content then put some keywords in your name and become more discoverable this setting is super super useful and a lot of us are not using this properly so start today posting times if you're confused about when is the best time for you to post then let Instagram tell now for this you need to have a Creator account to do this it's simple navigate to settings press business and controls as you scroll down you will see Switch Account types button press that button and switch over to the Creator once this is done you will unlock a bunch of insights and one of them will be posting times or basically it will tell you when your audience is most active and my recommendation for this is to post 2 hour was before that peak time if Instagram is telling you that everyone is online at 6:00 p.m. then start to post around 4p thank be later let me try this out prioritizing quality now if you're posting rules on Instagram you want to be able to post high quality if your content is low quality people are going to engage with that way less and respect your page way less what you need to do is go to settings and activity which will be on the top right of your profile then go down to your app and media in your app and media you will see media quality you need to make sure upload at highest quality is turned on there are people who have this turned off and you know what happens is you will post sometimes and Instagram will prioritize the posting the speed Etc and not the quality make sure this is turned on and make sure that you are posting the highest quality content humanly possible for you so you get more respect so many of of you don't have this on now I've actually seen accounts which have this turned off this simple sharing and remixing settings if you are trying to grow your account you need to give people the option to remix your content share the content you know for it to actually go viral go on to settings and press sharing and remixing and turn all of these on you want to make sure it looks something like this any which say no turn it on going viral is about sharability people can't share your content people can't remix it you're really damaging your potential growth training your explore page to give you content ideas if you are not doing this then your account is not optimized and not in the right settings to show you how to actually grow your account the best place to come up with ideas for your content or for reals for anything is from the explore page the explore page can literally feed you that information here's what I want you to to do go on to your explore Page by pressing the magnifying glass once you're there let's say that you are a skincare brand but you go on to your explore page and you are seeing football cricket videos about photography videos about growing your Instagram account this is not the right content for you you should be doing this on a personal account which you're not trying to grow if we're trying to grow we need to use our explore page properly what you need to do is pull over the post press it and simply press the three dots and press interested what is happening here is you are telling the algorithm the explore page that you want to see more of this content this is essential and if you look at my food page right here my food page is full of food videos so anytime I need ideas for what food is trending for you know potentially captions hashtags whatever it might be I can simply go to my explore page and I will get everything do this right now now you tried the next one is in settings and it's refining your explore page without even actually going on your explore page now what you want to do is go to settings then to suggested content and then what you can do is input specific keywords that you want to hide from your page so for example if there is certain stuff that keeps appearing and you don't want to see that anymore you can simply go to there type in those keywords and it will go now this shows us the importance of keywords simply by typing in keywords I won't see that content again this shows us how important keywords off for the whole growth of your account let's move over to the next one on the topic of explore page it also tells us at all times what is currently trending but not how you might think now you probably are thinking right now how have I never noticed this well go on to the explore page go on to search and you will see a bunch of trending topics right at the top like it'll tell you I don't know Kim Kardashian is trending right now or loads of different things you know healthy meals Etc this is super super useful it's a setting that Instagram is literally telling us what is popular right now listen to me and sometimes in certain niches you know for example if you're in the food Niche and it's telling you that healthy meals are training right now that could be something that you can jump on or create content for which is going to help you get pushed more so definitely keep an eye on there as sometimes it will just guide you to a particular topic even if you make motivational reals stories you know they might might be something that is trending that you can make a story about and that will go super viral this is a quick hack for your stories now simply on your story so let's say I'm going to pose this nature story right here I'm going to go to next and then press stickers which is right here I'm going to press this sticker right here this love heart one or this um face emoji what I'm going to do is I'm going to put this onto the right side so I'm going to literally just drag that there what will happen is as people scroll to the next story they will actually like it and you are basically you know forcing them to like your post and you know getting likes on your stories will get more people to view your story so this is a little trick for anyone who needs a story to get more views I wouldn't recommend doing it all the time and obviously you can play around with it you know with different ones but I would recommend just doing the H or something like that and yeah people will start liking it more so this is this neat little trick for stories it wouldn't be an Instagram video if I didn't speak about hashtags now now this is a bonus tip for everyone one of the big things with hashtags nowadays is which prevents us from growing or blocks our reach is when we use banned hashtags this is what I want you to do if you are using hashtags to use this website right here I am listening metahash tags.com what I want you to do is every time you post some hashtags especially if you've not used those hashtags before to go to the bad has hashtags put in your hashtags and it will tell you whether those hashtags are clean or if they're banned if they're banned your account will get affected so this is super super useful just to make sure that your account stays in good standing but also that each post every time you make content that it actually gets pushed Out imagine you know putting all that effort into creating content your captions everything and then you get blocked or you know it prevents you from getting shown to others just because you've used a band hashtag use this website to check whether any hashtags you use are ban refining your search we all spend time on Instagram and we all spend time searching for things but if we're trying to grow our account and we search we search it can confuse the algorithm and then the explore page and so forth what I recommend doing is refining and cleaning your search history often what you need to do is tap your profile icon open up the menu select your activity and go to recent searches and then you simply clear all I would recommend doing this every few weeks or every week just to keep things ticking to keep things clean and for without clogging too much information to the algorithm do this and thank me later crossposting on Facebook now this is one of the more controversial settings on Instagram right now in one of my previous videos I said don't use it and I still stand by that but let's say you are in a niche which potentially is more on Facebook so if for example you have an older kind of clientele and you think that they'll be very active on Facebook then it might be worth you crossposting just to get that additional exposure but if you are in a niche which you know you are prioritizing on Instagram then it's better to just focus on Instagram and not really confuse the algorithm further only use Facebook crossposting if you think it's actually going to benefit your brand otherwise just turn it off to turn it on you go to settings crossposting and then turn on recommend rules on Facebook it's that simple but be very smart and think about whether it's going to benefit your brand or not my name is Alex and I hope this video has helped you please make sure to subscribe and like the video for the algorithm and let me know if any of these settings surprise you or if you have any questions these are all settings that are super super important and most of us are neglecting my name is Alex let's go Ro