Building Smart Influence Approaches While Instagram Changes its Algorithms

Instagram is changing its algorithm and user experience. Kylie Jenner isn’t happy about it. She once critically wounded Snapchat by saying she never goes there anymore. Now she’s created a PR issue for the platform. But the changes to Instagram go far beyond pissing off a Kardashian.

Instagram is now outwardly saying video is better. They’re prioritizing it over the their heritage approach of photography. They’re also testing features that are much like TikTok. This is largely because TikTok is beating them at the game of creating stickier user experiences. Instagram can’t continue to dominate the social media platform usage among a certain population if the Joneses have built a better mousetrap. So they have to keep up.

And these changes change the way influencers and creators have to approach their roles. It also changes the way brands need to think about influencers.

Katie Stoller has been watching the algorithm changes, and Kylie Jenner’s reaction, along with the rest of us in the space. She’s an influencer marketing and public relations consultant and pro. I invited her to come on the show to talk about the layered complexities of the influencer space, how to design the right solutions for brands and clients when its hard to know what size influencer, what type of creator, what type of content and such will work.

But I invited her to do that the week the Kylie Jenner re-post of a meme begging Instagram to let Instagram be Instagram, so our conversation had to include both.

Katie is of like mind. She’s a public relations pro by trade, even worked at some of the major PR firms over the years. She’s currently handling influencer marketing for Fiat Growth, a Silicon Valley based investment and growth company largely in the FinTech space.

Our conversation will be very useful for those of you on the brand and agency side to better understand the complexities of building smart influence approaches, but then we’ll also get into this Instagram UX and algorithm discussion. Katie was the guest, but she asked me a few questions and I jumped out of character a bit to wag my finger at some folks.

An entertaining discussion is here for you today.

This episode of Winfluence is presented by Tagger, a complete influence marketing software solution. Check them out for a demo today at jason.online/tagger.

A full show transcript is available at https://jason.online/katiestoller.

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