It seems Instagram has been busy these last weeks, resulting in a big drop in engagement for most people (unless you have 10K+ followers and no longer need to use hashtags to make it to the discovery page).

Popular hashtags such as #likeforlike, #like4like, #l4l and the equivalent #followforfollow hashtags are now black-listed by Instagram. What's more, using just one banned hashtag means your photo will not show up in any of the other hashtag pages either. And if you keep using them, they might even decide to shadow ban your account for a week or 2. Instagram motivates this as a "fight against infringement and abuse", but it's most likely a manouvre to stimulate paid publicity.

So how can we still grow engagement on our accounts without sacrificing our wallet to Insta?
1. Use similar tags that are not yet banned: #like4likes, #l4like and the equivalent #follow4follows still work.
2. Don't abuse the same hashtag over and over, but pick one tag from the list for one photo, the next tag for the next photo and so on, regularly cycling through the tags.
3. Don't be spammy or post forbidden content, that will get your account banned but might also get the hashtag banned (sadly, what others do is out of our hands...)
4. Participate in Instagram engagement groups on Facebook
5. Try being genuine and interacting with people whose content interests you.

If you'd like to help each other out, here is my Instagram, please stop by and say hi: Noree Anne Celine.

And to check if your account is currently under a shadow ban, it's HERE (just enter your username to check).