Instagram Content Is Searchable on Google and Yes, That's a Big Deal❗

Why search should be a key part of your social/influencer strategy

I was in Carlsbad this week for the annual ANA Digital and Social Conference. And while I have plenty of takeaways from the week (check my LinkedIn for those), I’m dedicating this weeks newsletter to something that’s caused some confusion in the industry around social and search.

To set the stage, starting last week (July 10th to be exact), public posts from Instagram professional accounts were reported to be automatically indexed by Google and other search engines.

Now let me be clear, Google was already indexing Instagram content in search results. Meta has just expanded that to more people and regions. And while It’s not clear if that means more IG search results than previous, or more defined rules about which posts show up - it definitely means that your Instagram creator strategy absolutely needs a search pillar.

If you check out the video below you can see an example of this. I did a search for the best sunscreen for babies (random but personal ;-)). As I scroll down on the first page I arrive at a section called “what people are saying” where it shows social content from Instagram, TikTok, Reddit, YouTube, etc.

THIS IS A VERY BIG DEAL. It means that your photos, videos, carousels, and Reels can appear in organic search results. Think about the long tail search benefits of your YouTube videos… that same value is going to come from your Instagram content.

Again this is not new as of last week, but the reaction to the indexing news made it clear that Google wasn’t doing a great job making sure the community knew this was already happening.

So yes, search should have already been part of your influencer marketing strategy given how much social search has grown even absent of Google’s help, but indexing makes it even more critical as Google is still where 90+% of the world's search happens.

🌟 The benefits of indexing are very clear to influencer marketers:

• It means that Instagram content actually has a much longer tail than prior

• Influencer marketing as a channel is very deeply engrained in SEO

And just like your SEO strategy on Google, you need to treat social and creator content the same way. Every key search term should have a treasure trove of branded videos.

🤷‍♂️ What does this means in practice for brands:

• You need to collaborate much more deeply with the SEO team to make sure you know what search terms are most important to the brand, and how your social content is impacting search from a data perspective.

• You should be creating a content search grid (we call this a narrative map). This means mapping out all of the top search terms that people Google, and auditing your content to ensure you have strong videos addressing each and every one of them.

• Make sure you have SEO friendly copy, and have strong text overlays on your short form videos. Write captions with keywords in mind, especially the first line, which acts like a headline in search. Use descriptive Alt text just like you would on YouTube or in blogs, and rethink hashtags as they now have a dual-purpose.

Instagram has moved from a pure-play social feed to a searchable content powerhouse. And influencer marketers have search traffic, CTR, and Google rankings to add to their list of impacted metrics (sorry but not sorry).

If I were a CMO I would honestly have to ask myself at this point… what marketing channels does influencer marketing not benefit??

---

Other Resources

• The TikTok sale saga continues: Apparently they are building a new version of the TikTok app ahead of its potential sale to the US, but there are most questions than answers at this point.

• YouTube is shutting down its Trending page: The new place to find trending data is called “Charts”, and it will filter the most popular content by specific categories. YouTube also launched a corresponding blog series — What’s Trending — to track the videos and conversations making waves.

• The most important influencer marketing research report needs your input: Linqia’s annual State of Influencer Marketing Report is now collecting responses from marketers. A lot of publications and industry friends rely on this data so please take 5 minutes to fill out the survey 🙏