No.
Ok, that’s a bit short for a blog post, so let’s talk about it.
There have been lots of posts going around lately saying that saves are the most important thing you can do to content you like, then sending the post to a friend/putting it in your Stories (although that’s something that could be going away) but there is no evidence from Instagram to confirm this theory.
In April 2019, James Nord of Fohr suggested on their podcast that saves could be seen as a “super like” (although it’s unclear whether he meant if that was on Instagram as a whole or just on the Fohr platform) whilst in August 2019, Later posted an article saying that saves were the hot new engagement metric. Somehow, this has turned into “saves are the most important thing”
Instagram posted on their @creators account that comments, likes, reshares and views are important, but there was nothing to suggest any of those were more important
Most likely (although this is just a theory!), Instagram will see how long you spend looking at a post or reading a caption and use that to decide what to show you next. (Think about it – the more you look at posts about drag race or shopping at certain shops on the explore page, the more it seems like you see more of that content on the explore page!) Interacting with the content is important as well, but don’t worry that you’re not interacting with it in the right way!
