The New Way To Grow On Instagram: Algorithm Changes & Reels

As you know, algorithms on social media, especially on Instagram, constantly change. But there has been a recent change that gave me a lot of hope, and I decided to challenge myself to posting three reels a day. Now, in this video, I'm going to share my results, and I will also tell you how the algorithm works right now and how you can use it to your advantage. Now, the major change that has happened to the reels algorithm is that each video is now promoted to separately. What does it mean? So remember how earlier on Instagram, if you're a huge creator, you get a lot of views. If you're a smaller creator, most of the times you get not too many views, because Instagram basically used to pay a lot of attention to how many followers you have, which meant that bigger creators got bigger, and it was kind of hard for smaller creators to grow. Now Instagram realized that, and they want everyone to have a shot in this creator economy. And they basically change the algorithm in a way that every new reel, yes, it's promoted to your subscribers first. But with the algorithm, algorithm does. It evaluates how your subscribers and how certain groups of your subscribers react to the reel. And if it notices that, oh, interesting. So women aged 18 to 24 actually interacted more with this reel, and it starts promoting it to similar groups of people across Instagram. And this is why we started seeing so many smaller profiles getting 1 million views on their reels, 6 million views on their reels, and it's actually kind of great for everyone because it became easier for your reels to go viral, which leads to new subscribers and more engagement. Now, please don't get me wrong, Instagram still values your subscribers, and if people interact with your profile a lot, they will still see everything that you post. For me, also, as a bigger creator, I have 1.1 million followers on Instagram. I used to post less just because I thought, oh, my subscribers are going to be tired of me posting constantly, and if my content is not polished enough, they're going to unsubscribe. But now what I realize is that only maybe 10% of my followers actually see my content, which means that I can have this freedom to experiment, because if my content is bad, then, you know, only 10% are going to see it and it's fine. But if my content is actually good, millions and millions of people will interact with it. It kind of gives you this internal permission to post more and to post less polished content. And this is why I decided, like, why not post three reels a day if they're Evaluated individually. And my subscribers are not going to get tired of me constantly being in their feed. Now let's move on to the thing number two. So Adam Messeri recently said that the number one metric that they look at when they decide whether to promote the reel or not, it's not even comments, it's not likes, it's reposts. So when people are watching your reel, they have to have this feeling like, oh, my God, this is so relevant. I want to send it to my husband, to my friends, to my coworkers, which means that idea matters the most. If you're creating content about the idea that a lot of people can relate to, that means they're going to send it to their friends, they're going to share it in their stories. And shares are actually a good predictor of how your reel is going to perform. If you post a reel and you see some shares, that is actually a better metric versus just likes and comments, because this means that this reel will get more and more reach because people are sharing it. So, for example, some of my most viral reels, people have been reposting them like crazy. There was one where I shared a ride in a driverless taxi here in San Francisco, and people like, oh, my God, this is the future. Some people will, like, robots are taking over. So some people were happy, some people were not. But they basically started sharing it with their friends and they really got millions of views. Another reel is when I shared that I actually traveled to different countries from the US to get my dental work done because it's so much cheaper. And I shared how I paid like $70 to have my teeth fixed in Thailand, and people started resharing, telling that, oh, in my country is even cheaper. Oh, like, yes, the US in terms of dental care, it's like the most expensive place on earth, etc. So I provoke some reaction in them because dental care, everyone can relate to it because all of us go to see their dentists. So make reels that are super relatable to your audience so that they can comment and share. I like this rule that think of your audience as fifth graders in your topic. So if you're talking about investment, don't talk about complicated instruments. Talk about investing $50 towards your retirement. If you're talking about organizing a house, don't talk about how much you're making, how important it is to hire house organizer. Show your subscribers actual things that they can start using right away. Show them tips, show them hacks. And now some of you might think, oh, but my Business is so boring. It's, you know, I'm not targeting millions of views. I don't even need them. I need like a couple thousand views. But I want them to come from my perspective clients. Now I have great news for you. So now Instagram not only promotes reels that have this viral potential, of course you're going to see them in your feed. But they also promote reels that don't have this viral potential, but the ones that they're super targeted for their audience. So for example, if I'm learning German, I'm going to see reels that are related to learning the German language, even if they didn't get hundreds of thousands of views. Which means that even if your business is boring, the algorithm will try to do the best job of finding your potential audience, even if it's small. But still, even if your topic is really small, try to think about your area of expertise as a fifth grader. What are the questions beginners are asking? How can you help them? Now, if you're looking for a more in depth guide to crushing it on Instagram reels, I've got just the thing. This Instagram for Business kit from HubSpot dives deep into reels. It breaks down hacks you can use today to boost your engagement and guides you on how to develop a killer reel strategy to grow your Instagram account. And that's just scratching the surface of what's in this free guide. If you want it, I'll make sure to drop a link in the description below. Thing number four that I've learned during my experiment is that hashtags don't actually matter. They matter only in a case if your subscribers are subscribed to a certain hashtag and you can check it by going to your subscriber's profile and see what they subscribe to. But again, it wouldn't make a huge difference if your goal is to reach hundreds of thousands of people. It will make a difference if you're targeting a particular audience who are following a certain hashtag. Another thing, the timing of your video doesn't matter. What matters is how long you can keep them engaged. So the longer the the video, the more hooks you need, the more exciting information you need to provide. I know some creators who spend up to 40 hours on just making one 60 second video because there's so many things you should think about. It has to be catchy, the storyline has to have ups and downs. So always evaluate how much time you can actually spend on a reel. And sometimes reels that only last 8 seconds still get their millions of views just because they're so short and because they're showing something that people are excited about. Now, the last thing is actually mind blowing. You might be wondering, like, okay, three reels a day, amazing. But I don't have time to film them. What I actually did, I took my old reels and posted them again. And it's so funny, there was this reel about how much it costs to have a baby in California. The first time I posted it a couple years ago, it got maybe like a hundred thousand views. I posted it again, I changed nothing and it got millions of views. And then we posted it for the third time and it still got views. So it's actually crazy how Instagram lets you do that. Basically recycle your content. It doesn't work on YouTube though. Don't do it on YouTube. Didn't really work on TikTok. It only works on Instagram and only if you repost the content that you own. If you're just copying somebody else's reels, that's not gonna work. But if you posted something, it performed well three or four months ago, post it again. Because every video is looked at individually, I didn't get too many comments from my subscribers, like, oh, Marina, I think I saw this video. There were some people who saw this video, but most of the time my video got promoted to a new audience and it's just fascinating. So basically, if you go and look at your outlier reels, by outliers, I mean reels that got more than average views. Try to post them again. You could replace music or you can just post them. As always, you don't need to take down the reels that you've had before. You just post them again on your profile and magic happens. So this strategy has brought me over 30,000 new subscribers. In the month Instagram started paying me bonuses, which were pretty significant for Instagram. So I actually encourage you to try and do that as well. To take your Instagram and reels to the next level, please do not forget to download the Instagram for Business kit in the description below. Enhance your strategy and use the algorithm updates for your advantage. See you soon.