Instagram Updates You NEED To Know

If you feel that Instagram's changing things up again, you're definitely not alone. They've announced some changes recently, and I have observed some actual changes that they haven't talked about yet among my clients. Some of them were reporting that their content is just not getting the traction that it used to.

So I've been actually taking a look at this, obviously, diving deep into the latest leaks, updates around the whole Instagram algorithm. And it seems like the second half of 2024 is shaping up to be a year of big changes. From people preferring different kinds of content to how the Instagram algorithm is actually ranking posts yet again.

Yeah, looks like what worked last year might not work anymore. Yeah, the old spiel. We've heard it a million times before.

But here's the thing, and that's a really important thing. It doesn't really matter, the whole thing, that things are changing constantly. If you approach your content game with the right strategies and with the right mindset, kind of, you know, and it's what basically I call the data-driven content framework.

It's what we instal among all of our clients. It's how we create content. It's how we're able to kind of stay on top of the whole algorithm curveball game.

So if you're one of these creators who are like, well, I just can't seem to get traction. The algorithm is against me and everything is against me. Don't worry.

We've seen it a million times before. And I'll show you some things here in this video, kind of like my creative client, Eduardo, who, for example, just doubled his following after being stuck for months at a plateau. And it felt like the algorithm was a little bit against him.

But with the right approach, we were able to make him reach actually 18 million accounts just in the past 30 days. Another creator that we work with actually hits 1 million plus views with his latest videos almost every time. And another one of our clients in the career mentorship actually just hit 50,000 followers this week with an account from actually 2013.

In case you're wondering whether you should start a new account from scratch or whether the algorithm is against you, most likely not, as we could see right here. Right. So let's start with the most recent announcement from Instagram first, which is yet another analytics change, right?

There's something going on in the background. They change things up all the time. And this one will actually change the whole perception of how your content not just performs, but how it gets viewed from the outside world.

Because just a few days ago, our old friend, the head of Instagram, Mosseri, actually announced that views now will be the primary metric across all formats. Before it was going to reach for photos or impressions for photos, but the plays were actually just initial plays and one replay or something like that. No, now it's going to be the same all across the board, even for photos and carousels.

This will be a little bit more important a little later, but actually let me show you what they have said. They say views will measure the number of times a reel started to play or replay and the number of times a non-reel appeared on a person's screen. So basically an impression.

Views will ensure you have the same metrics across Instagram and help you better understand how your content is performing, regardless of its format. So first of all, we can see while they're trying to push carousels a little bit more, we'll get into that in a second. And they're also trying to make things generally better.

So not just videos. I know you guys are always like videos, videos. I don't want to create videos.

Well, create carousels then. But this will make things easier for a lot of you guys. So this is kind of how it looks.

There are a few questions that I have. First of all, will views be the primary metric on your profile or in the feed as well? For example, when viewing a profile of a picture or a carousel swiping through, will you see the views or will you still see the likes as the thing from that, the major thing from the outside?

I'm not sure. Most likely should be the views. The other question that I have though is what really counts as a view in this case, right?

Because right now there's some people on the internet and on threads and all these experts saying, well, the Instagram help centre says that a view is anything from three seconds and up. And I've tried to find this article in the help centre. I have not found it.

I just saw some articles talking, referring to the help centre without listing any source. So I'm not sure. The way it sounds here is as soon as a view starts playing, it counts as a view, which possibly means if people rewatch your videos, for example, or stay on your carousels, or I don't know, Patreon a lot, your view counts will go up quite a bit because the way I understand it right now is that a play most likely only counts once or twice, at least every 24 hours.

Don't pay me on that. I'm not a hundred percent sure, but it seems like it counts once as an initial play. And if you ride at the same sessions, watch it again once for the replay.

And now it seems like they don't care about this anymore. As soon as somebody starts playing, it's one view. And if it plays again, it's another view.

So if somebody views your reel for 20 times over, because it's a three second video, you'll get 20 views. For example, we'll see about that. Generally speaking, pretty good though, because they're trying to make things fresh or keep things fresh and trying to make things better for the users, which also gets me into the neck and second one, which is called trial mode or experiment mode.

Only a few creators have that already, but it actually shows that Instagram is aware and trying to fix their number of one major problem that they currently have, which is getting the algorithm to show your content to actual people, especially to non followers. Now this new feature called trial reels or something like that. For some creators, it was called experiment mode up until recently, and they changed some things, but it's essentially a tool to test out how well your reels perform out in the wild without showing it to your actual followers, which is actually really, really great news because a lot of the times the algorithm is just confused by your existing followers, right?

Because I personally think they don't have as much control over the Instagram algorithm, the recommendation system, as you might think, because you know, the sentient or something like that, but they actually tried to change this thing already with this latest ranking update a few months back, but it seems like it didn't really help as much. According to my data, about 50% of my clients have had an easier times of getting non-connected, unconnected, non-follower reach right now, while the other half seems to even have a little bit harder time of reaching new, fresh people. And in my opinion, it all comes down to the algorithm being slightly confused by either your old content and the algorithm's knowledge of your old content or your followers that you previously had.

So for example, if you had an older account, let's say four or five, six years old, and your followers are from mostly three years ago, and then you've also changed, pivoted slightly your content strategy, or you've had some videos blow up that are not really part of your strategy anymore. We've seen it that you probably have a hard time reaching non-followers and growing your account initially, right? Before you instal the data-driven content framework, which is basically my way of working against all of these changes and working against all these restrictions or faults the Instagram algorithm has.

And I actually just posted a video with some of the ways we're currently using from this framework with our existing clients to mostly get their non-follower reach up. I'll link it in the comments. But this new feature will make things actually a lot easier for any creator.

You know, here's actually how it's going to look like, by the way, shout out to Horatio, you know, fella Dominator, who actually sent me this amazing screen grab here, right? That's him. And basically the way it's going to look, you can actually check yourself right now if you have it or not, should have like this trial button at top saying new, right?

And if you turn it on, and basically say in feed and reels, a reel will only be shown to non-followers. Perfect. If it performs well, you can also choose to automatically share it with everyone in trial settings.

And if you open the trial settings, they say your followers won't see your trial read and feed or reels, blah, blah, blah. Some might still see it obviously, but you can also include to share it automatically. If it gets a lot of place within the first 48 hours, then it'll all automatically be shared to everyone.

But you don't have to do that. Nobody actually knows what that actually means. Having a lot of place or views, but there's one thing that's hidden in there between the lines that gives us a little deeper insight into the Instagram algorithm, which is the first 48 hours, because it's somewhat of a benchmark.

And we've seen that with our clients, usually a reel will start to blow up after 48 hours, right? I would say even between 42 days and four days after posting is when most reels blow up some even later, three, four or five weeks later, sometimes again, but usually the first two days, not as much happens as in the second two days. Let's put it that way, which actually gets me to another point that a lot of people are posting about when trying to get, you know, the post velocity up and stuff like this, ideal posting times, because there seems to have been some change around that topic as well.

It used to be somewhat of a science to actually figure out that the ideal posting time, and you've seen me included, I've talked about that. Ideally, you should post your reels right before your audience is online the most, right? You can see that in your settings, and it still is true.

But for example, to be honest, some of my clients are actually crushed, who are crushing it pretty well right now, are pretty much posting whenever, and the algorithm still figures it out when their audience are online the most. And this is why I think it takes two to four days for your reels to actually reach the most people, because the algorithm just checks, well, when are they most likely going to want to watch this reel or carousel or post, and then they'll show it to them, you know, in a time window of 48, 72, 96 hours. So I'm not saying that you should totally randomly post your content, let's say, once at 3 a.

m. and once at 6 p. m.

or something like that, but just roughly, it's just a rough estimate when your followers are online, and then just post them, you know? Could be during the day. My opinion doesn't really matter that much anymore.

Same thing here, by the way, with the ideal reels length, because I see it all over again, people are like, well, now it's still seven seconds, now it's three minutes, right? And I've been doing a lot of research into that among my clients, and to be honest, the reality of what's best actually is somewhere in the middle, and there's actually no reality, to be honest. You know, I can see it in my Viral Hooks database, that you can use, by the way, as well, where we actually hand track hundreds of reels of, you know, outlier and viral reels per day, and the range goes up and down.

There's some that really blow up that are kind of one minute 30 and above, and the only thing it depends on is actually the content, you know, whether the content is actually good, and whether the hook is actually good, and we're not going to talk about that today, but, you know, just think about it. It's a totally different skill set to create a awesome seven second reel than it is to create a awesome three minute one. With that being said, I have seen, though, a lot among our clients this pop-up come up on the screen a lot, which is basically Instagram saying that 30 second reels or more tend to do better.

That's what they say. Not sure if it's actually them trying to push 30 second reels more, or 30 second plus reels more, or if it's actually the case that they, on overall, perform a little bit better, but just thinking about my clients, actually, it really depends. Just recently, we've had, for example, one client had a 10 million views reel on a six second video, amazing video, by the way, and also we have some clients who were consistently hitting 700, 800k, 1 million plus reels on one minute plus once, right?

So it really depends on your skills and your audience preferences, actually. That's how I would put it. One thing to keep in mind, though, is that they're actively trying to push for three minute reels if you're a good content It's one thing I've noticed is that if you're a creator who posts longer reels, let's say one minute 20 plus once, and they see that your average watch time is actually pretty good with those, and the videos are actually pretty good, they will unlock three minute long videos for you.

So that's one thing, and it just shows me that they're trying to only give this thing right now to the better creators, that they think they're better creators. So in my opinion, if you really want to set yourself up for the long game, try to get there eventually with three minute long videos where you actually are in the camera or speak or have some voiceover or have stuff happening, you know, real videos basically. Now as for storeys, we also have some updates.

A lot of people forget about storeys. They're like, I don't know what to post about storeys. It's actually super important, not just for the monetization part and for actually getting sales if you have products, but also to get people to convert over to become fans, actual fans.

So really, really important. Don't forget about storeys. By the way, if you have no idea what to post as a storey, it doesn't really matter, right?

People usually are like, well, the barrier is much lower for storeys. So I just post sort of random stuff, which is all right. And that's essentially how they should be a lot more candid, you know, a lot more loose, if you will, a lot more real.

And there's a fun fact I can share you from one of my clients. Actually, he's essentially posting reels that technically should be storeys, right? So if you know what I mean, and they're killing it right now, really, you know, just as a thought.

Now, anyway, what's happening right now is Instagram is toying around with a feature called lately or something like that, which basically features all of your storeys from the past seven days as a highlight on your profile, right at the top of your profile. And this whole thing allows you to really connect with your audience a lot, especially if there's a lot going on right now with you as you post a lot, because especially if you have lots of cool reels, and lots of people coming to your profile, people are going to see that lately, you're actually active and that you're a real person. And you know, that brings your trust up.

We've talked about this people don't trust creators anymore as much as they used to. And by that, you can really, really minimise that or actually maximise the whole trust thing. Also, a lot of people don't really utilise storey highlights like they should, because to be honest, the user experience is kind of bad.

And storey highlights with with the way they're made, you always have to keep them up to date. And it always starts from the first one, and not from the latest one. First, I think this feature is actually a good thing.

And will actually be important to getting your conversion rate, your follower conversion rate up a lot. By the way, talking about converting more people into followers, this video right there actually shows you more of the latest insights into the Instagram algorithm coming straight from actual data I collected from clients. With this video, you'll actually be able to tell whether the algorithm really likes you or hates you and how to actually get your non follower reach up without having to have this new trial feature right there.