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Build Your Tribe | Grow Your Business with Social Media
How To Beat the Instagram Algorithm in 2025 | Reacting to My Interview with Adam Mosseri - 829
00:49:08
In today’s episode, Brock Johnson is reacting to his previous interview with the Head of Instagram, Adam Mosseri. He will be sharing his thoughts on the key takeaways from their conversation, including insights into the Instagram algorithm,...
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- [00:00]
Brock Johnson
Like your favorite startup's growth curve, T Mobile's coverage keeps scaling because T Mobile helps keep you connected from the heart of Portland to right where you are on America's largest 5G network. Switch now keep your phone and T Mobile will pay it off at the $800 per line via prepaid card. Visit your local T Mobile location or learn more@t mobile.com keepandswitch up to 4 lines via virtual prepaid card last 15 days qualifying unlock device credit service port in 90 plus days device knowledgeable carrier and timely redemption required Card is no cash access and expires in six months all right, so let's talk about what I really think about my conversation with Adam Mozeri, the head of Instagram. I'm going to assume that you have already listened to my interview. If you haven't, it's been out for a few weeks and I want to start by saying thank you so much to everyone who has watched, who has commented, who has hyped it up, who has shared, who has done their own reaction video, who has done their own critique or breakdown of the interview. I have really been so overjoyed with the response y'all have given, so I thank you so much for that. If you haven't watched it, you can go ahead and watch the full conversation. We'll make sure to link it up down in the show notes below this episode, but today I wanted to give you my own feedback, my own thoughts, my own reaction and response to some of the things we talked about and some of the things we didn't talk about. This episode here is going to be broken down into three main parts. The first part is going to be kind of your typical reaction style clips from the interview and then I will give my thoughts or response. The second part of this episode is going to be me responding to some of your most common questions, some of the most upvoted or most liked comments on the YouTube video, and on the posts that I've been making on my Instagram about the interview. And then we're going to end today's episode with kind of my overall thoughts and my direction of what we should do next and where we should head from here. And because I am a podcaster slash youtuber, I am legally obligated to say the following thing, which is Please subscribe to this channel. Every single week I release a new episode about the latest trends, changes, algorithm updates and new features. Not just for Instagram, but for all social media so that you can build a brand or business online. It's my job to help you grow and give you the no BS advice to help you grow and make more money in less time. But with all of that being said, let's skip over the first 10 minutes or so of the interview where we were kind of, you know, feeling each other out. I did have to butter him up a little bit to make sure that I was on his good side so that he would, you know, loosen up and maybe spill some of the tea later in the interview. But let's jump to the 9 minute and 52 second of our interview where I asked him about DM Automation. There's been a lot of mixed messaging, no pun intended, around DMs recently and specifically DM Automation. So I'd love if you could clear the air about DM Automation through approved partners, obviously, and whether that's allowed on Instagram or you know, specifically the whole if you comment this word, you'll receive this automated message.
- [02:52]
Adam Mosseri
Oh, interesting.
- [02:52]
Brock Johnson
So I would say this is the one question that I wished I had asked differently. It was a question that I really wanted to make sure I asked because DM automation is an absolutely essential tool for growing a business on Instagram. Not to get too lost in the sauce here, but the mistake that a lot of people make on Instagram when they're going to sell or promote something is they say, go, go click the link in my bio. Well, let's think about what happens when you say that you're telling people to abandon your post, to leave it alone, to not engage with your post, and to go do something else. And so of course they're not going to engage with your post. And when they do not engage with your post, that's a signal to the algorithm that it's not a very good post. And then your post is shown to less people. That was pretty much our only option up until about five years ago when DM Automation became available on Instagram. And essentially DM Automation is that thing, if you follow me, you know what it is, you've seen me do it, where a creator will say comment blank and I will send you blank comment code and I will send you the 20% off discount code comment shop and I will send you the link to my Amazon shopping cart or whatever. And this is something that is allowed on Instagram through approved partners, or at least it has been for the last few years, up until about April or May 2024 when the official Reators Instagram account made a post talking about engagement part bait, which is something that has always been not allowed on Instagram. But in said post, they gave an example of something that might be considered engagement bait. And that example was comment blank and you will receive blank. And of course, this caused like a mass hysteria in the industry. I did a series of reactionary posts to that news that also went viral. And it basically came out that that was just not the best choice of words. For an example, the creator who made that video was speaking on what they thought was an example of engagement bait. But according to an official statement from Reators, that was a mistake and you can use DM automation. They have even specifically said that on their official outlets. But then Fast forward to 2025, shortly before this conversation with Adam Mozeri. Again, it was in the news, at least within my little niche community of social media coaches. There were some people going viral saying, meta says that you can't do DM automation anymore. And so I just wanted to ask him directly. And it seemed like in my initial asking of the question, just from like reading his face and body language, it was making sense. And then when I gave him that example, which I thought would really, you know, put the nail in the coffin and make sure that we were totally on the same page, the example that I gave him kind of threw him a curveball. And then he started talking about getting hacked and giving up your password. But I can confirm from him, from what I can understand in his response, and from my numerous conversations with other high ranking officials, so to speak, at Meta and Instagram, using direct message automation through an approved partner is allowed and approved on Instagram.
- [05:52]
Adam Mosseri
But I do think that could also be really good one for people who are looking for things. You can imagine, whatever you use Instagram for, it'd be great to be able to find that more easily, but also for creators, because it should allow content to resurface so that you don't kind of get all the value in those first 24 or 48 hours.
- [06:11]
Brock Johnson
You know, in one of his very first answers, he said that one of the top three priorities for Instagram in 2025 and moving into the future is that they want to be the best platform for creators. And one of their explicit priorities is that they want to help small creators break out. And there's been some pushback about this. And we're going to talk about some of the comments and criticisms of him in this interview later. But I think that this is one of the components that is really lacking. I think that Instagram can be a massive player in the discoverability of content. YouTube and TikTok really excel in this category. If I want to find a specific video, a specific trend, a specific audio or creator, I know that if I go to YouTube or TikTok, I'll probably be able to find it. The thing I'm searching for and the videos or the answers that it provides me are usually pretty much in alignment. But I was glad to hear him say in this conversation that Instagram is not that way. Instagram's search, Instagram's SEO is not great. I would even say that in some areas, and in some cases it kind of sucks. So I'm glad to hear that they are working to improve it and that there are already things that are being rolled out to improve the searchability and discoverability on Instagram. And going back to my original point and his original point about Instagram being the best platform for creators, I think this is a huge part of it, because if your content can be easily resurfaced in search, that means you can get views months or even years after your content was originally posted. It doesn't mean for someone like myself, you have to constantly be reposting the same tips over and over again, hoping that people see them and knowing that no one's gonna see it after a few days. Instead, if the searchability on Instagram is really improved, then theoretically, my content from years ago could still show up in search results today, thus getting me views and thus eliminating the need for me to constantly be talking about the same topics over and over again. All right, with that being said, let's talk about how SEO and discoverability currently works on Instagram, because he kind of quickly said something that I think a lot of people are going to kind of gloss over and not notice. But I think it's absolutely huge for thinking about what informs the algorithm right now.
- [08:26]
Adam Mosseri
It's disproportionately looking at the caption relative to the video, relative to the audio, relative to the comments, in that order. But that's going to change because as we get better at understanding all the pieces.
- [08:37]
Brock Johnson
All right, so this right here is the answer to why are hashtags no longer important? This is what I've been saying for the last four or five years. The algorithm, basically the AI, the artificial intelligence, the robot brain who figures out what your posts are about, has been improving. It has been being trained on our data since the earliest days of Instagram. So it's got billions upon billions of posts that it is able to analyze. And with each post that it analyzes, it gets a little bit better. And so back in 2016, the algorithm still needed us common folk, us creators, to say pizza in order for it to know that this was a picture of a pizza. Now, it can scan the photo or the video, it can read your caption, it can look at the comments, it can hear or transcribe the audio to figure out that this is a photo or a video of pizza. It doesn't need us to tell it that it's a photo or a video of pizza nowadays. And that's really why hashtags are being phased out. Because if the algorithm can determine what your content is, then a we have to do less work to tell it, right? Like the average person can use Instagram easier without having to think about, oh yeah, I have to add these certain amount of hashtags and I have to tell the algorithm, no, the algorithm can determine for itself what your photo or video is about. But there's also an added layer on top of that, which is really why people are so upset that hashtags are less effective now is that hashtags from day one were never something that was supposed to be effective. Hashtags since day one were supposed to be something that was used by people, by creators, by business owners posting on Instagram to categorize our content. But of course, as us marketers do, as you know, the people in my profession, and hey, I'm part of the problem problem here, one of my first ever courses in the business world was called Help with Hashtags. And I taught people how to get the most reach from their hashtags, right? What we do, what we always do, is we figure out how to get the most possible juice from the squeeze, so to speak. We figured out very early on how you could use hashtags to strategically categorize your content, put it in different buckets, and thus reach more people. Well, Instagram doesn't want us to be able to trick the algorithm because then people are seeing content that us marketers want them to see and not necessarily the content that they would be most engaged with or that they, the consumer would most want to see. And so that's really the biggest reason that hashtags are less effective in 2025 than they were in 2015. Also, from his answer, I want you to take a mental note of those four things and he listed them in order. He said, number one, we look at your caption. So if you can have a caption that organically includes wor that describe your post. Awesome. Now, I did say organically. I don't think it's wise to at the bottom of your caption, just type a bunch of keywords, like people used to type a bunch of hashtags at the bottom of their caption. Nowadays, some people are just typing a bunch of keywords at the bottom of their caption. Don't do that organically. Use those words in sentences and in paragraphs that describe your post. But also, besides just the caption, they also analyze the photo and or video. They analyze the audio or the transcription of said audio. And now they're starting to look much more heavily at the comments. And what are people talking about below your posts? So, yes, everything matters. And that is why hashtags matter so much less now. Of course, the reason that people care so much about hashtags is that when used effectively a decade ago, hashtags would help you get more views. And nowadays most views are down, most people are getting less reach, most people are having a more difficult time getting the same amount of views that they used to in the past. Everyone wants to go viral. Everyone wants more views. And I think this next little segment was a juicy thing, something that he's talked about before. And so we didn't spend a lot of time on it. And I want to tell you that's why I didn't ask him, how do you go viral on Instagram? How do you get more views on Instagram? He has said it very plainly. I wanted to kind of unpack the different elements, but I'll play the clip and then we can talk more about it. You've talked about kind of the three metrics that are best or that you would recommend focusing on the most for increasing reach.
- [12:52]
Adam Mosseri
What do you tell people when they ask you what to shares?
- [12:56]
Brock Johnson
Yeah, because I think shares, at least algorithmically speaking, of course they're helpful. But it's a human sending a post to another human. So even if the algorithm was optimized for saves, a share would still be the way to reach another human being.
- [13:09]
Adam Mosseri
Yeah.
- [13:10]
Brock Johnson
Okay, so again, I have talked about this numerous times here on Build you'd Tribe over the last year or so, and he has said this himself on numerous of his own feed posts and his own Ask Me anything stories that he posts every Friday. The three best ways to get more views on Instagram in reverse order are number three, watch time, number two, likes, and number one, shares. And like I just said in our conversation, shares make sense, because when one human sends a video to another human, that video has just doubled its views. And the algorithm doesn't have to do so much work now to figure out who would be interested in this post. Because my wife sent me the video, the algorithm doesn't have to think right. She has determined that I would be interested in this post and that's a much better predictor than the algorithm. So in short, if you want more views, if you want to go viral, increase the amount of time that people are spending with your posts. Which, to say it another way, make your posts more engaging. Number two, increase the amount of likes that you are getting on your post. Again, make better quality content that people are actually going to engage with. And number three, best of all, make the kinds of content that is share worthy, which is like the pinnacle of engagement. It's not just me engaging with it myself, but it's bringing other people to also engage with it. That's the, the pinnacle of engagement. That's the pinnacle of a captivating post. Now, I could spend the next hour giving you a masterclass on how to create share worthy content. We have done previous episodes in the past, so I'm just gonna link one of those up down in the show notes. But if you can unlock that not so secret door, that's how you're gonna get more views on a consistent basis on Instagram. Now let's talk about everyone's favorite topic on Instagram, shadow banning.
- [14:56]
Adam Mosseri
And so it's possible if you write really aggressive content, there might be nothing wrong with that. Maybe you are advocating for a cause and you're mad and you have a right to be, that's okay. But it might get caught up in, oh, this isn't harassment, but it's borderline, it's aggressive and we won't recomm.
- [15:13]
Brock Johnson
This is one where people definitely get heated and there's definitely more opinions flying around. When it comes to shadow banning, I would say that the majority of people who believe they are shadow banned are not. I also think that there are some people that are shadowbanned, more people than probably Adam would admit to. But I don't think that 99% of people have ever been shadow banned. But I don't want to invalidate your experiences and your feelings because it can absolutely feel that way. And I do think it was somewhat enlightening to hear him say that. Yes, there are things that might not explicitly go against our guidelines, but they're kind of in this gray area, right? Like it's a woman posting pictures in like a skimpy little bikini. It's not nudity, but it's also something that's kind of in this gray area where they don't want to just be recommending that. Or it's someone who. They're not using, like, curse words and offensive language and whatever. They're not bullying or harassing, but they're using some aggressive language. And so, again, they're kind of in this gray area. And so Instagram doesn't want to recommend anyone who's in this gray area, because then it's their fault if you're offended, it's Instagram's fault if you are upset or if you don't like seeing this post, or if you know, it turns you away from Instagram, it's their fault for showing you the gray area. They have basically said that anything that's, you know, in this gray area or literally banned on Instagram, we're not going to recommend it. And we're only going to recommend the stuff that is definitely, you know, above the board, so to speak, or definitely meets community guidelines. But I need to be real with y'all right now. No matter what your political stance is, no matter where you fall on the political spectrum, whether you are farthest right or the farthest left person, I'm going to be honest with you, because I get thousands of direct messages every single day, and a lot of those direct messages are from people on opposite ends of the political spectrum going off on me as if I'm the head of Instagram. I'm not, by the way. That's why I had the interview with him. But going off on me, or just sometimes venting or ranting that they are shadow banned, that Instagram does not favor their kind of content, that their kind of posts, their political views specifically, are being suppressed and they can't talk about it. And yes, I do literally mean both sides. I don't care who you voted for, I don't care what you believe. I get messages, hundreds of them, on a daily basis, from people who are on opposite ends of the spectrum, who are saying that the other end of the spectrum is being promoted and allowed and that their end of the spectrum is absolutely not allowed, and it's being shadow banned on Instagram. And again, I tell you that not to invalidate your feelings. I'm not trying to gaslight you. I'm trying to tell you that, hey, you might not realize it, but both ends of the political spectrum, anyone who is, as he said, extreme or aggressive, or anyone who's kind of in a gray area and they're not definitely meeting community guidelines, they will not be recommended. And with recommendations being such a huge part of our reach right earlier in this interview, I asked him about how there has been a massive increase in the amount of non follower or disconnected reach happening these days, with that number being so high and such a large percentage of where our views are coming from. If you are no longer recommendable or that specific post is deemed aggressive and so it is not recommendable, you can realistically expect to get 30, 40, 50, 60% less views because of it. So again, it's not technically a shadow ban. It does feel like a shadow ban. I'm not trying to invalidate you, but pretty much everyone on both sides of the spectrum deal with it.
- [18:41]
Adam Mosseri
Now look, sometimes we make mistakes.
- [18:43]
Brock Johnson
And yes, they make a ton of mistakes. According to some rough estimates, there are almost a billion posts a day to the feed on Instagram. The most recent study that I've seen estimates that about 857 million hosts are made per day to just the feed that doesn't include stories. And so yeah, the algorithm is going to make mistakes. The algorithm is going to flag content that shouldn't be flagged. The algorithm is going to, you know, mark a comment as spam, even though it's like a heartfelt, very kind comment. That sort of stuff happens all the time. It's because the algorithm is just really flawed and imperfect. And not to go off on a tangent here, I think it's because Mark Zuckerberg, the founder and still the head of Meta Slash Facebook, who also owns Instagram, one of his famous quotes and mottos in life is move fast, break things. And so if they're updating the algorithm every day, we know they're moving fast. And so that means the algorithm is breaking in little bits every day as well in terms of consumption and like the interaction component. If I'm a creator and I create about this one niche topic, rock climbing, but I only consume content, or primarily consume content relating to a completely different topic, like cake baking, do those two things affect each other at all? Do they interact with each other or. Not necessarily.
- [20:00]
Adam Mosseri
Not necessarily.
- [20:01]
Brock Johnson
What about activity specifically around the time of posting? So I have a post, I'm going to make it 10am and so from 9:45 till 10am, I'm active and I'm responding to stories and I'm engaging. And then I make the post and I'm staying active. Does the algorithm reward me for that activity?
- [20:17]
Adam Mosseri
Not directly.
- [20:18]
Brock Johnson
For me personally, of every question that he answered in this conversation, this was the one that was one of the most surprising because I was a firm believer, not necessarily that, you know, if you engaged with more people than the algorithm automatically boosted your post. But I did believe that if you were more active, there would be some algorithmic benefits to that. And it was interesting to hear him talk about basically posting and ghosting. And this is something that I've been saying for the last few years. More of a mentality than an algorithm thing. Let me explain. I have been teaching that it is better to post and ghost than to not post at all. To say it, in other words, I would rather have you post and then forget about Instagram, like, go live your life, go run your business, whatever, than not post at all on that day. Basically, I would rather have you post and ghost than ghost and ghost, like, not post at all. But it was interesting to hear him say that. No, who you follow and who you engage with has no real impact on who's going to follow you and who's gonna see your posts. That was also personally relieving for me because if you look at my Instagram feed all winter long, it's nothing but snowboarding videos and edits of like cool dope powder videos from people snowboarding. And so if that affected who was seeing my posts, well, then I would be in a world of hurt because my ideal audience has very little care about snowboarding. So I was happy to hear that. I was also happy to hear that, no, you know, being engaged before posting isn't going to help you algorithmically. Of course, if I comment on Sue Smith's post right before I post, and then she responds to it and then she's like, oh, hey, I wonder what he's up to now. And then she checks out my page. Then, human wise, audience wise, I might be more likely to get a little bit more reach or engagement. But it was, I think, helpful to hear that, no, the algorithm doesn't care. With that being said, let's move on to one of the most disappointing responses and one that he said he was disappointed in himself for. First, I want to talk about Live. Is there any new exciting features, anything that you can share about changes coming to live in 2025?
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Adam Mosseri
No, I had something for you on that.
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Brock Johnson
No.
- [22:22]
Adam Mosseri
Yeah, no, I'm really disappointed in myself.
- [22:24]
Brock Johnson
This is one where I can flat out say I was wrong. One of my top eight predictions for Instagram in 2025 was that they would make some improvements to live shopping, slash, live video and live shopping would become more utilized on Instagram in 2025. I still think the second part of that could happen. I still do think that more creators could start going live and utilizing DM automation with Live, which is really an advanced topic that we're not going to get into today. So I do think that that is something that could still happen. However, it was disappointing to hear that like they really have no priorities or care to improve Live. And it was surprising because Twitch has really increased in popularity over the last few years. TikTok Live was largely responsible for TikTok's success in 2024 specifically, and so it was surprising and disappointing to hear that they have no plans for live in 2025. Again. Hopefully that changes. Maybe that will change because of this conversation and the fact that I asked him about it, but we'll see. One thing that a lot of people missed, but it's so important to hear from my conversation with the head of Instagram is that he schedules pretty much all of his posts. And if the head of Instagram does something, it's pretty safe to say that it's good for you to do it as well. And that's why I have been scheduling my posts for the last three or four years. And I can honestly say that using Metro Cool to schedule my posts has been a complete game changer in terms of staying consistent on Instagram because then I don't have to wake up every single day and remember to press post and have this anxiety filled morning where I'm creating a post and frantically posting it. Instead. I have it scheduled days or weeks or sometimes even months in advance on Metricool. Plus Metricool has some really useful advanced features that allow me to look at the stats on my past posts, easily reuse them or upcycle them as we call it here at Build you'd Tribe. And it truly, like I said, has been an absolute game changer for my consistency and my growth on Instagram. Metricool is the scheduling app that I recommend and while you can use it for free, there are some really helpful pro features that just take your Instagram experience up a notch and you can actually try those out for free for a month as well. Well, if you use the code Brock that's B R O C K. We'll put the link down in the description below. Today's podcast. Just don't forget to use Code Brock at checkout so you can get the pro features of Metricool for free for a month. Anyways, back to the episode. At least according to this one study, average reach for reels, carousels, feed, images and stories were all significantly down last year compared to the year prior. I'm curious, why is that? Why? And I know this is the number one question I Receive. Number one question I'm sure you receive is why am I not getting the views I feel I deserve?
- [25:08]
Adam Mosseri
Yeah, I mean, I wish I had a great answer that would satisfy people who aren't getting as much reach as they feel like they deserve. In general, reach is going up for some people and down for other people.
- [25:19]
Brock Johnson
Now, this question is one where I'm going to disagree with him a little bit. I'm going to agree with his reasoning or his cause, but I'm going to disagree with his view of like the state of the world or the state of Instagram specifically. The study that I was referencing in this question was a study from Metricool that came out in December of 2024, the very end of 2024, in which, and I'm reading it off my phone right now, they looked at over 400,000 accounts and over 32 million posts and or stories. And what they found is reach from feed was down by 44% on Reels, Carousel's reach was down by 58%. Feed images reach was down by 65% and story reach was down by 47%. So while, yes, he says in general, it's going up for some people and down for some people. Yes, that's true. There are definitely people who are getting more reach. If you look at the average and if you kind of, you know, pool everyone together, as Metro cool kind of did in this study, views and reach are down. So that's where I am going to disagree with him a little bit. But I do wholeheartedly agree with his reason why. And this is the unfortunate reality of the current state of Instagram. I believe that we are in an Instagram recession, and more broadly, we are in a social media recession that is caused by inflation. Now, I'm not getting political, and when I say inflation, I am not talking about the cost of eggs. I'm talking about the supply demand imbalance that has caused so many of us to be getting so many fewer views. It is basic economics. It is supply, demand. First, let's talk about supply. We would all agree that there are more people creating content in 2025 than there were in 2019 or even 2021, right? Think about how many people have left their jobs. Think about how many people have become entrepreneurs and content creators and have tried to start their own small business. Think about how many people have added a second form of income. Maybe they haven't left their job, they're still working a 9 to 5, but they have a side hustle. I know that so many of you who subscribe to this show are in this category. 5, 6, 7 years ago you were not creating content, and now you are. So that's the first layer of supply, is we just have more people creating content, but also the average amount that the creators are posting. And when I say creators, again, I mean business owners, small business owners, anyone who's, who's got a goal with the platform. They're not just using it to passively consume, but they're actually making something, posting something, sharing something. Those people are sharing more today than they were a few years ago. And we don't have to get into all of the reasons why and all of the different factors that have increased our average posting frequency. But not only do we have more people posting than before, the more people are also posting more than before. So that's way more supply than in the past. And demand, like he said, hasn't necessarily increased. If you look at the average time spent on Instagram, the graph has been pretty much the same since 2021. It spiked in 2020 as so many of us were on lockdown in our homes and just scrolling on our phones all day. And then it kind of went back down in 2021 as people started to get out into the world again. And it's remained pretty much flat since then. So the demand hasn't necessarily increased. If anything, it's decreased in the last few years. And so what all of this means is that social media is getting more competitive. This is true on TikTok, this is true on YouTube. This is true on every single social network. And I believe, unfortunately more than ever, this is true on Instagram. Again, and I mentioned this a moment ago, the most recent estimate is that There are about 857 million posts made per day to just the feed, not stories, but 857 million feed posts made per day on Instagram in April of 2025. Compare that to YouTube. On YouTube, the low end estimate is 2.6 million and the high end estimate is 3.7 million. So we're comparing over 850 million posts a day on Instagram to less than 4 million videos a day on YouTube. And I understand that there are differences in the content. I understand that many of you right now are watching a YouTube video that's 30 plus minutes long. And on Instagram you're watching videos that are super short. Like the length of the content is definitely not the same. It's not equal. But that's such a huge discrepancy in supply. It makes sense that the platform where the Supply has increased so much more, AKA Instagram is where we see our views going up and down and oftentimes down so much more. And again, I know this is no fun to hear. I wish there was like an easier scapegoat to point to of, oh, it was just like the political ad spend during the US elections in 2024 that was the cause of this. That definitely didn't help things. But I think that it's just ultimately supply and demand in the current state of how social media is operating and specifically how Instagram is operating. And I don't think there's necessarily anything that they can do to really change that without totally tanking and killing the platform in a matter of weeks. And with all that being said, I have something crazy to say, which is that I still believe that Instagram actually is the best platform for small business owners and content creators. I'm not saying that YouTube sucks. I'm not saying that TikTok sucks. I am big fans of those platforms as well. But I still believe that Instagram is the best. And Adam is about to share one of the reasons why I believe that.
- [30:40]
Adam Mosseri
To be true for Instagram specifically. If you're new to Instagram or you haven't been using it as much, I think it's important to understand that it's not just about short form video. That's a huge part of what we do. It's a lot of the time, maybe probably more than half the time spent on the platform at this point. But there's a lot of other things too that can kind of be really interesting. You can do stories that show behind the scenes of how you make your reels. You can create a channel and really create a deep relationship with your most passionate followers and message them directly. And the coolest stuff happens when people connect the dots between these things.
- [31:18]
Brock Johnson
The diverse ways that you can create content on Instagram make it so. If you're someone who likes long form video, you have a place on Instagram. If you're someone who likes photos, you have a place on Instagram. If you're someone who likes graphic designs, you have a place on Instagram. If you're someone who likes FaceTime content where you're just raw, off the cuff in the moment, talking to the camera, you have Instagram stories. If you're someone who likes live, there is live on Instagram. If you're someone who likes vertical short form video, there is reels on Instagram. My point is simply that there are so many different kinds of posts that you can make on Instagram that there's kind of a seat for everyone at the table. I can think of so many examples of people who never post reels but have successful accounts. People who only post reels and have successful accounts that doesn't really take place on any other platform like YouTube is. Yes, they have YouTube shorts now, but it's still primarily a horizontal long form video platform. TikTok. Yes, they have TikTok stories and yes, TikTok Live is powerful, but TikTok is still mainly a place where you go to consume short form, vertical videos. One of the arguments that I would make in favor of Instagram is that it has a different kind of content to pretty much meet every need. One final clip. And it was something that he mentioned at the very end that again, I think it's something that a lot of people just kind of skipped over and they heard him say we want to be the best platform for creators and we don't always necessarily see how these things are connected. But this final answer from him I think really highlights how Instagram can be one of, if not the best platforms for creators.
- [32:49]
Adam Mosseri
I will say this, I am very excited about the long term potential around partner ads. Partner ads allow you to create content as a creator and then have, you know, and you can do this deal offline, that's fine with the brand. And then they can ask for the permission to use your creative for their own ads and run ads through our ad system and you have to approve that as a creator and you can make that deal.
- [33:17]
Brock Johnson
All right, now we're going to get into your comments in just a second. But by far one of the most common complaints, especially that I've noticed from people commenting on the YouTube video itself, is that Instagram is not and will never be the best platform for creators because they don't pay creators the same way that YouTube does. Now, I absolutely agree. Instagram's pay per view sucks. Especially when you Compare it to YouTube's pay per view, aka AdSense on YouTube. You make way more per view on YouTube than you do on Instagram. But let me say this. There is a reason why the Paul brothers have Prime. There is a reason why Mr. Beast has beastables. There is a reason why almost every single large creator on YouTube, even the biggest YouTubers in the world, end up starting their own business. And that's because pay per view is usually not enough to pay the bills. Even on YouTube, where they have the best CPM or the best pay per view rate, you're still usually only going to be making at most a few hundred, maybe a few thousand bucks a month. If you're in the top 1% or 0.1% of creators, yes, you're going to be making a substantial revenue from YouTube, but for most of us, for 99% of the population, you're not really going to be paying your bills. You're not going to be paying rent or mortgage with pay per view, even on YouTube. And so I am a firm believer that if you want to actually earn an income, generate revenue as a content creator, you have to be somewhat of a business owner. You have to have a product that you sell or the other option, you have to do brand deals. And so I think this small feature that he was talking about actually highlights how Instagram can be a better platform. Now, of course, YouTube can come out with a similar feature, and I'm sure there are plenty of Google Analytics that can be easily shared from a creator to the brand they're partnering with. But I can say, as someone who has done over seven figures in brand deals, when the brand can see your analytics and maybe even boost the post or turn your organic post into an ad, there's just more transparency there. You are going to get better deals. Also, in a later part of this answer, he started to talk about how this is going to shift the mindset of brands who are working with creators and allow them to realize that paying a creator who's got 10 million followers for a post is actually going to generate less ROI than paying a bunch of small creators for posts. And so this feature that he's talking about here is truly a way that small creators in the future are going to be able to benefit directly from Instagram's decisions, and they're going to be able to benefit directly on Instagram. Again, the point I'm trying to make here is that yes, you can earn money through pay per view, and I'm not poo pooing the people who do have significant amounts of their revenue generated from pay per view. And yes, I recognize Instagram's pay per view sucks compared to YouTube's. But with all of that being said, if you want to earn a serious income from social media, you need to have something you're selling. And that either means you need to have a business selling physical or digital products or services, or you need to be selling the attention that you can gain or the audience's attention that you've built, and that would be brand deals. All right, so with all that being said, my three big takeaways from this Interview before we get into your comments were, number one, nothing was really all that jaw dropping for me. And I didn't necessarily expect there to be any moments where I was like, there's no way. But there wasn't any of that necessarily. With that being said, I do think it was valuable, educational and informative. I do think that my biggest takeaway was that everyone just needs to take a chill pill. Everyone needs to take a deep breath. Everyone needs to stop stressing out about, you know, posting and ghosting or hashtags or algorithm changes or all of these little things that we've been conditioned to think, oh, maybe this really matters. Oh, maybe this is really important. No, no, no. Take a deep breath. Can you make higher quality content than you did in the past every day, making your content just a little bit better, a little bit better quality, a little bit better, more engaging? Or can you make more content, a higher quantity in order to balance out the whole supply demand thing? Or the best of both worlds is doing both, right? Creating better quality and more quantity at the same time. Basically, everybody take a chill pill and just make better and or more content. And number three, let me just say it seems like he really gets it. Like, he seems like such a genuine guy, someone who is motivated by having a positive impact on the world through the product that is Instagram. He really seemed like he understood our complaints. And yes, they're doing everything that they can to try to solve those problems while also understanding that they're a business and they want to be able to grow the business and stay afloat and stay competitive. You're welcome to form whatever opinions you have of him and of me and you probably already have, but that's my two cents. Now, with all that being said, let's get into your 2 cents and I'm going to read through some of the comments, some of the questions, some of the concerns, some of the feedback that you guys have and talk about it. The first topic that I need to address and get out of the way is something that I should have said at the beginning of today's episode, and it's something that I should have said at the beginning of our interview. But when Adam and I are talking about creators, we aren't necessarily talking about creatives exclusively. So what I mean by that is we're not just talking about artists and filmmakers and musicians. We're also not just talking about people who are content creators. When Adam and I say creators, we are referring to essentially anyone who is creating or posting content, trying to grow a following With a purpose. Basically, anyone who is not just passively watching videos and consuming content, that would be a creator. So anyone with a small business, anyone with a brand, anyone who's trying to grow a following, grow a community, raise awareness, raise funds, sell something, anyone who is a creative, a musician, an artist, whatever. All of those people are who this conversation was about, all of those people are creators. In the context of this conversation, it doesn't matter what settings your Instagram is set up to be. If you're a business account or a creator account, we're talking about anyone who uses Instagram with a purpose besides just consuming content. Cortisol coach Christine on Instagram asked a question that was echoed in so many different slight variations from so many people. And the question essentially boils down to why do I not see my friends posts? Like, why do I not always see the posts from the people who I've chosen to follow? And I think part of this was answered when Adam talked about basically the negative feedback loop that was people just over time posting less on the Instagram feed, so then people consume less on the Instagram feed, so then people post even less, so they consume even less. And it's just a negative feedback loop where eventually, if that kept going, no one would use Instagram because there would be no reason to interact with the feedback there, right? There would just be maybe Instagram stories, there would just be DMs, in which case we might leave Instagram altogether. And so their solution to that from a business perspective was to increase the amount of recommendations in the feed. Now here's the really tricky bit, and I can give you my own personal example here, right? I follow all my close friends on Instagram. I also follow a bunch of awesome Instagram coaches and other people who are in my industry. And I also follow a bunch of people who are just my interests, right? Like let's take snowboarding, for example. All winter long, I'm obsessively consuming content about snowboarding. If one of my friends posts in the middle of winter, the algorithm then has to decide, do we show Brock the post about snowboarding from someone he follows? Do we recommend Brock the most engaging snowboarding video, for example, that was posted today on Instagram? Or do we show him his friend's post? And I know you as a fellow human being might think, well, of course you would want to see your friend's post. But from the algorithm's eyes, I chose to follow a snowboarder and I chose to follow my friend. I chose to follow the snowboarder A year ago, I chose to follow my friend 10 years ago. So maybe I'm not even that interested anymore. And again, it doesn't necessarily know that that person is my friend. It doesn't know that we went and got dinner the other night. It just knows I followed this person 10 years ago, and I followed this person a month ago. And this person who I followed a month ago, I've been consuming a lot more content, like the things they've been posting a la snowboarding recently. Then I have my friend who posted a picture of him and his girlfriend out to dinner. And so there's this really challenging dilemma that the algorithm faces when deciding what content you should be shown. And it can't show us everything. Like that is literally impossible. With the average number of people that we follow, with the average number of posts that those people are making a day, we would have to spend way too many hours, more than 24 hours a day on Instagram, to get through just all of the posts from the people we follow. And also think about how not engaging that would be. Like, think about all of the people you follow who they made a bad post today that's not actually that interesting, or they made a post that was like a promotion or sale for a product that you didn't want to buy. But if you only saw the post from only the people you follow and only in chronological order, then you would have to see that. And so I know it's frustrating. Again, like Adam said, like I've said numerous times, the algorithm is flawed, it is imperfect. But that's basically why recommendations are necessary on Instagram and really on all social media. I just think the reason that so many of us get frustrated by this is on YouTube, we don't have a background of following our friends, right? We follow YouTube creators whose videos we enjoy. On TikTok, we follow TikTok creators whose videos we enjoy. And since the inception of TikTok, it has been all about the FYP, all about the for you page, where it's just constant recommendation after recommendation, and we're hardly seeing our friends posts. But a lot of us joined Instagram 10 years ago, even five years ago, when the environment was different, when the norms were slightly different than they are today, and where our friends were posting more and we were used to consuming more of our friends posts. And so of course, that's changed over time. And change is hard, change is weird, change is challenging. And so, yeah, that's why it's more frustrating on Instagram and maybe even more apparent on Instagram than on any other platform. Andreas Ruckert on YouTube asked, what's the length of video to be considered long form versus short form, specifically on Instagram? And they've talked about this. Basically, if a video is longer than three minutes, which is longer than the current length, that you can make a reel, that would be considered long form and that would be less likely to be recommended. If it's under three minutes, it's considered short form, it's considered a reel, and it is eligible to be recommended. Seawolf13:30 on YouTube asked about Instagram jail and they basically said, if I'm in Instagram jail, should I start a new account or should I keep going with my existing one? First of all, I want to understand what exactly this person means by Instagram jail, because it's kind of a term that's loosely thrown around nowadays. There is not an actual thing that is Instagram jail or that is the 200 view jail. These are just terms that are used to describe when you can't seem to get more than 200 views or when you can't seem to grow despite your best efforts. But there's not an actual jail, like, there's not an actual like group of people who Instagram is not going to show your posts unless you have literally had content violations. And again, that would be visible in your account status. But if that's not you, then no, you're not in Instagram jail and I would not recommend starting a new account. However, if you have been, you know, putting your best foot forward and you've been creating great content and you've been doing everything right, so to speak, and it's been months and months and months and years, just not growing. You're going backwards. You might want to consider starting a new account. I'll link up a previous episode that we've done down in the show notes about this topic and I give kind of like some criteria that you should consider when deciding to start over or not. But it's again, it's not always like a black and white yes or no answer. JBZ Rugs brought up the topic of hashtags and SEO. And what he said is him saying hashtags aren't important, but he's trying to focus on SEO is the most backwards talking point ever. Wouldn't SEO be more accurate if the user literally helps it out by using specific hashtags for its intended viewers? Yes, in the past and we have talked about hashtags already today, so I'm not going to harp on this Too much. But essentially the algorithm is so good now that it does not need us to tell it what the post is about through hashtags. And many people who were using hashtags were abusing hashtags and using them to maximize their views rather than to just describe what the post was about. And so Instagram wants to level the playing field essentially, and make it more fair for everyone by restricting those of us who are trying to essentially take advantage of hashtags. All right, and the final topic I wanted to address today comes from Stephanie Roberts. And she says, great interview. Thank you. By the way, she says, Instagram used to be fun. Now it feels like we're being dragged along in a competition against all the other players. I loved it when Instagram just was what it was and it innovated in its own way. I understand. I totally sympathize with how you feel Instagram back in the day. Like, I remember Instagram 2013 and how fun it was. And it was just like this small little community of you and all your friends and you all posted. And I definitely think that there's some nostalgia there, right, where we always remember that the grass is always greener and we remember the good times and forget the bad. But I definitely agree, like, there were some things back in the day that were just more fun and less competitive. But this is the reality of the attention economy that we live in. This is the reality of, hey, we have a free social media platform. And yes, Instagram is still free to use YouTube, TikTok, they're still free to use. And they're free to use to get hundreds of thousands or millions of views that can be life changing for a small business or a content creator. And so, yeah, I recognize that for the average consumer, it might not be as fun. I would also say for the average consumer, you might be getting more engaging, better content nowadays than you were back in 2013. You might not be seeing your friends as much, but maybe the content nowadays is, you know, better production value or whatnot, more thought going into it and whatnot. And so I recognize that it might not be as fun, but I think that the opportunity for small businesses and content creators to grow and have success and build brands and businesses on Instagram is still there. And in many cases it might be there better today than it ever was before. I think that the barrier to creating really good content is lower than it's ever been before. I think that the potential to go viral is higher than maybe almost any time in history. And so I think that there are plenty of opportunities left to be had, plenty of successes, plenty of wins, plenty of views and followers left to be gained. But the reality is we are in the attention economy and nothing is more valuable than your attention. And so with everyone's starting to recognize that we're all competing for everyone else's attention. And yeah, it's a more competitive environment. So I understand. But with all that being said, I want to thank you for listening to the interview. Thank you for listening to me today. I want to encourage you to subscribe if you haven't already. And as always, happy Networking Instagram is a beast. There is no lie that every single week the algorithm changes, there's a million new features, there's so much to keep track of, so much you have to worry about, and all you're trying to do is scroll your business trying to get more customers and make more sales on Instagram. That is why we created the Insta ClubHub to help you learn exactly what you need to know to stay up to date with the changes that are actually relevant to you as a business owner and to help you grow your following and customer base. On Instagram, you can check it out Best part, for only $7 you can join a two week trial. For only $7. That's 50 cents per day for two weeks and all you have to do to that trial offer is go to instaclubhub.com trial again, that link will be down in the description right now. 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