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Yet again, the Instagram algorithm has had a major update. And so in today's episode, I'm going to be sharing with you 10 of the latest Instagram features that are actually going to matter and make a difference for you as you're trying to grow your personal brand or small business on Instagram. Let's not waste any time. Let's jump right into things. The first new announcement isn't necessarily a new feature that Instagram released, but rather a new direction that Instagram is headed, or I guess you could say a clarity that we finally have on where Instagram is headed. And this comes directly from the head of Instagram himself. He posted a very raw but yet thorough, comprehensive brain dump on his Instagram, kind of just talking through how he views AI and the future of Instagram and authenticity and professional content, video editing and growing your platform. And it's very, very thorough. And it's quite long. So if you haven't already checked it out, I will link it up down in the show notes below so that you can read through this full carousel that Adam Mozeri, the head of Instagram, post. But again, really, really in depth, really thorough. I'm not gonna read the whole thing, but one of my big takeaways from it is that he believes, and I agree, that AI content is not going anywhere anytime soon. And very soon it's going to be indistinguishable from everything else, like AI content versus real content, non AI content. You're not gonna be able to tell the difference. And I would be willing to bet that you have already fallen for an AI video. I bet there's already been a video that's come across your feed, whether you realize it or not, that was AI and you didn't realize it. And so one of the things that he talked about in this carousel, something that I talked about in my 2026 predictions video, which I highly recommend you go and check out, if you haven't already, is that authenticity is going to become a premium. People are going to hunt for, search for and crave authentic creators. Now, authenticity is one of those buzzwords that us social media coaches love to throw around. And then usually the tip is like, just be yourself, just be you. Here's a practical way that you can be more authentic on social media. Reduce the time between idea and execution, between the moment where you're like, hey, I have this thing I wanna talk about, I have this story I wanna tell, I have this tip that I wanna give. And actually pressing post that means eliminate the steps in between eliminate the editing process so that it's FaceTime content, it's just you talking to the camera with no cuts, no edits, no B roll. Eliminate the script writing process, eliminate the step in your process where you go to AI and you have it refined. What you eliminate all of these little checks and bumps, these moments where you're going to overthink, where you're going to filter, where you're going to refine, and ultimately where you're going to become less authentic instead. Get faster, become more efficient and reduce the time between idea and execution. And that's how you'll actually be more authentic. That's how you'll actually get more views. And most importantly, that's how you'll actually build trust in 2026 and onward. And trust, which already has become so key for purchasing decisions when people are deciding whether or not to become customers, Trust is at an all time high. Because the last five, six years we've all been asking the question, who can I trust? Where can I get my information from? What news outlets are going to tell me the truth, what story is accurate? But now we add an added layer on top of that, which is artificial intelligence. So not only could I be getting information from a source that I don't trust, the source itself could literally be non human. And so trust is only going to become that much more paramount for people in deciding who to follow, who to engage with and who to become a customer of. So embrace authenticity. That's tip number one. The second new piece of Instagram news is super exciting. And that is that we can now, for the first time ever, put clickable links in our reels. Hallelujah. But there's a catch. There's a few catches. Actually. Catch number one is you can't do this in Instagram. You can only achieve this feature. You can only use this feature in if you are using the Edits app, which for those of you who don't know, that is the editing app that Instagram released. It's kind of like their competitor of Capcut. And I will say it's actually pretty good. The first couple months of Edits was rough, but it has significantly improved since then and I actually really enjoy it to the point where when I'm editing my content on mobile, I use the Edits app. Most of the time I still edit on Capcut and on desktop, but when I'm editing on mobile, I use the Edit app. But again, that's catch number one is you have to use the edit app. Catch number two, and this is the much bigger catch is you can't link anything. You can't put a link to your website, your YouTube, your blog, whatever. You can only put a link to two things. The first thing that you can link to is Instagram profiles. You can link to someone else's Instagram profile. So let's say you were shouting someone out. You were talking about another creator, maybe you were collabing with someone. You could put a link or a clickable button, I should say, to their profile somewhere on your reel. And then the second thing that you are allowed to link to is reels that now you can link to your own reels or someone else's reels. And when you link to a reel, it actually creates a little embedded video player within your own reel. All you have to do to use the link a reel feature is of course, number one, open the edits app, like I already said, start a new project. And then when you are creating your reel, just tap on that Instagram logo down in the center. And then again you'll have the two options to choose between profile or reel. And then within each of those, there are different navigation settings to help you find what you're looking for. You can either copy and paste the link to the profile or to the reel. Or if you're going through the reels navigation, you can actually sort through every reel that you have previously posted and reels that you have previously saved. So you could create an entire saved folder of reels that you plan on embedding in your future reels. There's some really creative ways that I've already seen people using this feature. One creator I saw put four of their past reels on the screen at one time. And they were like, hey, believe it or not, there are four reels on the screen right now. You can click on any of them to watch. I think another really creative way to use this feature is to highlight the reels that you're doing in a series. So if you're like, hey, this was day four. If you want to watch day three, click right here and you can click and immediately it'll take them right into the previous reel or whatever it is that you want to link them to. So it's quite similar to how on YouTube at the end of the video, there's oftentimes like clickable other recommended videos on the screen. You can basically now do that on Instagram. Fingers crossed that someday in the future we'll be able to add any clickable links to our reels. But this is a huge Step forward. And something that we've never been able to do before. Instagram algorithm update number three is one that people always overlook and they always yawn when I talk about it, but I think it's actually really, really big, and that is that Instagram has added five new languages, bringing us to a total of nine total languages that your reels cannot just be automatically translated to, but automatically dubbed and lip matched. What that means is not only will your closed captions be in a different, different language, but Instagram can automatically take your voice and use AI to make it sound like you and your voice were speaking that other language. And it will even detect where your mouth is and do some crazy AI magic to make it look like your lips were actually speaking those words. The five new languages that Instagram just added are all different languages that are quite popular in India. And that makes sense because India represents the largest group of people who uses Instagram. There are more people in India who use Instagram than any other country in the world. The fourth major piece of algorithm news, and this comes also directly from the head of Instagram himself, is that you will not be punished. Your views will not be suppressed, you will not get less reach. If you are using a third party editing app, that means that you are free to use Capcut, you're free to use Imovie, you're free to use Inshot, you're free to film your content on literal rolls of film and cut it up with actual scissors and then upload it to Instagra. No matter where you edit your content, you will not be punished. That is directly from Instagram's head himself, Adam Mozeri. Now, with that being said, there is some conflicting news about the Edits app. When the Edits app was first announced, he said, no, we will not give preferential treatment to reels that are created with the Edits app. We will not boost or push the reels that were made with edits. But then a few months later, he said something on his stories which kind of caught a lot of people off guard. He said, we have noticed that people who use the Edits app are getting slightly more reach, which is confusing because, like, we've noticed you literally run the algorithm. So, like, what do you mean you've noticed? Either the algorithm is pushing out those reels or it's not. The way I make sense of all of this is that when the Edits app first released, you might remember there was a little badge that some people would get on their reel when they edited their reel in the Edits app. And the badge said like made with edits. And it was like this big, shiny, colorful badge that went on your reels and, and I believe that for those first few months, because people had that badge, it was slightly, ever so slightly increasing engagement or if nothing else, increasing watch time because people were like, oh, what's that badge? They would glance at it. And even if they were only looking at it for half a second, that was adding an extra half a second to every single person who posted through the Edits app. And so that was inadvertently leading to a slight increase in reach. Now, I wouldn't put it past Instagram, I wouldn't put it past Meta to inflate the numbers and, you know, boost and push out the content that was edited in the Edits app. But to the best of my knowledge, from all of the studies we've done, I've actually posted a few episodes in the past about some of these studies. There seems to be no difference whether you edit in edits or Cap Cut or imovie, whatever. It doesn't really make a significant difference. So if it gives you peace of mind, if it helps you sleep at night to post through the Edits app, knock your socks off. If you hate the Edits app and you just love using Cap Cut, go ahead and keep doing that. You should be fine. The one asterisk that I will put on all of this is just make sure that you do not have a watermark or a logo on your content. That is something that Instagram has said for years will downrank you. The algorithm will see that logo and basically it looks at it as something that is not favorable, something that they don't want on Instagram. And so they will downrank you and you will get less views if you have some sort of watermark or floating logo on your video. Are you ready to take your business marketing to the next level? Meet Breville, the all in one marketing and CRM platform built to connect you with your customers brand, boost engagement and grow your business smarter. With Brevo, you can manage all of your customer interactions in one place. Nurture leads with their built in CRM, reach your audience through email and SMS and keep them coming back with powerful automations. But here is where it gets really exciting. Meet Aura, Brevo's AI assistant. Aura helps you craft smarter campaigns by suggesting personalized content, optimizing send times and even analyzing performance data to improve strategies in real time. It's kind of like having a marketing expert on your team 24, 7 and of course Brevo offers advanced analytics, seamless integrations and AI driven personalization. It's basically everything you could need to create seamless multi channel campaigns that hit the mark every single time. Get started for free today or use code TRIBE50 to get 50% off the starter and standard plans for the first three months of an annual subscription. Just head to www.brevo.com tribe and take your marketing further with Brevo and Aura for the last few years I've been using Notion to basically organize my entire life. It's so much more than just a to do list app. It's truly a stop shop for organizing any area of your life or business. And it's not just great at organization, it's also great at automations as well. There's so many complex things that you can do and build that can happen automatically and instantly within Notion. And now for the first time, they are introducing Notion AI agents. The new Notion Custom Agents will allow you to automatically perform advanced tasks without you even having to lift a finger. For example, I built a Notion custom agent that automatically pulls the link to any reel that I have posted and then it pulls out the text that I say or the text on the screen in the first few seconds of the reel. Basically it pulls out my hook and then it's able to look at how that post performed and compare it to the hook, which allows me to see which hooks are actually working so that I can reuse them and tweak them for future reels. Notion is an AI powered connected workspace for teams. Notion brings all of your notes, docs and projects into one space that just works. It's seamless, flexible, powerful, and with AI built in, you spend less time switching between different apps and tools and more time creating great work. Now with Notion's custom agents, busy work that used to take hours or, let's be honest, didn't really get done at all runs itself. The easiest way to think about the difference between a custom agent and normal AI is that normal AI requires you as the human to prompt it. But custom agents work for you 24. Seven behind the scenes without you having to lift a finger. But don't just take my word for it. Notion is used by more than half of Fortune 500 companies and some of the fastest growing companies in the world like OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT. Try custom agents now@notion.com byt that's all lowercase notion n o t I o n.com byt to try custom agents today and when you use my link. You're supporting our show again. Notion.com byt as someone who cooks about 95% of their meals at home. And no, that's not an exaggeration. 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Go to hellofresh.com byt10fm to get 10 free meals plus a free Zwilling knife which is a $144.99 value on your third box. This offer is only valid while supplies last free meals applied at discount on your first box for new subscribers only and varies by planning algorithm. Update number five comes again directly from the head of Instagram himself, and that is that they're working on the ability to schedule trial reels. Scheduling trial reels has been something that many of us have been asking for since day one because trial reels are a game changer. Trial reels are a great way, arguably the best way to reach non followers. I've done multiple episodes on this channel in the past about trial reels, which I highly recommend going and watching if you have no idea what a trial reel is. But Adam Mosseri said that they are going to begin working on the ability to schedule trial reels. But that's not an update in and of itself because there's already a way to do this. Unfortunately there's no way to do it within Instagram. You're going to need a third party tool. The third party tool that you can use to achieve this is Metricool. Metricool is my favorite scheduling platform. It's the platform I've used to schedule every post since I went on my honeymoon in 2022. And so yes, it is trusted. No it will not hurt your views. It makes life so much easier. I schedule probably 95% of my posts through Metro. Cool. And a few weeks ago I was popping around on there, I was scheduling a reel and I noticed that there was a new feature where it said trial reel. I could schedule this to be posted as a trial reel. Since then, I now schedule five trial reels per day. And just last week, or maybe it was two weeks ago, I put out a episode on how to create 150 trial reels in 15 minutes or less and then schedule them all in metrical so you can check out that. I don't want this entire episode to just be like, hey, go check out this other episode. But there's a lot of connecting pieces you might need. So anyways, you can schedule trial reels in Metricool. Speaking of metrical, today's entire episode is brought to you by them. Like I said, it's the scheduling platform that I use. It is the scheduling platform that I recommend. And my favorite two things about Metricool is that number one, it tells you your actual best time to post. If you listen to all of these different social media apps and these different like studies that have come out, you'll be so confused because they all give you a different best time to post. In fact, according to HubSpot, the best time to post is 6 to 9pm According to Sprout Social it is 11am to 6pm According to Hootsuite, it varies depending on the day of the week, which makes a little bit more sense. According to buffer, it is 3 to 6pm and according to social pilot it is 6 to 8. So no, according to all of these different studies that have come out, there is no universal best term to post. But what a lot of us are then tempted to do is just stick with our Instagram insights. And I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but your Instagram insights are kind of lying to you. They're telling you when people are most active. But that doesn't mean that people are most likely to engage or even most likely to engage with your post. It just means out of all of your followers, the highest percentage of your followers are online at this time. What I love about Metricool is that it shows you actual engagement trends and it shows you, based off each day of the week, which hours are your followers more and less engaged with your content. Which makes scheduling content for the future super helpful. And then my second favorite reason to use metricool is that I can schedule content for the future. So if I make a reel today, and it's an evergreen reel, like it didn't have to be posted today to make sense, well then I'll schedule it for, let's say today, and then I'll make a duplicate of that reel in metrical and I'll schedule it again like four or five months from now. So then four or five months from now, I already have at least one post scheduled. And then if I repeat this process, the next thing you know, you wake up and it's April 2026 and you already have like 17 posts scheduled for the month without doing any work because they're just duplicates of posts from the past. It's basically my upcycling strategy. So again, I'm the biggest fan of Metricool out there. I believe that every single content creator should be using a scheduling plat and I think Metricool should be that platform. So I will put the link to them down in the show notes below. But if you use code brock B R O C K at checkout, you can get Metricool Pro for a month for free. Instagram Algorithm update number six is another new feature and this one is called Early Access Reels. This is kind of a fun little trick, little gimmicky feature. It's not going to be like revolutionary for Instagram, but basically early access reels is a setting that you can turn on so that your reels kind of like premiere to your followers first. So most people, I think, aren't going to have significant success or any real difference made because of this feature. But the bigger your audience is, the more effective this tool is going to be. Another way to say this would be, the more fans or super fans you have, the more use you're going to get out of this feature. But again, when you turn it on, basically your reel will be kind of like visible to non followers, but it will be blurred out and it will say that this is an early access reel that is only available to followers. So if someone doesn't follow you, but they see this reel pop up, they might be like, oh, what is that? That's really interesting. I want to see this person's reel. I want to get early access to this. And so it might increase the likelihood that they follow you. Instagram Algorithm update number seven is a flipping game changer. And like, I don't even know what to make of this. This is going to be so massive. And no, it's not 2017 Instagram for TV. Some of you might remember a decade ago when Instagram came out with igtv, it was its own separate app and then it was integrated back into Instagram and it was like long form video. And it was actually mostly horizontal video. But they eventually scrapped the program and not enough people were using it and so they got rid of it. But now IGTV is making a comeback, but it's going to be different. Instagram has partnered with Amazon Fire TV to basically put reels on the big screen. Now, they said that over the coming months and in the future they're going to continue to roll this out, they're going to put it on more streaming platforms, and it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that they're probably going to show favoritism towards horizontal reels, because I don't know if you've ever watched a vertical video on your tv, it's just a little clunky. But they're not only going to prioritize horizontal reels, they're also going to begin prioritizing long form reels. So I don't want you to take this out of context. I am not saying that you need to start posting 19 minute long reels on your Instagram, but I do want this to be on your radar because pretty soon it would not shock or surprise me if Instagram broadens the reach, broadens the length of Instagram reels, if they start encouraging us to post horizontal reels, or if there's a new setting, a new way that you can post reels that are meant to be watched on the tv. Basically, Instagram has more or less succeeded in their competition against TikTok. I'm not saying that TikTok's dead. I love TikTok. I'm still using TikTok all the time. But Instagram basically achieved its goals with TikTok. TikTok in the US was sold. 80% of the app is now owned by US companies. So more or less Meta won its lobbying and its campaign against TikTok. And so now they're shifting their focus to the other really big competitor when it comes to social media video, which is YouTube. And so that's why Instagram for TV is here. That's why it's probably not going anywhere anytime soon. And it's something that I want to be on your radar. Instagram update number eight is going to be revolutionary for Instagram stories, and that's because since the dawn of Instagram stories, they have not been a way to grow your following. Instagram stories pretty much only Reach your existing followers? Sure. Someone who is a non follower could go view your stories. Sure, if you used like a location tag or a hashtag in the past, both of which no longer apply to stories, you could get a little bit of reach to outside followers. But 99% of the time, 99.9% of the time, your story viewers were your existing followers. And so then it makes sense that if only your existing followers are viewing your stories, you can't grow your following with stories. But the new Instagram feature is you can now reshare anyone else's public story to your own. What that means is if you go on Instagram right now, which you can try this out if you want, go to my Instagram and hopefully I have a story posted at the time that you're watching this. If I do, tap on that little share button in the bottom right corner and then you can share my story to your own. Or to say it another way, you could repost my story onto your own story. Now, this doesn't give you credit. It shows up as if it was my story. If you're familiar with how over the last few years, if someone else tagged you in their story and then you reshared it, it's the same thing. So it shows up as if they posted it, it shows up as if they are the content creator, but it's on your story. So then your followers could see it. And so that's why now, for the first time ever, stories can actually be a way to grow. They can actually be a way to reach new people. If you create a share worthy story, it could potentially get a bunch of shares which would help you get a bunch of views, which could potentially help you get a bunch of new followers. It's kind of like a brand new way to reach people. And I think that most people, 99.9% of creators, are not going to take advantage of this in 2026. But if you can learn to create share worthy stories, you're gonna find a real gold mine. Because there's not very much competition, but there is a huge upside. Instagram algorithm update number nine is the reason that many of us might have experienced our views dropping since early December. And that is that they changed the way views are counted. And the way they've changed it actually makes a lot more sense now. Kind of makes me ask the question, why did they have it set up anyway else anyway differently originally, but basically the original way that views were counted was if your post was on someone else's Explore page or if someone else viewed your profile, the view would count even if they didn't tap on your specific post. So if I pulled up my Explore page and there's, you know, a dozen different videos and carousels and posts on that page, even if I don't click on any of them, all of those posts now are technically getting one additional view from me. If you clicked on my profile and you scroll down on my profile because you were looking for one specific post that I made that you thought was super funny and you wanted to show it to your friend, theoretically all of those posts that you scrolled by were getting additional views just by scrolling by them. That doesn't really make much sense, but basically, a lot of people were getting artificially inflated view counts from Explore and Profile. So now Instagram has changed that. They've rectified it so that it only counts as a view if someone actually taps on the post. So again, if you have seen a decrease in views over the last few months, that might be one of the reasons why. Update number nine, and I'm sorry if I sound like a broken record today, I'm really not trying to be sensationalized. I even didn't think that I needed to make a new video about Instagram algorithm updates, but then I started going through the list and I'm like, holy crap, I haven't talked about that. Holy crap, that one was massive. And I haven't talked about that. Like, I posted about them on my Instagram, which, if you haven't already, I highly encourage you to follow me there because I post about these updates, like when the news drops, but I haven't posted a full YouTube breaking down all of this recent news. So update number nine is also massive, and it is that hashtags have now been cut from 30 to 5. You used to, since the dawn of Instagram, be able to use up to 30 hashtags in your caption. But now, as of January 2026, you are limited to only 5 hashtags in your caption. I think that this signals the broader shift that has been going on at Instagram for the last four or five years that is phasing out hashtags. I highly doubt hashtags will ever be completely removed from the platform because then the angry mob with pitchforks would definitely show up at Adam Mozeri's front door, like, give me my hashtags. But I do think the relevance, the importance, the effectiveness of hashtags is going to continue to be lessened and lessened and lessened over time. Now we can only use a maximum of five hashtags in our posts, in our captions. If you're a new listener to the show, then you might be surprised to hear what I'm about to say. But forget about hashtags. They're just not a reliable or effective way to grow on Instagram anymore. They're not that important. So if you want to use five, go for it. But honestly, I wouldn't stress out that much. The 10th and final Instagram algorithm update is that you now have your own customizable algorithm. Yes, that's right. Instagram is calling it your algorithm, and they have now rolled out this feature worldwide. Essentially, all you have to do to access this is view the Instagram Reels page, the basically Reels Explorer page. Tap on those three dots or three bars or the gear icon, it looks different for different profiles. Click on it in the upper right hand corner and then you'll see what your algorithm currently is. Now, this does not impact who sees your posts. This does not impact your growth. This is only for you as the consumer. This is going to give you a short little sentence describing what sorts of content you're into, and you can then add other things that you might be interested in that you want to see more of to the list, or add certain terms, topics and phrases that you want to see less of to the don't show me section. Now, like I said, adjusting your algorithm isn't going to change how your posts show up or are distributed. But if your followers are adding topics related to your account to their algorithm, well, then your post would be more likely to show up on their Reels page. So overall, I don't think that this feature is going to be super widely adopted because it's just a few extra steps, right? And most people are just going to be mindlessly scrolling. They're not going to be that intentional with curating what they are consuming. But I do believe there might be a small subset of the population who does use this, your algorithm feature. And so it's just something that I want you to be aware of. And if it's something that you want to encourage your followers to add your topic to their algorithm, that might be something that you might want to do. But again, generally something that I don't think is going to make the biggest difference, but something you should be aware of. Thank you so much for watching today. I know Instagram is a slog. I know that there are always constant updates and changes and this was just the 10 that I think are going to make the biggest difference for you. There's probably 30 other ones that I could have listed that aren't going to make a difference, but are probably going to take up space in your brain because some social media expert is going to be like, you need to care about this. I don't think so. If I haven't reported on it, if I haven't told you about it, then chances are that it's probably not something you need to worry about. Speaking of, I do send out an email every single Tuesday that includes a what's hot this week? Or what new features do you need to know this week? So if you want to make sure that you get that email for free directly to your inbox, just click on the link in the Show Notes below. But it's instaclubhub.com newsletter again, totally free. I send it out every Tuesday morning and it includes an update with the latest features that you need to be aware of and how to use them. But again, thank you so much for watching today and as always, happy networking.