← Build Your Tribe | Grow Your Business with Social Media
Build Your Tribe | Grow Your Business with Social Media
NEW Way to Beat Instagram's Algorithm in 2025 - 838
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In today’s episode, Brock Johnson breaks down the 7 keys to understanding the Instagram algorithm in 2025. We’ll discuss how the latest updates are impacting Instagram growth strategies, engagement, and content reach, including the shift towards...
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Today's show is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. You chose to hit play in this podcast today. Smart Choice make another smart choice with Auto Quote Explorer to compare rates from multiple car insurance companies all at once. Try it@progressive.com Progressive Casualty Insurance Company affiliates not available in all states or situations. Prices vary based on how you buy the Instagram Algorithm Has Changed yes, the Instagram algorithm is changing on a daily basis, according to Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, in my one on one interview with him, which is available on this podcast or YouTube channel, by the way. So if you want to go back and watch that, you can. The Instagram algorithm is being tweaked and worked on and updated every single day. But what most people get wrong is that there are rarely massive changes rolled out. It's usually small incremental changes that might add up to a big difference over time, but you're usually not going to notice anything substantial from one day to the next. And so, with that being said, I'm going to share with you the seven keys to to success with the Instagram algorithm in 2025. But the keys to the algorithm today are vastly different than they were just a few years ago. In order to understand how we got here today, it's important to understand what Instagram looked like even just five to 10 years ago. Instagram, of course, is owned by Facebook. And Facebook, as many people know, was created by Mark Zuckerberg to be a social media platform. Emphasis on the social it was a way for friends to connect with friends to see what your colleagues and your loved ones and your family was up to and just check in on your social circle. But digitally and for the first 15 to 20 years of Facebook's existence, that was the case. And for the first decade or so of Instagram's existence, that was the case. But then in the late 2010s musical Ly, an app that later became TikTok, started to establish itself as a serious contender for the most popular social media platform in the world. And if you think about the social media scape over the last Decade or so, TikTok is really the only platform that has risen and stuck around YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, which of course we now call X, have been around for a long time and there have been lots of other platforms that have risen in popularity, but they usually disappear as quickly as they gain popularity. They're super viral and everyone is downloading them one month, and then a month later, almost no one is using them. I'm talking about apps like Clapper, Bereal, Foursquare, Lemonade. Some of these apps you might still use, but regardless of whether or not you use them, we all have to admit that they're not as popular as they were at their peak. TikTok started to grow in popularity in the US in 2018 and 2019. And then during the lockdowns in 2020, it absolutely exploded in popularity with tens of millions of people downloading it and it reaching as high as number one on the App Store. And now fast forward five years later, TikTok is the number one most used app in terms of time spent day in every single generation. Which is crazy. A lot of people have a misconception that TikTok is just for young people, people under the age of 30 or Gen Z. But in reality, even baby boomers use TikTok for a greater amount of time per day than any other social media app. But of course, the purpose of today's episode is to talk about Instagram and the Instagram algorithm. So how does all of this relate to Instagram? Well, the reason that people use TikTok more than any other platform and the reason that so many TikTok users report being addicted to the app, whether seriously addicted or just hyperbolically addicted, it's because of the TikTok for you page. And the algorithm that drives the for you page is different than any social media platform before it. Again, like I talked about earlier, the social media platforms of the early 2000s and 2010s of Instagram, Facebook and Twitter were designed to heavily weight who you decide to follow. So if you're someone just casually using Instagram and you follow a celebrity, and then Instagram says that's a really strong indicator that you want to see that celebrity's posts, or if you follow your friends and family, that is a very strong indicator that you want to see your friends and family's posts. But what TikTok realized is even though that might be a strong indicator that you say you want to see their posts, in reality those posts from the celebrity you follow, the brand that you followed, or even your friends and family that you follow, it's not always going to be the best content, it's not always going to be the most engaging content, it's not always going to be the content that keeps you on the platform and keeps you interested and engaged. What the TikTok for you page has done is it has basically said, we don't really care who you follow. We are going to show you the content that we think you want to see. And then over the years since TikTok has been created, that algorithm has continued to optimize and the machine learning has continued to improve. So now as you're scrolling through TikTok, the content that you're being recommended and that you're seeing is super specific, super relatable, super interesting and super engaging. I'll give you a personal example. If you were to ask me what I'm interested in and the sorts of topics that I enjoy to consume, I would list off things besides social media marketing like snowboarding or dogs or Pokemon. That's what I would tell you I was interested in. But of course, day to day there might be small things that pique my interest or that are more engaging to me. Well, last weekend I was in Mexico for one of my friends weddings and within my first four videos opening TikTok, after getting to our hotel room in Mexico, I was recommended a post from someone else, an American who was vacationing in Mexico. And it was a hilarious, relatable video about how they were at an all inclusive resort in Mexico and the drinks were bottomless and it was like super funny and relatable and, and I wouldn't really care to see that besides that specific two or three day window when I was in Mexico for my friend's wedding. It's that kind of content and that kind of hyper specific algorithm that keeps people, like I said, so addicted to the platform and spending so much time on the platform. But of course all these other social networks are smart, they're billion dollar companies themselves. Meta is one of the biggest companies in the history of the world. So they're not just going to sit back idly and continue showing us our posts from our uncle that isn't very engaging, funny or interactive. When over on TikTok we're seeing a super specific dopamine filled video that is perfectly recommended based off what we are interested in right this second. So the Instagram algorithm has been TikTokified. This is what some, including myself, have called the TikTok ification of the Instagram algorithm. And in reality I should say algorithms because there are multiple algorithms that run Instagram. There are dozens of algorithms, there's a different algorithm that determines what you see on the feed versus who sees your feed posts, your Instagram stories versus who sees your stories, what posts show up on the Reels tab, what posts show up on the Explore page, et cetera, et cetera. There are slightly different algorithms for all of these things, but they have all been continuously optimized over the last few years towards the ultimate goal of serving people with the most entertaining content possible based off what they are currently interested in. So with all that being said, let's get into the seven keys to success on Instagram. With the Instagram algorithms in 2025, number one is great news for those of you who have a smaller account, however you define smaller account. The smaller your account is, the better this news is going to be for you. And it is that followers have never mattered less. The number of followers you have has never been less important than it is today. Instagram has leveled the playing field. And so I'm sorry, if you have hundreds of thousands of followers, listen, that's me too. We can all have our pity party. Maybe we can have some group therapy sessions together to cry about the changes in the algorithm and how we work so hard to build all these followers. And now our followers aren't seeing our posts. But I think when considering the total ecosystem of Instagram and of social media as a whole, this is a positive change. Because yes, following someone is an indication that I want to see their future posts. And it is still that way. It is still true that if I follow person A, I am more likely to see their posts in the future than Person B, who I don't follow. But that's only if their posts are engaging. That's only if their posts are interesting to me or if the algorithm deems and expects them to be interesting to me. The algorithm is not just going to show me my uncle's posts because I follow him. The algorithm is not just going to show me some brand or business's post because I followed them seven years ago. Instead, the algorithm is going to show me the content that I am most interested in. And like I said, the fewer followers that you have, the better news this is for you. Because the playing field has been leveled. It doesn't necessarily matter the quantity of followers you have. It matters so much more the quality of content that you can create. According to Adam Mozeri, the head of Instagram, he says follower accounts matter less than view and like counts. Let's pause right there and think about that. Follower counts. The number of followers you have is less important than the number of views and or likes that your posts are getting. He continues by saying, I understand why people focus so much on follower counts. They're prominent and they're easy to find. But if you actually want to get a sense for how relevant an account is, look at how many likes or views per reel they're getting instead. This is directly from the Horse's mouth. Yes, follower accounts matter to a certain extent, but the number of views you're receiving is a far more accurate indicator or predictor of your account's relevance, the success of your business, and the impact that you're actually making. This is why when you look at so many large Instagram accounts, especially large Instagram accounts that have built their following over the course of many years, like myself, like the former co host of this podcast, Shalene Johnson, we're like pretty much anyone else with hundreds of thousands of followers who have built that following over a decade plus. And you'll see that their engagement rate and their number of views can oftentimes be quite low. Just think about it. I'll take myself as an example and I'll be very honest and transparent with y' all. Right now, I have almost 800,000 followers on Instagram. But a good percentage of those people are just straight up robots, right? They're spam accounts. They're bots, not B o u g h t. I did not purchase these accounts, but they're just spammers and robots who have followed me over the course of years. A good percentage of my followers are no longer active. Or maybe they're just no longer active on that account. Maybe they lost their password. Maybe they have multiple Instagram accounts and they just don't use that one anymore. Maybe they just haven't logged in in a while. Maybe they're on other platforms or they've deleted the Instagram app and so they don't use that profile anymore, but they're still following me. Not to be morbid or anything, but there's probably a fair percentage of my followers who just aren't alive anymore. Like they're not on this planet anymore, but they still have an Instagram profile, and their Instagram profile still follows me, thus hurting my engagement rate. It looks cool. Cause it looks like I have a lot of followers, and I do have a lot of followers. And I'm very thankful for my community and thankful for those who engage with my posts regularly. But my point is simply that over the course of many years, people become uninterested, they lose access, they're not on Instagram as much anymore, they're not interested in growing a business on Instagram, which is what all of my posts are about. And so because they're not interested in my posts, or because they literally haven't used Instagram in a while, they're not seeing my posts. And so that's why there's many accounts like my own that have hundreds of thousands of followers but rarely reach 50% of that in terms of their views. Even the best, most viral posts that you ever make will never reach 100% of your followers. I need to make sure that we are all on the same page about that. It is impossible, quite literally impossible. It will never happen that you reach 100% of your followers unless you have like 12 followers and they're your 12 close friends and they're all still alive and they love you and they're going to check Instagram on a daily basis. The reality is not everyone uses Instagram every day. Some people who followed you are no longer on this planet. Some people who followed you are robots. Some people who followed you are no longer interested. So you will never reach 100% of your followers. But the less followers that you have, the more followers you likely will reach, thus increasing your engagement rate and thus probably even reaching more people. But again, all of this to say the first key to the Instagram algorithm in 2025 is that you should stop stressing out so much over growing your following and instead focus on what you can do to improve your views. Now, of course, that's a ton of what we talk about in the Insta Club hub. That's a ton of what we talk about here at Build you'd Tribe, giving you strategies and tips to improve your videos, improve the quality, improve the quantity, the output, improve your hooks, and the different strategies to increase views. And we're going to continue talking about some of those things throughout today's episode. But I think that it's important to redefine success and stop caring about how many followers you do or don't have, how many people followed you this month versus unfollowed you, and instead focus on your total views per month or your average views per reel. The final point that I want to make about the deprioritization of followers comes from Stack Influence. And they did a survey that found that 86% of US brand marketers, so these are brands, companies that are sponsoring or partnering with individuals. Think about like when a phone case company is sponsoring me to talk about their phone case, those people, 86% of them will be working with micro influencers in 2025. And a micro influencer is generally defined as anyone with 10,000 followers or less. And micro influencers are now preferred. This blew my mind when I read this stat. Micro influencers. So people with less than 10,000 followers are now preferred 10 times more than mega celebrity accounts. Why is that? Because again, the algorithms have changed Just because you have millions of followers doesn't mean you're going to get the most view and thus doesn't mean you're going to get the most conversions from your audience for that brand. And usually the smaller accounts, the micro influencers, have a more engaged, loyal following that is ready to take action. And not to mention, it's usually way less expensive to work with someone who has 10,000 followers than Kim Kardashian. So that's the first key to the Instagram algorithm in 2025. The second key relates to the first key, and it is the key to getting more views. How do you actually reach more people? The best form of engagement, the most direct way to increase your views on Instagram is to get more shares, also known as sends. When one person takes a post and shares it with another or sends it to another person, that is a share, and that is by far the best form of engagement on Instagram. The average, according to a few different studies, is that from just one share, you can expect about 150 extra views on Instagram. And. And according to a few studies, that number is as high as 3 to 400 extra views for just one share. And think about how this could snowball if you got 150 extra viewers on your reel from getting one share, and just one out of those 150 people also shared it, well, now you got an extra 150. And this is how posts can snowball and turn into viral posts. Numerous times on his Instagram stories and in the podcast interview that I did with him, Adam Mozeri says that the most influential factor for getting more views on Instagram is sends per reach. To say it in a less complicated way, how many people are sharing your post that actually see your post? If your post gets a hundred views and seventeen people share it or send it to a friend, that's a pretty high rate. That's 17% of viewers sharing your post. That's a great indication to the algorithm that people are going to be interested in this. And the reason that these platforms have optimized for shares is that they recognize that shares bring people together. Remember, yes, it is still called social media. And so even though there is a growing focus on the media side of things, it's still social first. It's still a platform where humans connect with other humans over shared interests, posts and content. And so when my wife sends me a post, which she has likely sent me numerous, while I've been recording this episode today, that post has a very high likelihood of being watched by me. Think about during this episode today, how many posts my wife has likely viewed or liked or commented on, even or even saved. I'm not likely to see any of those. I'm not likely to care or be very interested in any of those. But the specific post that she is sending to me, she as a human being, has determined, regardless of the algorithm, that she thinks I would be interested. And so it is very likely that I'm not just going to watch those, but I'm then going to come onto the platform, spend more time on the platform, have a better, more positive experience, and interact with another user, my wife, because of that. Share shares bring people back to the platform and they improve the quality of time spent on the platform and the quantity of time spent on the platform. That is why all these platforms are optimizing for shares. It's both because of the audience, the real people who are sharing posts, and the algorith, the actual thing that is determining who sees what posts and whether or not a post is good or not. In fact, just a few months ago, I did an experiment about shares. I understood that shares were the most important metric on the platform, but I wanted to test and see was it really just the algorithm pushing our posts out to more people because they were getting shared, or were shares equating to more views? Because, of course, if my wife sends me a post that has now gone from one viewer to two viewers. And so the experiment was that I posted a reel and I told people to share it with me, don't send it to anyone else, just send me my own post. And so what I was doing here was essentially controlling for the variable of the recipient viewer. There were no recipient viewers. The only person receiving the post, theoretically, if everyone followed the instructions, was me, right? I was the only person who was going to be viewing the post. And I promise you, I was not viewing the post over and over again millions of times a day. But the results of that study was that the post went viral. Despite receiving very average number of likes and comments and saves and shares to other people, that post ended up reaching 2.6 million views. And that was because it was shared to me. It was sent to me over 30,000 times. And so that was a direct and obvious result that, yes, the algorithm is showing your post to more people. If your post is getting more shares now, how do you actually get more shares? It comes down to creating shareworthy content, the kind of content that people are likely going to be sending from one person to another. I've done an entire episode about that actually just a few weeks ago outlining the five different kinds of share worthy posts, giving you tips on how to create them and examples of each of the five. And I think you'll be surprised to hear what isn't one of the five kinds of share worthy posts. So definitely go check that out. I won't bore you with it here because it would be an entire extra hour on today's episode, but creating shareworthy content and thus getting more shares is the key to getting more views in 2025 and moving forward. Now, with all that being said about shares, Instagram doesn't make it super easy to sort all of our posts based off how many shares they are getting. And so it can be kind of hard to tell what your best and most shared posts are. Especially when you're using the strategy that I like to call upcycling, which is where you take something you've posted in the past and you either post it a second time giving it new life, or you slightly recreate it and modify it and post it a second time. And so the tool that I like to use to first of all analyze all of my content is Metricool. Metricool has advanced analytics that just give you way more control and way more of a bird's eye view as to what is actually working with your content than Instagram's built in analytics. And then what's really cool is with Metricool, I can schedule all my posts. So yes, about 98% of the posts you see on my Instagram account are scheduled in Metricool. Metricool is what I've been using to schedule my posts for the last few years. And don't just take my word for it, but Adam Mozeri, the head of Instagram, says that scheduling posts will not hurt your engagement. You will not get less views or likes or comments or saves or shares just because you scheduled your post in advance. So I highly recommend checking out Metricool down in the link below. I will put the link to Metricool, which by the way, it's free. That's one of the super awesome things about Metricool is it's free to use. Of course I don't just use the free version, I use the paid Premium Pro version. But you can get access to that for free as well by using Code Brock at checkout. Again, I will put the link down in the show notes below. But when you click on that link down in the show notes, you can get your first month of Metricool Pro for free, thus allowing you to get access to all of the advanced analytics and stats, and to schedule your posts in advance, to automatically post on not just Instagram, but every single platform. I cannot recommend Metricool enough. It is truly a tool that I need in my tool belt and it's a tool that I believe that any business owner or content creator needs in their tool belt as well. So check that out in the show notes below. And this was a little bit of a bonus key to the Instagram algorithm. So let's get back into the episode with the third key to the IG algorithm. Now, staying on the topic of getting more views, let's talk about how do you get more views on your Instagram stories? Because there is a different algorithm for Instagram stories than there is in the Instagram feed. The Instagram feed is great because reels especially are going to reach so many non followers. The Instagram feed is how you're going to grow your audience. It's how you're going to go viral. It's how you're going to reach new people. That's not necessarily what's going to happen with your Instagram stories. Instagram stories almost never go viral. They almost never reach non followers or reach new people. And because of those things, they almost never help you grow your following. But Instagram stories can be a powerful tool nonetheless for building trust, for building relationships and really connecting on a deeper level with your audience. Now, most of the time, I recommend using your stories as a place for documentation rather than creation. So for example, today on my Instagram stories, I posted about my meetings. This morning I posted about the walk that I got to go on right before lunch with my dogs and tay my wife. I got to post about all the different things I'm doing. This helps show people that I'm human. It helps allow people to connect with me, build that trust, show them some of my values, my beliefs, and that all in the long run will increase the likelihood. So my followers trust me and they don't just follow me, but they like me or even love me and that they're more likely to become customers. But with all that being said, sometimes you're going to want to maximize your story views. Maybe you have a launch or a new product that's going on sale, or you have a new YouTube video that you want to promote, or a new podcast episode, or you just have something that you really want to make sure the most possible people will view it on your stories that day. The highest percentage of your followers will actually see it that day. And in order to achieve this, I want you to Post less stories. Less stories equal more views. To say it another way, the more stories you Post In a 24 hour period, typically the fewer views you will get on each of those stories. And yes, this goes all the way to the farthest extreme of the spectrum. All of this to say posting just one Instagram story is how you get maximum views. But if you just post one Instagram story in a 24 hour period, that's not necessarily all that I would recommend to maximize your story views. The strategy that I am going to recommend to maximize your story views has a name and an acronym that you will never forget. It is the STD strategy. When you post an std, that is how you maximize your Instagram story views. And that acronym stands for this S single. Like we already talked about, you're just going to post one Instagram story in a 24 hour period. You're going to let all of the stories that you posted on the previous day expire. You could delete or archive them, but it's usually best to just let them expire. So you have no story prior to this. Then you're posting your just one single Instagram story. That's the S. The T stands for text heavy. The story that you're posting is going to be heavy in text. What I mean by that is two to three paragraphs, multiple sentences of text, and then the D is the most important part of the std. You cannot have a successful STD without the D. And the D stands for DM automation. DM automation is that thing where people will say, reply with the word guide and I'll send you my free guide. Reply with blank and I will send you blank. Essentially, DM automation is a tool that will replace the link sticker. Now, Instagram does not punish you for using a link sticker. There's a common misconception that the algorithm will show your posts to less people when you use a link sticker. Or to take this a step further, when you're saying things like link in bio on your feed posts. No, the Instagram algorithm will not punish you automatically for that. But what will happen is you will be punished for what happens when your audience, your followers hear you say, click the link in my bio. Or you put a link sticker on your Instagram stories. And here's what happens when you put that link sticker on your Instagram stories. People have two options. They can either click on that link if they're interested, cool, great, they clicked on the link. Or if they're uninterested, they can scroll. That's pretty normal. Of course, there are always going to be some people who are uninterested and scroll. That is unavoidable. But let's focus on the group who clicked. You have no idea who they are. Instagram does not tell you who they are from their perspective. They are now opening a link on their Instagram stories. So if they close the link and want to come back to it in the future, your story better still be up or else they won't be able to find it. And if it's a link that requires a purchase like a credit card or something, they now have to input their credit card info on the Instagram stories. If they have some sort of issue or challenge or something comes up or just for whatever reason, they get distracted and they don't end up purchasing or signing up or following through. You have no ability to follow up. And as my good friend Sally Sparks cousin says, the fortune is in the follow up. But there is no follow up when you put that link sticker on your Instagram stories. Additionally, there's no engagement. The Instagram algorithm does not reward that link click as if it was engagement because it's not truly engagement with that story, it's engagement with that link sticker. So like I said, instead the D in the STD is DM automation, where you can ask people to respond with a specific keyword and then you can have it set up so that when they say that keyword, it triggers an instant and automatic response where they get whatever it is they were looking for. This way, it's a win win. It's a win for you because you are getting engagement. People are interacting with and direct messaging you. They are responding to your story, which is a positive form of engagement. In fact, it's the best form of engagement and in the Instagram algorithm's eyes. And it's a win for them because now they don't have to cross their fingers and hope that everything works. And if they lose that link, they better hope that your Instagram story is still up and available and they can click it again in that 24 hour period instead. The link or the guide or the file or the podcast or whatever it is that they wanted is being delivered to them right in the direct messages, a place that they can come back to over and over again. You as the brand or business owner are able to follow up if they don't click or if they aren't able to purchase successfully. So it is truly a win win. And most of all, like I said, all of this goes back to getting the most possible views on your Instagram story. Now, I have done another entire episode breaking down that strategy in more depth. So if you want to learn more about the STD strategy, you can click down in the show notes below and we'll make sure to link that up. But the STD strategy, like I said, is how you maximize your story views. The cool thing about this strategy is that you can use it two or three times a week, basically whenever you want to boost your story views for a 24 hour period. And again, it's a 24 hour period. So the next day you can go back to normal posting a bunch of Instagram stories. Your views might go down a little bit, but during that 24 hour period, you got a ton more views. On average we see a two to three times increase in story views and we have seen some people in the Insta ClubHub report as much as a 20 to 30% increase in story views just like that, in a 24 hour period. The reason that the strategy is so effective is that, number one, you're increasing watch time by creating a text heavy story. Instagram a few years ago allowed us to start posting up to 60 second videos on our stories. And so what did most of us do? We hopped on our stories and said, hey guys, a lot of you have been asking me. And we rambled on for 60 seconds. And not only can that be very boring, very monotonous, very redundant, what unfortunately happens is your viewers have no way to interact with that story besides pausing it or skipping it. There's no way to fast forward, there's no way to rewind if they missed a word or they weren't clear on something you said. They can't go back a few seconds. It's either go back all the way to the beginning of the story, pause the story, or skip the story. We are very limited as consumers of Instagram stories in terms of the ways that we can actually interact with or use video stories. And so text stories are much easier on the user. People can hold their finger down, thus pausing the story. And they can skim, they can read word for word, they can reread sentences if something didn't make sense. They can basically consume at their own pace rather than being forced to consume at the pace in which you're speaking. Additionally, I mentioned this, but I kind of quickly glossed over it. The DM is the best form of engagement from an Instagram story. Yes, there are stickers like the little polls that you can vote in or the slider bar. And yes, those do count as engagement. But by far the best engagement that you can receive on an Instagram story is a direct message. And that's because again, according to adam Mozeri, the DMs are Instagram's bread and butter. They at Instagram believe that the DMs are what separate them and what allow them to stay competitive in the social media world. The DMs are more heavily used on Instagram than any other platform. And with on Instagram, the DMs are the most used area of the platform. And so when you're getting people to DM you from your Instagram story, the algorithm flipping loves that and it shows it to more people. And the final reason that the STD strategy is so effective is because of the S. The single Instagram is not just looking at how many DMs you receive, but they're looking at the engagement rate or the direct message rate. Let's do an example with easy numbers. If I have one Instagram story up and that story receives 100 views, and from those 100 views I get 23 direct messages, that is a direct message engagement rate of 23%. Super high. If I then post a second story and that second story maybe doesn't have a DM call to action, or it doesn't have any call to action at all, or maybe it just has one of those engagement stickers like the poll sticker, well then of course I'm going to be getting less DMs on that second story, but I'm going to be getting additional views on that second story. So let's say I only get two DMS on that second story. That brings us to a total of 25 direct messages. But let's say the second story gets 78 views. So the first one got 100, the second one got 78. So I've got a total of 100 and 78 views. When I divide the 25 direct messages by the 178 views, we drop from a DM rate of 23% on that first story to now just 14% in total because of the second story. So my overall stories engagement rate or stories direct message rate in that 24 hour period has significantly decreased by posting just one additional story. That is exactly why the S in the STD is so crucial. Now, with all of that being said, My fourth key to the Instagram algorithm in 2025 is going to be a little bit contradictory. The fourth key is to stop chasing gimmicks. And trends and quick fixes. Now, I would kind of categorize the STD strategy as a little bit gimmicky. It's a little bit of a hack. It's definitely something that Instagram could change their algorithms, Instagram could deprioritize the value of one story, or they could devalue the weight of a direct message. And that could definitely change this strategy. I will say the STD strategy has been effective for the last three years. So it's not a flash in the pan. It's not something that's just going to work for a month, but it's not necessarily something that I would bet is going to work 10 years from now. There are, however, definitely some strategies that I can tell you might work today, they might work this week or this month, but they're not going to work a month from now. They're not going to work in 2026, and they definitely ain't working five to 10 years from now. And these are the gimmicks and the hacks and the trends that a lot of social media coaches love to shout about. They're the things that oftentimes go viral because it feels like a way to get rich quick. But what do we call things that are get rich quick? We call them get rich quick schemes. They are schemes. They are scammy, they are hacks. They are not authentic. They might work, they might be effective for a day or two, but they're not authentic. And they're not going to lead to long term success or gains. Here's three gimmicks that I'm going to tell you to avoid. Number one, hashtags and trending audios. Now, hashtags and trending audios can work. And honestly, they aren't necessarily gimmicks. They're just far less effective now than they were 10 years ago. We don't need to get into the details of search engine optimization and how Instagram continues to improve its AI that can detect what your posts are about. And so hashtags are less important. Just listen to my conversation with Adam Mozerian. You'll hear how he says that hashtags do not help you increase your reach. People always get so upset when I say this, but the reality is, if you're having great success with your hashtags, if trending audios are making a huge difference for you, great, give me the middle finger, plug your ears and keep doing it. But for most people, I believe that too much stress or emphasis or too much of a focus is put on finding the perfect list of hashtags or getting the greatest trending audio before it blows up, when in reality, those things are only going to make a small difference. Those things can be like icing on a cake. If the cake itself, if the filling and the actual cake batter, if the actual mixture is not set up correctly, the icing can only do so much to save it. It might make it look pretty on the outside, but it's not really going to make a significant difference. Most of the time. There are exceptions to that. But generally speaking, stop worrying about hashtags and trending audios. Number two, one of my personal pet peeves and something that is growing in dispopularity or people are just growing to dislike more than ever before, are what I call clickbait reels. Clickbait is a term that originated from YouTube. Clickbait is where the thumbnail is like super exaggerated. There's like a shark eating a woman. And then the. The title of the YouTube video is like My wife's shark attack. And then you watch the video and it's like, not actually about a shark attack. It's about like how your kid came downstairs and he had built like a fake dorsal fin and he, like, pretended to, like, be Jaws and attack your wife. And so it's like, oh, it was a bait and switch. You baited me into clicking just to get the view. It leaves people with a really bad taste in their mouth. And while it can be effective, a lot of marketing strategies can be effective, but they're unethical, they're maybe outdated, or they're just tacky and kind of sleazy. That's clickbait on YouTube. And clickbait reels on Instagram are. Let me describe them for you. You've likely seen some. It's okay if you've made one in the last 24 hours, you've made one recently. When we know better, we do better. But clickbait reels on Instagram are the super short reels. They're like three or four seconds long. They're usually some random slapped on trending audio in the background. There's some random B roll, maybe of you, maybe of some AI clone, maybe of some random beach at sunset. And there's a super sensationalized hook, super sensationalized text on the screen, similar to like the YouTube clickbait titles. It's something that's like crazy outlandish. And then after two or three seconds, some three words of text pop up on the screen and it says, say it with Me. It says read the caption or details below. It says something like that. Basically it's trying to force you and trick you into reading the caption. There is no point of the reel. The whole point of the reel is to just be a billboard that says go read the caption. And then people are writing unnecessarily long 17 paragraph captions with no real value. They're forcing themselves to be super long winded and tell all these stories. And it's just trying to gamify Instagram. It's trying to trick us into spending more time with your posts. I have heard from so many of my followers that they will not engage intentionally not engage when they see people posting like that. Or some people are now reporting that they unfollow creators who are making that kind of content. Again, that kind of content oftentimes will be rewarded by the algorithm. Oftentimes the algorithm will say, hey, people are spending more time with this post, so we'll show it to more people so it can work. But what I'm here to report to you is that a growing majority of people are saying that they dislike this style of content. It's like clickbait. And so I'm encouraging you to not create this kind of content and instead put the value in the video. Create a caption that is as long as it needs to be, but not unnecessarily long. And you're not just trying to trick people into reading the caption. And then it's 2025 and I can't believe I have to say this, the third gimmick that has risen in popularity. I've been seeing it on threads a lot, but it's like, I'm gonna throw up if I see this, because now I'm starting to see it on reels too. Is follow trains or follow for follow. People are making these posts where it's like, comment what you do down below and then follow 17 other people and then everyone's gonna follow you and I guarantee you'll wake up tomorrow with 500 followers. Are you kidding me? I can't imagine a less organic way to grow. I can't imagine besides like buying followers, like literally buying robot spam followers. I can't imagine a way to grow your following in a less organic way, in a way that's going to give you more followers who are disengaged and who won't ever become customers and who are basically worthless. No offense to those people. Oh God, no. Please do not do follow for follow or follow unfollow or these follow trains. I mean, can we just leave that in 2014? All right, next up on the list, number five out of seven. And this one comes directly from my conversation, not with the head of Instagram, but with the head of Instagram for Business, Thomas Finetto. He's the guy who runs the official Meta for Business, Instagram for Business accounts. And he works with really high level brands. Like you think of a high level brand, they've worked with them at Meta. And he also of course directs Instagram for Business. So he works with small people, brands, entrepreneurs like us on a daily basis. And what he said is that a few years ago it was important for brands and businesses to consider entertainment. Like, yeah, they should provide value, they should teach, they should serve, but they should also be keeping in mind the, the entertainment factor. But he says that now brands need to think of themselves as entertainers first and foremost. The number one most important thing that you should be considering when you're creating content is the entertainment value that it provides. One helpful way that I like to think about this when I'm creating my content is looking at each individual piece, each sentence, each word, each frame, each scene, all of it, and ask myself, is it necessary? Is it going to move the plot forward or move the reel forward and keep people engaged? Or is it redundant, repetitive, unnecessary, slightly boring? Is there a moment where someone could have a lapse in attention when they are watching the reel? And recognizing this in your own content is definitely a skill that is learned over time. When you first start creating content, it's going to be tough for you to be that critical of your own content and really pick it apart to determine if it's that engaging or not. So something that you can do when you're first getting started is practice on other people's content, check out other people's posts, watch the posts that just are naturally engaging to you, or maybe the posts that are boring you, and just ask yourself why? What was it in this particular video that kept you watching? What was it in this reel that made you watch to the end? Or what was it that made you scroll away after the first few seconds? Paying attention to those things will improve your entertainment factor and thus the number of views and the success that you're having on Instagram now speaking of those first few seconds, those are everything for your reels. If you want more views, if you want more people to see your content, if you want to have more success, make more sales, get more customers, grow your business or brand on Instagram and really on any social media moving forward, the hook is everything. According to most studies, the average reel is watched for around 3 seconds. Translation most reels are not getting viewed after the hook and that includes all of the reels that we're watching for like a minute or two. So in reality, the majority of reels are probably being watched for less than three seconds. The majority of reels are not even getting their entire hook consumed before the consumer is scrolling on to the next one. So your hook is everything. Your hook is what I would recommend spending the most time, energy and effort focused on. Something that I like to do is teach a man to fish, but also give him a fish that way. It's kind of a win win. Whether you're someone who wants to learn to fish to feed yourself, or you're just someone who wants to just straight up eat and you're like Brock, just give me the ideas. If you want 25 viral hook ideas we did a study of about 3,000 viral reels and tiktoks and then we pulled out the hook. Whether it was a spoken hook that needed to be transcribed or just the text on the screen. We analyze those and put them into a list of the top 25 most viral hooks. That is free. You can download that in the show notes below. But if you're someone who doesn't just want to eat, you don't just want to be handed a fish. Here is how you can fish, so to speak, and create better hooks. Number one, the length of your hook. If you are considering the text on screen or the words that you're saying at the beginning of your video, keep it five to eight words long. Five to eight kind of tends to be that sweet spot where it's long enough to get your point across or to deliver a message that is understandable. But it's not so long that it's redundant and long winded and confusing. So five to eight words is a good general length to stick to. Also, the number five is the grade in which to max out at. And what I mean by that confusing sentence is don't make the words that you're using in your hook Smarter than a 5th grader, 5th grade reading level or simpler or lower for your hooks. Dumb it down. Use simple words. Use easy to understand language. Don't use any insider jargon or lingo or special acronyms. Make sure that you make your hooks simple so that more people can understand them. And that is not just because media literacy rates are declining, but mainly because most people are scrolling distracted. I'm gonna be honest with you, even while I'm talking to you right now and recording this podcast, I've got my phone right here, which yes, has my notes, but I'm also getting texts and emails and like, I'm a little bit distracted as I'm talking at some points in today's episode. And you likely are too. I would be willing to bet that you have done at least one other thing during the last 25 minutes of this episode. And so keep it simple. Dumb it down. Five to eight words, fifth grade reading level or lower. And whenever possible, use a negative word. One of my favorite examples of this is if you go on espn, you'll see this all the time. If a team won a game last night, instead of the headline being the team won the game, the headline will be the team snapped a three game losing streak. Either way, you are communicating the idea that they won last night. But to say they won the game is positive and thus unfortunately less engaging than saying they snapped. Negative word. The three game losing streak. Negative words. Using negative words like don't stop, avoid, cancel, crash, those sorts of things can be highly engaging in your content. But word to the wise, don't overuse it. If every single one of your hooks is negative, it will stop holding its value, it will stop being as attention grabbing and you'll be, you know, the nightly news where it's just negative story after negative story and eventually you gotta turn it off. And that brings us to the seventh and last but not least key to the Instagram algorithm in 2025. And this is something that is definitely working right now and is a little bit gimmicky, It's a little bit of a hack, but it's a hack that's been working for the last six months and so I can't not tell you about it. And it's Trial reels. Trial Reels is a kind of post that was created and released by Instagram in December 2024 that will only reach non followers. To say it another way, it's a kind of reel that when you post it, your followers will not see it. Trial reels are a game changer. They are a growth hack. Just a week or two ago I posted an episode of this podcast all about trial reels, detailing what they are, how to get access to them, and my beginner, intermediate and advanced strategies. And from that episode I got this message from Nicole Nesby where she said, I followed what you said in YouTube and these were my stats. I did a 24 hour trial reels blitz which I love that name for it. That's a great nickname and I'm definitely stealing that. She goes I ended up being able to post more than 25. I posted about 26 trial reels in 24 hours. In total, I got 72,441 views. And remember, that's 72,000 views from new potential followers. From that, I got 56 new followers in one day and I am gobsmacked, honestly. Which wow, Nicole, you've got some great words. Gobsmacked. She goes this is so easy. Using the duplicate a reel feature in my drafts makes it so simple. Pro tip, by the way, if you have a reel saved in your draft and you tap three dots, you can duplicate the reel, thus making it easier for you to post the same reel multiple times or make slight edits and tweaks to that reel before posting it multiple times. And she goes it's so simple to remix all of my best reels and get dozens of drafts ready to go in a blank. Shout out to you Nicole, and shout out to everyone else who has messaged me about the success that they've been having implementing the trial reel strategies that I outlined last week. But since that episode has been posted, Instagram themselves have posted their own statistics in regards to trial reels. And the statistic is so awesome. According to Instagram, 80% of people who are using trial reels are getting increased reach to non followers each month. So I can confidently say that trial reels are one of the best features Instagram has ever given us. I hope they're never taken away, but to be realistic, they will probably be taken away or deprioritized or the algorithm will change or something will happen within the next year or so. But right now, trial reels are a game changer. Definitely go watch that episode that I put out last week about trial reels and how they can help you reach more people without having to do a bunch of extra work. Because ultimately that's what this is all about. My whole goal is helping you get results in the least amount of time possible by giving you the strategies and techniques that are proven to be most effective and most efficient on Instagram. If that's what you're looking for and you haven't already, definitely hit subscribe. I want to say thank you to everyone who has recently subscribed. Thank you so much for being here and I'll sign off the way I always do by saying, as always, happy networking. Hi Zoe Saldana. Welcome to T Mobile. Here's your new iPhone 16 Pro on us. Thanks. And here's my old phone to trade in. You don't need a trade in. When you switch to T Mobile, we'll give you a new iPhone 16 Pro. Plus we'll help you pay off your old phone. Up to 800 bucks and you still get to keep it. There's always a trade end. Not right now. At T Mobile. I feel like I have to give you something in return for karma. That's okay. I don't really have much in my purse. Oh, let's see. 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