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Build Your Tribe | Grow Your Business with Social Media
The NEW Instagram Algorithm - How To get MORE Reel VIEWS! - 826
00:31:03
In today’s episode, Brock Johnson dives into the latest Instagram algorithm updates and shares actionable strategies to get more views on your Instagram Reels. He will cover how the new algorithm is prioritizing Reels and how you can take...
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Brock Johnson
The Instagram algorithm has changed yet again. Usually when people claim that the Instagram algorithm has changed, it hasn't. It's usually just a result of people's changing behaviors and people's changing interests. But I can tell you right now, beyond a shadow of a doubt, the Instagram algorithm is different. Over the first few months of 2025, things have been changing on Instagram. People's views have been affected, and I've been getting hundreds of messages every single day from people between over a million followers and people with less than a thousand followers who are reporting these change. Today, I'm going to break down what these changes are and what they mean for you in case you're new here. Hello, my name is Brock Johnson and it's my job to keep you up to date with the latest trends and changes on Instagram so that you can grow your following and turn those followers into customers. Here on the Build you'd Tribe podcast, we put out a new episode every single Thursday on the latest updates and changes on Instagram and social media more broadly. And coming very soon on this channel, yours truly will be having a sit down interview with Instagram's CEO Adam Mozeri. So make sure that you're subscribed to the podcast so you can automatically get access to that episode as soon as it comes out. Now, let's not waste any more time. Let's get into the algorithm changes that have recently taken place on Instagram. Really, these fall into two main categories. One category is changes to the way carousels are being shown on Instagram, and the second is all about reels. We're going to spend the majority of this episode talking about reels, but let's begin by talking about carousels. And this is some good news. Carousels are receiving significantly more reach in 2025 than they were towards the end of 2024. Carousels, of course, are the slideshow posts on Instagram where you can have now up to 20 photos and videos. So it is a mixed media kind of content. And the biggest tip that I can give you for your carousels is always add music. When you add music to your carousels, it makes them eligible to show up on the Reels tab. This is going to be a little bit confusing, but just stick with me for a second. There are really three feeds on Instagram. There's the main home feed that we're used to. There's the Explore page or the Explore feed, which has a collection of posts, oftentimes carousels that are being recommended to you. And then there's the Reels tab. Currently it's the fourth out of five buttons at the bottom. And the Reels tab in the past has been just for reels. But towards the end of 2024, Instagram added the ability to add music to your carousels. And when you add music to your carousel, it makes it el to show up on the Reels tab. So when you're viewing your own Instagram profile, your carousel will just show up on the main grid and it won't show up as if it's a reel. But by adding music to that carousel, it just makes it eligible. It gives it the option. It gives the Instagram algorithm the possibility of showing it on the Reels tab. Now, why would you want that and why is that beneficial? You want that and that's beneficial because the Reels tab is how you can reach new people. If a carousel is recommended to someone on the Reels tab, they of course have the option to follow you if they've never seen your content before. So it's just another way to increase your potential views or distribution for your carousel post. Now, of course, if you have a super complex educational tutorial like Carousel with a ton of info on every single slide, it wouldn't make sense to put some music in the background that has a bunch of lyrics or is super loud or aggressive or distracting because it would distract from the consumption of the carousel. So instead what I recommend doing is adding music to your carousel that just generally matches the vibe of the carousel. If it's an educational carousel, maybe you just kind of want some simple elevator type background music. If it's a carousel with inspirational quotes and messages, then maybe you want to add maybe an inspirational piano in the background. If it's a carousel, that's just a photo dump. It's a collection of, you know, your recent camera roll, your recent memories, kind of updating your followers. Well then maybe you do want to pick a song that more encapsulates and describes what your life has been like recently. Also, we're going to get lost in the sauce for just a second. A tip on top of the tip is when you are selecting the song, make sure that it plays for at least 30 seconds or so. You don't want to have like a 3 second clip of the song on top of a 20 slide carousel because that song is going to replay over and over and over again and probably become pretty annoying as people are swiping through the carousel. So what I like to do is like I said number one, select a song that just generally fits the vibe or the mood of the carousel. And number two, make sure that song is playing for about 30 seconds, just so it doesn't get annoying or redundant playing on loop for your viewers. Now, we could spend an entire hour talking about carousels, but a very easy way that you can take your posts that you've already been making, specifically the reels that you've already been making, and turn them into carousels is option number one. If you're doing a talking head reel, take the script from said reel, take the exact words you said in the reel, and just remake them as a carousel. You can take the hook of your reel and make that the new first slide of the carousel, take your second and third sentence from the reel and make that the new second slide of the carousel, so on and so forth. It's a very easy way to repurpose content that you've already created and just produce it in a new format. Another idea is if you're someone who does a lot of B roll reels where maybe the reel itself is relatively short, there's just kind of like a text on the screen that is hooking people in, and then they're reading the long caption that can very easily be turned into a carousel. All you have to do is take the hook on the screen, use that as the first slide of your carousel, and then use your long caption, which you've already typed out as your carousel slides. As you know, here at Build you'd Tribe and inside the Insta Club Hub, which is our Instagram course, we are all about helping you create better content and more content in less time. So those are two easy ways that you can convert reels that you've already been making into carousel posts and take advantage of this algorithm change. Now, speaking of reels, that is the second big algorithm change that we have seen. And that's what we're going to spend the remainder of today's episode talking about. The biggest change that has happened to the reels algorithm over the last few months is that the percentage of views that is coming from non followers has significantly increased. To say it another way, and to give you an example, in the past, when you've posted a reel, let's say you got 100 views, you could realistically expect that about 90ish of those viewers were people who already followed you, and maybe 10 out of the 100 were new people, people who didn't already follow you. So easy math, that's 90% views coming from followers and 10% views coming from non followers. Over the last few months, like I mentioned, that graph has been changing. That pie chart is no longer divvied up the same way. Now it's getting closer to 60:40 as the average. And some people are even reporting a 50:50 split between where their views are coming from. And some people are even reporting greater than 50% of their views coming from non followers. This change is what some people have called the TikTok ification of the Instagram algorithm. The TikTok algorithm really prioritizes showing your content to new people to test it out and to see how your content would do at large. This is because the TikTok algorithm doesn't necessarily care as much about how many followers you have, and it cares about how good is your content. And it wants to show the best content to more people, regardless of how many followers the content creator has. In the past, however, Instagram hasn't worked this way. Instagram has put much more weight into how many followers you have. So if you have a large audience, Instagram's going to make sure that more of your followers are seeing that content and probably even more non followers are seeing that content. Basically, Instagram used to operate under the assumption that if you have a lot of followers, you make good content. But now Instagram seems to be changing where it carries cares less about how many followers you have. I am not here to make a claim that followers don't matter and that Instagram is going to get rid of the follower count and that having followers is worthless. There's definitely value in having an audience and a community that you have built on Instagram. However, this change does indicate where Instagram is headed, which is more of a level playing field. Again, like the change that's happened to carousels. I think this is good news, especially if you're someone with a relatively small audience. Now, when I say relatively small audience, I don't mean that if you have more than a thousand followers, you're screwed, and if you have less than a thousand, hallelujah, celebrate and rejoice. I simply mean that the smaller your audience is, the less handcuffed you're going to be in the future, the more potential views you're going to be able to gain, because the algorithm will prioritize showing your content to non followers. Now, unfortunately, what this change has definitely done in the last few months is it's led to a lot of people getting less views and less engagement on their reels. And that's for a few reasons. Number one, when your posts your reels specifically are being shown to more new people. Those new people are less likely to engage than your existing followers. Oftentimes, if your existing followers see your posts in the feed, they're going to recognize your face, they're going to recognize your content, they're going to recognize your account, they're more likely to stick around, they're more likely to engage, and they're even more likely to give you the good old courtesy like and double tap, even if they weren't even paying attention to your content. But a new follower, a potential follower, someone who has never seen your stuff before, they don't have that know like and trust factor. They don't follow you, they don't really know you. And so they're not going to give you the courtesy, like, they're not going to give you the benefit of the doubt and keep watching, even if they're not super engaged. Basically, people who don't follow you have your content on a much shorter leash. If you make any mistake, if you get boring, if they become uninterested at all, the likelihood of them scrolling away is very high, and it's much higher than someone who already follows you. So that likely means that our reels are getting less engagement. And of course, the simplest way to think about the algorithm is more engagement equals more views. So if we're getting less engagement, we're going to be getting less views. And that's why so many people have reported over the last few months that their views are tanking. I'm here to tell you you're not shadow banned. Instagram doesn't hate you, you're not in Instagram jail. It's just a change in the algorithm. And in just a moment, I'm going to walk you through some things that I think you can do and some things I've been actively doing myself. To flip the script to actually use this algorithm change to my advantage and to navigate through the ever changing landscape that is Instagram. Before we move on to that though, it's important to understand the state of the union of Instagram, if you will. Like, what is the Instagram algorithm currently favoring? Yes, it is showing your posts, your reels to more non followers. But like, what is it looking for? What kinds of engagement matter the most? Directly from Instagram CEO Adam Mozeri, and according to our own research, there are three key statistics and one of them has recently changed. But there are three key statistics that you need to be aware of if you want to get more views and reach more people. And I'm going to List these three key forms of engagement in reverse order of importance. So bronze medal, third place. The third most important form of engagement is quite simply alike. Adam Mozzeri often says when he's discussing the Instagram algorithm and talking to people about how to get more views on their reels is they look at they being the algorithm looks at how likely people are to like this reel, how likely are people to double tap or to press that heart button and like this reel. The second form of engagement that really matters, and this one we've gotten some clarification on recently, and I think this is super interesting. It used to be in the silver medal spot. In the second place spot, watch rate. Watch rate was the percentage of your video that people have watched. So easy math. If you have a 10 second video and the average person watches 7 seconds, then you have a 70% watch rate. In the past and for the last few years, watch rate has been a really key metric that Instagram looked at. And this is why those super short reels have been so effective in the past, but they're less effective now. Essentially, if watch rate was the key, well then you could make a 3 second long reel, write a super long caption, and then while someone's reading your super long caption, that three second reel is playing over and over again, getting you a 200, a 300, 400% watch rate. Which was crazy. But Instagram caught onto this, and Instagram always does. The more we try to gamify and hack and trick the algorithm, the more advanced the algorithm becomes to say, no, no, no, we want to show content that people actually want to see, not just the content that you've used to trick the algorithm with. So the change that's taken place is that now no longer in second place is watch rate. Now it's watch time, the total amount of time that people are watching your reels for. Now this is an interesting distinction. And Adam Mozeri in one of his stories recently said that they made this change in part because they don't want to penalize people for making longer content. To use that example from a moment ago, let's say you made a 10 second video and someone else made a 30 second video. Someone watched your video for seven seconds. So you had a 70% watch rate. Someone watched the other person's video for seven seconds. They didn't have a 70% watch rate. Watching seven seconds of a 30 second video is a 23% watch rate. So with the old algorithm, that other creator would get less views than you. But what Instagram has realized is 7 seconds is still 7 seconds. Either way, people are spending 7 seconds on the platform. And so they didn't want to punish people, quote unquote, for making longer videos. So another way that you could think about this another moment is, okay, so a recent change in the algorithm, something that you can do to take advantage of this change is to create longer reels. Now, we're going to talk more about that in just a moment because just creating longer reels in general is probably not going to make a big difference. But that is where we are headed. And Instagram is prioritizing these longer reels. And in fact, according to a new study of over 4 million Instagram posts, Reels that are longer than 60 seconds are actually getting the most engagement on average, which is crazy. That's a total flip on its head of what Instagram used to be. Again, we're going to talk more about that in just a second and how to create longer reels that are actually engaging. But the big change, what you need to take away from this is that no longer is watch rate the key metric. Now it is watch time. That brings us to last but not least, actually last but most. The number one key metric that you need to be focused on, the best form of engagement to get more views, reach more people and grow Your following in 2025 is shares. Now, we've done an entire build you'd tribe episode. We've actually done multiple build you'd tribe episodes about how to get more shares. I'll make sure to link them down in the show notes below. Because getting more shares is not just a matter of posting more or telling people to share or adding a little paper airplane button, you know, a little emoji on your post and saying, you know, share this post. No, there are actual strategies and different kinds of content that are more and less likely to be shared. So I highly recommend checking out that episode because that is the key across almost all social medias. If you can get more shares, you will get more views. And the really cool thing about shares is shares trump the algorithm. Shares don't care about the algorithm. Yes, the algorithm does prioritize content that gets more shares, but even if it didn't, shares would be a great way to get more eyeballs. Because think about in the real world, what is a share? It's a recommendation. It's one human being sending a post to another human being. That means that's double the views. You just went from one person to two person. Well, what if that one person Instead of sending it to just one, what if they send it to multiple? What if they send it to their group chat with 10 people? What if they shared your post to their story for hundreds or thousands of people to see? Shares regardless of the algorithm are how you can snowball your posts from doing just okay or good to viral and being your best possible post. So I highly recommend checking out that entire episode that I did about how to create share worthy content. And creating shareworthy content is the first change that I would recommend making based off this algorithm. So now let's move into the what do we do? Okay, the algorithm has changed. There are basically new rules on Instagram. What do we do from here? Number one, create more share worthy content. I'm going to stop talking about share worthy content. I hope if you haven't already, you go watch that video. Maybe go watch it once this one is over. That's number one. Number two, what do we do now? Let's talk about watch time again. Longer reels, or I should say reels that get people to watch for longer are going to be rewarded more heavily. So how do we do this? I have a few tips for you to keep in mind. Number one, I don't think there's ever been a video about improving your reels. There's never been a training or tutorial about reels that hasn't included the following statement. It's all about the hook. The hook is how you get people to watch for longer. Don't worry, I have other tips besides this one. But I actually have a really cool new Instagram stat that Instagram just added to the Insight section that will allow you to make your hooks even better. Because yes, hooks are important. You've been hearing that for years now. But how do you know if your hook was effective? How do you know if people are still watching? How do you know if your hook was good or not? Instagram is now telling us. Hallelujah. Thank you Instagram. So you may have noticed this already and you can actually go back and check some of your reels from the last few months to look for this stat. But this new stat is called View Rate Past first three seconds. And essentially what this is showing is what percent of your viewers were still watching before or after the three second mark. Essentially, if more of your followers than average were watching after the three second mark, it was a strong hook. It was a better hook than average. If less, a smaller percentage than the average were watching at the three second mark, well then it wasn't a strong hook. And what you can do with this information is, is use it to your advantage. Here's how. If you have a higher than average watch rate, let's say, for example, your average view rate past first three seconds was 37%. And then this reel was 58%. Okay, well then it was a really strong hook. This specific reel was keeping way more people hooked than other reels. So what was it in the hook? Was there something that you were doing? Did you have a specific prop? Was it the verbiage, like the actual words you said in the hook? Was it the lighting, the spacing, the editing? Analyze your own content. Because success leaves clues. And of course the opposite is true as well. Failure leaves clues as well. And so if you have a reel that the average view rate at three seconds is 37%, and then this specific reel, only 23% of your viewers were watching past the first three seconds, then you know that was a pretty bad hook. Let's analyze it, figure out why, figure out what was not engaging about this hook, and then you can actually swap out the hook. Now, you can't do this on Instagram with the post you've already made, but here's what you can do. Take that same reel, let's say it was a talking head reel that was 30 seconds long. Take that same reel and just chop off the first three seconds, rerecord or recreate a new hook, a new intro, a new first three seconds, and then use second three through 30. The same. Those can be the exact same, right? Because those weren't the issue. The issue was getting people to start watching. So swap out the hook, replace it with a new one, and a few weeks later, post that reel again and then check the stats and see if you actually did improve on the hook. That is, in my opinion, the best way to improve your watch duration, your watch time for your reels. The second best tip that I can give for you is to use the two second rule. The two second rule is something that we talk about all the time in the Insta Club Hub. And it's essentially the idea that your reel, especially if it's a talking head reel or a reel with a voiceover, basically any reel that isn't either a trend or just a B roll reel with some music in the background. If there is spoken audio in the reel, if it's a skit, if you're telling a story, if you're giving some education, there should be a cut or a transition or a change or an effect. Basically there should be something happening every two Minutes, Seconds? Why is this? This is because the human attention span is super short. Studies used to say that our attention span was equal to that of a goldfish. And recent studies indicate that our attention span is decreasing and we now have a shorter attention span than a goldfish. I know that might be very sad, but that is the reality that we live in. And so in order to keep people engaged, it's important to have a lot of cuts and changes and things happening in your videos. In fact, I would venture to bet that 99% of people who are listening to this podcast right now have been distracted at some point while I'm talking. Maybe you've been checking your phone. Maybe you're working out while listening to this as a podcast. Our need for dopamine and interaction and things to be changing to stay engaging is at an all time high. And if you don't believe me, check this out. The next time you go watch TV or Netflix or a movie, you can count out loud. And I bet you'll have a tough time getting to three seconds, there'll be some sort of cut or change. So use this two second rule to keep people engaged. Some ways that you can execute the two second rule is to add multiple angles, b roll or cutouts into your reels to just make them more dynamic and more engaging, thus increasing the likelihood that someone's going to watch for longer. And then my final tip for you to increase your watch time is to incorporate storytelling into your reels. Stories are 22 times more memorable than facts. That's a fact that I often forget because it's a fact it's not a story. But again, stories 22 times more memorable than facts. So if you can incorporate storytelling into your reels, you make them more memorable, more engaging, and you increase the likelihood that people are going to watch for longer. Also, I talked about this in a recent episode of Build you'd Tribe. But storytelling hooks are really popular right now. So a simple change would be rather than saying three tips for becoming a better rock climber, you could say, I used to suck at rock climbing until I stopped doing these three things. The second hook, the second example is way more engaging. It's way more likely to keep you watching. And it does that because I'm telling you my story rather than just telling you some facts or information. All right, now that we've covered that, that means we've talked about likes, we've talked about how to get more shares, and we've talked about how to increase watch time. Let's talk about what do you do knowing that your reels are now going to be seen by more new people, more new potential followers? I have a few tips for you and I was kind of surprised to figure some of these out myself. Number one, this one makes sense. Simplify your content. This is something that I recommend always. This is something I've been saying for years on Instagram, Keep it simple, dumb it down. Not because your followers are dumb, not because you want to attract idiots, not because that's your target audience, but simply because most people are seeing thousands of posts every single day. And a lot of people are scrolling through Instagram and social media with their brain turned off. They're not paying full attention, they're zoned out. They're looking for another quick hit of dopamine. And so when your content is super lost in the weeds, it's super nitty gritty, lost in the sauce, it's super technical, it's super educational. You're using all these fancy words and insider lingo. You lose people, people lose interest. In fact, one study showed that the most engaging hooks were at a fifth grade reading level. Something that I'm always challenging myself to do when I'm creating my reels or writing my scripts or typing my captions is just dumb it down. I'll go through and if there's any word where there's a simpler synonym or there's an easier way to say it, or there's an extra explanation that I could provide to make things easier to understand, I'll add it. That's the first tip to help you when you're reaching new potential followers. Because remember, new potential followers, they don't know you yet. And so if you say a word, if you start talking about a topic that they don't understand, well, then they're a lot more likely to scroll. So simplify your content and it will help improve the watch rate, the engagement levels and the views from these new potential followers. The second tip that I can give for you, when you are creating content for these new potential followers, and this one is actually a kind of share worthy post, it is create more relatable posts. Posts that have relatable humor, posts that talk about the relatable struggles or pain points, this is because when someone doesn't know you yet, yet there isn't that connection. So when you can be more relatable, you give the opportunity to form said connection. So focus on creating relatable content. And again, in the share worthy video, I talk more about how do you create relatable content and what elements go into a relatable post. The third tip has a simple version and a more complex version. The simple version of tip number three for what to do now that this algorithm change has taken place is to ask for the follow in more of your content. You don't have to do it in every single post, but even if you're just typing a little PS at the bottom of your caption, or adding a little blurb to the end of your carousel, or adding a little bit of spoken audio to the end of your talking head reel, asking people to follow makes a difference. It's the whole point of a call to action. People are way more likely to act when you ask them to do so. And the pro level tip is if you have a post that you notice is specifically reaching a very high percentage of non followers, or you have a post that's going viral and reaching a ton of new people, go in and edit your caption. Editing your caption will not hurt the distribution. It won't stop the snowball from rolling downhill, so to speak. And I do this every single time I have a post that's starting to go viral. As soon as you see it starting to take off, it's getting way more views than normal. The pie chart, the graph showing you where your views are coming from is like 60, 70, 80% of the views coming from non followers. Go in, edit your caption and make it say something along the lines of Follow me for more. If you're interested in Follow me, basically add a call to action to your caption encouraging all of these new viewers to follow you, and they're going to be way more likely to do so. Little power tip there. Speaking of the caption, something that I've been doing more recently, which I found effective, is just occasionally reintroducing yourself in the captions. Kind of like I did at the very beginning of this podcast episode, where after the hook, after I told you what we're going to be talking about today, I reintroduced myself in this podcast. Now, I understand some of you who have been subscribers for years and who have been listening to the podcast and following me. You maybe skipped over that part or didn't pay attention, but according to our statistics on YouTube and our podcast analytics, a lot of our viewers and listeners are not subscribers. And so it's important to add some credibility and to reintroduce myself. And I'm recommending that you do the same occasionally. Not in every post, but in some of your posts in the caption, even if it's just a little P.S. or a little paragraph down at the bottom, just reintroducing yourself and telling people who might be finding you for the first time, who you are, what you do, and what they can expect from following you. And then with all of that being said, my final tip for you to take advantage of this new algorithm change is to create content that will drive more follows. Well, duh. That's about the worst advice I could give, and I understand that. But let me explain to you more of what I mean. And this is what was surprising to me when I was originally writing the script and coming up with what I was going to talk about in today's podcast, a note that I wrote for myself is that oftentimes, and this was my assumption, which is incorrect, my assumption was that the majority of content that really drove follows was not necessarily educational. I expected that the majority of content that drove follows would be the content that was super funny. Maybe memes share worthy content, relatable content. And I was mistaken. I analyzed my top 20 most viewed reels in the last year and I was shocked to learn that the reels that actually drove the most followers were not memes. They weren't even necessarily relatable humor. They were posts that had some form of education. Now here's the distinction that I want to make. Oftentimes, educational content can be boring, right? Go to any library in the world and you will find hundreds, if not thousands of textbooks that have been sitting on those shelves for years and never read. Is that because those textbooks are not educational? They're not valuable? No. Heck no. They're super valuable. They're super educational. But they haven't been read for years. They've been collecting dust because they're not engaging. There's no storytelling. There's no humor. There's no two second rule. There's nothing that makes me actually want to pick up the book and keep reading. Unless I'm just a book nerd who really wants that education. But on social media, where people are used to quick hits, funny content, memes, and quick value, you have to present your educational content in a way that is more engaging. Now fortunately, that's what you've been learning to do for the entire episode today. You've been learning about the two second rule. You've been learning about storytelling. You've been learning about improving your hooks. And these are the things that help make educational content not boring content, but actual content that's going to go viral and drive followers. In fact, according to that analysis of my top 20 most viral reels from the last 365 days, it took me 6,314 views to get one follower on memes or funny relatable posts. Again, 6,000 viewers to get just one follower on those meme posts. But when I looked at my educational or inspirational post that went viral, it took me only 450 viewers to get a follower. That means educational or inspirational content that went viral was getting me followers at a way higher rate. In fact, for example, on one video I got 3.8 million views. And from those 3.8 million views I got less than 300 followers. 291 to be exact. And then I had another post that got 650,000 views, so it got about six times less views. And yet that post gained me 6,000 followers. So again, while memes and relatable content has a place, while that content can oftentimes go viral, be very share worthy and reach a ton of people, the kind of content that you really want to go viral, the kind of content that's going to produce the best roi, return on investment, and bring in the most followers, is oftentimes going to be the engaging educational or inspirational content. I hope you found today's episode both engaging and educational yourself. If you did and you haven't already, make sure that you subscribe to this podcast for all of our future episodes. Also, I want to say I created a free Maximum Engagement Checklist. It's basically a 10 step checklist that you can go through before and after making your new posts to make sure that those posts are getting the most engagement and views possible. Again, totally free. I'll put that link down in the show notes below, but thank you so much for listening today and as always, happy networking.