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Welcome to Shiny New Clients, the marketing podcast that helps you attract shiny new clients to your business. We talk about social media marketing. I'll give you actionable strategies to get more clients today and the mindset that it takes to grow a business all in 25 minutes or less. Whether you're an online business owner or have an in person service or even a course or membership, if you've got a service based business, this is the show you need to fill your calendar. I'm Jenna Harding, your new marketing coach and this is Shiny New Clients. That pesky Instagram algorithm just changed again in 2026. Here's what you need to know so you can keep getting your content in front of ideal clients. As a social media expert and someone who has helped business owners grow on Instagram and get clients from their posts for, I don't know, eight years or something, I don't know how long I've been doing this a long time. Enough time to see a lot of my clients brand new business owners and build six figure businesses mostly credited to the clients they're getting on Instagram. I've been in this game a long time and I do have one opinion about the Instagram algorithm that I hold firm to. And ironically it is this. None of the updates ever actually matter as long as you know one thing. And that thing is get people to touch your posts. And in all my time and in all the updates and all the iterations of this app, none of that has changed. We're always creating content that interests our ideals, ideal client. We're doing research to figure out what they need to hear from us. And then we're making content based on what they're going through and what they need. And then we're building every single post to be touched. In my program Magic Marketing machine, we we call this using engagement attractors. Instead of just creating a post and hoping people interact with it, you are building every post to be touched. And that is one thing that this new update really wants you to do. But they don't want any old engagements, they want a very specific one. The new Instagram algorithm in 2026 really wants people tapping the paper airplane and sharing your content amongst each other. Instagram's eyes. This means creating community, creating conversation. You might remember last year they had a really strong push towards direct messages. And remember also Meta owns WhatsApp. So like WhatsApp, Messenger, Instagram, DMS, they really doubled down on that last year and they wanted people having conversations, which means you need to make content that makes people want to share it. And as a directive that might have you going in your head right now, like, well, how the heck am I supposed to do that? How am I supposed to just create shareable content? So I'll give you a couple ideas for that right now. But when I learned this, it made something else make perfect sense. So if you came to this podcast, because you know me from Instagram, where I am at Jenna's page page with an I, you probably have seen my B Roll Reels ideas series. It is my most popular series. I get the most views when I give B roll ideas to business owners. And most of my followers come from my B roll Reels ideas. Now, I use essentially the strategy that I teach, which means I can't just post B roll reel ideas. I'm here for clients, right? So I also have to have my nurture and my sales content. But the B roll reels ones, they get the most views and they always get the most followers coming in off of them. And I recently noticed they get shared a ton. And I wonder to myself, I. I'm giving a goofy B roll reel idea. Who is sharing these? Like, literally, who is sharing these? I was. I was kind of baffled by it. So I made a post saying, hey, who's sharing these? Like, where are these going? Where are you sending me? I was, like, making a joke about it. Mom, it's dark in here. Mom. And then in the comments, my followers all told me that a lot of my cli. My followers, because they have businesses, they have a personal account and a business account, and they are sending the B roll Reels ideas to their other account so that they remember to make them, which means I have all these inflated shares. And then the algorithm sees people are sharing the post, and then the algorithm sends that post to more people because it's getting the exact engagement that the new algorithm wants it to have. So they have a priority on shares, especially post being shared to the direct messages. And that is probably a big, big part of why my B Roll Reels series is always my thing that gets the most views, because it has all of those shares. Fascinating stuff, right? Let's talk about you. What can you say that's going to get people hitting the little paper airplane button? That's what it is, right? It just looks like a little triangle, but I think it's a paper airplane. That's why it indicates send on Instagram. So what can you be posting that gets people sharing? I'm going to give you three options for shareable content that you can make Right now, that will work for your specific business. But first, I have a guest recording here from one of my alumni from Magic Marketing Machine, Molly Donlin, who wants to tell you a quick story. Then we'll come back and talk about what you're going to post this week.
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Hi, my name is Molly Donlin. I'm a Reiki master, teacher and author of Mundane Magic. And I help people add more magic into their everyday lives using a blend of science and spirituality. I joined MMM years ago because even though I had a large following over on TikTok, I was struggling to convert them to sales. I had a Reiki training program that getting eight people into was like pulling teeth. I just did not know how to sell. I only knew how to make growth content. And additionally, I only knew how to make growth content on TikTok. I really struggled with Instagram as a platform, knowing what to post, when to post. I found it just a slog. I really, really struggled with it. I hated writing captions, I hated creating videos. I just. It was not my jam. It was not my thing. And through mmm, I really learned so much of the skills that I use today. I learned how to sell my services. I learned how to enjoy making content again. I learned how to put my personality into my content again. I feel like when I was grinding out content and not able to connect with people, nurture people, create sales, I was just like a textbook. Like, I really just felt like I was churning out content. And for what? I really wasn't getting that reciprocity back and I wasn't building a community after MMM. About four months after I joined MMM or so. I joined at the end of March 2022, and in August 2022, I had my first launch since joining the program and I had 75 people join. I know. Wild. And it felt fun, it felt easy, it felt exciting. Now it's been almost four years. I'm still enrolled in mmm and I have over a quarter of a million followers on Instagram. My email list has grown from, like, I had, like 3,000 subscribers to 17,000 subscribers. My training in the past couple of years has sold out within literally minutes. I have a wait list that is over 1800 people long, and I just really feel excited about creating content again. Being on Instagram has allowed me to really meet some of my wildest dreams, like publishing a book, having a number one podcast, and ultimately fostering a community where I really, really feel like I'm making a difference in the world. And that is all thanks to everything that I learned in MMM from Jenna and her team. I'd recommend MMM to anyone who is looking to grow a business, who is looking to fall in love with creating content. I think it can be really easy when we're pulling tips and tricks from everywhere to think we have to do everything. And one thing that MMM really helped me find is how to do my thing, how to do it Molly's way, how to really enjoy creating content and create content that connects and feels authentic to me. And I think that's really the thing that sets MMM apart. So highly recommend you join. Mmm. Okay, love you. Bye.
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So one thing I like to think about is social currency. When you create a post that by sharing it gives someone social currency, they're more likely to share it, especially to their stories. Think about like political advocacy or any causes that you stand by. Maybe it's like Pride month and an account I follow makes a really nice pride post. And that's something that I care about. So I'm going to hit the paper airplane. I'm going to share it to my stories because I now get the social currency of standing up for this cause that I believe in in my stories. Another really simple example of this is when you share a joke with a friend, right? You share a meme or like a funny video that's going to make people laugh, you kind of inherit that laugh, right? If you saw a meme that's going to make your friend Susan laugh. So you send that to Susan and she laughs and then she writes back to you. Ahaha. You know me so well. Now you have social currency. Jonah Berger talks about this in his book all about what makes content go viral. It always elicits an emotional reaction. So whether you're making people angry or making them happy, you're making them sad. Any viral posts has an emotional driver. Even take like a viral cookie recipe. Oh my gosh. Remember that viral cookie recipe where the person went to a restaurant. I don't know if it's a true story, but they went to this fancy restaurant in the restaurant and they asked their server if they can have a copy of the recipe for the chocolate chip cookie that they had because it was so good and the server gave it to them and then There was a $10,000 charge on their bill because they had charged them $10,000 for this cookie rec. So then the person took that recipe and spread it wide and gave it to everybody and shared it with everyone. And it has this emotional driver because it has this story behind it. But even a delicious mouth watering photo of a cookie is going to make us share that recipe because of that, like, visceral good feeling that that comfort food is giving us. Even that is still an emotional response in its own way is neat. I'm such a nerd for it. So remember earlier I was talking about how your content needs to be for your people. Think about this. Another thing that gets spread is information. Information that we're passionate, that needs to be spread. But it can't be you that's passionate. It needs to be. Your ideal client is passionate. Your followers need to be passionate about the spread of this information, not you. So you got to put yourself in their shoes. What would they share with people? Or heck, just make a post that says, share this with someone who, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, you know? Well, you know what? Another one that goes viral all the time. I see these all the time is like, because I follow a lot of like, nature and adventure accounts and it'll be a really adventurous looking photo of a mountain and it'll be like, share this to someone who you want to go here with, right? So everyone's going to share it. The algorithm sees that they're being shared, it shows it to more people, it takes off, the ball rolls, the post goes viral. What can you post? What can you post? Second get shared this week. What if you only had one job and it is to get five shares? Five shares this week. Why don't we just start aiming with that and then you can celebrate every single win, celebrate every single share, and you'll be practicing this muscle of creating content that really, truly interests your followers. So much so that they want to spread it for you. Have a beautiful, wonderful, fabulous freaking week. Go get views and build your business.
Host: Jenna Harding
Guest: Molly Donlin (Magic Marketing Machine alumna)
Date: April 6, 2026
In this episode, Jenna Harding dives into the recent 2026 Instagram algorithm update and demystifies what truly drives visibility and engagement on the platform. Jenna argues that despite frequent changes to the algorithm, the core principle of success on Instagram remains the same: create content that people want to touch—especially content that's shared via direct messages. The episode provides actionable, mindset-driven strategies for entrepreneurs and business owners looking to grow their client lists through intentional, share-focused Instagram content.
(Guest Segment, 05:45–09:12)
(09:12–End)
Jenna leaves listeners feeling empowered, shifting the Instagram growth conversation away from technical tweaks and towards authentic, community-building content that brings real, shiny new clients.