Here’s What You Need to Know About How Instagram Works

 

Adam Mosseri (Instagram CEO) just explained exactly how the Instagram algorithm works, and how they rank content in stories, feed, reels & explore. The last slides are most important. It's how I've added 500K followers to my accounts in 4 months. Here's what you need to know:

Ranking Stories: The higher the probability that the story will be opened, replied to, and reacted to – the higher the ranking. They use signals to make these predictions: Your history of viewing, interacting, and messaging with that author.

Ranking Feed: The goal is to catch you up with the very best of IG since you opened the app last. For every post, they predict how likely you are to comment, like, share, tap on profile, and spend time viewing it. They accomplish this by making predictions – using signals.

Order of importance of Signals: - Your history of interactions - Information about the post and its activity - Information about the author Adam says predictions are imperfect, so user controls like favorites and following are important.

Ranking Reels: The goal of Reels is to entertain you, and they prioritize videos from accounts that you do not yet follow. They make a series of predictions about each reel, to assess how interesting it may be to you. Personal note: REELS are the game right now.

Instagram takes a look at what you interact with, other people that interact with the same content – and what else they seem to be interested in. Then, they go back into the same prediction pattern How likely you are to: - finish the reel - share the reel - go to audio of reel

The signals used for these predictions are similar to feed: What you tend to be interested in on Instagram, what you've watched in the past, information on the reel and its author, etc.

Adam also touched on shadow-banning, and debunked a popular myth: They do not suppress reach, in order to make an account pay for ads. He explains that their business interests are aligned with connecting people with the content that they are interested in.

Lastly, Adam gave advice on how to grow your audiences on Instagram. He says there are no silver bullets, but there are some things that seem to work: - Experiment - Check your Insights to see what is working - Collaborate - Original Content

Those last two points are INCREDIBLY important. Instagram is making a reel effort to distinguish between original content and aggregators. They want to greatly diminish the reach of aggregators, to reward the original source of content with the engagement.

By creating OC, I've been able to grow my personal IG 150K in 4 months (instagram.com/rpnickson), while spurring fast growth for @themetav3rse and @ElunaAI's IG pages. Low effort meme and aggregator pages that just rip off other people's content are coming to an end.

Collaborating (especially collaborative reels) with other pages of similar sizes and audiences is also a superpower right now. It is by far and away, the best growth tactic – especially when paired with high quality original content.

Hope you enjoyed this breakdown. I'll release a comprehensive guide into how to create content and grow on socials on my newsletter (rpn.biz) soon. Growing an audience is the ultimate leverage, and it's not a zero-sum game. There's room for all of us.