Instagram have just rolled out a bunch of new updates to how the algorithm Works how the platform works and a few new features so let's break down all the updates my thoughts and how you can leverage them to grow your audience and business on Instagram first big update is Instagram RS can now be up to 3 minutes long compared to in the past when they could only be 90 seconds at the most now funnily enough YouTube rolled out this change late last year as well and it seems both of the platforms are looking to capture
the market for medium length content that is 1 to 3 minutes long and used to be consumed on Tik Tok prior to the ban now at the time of filming Tik Tok is back but it could be gone again either way both platforms are coming after this type of content now personally I think this is great and it gives you the ability to publish content that's longer with more nuance and better nurtures your audience now previously Instagram stated within their best practices feature that content longer than 90 seconds will not be pushed to non-followers it
will only been shown to your existing audience however Adam Missouri publicly commented on this post about the update saying now having reals extended to 3 minutes means any content up to 3 minutes and length is eligible to be promoted to non-followers starting today you can upload reels to Instagram up to 3 minutes long now historically it's only been 90 seconds and that's because we' wanted to focus Instagram on short form video not on long form video but we've heard a lot of feedback from a lot of you creators out there that 90 seconds is just
too short so we're hoping that upping that limit it up to 3 minutes will help you tell the stories that you really want to tell which I think is a great update uh that not only you can post longer content but longer content can be recommended to non-followers too now recently I've actually been testing posting longer content that's 2 to 8 minutes long across all platforms Instagram Tik Tok LinkedIn Facebook YouTube for one of our clients and seeing really good reach and engagement and growth from it so test out some longer content and see how
it goes now the second big update is Instagram came out and see what their priorities and focuses are for 2025 creativity and connection now the first part of this is improving their creative tools including adding more AI tools to content creation so creators can make more content of which they are more proud of now Instagram is really founded on the idea of allowing anybody to share something creative that they were proud to share and so we want to double down on that by making sure that our creative tools are Best in Class across the board
which they are not right now by embracing new technologies like AI to allow more creators to create more content that they're proud of by trying to reward creative content more by focusing ranking on things like originality which I think is a good thing all around assuming the content is good which I think is a fear assumption as bad content will get pushed out of the algorithm fast now the second part of this is that they will be focusing on originality when it comes to ranking content within their algorithms promoting original creators more than people who
are reposting or using other people's content which means if you are going to use AI in your content you can't be lazy and use the same sort of stuff as everyone else but we don't just want to be a place where people who are creative share and other people passively consume we want people to connect over the things that they discover on Instagram and so in terms of connecting with friends a few more things that we're going to focus on doubling down on messaging which by the way is the primary way people share on Instagram
today even though a lot of people don't think of us that way we're also going to look for more ways to make recommendations in consuming content more interactive and more social and we're going to be exploring some new ways to connect with your friends on Instagram so a lot more to come around creativity and connecting with friends now personally I always like it when they're going to push original content it would just be interesting to see how this actually pans out as it could be tricky at times to test and they've been saying this for
a while now the third part of this is I'll be rolling out updates to help people connect with their friends more as messaging is actually the number one place that people share content on Instagram not reals or stories or feed posts messaging so they want to make content recommendations and consumptions more social now actually just before filming this today I did see that Instagram have also dropped a brand new editing app called edits which is specifically for editing short form videos on mobile today we're announcing edits a brand new app for making videos on your
phone now there's a lot going on in the world right now and no matter what happens we think it's our job to create the most compelling creative tools for those of you who make videos for not just Instagram but for platforms out there as we can this will have a tab for inspiration a tab for your own ideas a higher quality camera the ability to share drafts with other creators and all the typical video editing tools and Powerful analytics of how the real is performing now honestly this seems very very convenient if not suspicious timing
to announce a dedicated video app the same day that cap cut and Tik Tok were shut down in the US which as mentioned previously have since been reinstated what I do love about this is the improved insights I'm very much looking forward to seeing what those are when the app launches in February because better insights can always allow you to make better content now before we do get into the final update of this video I've gone ahead and put together an Instagram course showing you how to get your first or next 10,000 followers on the
platform which you can get entirely free in the link in my description so if you want to go check that out hopefully that helps now the third and final big update is Instagram's new feed of reals liked by your friends which somewhat goes along with the previous update of making content consumption more social now you might have seen this new prompt pop up when you're scrolling reals recently which takes you to a new feed of reals liked by people that you follow this feature falls into the previously mentioned updates of making more social recommendations and
helping people connect according to Instagram CEO Adam Missouri we're going to bring your friends to the reals tab on Instagram we want Instagram not to be just a place where creatives share their creativity but one where people connect over that creativity with friends with shared interests and so what we're going to do is we're going to add some friends to the reals tab so when you go to the reals tab you'll see a few friends in the top right and if you tap on that pill you end up with a dedicated feed of reals that
your friends have liked and you can see which friends have actually liked those reals and if you tap on them you can start a conversation with them maybe you have a shared interest you both think the commedian is super funny or the architecture is really interesting we're doing this because we want Instagram to be not just a lean back experience but a participatory one a social one one where you actually explore your interests with your friends now personally I don't really like this feature and my guess is this will make people engage with content a
lot less because they won't want their mates seeing the content they like especially if the content is more Niche or not as socially acceptable maybe memes that are a little bit on the edge or certain content about how they feel or something they might not want other people seeing that unless it's really safe and mainstream content now when I look through the comments of this post most people in the comments are saying similar things that they will like less content because they don't want their friends and family seeing it now what this could do to
content is mean people like photos a lot less and that means shears and saves and watch time are just going to become become more and more of an indicator as to how well someone likes a piece of content because someone could really really like a post but the only reason they don't technically like it is because they don't want other people seeing that they've liked it however someone saving the post or watching the whole post is still going to be anonymous or sending it to a friend one to one is not going to be seen
by the rest of the world and so these will probably be better indicators as to how well a piece of content is performing which has somewhat already been the case but will probably only improve now I personally think if they wanted content consumption to be more social and do a feature like this they should have created a new form of Engagement that goes into this feed so people can continue to like content as it is but still get the effect of more social consumption I don't know what this feature could be called or how it
is places like Tik Tok have got reposts although Instagram you can technically repost the stories but I feel like they could have made a different feature that only goes into this feed even something like supporting the content or I'm not sure on the technical word but a different form of Engagement now let me know what you think of these updates in the comments do you like them do you hate them how do you think they could be improved and I'll see you next time
