Instagram's CEO has recently dropped 17 different algorithm tips growth hacks and best practices to help you understand Instagram get more reach and grow faster on the platform in 2025 I've spent hours consuming his videos interviews and press releases directly from Instagram to compile this list of the most effective tips directly from the source to grow in 2025 and give you more clarity let's dive into it now number one instagram stories won't help you get new followers however they are the secret to growing your audience as fast as possible this might sound kind of intuitive but
it's because whilst they won't get you new people to follow you they are the best way to engage your existing audience so that they stick around and this decreases the amount of people who unfollow you meaning you grow much faster if you're currently gaining a couple thousand new followers a month but you're also losing a couple thousand you're not going to grow however if you start posting more stories build better relationship with your audience and all of a sudden only a few hundred people unfollow you each month all of a sudden you're growing 1,500 new
people per month now he didn't give out any specific numbers but he did go ahead and say that they have found creators who post two stories often see less unfollows than those who don't and we see this in the data creators that post the stories often see less unfollows and creators who don't so post stories make it consistent number two High produ prodution value content could actually be decreasing your reach in some situations let's have a listen to what he had to say now if you are doing branded content deals with premium or luxury Brands
and yeah it might make sense to try and create that really really polished look but if you are a musician or an athlete or a comedian honestly it might work against you it might make your content a lot less relatable so think about whether or not being polished is aligned with the story that you want to tell and the brand that you want to build and then decide based on that so think about your audience before focusing too heavily on improving your production value and think is it better to spend this time and money on
production or is it better to spend it on telling better stories coming up with better ideas and producing more content I always say that there's a certain Baseline that you want to get to when it comes to the production value and then beyond that you want to determin like Adam says depending on your Niche whether it's better to focus at energy into the content the production the ideas ETC number three post carousels instead of single image posts this comes from the new Instagram best practices feature which says carousels typically get better reach than single image
posts try adding text in the first slide to set context and keep people scrolling through the CEO of Instagram also talked about this in another clip saying that carousels perform better because it gives people more content to engage with and can and from that added engagement it then gets more reach it usually gets more watch time and it will perform better why carousels often get more reach than photos two main reasons one multiple pieces of media and going to mean more interactions with your Carousel post and more interactions is going to mean more reach on
average and two if someone sees your Carousel post but they don't swipe will often give that Carousel a second chance and automatically move to that second piece of media for the viewer so in future rather than posting a single image try group a few images together and where possible try to add text to provide context to people which should lead to more people engaging and spending more time on the content scrolling through it now I'll throw up an example on the screen from Jam Smith that got nearly 100,000 likes when really it's just a simple
photo dump of his year but he's added context by adding a little bit of text to each slide which makes you want to read and scroll through it and SP more time on it and engage with it and that's why it's performed so well number four hashtags are pointless this is what Adam had to say in an interview do hashtags improve like visibility and you said no I just like screenshotted that so anytime a Brand's like can we do the hashtag i' be like here's the man telling you no need so while some people might
debate that they still help a little bit which in all honestly I think they probably do help a little bit Instagram CEO is making it clear that they don't matter and aren't worth your time now for context Instagram used to use hashtags to categorize content so that they could better understand it and show it to the right people however in the past decade AI has evolved so much and they can fully understand your content by what you are seeing in the video and in the caption without the need for specific hashtags so they are a
lot less useful and whil they might have some use it's probably better to spend that time on your content than thinking about hashtags tip number five SS are the most important trigger in the algorithm even more important than saves here's what Adam said why do we prioritize send instead of saves well we actually do value both and ranking but we focus more on SS primarily because our whole hope is to inspire creativity that brings people together now Instagram want to bring people together and that's why the algorithm rewards us it definitely does prioritize relatable content
and funny content which people will likely send however I will add that sends aren't the only way to get rich they might be the biggest trigger in the algorithm but you can also create great educational content that people like and save and come back to later and you'll get really strong reach on it because people are engaging with it if people engage positively with your content in any way shape or form then it will get strong reach so whilst sends are important don't only focus on that format of content if it doesn't make sense for
you in your account number six is that watermarks will decrease your reach let's take another look at the video Simply create asks if you Watermark a real with your own logo will that affect its reach and the answer is no that's actually good to go what we try to do is not recommend reels with logos from other apps but if it's your own logo don't worry about it so third party editing apps are completely fine to use but the big watermarks that they may leave are not Adam also came out and clarified this by saying
if it's your own logo it's totally fine which seems weird that if you have a big logo throughout the whole video it'll get you shadowban but if you have a big logo that is your own logo it is totally fine I do get a little bit worried that Instagram's algorithm May sometimes fail to pick up the difference between the two and potentially could restrict if you put your own logo in it so if you do just make sure that you're still getting strong reach before you commit to it we do add logos for one of
our clients and they still see really strong reach and growth on the cont content it's in the top corner and it's clear that it's not an editing app so that's fine but probably something worth double cheing now tip number seven is to post soon after a viral post to make the most of your momentum and give the next video the best chance of going viral as well let's take another look at what the CEO had to say if you have a video that does really well don't feel like you have to post again right away
it certainly don't force it but in general in general it would be good to post relatively soon in the next day or two if you want to capitalize on that momentum because you got a lot of people who are now expressing interest in your content and they're more likely to see whatever you post next now this makes sense to me try posting another good video a day or two after something has taken off so what the first video is doing well and getting shown to people Instagram then have more content that they can recommend to
these people after they've watched it and then they can watch one or two or three or four good videos binge your stuff follow you uh and these other videos can take off this is what we find on any platform on Tik Tok YouTube Facebook anything if a video starts performing well on YouTube we on a similar video that is then going to get pushed and it can have a really really powerful effect the eighth tip that he had is less about the algorithm and more so about consuming more content within your Niche if you want
to come up with better ideas and by doing so you can then create better content that does perform better in the algorithm because it's simply better let's take a look at the video if you're having trouble coming up with new ideas my best advice is to consume more information you find interesting Rick ruin calls this Source number nine is how often should you post lers are ask me a lot how often they should post on Instagram and though there's no one perfect answer two things are true one is the more you post in general the
more reach you're going to get the other is if you commit to too much content creation you're going to burn out cu Creator burnout is a real thing so my advice is try to come up with a schedule that you can sustain over the long run and you can continue to enjoy because if you're enjoying making this content if you're enjoying being creative the content is going to be better for it now his answer is about as vague as it gets however I often give the same advice when I'm speaking generically because it requires a
lot of nuance you should post as often as you can consistently post with good content some content is very simple and easy to make so that you can get a good post every single day with ease and in that situation I would recommend posting every single day other content is extremely hard to make it might take weeks of planning and so you might only be able to post twice a month figure out how often you can consistently post good stuff and stick to it but don't get this the wrong way around if your content takes
a long time to make don't necessarily try and post every day and just water down the content equally if your posts are really simple to make don't be lazy and just post once or twice a week if it's very easy which is why this requires a bit of nuance to sort of understand how often you should be posting now if you want a more direct answer inside the Instagram best practices section they said that accounts set Post 10 times per month on average which is roughly 2 to three times a week is what performs best
and I think that is a good starting point for people to go with 2 to three times a week if they don't know how often to post and then can adjust from there if it's way too much time they can drop it down if it's easy they can bump it up now the 10th tip is to have an engaging second slide on your carousels to increase your reach this is because if someone sees your post the first time and they don't swipe through it Instagram will show it to someone a second time but this time
they will open the post on your second slide this thing gives you double the chances of someone engaging with your post by making sure the second slide is good and so this can be the case whether you're creating an educational Carousel your first two slides can both sort of be introductory with a strong hook on it or it can be used in posting a series of photos making sure the first two are both really good photos that grab attention so that if the first one gets shown to someone and they don't engage with it which
could be because of the content itself or it could be just cuz they were busy and distracted and scrolling when it gets shown a second time you've got a good chance that they engage as well number 11 the first 3 seconds are super important to the performance of your video let's have a look the first 3 seconds of a reel are super important now we call this the hook now that doesn't necessarily mean you need to bait the user or have a cliffhanger but you do need to get the users's attention because as they're scrolling
through feed you have a brief moment where you might actually get them invested in hearing what else you have to say a couple things I recommend one use text when possible because a lot of times people actually have the sound off to start and two set expectations let people know what you're going to talk about so they know if they are interested and viewing a bit further now I love his advice of using text and setting expectations it's a great way to hook people in now recently I was doing some research and found out that
this 3 second number that I've thrown around that Adam's talked about is a lot more scientific than people may think I was diving into the data of one of my clients and I mapped out where people were leaving his videos on Tik Tok and how that correlated to the total views of the video I found that on average after one second 85 to 90% of people were still watching meaning regardless of the video 10 to 15% of people had already left in the first second for whatever reason and that didn't matter if the video performed
really well or really badly pretty much all the videos were the same I also noticed that after 3 seconds majority of the videos had 60 to 65% of people still watching again some of these videos had 50,000 views whilst others had 500 they all had similar retention at the 3 second point and so they were all pretty much the same what I then noticed is how people react after those initial 3 seconds determines the performance of the video the best performing video which has got over 50,000 views had a retention rate of 60% after those
6 seconds meaning 65% of people saw the first 3 seconds and then only 5% of people dropped off in the next 2 seconds which is really strong for that many people to stay watching and therefore the video performed really well one of the videos that had sort of 14,000 views had a retention rate of 57% at 5 seconds and 63% at 3 seconds so only 6% of people dropped off in the next 2 seconds and so these two videos both had a small drop off and performed really well whereas all of the videos with under
1,000 views all showed the same Trend a double digit drop off and retention between the 3D and 5 Seconds the videos that only got 500 views had a retention similar of around 60% after 3 seconds but after 5 Seconds it was in the 40 something per like 48 49 and so that had a massive drop off in the third fourth and 5ifth second this goes to show that most people will give your video 3 seconds and then whether they choose to stay or go after that determines how well the video will perform so if after
Summer's watch 3 seconds they stick around the video performs well if they leave it performs badly and that's pretty exact from the content we looked at anyway that's a bit of a tangent let's get on to tip number 12 which is to use audio on your content to increase the reach and growth why should you use audio when you post reals or even photos and carousels on Instagram I talk about this a lot so I figured I would quickly explain why it helps with engagement the first is the big one which is just makes your
content more engaging when it's more immersive when audio is on and about half the time people have audio turned on when they use Instagram you're more likely to get get someone's attention and that'll help in terms of getting more likes comments and therefore more reach the second is for Real specifically you get to be on the audio page and a lot of people go to audio pages to look for inspiration and then they might see your real which might also help again with reach just a way to get your content in front of more people
more quickly simply to make your post more engaging allowing your carousels to show up in the real section and give you the ability to show up on the audio tag for the video for additional reach now tip number 13 right after telling you to use sound is that 50% of content is consumed without sound I don't have a stat to share but last I checked it's not about people it's about time so like what percentage of video Impressions have sound on or off and I think it was like it was roughly half so on the
flip side of things whilst it's important to use sound Adam also stresses you also need to make sure your content is engaging to people who don't have their audio on by using captions sub titles good imagery which is also something that I've constantly talking about lots of people consume content without sound lots of people consume content with sound make sure it is equally engaging to both groups of people if you want to maximize the performance of it tip number 14 and we're getting towards the end of these stick around cuz there's a few good ones
left real should be 30 to 90 seconds long for optimal reach now this comes from the new best practices feature that Instagram rolled out where they say reels that are 30 to 90 seconds long will get better engagement and are shown to more people reels over 90 seconds won't be recommended to new audiences so as a rule of thumb follow those rough times you can go shorter than that if you want to reach a lot of people you can create something that's 10 or 15 seconds long although they're saying in general it should be 30
to 90 and you can also still post content over 90 seconds long but only post that with the goal of nurturing people rather than reaching people so for example one of our clients is posting YouTube videos every week um and we actually will post them on his Instagram and these are 5 to 10 minutes long we know they're not going to reach new people but they actually get really strong views with existing followers and help really nurture them and then the people who have watched all of that extra content might then see a 30-second re
popup that they engage with more because the relationship is stronger and then those reals perform better being pushed out to new people so it can will help tip number 15 is another one out of the best practices and that is simply to reply to comments within a couple days at the most to keep the conversation going increase engagement and grow the reach of your content don't wait days get it done as soon as you can now tip number 16 is be the first to cover current events Instagram have said try creating content about events as
soon as they happen so that you can share your point of view in the moment which is again something I've been saying for years and I believe is one of the easiest ways to guarantee good reach and growth on social media I'm going to make a whole video on this you can see me do this with some of my YouTube videos about different algorithm updates platform changes verification updates you can see some of my clients doing this one of my clients Shane gives his thoughts and opinion on upcoming boxing fights or another client that I've
worked with might give updates around what's happening with interest rates or what's happening in the media related to the niche and these contents and these videos always perform really really well even if they're super simple to make I'm going to make a full video breaking down exactly how to do this because it's something that I think is really important really underutilized and an effective way to easily grow your audience so stay tuned for that number 17 and the final tip of this video is again from the best practices where Instagram have said make sure the
video quality is at least 720p and 30 frames per second now essentially just don't post lowquality content that people don't want to watch not only does it impact the algorithm directly when they see a lowquality video and they likely rank it down but it also impacts how people react when they see it which usually causes them to spend less time on your content and the algorithm down ranks it even more so that's 17 tips direct from Instagram and their CEO to help you crush it in 2025 if you want to watch another video to help
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