Instagram's new algorithm updates will majorly help small creators
Hello, and welcome to Talk Social to Me. Today, Ben and I discuss all the latest updates from Instagram, including all the reels made by Mosseri recently. And guess what? He's clapping back a bit. We gave our top tips on what you should be doing to grow on Instagram.
Mackenzie:Plus, there is a super exciting update at the end of this episode that you'll want to stick around for. We really hope you enjoy listening to this episode. Let's get stuck in. Hello, Ben. How are you today?
Ben:I'm better now. Mackenzie, how are you doing?
Mackenzie:Not too bad. The sun's shining and that's what I just want all the time.
Ben:Yeah. No. I'm I'm there with you too. Toronto's got the sun out. So as soon as this call is over, I'll be taking my laptop to my balcony and consuming some
Mackenzie:some memories. Toronto actually has sun today.
Ben:It is crazy. I'll take it. It's it's somewhat warm here, and I'm all here for it. Okay. I'm not gonna it's only 15 degrees, so that's not crazy, but I'll take it.
Mackenzie:Well, we're going to do a pretty interesting episode. Well, between us, it's interesting about all the new Instagram updates and everything that they've been talking about with algorithm updates. And before we do that, do you have a flex tip? Flex tip.
Ben:There it is. Missed that that hard hitter. I think
Mackenzie:you think you know.
Ben:Honestly, I I think that Drake or Kendrick needs you for the next beat
Mackenzie:I agree.
Ben:For the next diss track. But, so for the the tip for this week is very much in line with what we're gonna be talking about from the messages from Messeri. And he did mention this tip, but I don't think we'll go too deep into it today, so I wanted to share it here. It's basically just Instagram is like a toolbox with a ton of different tools in there, and then a lot of people get mad when, say, their specific situation doesn't fit for a hammer. Let's say a hammer is reels, and they're mad that the hammer doesn't work for them.
Ben:Yep. But there are 8 other tools that work fantastic for them, and they spend all their time focusing on the fact that the hammer doesn't work for them. Use the tools that work for you. Turn this into a tool, and don't let negativity consume you because we have an opportunity for free attention. So double down on what works for you, and you're gonna win so much more.
Ben:I I why I chose this as the flick tip for this week is because we made a video on our YouTube channel talking about this, about the recent changes to the algorithm. And a little teaser, it's basically everything that people ask for and people are still complaining. It's like, oh my lord. So if you just are the few people that decide, you know what? I'm gonna see silver linings here.
Ben:Life becomes a lot easier and a lot more fun, and you're gonna attract more positive people and more opportunities. So that's my tip. Find the things that work for you. Make them work for you, and stop stressing over the things that don't because they don't. Move on.
Mackenzie:Correct. And to go into that, which will easily, very well easily go into the new changes that's been happening, Create original content.
Ben:Yes.
Mackenzie:That's what Instagram wants, and that's what all the changes for the algorithm is talking about. So what we're talking about today and all the new changes, Instagram's new algorithm update prioritizes. What is that? Original content.
Ben:That's such a massive change. So I got started in Instagram early days when theme pages were a massive thing, and it was the Wild West. Like, we were stealing people's content left, right, and center. Yeah. Like, it was it was absolutely insane, and it was it was fine.
Ben:And I love this now that those people just randomly stealing our people's content won't be rewarded. And so I'll let you handle specifics unless you want me to handle that.
Mackenzie:Yeah. I'll just do the main highlights. So essentially, the head of Instagram out of obviously, our boy Adam, he took to reels earlier this week to announce a major, and I mean major update to the Instagram algorithm, and it's how it's going to prioritize original content. So basically the 4 key things is that they're going to be rewarding original content, labeling reposts, removing aggregator accounts, and also doing higher reach for smaller creators. So do you wanna dive into some of those?
Ben:Yeah. So to explain what an aggregator is and there's basically a theme page. If if you go to someone's page, it's not, like, public facing in terms of there's not a person behind it. They just take other people's content around a specific theme or a niche or whatever and they post it. Those people that are doing that, just straight up taking other people's content and not changing it in a material way, they're gonna be labeled as aggregators.
Ben:And why that sucks for them is because once you get deemed an aggregator, which I believe it's 10 posts over the last 30 days that weren't your own Yep. Then they stop showing your content, all of it, across recommendations on Instagram. So that's how you find how new people find you. So, basically, once you get labeled that, your opportunity for growth diminish tremendously.
Mackenzie:And they're also demonetizing you. Correct?
Ben:So I don't know. I I don't know. That's in in particular. That probably makes sense if they're it'd be hard to monetize if you're not being shown to new people.
Mackenzie:Yeah. I believe that they're now deincentivizing, obviously. So they'll be removing the account and content from being recommended. And then in the coming months, accounts that repeatedly 10 or more times in the last 30 days post content from other users that they didn't create or enhance in a material way will not be shown in surfaces where we recommend content. So I know that they were talking about demonetizing them, so if the counts always already, like, the reels get monetized, they'll stop or they stop monetizing them.
Ben:That's massive because of everything across the board. Like, that was such a massive aspect of Instagram and a hack to grow, which is to take high performing content. So now I think the important question to answer is if you run one of those pages or if you've ever post repost to people's content, like, what does materially different look like? It could look like a reaction, so maybe you're in the video, it could be changing, like, cropping the video around, adjusting the color grading, adding captions, like, things of that nature. It has to be a materially different piece of content to not be flagged by the algorithm as an aggregated or a reposted piece of content.
Ben:So that's that's huge. I think that's it should be freedom for people that are creating content because now you're gonna be rewarded. And the other piece that I wanted to really underline is that it seems like their algorithm is gonna go a lot more TikTok route. So every post that you make has an opportunity to go viral because they're going to look at the post itself, not your audience. So and what I mean by that is that they're gonna scan through what you talked about and try to smash that with people that want that content even if they aren't currently following you.
Ben:And that's the problem with how it previously functioned is that say you talked about something that's slightly off topic of what you normally cover, it's now gonna only be shown to people that follow you. If they didn't follow you for that reason, they're way less likely to engage with it. Instagram then thinks this is a bad post and doesn't push it further, when it could have been an amazing viral piece of content if it had been given the opportunity to people that actually wanted it, much like TikTok does all the time. So it seems like that's coming few years late, but I'm very happy to see it coming to to IG.
Mackenzie:Absolutely. And the other thing is is the part where he is talking about labeling repost. I think that is something that a lot of people don't even know was an option, like reposting content. And now they're going through all of the post, basically adding a label to reposted content and linking it back to the original post. So there will be something at the bottom of each Instagram post saying like, click here for the original piece of content.
Mackenzie:You click there, and it takes you right back to that original creator.
Ben:Yeah. So when you were reposting people's content, the polite thing to do was tag them and give them credit. A lot of aggregators didn't. But now it's gonna happen automatically. So Instagram will flag that and then put this in there and you can from what I read, I think you can turn that off if both parties want to, but it should happen automatically.
Ben:And then that way, you get credit for the content if it is being used by someone else who's reposted it, which is awesome because that was one of the major problems. And this has happened a lot with photographers, and they were really pissed because it's their whole livelihood. And so people were taking their content for their theme pages and then not even tagging them when that's literally their whole job. So this is a step in the right direction, in my opinion.
Mackenzie:Absolutely. I'm curious what's gonna happen with meme accounts. Like, will meme accounts because obviously, they always steal other people's content all the time. I'm curious if this will be a thing that they do for meme accounts as well.
Ben:So he mentioned that in particular. Alright. Sorry. He didn't mention it. I saw the creator's account reply in comments, and they basically still said they're they're absolutely still going to support and reward meme pages.
Ben:But with this whole filtration system, I could see see it becoming pretty messy because it's none of it's, like, truly original content. Like, how do you source where a meme originally started? And do they and do they get all of the credit? I I I see an opportunity for when it's just getting sorted out for people gamifying this. I think this kind of will take us back to earlier IG days where there was more growth hacking.
Ben:Yeah. And I I I think there's gonna be a lot of tests done in terms of how much do they need to change it to become new content. Like, I think that I think that's what the game will be like. Is adding my handle to it now make it new content? Like, it'll be very interesting to see how Instagram's filtration system or tagging system works for this, but they still say they're absolutely gonna support meme pages.
Mackenzie:Well, it's interesting because there's that one, obviously, that one trendy thing to do where you have the green screen and you let somebody else's video play behind you, and you don't comment on it. You just do, like, those looks looks to camera all the time.
Ben:Ridiculous.
Mackenzie:And I feel like you're not adding anything to it. So will those still get flagged, or those going to be fine? Is that original content?
Ben:So that's where it gets really messy because I I think that would be deemed original content. Okay. Because there are applications where you could actually make it funny by simply doing that. 99% of people don't. But, like, let's say if you were pointing out something that people didn't notice that was really comedic or whatever in the background, like, that made it materially different, materially funny.
Ben:But I think we're at the frontier of defining what these things mean. And I think that the definition will be constructed based on user feedback and how mad people get
Mackenzie:Yeah.
Ben:And how Instagram decides to to make this all function. So a lot of questions yet to be answered. These headlines read very well, but the tech behind them and how effective it really is Yeah. Remains to be seen. Yeah.
Mackenzie:Yeah. So I'm going through Adam Osteria's his his comments after he posted. He does. Just they're so wildly different. Like, every some people are like, like, I love this, this is amazing.
Mackenzie:And then there's this one comment where this guy says, as a reposting owner, I feel extremely disappointed. We have helped over the years for god. He needs help with writing. We have helped over the years thousands of small, medium, and big creators to reach bigger than audiences than they have. There's hundreds of thousands of reposting pages on Instagram.
Mackenzie:Easily, you're about to discourage the uses of the platform of 1 third of your users?
Ben:See, but the thing is those reposting pages, if you run a a posting page like that, usually they own, like, 10. Yeah. So so it's not a really indication of that's, like, true authentic creation. And I also don't think that my biggest issue with Instagram is how BS the content is there. If you go, it's basically like, I I started a tweet that I almost posted yesterday where I was like, Instagram is basically say nothing and make it look pretty.
Mackenzie:Yeah.
Ben:Like, literally, the value even the value content, like, people get rewarded for making it sound like they're giving you information. They say absolutely nothing because it gets rewarded.
Mackenzie:It's like that Dua Lipa meme. Go on, girl. Give us nothing.
Ben:It's it's actually like that. If you pay attention, like, that stuff, as long as it's pretty, it works on Instagram. And so I'm hoping that this push for creative content will push those boundaries. And I do think there's kind of a renaissance going on in terms of content and what people want. I think we're so disconnected from each other that people want connection through the medium of their phone.
Ben:Yeah. And that allows for more than just pure dopamine crackhead edits in your face. So I think this will be good. Yes. Obviously, any change, someone's not going to win, but I think at large for the ecosystem of the creator economy, I think it's a plus.
Ben:And also for the consumer too. There's gonna be a little bit of actually, I think the consumer completely wins. The only person the only people that lose is potentially the aggregators.
Mackenzie:Yeah. And a lot of the aggregators, they've only gotten popular because they're reposting other people's content. They're not posting any of their own original content. So they're mad because they're losing out on being able to repost other people's shit that they didn't even create.
Ben:They're mad that social media is somewhat working like traditional media literally always has. Like, when you play and you're a radio station and you play someone's song, you owe that song royalties, like, the the studio, the person behind it, whatever. So they get some credit for their work. So now, basically, there's something like that coming over to Instagram and they're mad about that. Yeah.
Ben:Well, buddy, change with the times, man.
Mackenzie:Well, and somebody who commented, this is another very ill thought out change that will harm those seeking to reshare news and information. And he actually commented, Adam did, and he said this is about exact copying, not commentary. If you make the content your own, it won't be different, and if you do that, then they're not going to, like, demonetize you or, like, de incentivize you.
Ben:Yeah. Well, news content's already banned in my country, so that doesn't impact me all that much.
Mackenzie:Yeah. You can't even log on and see news. You're not allowed.
Ben:Man, Canada is is crazy. Yeah. So I can't
Mackenzie:I keep forgetting that.
Ben:Yeah. People send me stuff all the time that from America or other countries, and it will literally just say post not available. It's like when you've been blocked by someone. So I can't even see these I think they deem news. It's getting crazy over here.
Mackenzie:You need to leave soon.
Ben:I'm I've been trying. Then this is how crazy it is. They're now trying to impose a exit tax of $25,000 for anybody who wants to leave the country.
Mackenzie:What?
Ben:That's how messed up it is here.
Mackenzie:Yeah. $25,000?
Ben:Yes. Because the the current structure of how the Canadian system is built is that if you leave and you relinquish citizenship, you're no longer on the hook to paying taxes. So we've we've talked to this person where if you leave the states, you're still liable to pay some expenses there. If you leave and and cut ties with Canada, you owe them nothing anymore. And so so many people are leaving that they're like, oh, dang.
Ben:This is a lot of tax revenue, especially because who leaves during things like this? The people that actually generate money
Mackenzie:for the economy. Yeah. Yeah.
Ben:Yeah. Yeah. Right? So I love it here. It's awesome.
Mackenzie:Oof. Okay. Well, good to know.
Ben:Don't come visit Canada. Beautiful country. Wouldn't live here.
Mackenzie:Yeah. Jesus. Okay. So, basically, Adam posted 3 separate reels, basically highlighting each of the information on the changes that are coming. So the first one, obviously, is about reposted content and we were kind of reading some of the comments under that.
Mackenzie:The second one was about helping smaller creators because you said, historically, smaller creators haven't gotten their fair share of reach on Instagram and they wanna change that, so so they're making some changes to how they rank recommendations to give smaller creators a better chance of breaking through. We are rolling this out slowly, but hope smaller creators start to see the benefits over this next several
Ben:months. Yeah. And it's it's a thing, man. I've been telling people whenever they complain about things that maybe they should just start a new account, and people always get so mad at me for that, but I did it for myself. So because I used to use my original account as a test for when I had, basically, a primarily focused Instagram marketing agency.
Ben:And so I would do a bunch of tests on my own account to make sure I it worked or didn't kill my account before it did it on the clients. Yeah. And so my health score on my primary account with over 10,000 real followers is horrible. So I get, like, no traffic because of all the things that I did because that was all tracked.
Mackenzie:Yeah. Yeah.
Ben:They didn't have the tools to penalize me back then, but they were able to monitor the behavior and then now penalize me now. And so my account was over 10,000 followers. The average view on a reel is, like, between 802,000. And on a brand new page that I literally made, like, a week or 2 ago, the average views is, like, over a 1,000, and I have 22 followers. What?
Ben:I've never promoted it on my other account. I've never done any of those things. I've simply posted organic reels with no promotion whatsoever, and I have some posts. This one has 1400, 1300, 1200, and this is on a page with 22 followers that was started a week ago.
Mackenzie:Okay. Maybe I'm gonna do that. Just to kind of maybe I'll do a test blog on this and figure out what works and what doesn't.
Ben:Yeah. Or you can even use my account if you don't wanna make a new one. I can talk about it that way too. Or go ahead and start one. Like, I think that people are shocked by because a lot of people did a lot of shady things, or it wasn't shady at the time, but now it is considered shady by Instagram, and they have the tools to to know who did these things.
Ben:And so a lot of people aren't aware that your account has a health score. And so that's why you can do certain things on an older account that you can't on a newer account because they don't know if it's a bot yet. Right? So to get an action block on an established account, you could maybe unfollow, like, a 100 people in a row, and it'd be no problem. But on a new account, that could be, like, 20.
Mackenzie:Yeah.
Ben:So it all depends on your health score for the account, and a lot of people have done things that they maybe shouldn't have, given apps access to their account that they shouldn't have.
Mackenzie:Yep.
Ben:And so that's why people are a little concerned. Full disclaimer though, Flick is completely safe and approved. Because I know a lot of people are always like, is this safe? This is 100% safe.
Mackenzie:It's absolutely safe.
Ben:Approved by Instagram, Facebook, Meta. You're good to go. That's not what this is, but a lot of people use things that aren't or weren't, and they're paying for it now.
Mackenzie:Yeah. Called fake followers.
Ben:So many of that. Yeah. And I used to experiment with all this stuff because of the agency that I ran. And so my health score on that account is just absolute trash. And I honestly think that I'll get over 10 k on this new page within a few months.
Mackenzie:Yeah.
Ben:Yeah. And then they'll all be new fresh people that are actually active on Instagram. That's another problem if your account is very old. Hopefully this new change will help to counteract this a little bit, but a lot of people just stop using Instagram, or don't use it as much, or their interests change. So you can actually be penalized a little bit for having an old established audience because how it previously worked is if your audience wasn't there to be shown, you didn't get the possible positive feedback.
Ben:So now it's, this algorithm change should help with that a little bit at least.
Mackenzie:Yeah. Absolutely. And it's something kind of what Adam was saying recently on that reel is all these people in the comments are mad about the fact that they're going to be supporting small creators and like boosting their content more. And people are like, well, why don't you just show our content to our followers? Like, obviously our followers want to see it or they wouldn't have followed us.
Mackenzie:Or dude, you've completely ruined this app. I'm just kind of reading through some of the comments. And he, and I know some it's something that we both really enjoyed, he kind of did like a clap back a bit, which is like, you say you want this, and yet the like, if we just showed you, made the algorithm or the chronological feed sticky, you wouldn't be on the app that much, and you wouldn't be selling your stuff anymore. Like nobody would be like you would be seeing maybe 20 people's content, and like, scrolling for a little bit and then be like, oh, this is boring. Let me let me get off of this.
Ben:Yeah. I love the clap back. I think it was overdue. I think society at large is kinda coming back to somewhat sanity, and they're clapping back at all this nonsense of people just that that love to complain. And the true business lesson here that is very, very important if you're on a business or brand, listen to this and remember this.
Ben:Listen to what people do, not what they say. Like, they show you what they want with their time, their attention, and their money, their resources. They can say anything. Oftentimes, they have no clue what they actually want, and they just like to hear themselves complain. Like, people love that.
Ben:People so many people are now addicted to complaining and the feelings they get when they do that. Yeah. So you shouldn't even take in a lot of the comments, especially if they're super extreme on either end of the spectrum. I wouldn't even put that into your realm of thought for future decisions.
Mackenzie:And the thing is is I I do every once in a while, I will change my feed from the algorithm feed versus the chronological feed. And most of the people I follow that are friends of mine, they hardly ever post. I think the last time my friends posted was maybe a year ago because they just don't give a shit. And the only things I really want to see are stories because I hardly ever scroll through the feed anymore.
Ben:True.
Mackenzie:So obviously the chronological feed doesn't have stories at the top, but I do understand what he's saying. They're feeding us information, or they're feeding us posts that they feel like we want to see because we're engaging with those certain posts, And so nobody's going to be on it long enough and see your content if it was chronological feed because they don't care.
Ben:They don't care. There's not enough content. There's a massive shortage of of creators and a surplus of consumers.
Mackenzie:Yes.
Ben:And so that's why it's not too late to start at all. There are people that spend every waking moment on these apps and not that many people creating content. It seems like that because you constantly can see more content, but in terms of just sheer numbers, there are way more consumers than there are creators. So, yeah, it's it's I think these are all net positive changes for the creator ecosystem, but it'll I do think there'll be a transitionary period of of how smooth can this go.
Mackenzie:Yeah. Absolutely. So I'm thinking the 4 key takeaways from all of this is obviously 1, focus on original content. Create your own content that's completely unique to you and your niche because you're going to get a lot more people through the door, especially with this change. The second one is don't worry about reposts because obviously Instagram will now be replacing reposts with the original content and labeling them back to the original creator, which is something that they should have been doing from the very beginning, if you ask me.
Mackenzie:And then follow community guidelines because if you don't, you're gonna be fucked and you're gonna get your content removed.
Ben:Yeah. And And your health score will be And
Mackenzie:your health score, like, exactly like what you said. Your health score is so important on Instagram, and you're not going to get that reach that you want or even see new followers come through the door if you have a really bad health score.
Ben:Yeah. I can't I can't exaggerate how much this stuff matters. And when I was really dedicated to Instagram, the second that this stuff started being catchable, which is probably 2019, 2018, there were massive creators that use these tools that their whole business got wiped out completely from trying to try, like, to jump start. And I had, like, people in my DMs, and I was, like, a 20 3 year old kid, and these were, like, grown adults, like, sobbing in my DMs. I'm like, because I gave them the that I knew because I had run it on my own accounts.
Ben:I had run it on clients' accounts. I had seen I had run the data. I had seen it. And so I was like, if I were you, I would start a new account, and I'd start it right now. And these guys were like these guys would mostly dudes would I would start a new account and I'd start it right now.
Ben:And these guys were like these guys would mostly dudes, would literally cry. And I was like, so this stuff does matter. The other thing that I would say to add on to your awesome list of takeaways would be to change how you approach creating content at large. We already made the point of people don't know what they want, so experiment with content. Because every content that you create is now gonna have a chance.
Ben:A lot of people they didn't want to experiment because they're like I wanna put all this time and effort into coming up with a unique concept that I don't know if it's going to work. But those usually the people that have the conviction to do that are the ones that build the super unique brands, that have very strong brand loyalty, and now is an opportunity for us to also go viral or get traffic. Definitely be more creative. Definitely take more chances and risks because I do think that those that do will win in the long run.
Mackenzie:Absolutely. Love it. Well, do you have any other things that you wanna say about these changes? Because I think we kind of dove pretty deep into them, but I feel like people are still going to be freaking out about it and wondering if it's going to massively affect their Instagram.
Ben:Yeah. Most definitely. I think it's a good idea to remain informed in in on how everything works because if you understand how our platform works, you understand what they care about, and you can do that to win. So what I would say to you is to go over to our YouTube channel because I did a full video walking through the key points that we discussed with the direct wording from Instagram, word for word, walking through that. And then I also we just released a video today with some of the older messages that he's given from this year that you may have missed because he's dropped a lot this year, in terms of advice, things he would do, strategy for going on the platform.
Ben:So our 2 most recent videos, you're gonna see Museri's face. I recommend watching both of those to answer any and all questions. And if you do have anything, even after watching that, leave a comment and we'll do our best to get back to you as soon as we can.
Mackenzie:Yeah. Ben really highlights everything that you need to know about it and they're incredible videos. So if you're really freaking out about it, just go watch our YouTube, and he'll calm you down. I promise.
Ben:Yeah. I promise. It's not it's not as scary as it sounds. Everything's gonna be just fine. It'll be all good.
Mackenzie:So this week, we're gonna be doing a flick feature and the flick feature, I believe we've highlighted her before, but she is doing something incredibly unique and epic this year. We're going to be highlighting your social team. And this September, she is hosting something called the Realies, and it's going to be an online event, but it's also going to be an in person event in Atlanta. And basically, what it is is you can enter and submit your reels, and there will be a jury. And I will I have to highlight the fact that I will be on the jury.
Ben:That's badass. You got it.
Mackenzie:And basically, we're going to kind of be judging and handing out some awards and doing some really great networking at the ceremony, and we will just be giving out 31 trophies. So submit your reels, I will put all the information in the show notes, exactly like what you need for the reels and how you'll win, all that kind of thing. And, yeah, you should submit. It's going to be a great event, and, yeah, that's all I got.
Ben:That's awesome. Yeah. Definitely check that out. I love when online things become real world things, and so definitely take advantage of these. It'd be pretty cool to say you want a a really or is that what it's called?
Mackenzie:Yeah. A really.
Ben:Okay. So, yeah, it'd be pretty cool to say that. And if you yeah. That's that's badass. I wish I could say that.
Mackenzie:Yeah. Some of the categories that people are curious. So, obviously, there's the best POV, best DIY, then there's some other fun ones, like the best meme reel, most embarrassing reel, worst reel ever. So there's some pretty fun ones in there. So be sure to submit.
Mackenzie:I will have all the information in the show notes about the last stage to submit, all that kind of stuff.
Ben:Sweet. That's so fun. I love that we're at this place in social media where it's very much becoming, like, real. Yeah. Yeah.
Mackenzie:Real. Real. Real. Well, thank you so much. If you like this episode, please give it a 5 star review because obviously that's how more people listen to us.
Mackenzie:You can also follow us over on all of our social media channels. We are at flick.social on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and I think on x we are flick_social because you can't do the dot. Ben, do you have anything else to sign us off?
Ben:Yeah. So what I all I would say is if you're still here, and you have someone else who's confused about this whole change or changes, just share this episode with them. I think they'll get everything that they need from it and also the resources that we've talked about for further information. So just share this with someone that you know would want it or someone who's freaking out right now, and hopefully we can put them at ease. But that's, that's my one favor I would ask for you today is if you could share it with someone who you know would take some value from it.
Mackenzie:Love it. Alright. Well, we will see you all or talk to you all in 2 weeks. Bye.
