Instagram has quietly shifted how it decides what to show people.
And honestly?
The changes are good news for you.
Here are the 3 things Instagram no longer cares about (and the one thing it cares about more than ever).
1. Your follower count
For years, the size of your account dictated how far your content could travel.
Big account, big reach.
Small account, small reach.
That’s gone.
Instagram now ranks every single piece of content on its own merit.
Which means one video from your account could land in front of thousands of people, even if you’ve only got 100 followers.
Stop waiting until you’ve got what you see to be a ‘good number of followers’ before you start posting properly.
The algorithm no longer cares.
2. Hashtags
Remember when you’d cram 30 hashtags into every post and hope for the best?
Instagram has now capped it at 5.
The reason is simple.
Hashtags were too easy to hack.
People were slapping #mortgageadvice and #homebuyers on everything and Instagram couldn’t trust what your content was actually about.
Now they’re listening to the words you say in the video and reading the words in your caption.
That’s how they decide who to show it to.
Speak clearly about what you do, write captions that actually say something, and stop hiding behind a wall of hashtags.
3. Polished, slow-burn videos
This one is what they care MORE about, not less.
But it’s worth knowing.
The first 3 seconds of your video matter more than anything else.
If you can hook someone in those 3 seconds, Instagram reads that as a strong piece of content and pushes it out to more people.
If they swipe away in the first second, it dies.
So no more “Hi guys, today I’m going to talk about…”
Open with the point.
Open with the hook.
Open with the thing that makes someone stop scrolling.
Social media always changing, but I’ll be here to keep you up to date
Chris