Instagram Updates: January 2025

On this episode, I recommend paying attention to recent Instagram updates and/or announcements of whats to come:

A Vertical Grid - LINK (and our Sircle document here) - ALREADY LIVE ON IG

• Posts on your grid are now vertical instead of square, and Instagram’s added an editing tool so people can adjust their thumbnails to the new grid size

2025 Algorithm Priorities - LINK

• At a high level, there are two types of ranking on Instagram:

• Connected reach (accounts that follow you)

• Unconnected reach (accounts that don’t yet follow you)

• For both, the top three signals that matter most for ranking are:

• Watch time

• Likes

• Sends (shares)

• So when looking at your insights, pay close attention to average watch time, likes per reach, and sends per reach

• One nuance: likes are slightly more important for connected content, and sends are slightly more important for unconnected content

Edits App - LINK

• Instagram is launching a new video creation app that includes editing, insights, project management capabilities, a better-quality camera, and the ability to share drafts with friends

• It’s a full suite of creative tools

• There will be a dedicated tab for inspiration, another for keeping track of early ideas

• A much higher-quality camera

• All the editing tools you’d expect

• The ability to share drafts with friends and other creators

• If you decide to share your videos on Instagram — powerful insights into how those videos perform

Highlights Tab - LINK

• Looking to move highlights into the grid and add them as a tab

Grid Control - LINK

• Building a tool so you can re-order your entire grid and make it whatever you want

• Adding the ability to post directly to your grid, in case you want to bypass feed entirely