How do you grow on Instagram? What Instagram itself says

What Instagram says it ranks

Read on 11 October 2026. The explanation Instagram’s own pages keep pointing to is Adam Mosseri’s post of 31 May 2023. It says Instagram has no “singular algorithm”: each part of the app has its own, tailored to how people use it.

The same post says that for Reels Instagram looks at the number of followers or level of engagement “to help find compelling content from a wide array of people and give everyone a chance to find their audience”. It does not give a weight for any signal.

The Transparency Center’s system cards are newer. The Feed card was updated on 29 June 2026 and the Explore card on 22 June 2026, and both say their signals “change frequently”. Between them the cards list what the system predicts: whether a viewer will like, comment on, share, save or skip a post, swipe through a whole carousel, watch more than 95% of a video or follow the author. Under the prediction of a share in a direct message the Feed card lists, among others, whether the post is informative content (news, product reviews, tutorials, how-tos) and how recently it was created (within 90 days). None of the cards gives a weight either.

One thing is new in 2026. Mosseri wrote on 10 June 2026 that Your Algorithm, which shows a viewer the topics Instagram thinks they are most interested in and lets them add or remove some, was live across Reels, Explore and, that week, Feed. Recommendations are made for each viewer, and the viewer can now see and edit the topics behind them.

What makes content eligible to be recommended

Instagram’s recommendation eligibility page says recommendations show posts in places like Explore, Reels and Feed Recommendations to people who don’t already follow you. Its Recommendations Guidelines decide what content “from public accounts” is eligible. Three lines from the page matter:

• Eligible is not recommended. Eligibility “doesn’t guarantee that your content will be recommended”.
• One flag covers everything. If the account is not eligible, none of its content will be recommended.
• Followers are unaffected. Even if you are not eligible, your content can still show up for your followers.

To check, a professional account opens Account Status. The steps on Instagram’s Account Status page, computer edition: click More in the bottom left, click Settings, then click Account Status below More info and support.

What Instagram says it tries not to recommend, from its recommendations page:

• Unoriginal content “largely repurposed from another source with only minor, immaterial edits”.
• Long captions unrelated to the content, and coordinated comment networks meant to drive engagement artificially.
• Accounts that repeatedly engaged in misleading practices to build followings, such as purchasing likes.
• Accounts that repeatedly share a photorealistic AI-generated person, unless the account has added the AI-generated profile label.

Originality: what changed and when

What counts as a material edit, in the 2026 post: adding text that gives more context than describing what happens, graphics that add new information, or the remix feature. Adding a border, a watermark, subtitles or a credit in the caption does not qualify. Instagram says the update does not change how it shows people content from accounts they follow.

Photos, carousels and reels

Two statements on the creator FAQ, which is undated, look as if they pull in different directions:

• To grow with video: the most effective way “is to consistently create engaging reels, as reels are the best way to reach new audiences”.
• To grow with photos: consistently sharing feed posts or carousels helps you engage your audience, “which can boost the distribution of your content”.

And on Feed, the FAQ says its ranking system “does not give preference to reels over photos”. One way to read them together, which Instagram does not spell out: reels are the format of surfaces built to find new audiences, while Feed predicts for each viewer which type of media they find most valuable. The 2026 originality post treats photos and carousels as recommendable content, and the Explore card says it fetches photos and videos. We found no Instagram page that says photos or carousels get less reach than reels, or more. A trial reel, which Instagram shows first to people who don’t follow you, has its own answer.

The advice Instagram gives

The FAQ also gives one frequency figure. When Instagram looks at creators with the greatest net follower growth rates, on average they post 10 or more reels per month. The sentence opens by saying that how often you post is one factor of many. It is a description of fast growers and not a rule. Reels over 3 minutes are not recommended to unconnected audiences (see the reel length answer).

Where the pages do not line up

• Who sees a reel first. The FAQ says that when you first share a reel, your followers are typically the first to see it. The April 2024 post says eligible content is first shown to a small audience regardless of whether they follow the account. They may describe different surfaces, Feed for the first and recommendations for the second, but neither page says how the two fit together.
• How an aggregator is counted. The 2024 post gave a number: 10 or more copies in 30 days. The 2026 post speaks of “most” recent posts being original and gives no count.
• How old the advice is. The tips page and the ranking post date from May 2023. The cards are from June 2026. The creator FAQ carries no date, so we cannot say which of its answers are current.

What the pages do not say

• A follower count needed to be recommended, or for growth.
• A day or an hour that works for everybody, or a number of posts it promises will work. The FAQ’s question whether posts with many reactions in the first 30 minutes are ranked higher is answered “No”, and Instagram says it can confirm this isn’t true.
• How much a hashtag, a keyword or a sound adds. The FAQ says trending hashtags relevant to your topics can help and warns against irrelevant ones.
• Whether paying for ads changes organic reach. Mosseri’s 2023 post says Instagram doesn’t suppress content to encourage people to buy ads.
• Whether a post sent through a scheduling tool’s API is ranked differently from one posted in the app. We found no page that says either way.

Mellow Hub and growth

Hub does not change how Instagram ranks a post. It publishes what you made, to the networks you connect. What Hub needs for Instagram: A professional (Business or Creator) Instagram account. A personal account cannot publish through any API. Its cabinet shows the views and likes each network reports for a post, over 7, 30 or 90 days. The followers and non-followers split that Instagram’s tips point to is in Instagram’s own Insights (how to see them), not in Hub.

The first 3 posts are free, however many networks each one goes to, and need no card. After that Hub is paid: plans start at $19 a month (Solo), after a 7-day trial with a card on file that costs nothing if you cancel before it ends, and a monthly plan's first month is 20% off. Publishing is unlimited on every plan, under a fair-use ceiling that stops automated floods (900 publications a month on Solo), where one publication is one post on one account, so a post sent to five networks counts as five toward it. There are no automatic overage charges.