The latest guide to Instagram for creators makes one thing clear: the platform wants people to stop posting recycled TikToks on Reels. Today, Instagram says it is making changes to its algorithm and how it recommends Reels to users. Along with that, you are broadcasting new best practices on your @ creators account. For what? To give Instagram users advice on how to create content that is likely to be viewed and promoted.
The team now recommends that Reels users post vertical videos that use music found in the Instagram library or sounds found in Reels. They also suggest ‘starting a trend’ that others can participate in, such as dance craze, as well as ‘entertaining’ and ‘fun’ content. The reels that are mostly covered by text, are blurred, have a watermark or a logo . They also have a border around them, they will not be recommended as often.
«We rely on what we’ve learned from Explore to recommend fun and entertaining videos in places like the Reels tab and personalize the experience, ”says spokesperson Devi Narasimhan in an email to The Verge. “We are getting better at using rating signals that help us predict whether people will find a reel entertaining and whether we should recommend it.”
Narasimhan says that Instagram user surveys showed that people have a “less satisfying” Reels experience when content is recycles from other applications or is blurry . So you’ll start to downplay that content in your recommendation software. This makes it less likely to be discovered by people who don’t follow the person who posted it.
No wonder these recommendations hit six months after Reels launched in the US, the platform might have been okay with people initially taking their TikToks to Instagram. However, as it seems to become a popular destination on its own, the Instagram algorithm needs to make sure that Reels is not just an advertisement for TikTok; or worse, a place where people just throw away whatever content they’ve already created. However, this could mean more work for creators. The reason? They will have to shift some of their effort to Reels, rather than focus on one platform and then distribute the content everywhere.
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