Looking to improve your performance on Instagram in 2025?
This will help. Instagram chief Adam Mosseri has kicked off a new video series in which he’s planning to outline the key factors that power its algorithms, and will ultimately maximize your reach.
In the first video, Mosseri has outlined the three key factors that carry the most algorithmic weight, and lead to content being shown to more users.
Those three factors are:
As per Mosseri:
“The top three signals that matter most for ranking are watch time, likes and sends. So when looking at your insights, pay close attention to average watch time, likes per reach, and sends per reach.”
Though Mosseri also notes that there is some variance, depending on where content is shown, and who it’s shown to.
“Likes are slightly more important for connected content, and sends are slightly more important for unconnected content.”
So if you want more of your followers to see your posts, likes are the key factor. The more people that tap like, the wider the reach will be among your audience.
If you want to reach new people, and grow your following, sends are more important. So you’ll want to create content that people want to forward to others, as that’s a clear indicator that they think your posts deserve a broader audience. Instagram will then take as a signal that it should also show your posts to more users via Explore, recommendations, etc.
Both of these make sense, in that the system is basing its algorithmic signals on user behavior, and what’s more likely to resonate with each group. If, for example, a lot of people are liking your new post, that might be an in-joke, or a relevant trend among your peers, so it’s likely to be of interest among other people that follow the same. Shares, however, are more likely to be because people are forwarding your posts to non-followers, meaning that post has appeal to a more general audience.
Though you will also note that comments are not mentioned at all in Mosseri’s overview.
I suspect that comments would essentially be factored into watch time, and the total amount of time that people spend looking at a post. Because if you have to write a comment, you’re going to spend more time on that content, which would likely mean that more people commenting would still lead to a boost to some degree.
But IG isn’t seemingly basing algorithmic amplification off of discussion generated. Which used to be a key factor, especially on Facebook, but in its shift away from politics, maybe this has been a compromise that Meta’s found to lessen the impact of divisive discussion, without directly penalizing posts based on the content itself.
And given that most of the content on IG is now video anyway, watch time is a valid indicator, even for still image content, which would also explain why carousels rank higher, because they take more time to view.
But if you’re looking to build a more effective IG strategy., these are the factors you should be considering, and measuring for each element of your outreach.
Some handy notes, which could guide you towards a more effective approach.
