The 2026 Instagram Algorithm Update (and the ONLY part that matters)

Find out the major change that determines if your posts are shown to more people, and 3 ways to incorporate it into your content strategy. Plus, hear my take on the one--only--thing you really need to know about the Instagram algorithm, as someone who has worked in social media management for 8+ years.

We break down how the Instagram algorithm actually works in 2026 (and why most updates don’t matter nearly as much as you think). 

If you’ve been stressing about low reach, declining engagement, or trying to “keep up” with every new feature, this episode will simplify everything.

Inside this episode, you’ll learn how to create content people actually want to share, how to use “engagement attractors” to increase Instagram reach, and how to build a content strategy that consistently gets your posts in front of new audiences—without chasing every algorithm update.

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Music by Jordan Wood

Hosted by Jenna Harding (Warriner), Creator of Magic Marketing Machine

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✨Tap here to watch a FREE masterclass on “How To Get Clients From Instagram (without wasting hours glued to your phone)"

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Tap here to get your free Posts That Sell Template (This caption got us 10 sales calls in 3 hours)

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Music by Jordan Wood

Hosted by Jenna Harding (Warriner), Creator of Magic Marketing Machine

Transcript

Jenna Harding (00:00)
That pesky Instagram algorithm just changed again in 2026. Here's what you need to know so you can keep getting your content in front of ideal clients.

and someone who has helped business owners grow on Instagram and get clients from their posts for, I don't know, eight years or something. I don't know how long I've been doing this a long time,

Enough time to see a lot of my clients be brand new business owners and build six figure businesses mostly credited to The clients they're getting on Instagram. I've been in this game a long time and I do have one opinion about the Instagram algorithm that I hold firm to.

And ironically, it is this.

None of the updates ever actually matter as long as you know one thing and that thing is get people to touch your posts.

all my time and in all the updates and all the iterations of this app, none of that has changed. We're always creating content that interests our ideal ideal client. We're doing research to figure out what they need to hear from us. And then we're making content based on what they're going through and what they need,

And then we're building every single post to be touched. In my program, Magic Marketing Machine, we call this using engagement attractors. instead of just creating a post and hoping people interact with it, you're building every post to be touched. And that is one thing that this new update really wants you to do, but they don't want any old engagements. They want a very specific one. the new Instagram algorithm in 2026,

really wants people tapping the paper airplane and sharing your content amongst each other. In Instagram's eyes, this means creating community, creating conversation. You might remember last year they had a really strong push towards direct messages. And remember also Meta owns WhatsApp. like WhatsApp, Messenger, Instagram DMs, they really doubled down on that last year and they wanted people having conversations.

Which means you need to make content that makes people want to share it. And as a directive, that might have you going in your head right now, like, well, how the heck am I supposed to do that? How am I supposed to just create shareable content? so I'll give you a couple of ideas for that right now. But when I learned this, it made something else make perfect sense. So

If you came to this podcast because you know me from Instagram where I am at Jenna's Paige page with an I, you probably have seen my B-roll Reels ideas series. It is my most popular series. I get the most views when I give B-roll ideas to business owners and most of my followers come from my B-roll Reels ideas. Now I

use the strategy I teach, which means I can't just post B-roll real ideas. here for clients, so I also have have my nurture and my sales content. But the B-roll reels ones get the most views and they always get the And I recently noticed they get shared a ton. And I wonder to myself, I'm giving a goofy B-roll reel idea

Who is sharing these? Like literally who is sharing these? I was kind of baffled by it. So I made a post saying, hey, who's sharing these? Like, where are these going? Where are you sending me? I was like making a joke about it. Mom, dark in here, mom. And then in the comments, my followers all told me that a lot of my followers, because they have businesses, they have a personal account and a business account.

and are sending the B-Roll Reels ideas to their other accounts so that they remember to make them. Which means I have all these inflated shares and then the algorithm sees people are sharing the post and then the algorithm sends that post to more people because it's getting the exact engagement that the new algorithm wants it to have. So they have a priority on shares, especially

post being shared to the direct messages. And that is probably a big part of why my B-roll Reels series is always my thing that gets the most views. because it has all of those shares. Fascinating stuff, right?

Let's talk about you. What can you say that's going to get people hitting the little paper airplane button? That's what it is, right? It just looks like a little triangle, but I think it's a paper airplane that's why it indicates send. on Instagram. So what can you be posting that gets people

Jenna Warriner (04:47)
I'm going to give you three options for shareable content that you can make right now that will work for your specific business. But first, I have a guest recording here from one of my alumni from Magic Marketing Machine, Molly Donlan, who wants to tell you a quick story. Then we'll come back and talk about what you're going to post this week.

Jenna Warriner (05:08)
Hi, my name's Molly Donlan. I'm a Reiki master teacher and author of mundane magic. And I help people add more magic into their everyday lives using a blend of science and spirituality. I joined MMM years ago because even though I had a large following over on TikTok, I was struggling to convert them to sales. I had a Reiki training program that...

getting eight people into was like pulling teeth. I just did not know how to sell. I only knew how to make growth content. And additionally, I only knew how to make growth content on TikTok. I really struggled with Instagram as a platform, knowing what to post, when to post. I found it just a slog. I really, really struggled with it. I hated writing captions. I hated creating videos. I just, it was not my jam. It was not my thing.

And through MMM, I really learned so much of the skills that I use today. I learned how to sell my services. I learned how to enjoy making content again. I learned how to put my personality into my content again. I feel like when I was grinding out content and not able to connect with people, nurture people, create sales, I was just like a textbook.

I really just felt like I was churning out content and for what? I really wasn't getting that reciprocity back and I wasn't building a community. After MMM, about four months after I joined MMM or so, I joined at the end of March 2022 and in August 2022, I had my first launch since joining the program and I had 75 people join. I know. Wild.

And it felt fun. It felt easy. It felt exciting. ⁓ Now it's been almost four years. I'm still enrolled in MMM and I have over a quarter of a million followers on Instagram. My email list has grown from like I had like 3,000 subscribers to 17,000 subscribers. ⁓ My training in the past couple of years has sold out within literally minutes. I have a wait list that is

over 1800 people long and I just really feel excited about creating content again. ⁓ Being on Instagram has allowed me to really meet some of my wildest dreams like publishing a book, having a number one podcast ⁓ and ultimately fostering a community where I really, really feel like I'm making a difference in the world.

And that is all thanks to everything that I learned in MMM from Jenna and her team. I'd recommend MMM to anyone who is looking to grow a business, who is looking to fall in love with creating content. ⁓ I think it can be really easy when we're pulling tips and tricks from everywhere to think we have to do everything. And one thing that MMM really helped me find is how to do my thing.

how to do it Molly's way, how to really enjoy creating content and create content that connects and feels authentic to me. And I think that's really the thing that sets MMM apart. So, highly recommend.

You join MMM. Okay. Love you. Bye.

Jenna Harding (08:34)
So one thing I like to think about is social currency, when you create a post that

By sharing it, give someone social currency, they're more likely to share it, especially to their stories. Think about like political advocacy or any causes that you stand by.

Maybe it's like Pride Month and an account I follow makes a really nice Pride post. That's something that I care about. So I'm going to hit the paper airplane. I'm going to share it to my stories because I now get the social currency of standing up for this cause that I believe in in my stories. another really simple example of this is when you share a joke with a friend, right? You share a meme or like a funny video that's going to make people laugh.

you kind inherit that laugh, right? If you saw a meme that's gonna make your friend Susan laugh, so you send that to Susan and she laughs and then she writes back to you, ha ha, you know me so well. Now you have social currency.

Jonah Berger talks about this in his book all about what makes content go viral. It always elicits an emotional reaction. So whether you're making people angry or making them happy or making them sad, any viral posts has an emotional driver.

even take like a viral cookie recipe. my gosh. Remember that viral cookie recipe where the person went to a restaurant. don't know if it's a true story, but they went to this fancy restaurant in the restaurant. and they asked their server if they can have a copy of the recipe for the chocolate chip cookie that they had because it was so good and the server gave it to them. And then there was a $10,000 charge on their bill.

because they had charged them $10,000 for this cookie recipe. So then the person took that recipe and spread it wide and gave it to everybody and shared it with everyone. And it has this emotional driver because it has this story behind it. But even a delicious mouth-watering photo of a cookie is gonna make us share that recipe because of that like visceral feeling that that

comfort food is giving us. Even that is still an emotional response in its own way. Isn't that neat? I'm such a nerd for it.

So remember earlier I was talking about how your content needs to be for your people. Think about this. Another thing that gets spread is information information that we're passionate that needs to be spread, but it can't be you that's passionate. It needs to be your ideal client is passionate. Your followers need to be passionate about the spread of this information not.

use. got to put yourself in their shoes. What would they share with people or heck just make a post that says share this with someone who blah blah blah blah blah. You know we know in another way that goes viral all the time. I see these all the time is like because I follow a lot of like nature and adventure accounts and it'll be a really adventurous looking photo of a mountain and it'll be like

Share this to someone who you want to go here with, right? So everyone's going to share it. The algorithm sees that they're being shared. It shows it to more people. It takes off. The ball rolls. The post goes viral. What can you post? What can you post that can get shared this week? What if you only had one job and it is to get five shares? Five shares this week. Why don't we just start aiming with that?

And then you can celebrate every single winch, celebrate every single share. And you'll be practicing this muscle of creating content that really truly interests your followers so much so that they want to spread it for you.

Have a beautiful, wonderful, fabulous freaking week. Go get views and build your business.