The Instagram Algorithm is Not the Villain: Being More Intentional with Your Content

If you’ve been feeling confused, overwhelmed, or just simply stressed out by Instagram this past year, it’s time to change your approach for 2026. It’s not 2020 anymore and content strategies have changed. Going into the new year, we’re focusing on crafting a more intentional content strategy that’s all about authentic connection, powerful storytelling, and understanding exactly what your audience craves. We’ll discuss a major Instagram update from this past week (hashtags aren’t dead), how to best apply the change to your own content, and why it might feel like the algorithm is the enemy (it’s really not!). Let’s make 2026 our best year yet!

In this episode we’ll be covering:

• The latest update from Instagram: New hashtag update limits usage to three to five relevant hashtags per post.
• Prioritizing intentional content, with keyword-rich captions and on-screen text.
• Keeping audiences engaged and increasing retention rates through storytelling and humanizing your content.
• Using me-centric storytelling hooks and relatable language that builds emotional connection, driving shares and saves.
• Doing audience research and speaking directly to followers' needs, interests, and lifestyles for optimal reach.
• The algorithm myths: Instagram rewards valuable content that genuinely resonates with people.

Featured content in this episode:

• Hashtag Update

Recommended episodes:

• Episode 088: Find Your Content Rhythm and Build a Simple Content Strategy
• Episode 089: How You’re Going to Become Really Good at Content Creation in 2026 (Part 1)
• Episode 090: How You’re Going to Become Really Good at Content Creation in 2026 (Part 2)
• Episode 091: My Personal Predictions for Instagram in 2026
• Episode 092: This is the Era of Experiences and Belonging

If you use the send a message option above, be sure to include your email address if you would like a reply! (Please allow 3-5 business days for a response)

Join me in the Reels Lab!

Love this conversation? Make sure to follow and subscribe so you never miss an episode.

Connect with me on Instagram!

Transcript

Shannon McKinstrie [00:00:00]:
I am your host, Shannon McKinstrie. Welcome to Good Content, the podcast where I remove the never ending content creation, guesswork and overwhelm so that you can actually enjoy being on social media again and growing your business with what has always worked Good Content. Okay, so I'm recording this on December. Wait, 18th. Yeah. And Instagram just announced something big. We all knew it was coming.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:00:31]:
People have been talking about it, but, you know, again, I don't like to say anything until Instagram. Adam Mosseri, the creator's account, Meta says it. Now, I got this email from Meta this morning, and because I'm part of one of their, like, creator programs, and I was like, finally they confirmed it. We used to be able to use 30 hashtags, right? And for years we used to use all 30 hashtags because hashtags really helped with reach. Over the years, hashtags don't work as much for reach, they work more for, the way I like to say is like, they're keywords, right? They help categorize your content. But also, we as users still search hashtags. Talked about this before on the podcast.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:01:08]:
Don't worry, I'm going to get into overall strategy. But if I'm traveling to a new place, I'm going to search that city and then the word eats, because I want to know where to eat. Y' all know, going out to eat is literally my hobby, my only hobby. And when I moved here to Cary, I found my hair stylist through a hashtag. You know, obviously, like with searching Hairstylist Raleigh, things like that, I don't want to get too far into it, Right? But hashtags are a great tool. They always have been. Not so much for reach now, but they do still technically help for reach. Because if I'm searching that hashtag, I see your content, I go find you.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:01:41]:
Hi. Great metric there. Right? So, but what Instagram just said is that, you know, they don't want people spamming and trying to hack the algorithm with hashtags. Like explore #reels. Right? Things like that. They want to make sure your hashtags are specific to your content. And we. And I've been saying that forever.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:01:57]:
I don't just use #Instagram #reels. I use #Instagramforbusiness. #Instagramgrowth, #Instagrammarketing #contentstrategist. Right? But let's for instance, say I'm doing a post about Instagram hooks and how to use hooks that help grow. I'll use hashtags around Instagram growth and content creation. Right. I won't use #socialmediamarketing. That's a little more broad.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:02:20]:
So that's what I mean by that. So for instance, let's say you're an interior decorator in... Let's pick a fun state. Let's say New York City. Let's have some fun. Let's use Instagram like users do, not like the clickbait content. Anyway, don't get me started.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:02:34]:
I got, I just saw a post that has me really upset. That's why we're doing this podcast right now. Okay, let's try it. #nyinteriordesigner. There's ha- There's 20,000 posts with that hashtag. All right, now I will say a few of the things that came up are interior designers other places. But I did find one.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:02:51]:
His name is Sean Henderson and he's an interior designer in New York City. And his hashtags on this reel are #interiordesigner, #interiordesigners with an S at the end, #NYinteriordesigner, #NewYorkdesigner, #officelife. Those are great ways to use hashtags. A mix of local. If you are a local business, you don't have to use local. If you're not talking about a local city or your contents, not about that city in particular or you're not based there. But again, hashtags that are specific to the content itself and your account itself. So again, I, and I just did a poll post about this #update and someone asked me, she does outfits and she asked me, you know, what do I do, as far as keywords? I go to her profile, I see she does a lot of mid size fashion.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:03:37]:
Women over 30. So I'm like, those are your keywords. If I am a woman over 30 trying to find my style, I'm going to search women over 30 style. So let's try that, let's try #womenover30 style. Let's see if that's a hashtag. I just typed in #womenover30. There is a women over 30 style, but it's, it's like 500 posts. So if I were her, I would use #womenover30.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:04:00]:
Because what you want to focus with hashtags is the lifestyle. So, let's say her outfit that she's sharing is from Nordstrom. I'd use #Nordstrom, #womenover30, #midsizedmoms. Right. Those could be my three or if I want to do five. Right. Um, I will say just a quick thing. Some people are saying they're actually only able to do three right now.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:04:18]:
I think that's probably because this is such a big, huge update and Instagram's been testing and you should have options to do five hashtags soon. This is. Everything they do is a slow rollout. Typically there's going to be glitches. It's okay. And we had a huge glitch this morning with people getting notifications about random people's Instagram stories. If you had that. This usually happens when Instagram is rolling out something big.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:04:38]:
And this is a big deal that they are now limiting us to hashtags. But that doesn't mean hashtags are dead. It doesn't mean they're limiting. They're making us be more intentional with our hashtags. That is an amazing thing. This is only going to help you, only help you have more reach, better performance of your content in 2026. So struggling with hashtags, ask ChatGPT, right? You can even say, hey, I'm doing a post.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:05:01]:
Let's say you're an author and you're doing a post about your book launch, right? Look, say, hey, chat. Give me three to five great keywords. Here's my caption. It would probably be the genre that you write about. It would probably be #author, #selfpublishedauthor, #booklaunch, right? Just. And what I always love to do, because I'm a nerd, is I will type in hashtags straight into Instagram and look at content. This is what I would do. I used to make these things.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:05:28]:
Oh, my gosh, guys, I used to make them. They were called hastvaults. And people paid me $50 for these #vaults. I'd make them in Google Docs. I do five categories, right? So for instance, if it was an author, I would do one about the genre, one about being an author, one about books, right? And I'd have these different ones and I'd say depending on what you're writing and depending on what your content is about, choose 20 to 30, right? Mix them up. But every time, what I would do, I wouldn't just use. There was a website called Flick, right? People could use that. But no, I would actually go into Instagram and type in those hashtags and make sure people are using them.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:05:59]:
That when I go and search that hashtag, the content that Instagram shows me after saying, hey, all these posts have this hashtag that it looked like my client's content belonged in that Mix. My business partner, Emily Schwabach, she used to say they were like clubs. Right. If you type in that hashtag, search it the content, does it look like you belong in that club? Meaning like a social club, a country club, that type of club, not the club. Although those are my favorite types of clubs. Okay. I'm a millennial through and through. That was cheesy.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:06:26]:
But again, I'm a millennial, so there you go. We're cheesy bunch. So that's how it's working. So let's talk about your content strategy. Now that you've, you know, you can now ignore any of the clickbait around hashtags and what Instagram said, I will have the post in the show notes all about this because again, it's straight from Creators account and it's straight from meta. I'm not giving you any advice. It's not straight from, for lack of a better term, the horse's mouth.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:06:50]:
Right. They're still useful. Just be intentional. And anytime we can be more intentional with our content, what a great blessing. Right? So use three to five hashtags per post. Don't want to use hashtags at all. Fine. Make sure your caption is rich with keywords.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:07:03]:
Make sure the on screen text carousels, whatever that is in that image or reel, that those words are also intentional. This is key for your content strategy in 2026. Onto the rest, let's talk about the post that just really upset your girl. And again, this might be a little longer of an episode because it's, it's, it's a big one. It's a big one, right? We are not wasting time. We don't have time to waste in 2026, now that you have your hashtag and your keywords, et cetera, and you guys have been listening. So you guys are hookaholics, right? You already know how to write a hook because you've been listening to me. Or at least I give them to you every week and you just take them and run with it.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:07:35]:
Right? I love getting the messages from you guys where you're like, hey, I took that hook on the podcast and went viral. Like, heck yeah. Or hey, I got 3,000 views when I normally get a hundred. I'm like over here freaking out for you. So the post I saw was basically saying that the algorithm has drastically changed now. Is that true? Not really. Let me just tell you, when you think of the algorithm, and these are all just to scare you and make you rethink everything, the algorithm is just like, again, I've talked about it a bunch. To make it as simple as can be, think about walking into a store.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:08:03]:
And that store right when you walk in is like, everything you want is right in front of you. It's all curated. Every aisle is curated with stuff you're looking for. You're renovating your basement, there's an aisle for that. You're interested in starting to take kickboxing, there's an aisle for that. Like, it's like all of your interests are in this aisle. Wouldn't that be tight? Right? Like, but that's. That's what the algorithm does, and that is tight.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:08:26]:
That's awesome. That's the algorithm. It's literally just trying to figure out what you spend time on, what you're saving, what you're sharing, what's grabbing you, and it shows you more of it to keep you on the app so they make more money. So that's the algorithm. So has the algorithm changed from that? Not really. But Instagram knows that we have changed. We as users have changed. We're on more apps, we are busier than ever.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:08:49]:
We're bombarded with ads all day and being sold to all day. Right. So this person's thing basically said, Wait, well, let me see what it actually said. Oh, that, like, yeah, there's. There was like a leak of the new algorithm. It's just these things just get people to freak out. But again, is any of it, like, not true? No, but it's. It's like the algorithm is the algorithm.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:09:07]:
Okay, Hook is important because the first three seconds are important. But guess what's important after the first three seconds of grabbing someone? The next three seconds. And so are the next three seconds, right? You gotta keep them going. You gotta keep them interested. Shares are important. If you made it to the end of someone's carousel, that's huge. So again, all the algorithm wants you to do is keep people on your post. So how do you get them? You hook em.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:09:30]:
How do you get em after that? Hook? You hook em again. And you make sure the content you're feeding them keeps them interested. To the end of your reel, to the end of your carousel, to the end of your caption. And if you go to your insights, it's an incredible, incredible insight that they give us now. It'll show, like, in your carousels, et cetera. I love this. I was looking at a carousel mine that did decent the other day. So I was like, why Didn't do as well as I hoped.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:09:52]:
I was able to see where people liked my carousel throughout the carousel and where they'd fall off and where it would pick up again. Just really good information for us to see. Instagram also wants to see that. That you. If, if someone goes to your post or sees your post, are they going to your profile? This is not a major leaked algorithm craziness. Oh, my gosh. This is. No, nothing.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:10:12]:
None of this is mind blowing. Instagram's a business. So what do we need to do in 2026? We need to use powerful hooks. And what are powerful hooks? Me Centric storytelling hooks. Meaning. And if you've listened to this podcast before, you know it's not how to, three ways, It's here's how I, here's what I'm doing, here's what I bought, here's what I use, here's how I do X, Y, Z.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:10:34]:
If it's educational, helpful content. If it's something humorous, hey me when I da da da da da. Right? So we know using words like me I, we are it makes helpful content, humorous content, heard content. My four H's happenings feel like it's not just a quick tip or a quick joke or a quick story. It's personal and a lived experience that you're telling us, right? Or something that we can picture ourselves in. So what do you want to make sure your content does? You want to make sure that it doesn't just hook them, which we're already pros at, right? It's that we keep them. And how do we do that? Storytelling. Instagram has been a storytelling app since its debut, and it still is.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:11:12]:
But we lost sight of storytelling as business owners because we just want to sell. And then we were told, don't talk about yourself. It's not about you. It's only about your audience. That's not true. Right. We just got a little distracted, but we're back. It's okay.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:11:24]:
So how do we get your saves up? How do we get your shares up? How do we get people to scroll to the end of your carousel? We keep telling a story and we keep using words your people can attach to and see themselves in. Another big trend in your content for your hooks, your captions, etc. because everything sounds like boring AI now, is add in words that grab us. Right? Words like, like right now in 2020, December 2025, one of the words we've seen a lot is disgustingly how to get disgustingly good at reading or how to be disgustingly wealthy, da da da, right? That's a fun buzzword. Other words we saw in the Past couple months of 2025, odd, boring, unsexy, those words were going crazy for carousels, everything. So we're going to see a rise that in 2026.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:12:08]:
So think of fun words like that. And when you see one, you see a reel or a carousel going crazy or you shared it yourself, what was the word in there that just added an extra oomph. Right? So I think adding a oomph word will be really good for you and maybe write down a bunch of words. Again, we've got to stop sounding like robots. We got to add in those extra words that make us sound human and relatable. And I'll say it again, I know I work with a lot of people in the medical field, lawyers. You guys are so wicked smart that you sound too textbook. And I'm.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:12:41]:
This is not being mean. You have to sound textbook. That's literally what you did. And what why you spent so much money going to school and how you help people. Right? But there's a doctor who did this brilliantly. She looked at the camera, she goes, hi, I fix broken bones for a living. She didn't say I'm a her title. She said that.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:12:59]:
Right? So that's what I mean by human words. So again, me centric hooks on top of me centric. Not every hook needs to have the word I my it. Right? But if I'm saying something like, let's say I'm creating content for a client. Oh, I know one of my clients, she's a nutritionist. I could say three dietitian approved grab and go snacks from Aldi. But again, we wanna add something in there so that we know why do I care? I care because they're dietitian approved.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:13:24]:
So we're gonna see more of that. We're gonna see people focusing more and more on quality. I usually take two days off. Sometimes I'll post twice in a day, but that's only because I want to. Like, something came up or I'm excited. Most of my clients, again, I'll tell y' all over and over again, they post three to four times a week. And if you can do four times a week quality content, you're gonna freaking kill it. So your content strategy is number one.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:13:47]:
Pick how many times a week you are capable of posting. You know that Mondays are your slow days. Monday, you better get a post up. Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Sunday. Pick four days. Pick what formats you love. You love creating carousels, but you hate video. Just do carousels.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:14:03]:
There are so many people out there who just do static images and carousels and they do great. I always tell people though, it's great to do a mix of what your audience enjoys consuming and what you enjoy creating. I love creating reels. My people do love my carousels though I find them time consuming. That's why I usually do a carousel on a day that is slow for me, definitely a day that my daughter's in school. Cause she's not in school every day. Cause she's in, you know, half a day preschool. And I usually lean on really low lift reels like B roll 5 second trending audio.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:14:31]:
Powerful statement, right? And what I say about those is those types of content, I call them text first reels, meaning the video is kind of whatever and the main star of the reel is that text. But those don't do well for everybody. Those type of reels really have to pack a punch because we are done with the boring chat GPT. We're done with the generic. We want words that make us feel right. Your content strategy in 2026, make sure when they see that hook, it's not just helpful or funny or makes they have to feel it. Right? They need to feel it in their bones. Now I'm also, this might be bold, but I think a lot of people that grew in 20, I'd even say like 2022, 2023, that like went crazy even last year, they're going to struggle right now unless they make this pivot.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:15:17]:
A lot of them went crazy with more of the generic type of stuff, right? But now they're going to have to make this adjustment, add in more storytelling, all these faceless accounts, like, nope, we have to add the human back into our content. Does that mean you have to show your face? No, of course not. Right? If you don't want to. There's tons of brands, there's jewelry brands. You probably never see a face on their account, but they use the text to tell a story. They use the text to give belonging by sharing what their taste is, right? Maybe they're really high end or maybe they're whatever, right? I've talked about this a lot. There's that one jewelry brand that I love. They gamify their reels.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:15:53]:
They go, can your boyfriend guess which ring you want most? And they show like five rings. And all these people are in the comments, right? They make it like a game. So again, add personality, make it human, make it an experience. I talked about this in last week's podcast. The villain of 2026 is not the algorithm. The villain is outdated tips from 2023 even, outdated rules that don't exist.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:16:16]:
Right? It's generic hooks, vague copy is the biggest villain. And I'll just say this. The algorithm isn't so much, again, as a villain, as a strange robot that we can't actually see. It's a mirror of your audience. It mirrors what they want. It knows it's going to feed us what we want to connect with. So we need to know what our people connect with. So the winners in 2026 are going to know their audience so well, it's scary.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:16:44]:
I know my people so well now. Do I have content that flops sometimes? Yes, of course. Because I'm constantly testing. I even purposely shared a reel last week that wouldn't do well so that I could teach my reels lab students why it didn't do well. Okay. I'm constantly testing, trying, tweaking. Because I am in the trenches with you.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:17:02]:
I have clients I still manage for because I want to be sure I don't lose sight of the fact that all of us are going to grow in different ways. Right. Don't want to rant, but just want to wrap it up in one thing. It's not that the algorithm has drastically changed. We have changed. And the algorithm and Instagram knows our human behaviors even more. So they know what content's going to get people to stick around. Instagram rewards content that keeps people there.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:17:27]:
So we have to use words that grab them. And again, like I said, one of my clients who went completely viral with several of her carousels and went from 10,000 followers to 70,000 in about a month span. True story. I'm so proud of her. And her sales are insane. And she, she hit her goal in December, on December 15, for the entire month. Crazy. I'm just so proud of her.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:17:47]:
She started using words and copy in her hooks to make sure her people felt more seen. So instead of parents, she used things like parents of first graders, right? So that when I see it, I'm like, that's me. Or if it's not me, I'm still going to read it because I'm a parent of someone who's going to be in first grade. Do you see what I mean? And actually interesting. Someone just wrote on one of my, on my post from today saying, oh, well, I need hashtags. I make cookies with edible crystals in them. And it's, you know, I looked, I looked at her accounts, obviously, people that are really into crystals and woo woo stuff, right? So I told her, I said, use hashtags, like #Crystals, gemstones, things like that. And she's like, no, no, no, but I make cookies.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:18:22]:
I'm like, sure, you can use #edibleart, you can use #bakedgoods, cookies, but who is going to follow you? Who's going to want to buy your stuff? People that love crystals. So we have to know our people and what they're searching for, what they're looking for, and speak their language and their beliefs and their values and whatever it is, right? And one of my other clients who's. I know, I told her, I was like, you need to add your faith more into your content because that's who she's attracting. And you know, her husband's a pastor. I'm like, you need to lean into that. Stop hiding behind what you think people want to know or hear. You know what your people want to know, hear about you, and it's time to share it. That's what's gonna work in 2026.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:19:01]:
Complete transparency. Complete. Here I am. Here's what I believe in, here's what I'm working on, here's what my client did, here's what our customers are saying this, right? So whether you sell baked goods at a bakery in a small town or, or you run a headquarters with a hundred, whatever, we want to know the people, we want to know the processes, the systems, et cetera, all of it. So here's what we're going to break it down. Ready? Your content strategy. Your hook matters huge because we decide really fast. So really get to know keywords, hashtags, all that stuff like just copy in general really matters.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:19:38]:
Okay. Retention matters. We have to match what we promise in our hook. We have to make sure what we're sharing is there. And if you're like me and you'd love to lean on 5 second B roll with text and trending audio, make sure that copy packs a punch and makes them feel whether it's helpful, something that makes them feel heard, whatever it is, right? I love to help people break down the pov. You're a blank. Who wants blank? And you find my account. Right? I've helped hundreds of people go viral with that hook.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:20:03]:
Again, they're not busy moms, they're moms who dread the 4 to 7 window. They're not athletes, they're D1 athletes who had an injury and wanna get- right? You wanna talk to your people. Next. Shares and saves really matter too. We wanna see ourselves in your content. We wanna relate to it. And if your content feels validating or it's useful, we're gonna save it, we're gonna share it, we're gonna follow you, and we're gonna come back for more.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:20:28]:
And the algorithm will see that we are all up in your content and your profile, and you're gonna explode. So it's not that there's this major leak happening or like Instagram's trying to hide something from us. No, it's human behavior. And the more we understand people and your audience and your people and their interests and what they care about right now, the faster you're gonna grow. So if the algorithm is stressing you out, your 2026 content strategy is stressing out. Gurus full of nonsense are stressing you out. You do not need to post more. You do not need to throw out everything you've been doing.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:20:56]:
You're probably one to two tweaks away. That's what this podcast is for. You just need content that looks familiar, sounds familiar. Repeat yourself. When something works, find fifty to a hundred other ways to say it. Be clear. Create content that's relevant and just know your audience. Be obsessed with them.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:21:13]:
I've said. And again, I. I've said this before on this podcast, but I had a post that did really well for me in 2020, and it basically just said, biggest algorithm hack. Bond with your audience. You guys use your stories to get to know them. Interview past clients, interview past customers. Interview people you are dying to work with or get to buy your stuff. Know them so well that you know them better than yourself.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:21:33]:
Connection will win. It will continue to win. And I will continue to bring you everything you need to know. I love you, friend. You've got this. Take this week to chill test. Have fun. I love you.