It's not just you.

 Instagram is really weird right now.

 The algorithm, the content, and the culture of Instagram have been shifting drastically in the past few months.

 And while I find this all very fascinating, it's also very frustrating for content creators to try to keep up with.

 Today we're going to analyze what's changing, why I think it's changing, and how you can adapt your strategy to keep up with all these shifts so that you can make sure that you keep growing your audience and your business on Instagram.

 Welcome back to Coffee Chats with Katie, by the way, the series where we just sit down and talk about all things social media and content creation.

 Today I am highly dehydrated so I'm just going to drink water.

 I hope you have a more fun beverage than me, but I have a lot to say on this topic so let's get into it.

 And thanks to Storyblocks for sponsoring today's video.

 So what exactly is changing or what has changed on Instagram? To state the obvious, Reel's views are down for like everybody right now.

 In preparation for this video, I actually sent out a survey to all of you on Instagram to find out what kind of changes you've been experiencing and like gather a bit of data.

 58% of you that responded said that your Reel's views have gone down in January to March of 2025 as compared to October to December of 2024.

 That has been my experience as well.

 Now this is obviously super frustrating because most of us have pivoted our strategies drastically towards video in the past couple of years to prioritize Reel's because that's been the main way to grow on Instagram for like a while now.

 And to be clear, like that has totally worked at least up until recently.

 Focusing on high quality, consistent Reel's took my Instagram account from about 35,000 followers in January of 2023 to 100k followers by the end of that year.

 And it's continued to help me grow to now 190k followers in 2025.

 However, recently a lot of us have been noticing that our Reels are just not performing as well as they once did.

 In fact, my personal Instagram insights have flipped basically upside down.

 Last year, it was common for me to get 30 to 40k views on a Reel on average with many of them also hitting like closer to like 100k and beyond.

 And my stories would tend to get like 2k or like 5k views in 24 hours.

 Now, my top performing Instagram stories can get like 20 or 30,000 views on an average day.

 It's more like 10 to 15k views, but that is still a huge increase compared to what it used to be.

 And my Reels are just like, let's not even talk about it.

 Like it's not going well.

 This is frankly shocking to me.

 Like I honestly cannot believe that my stories, which are presumably content that's only being shown to people who already follow me, are getting more views than Reels, which have the opportunity to reach a wider audience outside of my existing following.

 So this is just bizarre, but if Instagram is going to do one thing, it's going to be keep us all guessing about what the frick is going on.

 Okay, so Reels views are down.

 Story views seem to be up strangely, but I should put a caveat on that only if you use this one specific strategy, which we'll touch on in a minute, which I was kind of affirmed in seeing many of you also mentioned this strategy in my survey.

 But also we're seeing that carousels are experiencing a bit of a resurgence.

 I have been seeing so many carousels on my Instagram feed lately, and it's actually been a great way for me to discover new accounts to follow as well.

 Again, I feel like there's a specific strategy and style of carousel that's working really well for people right now.

 We'll discuss that in depth in a minute, but the point is these are the three main changes that I've really observed over the past like three or four months on Instagram Reels views are down.

 Carousels seem to be more popular and story views are up if you do this one thing.

 In my opinion, this is a huge shake up of the platform and just like a totally different landscape than we were dealing with like six months ago or a year ago.

 If there's any other changes that you've personally been experiencing, leave them in the comments below because I'd be curious to hear about them.

 But I feel like those are the three main themes and we're going to talk about why they're happening and how you can adjust.

 Okay, so why are these changes happening? I can't speak to this with certainty because I'm not Adam Masseri and I'm honestly not even sure if Instagram staff could answer this question.

 They designed an algorithm that ultimately functions more or less on its own.

 They designed it, they created it in their little lab, but then they go and let it run out in the real world.

 So even the creator of an algorithm can't always answer for all the reasons that it does what it does.

 So that's important to remember.

 There's no like human making each of these individual decisions about whether or not our reels get views.

 These things tend to be the knock on effects of algorithmic decisions that like weren't intentionally made to have those impacts.

 Okay, with that being said though, let's get into my theories because I have a few ideas of why this might be happening.

 Theory number one is the trial reels impact.

 Okay, so if you haven't seen this already, Instagram released a new feature a little while back called trial reels that basically allows you to post reels exclusively to non-followers.

 So typically how it works is you post a reel, it's shown to your followers first.

 If they engage with it, if it performs well with them, then Instagram will start showing it to a wider audience and that's how you can end up going viral.

 But Instagram wanted to give creators a choice where you didn't have to have your like initial test group of viewers be people who are already following you.

 You could show it to essentially strangers, non-followers and see how it performs with them first.

 The idea being that this can be a good way for creators to experiment in new niches that their existing audience might not be into, but that doesn't mean that it's not a good reel.

 So anyway, ever since the trial reels feature was released, I feel like that vaguely lines up with the timeline of reels views taking a decline generally.

 I've seen other people talk about this as well.

 Basically the theory goes that since Instagram introduced trial reels, people's feeds are being flooded with like lower quality content that they wouldn't have otherwise seen except for the fact that it's a trial reel.

 And so therefore these trial reels are like taking up space in the feed that like people's typical content would have been, which is leading to lower reach for many creators.

 I definitely see where this theory is coming from when I understand it, but at the same time I've also observed and heard from others a lot of anecdotal evidence around trial reels not really being all that effective for like getting views.

 And you can let me know in the comments, but for me anytime I've posted trial reels like they bomb, like they don't do that well.

 So I don't think they're really flooding anybody's feed.

 It doesn't seem like that anyway.

 So these two things kind of seem in opposition.

 It's like how are trial reels taking over the feed, but at the same time I haven't heard from a lot of people that are seeing a ton of success with them.

 So I don't really know about it, but it definitely is like a prevailing theory about the recent dip in reels views.

 Okay, another theory for you is short form fatigue.

 And I feel like this one is probably a little more likely to be the case.

 I feel like we've been talking about this for a while now, but people generally are starting to feel fatigue around the constant scroll.

 It's like a constant fire hose of entertaining short form attention grabbing videos.

 And I think people are starting to get sick of it.

 We're all talking about healing our attention spans and we've seen longer form YouTube videos and podcasts gain a ton of popularity over the past year or so.

 So that might be one reason that people are just scrolling on their reels feed a little bit less often than they used to.

 They might just be taking a break from all the short form video content.

 And that could be leading to a decrease in views.

 Quick insert here from editing Katie.

 Since I recorded this video, I actually stumbled upon this interview with Adam Masseri where he's asked directly about this.

 And I actually feel like his answer is kind of a succinct summary of some of my theories.

 Overall, there's more reach to go around this year than last year.

 There's also more people on Instagram.

 And so there's more competition.

 There's 10 percent more content.

 Because there's 10 percent more people and they're all posting the same amount.

 It doesn't mean there's 10 percent more things consumed.

 It sounds like it's kind of a supply and demand issue.

 Over the past couple of years, more creators have started sharing content on Instagram.

 But the number of viewers looking to watch that content has not necessarily grown in proportion.

 Basically, compared to a couple of years ago, there's more content on the platform per viewer than there used to be, which means it's harder to get views.

 This is definitely the most logical explanation for like the dip in Reels views.

 Also, as kind of a third theory, I'm going to be super honest with this one.

 I feel like the Instagram Reels algorithm is still not quite good enough.

 Like, for example, something that happens to me all the time when I'm scrolling through my Reels feed is I feel like I'll have like three or four videos back to back with the same exact trending audio in the background.

 And I'm like, OK, I get it, Instagram, like we've proven that this audio is good for capturing people's attention.

 But like maybe we could also prioritize a little bit of variety because I really don't need to hear the same song like three times in a row.

 Maybe we could sprinkle in a couple different videos in between them.

 Like, I just feel like even all these years later, I am still more likely to open up TikTok to scroll for entertainment than I am to open up Instagram and scroll through Reels.

 I just feel like the Reels algorithm isn't like algorithming as good as it could be.

 It's just not keeping me on there.

 And so that ultimately is a disservice to creators like myself who post on Reels because if the Reels algorithm isn't doing a good job of actually serving my content to the people who are interested in seeing it.

 In fact, maybe the Reels algorithm is annoying those people off of the platform by serving them the same trending audio again and again.

 Then my views are going to go down because those people are no longer scrolling on Reels.

 They're going somewhere else.

 So at the end of the day, nobody can say for sure why we've seen this dip in Reels views.

 But I feel like it is probably a combination of everything that I've talked about.

 Trial Reels kind of messing things up a bit.

 Short form fatigue really taking over and the Reels algorithm still not being as effective as it needs to be.

 As for my theories around why Instagram story views have gone kind of crazy lately, honestly, I think the Instagram stories algorithm is a little bit broken.

 Okay, so you know before how I said there's kind of this one strategy that lets you get like crazy high views on your story to the point where I get more views on my stories than I do on my Reels.

 And that strategy is basically just posting a single frame within a 24 hour period.

 This is a hugely pervasive observation.

 Okay, like everybody has noticed this and it's very, very weird to me.

 So if you post one story in 24 hours, you'll see your views go like way up.

 But as soon as you post that second frame, it's like, like, just terrible.

 I think this is way too widespread of an observation for it to just be a coincidence.

 Like there's definitely something going on here with the algorithm.

 But kind of to the point that I mentioned earlier, I don't think it's intentional.

 I think that when Instagram has like designed the stories algorithm, I think they've probably put a little bit too much weight on exits and skips towards like down ranking a story in the algorithm.

 Like essentially, if somebody is going through stories and they exit, you know, the story viewer while they're on your story frame, or they just like tap through it to skip on to the next, that like super decreases the chances that your story is going to be shown to more of your followers.

 I think that they've designed the algorithm to put a little bit too much weight on to that to the point where when you post just one story, obviously, just statistically, you're going to have less skips and less exits because you know, you have less content for people to watch through all of a sudden that gives you like a mega boost in the stories algorithm because you have so much less exits and skips.

 I honestly think that's why it's working.

 And I also think that this is something that Instagram needs to fix because it's really not in their best interest.

 Like we all know that the point of the Instagram algorithms is to keep us on their app longer.

 So we see more ads, blah, blah, blah.

 And I think through this kind of like glitch or mistake in the stories algorithm, they've unknowingly incentivized creators to just post one frame per day, which like as that proliferates out across, you know, all creators are all users on the app, there's just going to be less story content, which means that we'll spend less time on Instagram.

 So like, it's really counterintuitive, like it doesn't make sense for it to be this way.

 So I feel like that is kind of like a bit of a glitch or a bug in the stories algorithm that they need to work on.

 But for now, like that definitely seems to be the case.

 Okay, when I post a single frame in 24 hours, it's like night and day compared to posting even two frames.

 And finally, my theory on why we're seeing a rise in carousel content, I think this is directly connected to the stories algorithm glitch, if you will, because I think what we're seeing now is carousels are like the new stories, all the content that people would post on their stories, like six months ago, eight months ago, we're now seeing people post as photo dumps and other carousels, because it feels like there's no point in putting it on your story, because nobody's going to see it if you post more than one frame photo dumps have been popular for a while now, but I think they've become even more ubiquitous.

 And to that end, I think that we've seen a whole new format of carousels emerge.

 And this is really the style or the strategy that is helping people get discovered, like these are the type of carousels that are popping up on my feed and getting me to follow new accounts.

 In my mind, this style of carousel is kind of like if the 2020 2021 infographic style carousels had a baby with photo dumps, basically, what we're seeing is people post kind of casual images with text on top that tell a story or share information.

 And we're going to get more into the strategy behind that and how you can implement that in just a minute.

 But I really feel like that is the type of carousel that is really on the rise right now.

 Okay, so next, we're going to get into arguably the most important part of this video, which is how you can adapt your Instagram strategy today to start accounting for these weird changes in the algorithm and continue to see growth in your audience and in your business.

 But no matter what strategy you're using, or what kind of content you're creating online, you need high quality visuals, especially in the current social media landscape, where so many of our feeds seem to be inundated with like AI generated imagery.

 Real artistic visuals can really help you stand out.

 And that's partially why I think this new style of carousel content is performing so well because it feels so real and so human.

 And when you don't have the time or resources to capture these high quality visuals for yourself, that is where Storyblocks comes in, especially with their new restock collection.

 Storyblocks has partnered with real talented artists to create a collection of authentic visuals that capture the human experience in a way that AI just can't replicate.

 When you sign up for Storyblocks, you get unlimited access to a huge variety of high quality media for one predictable subscription cost.

 I really believe it's a one-stop shop for content creators to get the stock footage, animation templates, background music, and sound effects that you need for your videos.

 So to get started with unlimited stock media downloads at one set price, you can go to storyblocks.

com slash Katie, or sign up at the link in my description.

 And thanks again to Storyblocks for sponsoring today's video.

 Okay.

 With all that being said, let me lay out for you my current strategy recommendations for Instagram to account for the current algorithmic moment that we're in, starting with carousels.

 Okay.

 So if you haven't already, I really want to encourage you to start experimenting more with carousel posts.

 Remember to include some value in them, whether it's like inspiration or education or a little funny moment, something entertaining.

 We all know and love photo dumps, but I'm going to be honest with you.

 Photo dumps are not a way for you to grow your account.

 It's a way for you to like build a more personal relationship with your followers.

 But if you want to create carousels that are going to show up in people's recommended posts in the home feed or in the explore page, or even in the reels feed, cause carousels with music attached will go to the reels feed.

 You need to approach it with a little bit more intention than just a photo dump.

 An example that I want to share with you is a creator that I actually found recently through her carousel coming up on my home feed.

 I scrolled through it and then I was like, I need to follow this girl.

 I'm obsessed.

 Her username is by Jacqueline and she's a UK based creator that does a lot of content around art and history and getting existential in museums.

 And I just love it.

 You can see through the way that she formulates her carousel, that she shows interesting images with really quick and fascinating anecdotes that are easy to read as you scroll through.

 And the crucial piece that she does such a great job of is including a call to action slide on the end of her carousel that basically introduces herself and says, Hey, follow me if you like this kind of content.

 Like this specific carousel literally has 32,000 likes, which I just think is insanely impressive.

 I would be so curious to see the insights on this post.

 Like I would love to know how many of the people that she reached were non followers.

 Cause I'm going to guess it's a ton.

 And I was one of them.

 That's how I found her.

 But the great thing about this carousel strategy too, if you're kind of worried about, well, what images would I include the message that you're sharing with the text doesn't have to be like really literally connected to the imagery.

 And I think Tori from her first 100 K does a lot of carousels that are a great example of this.

 All of her content is about like financial advice and financial strategy for women.

 But a lot of the images in her carousels are just kind of like selfies or pics of her on vacation or like pretty landscapes.

 And it still works really well because she's sharing that value in that education.

 But at the same time, you're getting a little sense of her personality and her lifestyle outside of just like her financial advice.

 So I really want you to consider incorporating carousels like this into your content, like maybe once or twice per week.

 Like I think that would be awesome if you could post like two informational or like interesting or like anecdote based carousels, like put for sure one on your weekly content calendar, two for bonus points.

 And you really don't have to make this super complex.

 Like I think in the past I've kind of held myself back for making carousels on Instagram cause I get intimidated and I think that it needs to be this whole essay or this like groundbreaking piece of information, but just try thinking about it this way.

 The same kind of stuff that you maybe would have shared on your story like a year or two ago.

 Like I feel like back in like the early 2020s, we were all like sharing like tutorials on our stories or like actually taking people through a day in the life with like lots of captions and texts.

 Stories aren't really like that anymore, but you can take that exact same content and turn it into a carousel.

 Just make sure that your first image has some text on it that has a little bit of a hook that draws people in and make sure your final slide has a call to action, introducing yourself and saying a little bit about why people should follow you so that when your carousel gets recommended to people who aren't following you yet, they have that little push to do so.

 And probably the most important piece of advice with this, make sure that the text that you have on these images is really short and to the point.

 If you end up putting way too much text, especially on that first slide, but really any of them, that's going to be a reason for people to bail and just keep on scrolling.

 So keep it succinct, keep it valuable, keep it interesting, and really work on those initial first hooks because that's going to be the big thing that makes the difference for your post getting more reach outside of your existing following.

 Okay, so we've got two carousels on the weekly content calendar.

 Let's add in a reel.

 I'm going to recommend that you kind of alternate one week to the next, one week doing a more like trend-based reel, you know, with the classic trending audio in the background, probably text over a B-roll clip, and then the following week, do something that's more like an original reel like chatting to camera, get ready with me, maybe a tutorial or a vlog.

 And I think when it comes to the trending reels, as annoying as this is, the advice still stands that doing a really short clip with a short trending audio that's going to loop several times while people are reading the text that's on your screen, like, that does work.

 And yes, I know it's kind of annoying because that's not really my favorite reel type to come across.

 Like I get kind of frustrated when I see it, but it does work.

 So I feel like I do just have to say that we can all strive for better though, you know, making more creative, original, longer reels.

 Like I love when I stumble across like a really well crafted vlog, like chef's kiss.

 That's amazing.

 But unfortunately, probably like about half of my reels feed is like three to five second video clips where there's like a hook with text on the video and then like a bunch more stuff in the caption.

 Like yes, in 2025, we're apparently still doing that and it's still working.

 I don't know.

 I feel like the whole thing with reels views being down, it's a bit of a weird catch 22 where we're kind of stuck in this like formulaic way of creating reels because we know they do well, but then people don't even really like to see that kind of content.

 So I don't know.

 I think that might be part of why views are down, but sometimes you just got to play the game.

 So the game doesn't play you, you know, but definitely don't make all of your reels, you know, the trendy ones.

 I think it's really good to incorporate more original content.

 That's a little bit longer and a little bit like different than what you're seeing on your feed.

 Cause there's a lot of creators who have kind of blown up by doing something just like totally different than what everyone else is doing.

 So you got to shoot your shot with that too.

 By the way, if you want the best system for planning and tracking your content creation, my content creator starter kit includes my custom notion content calendar template that I use to plan all of my content from YouTube to Instagram, my email newsletter and more.

 And the starter kit also includes a ton of other great resources for beginner creators, including a new edition, which is my 12 month plan to going full time as a content creator.

 It takes you through each month, what you should be focusing on.

 So yeah, go check it out.

 You can go to Katie's deckley.

com slash starter kit if you're interested.

 Okay.

 And finally, stories, what's the strat? This one's pretty straightforward.

 Honestly, a single story post every 24 hours max, that's going to be how you optimize your views.

 I think if you want to like, you know, maybe once a week, twice a week, do like a day where you post multiple stories and just acknowledge like that's going to be your like MVP followers, like people who are like most interested in what you're doing, that's going to be, you know, the few people that see them.

 But because we can't just forgo our businesses entirely by posting a random image every 24 hours on stories, this is what I would recommend.

 So for me, I'm going to post a story like every weekday, Monday through Friday, once every 24 hours, and I'm going to pick one of those days each week to be my like promo day where I'm going to post something that hopefully I can actually earn a living from, you know, so maybe the odd time that's like a sponsored post if you do those sometimes, but more likely, I think you should take this opportunity to like post an affiliate link for something that you love, you know, like share a photo of whatever it is, include a little link sticker, promote one of your freebies or lead magnets that help you grow your email list or share a direct link to one of your digital products.

 Take the opportunity in your stories to actually like promote yourself because if you're optimizing this correctly, then you're going to get high views on your stories.

 And stories are one of the few places in Instagram where you can actually post links.

 So take that opportunity once, maybe twice a week to throw a link sticker on that story so that you can actually like reap the reward of gaming the Instagram story algorithm so well.

 If you're getting all the views anyway, you might as well actually like get some traffic to your website or whatever out of it.

 Okay.

 And finally, as a little bonus tip, I'm going to talk about my email list here because while not strictly Instagram related, I do think it's relevant.

 I'm shifting a lot of my focus at the moment towards email marketing and how it can be more effective and strategic with that, partially because Instagram is so volatile.

 Reach on Instagram is very unreliable right now.

 So I think one of the best things you can do is try to shift your audience towards a space that is a little bit more reliable.

 When you have an email list that is your best, most direct connection to your audience.

 And yes, they're not going to open every single email, but in my experience, that is like a lot more consistent.

 And also you're going to see much better conversion rates when and if you do decide to promote something like a digital product, for example, I'm thinking of incorporating like my email list into my Instagram strategy and kind of a reciprocal way where I repurpose the writing that I do for my email list into content for carousels.

 So let's say you write like a mini article for your email newsletter.

 You could turn that into even just one paragraph from it, turn it into like a carousel where it's text on imagery and then using those carousels to promote the email list through a DM automation like many chat or stand store or whatever and saying like, if you like this kind of content, I share more in-depth information in my email newsletter, comment, email, and I'll send you the link to sign up or whatever.

 And I think that can be a really effective way to kind of do both at once and get the benefits from both, but with half of the work.

 I'm still work shopping my exact strategy around that.

 I need to experiment with it a little bit more, but let me know in the comments below if you're curious about like email marketing strategy and if you'd like to see a video on that in the future because I could report back on how that goes.

 So my friends truly best of luck out there with your Instagram strategy.

 I know it's a very weird thing to navigate at the moment, but I hope some of the tips that I've shared today have shed some light on what you can do at the end of the day.

 We just have to do our best and hope that the effort that we're putting in is commensurate to the benefit that we're receiving and the benefit that our audience is receiving as well.

 Something that I hate to see is just creators hustling and hustling and struggling and then really not seeing a lot from it and their audience isn't even receiving that content.

 Like that's just sad situation.

 So as much as I feel like gaming the algorithm is kind of like an annoying thing, it is something that we have to do to see the most positive impact for the work that we put in both for ourselves and for our audience.

 If you like this casual style of video from me, then most likely you would like these videos as well.

 So make sure you check those out next.

 One of the best ways that you can support my channel is simply by clicking on the videos in the end screen and watching them as well.

 I really appreciate it and it helps me out in the YouTube algorithm.

 So as always, thank you so much for watching.

 I hope you're having adventures and following your dreams and I'll catch you in the next video.

 Bye.