How Exactly Does Instagram Rank & Deliver Reels & How I Use That for My Advantage?

There is so much speculation about how Instagram ranks and delivers Reels, and many of those who are doing this get it plain wrong!

Hidden in documentation literary on another domain, Meta outlines exactly how it works: https://transparency.fb.com/features/explaining-ranking/

and https://transparency.fb.com/.../explai.../ig-reels-chaining/

Instead of reading through that, I've summarized it here for you...

Instagram aims to show you content that you find interesting, not just content from accounts you follow, especially on Reels.

This approach is designed to keep you engaged on the platform, increasing the likelihood of you seeing advertisements.

For Reels, the content and its order are tailored to what you're most likely to enjoy or interact with.

Your overall activity on Instagram influences what you see on Reels.

However, interactions with Reels themselves have a more significant impact on what you will see in the future.

The factors that influence what you will likely see on Reels in the future include:

1. Who you follow.
2. What you've recently liked.
3. What you have recently engaged with (comments or shares including the total number of shares and the total during your current session, especially shares of Reels, both on and off Instagram).
4. What Reels you have watched at least 3 seconds of, but ideally more than 25% of.
5. What amount of time you have spent watching particular content, especially rewatches.
6. What consumption of content comes from your Explore page.
7. What content you have saved the audio from, especially the last 100 audio.

Based on these factors, if you watch Reels for more than 15 seconds, Instagram curates and ranks the next 100 similar Reels, including variations in length and the selection is based on relevance according to the above factors.

If you want more people to see your content then create content that:

1. Is similar to what is found on accounts that have the same type of people you want as their followers.
2. That hooks people to watch longer than 3 seconds before they get the hooks payoff.
3. That forces people to rewatch it, such as content that needs time to comprehend what was said or happened.
4. That people feel compelled to comment on, such as comment-baiting.
5. That people want to share both on and off Instagram.

NOTE: there is no verifiable link between trending sounds and saving sounds and none between text, hashtags and location tags, although they are used for discovery outside of the feed.