Crack the Algorithm: Practical Instagram Tips Straight from Meta

Ever wish you could pick the brain of someone at Meta to truly understand what Instagram and Threads want from creators right now? In this episode, Lisa shares a rare, behind-the-scenes look at her conversation with a Meta representative. From optimizing your Reels to leveraging Threads, discover straightforward strategies to grow your reach, engage your community, and simplify your social media routine—no guesswork required.

What You’ll Learn:

1. Consistency Counts:
   Learn why Meta recommends a balance of three Reels and one feed post per week—and how sticking to a regular schedule can draw in new followers while keeping your current audience engaged.
2. Peak Posting Times:
   Find out how to identify when your audience is most active and why posting about 30 minutes before that peak time can give your content a competitive edge.
3. Reels Best Practices:
   Discover the ideal Reel length (30–90 seconds) and how trending audio and thoughtful captions can help you stand out and spark meaningful interactions.
4. Leveraging Threads:
   Get the lowdown on why Threads is a major focus for Meta right now. Learn how cross-promoting content to Threads and engaging in conversations can amplify your reach—without having to create entirely new content from scratch.
5. Engagement That Counts:
   See how just 15–20 minutes of intentional daily engagement—commenting, liking, and joining conversations—can build relationships and boost your brand awareness.
6. Batching & Scheduling:
   Uncover how Instagram’s in-app scheduling tool can support consistency and free you from posting on-the-fly, allowing you to spend more time creating compelling content that resonates.

Action Steps:

• Audit Your Strategy: Check your posting habits and analytics to pinpoint the best times to share content.
• Plan Ahead: Batch-create Reels and posts, and schedule them in advance using Instagram’s built-in tools.
• Try Threads: Cross-promote your Instagram content to Threads, join conversations, and establish yourself as an active, authentic voice in your niche.
• Engage Daily: Dedicate a small window of time each day to meaningful interactions—responding to comments, exploring relevant hashtags, and contributing to community dialogues.

Connect & Share:
If you found these tips helpful, please share this episode with a friend or fellow stylist, leave a rating or review on your favorite podcast platform, and join Lisa on Instagram and Threads to continue the conversation. Let’s grow smarter, not harder, and make social media a fun, authentic space that supports your business goals.

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Transcript

0:00

Hello, and welcome back to Stylus Soul Tribe Conversations. We've got a solo episode today. So I've said it on here before. I don't really love doing solo episodes. Not because I don't like talking to you guys. not because I don't like ranting on about random topics. But I have a really hard time getting my thoughts together and like, Speaking it out loud in a digestible manner for you guys to receive. So anyway, I won't dwell on that, but I just want to say hello. We're here for a solo episode. I'm very excited. It feels nice. It feels intimate. If you guys like this episode, tell me, and I may try to do more solo episodes in 2025, or if you're like, no, you're definitely better at like a banter back and forth. Then tell me and I'll. Keep not doing them. Okay. So I got on my Instagram story yesterday and shared that maybe six months to a year ago, I want to say, I remember receiving a voicemail from Metta, like Facebook, Instagram Metta. and it was like, Oh, we're calling you to discuss your Instagram growth. Or I think I had like a pop up come up that said, like, would you Like more tips or resources on bettering your Instagram or something like that. And I clicked it, which submitted me into like getting this phone call or something. It was like six months to a year ago. Like I said, I was living in my old house. That's why I know that. And I get so many spam calls. So I just kind of like ignored it. Didn't think anything of it. But then right after that happened, I started seeing all over TOK and everything, like all these like influencers and Instagram educators, like I had a phone call with Metta and here's what they said. And, I talked with Metta and this is what Metta said, And I was like, Damn, that really was a thing. how random, how kind of cool, how bizarre, that that's the approach that Meta is taking right now. and like also why me and like, I don't know, just all those interesting thoughts. So anyway, long story short, I thought I missed that opportunity, didn't think much of it, but there was a moment of me that was like, damn, that kind of was cool. That was a real thing I should have answered, but bummer, you know, I didn't dwell on it too much. then I woke up yesterday, I received a text message in the morning and it said, Hi Lisa, this is Stacy from Metta. I will be calling you between this time and this time today. to discuss Instagram growth strategies. What's the latest on the app, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I was like, okay, they're doing it again. Interesting. And I had a pretty free day. So I was like, okay, I gotta like try to remember that and answer my phone. I was working in the coffee shop yesterday. Cause that's when I'm the most productive is in the coffee shop. I had one client in the salon yesterday. Then I went to the coffee shop to bang out some work on my computer. I don't even remember getting a call, but again, I get So many spam calls. I looked and I had a voicemail and it said, hi, Lisa, this is Stacy from Metta trying to discuss blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I'm going to call you again shortly. hopefully we can chat. And I was like, damn, I missed it again. Okay. We'll see if she calls again. Then again, long story short, I was driving home from the coffee shop. So this. It's a town that I live in and the town that I, work in are about 40 minutes away. I was just getting on the highway heading home and my phone rang and it said San Francisco, California. I'm like, Oh yeah, I think this is probably it. I answered and the lady's like, Hi Lisa, this is Stacey from Nup, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, Do you have some time for like a 20 minute phone conversation to discuss your Instagram profile, the latest with the algorithm, with the platform? I'm like, yes, actually I do. Do you mind if I record this? Cause also Apple updated and now when you're on the phone on an iPhone, it like has a little thing that has like wavelengths with the record dot. And I remember seeing it a few days ago and I was on the phone with my husband. And I was like, what is this record feature? And I clicked it and it does say out loud, like this call is being recorded. Kind of like how zoom does. So I knew I couldn't just click it. I had to ask her. So I was like, do you mind if I record this? And she was like, Oh no, that's okay. She's like, Oh, I also need to tell you that I'm recording this call as well. For, you know, training and purposes or whatever. And so I clicked record, and that new cool feature on the iPhone now, not only sends the voice memo to your notes, but it also will transcribe it. So I'm like, brilliant, genius. So we had a 20 minute phone conversation. I already don't really remember exactly what we talked about. I remember some parts, but definitely not enough for me to like streamline and put into a podcast episode. So again, this is just another example of like how much I'm loving AI and all of these new AI features. it is making my brain shrink, and think for itself a lot more, but I am becoming extremely dependent on the robots. So I took that transcript, I plugged it into ChatGPT, Here's what it shared with me, based on all of this information to help me, come up with a plan moving forward. It gave me some ideas for some reels. It gave me some ideas for some carousels, I got on my Instagram story and I blabbed this whole thing. I've already been talking for six minutes. My Instagram story was probably only like two minutes. and I said, if anybody's interested, tell me one, I am totally, totally hopping on the bandwagon clickbait. I had a phone call with Metta. Here's what they had to say that I saw everyone else do six months ago. I'm totally late on it, but I'm totally jumping on it. And two, I said, is anybody interested in hearing what they had to say? Cause not everything was like groundbreaking. There's a lot of things I already knew. another just reminder and kick in the ass to remain consistent. But there was definitely things that I had never heard of before that I never knew about before. So it was very insightful and, I got an overwhelming yes. Types of dms and reactions, to my Instagram story. So here we are. Today is Friday, December 6th. You're probably gonna hear this on Wednesday. Anyway, um, I. Plugged into chat GPT, and I'm going to try to stay focused and stay organized and share with you guys some of my biggest takeaways, or actually all of the takeaways from my phone call with Metta. Okay, question. Have you ever wished that you could sit down with someone from Metta and get the inside scoop on Instagram growth? Well, I did just that this week and I'm spilling all of the details on today's episode. From tips on reels to how threads can skyrocket your engagement, I'm sharing what I learned and how you can apply it to grow your business as well. As hairstylists, salon owners, and beauty professionals, we rely on social media to attract clients, build community, and grow our businesses. But let's be real, it's tough to keep up with all the changes on Instagram and now threads. I don't know if you guys are anything like me. I have developed quite the love hate relationship with Instagram over the years. It definitely started out as a full love lust infatuation. I was obsessed with it as years have gone on and algorithms have changed. And I've honestly just kind of grown as a person and lost interest. Have a harder time keeping up with every algorithm change, every this, every that. So I, I have definitely that love hate relationship with it, and I definitely feel over the last few years, probably honestly since Reels hit the scene, I just feel like the energy shifted and it's just become like a, what the hell do you want to see? To do kind of thing where it used to be very like I shared from my heart. I felt like I was really engaging with people. I felt like I was really like reaching new people. And then over the last few years, it's just felt like, do you want me to dance? Do you want me to do flips? Like, what do you want me to do? and sometimes I play along and get inspired and sometimes I'm just so totally uninspired. I'm like, fuck this. And I just kind of like give up on it. So all that being said, this call was one, a kick in the butt to remind me that. Honestly, even if it's a love hate relationship, I am still interested in social media. I find it fascinating. Instagram, Facebook, I like the ability to connect. TikTok, I am addicted to. YouTube, some of you may be watching on here and obviously you're listening to this as a podcast. I do, whether I like it or not, still love and am very interested and intrigued in the online social media world. So the first thing that the call with Meta did was remind me of that and say, quit being inconsistent and lazy and making excuses and get your butt in gear. So that was like the, my first takeaway. I was like, if Meta, if poor Stacey herself from Meta will call me and tell me how to behave on the app, I'm like, the least I can do is just like, put some of these things into play. So key takeaways from my call. Number one, like I said, is definitely consistency is key. Metta recommends for me, Stacey recommends posting three reels and one feed post per week. I don't know if she would have said that to everyone. I don't know if that was based on my existing cadence. she did say for me three reels and one feed post per week. She said right now reels are great for reaching new followers while Feed posts are better for engaging your current audience. Kind of something I knew, not, not a hundred percent, definitely hearing it like out of Meta's mouth is very clarifying. but I wasn't entirely surprised by that, but I also just liked like the accountability of somebody saying like, here's exactly what you need to do. Can you do that? Like she literally said that a bunch of like, can you do that? I'm like, yes, Stacey, I can do that. So between ChatGPT and I, the actionable advice that I'm going to give you and that I'm going to take for myself is to set a schedule. For me, that means posting reels on Monday, Friday, and Sunday with a carousel or a static post mid week. We'll see how long I stick to that, but that's what ChatGPT and I came up with and that's something I'm going to try to stick to. I did ask someone. Stacy, our reels or posts penalized if they're scheduled in the Instagram app, because back in my day, we had later, we had all the different apps and things that we would use to schedule. And it was like for a while they performed well, then they started tanking that Instagram came out out loud and said like, we don't support second party apps. And so then we all just kind of were like, okay, we need to post in real time. Then we went to Facebook business manager. They've made us do a lot. Like I said, over the last few years in the latest, that it comes to scheduling is inside the Instagram app. When you go to post a reel or a post, you can scroll down to more options and then it will bring up a new page and you can trigger on a little, switch that says schedule this reel. If you trigger that on, it will pop up and say, what day and time do you want to schedule? I've played around with it. I go through really creative bursts where I schedule batch, a ton of content in advance. And like I said, over the last few years, I feel like the way the algorithm works. Some posts perform well, some don't. You wonder, is it because I scheduled it? Is it because I didn't dance the way I was supposed to? Is it because I didn't jump through this hoop? What is it? so I asked her if scheduling them penalized you at all in any way, shape, or form. And she said, no, absolutely not. We recommend you use the scheduling feature. Because another thing she said that I knew was kind of important, but I didn't really know was how important timing is. She was like, so what is your current strategy when it comes to when you post? I'm like, honestly girl, just whenever I have the ability to do so. Like, sometimes I'll try to have it stack with my morning routine. I'll be posting at like 6am, some perform well, some don't. Sometimes, like lately I've been doing Mastermind Mondays at the end of the day, and I post those just at the end of my day, right after I record them. I really can't post those sooner. And she said, we highly recommend that you go into your analytics, and you look at when your peak audience time is and you post about 30 minutes before that peak audience time. and again, I just feel like in the past, like I, I listened to so many different social media focused educators, influencers, things like that. I just feel like I've heard this question for years and it kind of seems like the trend changes. Like sometimes it matters, sometimes it doesn't. Stacy from Metta said Go to your analytics, pull up your audience, scroll down to their most active times, it will show you Sunday through Saturday, you can click each day, and it will show you the peak time. So I screenshotted all those after already having this conversation with ChatGPT, I plugged those seven images in and I said this is when it says my peak times were, and then ChatGPT started making a plan with me for social media. For me personally, my best times are around 11. 30am and 2. 30pm. but that's gonna be different for every everyone. Tip number three is reels optimization. She said reels should be 30 to 90 seconds long. I really struggle with that. I've been inspired lately to create more reels. I have a really hard time keeping them that short, but that is what Stacey from Metta said. Anything shorter than that doesn't tell enough of a story, and anything longer isn't prioritized by the algorithm. So, 30 to 90 seconds right now is the actual sweet spot. That's what I'm going to try to work on. That's what you guys should try to work on if you care. don't forget trending audio. in captions to boost engagement. That was another thing she kind of touched on. She also talked about cross promoting to threads. I remember when threads first came out, everyone freaked out. Kind of like when Clubhouse first came out. Whenever the new thing comes out, everyone freaks out. I was one of them. I was on threads like, what's going on here? I thought the launch of threads was so funny. The behavior on threads, like the day that it launched, was so fun. So funny. After like three, four days. Personally, I was kind of bored of it. Um, I then noticed months later that you could like toggle on the option to share your Instagram posts also to threads. And I'm like, sure, why not? What difference does it make? I'm already posting it. they're really trying to prioritize threads. So, I'm gonna try to like stop being a brat and behaving the way that I'm behaving and think like, How could I get into threads? I know threads is very much like a similar take on Twitter, which is now X, which is never really something that I've been super into. but it is something that I'm gonna work on and it is crystal clear, clearly, clearly something that Medicare is about right now. And that meta is prioritizing right now. So she said every single post should get cross promoted to threads. Apparently you can only do that with posts and not with reels. she said threads is a powerful way to repurpose Instagram content and spark real time conversations. She said threads specifically is not supposed to be about perfect content. It's about, it's supposed to be about showing up authentically. That's kind of my behavior on stories. so I'm gonna have to train myself a little bit to show up on threads more so that way. She basically said reels and threads is should be your behavior right now. Like that's what they care about right now. Interesting. Is that in alignment with where I'm at right now? Sometimes, other times not. So I can't tell you how I'm going to behave, but this Meta's mouth. tip number five was engage, engage, engage. And this is something that I used to do back in the day, will fall in and out of, and I have recently been doing more of it. And no duh, it's social media. The more you engage with other accounts, especially hairstylists, listening people in your area, like going to geo tags, going to other local businesses that are where your target market hangs out. Putting your name in people's notification box, is something that I have been doing more of recently and Stacey confirmed that they really like you to be doing that. So she said spend 15 to 20 minutes daily interacting with your audience, reply to comments, like posts, and join conversations On threads, she said, everywhere hashtags are important. I should have asked her more about hashtags, damn it. But on threads, she said if you put in a single hashtag, for example, hairstylist, for you it might be Chicago, Illinois. If you put in a single hashtag that creates a hyperlink, and it brings you to Threads specifically about that. So she was saying I could put it in the hashtag hairstylist and what I'm kind of understanding, I need to play around with this, is that almost creates a reddit like forum. so she talked about the single hashtags on threads becoming hyperlinks and really spending time engaging with communities and with other people's threads, adding to conversations. Giving insight, giving valuable, feedback so that people are pulled to click on your name, go back and follow you, go back to your page, realize that you're very active, realize they like what you're posting, and then follow you from there. And then that threads to Instagram, you know, when they go to your threads account, they can click through to your Instagram. When they go to your Instagram, they can click through to your threads. It really does sound like they're trying to push this right now. So I wanted to share that as well. Okay, again, me and my friend ChatGPT, I really should come up with a name for it, but we decided on how I'm implementing these tips. So first things first is a Reels schedule. I've already started batching my Reels for the week. focusing on topics that resonate with my audience, mindset, business tips, and behind the scenes insights from Stylist Soul Tribe. My thread strategy is now going to be part of my weekly routine, I hope. I use it to cross promote reels, start conversations, and connect in a more casual, text based way. Habit to engage for about 15 minutes a day, not just on my own posts, but on others as well. And this has already helped me connect with new people in the industry. So again, anybody who's focused on industry growth, you can do the exact same thing I'm doing. If you're focused on local. growth to clients. Um, you're going to want those behaviors to just change rather from niche specific beauty industry to location specific where you live. let's move on now to how you can apply these tips. So first things first, I want you to audit your Instagram strategy. Take a look at your current posting habits. Are you posting reels consistently? Are you using your peak times effectively? Cause again, those were two things that you really, really, really hit home about. Okay. Step two is start planning for threads. If you're not really participating in threads yet and you care to grow on Instagram, they have blatantly said that they are prioritizing this right now. So now would be the time. Start with repurposing Instagram content and then experiment with quick conversational posts. Batching some content and set aside time to batch create reels and plan your posts for the week. This saves time and ensures that you're consistent. And then step four is going to be engage intentionally. Like I said, schedule time each day to engage with your audience. Remember social media is a two way street. It's called social media for a reason. Engage with your current audience, engage with your followers, engage with your clients, and engage with brand new people in your area or in your niche. show up in their notifications so that they think, Hmm, who's this person liking my post, commenting on my post, responding to my threads, giving super educational, helpful, valuable responses. And then they will go back to your profile and they're more likely to stick around and follow, engage with your content, which the algorithm likes, all of those things. All right, so all in all, here's what we've learned. You need to post consistently, no surprise, but this can be your kick in the butt. You need to optimize your reels, you need to leverage threads for cross promotion, and you need to engage with your community. A reminder for you guys, as well as a reminder for me. Social media isn't just a tool. It's a way to connect, inspire, and grow. Don't let the algorithm stress you out. Focus on showing up authentically. If you found this episode helpful, please share it with a friend or fellow stylist. And don't forget to join me on threads and Instagram. I'd love to hear how these tips work for you. All right, that is it for now. I hope that you guys learned a little something. I will see you over on the gram and on threads moving forward. if you guys enjoyed this episode, please, leave me a rating or review wherever you listen to your podcast. It's been a little while since I've gotten some fresh ratings and reviews. So this is just my selfish ask of please, please, please, leave a rating if you're on. Spotify and a written review if you are listening on Apple. That means the absolute world to me. And as always, thank you guys so much for listening to this week's episode of Stylus Soul Tribe Conversations. I am grateful as fuck for every single one of you, and I will talk to you all next week. Bye.