104: Instagram Updates 2026: Trial Reels Strategy and New Hashtag Limits
Instagram is shifting again, and I’m breaking down exactly what you need to know so your content performs and converts.
In this short, actionable episode, I’m sharing three key updates that can directly impact your reach, engagement, and sales:
• A smarter way to use Trial Reels without killing your momentum
• The new hashtag limit and what actually matters now
• A simple authenticity shift that could completely change your results
If you want your content in front of the right people and turning followers into leads, this is your quick strategy refresh.
What You’ll Learn
01:40 - How Trial Reels actually behave after 24 hours
05:54 - Why “share to everyone” might be hurting your traction
09:08 - The new 5-hashtag rule and how to choose the right ones
09:34 - Why hashtags are no longer the main discovery tool
10:32 - How Instagram now understands your content without 30 tags
12:24 - The real reason raw, imperfect content performs so well
14:18 - A faster way to create content without overthinking
Key Takeaways
1. Trial Reels: Don’t Upgrade Them
If your trial reel is performing well, leave it in trials.
Instead of upgrading it to your grid, repost the same video as a brand-new reel. This keeps the algorithm treating it as fresh content while your trial version continues gaining traction in the background.
This strategy creates double distribution without killing momentum.
2. Instagram Hashtags Are Now Limited to Five
The 30-hashtag strategy is gone.
Instagram now allows only five hashtags per post.
The algorithm understands your content through:
Caption text
On-screen text
Spoken words in your video
Use all five hashtags, but make them specific. Avoid broad or generic tags. Make them directly describe the content in your post.
Then move on.
3. Authenticity Is a Performance Strategy
Your most real moments may be your best-performing content.
When I posted a completely unfiltered story after a microneedling appointment, it resonated deeply. I repurposed it into a reel, and it drove new followers and conversions.
The lesson:
Reduce the distance between the idea and the post.
Film it.
Share it.
Repurpose it.
Overthinking kills momentum. Simplicity builds it.
A Truth You Need to Hear:
“Your most authentic moments might just be your best content.” — Elizabeth Marberry
Resources Mentioned:
Hot Reels Full Program Details
S3 Ep104 Transcript: Instagram Updates 2026 - Trial Reels Strategy and New Hashtag Limits
00:00
Today I'm sharing some new Instagram updates that you definitely wanna know about if you want your content not only to perform well, but get in front of your ideal clients and customers. We're dishing on a new trial reels strategy that you are gonna love and wanna run with, a hashtag update and how that impacts your approach to your content. And I'm sharing a simple way to weave in more authenticity into your content that could completely change.
00:27
how you create your content and your results. These updates are gonna help you drive more views and more conversions. I hope you're ready, let's go. Welcome to Strut It, a podcast about creating bold visibility on social media with zero apologies.
00:46
I'm Elizabeth Marberry, your host and Instagram marketing coach. I help small business owners get seen on Instagram and monetize their offers so they can make more money doing their sole lead work. If you're tired of spinning your wheels on Instagram and you're seeking simple, proven Instagram marketing strategies that actually work, you're in the right place. Let's dive in.
01:17
Welcome back to the show. I'm so thrilled you have joined me for another episode of Strut It and just appreciate you sharing your precious time and energy with me. This episode is going to be short, sweet, and very actionable. I wanted to record this because as you all know, the Instagram algorithm and just social media in general is always shifting and changing.
01:40
And my job as an Instagram marketing strategist and business growth mentor is to cut through all the noise and really decipher what is most relevant and important to you. Because if you're listening to this podcast, you're a small business owner, you're a creative entrepreneur, maybe you're a service based business or product based business, or you're a marketer on a team. One thing I know for sure is that you have other things to do in your life besides just create content for Instagram. So
02:10
My goal each week is to really simplify what is working on Instagram for brands and businesses. So you can walk away from this episode with clear takeaways and next steps that you can go and run with and implement this week. And before we get into the updates, I want to pause and just say thank you to each and every one of you who has taken 30 seconds to rate and review the show.
02:36
It really makes a difference in the podcast algorithm and gets this podcast in front of more brilliant business owners like yourself. I wanna give a couple of you a shout out. So, handle is Manila J. They said, love this podcast and Elizabeth's personality. Oh, thank you. After I found her show, I binged so many episodes because I found her content relatable, fun, and easy to follow. Her nuggets of advice have also helped me create better social media content. Yes!
03:05
I love hearing that. I love when you guys DM me with your wins or you say, hey, I just went and did the thing that you said to do in your podcast and oh my gosh, my views have doubled or tripled. I cannot tell you what a difference it makes to me and my team. Whenever you share a win like that with me, I share it with my podcast manager, Lena, and my assistant, Kristen. And we're a small team over here. We put so much of our heart and soul into this work.
03:34
And so when you take a moment to follow me on Instagram and DM me with a win or a takeaway from the podcast, or you take 30 seconds to rate and review the show, truly it makes such a massive difference. So if you love the show and you haven't yet done that, I would so be grateful if you took a moment to do that. I'm a big fan of energetic exchanges and this podcast, I hope you feel is a gift to you each week.
04:04
And I would be so gracious to receive that energetic connection with you. So leaving us review, DMing me, giving me a follow on Instagram, it's how the world goes around and I just appreciate that love cycle. Gosh, I know I sound so hippie, but you guys, if you're listening to this podcast, you know that sometimes I get a little woo and I don't need to apologize for that. All right, let's transition now into the trial reels update.
04:30
This is still one of the newest distribution tools on Instagram and I'm actively watching how trial reels are behaving across accounts. So I'm testing trial reels not only in my own accounts, but with my clients accounts, they're sharing their results. And then of course, I'm just studying across the board what is working for people. And a quick recap, trial reels are a feature that lets you test your reels.
04:59
by sharing them exclusively with non-followers first. They don't appear on your main feed or to your existing followers, only to new people who don't already follow you. After about 24 hours, Instagram will give you that performance data on that trial reel, like views, likes, comments, shares, to see how it performed with a fresh audience.
05:24
before deciding whether you wanna post it to your main feed. So essentially it's a way to test content, experiment with an unbiased audience, so a total cold audience, someone who doesn't know you, and reach those new people without it affecting your current followers' experience or your grid on Instagram. So here's the update with that. In the past, what I was doing is, let's say I posted a reel to trial reels,
05:54
and it was performing above average for my typical reels, what would happen is that Instagram will give you a little pop-up that says, this trial reel is taking off, share to everyone, and then there's a little button where you can share your trial reel to everyone. And I would do that, right? Because you're thinking, oh, okay, this reel is doing really well, I wanna share it to my main grid.
06:17
What I discovered, and this is not just for me, like I said, for my clients and across the board with other uh Instagram mentors and coaches as well, is that when you share a trial reel to your grid, to everyone, we noticed that it essentially killed the traction of the video. So let's say it's going up, it's getting more and more views, reaching more and more people. I would send it out to my grid and then it would essentially level out.
06:46
The reason why that is happening, like plateauing, is that when you upgrade a trial reel to a regular reel, essentially like posting that to your feed, the platform tends to treat it like older content, right? So let's say I posted this trial reel on Monday, and then on Wednesday, Instagram's like, oh my gosh, this trial reel is doing really well, push it out to everyone. When I push it out there, it's treating it like older content. That usually means it loses steam.
07:15
with your followers and that's the opposite of what we want, right? So instead here is a better plan. When you have a trial reel doing really, really well, leave the trial reel as is, meaning leave it in trial reels. It will still get those views, the engagement. Trial reels are a great way to get new followers, right? So you can get conversions, but just leave it in trial reels. Then what I want you to do,
07:44
is clearly that video is doing really well. I want you to post that same video again as a brand new reel to your main feed. Now, why does this work? Your feed post gets treated like fresh content, again, by an algorithm. So instead of, know, oh, this Monday post is now live for your followers on Wednesday, right? So it's already like two days old. I post that fresh reel that's getting traction on Monday and trial reels, I post it to my main grid.
08:14
on Wednesday and the algorithm is like, ooh, fresh content, right? So that's a win-win. And your trial reel keeps running in the background. You can still rack up those views and bring in those new followers. So that is a strategy that I have been playing with. It's been working really well for me and my clients to really drive up reach engagement and of course get more followers and conversions from our content.
08:40
So I invite you to test this out for yourself, like anything with Instagram strategy, what is working right now may not be working in a couple months. So like I said, keep coming back to this podcast. I'll keep sharing with you what I see is working and what's not, but I'm excited for you to kind of experiment and test that out. So to summarize that part, when you have a trial reel performing really well, leave it in trials, just let it be.
09:08
and then post the exact same video again as a brand new reel to your main feed. Okay, now on to hashtags. Instagram recently changed how many hashtags you can use. You can now only include up to five hashtags per post, so the old 30 hashtag method is gone. Here is the truth. So many times when I go and do speaking events, people are always so concerned about hashtags.
09:34
And I just wanna kind of give you permission right now, like stop stressing about hashtags, okay? Hashtags are not the discovery hack that they used to be. The platform now uses other signals to let the algorithm understand what your content is about so it can really sort it and put it in front of the right people. Remember that recommendations based algorithm is all designed to ensure that the user, the person who's scrolling is able to see the content they like to see. So if they,
10:03
love dog content and they're hearting it and they're commenting and they're sharing the dog videos with our partner, they're gonna start to see more dog videos, right? That is the recommendations-based algorithm. In the past, hashtags were such an important part of helping the algorithm to really understand how to classify your content. Now, it's much more savvy. In 2026, the algorithm can understand what your content is about by looking at the text in your caption.
10:32
spoken words in your video, the text on your video. I'm sure you've even seen that AI analysis where you see kind of at the top of someone's caption where the AI is essentially summarizing what the video is about, right? So that said, hashtags do still serve a purpose and I still recommend that you use them. Why not use all five hashtags? Some people still search hashtags. I believe that hashtags are still super helpful.
10:59
hashtags can add context to your post and they can help Instagram confirm the topic of that piece of content. So my recommendation, use all five, but make them super specific. So think about what your video is truly about. Don't pick broad, generic hashtags. Make sure that your hashtags are very specific to the video or the piece of content. So for example, if you're sharing your top Trader Joe's finds for under $20, because I love Trader Joe's, I don't know about you, they just opened one
11:28
like 10 minutes from my house, my husband and I are obsessed, our kids love it. So let's say I did a reel on your top Trader Joe finds under $20. The hashtags I might use would be hashtag Trader Joe's finds, hashtag budget grocery tips, hashtag Trader Joe's, hashtag affordable snacks, hashtag grocery favorites. And I didn't do any research on those hashtags by the way, but I'm just trying to use that example of
11:57
you can hear how those hashtags would describe the content of the video. So I wouldn't do hashtag mom life. That's too general. I would do hashtags to describe the content of the video. You just wanna avoid ones that are too broad or unrelated. So I hope that clears up any hashtag confusion. At the end of the day, don't stress about hashtags. Just get them done and move on.
12:24
Now to close out, I want to tell you about my own little content experiment that completely shifted how I'm starting to think about creating content. So last week I got micro-needling done at a place in my neighborhood. And if you've had this done, basically they poke tiny holes in your face to stimulate collagen. Okay, it sounds horrible. My face was totally numb. I actually kind of thought it felt good. But afterward your face looks red.
12:52
And I ended up getting this face mask put on to lock in the moisture in my skin. This particular skincare place was in my neighborhood. So I had walked there and I was gonna walk home. And when I saw myself in the mirror after this, I seriously started laughing because I looked like an extra in a horror movie. Like my face was melting off. And so I was walking home with this face mask on and my face is bright red underneath and I just look insane.
13:19
And for some reason, I just whipped out my camera and recorded an Instagram story. And I said something like, hey, if you've ever struggled to get on camera, I just want you to note that I'm out here walking in public right now, looking like my face is melting off. And if I can do this and I can show up on camera, you can get on camera too. It was completely off the cuff, no planning, no perfect lighting, definitely no perfect appearance. I didn't have a microphone, but here's what happened. That story, of course, cracks people up.
13:48
but it really resonated with people. And so I repurposed that video into an Instagram reel and I edited it down. I took out all the pauses and it is performing really well for me right now. It drove a ton of new followers and conversions to my lead magnet, helping me grow my email list. And it got me thinking, okay, what if content creation was actually this easy? What if it was just, you have an idea, you film it,
14:18
You record it, you post it, you save it to your camera roll for repurposing, and you just keep doing that. Instead of creating all this distance between the thought in your head and the actual content, instead of overthinking every single post, what if you could reduce that resistance to content creation? In my Hot Reels training this week, we talked a lot about how can you create a content creation system in your business and in your life?
14:48
that works with your current life, right? Because no one has an extra eight hours a week to just sit around and plan and film content, right? It's really imperative that you reduce that resistance for yourself to creating content so you can create more of it. And the more that you create, the better you become at it and the more effective your content creation efforts become. So I hope that you found this episode short, sweet.
15:17
helpful and a reminder that your most authentic moments, your most ugly raw moments might just be your best content. I'll keep watching for how these features evolve. And of course I will always share with you what's actually working on Instagram. And remember if I can post content looking like a horror movie extra, you can definitely get on camera too. We wanna see your face and we wanna hear your voice.
15:44
I'm rooting for you and I'm sending you so much love and I cannot wait to strut it with you next week. Thank you for listening to strut it. If you're ready to start leveraging Instagram to grow your business, then you're gonna wanna grab my free monetize your IG guide, where you'll learn seven simple and proven ways to finally make money on Instagram. You can grab your guide at elizabethmarberry.com slash freebies.
16:13
That's ElizabethMarberry.com slash freebies to get my monetize your IG guide. If you got some incredible value from today's episode, be sure to leave a review and subscribe on your favorite podcast platforms. And I cannot wait to start it with you again next week.
