#1407- October 2026 Instagram Algorithm Change (The 2 Formats Working Right Now)

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• 0:00Speaker 00

  What's going on squad? Welcome to another episode of the change lives make money podcast for business owners who want to grow and sell on social media. My name is Brian Mark. I'm your host. And in today's episode, we're going to be talking about my prediction for what social media is going to look like in 2027. We've only got three months left of the year, and so we need to start thinking through content strategy that's working right now. And also going into 2027, if we want to be able to make money from our social media content, like what are we going to do? Now, just a quick reminder, I'm giving away a thousand dollars cash on the podcast. All you gotta do screenshot any episode, share it to your Instagram stories, tag me at the real Brian Mark, let me know that you were tuning in. And if you're tuning in right now, make sure you subscribe. There's a link right there. I post five episodes a week specifically for business owners that want to grow and sell on social media. Now I'm making this episode because as of right now, October 2026, the Instagram algorithm has shifted again.

• 0:45Speaker 00

  And I noticed the shift at the start of the month and it was pissing me off. All right. And I'm going to tell you why it's pissing me right off. Pissing me off because like I had found a flow. I had like found a flow of content where I had like predictable formats that were consistently crushing for me on social. And all of a sudden it was like October 1st, bam, those like those predictable formats like dropped off a cliff and the stuff that I was posting that I like. It was almost like every time I posted, I was like guaranteed this goes viral, guaranteed this gets views, stop performing as well. And so over the course of the last two weeks, like basically my job as a content creator is to stay ahead of the curve and to be on top of trends and what's working right now. And it's like literally what I get paid to do. And then I pass that information along to the people that are working with me inside of my coaching containers.

• 1:29Speaker 00

  So I've literally for the last like two weeks, I've been fucking like tweaking out, paying a lot of attention to social media and not only paying attention to other people's social media, but paying attention to my own social media and my own analytics and my own metrics. And what I found is that there was a shift, like I predictably found the format that is consistently bringing me in the views and the engagement that I'm looking for now. So I'll talk about a couple of things that I believe are going to be very true in 2027. And I'll also talk about stuff that I'm not doing and why I'm not doing it anymore. So stuff that I'm not doing and why I'm not doing it anymore. It's actually one of the formats that is still like outperforming in terms of like the engagement on my page. But I made the decision to stop doing it and I'm going to tell you why. The format that I'm no longer taking part in than that I'm no longer doing is the AI carousels that I was doing.

• 2:13Speaker 00

  And so I used to do these like AI carousels that were like cartoon versions of my face and I'd have like motivational messages on them. Those fucking rip. Okay. They still rip to this day. Like I've probably gained over a hundred thousand followers because of that content style by itself. And it still rips like I'll have AI carousels in the last 30 days that I posted that I've gotten over a million views. But here's the problem, and this is what I realized as my brand has gotten bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger. It's like, even though those were bringing me in views and they were bringing me in followers, they weren't actually building my recognizability and they weren't actually building my personal brand. Which is going to lead me in, I'm going to explain why that's so important in the number two phase of this. But just because I was getting visibility, doesn't mean I was getting brand. So like, what I mean by that is like, let's say hosting AI carousel gets 5.5 million views, whatever.

• 2:58Speaker 00

  And brings in a bunch of followers, brings in 20,000 followers. Well, those people never actually saw my face, right? And so they made the decision to follow me, but they didn't actually make the decision to follow my face. They made the decision to follow this fucking cartoon fucking version of me. So they followed me, but they didn't actually follow me. They followed like a cartoon version of me. And as a result of them following a cartoon version of me. What that basically means is like, they're not actually following Brian Mark. They're following cartoon Brian Mark. And so when Brian Mark pops off, has a video that goes viral or is posting videos on his page. It's like, they don't actually recognize me. They would only recognize me from my carousels.

• 3:39Speaker 00

  Now, the, the reason that I think this is even more fucking important going into 2027 is how many of you guys have seen like viral AI influencers? Like, how many of you guys have seen those before? You know, where you like, there's like an AI fucking AI influencer and you're like, what the fuck? And then you look really close and you're like, oh shit, this is actually fucking AI. How many of you guys have seen that? There's like a variety of creators at this point that are like viral as fuck, like AI influencers. So that's number one. Okay. So that's what we're, what we need to be aware of. The second thing we need to be aware of is like, dude, it is so fucking easy for you to go to chat GPT and come up with a script and then just get on camera with a videographer and just regurgitate bullshit. That you there's that you're like reading from a script and people know that these days.

• 4:25Speaker 00

  And so what I've noticed is two things. One, the highly produced content on my page. And when I say highly produced, I mean professionally shot with a videographer, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. The highly produced content on my page as an overall blanket statement is performing less consistently, less like getting less views than it ever has, like ever. And like, I used to be like highly produced edits across the board consistently. I'm noticing that across the board, my highly produced content is actually getting less engagement. So I'd notice that. And then here's two reasons why I think this is, is very, very prevalent. Reason number one, I think it's very prevalent is because again, there's AI influencers. It's hard for people to tell like what's real, what's not. So like even

• 5:09Speaker 00

  like if my content gets distributed to a small group of people and they don't recognize my face and they don't know if it's AI or not, they're just not going to engage. You're going to scroll past. So it's very easy to scroll past. Okay.

• 5:20Speaker 00

  What's going on fam? It's your boy Brian Mark. If you didn't know, we just launched the 10 million dollar Instagram funnel blueprint. We became a three time national best seller within the first week of us launching. You can get the book, the 10 million dollar Instagram funnel blueprint. That is my literal start to finish complete guide on how to make money with your social media account on amazon.com. So search up the 10 million dollar Instagram funnel blueprint by Brian Mark and get your copy. Guarantee you best purchase you've ever made.

• 5:48Speaker 00

  Number two is because there's a lot of AI influencers and people are like having a hard time deciphering what's real, what's not. It's like, when they come across a highly produced video, there's like an instinct that like makes them feel like it's almost AI. And I feel like that is going to be even more fucking prevalent. Like dude, even for me, when I'm watching a highly produced video, like I actually watch really closely to ask myself if it's AI or not. Like I'm like, is this fucking AI? And so like, I have to waste my time considering whether or not this is AI. And so because of that, I'm just not engaging with those videos as much anymore. Myself is like a buying behavior. Okay. This is my prediction for 2027 social media, and this is actually what I'm doubling down on right now.

• 6:28Speaker 00

  And you'll notice this on my page and you're going to see more and more and more of this stuff over the course of the next 30, 60, 90 days from me specifically. My prediction is that the content format that is going to perform the best in 2027 and beyond, there's two. Actually, there's two that are working right now, but one I think is going to send the test time. The two that are working right now, number one, carousels, carousels by far are my top performing content on my page. And even the AI carousels that I stopped doing, it's like carousels, my lowest performing carousel on my page is like beating my average view volume on my other videos, you know? Like I posted a carousel the other day that was like my company booked 1100 sales calls, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's like my lowest performing carousel, we've got 33,000 views, whereas like an average video that's like a good video on my page will get 33,000 views.

• 7:13Speaker 00

  So like my lowest performing carousels are significantly outperforming my like good reels these days. And like an average carousel for me is like 50,000 views, but like an excellent carousel for me will be like 200 to 300,000 views. Like I posted one, like this was like four days ago. So this carousel that I posted four days ago, that was like a personal story carousel that like goes into my story, 150,000 views. So it's like, whereas like to for me to get a video that gets 150,000 views right now is like, it's got to be a real, real, real fucking good video. Whereas like I can post like a decent carousel, like not even a fucking good carousel, not even a good one. And a good one, decent one will get like 50,000 views where it's like, you have to, I have to fight to get those view volume on my talking videos.

• 7:55Speaker 00

  So that's number one. Okay. So carousels I think are currently working right now. I don't know if they're going to be working in 2027, so I don't have a prediction on whether or not that's going to be the case. But one thing that I absolutely do have a prediction that is 100% going to be prevalent in 2026, no matter what. And it's like, it's working right now and it's going to continue to work in 2027. I think it's going to be the format that literally does stand the test of time when it comes to social media is opening up your iPhone and speaking. And like, I'm not talking about like right, using chat GPT to help you write a script. I'm talking about opening up your iPhone and speaking about your unique subject matter and expertise. Like that is going to be the format that is going to crush in 2027.

• 8:34Speaker 00

  And I've started to do this a lot more on my page right now. And I've got like formats and I've got like formulas and structures and like, if you're my client and you're listening to this right now. You're likely engaging with, with what I call the raw talk challenge. If you are my client and you're engaging with that, just let me know. And there's a reason that I'm getting my clients to partake in stuff like this right now is because I believe that that skillset is going to be the one that separates you in 2027. It's like people are craving actual content from creators that are pulling out their iPhone. It's like, I feel like we've kind of like evolved past the, well, I'll call it like the expert era. And the expert era was like when we were like following the creators that like highly produced content and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And stuff like that. It's like, that's kind of to me like the expert era. We've evolved past that.

• 9:16Speaker 00

  And if you're like still creating like expert era style content, it's like, you're going to be competing with some of the big dogs that actually have like the credibility and the experience in the background to be able to do that. Whereas like, I think you can be like a very small time creator. And when I say small time, like I think anybody listening to this can open up their iPhone and start speaking about subjects that they're actually like highly versed in and immediately stand out for the crowd. But I think that the skillset that you absolutely must develop is speaking to your iPhone. That's like the skillset that I think is going to, is going to be the one that dominates. And the good news about that is it's so fucking easy. Like obviously like you have to get over the fear of speaking on camera and all this stuff. And it's good to have frameworks to speak in and know like at least some sort of like structure to be able to communicate your videos in. And this is something that I communicate with, with my clients and like, we

• 10:00Speaker 00

  Give them structures and frameworks to do those speaking videos in. But it's been like this is like it's once you get over that fear of speaking to the camera like it literally will take you 15 minutes of film a video, you throw up captions on the edits app and fucking bam, it's up. And I posted one 31 minutes ago and that video is absolutely ripping 12,000 views in 31 minutes. I told my team, I was like, this one's gonna go viral. I just have a feeling. But it's like that, like it's so fucking easy. You just pick up your phone and you start speaking. So like the good news about that for the creators that are listening to this right now is I think we're still like early in this wave. Because I don't think that there's a lot of people that are like doing that and doing it well. There's creators that like open up their phone and speak to the camera, but like there's not a lot of creators that know how to communicate a high level of subject matter expertise in a short period of time without rambling.

• 10:45Speaker 00

  And just getting to the point extremely fast, like that's going to be the skill that will, that is going to carry you into into the remainder of the year and into 2027. It's going to create more lead volume. It's going to bring in followers that actually want to follow you for you. And it's absolutely going to grow your personal brand faster than any, anything else on social media. I think it grow your personal brand right now. So right now, what's working on social media is carousels and FaceTime talk to the cam videos. So those are the two things that are working right now. I also think that it's very important for you guys to understand this. If you're listening to this and you've been thinking about getting into social media, like you gotta stop fucking thinking. Because I can tell you from somebody that literally plays this game 24/7. When I say play the game 24/7, I get paid on whether or not I'm good on social media, you know? Because if I'm good at social media, then I've got expertise to pass down to my clients.

• 11:29Speaker 00

  And if I'm not good at social media, then my content doesn't perform well and I don't sign clients. So it's like, I literally get paid to be good at social media. That's my fucking job, you know? If I'm good at social media, I make money. If I'm not good at social media, I suck. Okay? And I can tell you from somebody that is like literally gets paid for this stuff is this fucking, it like shit is changing so fast, you know? Algorithms are shifting so fast and you absolutely need to be fucking tapped in. Like you need to be tapped into somebody that's like literally in the fucking trenches. Because if you're taking advice like from somebody on content that and their content strategy crushed in like 2025, like 2025 content strategy is fucking click, click, bang, bang. Like it's like, we're talking like content strategy can change like month to month at this point. Whereas like it used to be, you know, content strategy, like

• 12:11Speaker 00

  once you had a strategy, like you could like grip it and rip it for like a few, like six months, eight months, whatever. It's like, it's not like that anymore. Like the formats that like literally were working for me a month and a half ago have like significantly decreased in performance. And I've actually never seen it shift as fast as it's shifting right now. And at first, like when I like, on October 1st, when I realized that there was another shift, it actually stressed me the fuck out. If I'm being honest with you, I was like, man, like I'm like, this like happens so fast. But then I just embraced it and I realized that like this is the game that I chose to play and like I am a fucking social media marketer and my job is to stay on top of the trends. And so that's exactly what the fuck I'm gonna do. And I'm going to communicate those trends downline to everybody that's in my audience and all the people that are in my container and my coaching program, and I'm going to give people the frameworks to be able to be successful.

• 12:54Speaker 00

  And so they stay ahead, stay ahead of the trends. And Megan's like, I'm so stressed. I feel you. Yeah, exactly. But it's like, you just gotta play the game. So like, if you are a business owner that is looking to grow and sell on social media, I do have the sauce, you know? We've got a coaching container for fitness coaches. We also have one for people that are business owners that just want to sell more of their offer. So if you are interested in learning how to grow and sell on social media, send me an Instagram DM with the word info, or you can comment on this live stream right now with the word info. I'm more than happy to have a conversation with you. Peace, love and protein. I hope you guys have the best day of your entire life. Thank you guys so much for tuning in. Just a reminder, we're giving away a thousand bucks. All you gotta do, screenshot any episode, share it to your Instagram stories, tag me at the real Brian Mark. Make sure you subscribe to the pod and I'll talk to you in the next one. Peace. Thank you so much for tuning into today's episode. Hopefully you got some value.

• 13:39Speaker 00

  If you did, and you want to learn more about how me and my team can help you scale your online fitness business to $10,000 a month. DM me 10K on Instagram at the real Brian Mark for more information and I'll reach out to you to see if I can help you grow an online coaching business.