Surviving the Social Media Shakeup: How to Thrive After the TikTok Ban and Instagram Overhaul

 

By now you’ve no doubt heard TikTok has been banned and plans to shut down tomorrow. Not to be outdone, Meta threw their own chaos into the social media sphere with an announcement  their grid is changing from square to rectangular. They’ve made several other changes to the interface as well and changed their algorithm.

I wrote a little in my last post about the algorithm change and now I have a bit more clarity about what they want us to post for views. This morning I got a message my account would no longer be shared with people who don’t already follow me because I am “violating” their original content rules. I looked up the posts supposedly in violation and they are all remixes. It didn’t make any sense to me because I also got a notification that one of my remixes was doing better than most of my content and they told me to “make more Reels like this”. So which is it?! This has happened before and I appealed the decision. I appealed it again this time and expect to be exonerated.

Now if you have my Lazy Content Guide you know this summer when Remix was a new feature  you could very easily go viral just remixing others’ Reels using it. Insta rewarded you for using the feature. Over the past month, however, I noticed my remixes weren’t converting well at all. In many cases my best-performing Reels were just random videos of me walking around my house or yard or the mall. As remixes aren’t doing as well anyway I am posting more original content.

Since the beginning of the year I also noticed a shift in public sentiment. Last year my best Reels were inspirational, talking about being your best self, manifesting happiness, and stuff like that. Abruptly in 2025 my best Reels have exclusively been dark humor; almost cruel, sarcastic content. I don’t really like posting stuff like that and I’ve been doing my best to put a positive spin on it. 

But anyway, should you stop using Remix all together? I wouldn’t say that quite yet. Maybe because I just don’t want it to be true ~ it made content creation so much easier! I did see the Remixes not in violation were ones in which I added my own text directly to the Reel; sometimes I even completely covered up the original text on the Reel with my own text. So, use Remix, but instead of just adding a sticker to the Reel, add an entire hook and even cover up the original hook if it doesn’t suit your account.

Obviously if you’re a person who has an account where you’ve carefully curated Reels covers and posts for a unified look, I’m sorry. It really sucks for you because you’re going to have to completely redo your grid! 

I love the accounts with the beautiful grid, and I was doing that with my new account when I started, but I stopped because I read this suppresses your reach. Apparently people don’t view your Reels as much when you have a Reel cover on it. I also stopped because Reel covers don’t work with analytics. You can see the Reel itself but not the cover, so when you see a Reel doing really well in analytics and you go to find it and try to replicate it you can’t find it, or at least not very easily. 

More things I’ve noticed about the new algorithm is original content is starting to do better than filmed content. This is another bummer because using stock videos is so much easier than having to film it yourself. Raw, unedited, homemade-looking videos are getting way more views than slick, professional stock videos. The good news is, it doesn’t seem to matter what you film: one of my best Reels is a random pan of my parents’ impressive garden with some text over it about how you don’t have to post at the exact same time every day.

I also hear bad news for faceless accounts like my business account. Because so many “TikTok Refugees” are supposed to be headed to Insta now that TikTok is banned, I hear TikTok style face-forward Reels will trend. I don’t know if that’s true, however, since everyone seems to be moving to Red Note instead.

I have to admit, I feel some schadenfreude about this ~ Meta was one of the biggest forces in pushing the TikTok ban. The idea that suppressing free speech because TikTok was collecting information of people is especially flimsy when you look at all the information Meta collects. The other day I looked at a product on Pinterest and it was immediately advertised on my Facebook the next time I was on the app. I honestly hope several new sites pop up to dilute Meta’s monopoly.

Don’t get me wrong, I am grateful for all the years Facebook let businesses have free pages so we didn’t need to pay for websites, but don’t think that excuses stealing all our information, brain-washing our parents, allowing the Russians to disrupt our elections, and now getting rid of fact-checkers. And worst of all, buying my favorite site, Instagram, and wrecking it by turning it into a pay-to-play video site. So, if you really want to remain faceless, maybe try to film your hands doing things, your feet walking around your house or at stores, your environment as you walk through it, and things like that.

I have noticed Carousels, which were converting even better than Reels early last year, are no longer converting at all. My carousels get no views whatsoever. The individual slides do well on Pinterest, so I am formatting those as stand-alone Pinterest pins. Even still photo carousels that used to do well are pretty much doing nothing unless I convert them to a Reel slideshow. Then they do well. Even if all you do is add a moving transition between each photo or take one photo and add a Zoom filter to cause movement, they do way better than still photos alone.

For engagement, Stories are doing very well. I won’t lie; I hate Stories. I don’t like spending time creating content that only lasts for 24 hours. And I hate watching other people’s Stories because they either last way too long and are boring or they disappear before you can read all the text and to re-read it you have to watch all their Stories again.

To get Stories to last longer I add them to Highlights. It is nice that you can now add links to your Stories with the link and product stickers. Way more people respond to my Stories than Reels, so that’s a good thing to experiment with if your audience is really quiet. 

So, that’s the scoop (for this week anyway). Meta seems to be changing up their whole operation every other day. Now I will have to rewrite my Lazy Content Guide too, so if you have a copy you will want to sign up for the new one. If you get my newsletter I’ll let you know when I get it re-written. Click here to sign up.