Instagram 2025: 3 Key Best Practices

These best practices have been confirmed throughout 2025, but in case you missed them, we'd rather bring them up again! The Instagram algorithm underwent major changes this year, completely redefining the rules of the game. As Instagram growth experts, we've analyzed these changes to identify the 3 must-have practices that now determine your success on the platform.

1. Engagement > Followers: the 2025 algorithm revolution

The paradigm shift

The Instagram algorithm now favors authentic engagement over follower count. This major shift reshuffles the deck: small niche accounts come out ahead, while large accounts see their organic reach decline.

What really matters now

The engagement signals that matter: genuine comments and exchanges (not just emojis), shares in stories and DMs, saved posts, time spent on your content, and repeated interactions with your profile are now the metrics that really count.

Propulse's tip: Favor content that sparks discussion. A post with 50 likes and 20 engaged comments will perform better than a post with 500 likes and no interaction.

Practical applications

To maximize this authentic engagement, ask open-ended questions in your captions that invite reflection, systematically reply to comments to keep the conversation going, create content that sparks (constructive) debate within your area of expertise, and use interactive stickers like polls, questions, and quizzes to keep engagement up day to day.

2. Geolocation: the local boost confirmed

The power of localized content

Instagram massively favors geolocated content in 2025. This trend reflects the platform's push to encourage local interactions and compete with platforms like TikTok on local discovery.

Impact on visibility

Geolocated posts benefit from better reach among users in the area, appearing in location searches, recommendations to users who've visited similar places, and a particularly valuable algorithmic boost for local businesses.

Propulse's tip: Even if your business is digital, geotag your content in strategic locations (coworking cafés, events, city trips) to maximize your local visibility.

Winning strategies

To make the most of this trend, geotag your posts systematically, even the simplest ones, create content around trending spots in your city, take part in local events and document your presence, partner with local players through collaborations or takeovers, and use location hashtags alongside geotagging to maximize your visibility.

3. Native content: Instagram authenticity rewarded

Why the algorithm favors native content

Instagram increasingly penalizes content created elsewhere and imported. The algorithm detects TikTok content (with the black borders), overly formatted Canva visuals, or videos with the wrong aspect ratios.

What counts as “native” content

Criteria for native Instagram content: content created directly in the Instagram app via stories, reels, and posts, optimized formats like 4:5 for the feed and 9:16 for reels, an Instagram aesthetic free of other platforms' watermarks, and the use of built-in features like Instagram music, effects, and stickers.

Propulse's tip: Even if you prep your content beforehand, always finish it off with Instagram's own tools so the algorithm perceives it as native.

Best practices for native content

To create content that's perceived as authentically Instagram, use Instagram's own filters and effects instead of external apps, add music directly from the Instagram library, take advantage of new formats like carousels up to 20 slides or notes, build your stories with the built-in text, sticker, and drawing tools, and absolutely avoid watermarks from other platforms, which hurt your reach.

The major hashtag shift in 2025

Instagram is moving away from hashtags in favor of relevant keywords in your descriptions and comments. This shift follows SEO logic, as Instagram is increasingly indexed by Google.

The new keyword strategy

Optimize your keywords in your post descriptions by weaving them in naturally, in the comments you post, in your profile bio, and in your account name to maximize your search visibility.

Instead of 30 hashtags, favor 5-10 strategic keywords perfectly targeted to your audience.

What these best practices reveal

These three trends confirm Instagram's push to return to its fundamentals: prioritizing authenticity, closeness, and real engagement. The platform is fighting automation and favoring genuine human interactions.

Our Propulse approach for 2025

We're building these shifts into all our strategies through an audit of authentic engagement versus vanity metrics, geolocation optimization tailored to your industry, training on creating native Instagram content, and an SEO keyword strategy specifically adapted to Instagram.

Our recommendations for immediate action

To implement these best practices, start by auditing your engagement by analyzing your best-performing posts in terms of qualitative interactions, test geolocation on your next 10 posts to measure the impact on your reach, create 100% native content for 2 weeks to compare performance, and replace your hashtags with keywords naturally woven into your descriptions.

These shifts aren't passing trends: they're permanently redefining the rules of Instagram growth. Brands and creators who adapt quickly gain a decisive edge over their competition.