What Is Instagram? How the App Works and How Brands Use It in 2026

Instagram is a free photo and video sharing app owned by Meta, and it’s one of the largest social networks in the world. People use it to keep up with friends, follow creators, and discover the brands they buy from. Businesses use it to get discovered, build a community, and sell their products.

The app has changed a lot since it launched in 2010 as a simple photo app with filters. Short-form video now drives most of what people discover, private messages are one of its busiest spaces, and new features roll out almost every month. If you set up a brand account a few years ago, expect changes to how Instagram counts views, how it recommends content, and how much hashtags help.

What Is Instagram?

Instagram is a social media app for sharing photos, videos, and messages. You post content to your profile, follow other accounts, and interact through likes, comments, shares, saves, and direct messages. It’s available on iOS and Android, and there’s also a desktop version at instagram.com.

Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger launched Instagram in October 2010. Facebook bought the app in 2012 for around $1 billion, and it’s now part of Meta alongside Facebook, WhatsApp, and Threads. Instagram passed 3 billion monthly active users in September 2025, which puts it in the same league as Facebook and WhatsApp.

How Does Instagram Work?

Every account has a profile with a photo, name, bio, and the content it has posted. When you follow an account, its posts show up in your home feed. When someone follows you, your posts show up in theirs.

Your feed also includes accounts you don’t follow. Instagram’s algorithm recommends posts and Reels based on what you watch, like, save, share, and search for, and the Explore page and Reels tab work the same way. The algorithm gives more weight to saves and shares than to likes, and it shows posts again to people who scrolled past them the first time. For brands, that means a post that people find useful enough to keep or send to a friend can keep reaching new viewers after it’s published.

Accounts can be public or private. Anyone can see a public account’s profile and posts, while a private account’s content is visible only to the followers it approves.

Instagram Account Types

When you set up a profile, you can choose from three account types:

• Personal Account: This is the default option for people who use Instagram to share with friends and family. It covers posting and messaging, without analytics or business tools.
• Creator Account: This professional account is built for influencers, artists, and public figures. It includes audience insights and tools for working with brands.
• Business Account: This professional account is built for companies, stores, and organizations. It includes insights, contact buttons, and access to ads and shopping features.

You can switch from a personal account to a professional one at any time, and it’s free.

Instagram Features and Content Formats

Instagram started with single photos in a square frame. Today, it supports several formats, and each one does a different job. Metricool’s 2026 Instagram Study analyzed more than 24 million posts from 375,000 accounts, and the results show how differently each format performs.

Feed Posts and Carousels

Feed posts are the photos and videos that appear on your profile grid and in your followers’ home feeds. A carousel combines up to 20 photos and videos in one post that people swipe through.

If you’re choosing between a single image and a carousel, the carousel is the better option. Carousels reach more than twice as many people and get nine times the saves. Brands still post them less often than single images, which leaves room for yours to stand out. They work well for tutorials, product collections, and step-by-step content that people want to come back to.

Reels

Reels are vertical videos with music, effects, and editing tools built in. They’re Instagram’s main discovery format, since the app recommends them in the Reels tab and on the Explore page to people who don’t follow you yet.

Reels also bring in the most engagement. The average Reel gets more than four times the interactions of a single-image post. People are also sharing Reels more and watching them for longer than they did a year ago.

TikTok still gets more views and interactions per video. Carousels reverse that pattern and get nearly five times more views on Instagram than on TikTok. If you post on both platforms, carousels are where Instagram gives you the clearest advantage.

Reels can now run up to 20 minutes, but Instagram only recommends Reels under 3 minutes to people who don’t follow you yet. Meta also offers Edits, a separate app for editing Reels.

Stories and Highlights

Stories are photos and videos that appear at the top of the app and disappear after 24 hours. Stickers for polls, questions, quizzes, music, and links make Stories one of the easiest ways to start a conversation with your followers.

Stories reach about the same number of people as they did a year ago. However, replies nearly doubled in 2026, and more viewers watched through to the end. That makes Stories a better fit for talking with your existing community than for reaching new people. If you want a Story to stay on your profile, save it to a Highlight, which sits below your bio.

Instagram Live

Instagram Live lets you stream video in real time while viewers comment and react. Brands use it for Q&A sessions, product launches, and interviews with guests. To go live, you need a public account with at least 1,000 followers.

Direct Messages, Notes, and Instants

Direct messages (DMs) are Instagram’s private messaging space. You can send text, photos, videos, voice notes, and posts you’ve found, and you can also start group chats and video calls. For many brands, DMs are where customer questions and sales conversations happen.

Two smaller features also live in the inbox. Notes are short status updates of up to 60 characters that appear above your profile photo for 24 hours. Instants, which launched in May 2026, let you share unedited, in-the-moment photos with Close Friends or mutual followers, and each photo disappears once it’s viewed.

Explore and Search

The Explore page shows recommended posts and Reels based on your activity. The search bar lets you look up accounts, audio, hashtags, places, and topics.

Instagram search now works more like a search engine, since the app indexes the words in your captions. Since July 2025, public posts and Reels from professional accounts can also appear in Google and Bing results,. You can turn this off in your privacy settings. If you describe your post in natural language and include words related to your business, people can find it on both Instagram and in search engines.

Instagram Shopping

Eligible businesses can set up an Instagram shop and tag products in posts, Reels, and Stories. When someone taps a product tag, they see its details and can go on to buy it. For brands that sell physical products, this shortens the path between discovering a product and buying it.

How to Create an Instagram Account

Setting up an account takes a few minutes:

1. Download the Instagram app from the App Store or Google Play, or go to instagram.com on your computer.
2. Tap Create new account.
3. Enter your mobile number or email address, then type in the confirmation code that Instagram sends you.
4. Add your date of birth, name, and a password.
5. Choose a username (your handle). If the account is for your business, use your brand name so people can find you in search.
6. Add a profile photo, a short bio that explains what you do, and a link to your website.

If you’re setting up a brand account, switch it to a professional account in your settings so you can access insights, contact buttons, and ad tools.

Why Businesses Use Instagram

Instagram is where brands publish the most. In Metricool’s 2026 Social Media Study, it drew close to 4 in 10 of all the posts analyzed, more than any other platform. For brands, Instagram offers:

• A Large Audience: Your customers are likely on the app already, so you can reach them without asking them to download anything new.
• Reach Beyond Your Followers: Recommendations give a small account the chance to reach people far outside its current follower base.
• Room to Grow: Instagram helps more accounts grow their following than any platform except TikTok, and smaller accounts grow most often.
• A More Personal Brand: Stories, Reels, and Live let you show the people behind your company, how your products are made, and what a normal day looks like, which helps followers trust you.
• Direct Conversations: Comments and DMs give customers an easy way to ask questions before they buy.
• Targeted Advertising: Instagram ads run through Meta’s ad platform, so you can target people by location, age, interests, and behavior.
• Built-in Analytics: Professional accounts include Insights, which show your reach, engagement, and follower activity. Instagram now reports views instead of impressions, and every replay or repeat appearance counts as a new view.

Drawbacks to Keep in Mind

Before you build a strategy around Instagram, it helps to know its limits:

• Competition for Attention: Brands are posting more than they did a year ago, so your posts compete with more content in every feed. Views per post have also gone up, though, so the average post still gets more views than it did a year earlier.
• A Short Window to Perform: Most of a post’s views arrive in its first three days, and single images and carousels fade faster than Reels. After that, Instagram shows the content to fewer people, so a post needs to catch attention early.
• Algorithm Changes: Instagram updates how it ranks and recommends content regularly, so it pays to review your results every month instead of relying on what worked last year.
• Limited Links: Clickable links live in your bio, Stories, and DMs, while links in post captions stay plain text. As a result, sending traffic to your website takes a few extra steps.
• Time Commitment: Growing an account takes regular posting, community management, and video production, which adds up fast for small teams.
• Spam and Fake Accounts: As your account grows, you’ll see more spam messages, bot comments, and follow-unfollow accounts, so you’ll need to set aside time to block and report them.

Common Mistakes Brands Make on Instagram

These problems show up on a lot of professional accounts, and most of them are quick to fix:

• An Unclear Bio: Your bio is often the first thing new visitors read, so it should tell them what you do in plain language. Add a link to the page that you most want them to visit.
• Posting the Same Type of Content: Followers lose interest when every post looks the same. A shoe store that mixes product photos with care tips and styling ideas gives people more reasons to keep watching.
• Not Inviting Conversation: Comments show Instagram that people care about a post, and the easiest way to get more of them is to ask. A clear comment prompt can triple your comments, while asking for likes tends to backfire. When people comment or send a DM, reply to them.
• Never Tagging Other Accounts: Tagging the brands, partners, and creators in your content also puts your post in front of their audiences. Small accounts get the biggest lift, since a mention can more than double their reach.
• No Consistent Visual Style: Followers should recognize your posts before they see your name. Use the same colors, fonts, and editing style across your content.
• Relying on Hashtags: Instagram has been scaling hashtags back for years, and your caption now does more to help people find your posts. Use one or two hashtags that describe your topic and put the extra effort into a clear caption.
• Posting at the Wrong Time: If you publish while your audience is offline, your post misses its first wave of engagement. Evenings are a good starting point, but your own analytics show when your followers are online.
• Copying Another Account’s Posting Frequency: How often you should post depends on your size. Smaller accounts usually benefit from posting often, while large accounts tend to get more interactions per post when they post less.

Manage Your Instagram Account with Metricool

Metricool brings your Instagram planning, publishing, and reporting into one place. You can plan and schedule Reels, carousels, posts, and Stories from a single calendar, and see the best times to post based on when your own audience is online. Comments and DMs arrive in one inbox, so you can reply without switching apps.

Metricool’s analytics also track your views, reach, engagement, and follower growth. You can compare your results with competitor accounts to see which content works in your niche and plan your next posts around it.