Brands Are Posting More Than Ever and Reaching Fewer People

If you run a brand account on Instagram, you have probably noticed the following pattern. You are posting more often, spending more time on content, but watching your reach shrink. Metricool's 2026 social media study confirmed that posting volume rose 21 percent year over year while average reach fell 31 percent.

The volume trap

The instinct to post more makes sense if you assume the algorithm rewards consistency. For years, that was roughly true. But the 2026 data shows that the relationship between frequency and visibility has broken down. Reels published across the platform grew 35 percent, yet Reels reach dropped by a nearly identical margin. Stories saw a 28 percent increase in adoption, but impressions per Story slipped 6 percent. More content is entering the system than the system is willing to distribute.

Instagram has been shifting toward user-controlled personalization, giving followers more ways to filter what they see by topic and interest. The feed is no longer a firehose, and content that does not earn its place gets filtered out before it reaches even your existing audience.

What it feels like on the ground

For the people actually managing these accounts, this is leading to frustration. You publish a Reel that took two hours to produce, and it reaches fewer people than a throwaway Story from six months ago. You try posting more often because that is the only lever you can pull, and the numbers get worse. The quarterly review becomes an exercise in explaining why effort went up and results went down.

The temptation is to blame the algorithm - and the algorithm is certainly a part of it - but the bigger factor is competition for a fixed amount of attention. When every brand increases output by 21 percent, nobody gains an advantage.

What the data suggests instead

Carousels are the quiet winner in the 2026 data. They pull the highest average impressions and interactions of any format, and they remain the least saturated at roughly one per week per account. That gap between performance and adoption suggests most teams are still over-investing in Reels at the expense of a format that actually reaches people.

Stories still matter, but the data argues for a different approach. Rather than posting more, the accounts seeing above-average performance tend to treat each Story frame with more intention. Interactive stickers like polls, questions, and link stickers drive engagement that passive viewing does not, and that engagement signals to the algorithm that the content is worth distributing.

If your team schedules Stories in advance through a tool like Storrito, this is a good moment to audit what you are sending out. Planning multi-slide sequences, adding stickers, and reviewing everything before it goes live matters more now that volume alone will not compensate for weak content.

FAQ

Is Instagram reach actually declining for everyone? The 31 percent drop is a platform-wide average. Individual accounts vary based on format mix and audience behavior, and those that held steady tend to be the ones that shifted strategy rather than just increasing volume.

Should I stop posting Reels? Not necessarily. Reels still generate strong saves and shares when they land. But the algorithm decides distribution within seconds, so treating each one as a high-effort bet rather than a volume play makes more sense right now.

Why are carousels outperforming other formats? Carousels encourage swipe behavior, which counts as engagement, and they keep users on a single post longer than a static image. The format is also less saturated, so there is less competition per impression.

How do Stories fit into this picture? Story impressions dipped slightly while adoption went up, which means more accounts are posting to a smaller per-account audience. The teams getting the most from Stories are using interactive elements like polls and question stickers rather than just broadcasting slides.