Marketing & social media updates - META organic 2025-2026
- Jantien Vanderbeke
- 19 hours ago
- 4 min read
Staying up to date with marketing trends is no longer the problem. We read newsletters, follow experts, and are presented with new updates every single week. A lot of updates; not always visible, not always easy to apply, and often driven by AI optimisations behind the scenes.
And yet, I keep seeing the same pattern with many marketers: we know something has changed, but we’re not always sure what that actually means for our strategy.
This article is therefore not a list of trends or predictions. What you’ll read here are structural shifts that are already happening today, and that will be applied even more in 2026.
Updates META (Facebook & Instagram) Organic 2025-2026
tl;dr
META organic has fundamentally changed. Facebook is far from dead, Instagram is no longer just visual, and reach is increasingly driven by community, Reels, social SEO and AI-based distribution. Brands that understand how content is discovered, compared and bought, especially by Gen Z, will outperform those still posting for aesthetics or volume alone.
What are the characteristics of Meta?
Meta is a combined ecosystem of Facebook and Instagram, where content, community and advertising come together in one AI-driven environment.
What? Facebook is mainly used for groups, communities, events and updates.
Who? Facebook remains strong across a broad demographic, with a clear core audience between 25 and 55 years old.
Format? Facebook performs best with text and images in a 4:5 format, combined with Reels in 9:16 and Stories also in 9:16. A major advantage of Facebook is the ability to include external links.
What? Instagram focuses more on inspiration, discovery, and following brands and personal brands.
Who? Instagram attracts an audience between 18 and 45 years old, including creators, brands and visually driven users.
Format? Instagram prioritises 9:16 Reels and Stories. Images, videos and carousels in the feed perform best in a 3:4 format.
What changed in 2025?
Facebook is still often written off as “no longer relevant” or “only for boomers”. In reality, the platform remains surprisingly strong, mainly because of the community behaviour that happens there. Interaction within groups is key.
The number of Facebook users is also still growing across all age groups. And let’s not underestimate the so-called “boomer” generation: they are still one of the largest and most purchasing-powerful groups in society.
On Instagram, the biggest shift is not what we post, but how content is distributed:
Reels have become the primary focus, and the Reels tab is now the 'home page' when someone looks up an Instagram profile. Smaller accounts should absolutely invest in Reels as well: brands with 1–5K followers often achieve above-average reach, with views reaching around 20% of their follower count.
Want to test new Reels formats without confusing your existing feed or algorithm?Then test Reels are a great option. Just before posting, you can simply tick this option in the app. Your Reel will only be pushed to non-followers. This is also the way to reach new people.
(Easy tip: repost your best-performing Reels as test Reels. It’s basically free advertising.)
Borrowed from TikTok (and just as relevant here) are Reels series. You can link Reels together to create an automatic playlist. This increases engagement and watch time, and works perfectly for tips and tutorial-based content.
Stories can now also remain visible after 24 hours. How? Stories that you add to Highlights will appear again in your followers’ overview once they’ve watched all active stories. This won’t create a massive spike, but it does slightly increase your visibility.
Just like formats change, so does the algorithm. At the moment, Instagram prioritises meaningful engagement such as comments, saves and shares over watch time. As a result, carousels are making a comeback.
Public posts from business and creator accounts are now also indexed by Google, making social SEO more important than ever. Not only your captions, but also your subtitles should include the right keywords. Instagram is no longer just a social platform, it’s also a channel to be discovered via search engines and LLMs.
This latest update also forms the foundation of the Gen Z marketing loop. Where traditional marketing still strongly relies on funnels (where a customer moves through different stages like know–like–trust), the marketing loop represents a shift towards purchases at the very first contact with your brand.
Gen Z does most of their research on social media, scrolling through and comparing multiple posts from different brands. If your post stands out among all the others, there’s a high chance someone will buy immediately, without ever entering a classic funnel.
What is the role of AI in META organic?
META’s algorithm doesn’t look at what you find beautiful, but at how people behave. Is something saved? Shared? Does it lead to further interaction?
Keywords also play an important role in being discovered by LLMs like ChatGPT. If you invest in integrating keywords into your social content, you increase your chances of appearing in AI-generated answers as well.
Now, what matters most for LLMs? Structure and clarity. Content without a clear structure or context is simply harder to understand and therefore less likely to be distributed. Keep it simple & stupid still applies.
What does this mean for your strategy in 2026?
Beautiful visuals alone are no longer enough. Content needs to be clear, for your audience and for the algorithm.
In practice, this means content should:
have context (clear text, covers, explanations)
be reusable (test Reels, series, formats)
feel relational (community, recognition)
Instead of isolated posts, it becomes more important to work with content pillars and formats. Success is no longer about how much you post, but about how well you adapt to new platform changes. Just like on TikTok, creators who adopt new features early are rewarded. (Think of creators using Edits instead of CapCut. Guaranteed visibility boost.)
This is the first part of a series on marketing and platform updates that many marketers missed in 2025 and that will become even more important in 2026.
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