Mastering Instagram: How to Get More Views on Your Reels

Unlocking the Secrets to Instagram Views

Wondering how to get more views on Instagram? Then boy, do I have good news for you! Instagram just dropped a new section on their video analytics page. You can access it by clicking “View Insights” under your reel. This section is literally titled “What Impacts Your Views - Rates are listed in order of importance to reach.” Look at the screenshots below and tattoo them into your brain. Instagram is ranking the top signals their algorithm reads. Let’s define each of these signals.

What Impacts Your Views page on Instagram

Skip Rate: The Hook That Matters

Skip Rate is the percentage of views from people who skipped during the first 3 seconds of your reel. This metric analyzes the performance of your hook. For reference, the videos that perform average for me tend to be around 45-50%. Videos at 60% or higher almost definitely bomb (for me). Skip rates under 35% usually perform pretty well or even go viral in my case.

I say usually because don’t forget this is not the only signal. The skip rate is just one evaluation of your hook. There are thousands of other signals. Still, the lower the skip rate, the better. Find the ranges that “make or break” the performance of your content. Improving your skip rate means making better hooks. If you want to improve your skip rate, we have created a “50 Viral Hook Exercises” workbook, which you can get for free by signing up on our website. It will definitely help.

Share Rate: The Viral Factor

Share Rate is the percentage of views that resulted in a share. I’m personally obsessed with share rates. This data point measures your shares against your views. I like to look at my shares vs my likes. If I get about 50% as many shares as likes, I consider the content to have delivered for my audience.

Naturally, the more viral your video goes, the more the share rate will drop. This is normal. I think the best time to read data like this is after 2-3 days. For example, in the screenshot below, I have a share rate of “only” 3.1%. I took that screenshot about a month after posting, and the video now has over 45 million views. The share rate was much higher on the 2nd or 3rd day after posting. Long story short, when you make a video, ask yourself: would anyone SHARE this? The answer should almost always be yes.

This video was a great example of hitting all of these benchmarks

Like Rate: The Engagement Metric

Like Rate is the percentage of views that resulted in a like. It’s similar to the share rate but focuses on how many likes you got vs your views. This metric also decreases as your video goes more viral.

This one is harder to control. If your video got 10,000 views at 10 likes, it means the algorithm really tried to help you out, but it just didn’t click with the viewers. Learn and improve for next time.

Save Rate: The Underrated Signal

Save Rate is the percentage of views that resulted in a save. Ah yes, one of the most underrated signals on Instagram. Many content creators ignore the “save/bookmark” tool. It’s right there next to the like, comment, repost, and share buttons for a reason. If I send my link to my friends and they don't bookmark it, consider our friendship OVER. Okay, not really, but yes, get your friends to bookmark your videos—Instagram has ranked it 4th after all.

Repost Rate: The Hidden Value

Repost Rate is the percentage of views that resulted in a repost. This might surprise many people. We often think a repost holds more weight than a save. After all, you’re reposting someone else's video onto your own page.

However, there’s a hidden caveat. Reposts might be ranked lower than saves as a signal for the algorithm’s distribution. But that doesn’t mean they are less important overall. One thousand reposts over time will get more external views than 1,000 saves. Reposts appear on other people’s Instagram profiles.

As of mid-2026, not many people actively look into others’ repost sections because it’s quite new. However, this may change as the feature becomes more familiar.

A breakdown of the 'What Impacts Your Views' metrics

Comment Rate: Quality Over Quantity

Comment Rate is the percentage of views that resulted in a comment. I could spend hours typing a dissertation on comments. Comment rate is important, but Instagram values comment quality more.

The reason it features “comment rate” instead of “comment quality” is that measuring comment quality is harder. It’s simple to measure how many comments you got vs your views. But how do you measure two people fighting to the death in the comments with paragraph-long arguments?

This signal being featured in Instagram's ranking is a textbook example of how simplification can be misleading. Based on what Instagram is telling us, you might think that having 1,000 fire-emoji comments is better than having 200 well-thought-out longer comments. That’s completely false.

Two hundred high-quality comments hold significantly more value than 1,000 people leaving emojis. They also have a much higher chance of attracting replies. Nobody replies to fire emojis other than the author of the video, except the occasional total lunatic. Spicy comments, however, attract spicy replies.

TL;DR: Create Emotionally Engaging Content

In summary, make content that triggers an emotion or opinion from viewers.

Remember, you can sign up for our free newsletter to stay up-to-date with my blog posts. If you want to take it a step further and level up your game, start with our $100 CRASH COURSE. This includes 8 masterclass-style videos, access to our members-only section of our Discord community, along with a social media toolkit bundle and our “golden rules” sheet (rules we apply to every single video that we post). Let’s get more views!

-Sergi Galiano