Instagram Content Tips For Life Coaches (2026 Algorithm Update)

With AI doing more of the heavy lifting and the Instagram algorithm giving users more control over what they see, your dream clients can now literally tell the app, “Nope, don’t show me this kind of post again.”

Which sounds great as a user.
 As a life coach trying to get clients? That hits differently.

In this episode, I break down what the 2026 Instagram algorithm changes really mean for life coaches and how to create content that still gets seen, saves you from shouting into the void, and actually leads to paying clients.

We will talk about:

• How AI and the Reels algorithm decide what content gets pushed out
• What high value content actually looks like for life coaches in 2026
• Why vague messaging like “I help women feel more confident” is not enough anymore. 

Mentioned in this episode

🎁 Free 7 Step Coaching Biz Roadmap
Want help tightening up your message and turning your content into a client getting system?

👉 Grab the free roadmap here

It will walk you through the foundations you need so your content is not just “nice” but actually leads somewhere.

📞 Interested in working together?

 After you grab the roadmap, you will have the option to book a strategy call with me.

On that call, we will look at where your visibility is getting stuck, what you actually want your coaching business to do for you, and whether it makes sense to work together.

If you enjoy this episode, hit follow, leave a quick review, or share it with another coach who is tired of feeling like the algorithm has them on mute.

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome And Big Question For Coaches
• 1:49 Instagram’s New Reels Controls
• 3:46 What User Choice Means For Visibility
• 5:10 Why Random Posting Stops Working
• 7:20 On-Point Messaging Defined
• 9:15 Beyond Generic AI Content
• 11:20 Building A Simple Content System
• 13:20 Train The Algorithm With Focus
• 16:10 The Fix: Message, Plan, Repeatability
• 18:03 Seven-Pillar Roadmap Invitation

Transcript

Michelle Kuei: 0:00

You probably already know this. AI is here to stay and it is not going anywhere. But the real question is, what does all of this mean for you as a life coach who just trying to find a tiny corner of the internet and fill your calendar with paying clients? I mean, you know, you're not asking for thousands of clients. If we're being real, you would be thrilled, even if just 1% of your audience become your clients. And that would probably turn your coaching business from struggling to something that is doable and sustainable. Today I want to walk you through what this Instagram change really means to you in 2026, why your content and messaging matters even more than ever, and plus, how to protect your coaching business from getting quietly hidden by the algorithm. And no, my friend, you cannot beat the algorithm. Hey coach! Welcome to Make It Visible Podcast. I'm Michelle Quay, your visibility marketing coach, and I help female life coaches to get seen in all the right places, attract happy paying clients, and build a coaching business that actually feels good to run. Even if you are still trying to figure things out. Each week I'm giving you visibility tips, simple marketing strategies, and showing you how to create the kind of content that connects with your audience so that you can stand out, build your authority, and attract clients who's already feeling like a yes before they jump onto your discovery call. So grab a notebook, pour yourself a favorite drink, and let's make your coaching business visible. Last week I was browsing through my Instagram feed and I came along with this post about how there's a new feature that they have just released that allowed the user on Instagram to decide and shape their own algorithm on reels. If you go to your latest reel, and on your upper right-hand corner, there are three dots. When you click on the three dots, you can literally tell Instagram, show me more of this type of content, and absolutely not, never again, these type of content. You can pretty much dictate what you want to see on your social media feed. Well, it sounds fun for Instagram user, but maybe not so fun when you have a business to run and you rely on people seeing your content so that you can have that visibility. You'll notice that the type of the content on Instagram is based on interest. Let's say you're shopping for a purse, you'll notice that perhaps that whole day or that whole week, more advertisement or more posts about a particular brand or type of purse that you're purchasing is going to show up more often on your Instagram feed. And that is based on the interest. It tells the algorithm basically, these are the type of content that I'm interested to see. And so it's going to share more of the similar type. Now, the feature that they rolled out was you can now decide which type of content your algorithm is serving you and which is not. So let's say you are someone who didn't appreciate a whole lot of politics showing up on your Instagram. Now you can turn it off and post that interest you more. So maybe it's business building, maybe it's marketing, and you would like to see more of those types of content, then you can train your algorithm and actually dictate what you want to see and watch. Now, when you think about this, is how you are using Instagram. Now imagine your clients who might also have this feature and they will be able to turn off, to mute it, or to hire your content based on what they like and what they see, which means that they can literally block an entire category of the content that you're putting out. Things like, hey, I'm a coach, book a call with me type of promotional post. So, yes, you might hate seeing some spammy marketers, you can turn them off, but so can your audience now. All right, so what does that all mean for you as a life coach? Well, this is where things get a little complicated as you might feel when it comes to marketing. If you're trying to rely just on, you know, today feels like I need to post, so you post one day, or today you feel like, oh, I got a workshop coming up, I'm gonna post about my workshop. So things that show up randomly, it's not going to work, and your people are probably not going to be able to see your content anymore because it's not something that's interest-based. So the chance of your post being seen is going to go down because the algorithm is now listening to what the user or your ideal client they want and what they don't want to hear. If your content feels like it's noise, it's not really speaking to what they're interested to hear, it's not a topic that they wanted to know about, or you're being too vague or too raw, then the algorithm will pick up these keywords that you have in your caption, and it's going to decide who to show it to. The bottom line is your visibility is getting a lot pickier, right? The stuff that you put out into the world, it matters more than ever. So you want to make sure that you're creating content, you're writing your caption, you want to be intentional, you want to be interested, otherwise, nobody wants to see it, which also is not going to favor the algorithm and it's not going to get seen by the people who need to see it. Now, the problem is a lot of white coaches have no idea of what your audience actually wants to hear. Now, there's advice that tells you to go out and do a survey and ask people what they want to hear. And what happened is you don't get a lot of traction or you don't get a whole lot of responses because, well, first of all, some people are shy. Other, well, they probably didn't see that post at all. So it's not that they don't want to answer your question, is because that post is not seen at all. So even if you want to do market research, a lot of times you can't. You want to be very, very intentional about who you are serving, what problem do they have, and what type of result are they looking for? And once you have those three questions and answers, then your message would be more on point because they're experiencing this problem, and therefore I can help them to achieve this kind of result. So, what does on point, your messaging on point, really looks like right now? It looks like you have a clear specific message. It's not just something like I help women to feel more confident, or I help women to build their confidence so they can achieve more. What does that even mean? You wanted to be very intentional about what situation, what problem, and towards what kind of result are you helping them accomplish. The second indication that your message is on point is that when you're creating content, you're not just creating and throwing something into Chat GPT, and hopefully it'll come up with a generic post. You want to deliver some type of higher value content, meaning that it demonstrates that you actually understand what people are going through, what makes people stop scrawling on social, feel that they are understood and thinking, wow, this post really spoke to me, or wow, this is exactly what I've been going through. So it's not just gonna be because you know, anybody can pop into the Chat GPT and it's going to spill out some of the content for you, but it sounds very generic. It sounds like everybody else can just create it. So when you look at the high value content, and a lot of time this is what I teach my client is that sure, you can absolutely use Chat GPT to help you to create content, but what you want to do is once you use that, you want to use that as a draft and not so much as your final content that you put out. So if you're talking about women who want to feel more confident, why would they want to feel more confident? You gotta go deeper than just oh, having more confident, achieving what you want. That's kind of like the surface level. What on point really means is how deep, how much understanding do you have about the clients that you're going to serve? The third indicator of how your message is going to be on point is if you have a simple system that you can create and repeat. Because you don't want to be someone who's waking up in the middle of the day and trying to figure out, okay, I gotta be on social now. Uh, what should I post for tomorrow? You would not want to be in that situation where you have to constantly think about what do I post tomorrow? What kind of topic am I going to talk about? You should have a plan. I would suggest that you do it either quarterly or, you know, in the past, I have done this like on a yearly basis. Um, in the beginning of the year, usually around this time of the year, I would sit down and I would map out what do I want to talk about for the next quarter or for the next year. I will plan out the topic that I want to focus on. This way, I don't have to throw spaghetti on the wall and coming up with different ideas all the time. I have specific systems that I can follow. Now, when I say higher value content, I don't mean that, you know, giving away your entire program, but you do want to be helpful. Your topic, the creation of your content, what you write, what you post, it should spark the interest for your ideal client and get them to say, well, this is an interesting topic. I never thought about this before. Let me hear some more, let me follow this person for more. And that is going to help your algorithm to send the pose or show the post to someone else who are more like them. So when it comes to creating your content, you want to be careful because if you're someone who just randomly shows up or you're picking a topic here, picking a topic there, then your algorithm is going to send you a whole bunch of different types of people. And you might think that's a good thing, right, Michelle? But no, it's not a good thing because now your audience is consists of all these different types of people, and it's not really your ideal client who's going to buy your program. So you gotta be more intentional about who you show your content to, what type of audience that you're engaging with, because all these factors is going to determine what your Instagram is going to show your next piece of content to. Now, if you're sending it to the wrong person, then that person is going to find it inspirational. But at the end of the day, that person is not an ideal client, and that person is very unlikely going to sign up to the program. So you wanted to be more intentional about the type of content that you're putting out there. Is it high quality? Is your message on point? Is it actually interesting for someone to continue to read? Now, all of this sounds so complicated, and you're sitting there and thinking, well, Michelle, this is exactly why I hate marketing. Well, the good news is, all what I had talked about is something that is fixable, something that you can learn. So, what do you need? You need a clear message, you need to have a visibility plan, you need to have a repeatable way of creating content that would attract your ideal client and not just random everybody. I put together a seven-step-by-step roadmap, and it is based on my client enrollment method. It walks you through how to get your message on point. I have exercising there that walk you through each of the pillars that I have in the client enrollment method. And this is also how to create that simple content plan so that you can stick to your topic will be on point. Everything that you show up and put out into the world is going to help you to lead to your offer. Now, when you grab it in the description box below, you'll get the exact roadmap, seven pillars, and you have exercises that walk you through each of the pillars. And you also get a chance to look at, okay, so which pillar is my weakest link? Which one do I need to work on first? And it also helps you to decide what your next step would be. Now, if you're listening to this and you're thinking, oh my goodness, I've been struggling with creating content. Now I have to beat with this AI algorithm and I don't want my post to be hidden. I'm tired of being the best secret in the coaching industry. Then your step number one is to click on the link in the description so that you can grab that resource that I have prepared for you. And if you want, after you walk through the roadmap, what you can do is you can grab a strategy call with me. And on that call, we'll talk about basically your full picture of where you are now. I'll ask you a couple of questions about your coaching business, who you help, what you're offering, or that you want to offer, and what things look like right now in terms of client and income. And from there, we'll talk about how to map out your next few steps, including in the next couple of months. And if you want help to implement it, we can also talk about how to get the support. The bottom line is that the AI here to stay, people are creating content a lot faster. And if you're not intentional about what you're putting out into the world, and if it doesn't have any specific unique message or unique way of how you talk to your audience, then people are going to tune you out very quickly. And now they have the ability to tune you out based on the algorithm, how the algorithm works. So when you think about marketing your coaching business, you wanted to think about all the things that you're doing on social. As a coach, a lot of time we create content and you're creating educational awareness, and you essentially is a content creator. When you create content, that content, that piece of content is supposed to do you something. It's supposed to bring business into your business. Now, if you're not intentional and if you don't know what you're doing, then chances are the stuff that you're putting out, it's not doing what it's supposed to do. The piece of content that you put out is supposed to drive the traffic back to you. And when I say traffic, these are potential clients, these are potential leads that's going to either sign up with you or you build your audience number. You get more followers, you get more people, word of mouth. So that traffic is supposed to do something for your business. And that's the power of putting out and creating content. I hear a lot of life coaches when I talk to them, I ask them, Do you know why you're on social? Well, I'm on social because I'm doing marketing. No, you're on social because the content that you're creating is supposed to work like a machine for you to attract the client into your business. Now, if you are not intentional or you don't know what you're doing, then you're basically doing all the work, but there's no revenue coming in. And you're sitting there and wondering, okay, so what am I doing wrong? Well, there's a number of things that I just talked about, right? Your message. Do you have a system that you can show up consistently? Do you know what your plan is once you put out this content? If I'm doing a podcast, for example, there's a purpose, there's an intention behind why I'm doing the podcast. What is this podcast episode going to do? It's going to spark the awareness that, hey, the AI is here to stay. But there's another purpose behind this podcast episode. I just share a resource with you, and that is going to drive the traffic into my business. So, do you understand why you are on social? And how do you leverage the algorithm in your favor so that you can get more leads? And having more leads also translates to increasing number of discovery calls. And when you have increasing number of discovery calls, then chances are out of those 100 calls, 1%. And all you need, all you're asking is just 1% of that audience become your paying clients. So if you found this episode helpful, I would love for you to hit reply to my email or send me a message to me and let me know if you are creating content just for the sake of it, or your content is actually driving traffic into your business. I would love to hear where you are in your business when it comes to content creation. And until then, happy coaching. Thank you for listening to Make It Visible Podcast. If you love this episode and want deeper support for your coaching business, head over to elevate lifecoaching.org and see how we can partner together to turn your passion into a profitable business. I help female coaches launch and scale their coaching business faster than ever without wasting time and money, filling the gaps in your marketing strategies, creating a simple and easy to follow system so you can accelerate on the path of coaching business that you love to wake up to. Head over to elevatelifecoaching.org and wrap a free strategy up today.