E375: Top posts this month from the Instagram Marketing subreddit.
I had a lot of fun recording this one. If you want to grow on social media, especially Instagram, you will enjoy this episode. Pinky promise.
“How I generated over 500 million views” - https://www.reddit.com/r/InstagramMarketing/comments/1e1nc0y/how_i_generated_over_500_million_views/
“New hashtag strategy that actually works” - https://www.reddit.com/r/InstagramMarketing/comments/1e1ffw2/new_hashtag_strategy_that_actually_works/
“Reminder to NEVER buy bot followers‼️” - https://www.reddit.com/r/InstagramMarketing/comments/1dps601/reminder_to_never_buy_bot_followers/
“Remove all the “flagged for review followers” & engagement increases instantly” - https://www.reddit.com/r/InstagramMarketing/comments/1dzpnut/remove_all_the_flagged_for_review_followers/
00:00 What You Will Get From This Episode 00:10 Overview of Instagram Strategies 00:48 New Hashtag Strategy That Actually Works 04:18 Generating Over 500 Million Views 12:52 Pitfalls of Buying Bot Followers 14:52 Removing Flagged Followers 15:36 Conclusion
#socialmediamarketing #instagrammarketing #contentmarketing #digitalmarketing
The Edward Show. Your daily digital marketing podcast: https://edwardsturm.com/the-edward-show/
On today's episode of the pot, I'm going to be giving very actionable Instagram advice. Some of this is actually advice that I haven't heard myself and it's advice that I thought was so noteworthy, I even shared it with a friend. I'm going to be sharing four short posts from the Instagram marketing subreddit. I love this subreddit. It always has great information. Here's what you're going to hear. You're going to hear a post called new hashtag strategy that actually works is a good one. Then how I generated over 500 million views, then reminder to never buy bot followers, which I actually have tried years ago for a different account. I shouldn't admit that, but I did it many, many years ago for a different account and it was a mistake and related and this last one is super short. It's called remove all the flagged for review followers and engagement increases instantly. All right, new hashtag strategy that actually works. So in the past, one of my most viral videos was talking about how hashtags don't work on Instagram. If you want to grow on Instagram, you might think you should use hashtags. But actually what happens is they end up leaving you with an account like a hollow shell of an account. Ultimately, hashtag followers end up being spam followers. That was what was revealed. And so I stopped using hashtags many, many months ago on Instagram and I've grown a ton since then, not because I stopped using hashtags, but because I didn't need them in the first place. And if I had used them, my account, my Instagram account, which is one of my favorite channels I love Instagram, if I had used them, my Instagram account would have been a risk of becoming a shell of an account. And you might see lots of big accounts using hashtags, but that doesn't mean that you should be using hashtags. It means that they don't know what's up. Don't use hashtags. You get spam followers from using hashtags. I stopped using hashtags. I still go viral all the time on Instagram. It's crazy how commonplace virality is. A decade ago, you were in the elite. If you could go viral even once, and I think for a lot of people, it's still quite hard. But for me, I feel like I go viral once a week. And actually, a lot of the stuff that I'm sharing today is related to why I go viral once a week and going viral is great. You can promote so many different things when you go viral when you know how to make viral content. Okay. So this is called new hashtag strategy that actually works. I'm going to read it. Don't use hashtags. They do nothing. Focus on your hooks aimed at your ideal avatar. Break it down into three types of hooks. Number one is controversial. Controversial hooks do super well. Number two is negative. I literally created a podcast about how negative hooks also do very well. And number three, I got to actually got to focus more on my hooks for this podcast. Number three is desired outcome. The post continues from personal experience, controversial and negative hooks work best for views and engagement. I've seen that to desired outcomes for conversions. I've also seen that. That's a really interesting way to look at it. I've talked about this before. I made a video about how you're more likely to sell multiple items if the price of those multiple items is easily divisible. So you want to sell five shirts for $50, not five shirts for $47. I mean, this video, it got 98,000 views. I made a super viral video that got two million views, but the video where I talk about desired outcome got me two times the followers, even though I had 20 times the views on the other video. And that's because I gave a desired outcome. So interesting. And then the last part of this post is if you're creating a personal brand nine out of 10 times your avatar is you, but two to five years ago, just provide advice to you two to five years ago and you'll attract the right audience. So interesting. Holy moly. I really like this. Wow. Great. These are this great insights. I'm going to give this an upvote. This is recent. What I did to get this content is I went to the Instagram marketing subreddit. I sorted by top for the month and I came across all of these great threads. This thread, I skimmed it and it wasn't as good as when I actually thoroughly read it now. These are two amazing insights. desired outcome will get you more followers, people who appreciate you more and create content for you two to five years ago. Wow. Okay. The first is how I generated over 500 million views. I think a lot of people are interested in hearing this. I saw the title. I was immediately interested. Here it is. Hey, everyone. I'm excited to share how I've managed to generate over 500 million views on Instagram for myself and my clients. I've shared some insights before about the algorithm avoiding hashtags. Oh, is this person? Yeah, I remember this person is the person who actually made this post about avoiding hashtags. This person's great and other minor details. So I'll skip those here. Let's dive into the tips that made this possible. Number one, understand what your audience wants. Audience psychology, you don't need to be ultra creative. You just need to understand how audience psychology works and how to manipulate their attention span. Honestly, I'm still thinking through that last piece of advice that could be life changing. The one from the previous thread create content for you two to five years ago. That's freaking crazy. Oh, it's cool when I do this podcast and I learn stuff on the podcast while I'm doing it. That is really good advice. Really insightful. All right, back to this thread, how I generated over 500 million views. Person writes about hooks, which was just talked about attention hooks. Hooks are key. No one cares about this is why hooks are so important from the previous thread. No one cares about who you are or what you do. Get straight to the point from the beginning and start telling your story. A strong hook engages the audience to stay and watch your reel. Instagram reels are amazing, way better than posts, but both can be done. Actually both. I've seen it. I saw an account that grew from zero followers to 650,000 followers. Real people, people who I follow, notable people in entrepreneurship in two months, grew in two months to 650,000 followers. It was posting six times a day, I was DMing with the person who had the account posting six times a day. And around half of that are a little bit over half of that was reels, but it was also posting images. It was an entrepreneurship account posting reels from famous entrepreneurs speaking, but also just images of quotes from them. Oh man, a lot of listeners know this. I'm releasing an SEO product soon. I've been working on it for months, months and months and months. And when that comes out, I will probably actually post a lot of just SEO images on Instagram, but Instagram is super generous with giving attention to reels. Are crazy. All right. Number two on this post content is king focus on the content, forget about relying solely on trending music or hashtags. They can be helpful occasionally, but it's like playing Russian roulette. At the end of the day, your content is what matters. Content is king is basically a platitude at this point. But if you've ever tried creating content, if you ever tried doing content marketing digital marketing with content, you know that this platitude is true. A friend of mine, he keeps saying, try shooting your videos like this or try shooting your videos like this or try doing this gimmick or this gimmick. And I tell him, his name is Yuri, he's a mentor to me and he's great. But at this point, I have to school him and I tell him, Yuri, it's just about the subject matter. The subject matter is good. It goes viral. It's about the subject matter and the hook. If the subject matter and the hook are good, it goes viral. If not, it doesn't. Content is king quality over trends. Make sure your content has all the necessary elements of good hook, a strong main body, and engaging throughout. Yep. Number three, create high quality content. My friend, Avni, just went in like three days from 60,000 followers to 120,000 followers. Crazy. And I was talking to her about that she was on the podcast. She said, okay, Edward, I'm going to take your advice and we're going to put out reels every day to my audience. But since they're going to be seeing this, since my existing audience is going to see this and I wasn't putting out reels every day, I really want to make it good so I don't lose followers. She was worried that she would lose followers. And I told her, I'm like, Avni just put out content every day, put out reels every day. Avni gets insane sponsorships from some of the biggest tech companies. Avni is a real deal. I was lucky to have her on the podcast a few episodes ago. And she made this video, I think, gets like 1.2 million views. And she gets so many followers from it, around 60,000 from it, probably from the other videos that she was posting too. But I said, what do you attribute it to? And she said to me, she said, who would have thought just focusing on quality content would have been enough? Who would have thought? She said it sarcastically. Of course. But she really sick. She sat down, spent hours making this real popped off like crazy and her other ones popped off too. So this author back to this Reddit post, the author says visual appeal invests in good lighting and high quality visuals, Instagram is a visual platform. So your content needs to stand out. That is false. I'm going to tell you from experience. But as false, there's tons of people who shoot reels in their cars. I make reels purposefully in my echoey office without using this microphone because it sounds more authentic. I've actually noticed if you were talking reels that are unpolished, where you're in your car, you're in a room that's not particularly attractive or that super plain or the audio is super echoey. I record videos, I record reels in restaurants and cafes and bars all the time. And I don't add music because it makes it seem authentic. People love authenticity. I think there's way too much over editing in Instagram reels these days on TikTok as well. And if you are someone who is sharing knowledge, authenticity is so appealing. And actually it's never been easier to share your knowledge because people like authentic content. You can check out Jefferson Fisher. He's a lawyer who every day makes videos reels in his car every single day only in his car sharing advice on how to deal with mean people or aggressive people. I would totally check him out. It is inspirational. He just shoots his reels in his car. I see this from lots of other people. I see this for myself. I make videos in my echoey office. They seem lazy, but they get views. So I disagree with the visual appeal there. However, I do shoot on the front facing camera of my iPhone. So it's super crisp. I have an iPhone 15 pro looks really nice and I shoot at 60 frames per second. However, I've also seen videos in the past. I built my early audience shooting from the selfie camera of my iPhone eight and I was only a year ago and I still had videos that did well. I'll say what I said before. You want to have a good hook. You want to have subject matter and you want to be authentic. This next part, I really agree with the author says consistency posts regularly, but don't compromise on quality aim for a regular posting schedule that your audience can anticipate. Like I said before, high frequency posting is a thing. The entrepreneurship account was posting six times a day. I tried posting six times a day. I started growing by thousands of followers a day. It does take a lot, but it works just aim for one time a day. It will be the best thing you have ever done aim for one time a day. Seriously, it is just amazing for marketing, just aim to put out a real a day. Hopefully you like it. You get in the swing of things. It becomes easy and then you're able to crank them out faster. I'm able to crank out videos so fast now, just because I've gotten the muscle memory in number four, stand out from the crowd, unique value. You really need to work on how to stand out from others. Why should someone watch your real? What are you bringing to the table? Why you differentiation, you have to find answers to all these questions before posting on Instagram, make sure you're different and offer something unique that others don't. That is super false. I just started making videos about my software companies and over time, I learned what I like to talk about and what I don't like to talk about and I got ideas for things and I tried them. I completely disagree with that. Just start posting. Just start posting and you will figure out what you like and what you don't. It may take you months, but it will happen. Just don't be quick to give up like everybody else. That is my advice. I still think this post was good. It had some nice things in it, but you don't have to have super visually appealing or professional content. I've seen that for myself. I've seen that from others and you don't even have to be highly differentiated before you start posting. It helps, but you can start posting and then figure out what you like and what you don't. That's what I did anyway. It worked for me. I'm growing a lot. I have a nice growing audience. I'm really proud of what I've done and feel really good about it. So those are my thoughts on this thread, how I generated over 500 million views. We're nearing the end now, reminder to never buy bot followers. Like I said, I tried this before. It was a mistake. It was so many years ago, did absolutely nothing and I totally would not recommend this. I would say do not do this for an Instagram account that you are serious about growing. It will not help. This is what the post says. I see this question all the time and want to explain my story to help someone get a better understanding of how awful bots are for your account. I took on a client early February and after consulting with them, I was told there was a decent following, but there was a catch. Only some of them were bot followers. I took some time to scrub through and realize that they were more than implied. However, the client was pretty adamant about having a good perception online. So we continued through with it and post results were bad. They were awful. It was very rare that a post would be seen beyond the inner circle of followers that personally already knew the brand growth was nearly impossible. So the client wanted to keep these bot followers because the client wanted to have it look like the client was followed by all of these people and because the bot followers were not scrubbed, growth was rough and this Reddit post is about to end. The author says Instagram recently released a feature allowing you to remove spam accounts with one button. If you go to the people who are following you, you'll see predicted spam followers or bot followers, you can click that and remove them with one click and this is what this person did. The person says the day that came out, I found out that more than 70% of the current following was either bots or inactive accounts. So that day we had a talk and I pulled the plug. Person did it and removed the 70% of current followers. One week later, 200 view posts are now hitting 2000 to 7000 frequently. That is only after just a few days of removing the bots. So a fair reminder to everyone that although it might seem tempting, bot followers are not worth your ability to reach new people. Please, please, please do not ruin your account and the last thread that I want to share with you today is it's called remove all the flag for review followers and engagement increases instantly. This is what we were just talking about. Spam and bots are just part of the game. Go to your followers and if you have any to remove, remove them. I did this engagement went up 300% because there are no bots in the first pool of people that your content is showed to. So you actually get more engagement because in the pool of people that your content is showed to, when it goes out, it's not shown to bots and you get more engagement. This person's engagement went up 300% by just removing the bots, going to the person's followers, clicking flag for review followers and removing them. And that is the podcast 375 episodes down done this for 375 days in row. This is my daily digital marketing podcast. This is the Edward show. Thank you so much for watching. Thank you so much for listening. I enjoyed sharing this one. Learned a lot of stuff as I was sharing it. Ooh, this is great. I'm feeling energized. I hope you are too. Thank you so much. I will talk to you again tomorrow.
