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Build Your Tribe | Grow Your Business with Social Media
10X Your Instagram Followers in 30 Days with These New Reels - 873
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In today's episode, I'm going to be sharing with you 13 Instagram reel ideas that are currently viral, trending, becoming popular, and can help you blow up on Instagram. And we're not going to waste any time hopping right into things. The first idea is to use the new Linked Reels feature that Instagram recently put out. Now, if you haven't already watched it, earlier this week I put out another episode of Build you'd Tribe where I updated you on all of the latest Instagram features and the algorithm changes that you need to be aware of. So if you haven't checked that out, definitely go do once you're done watching this episode, of course. But one of those new features that I talked about in said episode is the new Linked Reels feature, which essentially allows you to embed a video, put a clickable playable reel within your current reel. And even though this feature is brand new, it's already been used in some really creative ways. And so here's three ways that you can use the new Linked Reels button to take advantage of this new feature. Get on Instagram's good side and also catch your followers off guard, grab their attention, get more views and engagement because of it. Number one is the most common way that I've been using it, which is part of my outro for my Instagram reels. Typically, my Instagram reels in the past have just ended with a call to action, something like like this reel. Or don't forget to save this post. But now I have been adding an additional next step. So I'll say something like like this post. If you learn something new and if you want more information about creating better hooks, you can tap here. Or if I'm doing a daily challenge or series, I can say something like today was day seven. If you want to watch day six, you can tap right here and then I will embed or link the previous day's reel right on the screen so that people can continue watching and actually Bing own posts. The second creative way that I've seen people using this is putting multiple linked reels on the screen at one time. I've seen people put as many as four linked reels all playing at the same time. And because this is such a new feature, most people don't even realize it's a thing. So you can say there are four reels playing on the screen right now. If you don't believe me, tap on one of them to find out. Now, eventually the novelty of this feature will wear off and people will kind of Figure out what this feature is all about. And so the there are four reels on the screen right now. Click on one to prove me wrong or whatever. That that won't be as effective. But what will be is the third idea, which is creating curated collections of your reels. So let's say you have done multiple reels about the same topic. Maybe you are a rock climbing coach and you've done multiple reels that are all like a gift giving guide or a beginner equipment guide. You could put all four of those reels on the screen at the same time and you could add a little bit of text labeling what each reel is. And then the current reel that you're posting kind of exists as like a menu for people to select and go back to a reel that they have previously missed. If you need a full tutorial on how to create these linked reels, you can find that in the episode that I put out on Monday. But moving right along, the second reel idea that I have for you is what I'm calling FaceTime reels. And I believe that FaceTime reels are going to be one of the most effective overall trends or changes that we see take place on Instagram in 2026. And FaceTime reels are exactly what the name describes. They are reels that feel like a FaceTime. They don't feel like a TED Talk. They're not highly scripted, highly edited, or very polished. They have very minim editing, very minimal cuts, and honestly very minimal planning. And so they feel much more casual, much more conversational. My pro tip for you to make your FaceTime reels feel more FaceTime y is to literally FaceTime a friend. Call up a loved one or a friend on FaceTime on your computer, and then lean your phone up against your computer, tell your friend, hey, I'm going to be recording myself, so don't worry, you won't be on the screen, but I'm going to be recording myself as I talk to you right now. Do you care if I give you a quick tip about tax planning and then tell your friend? Just talk to your friend the way you normally would. It will help you come across much more conversational and it will help you use layman's terms. Use terms that the average person would understand. Because you're not going to try to impress your friend. You're not going to try to like use fancy vocab in order to make your friend think that you're cool or smart. You're going to talk to your friend the way you would normally Talk to a friend and that will make your content come across much friendlier, much more approachable, and I believe much more engaging on social media. My one pro tip is if you are going to FaceTime a friend, you might have a tendency to get a little yappy, to be a little long winded, and so you might have to trim out some parts when you're done. But in addition to that, I would also recommend once you're done recording the FaceTime reel, think about what is a concise way that I could kind of summarize everything I just said to my friend, or what is a short way that I could encapsulate or create curiosity or create interest around what I'm about to teach my friend. Like, if you had to tell your friend in one short sentence what it is you were about to tell them to get them interested in hearing what you have to say, what would that be? Basically, all of these questions boil down to the hook. So once you're done recording this reel, talking to your friend, this facetime style reel, you're going to record an additional clip which will end up being the hook. Then in the editing, you can just put the hook at the beginning and play the rest of the clip where you were talking to your friend. And again, it will feel very conversational and I believe it will be very engaging and much more authentic than the perfectly scripted robotic AI content that so many of us are used to nowadays. Idea number three is what I call outro swap trends. Now there's something that I've talked about here on the podcast before called hook swaps. And a hook swap is essentially taking an already viral hook, or at least the beginning of an already viral video, and then using what's called a match cut, which is a editing term that basically means that the end of your first clip matches the beginning of your second clip so that they are kind of like mirrored, they're matched. And so it's a very seamless transition. Maybe the screen is totally black at the end of your first clip and so it's going to be totally black at the beginning of your second clip. Maybe there's going to be a person who's about to hit the ground at the end of your first clip, and then the beginning of your second clip begins with someone actually hitting the ground. That is a match cut and that's necessary for hook swap reels. But this specific idea is outro swap reels, and this one specifically relies on pre existing trends. Basically, the thought here is that there's a trending audio or a certain song or a certain video style that has become so, so popular that a lot of people are familiar with it. And so it creates an expectation. And so by just using that song or by using the same video format, it creates this like anticipation in your audience that gets them really excited to keep watching. So while sometimes with a hook swap reel, once you have swapped into your actual video, people are like, eh, I'm over it. The first three seconds were engaging, but I don't care about the rest. With a outro swap reel, people are anticipating and looking forward to the ending and so they're going to stick around through your intro before you actually swap into the outro. Definitely feel free to use and recreate any of the examples that I give you in today's episode. And also just be on the lookout for this style of trend moving forward. If you ever recognize that there is a song that a lot of people are using and the ending of the song is what people are really focused on, or if there's a clip that everyone is adding to the end of their reel, these kinds of hooks can be a really powerful way to hack watch time and retention in order to get people watching your reels for longer, thus getting you more views, engagement, and hopefully followers too. Idea number four is to Take a nap. Taking a nap is an acronym, of course, that I've used here previously at Build you'd Tribe, which stands for Niche Adjacent post posting. Something that is kind of relating to or talking about or bringing in influence from outside of your niche. For example, at the end of 2025, a lot of people were bringing in Stranger Things because it was something that kind of the general population, or at least a lot of people were paying attention to. If you were to say, like, what's the number one trending thing in society right now? It's Stranger Things at the end of 2025, so people who were hairstylists were talking about how the Stranger Things characters styled their hair. People who were fitness experts talked about the different workout routines that the actors and actresses in Stranger Things did to prepare for their roles. This episode is coming out four days after the super bowl, and so you can bet your bottom dollar that there are quite a lot of memes and quite a lot of super bowl references that people made, even if their accounts aren't usually because the super bowl is this big cultural event, because the halftime show is this big moment. People are making memes about, people are talking about, people are posting about, and people are finding ways to relate the Super bowl or the football players, or the halftime show, or the cheerleaders or the event back to their own niche. The next big cultural moment, if you're watching this at or around the time of release, is Valentine's Day. So within this idea of taking a nap, I have kind of like a bonus specific idea for Valentine's Day, and feel free to use this one. And this idea is going to require a second person, preferably a friend, a lover, a boyfriend, girlfriend, a spouse, hopefully not your grandma or a family member. But I guess that could add a kind of funny, silly wrinkle to this real idea. But essentially what you're going to do is have the other person walk into the frame and hand you some sort of, let's call it, prop. And I'm going to add a big wink here. If you're not watching me, I'm winking very big right now. It's a prop. And maybe I'll say like a kinky prop. Hopefully I don't get in trouble for saying that. But they're going to hand you something like a leather mask or pink fuzzy handcuffs, or they're going to hand you, like a velvet eye mask to cover your eyes. And then they're going to say, I want you to use this and teach me a lesson, or I want you to wear this and teach me a lesson. But then the video cuts to you wearing the thing. Maybe you have the handcuffs on, or you have that leather mask on, and you're quite literally teaching them a lesson related to your niche. You're giving some sort of educational tip, some sort of valuable story, something like that. It's kind of like playing on this intro of like, oh, there's this innuendo of what's going on. And it's Valentine's Day, so people are kind of already in that mindset, Right? But then it's just a valuable tip related to your niche. So I think it can be a really fun way to not take yourself so seriously and to get some extra engagement while still providing people with value at the same time. Idea number five is what I'm calling the fake green screen reels. Many of us have become familiar with the stereotypical green screen reel where there's someone in the background doing something. Maybe they're playing pickleball, or they're making a ceramic vase, whatever. And then there's like a person who looks like green screened down in the corner, and they're talking about what's going on behind them. But the fun thing that you're going to do here is you're going to kind of play on people's anticipation and you're going to play on what they would assume to be a green screen. And you're going to achieve this by setting it up as if it was a green screen. You're going to have someone behind you doing something and you're going to position yourself down in the bottom corner of the reel. Now Pro T. And this is a little bit technical, but if you can get the lighting to be different, that would be awesome. Like maybe you're going to put them in kind of like a darker environment. You're going to put a lot of light close to your face or vice versa. Maybe you're going to use a warmer light near your face, something that makes it kind of look like these were filmed at different days or at different times. And then you're going to talk about the person, you're going to say something about what they're doing, but then at some point in the video, you're going to turn around and interact with them or you're going to break that fourth wall and kind of reveal that this wasn't actually a green screen. Again, similar to some of the other ideas that we've already talked about today, it's a great way to just build anticipation and play on people's expectations in a way that is unique and trendy and popular right now. Are you ready to take your business marketing to the next level? Meet Brevo, the all in one marketing and CRM platform built to connect you with your customers, boost engagement and grow your business smarter. With Brevo, you can manage all of your customer interactions in one place, nurture leads with their built in CRM your audience through email and SMS and keep them coming back with powerful automations. But here is where it gets really exciting. Meet Aura, Brevo's AI assistant. Aura helps you craft smarter campaigns by suggesting personalized content, optimizing send times and even analyzing performance data to improve strategies in real time. It's kind of like having a marketing expert on your team 24, 7. 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The new Notion custom agents will allow you to automatically perform advanced tasks without you even having to lift a finger. For example, I built a Notion custom agent that automatically pulls the link to any reel that I have posted and then it pulls out the text that I say or the text on the screen and in the first few seconds of the reel, basically it pulls out my hook and then it's able to look at how that post performed and compare it to the hook, which allows me to see which hooks are actually working so that I can reuse them and tweak them for future reels. Notion is an AI powered connected workspace for teams. Notion brings all of your notes, docs and projects into one space that just works. It's seamless, flexible, powerful, and with AI built in, you spend less time switching between different apps and tools and more time creating great work work. Now with Notion's custom agents, busy work that used to take hours or, let's be honest, didn't really get done at all, runs itself. The easiest way to think about the difference between a custom agent and normal AI is that normal AI requires you as the human to prompt it. But custom agents work for you 247 behind the scenes without you having to lift a finger. But don't just take my word for it. Notion is used by more than half of Fortune 500 companies and some of the fastest growing companies in the world. Like OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT. Try custom agents now@notion.com byt that's all lowercase. Notion n o t I-O-N.com by t to try custom agents today. And when you use my link, you're supporting our show again. Notion.com byt as someone who cooks about 95% of their meals at home. And no, that's not an exaggeration. Usually the only meal that Tay and I eat out each week is our Sushi Saturday. 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Go to hellofresh.com byt10fm to get 10 free meals plus a free Zwilling knife which is $144.99 value on your third box. This offer is only valid while supplies last. Free meals applied at discount on your first box for new subscribers only and varies by planning Idea number six might be the best idea of all and if you take away no other ideas. If you implement nothing else from today's episode, I hope it's this one. And this is something that I've talked about a few times on past episodes of Build you'd Tribe. So if you haven't already, make sure that you're subscribed to the podcast. Because I am constantly putting out post ideas, new algorithm updates, feature alerts, and just best practices for growing on social media and crushing it with your business on Instagram. But this idea is specifically to create some sort of series or challenge, something that you can do time and time again, over and over again. And I want to give you a quick sidebar. It is okay to pivot your challenge. So whatever challenge you set out to start, it's okay if you need to pivot. For example, the original challenge that I was going to do for 2026 was I was going to write down the names of every single person who followed me. My idea was, hey, this will be a great way to kind of show everyone that they matter, that I care about them, and remind all of us that every follower counts. But I quickly realized that that would just take way too long. Like it took me like four hours to write like a couple hundred names. And as someone who gains usually a couple thousand followers a day, it's just not sustainable. So I pivoted before I even got started and I decided I would be reading the names of Every new follower and adding a tally to a giant piece of paper. Again, same intention. But I quickly realized that it was kind of misaligned. It was something that wasn't that visually impressive. It wasn't that cool. It wasn't really directly related to my niche. Like, the people who follow me to find out how to grow on Instagram, they're not really gaining anything from those posts. And ultimately, I think most people don't need a reminder that every follower counts. I think most people are counting every follower and they're, like, hanging on. Oh, my gosh, I lost three. I gained seven. Most people are not in the position that I am where they're gaining thousands and losing hundreds of followers every single day. So I put my ego aside and I listen to the feedback of all of my followers, and some people who I really trust, who are are closer to me and who themselves are social media experts. And I decided to pivot my challenge. And so now my challenge is reviewing one of my followers reels every single day until I reach 1 million followers. So it's much more related to my niche. It's much more valuable, and the engagement has been through the roof. I'm talking a minimum of 10 times more engagement. Which, by the way, if you haven't been following along for that series, I highly recommend that you do, because, like I said, super valuable. So just check out my Instagram page, brock11johnson. Follow me there. And all you have to do to enter in to win the next day and have your reel reviewed on the next day is to like the current day's reel. But you can go back and binge through all of the past reels in the series. But again, all of this is relating to idea number six of 10, Xing your followers in the next 30 days, which is creating some sort of series or challenge. I think if you really want to go viral and you really want to 10x and get 100,000 followers in the next 30 days, then your challenge A should be related to your niche. B, it should be something that is impressive, something that is actually challenging, something that is like, whoa, that is crazy. And C, and this is really the gold mine, if you can figure this one out. The challenge should be tied to gaining followers. That was something that I kind of forced early on, the whole reading the names and tallying thing. It was tied to how many followers I gained right now. I think there were a lot of other problems, like I've already stated with that original challenge, but that was my attempt to tie the challenge itself to Gaining a follower. So an example of this would be running a mile for every follower that I gain petting my dog for every follower that I gain. Basically, someone is incentivized to click that follow button in order to add on to what you have to do the next day. If you can find a way to relate it to your niche, make it visually challenging or impressive, and connect it to incentivizing a follow, you will blow up on Instagram, I can pretty much guarantee it. Real idea number seven is breaking the fourth wall, specifically breaking the fourth wall with video elements. The trend that is super popular right now and yet not a ton of people are doing it, because it's a little bit more technical, is they're interacting with the text, they're moving the text, they are ducking under the text, they are hitting their head on the text. And again, it's something that kind of contradicts our expectations. Where typically, most reels that we're watching on Instagram, the text is just kind of there. And the creator, the poster, the consumer, all of us kind of have this mutual understanding and agreement that the text was added after the fact, and the person who was recording the video didn't know that the text was going to be there. Or at least if they did know the text was going to be there, they're not interacting with it in the real world. But this trend kind of flips that idea on its head. And as a quick tutorial, I will show you how to do that right now. Now, you can do this on pretty much any editing app. I haven't used Imovie in a while, so I'm not sure if you can do it in Imovie. But Capcut Desktop, Capcut Mobile, the Edits app, all of these apps will allow you to create this effect. And actually, I've found that it's easiest to achieve this effect within the Edits app. I actually think that the Edits app does the best job of what you need it to do. To achieve this look. All you have to do is step number one, record a video of yourself where you are kind of looking at where the text will be and then ducking under it. If you want to get more creative, then you can do something like hitting your head on where the text will be, or you can like knock on the text or whatever, something like that. That makes it a little bit more interactive. But the basics is look at where the text is going to be and then kind of step and duck under it and walk forward, then pull that clip into the Edits app and add your text. I find that it's best if the text references the fact that the text itself is going to be moved or interacted with in this video. Something like this text isn't going to stop me from growing on Instagram in 2026. Or nothing is going to stop me from becoming a better rock climber in 2026. Not even this text. Something like that. That kind of plays on the fact that the text is going to be interacted with. Then just click the overlay button and add the exact same video on top of the original video as an overlay. Then trim the overlaid video so that it begins right at the moment where you are kind of standing up in front of the text or where you're going to be actually like. Like hitting the text and coming in front of it for the first time. Then just simply click the button that removes the background and you're good to go. Idea number eight is making a clone of yourself. But hold up, I am not referring to an AI clone. I'm not a big fan of AI influencers and AI content clone creators. Not a big fan of those. But I digress. This one is going to be making a clone of yourself, or rather putting two or three or even four of yourself on the screen in one reel at the same time. In order to achieve this effect, you're gonna have to move your camera a little bit farther back than where you normally would. If you're watching this on YouTube right now, you can see that, like, I take up most of the screen, right? There's not much room for another Brock. But if I'm to. And I'm breaking the fourth wall right now, if I'm to zoom out right now, there's a little bit more space. Maybe I'm gonna move myself to the left in order to make more space on the right for the second Brock. Then all you have to do is stand on one side of the frame and record yourself saying what you wanted to say. Give the tips, share the advice, or have half of a conversation, then move over to the other side of the screen and record the other tips, the other advice, or the other half of the conversation. And then again, in any editing app, you can essentially put the same video on top of itself and just remove the background from the overlaid video. Because the background is a perfect match. Even if. If the background isn't perfectly removed by the editing tool, it is a perfect match of what is behind it. And so really what you've done is you've Just cut out the second person. And so now there is two or again, maybe three or four of you on the screen at the same time. I found this to be a very effective style for comparing this versus that, before versus after, old versus new, bad versus better versus best advice. There are a lot of different creative ways that you can use this trend, and it can pretty much apply to any niche, so. So have fun with it. That was idea number eight. Idea number nine through 13 are going to be a little bit more rapid fire, quick hitters. The first one is the I'm greater trend. Essentially, you just add some text on the screen about how, I know that your baseball coach is good, but I know that your real estate agent is good, but I know that your rock climbing coach is good, but. And then you pull in a cheese grater. You say, but I'm grater. So it's just a little pun. Very easy. Real. It's just kind of a fun, easy thing that you could create in probably just a few minutes. Idea number 10 is what I'm gonna call the hand holder. Essentially you record a clip where two hands are interlocking and they're coming together in front of the camera. And it kind of looks like it's two different people holding hands. And you label each of the two hands as if they are different people, as if they are like the perfect client or the perfect person coming together. But then you kind of like waddle away in front of the camera revealing that it was actually just you the whole time. It was actually just bullshit. Your hands, very easy to do. And it definitely looks better if you have some sort of like, pretty sunset or scenery, something that like, the two people would be like on a date looking at. But again, super easy to create. Funny and unexpected. Idea number 11 is the blank isn't a job trend. And this could be applied to pretty much anyone. Real estate agents, bakers, content creators, Instagram coaches, whatever. All you have to do is insert your niche. So, quote content creation is not a real job. Quote rock climbing is not a real job. And then you say, oh, yeah, well, I make. And it's gonna get a little mathy for a second. You say, I make double your monthly salary in a year. So at first when people read this, they might be a little bit offended or triggered and be like, what? This person's like, talking crap about how much money they make and how rich they are. But when you actually take a second to realize what it's saying, it's saying that what I make an entire year, you make in two months. So again, like so many of the reels in today's episode, it kind of plays on people's expectations and it breaks what they would normally assume or anticipate in the reel. It's a little bit of self deprecation, it's fun, it's lighthearted, and if your followers are in the same niche as you, it can be very share worthy because they're going to share it as a way to tell their followers like haha, yeah, look at me, I don't make that much money, but I love what I do. Number 12, our second to last idea is what I'm going to call the the don't do before posting trend or don't do before blank trend. Again, it could be applied to any niche. If you are a runner, you can say here are five things you shouldn't eat before running a marathon. If you are a parenting coach, you could say five things you shouldn't do when you are reprimanding your kids. If you're a financial planner, you could say five things you shouldn't do before filing your taxes. But then just like so many of other examples, today we're playing on people's expectations and the things that they are not supposed to do or not supposed to eat are outlandish. Things that no one would eat, things that no one would do. And then last but not leave idea number 13 is the magic writing trend where essentially you are going to take a notebook, you're going to take a string and a highlighter, you're going to drag the string underneath the highlighter in order to essentially transfer ink onto the string. Then you're going to lay the string out on the notebook, close the notebook and pull the string out. Basically this is supposed to be some sort of like magic trick where you open the notebook after pulling out the string and some writing or some artwork has magically appeared. But the unexpected twist that your reel is going to have is that when you open the notebook, it's not going to have some magical artwork. It's going to be something that you very clearly wrote. Like a quick tip, a hot take, an unpopular opinion, a call to action. Basically something that is like, haha, okay, yeah, obviously the string didn't write that, but at least you grab their attention. At least you were able to hook in the viewer and now you are using that to give a tip, tell a story, share a hot take, or give a call to action. Thank you so much for watching today. I just wanted to take a quick second to say I appreciate you so much. I will see you in next Monday's episode where we talk about how to fix Shadow Ban. So if you are stuck in the 200 View jail, make sure that you hit subscribe so that that episode automatically shows up on your feed. And until next time, and as always, happy networking. Don't.