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Hashtags do not work anymore. Here's what does Search Engine Optimization, Share worthy content, Upcycling, Hyper Frequency Carousels, Variety and trial reels. Those seven things are exactly what I'm going to be teaching you in today's episode. Those are the strategies that are most efficient and proven to get results to help you get more views, more followers, and most importantly of all, more customers on Instagram. But before we dive into those seven strategies, how the heck do we even know that Hashtags are Dead? I've been proclaiming that hashtags are dead since way back in 2021. But here are three examples of proof that show that hashtags are far less effective than they used to be. Number one, when asked if hashtags are a reliable way to increase your reach, the head of Instagram said this they don't significantly increase your reach of Instagram. Gotcha. Contrary to popular belief. And besides just saying that to me in our interview, he has also said that numerous times on his own Instagram stories. But don't just take his word for it. The second piece of evidence that I have is is that Instagram has been increasingly limiting or even reducing or even completely getting rid of different features relating to hashtags. Earlier this year they removed the ability to follow hashtags. So now when people make a post using a certain hashtag, that post is no longer eligible to be recommended on your feed. Additionally, Instagram got rid of the entire recents section below Hashtags. It used to be that when you looked at a hashtag, there were two different categories, two different feeds below that hashtag. One was the top the most popular posts who have used that hashtag. And the other was recent, which showed every single post that was recently made in reverse chronological order using said hashtag that was deleted. And then just recently, within the last month, Instagram has made arguably the biggest change to hashtags that they have ever made since the launch of the platform, and that is that they are significantly reducing the number of hashtags that you can use on your posts. Since the dawn of Instagram, you've been able to use 30 hashtags on whatever post you make to your feed. But recently, many Instagram users have received a pop up when adding hashtags to their caption. Specifically, this pop up is a warning telling them that they are not allowed to use more than five, or in some cases even more than three hashtags in their caption. This is essentially an 80 to 90% reduction in the number of hashtags that you can use in your caption, and it signals a significant change that is taking place on Instagram now. Also, in my conversation with Adam Mozeri earlier this year, which, by the way, if you haven't watched that yet by the end of 2025, do yourself a favor and check out that interview. We're working on an updated version for 2026, so make sure you're subscribed, because if we do get that interview, if we do get to do an updated round two, you want to make sure that that video, that interview, shows up the second I release it. And if you have a question that you would like me to ask the head of Instagram in our 2026 updated interview, just comment the letter Q and then your question on this episode and I will know that that's a question that you specifically want me to ask him. But I digress. What he said in our interview earlier this year is that they do not plan on removing hashtags altogether. And I believe him when he says that I don't think that there's going to be a day, at least within the next year or two, where hashtags are totally removed from the platform. I think that would cause way too much of an uproar and way too much of a headache. But ultimately, this uproar and this headache is because a lot of people think that hashtags are still a reliable way to grow. Hashtags are still an effective way to get more views when the data suggests otherwise. The third and final piece of evidence that I want to present to you is a new study that was published by Social Pilot, where they analyzed millions of Instagram posts. And what they found was that posts with zero hashtags on average performed 23% better than posts that had one or more hashtags. Additionally, in that study, they found that there was an inverse relationship between hashtag usage and reach. Basically to say that in layman's terms, the more hashtags you used, the less views you got. And take it from me, a guy who used to sell a course called Help with Hashtags that was literally designed to help people find the optimal list of hashtags to get more views and to grow more followers on Instagram. They just don't work anymore. But there are things that do still work. You can still grow. In the last 12 months, our average engaged Insta Club Hub member has grown by an average of almost 16,000 followers. So, yeah, it's definitely still possible, but the strategies and techniques that we need to use have changed so let's go through those seven strategies. The seven most effective, most efficient strategies that you can use to actually see results on Instagram, and the one final thing that I will say is that everything is a general recommendation. Everything is a best practice. So if you are still using hashtags on your post, and as long as you're not using more than Instagram allows you to use, you're seeing good results, you're seeing growth, maybe even you're seeing reach, and people discovering you from, from your hashtags, that's great. Go ahead and keep using them. When I say hashtags are dead or forget about hashtags, the overarching message that I want you to take away is that hashtags should not be a source of stress or frustration. They should not be something that you're spending very much time on. The majority of your time, energy and effort would be much better spent in some of these strategies that I'm about to describe to you, rather than researching and finding your optimal list of hashtags. Number one, the arch nemesis of hashtags, and the reason that hashtags are largely being phased out is, is because of search engine optimization. Not to get too lost in the techy weeds here, but basically hashtags were created as a way to categorize your content, to say, hey Instagram, this is a picture of pizza. Hey, Instagram, this is a hashtag yogaflow. But now the artificial intelligence that runs the Instagram algorithm has become so advanced and so much smarter than when Instagram first launched that it doesn't need you to tell it what your post is about or who your reel is intended to be viewed by. Instead, it's able to deduce a lot of that information for itself. It's able to scan your post, it's able to transcribe your reels, it's able to read your captions, able to read your comments. It's able to analyze all of this information, and that gives it a much more clear picture than you ever could, even with all 30 hashtags. Search engine optimization really boils down to one keyword, and that is keywords. Keywords are what SEO is all about. And keywords are something that feel very overcomplicated when really a keyword is just any important word in your sentence, in your reel, or in your caption. And so, with that being said, here are some do's and don'ts for keywords in order to improve your SEO on Instagram. Number one, use the keywords organically instead of trying to Cram them into your caption, or force yourself to say specific words in your reel. When you are scripting your reels, when you're writing your caption, when you're coming up with the text that you're going to put on the screen, just try to, in natural sentences, the way normal humans speak, include important words and important phrases that describe your post and articulate who the intended audience is. And that directly relates to the first don't of SEO on Instagram, which is do not do what's called keyword stuffing. Keyword stuffing is this growth hack that was invented where people would write their entire caption, they'd make their post, and then at the bottom of their caption, they would type out a bunch of keywords, kind of like the tags on YouTube. Like, they would, instead of putting like hashtag pizza, hashtag New York pizza, hashtag slice of pizza, they would just write those words and separate them by commas. Pizza, comma, slice of pizza, comma New York pizza. That's considered keyword stuffing. Additionally, there was kind of this, like, next level hack that was created by some Instagram guru where you would take those words, those keywords that you were gonna add to your caption or that you were gonna type out as hashtags. Instead, you put them on your video and then you match the color of the text to the color of the background so that they kind of like blend in. And then people would even like shrink the text down super duper small, so that the chance of a viewer actually seeing it was near impossible because it again, it blended in, it matched the background, it was super small. But the thought was that then the algorithm would read those words. And long story short, Instagram figured out what people were doing and they quickly caught on and said that this is considered spammy behavior. And Instagram, in one of their posts about a year ago, specifically said that if you do keyword stuffing, the algorithm will detect it and your post will be downranked, AKA shown to less people because of that. So do not do keyword stuffing. Use the keywords organically and naturally in your spoken words, in your sentences, in your caption, and typed out with the text on screen. The second do when it comes to keywords is to focus on quality keywords rather than quantity. In these examples I've been giving you, I've been saying, new York pizza, pizza slice, New York slice, cheese pizza. Those are super generic. They are not very high quality keywords. Generally speaking, a higher quality keyword is going to be long tail, meaning that it's going to have two, three, four, even five words in that phrase or in that keyword, because that's what makes it more specific. One way that you can think of this is the drunk grandma. You want your keywords to be able to be understood by a drunk grandma. If you were to say these keywords or say these phrases to a drunk grandma, could she get a general understanding of what your post was about or who the intended audience was? I'll give you some examples in just a second. But generally speaking, what I think people are doing wrong is they're getting too vague with their keywords and so they lack that specificity which the algorithm really needs to pinpoint who your target audience is and then serve up your content to said audience. My final tip for your keywords with some examples is the two most important places for your SEO friendly keyword ridden sentences and phrases and words. And those two key places are, number one, the first sentence of your caption and number two, the name line on your Instagram profile. Let's talk about the caption first. The entire caption matters. The entire post matters. The spoken word matters. All these different areas are analyzed by the algorithm. But for whatever reason, that first sentence or those first few sentences of the caption are what are most analyzed or what are weighted most heavily by the algorithm. So if I made, let's say, a really great recipe and I was posting a reel about said recipe, I could say in my first sentence of the caption, save this easy recipe. Because I'm like, oh hey, easy recipe. That's what this is. That's an SEO friendly keyword phrase, right? Well, yes, but it's too vague. Yes, a drunk grandma could understand that, but it's so vague she couldn't pinpoint what the recipe is. Right? And, and so rather than using something generic like that, let's embed, let's bake in, pun intended, some more SEO friendly keywords into that sentence. Instead I could say something like save this easy gluten free Thanksgiving Mac and cheese recipe has a lot more keywords, it's a lot more searchable, and it helps the algorithm determine what my post is about. So much more than just save this easy recipe. And then like I said, the other really important place in your Instagram where SEO matters is the name line on your Instagram bio. The username, also known as handle, is one of a kind. I'm Brock11Johnson, and so no one else on Instagram can be Brock11Johnson, which quick sidebar, if you're not following me On Instagram. Make sure that you're following me on Instagram because I'm posting daily tips and strategies and ideas all the time over there. So make sure you check me out. But no one else can have that same username. But your Instagram name can be identical to someone else's. I say that to just make sure that you know that you can put keywords on there that other people have. And that line is 100% searchable. It's 100% searchable on Instagram and off of Instagram, meaning that if anyone searches on Google or ChatGPT or on Instagram's native search bar, you will come up if you have those keywords and those phrases in your name line. Additionally, your name line has a lot more freedom and flexibility. I believe you have up to 56 characters that you're allowed to put on that nameline. So instead of putting something like recipe creator or home chef, I would put something like easy gluten free dinners or recipes for moms of four plus. Basically, you want to include more keywords and more phrases on that nameline to improve your searchability. My all time favorite example of when this proved beneficial for someone was actually before my interview with Adam Mosseri. I needed a media team, right? I needed people to actually film our interview. And I didn't have like a filming crew to take you kind of a peek under the hood or behind the curtains for a second. I'm filming by myself in my office right now. I set up my phone, I set up my camera, which, yes, my second cam is literally just my phone, just my computer. I have two lights, my microphone, I have my script on my iPad in front of me. Like, all of this is me. So shout out to me. But no, I don't mean to toot my own horn. When I was doing that interview with Mozeri, I was like, I can't do this myself. I'm definitely not gonna rely on myself to like press start and stop on all the cameras. So I had to reach out to a media team, like a production team, a filmer to film and create the whole podcast. And so in order to find said videographer, I went to Instagram and I searched San Francisco videographer. And that's how I found my guy. There were definitely other videographers who probably could have done a better job and charged me less, but on their Instagram nameline, they had like wave wind media or whatever. They're like, cute little tagline was, or we make your dreams come true or, you know, your videography bestie. Like they had these things that were not SEO friendly, they were nicknames or taglines or pseudo names or maybe they just had a repeat of their company name. But instead because the guy I hired had San Francisco videographer in his nameline, I was able to find him, look through his stuff, looked good, I DMed him, I hired him and boom, now you have that interview. So by strategically including quality keywords in your captions, in your nameline, in your bio and in your posts in general, you will get discovered more. You will show up in more search results. You will help the algorithm place you in front of the people who actually want to see your content and you'll get more views, engagement and growth because of it. The second strategy that will help you see better results on Instagram is is focusing on creating share worthy content. And that's because shares are the best kind of engagement on Instagram. When you get one share, you get disproportionately more views than if you were to get a like a comment or a save. Shares help you reach not only more people, but they also help you reach the right people. Like I've said a few times, the algorithm's job is to show us the content that it thinks we want to see, but ultimately it's just guessing. With a share, however, you are sending a post to someone who you know they're going to watch it. Like I I bet while I'm recording this podcast today, my wife who's out in the living room, I bet she is sending me reels. And guess what? Those reels that she's sending me, it's not like a guess if I would be interested. She knows I would be interested. And I am way more likely to watch those than to watch whatever the algorithm recommends I watch next. 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. Built boost engagement and grow your business smarter. 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Just head to www.brevo.com tribe and take your marketing further with Brevo and Aura for the last few years I've been using Notion to basically organize my entire life. It's so much more than just a to do list app, it's truly a one stop shop for organizing any area of your life or business. And it's not just great at organization, it's also great at automations as well. There's so many complex things that you can do and build that can happen automatically and instantly within Notion. And now for the first time, they are introducing Notion AI agents. 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 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. 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. What we eat, what we prepare, it matters a lot to us. And that's why I'm so excited to introduce you to our newest sponsor, HelloFresh. HelloFresh allows you to choose between more than 100 recipes every single week, including cuisines from all around the world and bigger portions that satisfy everyone. Over 35 of those weekly recipes are high protein recipes, which fires me up and it allows me to feel great because I know that I'm eating wholesome ingredients like sustainably sourced seafood and 100 antibiotic and hormone free chicken. And of course, most important of all is how it tastes. And let me tell you, it actually tastes really good. This helps me be a better business owner because I'm able to eat meals that taste good and help me feel satisfied. I don't have to spend as much time thinking or prepping each meal and I can make sure that I'm hitting my protein goals in the process. Go to hellofresh.com byt10fm to get 10 free meals plus a free Zwilling knife which is a $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 plan. When you send posts to your friends, your family, your colleagues and they are the intended target audience, they are the ideal viewer. They are the most likely to be engaged potential follower of that piece of content. So shares don't only equal more viewers, they equal better viewers. Now I could do an entire podcast on creating share worthy content and I have. And so I'll put the link in the description below if you want to listen to that entire episode. But in short, I've recently come up with an acronym to help you remember what is shareworthy content. Shareworthy content is s simple. That means that again, a drunk grandma could understand it. It means that you are using easy to understand language. It means that you are being as concise as possible. You're not being long winded, you're not being redundant. You're not trying to stroke your own ego by using fancy words and synonyms. You are making your content easy to binge and easy to watch. Hook the hook is the most important part of any piece of content and the hook we oftentimes focus so much on just the words that we're saying or the text on the screen. But an easy way to make a big difference in the effectiveness of your hooks is to focus on the visual, the actual what's on the screen, what's happening in the video, what is the eye going to first? And the audio is there music? Is there sound effects? Is there a delay? Is there something that builds tension or curiosity and makes me want to keep watching? Paying attention to the visual and the audio in addition to just the text or the words that you're saying is so key. Additionally, for your hooks, I generally recommend keeping them in a five to eight word range. It's okay if you go a little bit longer or a little bit shorter, but generally you want to keep them as short and concise as possible. And whenever possible use a negative word. Basically, you want to include words like don't stop, avoid, cancel, lose, stay away from, deny, decline, whatever, those sorts of negative words whenever possible, because those are often what our brains pay more attention to and thus we are more likely to stop and pay attention to your posts. A Authentic when people talk about authenticity, you often hear just be yourself. But I don't think that's very helpful advice. So instead when I say authentic, here's a tactical way that you can make your posts more share worthy by being more authentic. Reduce the amount of time between idea and execution. Reduce the amount of time between oh hey, I think I have this posted here. Oh hey, I I think I could talk about that question. Oh hey, I think I could talk about that topic. And actually posting the post. Not just making it, not just editing it, not just planning it, but actually posting it. I believe that the more time we spend editing, refining, script writing and planning our posts, the worse they are going to do. I mean, think about yourself. How many times have you made a post that you were like, oh, this one's going to go viral, this one's going to do great. This one's going to be hilarious. This post is going to make me famous. And then you spend hours working on it and you post it and it flops. And then think about the flip side of that coin. Think about how many times you just kind of like whip something up. Maybe it was a meme. Maybe it was like a quick news headline. Maybe it was just like some random B roll post that you didn't even think about. You just whipped it up and posted it. Maybe you didn't even think about it after you posted it and you came back a few hours later and you were like oh my gosh. This is my best post of the month. This is my best post of the year. This post is going viral and you put less time, energy and effort into it. I believe that the reason that that happens is the less time we spend editing and refining and trimming and planning our posts, the more true to ourselves they are, the more it's just like brain onto the page or onto the post or onto Instagram. Boom. And we're done. We're not like filtering it. We're not adding layers of refinement and getting farther away from the true idea that we had. So in short, if you want to be more authentic, spend less time editing and more time posting. The next letter in the acronym is R. R stands for relatable. And relatability comes from specificity. Basically, be specific, tell specific stories, include specific nuances, include details, include more specifics than you think you might otherwise include. Because what we often do is when we're making posts for social media, we think, oh, I need to be vague. I need to appeal to everyone. I need to make sure that everyone can understand and like this post. And so we end up doing is we really water down our experiences, we water down our opinions, we water down the stories that have taken place that we want to share, that we want to tell. And because of this, sure, everyone can understand it. Everyone, it makes sense to. Everyone can kind of relate, but no one really relates that strongly. Instead, I want you to include specifics when you're telling stories. I want you to include details when you are making a post. So if I was making a post about how you spend a bunch of time making a reel and then it doesn't do well, I could put text on the screen that says when you spend a bunch of time making a reel and it doesn't do well, everyone can relate to that. Everyone can relate to spending a bunch of time and it not doing well. But instead it would be more relatable if I got more specific. So if I put text on the screen that was like when I spend three hours editing a reel and it gets seven likes, those numbers are more specific and you could argue that less people have spent exactly three hours and got exactly seven likes, but because it's more specific, it will be more relatable and thus it will be more share worthy. Finally, last but not least, E E could have been a point in and of itself. Like not just a point within shareworthiness, but a point within how to grow on Instagram. And E is to focus on entertaining content, put Entertainment first. My interview with the head of Instagram earlier this year is the interview that's getting all the attention and all the views. But the interview that I think you might actually benefit more from listening to is my interview with the head of Instagram for Business. I uploaded it here on the channel a few months ago. It was with Thomas Finetto, and in that conversation he said that brands and business owners need to think about entertainment first. It needs to be their number one priority when they are creating content. Not value, not education, not how funny can this be, not how relatable can this be, but entertainment. Entertainment. And sure, sometimes entertainment comes from value, sometimes it comes from relatability, sometimes it comes from humor. But focusing on entertainment first and foremost and really asking yourself, would this post be entertaining? Like when people are seeing thousands and thousands of other posts in the day, is this post really worth their time? Is this post really going to grab their attention and make them lock in so that they pay attention throughout the entire post, the entire slideshow, and then read the entire caption? And if not, how could we improve the entertainment factor so that more people do spend more time with this post? Strategy number three to see better results on Instagram is what I like to call upcycling. And upcycling is my all time favorite strategy because it helps you see better results in less time. Upcycling is all about saving your time, energy and effort so you can focus on other things so you can reclaim your life and stop spending so much damn time on Instagram. Upcycling is essentially the idea of taking a post that you have previously posted and posting it a second time, or recreating a slightly modified version and then posting that a second time. Basically you've already done the work to make a post. Most people didn't see it the first time and the algorithm will not punish you for posting it a second time. So my recommendation is once it's been 90 days or more, post it again. Or if you want to make a slightly modified version, if there's maybe one tip that's outdated or one thing that you know, you filmed it wearing a Santa hat because it was December, but now it's March. Okay, well then maybe you film it in a new setting but say the exact same words. Recreating or literally re uploading your post is a growth hack. I believe that every post should be posted at least thrice, at least three times. Post it today, schedule it 90 days from now, and schedule it at least 90 days after that. If you post it three times. And all three times it's flopped and it's crashed and burned. Then you can retire it and decide maybe it was the way you presented it, maybe it's just that topic people are interested in. Maybe there's a word that you're saying that didn't make sense. You can then decide to scrap it and go back to the drawing board. But if you posted it three times and one out of the three has done well, then post it a fourth time, a fifth time, and keep posting it until you have three in a row that aren't doing well. And then you have my permission to officially retire said post. But this is the strategy that I use for about 60 to 70% of my posts on Instagram. And, and I truly believe that it's how I've been able to grow so much, be hyper consistent, and spend very little time on Instagram. Realistically, I spend less than an hour a day. Once I did a study where I saw like, what was my minimum amount of time, and I spent less than 30 minutes a day on Instagram. But I'm still growing at a rate of hundreds of followers every single day. I'm still pumping out numerous posts every single day. And in just a second, we'll talk about why that's so important. But upcycling your content will be so freeing for you. And if you take nothing else away from this episode, go through your catalog of posts from 3 months ago or older and pick a few out that you could repost in the future. With all that being said, that brings me to my fourth strategy to help you see better results on Instagram. I mentioned it a moment ago. It is hyper consistency. The more you post, the more you grow. Should you post once a day? Sure. Should you post once a week? Sure. Can you see results posting once a month? Sure. But on average, the more you post to your feedback, the more growth views and engagement you see in return. So to say it another way, three posts is better than two posts. Two posts a day is better than one post. One post a day is better than one post every other day. There is no such thing as algorithm crowding. It's not like the algorithm is gonna say, oh, this person is posting too much. So we're gonna show them to less people if your posts are engaging, if they're captivating. And as long as the quality is not declining, the more you post, the more you growl. So I want you not to work harder, not to, like, hustle, culture yourself and stay up till 3am making reels for Instagram. Instead, I want you to use strategies like upcycling. I want you to use strategies like feck perfection. Stop trying to make such perfect posts and over edit it and overanalyze every post you make and instead rip the band aid off and just press post. I want you to do these things because they will allow you to post more, stress less and see better results. The fifth way that you can see better results on Instagram moving forward is to start posting more carousels. Over the last few years there has been such a widespread adoption of reels that a lot of people have abandoned photos and carousels altogether. And this makes sense because for a while, for the first few years that reels existed, Instagram was pushing reels like crazy. They wanted the adoption to take place. They wanted us all to start using and consuming reels. Congratulations Instagram, you did your job. But now so many people are not posting any carousels. And I understand we have this thought that like, carousels are hard to create. They're complicated, they're going to take a bunch of time. I would argue that in many cases they're actually easier than reels to create. And I've done a few episodes now about carousel ideas that are easy to make and currently trending popular or going viral. And they're not just like the generic canva template graphics that you've seen that have been going around since 2016. I've actually done two episodes each with eight different carousel ideas. I'll link those up down in the show notes below, but the TLDR of it is A recent study was published by Metricool where they analyzed hundreds of millions of posts and they found that on average, carousels are getting more engagement and a higher engagement rate than reels. Now, on average, reels are still getting slightly more views than carousels, and reels are helping you reach more new people, more non followers than carousels on average. But carousels have a higher reach to your existing followers. Like I mentioned a moment ago, they have a higher engagement rate. So more likes, comments, saves and shares than reels. And because most people are so focused on posting mostly reels, when you post carousels, you lower the level of competition that your post has to compete with and thus you can see much better results. So if you're not currently using carousels, I highly recommend adding them into your strategy moving forward. And part of adding them into your strategy brings me to my sixth way that you're going to see better results on Instagram. And that's variety. Variety is the spice of life. And it is the price of likes. I know a lot of people are big fans of content pillars, and I know a lot of people are big fans of creating repeatable series. And I think that those things can be effective. But I think that you also need to be constantly experimenting. You need to be constantly trying out new ideas, new formats and new styles. If you've never done a voiceover reel, give one a shot. If you've never done an inspirational carousel, try one out. If you've never made a reel that was a behind the scenes day in the life vlog, give it a shot. Basically constantly be trying out different kinds of content. And don't judge that one piece of content as if that is the ultimate result. And what I mean by that is if you make one voiceover reel and it bombs and it flops, that's not a failure because you experimented. You gave your audience something else to consume with. You Re engaged even just a few people who might otherwise have been bored by your same old, same old content. And one post is not enough of an experiment. Give at least a couple, give at least a dozen posts with this style before you write it off completely. But even if all dozen of those posts flop and fail and they don't do very well, I want you to continue to experiment. I believe that the sign of a healthy, thriving, growing Instagram is this. Some posts do well, some posts flop, some posts go viral, some posts reach no. 1. Some posts get thousands of likes, some posts get seven likes. I believe that that is the sign of a healthy Instagram. I think that if every single one of your posts is doing well, it means that you're healthy and thriving for right now. But I think that you are going to be rapidly approaching a cliff because eventually user habits are going to change. People are going to get bored of that style. If every single one of your posts look the same and you're having great results, I think that's scary because eventually that same post that you keep making over and over again is not going to hit the same. People are going to get bored of it, people are going to get tired of it, and then you're suddenly going to be stuck in a place where you only know how to create one kind of post and people don't like that one kind of post. That's the trap that a lot of people have fallen into with B roll reels. That's the trap that a lot of people fell into in 2021 with voiceover or lip sync reels. Constantly be experimenting. Constantly be Adding variety to your kinds of posts. And remember that just because a post doesn't perform well, it's important to always be testing. And speaking of testing, last but not least, the seventh and final strategy to help you see better results on Instagram is trial reels. Trial reels are a feature that were announced almost exactly a year ago and they are a kind of reel that is only shown to non followers. They're only shown to new people. And so it makes sense if 100% of your viewers are non followers. They're a great opportunity to convert people into followers. I recommend posting no more and no less than five trial reels per day. Now, Instagram has recently made some big changes to trial reels, namely that you can no longer re upload trial reels. So you know my upcycling strategy that I was raving about earlier, that works on the feed and Instagram themselves. Adam Mozeri himself has said that yes, you can upcycle, you can repost onto your feed. That's totally allowed. They have also explicitly said that you cannot upcycle or re upload as trial reels. So if you posted a reel in April of 2025, you are totally free and clear. The algorithm will not punish you if you post it again to your feed whenever. But if you take that reel that you have previously posted and you try to upload it as a trial reel, it may not work as well. Specifically, what we have noticed recently is that taking a past trial reel and uploading it again as a duplicate trial reel is almost certain to not work. You're almost certain that you're going to get a pop up from Instagram that says, hey, this looks like a duplicate of something you've posted before. And thus we're going to show it to less people. And some people have even noticed that if they take what was previously a normal reel again, let's assume you posted it back in April of 2025 and now you're posting it as a trial reel. Some people have even seen that that is getting shown to less people and that is causing the pop up of hey, this is a duplicate. So test it out for yourself and see if you have the ability to post previously posted normal reels as trial reels. If you don't, then you're going to have to make entirely new posts for your trial reels. And making five entirely new posts a day. I know it sounds daunting and it sounds like a lot of work. So I created an entire episode that I just uploaded a few weeks ago about trial reels with all of my strategies and best practices, including recommended posts and examples of what your trial reels could look like. That will be low effort, but likely bring in a higher percentage of followers, so make sure to check that out. Don't forget to subscribe, and as always, happy networking. Sam.