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Build Your Tribe | Grow Your Business with Social Media
How To Get 100k Views On Your Reels | New Algorithm Breakdown - 820
00:25:40
In today’s episode, Brock Johnson, breaks down the key strategies to get 100k views on your Instagram Reels, including how to leverage the new 2025 Instagram algorithm. We’ll discuss how to create viral Reels, boost views, and increase shares and...
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If you are absolutely over the Instagram algorithm and you are so annoyed by the constant up and down roller coaster where it's more down than up and your views are just in the trash, you're in the right place. Because today I'm going to share with you exactly how to get more views on your reels. And this is coming from our own internal research, the data that we are able to collect from our over 40,000 insta club hub members, and most importantly of all, Instagram's CEO himself has spilled the beans on how the algorithm works. So with all of that being said, let's hop right into it. Instagram CEO Adam Mozeri has recently put out a reel of his own explaining how ranking works. Ranking is a fancy term that they use at Instagram that basically means how they decide what video shows up. Where to say it another way, the best ranking ranking content shows up first, the second best ranking content shows up second, so on and so forth. And when you think about that, there are so many different areas to consume content on Instagram, be it the home feed, the reels page, the Explore tab, or stories, making sure that your content is ranking at the top is really the only way that you can get views. Nowadays it is increasingly tough. With more content creators, more business owners and better content out there, it's tougher than ever before to get views on Instagram. So understanding how the algorithm actually works is key. It is absolutely essential for beating the algorithm and thus growing on Instagram. The first key metric, the general most important metric for your reels in order to get more views is what Instagram calls view rate. View rate is basically the percentage of your video that someone completes watching. So let's use simple math here. If you have a 10 second video and the average person watches six seconds of that video, then you have a 60% watch rate. The greater your watch rate, the more likely Instagram is to push your reel out to more people. Now immediately. There's already some clues that we can pull out of this single statistic that will inform how we can get more views on Instagram. Adam Mozeri, in this post and a few other official Instagram accounts since this post has been put out have confirmed that there is a difference between view rate and watch time or watch duration. Watch duration or watch time is just the total amount of time that someone watches. View rate is the percentage of completion. So if you post a three minute reel and someone only watches six seconds, or you post a 10 second reel and someone watches six seconds, the video that was shorter is better. It's going to be pushed out to more people because it has a better view rate. The 10 second video that people are watching for six seconds, like I mentioned a moment ago, has a 60% view rate, while the three minute video that people are only watching for six seconds has about a 3% view rate. So that tells us that yes, generally speaking, shorter is better. But that doesn't mean that you should make all of your videos 10 seconds long or all of your videos 6 seconds long. It simply means, and we'll get into this in just a moment when I talk to you about some more of the best practices and mistakes to evolve. It simply means that if your video can be shorter, make it shorter. Don't intentionally make your video longer just for the sake of making it longer. Try to be as concise as possible so that you can increase your view rate. But again, that's more of the general overarching best form of engagement in order to get more views. But something that was very interesting that Adam Mozeri shared in his recent update is that there are actually two different kinds of engagement that will determine whether you get more views from followers or you get more views from non followers. Let's talk about getting more views from your followers first. And before we even talk about how to achieve that, why and when would you want to achieve that? Let's say you were making a sales related post. That is the type of post that you would want to reach more followers, right? Because a follower is more likely to become a customer than someone who's never met you before. A warm audience is more likely to become a lead than a completely cold audience. Also, you would want to reach more of your followers if you're making more of a personal post, a post that is more sentimental to you or that is more a reflection of your values or your interests and your hobbies. And it wouldn't really make sense to tell a stranger about Your interests and your hobbies, you'd rather tell someone who has already decided to follow you. So if you want to reach more of your followers, according to Instagram's CEO and according to our own internal research, the best form of engagement to receive is a like. The more likes you get, the more views you will get to your existing followers. Fortunately for all of us, likes are also the easiest kind of engagement to get on Instagram. It's much easier for someone to just double tap and like your post than it is to save or comment or share with a friend. So later on I'm going to talk to you about how you can actually get more likes. But the basic thing you need to know is if you want to reach more of your followers, you should be aiming to increase your likes. Now, let's talk about reaching non followers, reaching the people who don't already follow you, the people who maybe have never seen your content before. Why would you want to reach those people? Well, obviously you want to reach those people so that you can grow. If you're reaching only your existing followers, it's going to be really tough to grow because someone can't double follow you. So if we want to grow, if your goal is to cast a wider net, bring more eyeballs to your business, more traction to your page, then you want to, of course, reach non followers. Non follower related posts are great, of course, for growing your following and thus increasing the leads that you can generate from Instagram. If you want to reach non followers, the best form of engagement, and we've been talking about this for years here at Build you'd Tribe, is shares. Getting more shares on your post will directly lead to reaching more people. It will do this because, number one, of course, that's how a share works. When someone shares a post with a friend, the friend receives the post, and if the friend doesn't already follow you, then of course that's a plus one to the non follower reach. So shares, of course, that makes sense how they work, but also algorithmically speaking, when you get more shares, the algorithm thinks, oh, this would be a great post for non followers to see. So they push it out to non followers. I personally did a very interesting experiment back in the summer of 2024 where I asked people to share my post with myself. So rather than sending it to a friend, rather than sending it to a non follower, I just had them send it to me. So basically with this experiment, we knew that the post wasn't going to be reaching a ton of people because of the share, right like the post wasn't being sent to a bunch of people. It was really just testing to see, hey, if this post gets a lot of shares, regardless of who the share is going to, will the post be pushed out to more people? That post ended up going viral, reaching millions of people. And again, it wasn't shared with millions of people, it was shared with myself tens of thousands of times. The algorithm thus deemed it a post worthy of reaching non followers. And to this day, I'm still getting people seeing that post, following me from it, and yes, even sharing the post with me. So just to repeat myself and make sure that we are clear, if you want to reach more followers, get more likes, and if you want to reach more non followers, get more shares. Now, with all of that being said, I wish the next thing that I could do is climb through your phone or your computer or wherever you're listening to this and like scroll through your reels and look at them and give you feedback. That would be awesome. But that's something that we can only do in the Insta Club Hub. That's something we actually do every single month for our Insta Club Hub members. But I can't do that for you as a podcast listener. So here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to give you the next best thing, which is I'm going to share with you the nine biggest mistakes that people are making that are hurting them from getting more likes, getting more shares, or increasing their view rate. And these nine mistakes that I'm about to share with you, I want you to use them to grade your own content and be a harsh judge, a harsh critic of your content before we even get into the mistakes. Mistake number zero, I guess, is that people oftentimes are critics and judges and harsh judges of their content before they press post. And so you never end up pressing post or you're constantly frustrated and overwhelmed and on the edge of burning out and second guessing yourself because you're judging your content before you put it out into the world. That's a huge no, no. Just press post and then based off how it performs, you can learn from it. You can get 1% better with each post. I'm a firm believer that yes, great content is ultimately how you're going to grow on Instagram. Great content is how you're going to reach more people. But how do we make great content? We practice. To say it another way, how do we achieve quality, quantity? We continue posting and we learn from each post rather than kicking ourselves while we're down and getting upset with ourselves or with the algorithm for not giving us enough views. What can you learn from this post that you just made? Key part of that sentence that you just made. Only judge your posts once they have been made. But with that being said, here are the nine criteria that you can use to judge your posts in order to hopefully improve them and thus increase your view rate, your likes and your shares. All right, number one, we've kind of talked about this one already, but a big mistake I see a lot of people making is that your reels are just far too long. How long should your reels be? Is of course the question that you're asking next. And my answer might make you laugh, but it also is not going to be necessarily what you're hoping to hear. My answer is that there is no universal best length. For some of us, we're going to have success with 2 minute long reels. Some of us are going to have success with 14 second reels. Every audience is different. But the key tip I want you to remember here is what's called the miniskirt rule. The miniskirt rule is a great rule that was named by one of our Insta clubbers and it is as follows. Your reel should be long enough to cover the important bits, but short enough to hold attention. Basically, it should be long enough to cover whatever it is you want to cover, to talk about whatever it is you want to talk about, to share whatever tip or story or value that you intend on sharing and no longer just long enough to cover the important bits and no longer than that. So that means that for some of us you're going to need 37 seconds to fully tell your story and get your point across. If that's how long you need, take it. I don't want you to say, well, this story or this tip or this education would have taken me 37 seconds, but Brock said it has to be 17. No, it needs to be as long as it has to be and no longer. But the mistake I see a lot of people making is they're having run on sentences, they're kind of babbling, they're losing track, they're redundant. We're going to talk about some more of these mistakes later on, but in general, try to tighten up your reel even once you're done filming. When you're in the editing stage, think, could this sentence be removed? Is this sentence absolutely necessary for understanding what I'm trying to share? Is this phrase, is this important? Is this word, is it necessary to be included in the reel and if not, edit it out. And I think right now would be a perfect time to mention something that I'm a huge fan of, something that we always teach here at Build you'd Tribe, and something that we hammer home to our Insta Club Hub members. And that is that you should be constantly upcycling your content. Upcycling is a term that we use to describe reposting or recreating your content. Reposting meaning taking something from the past and posting it again. If it did well 90 days ago, post it a second time. Same captions, same everything, don't change a thing. Post it a second time and it will likely do well the second time. Or refresh, recreate the post to use this mistake and apply it here. If the reel that you posted a few months ago, looking back at it, it was just a little too long, a little too wordy, a little too redundant. You could have trimmed out and made your skirt a little bit shorter. Take that same post from, I don't know, back in October of 2024 and just cut it up a little bit. Trim out some parts, make it a little bit shorter and more concise, and post it a second time. That way you can increase your output without having to significantly change your input or spend a lot of more time, energy and effort on the creation side. You've already done the work. Let's just chop it up and post it again. All right, so again, mistake number one is just having your reels be too long. Mistake number two is similar but slightly different. And it's not having enough cuts. There's this rule in TV and cinema called the three second rule. And this rule is essentially that you should have some sort of cut or change or transition every three seconds. And that's to keep you engaged in the hook in your reels. The same principle applies. There should be some sort of cut or change or effect or transition or new scene every two to three seconds. And again, I know that you're thinking, that's crazy. That's so fast. That's so many cuts and edits. The next time you're watching TV or a movie, pay attention. And I bet you'll notice that the same is true there as well. The next time you're watching Netflix, count out loud. And I bet you'll be able to notice that every two or three seconds there's some sort of scene change or cut or transition. One easy way that you can apply this to your reels. Specifically, if you are doing a talking head reel is to film each sentence of your talking head reel in a new location. So rather than setting up your phone on a tripod and talking for 60 seconds straight, which is very tough to do and remember, like everything you wanted to say and stay on script and not be redundant or not fumble over your words like, that's tough even for me. What I would recommend doing is just record one sentence at a time. Record your hook in your kitchen, record the second sentence in your bedroom, record the third sentence outside your front door. Just changing scenery like that, even if it's still you in the same outfit, holding the phone with your right hand, just the fact that there is a cut and a transition every two or three seconds, it will help keep your viewers engaged for longer, which, remember, that will help increase your view rate, which will help you get more views in general. One of the biggest mistakes, the third biggest mistake that I see people making with their reels, and this probably should be number one, I think this is the biggest mistake of all, is just boring hooks, bad hooks, or not having a hook at all. In fact, I believe that the majority of your time, energy and effort should be placed on those first three seconds of your video. The stronger your hook can be, the better. Now, down in the show notes below this episode, I'll put a link to 25 viral hooks that we have collected for you. Basically, we went through over a thousand Instagram Reels and TikTok videos, and we just pulled out the hooks from every single one of those videos. And then we tallied how many times we heard the same hook over and over again. And we put them in order for you with the top 25 most viral hooks. So go ahead, download that totally free. But one of the biggest tips that I can give you for your hooks is rather than doing a generic three tips for losing weight, get specific and include your story into the hook. Such as, when I eliminated these three things from my diet, I finally broke through the plateau and lost 15 pounds. The second video really makes you want to watch. The second video makes you interested, and it gives you a little window into who I am, my journey, my experience, my expertise. The first video is like, not that interesting kind of generic. The second video, the second hook, I should say, is way more engaging and way more captivating. So rather than using the generic hooks from 2021, start incorporating your own experiences and storytelling into your hooks, which then will make them more engaging, which will increase the likelihood that people keep watching, thus increasing your view rate, thus increasing your views in general. And again, remember, our Strategy of upcycling, you can take any video that you posted in the past. Let's say you posted a great workout routine for rock climbers, and in the past you use the hook three exercises. For rock climbers, you could use the exact same video like second three through whenever the video ended and just replace the hook. I call it my hook swap strategy. Take a video from the past and replace it with a new hook and bam, you basically got a new reel, a brand new piece of content with a stronger hook. So that's mistake number three. Mistake number four is super common and it's also super easy to fix. It's simply not having closed captions on your videos. The majority of people who watch reels and consume content on Instagram are watching on mute. So if you don't have closed captions, it's so much harder for them to watch and engage. Now you can use outside apps like Inshot, like Capcut, or like Captions to add more dynamic closed captions. They'll like fly on the screen and have little effects to them and have like certain words in bold and whatnot. That is definitely a way to take your reels up to the next level. But at a bare minimum, use the captions sticker on Instagram to add closed captions to your videos. All right, so that should be a simple fix. That's mistake number four. Mistake number five is either not having B roll in your video. And this is specifically for those of you who are doing like talking head videos. If you're doing a talking head video, it shouldn't just be your face talking to the camera the entire time. Ideally, we would have some sort of secondary video. If you're talking about the perfect form for doing a push up, you shouldn't just be talking about it. We should see the perfect form, we should see the bad form. We should be able to stay engaged with what's called B roll. The other related mistake that I see people making is for those of you who do B roll reels, the type of reel where there's, you know, text on the screen and then there's a video in the background. And it's simply that the video in the background is either not related to what you're talking about, like it's not related to the text on the screen, or it's just not interesting. I've seen people do, you know, tips for making passive income at home for moms over 35 and there's like some text on the screen, but then the background video isn't a mom over 35. It is like a pretty sunset. That's okay, but it's not really related. It's not interesting, it's not engaging. Right. So if you're doing talking head videos, incorporate B roll. And if you're doing B roll reels, make sure that the B roll relates to whatever it is that your reel is about. The sixth mistake that I see people making is either not having a call to action, which I'm going to stop right here. Every single post you make should have a call to action. A call to action is essentially telling your audience what you want them to do. So that's the first mistake. Another mistake. Cause a lot of you are familiar with that. A lot of you are like, yeah, Brock, I know I got a call to action is. Your calls to action are either generic, simple or confusing. Some of you are using multi action. Call to actions. It's a call to action, not a call to actions with an S. So instead of being like, like this reel and don't forget to share it with a friend and save it for later and follow for more. Like, don't give people multiple things. Give them one thing to do. What I usually recommend to our Insta Clubbers is, is to watch your reel and then ask yourself, what is someone most likely to do when they watch this reel? If the reel's educational, what are they most likely to do? I feel like Dora right now. Yeah. What they're most likely to do is save it. If it's a super funny, relatable reel, what are they most likely to do? Yeah, like it. Or maybe share it with a friend. If it's a reel that's like controversial and is talking about an opinion and asking people for their thoughts, what are people most likely to do? Comment. Yeah, exactly. So ask people for the action that they are most likely to do. And then one way to make your calls to action stronger is instead of just asking for an action, for example, like this post, give them a reason. Like this post. If you found it valuable, share this post if you can relate to it, save this post so you can refer to it later. Give them a reason. In addition to the action mistake number seven is bad audio, bad lighting, or bad formatting. You don't need to invest in like a professional mic or like fancy camera and lighting equipment like I have right now. Your phone is good enough. But some pro tips, especially for my ladies out there. If you got, you know, some makeup smudges or some oil smudges on your camera lens, just clean off your camera lens. Speaking of, use the back camera instead of the front camera. It's better quality. Make sure that when you're holding your phone, you don't have your pinky down here covering up the microphone. It's a very common mistake I see people making. And then for lighting, just stand near a window. Cloudy days are actually some of the best days because it creates kind of a uniform lighting, not a harsh bright spotlight. Stand near a window and you're good to go. Make sure that your audio is crisp and clean and easy to understand. And then when it comes to formatting, one of the big mistakes that I see people making is having like borders on their reels. Like there's a big black chunk at the top or at the bottom, or the reels are kind of zoomed out and like kind of squished in. Don't do that. Make sure that your video takes up the entire screen. Zoom it in if you have to, refilm it if you have to. Don't ever post a horizontal video as a reel. Make sure that there are no borders so it's formatted correctly. Mistake number eight. And this one is something that is kind of controversial because on one hand, this is something I'm calling a mistake, but it works. It works. It will definitely. Doing this will get you more views, it will get you maybe more reach. It might help you go viral. But on the other hand, it's probably going to annoy the majority of your followers and it's probably not going to work for very long. What I'm referring to is any kind of gimmick or clickbait. A gimmick is something that works today and is gone tomorrow. It's kind of like tricking the algorithm or hacking the algorithm. It's the type of thing like a one second reel that's a gimmick. It's a reel that's playing over and over again. So you're like, my view rate is going to go through the roof. It might go through the roof, but it's going to really annoy your followers if they're watching a 1 second video over and over again. So yes, it might reach more people, but like, what is that doing in the long run? That's not a very ethical way to do business. That's not a very sustainable way to grow a following on social media. Annoying your followers in exchange for pleasing the algorithm is not something I would recommend. So don't do any of the gimmicks, whatever they are. There's always new ones coming out. And then clickbait Clickbait is a sensationalized hook that is ultimately a lie. It's untrue. It's a fabrication. It's the person who's like, here's how to make $35,000 in one night without having to lift a finger. That's clickbait. Let's not do that. And then one more thing that I'll lump into this category is the read the caption reels, where it usually has like a clickbait hook or clickbait text on it. And then it just says read the caption. And then like maybe the caption answers the question, but the caption is probably just like selling you some course or something. Don't do that. It's a gimmick. It's clickbaity. It might work, but it's not sustainable. It's not long term, it's not ethical. And then number nine, last but not least, it kind of relates back to number one about being too long or number two about not having enough cuts. And it's just in general, dead air, dead space. The millennial pause, using filler words, being redundant, anything like that. Again with this idea of making your reel as tight and concise and succinct as possible. You don't want to do what I just did. Tight and concise and succinct. Those three words mean the same thing. I can say them to you here because you've committed a long form piece of content like a YouTube video or a podcast. But if you were watching a reel, I would recommend saying just one of those three words so that you can be as concise and succinct as possible. So really try to eliminate the filler, eliminate the dead air. Dead air is the pauses, the ums, the ers, the ahs, the millennial pause some of you are familiar with. It's how the first second of your video and millennials, I'm a millennial myself. We're guilty of this. We go and there's like that one second pause at the beginning of the video. Just trim that off. Make sure to remove that. It will help keep people engaged. It will help increase your view rate, your likes and your shares, which will help you reach more people and grow your following. I want to say thank you so much for listening today. Definitely check out some of the past episodes we've put out. On Build you'd Tribe, we did an entire episode about how to get more shares and how to create share worthy content so that you can actually reach more non followers. We'll link that up in the show notes below. Don't forget to subscribe so that our new episodes, which come out every Thursday, that those automatically show up in your inbox and I will see you next week. As always, happy Networking.
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