← Build Your Tribe | Grow Your Business with Social Media
Build Your Tribe | Grow Your Business with Social Media
Instagram Isn't Hard, You Just Don't Get It (Yet) - 849
00:40:27
In this episode, Brock Johnson breaks down why Instagram isn’t hard—it’s just that most people are approaching it the wrong way. He covers common mistakes that slow growth, including overthinking trends, relying on hacks, and focusing too much...
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Back to school is better With Family freedom from T Mobile, we'll pay off four phones up to $3200 and give you four free phones, all on America's largest 5G network. Visit your local T Mobile location or learn more@t mobile.com FamilyFreedom up to $800 per line via virtual prepaid card typically takes 15 days. Free phones via 24 monthly bill credits with finance agreement eg Apple iPhone 16128 gigabyte 8 $2009.99 Eligible trade in eg iPhone 11 Pro for well qualified credits end and balance due if you pay off early or cancel contact T Mobile Unpopular Opinion Instagram Hard it's actually very simple. There are some parts of Instagram that are supposed to be hard, like the time it takes to grow the creativity and the discipline required to keep showing up. But for most people, that's just the start. For the vast majority of people, the actual hardest part is keeping up with trends, updates and hacks, figuring out the algorithm so that you can actually get views, and of course, overthinking every single post that you make. Now, I know that it sounds crazy to say that growing on Instagram is actually not very complex. It's simple and it can be easy, but it's possible. And sure, it might have been a little bit easier to grow on Instagram a decade ago, but people are still growing today. In fact, I want to say thank you really quickly. I just hit 800k followers myself on Instagram, which if you aren't already following me on Instagram, go check me out at Brock 11 Johnson. But don't just take me as an example, because I get it. I'm a guy teaching people how to grow on Instagram, so some people think it's easier for me to grow on Instagram. You could take my dog Mila, for example, who has over 200,000 followers, and we gained that following in about a year. Or don't take Mila as an example, because maybe you're thinking, oh, she only grew because she's a cute dog. Take Our average Insta ClubHub student, our average engaged Insta ClubHub student, which the Insta Club hub is like my Instagram school where I teach people how to grow on Instagram step by step. The average engaged student grows by 1200 followers in their first month and almost 16,000. The exact number is 15,947 followers in their first 12 months within their first year. I'm not here to sell you the club. I'm not even going to put a link anywhere to join the club. I'm just giving you that statistic so that you know that it's possible. And what I'm about to share with you today is not some random foo foo advice. This is not some random hack, some random strategy. This is the absolute, no bs, simple guide for growing on Instagram. I can guarantee that you will know how to grow on Instagram and you'll feel a lot more at peace while doing it. You won't feel so stressed out all the time. Because honestly, making this simple and easy is what I'm all about. And the way that we make it simple and easy is by focusing on the things that are going to make the biggest difference. Recently I posted about one of these new Instagram features on my Instagram and I got a bunch of comments from people saying, I'm exhausted, I'm overwhelmed. Instagram is so hard to keep up with and I totally understand what that feels like. I get it. You're a small business owner or a content creator, or you're just trying to grow a brand and a following for yourself online and it feels like there's a never ending flood of changes and things you have to come up with and new trends you have to try and algorithm shifts and adjustments and in fact, prior to creating this episode, I polled my audience to see what the biggest struggle is that you're having on Instagram. And according to that poll, over 75% of people reported that it was either figuring out the algorithm, keeping up with the trends, changes and updates, or not knowing what to post, slash, overthinking the posts that you are making. And like I said, I get it. It makes sense. I remember when I first started trying to grow on Instagram back in 2018. For the first six years of my Instagram experience, I was a teenager. I was in high school or in college and and I was using Instagram like most people were in those days. I wasn't using it for marketing, I wasn't using it for business. I was just posting cool little updates of my life. But then in 2018, or maybe even the end of 2017, I started taking Instagram seriously. And those first few years were rough. It was a year or two of very, very slow, minimal growth, constantly scratching my head, trying to figure out what to post. And I know you can relate to this one. Spending so much time thinking about every single post, making sure that the filter looked right, the editing looked right, making sure that the caption was well written, finding the perfect Drake lyric to go along with the photo of me. It was draining and exhausting. But then I figured out what really makes the biggest difference and I started doing more studies, more tests, more analysis. Heck, we even added a staff member to our team who is a PhD in researching Instagram. Basically, she got her doctorate in qualitative research of Instagram and building communities on Instagram. And so now she is a full time team member who helps me with this research and these studies so that I can give you the no BS advice, the research stuff that's actually going to make the biggest difference. So in today's episode, I'm going to give you the five ways that you can actually grow and see results on Instagram. And if you just focus on these five things, if you can get these five things through your school, I promise you, you will see results. I would argue that number one is the most important, and it's that you need to focus on the audience rather than the algorithm. In that poll that I did, asking people what their biggest struggle was, the most common response was figuring out the algorithm. And here's the real deal, according to Adam Mozeri. In my interview with him earlier this year, he said the algorithm changes every single day. So if you're trying to figure it out, then that becomes a daily job. That's stressful, that's overwhelming. If there are ever any massive Instagram algorithm updates, I will let you know here on this podcast on my Instagram in the Insta ClubHub, I will let you know about the massive shifts. But what you need to understand is that it's constantly changing every single day. There are slight algorithm tweaks and updates and changes. And so you gotta stop trying to figure it out. You gotta get off the hamster wheel of trying to figure out the algorithm and instead shift your focus to be on your audience. And the reason for that is that ultimately it is the audience that drives the algorithm. I recently saw a creator talking about how he posted one style of video and the algorithm didn't like that. That's not true. That's not the case. It was that the audience, his audience, didn't like that. Quite literally, they didn't like the post, they didn't engage, comment, save or share. And so the algorithm determined that this post wasn't very engaging, and so it showed it to less people. If it was the algorithm that dictated whether or not a post was good, if it was just the algorithm that decided what kind of content it likes, then we would all not be so addicted to Instagram and TikTok and Facebook and YouTub. We are spending as much time on our phones and we're spending as much time scrolling on social media as we are because these algorithms are really good at showing us what we want to see. And the algorithms have gotten so good at showing us what we want to see because we are constantly giving it more and more and more data by engaging with posts, liking, viewing, saving, sharing, all those good things. Every tiny little nuanced interaction that you have with a post is being tracked by the algorithm, all to figure out what do you actually want to see. So if you post a certain kind of video and it doesn't get very many views, the answer was not that the algorithm was mad at you that day. The answer was that your audience wasn't interested in that post. So rather than trying to figure out what the algorithm wants, figure out what your audience wants. And the best way to do that is by posting and looking at what they are engaging with. Look at the kinds of posts, the kinds of topics, the style of videos, the hooks, the carousels, reels, length, duration, closed captions, audio, music, all those different variables that could go into a post. Consider those things when determining whether or not your audience liked the post, and of course, more importantly, why they engaged with the post. But with that being said, I know that there's some of you who are like Brock, no matter what I post, no one engages. Well, it could be the case that over the course of many years, five plus years, you've consistently posted things that just weren't very engaging. And so the algorithm has learned that your account as a whole is not very engaging. And so it's going to stop showing your posts to your followers. That can definitely be the case. I've done an episode of Build you'd Tribe in the past about deciding whether or not you should revive a dead account. Whether or not your account is dead in the first place, if you are going to revive it, how do you restart it? So I'll link that up somewhere if you want to check that out. But besides that rare case, which maybe represents 10% of people, for most of us, the reason our posts aren't getting very much engagement is because they're not very engaging. And of course, if none of your posts are getting very much engagement, then what data do you have to go on? Well, what we have to remember is that while we are all creators, we're all business owners, we're all creating content for social media, we're also consumers. And so I want you to look at what kinds of posts are showing up in your feed and become a conscious consumer. I think we all spend way too much time mindlessly scrolling and not enough time consciously consuming. And so I want you to retrain your brain. It doesn't have to be 24, 7 all of your social media use, but maybe just set aside a window of time. Maybe it's 30 minutes twice a week, maybe it's 10 minutes each morning while you're sipping your coffee and just consciously consume. What I mean by that is every single post that you see, pick out clues from it. Pick out key elements that either were engaging or that weren't. If you love videos of rock climbing, but your favorite rock climber just posted a video on his Instagram and you didn't think it was very good, like you watched it for two seconds, then you scrolled. Just pause and ask yourself, why did I scroll? I'm usually into this topic, I'm usually into this creator. Why was this specific video boring? And then how can I avoid those things in my content? Similarly, but on the opposite end of the spectrum, if there's a post that you thought was really funny, a post that you sent to your loved one, a post that you commented on, a post that you saved for later, why did you do those things? Was it that the creator told you to do so? Was it something different that they were doing? Was it funny? Was there some storytelling element? Was there music in the background that really added to the mood? Picking apart each of these little elements over time will allow you to improve your own content without needing to rely on the data from your own audience. But again, it's all about the audience, the real people, not the algorithm. The second way that you're going to grow and see results on Instagram is something that you're not going to like to hear. And it's something that I've been preaching about for the last four or five years. And every single time I talk about it, I get hate, I get pushback. Other Instagram coaches try to crucify me for it, and it's that I believe that you should focus on quantity. Yes, quantity rather than quality. Let me explain. I am in no way encouraging you to post random crap. I am in no way encouraging you to just throw spaghetti at the wall and see what sticks. But what I am encouraging you to do is alleviate the stress and the pressure of trying to make an A post every single time. Take the weight and the burden off your shoulders of trying to create high quality content with every single post. When you're first, getting started, which, it's because you're just getting started. It's because you haven't hit the goals that you're trying to hit. It's because you're not getting the engagement that you want. You're not getting the views that you feel like you deserve. You don't have the number of followers that you feel like you should have by now. Well, then, focus on quantity rather than quality, and let me tell you why. There was this university art professor who was teaching a ceramics class to his students, and at the beginning of the semester, he split his class in half. He told half the class that you would be graded on your 10 final works. @ the end of the semester, you are to submit 10 works, and you will be graded on the quality of those 10 works. And then he told the other half of the class, you will be judged not on the quality of 10 works, but the total quantity of works that you can create. So if you create 300 works in the semester, you're going to get a better grade than someone who creates 200. If you create 500 works throughout the semester, you're going to get a better grade than someone who creates 499. So he told that half of the class, your whole focus is not on creating these amazing, intricate ceramics, but just creating and practicing and trying out as much as possible. Well, I think you can guess where this is going. The second group, the group that was told to submit the biggest quantity possible at the end of the semester, their top 10 finished products were way better than the top 10 finished products of group number one. Even though they weren't told to focus on quality. Sure, they had some absolute disasters. There were some terrible works. There were some cracks and some failures and some ceramics that just did not pan out. And sure, if you looked at, like, their average level of ceramic, it might have been slightly lower than the group that was just focused on quality. I'm not exactly sure, so don't quote me on that part. But what I can tell you is that the group that focused on quantity ended up creating far better works. And the even better part, the part that I think is going to make the biggest difference for you, is that the group that focused on quality reported much higher levels of stress, dissatisfaction, overthinking, anxiety, and all of those other negative mindsets and negative patterns that can happen when we focus on quality. And so while I'm a big fan of quality content and so many episodes of Build you'd Tribe are about creating quality content, I am ultimately a believer that quantity breeds quality, basically. To say it another way, practice makes progress. The more content you create, the better your content will get over time. Now, if every single day you're just posting, not thinking about it, la la la, Posting, not thinking about it, la la la. Then you're not going to improve. But if you're posting and then the next day, you're going to improve one thing. Maybe you're going to make your caption a little bit stronger. Maybe you're going to pick your hook and make your hook a little bit stronger. Maybe you're going to improve your editing. Maybe you're going to improve your storytelling or your set design or your audio quality. And improving just one thing every single day will lead you to be so much better within just a few months than watching more podcasts and consuming more YouTube videos and signing up for more trainings. And listen, I know that's not the popular thing to say because I'm a guy who makes podcasts and YouTube videos and trainings, and I'm always going to be here to help you along the way. But at the end of the day, you got to just put one foot in front of the other. You got to just start experimenting and start posting, learn as you go. And you're going to improve so much faster than someone who's constantly overanalyzing their drafts, spending more time editing and spending more time in their own mind thinking about the content that they're making. Another one of my unpopular opinions that goes along with this school of thought is that it's not the number of posts that you're making that is leading to burnout. I believe that most content creators do not burn out because they're having to make so many posts. Because if I told you, hey, all you have to do every single day, and I'm not telling you this, by the way, but just go with the hypothetical for a second. If I told you, hey, today and every single day for the rest of the year, you just have to post two absolutely random photos from your camera roll. I don't care what they are. I don't care what they're related to. I don't care. I don't care about anything. Literally, just take two random screenshots, two random photos from your camera roll, and post them. You'd be like, okay, like, as long as I don't forget. That's easy. I'm never going to burn out. Well, that leads me to say that it's not purely quantity or the frequency of posting that leads to burnout. Instead what leads to burnout, in my opinion, is either number one, and this is the biggest reason. Overthinking, overanalyzing, spending so much time hours on one single post, so much time thinking about and crafting and curating and massaging your post, trying to make it an A plus touchdown home run slam dunk, that's super stressful. And then two, which kind of often is the result of number one, you post it and it doesn't do very well. And so that's a negative feedback loop. Oh my gosh, I spent three hours. I didn't get very many likes. Okay, next time I should spend four hours. I didn't get very many likes. Oh, I should spend five hours. Oh my gosh, I'm getting even less likes. And that is anxiety producing, that is stressful. And I think that leads to burnout. So it's either spending too much time creating your posts or the constant diminishing returns and lower engagement and views and basically tying your worth, tying your enjoyment, tying your satisfaction on the platform to the results, rather than focusing on the process that is ultimately what leads to burnout, not just a high frequency of posting. And the final thing that I'll say about focusing on quantity rather than quality, and this one is probably the most important reason, is that the more you post, the more you grow. I'll say it again, the more times you post to your Instagram feed, we're not including stories. Stories don't help you grow. The more times you post to your feed, per week, per day, per month, whatever, the faster you will grow. There is a direct correlation between post rate and growth rate. The more you post, the more you grow. I've been saying it for years and people hate this and I'll explain why in just a second, why this is actually going to be helpful for you. But according to a new study from Buffer that was just released in 2025, they studied over 2 million posts and they found what I've been saying for years, which multiple other studies have found as well, which is that there is a direct correlation between post rate and growth rate and there no upper end limit, meaning that even if you post 5 or 25 or 500, probably not 500, but you know that many times a day you're going to continue to see growth. Now here's where I'm going to say don't hate me and make sure that you keep listening. Yes, the more you post, the more you grow. But if you run out of ideas, if you become burnt out, if you can't Handle that frequency during this season of life and you stop posting, you're not going to grow. So what I want to encourage you to do is rather than trying to post 15 times a day, pick a number that you can sustain. Find a number that works for you, that is sustainable for you, based off all the factors that might influence that. The season of life that you're in, the season of business you're in, the goals that you currently have, the capabilities, the resources, the team that you might have, all of those things are going to help you decide what your sustainable frequency is. Pick that sustainable frequency. Let's say it's one post a day, and then I want you to challenge yourself to just create a little bit more, not work harder. On one of our recent podcast episodes, someone left a sarcastic comment basically saying that they feel like I'm preaching Hustle culture, that I'm preaching to neglect your emotional well being and your mental health and just prioritize creating content for social media to please the algorithm overlords. And that couldn't be farther from the case. I am so vehemently against Hustle culture. The whole point of me doing this is that you can spend less time on Instagram, spend less time working, spend less time creating content, and more time doing what you love. My definition for success is being able to do what I want, when I want, with who I want. That means that if I'm spending more time creating posts for Instagram every day, I'm not very successful. And by my definition, neither are you. So I want to help you create systems, use automations, rely on team members, work smarter and not harder. And so when I say figure out what you can sustain and then challenge yourself to do more, I am not challenging you to work more or work harder. I am challenging you to work smarter, to work less, but increase your output. Because like I said, ultimately the more you post, the more you grow. And this leads me perfectly into the third key that you need to know to grow on Instagram. And it's that consistency is king. Kind of going along the same lines of what I was just talking about. If you post with a super hyper frequency three times a day for a week, but then you burn out, you run out of ideas, life gets busy, and you miss a month, it's going to be really hard to growl. And so consistency is king. Let's be real here. Kings are usually not very sexy. I mean, think about like any historical painting of a king. Usually not very sexy. So consistency is king, but consistency is also not very sexy. Additionally, for most people, when they're trying to get consistent, they think they need more motivation. Motivation is something that you need every single day. And if you rely on motivation to stay consistent, well, then you're not gonna be very consistent for very long because you're gonna run out of motivation one day. You're gonna be more motivated to do something else one day. You're just not always going to feel 100% motivated and inspired to create content for social media. And so rather than relying on motivation, I want you to rely on discipline. What that means is you're staying consistent even when you don't feel like it. You're staying consistent even when it's not easy. You're embracing the suck. You're embracing that. This is gonna take a while. I think that many of us have a misconception that Instagram, or growing on Instagram or growing on social media is going to be fast. And sure, there are those 1% of people who go viral and they do quite literally blow up overnight. But even for those people, what you usually don't see is the years or decades of creating content and showing up online before that one viral video that led to their. Oftentimes on social media, it's spikes in your growth that lead to growth. Very rarely is it a straight line up and to the right. Usually it's a spike of followers, a few days, weeks or months without a spike, another spike of followers, days, weeks or months without a spike, and then another spike. And for some people, it's spike, spike, spike, and then it's exponential growth. But for most people, it's not consistent up and to the right. I'm gaining new followers every day and I'm gaining more followers today than I gained yesterday. That's very rare. That's very uncommon. For most people, it's going to take 90 days or 120 days, six months. It's going to take an entire year to grow. So embrace the suck. Be able to be disciplined enough to keep showing up. Now, with that being said, let me give you some strategies to make it easier. Because remember what I said about working smarter, not harder. Let me give you some strategies to make it a little bit easier on yourself. Number one, schedule your posts in advance. It's a myth, it's a very outdated myth that if you schedule posts on Instagram, you're going to get less engagement. It's just not true. In my conversation earlier this year with Adam Mozeri, he said he schedules all of his posts, I schedule all of my posts, and there have been multiple studies done that have disproven the myth that if you schedule a post, you're going to get less views or engagement. So you should absolutely be scheduling posts. If you're listening right now and you're like, brock, I don't have any posts made in advance to schedule. I just don't have anything in the can, so to speak, I can't schedule because I have nothing made. Well, then I'm going to give you a tip that I've shared on this podcast before, which is that you should take two weeks off. Not two weeks off of working or creating, but two weeks off of posting. Your algorithm will be fine. Your audience will be fine. Your Instagram will be fine. Take two weeks and use those two weeks to batch create as much as possible, again focusing on everything that we've already talked about in today's episode. Take those 14 days and make as many posts as you can without posting any of them. Then once those two weeks are over, you can return to, let's say, daily posting and you have two weeks worth of daily posts ready to go. You can schedule them out in advance. And that allows you over those two weeks to not feel a daily stress or pressure of creating content, but instead you can allow yourself to create content when you're feeling inspired or motivated. That M word again. Or create content when you have an idea, or create content when you're feeling good and looking good. That sort of thing. Because you already have things scheduled in advance, you don't have to stress every single day. That's number one. Number two, ask the question who, not how. Great book, highly recommend it. Basically ask the question, who is going to help me post more rather than how am I going to post more? Here are three who's that allow me to post more, create more content, which ultimately allows me to make more money for our business. The first who is a who, who can help me do things around the house in daily life that I'm not very good at, that take too much of my time or that I suck at. And one of those, for example, is our gardening. In fact, while I'm speaking right now, our gardeners are here and they're trimming our lawn. Maybe you're going to hire the local 15 year old down the street who's a sophomore in high school and needs to make some extra money to mow your lawn every other week. Now, you don't have to spend an hour every other week mowing your lawn. You're going to pay this kid to do it. He's able to make some money for himself and you are able to create X number of posts. And during that hour, the second who that we've added to our business that allows me to create more content is a who that takes on other areas of my business that I suck at. So I really suck at organization. I'm not a very organized person. I'm very type B and so I'm disorganized. I suck at numbers, I suck at spreadsheets, all that sort of stuff. I'm not very good at it. So we have people within our Insta Club hub on our staff who are really organized, who are really on top of it, who think of every detail, who never misses a detail or a date or deadline, and they help keep the business running. They help keep me detailed and organized so that I don't have to do those things myself. And then the third who that I've added to my team to help me create more content in less time is a who who helps me with content specifically. So I have an editor. You've heard me promote her if you follow me on Instagram. I promote her on my Instagram stories all the time because people are always asking me who my editor is. I don't edit the majority of my content and I love editing. I think I'm pretty good at edling. I did editing in my high school video production class and I minored in film study in college. I love cinematography and editing, but I know it's not my zone of genius. I know that there are people out there who are better and who can do it faster than me. And so rather than spending all of my time editing my own posts, I've outsourced and hired an editor who keyword who can help me create more posts in less time. The third way that you can create more posts in less time and be more consistent without having to work harder or longer at Instagram is to rely on the magical tool of AI and or just automations in general. The more that you can systematize and automate and rely on AI for the better. I'll give you an example that relates to what you're listening to right now. When I finish this podcast, I use a pre written prompt in ChatGPT to help come up with the description and the keywords for this episode. So if you go and read that description right down there right now on the show notes, if you're listening to this as a podcast that was written by ChatGPT, that saves me the time that I used to spend myself writing a long description. And so it might only be five or 10 minutes, but if it only takes me five or 10 minutes to make an Instagram reel, well, then I just bought myself one Instagram reel with one simple prompt for ChatGPT. And then last but not least, actually last but most. The most helpful cheat code strategy for posting more in less time, creating more content with less work, energy and effort, is what I like to call upcycling your content. Upcycling is a term that I use to describe taking a post that you have previously posted. Let's say you posted it back in March of 2025 and posting it a second time. Not changing a damn thing. Same caption, same audio, same edit, same everything. You're taking the exact same post and you're posting it a second time. Or you can slightly modify it, maybe update a little bit, maybe change the edit a little bit, or rewrite the caption a little bit. But you don't even have to do that. You can literally take your post and post it a second time. Let me answer some FAQs that I know. Rapid fire questions are popping into your head right now. Do I have to delete the original one? No, you do not. Am I going to get in trouble for posting the same thing twice? No. The Instagram algorithm and Instagram as a whole, they know that this is your content, so you are free to post it a second time. I spoke directly with Instagram staff about this very question within the last two weeks and directly from the horse's mouth. It's your content. You are free to post it a second time. You will not get flagged as spam or stealing content because it's your own content. You can't steal what's legally yours. Do I need to announce that I'm posting this again? No, you don't. Because most people didn't see it the first time and they don't care. So why would you advertise I'm posting this again? I posted this a few months ago, but you didn't see it. Now just post it. And then finally, why is this effective? That's probably the most important question. Why should you upcycle your content? Well, you already understand that it's going to save you time, energy and effort. But more importantly, most of your followers didn't see it the first time. Think about this. The average person sees 10,000 posts a day. So if it's been, let's just say, two months between the first time you posted it and the second time you posted it, that's 60 days times 10,000 posts a day. They've seen 600,000 posts in the last two months. Please don't flatter yourself. They don't remember yours. Most of them didn't even see it. The few who did see it don't remember. And if there is like 1% of your audience who does remember, they remember because it was that good. Think about your own favorite movie. You have likely rewatched it more than once, right? Unless it just came out and you just watched it, you've probably watched it multiple times. I mean, heck, even if it did just come out, you might have gone and seen it multiple times in theaters because it was that good. And if it's that good, you wouldn't mind seeing it again. So please, if you want to create more content in less time without having to do any additional work, start upcycling your content. That was number three. Moving on. Now, the fourth biggest key to growing on Instagram and having success in 2025 and even into 2026 and moving forward is that you gotta forget all of the rules and stop worrying about all of the latest hacks. I'm going to say it as plainly as I possibly can. There are no rules. Well, I mean, I guess there are some rules, but they're more like limitations that Instagram put in place. Like, you can't post pictures of your naked butt on Instagram. You're gonna get in trouble for that. You can't post a reel longer than three minutes. Instagram doesn't allow it. But in terms of rules for how you post, there are no rules. Everything that I'm sharing with you forever is not a rule. It's a general recommendation. It's a best practice. It might be researched and it might be what works for most people, but that doesn't mean that you're going to go to jail if you break the rule. What I always say is, if you figure out that something works for you and I've told you to do the opposite, please give me the middle finger and don't do what I told you. Because at the end of the day, nothing works 100% of the time. And so if you find a strategy or a technique or something that just works for you, knock your socks off and keep doing it. And don't worry about whatever me or any other Instagram expert is telling you to do. Additionally, stop worrying so much about every single hack. A hack is a term that I use to describe strategies that work for a short period of time. They're taking advantage of some Instagram update, some change or some quirk in the way the app works or the way it was designed. And they usually only work for a few weeks or maybe a few months. Very rarely do hacks work for more than a few months. I think there might be a couple that have worked for a few years, but they're usually as soon as Instagram catches on where worked out of the algorithm and removed. And so while a hack might give you a short boost of views, it might really work on one post. There's always more hacks. And so I don't want you to stress out over whatever the seven latest hacks are. And again, I know this sounds silly because I'm always going to be posting about what the latest hacks are because I know that there are some people who are going to use those hacks and are going to see great benefits because of them. Let me go through some of those hacks for you right now. Number one, the best time to post. There is no best time to post. It's like, hey, Brock, what's the best time to work out? Well, there might be better times to work out because maybe the gym is less crowded or maybe like your energy levels are higher at different times of the day, that sort of thing. But at the end of the day, there isn't a best time to work out. And even more so, even if there was a best time to work out, you would be healthier by exercising, period. Rather than skipping an entire day of exercise because you missed the perfect time to equate that to Instagram, you would be better growing. You would grow more. You would grow faster. You would get more engagement by posting, period. I don't care if it's at 3am, I don't care if it's at one in the afternoon. I don't care what time it is. You would be better off posting than skipping a day because you missed your perfect time. The second hack is hashtags. Hashtags used to be super effective. In 2017, I created a course called Help with Hashtags that was designed to help you create a list of hashtags that was going to consistently get you results. But the algorithm has been optimized so that you no longer need to worry so much about hashtags. Sure. Are there some people who have great success using hashtags? Yep. Sure. Are there some people who have great success without using any hashtags? Yep. On average, do posts with zero hashtags get the most views and engagement? Yup. But at the end of the day. Don't stress about hashtags. If you want to use them. If you see great results with them, great. If you don't use them and you don't see results with them, that's fine too. Number three, and this one has been really popular over the last few years. Trending audios could you get more views if you use a trending audio right at that perfect moment, right as it's blowing up, before it reaches its like peak popularity, when it's still on the incline? Sure, yeah, you could get some more views for that. But I think a lot of people stress themselves out trying to figure out what's the latest trending audio. What's how many views does this audio have? How many people have already used this audio? Should I use it? Is it too early? Is it too late? If you have a good idea that goes along with a trending popular audio, use it. If you see a trending popular audio that you don't have any ideas for, don't use it. Bottom line is, don't stress out about a trending audio. Just pick the audio, the sound bites, the songs that spark ideas in you and use them. And then the final hack is one that I was talking about for most of 2025, but I've also been telling you for most of 2025, use it while you can, because Instagram's gonna take it away at some point. And that's none other than trial reels. Trial reels were created at the beginning of 2025 as a way to test out content. But really it was a way for us to get our reels in front of people who have never seen us before. The way trial reels work is that they are only shown to non followers. They are not shown to your existing followers. And so for the majority of 2025, I've been telling people to post as many as you can. Pro tip. You could upcycle your old content from the past and post as many trial reels as you can. But I've also been saying while you can, because Instagram's gonna figure this out. Instagram's gonna figure that all of us content creators and brands and marketers are taking advantage of the system and we are getting our content seen by more people because we figured out how to hack this new feature. And this is a hack that I've got some pushback for. But from my point of view, don't hate the player, hate the game. Our jobs as business owners and marketers and content creators is to get attention, to get views and eyeballs and to get then conversions into our business or customers or followers. And so if Instagram is going to give us a feature that allows us to do that better arguably than any other feature before, then we might as well use it and use it to its fullest capability until Instagram says, whoa, whoa, whoa. Okay, we need to reel things in. And just as I've been predicting all year, Instagram has reeled things in. And so now there is a limit on trial reels. You can post between 5 and 25 trial reels per day. How many you are specifically allowed to post on your account varies and there's no way to tell until you exceed that limit. Again, some people, if they post more than five, if they try to post a sixth trial reel within a 24 hour period, they will get blocked for 30 days, meaning that they can't post any more trial reels for another month. Some people can post 25 trial reels a day, every single day with no problem. Again, there's no way to figure it out in advance. And so my current recommendation is to post no more and no less than five trial reels every single day. But again, that's a hack, so don't stress out over it. If you can't create five, if you can't post five, if you can't remember to do it, that's okay, there will be another hack. There will always be these little tiny strategies that work for a few months. So I don't want you to stress out over them, I don't want you to focus on them because they're usually just going to be a little blip. They might make a little difference for a few weeks, but they're not going to make or break your Instagram. And then last but not least is actually step number one for growing on Instagram, and step number one for growing on Instagram is to niche down. Just like the more you post, the more you grow, the more you niche, the more you grow. I define niche in two parts. Part number one of your niche is the who. Who are you trying to talk to? Who are you trying to attract to your page? Who is your target demographic or your ideal followers? Basically, the more specific that you can get with the demographics of the who, the better, because it will allow you to speak to them more precisely. It will allow you to solve their needs, calm their stresses, and create products and solutions and posts that directly speak to them. Even better. The second part of niche is not just who you're trying to attract, but what are you going to be talking to them about what is the specific problem that you solve, what is the specific topic that you're going to be posting about? What is that niche interest that you can just yap about all day long and people are going to follow you because of it. You do not need to be an expert, but you likely need experience. Again, you don't need some sort of certification or qualification. You just need past lived experience in that niche in order to be credible to be in that niche. And again, the more you niche down, the more you will grow. Oftentimes when I bring this up, people will name famous influencers who don't have a niche. Famous influencers who have tens of millions or hundreds of millions of followers and they post about everything and anything. They post about every single interest and passion and hobby that they have, like Kim Kardashian for example. And what I will say is that what they're doing now is not what got them to where they are. Let's take Kim Kardashian as an example. She became famous for one thing in particular, one thing that I am not going to say on this podcast because I don't want to lose my monetization status. But Kim K. Lover, she became famous. She became really popular for one thing in particular. And then she got famous. And over time she started to broaden her niche. And that's how it works. When you first become known, when you first become famous, it is because of one thing. When you first grow a following, it is because of one specific niche. And then once you grow that niche, once you grow that audience and that following, you can start to expand. You can start to talk about other things. Let's talk about Shalene Johnson, the former co host of this podcast, which, yes, it's former. If this is the first episode you've listened to in a few months, she is no longer the co host of the show. She will likely be invited back for future episodes, but I am now the solo host of Build you'd Tribe. But long story short, my mom grew her popularity because of fitness videos. Y' all know her and so many of you found her because of her fitness infomercials. You turned on your TV at 2am one night when you couldn't sleep and there was this little 52 blonde lady bouncing around and you're like, oh, I like her energy and I've got a few pounds to lose. So you ordered her DVD and then you worked out with her for the next 10 years and then she got on Instagram and you already loved her back in 2010, when you first got on Instagram, that is how my mom, Chalene Johnson, built her original audience. She had a specific niche. She was helping a specific demographic of women with a specific problem. But then over time, she started to show you her other interests. Her interests in marketing, her fitness in other areas of holistic health, her expertise in building an online business. And so you started to be interested in those things with her. But she didn't grow her audience. And in fact, if you study her growth over time, her growth significantly plateaued as she started to talk about all of these other interests that she had. So if you're just getting started on Instagram, or if it feels like no matter what you're doing, you just can't grow, I want to encourage you to niche down even farther. Get more specific with the demographics and get more specific with the targeted area, the specific topic that you're going to be focused on. Because then you could be the world's leading expert. Hypothetically, in this one topic, you can be the go to account for this one thing. And sure, while that might not equate to 100 million followers, it might equate to 10,000 super engaged followers. Heck, it might even equate to only a thousand engaged followers. But if you're familiar with the idea of a thousand true fans, you can make a million dollars a year with only a thousand true followers. And the way you build those thousand true followers is by niching down when it comes to the followers that you have. Sure, quantity looks cool, but it's the quality of your followers that's ultimately going to make the biggest difference in your brand, your business, and your engagement. The bottom line is this. Start with your foundation being your niche, the specific demographics, the who and the what that you're going to be posting for. Then figure out what those people actually want to see. Focus on them as the audience, not the algorithm, but focus on that audience and create content that they resonate with, that they find engaging, entertaining, inspiring, et cetera, et cetera, whatever. And then in order to create better content, which is ultimately how you're going to reach the masses, how you're going to go viral, the way that you do that, the way that you stay consistent, the way that you show up every single day is you don't worry about the hacks, you don't worry about every little rule and every little voice in your head, and you don't worry about overthinking every damn post that you make. You ultimately lean into quantity first, because quantity breeds quality. Practice leads to progress. That is how you learn, that is how you improve, and that is how you grow. On Instagram. 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