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Build Your Tribe | Grow Your Business with Social Media
Is Your Instagram Dead? Should You Start Over? - 875
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Starting over on Instagram is one of the scariest, yet possibly one of the best things that you could possibly do. And so, in today's episode, I'm going to walk you through whether or not it's the right decision for you. Because some of you would really benefit and might go viral and blow up your business from starting over, and some of you need to stick with it. You should not start over. More specifically, in today's episode, I'm going to give you eight different questions that you should ask yourself before deciding whether or not it's right for you to start over. But first, let's start with, why might you even want to start a new account? Well, you did click on this episode, so you might have a little bit of a motivation to want to start over already. But like I said, already. Newer accounts can oftentimes grow faster for numerous reasons, some of them more clear than others. Basically, new accounts oftentimes get preferential treatment from the algorithm and can get an additional boost. Really, what's happening here is that the algorithm is trying to figure out where your account fits in and who would be interested in your account, rather than having years of proof that people just aren't interested in your account. Some people might want a new account just for a fresh start, a rebrand, or maybe a new niche. Maybe your account has been plagued with restriction after restriction, a lot of them for no reason. You left a comment on your friend's post and Instagram took it down. And so now it feels like you just can't get any views. Some people want a backup account for safety measures. Maybe their main account is in jeopardy of being taken down because of the niche that they're in. And so having a backup account is kind of like a safety net. And oftentimes older accounts have a lot more fake followers, a lot more spam followers, or they don't have access to all the same features that they should have. Like I on my Instagram account, which I've had since 2012, I still don't have the repost button. Yeah, the repost button, which came out like six or eight months ago. Now, I still don't even have that on my account, but on my same phone, I run three or four other newer accounts that do have access. So regardless of what your possible motivation is, I'm about to share with you eight different questions that you can ask yourself. And if you answer yes to five or more of these questions, then I would recommend starting a new account. Question number one. Is your account older than three years old? Like I already said, newer accounts oftentimes get preferential treatment. They have less followers, which can mean a higher engagement rate, and they usually get access to all the best features. So if your account was started in 2021 or prior, you might want to consider starting a new account. If it was started in 2022 or later, then, no, it's way too soon. Question number two is in regards to consistency. Have you Posted at least 5 times per week to your feed, not stories, 5 times per week to your feed every single week for at least the last 12 months? If you answer no to that question, then it is definitely not time to start over because you have not been consistent enough. It is true on Instagram that the more you post, the more you grow, but also the more you post, the better you get, the more you improve your skills and the better your quality of content becomes. And so if you haven't been that level of consistent 5 per week for a year, well, then it's too early to start over. You don't need a new account. You need to get more consistent. And I really want you to be honest with yourself in these answers. I don't want it to be like, well, yeah, I've been pretty consistent. I've posted like three a week, or, yeah, I post five per week most weeks and I miss a couple weeks here or there's. I want you to actually look at the numbers. Like, take how many posts you posted in 2025 and divide that by 52. If your number is less than five, then you did not post five times per week in 2025. If consistency is a struggle for you, the two biggest things that I would recommend are, number one, take a week or two off. I know that sounds crazy, but, like, literally take a week or two off of posting and instead use that time to create as much as possible. So it's not like two weeks of sipping a martini. It's two weeks of batching. It's two weeks of making as many posts as possible. That way, once those two weeks are over, you have like 14 or 30 or 50 or maybe 150 posts that you have created, and then you can schedule them for the future. You can post once a day without having to create every day. And you can instead create two or three times a week. You can create when you're feeling good, looking good, when you have an idea, when you're feeling creative, when you actually have the time and the energy to create instead of forcing it every single day. And then my second tip is to use the strategy that I like to call upcycling, which is essentially taking posts that you have previously shared and re uploading them or recreating them every 90 days or so. Now, I used to say that you should only take your best posts and upcycle them, but as we all know, sometimes you make a great post and it just doesn't perform well. Sometimes you make a bad post and it does perform well. So whether or not it performed great or bad, whether or not it went viral or it flopped to the first time, I want you to take every single post that you have previously posted. And as long as it still makes sense, right, like as I'm not going to tell you to post a Christmas meme in the middle of April, but as long as it's still timely and relevant, as long as it's still coherent and makes sense and appropriate, then post it a second and even a third time, like a directory upload. Save it to your device, download it, hopefully you already have it saved before posting it, and just post the exact same video. You could use the same audio in the same caption and post it again, and that should allow you to increase your output without having to necessarily change your input. Question number three Is my content above average compared to everyone else in my niche? Now this is one that's a little bit harder to judge. So you might need like an independent third party. You might need to like ask a spouse or a loved one or your kid or something to judge your content and tell them to be really harsh and be really honest with you. You could even use AI and put your content into AI and ask AI to be a Simon Cowell style harsh judge and critic of your posts. But are they actually above average compared to everyone else in your niche? Or are you just a mockingbird? Are you just posting the exact same things in the exact same style as everyone else? So you're just average compared to everyone in your niche? Or are you below average? The quality of your content absolutely matters. And if you're not creative, if you're not coming up with new ideas, if you're not, if you're just regurgitating the same posts as everyone else with little to no authenticity, creativity or originality, you're not gonna grow. I also want you to pay attention to the little details like the editing, the pacing, the lighting, the camera quality. The audio quality is a huge one that so many people overlook. The caption style, the video style, and probably most importantly of all, the hook. If these things aren't above average compared to everyone else in your niche, you're not going to see results. Question number four have I used inorganic growth tactics? And when I say inorganic growth tactics, I mean one of the following things. Buying followers, buying engagement, buying a shout out, Participating in paid giveaways where it's like hey, you have to follow these 10 accounts to enter into the giveaway joining follow trainings which are kind of like those mass forwarded emails and texts from 2004 where it would be like send this to 10 people or you're going to get three years of bad luck. Forward this to seven people or else your family is going to be cursed. But now the 2026 equivalent is like follow me and the other seven people on this list and then add your name to the list and Forward this to 10 new people. Are you ready to take your business marketing to the next level? 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Or use code TRIBE50 to get 50% off the starter and standard plans for the first three months of an annual subscription. 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 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 actual 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. 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Free meals applied at discount on your first box for new subscribers only and varies by plan Another example of an inorganic growth tactic is, of course the classic follow unfollow, which is where you follow a bunch of people, you wait for them to follow you back, and then you unfollow them. That was popular in 2012, but in case you haven't looked around, it's not 2012 anymore, so don't do it. It's tacky and it's inorganic. Another form of inorganic growth, which I think is actually less common nowadays, which is a good thing, is called engagement groups or engagement pods. And it's basically where a bunch of people, usually a couple hundred or at least, you know, 10 to 15 people, get together in some sort of group chat on WhatsApp or in the Instagram DMs, and they all agree to engage with each other's posts. So that way every single time you post, you have like a guaranteed 10 likes. Yay. But unfortunately, over time, the Instagram algorithm recognizes that this is inorganic. It's the same exact engagers at the exact same time every single time you post. And so that engagement is weighted less heavily. It's basically less valuable likes. And so your posts end up getting shown to less people. And usually when people join an engagement group, they end up worse than when they started, and then they're kind of dug into a hole. Question number five Do I have multiple community guideline violations? Whether it was your fault or not, whether you actually posted a picture of your butt or it was just your knee and Instagram thought it was your butt. Regardless of the reason, regardless of whether you were actually in the right or wrong, have you had strikes or violations or posts taken down by Instagram? If it's just one or two, you're probably fine. But if you have three or more, then answer yes to this question. And basically what's going on here is that the more times you basically go to jail, the more times you get in trouble with Instagram, the closer they keep a watch on you and the less likely they are to let you go for a minor speeding infraction, the less likely they are to let you go for jaywalking. And so starting a new account wipes it clean and makes Instagram forget you're like a new person with a new Social Security number and you've changed your identity. Question number 6 Do you have critically low engagement? And I'm going to define first of all what I mean by engagement, and then I'm going to talk to you about some benchmarks that you can compare your engagement rate to. When I say engagement rate, I'm specifically talking about the amount of people who engaged. Or you could say the total number of engagements divided by the total number of views that that post received. So simple numbers. Let's say you get 5 likes, 2 comments, and 1 save. If you add all that up, that is 8 total engagements. If your post got 100 views, then your engagement rate would be 8 divided by 100 or 8%. So while it might feel like 5 likes and do comments isn't very good engagement, 8% is actually well above the average and is not critically low. Here's what would be defined as critically low. If you have less than 5k followers, a critically low engagement rate would be below 2%. If you have between 5k followers and 20k followers, a critically low engagement Rate would be below 0.85%. If you have between 20k and 100k followers, a critically low engagement rate would be less than 0.6%. And finally, if you have more than 100k followers, a critically low engagement rate would be below 0.5 or half a percent. And you might have noticed that as the number of followers got higher, the engagement rate went down. That is common. It's very common. If you have 30 followers, that half of them are your family members, and so they're going to like everything that you post. But when you have 30,000 followers, there's a lot more people who are disinterested, a lot more people who are just kind of lukewarm followers, a lot more people who followed you on their second account but they forgot to log in and password. And so the more followers you have, usually almost always, the lower your engagement rate is. And I should say that your engagement rate needs to be that low for at least a few months. If you have like one post with that low of engagement, okay, you made one bad post. If you have one week or even one month with that low of engagement, okay, hey, maybe we need to go back to the drawing board and figure out what was going wrong this month. But if it's four or five or six months with that critically low Engagement rate, then you would answer yes, and it might be time to restart. Question number seven. Have you had a post that went viral and brought in a bunch of followers from outside of your niche? And I know this might be a confusing one because you're like, rock, it went viral, that's awesome. Going viral is fun, but when it's outside of your niche, what happens is you get a bunch of followers who are non ideal. Let me tell you about when this happened to me In November of 2025, I posted a reel that had a really strong hook. It had a little gamification. There was like hidden words and you had to comment a keyword. And at first it was just a great performing post and it was reaching people in my target audience and I was getting a bunch of leads and customers from that post. But then in January, it started to spike again. Three months later, suddenly was picking up steam and was getting a lot more views and my following was like spiking up. And I was like, I literally said to my wife Tay, I was like, why is my following blowing up right now? Like, I usually have a good idea, okay, this post is going viral or this thing happened and so I'm getting followers. But like, I've gained like 5 to 10,000 followers in the last week and I don't know why. And then I figured out, oh, hey, that post from November is going viral. But unfortunately, from looking at the DMs and looking at the followers who were actually coming in from that post, a lot of them were high schoolers, gen alphas under the age of 18 who are not my ideal clientele, who have no interest in starting a business or growing their following on Instagram. And so I was suddenly getting a bunch of non ideal followers. And because of that, my following posts for the next two or three weeks didn't do as well because Instagram wanted to show those posts to my new followers. Those new people had just decided to follow me. That's a big indicating factor that they're interested in my content, right? But then when Instagram shows them a post about hashtags or how to grow on Instagram, these kids are like, I'm a sophomore in high school, I don't care. And so they don't engage. So my post gets less views. And so I had to archive that post, I had to take it down. Fortunately for me, I had a lot of followers before that. I had 800 something thousand followers before that. And so a couple thousand followers is a small percentage and it's not going to make a big dent. But if you had 200 followers and you gained 5000 who are non niche, that might be a big problem down the line because either those people are not going to be engaged or they're going to stay engaged, but they're never going to become customers. And so if you have had multiple viral posts outside of your niche, or if you have, let's call it more than 50% as an estimate of your followers have come from these viral non niche posts, then your answer would be yes to this question and it might be a good idea to start over. And then my eighth and final question. Have you had a major rebrand or change in niche? Now, if you go from like rock climbing coach to fitness influencer, that's not really a massive change. If you go from like recipe creator to you own a bakery, that's not a huge change. If we think of these things as Venn diagrams, they're quite overlapping, or at least there's a lot of space overlapping between the two different niches. If you go from like business coach to snowboarding expert, then that's a completely different niche. And your answer would be yes. The bigger the shift, the bigger the change, the more likely I am to recommend starting a new account. Now, again, if you answered yes to five or more of these questions, then I want you to seriously consider starting a new account. And I know it's scary. I would say it's one of the scariest things you can do on Instagram. But you're not starting from zero. You're starting over. Yes, but you're starting over with all of the knowledge, all of the experiences that you've already gained. And if you're staying in the same niche, then you can even take the posts from your old account. I wouldn't recommend taking all of them, but maybe take the best posts from your old account and post them onto your new account. Speaking of, I did an episode just a few weeks ago on how to start over on Instagram in 2026, how I would actually go about growing my following from zero followers if I had to start from scratch in 2026. So if you did answer yes to five or more of these questions, then go watch that episode. And I guarantee that you will grow in 2026 if you implement the strategies that I shared in that video. Thank you so much for listening today. And as always, happy networking.