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Build Your Tribe | Grow Your Business with Social Media
The Secret to Viral Reels | Why “BAD” Videos Get More Views - 844
00:19:49
Brock Johnson reveals the secret to viral Reels and why "bad" or low-effort videos can actually get more views on Instagram. He’ll explore how unpolished, authentic content often outperforms high-production videos and why simple, relatable Reels...
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Contact T Mobile Instagram has forever changed and why you aren' the views you feel like you deserve, how the algorithm has shifted and what you need to be doing in order to get success on Instagram right now. And for those of you who are listening to the audio version of this podcast, I highly encourage you to watch the video version on YouTube instead because I have a whiteboard and I'm going to draw some things that are going to be very helpful for understanding everything that has changed with Instagram and and the visual aspect is just going to go a long way in this explanation. The first thing that we need to understand is that there is a imbalance between supply and demand, and this is something that isn't necessarily an Instagram issue. This is something that is going on on all social media platforms right now, where basically the supply, which is the amount of posts being shared, the amount of things being posted, the amount of video content being uploaded on a daily basis has significantly increased. There is not only way more posts being posted every single day, but there's way more people creating content and thus posting things every single day as well. And so those two things multiplied together has led to a significant rise in the supply of content being shared, but the demand is arguably decreasing. Yes, people are spending more time online than ever before. But when you compare specifically 2024, 2025 and onward to people are spending slightly less time on their phone than they were in 2020 and 2021 when we were all stuck at home on lockdown, the amount of time we spent each day scrolling and consuming content increased. So during the pandemic, demand was at an all time high. But now on Instagram especially, but really on pretty much all social media platforms, supply has increased and demand has either plateaued or slightly decreased in recent years. Does this mean that it's impossible to grow, to get views, or to have success? No, absolutely not. In fact, in the last year Our average Insta ClubHub student has grown by almost 16,000 followers per person. 15,947 followers per person to be exact. So it's still possible as long as you're using the right strategies and the right techniques. And that's a lot of what I'm going to be sharing with you today. But it's important to start here because we all have to understand that competition is at an all time high. The things that worked even just three years ago, arguably even just three months ago, are not going to be effective anymore. And so you're in the right place because you're about to learn the strategies of what is effective right now and what is going to be working moving forward. But you have to recognize that what got you here will not get you there. Arguably the most important thing that you need to keep in mind as someone who wants to grow a brand or business on all social medias is that the audience matters more than the algorithm. Yes, I am constantly posting about the new algorithm updates and letting you know what changes and what things we're seeing take place in the algorithm. But truly it is the audience or the average people or the collective mass of society, the human beings, that dictate where the algorithms go. If the algorithms were just constantly making random changes, well then the audience, us as users, as consumers, we would not enjoy being on the platform. We would not be as addicted to these platforms as we are. The audience is what dictates the algorithm. And so it's the audience that needs to come first. And is the psychology of your average follower that you need to understand in order to have success on Instagram and arguably on all social networks. So in order to understand the psychology of our followers and how the audience preferences have shifted, I'm going to draw a graph where here on the Y axis we're going to have just the total number of posts being made. And then the horizontal X axis is going to have the quality of the content that is being posted. And don't worry, we're going to go in depth into what I mean by quality. As I've been thinking more about this graph, I realized that it really falls into what's called a normal distribution, or sometimes called a bell curve distribution. And within this bell curve, this middle part here represents about 99% of the content that is being posted every single day on Instagram. According to the most recent data, about 38.5% of all content shared on Instagram is reels. And that's actually a slight increase from the end of 2024, which means that there are more people posting more reels than ever before. And 99% of reels fall in this middle ground. And we're going to talk about what this middle ground means in just a second. But before we do that, let me explain what is on either end of the bell curve here. What is on either end of the extreme or of the distribution on this far left side. We have very little posts being made in this category, but they're also very low quality. On the opposite end of the bell curve, we also have very little posts being made in this area. But that's the super high quality content. But what's changed over the last few years and especially the last few months, is that this content, the content that is super low quality, or the content on the opposite end that is super high quality, super cinematic and professional, that is the only content that is performing well. Back in the day, if you just posted good enough content, middle of the road content, you would get results. You could expect views. But now, because of the increase in competition, because of the change in user habits and preferences, only the lowest of low quality content and the highest of high quality content is actually going to perform. So with that being said, let me give you a more clear definition for low quality, high quality. And in the middle ground, which is what 99% of people are currently making, the low quality content is what I've heard some people refer to as FaceTime content. It's also been called yapping content, where a yapper is someone who just talk, talk, talks. I'm definitely a yapper. Yapping content, it's the content that has literally zero editing. It might have like some simple closed captions attached to it, but there's no cutting, there's minimal editing, there's no effects or transitions or music or sound effects. This is the kind of content that is especially popular on TikTok. So if you're someone who primarily consumes or creates content for TikTok, I would recommend leaning into this style of low quality, or some might call it low effort content. And when I say low quality content, I'm not meaning that you should intentionally smudge your camera or that you should worsen your audio quality. There are certain expectations that we have when consuming content that we can hear the audio and see the video. So I'm not encouraging you to intentionally make your quality worse by recording with a flip phone or smudging your camera or doing anything like that. I simply mean minimal editing, minimal video production. Whip out your phone and start recording. Don't even use a tripod, prop your phone up on a window and just hit record. Hopefully hearing this news and this change is encouraging for for most of you because the low effort content is of course the content that we can produce more of. It's the content that is easier to make. It's simpler for you to put out. And my hope is that this episode also encourages you to just press post because ultimately you might not know what's going to perform well, you might not know how people are going to respond. And so I want to just encourage you to press post, share that post, put it out into the world and then judge it rather than having it sit in your drafts or in your list of ideas, constantly over answering, analyzing it and thinking about it. Instead post it and then you can judge it. Then of course, on the opposite end of the spectrum, where we have the high quality content that is performing well, this is the stuff that is cinematic. It has color grading, it has dynamic edits, it has sound effects, it has transitions, it has multiple cuts and B roll. The more editing the better. This level of content used to be only obtainable by a select few. Now it's much more accessible. Now we pretty much all have smartphones that can shoot in hd and with free tools like the Edits app or capcut, you can create some pretty complex professional looking edits. But just because it's more accessible doesn't mean it's necessarily simple or easy. Creating a well edited video takes time. Even for someone who's a professional, it's going to take multiple hours to create just one professional looking, cinematic short form video. And so of course unless you have a massive team or a massive budget, it's going to be really difficult to create a high quantity of this super high quality content. When you are creating this high quality content, definitely incorporate some of the things I've already mentioned like good editing, good lighting, good sound effects, transitions and music. The bottom line is that overall this high quality content is going to take a lot of time, energy and effort to produce. It's going to take practice, it's going to take hours. It's going to take studying other content creators and video producers to see what works from them and incorporate elements from their styles into your own. That takes time, energy and effort. And so if you're someone who's just getting started or you just don't have the capabilities of creating this super high quality content, lean into the low effort content, lean into the FaceTime videos, lean into the raw, imperfect, unpolished, unedited video content. This content feels so much more authentic. And I believe that ultimately that is why it's performing better. It has become so easy for the average person scrolling on social media to pick out what edits have been made and to pick out what filters have been added and to recognize that each level of filtering, each level of editing is getting us farther and farther and farther away from that authentic moment. Nothing is more authentic than a live video. If you were like sitting in this room with me, you would see all of my mistakes, you would see all of my errors, you would see every little time that I've had to draw something and then erase it and then rerecord it a sentence. And so that would feel super authentic because it's unedited, it's unfiltered, it is truly as real as it gets. Unless you were like sitting in this room, right? So that's why people prefer that content. That's why the authentic content, the real, in the moment, unedited stuff is performing so well. But like I said, what most people are posting, what 99% of the content being shared is, is this middle ground where you're putting forth some effort, you're doing some editing, you're doing a little bit of tweaking and refining, but you're not taking it all the way to making it super high quality. You're taking it just enough to remove the authenticity factor. Four super common mistakes that a lot of people are making that are ending them up in this middle ground where they're getting no engagement, they're doing a little bit of editing, a little bit of effort, but they're seeing little to no returns. Is number one, the fancy captions. This was made popular by Alex Hormozy and it's now what's called the Hormozi style edit. It's the kind of short form video where you're talking directly to camera and there's some big bold attention grabbing closed captions on the screen. There's not a ton of editing, there's no transitions or effects or B roll. It's just that the closed captions, which in the past were just a plain white text, maybe with a black outline, they are now yellow text or they're neon or they pop onto the screen and. And so for a few years this really worked to grab people's attention. But now thanks to templates that are in capcut, thanks to the Captions app and numerous other apps, it's really democratized the ability to add fancy captions to your videos. And so Those fancy captions, they don't strike people the same way. They don't grab the same attention that they did just a few years ago. And so that's now no longer a high quality form of editing that is a middle of the road or good enough amount of editing, and thus it's going to get very poor engagement. Number two is fake podcasts. Fake podcast is something that is super popular in the world of experts and coaches. People like myself who set up a fancy camera and a fake microphone and then instead of looking at the camera, they look off to the side of it and they pretend like they're talking to an interviewer, but really they're just recording clips and sound bites for short form video, for Instagram reels, fake podcasts a few years ago, super impressive. But now everyone and their mama has their own podcast. And so being on a podcast, having these podcast clips, it's just not as engaging as it once was. Number three on this list is generic B roll. Now, B roll can be a way to really improve your editing. If you want to get into this high quality, high effort style of content, you're going to want to include more B roll clips. B roll clips are kind of like the secondary footage. So it's not you talking to the camera, it's the clips that are cut in and added to the video to add context or more dynamic visuals, et cetera. And so generic B roll is where people can get in trouble getting random stock videos or stock images from the Internet. For example, if I was a fitness creator and I was making a talking head reel about better push up technique, I would want to use a video of myself demonstrating poor pushup technique versus good pushup technique, rather than just some generic videos that I find on the Internet of random people doing pushups and then last but not least, using random effects. And by random effects, I mean random sound effects and Rand transitions or video effects. This is a kind of editing where again, a few years ago people were really engaged. If your video had some cool filter on it, think about how revolutionary it was when Snapchat came out with the dog ears filter or any of the other face filters that they created a decade ago. Adding a unique filter or effect to your video made you stand out. It was cool, it was unique. But now it feels like a gimmick. It feels like you're trying to trick your audience and into engaging or you're trying to trick them into interacting with your video. So use sound effects, use filters, use transitions, but use them intentionally. Use sound in order to build on emotions, use transitions to visually get a point across. Don't just slap a random effect onto your video hoping that people are going to be wowed by it. To say all of this another way, if you were to replace quantity or the number of posts that was on the y axis with something like views, then what we would end up with is an upside down bell curve where again, either the lowest of the low quality, the raw, imperfect in the moment low effort content, and the highest of the high quality professional cinematic content is getting views and everyone else is ending up in here in the middle, where you're doing a little bit of work, you're creating content that is good enough, but you're getting views that are next to nothing. So what does all this ultimately mean for you? It probably means that it's time for you to stop overthinking your content, stop worrying about the editing that you're doing, unless you are going to take it to the upper end extreme of creating professional cinematic content. But if you look yourself in the mirror and you can realistically admit that that's just not you, that's not what you're going to be creating anytime soon. Lean into the low effort content. Lean into the content where you are speaking directly to camera. Lean into the content where you are telling a story rather than scripting out a reel. Lean into the content that has little to no edits, rather than the content that has some random sound effects, GIFs placed on the screen, or transitions that just don't make any sense. Every single one of us is looking for people that are real, people that are genuine and honest people that are going to give us tips and strategies and helpful advice. Not because they want to sell us on a course, but because they truly just want to serve us. We're looking for people who are telling their story authentically so we can connect and resonate with them. So that we can feel a little bit less lonely in the world, even if we're sitting alone in our house as we scroll through Instagram. I am in no way encouraging you to do what's called shit posting, which is where you post random stuff, anything and everything. You just throw spaghetti against the wall and you intentionally post bad content. In no way is that what I'm telling you to do. But what I am telling you to do is to stop putting so much pressure on yourself. Stop demanding high quality professional cinematic content from yourself when that's just not what you're capable of right now. Because when you strive for professional content, but that's not what you're capable of. You end up with middle of the road content. And middle of the road content is never going to perform well. So yes, absolutely. Incorporate everything that I have ever shared with you about what makes a good post. Think about your hooks, think about your target audience, think about the words you're saying and not saying. Think about your SEO, think about all of those things. But ultimately, just press post because it's through pressing post that you're going to get better. If your ultimate goal is to create high quality cinematic content, you create that content by posting something, failing and learning from it. You create high quality professional posts through creating hundreds of posts that weren't really all that high quality and weren't really all that professional. One of my favorite stories that relates to this topic is the story of a college art professor who split his class into two exactly 50, 50. And he told half the class that you will be graded on the number of submissions that you create at the end of the semester. I don't remember if it was a photography class or if they were doing ceramics or what kind of art it was, but they were going to be graded not based off of their best works, not based off their final project. They were just going to be based off of how much can you create during the semester. And then he told the other half of the class the other 50%, you would be graded based off of your 10 best submissions. So you better make sure they're good, you better make sure that they're professional, high quality. And you can only submit 10 at the end of the semester for a grade. And you might already see where this is going. But the group that was told to focus on quantity, the group that was told to focus on just creating and not worrying about making their best possible work, but just creating as much as they possibly could, they ended up, number one, creating far better outcomes. What they produced was way higher quality, way more professional, and way more creative than what the group who was told to focus on those things was able to create. And arguably a more important fact is that the first group, the group that was told to just focus on quantity, enjoyed the class so much more. They reported such higher levels of satisfaction and enjoyment with the class that semester because they weren't stressed. They weren't putting pressure on themselves to create an A plus essay every time, an A plus slam dunk home run touchdown post every single time. Instead, they were just focused on showing up. They were just focused on creating. They were just focused on putting their ideas out there into the world and so if you take nothing else away from today's episode, it is exactly that. Just press post. Put your ideas out into the world. Judge them based off their performance after they have been posted, not based off how you think they will perform when they're sitting in your list of drafts or ideas. Thank you so much for listening today. And if you want any tips on how to actually improve your editing the quality of your content, and move yourself towards that professional, more cinematic level of content, check out any of the other episodes that we have recently put out on Build you'd Tribe. Thank you for listening. Don't forget to subscribe. And as always, happy networking.
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