Kaitlyn Rhodes (0:00)

All right, this Instagram growth hack that I'm about to share with you guys comes from my heart, and it is what helped basically launch my own Instagram growth back in 2021. And I'm super excited to share this strategy with you guys. Some of you might be familiar with this, and even, I mean, you're going to believe in it because it's just how it is. It's how people grow on Instagram, but no one ever really talks about how to do it. So today we're going to be diving in to my Instagram growth hack, which is showing up on the Explore page. I'm going to talk to you guys about how you can more views, get more followers, get more sales, and it's all thanks to the Explore page. So let's get into it. Welcome to another episode of Call Her Creator, Powered by Stan. I'm your host, Kaitlyn Rhodes, and today we're going to be talking about a growth hack that I used to launch my growth journey on Instagram. It's something that is easy to implement, and it's one of those things that when you do these tiny little tasks every day, they will snowball into that bigger effect. And that's exactly how you get this hack, this strategy that I'm going to be teaching you guys to work for yourself. So today's episode is all about learning what the Explore page even is. How does the algorithm choose what shows up on the Explore page, why you want to be shown on the Explore page, and then best tips to get you there. So super excited for this. Before we get into today's episode, if you're new here, I'd love for you to download this episode. Once you download the podcast, you'll get alerted every week whenever I drop a new episode, and it's how we measure the success here. I also would love to see you guys follow. Call her creator on Instagram. I'm over there. We've been posting some fun stuff lately, and I show up in the DMs all the time over there. They're a little less messy than my main account. So if you really want to talk, that's the best way to reach me is over on Instagram. All right, I've got so much to share with y'all today. Before I get into today's episode, I like to give y'all a little bit of motivation. Motivation before we get started. And one thing I can tell y'all, so on top of the podcast, I also own a social media agency, Influence Marketing Studio, and we stay Pretty busy. I've got a team of three. We're doing really well. But I will say that this month of January has been a little quieter than most months. And I was just starting to think, you know, there might be other creators out there or business owners who need to hear this. Not everything is rainbows and sunshines and butterflies. I am having to pivot my marketing a little bit this month, just do other things that I'm not used to doing just because business is usually rolling in. So I just wanted to tell you, if you are in the position right now where things are a little bit slow, don't stop, don't give up. Just pivot a little bit, change your route, expand your efforts into other channels. We've started posting over on LinkedIn more. I'm showing up on Facebook more. I've still got my Instagram. We still post YouTube shorts. But I'm expanding where my touch points are as far as my marketing goes. And so don't be afraid to do that, too. And then don't. Also, don't be afraid to reach out to old leads or old past sales that you've already had. Maybe you've worked with these people in the past and you want to talk to them again. Maybe they. Maybe they have something else that you could work on for them. Don't stop what you're doing just because it's slow. The world's really weird right now, but I have a feeling things will get back in motion soon. And if they don't, then that's okay. Well, we're still expanding what we're doing to market our business. So hang in there, friends. All right, so what is the Instagram Explore Page? If you're new to Instagram, or maybe you just don't hear the Explore Page word enough, that is going to be that little magnifying glass that's there at the bottom of your Instagram menu whenever you are on the Instagram app. And the Explore page is basically a curated collection of new posts and reels based on your interest from accounts that you don't already follow. Now, the way that this Explore page is built is the Algorith bases, what it's going to show you off of things that you're searching for or things that you like. So this is where it gets a little weird, too. I saw a post the other day. I actually sent it to Darby because I want us to share it. If you have a really weird Explore Page, many things can happen to make that happen. Okay, so the meme I read it was like, oh, sorry, algorithm. I sneezed and spent a little bit longer time on this picture of a frog, and now my whole Explore pages of frogs. And that's what the algorithm does. It's watching you. It's watching your behavior. And maybe you accidentally clicked on, you know, a post about trolls or frogs or, I don't know. I search things for my Frenchie all the time, like callers and stuff like that for him. So now I'm getting all this Frenchie stuff in my feed. There was the. The big news on Rachel and Matt splitting up on Bachelor Nation. So now my whole Explore page is back on Bachelor Nation. So just know that little things that you search and do, the behavior you have on Instagram, that's how the algorithm learns about you, and that's why you are seeing these things on your Explore page. So this is Instagram's way of helping people discover new accounts. Brands, creators. They don't always get it 100% right, but that's how it works. It curates content on a user by user basis. So everybody's Explore page is unique. Nobody has the same Explore page. Now, the thing about the Explore page is you want to get on there. You want to get your content on there because that's what's going to get you in front of new eyes. It's going to get you in front of people that have never heard from you before. Maybe you post a reel or a carousel and it shows up on someone's Explore page. They click on it, they learn about you, they like what you're saying, so they go to your account and they follow you. It is the easiest way to grow your account is by getting on the Explore page. Back in 2021, before, you know, the algorithm had started recommending post in your feed, we really had to rely on the Explore page to get featured and to get to grow our accounts. So my main goal back then was always to just make content that gets on the Explore page, make content that gets a ton of engagement so that the Explore page will share it with more and more people. So what I'm going to be doing is kind of teaching you guys how to get the most engagement on your posts so you can get featured on that Explore page. Now, landing a spot on the Explore page can give your content a serious boost in engagement. This is how I grew my page to 180,000 followers. I posted and I posted and my content started gaining traction. And then it ended up being over there on the Explore page. And the reason I know that is because I'd get comments on my posts and it'd be something like, like, hey, you're on my Explore page or hey, I just found you on my Explore page. So that's how I knew that it was working. That's how I knew that these tactics that I'm going to teach you were working. So there's three signals that the algorithm looks at to rank Explore Page posts. So there's information about the post activity and explore and then information about the person who posted. So just to back it up, information about the post. What does that mean? That means how popular a post seems to be, how quickly did users engage with it? Was the post gaining traction with comments? Was it getting a lot of likes? Were people sending it into the dms? The algorithm is looking at that. That is the information about the post that it's looking at. What was the engagement like? Then there's activity in the explorer. So how you've interacted with post in the past, that's where I'm telling you, if you accidentally spend too much time on a certain topic or, or kind of post, you might see more of that show up on your Explore feed because that's what the algorithm is looking at. So pay attention to what you're looking at. And girls, this is funny, but if you want to know what your means is looking at, you can go look at his Explore page. Don't do that because sometimes the Explore page does not get it right. And again, like that meme I told you guys about, it said something like I sneezed and now I'm, I spent more time on the post and now there's frogs all over my Explore page. Again, that person wasn't looking up frogs, he just spent more time on that post. And so the algorithm got it wrong. And then there's information about the person who posted it, how many times people have interacted with them in the past few weeks. So these three things play a significant role in if you will see them on your Explore page. The thing about the Explore page is that it's constantly evolving with new topic categories, advanced search functionalities. They're introduced all the time. The Explore page now did not look like that back in 2021. In fact, the explore page in 2021 was mostly just carousels for a while and then now, then reels started getting featured on there. But now I believe reels have their own. They even have their own like section now. They take up more room than a carousel does. So just know that that Explore page is constantly changing so try to. You want to keep up with that. You want to take a minute like every month or so to go look at the Explore page and see how it's evolved. Another thing with the Explore page is you can now type in specific words like keywords and tags. And when you type those in, those will also help you discover things on the Explore page where it didn't used to be that way. It used to just be a page you couldn't search, but now there's a search functionality. So again, it's always evolving. Instagram's goal is to provide you with content that you want to engage with. They're trying to help you. At the end of the day, I know a lot of people will be like, you know, the algorithm's out to get me, but really it's not. It's just trying to serve people the content that they're searching for. So keep that in mind. If you can continuously though, get engagement on your reels, on your post, on your carousels, you are going to start getting shown on that Explore page. So why do you want to be on the Explore page? What does that mean for your account? Well, there's a couple different things that happen when you get on the Explore page. The first thing is that it increases your account's visibility. Right? If you're just starting out or, or you're wanting to make new connections, maybe you rebranded. Getting featured on that Explore page is the perfect way to spread the word about your brand and your business. It is how you are going to reach new people. The second good thing about the Explore page is that you get to show relevant people your content. So if there's people out there that are probably like the perfect customer for you, they don't know anything about you. If you're sharing really good content and it's getting on the Explore page, those people will eventually see it because everybody goes to the Explore page. The Explore page targets users based on accounts they've already interacted with, meaning your content will be shown to people more likely to become followers or even customers. Another part of that is if someone is interacting with your competitors a lot or they're already following your competitors, you guys post similar stuff. More than likely, you will show up on the Explore page if you're posting the same stuff as them. Like, I'll, I'll go check my husband's Explore page and I'll start to see like, oh, that's another Instagram coach. And it's cuz he's always engaging with my content. Now he's starting to get fed more and more Instagram coaches and social media agencies. So it's like a double edged sword because like you want to get recommended, but on the other hand you don't want to recommend your, your competitors. Right? So that's where we have to have the abundance mindset that there's enough for all of us to go around and don't look at as a competition, but more so, hey, they can do it. I can do it too. The other thing I like about the Explore page and other people will tell you is that if you end up on the Explore page, you will see better engagement. You will get more likes, more comments, more views. This is how people typically go viral. If your reel shows up on the regular feed where people are already following you and they start commenting and liking and sharing, that's gaining lots and lots of traction. What happens next is you go to the Explore page, that is Instagram trying to show your content to more people and that's when it typically will blow up or go viral. That's when you'll see like those numbers really scale is when you hit over on the Explore page. The more people who are seeing your content means that they're more likely to engage, which makes it more likely for the Instagram algorithm to promote your content. It's the gift that keeps on giving, they say. So tips to actually get on the Explore page. Now, I've kind of taught y'all what it is, why you want to get there, but how do we get there? What exactly do I need to do, Caitlin, to get my content shown on the Explore page? It's not an easy feat. Just know that it's, it's something that you really have to work hard on. So I'm going to give you guys my best tips on getting featured on the Explore page and what's worked for me. But at the end of the day, it's, it's really up to the algorithm gods if they want to show you on that Explore page. But here's how you can set yourself up for success. First tip of advice I have for you guys is to try different types of content. You need to see what's going to get the most traction from your audience so that the algorithm will push it to a new audience. So on the Explore page, you'll find everything. You'll find reels, you'll find carousels, you'll find static posts. So you need to be testing all of those and see which one sticks the best with your audience. For example, my content, I typically see reels perform better than any other format. But there's another, you know, competitor of mine, she posts more carousels and she gets a ton more engagement than I do on her carousels. So it depends what your audience likes, what you're, what you're known for. So that's why it's super important to test different types of content. Because what works for somebody is not always going to work for everybody. So you need to get in there and see what works and don't just try it one time and be like, oh, that crashed. I shouldn't be doing that. You need to test it for. Honestly, we tell new clients at the agency, you need to be working with us for at least 90 days before we even have enough data to go through and understand what's working. So if you can set a 90 day goal for yourself, that would be the best versus doing it for one week and deciding that it was a fail. Prioritizing reels is gonna be my suggestion for everybody. Just because my reels perform best on the, you know, the other side of that, there was a time when Instagram was prioritizing reels. I don't know if they still are prioritizing reels. I'm seeing carousels get really good engagement right now too. I actually posted one last week, or it was this past weekend. And for like the past year, my carousels have been like getting less than a hundred likes or maybe a hundred likes, which is crazy for someone with an account that has 180,000 followers, right? But this past weekend when I posted a carousel, I changed the content a little bit, but I, I based it off of one of my last top performing carousels, which is a tip I have later on. And I just tweaked it just a tad and it performed really well. Had a ton of shares, ton of comments, ton of likes. So again, I can't say for certain that Instagram is only prioritizing one type of content when I'm seeing good results for both. But again, I do see better results for my reels. So you have to decide. You have to test it and see what works for you. Pro tip here. If you are not a graphic designer or you don't know what works for you and you don't have time to test things, you could always join Club Influence. We are currently running a special right now. You can join for 12 bucks for your first month, but we provide you with reels prompts if you want to test reels and we also provide you with Canva templates. Those are carousels, static images, reels, templates, all the above, so you don't have to waste your time designing. You can use things that we've already tried and tested and we like and we give them to you guys. So that is Club Influence. I'll link that in the show notes for today. Next tip I have for you guys is to partner with other people. Partner with other creators. Partnering with other creators helps you tap into their audience and get in front of a new pool of people. This can help increase your engagement, your reach, and Explore. Secure a spot for you on the Explore page. I have a couple different accounts, right? So I have the Caitlin Rhodes Influence Studio for a social media agency, and then I have Call Her Creator podcast. So I take turns sometimes collabing with these three accounts because one, they're all mine, so I want to spread the wealth with the audiences there. But two, they all have one thing in common, which is to help creators and small business owners shine online. So when you are thinking of who you want to collaborate with, make sure it's a brand or a creator that compliments or believes in the same things as you. That's what's going to make sense. It would not make sense for me to collab with, like, I don't know, like an underwear brand. That just would not make any sense for me. Cool. Yeah, I have, like, at the end of the day, there's people following me and everybody wears underwear, but they're not following me for fashion advice. They're following me for social media. So that's where you have to think about, okay, would my audience think this is weird if I collaborated with this person? That's. That's what will help you make a good educated guess on that. Next tip for you is to use keywords. Keywords are even more important than hashtags, but they're both very relevant. Hashtags work as keywords. To be honest, that might confuse some of you guys. But let me tell you the difference here. Keywords are when you use words, like hot words, like things that people are searching for in your caption or on your text overlay of your reel, hashtags would be at the bottom of your content and they would have the hashtag and then the word. Right? So there's two different things. Keyword, hashtag, they kind of do the same thing, but what they do is they help the algorithm to read and understand what your content is about so that it can send it to other people that are interested in that content too, or people that have been Searching those keywords or hashtags, it's going to serve your content up on a silver platter for those people. So keywords help the algorithm serve your content to the right audience, if that makes sense. Next step here is checking your insights. And if we go back for a minute, remember when I just told you guys I posted a carousel over the weekend and it was one of my top performers. So something we do here for my account, for our clients accounts, is that we will go in and look at content that was posted the month before and find the top performers for the month and we'll figure out, okay, how can we repost this with a. Either like a new angle or tweak the caption on it, or maybe tweak, tweak the hook a little bit to make it even better. Typically when we repurpose content, it ends up performing either just as good or better than the first time. So I'm a huge, huge believer in checking your insights and repurposing content. Now, you can check this stuff right within the Instagram app, or you can use another platform like we use Metricool to schedule all of our content. And there's also really good analytics in Metricool. I have an affiliate link. I'll put in the show notes for you guys too if you want to grab it. But we love Metricools. I also will plug it in for scheduling because we were using Meta Business Suite for scheduling a long time ago and it was just really wonky and sometimes things wouldn't post and we don't really. If something doesn't post, Metrical always says like, hey, we had a problem posting this, might want to check that out. Meta Business Suite didn't give us any kind of warning. It just didn't post it. So another very important part to all of this to get on the Explore page is to make sure that you're focusing on your call to action. Because at the end of the day, your call to action is how you get people to comment on your posts. So you need to be very specific with what you want them to do next. I personally like DM Automation and Stan now offers DM Automation, by the way. So if you're a Stan user, you can get this feature, I believe, for free. Or it's with the Pro account. Let me click on it really quick. All right, so when I'm in the Stand Store online, all you have to do is connect your Instagram to set your IG auto reply. And what that does is. So your call to action could be something like Comment the word checklist and then that sends them the checklist automatically in the dm. So they're commenting on your post to get something in exchange from you. But at the end of the day the algorithm is saying is seeing someone comment on your post, which is a big deal. Well, people are commenting on their post. Let's keep sharing it to more and more people. Oh, they're talking in the DMS now. Let's keep sharing this to more and more people. So the thing with your call to action leads into using DM automation. They just go hand in hand. And using DM automation has honestly helped us increase our engagement and our conversions. Because people no longer want to click out of a post and go to your link in bio. They just want it right then and there. We need instant gratification. So setting up DM automation is going to be the easiest way to increase your engagement on a post. And increase engagement means you get shown to the Explore page if your post continues to gain some traction. Some other bonus tips I have for you guys when it comes to getting on the Explore page. I talked a little bit about hashtags earlier, but if you don't know hashtags are a tactic to extend your reach, I always tell like especially new creators, new businesses that are just getting started with a smaller follower account, hashtags would be a great way for you to extend your reach because that's what people are searching for when they look for stuff and it pops up on the Explore feed. So use hashtags, use keywords. Greater reach equals higher engagement levels typically. And studies have actually shown later did a study on this, that post with hashtags received higher engagement rates. So take it or leave it if you want to believe in hashtags or not. But there's studies out there by later the best way to break up your hashtags if you're like, okay, well how do I, what do I come up with for hashtags? So Instagram allows you to post up to 30 hashtags. I never post all 30, but if you wanted to, you could break that up to like three to five hashtags that are specific to the post that you're posting about. Like the keywords of the post. The other three to five hashtags could be specific to the industry that you work in. And then the other hashtags that remain could be like location based or maybe just keywords in general for your industry, not just the post, but for your industry in general. That is how we typically break up all of those hashtags. But lately what I'm seeing, what I've read is that like, honestly, at the end of the day, three to five hashtags will suffice for a post. You don't need to use all 30. And then the other part of this is I really recommend having a real engagement strategy in place if you want to grow on it. Instagram. We actually have a free 28 day engagement challenge that we're about to kick off February 1st. If this, this episode is going to come out after the challenge has already started, but I will have a spot for you guys to sign up for that in my sand store and it'll just live there from now on. So you're listening to this late. You can still join the challenge. But this engagement challenge is 28 days of getting you to actually do things that will nurture connections and build up your engagement. But just for starters, just how can you, how can I, Caitlin, increase my engagement right now? I say give it 15 minutes a day. And we call this the 555 method. And that's commenting on three posts in your feed, replying to three stories up at the top and then heading to the Explore page and commenting on three posts there. And you spend five minutes doing all three of those. So five, five, five, five minutes. And what that does that is that tells the algorithm like, hey, she's home. She's commenting on people's content, she's commenting on the Explore page, she's replying to stories. Someone's there, someone engaging and it should give you a little boost. We do, we use it and we like it. And I, I truly believe that you have to give to get engagement. So that's one of my biggest tips out of all of this is make sure you're spending time on the app doing that. Alright, so those are my tips for getting on the Instagram Explore page. I do believe that it is the way to get your followers up, it is the way to grow your page is to get on the Explore page. So what's your goal? If you don't have a goal for Instagram this, this year, it should be how can I get on that Explore page and reach new eyes and new people? That's what's going to help you grow your account, grow your following, grow your brand, grow your sales. If you liked this episode, please let me know. Feel free to leave me a review over on Apple or Spotify. I feel like engagement is probably one of the biggest things that people struggle with. So if you did listen to today's episode and you're like, dang. She has all these suggestions, but I'm still not seeing any type of growth over here. Then join our challenge. It's 28 days. It's not just, you know, a 20 minute podcast episode telling you what to do. We're going to send you actionable things that you can do every day for 28 days to. To help boost your visibility on Instagram. And don't get down on yourself. It takes time, it takes commitment, and it takes consistency to really see growth on this app. But when you really put in the time and the work and you're passionate about it should see results. All right, guys, thanks so much for tuning in today. I'll see y'all next week.