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If you're an agent who feels like you're doing all the right things on social, but you're still not getting any clients, you're not alone. But the solution is actually way more simple and closer than you realize. I recorded a quick video just for you that explains more. Go see it over@massiveagentsociety.com Easy. This is not something you want to sleep on. On February 11, 2022, I deleted my Instagram account. At the time, I had like 13,000 or 15,000 followers. I deleted it started over from scratch, and it was one of the best decisions that I've ever made. I'm going to break down why I did it, why I felt I needed to in the first place, and what I've learned as a result. And what would I do differently today? Let's jump into it. The Massive Agent podcast with lead generation tips and strategies to get you more leads and sell more homes. I love to buy houses. I like to sell houses. It takes brass balls to sell real estate. Wait a minute. The leads are weak. You're weak. I've had better. Oh, have I got your attention now? Here's your host, Dustin Brome. What is up, guys? Welcome to episode 414 of the Massive Agent Podcast. I am your host, Dustin Brome here in Salt Lake City, Utah. We're going to talk Instagram today and social media in general. I mean, I think this is going to be very enlightening. And I think after this episode, a light bulb is going to go on in your head when it comes to how you look at social content and how it works and how to get your content performing better and how to reach more people. This will answer all those questions, but in the form of a personal story. Okay, so before I get into the story from February 11th of 2022, one of the craziest things I've ever done, deleting my frickin Instagram when I had a decent sized audience before. I do that. If you are one of these agents, if you feel like you are, you're doing the work on social media, you're posting, you're doing it consistently, you're putting in the effort. You think you're doing pretty good stuff, but you're just not getting any business from it. First off, I hear you. I recorded a short video, like less than two minutes that explains how to fix it. I diagnose it, I show you how to fix it. Go over to massiveagentsociety.com easy and click play on the video. It explains the Rest. It shows you how I can help and what to do about this. Because, look, a lot of you are doing great content and you're doing enough of it. There's some small tweaks that need to be made. And once you make those, all of a sudden clients just start showing up in your inbox and they start calling you and you finally turn social media into a lead generating machine, a client generating machine. But it starts with knowing what the hell's happening. So. MassiveAgentsociety.com Easy. And check out that video I made for you. Okay, so February of 2022, I. I had been frustrated for, for quite a while, I'd say a year or more with how stagnant my Instagram seemed to be. It. It felt like no matter. No, hold on. We want to make sure. Let me preface this with saying I was waiting to make sure that I had crossed every other box, that I've crossed every other bridge to make sure that, like, maybe my content just sucked. That was the first thing I was like, well, maybe I'm not. Maybe I'm not getting business from this. Maybe my engagement sucks because my content sucks. So of course I entertain that first, as should you. You never want to blame the damn algorithm, okay? Never blame the platform. Now if you're a golfer, you always blame the clubs. Always blame the clubs if you're a golfer, especially if they're rentals, because, I mean, they're not your clubs. So of course you shanked it into the woods. Of course you six putt. Anyways, yeah, you gotta make. Take responsibility first before you blame. Blame the platform. So I waited like a year and I'm like, I watched my buddy Neil Dhingra delete his Instagram and start over and he just blew up. And so I knew that there was merit to it, but I wanted to make sure that I, that I tried everything else first. Because deleting your Instagram when at any size and I had 12,000, 15,000 followers, something like that, Uh, I mean, that's a decent sized audience that you can make a great living with that audience if the audience is real. Here's the problem. Instagram used to, when Instagram stories were fairly new, they used to have this, this feature where if you had over 10,000 followers, you could swipe up and, and you. So you could add a link to a story and you'd swipe up and it would take you to the link, but the Instagram only gave that functionality to accounts with over 10,000 followers. Well, damn it, I'm A marketer. I wanted that functionality. I wanted the Swipe up feature in my stories. But I didn't have 10,000 followers. So you can see where this is going. I want to say I had 7,500, maybe like 8,200 followers or something respectable, right? Good size audience, some of you guys even. And I made the stupid decision, the short sighted decision, the wildly uneducated decision to buy some followers to get me over the 10,000 follower Humphrey just so I could get the Swipe up feature in stories. I mean, and in fairness, once I got over the hump and got the Swipe up feature, I loved it. I used the shit out of it. There's much better ways now with ManyChat and comment automation and all that stuff. Way better. But nonetheless, it was great because for the first time, you could actually send somebody to a place from Instagram and you couldn't really do that before the Swipe up feature. So I bought followers. I bought 20. I think I bought 2500 followers and it got me just over 10,000. I think I had like 11,000 when it got me over that hump. And I noticed pretty quick that my content, even though it was doing like I was doing, I thought at the time, doing pretty good stuff. Very different than stuff than I'm doing today, of course, because I, you know, I grow as a person and, and improve. But I thought I was doing decent stuff. And I noticed that I'd post something and it would just kind of go, go, go, go, and then hit a ceiling. The next day I'd post something, go, go, go, go, go, hit a ceiling. And it. I noticed it kept hitting this ceiling. And, and so I just, I'm like, well, does my content just suck? Like, what's going on? Well, in talking to some friends, like my buddy Neil and doing some research, I found out that the problem was I had bought followers, which absolutely crushed my account. It crushed my reach. It. It crushed my. It crushed my engagement. And, and so what I was experiencing with my content hitting us, hitting a ceiling constantly and never doing that well, I. I felt like my engagement was way low compared to other accounts of a similar size. And I'm like, of course, for a while I just blamed my content. Like, my content just sucks. I got to do better, I got to do more. I got to do better, I got to do more. Now that is a valid way to look at it, right? That's not the wrong approach. But what I learned about how the algorithm works is super enlightening. And this is going to tell us a lot. This is why I'm telling you this story today. Mainly hopefully to encourage you and teach you to never buy followers ever at all. Dumbest thing ever. You buy followers if you want to crush your account. And by the way, you don't need. Spoiler alert. You don't need a hundred thousand followers to reach millions of people with your content. Not anymore. Not with how the algorithm works today, which I'll explain a little bit later. You could have 165 people following you and you could reach millions of people with your content. Your follower count does not matter as far as distribution to people. It might matter in the context of, like, if somebody lands on your account, do you look credible? I mean, and I'm, I'm not an idiot. I know that if you land. If a, if a seller gets referred you. Okay. That they get referred your name, they go to your Instagram account and you have 65 followers. That's not so impressive. If they go to your account and you have 65,000 followers, in their eyes, that's impressive. Right? Like, so there's a certain social proof and credibility that comes with a high follower count. I believe that is literally the only value of having a high follower count in today's world. It's an ego thing. And yes, is credibility in the. Of others, which can open a lot of doors. Like, I mean, that's a meaningful thing. So I'm going to teach you what I learned about, about why the algorithm just absolutely hated my account after I bought followers. Buying followers destroys your engagement because Instagram cares about who interacts, not about how many followers you have. Okay? So when you, when you buy followers, those are not real people that you are not getting real people. So you're getting bots, you're getting fake accounts that will never, like, they'll never comment, they'll never share, they'll never save or watch anything that you post ever. So every time you upload a piece of content, Instagram shows it to a. Here's how it works. You post something, you upload a piece of content, you hit post. Instagram shows it. And it's not just Instagram, it's all of them. Instagram shows it to a small sample of your audience to test how. How well it does, to see how people react. And if that sample, it has fake followers in it who, who do nothing, who don't engage, who don't watch, who don't comment. Instagram thinks your content is boring or low quality. So if you had 10,000 followers but 2,000 were fake. If you had 8,000 and you bought 2,000 to get to 10, which is, you know, close to what I did, that means that 20%, like even if you posted and a hundred percent of your real followers loved that content and engaged with it, you'd still only have an 80% engagement rate because the 20% is fake. So you have this, this, this ceiling on how well your content can ever do it caps how well you can ever do. And some people have bought way more. Some people have half of their followers are fake. That means no matter what the best post, even if 100% of the real people, the real followers engaged with it, watched it and loved it, it still only has a 50% engagement rate because the other 50 that's fake can't engage. So I didn't realize this, but I just put a cap on everything that I ever did. No wonder it was hitting a ceiling. It was hitting that cap. It made Instagram think that my content was boring, not very engaging and low quality, when in fact maybe it was, but Instagram was going off of, there's all these followers that aren't, aren't engaging with it at all. So the algorithm, when you buy followers, the algorithm stops pushing your post to more people, your reach tanks, your engagement falls off a cliff, your account basically dies, or at least it just hits a ceiling and you can't really grow. So if you're in that situation where you've ever bought followers, even if you've, even if you've done some of the shady, like I did two years ago, where it's like you pay a service to go like a bunch of, or to go follow a bunch of accounts, hoping that they'll follow you back and then it unfollows them a day later. Or the auto comments or the auto likes. Like if you are doing anything unnatural at all, if you are having any service, do anything that's not natural, stop it. You are destroying your account. It is the kiss of death for your account. So if you have done some of that, especially if you have purchased followers, if you have a certain part of your following on Instagram that is not real, that is fake, starting over may be the fastest fix, but let's not jump to conclude to conclusions. I've talked to a lot of agents over the last few years since I did that, what was that, three and a half years ago, that they're like, hey, I think I need to, you know, delete my account and start over. And I look at their content and honestly, it's not good. Or it's just they post once a week or every few weeks, and it's just not good. And I'm like, look, that's the least of your problems. You got to get your content dialed in. You have to follow a proven formula. You got to follow the blueprint. You know, you got to do it consistently. You got to get better on camera. Like, all those things matter, of course. But once you make sure that all of those other boxes are checked, if you've purchased followers, in order to really optimize your account, you may have to start over from scratch. So when I did, when I did start over from scratch, I realized within hours, within the first few hours. Now, of course, here's how I did it on my old account. I kept it going. I created the new one and I called it like the massive Agent. So I had a different username and, and I just went to my, went to the followers on my old account and I, I gave them like a week or two heads up and I'm like, hey, go to this account. I'm shutting this one down. Go to go follow this account. I'm shutting this one down. And at the end, I did like a, a goodbye video that said, hey, this is my last video here. I'm deleting this in seven days. Go over here, Follow. So I, I had, you know, a few hundred followers over on the new account when I started to post new content over there. And within hours, I want to say within three or four hours, I could tell that my engagement was through the roof. It only took me a few hours. It took me one post and I think a couple stories where I was like, wait, I'm getting so many more views on the stories. I'm getting so many more replies. I'm getting so many more comments and messages. My engagement was through the roof on an account with like 400 followers. So much more than an account with 15,000 followers. That told me all I needed to know that I made the right decision. And so ever since then, I, I, I, I committed to myself I would never do anything unnatural with Instagram or social media in general ever again. I would not pay services to do anything on my behalf. I would not do the follow unfollow, I would not do auto comments, auto likes, no bullshit. Just post good content, engage, reply to my comments, try to be interesting, try to have a personality, and then just keep doing it day after day. That's all I've done. And now I've grown my account to almost 40,000 followers. I think it's like 37, 37ish. 37,000 followers, which is crazy. In three and a half years just by following the blueprint, the content blueprint that is proven to work. And so in hindsight, I wish that I would have deleted my account a lot sooner, if I'm being honest with you. But I'm also glad I didn't jump the gun and do it too soon as a knee jerk reaction. I don't want you to listen to this and think, hey, my account's not growing. I need to delete my account and start over. Deleting your account and starting over is a pain in the ass. Especially if you want to keep the same username. It requires a new account. Then you got to delete the old one, wait a certain amount of time, delete till once that old one's deleted. You got to hurry and like snag the old username before somebody else does. And it's, it's a pain in the ass. So you don't want to have to do it. Ideally you just start doing the right content right now. Let me look at my notes here. Like I said, I wish that in hindsight, I wish that I would have done it earlier. So, because doing social media the right way organically is the most powerful way to do it. Without a doubt, all the other fake shit is just a band aid for uneducated people. I was very uneducated when I bought those followers to get the swipe up feature. Now do you need to also delete your account? Like I said, if you did not buy followers, you know, 9.9 times out of 10, you do not need to start over. What you need to do is start doing the right shit, start doing better content, learn hooks, learn the content formats that work, start. Maybe you need to be more interesting, maybe you need more personality. Like there's so many different levers to pull and that's something that we help agents with in our, in my massive agent society coaching group. But there's so many great resources, sources out there that will teach you how to do all those things better. But focus on you before you start blaming, hey, I need to delete my account and start over. Unless you bought followers now. Doing great, great content is the way to grow your account, right? For the same reason that buying followers crushes you. Doing con, doing great content will grow your account. And it's the same reason, okay, because of how the algorithm works, when you post something Instagram, all of the platforms do this, so TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, all of it. You create a piece of content, you post it, it shows it to a small sample of your audience. So even if you only have 145 followers, it's going to show it to, let's say, 15 of them. Well, if seven or, or nine of them engage, they watch a lot of it, they like it, Whatever the algorithm's like, okay, this must be good stuff. So then they show it to a little larger sample size and a little bit larger, and pretty soon once the, once the content has shown that it is engaging, it keeps people watching and it's good stuff, the algorithm starts to suggest it to people that don't follow you. This is how you're, you start to grow your audience and reach new people is by doing good stuff with a certain target audience in mind. And then the algorithm will show your good content to more people that don't know you yet. So it doesn't matter if you have a hundred thousand followers or 10,000 followers or whatever, if you do great stuff with a great hook and it keeps attention and it keeps people watching for a long, you know, for a big chunk of the video or, you know, if they go through all of your carousel posts, let's say you put 14 images or slides up in your carousel post and people are going through all 14, that shows the algorithm, this is good stuff. And it's going to suggest your content to new people and then if they like it, if they engage with it as well, it's going to show it to even more new people. That's how you could have 143 followers and go absolutely crazy ass spiral and have 10 million views on a video. It happens. It absolutely happens. But it starts with the content itself. So there's my story about Instagram starting over from scratch. It was a big pain in the ass, but one of the best decisions I made. I wish I would have done it a lot sooner. And, and now you have a better understanding of how the algorithms work and how if you just focus on doing the right content by copying and pasting a proven formula, a proven blueprint. This do what works, put your own spin on it with your own personality. But if you just get the formula, get the blueprint, follow it to a T, be consistent every day, you will grow, you will grow faster than ever. You will gain followers, you will gain clients, and just get, just do the work. But if you want the easy button, if you want to learn, learn how to just find out exactly what to do. So you can just copy and paste and implement a proven System. Check that video out. Less than two minutes. Massive agentsociety.com Easy. And I, by the way, I have something probably next week that I'm doing for you that will be completely free, completely open to anybody. I am putting considerable resources right now into creating tools for you to learn, copy and implement. I. My goal in this next year is to help. I haven't even thought about this. I haven't quantified this yet. Okay. Is to help thousands more agents to get five deals per month from social or more. Thousand. At least a thousand agents in 2026 to get five or more deals from social media every single month. And to do that, I've got to give you a bunch of resources. The next one's going to be completely free. So look for that in the next week or so and then just take freaking action. I can. Unless you want me to, like, literally take your phone and post for you and record your content for you and do it all the time, which, by the way, is insane. I'm not doing that if that's what you're expecting. Good luck. Good luck with that. But I promise to create and provide the next best thing to that and just to give you everything that you need. So you can just take it, implement it, copy it, paste it, do it, post it, record it, and do it again. That's my commitment to you. Thanks for listening to this episode of the Massive Agent podcast. Happy Thanksgiving. Actually, this. This podcast comes out on Thanksgiving, so happy Thanksgiving. Hope you enjoyed time with your friends, your family, and your loved ones. I sure as hell did. Yes, I am speaking into the future, but I know that I did. Hopefully you took some time off like a normal human. Hopefully you're not working away on Thanksgiving. That kind of sucks. But respect to those who do what it takes. Do what you got to do. Thank you for listening. Please share this with somebody who needs to hear this message. And I'll be back next week with another episode of the Massive Agent podcast. Take care.