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The Think Media Podcast
524: What's Actually Working on Instagram in 2026 (Yapping, Trials & Reposts)
00:55:40
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- [00:00]
A
Hey, before we jump into the show, I wanted to give you a heads up that my free YouTube strategy class is available right now on demand@thinkmasterclass.com on the class, I reveal the one YouTube strategy we use at Think Media to generate over 330,000 views every single day. So if you're new to YouTube, this will help you start right and avoid mistakes. And if you're a YouTube pro, this training will help you multiply your your growth. This class is 100% free and you can watch it now on demand@thinkmasterclass.com now let's jump into today's show. You can stop searching the Internet, asking ChatGPT questions, and you can go straight to an Instagram expert to learn how to get followers, build your brand, and make money using Instagram. Right now, today's guest is getting 15 million views every single month. But there's been so many changes. The head of Instagram has revealed new things. The algorithm's changing. Today we're really diving into an Instagram masterclass class. Brock Johnson, welcome back to the show.
- [01:02]
B
Thank you. I'm excited to be here.
- [01:04]
A
What is the best post for getting views on Instagram right now? The best format?
- [01:09]
B
That's a really good question. I think format's the key word because I think that there's two formats that everyone is doing on repeat and they're just not working. One of them is the 7 second long trending audio in the background. I'm going to grab a random B roll video myself. I'm going to slap a clickbait, hook some text on the top, wait a few seconds, and then say, read the caption. This would never in a million years work on YouTube. Imagine you post a YouTube video like today, and it was like, I'm interviewing Brock Johnson About Instagram and three seconds into this YouTube video, it's just like, read the description of the YouTube video for all of us.
- [01:43]
A
If you want to go see the conversation, there's a link to the transcript, right?
- [01:46]
B
Like that's, that's just not ever going to work on YouTube. But it did work on Instagram for a little bit. And it worked because it was tricking the algorithm into thinking, oh, you got this super long watch time because your videos loop and people are reading this caption. But Instagram, just like YouTube, is a visual platform, people want to watch something, they want to consume something with their eyes, not read this little fine print. So that's one thing that's not working. Another kind of format that's not working is the Very polished, scripted talking head reel. Especially because those talking head reels are often scripted by ChatGPT. They sound the same. And it's three tips for becoming a better rock climber. And so it's overdone and it's boring. Two things that we are seeing is working really, really well right now. One is super raw, unpolished content. What the Gen Z crowd would call like yapping content, where it's like, it's uncut. My. My phone is not on a tripod. Or it at least starts not on a tripod. It starts in my hand and I'm setting it down and I'm just talking to the camera. FaceTime style, where I'm very organic, talking to a friend. That's one style of content that works really well. And the misconception with that content is people are like, oh well, I'm just yapping. I'm just talking to the camera.
- [02:53]
A
That's easy.
- [02:53]
B
It's not easy. It's easier on post production because you don't have to edit it and splice it. It's easier on pre production because you don't have to script it with ChatGPT. But it's much harder during the actual filming process to speak for 47 seconds eloquently, concisely, no filler words, without pausing, without going off on a side tangent. That takes a lot of practice, as you know. So that's one style that we see working really well. The other is just creative formats in general, unique ways of positioning the exact same content. So one example that I've seen working really well recently is ranking or scoring or grading videos. There was a bunch during March.
- [03:32]
A
ChatGPT versus Claude.
- [03:34]
B
Yeah, and they're doing that. Or like during March Madness, everyone was doing a bracket, you know, comparing this feature to this feature that one wins and kind of like working their way through.
- [03:41]
A
I've seen people bracket content creators and maybe you were on there.
- [03:44]
B
I'm sure I was probably at the bottom of the list. And then there's also ones where they do like tier ranking, where it's like super. It's been popular on YouTube forever where people do S tier A tier B tier, and now just doing that with their own content on Insta. So those are working really well. And it's really just ultimately trying to find different creative visual ways to communicate the same ideas rather than just yapping or I shouldn't say yapping rather than just talking directly to the camera.
- [04:11]
A
Okay, I want to just make sure we're all on the same page. What Is your definition of formats and why that matters when somebody just thinks, like, it's just posts. What is a format?
- [04:20]
B
Yeah, a format. This is a great topic. Something I was actually thinking, like, on the drive here today. How do I define a format? A format is essentially the way the video is packaged or the style in which it's written. So it's. Let's put it in YouTube context. On YouTube, there are explainer videos where it's one person talking to the camera. Maybe there's some screen recordings, but they're explaining or teaching something. There are vlogs. Those are very different formats, for sure. They could be used to ultimately teach the same lesson. They could have the same or a very similar big takeaway. But they're completely different formats. Right? Like, even this conversation today has a format. It's you and I sitting across from each other in this room. We have, like, the chairs, we have microphones. What if we did this as like a vlog? And it started with, like, you waking up in the morning in your hotel room and you're telling the camera, hey, I'm going to be interviewing Brock today. You walk into a coffee shop. There I am, we're drinking our coffee. It's vlog like, but we're still having this conversation and giving these tips. So it's different formats. It's just a different way of presenting the topic or the material or whatever it may be. And those formats are what I would argue might be the most important thing for getting views on your reels, because those formats are what are constantly changing. And what format is popular or working really well right now. That is what is constantly evolving. And I think that you could take a really boring subject matter like tax strategy. And with the right format and the right hook, that's the other ingredient, the format and the hook, you can get amazing views. You can go viral.
- [05:48]
A
That's. That's powerful because that's. It's what makes this available for everybody listening, no matter who their target audience is, what problem they solve, what their product or service is, what business they're in. The point is, a change of format could be a drastic change of results that might lead to 10 to 100x more views.
- [06:07]
B
Thousand percent, thousand percent. Some other ones that come to the top of my mind immediately. Series and or challenges. I think the easy version of this is like day one of giving a different tax tip every day. Probably going to get pretty boring, but it's at least going to provide you with an idea, a baseline. Hey, every day I can just give A new tax tip consistency, a more powerful growth hack. Like, if you want to go viral in 2026, the guaranteed way to do it is by starting a challenge for yourself. So the that I'm doing is reviewing a reel every day until I reach 1 million followers. Another member of ours is donating a dollar for every new follower to cybersecurity until she reaches a million followers, which is insane.
- [06:50]
A
We'd be donating up to a million dollars.
- [06:51]
B
Up to a million dollars. Yeah. Another one of our members, she went from 700 to 25,000 followers in a month. And what they're doing is they're a couple, and they are on their lgbtq. And so for every follower, they're writing the follower's name on a colored sticky note and adding it to the wall. And the wall is forming this giant pride flag mural.
- [07:13]
A
So people are seeing the progression.
- [07:15]
B
So by following, they're adding their. Yeah, they're adding it. They're seeing the progression. They're seeing the mural, the kind of flag come together. They've absolutely blown up because of it. And now they have merch and brand deals and whatnot. So a challenge or a series then? The other idea that I wanted to share is street interviews. We've all seen street interviews. They're so dynamic. They create a lot of variability. So I don't care if you're doing rock climbing tips, tax, strategy, real estate, go out on the street and talk to people. And it creates this feeling in the viewer of like, oh, I don't know what's gonna happen. This is unscripted. This is raw, this is real. Let me lean forward. And there's so many viral moments that can come out of those.
- [07:49]
A
I want to go in what I think is fair to call go deeper in the yap strategy. Really? And yap is almost like an official term now, like, yap as a style of reel. It could be somebody in their car, a female with a cup, ranting, and it has, like, that feel to it. But it's an actual content format now that there's, like, frameworks around. Is there any prompts you would have for us? Because I. And then I think the mistake listeners could make is they just think, okay, who cares about just random thoughts shared in a car, shared in my office? Well, that's a very surface, level observation of it, because it's a style. But what are some ideas if you were to try to get somebody thinking about what they could start yapping about right after listening to this podcast, that could get results? Like, is there A formula?
- [08:41]
B
Yeah. I think first and foremost, you want to talk as if you're speaking to one person. So you don't want to be, like, talking to the audience. It's not guys, it's not y'. All. It's one person. And something that I've told people to do is literally FaceTime a friend. Like, if you struggle to sound organic and conversational on your content, literally FaceTime a friend and screen record yourself and just blur out their camera or zoom it in a little bit, or FaceTime them on your computer and then, like, lean your phone up against the computer and just talk to your friend while your phone is filming. And that way you'll be much more conversational. I've also heard some people are now talking to ChatGPT. Still have, like, a conversation with ChatGPT so that, hey, I don't have to put my friend on the spot and FaceTime them, but I'm at least talking to what feels like another person even.
- [09:24]
A
And in that case, verbal prompts, they're looking at, or they're actually talking and you hear ChatGPT's audio, they'll cut out
- [09:29]
B
ChatGPT's audio in the background. It's just to get that internal feeling of like, I'm talking to a human. I'm not talking to content.
- [09:36]
A
Because, like, one big principle of effective yap strategic content is tone. Sometimes we turn on in this video. Yeah, I'm about to like the broadcaster. Yeah, we turn on the broadcaster. Or we also, like, are so in a way preachy. Doesn't have to be a bad preachy. It could be a bad preachy, but it's like, yeah, we're not. But we're. You feel like you're cutting mid conversation.
- [09:58]
B
Yes.
- [09:59]
A
You might feel a little rant energy. Like, it's. And yeah, okay, so go on.
- [10:03]
B
I think another principle of that is varied sentence length. So oftentimes when we're speaking in content, we speak in short sentences so that people can follow on every word. And they're all five word sentences. I'm gonna pause after each one so you can understand what I'm saying. That's not how I talk to you. Like when we're walking over here and we're just chit chatting. Varied sentence length, short, long medium, and playing around with that, it really adds like a music. There's a great book by, I think his name is Gary Provost, and it's a hundred ways, or might even be a thousand ways to improve your writing, but it applies to content as well. And you're speaking in this yapping content where your yapping can sound like music and it can flow and it can be conversational rather than conversion content. Or like our normal marketing jargon speak where we have like these things that we ways we want to say things and tones and inclinations. And I think that that can make a big difference for people.
- [10:56]
A
Do you have a viral content strategy?
- [10:58]
B
Yes and no. Yes and no. I think that in general there's a few things that I would tell people. First of all, you never know what's going to go viral. It makes me crack up when people are like, I know what's going to go viral every time. Like, no you don't. Like, unless you have a time machine.
- [11:11]
A
You might know the principles.
- [11:12]
B
You might know the principles and you
- [11:14]
A
might do consistent posts to actually predict and be able to do it.
- [11:17]
B
Yes, yes. I all the time make a post and I'm like, this is really, really good.
- [11:23]
A
Okay.
- [11:23]
B
I post it and it flops or the opposite. I'm like this, whatever. I'm just making, I'm just posting it because I want to get a post up right now and then it goes viral or it does better than the average. And I think that that is our own ego getting involved and that's our own, like we're too close to it. We're too involved in the editing of it. We care too much about it. We view our post as our art form and our self expression and it's just a real. It's not that serious. But there are definitely principles, right? There are things like the hook is, is the most important thing we need to grab people's attention. A recent report came out from Meta where they said that it takes people 1.7 seconds on their platforms on average to decide whether or not they're scrolling. 1.7. So we've always said like the first three seconds are your hook. 1.7. They're deciding, am I watching or scrolling? And that's the number one thing that Matter is looking for is what you might call the skip rate. Are people stopping or are they skipping?
- [12:14]
A
That's the first thing I just saw today. I posted a reel. It said your average reel has a 77% skip rate. This reel has a 50% skip rate and it was performing better. It's getting more views.
- [12:27]
B
Absolutely.
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A
And so you're saying that the skip is determined. They did not skip. If they're there after 1.7 seconds, I
- [12:35]
B
believe that's how they define it. It might be three in their actual analytic measurement. Yeah, they Want the viewer to stay past three.
- [12:42]
A
Yeah. And we as consumers just know actually, like, it's wild how fast we might skip.
- [12:46]
B
Yeah.
- [12:47]
A
They would see it. Nah. Nah. And so three seconds is. Sounds crazy, but it's like a long time of dwell time.
- [12:53]
B
Yeah. And that's, that's another thing that people overlook when it comes to hooks. We've talked so much, we as marketers and people who teach content about the words in your hook or the text on the screen or what you're saying when the visual matters so much more where you are. Yeah. Like people are going to be able to see what's on the screen and make that decision. Like you said, faster than they can read, faster than you can finish that first sentence, they've decided, what is this video about? Is it worth my attention? Is it worth my time? Am I skipping or am I watching? So that's the first thing. The second thing that determines virality especially is share rate. Mozeri has recently said. Head of Instagram has recently said likes determine reach from followers. So say that another way. If your post is getting significantly more likes than it normally does, then it will be pushed out to more of your existing followers. If it's getting more shares than it normally does, then it will be pushed out to new people.
- [13:42]
A
And that's powerful. Not. Not just because sharing literally exposes it to people. Instagram itself will say if people are sharing this, which would expose it to those new individuals. We're algorithmically.
- [13:56]
B
Yes, we're going to show it to even more. So like the. The key thing that determines every viral post is shareworthiness. Whether or not it's going to be shared, whether or not it is actually being shared.
- [14:06]
A
What's the framework that makes a post share worthy?
- [14:09]
B
I have an acronym. S H A R E Share. S is simple. So I think that we can oftentimes really over complicate big words, fancy lingo, fancy vocab. Dumb it down, please. So simple that a drunk grandma could understand it.
- [14:23]
A
Ooh, the drunk grandma principle.
- [14:24]
B
Drunk grandma principle.
- [14:25]
A
Exactly.
- [14:26]
B
Yeah. That needs to apply to your reels and, and apply even in the first few seconds.
- [14:31]
A
Yeah.
- [14:31]
B
Like I see people using idioms or analogies in their hook. It's gonna go over a lot of people's heads. Or they use fancy insider lingo. It's gonna go over people's heads. Dumb it down. Mr. Beast has talked about how his most viral short form content has no words, has no spoken audio, so that even if you are deaf, even if you don't speak any language, you're able to consume that content and understand what it's about. H is hook. We've talked about the hook, right? A is authentic, and authenticity is one of these buzzwords that people love to throw out there. My definition of how do you practically be authentic on Instagram is to reduce the time between idea and execution. So the less time that you can spend scripting, chatgpting, prompting, planning, and all of that, the more authentic it'll be. Additionally, the less time you can spend editing. I think a huge problem is overthinking.
- [15:20]
A
Yeah, no, that makes sense. And I think there's maybe a couple of different types of people, but two big categories. One, there's people who are already comfortable posting content. There's still some that are trying to get over the fear, but many are comfortable posting content, and then some are hesitant to even post at all. What's funny is, as you said, that it actually made me think about my own process in a way. Like, I almost know too much. I'll get an idea, but then it's like, oh, let me craft it. Let me really. Let me talk to Claude about it. Then what should the exact headline be? And then. And let me even make a few bullet points. And then I've sometimes scripted an entire video and use cap cut to do the eye contact thing. And I just read it on my computer to quickly do that. Which again, still did. But talk about that idea of just compress it. Like, use the energy around closest to when you had the inspiration or the idea is genius. Because that's also kind of when your emotion is biased too.
- [16:09]
B
Yeah. That is what makes it authentic. Quite literally. Every layer of scripting, editing, refilming, reshooting, all of that is adding layers between your original idea and emotion and energy and the final product. And I could give a million examples. Three days ago, I had a post, I was like, this is really good. I remember I finished editing it and I came out and told Tay, my wife. I was like, I'm feeling good right now. Like, I'm feeling in the zone. That was a good edit. Is my worst performing post of, like, the last 90 days.
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A
Wow.
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B
Yeah.
- [16:37]
A
Yeah. So that's. And. And would you agree with this, that at the same time, listeners, it's both. And there's a time and place, though, to sit down and script and to practice the art form.
- [16:47]
B
Absolutely.
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A
Because the processing of scripting or crafting each sentence in a certain environment could absolutely be effective.
- [16:55]
B
Thousand percent, thousand percent. I am a big fan of doing that in public. Practicing in Public iterating in public. And so as you are scripting, as you're refining your hooks, as you're like, oh, I'm trying to figure out these new formats. I'm trying to speak in varied sentence length like Brock said to do. Post it. Like, don't edit it and then leave it in your drafts and be like, I'll do another one tomorrow. No, post it. It'd be like, imagine you studied shooting a basketball and then you did all this work. Like, you're holding the basketball and you're like, following through, but you're never actually, like, shooting the basketball. Shoot the ball, like, and then you can learn from the.
- [17:25]
A
What'd you do this week? I read five more books about basketball. Have you actually been shooting the ball?
- [17:29]
B
Exactly.
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A
I haven't been shooting it though, but exactly, yeah.
- [17:32]
B
I want to finish the Share acronym, though. The R is relatability. And relatability comes from specificity. So something that I think a lot of people do is they try to water down their stories. Because the thought is, if I tell a story about how I was running late and I was stressed, everyone can relate to being running late and stressed. But no one's going to relate that specifically. No one's going to relate, like, feel it that heavily, right? But if instead I'm talking about how I missed my alarm and then my dog threw up in the corner, so I had to clean up their throw up this morning. And then I really wanted to get a good cup of coffee, but I just didn't have time, so I had to do, like, a crappy old cup of brewed coffee from the night before. And then I was like, I spilled on my shirt, so I had to change shirts. I had to stop at the Nordstrom's and grab a new shirt on the way. Like, all of those specifics, no one has had that exact thing happen to them. But because of how storytelling works, because of how our mirror neurons and our minds work, when I give you all those specifics, you're picturing yourself. Your brain is like imagining what it's like to be in that story. And so it's able to connect with you much deeper. It's able to hit much harder.
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A
So relatability is specificity.
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B
Relatability is specificity. It's not vagueness. And again, we think, oh, if I'm more vague, if I'm more watered down, if I'm more vanilla. Everyone likes vanilla, sure. But nobody is like, a vanilla super fan. No one's going to be like, some people are, but no one's going to be craving that vanilla. I remember I talked about this on stage once and someone was like, what about Madagascar Vanilla Bean? I was like, but that's specific. You gave me a specific vanilla.
- [18:59]
A
Yeah.
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B
And so relatability comes from specificity. So whether it's your captions, the stories that you're telling when you're yapping, the text that you're putting on the screen to label the situation, get specific. One more quick example before we move off of the R. If I posted a reel and it said it was like me crying, let's say a meme of me crying with some sad violin in the background, and the text said, me when my reel doesn't do well, everyone can relate to that. Whether you're Oprah Winfrey or you're Joe Schmo, everyone's had a reel not do well. But if instead I say me when I spend three hours editing a reel that I was sure would go viral and it gets seven likes, those specifics are what allow you to connect on a deeper level. It's what makes it funnier. It's what makes it more relatable.
- [19:41]
A
Okay.
- [19:42]
B
And finally, the E is entertaining. So way too many business owners and brands and content creators are focused on educational content. There's value in education, but education alone is often very boring. And so instead we have to, like we were talking about earlier with different formats for your videos, with your hooks, with your visuals, the way you're presenting the content, you can educate, but you have to do it in a way that people are actually going to be entertained or else they're not going to stop their scroll and watch.
- [20:06]
A
That's strong. The share formula. And that if you hit all those, sharing is the number one metric for virality.
- [20:14]
B
Yes.
- [20:14]
A
What if I told you that you could grow your Instagram following in less than 15 minutes a day? Well, I'm excited because I'm hosting a free web class with brock johnson@bestigtips.com he actually has a three step framework for gaining 1000 new followers per month, how to beat the algorithm right now, and some of the changes that are happening, as well as his formula for creating Instagram reels that get you the right followers and get more views. So if you want to be a part of that free class, just go to bestigtips.com or click the link in the show notes. All right, let's dive back into the podcast. I'm curious about what you think about this in terms of your understanding of the Instagram algorithm algorithms are similar, I believe, especially in the today's world where it's like we've shifted from social media to interest media and the content is the variable. And that's true kind of across platform. But I've noticed algorithms seem different and one big part of Instagram seems to be identity. That Instagram is an identity based platform. You might disagree. I'll go deeper though.
- [21:23]
B
Yeah.
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A
That as Instagram begins to get to know you, the reels you're being recommended is like, I'm an elder millennial. I'm 42, I'm a dad of 5 and 3 and Instagram knows I'm a dad. I'll get dad. Obviously it's who I'm engaging with.
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B
Yeah.
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A
But the types of posts that can hit identities and those identities could be very broad appeal because there's lots of dads or there's like small business owners. And is there something strategic to lean in on that? Is that an accurate assessment of some of what's working on Instagram?
- [21:52]
B
Yeah, definitely. It just goes back to the idea of niche. Like when you niche down, that is ultimately how you're going to grow. Now you can go viral without any.
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A
Let me ask you this. If, if I'm not going to niche down, like, so you, you follow me on Instagram. I wrote YouTube secrets and you know, teach YouTube. But I feel like there's a time and place to talk about like fatherhood stuff does good for me. That's the. Maybe it's a piece of the overall puzzle or my faith and that can resonate. Is that a good idea or a bad idea? Because that's not my niche. Yeah, no, fatherhood nor faith is my niche.
- [22:25]
B
Yeah. I think that there's, there's, there's layers to this and how we approach it. Good idea or bad idea? I would take a step back and ask, like, what is your goal? If your goal on Instagram was to get a million followers and to have this ginormous Instagram audience, then I would say stick to one thing, like bring in those other elements, sprinkle them in, maybe weave them into stories creatively. Like, we both love snowboarding. Maybe I'm not going to make a post of me snowboarding some sweet powder day, but I'm going to record a quick tip on the podcast or on the chairlift. Excuse me. So they're seeing it. Right. But if your goal is, hey, I don't want a million followers, but I want maybe a couple hundred thousand who really know me, who are super fans, who are invested, then you can start to broaden out those topics a little bit. I can start to bring in more fatherhood. I can start to bring in more faith related. I can start to bring in more snowboarding content because then people are following me for these different buckets.
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A
Yeah.
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B
The only challenge there is, you know, to give the counter argument. Let's say you make an amazing post about fatherhood and it goes viral and I love in this. Yeah. And you don't talk about it anymore.
- [23:26]
A
Yeah. So I see. Okay. So I mean I, I'm sure this is the type of stuff as you know, marketers and social media people we think about a lot. So what would you tell me to do? Do it or not? If you were me, what would you do?
- [23:36]
B
What's your goal?
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A
Well, my goal is to, I mean my, my primary goal number one I would actually say is to not go out of business. It's actually because. And that's not that money is the first thing, but I believe that you need money for the mission and it's maybe another way to put it. I want to play the infinite game like Simon Sinek's book. And my ethos is that you know, your income strictly correlated to the amount of value you add to the marketplace. So there's, there's a presupposition that I'm going to add value. You know, there's going to be brand trust built and we're going to help people with YouTube as far as our company. And then so then I, my, my belief which could be a false belief but it's like that on the same token people do business with people that they know like and trust.
- [24:25]
B
Yeah.
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A
And they follow people with shared beliefs.
- [24:29]
B
Yeah.
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A
Sometimes, I mean to some degree they resonate with certain people. But people, I mean Gen Z especially, there's a whole bunch of stats of like a Gen Z will switch brands if, if they have two options and there's a brand that more aligns with, they believe in more eco friendly or something like that. So that's kind of. I think there's that, I think there's also then there's like the sub point of, of like self expression slash. Well, I just feel like I would sacrifice followers to be able to express myself. I still think there's like a hierarchy of priority because the social media serves business, you know, objectives, not the other way around.
- [25:06]
B
I think the way you're doing Instagram is perfect for what you want and what your goals are. I think it, like you said, it checks off the self expression. You get to talk about the things that really matter to you. You have a large audience, your audience knows, likes and trusts you. You don't have 2 million followers on Instagram. I also.
- [25:24]
A
I don't have 1 million followers.
- [25:25]
B
I also would imagine, true, I don't have 500,000. I don't have 1 million Followers on Instagram. But I also would imagine that being someone who focuses on YouTube and posting about that on Instagram is just never going to have.
- [25:38]
A
It's not that.
- [25:39]
B
Yeah, the ceiling. Right. It's like me posting about Instagram on TikTok. The TikTok audience is like, we want TikTok. Yeah, maybe they want YouTube, but they definitely don't want Instagram. Right. And same thing, whenever I talk about TikTok on my Instagram, they're like, we don't want TikTok, we want Instagram.
- [25:53]
A
Makes sense.
- [25:54]
B
Yeah. And there is. There is the YouTube crossover, which YouTube has this kind of unique position in the market where it's kind of the like, yeah, I'm on Instagram and YouTube.
- [26:01]
A
It's the universal center. It's almost considered not a social media platform.
- [26:04]
B
Totally.
- [26:04]
A
Exactly. It's the video player place where you live.
- [26:07]
B
Exactly. And so I think that there are opportunities, like a bigger opportunity for you to reach, you know, a larger audience. But I think the way that you're doing it is. Is exactly what I would suggest.
- [26:16]
A
Okay, so that was on. We talked about share. We're talking about, you know, types of posts that get views. You're talking about authenticity. I want to hear about some of the changes. There's always these micro changes. That's why I follow you and that's why you're my coach and Instagram. But what are the most significant from you meeting with Instagram's team, the CEO, you know, assuming that most people, you know, aren't paying that close of attention. If there's like some of the big rocks of things that have happened in most recent six to 12 months.
- [26:48]
B
Yeah. First of all, there's a million bajillion little features. There's probably been three new ones that they've released today. There is always little tiny changes, but there haven't been any massive overhauls necessarily in the last few years. Shares are number one in terms of virality. Likes are number one in terms of reaching your audience. Those are the two most important. Everything else, comments, saves, all of those are far, far, far lower in terms of what's going to determine your. Your reach on Instagram. Ultimately, what Instagram cares about is getting people to have conversations and Specifically, DM conversations. That's their Holy Grail. That's their North Star, is how do we get more people to have DM conversations? Because we can argue about which came first, the chicken or the egg. But as the algorithm has existed for the last decade, the average Joe is posting a lot less. Your friends and family are posting a lot less. I remember when I was in high school, every one of my friends posted every single day, without fail on their feed. Now I have friends who I follow who haven't posted in six years, and they're still alive, and I talk to them every day, but they haven't posted a single thing in six years. They've gotten married, they've had children. They haven't posted in six years. And so, again, we can make the argument as to, did people start posting less so the algorithms change? Did the algorithms change so people started posting less? All of this to say, Instagram's like, people are existing in the DMs. People are using Instagram for the DMs.
- [28:14]
A
I get what you're saying, and I have friends, too, that I felt like there's almost no life on their account, but they consume, share, and talk to people.
- [28:20]
B
Yes. One of my best friends, it's gotten to the point where I've almost had to send him to rehab, where he sends me so many reels that I'm like, you need to chill. And then every three weeks, he deletes his Instagram for a week. And then he comes back a week later and he's like, I'm better now. And during that week, he's sending me YouTube shorts. I'm like, you're no better. You're just on a different platform. Yes. Texting me YouTube shorts. And then he said, I'm deleting YouTube shorts. He starts sending me LinkedIn videos. Yeah, okay. But anyways, the case in point is that's how most people use Instagram. Most people are using Instagram to send reels, to have DM conversations, to chat in the messages. And then Instagram says, hey, if we can get them to do that, then maybe they'll see the occasional ad in their feed as well. Right. They still have to scroll reels to find the things to send. And so all of this to say shares, but also content that generates DMs, content that generates conversations, Instagram stories. That is really Instagram's focus.
- [29:10]
A
What is a trial reel?
- [29:13]
B
Yeah, the trial reel. It was touted as the Holy Grail, and I think it's somewhere in the middle. It's a helpful thing. So what a trial reel is, it's a unique thing that Instagram created where you can post a reel that will not be shown to any of your existing followers. So it's only shown to new people. Right. And there's a clear benefit to that from a marketing perspective. I can test things out, I can trial things, hence the name trial reels. But what a lot of people, myself included, very quickly figured out is this is like being a baseball player who cannot strike out. I can swing all I want willy nilly. Maybe I make a contact 1 out of 100 times, but who cares? Yeah, because I just have unlimited at bats or opportunities to reach new people. Instagram was like, whoa, whoa, whoa. Maybe we let the floodgates open a little bit too much on this one. And so now they've throttled it down. So you can only post. It varies per account, which is annoying. Some accounts can post only 5 per day, some can post up to 25 per day. But it still represents how many can you post?
- [30:10]
A
Five. How many do you post? Five every day?
- [30:13]
B
Yeah, I try to. This is another layer that we can talk about. But when they first launched, you had to manually post every single one. And that was a huge challenge. Right, Because I have a team, I have a business to run, and so I'm not just gonna be sitting there on Instagram posting my 5 trial reels a day. Now tools like Metricool can schedule them, and Instagram actually recently opened up the ability in Instagram in the app to schedule your trial reels. So that's really helpful. But again, I think that they're best used as a. An opportunity to test out ideas. So if you're like, hey, I have these two different hooks, I'm not sure which one. Post them both as a trial and see which one wins. If I have three different ways that I edited this video, post all three and see which one wins. Right.
- [30:53]
A
Are some of your videos trial tests that eventually were flipped public?
- [30:57]
B
Yes and no. So here's the hack. Here's what everyone gets wrong about trial reels is if a trial reel does well, they upgrade it or they flip it or whatever word you want to use, and they put it onto their normal feed, they transfer it to their normal feed. That's not the way I would recommend doing things. And here's why. If I post it as a trial reel on Monday, it goes viral on Thursday, and on Friday, I upgrade it on Friday, it does not show up on my feed for all of my followers to see as a New post. It shows that I posted it five
- [31:22]
A
days ago as a days old.
- [31:23]
B
So it's more likely to get buried.
- [31:24]
A
Yeah.
- [31:25]
B
So what I recommend doing is, hey, it's proven itself. It's going to do well. The people like it. They're eating it up. Just take that exact same video and create a copy of it, duplicate it. Probably duplicate it before posting it so that you just have it in the backlog ready to go and post it as a new reel, an actual original reel. One caveat I do want to do that say about this is you cannot do this in reverse. So you cannot take something that you've previously posted on your normal feed and post it as a trial reel. Originally, you were able to do that,
- [31:54]
A
meaning you're not liking conditions. Or it'll flag it.
- [31:56]
B
It will. Instagram will allow you to post it, but once you do, you'll get a notification that says, sorry, this is viewed as duplicate content and we will not be showing this to new people. And the Instagram pendulum has swung way overboard in this, where even if you have something that's brand new, this happened to a lot of people and they have never posted it before. Instagram's like, whoa, this is a duplicate. Like, no, it's not. I've never posted this. So it's an overcorrection by Instagram. I'm sure the pendulum will swing back and it will. That the tools will get better at determining what actually is a duplicate. But the long and short of it is if it's posted to your trials, you're good to post it to the feed. If it's supposed to your feed, you should not also post it as a trial.
- [32:34]
A
Are you. I mean, I followed you. And one of the big opportunities for listeners is like, okay, Instagram's a great place to make money, get leads, build a following, build a personal brand. But all this stuff, man, it takes work.
- [32:46]
B
Sure.
- [32:46]
A
One of my favorite strategies from you, though, is like, never post a reel once.
- [32:50]
B
Mm.
- [32:51]
A
Schedule immediately if you're about to post a reel, to repost it in 60 to 90 days. Yeah. So you're gonna have this compounding stack of new content, but also repurposed content. But in light of what you're just saying about trial reels, terms of service wise, are we allowed to do that?
- [33:08]
B
Yes. Yes. So I asked. I asked Missouri about this in my interview with him. I said, are we good to do this? He said, yes, because it's your content. You have the right to it. They had to make this change for trial reels. Because marketers were spamming the system because they recognized I could post 300 of the exact same trial reel over and over and over again. And even if each one of these only gets a thousand views, if I post it 300 times, you.
- [33:28]
A
3,000 views. 300,000 views, yeah.
- [33:31]
B
And so they were like, okay, we need to kind of reel things in a little bit. But on your feed, they recognize that if you were to post the Exact same video 300 times in a day, everyone would just unfollow you and the algorithm would learn like, hey, we're not going to show this to anybody. And so, yeah, you're free. Yeah, you're free to re upload over and over and over again as much as you want.
- [33:51]
A
For you, though, do you literally repost every reel you post or only the winners?
- [33:55]
B
Every reel? Because like we talked about earlier, there's something that you're like, man, this is gonna go viral. And it doesn't. Maybe there's something going on that day. Yeah, you know, maybe there was. Maybe there was a big cultural event, maybe everyone was paying attention to something else. Maybe there was. Who knows? There's so many different factors. And so what I say is post it at least three times before you let it strike out. Basically give it three, three, three swings at the bat. And if all three times that you post it, it flops and fails, then you can say like, okay, I'm gonna shelf this post or I'm gonna revisit it. Why did it not work? But sometimes it's the third post, the third time where I post it, where then it goes viral, then it spikes and goes crazy. And I'm glad that I had posted it that third time and not just prejudged it and predetermined that it was gonna flop.
- [34:36]
A
Is it worth doing solo photo posts with captions?
- [34:43]
B
Rarely. Rarely. I'd much rather have a carousel, even if it's just a two slide carousel. And the algorithmic reason for that is that the second slide of the carousel can reappear in people's feed. It's kind of like, I think, correct me if I'm wrong, if YouTube does this, you know, you have like multiple thumbnails that you might be testing. If I don't click on the video the first time YouTube shows me, it will show me it again. With the second thumbnail, it shows you with a different thumbnail, same exact idea. So it'd be like, well, why would we not at least give it a second thumbnail? Why would we at least not give a Second slide in the carousel. In most cases, that's what I would recommend instead of just a still.
- [35:17]
A
Is Instagram Live still a good strategy?
- [35:19]
B
No, no, no. Instagram Live, you can, like, take it off your to do list, take it off your thing. It's. It's not evergreen. There's a very, very, very small niche market who can use it very effectively, like live sellers or people who already have a large audience. But the real limitation with Instagram Live is it doesn't reach new people. So the only people who are finding it are existing followers or if there's like a random straggler who. Who finds your page at the exact moment that you're live. And there are some really niche strategies that you could use, like DM automation on an Instagram Live that can be powerful. And I've done that before where I'm on Live on Instagram and I say, hey, comment the word live or comment the word send and I'll send you the ticket to our upcoming event. That's possible, but again, it requires a big enough audience to begin with to actually have people show up on the Live.
- [36:03]
A
There's kind of a newer feature called, like, repost, which was similar to when Twitter was called Twitter retweet.
- [36:09]
B
Yeah. Yeah.
- [36:10]
A
Is it effective?
- [36:11]
B
What does it do when you press Repost? If I see a Sean Cannell post and I press repost, it's my way of telling the algorithm, hey, algorithm, I want my followers to potentially see this. It's kind of like I can suggest to the algorithm that I think my followers would be interested in this. It doesn't guarantee it. Reposting your own stuff does absolutely nothing because you already posted, you've already told the algorithm, I want my followers to see this. So reposting your own things doesn't.
- [36:37]
A
I feel like people still do that, though.
- [36:38]
B
They do.
- [36:39]
A
They want the little not going to hurt floaty guy.
- [36:41]
B
Yeah.
- [36:41]
A
So then it's all. It also feels like somewhat of a social proof. If I see somebody else's thing, I can see a few faces, but it's usually people I follow. So I'm like, oh, my friends are into this too.
- [36:49]
B
Exactly, exactly. And so there's a little bit of social proof to it that, yes, your profile bubble will kind of float over the bottom left corner of the post if you've reposted it. But algorithmically speaking, when repost first launched, we were like, holy schnikes. This is going to be just like a share. Right. Because it's putting posts in front of more eyeballs but reposts have nothing to do with the DMs. If I repost your post, there's no conversation being started, there's no direct message happening. And so again, going back to what Instagram's North Star is, it doesn't really connect. And so all of this to say reposts don't really make a huge difference.
- [37:24]
A
Let's get into a few more tactics and I actually want to hear about some of the biggest mistakes. But one of the things we've benefited from, I think media and I have personally, is being a part of your community called Insta Club Hub. Now, I wanted to make sure, if people want to check that out, I think you have a trial to that.
- [37:37]
B
Yeah, we do.
- [37:38]
A
People can go to, I mean, it's like seven bucks for 14 days. You could go to IG growth guide.com or we'll put a link to that in the description. But what exactly are you guys doing in that community?
- [37:48]
B
Yeah, we try to not just like, lead a horse to water, but lead a horse to water, put the straw in the horse's mouth, and then cheer for it while it drinks the water. So the way that we do that is we have a course, five courses in one that vary depending on what level you're on. So when you join the club, you take this assessment because there are people watching today who are like, you know, get into the advanced stuff, Sean, like I want to get into. And then there are some people who are like trial reels. What are we talking about? This is a different language. Those two people should not be taking the same course. So we have five different courses in one. Also part of that assessment is we figure out what your niche is, what your production style is, what your resources are, and we actually create a custom content calendar for every single one of our members. So every single person in the club gets a 30 day personalized calendar of here's what you should post. And then of course, we have, you know, live trainings and workshops and templates and all of that. But that's how, you know, you started today by mentioning that I get 15 million views a month. And I'm proud of that. But I'm even more proud of is that our average member gains 15,000 followers per year, almost over 500 in their first 30 days. And so we get them results, or we help them get results by giving them everything they could possibly need. So all they have to do is, in your words, just hit record.
- [39:01]
A
Yeah, I love that. And I mean, it's one thing to you know, as a marketer, talk about the talking points of your product, but to share the transformation of your clients in your students with real numbers like that is incredible.
- [39:13]
B
Yeah, I'm really proud of them. They're kicking butt.
- [39:15]
A
So you get to coach all these individuals that are specifically doing Instagram. I'm curious the biggest pitfalls and mistakes where you see people that's sabotaging their growth and they're not getting the followers or the views because they are doing these things that are fixable.
- [39:30]
B
Inconsistency is the obvious one. Inconsistency often comes from burnout. My hot take is that burnout does not come from posting too much. It comes from overthinking, over analyzing and over refining every post you make. And so my three famous words are just press post. Just press post. And then you can also Press post again 60 to 90 days later, 60 to 90 days after that. But that will ultimately allow you a lot more freedom and a lot more, okay, I'm just, I have a post on for the day. I'm just gonna post it. I'm not gonna try to make it perfect. And I think that a tactical way that people can do this is if they're watching today's episode and they do not currently have seven days at least of pre scheduled, pre made content, they should not post today, they should not post tomorrow, they should not post for the week, they should not post again until they have seven days scheduled. So if that means take two weeks or three weeks or four weeks off of posting in order to batch, create, do that.
- [40:22]
A
And the reason for that is then
- [40:24]
B
they will get off the hamster wheel of wake up every day. What am I going to post today? Come up with a new idea, create it, over analyze, agonize over it, press post, it flops. That is such a demanding, draining, negative feedback loop. And then what happens when life happens? What happens when the boys are being boys? What happens when you know something goes wrong and then you don't have a post that day? Now you've become inconsistent. Your competition and everyone else out there did post that day, but you didn't. And I say all this because the more you post, the more you grow on Instagram, there's a direct correlation. Twice a day, three times a day, four times a day. There's examples of accounts posting over 100 times a day and they are growing the fastest. So ultimately, if it is that frequency that's going to determine your growth, then why are you banking on, I hope I have an inspiration tomorrow. I hope I Have enough motivation tomorrow, batch your content, then you're out ahead of things, and then you don't have to create every day. You can create when you're inspired, when you're feeling good, looking good, when life is allowing you a 30 minute window to film a quick reel. And that will allow you to stay a lot more consistent.
- [41:27]
A
What is the importance of Instagram stories?
- [41:30]
B
Yeah, Instagram stories brings me back to something you brought up earlier, which is the know like and trust factor. Instagram stories are where people go to know like and trust you better. And so they might see one of your posts in their feed. It's a quick tip about your thumbnails, quick tip about YouTube. And they're like, oh, that's cool. I want to grow on YouTube this year, so I'm gonna follow this guy. They click follow first. They're probably gonna check out your page, they're gonna see your bio. It mentions it's YouTube. They see YouTube in a bunch of all your other posts. Okay, I'm gonna follow Sean then, because they followed you, Instagram's like, do you want to check out this guy's stories? Then they watch your stories and they're like, oh, he's a dad. Oh, he snowboards. Oh, he's into faith. You know, they see all this other stuff, they're like, oh, I like his style. And then they're like, okay, now I'm starting to like this guy. I'm gonna keep tuning into his stories. And so Instagram stories are a place to let your freak flag fly. They're a place to build that trust. And because of all that, they're also a really powerful place to sell. Right? And so it's a place where people can really get to know you, trust you. And then you're like, hey, you know, I've really been struggling with X, Y and Z. Or I was working with a client the other day and they were, they had this problem. So I created this. I have this guide, I have this solution. I have this new YouTube video, I have this new podcast. And people were like, I love Sean. I love all his content. I relate to him, I connect to him. I'm going to click on that without even having to hear the sales pitch. I'm going to sign up without even having to read the sales page. So I think that Instagram stories are a really, really powerful place to build the trust and then also convert on the trust.
- [42:57]
A
I want to talk about one big final category that might go lots of different directions, which is not just how to monetize best practices for making money, but also making money with a small audience. But before we get there, as kind of like the part final of today's podcast, I do want to make sure people can follow you and check you out. Of course. Easy enough for people to know that we always have great show notes in the description, you know, but anything you want to shout out, anything people can where they can find you.
- [43:27]
B
Yeah. Instagram. Brock Levin Johnson. I post 75 million times a day. And so there's plenty of strategies, ideas and tips and stuff for free. And as my YouTube coach, we've recently hit 100k on YouTube. So thank you so much for all your guidance there. That's been in the works for a while and so I appreciate all your tips and help. And we're build your tribe on YouTube where every week, at least once a week, there's some sort of tip strategy video about growing on. Usually growing on Instagram.
- [43:53]
A
Yeah. I appreciate your kind words. Congratulations.
- [43:55]
B
Thank you.
- [43:56]
A
So great resources, as usual in the show notes of the Think media podcast, but we're not done. We're gonna talk about making money. So on Instagram specifically, before money, because it kind of ties into it. You know, you're the Instagram guy. But what I love is we, we've been in this last couple months, we've been collabing because we're both kind of like all in on YouTube and Instagram or Instagram and YouTube and those two things kind of work together. What synergy do you see there? Maybe that ties to the money connection conversation, I should say.
- [44:27]
B
Yeah.
- [44:27]
A
Or maybe it ties to just. A lot of humans are both. I mean, a lot of consumers. You know, I connect with friends on Instagram, I scroll. It's entertaining. It's a different platform. I also watch YouTube. Of course, there's people who love TikTok and Snapchat, but. Yeah. Your thoughts on the, the, your workflow between those two platforms?
- [44:43]
B
Yeah, I love the synergy between the two. I'd be curious what your audience split is like, because I was talking to my mom, who she's not just a random mother. She's been on the show before. She is, I guess today you can. Could call her a fitness creator. Her. Her niche changes every few months with the wind. Yeah, but we were talking the other day and I was like, hey, my YouTube audience is completely different than my Instagram audience. Different demographics. There's, you know, core fans who are followers on both, but my YouTube audience skews more male. It skews younger. My instagram audience skews more female excuse. Older. And she was like, yeah, same. Like the people who follow me on Instagram, the majority don't also subscribe to my YouTube. There's the super fans. But I'm wondering, first of all, for you, do you notice the same thing or do you.
- [45:31]
A
Well, it's funny listening to you talk. What it actually told me to do is to do my research because I'm like, now I'm super fascinated. No, I actually, I don't know that we've directly analyzed that. Secondly, it made me ask a very tactical question, which is, is there an easy way to see your Instagram analytics? Maybe more specifically, is there a desktop way to see them?
- [45:49]
B
I think you can view it on desktop now. I believe on the Instagram, just instagram.com on desktop. You can now view your professional dashboard. They have the best. They've been smart about this. Their best analytics dashboard is in the edits app because they want people to download the edits app. So if you go there, then you can see like really fine tooth stuff.
- [46:07]
A
What's the edits app?
- [46:08]
B
It's their, their editing. It's their Capcut competitor. So it's their mobile only app that is directly tied to Instagram. All of Instagram's audios and stuff are in there. If you save a post on Instagram, it will show up in the edits app. It's actually gotten a lot better. When it first launched, I was not a fan, but now I use it for like quick edits for reels and stuff. But that's the app where you can find like more advanced analytics.
- [46:28]
A
Okay, so interesting. So I don't have a good answer for you, but we're talking about the difference of audiences. Some crossover, some, you know, of course, isolated individuals that only follow you one place or the other. But then bringing it back, then what's the best monetization strategies, do you think? Or how do you coach people when they start thinking, I want to get onto Instagram and make money?
- [46:48]
B
Yeah. Yeah. I also do want to say I have seen a really great conversion between Instagram and YouTube and vice versa. It's definitely been an awesome boost to my YouTube to have a large Instagram audience to kind of feed subscribers early on. And now I'm getting all these subscribers and messages from people who are like, I love your YouTube channel. I've only followed you on YouTube for two years and now I followed you on Instagram, which is really cool to.
- [47:10]
A
How do you actually do that? Get them from one place to the
- [47:13]
B
other so on YouTube, just telling them here's my Instagram channel, subscribe to me there, follow me there. And here's why. Giving them like the specific what I post, why would they want to follow me on Instagram? And I think the benefit there is like Instagram is a lot daily content. Right. You're getting little snippets, you're getting a little goldfish tray every single day on Instagram, whereas you're getting the full buffet on YouTube once a week.
- [47:36]
A
Yeah.
- [47:37]
B
And then on Instagram of course there's the full buffet on YouTube. But I think there's some really creative ways that you can promote your YouTube channel. I think if you just take a 7 second or 43 second snippet from a podcast and you throw it up on your Instagram, people are going to be like what? It's going to lack context. They're going to be super confused. But there are some creative formats that we've seen really work for getting people From Instagram to YouTube and we can talk about those. But I know you asked me about monetization, so I think one misconception with monetization is you don't need a big audience. Audience. Yeah. One of our members recently had a $35,000 launch in one weekend. She's got 957 followers. Not even a thousand followers. She's got really great trust with her audience. She's super niche down. She only talks about one super hyper specific topic. And so when it comes time to sell her mastermind, they know she's good for it. They know they can count on her. They know she's reliable for that topic. She's also very heavy in the DMs. Ton of DM conversations, qualifying leads, answering questions, serving, focusing on the transformation. Not just the, the transaction herself too.
- [48:37]
A
Not as a bot.
- [48:38]
B
Not as a bot. That does bring me to manychat and DM automation which is. That's like a non negotiable. Yeah, that's like if you were trying to grow a YouTube channel and you didn't have thumbnails made, you just kind of picked a random snippet from the random freeze frame.
- [48:51]
A
Deciding not to do that.
- [48:52]
B
Yeah, like I'm, I'm not gonna worry about like.
- [48:54]
A
No, that's not actually a choice.
- [48:55]
B
If you want to like titles. I'm just going to do img_003.mo v.
- [49:00]
A
Like that's not doing titles either.
- [49:02]
B
Yeah, if people are going to find
- [49:03]
A
it, they're going to find it.
- [49:04]
B
Exactly. I'M going to let them do it the right way. No, DM automation is a non negotiable and that's. Everyone's seen it now. It's the thing where it's like comment guide and I'll send you my free guide comment recipe and I'll send you the full details. That sort of thing.
- [49:16]
A
Is manychat the only solution for that?
- [49:17]
B
No, there, there are others. There are less expensive options. Many chat is the most trusted. It's over a million users. It's an official partner of Meta, which means that they don't just like access Meta's API. They're literally shaking hands with Meta. And so that's a big difference maker. They're very safe and they have most of the advanced features. There are some fringe tools that have crazy advanced features, but ManyChat has every feature you need and a few features that are really powerful that most people don't even use.
- [49:46]
A
Yeah. Okay, so that's. Break it down though, just for anything else tactically, if I want to go to Instagram. Do you. You make money from Instagram itself? How much they pay you?
- [49:59]
B
I believe, I shouldn't say exactly. Zero. I believe I get maybe 50 to 60 bucks a month for again, 15 million plus views. Their monetization is atrocious. It is so bad. Especially when you come compare it to YouTube. Yeah, even when you compare it to something like Tik Tok, it is atrocious. So what I always tell people is if you just want to get paid for your content, go to YouTube. Don't try to post on Instagram because Instagram don't pay for content. There was like a brief period, they went way overboard. It was called the Reels bonuses program. Back in like 20, 22 or 3 because they wanted people to start using reels.
- [50:35]
A
So for a second they were like giving.
- [50:37]
B
They were offering 35,000amonth. And I believe last time I was on your show, we talked about how my dog Mila was paying our rent. She was using the reels bonuses program and her reels were going viral, viral, viral. We were making like five figures, six a month. The good old days from, from our dogs, Instagram reels. Right. And then Instagram was like, hey, so this isn't sustainable.
- [50:58]
A
Yeah.
- [50:59]
B
Like they literally. Adam Mozeri, the head of Instagram was like, yeah, we, we can't keep paying people this much. He's publicly said numerous times like this we need to figure out a way to make it work. But they haven't yet.
- [51:07]
A
Yeah.
- [51:08]
B
Which is. Makes me scratch My head because like YouTube figured it out. Just do what they did. Your Instagram, you copy everyone else. Just copy what YouTube did with monetization. But no, I don't really get paid by Instagram.
- [51:18]
A
Got it. So your point is many chat, take the conversation off the platform and then figure out your monetization strategy. Yeah, what is it?
- [51:28]
B
Course a coaching membership merch, whatever it may be.
- [51:32]
A
Can affiliate marketing even work on Instagram?
- [51:34]
B
It can, and that's actually a really exciting brand new feature that was just announced. Instagram is now going to allow clickable links on reels for the first time ever, only through their built in affiliate program. So it's not exactly clear yet what products are going to be in their program. It's going to be similar to TikTok
- [51:50]
A
shop, but I believe YouTube shopping.
- [51:53]
B
Yeah, absolutely. It's going to be, I think a little bit more broad. It's not going to be like super specific to the products that are in the shop. I believe there might even be a way to like suggest products to be added or kind of like say, hey Instagram, I want to talk about this. It's not clear yet because they just announced it, but that is going to be big and that is going to be a way that people can monetize right on Instagram without needing a website or their own products. But I'm a huge fan of affiliate marketing and I do think it's a powerful, powerful way to get started.
- [52:19]
A
Okay, so in just a second I kind of want to ask the final question and this I think could be the most important question. But a couple things. Great resources as usual. Manychat for every serious professional that's active on Instagram, if you have something to sell, I mean even content creators, if you're business minded, you're going through that. We talk about the five stages of YouTube success. It's just one of those tools, if you're active on Instagram, to grab manychat, we'll make sure it's down there. Check out the club. I mean that's probably the best $7 you could spend for 14 days because if it's 500 followers in a month, that's 250 new followers for 7 bucks. Obviously got to do the work. No results guaranteed, but cool trial. And so we'll have a link to Insta Club Hub, your community and coaching program to help people crush it on Instagram and then your social media as well. My next question is just the future and last question, like when it comes to the future, you've been through so many different generations, or algorithms, trends, the reels bonus and your dog paying your rent, you know, but where do you see the future of Instagram and the opportunity and even challenges ahead and how people should navigate?
- [53:26]
B
Yeah, I think that with the rise of AI, which is something we haven't even touched on today, the bar, or I should say the, the ease of creating really professional content, really, really beautiful content, it's going to get a lot easier. It's going to be a million times easier. And we think about Instagram 2016, if you had a cool filter on your photo, you were getting likes because it was like, man, this looks pretty, this looks polished, looks put together. And that's why Instagram has the, the stigma that it still does to this day. But over the last 10 years, everyone's been like, Hey, I can download a 99 cent app, I can download a free app and get those same filters. I can edit my photos. It doesn't take a rocket scientist. And now we have AI. Or I can tell ChatGPT to make it look a certain way. And so I think that the, the vanity or the aesthetics of your content is going to matter so much less and less and less and less. And it is going to be the value that you're providing. And when I say value, that's often misinterpreted as education. Like we talked about earlier, value can be entertainment, right? On the drive here today, I was, I wasn't watching a YouTube video while I was driving. I was listening to it, but I had a YouTube video up. And it wasn't educational, but it was, it was entertaining. And every time I go on a long drive, I put on a YouTube video. And that is valuable to me because it's giving me joy and allowing me to pass the time. And so anyways, all this to say I want everyone listening to embrace the raw, the real, the imperfect. Rip the band aid off. Like, embrace what makes you uniquely you, even if that's something that's flawed or mistaked or filled with imperfections, because that is what makes you human. That is what makes you unique. And that is what we're all craving. We all go on Instagram craving someone real who I can just relate to, someone who is talking to me like a human being, who's not talking to me like a newscaster from 1970 with a polished filter and some AI edit on top. Like, if, if you're a great content creator and you really want to make that professional cinematic stuff knock your socks off, if that's your creative outlet knock your socks off. But for most brands and business owners, stop trying to make it perfect and polished and make it.
- [55:26]
A
Posted Brock Johnson thank you so much for coming back on the podcast. Think Media Podcast like Rate, Share, review wherever you watch or listen. My name is Sean Cannell, your guide to building a profitable YouTube channel and I will connect with you in a future episode.