If you've been struggling to get followers and views on Instagram, and if you've ever thought, well, maybe the algorithm is just not on my side, or the latest algorithm updates are just messing me up and stuff like this, let me actually show you the exact same system that I've been using with my clients for the better part of two years now. Obviously, we've been refining this process basically daily, but let me show you the latest step -by-step process you can actually follow that we have used to get our clients 4 .2 million followers over the past 12 months. At least that's how much it was when I last took a look at this. Obviously, it's been a lot more. Just yesterday, there was another client hitting 100 ,000 followers. The other day, it was somebody hitting 500 ,000 followers. Oh, yes, but you get the idea. These are just a bunch of screenshots that we've just recently gotten, as you can see, well, basically recently with our clients. I could scroll for days at this point already, but I don't want to toot my horn, actually. I just want to use this whole thing to actually make you figure out and make you understand that Instagram is far from dead. I honestly believe, especially if you want to monetize and build a strong following base right now in 2024, Instagram is the strongest platform out there, especially for content. Now, the way we've been able to do this, because there's a lot of gurus out there who are just talking about this one strategy and this one thing that just works well and stuff like this. Yes, obviously it might work for them, but I've been working with clients for the better part of seven years now, and I've seen the game change so many times, to be honest. If there's one thing I can say is that, well, there's not one strategy. There's actually some things that might work for one person, might not work at all, might actually mess up the other person's account. This is where my strategy, our strategy from my agency basically right now, the creative mentorship comes into play, which I call data-driven content marketing, data-driven content framework, because here's what's up. Again, if there's one thing I've learned over the past years, you just need to take a look at data. We don't want to do hope marketing. We don't want to just throw a bunch of content out there and hoping it will stick. We actually want to throw a bunch of content out there. First of all, hoping it would stick, but, and that's the important difference, we want to be able to analyze which one of them sticked, stuck, and what are the insights that we can actually take away from this whole mess that we created. Now, in order to do this whole content marketing framework, while it's not so beautiful as I thought it would be, we obviously need to get all the way down back to your inner core, back to what you are and why you even want to become an Instagram creator or a content creator in the first place. Because I see it a lot. Lots of clients come to me. They're like, well, I just want to get Instagram famous. For example, I just want the internet to give me internet points, invisible internet points that are not going to buy me anything at the end of the day. Well, fair enough, right? That's all. There's also a way to get that. Just be cool among your friends. But obviously that won't buy bread at the end of the day or a Lamborghini. You know what I mean? So first of all, you need to be aware of what are your actual goals and not just your goals. For example, if you want to make money with it, which probably is obviously the case, or you want to become free in terms of having more freedom. That was my initial goal when I started out was I just don't want to wake up anymore and go to work. I didn't care as much about the actual becoming rich part. I actually cared about being free. So that was my initial thing. But that's not enough because we also need to be aware of what is our actual mission, because, you know, what actually drives, for example, in my case, it still is the same thing. I want to help as many people as possible to actually become free, actually make money and do things that they love, which is content creation, because that's actually the thing that I love the most as well. Now, if we're clear about that, only then we can sort of reverse engineer our strategy, our content strategy that is, first of all, in alignment with our own goals, but also one that's in alignment with what works, because you'll get yourself burnt out quicker than you can say hello if it's misaligned, kind of. Now, so first of all, get clear on that part. What is your actual why? And write it down right now. Take a pen and paper, write it down. What is your why? What is your goal? Think about, let's say, in a year from now, what is the one thing you want to have accomplished with your content, right? With your Instagram account, for example. Most likely it's being free. Most likely it's making money. Who knows? Whatever that is, just write it down. Then the second thing that is even the most important thing, and in my programs we spent weeks, sometimes with some clients, even months figuring that out. And here's a quick, you know, outlook into the future. You're going to always have to think of your ideal viewer persona, aka your avatar, if you create content, because things change, things develop, content develops, stuff like that. So second thing I want you to write down right now, instantly, because once you've done it, you got it over with, because I know most people actually, they struggle with this and they don't want to spend time on this crucial part. But yeah, think about what is the age of your ideal viewer? What are their struggles, right? What are their biggest frustrations? Everybody has frustrations. And here's actually where you come in. Also, you want to know about their values. You also want to know about their goals, right? Ideally, these things are in alignment with you, with your mission and with your goals, because well, people just like the whole no bullshit thing. And people just like to kind of be attached to somebody that has been in the same situation as them before. So once we have that, and it can take a while for you to figure that out. We actually have some videos here on my channel about this. Also in my free school community, we have some actual free lessons about this in there. But once you're clear about that, only then we can come on, we can actually start with the content strategy. We can start with data driven marketing, right? Content market. And basically, we just want to break this whole thing down into three simple phases, because simple scales, everything else fails. I don't know. There's a saying about that in the content marketing space. I have no idea what it actually is, but let's just assume that's the one. Actually, let's just make that our thing right here. Simple scales, everything else fails. It's probably different than what I said before. And going in there, the first phase is, in my opinion, the most important one. And I would say 65% of the initial creative mentorship cohort that I'm running, where I basically teach a group of people this whole process hands on, on their own example and with their own content, it revolves around this whole first phase, which is a lot of research and a lot of trial and error. And if you're right now like, huh, what do we mean trial and error? I think I thought you know what to do. That's actually the thing. We don't know what to do until we throw a bunch of stuff out there because every audience is different. Every creator is different. And sometimes even though you have the same audience, the way you create content, the way you package content, the way you kind of strategize your content could be totally different for you that it works because people just feel the way some things are natural to you or not. And these are the things that actually make the difference in the grand scheme of things. But don't get confused right now, because let me actually show you what to do in this first phase, step by step. So you can have actually 10,000 followers as soon as possible. Fun fact, this whole process, actually, it is basically the same whether you know for the first 10,000 followers for the first 100 ,000 followers, actually for the first million followers as well. But I'll show you the little differences in this video along the way. So the goal of this first phase or the three major parts of this first phase are for you actually to get a lot of insights. First of all, you want to get industry insights about what's going on in the content world inside your industry. So basically the macro level of things, because you want to stay on top of it. You want to know what content generally is going on in your niche. You also, if you're actually a good creator, you also want to know what content is actually going on generally in the whole content creation world, platform wide, but also outside of your main platform, which is Instagram in this case. So that's the first thing. You want to have this overview and we're going to use the whole research to get that. The second thing is to actually get content insights about, you know, basically the micro level about which individual pieces of content perform for your competitors, but also for yourself, because obviously in this whole phase, we also, we want to start posting as soon as possible because the third thing is actually, we want to get the algorithm on our side. We want to become friends with this threaded algorithm, which is totally changing every single week. And if you remember a few weeks back, I made a video saying, well, the algorithm sort of got fixed. Well, we're going to have to make another video about this, but it's a little more volatile than it used to be before. So if your content, you know, if your reach is down generally in the past three, two to three weeks, every it's, it's down for everybody. Don't worry about it. We'll get over it. And, um, you know, this actually gets me to the next point right here. This is normal. And this is why you need to, um, spend a lot of time in that phase. And that first phase, it might seem slow for you, right? Just being in that phase. Um, I'll tell you as a second, what to actually watch out for, but this is actually for the better part for the better, for, for the whole longterm thing. I'll, I'll show you in a second, but just be aware that this whole first phase can, and most likely, likely will take weeks, if not months again, getting insights and training the algorithm to understanding your content landscape, but to also post consistently to actually gain algorithm trust. And I would strongly advise you to post at least three times a week, because that seems to be somewhat of threshold within the Instagram algorithm. I have seen some special cases among my clients where they post less than that once to two twice a week. And it still works still at the beginning, obviously, um, because most likely you're not the best content creator yet. You don't know a lot of things about hooks and how to package content, how to script your stuff. Obviously the more you create them, the more you learn and the more you actually get ahead with this whole thing. So you want to basically maximize the output as much as possible, not just for the algorithm, but mostly also for you. Um, and then also just by doing that, and I'll show you how to do that in a second. The other goal to doing that is actually to create a back catalog for potential breakout videos and which will be, you know, hint the face number two, because at some point where we want some of the videos to kind of break out and give us some spikes in viewership. And if we don't have a back catalog from other videos, and I'll show you in a second what that actually means, we're going to have a problem because people are not going to follow us, which is going to be bad for the algorithm. Now, the last important thing for this whole, for this whole stage, for this whole phase one is to actually get insights and data that we can use. Because if you remember, we're actually doing data -driven content marketing, you know, because without data, without the right kinds of data, it's going to just be again, throwing out a bunch of stuff and hoping it will stay hope marketing, basically. Now this phase also is the phase where most creators give up, unfortunately. And I've seen this times again and again, because it just takes, first of all, a lot of patience. Remember back in the days, if you're among the old crowd, like me, Gary Vee also used to always used to say, well, um, I forgot what he always used to say, but something with patience, you know, hard work and patience or something like that. And that is actually true still to this day, because yeah, it just takes time to get the algorithms trust to, you know, kind of understand this. Plus all these short-term algorithm drops, like the one we see right now, we're not going to get data that shows us stuff over the longterm. If we just create for two weeks, you know, while there's an algorithm drop, and then we take a look at the data, see, well, it's down. We're as, you know, it's down for everybody. And now we actually have to take, take a look at this whole thing for a longer period of time. That's just the way it is. The world turns around, time is a thing, and you just can't blow up overnight. Fun fact, this strategy is usually what people call blowing up overnight, because the first phase will look like this. And at some point you're going to blow up and everybody's just going to take a look at this and see that things will blow up, but nobody's going to see the hard work that you've done for weeks to months at an end before that in this first important phase. Now, how to use and get data for this first important phase as best as possible. We usually, well, actually always, we use a, what I call a content pillar strategy. It's not just me, it's just everybody calls it that. We also call it content bucket strategy. It doesn't matter. Yes, there's a hook in there, or actually an anchor in there, and it's not a pillar. Don't ask me why, but it just looked better. And you might've heard this a lot out there. You know, if you swipe through Instagram or somebody's like, well, you need to create content pillars. This is the secret to blowing up to 5 million followers overnight, stuff like that. Here's the thing. I feel like most people don't really understand what content pillars actually are, because usually if I read through that, people say, well, a pillar would be educate. Another pillar would be to inspire people. And another pillar is how to content. Apologies, by the way, I've been sick over the past days without internet here in Kiev and I got sick and my voice is done, but we're not going to focus on that right now. So yeah, pillar content is not that. These would be overarching categories that you can then use to sub group content pillars underneath. And if you just create content like this, you're not going to get far. You're not going to get the data that we actually need for, you know, for our data-driven content framework. So what a content pillar actually is, my friends, is basically like a subtopic with a similar hook. You know, something that instantly makes us recognize, oh, I've seen this before. Oh, I know where this is. Oh, I know where this is possibly leading towards talking about setting expectations, talking about kind of, you know, the brain always wants to kind of know where what's what's going to happen. And, you know, basically brain always recognizes patterns. And by having that, you make it a lot easier just for people to instantly recognize and instantly set an expectation what's going on, as well as, you know, the ability. Ideally, you want followers to take a look, find one of your videos and then watch your whole catalog through. And it's going to make it a lot easier for them if they have pillars, if they see, oh, I've seen that. I want to see a similar video to the one that I just saw before and then watch through all of here's an example of how content pillars could look actually from one of our clients from the creative ship. Great job, by the way. And you can see it did fairly well, I would say. But you can instantly see that this is similar content. First of all, it's a very unique visual branding style, visual identity style that is unique to the creator. So if you see this or if you see if you see just two of them, you instantly know, well, this is this creator who, you know, I've seen before. Also, the first frame hierarchy, you can instantly well, you just can't recognize what's going on right here. Well, it doesn't look good if I draw in there, but you can see two things, some hook text hook in the front and some comparison and sort of like a mean character going on with some emotion, stuff like this. So that would be a pillar. And yeah, for this first phase, we're our goal is to actually create three to five content pillars, maybe even more. Always depends on your niche and the research that you did in your audience, right? Understanding your industry and content, but create at least three to five and experiment them to gather data for a minimum of four weeks, minimum of four weeks before you first start drawing conclusions, ideally longer, 45 days, 60 days, sometimes it's actually when you can actually get real data. Now, so this would be one pillar, right? Let's say this pillar right there, then you just need to fill it up with different pillars. And like I said, continue posting for at least four weeks, ideally more. And how are you going to do that? Well, the easiest way, at least at the beginning is to kind of take what we set here, take the content insights from our industry and basically recreate similar content right there. This is actually a fun example because I think this post recreated their account, their post. But then again, it's just, you can kind of see what's going on right here. Well, Rolex Day-Date, rose gold, olive two years ago, this price right now, this price, we can see it's validated. It has 4,000 likes. And then we can try to find a way to wrap it around our own brand identity, our own style, or just if you don't have a style yet, just experiment with that. This is what this first phase is about. Please take your time. It's totally okay to experiment with stuff and it's totally okay for stuff to flop. You actually want stuff to flop. Nobody's going to care because we need, again, we need the data. Even if the data is just a little bit, and I'll show you that in a second. Now again, how to do that? We're going to want to spot patterns in the industry and use basically proven frameworks, right? Similar hooks, similar first frames, similar videos with a similar length and stuff like this. And then again, we group them into pillars. And by that point, we just need to grind it out. I just tell you how it is. There is no silver bullet. There's no hack to help you out. There are some small hacks that might help you out, but actually there's no real hack. Don't worry about that. Don't worry about hashtags. Okay? Just don't worry about them. Use them a little bit again to, like I always say, to tell what's going on. But for example, this creator who has a lot of views basically, and by the way, this creator started from zero, you know, and within, I would say a month or something, this happens. They used a maximum of one hashtags per post. Some of them actually had zero, just putting that out there. And that was recently, right? So it's not some old story. Okay. Now coming from the content pillar strategy, posting, posting, posting, grinding, grinding, grinding, trying different pillars. And again, we need to be consistent with the pillars, right? Also for the data later on. One, let's say about three, four or five weeks later, we want to first start to track our data of these things. And we want to take a look at, well, maybe we can spot some pattern, whatever that pattern might be. You know, like I said, could be the hook could be the length of the video could be the style of the video could be, you know, whatever that is. But before I tell you what that actually is, let's, let's go on to phase number two, because to be honest, it's not like phase number one and phase number two. It's actually phase number one is kind of swimming through phase number two. If you get what I mean, we're just going to delete that for the algorithm. But you know what I mean? So it's kind of merging together. That's what I wanted to say, actually. Now, here's one important thing, though. An issue that I see with most creators, to be honest. It's really, really important to take time with this initial phase, because if you instantly, you know, chances are, you're going to find, let's say this pillar, you create this content, and this blows up within a week of you starting the account or two weeks of posting, you're going to be like, oh, wow, I'll just use this pillar now. And I don't care about the rest right here. And obviously, you're going to grow like crazy, that's going to happen a lot, you're going to grow like crazy. Oh, I actually have this here, you're going to grow like crazy. But it's not for the long term, because you'll actually corner yourself into something very narrow, unsustainable. And the more you kind of milk just one content pillar out, the more the algorithm is also going to corner you in, and it will be very hard to get out of it, it will be possible, obviously, but it will be hard. And if we can take a look at this, this is actually what you want. You know, let's if we laid this over, let's say it's kind of like this. You know, let's say this is this is three months in three months in. And if we were to compare these two accounts, you'd be like, well, this account a does so much more better has hundreds of millions of views, and so many more followers. And the second account doesn't in comparison to that. But we actually want to just take a look at the long term, please, please remember that we're in it for the long term, we don't care for vanity metrics that are just short term view boosts. Because what's going to happen with the one account is going to just start to lose steam, it's going to hit a plateau. And then they're going to call me. And we're going to fix now this being the problem, but let me actually tell you how and how to track the analytics and how to track your basically where is it your pillars to use that whole data to blow up even more. And here's the thing, I call this whole phase the breakout video, like we said before, at some point, you want to have one breakout video or another, and then double down on some of these breakout videos to actually grow and kind of handle yourself up to different integral algorithm tiers. The thing is, a breakout video does not necessarily mean it's a viral video, it could literally been be something like this here, where a video just let's say you have 39 followers, where a video reaches 2004 and followers, you know, 8000% more might not look like a lot in terms of absolute numbers, but it's actually something to take home and something to work with. So be really kind of focused on percentage increases within your pillars. And once you see that, try to find, first of all, content that has the most important thing that has higher reach on average, like you said, percentage wise, but then also take a look at which kind of has the most got you the most followers, because chances are it's not the one that actually had the higher reach, or which content gave you the most comments, you know, talking about the audience development, the relationship you have with the audience, safe sense, stuff like this, just, you know, basically track everything. Also, by the way, money, if money is your actual goal. Fun fact, a lot of the times, especially for me, the content that makes me the most money is the content that has the least amounts of reach, just putting that out there. So yeah, this is why sometimes you see a lot of creators who are totally fine with not ever blowing up and having sort of low numbers, basically, for the outside, it might look like they're a failure, but actually internally, that's the kind that actually makes the money. So be aware of that as well. And be okay with that as well, especially if you want to, you know, money is your actual goal right now, your short term goal, as well as your long term goal. Now, track these things, and then try to spot patterns among the ones that perform a little better. So anything, right? Ideally, you write down some lists, my creative mentorship, we have some sheets for that, depending on, you know, your coach, your personal coach will work that out with you, for example. But, you know, note down anything from the style, whatever that might be, could be, you know, the fonts that you use, the overall look and feel, the hooks, most likely 99%. No, but 85% is going to be something related to the hooks. Also the length of the videos. And I'll tell you, I'll show you some insights about the best length in terms of Instagram right now to give you followers and reach also comments, maybe among some video, you notice a influx of certain comments, you know, different comments, one video, you usually just get emoji comes in one video that doesn't get a lot of views. But one video gives you very in depth comments, kind of make people join a conversation and stuff like this, note down on that and try to figure out what is going on here. And once you've done that again, for weeks on end, ideally months, obviously, then it's time to eliminate some of the low performing pillars and change them out with something new. At some point, you're going to have a system where you basically have, let's say, A, B, C, always performs better than average, always helps you. And then D and E are things where you play around what you play around with things that you experiment with things that actually you use to kind of get the channel to stay fresh. And these are the ones that are guaranteed to, you know, guaranteed to give you views or whatever that is, because, you know, there's something I call the AVC framework, you know, attention, value, connection, right? A lot of the times, you know, basically be aware that different content can have different purposes for you. Obviously, the majority, especially if you want to grow to 10k followers or more, it's going to be attention. So focusing on content that gives you the most reach and followers, but also could be value, for example, content, like I just said, content that doesn't give you the most reach, but gives you the most money at the end, or content that actually gives the most comments that makes followers to kind of fall in love with you, if you will, to become your friends, your actual true fans. Now, obviously, you know, this thing is going to be the main bread and butter for you. Well, that's not the right term. But that's going to be your main thing that you need to work on this posting pillars, tracking them, spotting patterns, and reworking them and kind of making better. There are a few tools for that. And basically, most of my videos talk about these things, we're going to make a whole bunch of another videos about this. And also, we have a totally free community where I'm inside some of my coaches are inside. I right now still still have a free course, totally free course for you to go through in my creator club, free community on school, you know, check it out. If you're a cool kid, you're you will actually get accepted. Now I'll actually accept almost everybody, to be honest, obviously, obviously. But there are a few things that I can tell you right now that just work right now. So the depending on when you watch this video, these might be sort of out of date, all the other things are not going to be out of date, because they've been basically the same for years now. And this is usually what most creators focus on these hacks, you know, what are the hacks that work? These are just small things that kind of help you a little bit. But that's about it. So first of all, hooks, obviously, we've talked about this under the writer hooks that are not here at the top five lessons I learned from drinking cat piss. Well, my mind is sometimes very weird, just came out of the blue right now. But yeah, obviously these under the writer hooks, watch my last video to kind of know what we're talking about. Then also on Instagram, four to 30 seconds content just works the best right now with an emphasis on lower, you know, shorter, using the M automation. Now there's been some controversies about that recently over the past two weeks. Unfortunately, I still didn't have time to make a video about this, because we're stuck here in the war zone, unfortunately, without internet, and with a fever, and somebody took away my tooth, the doctor, totally unexpectedly, a few days ago, what a life. So what a life. Anyway, also, what I call the common strategy, there's also a video that I've made about how to use comments effectively to kind of get the first sort of eyeballs to kind of make the algorithm a little bit earlier aware of your content. Also video, I'll link it down below. And obviously, there's some tools to help you with the research thing, talk audit, obviously for TikTok, viral finder for Instagram. And the most important tool is the retention curves that you have on Instagram. Yes, I'm aware if you just recently watched this, they've been taken away for 80% of creators over the past two weeks. Why? We don't know, because they're trying to fix something, they're trying to update something, but they'll be back, I can guarantee you that. And the other thing is, you know, this constant optimizing your content, always revisit your avatar, always revisit your goal every, you know, few months, just to come back and just to, you know, be aware that you're actually still on the right track, and you're not kind of going exactly the opposite of where you wanted to go. Because for example, you followed the vanity metrics and the views and the followers might be cool, might be aligned, but sometimes you might find yourself in a situation where you're a viral creator, and you don't know what to do with it, because you kind of hate doing that, right? So there's that, that's the most important thing. If you just do that, you'll be fine, right? You'll blow up, you know, especially over the course of a few months, if you can't consistently do that. But we want to scale this thing up to be actual sustainable, to get fans who actually come back to your profile, who recognize you on the streets, for example, who buy your stuff, who are, basically, this last face is the face to make you the number one creator in your space. And this face is going to make you the one that people look at and copy your content, right? Doesn't matter if people copy your content, because you're the OG, and it's about you as a creator, your personal brand, that's the strong element of this whole thing. And recently, there was actually a study from Google, right? I mean, Google search is kind of weird, has been weird lately. I'm not using it anymore. Let me know, do you still use Google search? Because it's really gotten weird. But they call it actually the 7-11 -4 rule of getting, well, that's my part of getting actual followers. They're actually talking about getting conversions and, you know, yeah, getting conversions. And basically, this rule means that in order, if we wrap it around the whole content context, in order to become a true fan and buy from you, a viewer, a random viewer who swipes through your profile has to watch your content for seven hours, right? Seven hours across 11 moments or touch points in four different locations, right? Obviously, it's not to set numbers. You know, it's also sort of like a fluid system. But this thing is why video obviously is king, because, you know, watching, consuming seven hours of content is just easier with videos, obviously. But not only, don't forget carousels. Don't forget just regular pictures with captions, because, you know, it takes a while to read captions as well. You can take people on a ride with a caption as well and become your fans, put a smile on their face, stuff like this. But also, and never forget that, which is the most important thing for any creator, emails, right? And, you know, all these things, obviously, we have different locations. We have reels. We have carousels. We have stories. So important, stories, because that is a symbol for stories. Emails. We have other social media platforms. You know, ideally, you also open up at least another, for example, YouTube, maybe even long from YouTube if you're okay with that. But also, let's say TikTok or short from YouTube, stuff like this, and nurture them with exactly this system for a while. And you're going to see, you're automatically going to get fans and followers that want to buy from you, fans that are your actual fans, as opposed to just some random viewers, basically this example. And this is why it's good to, you know, sort of take your time, but you will be the one that will still be here at the end of the day. Fun fact, short story from my beginnings, I was, when I started out with this YouTube channel right here, I was basically one of many four or five creators who all were bigger than me. They were kind of like this example. They all blew up and I was always like the late bloomer, the slow grower, not in terms of the monetization, I have to say, but in terms of the whole views and stuff like this, guess what? I am the only one who's left. Just putting that out there. Now, obviously there's another phase, the fourth phase that is not really part of this video, but this is the actual one that's going to put food on the table for you and mom. And at the time every house that we, but yeah, this will actually be the easy way if you've been nurturing the whole other system for a while, for the right time. Now the making money part, here's what's up. I'm going to have something very special and it's just applies to a few of you. So don't worry about it. You can watch another video that's in the comments down below if you're not interested in making money. But at the end of the month, I'm going to take 15 creators where I think we have seven or eight spots left. And I'm going to personally install my moneymaking framework, basically phase four into their whole content strategy to make actual money. The framework that I've been using for a while that has basically gotten me to my goals. Yeah. Apply down below, talk to my community manager, Florian. And if you're still in for the phase of growing your audience, join my free newsletter, The Insider Club, where we have weekly, almost weekly newsletters, depending on if I'm sick, with content breakdowns, strategies, insights, and obviously my free school community. I'll see you in a few days. And let me know if I should create a video with the same process about the whole monetization thing. Maybe, maybe in the school. I don't know if we should put this on YouTube.
