47:54Think Media Podcast · Interview
What YouTube Actually Wants in 2026
YouTube's Creator Liaison explains at NAB Vegas what the algorithm actually rewards, what's changing in 2026, and what creators keep getting wrong.
May 22ndThe argument in one line.
Unscripted yapping-style Reels, Trial Reels used as an unlimited testing sandbox, and reposting every piece of content at least three times are the three compounding habits separating fast-growing Instagram accounts from stagnant ones in 2026.
Read if. Skip if.
READ IF YOU ARE…
- A creator or business owner who posts Reels but keeps getting inconsistent reach and cannot figure out why some posts flop while others spike.
- Someone who has heard of Trial Reels but has never understood the correct workflow for flipping a winner to the main feed.
- A coach, consultant, or service provider with under 10,000 followers who wants to know if Instagram can actually drive revenue without a massive audience.
- Anyone posting once a day and burning out — this episode makes the case for batching and systematic reposting instead.
SKIP IF…
- You are already posting 5+ Trial Reels per day, reposting every Reel on a 60-90 day cycle, and using ManyChat — you already know this material.
- You are only interested in short-form platforms like TikTok; the platform-specific algorithm mechanics here are Instagram-only.
The full version, fast.
Instagram in 2026 rewards two things above all else: shares (which trigger algorithmic reach to new people) and DM conversations (the platform's stated North Star). The fastest-growing format is unscripted yapping — handheld, FaceTime-style Reels that feel like talking to one friend rather than broadcasting. Trial Reels give every creator an unlimited testing sandbox for hooks and formats without risking existing audience reach, but only work correctly when winners are re-uploaded as fresh Reels rather than flipped. Every Reel should be reposted at least three times on a 60-90 day cycle. Combined with ManyChat DM automation and a 7-day content buffer at all times, these habits eliminate the burnout cycle and compound over time.
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Create a free account →Who's talking.
00:00hostSean Cannell
00:15guestBrock Johnson
Where the time goes.
00:00 – 03:00
01 · What formats are dead in 2026
Trending-audio looping Reels and polished AI-scripted talking heads are both dead. Instagram is a visual platform — tricks that gamed the algorithm are closed.
03:00 – 08:00
02 · What formats are winning: yapping and creative structures
Unscripted FaceTime-style yapping and creative formats (brackets, tier lists, rankings) are outperforming everything. Format is the variable — not subject matter.
08:00 – 13:00
03 · How to yap well: the craft behind unscripted content
FaceTime-a-friend technique, talking to one person, varied sentence length, and cutting mid-conversation for rant energy. Gary Provost writing principles applied to video.
13:00 – 17:40
04 · Viral content strategy and the SHARE framework
Shares reach new people; likes reach existing followers. SHARE: Simple (drunk grandma), Hook (1.7 second decision), Authentic (compress idea-to-post time), Relatable (specificity), Entertaining.
17:40 – 21:00
05 · Mid-roll: BestIGtips.com free class
Sponsored break for Brock's free webclass on 1,000 new followers per month framework.
21:00 – 26:00
06 · Algorithm mechanics: identity, niche, and DMs as North Star
Instagram is now interest media. DM conversations are the platform's stated goal. Niche determines ceiling. Shares trigger algorithmic push; DMs signal content worth amplifying.
26:00 – 32:00
07 · Trial Reels: the correct workflow
Trial Reels are shown only to non-followers. 5-25 per day limit. The flip mistake explained. Duplicate before posting, upload fresh when the Trial wins. One-way door rule.
32:00 – 36:00
08 · Reposting: every Reel three times, 60-90 day cadence
Repost every Reel at least 3 times before retiring it. Schedule immediately. Mosseri confirmed it is allowed. Three swings before a post is declared failed.
36:00 – 40:00
09 · Carousels, Instagram Live, and the repost feature
Carousels beat single photos. Instagram Live is dead for growth. The repost feature shows social proof but is algorithmically meaningless — no DMs generated.
40:00 – 45:00
10 · Consistency, batching, and avoiding burnout
Do not post until you have 7 days pre-scheduled. Batch create. Frequency directly correlates with growth. Burnout comes from overthinking, not posting volume.
45:00 – 48:00
11 · Stories, monetization, and the DM pipeline
Stories build trust; the feed builds awareness. Monetize through coaching, memberships, or affiliate — not Instagram's payment system. 957-follower member ran a weekend.
48:00 – 51:00
12 · Instagram and YouTube synergy
Different demographics, complementary formats. Instagram is the daily snack; YouTube is the weekly buffet. Cross-promote with specific value propositions for each platform.
51:00 – 55:03
13 · The future of Instagram and closing advice
AI will make polished content easier and less differentiated. Raw, real, imperfect content will compound in value. Embrace what makes you uniquely human. Make it posted.
Lines worth screenshotting.
- Likes determine how many of your existing followers see a post; shares determine whether Instagram shows it to strangers — and most creators optimize for the wrong one.
- Meta's own data puts the skip-or-watch decision at 1.7 seconds — the visual in your opening frame matters more than anything you say in the first sentence.
- Yapping feels easy to make but is actually harder than scripted content: you need 47 filler-free seconds of clean speech, which takes real practice.
- The drunk grandma principle: if a drunk grandmother cannot understand your hook in the first three seconds, your content is too complicated to go viral.
- Relatability is specificity, not vagueness — a story about a missed alarm plus dog vomit plus a Nordstrom shirt stop is more relatable than 'we all have stressful mornings.'
- Every layer of scripting, editing, and re-filming adds distance between your original emotion and the finished product — and that distance is what kills authenticity.
- Trial Reels are a one-way door: you can post a Trial to your feed, but you cannot pull something from your feed into Trial without Instagram flagging it as duplicate content.
- If a Trial Reel goes viral and you flip it to your feed, it shows as 5 days old and gets buried — the correct move is to duplicate it first and post a fresh copy.
- Posting the same Reel at least three times before retiring it is Mosseri-approved — your content is yours, and any individual post day may have invisible reach suppressors.
- Instagram pays approximately -60 per month for 15 million views — if your goal is platform revenue, YouTube is the only rational choice.
- A creator with 957 followers ran a ,000 launch weekend through DM relationships alone — audience size matters far less than trust depth and niche clarity.
- Burnout comes from overthinking and over-refining every post, not from posting frequency — the fix is batching until you have 7 days pre-scheduled before resuming.
- Instagram Stories are the trust layer: viewers follow you for your niche content but become buyers after watching your Stories and seeing the human behind the account.
- Brackets, tier lists, and personal challenges are working because they create compounding return visits, not just one-time views.
Three Instagram plays most creators have never tried.
WHAT TO LEARN
Shares beat likes, yapping beats polish, and the repost cadence most creators skip is the one that compounds.
01What formats are dead in 2026
- The trending-audio plus caption-read format exploited a watch-time loophole that Instagram has since closed — it never worked for the same reason it would never work on YouTube.
- Polished, AI-scripted talking-head Reels are overdone and indistinguishable — the format itself is the problem, not the topic.
02What formats are winning: yapping and creative structures
- Format is the primary variable for views — a boring subject like tax strategy can go viral with the right format and hook.
- Brackets, tier lists, and personal challenges create compounding return visits rather than one-time views.
03How to yap well
- Talking to one specific person — not an audience — changes your delivery from broadcast mode to conversation mode, and viewers feel the difference.
- Varied sentence length creates a musical quality that holds attention through a 47-second clip.
04Viral content strategy and the SHARE framework
- Shares are the metric that triggers algorithmic reach to new people — likes only push content to existing followers.
- The 1.7-second decision window means the visual in your first frame matters more than anything you say in your opening line.
- Specificity is the mechanism behind relatability: a story with seven precise details is more emotionally resonant than a universal claim about stress or struggle.
06Algorithm mechanics: identity, niche, and DMs as North Star
- Instagram's stated goal is DM conversations — content that generates messages gets amplified; content that generates only passive views does not.
- Niche determines your ceiling: posting about multiple topics can build a smaller, more loyal audience but limits follower growth.
07Trial Reels: the correct workflow
- Duplicating a video before posting it as a Trial, then uploading the duplicate as a fresh Reel when the Trial wins, avoids the 'shows as 5 days old' burial problem.
- The one-way door rule: Trial-to-feed is allowed; feed-to-Trial is flagged as duplicate content by Instagram, sometimes even incorrectly.
08Reposting: every Reel three times, 60-90 day cadence
- Scheduling a repost at 60-90 days immediately after the first upload takes the decision off the table and builds a compounding content library.
- Any individual post day may have invisible reach suppressors — three attempts before retiring a piece is the minimum to get a fair read on its potential.
10Consistency, batching, and avoiding burnout
- Building a 7-day pre-scheduled buffer before resuming regular posting breaks the daily panic-create-flop cycle that causes burnout.
- Burnout comes from overthinking and over-refining, not posting frequency — the fix is a batch creation session, not a break from the platform.
11Stories, monetization, and the DM pipeline
- Stories are the trust layer: feed content builds awareness, Stories build the personal connection that converts followers into buyers.
- Instagram platform pay is functionally zero at any scale — monetization requires routing audiences to owned products or services through DM conversations.
13The future of Instagram and closing advice
- As AI makes polished content trivially easy to produce, raw and authentically human content becomes the differentiator — not the exception.
- The gap between idea and post is where authenticity lives: every round of scripting and editing that happens between inspiration and upload reduces the emotional signal in the final video.
Terms worth knowing.
- Yapping
- An unscripted, handheld Reel format where the creator talks directly to the camera in a casual, conversational tone — as if on a FaceTime call with one friend. No tripod at the start, no script, minimal editing.
- Trial Reels
- An Instagram feature that shows a Reel exclusively to non-followers for testing purposes. Allows creators to test hooks, edits, and formats without exposing experiments to their existing audience.
- Skip rate
- The percentage of viewers who scroll past a Reel without watching past the first few seconds. Meta uses this as a primary signal; lower skip rate indicates stronger content.
- DM automation
- A system (most commonly ManyChat) that automatically sends a direct message to anyone who comments a trigger word on a post. Example: Comment GUIDE and I'll DM you the link.
- SHARE framework
- An acronym for the five attributes of a shareable post: Simple, Hook, Authentic, Relatable, Entertaining. Shares are the metric that drives reach to new audiences on Instagram.
- Interest media
- A term used in the episode to describe the shift from social media (following people you know) to algorithm-curated feeds built around topics and interests rather than social relationships.
- Reels Bonuses Program
- A now-discontinued Instagram incentive from around 2022-23 where creators were paid directly for Reel views — at peak, some creators earned ,000/month. The program was shut down as unsustainable.
Things they pointed at.
51:40toolInstagram Edits app
10:20bookGary Provost (100 Ways to Improve Your Writing)
Lines you could clip.
06:30
“A format change could be a drastic change of results that might lead to 10 to 100x more views.”
10:50
“Simple that a drunk grandma could understand it.”
13:50
“Relatability is specificity. It's not vagueness.”
26:20
“This is like being a baseball player who cannot strike out. I can swing all I want.”
40:20
“Burnout does not come from posting too much. It comes from overthinking, over-analyzing, and over-refining every post.”
54:00
“Stop trying to make it perfect and polished and make it posted.”
Where the conversation goes.
00:00 – 08:00denseDead formats and what replaced them
08:00 – 13:00denseYapping format craft and execution
13:00 – 17:40denseSHARE virality framework
21:00 – 26:00denseNiche, identity, and algorithm mechanics
26:00 – 32:00denseTrial Reels workflow
32:00 – 36:00steadyReposting cadence
36:00 – 40:00steadyCarousels, Live, and repost feature
40:00 – 45:00denseBatching and burnout prevention
45:00 – 48:00denseStories, monetization, DM automation
48:00 – 55:03steadyPlatform synergy and the future
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analogystory
00:00You can stop searching the internet, asking chat GPT 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 15,000,000 views every single month, but there's been so many changes.
00:14The head of Instagram has revealed new things, the algorithm's changing. Today, we're really diving into an Instagram master class.
00:22Brock Johnson, welcome back to the show. Thank you. I'm excited to be here.
00:26What is the best post for getting views on Instagram right now? The best format? That's a really good question.
00:31I think format's the keyword 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 seven second long trending audio in the background.
00:44I'm gonna grab a random b roll video of myself. I'm going to slap a clickbait hook, some text on the top, wait a few seconds, and then say, read the caption.
00:54This 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 see videos.
01:05The conversation. There's a link to the transcript. Right?
01:08Like, 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 video's looping and people are reading this caption.
01:20But 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.
01:27So 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 Chiachi PT, they sound the same, and it's three tips for becoming a better rock climber, and so it's overdone and it's boring.
01:46Two 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 at least starts not on a tripod.
02:00It 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, it's I'm just yapping. I'm just talking to the camera.
02:14That's easy. It's not easy. It's easier on post production because you don't have to edit it and splice it.
02:20It'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 forty seven seconds eloquently, concisely, no filler words without pausing, without going off on a side tangent.
02:34That takes a lot of practice as you know. Um, 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.
02:45So one example that I've seen working really well recently, um, is ranking or or scoring or grading videos. There was a bunch during March Chad GPT versus Claude.
02:55Claude. Yeah. And they're doing that.
02:56Or 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 I've seeing people bracket content creators and maybe you were on there. I'm sure I was, probably at the bottom of the list.
03:08And then there's, um, there's also ones where they do like tier ranking, which 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 on Insta. So those are working really well.
03:22Um, and it's really just ultimately
03:24trying 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. Okay. I wanna just make sure we're all on the same page.
03:35What is your definition of formats and why that matters? When somebody just thinks like it's just posts,
03:41what is a format? Yeah. A format, this is a great topic.
03:44Something 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.
03:54On 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.
04:05For sure. They could be used to ultimately teach the same lesson. They could have a the same or a very similar big takeaway, but they're completely different formats.
04:13Right? Like even this conversation today has a format. It's you and I sitting across from each other in this room.
04:19We 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 gonna be interviewing Brock today.
04:29You 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.
04:36So it's different formats. It's just a different way of presenting the topic or or the material or or whatever it may be. And those formats are 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, um, and what format is popular or working really well right now.
04:55That is what is constantly evolving. Um, 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.
05:09You can go viral. That's that's powerful because that's it's what makes this available for everybody listening Mhmm. No matter what who their target audience is, what problem they solve, what their product or service is, what business they're in.
05:20Mhmm. The point is
05:22a change of format could be a drastic change of results that might lead to 10 to a 100 x more views. Thousand percent.
05:29Thousand percent. Some other ones that come to the top of my mind immediately,
05:32series and or challenges. I think the easy version of this is like day one of giving a different tax tip every day.
05:40Probably gonna get pretty boring, but it's at least gonna 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, you wanna go viral in 2026, the guaranteed way to do it is by starting a challenge for yourself.
05:55So the one that I'm doing is reviewing a reel every day until I reach 1,000,000 followers. Um, another, uh, member of ours is donating a dollar for every new follower to cybersecurity until she reaches a million followers, which is insane.
06:11So she'll be we'll be donating up to a million dollars. Up to a million dollars. Yeah.
06:14Um, another one of our, uh, members, she went from 700 to 25,000 followers in a month and what they're doing is is they're a couple and they are on they're LGBTQ and so for every follower, they're writing the followers name on a colored sticky note and adding it to the wall and the wall is forming this giant pride flag mural.
06:35So people are seeing the progression. So by following, they're adding their their yeah. They're adding it, they're seeing the progression, they're seeing the mural, the kind of flag come together.
06:42Um, they've they've absolutely blown up because of it, and now they have merch and brand deals and whatnot. So a challenger series. Then the other idea that I wanted to share is street interviews.
06:51We've all seen street interviews. They're so dynamic. Uh, they create a lot of variability.
06:56So 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.
07:07This is real. Let me lean forward and there's so many viral moments that can come out of those. I wanna go in what I think it's fair to call,
07:15uh, go deeper in the yap strategy. Yeah. Really and and the app is almost like an official term now.
07:21Like, yap as a style of real. It it could be, uh, somebody in their car, a female with a cup ranting.
07:29Yeah. And it has like that feel to it, but it's an actual content format now that there's, like, frameworks around.
07:36Mhmm. Is there any prompts you would have for us? Because I and then I think the mistake listeners can make is they just think, okay.
07:43Who cares about just random thoughts shared in the car or shared in my office? Well, that's a very surface level observation of it. Mhmm.
07:50Because 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 Mhmm.
07:59Right after listening to this podcast that could get results? Like, is there a formula? Yeah.
08:03I think, uh, first and foremost,
08:05you wanna talk as if you're speaking to one person. Um, so you don't wanna be like talking to the audience. It's not guys.
08:10It's not y'all. It's one person. And something that I've told people to do is literally FaceTime a friend.
08:15Like if you struggle to sound organic and conversational Mhmm. On your content, literally FaceTime a friend and screen record yourself and just blur out their camera, 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.
08:33Um, I've also heard some people are now, uh, 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 in in that case, verbal prompts they're looking at or they're actually talking and you hear ChatGPT's audio.
08:50They'll cut out 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.
08:57Because like one big principle of effective
09:00yap strategic content is tone.
09:04Sometimes we turn on in this video Yeah. I'm about to Like the broadcaster. Yeah.
09:08We turn on the broadcaster or we also, like, are so in a way, preachy. It doesn't have to be a bad preachy.
09:14It could be a bad preachy. But it's like, yeah, we're not
09:17but we're you feel like you're cutting mid conversation. Yes. You might feel a little rant energy.
09:22Mhmm. Like, it's and Yeah. Okay.
09:24So go I think I think, uh, 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.
09:35And 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 chitchatting, varied sentence length.
09:42Short, long, medium, and playing around with that, it really adds like a music. Uh, there's a great book by, I think his name is Gary Provost and it's a 100 ways or might even be a thousand ways to improve your writing, but it applies to content as well, and and you're speaking in this yapping content, where your your yapping can sound like music, and it can flow, and it can be conversational rather than, uh, conversion content, or like our normal marketing jargon speak where we have like these things that that we ways we wanna say things and tones and inclinations, and I think that that can make a big difference for people.
10:17Do you have a viral content strategy? Yes and no. Yes and no.
10:21I 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 gonna go viral every time.
10:30Like, no, you don't. Like, unless you have a time machine. You might know the principles.
10:34You might know the principles. And you might do consistent posts Yes. To actually predict and be able to do it.
10:39Yes. Yeah. Yes.
10:41I, all the time, make a post and I'm like, this is really, really good. Okay. I post it and it flops.
10:46Or the opposite. I'm like, this whatever I'm just making. I'm just posting it because I wanna get a post up right now, and then it goes viral, or it does better than the average.
10:53And 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.
11:00We 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. Um, but there are definitely principles.
11:10Right? There are things like the hook is is the most important thing. We need to grab people's attention.
11:14A recent report came out from Meta where they said that it takes people one point seven seconds on their platforms on average to decide whether or not they're scrolling. 1.7.
11:24So we've always said, like, the first three seconds are your hook. One point seven, they're deciding am I watching or scrolling. And that's the number one thing that Meta is looking for is what you might call the skip rate.
11:34Are people stopping or are they skipping? That's the first thing. I just saw today, I posted a reel.
11:39It said your average reel
11:41has a 77% skip rate. Mhmm.
11:44This reel has a 50% skip rate, and it was performing better. It's getting more views. Absolutely.
11:49And so you're saying that the skip is determined they did not skip if they're there after one point seven seconds? I believe that's how they define it. It might be three in their actual, uh, analytics.
12:00Measurement. Yeah. They want the viewer to stay past three.
12:04Yeah. And we as consumers just know actually, like, it's wild how fast we might skip. Yeah.
12:08That we just see it. Nah. Nah.
12:10Yep. And so three seconds is sounds crazy, but it's like a long time of dwell time. Yeah.
12:15And that's that's another thing that people overlook when it comes to hooks. We've talked so much. We as 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.
12:27Where 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.
12:35They've decided, what is this video about? Is it worth my attention? Is it worth my time?
12:39Am I skipping or am I watching? So that's the first thing. The second thing that determines virality, especially, is share rate.
12:45Uh, Moseri has recently said the 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.
12:59If it's getting more shares than it normally does, then it will be pushed out to new people. And that's powerful. Not not
13:06just because sharing literally exposes it to new people. Yep.
13:10Instagram itself will say, if people are sharing this, which would expose it to those new individuals, we're algorithmically.
13:17Yes. We're gonna show it to even more. Yeah.
13:19So, like, the the key thing that determines every viral post is shareworthiness, whether or not it's going to be shared, whether or not is act it is actually being shared. What's the framework that makes a post share worthy?
13:30I have an acronym, s h a r e, share. Uh, s is simple. So I think that we can oftentimes really overcomplicate big words, fancy lingo, fancy vocab.
13:41Tongue it down, please. So simple that a drunk grandma could understand it. Oh, the drunk grandma principle.
13:46Drunk grandma principle. Exactly. Yeah.
13:47Yeah. That needs to apply to your reels. Um, and and apply even in the first few seconds.
13:52Yeah. Like, I I see people using idioms or analogies in their hook. It's gonna go over a lot of people's heads.
13:58Mhmm. Or they use fancy insider lingo. It's gonna go over people's heads.
14:01Dumb it down. Um, Mister 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.
14:16H is hook. We've talked about the hook. Right?
14:19A 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, chatty pitying, prompting, planning, and all of that, the more authentic it'll be.
14:37Additionally, the less time you can spend editing. Think huge problem is overthinking.
14:42Yeah. No. That makes sense.
14:43And I think there there's maybe a couple of different types of people, 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, um, but many are comfortable posting content.
14:55Mhmm. 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.
15:00In a way, like, I almost know too much. Get an idea, but then it's like, oh, let me craft it. Let me really let talk to Claude about it.
15:07Then 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 CapCut to do the eye contact thing.
15:16Yep. Yep. 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 kinda when your emotion is Yeah.
15:30Biased too. Yeah. That that is what makes it authentic.
15:33Quite 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. Mhmm.
15:43And I could give a million examples. Three days ago, I had a post, 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.
15:52Like, I'm feeling in the zone. That was a good edit. It's my worst performing post of, like, the last ninety days.
15:57Wow. Yeah. Yeah.
15:59So that's and and and would you agree with this that at the same time, listeners,
16:04it is both and, there's a time and place though to sit down and script and to practice the art form. Absolutely. Um, because
16:11the processing of scripting or crafting each sentence in a certain environment could absolutely be effective. Thousand percent. Thousand percent.
16:18I 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 just leave it in your drafts and be like, I'll do another one tomorrow.
16:35No. No. Post it.
16:36It'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 ball. Seen the ball.
16:45The ball, like Yeah. And then you can learn from the this week? I read five more books about basketball.
16:49Have you actually been shooting the ball? I haven't been shooting it though, but Exactly.
16:54Yeah. I wanna finish the the SHARE acronym though. The r is relatability and relatability comes from specificity.
17:01So, 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, it that heavily.
17:17Yeah. 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 of brewed coffee from the night before, and then I was like, I spilled on my shirt, I to change shirts, I had to stop at at the Nordstrom's and grab a new shirt on the way, like all of those specifics, no one has had that exact thing happened to them.
17:41Okay. Because of how storytelling works, because of how our mirror neurons in our minds work, when I give you all those specifics, you're picturing yourself. Mhmm.
17:50Your 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. So relatability is specificity?
17:58Relatability 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.
18:06Sure. But nobody is like a vanilla super fan. No one's going to be like some people are, but no one's gonna be craving that vanilla.
18:13I remember I talked about this on stage once, and someone was like, what about that Madagascar vanilla bean? I was like, but that's specific. Yeah.
18:19You gave me a specific vanilla. Yeah. Um, and so relatability comes from specificity.
18:23So, 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.
18:32One 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.
18:46Mhmm. 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.
18:56Mhmm. Those specifics are what allow you to connect on a deeper level. It's what makes it funnier.
19:01It's what makes it more relatable. Okay. Yeah.
19:03Um, and then finally, the e is entertaining. So way too many business owners and brands and content creators are focused on educational content.
19:10There'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 gonna stop their scroll and watch.
19:28That's strong, the share formula.
19:31And that if you hit all those, sharing is the number one metric for virality. Yes. What if I told you that you could grow your Instagram following in less than fifteen minutes a day?
19:42Well, I'm excited because I'm hosting a free web class with Brock Johnson at bestigtips.com. He actually has a three step framework for gaining 1,000 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 gets you the right followers and get more views.
20:04So if you wanna be a part of that free class, just go to bestigtips.com or click the link in the show notes. Alright.
20:11Let's dive back into the podcast. I'm curious about what you think about this in terms of your understanding of the Instagram algorithm.
20:20Mhmm. Algorithms are are similar, I believe, especially in the today's world where it's like we've shifted from social media to interest media Mhmm.
20:29And the content is the variable. And that's true kind of across platform.
20:34But I've noticed algorithms seem different. And one big part of Instagram seems to be identity.
20:40That Instagram is an identity based platform. You might disagree. I'll go deeper, though.
20:44Yeah. 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.
20:51I'm a dad of of five and three, and Instagram knows I'm a dad. I'll get dad con obviously, it's who I'm engaging with. Yeah.
20:56But 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 Mhmm.
21:04Like, small business owners. Yeah.
21:07Uh, and is there something strategic to lean in on that? Is that an accurate assessment of of some of what's working on Instagram?
21:13Yeah. Definitely. It just goes back to the idea of niche.
21:16Like, when you niche down, that is ultimately how you're going to grow. Now, you can go viral without But let me ask you this. Yeah.
21:21If if I'm not gonna niche down, like, so you you follow me on Instagram Mhmm. I wrote YouTube secrets and, you know, teach YouTube.
21:30But I I feel like there's a time and place to talk about, like, fatherhood stuff does good for me. Mhmm.
21:36That's the real maybe it's a piece of the overall puzzle or my faith,
21:40and that can resonate. Mhmm. Is is that a good idea or a bad idea?
21:43Because that's not my niche. Yeah. No.
21:45Neither fatherhood nor faith is my niche. Yeah. I think that there's there's layers to this in how we approach it.
21:50Good idea or bad idea, I would take a step back and ask, like, what is your goal? Mhmm. 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.
22:02Like, 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 gonna record a quick tip on the podcast or on the chair lift, excuse me.
22:17So, they're seeing it. Right? But if your goal is, hey, I don't want a million followers, but I want maybe a couple 100,000 who really know me, are super fans, who are invested, then you can start to broaden out those topics a little bit.
22:30I can start to bring in more fatherhood. 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.
22:38Yeah. The only challenge there is, you know, to to give the counter argument.
22:42Let's say you make an amazing post about fatherhood and it goes viral, you go like, I love this. Yeah. And then you don't talk about it anymore.
22:48Yeah. So I see okay. So I mean, I I would say I'm sure this is the type of stuff as, you know, marketers and social media people we think about a lot.
22:55So what would you tell me to do? Do it or not? If you were me, what would you do?
22:57What's your goal? Well, my goal is to I mean, my my primary goal, number one, I would actually say is to not go out of business.
23:08Mhmm. It's it's actually because and it's not that money is the first thing, but I believe that you need money for the mission. Mhmm.
23:15And it's maybe another way to put it. I wanna play the infinite game Mhmm. Like Simon Sinek's book.
23:19Mhmm. And my ethos is that, you know, your income's directly correlated to the amount of value you add to the marketplace.
23:27So there's there's a presupposition that I'm gonna add value. You know, there's gonna be brand trust built.
23:34Mhmm. We're gonna help people with YouTube as far as our company. Mhmm.
23:37And 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. Yeah.
23:47And they follow people with shared beliefs. Yeah.
23:51Sometimes. I mean, to some degree, resonate with certain people. But people 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 what they believe in or eco friendly or something like that.
24:07Mhmm. So that's kind of I think there's that. I think there's also then there's, like, the subpoint of of, like, self expression slash, well, I just feel like it.
24:17I would sacrifice followers to be able to express myself. I still think there's, a hierarchy of priority Yeah. Because the social media serves business,
24:26you know, objectives, not the other way around. 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.
24:36You get to talk about the things that really matter to you. You have a large audience. Your audience knows, likes, and trusts you.
24:42You don't have 2,000,000 followers on Instagram. It's true.
24:45I also I don't have 1,000,000 followers on would imagine true. I don't have 500,000 followers. I don't have 1,000,000 followers on Instagram.
24:52But I also would imagine that being someone who focuses on YouTube and posting about that on Instagram is just never going to have It's not that Yeah.
25:01The ceiling. Right? It's like Pretty me posting about Instagram on TikTok.
25:05The TikTok audience is like, we want TikTok. Yeah. Maybe they want YouTube, but they definitely don't want Instagram.
25:10Right? And same thing, whenever I talk about TikTok on my Instagram, they're like, we don't want TikTok. We want insane.
25:14We want Instagram. Makes sense. Yeah.
25:15And 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. It's the universal YouTube center. It's almost considered not a social media platform.
25:26Totally. Exactly. It's the video place where you live.
25:28Exactly. And so I think that there are opportunities, like a a bigger opportunity for you to reach, um, you know, a larger audience, but I think the way that you're doing it is is exactly what I would suggest.
25:38Okay. So that was on, uh, we talked about share. Mhmm.
25:41We're talking about, you know, types of posts that get,
25:45uh, views. You're talking about, um, authenticity. I wanna hear about some of the changes.
25:49There's always these micro changes. Mhmm. That's why I follow you, and that's why you're my coach on Instagram.
25:54But what are the most significant from you meeting with Instagram's team, the CEO, uh, you know, assuming that most people, you know, aren't paying that close of attention Mhmm.
26:05If there's, like, some of the big rocks of things that have happened in the most recent six to twelve months. Yeah. First of all, there's a million bajillion little features.
26:14There's probably been three new ones that they've released today. There is always little tiny changes,
26:20but there haven't been any massive overhauls, um, necessarily in the last few years. Shares are number one Yeah.
26:27In terms of virality. Likes are number one in terms of reaching your audience. Those are the two most important.
26:32Everything 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.
26:47That'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, uh, the average Joe is posting a lot less.
27:03Your friends and family are posting a lot less. I remember when I was in high school, everyone 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, I talk to them every day, but they haven't posted a single thing in six years.
27:18They'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?
27:26So the algorithms changed. Did the algorithms changed? So people started posting less.
27:29All of this to say, Instagram's like, people are existing in the DMs. People are using Instagram for the DMs. I get what you're saying.
27:36And I have friends too. I felt like there's almost no life on their account, but they consume, share, and talk to people. Yes.
27:42One of my 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.
27:58I'm like, you're no better, you're just on a different platform. Yes. Texting me YouTube shorts.
28:02And then he said, I'm deleting YouTube shorts. He starts sending me LinkedIn videos. Yeah.
28:05Okay. But anyways, the the case in point is that's how most people use Instagram.
28:09Now, 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.
28:19Mhmm. Right? They still have to scroll reels to find the things to send.
28:21And so all of this to say, shares, but also content that generates DMs, uh, content that generates conversations, Instagram stories,
28:30that is really Instagram's focus. What is a trial reel?
28:34Uh, 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.
28:41So 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.
28:50Right? And there's a clear benefit, uh, to that from a marketing perspective.
28:55I 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.
29:06I can swing all I want Yeah. Willy nilly. Maybe I make a contact one out of 100 times, but who cares?
29:12Yeah. Because I just have unlimited at bats or opportunities to reach new people. Instagram was like, woah.
29:17Woah. Woah. We, uh, let the floodgates open a little bit too much on this one.
29:20And so now they've throttled it down, so you can only post it varies per account, which is annoying. Some accounts can post only five per day. Some can post up to 25 per day, but it still represents
29:31How many can you post? Five. How many do you post?
29:34Five. Every day. Yeah.
29:35I try to.
29:37I I I've 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.
29:46Right? 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 five trial reels a day. Now, uh, tools like MetraCool can schedule them, and Instagram actually recently opened up the ability in Instagram, in the app to schedule your trial.
29:58So that's that's really helpful. Um, 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.
30:10If I have three different ways that I edit this video, post all three and see which one wins. Right? Are some of your videos trial tests that eventually were flipped public?
30:18Yes 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 wanna use and they put it onto their normal feed.
30:28They 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.
30:38On 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 days ago. As a days old.
30:44So it it's more likely to get buried. Yeah. 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.
31:04One caveat I do wanna do that, uh, 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 Meaning additions or it'll flag it?
31:18Uh, it will Instagram will allow you to post it, but once you do, you'll get a notification that says, sorry, this is, uh, viewed as duplicate content and we will not be showing this to new people. And the Instagram pendulum has swung way overboard in this, even if you have something that's brand new, um, this happened to a lot of people and they have never posted it before, Instagram's like, woah, this is a duplicate.
31:39Mhmm. And they're like, no, it's not. I've never posted this.
31:41So it's an overcorrection by Instagram. I'm sure the pendulum will swing back and it will the 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.
31:52If it's posted to your feed, you should not also post it as a trial. Are you I I mean, I followed you, and one of the big opportunities for listeners is, like, okay.
32:02Instagram's a great place to make money, get leads, build a following, build a personal brand. But all this stuff, man, it takes work. Sure.
32:08One of my favorite strategies from you, though, is, like, never post a reel once. Mhmm. Schedule immediately if you're about to post a reel to repost it in sixty to ninety days.
32:17Yeah. So you're gonna have this compounding
32:21stack of new content, but also repurposed content. Mhmm. But in light of what you're just saying about trial reels, terms of service wise, are we allowed to do that?
32:29Yes. Yes. So I asked I asked Missouri about this in my interview with him.
32:33I said, we good to do this? He said, yes, because it's your content. You have the right to it.
32:36They 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'd Thousand views.
32:51Yeah. Yeah. And so they were like, okay, we need to kinda reel things in a little bit.
32:56But 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. Yeah.
33:02And the algorithm would learn like, hey. We're not gonna show this to anybody. And so yeah.
33:07You're free. To the location. Yeah.
33:09You're free to to reupload over and over and over again as much as you want. For you, though, do you literally
33:14repost
33:15every reel you post or only the winners? 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.
33:23Maybe there's something going on that day. Yeah. You know?
33:25Maybe there was maybe there was a big cultural event. Maybe everyone was paying attention to something else. Maybe there was who knows?
33:30There'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 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.
33:45Why did it not work? But sometimes it's the third post, the third time where I post it where I then it goes viral, then it spikes and goes crazy, and I'm glad that I had, uh, posted it that third time and not just, uh, prejudged it and predetermined that it was gonna flop. Is it worth doing
34:00solo photo posts with captions?
34:04Rarely. Rarely. I'd much rather have a carousel, even if it's just a two slide carousel.
34:09And the algorithmic reason for that is that the second slide of the carousel can reappear in people's feed. It's kind of like 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 a second with a different thumbnail.
34:28Same exact idea. So it'd be like, well, why would we not at least give a second thumbnail? Why would we at least not give a second slide in the carousel?
34:35Um, in most cases, that's that's what I would recommend instead of just a still. Is Instagram live still a good strategy? No.
34:41No. No. Yeah.
34:42Instagram live, you can like take it off your to do list, take it off your thing. 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.
34:54But the real limitation with Instagram live is it doesn't reach new people. Mhmm. So the only people who are finding it are existing followers, or there's like a random straggler who finds your page at the exact moment that you're live.
35:04Um, 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 a big enough audience to begin with to actually have people show up on the live.
35:24There's kind of a newer feature called, like, repost, which was similar to when Twitter was called Twitter retweet.
35:30Yeah. Yeah.
35:32Is it effective? 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.
35:41I want my followers to potentially see this. It's kind of like a a I can suggest to the algorithm that I think my followers would be interested in this.
35:50It doesn't guarantee it. Reposting your own stuff does absolutely nothing because you already posted it. You've already told the algorithm, I want my followers to see this, so reposting your own things doesn't do anything.
35:59Still do that though. They do. They want the little It's not gonna hurt.
36:01It's not gonna hurt. Floaty guy on So then it's all it also feels like somewhat of a social proof. If I see somebody else's thing, I can see Yes.
36:07Few faces, but it's usually people I follow. So I'm like, oh, my friends are into this too. Exactly.
36:11Exactly. And so there's a little bit of social proof to it that, yes, that your profile bubble will kind of float over the bottom left corner of the post if you've reposted it.
36:20But algorithmically speaking, when repost first launched, we were like, holy shnikies. This is going to be just like a share.
36:27Right? Because it's putting posts in front of more eyeballs, but reposts have nothing to do with the DMs.
36:33If I repost your post, there's no conversation being started. There's no direct message happening.
36:39And 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. Let's get into a few more tactics, I and actually wanna hear about some of the biggest mistakes.
36:49But one of the things we've benefited from at Think Media and I have personally is being a part of your community called InstaClubHub. Mhmm. Now, uh, I wanted to make sure if people wanna check that out.
36:58I think you have a trial to that. Yeah. We do.
37:00People can go to, uh, I mean, it's, $7 for fourteen days. Mhmm. Um, you could go to, uh, iggrowthguide.com,
37:06or we'll put a link to that in the description. But what exactly are you guys doing in that community? Yeah.
37:11We 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. Yeah. 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.
37:25So 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 I wanna get into and then there are some people who are like, trial reels? What are we talking about?
37:35This is a different language. Those two people should not be taking the same course. So we have five different courses in one.
37:41Also, 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. Mhmm. So, single person in the club gets a thirty 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 15,000,000 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.
38:11Almost over 500 in their first thirty 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.
38:23Yeah. I love that. And I mean,
38:25it's one thing to, you know, as a marketer, talk about the talking points of your product, but to share transformation of your clients and your students with real numbers like that is incredible. Yeah.
38:35I'm really proud of them. They're kicking butt. So you get to coach all these individuals that are specifically doing Instagram.
38:40I'm curious the biggest pitfalls and mistakes where you see people
38:45that's sabotaging their growth, and they're not getting the followers or the views because they are doing these things that are fixable. Mhmm. Inconsistency is the obvious one.
38:53Inconsistency 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.
39:03Mhmm. And so, my three famous words are just press post. Just press post, and then you can also press post again sixty to ninety days later, sixty to ninety days after that, um, but that will ultimately allow you a lot more freedom and a lot more okay.
39:17I'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.
39:32They should not post tomorrow. They should not post for the week. They should not post again until they have seven days scheduled.
39:37So if that means take two weeks or three weeks or four weeks off of posting in order to batch create, do that.
39:44And the reason for that is? Then they will get off the hamster wheel of wake up every day, what am I gonna post today?
39:52Come up with a new idea, create it, overanalyze, agonize over it, press post, it flops. That is such a demanding, draining, negative feedback loop.
40:01And 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 you don't have a post that day, and now you've become inconsistent.
40:11Your competition and everyone else out there did post that day, but you didn't. Um, and I say all this because the more you post, the more you grow.
40:18On Instagram, there's a direct correlation twice a day, three times a day, four times a day. There's examples of accounts posting over a 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.
40:33I 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 thirty minute window to film a quick reel, um, and that will allow you to stay a lot more consistent.
40:49What is the importance of Instagram Stories? Yeah. Instagram Stories, uh, brings me back to something you brought up earlier, which is the know, like, and trust factor.
40:57Instagram 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.
41:09I wanna grow on YouTube this year, 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 YouTube, it's they see YouTube in a bunch of all your other posts, okay, I'm gonna follow Sean.
41:20Then because they followed you, Instagram's like, do you wanna check out this guy's stories? Then they watch your stories and they're like, oh, he's a dad. Oh, he snowboards.
41:27Oh, he's in the faith, you know, they they see all this other stuff, they're like, oh, I like his style. And then they're like, okay, now I'm trying to like this guy. I'm gonna keep tuning into his stories.
41:36And 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?
41:45And 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 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.
42:03I I love all his content. I I relate to him. I connect to him.
42:06I'm gonna click on that without even having to hear the sales pitch. I'm gonna sign up without even having to read the sales page. Uh, so I think that Instagram stories are really really powerful place to build the trust and then also convert on the trust.
42:18Um, I wanna talk about one big final category that might go lots of different directions, is not just how to monetize best practices for making money, but also making money with a small audience.
42:30Mhmm. Uh, but before we get there Mhmm. As kind of like the part final of today's podcast, I do wanna make sure people could follow you and check you out.
42:38Of course, easy enough for people to know that we always have great show notes in the description, you know. But anything you wanna shout out, anything people can, um, where they can find you.
42:49Yeah. Instagram, Brock eleven Johnson. I post 75,000,000
42:52times a day, and so there's plenty of strategies, ideas, and tips, and stuff for free. As my YouTube coach, we've recently, uh, hit a 100 k 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.
43:06And we're build your tribe on YouTube where every week, uh, at least once a week, there's some sort of tip strategy video about growing on usually growing on Instagram. Yeah. Appreciate your kind words.
43:16Congratulations. Thank you. So great resources as usual in the show notes of the Think Media Podcast,
43:22but we're not done. We're gonna talk about making money. So on Instagram specifically Mhmm.
43:27Before money because it kinda ties into it. You know, you're the Instagram guy, but what I love is we we've been we we in this last couple months, we've been collabing because we're both kinda, like, all in on YouTube and Instagram Mhmm. Or Instagram and YouTube.
43:42Yeah. And those two things kinda work together. What synergy do you see there?
43:45Maybe that ties to the money connection Mhmm. Conversation, I should say.
43:49Yeah. Or maybe it ties to just a lot of humans or both.
43:52I mean, a lot of consumers, you know, I I connect with friends on Instagram. I scroll. It's entertaining.
43:56It's a different platform. I also watch YouTube. Mhmm.
43:58Uh, of course, people there's who love TikTok and Snapchat, but yeah. Your thoughts on the the, uh, your workflow between those two platforms. Yeah.
44:05I love the synergy between the two. I'd be curious
44:08what your audience split is like because I was talking to my mom who not just a random mother, she's been on the show before. Um, she is, I guess, today, you could call her a fitness creator. Her her niche changes every few months with the wind.
44:20Yeah. Um, but we were talking the other day and I was like, hey, my YouTube audience is completely different than my Instagram audience.
44:28Different 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, it skews older, um, and she was like, yeah, same.
44:41Like, the people who follow me on Instagram, the majority don't also subscribe to my YouTube. There's the super fans.
44:47But I'm wondering, first of all, for you, do you notice the same thing or or do you have the
44:53talk, all 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.
45:00Secondly, it made me ask a very tactical question, which is is there an easy way to see your Instagram analytics?
45:07Maybe more specifically, is there a desktop way to see them? I think you can view it on desktop now. Um, I believe on the Instagram, just instagram.com Yeah.
45:15On desktop, you can now view your professional dashboard. They have the best they've they've been smart about this. Uh, their best analytics dashboard is in the edits app Okay.
45:24Because they want people to download the edits app. So if you go there, then you can see like really fine tooth stuff. What's the edits app?
45:29Uh, it's their their editing. It's their CapCut competitor. So it's their mobile only app that is directly tied to Instagram.
45:36All of Instagram's audios and stuff are in there. If you save a post on Instagram, it will show up in the edits app. Um, it's actually gotten a lot better.
45:43When it first launched, I was not a fan, but now I use it for, like, quick edits Yeah. For reels and stuff. But that's the app where you can find, like, more advanced analytics.
45:50Okay. So interesting. So I I I don't have a good answer for you, but you were talking about the difference Yeah.
45:55Of audiences. Yeah. Some crossover.
45:57Some, 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 what how do you coach people when they start thinking, I wanna get onto Instagram
46:09and make money? Yeah. Yeah.
46:10I also do wanna 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.
46:26I've only followed you on YouTube for two years, and now I followed you on Instagram, which is cool to how do you actually do that? Get them from one place to the Um, 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 wanna follow me on Instagram, and I think the benefit there is, like, Instagram has a lot of daily content.
46:48Right? You're getting little snippets. You're getting a little, uh, uh, goldfish tray every single day on Instagram, whereas you're getting the full buffet on YouTube once a week.
46:58Yeah. Um, 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 seven second or forty three second snippet from a podcast and you throw it up on your Instagram, people are be like, what?
47:11It's gonna lack context. They're gonna be super confused. But there are some creative formats that we've seen really work for getting people to from Instagram to YouTube, and we can talk about those.
47:19But I know you asked me about monetization. Um, so I think one misconception with monetization is you don't need a big audience. Yeah.
47:25One of our members, uh, recently had a $35,000 launch in one weekend. She's got 957 followers.
47:31Wow. So not even a thousand followers. She's got really great trust with her audience.
47:36She'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.
47:45They know they can count on her. They know she's reliable for that topic. Um, she's also very heavy in the DMs.
47:51Ton of DM conversations, qualifying leads, answering questions, serving, focusing on the transformation, not just the the transaction.
47:58Herself too, not as a bot. Not as a bot. That does bring me to ManyChat and DM automation, which is that's like a non negotiable.
48:04Yeah. That's like if you were, uh, trying to grow a YouTube channel and you didn't have thumbnails made, you just kinda picked a random snippet from the freeze frame.
48:12Deciding not to do thumbnails. Like, I'm I'm not gonna worry about that. Like, no, that's not actually a choice if you wanna Like titles, I'm just gonna do I m g underscore zero zero three dot m o v.
48:22Like, that's Yeah. I'm not doing titles either. Yeah.
48:24If people are gonna find it, they're gonna find it. Exactly. I'm gonna let them do it the right way.
48:28No. 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.
48:34Comment recipe, and I'll send you the full details, that sort of thing. Is ManyChat the only solution for that? No.
48:39There are there are others. There are less expensive options. ManyChat is the most trusted.
48:43It'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 like literally shaking hands with with Meta, and so that's that's a big difference maker. They're very safe, and they have most of the advanced features.
48:58There are some like 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.
49:08Yeah. Okay. So that's break it down though Mhmm.
49:13Just for anything else tactically. If I wanna go to Instagram, do you you make money from Instagram itself?
49:19How much do they pay you?
49:21I believe, uh, I shouldn't say exactly zero. I believe I get maybe 50 to $60 a month for, again, 15,000,000 plus views.
49:31Their monetization is atrocious. It is so bad, especially when you compare it to YouTube.
49:36YouTube. Yeah. Um, even when you compare it to something like TikTok, it is atrocious.
49:41Um, so what I always tell people is if you just wanna get paid for your content, go to YouTube. Yeah. Don't try to post on Instagram because Instagram don't pay for content.
49:48There was like a brief period. They went way overboard. It was called the Reels Bonuses Program back in like twenty twenty two or '3 because they wanted people to start using Reels.
49:57So for a second Yeah. They were like giving offering 35,000 a month.
50:02And I believe last time I was on your show, uh, 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, 5 figures, 6, uh, a month The good old days.
50:15From from our dogs' Instagram reels. Right? And then Instagram was like, hey.
50:19So this isn't sustainable. Yeah. They like, they literally Adam Mozarie, the head of Instagram was like, yeah.
50:23We 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 Yeah.
50:29Which 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 I don't really get paid by Instagram.
50:40Got it. So your point is many chat,
50:43take the conversation off the platform Mhmm. And then figure out your monetization strategy.
50:48Yeah. You What is it? Of course, coaching, uh, membership, uh, merch, whatever it may be.
50:54Can affiliate marketing even work on Instagram? It can. And that's actually a really exciting brand new feature that was just announced.
50:59Instagram is now going to allow clickable links on Reels for the first time ever Mhmm. Only through their built in affiliate program. Um, so it's not exactly clear yet what products are going to be in their program.
51:11It's gonna be similar to TikTok shop, but I believe YouTube shopping. Mhmm. Yeah.
51:15Absolutely. It's gonna 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.
51:22I believe there might even be a way to, like, suggest products to be added or kind of like say, hey, Instagram, I wanna 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.
51:36But, uh, I'm a huge fan of affiliate marketing, and I do think it's a powerful, powerful way to get started. Okay. So, uh, in just a second, I kinda wanna ask the final question,
51:44and this I think could be the most important question, but a couple things. Uh, great resources as usual.
51:52Many chat for every serious professional that's active on Instagram. If you have something to sell, I mean, content creators, if you're business minded, you're going through that.
52:01We 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.
52:07Uh, check out the club. I mean, that's probably the best $7 you could spend for fourteen days because if it's 500 followers in a month, that's 250 new followers for $7. Obviously, you gotta do the work.
52:17No results guaranteed, but cool trial. And so we'll have a link to InstaClub hub, your community Mhmm.
52:24And 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.
52:31Like, when it comes to the future, you've been through so many different generations or algorithms trends.
52:38The reels bonus and your dog paying your rent, you know. But where do you see the future of Instagram and and the opportunity and even challenges ahead and how people should navigate?
52:47Yeah. I think that with the rise of AI, which is something we haven't even touched on today,
52:53the bar or I should say the the ease of creating really professional content, really really beautiful content, it's gonna get a lot easier.
53:03It's gonna be a million times easier. And we think about Instagram 2016, if you had a cool filter on your photo, you were getting likes.
53:10Because it was like, man, this looks pretty, this looks polished, this looks put together, and that's why Instagram has the, uh, the stigma that it still does to this day. But over the last ten years, everyone's been like, hey, I can download a 99¢ app.
53:23I can download a free app and get those same filters. I can edit my photos. It doesn't take a a rocket scientist, and now we have AI, or I can tell ChowQPT to make it look a certain way.
53:32And 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. Um, and when I say value, that's often misinterpreted as education, but like we talked about earlier, value can be entertainment.
53:49Right? 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.
53:55And it wasn't educational, but it was it was entertaining. And every time I go on a long drive, I 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. So anyways, all this to say, uh, 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 or or filled with with imperfections because that is what makes you human, that is what makes you unique, and that is what we're all craving.
54:25Like, we all go on Instagram craving someone real who I can just relate to, someone who I is talking to 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 wanna make that professional cinematic stuff, knock your socks off.
54:41If 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 posted. Brock Johnson, thank you so much for coming back on the podcast.
54:52Think Media podcast, like, rate, share, review, uh, 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.
The Hook
The bait, then the rug-pull.
Brock Johnson is generating 15 million views per month on Instagram while most creators are still running the same dead formats. This conversation is the fastest-path update on what actually works right now — yapping-style Reels, Trial Reels used correctly, and a reposting cadence most people have never tried.
How they asked for the click.
MENTIONED ON CAMERA
FROM THE DESCRIPTION
PRIMARY CTAWhere the creator wants you to go next.
AFFILIATECommission earned if you click.
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