18:17Build Your Tribe · Listicle
7 New Trial Reel Ideas To Go Viral on Instagram
Trial reels only reach people who don't already follow you — seven formats built to turn that stranger traffic into new followers.
July 16thThe argument in one line.
Posting less but testing every idea first, by reading retention graphs and share triggers on a private trial before it ever hits the public feed, outperformed brute-force daily posting across every growth metric.
Read if. Skip if.
READ IF YOU ARE…
- A creator already burned out from daily posting who wants a repeatable way to know a post will work before it goes live.
- Anyone with access to a private test-post feature (like Instagram trial reels) who wants a framework for reading the retention data.
- An advice-based or freelancer-facing creator curious about what actually makes people share content versus just watch it.
SKIP IF…
- You're just starting out and haven't posted enough yet to have built the pattern-recognition Jamie needed his 6-month high-volume phase to develop.
- Your platform has no trial or test-post feature, since most of the tactical advice here assumes a private retention graph exists before publishing.
The full version, fast.
Jamie Brindle spent six months posting 12 reels a day just to harvest data on what his freelancer audience would watch, save, and share. Once he had that pattern-recognition, he switched to posting three times a week, and every metric outperformed the daily grind: views up 139%, reach up 467%, tens of thousands of new followers in 90 days. His method now runs entirely through Instagram's trial reels: post privately, read the retention graph for its two plateaus, where the real hook should start and where interest dies, cut to fit both, then only publish once retention holds north of 50%. Every trial that wins gets upgraded straight to the public feed instead of reposted fresh.
Free for members
Chat with this breakdown — free.
Sign in and you get 23 free chat messages on us — ask for the hook, quote a framework, find the exact transcript moment, generate a markdown action plan. Bring your own key when you want unlimited.
Create a free account →Who's talking.
00:00guestJamie Brindle
00:00hostBrock Johnson
Where the time goes.
00:00 – 03:43
01 · Intro
Brock frames the reversal: Jamie posted 12 reels a day for six months, saw growth plateau, then flipped to about three posts a week and every metric went up.
03:43 – 07:10
02 · From 12 To 3
Jamie recaps the 12-a-day, data-collection push from November to April, then describes the moment he realized it was really about avoiding the harder work of making one good post.
07:10 – 09:40
03 · The 90-Day Results
Jamie shares the last-90-days numbers: roughly 30,000 new Instagram followers, 50,000 new Facebook followers, views up 139% to 41.9 million, reach up 467%, interactions up 366%.
09:40 – 10:27
04 · Manual vs Creative Labor
Jamie contrasts the two eras: the 12-a-day sprint looked more labor-intensive on camera, but the new approach is creative labor, starting every post by asking why someone would share it.
10:27 – 14:20
05 · The Share Test
Jamie explains his two share triggers for a freelancer audience: content that proves to skeptical friends and family they made the right career choice, and content that makes them feel like an insider.
14:20 – 18:29
06 · It's About Identity
Brock names the identity/in-group pattern and asks how Jamie found it; Jamie says it came from living in the DMs and comment arguments during the 12-a-day flood, not a spreadsheet.
18:29 – 20:48
07 · What If It Flops?
Brock asks about the fear of doing the work and still flopping. Jamie explains trial reels as the insurance policy that lets him confirm a post will hit before it goes to the main feed.
20:48 – 23:35
08 · The Two Plateaus
Jamie's method for reading a trial reel's retention graph: there's a plateau near the start showing where the real hook should begin, and one near the end showing where the video should stop.
23:35 – 25:15
09 · Find It In Edit
Brock recaps in filmmaking terms: shoot modular assets, then let the trial-reel data, not the original script order, tell you what sequence of lines actually holds an audience.
25:15 – 26:15
10 · The 50% Rule
Jamie's completion-rate bar: north of 50% retention to the end means a reel is going to do well; 57-58% or higher means he expects a genuine hit.
26:15 – 28:31
11 · Fixing Slow Drop-offs
For reels with no sharp plateau, just a steady bleed downward, Jamie shortens the edit and adds re-hooks, citing the South Park writers' therefore/but-not-and-then rule for story beats.
28:31 – 33:53
12 · Married To One Reel
Jamie describes staying locked on one trial reel for a full day, re-editing multiple versions, even stretching pacing to add watch time, and batch-posting trials at the same moment to keep the data clean.
33:53 – 37:32
13 · Upgrade Or Repost?
Jamie always upgrades a winning trial reel straight to the main feed instead of reposting fresh, and Brock reasons through why that specifically avoids confusing the algorithm for Jamie's schedule.
37:32 – 39:54
14 · Why Skits Work
Jamie's back-and-forth conversational format builds the hook-rehook loop in naturally: a question opens a curiosity gap, the answer opens a bigger one, and it requires a trainable performative quality.
39:54 – 42:31
15 · Look Outside Your Niche
Jamie's advice to study other mediums, not other creators, to avoid becoming wallpaper; his own conversational-skit format came from his wife showing him a TikTok creator doing looping skits outside his niche.
42:31 – 46:03
16 · The Real Time Cost
Jamie breaks down real time per post, about 2-3 hours total, most of it in scripting, with a fast one-take shoot and a 20-minute edit, before the two say their thanks and sign off.
Lines worth screenshotting.
- Posting 12 reels a day for six months wasn't really a growth strategy, it was a way to avoid the harder work of making one good post.
- Every retention graph tends to have two plateaus: one near the start showing where the real hook should begin, one near the end showing where the video should actually cut off.
- A completion rate north of 50% is the bar for a reel that's about to take off; 57-58% retention at the end signals a near-guaranteed hit.
- Freelancers share content for one of two reasons: it proves to skeptical friends and family they made the right career choice, or it makes them feel like an insider who gets the joke.
- If a post is genuinely weak, nobody sees it, which makes the downside of trying and failing publicly smaller than it feels.
- Adding a second of pause after each line of dialogue can add 10-12 seconds of watch time without changing a word of the story, and the platform rewards the extra duration with more reach.
- Trial reels should post in the same batch at the same moment, because staggering post times muddies the data with unrelated timing effects like news cycles.
- A winning trial reel should get upgraded straight to the public feed rather than reposted fresh, because reposting confuses the algorithm about which version to push.
- A back-and-forth skit format is naturally built for hook-rehook: a question opens a curiosity gap, the answer opens a bigger one, and the final answer becomes the shareable payoff.
- Studying other mediums, film, painting, acting, produces more original content ideas than studying other creators in the same niche.
- If the word 'and then' connects a story's beats instead of 'therefore' or 'but,' the story isn't escalating, it's just listing events, and attention drops.
- Scripting is where the real work happens: one take of filming, a 20-minute edit, and 2-3 total hours per post, most of it spent before the camera ever turns on.
Why fewer, tested posts beat daily volume
WHAT TO LEARN
Trial reels turn publishing into a repeatable test: read a retention graph for its two plateaus, hit north of 50% completion, and only then does a post earn its place on the feed.
02From 12 To 3
- High-volume posting can work as a fast way to gather audience data, but treating it as a permanent strategy risks avoiding the harder work of making one thing well.
- A plateau or decline in results after a long stretch of heavy output is a signal to change the strategy, not just push harder on the same one.
03The 90-Day Results
- A lower-volume, higher-intentionality posting cadence can outperform daily posting across every metric at once: reach, interactions, link clicks, and follows can all rise together.
- Judge a strategy change over a real window, Jamie used 90 days, rather than the first few posts, since results can take months to compound.
04Manual vs Creative Labor
- Time spent creating doesn't measure effort accurately; asking 'why would someone share this' before making a post replaces guesswork with a filter that kills weak ideas early.
- If an idea doesn't have a clear answer for why someone would share or save it, it's worth not making that post at all.
05The Share Test
- People share content that proves to skeptical friends and family they made the right choice, especially in categories where the audience carries real doubt about the decision.
- People also share content that makes them feel like an insider, in on a joke or reference only their community would recognize.
- Solo audiences without built-in sharing behavior, like freelancers with no team, need a specific psychological reason to share, not just good information.
06It's About Identity
- Reading DMs and comment arguments in volume, not analyzing a spreadsheet, is what built the pattern-recognition for what an audience actually responds to.
- Logging recurring reactions, what people argue about, what gets saved, what gets shared to stories, eventually becomes instinct that no longer needs a notes app.
07What If It Flops?
- The downside of posting something that fails is smaller than it feels, because a genuinely weak post simply won't get seen by many people.
- A private testing feature that reveals a post's performance before it's public removes most of the risk from publishing content nobody has judged yet.
08The Two Plateaus
- Every retention graph tends to flatten twice: once near the start, before the real hook begins, and once near the end, after interest is exhausted.
- Trimming a video down to the material between its two plateaus produces a tighter, more retentive cut than the original full-length draft.
09Find It In Edit
- Treating raw footage as modular pieces, rather than a fixed script order, lets the actual data decide which sequence of lines keeps people watching.
- The order that felt right while filming isn't always the order that retains an audience; testing reveals what the writing process couldn't predict.
10The 50% Rule
- A completion rate above 50% is a strong signal that a piece of content is about to perform well; the buffer above that number scales with how big the hit will be.
- Setting a numeric bar for 'good retention' turns a subjective judgment call into a repeatable decision rule.
11Fixing Slow Drop-offs
- A steady, gradual decline in retention, instead of one obvious cliff, usually means the video needs to be shorter and needs more re-hooks planted throughout, not just trimmed at the ends.
- Story beats that connect with 'therefore' or 'but' escalate and hold attention; beats that just connect with 'and then' are a list of events and lose it.
12Married To One Reel
- Spending an entire day re-editing and re-testing a single piece of content, rather than moving on to the next idea, is how a near-miss becomes a hit.
- Adding small pacing changes, like a beat of silence after a line, can add watch time without changing the substance of a story, and more watch time earns more distribution.
- Testing multiple versions at the exact same time, instead of staggering them, keeps the comparison data clean of unrelated factors like news cycles or time of day.
13Upgrade Or Repost?
- Publishing a private, already-proven test directly to the public feed avoids confusing the algorithm about which version of a post deserves distribution.
- The gap in time between when a test succeeds and when it goes public matters: publishing a winner the same day is different from reviving one days later.
- Visible social proof, like a high share or comment count, creates its own curiosity that pulls in more viewers independent of the content itself.
14Why Skits Work
- A question-and-answer conversational structure builds hook-and-rehook into the format itself: each answer should open a bigger question than the one before it.
- A performative delivery style is a trainable skill, not a fixed trait, and it matters as much as the writing for a skit-style format to land.
15Look Outside Your Niche
- Studying mediums outside your own, film, painting, acting, produces more original ideas than studying what other creators in the same niche are already doing.
- A format that becomes a creator's signature can come from a completely different genre or platform than the one they're known for.
16The Real Time Cost
- Most of the real effort in a successful piece of content happens before filming starts, in scripting and ideation, not during the shoot or edit.
- A short, simple-looking piece of content can still represent several hours of total work once scripting, filming, editing, and post-publish monitoring are all counted.
Terms worth knowing.
- Trial reel
- An Instagram feature that lets a creator post a reel privately to a sample of the audience to see its retention and share performance before deciding whether to publish it to the main feed.
- Retention graph
- The chart a platform shows for a video's audience retention over time, used here to find the exact second viewers drop off so the edit can be adjusted around it.
- Upgrading a trial reel
- Publishing a private trial reel directly to the main public feed once it proves itself, instead of deleting it and uploading a fresh copy.
- Re-hook
- A moment inserted partway through a video specifically to re-capture a viewer's attention and prevent a drop-off.
Things they pointed at.
40:00channelAmerican Baron (TikTok creator)
Lines you could clip.
00:40
“I'm known for saying the more you post, the more you grow.”
04:50
“My 12 posts a day push was really about me shirking the responsibility of making good content.”
19:10
“If a post is terrible, nobody's going to see it.”
21:30
“There's two plateaus on any retention graph.”
25:25
“North of 50 is going to do well for us.”
27:40
“If the word 'and then' comes between beats, you're... in trouble.”
28:50
“Me and this one reel are married until I figure it out.”
44:10
“If you give me an hour to chop down a tree, I'll spend the first 45 minutes sharpening the axe.”
Where the conversation goes.
00:00 – 09:40denseWhy the 12-reels-a-day era ended
09:40 – 18:29denseThe psychology of what makes people share
18:29 – 28:31denseTrial reels and reading retention graphs
28:31 – 37:32steadyTesting workflow and publishing winners
37:32 – 46:03steadyFormat, craft, and real time cost
Word for word.
Read-along
Don't just watch it. Burn it in.
See every word as it's spoken — crank it to 2× and still catch all of it. The same dual-channel trick behind Amazon's Kindle + Audible.
metaphoranalogystory
Imagine only posting three reels per week and yet getting almost 50 million views per month. In today's episode, I'm going to be interviewing someone who was on the podcast just a few months ago, but he's now using a polar opposite strategy. Earlier this year, today's guest, Jamie Brindle, joined the show to tell us about his strategy of posting 12 reels per day.
I'm known for saying the more you post, the more you grow. And so this strategy was very much in alignment with that. ton of low effort, relatively air quotes, easy content to his feed.
And even though his views per video weren't super high, he was seeing a lot of growth, engagement and new followers over a 90 day period using this strategy. But then shortly after our previous interview aired, the results started to plateau or even decline a little bit. He wasn't seeing the same amount of growth.
He wasn't seeing the same amount of views or engagement, yet he was still posting an absolute ton over 12 times. per day on Instagram and every other platform. But now he's doing the exact opposite.
He's only posting about three times per week every other day. And yet every single statistical category is up compared to when he was posting 12 times per day. Basically, he went from 84 reels per week down to just three and is seeing better results.
And listen, you know me, I consider myself an expert when it comes to Instagram and social media content strategy. Every single week here on this podcast, I put out some sort of video with ideas, tips, and strategies to help you grow your brand or business on Instagram. By the way, make sure you hit subscribe if you haven't already.
But in today's conversation, multiple times, my jaw was on the floor. Multiple times, Jamie answered a question in the opposite way that I expected. I expected him to follow strategy A, and he followed strategy Z that I didn't even know was a possibility.
One thing that we didn't delve too deeply into in today's conversation was just how necessary that six month period is because you might take today's interview and think, oh my gosh, well, great. I'm just going to post three times a week and I'm going to grow as much as Jamie does. And while that is possible, if you follow all of the strategies and all of the tips that he outlines in today's episode, he also believes that that six month period of 84 reels a week gave him a fire hose of data.
absorb so much information about his community, about his audience, about the algorithm, about his content. And he is then able to use that to inform his now very strategic and intentional three posts per week. It's kind of like in this big debate of quality versus quantity.
Most people kind of ham and egg it and fall somewhere in the middle. They do a little bit of quality and a little bit of quantity. They post maybe one or two times a day, and they're somewhat strategic and somewhat intentional with that content.
What Jamie did was spend six months, not really, and this is kind of crazy to say, not really caring about quality. Like, yes, he needed them to be a certain level of quality, but he even admits it in our conversation. It was kind of an excuse to really just like not care as much and kind of just post this low hanging fruit, this easy content.
And so again, he posted an extreme amount of quantity. He went all in. He turned the dial all the way up when it came to.
quantity to learn as much as he possibly could in the shortest amount of time possible. Then he fully swung the pendulum in the opposite direction, going all in on quality, using all of that data, using everything he learned to make the best posts possible. And now not every post he makes is going viral, but every post he makes is set up for viral success.
And with a few tweaks and adjustments and a few strategic elements that he's going to talk about in today's episode, he is consistently post after post after post. going viral. So without further ado, here's the full conversation.
Jamie, welcome back to the podcast for your second time this year. Good times, man. I'm on a roll here.
I want to tear on the Build Your Tribe podcast. Yeah, yeah, you are. And it's because earlier this year, we brought you on when you were doing a bonkers, absolutely insane strategy, hosting like 12 reels a day.
And we were talking all about what your growth was like, what your system strategies and everything were like during that period. But now your pendulum has swung in the complete opposite direction. So I won't steal your thunder.
What's your strategy right now? And like where how's it working for you? Yeah.
So big picture about this time last year, like almost to the day, my team and I decided to start posting 12 times a day on Instagram across social media. So really, it's 12 times whatever. four or five profiles that we have a day across social media.
And purely on a data collection mission, we got some really interesting stats and a really clear picture of what people want, what people want to engage with. It was like a , as you could expect. And we maintained that pace, cadence, for...
until like April. So it was from November to April. And then kind of started to down throttle a little bit after that, because we weren't seeing the returns that we were seeing on the early side of the initiative.
And so we slowly backed off to, you know, 12 posts a day or six posts a day and then three posts a day, which is where we were before we started. And then I kind of had this moment, not to get like too philosophical in what I imagine is going to be a very practical podcast episode, but I kind of had this moment of clarity where I realized that my 12 posts a day push was really about me shirking the responsibility of making good content.
It was like, I was like, oh, okay. You know, I can just like, I can just, you know, bully my way into, you know, growth and just, you know, punch this wall enough times that it breaks down. And I was, you know, I had this mind, I was just like looking at the stuff that I was putting out and I was like, who is this?
What is this for? Like, what are we doing here? You know?
And so I thought, well, okay, Jamie, you have the time and tenacity to, come up with enough content for 12 posts a day what if you put all of that effort into one post what if you like actually sat down and tried to figure out how to make something that um you know speaks the language of the internet that's valuable to your audience that plays the game of social media like you got a lot of boxes to check to have a viral post um and so my game became about that uh and now i post maybe three times a week right now on instagram like it could not be more polar opposite than where we were this time last year um but the results uh, have been astounding, like, like really exciting and enjoyable.
Um, and so far they're holding like in, in a way that the, the volume plate didn't necessarily. Yeah, that makes sense. Um, and I, I know you just said like the results are holding, you know, what are those results?
Cause I remember in our last episode, which we'll link up if anyone wants to watch that, uh, you shared your growth. What's the growth been like since April, since you made the switch? Yeah, since we made the switch, so officially, we officially started this type of posting this summer, right?
So there was kind of a no man's land between April and this summer. So, you know, to keep it fair, it was, you know, just, we're basically talking about, you know, the last 90 days here. And in the last 90 days, we've seen almost 30 ,000 new followers on Instagram, 50 ,000 new followers on Facebook.
The views are up 139 % on our Instagram to 41 .9 million. This includes Facebook views too because I posted both from Instagram. Reaches up 467%.
Interactions are up 366%. Link clicks are up 100%. Profile visits are up 144%.
And follows are up. uh 95 percent uh in in this this 90 this 90 day window of posting with intentionality yeah that's that's insane um and i would imagine i mean you were texting me we were talking yesterday you had a video that like is blowing up as we speak so who knows if those numbers from that mega well yeah i mean yeah we have two right now like literally this morning is going to be another million view video the video we posted this morning is is i mean when we post it's when i logged on to this call it was like at 840 000 views i don't i don't know where it is now but um i'm pulling it up as we speak so 10 minutes after you checked it's already at 875 yeah um i'll just read some of your recent views on these 875 4 .6 million on the one yesterday basically 200k on the day before 190.
275 the day before 275 313 and these are 313 000 275 000 the day before that 735 the day before that or i should say the post before that 864 1 .5 million 864 again i mean it's like your lowest is 150 000 which is insane but there's multiple here's 1 .9 million 2 .2 million this is absolutely insane i'm curious first question about this whole strategy you know 12 posts a day people hear that and they're like that's an insane amount of work jamie yeah you said what if i took the time energy effort intentionality creativity that i was putting into 12 posts and put it into really one a day or really like one every other day yeah so would you say that the workload is the exact same is it more now is it less now how does that compare yeah it's the difference between like manual labor and like creative labor right like so like i'd like you know if someone were had a had a camera in my office it might look like the 12 posts a day initiative was more labor intensive um but but this current initiative uh like i could shut my brain off during because it was just like you know we were leveraging ai like i was making multiple versions of similar posts i was experimenting with headlines you know whatever um and now it's like okay like
What am I actually doing? So I start every post with why is somebody going to share this, right? And then I back into the post from that angle.
And if I can't answer the question, I don't make the post. And beforehand, my question was, why would somebody save this? And for people that don't know my content, I give advice to freelancers on social media.
So that's a pretty easy one to answer because it's educational content. So it's like you'd save it to come back and refer to later. And shares was always a little elusive to me because freelancers are kind of one -man bands.
They're solo operations. And it's not like they have a team that they're going to share for the most part. They don't have a team that they're going to share.
content too um i was trying to maybe i could get away with share this to your notes you know like as a you know as like so i was like trying to train that behavior for a little bit didn't take um you know but like there was i couldn't couldn't crack that for the longest time so that was issue number one was how do i and and brock you and i we we riff on this occasionally it's like how much of content creation is human psychology you know and it's like so how do i what is it about a post that a freelancer which share their stories for everybody else to see, assuming that the people that follow them are their friends and family and not other freelancers, right?
And so I landed on, well, freelancers, you know, A would be sharing content that... they're uh that that proves to their friends and family that they made the right choice right so it's like because i was thinking there's a lot of conversations that i have in the dms or um you know well my parents don't understand this or my parents want me to get a nine to five or you know i i want to do this but you know my my significant other doesn't think it's the right play and so it's like this is their way to kind of passive aggressively tell all those people through jamie's mouth that they've made the right decision um right and then b they would share something if uh if they felt like uh They were being directly represented.
They're in on the joke, kind of. It's a way to show, oh, yeah, I'm so good at this that I know what this guy's talking about. Got it.
Those two kind of became our guiding principles for how to get into a topic. Gotcha. I have no idea what question started me on this tangent, so I don't know if I've answered it or not.
I don't remember either. I'm sure everyone can rewind three minutes to go and check. Comment, let us know.
Did Jimmy answer question one? Yeah, let us know in the comments. There was a period of time where I was obsessed with stand -up comedy.
And during that period, I heard one of my favorite jokes of all time from John Mulaney, where he said something along the lines of, he's a 30 -something -year -old man, and he still thinks about how he can't wait to get big and strong. And I thought that was so funny because I relate to that so heavily myself. And I know I was a college football player, but I'm not exactly like the buffest guy in the room.
But I'm also looking forward to when I get big and strong. So something that I'm doing to turn that dream into a reality is taking creatine. And the creatine that I've been taking every single day for the last few months is from Momentous.
Every single morning, I mix a scoop of their new Signature Spec Creatine into my oatmeal, and it's amazing. Because I ain't no fitness expert, but from what I understand, creatine is one of those supplements that is really good for you in so many different regards. And now, the Signature Spec Creatine is even cleaner, with 10 times fewer impurities, 2 to 5 times tighter heavy metal limits, and screening for PFAS and microplastics.
If you want to try Momentous' new Signature Spec Creatine, just head to livemomentous .com. And use code BYT for up to 35 % off your first order. Again, that's livemomentous .com and use code BYT for up to 35 % off.
L -I -V -E -M -O -M -E -N -T -O -U -S, livemomentous .com and use promo code BYT. Both of those, to me, sound like they go back to identity. One is kind of affirming their identity and affirming their choice in identity, affirming their choice in career, their choice to become a freelancer.
And the other one is kind of like an in -group. It's like, hey, I can relate to this or I know this. I'm affirming my identity as someone who's knowledgeable or someone who connects with this piece.
How did you figure out what those things specifically were for you? Because I think that's super smart. Was it going back to the data of those?
you know seven million posts in six months or was it like just sitting there and thinking about the psychology of it because i agree it's so much about psychology where did those specific ideas come from well that's it's i'm glad you brought that up because we can explore this together i can try to uncover this within myself uh live on camera but i i do no i i honestly think that in in those first in that big 12 posts of a day push that uh i It was like I plugged myself into the culture of my audience.
Like the amount of DMs I was getting. and the arguments i was seeing playing out in the comments and like so it was just a way to just like download all of that like you know in a really efficient manner not i mean i had already i would already argue that ahead of that initiative i had a lot of a lot of that understanding of my audience but um it it did feel a lot like uh you know i i was collecting a lot of a lot of data in real time and there's no like real scientific like and i was gathering it all in a spreadsheet to be analyzed by claude and you know it wasn't that it was just like maybe it should have been who knows but it was it was like an instinctual like you know yeah it was like you know putting steroids into my instincts for for what this for what this audience is interested in and you know so I would I mean admittedly on the on the data collection side I did have a notes app whereas I saw something that would come up regularly I kind of log it
This seems to be something that people can't quite get over this obstacle. Or this one, whenever I post about it, it's super controversial. People are always arguing about this.
Or whenever I do this, people share it to stories. It's like those things I would clock and log. But you do that enough times, it's like you don't need to keep doing it.
I now just know inherently what the things are. But that list, whether I opened the notes app and referred to it, or I was just consulting my own, remembrance of it that list informed you know the starting point for for where all this uh for where these these uh you know more viral pieces of content uh were were created and i mean for reference literally uh at the in those days the the posts were doing on average i mean like a 10 000 views was a great post during that push right um and so i was you know posting you know 12 of those a day so i'd be getting you know 100 to 200 000 views a day across 12 posts but on you know the individual level the posts weren't uh weren't weren't performing that well which makes sense makes sense and you know i i think there's plenty of practical tips that we're going to share today but i also think there's something about the approachability or the actual like implement implementability if that's a word um that like there wasn't some like fancy spreadsheet that was like automatically being logged and doing a quantitative analysis of your comments scraped by claude and plugged into some master ai brain it was like no i was just like a human being who was listening to other human beings and really like taking in what my audience was saying and after a few months i didn't even have to write it down because i was just like yeah okay i i know that there's these certain boxes that are
you know people are always asking about these certain things that are always uh problematic or challenging whatever controversial um so i'm curious then you you kind of slowly make this shift you described as like a no man's land for a little couple months there where you were transitioning back from 12 a day to maybe even less than one a day i'm curious how you ultimately decided what posts to post because there's plenty of data However, I'll just be candid.
My personal concern for myself is like, I have so much data, hundreds of posts over hundreds of years. Well, hundreds of posts over whatever, five, 10 years. And like, I have all this data as well.
But my concern is like, well, what if I put all this effort in? What if I do everything that you're saying, Jamie? And I think I'm checking off all the boxes and I post it and it's still flopped.
So I put in the 12 hours worth of work, so to speak, but it's still flopped. So did you have that concern? Did that happen?
And how did you deal with it? I mean, the longer you do this content creation thing, the less concern you have for what if this post flops? Because I think actually you taught me this.
It was like if a post is terrible, nobody's going to see it. Like the only time anybody's going to see a post is when it's awesome, which is super freeing advice. But I drove trial reels like I stole it.
And I still do during this whole operation, right? Where, you know, trial reels, I really leverage, you know, that feature to guarantee that anything I, with a capital G, that anything I post is going to do over 100 ,000 views, right? Okay.
As you... uh, observed earlier. And it's, I mean, if you, if we were, you just, you opened up my account and look down my, now, if, if we open up my trial reels and look down, it would be much smaller numbers, right?
Because they're, uh, you know, it's, they're, it's, it's kind of my graveyard of, of all the edits that didn't, that didn't make it to, to the public feed. Um, and what I'll do is I'll, I'll, you know, so, so first off, first things first, like, you know, you, you pick an idea that's shareable. It's not going to work if it's not shareable.
and this is all by the way this is all my experience people watching this is not universally prescriptive uh and if anything i say disagrees with anything brock said go with brock because he he's the one that's observed thousands of these experiences um but but in my experience i posted the trial reels uh and um and i'll i'll look at the retention graph right uh and for the most part for me uh there's two plateaus on any retention graph there's one at the very beginning there's one at the very end uh and so that tells me where the where the video really should have started and where it really should have ended right um so i'll i'll find let's let's pause it what exactly do you mean by that that's where the video really should have started like if i'm looking at the graph what am i looking for right so if you see in the first like three seconds you're three seconds flat then down then flat again right and say that the slope down took you to seven seconds and then it went flat again right so now i'm going to figure out a way to start that video at whatever happened at seven seconds right so that's i'm going to find a way now odds are that's not going to be a super hooky moment in the video so i have to find a way to reverse engineer a hook at that at that seven second mark right um or for me my format is conversation reel so usually the
the first character is kind of an inexperienced freelancer and he poses a question or, or the first character is a client and he poses an obstacle. Right. So both of those are inherently very hooky.
So usually, uh, you know, what happens is I keep that part and then I delete whatever comes after it. And then I just take the middle of, I connect the hook to the middle of the video, you know, and having done this a few times now, I'm starting to write them knowing that that may have to happen. right so it's like half okay i may have to have the client make a request and then the freelancer answers it and then the client follows up with a question and the freelancer answers that but i may have to delete delete those middle two and have freelancers answer to the second request actually be his answer to the client's question right gotcha so so it's like and for anyone who hasn't seen your content i encourage them to go check it out a lot of skit right where it's like back and forth two characters so what you're saying is what you noticed in trial reels was that if you did Person A, scene one, asking a question, presenting a problem.
Then person B responds, they answer the question. And it goes back to person A for scene number two. And then it goes to person B for scene number two, their response to that second question.
What you have done is basically removed the first response and the follow -up question so that it kind of more or less goes from person A, first question, into the second response, more or less. Because that second response is really where people are retained. Like the first question is the hook, but then the response and everything else has been proven to retain people.
Exactly. Exactly. And the whole, like when you, when you think of, and you can do this, I've done this with two camera.
reels as well, where it's just modular. I mean, and it might come, my background as an editor, you can kind of make anybody say anything, you know, you, you learn. Um, but like you just think of your content as modular and your trial reels.
So it's like, you know, you hear a director say, we'll find it in the edit. That's what you're doing here. Right?
So it's like you shoot your content, you collect your assets, and then you use trial reels to tell you what you've got. So it's like, well, what order do these sentences need to go in to keep somebody's attention, to keep them interested? And after like two or three of those successes, you almost don't even need the trial reels anymore because you understand it.
And that's kind of becoming a theme of our conversation today. It's just like it becomes inherent to your understanding of your content and your audience.
Figure out where that first plateau is and make that the opening. And then go look at the second one. Where are people dropping off when they go, okay, I get it next, right?
That's where your video should end. Because so many people, you know, what is this Brad Pitt in Moneyball? When you get the answer you want, hang up the phone, right?
It's that with, so it's like when you just want, you don't, you want to make the most of your time. and get the hell out the second that they've gotten the value or the entertainment that they've decided to like or share it. And so you'll see reels viewed to completion.
It's going to be, well, 50 % of people watch this thing to the end. 60 % of people watch this thing to the end because you didn't give a chance to click off. And so I think that's a primary takeaway practically from all of this is to, you know, be very responsible with other people's time.
And, and, you know, uh, if, if it's not holding their attention, it doesn't belong in your video. Well, okay. That makes sense.
Um, so like talking percentages and everyone's percentages are going to be different niche to niche industry to industry, whatever. What does your definition of a good retention graph look like at the end of the video? What percentage of people are still watching for you to say, I did my job.
I respected their time. North of 50. North of 50 is going to do well for us, and I think that's fair for my contribution to society.
If more than half of the people have decided that it's worth watching, then I think it's worth watching. But any number above 50, 51, 52%, if I post a reel to Trials and it's still holding strong at like 57, 58 % at the end of that reel, I know that thing's going to do gangbusters. I know we're going to have a fun 24 hours with that reel.
What if there is no... What if there's no stark drop off? What if, cause like you talked about the plateaus, right?
What if I'm just kind of seeing a gradual decrease throughout the entire video from second one to the end and we end up at 20%, what do I do with that? I mean, I, I would argue that you can always kind of spot the moment in that, in that graph. Like even the most gradual, you can kind of see just one small like moment to lock in on and do something with.
Um, but in that instance, I mean, I would pontificate that maybe shorten that thing up and try to find a way to throw in a couple re -hooks, right? Try to find a way to get them curious again and again throughout the video.
There's a great storytelling hack from...
some elite filmmakers by the name of Trey Parker and Matt Stone, uh, the South Park creators. And they, uh, they have a whole, um, uh, you know, when they're telling a story, they, they line up the beats and they make sure that the words therefore or, but come between each beat. And if the word comes, if the word and then comes between in the words of Matt Stone, you're fucked.
Right. So like you, you, you need to, um, So I would audit your reel accordingly and see, okay, am I actually holding people's attention or did I just make something that I liked?
Listen, I totally get it. Hiring help for your business is scary, it's frustrating, and it is such a headache. But it shouldn't have to be that way because Upwork makes it easy to hire specialized freelancers quickly.
You can browse profiles, review past work, and get help scoping out the role so you can hire with confidence and get started quickly. And with Business +, you can access the top 1 % of talent on Upwork with AI -powered shortlisting so you can get matched with the right freelancer in less time without having to do endless searching.
Visit Upwork .com to post your job for free. Again, that's Upwork .com to get connected with the top talent ready to help your business grow. That's U -P -W -O -R -K .com.
Upwork .com. Yeah. Speaking more about trial reels, how many are you posting per day?
And is there like a quota goal or is it we're posting as many as we can until we find the reel that we know is going to hit on the feed? It's so different from what I was doing before where it's like each video is like a marriage to me. It's not like I'm going to go out there and find what works.
It's like I've got an idea. I know this works. I know people are interested in this.
I'm going to figure out how to make it work. And so me and this one reel are . And so I'm spending the day posting and then re -editing.
And what's interesting is sometimes it's giving it room to breathe that will do better. I've had some where I literally didn't change anything about what was being said, but I would add a second after each person talked to just give it room to breathe. So at the end of it, the video was about...
10 or 12 seconds longer held the same retention because it was the same story being told, right? But now I'm getting an extra 12 seconds of viewership, which obviously Instagram's going to love, right? So when you pit the original concept against the same thing just a little bit longer, you know, with padding, Instagram's going to prefer the little bit longer one because it's going to keep people there longer.
So it's going to put it in front of more people, right? Super fascinating. And I think it also like that in of itself is great for people to hear because especially on Instagram with short form content, it's all about be as short as possible, be as concise as possible, you know, eliminate the dead space, eliminate the, eliminate the, the errors, the odds, the mistakes, the bloopers, whatever.
It's really interesting. Um, and it makes sense though, right? Especially with your content specifically, because it's often very conversational.
Right. And if it was just like, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, back and forth conversations, um, it might be too fast for the audience to actually even understand what the heck was going on right yeah um so when you're posting these trial reels and you're really you know figuring it out you're married to this reel until you get it right yeah do you care really about the views that the trial reel is getting or is it primarily that the views are a delayed indicator and the primary thing that you're watching is share rate and the retention graph yeah it's for yeah views obviously I care about, yes.
But in the practice that we're discussing, like the act of crafting a reel that's going to go viral, I could care less because I'm locked in on primarily retention and share rate, right? Because you take care of those two and everything else will take care of itself. Yeah, that makes sense.
You do have to let it... go a little bit because i have noticed like there are times where i will like post something to trial monitor it for the first three hours and be like it's not it didn't happen you know and then like i'll come back to it like five hours later and it's got 800 000 views and i'm like holy shit like it's just like it needed a second to figure out what to do with that piece of content you know and so in the early days i i wonder you know i i have caught myself doing it but it's like i wonder if i you know uh uh How many I went in and fucked with and made six different versions of posting.
And I was also trying to be careful with how many trial reels I was allowed to post a day and all that stuff. But yeah, you got to let it sit a little bit. We did that.
We have a client. We do a little social media consulting on the side to keep ourselves sharp for all this freelancing content. And we had a client that we're helping that...
had 3000 followers and we went and shot some content with them. Uh, first video we posted, I posted the trials and I was like, ah, I really thought that one was going to do it. All right.
Well, you know, we'll figure it out tomorrow. We called it a day. I woke up the next morning and it had over half a million views and their following had doubled.
And now they're at 10 K and that video is over a million, you know, and it's just, so you just gotta let it, gotta let it sit sometimes. Yeah. Okay.
So we'll let it sit for at least. at least six, but maybe even 12 to 24 hours before we really start going in. Another just quick question about timing wise, when you're posting these multiple variations, are you strategic about spacing them out or will you just bam, bam, bam, upload them and that allow that to test?
I love uploading them at the same time. Yeah. I love uploading.
I love uploading them at the same time. Yeah. It's because it's like the purest data set, you know, it's like, like, cause, cause it is like.
Luck does play a factor in our business. Part of that luck is timing. If something happened in the news at 2 p .m.
that day, it's going to mess with your reach. If I posted a trial at 1 p .m. and one at 3 p .m., then we're going to have a muddy set of data.
I'll get batch one up, read the data. go edit a couple versions of batch two, get that up, read the data, you know, but I do try to get them as close, as close as possible. Super interesting, man.
This is, this is so good. And then I, I think I know the answer to this, but once you have the winner, then the winner is uploaded fresh to the feed. It's not upgraded from trials, right?
Totally upgraded from trials. Yeah. Really?
Yeah. yeah man no way tell me why you said that do you know something i don't know should i not do that no i mean what we typically tell people is don't upgrade it because when it's been upgraded now here's the differentiation for most people they're upgrading non -winners let's say they're upgrading not the ones like you have done so much researching and truly using trial reels the way they were intended to be used and you're truly picking one that is basically viral or almost viral and then upgrading it so here's why i think that really works for you i'm thinking about this through in real time it's already a winner it's already getting a lot of views and you're upgrading it my guess is within 24 hours of posting it or will you upgrade it okay okay so it's still it's relatively recent yeah okay so it's relatively recent and i think where most people would go wrong is they've already posted let's say you posted to your feed that morning And then you upgraded a trial reel that you posted yesterday.
Well, now the algorithm's like, well, hey, there's this trial reel from Jamie, but it was actually posted prior to this other reel, but now he's upgrading it. So there's like some conflict there where the algorithm has to decide, do we push Jamie's post from 9 a .m. this morning or his trial reel from yesterday afternoon that has now been upgraded?
But that's not really the case with you because of the schedule that you're sticking to. So as I'm thinking this through in real time, your strategy totally makes sense. I think for most people, if they're posting, let's say, multiple feed posts, and then they have a trial reel that is also not going viral, it's just kind of good enough.
They're like, yeah, I want to upgrade it. Then they upgrade it three days later. It shows up on their feed as if it was posted three days ago.
So I could see how that would be a challenge for most people. But actually, that totally makes sense if they're following the kind of blueprint that you've laid out. Yeah, yeah.
I mean, it's served us well. And oftentimes, it's, you know. Something will go to half a million, 600, 700 ,000, and I'll wake up.
That's the one downside to it. You can't schedule it. You have to wake up and actually transfer it.
I'll wake up at four in the morning to post it public because that's when my audience is most active, 4 a .m. Pacific time.
But, you know, yeah, I mean, then I'll go back to sleep and wake up again and it's over a million, you know, because it's just I think I think there is also going back to human psychology. It's like when you're standing across the street, you see two restaurants and one has a giant line out out front, like which you'll go check that one out, you know.
And so it's like I think when you come to a post that has 20 ,000 shares and, you know, 800 comments, you're like, well, there must be something good at the end of this video. yeah so i'll watch it you know so there is like a psychology element to it that helps yeah i mean i i i'm sure you do too i catch myself doing that all the time i i feel like i do it a little bit more on tiktok than instagram that might just be a personal thing where if i start a video and it's like the most random off the wall i'm like what the heck are we doing here but you Yeah, I look at the comments.
I'm like, oh, it's got 7 ,000 comments. Oh, it's got 2 .1 million likes. I'm going to watch because there's going to be something.
There's going to be some reason that this random video is blowing up. Whereas if it's some random video, and I feel like, again, this just happens to me more often on TikTok, and it has like one like, zero comments. I'm like, oh, this is not random off the wall going to be great.
This is just random off the wall. Instagram's kind of... TikTok is using me to test this content.
I totally agree though, like the human psychology aspect of it. I want to drill down real quick into your specific format, which is these skits. And when I think about like, what is Jamie's content?
three four years ago when we first got connected i was like oh it's the skit it's like you do this great back and forth conversation with yourself which is so so cool um and that's really what's working now so it's kind of cool to see it come full circle yeah um do you think that's just like what works for you and you're good at it do you think that this is a format that you're like i think a lot of other people could incorporate this into their niche and like make it work what do you think i uh yes yes to both i i think that i've seen I think that you do have to have or train in yourself kind of a performative quality.
That's not a born with, by the way. If you want to do skits and you're not great at performing, go get great at performing. That's a piece of cake.
It's probably easier than most things that you have to do as a content creator. But that is important because there are plenty of people that do the skits, but dry as a bone. And it's just like, and the editing's not there, and it just doesn't feel entertaining because, you know, you're looking for entertainment in that format.
So that's important. But I think that the format itself is so valuable to content creators because that whole hook -rehook thing that we're talking about is just built into a skit, right? It's the most natural way to do it where it's...
Ask a question that opens a curiosity gap. Answer the question in a way that opens an even bigger question. Ask a follow -up question to that bigger question that opens an even bigger curiosity gap.
Answer that question in a way that's savable or shareable. That's the whole package. I've been doing that for years.
Sometimes I forget that that's what I'm doing and that video doesn't perform.
That's the benefit of that format. But it is. If you're not selling it, Um, if you're not entertaining and if it's edited kind of awkwardly, it's not going to do the things that you want it to do.
So you have to, uh, you know, be really, get really real with yourself about, um, about those parts of it, you know? And it's like, I mean, I think I learned this. I live in LA.
I, I've, you know, cut my teeth in the film and television business for those of you not watching. And I've. directed my fair share of things.
And a great piece of advice that a cinematographer gave me on one of my projects was, you know, go outside our medium for inspiration. Go look at paintings. Go to a museum.
Go look at sculptures. Listen to some music. Read a book.
Don't watch other movies to figure out how this movie needs to look. And I think that that is so important in the content game, too, for a number of reasons. A, because so much content is ubiquitous that it just becomes wallpaper and your job is to...
figure out how to stand out from the wallpaper um you know it's very i very soon one thing just do the opposite um but but also uh you know b it you know you understand what what people have you know gravitated towards or what's hooked people's attention in other mediums then you can apply that to this one you know um and so like you know how i would like okay so say you're not you know you're having trouble performing something like go learn how to act like don't don't don't watch content creation content go go watch acting con like go learn how to be an actor and actors all know that it's not about talking it's about listening you know and so that's when people talk about how realistic my conversation content is it's because the characters are listening to each other like i i read what the guy says before me and then I read my line and then I react to what the guy said before me and then I say my line you know so it's like how so it's stuff like that like pick you know pick and choose from other mediums and other art forms to to inform to inform your own art form or like even more micro I guess macro I don't know which one applies here actually but even more to the point like like the content the conversation format
um was one my wife courtney walked into the living room one day and showed me this guy on tick tock uh his name's american baron uh you know it was his tick tock handle and he does kind of funny skits that loop and she was like why couldn't we do this you know because at the time like everybody in the business niche was doing two camera whiteboards presentation behind them Q &A panel, you know.
And so in a smaller way, I went outside of my niche and I took something from, you know, what kind of the entertainers on social media were doing and applied it to my niche. Yeah, totally makes sense. And I love it.
I think that's so, so smart. In terms of time, we talked about the energy and the effort you were putting as much into 12 posts as you now put into really one post. I'm curious specifically around time.
How much time are you now spending? per post in total filming, re -editing, scripting, everything? Oh, man, I haven't really logged it.
I mean, I will caveat this with I'm an editor by trade. So like my answer to this question would not reflect a non -editor by trades answer to this question, right? But, you know, I would say that, you know, any one of these represents like a cumulative like two or three hours of my life.
you know like from okay from scripting filming editing um but again like i when i film i only film one take of everything i have no choice how i'm gonna you know like if i'm one take i so i i put a lot of effort into the ideation and scripting phase what's the saying if you give me an hour to chop down a tree i'm going to spend the first 45 minutes yeah someone said that on stage at the the live event i uh there's like so many different time amounts i think it's like abe lincoln or is it george washington some old president said yeah you give me x number of hours to cut down a tree i'll spend the first 80 sharpening the axe exactly yeah yeah it's uh it's but it's true like i mean you know it's and we say in film and tv too right where it's like if uh you know it's you know you the battle is won at the scripting phase.
And then, you know, and then you're, you just go out and film the stuff, you know, you, you should know, you should know it works before you go film, spend any money filming anything, you know? Um, and so I put a lot of effort in there and then shooting is, I say, Hey, Courtney, can you leave the, can you leave the office for 120 seconds?
I got to film this, you know, it's really quick. Um, and, uh, and then she goes and plays Mario deluxe on our switch. And, you know, she loses an hour of her day to that because I, Asked her to leave for two seconds.
That's my fault, really, because then I go out and join her, and then I play for two hours. And then editing is 20 minutes for me. But then the tail of that is post it, wait a couple hours, check the analytics, get back in the edit and mess around with it a little bit, post it again, wait a couple hours.
So there's that component of it, too. So it does take. You know, it's a bit of a process.
But ultimately, as far as like input from me, that's probably what we're looking at. Fascinating. Fascinating.
Well, Jamie, this has been so fascinating from start to finish. Every single answer, I was like, wow, writing notes for myself, thinking about how I'm going to implement this. So I hope everyone who was watching at home and listening was taking notes and considering how they could implement this into their own strategy as well.
But dude, man, I appreciate you. This is, as always, when we have a conversation, so great. Really appreciate you being here.
It's my pleasure, man. And thanks to you too. I mean, at least one of those million view videos, I directly lifted off of your page.
good well I'm glad I'm glad I could be that source of inspiration for you as you've been a source of inspiration for me I appreciate you man yeah dude likewise
The Hook
The bait, then the rug-pull.
Jamie Brindle posted 12 reels a day for six months, then swapped to three a week and watched every growth metric jump. The conversation that follows is his post-mortem on what that plateaued grind taught him about retention graphs, share triggers, and when to trust a single edit.
How they asked for the click.
MENTIONED ON CAMERA
