I Got 1 Million Followers on Instagram, Here's How
A podcast host grades the five-strategy Instagram plan he committed to a year earlier, and finds the biggest lever wasn't any of the five.
Posted
yesterday
Duration
Format
Talking Head
educational
Views
2K
58 likes
57 · 43
Big Idea
The argument in one line.
Reaching a million Instagram followers came less from any single growth hack and more from filtering every post through one question: will someone actually send this to a friend.
Who This Is For
Read if. Skip if.
READ IF YOU ARE…
A creator or business account posting multiple times a day who wants a concrete filter for judging which posts are worth the slot.
Someone running DM automation or giveaways who wants to see how a follow-gate and incentive loop actually gets structured.
A podcaster or YouTuber trying to cross-pollinate audiences between platforms instead of treating each as separate.
SKIP IF…
You're looking for a single hack — this is a year-long retrospective on five compounding strategies, not one trick.
You post only occasionally and aren't interested in daily-volume content systems.
TL;DR
The full version, fast.
A creator who just crossed a million Instagram followers walks back through the five strategies he committed to a year earlier and grades each one honestly. The biggest lever wasn't volume, it was filtering every post through a five-part checklist for what makes something shareable: simple, a strong hook, authentic, relatable, entertaining. DM automation and carousels outperformed Reels for follower conversion, while a daily reel-review series he expected to go viral barely moved the needle because the incentive to follow was never made explicit. The real unlock came late: posting more personal stories, because followers who don't feel they know a creator won't act when asked.
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Cold open: the milestone is announced, with a note that the episode is a strategy breakdown, not a victory lap.
00:31 – 01:02
02 · Revisiting the five-strategy plan
A clip from a year-earlier episode sets up the five strategies the host originally committed to.
01:02 – 04:40
03 · Strategy 1a: the SHARE checklist
Shareworthy posts are broken down into a five-letter checklist: Simple, Hook, Authentic, Relatable, Entertaining.
04:40 – 06:50
04 · Strategy 1b: DM automation and follow-gating
A ManyChat automation checks whether a commenter already follows before delivering a freebie.
06:50 – 08:35
05 · The hacking story, and the case for Keeper
A family account was hacked through one compromised password, losing a quarter-million followers overnight; segues into a sponsor read.
08:35 – 10:15
06 · Strategy 1c: carousels beat Reels
Carousels outperform Reels on views and on follower-conversion rate per view.
10:15 – 12:56
07 · Strategy 2: Trial Reels and the Triple Double Method
Every Reel gets posted as a Trial Reel, then mirrored and posted again, doubling test reach before the main feed.
12:56 – 14:15
08 · Strategy 3: the posting-frequency gap
A goal of 5 feed posts a day actually landed at 3.8-3.9, with intentional dips during launches.
14:15 – 16:09
09 · Strategy 4: one collaboration post a week
Collabs with smaller accounts still pay off as trust-transfer recommendations; collabs are planned, not accepted ad hoc.
16:09 – 17:56
10 · What-ifs, and the Shopify break
A reflection on early entrepreneurial doubt leads into a sponsor read.
17:57 – 19:05
11 · Strategy 5: the YouTube-Instagram-podcast loop
Cross-promotion between platforms grows both audiences despite minimal organic overlap between them.
19:06 – 20:59
12 · What didn't work: the daily reel-review series
A daily series reviewing followers' Reels underperformed because the incentive to follow was only ever implied.
20:59 – 25:23
13 · The real unlock: make people give a shit
An outside creator's blunt feedback leads to a shift toward more personal storytelling as the real growth driver.
Atomic Insights
Lines worth screenshotting.
Carousels got almost double the views of Reels over a 90-day stretch, and converted viewers into followers at a far higher rate per view.
A reel can get a million views and only 100 new followers, while a carousel with a tenth of the views can bring in 500 — views and follow-conversion are different metrics.
Posting the same video twice as separate Trial Reels, mirrored left-to-right, gets it treated as a new post without breaking captions or on-screen text.
A follow-gated automation checks whether a commenter already follows before sending the requested freebie, and reminds them to follow if they don't.
A creator who hit a million followers was still only posting 3.8-3.9 times a day against a stated goal of 5, showing consistency mattered more than hitting the exact target.
Collaborating with a much smaller account can still work in the bigger account's favor, because it functions as a referral recommendation from someone that audience already trusts.
A daily review series that looked viral on paper brought in only 1,000-2,000 followers per post because the incentive to follow was only ever implied, never stated outright.
The single biggest lever for growth wasn't a format or an automation, it was telling more personal stories so followers felt they knew the person behind the account.
A family Instagram account was hacked through one compromised email password, erasing a quarter of a million followers overnight.
Most followers of a large account don't know the creator has a podcast, and most podcast listeners don't follow the creator on Instagram — the overlap between platforms is surprisingly small.
Takeaway
The real unlock wasn't a tactic, it was being known
WHAT TO LEARN
Every format change, automation, and posting-frequency fix helped less than the simple decision to let followers actually get to know the person behind the account.
03Strategy 1a: the SHARE checklist
Judge every post against a five-part filter before publishing: is it simple, does it have a strong hook, is it authentic, is it relatable, and is it entertaining.
Authenticity here doesn't mean 'be yourself' in the abstract, it means shrinking the gap between having an idea and actually filming it, rather than over-scripting and over-editing.
Relatability comes from specificity, not from softening your story to make it broadly palatable — naming the exact problem lands harder than a watered-down version.
04Strategy 1b: DM automation and follow-gating
DM automation isn't just a sales mechanism — gating a free resource behind a 'comment a keyword' flow nudges people who already want the content into following too.
A follow-check step in the automation closes a gap where people request a freebie without realizing they never actually followed.
Avoiding DM-automation posts for feeling 'too salesy' turned out to be a limiting belief — the audience wanted the value being offered either way.
05The hacking story, and the case for Keeper
A single compromised password on one family member's account cascaded into email, then Facebook, then Instagram access, erasing a quarter of a million followers in under 72 hours.
Password reuse across accounts is the real attack surface — a unique, managed password per account limits how far one breach can spread.
06Strategy 1c: carousels beat Reels
Over a 90-day window, carousels got almost double the views of Reels on the same account.
View count and follower conversion are different metrics: a carousel with a tenth of a Reel's views converted five times more of those viewers into followers.
Carousels that never go viral can still quietly bring in hundreds or thousands of followers each, which makes them worth the production time even without a breakout hit.
07Strategy 2: Trial Reels and the Triple Double Method
Posting a Reel first as a Trial Reel lets you see retention, share rate, and like rate before committing it to the main feed, so you can tweak or kill it early.
Mirroring a video horizontally and reposting it as a second Trial Reel lets the same content run twice, since the platform treats the flipped version as new without breaking captions or on-screen text.
Trial Reels only reach new, non-follower viewers, so even a 'small' 15,000-view Trial Reel is 15,000 people discovering the account for the first time.
Curating which finished Reels go into Trial Reels at all, rather than running every post through the funnel, outperformed raw volume.
08Strategy 3: the posting-frequency gap
A stated goal of five feed posts a day actually landed at roughly 3.8-3.9 over the year — more frequency, not perfect frequency, drove the growth.
Posting volume dipped intentionally during product launches and a live event promotion, trading short-term frequency for focused promotional pushes.
09Strategy 4: one collaboration post a week
Collaborating with an account that has far fewer followers still benefits the larger account, because it functions as a trust-transfer recommendation to an audience that doesn't know you yet.
Collaborations were planned in advance through direct conversation, not accepted ad hoc from inbound requests — the selectivity protects the trust transfer.
11Strategy 5: the YouTube-Instagram-podcast loop
Cross-promoting between platforms helped hit growth goals on both, even though the two audiences barely overlap.
An estimated 90%+ of the podcast and YouTube audience doesn't follow the Instagram account, and the reverse is also true — prompting both ways captures growth organic crossover never would.
12What didn't work: the daily reel-review series
A daily content series that looked structurally viral on paper underperformed because the incentive to follow was only ever implied, never stated as an explicit requirement.
Comparing it to a creator who ties following directly to a concrete outcome shows an explicit, visible incentive converts far better than an assumed one.
A format can generate steady engagement without ever producing the viral breakout its creator expected — worth running, but not worth over-forecasting.
13The real unlock: make people give a shit
Being told by an outside observer that your profile reveals nothing personal about you, even after years of posting, exposes a gap between value-driven content and audience connection.
The majority of an account's followers may never develop a deep relationship with the creator behind it, but shifting toward more personal story and behind-the-scenes content compounds over time.
Expect a temporary dip in performance when you start sharing more personal content, because initial curiosity fades before the deeper connection it's building actually pays off.
Glossary
Terms worth knowing.
Trial Reels
An Instagram feature that tests a post with non-followers first before it's added to a user's main profile grid, used to gauge performance before committing.
SHARE checklist
A five-part filter (Simple, Hook, Authentic, Relatable, Entertaining) used to judge whether a post is likely to be shared from one person to another.
Follow-gated automation
A DM or comment automation that checks whether the requester already follows the account before delivering a promised freebie, prompting them to follow first if not.
Mirroring
Flipping a video horizontally before reposting it as a new Trial Reel, which makes the platform treat it as fresh content without altering captions or on-screen text.
“They doxxed us, which means they gave up our family's home address... causing us to lose over a quarter of a million followers as a family overnight.”
high-stakes personal story with a clear stake→ IG reel cold open↗ Tweet quote
20:59
“She believes the secret to her success, the secret to her $7 million in launches, was simply that people gave a shit.”
punchy reframe of the entire episode's thesis→ TikTok hook↗ Tweet quote
The Script
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.
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analogy
I just hit 1 million followers on Instagram. First off, I just want to say thank you so much. There's been a huge outpouring of love and support and engagement from people who have found me on YouTube or found me through this podcast and then gone over and followed me on Instagram.
And so I just wanted to say thank you so much. It truly means the world to me. But the purpose of this episode is not just to say thank you, and it's definitely not to brag, boast, or gloat.
It's to share with you the strategies and the things that made the biggest difference in actually helping me reach 1 million followers. So don't forget to hit that subscribe button and let's get into it. Earlier this year, I uploaded an episode of this podcast where I said, let's get into the five strategies that I'm going to be using to grow my Instagram in 2026 to over 1 million followers.
Can't wait to hit 1 million followers. I hope you help me get there. And until next time, happy networking.
And now it's happened. In that episode, I shared five strategies that were my plan to reach 1 million followers. And so in this episode, I wanted to go through each of those five strategies, talk about how important or impactful they actually were, and also share any other strategies that I found were even more impactful.
that I used throughout this year. The first strategy that I shared in that episode was that there were three kinds of posts I was going to be focusing on throughout this year. And those three kinds of posts were number one, share worthy posts, posts that got people sending from one post to another.
And that is absolutely true. And I think that in the last few weeks, that's something that I've really been doubling down on. I did an episode a few weeks ago with Jamie Brindle, and he said that that's really his only focus.
Once he gets retention high and he gets people actually watching his entire video, all he cares about is finding posts and finding topics. that have a high share rate. And so over the last few weeks, as I've been kind of making this final push over 1 million followers, my biggest focus has been what is shareworthy?
What are people actually going to send from one person to another? And really making sure that that is my primary focus. I think oftentimes as entrepreneurs and content creators, we can kind of be like, oh, I don't want every post to be shareworthy, or I don't want every post to have this focus of shares and sending from one person to another.
I want to make sure I have a good amount of value and a good amount of education. And there's definitely some merit to that. But I think at the end of the day, I think that's kind of a limiting belief that we don't think that every post can go viral or that every post should be share worthy.
And I hope this is resonating with you. But the advice that I want to give to you is really go back to the drawing board and recommit to making the majority, if not almost 100 % of your posts. focused on first and foremost shareworthiness.
Is this post likely going to be shared? And there's an acronym, a five -letter acronym that I like to share that helps you remember what is shareworthy. Shareworthy posts are share.
That's the acronym, S -H -A -R -E. S stands for simple. Shareworthy posts are not complex.
They're not super educational. They are very direct, simple, and easy to understand. So simple that a drunk grandma could understand the post.
H, hook. The post needs to have a strong hook. If you don't stop people scroll, if you don't grab their attention, then the rest of the post is a waste.
A, authentic. Shareworthy posts are authentic. And authenticity is one of these buzzwords that people love to throw around.
And authenticity ultimately means not just being yourself, but reducing the time between idea and execution. In the last few weeks, as I've been making this final push over 1 million followers, I've been really trying to emphasize this whole premise of less time editing, refining script writing, and more time, I have an idea, I'm going to make it.
I have an idea, and I'm going to make it. And I've been really practicing. keeping a tripod with me, keeping my microphone with me so that whenever inspiration strikes, I hit record and then I post it or I at least hit record and then I schedule it for the next available time to post.
That's the A in the acronym. The R stands for relatability and relatability comes from specificity. What that means is talk about specific problems, specific challenges.
Don't try to water down your examples. Don't try to vanillify your stories that you're telling and make them more palatable for everyone. Instead, talk about the specific challenges, problems, and burdens that you're facing, and people will be able to relate to them on a much deeper level.
And then the E in the acronym is entertaining. I've been really trying to think about the entertainment value of my content, not just how valuable it is, not just how share worthy is it, but what's on the screen. Is there any sort of prop that I could include?
Is there any sort of visual that is more likely to grab people's attention? I've also been trying to include some more storytelling into my content recently so that people can connect with me on a deeper level and be entertained in a way that isn't so superficial, but in a way that is instead a little bit deeper. The second kind of post that I've been focused on this year is posts with DM automation.
I've talked a lot about DM automation before, and it is really the holy grail of growing on Instagram. It's one of those things that... every single creator, every single business owner who wants to go on Instagram needs to have in their tool belt.
You need to be using. And I had this belief for a while that I shouldn't do more than a third of my posts involving DM automation because those posts were typically promotional or salesy and I didn't want that many of my posts to have some sort of sales component. But when I'm offering a freemium or a digital download or an inexpensive digital product, giving that at the end of the post is a great way to just get some next steps going.
So if I make a post post that has some real ideas in it. And then at the end, I say, comment the word send, and I will send you 10 more real ideas.
Well, hey, the people who are watching, they want more real ideas anyway. So yeah, they're likely going to follow me, but including that DM automation really increases the likelihood that they get more value from my account. Additionally, I've begun using an automation that's actually been around for a while on ManyChat that I hadn't taken advantage of before.
And it's kind of silly that I hadn't been using it. And it's simply to check if the person is following you first. So you can actually set it up in ManyChat so that anyone who comments that keyword, let's say they want your meal plan or your workout guide or your free post ideas or whatever it is that you are distributing, whatever it is that you're giving away for free.
When they request that and they comment the keyword because they want it, ManyChat will actually check first and foremost. if they are following you. If they're following you, great, they get the thing.
If not, they get a first primary message that says, hey, this is only for people who follow me. Make sure to follow and then I will send it to you. Then once they follow, they click the button and it will send to them.
If they try to click the button without following you, then it will just repeat the message of, hey, make sure you're following. And so it's kind of just a nice way to incentivize and even remind people because a lot of times people are like, hey, I see so many of your posts. I've even been commenting on them and getting your free stuff, but they don't realize that.
they haven't followed. Similarly, you might be listening to this podcast, you might be watching it on YouTube, and you might not be subscribed. In fact, the majority of our viewers and listeners every single week are not subscribed, even though you're coming back week after week.
So just take a quick second right now and double check that you are subscribed. And unfortunately, on YouTube, I don't have any way to send you a message and make sure that you're subscribed. But on Instagram, I can and that has been a huge difference maker over the last few weeks.
About a decade ago, the scariest 72 -hour period in the history of our family's business took place. Hackers had used social engineering to figure out the password to just one of my mom's accounts, and through that, they were able to access her email, which allowed them to hack into her Facebook and her Instagram. They doxxed us, which means they gave up our family's home address.
They threatened and extorted us, and they began removing all of my mom's posts one by one and replacing them with extremely inappropriate images, causing us to lose over a quarter of a million followers. as a family overnight. And ever since that day, cybersecurity has been one of my biggest focuses.
Now it's something that I don't necessarily talk about all the time because like you're doing right now, most people just tune it out and think, yeah, that's no big deal. I don't need to worry about that. But the reality is hundreds of thousands of social media accounts are compromised every single day.
And when your account is compromised, your business is compromised too. And that's why I'm so excited to introduce you to one of today's sponsors, Keeper. Keeper is a password manager that creates strong and unique passwords for all of your accounts.
Because no, you should not just be reusing the exact same password for every app. Keeper then stores them all securely in one place so that you don't have to remember them all. And then Keeper can automatically log you in across all of your devices without you having to expose your passwords anywhere.
From individuals and solopreneurs to families and small businesses, Keeper is the app that will keep you safe. Millions of people already use Keeper to keep their business and their accounts locked down. And right now, Keeper is offering 60 % off their personal and family plans at KeeperSecurity .com forward slash BYT.
And this incredible offer is only available for my podcast listeners. Again, that's KeeperSecurity .com forward slash BYT for 60 % off the personal and family plans. And if you're leading a team, check out Keeper's business plans as well.
Just make sure you use my link so they know that I sent you. Again, that's Keeper Security, K -E -E -P -E -R -S -E -C -U -R -I -T -Y .com forward slash B -Y -T. And then the third and final post that I've been focusing on is carousel posts.
Carousels, on average, get more views and more distribution than reels, which is absolutely crazy. They also get a greater percentage of views from your followers. According to my own statistics, over the last 90 days, my carousels have...
performed almost two times better. They've gotten almost double the amount of views that my reels have. And I've had numerous viral reels over the last 90 days, but it just goes to show you that the carousels on average are performing better.
Carousels also have a super high view to follow ratio. What I mean by that is you could get 1 million views on a reel and maybe only get 100 followers from it. Meanwhile, you could get 100 ,000 views on a carousel, so a 10th of the views, but you could get 500 followers from it.
Now, of course, this is anecdotal, but I have plenty of carousels this year that haven't necessarily gone viral. They haven't even necessarily reached half a million people, but they've brought in hundreds or even thousands of followers. And so I want to encourage you to post more carousels.
And if you need some easy viral carousel ideas, you know I've got you covered. I posted a handful of episodes in the not -so -distant past with viral carousel ideas.
Strategy number two was that I was going to post five trial reels per day. Now, admittedly, that was something that I wasn't doing so great at for the majority of this year, especially in the beginning of the year. I was making every excuse, right?
I was too busy. I was doing other things. I was focused on the business.
Whatever my excuses were, I just wasn't making it a priority. I wasn't posting five trial reels a day. I was maybe posting one or two.
And then there were a few months there where I was posting trial reels pretty consistently, maybe three, four, or even five trial reels a day, but they were kind of half -assed trial reels. And so they weren't really giving much in return. They weren't really bringing me very many views or followers or very much engagement.
But then over the last three months, I've been using what I now call my triple double method, which has been allowing me to get way more views and way more consistent followers and growth from my trial reels. And the double part of the triple double method is that every single reel that I create is now being posted at least twice as a trial reel.
Specifically, whenever I create a reel from now on, and this is what I recommend for you as well, whenever you create a reel, post it first and foremost as a trial reel. That way, ideally, you can test it, you can refine it. You can look at the retention rate, the share rate, the like rate, all of those things, and you can tweak it and edit it before you publish it to your main feed.
Or if absolutely nothing else, at least you're now getting double the bang for your buck because you're posting it once as a trial reel and once to the main feed. So you're getting twice the opportunity to grow, get views and engagement from that reel. But again, I call this the triple double method.
And the double part is the part that pertains to trial reels. So not only am I posting it first as a trial reel, but then I am mirroring the video, which a lot of people on my Instagram have some confusion about. Mirroring the video just means basically flipping it horizontally, left to right.
So you don't flip the entire reel because that would make your closed captions and any text on the screen backwards. You only mirror the video. And you can do this in your camera roll.
You can do this in the edit tab. You can do this in CapCut. You can do this in whatever edit.
app you use, but then once you do that, Instagram will not view it as a duplicate trial reel. Instagram will view it as a new trial reel. They'll say, yay, great, this is a new post.
No one's ever posted this before. Yes, they have. You posted it a few days ago.
It's just a mirrored version of it, but Instagram isn't quite smart enough to catch on to that yet. We mirror it. We post it again.
Now you have posted it twice. You have posted it double what you would have normally posted it. Again, both of these as trial reels.
And of course, the really cool thing about trial reels is that they only reach new people. So sure, I might only get 15 ,000 views on one of my trial reels, but that's 15 ,000 totally new people. And I want you to remind yourself of that as well.
Even if you're only getting a few hundred views on your trial reels, that's a few hundred new people who are discovering your content every single day. super strategic about for the final few months pushing over 1 million followers is posting trial reels that have a really high retention rate, a really high share rate, and or a really high view to follow ratio.
So I haven't just been posting the low hanging fruit or the easy content to trial reels. I've been posting the best content to trial reels and it's been a huge unlock. The third strategy that I said would help me reach 1 million followers in 2026 was that I was going to increase my frequency of posting to the feed to five posts per day.
And this strategy, because quite simply, the more you post, the more you grow. Now, in all honesty, I just did the math. I am not quite posting five times per day to my feed.
I'm posting just below four, like 3 .8 or 3 .9 times per day to the feed. If I'm to add a little bit of an asterisk here, I think I would have been at five per day if we hadn't had multiple launches because we did two launches for our business and a long promotion for our Insta Club Hub live conference that took place in Dallas earlier this year.
There was a few periods where I was intentionally posting a little bit less so that I could post more about these promotions or launches. So there was a strategic kind of scaling back during these periods so that I could put more time, energy, and effort focused into the promotional posts. But even without that, I still don't know if I would have been quite exactly at five per day.
So that's something that I still want to continue to grow towards. And looking at my calendar for the next few weeks, I am closer to four or five per day. And ultimately that is a goal of mine to strive towards.
And admittedly, I'm not totally there yet. A strategy that I can give the thumbs up to and say that I did achieve this strategy and I did do it the way I set out to do was the minimum of one collaboration posts per week. At that live event in Dallas, Maria Wendt, who just hit a million followers herself, congratulations to her.
She said that one of the huge growth strategies that her and her team had been focused on this year was collaboration posts. She found that collab posts were by far the greatest driver of followers for her account. And that makes sense because when you and someone else collaborate on a post, both of your followers come together.
Your post and your profile get shown to that person's followers. And so while I don't have an exact number of collaborations that I've done this year, I can get... guarantee you it is more than one per week.
And I've been collaborating with people who have half the number of followers that I have, less than half, 100 ,000 followers when I'm at 900 ,000. I've even been collaborating with people who have less than 100 ,000 followers. Because like I mentioned a moment ago, the really cool thing is, let's say I collaborate with someone who's got 50 ,000 followers.
You might think on paper, that math doesn't make sense. Brock's got over 900 ,000 followers. This person's got less than 50 ,000.
That collab just doesn't work. It's not going to benefit Brock in any way, but that's where you're wrong. Because that's kind of like getting my account recommended potentially to 50 ,000 people.
50 ,000 people who have already chosen to follow the person I'm collaborating with. And now the person I'm collaborating with is kind of putting their stamp of approval on me saying, yeah, this person's such a great guy or such a great Instagram expert or such a whatever, so trustworthy that I am willing to collaborate with them, that it is a really great recommendation and it really increases the likelihood that their followers follow me.
And so I don't want you to go crazy. Now, I'm not saying that I'm going to accept every single collaboration that I get. It's usually something that has to be planned out ahead of time.
It's something where I'm having a conversation in the DMs and I'm actually talking to the person and we're planning out what the post is going to be. So I don't want you to just like shoot your shot. I don't want to receive 50 ,000 DMs after this with collaboration invites from every single one of you.
That would be a little crazy. But the point remains that you should start doing more collaboration posts with other people in your industry. Start networking with other people who are of a similar need.
even if their following size is greater or less than yours and collaborate with them back in 2016 when I started my first real online business I remember that my head was filled with so many what -ifs what if no one buys this what if I'm an imposter what if there's no market what if I can't sell what if what if what if what if this is all just a big waste of time and I'm just banging my head against the wall but what I wish someone told me back then is just like you can imagine all the negative what -ifs there are just as many if not more positive what ifs what if this works out what if this is my breakthrough what if this is what sets me financially free and thanks to one of today's sponsors shopify It's easier than ever to turn those positive what -ifs into reality.
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The fifth strategy that I said I would be employing this year to help me grow and reach 1 million followers on Instagram was a symbiotic relationship. And what I meant by this was that I was going to use my Instagram to help me reach 100K on YouTube, which I did. Thank you so much for helping me do that.
And using my YouTube subscribers slash podcast listeners to help me grow on Instagram. Thank you so much for doing that. Now, if you want to know the crazy thing, I would still venture to bet that 99 % of my Instagram followers have never listened to an episode of the podcast.
And I bet 98 % of my Instagram followers didn't even know that I have a podcast. And similarly, I would venture to bet that over 90 % of y 'all who listen to me every week or who subscribe to this show on YouTube are not following me on Instagram. There's no way to know exactly, but I would bet that it is a very, very high number that does not cross over.
But with that being said, I have been trying to make an intentional effort this year. to cross -promote, to use podcast episodes and YouTube videos like this to remind you, hey, go follow me on Instagram. You get great daily advice, quick tips, and whatever.
And I've been using my Instagram to do the opposite, to say, hey, go watch my YouTube. You'll get more in -depth advice. You'll get more long -form strategy videos.
So this is something that I can't quite quantify, but it's definitely something that I have achieved and made a focus this year. Now, that was everything that I covered in the previous video and that I said would help me reach 1 million followers. But there's two other strategies that I wanted to talk about.
One that I was sure would help me reach 1 million followers. And I had a sneaking suspicion that it would help me reach 1 million followers super fast. And it didn't.
And that was my daily series. Now, if you've been following me on Instagram, which I'm going to say it for the millionth time, make sure that you are. But if you are already, then you'll know that I've been doing a daily -ish.
It hasn't quite been every day. It's more like every 36 hours or every 48 hours, but almost. daily series where I review one of my followers' reels.
We watch it together, I pause it, I break it down, I tell you what's right and what's wrong. I thought that challenge would be a lot more viral and that I would have a handful of daily reel reviews that blew up and that helped me reach 1 million followers. But in hindsight, I see what the problem was.
There wasn't a clear incentive to become a follower when you watch the reel reviews. Yes, I said reviewing one of my followers' reels, so it is implied that if you're not a follower, you're not going to get reviewed, but that was never explicit and rarely in the call to action. did I remind people to follow?
Also, the most viral daily series and challenges have the follow tied to some sort of outcome. For example, Gage, who I've told you about before, is running a mile for every follower. That is a huge incentive.
That means every time someone presses follow, he has to run another mile. That's crazy. For me, when you hit follow, you get a chance of maybe having your reel reviewed in the future.
But even that chance isn't explicitly stated. It's kind of just implied. And so while I had some daily real reviews that did really well, I didn't have any that went viral, and I didn't have any that brought in more than maybe 1 ,000 or 2 ,000 followers.
Whereas if you would have asked me in January, I would have guessed that there was at least a handful that got over a million, if not 10 million views, and that there would have been a handful that brought in 20 or 30 ,000 followers from one review. The other strategy that I've been using over the last few weeks doesn't have a quantifiable outcome.
And it came about because at the live conference that I hosted in Dallas, Jessie Jean, the Yap Queen herself, gave my audience the secret to her viral Yap challenge. And she said that she believes the secret to her success, the secret to her $7 million in launches and her overnight success story that she had was simply that people gave a shit.
She got people to care. She got people to buy in, not just to her course, but to her and her story and her journey and to want to go on that journey with her, with her maybe just a step ahead of them. And the reason that she believes people gave a shit, to oversimplify, is because she told her story and her stories, plural.
She gave updates about her life. She gave behind the scenes. She gave a window into her life to allow people to care a little bit more.
Then after she spoke on stage, she did a little bonus Q &A session with me where I got to ask her questions and the entire audience got to listen into her expertise. And in that Q &A session, I don't remember exactly what the question was, but she started talking about how when she got invited to speak at the live conference by me, she wanted to do some digging.
As we often do when we meet someone new on the internet or when we follow someone new, she wanted to see like, hey, is this dude legit? Is he a good person? Is he someone who I should speak at his conference?
And so she starts scrolling through my Instagram and she said that she felt like she couldn't really find those things she couldn't really find as much as she was looking for and she didn't mean to call me out live on stage but i kind of took it that way and someone in my comment section on instagram said that she called me up instead of calling me out.
And I really liked that reframing, but no matter how you look at it, there was some truth there, right? She was saying that as she scrolled through my Instagram, she wanted literally as a new follower of mine, she wanted to get to know me a little bit more, to get to know me deeper, to learn about my interests, passions, and hobbies beyond just some good Instagram strategy.
And she couldn't really find it. Now I had people at the live conference who knew a bunch about me, who knew what kind of coffee I drink every morning, who know how many breakfast brewers I've had this year. There are definitely people in this audience who who we like to call Brock stars, people who have just been like super fans and followers for a long time and know all these intricate details and hobbies and passions of mine.
You know, all the backstory, you know, all the lore, so to speak. Maybe you've been a follower of my mom for like 20 years. And so you've kind of known of me since I was a child, which is crazy to think about, but that's really like 1 % or probably even less than 1 % of my followers.
I, unlike most other influencers, don't have this super deep, intimate, close relationship with most of my followers. And so while my followers can get a lot of great value from my page, the majority of them, I would say, don't have this deep connection with me. The majority of them don't give that much of a shit about me.
And that's candid. That's honest. And so what I've changed since this moment, this aha moment that Jesse Jean gave me on stage, is I've started incorporating more personal stories onto my page.
Now, of course, initially, they've been performing well because people are like, oh my gosh, what a breath of fresh air. I'm getting to learn these little tidbits about this person who I followed for years. years.
I anticipate that there will be a little dip in the near future where I continue to share about my personal life and people are like, okay, yeah, we know enough now, but we don't quite give a shit. We haven't gotten through that valley where the initial luster of it has worn off, but the long -term benefits haven't kicked in yet.
But eventually, those long -term benefits will kick in. Eventually, people will give a shit. And eventually, a greater percentage, maybe even half, more than half of my followers will truly give a shit.
They'll know my lore. They'll know my backstory. They'll know my motivations.
They'll know my interests, passions, and hobbies. And so when I post about them, those posts will do well. But even when I don't, even when I just post some Instagram strategy, those posts will do better because people feel like they know me and they want to support me.
And so that is my recommendation for you as well. I still think that the majority of your posts should be related to one singular topic because that's what people will know you for. That's what people will follow you for.
But I want you to start weaving in more storytelling. I want you to start weaving in more of your personal life. And I want you to incorporate all of the other strategies that I've shared with you today.
Again, whether your goal is 1 ,000 followers, 10 ,000, 100 ,000, or a million, incorporate these strategies that I've shared with you, and it will help you get there faster. Thank you so much for tuning in, and as always, happy networking.
The Hook
The bait, then the rug-pull.
A year after publicly committing to five strategies to reach a million Instagram followers, the creator is back to grade his own homework: what worked, what flopped, and the one thing he didn't see coming that mattered more than any of it.
Frameworks
Named ideas worth stealing.
02:34acronym
The SHARE checklist
Simple
Hook
Authentic
Relatable
Entertaining
A five-letter filter for judging whether a post is worth posting: Simple, strong Hook, Authentic, Relatable, Entertaining.
Steal forany pre-publish checklist for social content
10:31concept
The Triple Double Method
Post every Reel first as a Trial Reel, then mirror it horizontally and post it again as a second Trial Reel, doubling reach before it ever hits the main feed.
Steal forany Instagram Reels posting workflow
CTA Breakdown
How they asked for the click.
VERBAL ASK
00:29subscribe
“don't forget to hit that subscribe button”
quick, low-friction ask right after the cold open, before diving into content
Add Modern Creator as a preferred source and Google shows you more of our breakdowns in Search, Top Stories, and AI Overviews. It only changes what you see, and you can undo it in your Google settings anytime.
Add to Preferred SourcesOpens your Google source preferences with us pre-loaded. Tick the box and you're done.
A 17-minute breakdown of Meta's new $1-2/month subscription, the 7 features it unlocks for Stories, and why Feature #5 might be the beginning of the end for free reach on Instagram.
A straight rundown of six algorithm changes Instagram just made, and why skip rate, retention, and share rate are the only three numbers that decide if a reel gets seen.
A solo host walks through the RAMP framework — Research, Assemble, Multiply, Process — for handing an Instagram content pipeline to an agentic AI tool, one recurring problem at a time.
A 16-minute system walkthrough for automating the entire Reels pipeline from saved inspiration folder to scheduled post, with Claude doing most of the work.
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