Every day I get messages from creators saying, Dominik, I've tried everything on Instagram, posting daily, following all the trends, studying the algorithm, doing what you say, but I'm still stuck at the same follower count while my reach just keeps dropping. I don't know what to do anymore. If that is you, I've got something special in this video.
This is what happened when one of my clients implemented this exact system that I'm about to show you. And they're obviously not alone. Here's another example, and another example, all from using this sort of new framework over the past three months.
So if you feel like you're stuck right now, I can tell you with absolute certainty, working, refining these types of process over the past years, working with hundreds of creators, Instagram is far from dead. It's actually the most powerful platform, both for monetizing with your own products, but also just building your personal brand in general. So let me show you this exact step -by-step system we use with every single client.
The same system that's consistently turning struggling creators into people building something for the long run, regardless of niche or starting point, and essentially everything here boils down to these two phases. And I'll show you in a second how to self-identify and basically figure out which phase that you're in. And then I'll show you exactly what to do in each phase with all the steps to really get out of this video with hopefully the most value you've ever had in terms of watching a YouTube video here.
So first of all, the first stage here is basically this one, in case you're wondering, but it's basically the one where you need to train the algorithm. The algorithm is weird. We know that the algorithm has no idea about you and the algorithm does not care about you at all, which is why it doesn't matter if you're just starting out from scratch or you've been creating content for a long time.
You need to train the algorithm to show who you are, who, well, it's three who's, who you attract and who you're not actually. So this is the first stage. The second phase is actually what I call the empire building phase.
This is the phase where you systematically take all of your insights and use all of the insights that you got from phase one and basically optimize, iterate and build your empire. Now you might be wondering, what's the green line? What's the blue line?
The blue line is basically your followers. The green line is basically the amount of money you can make and the revenue and the sales and the products that you can sell with it. You'll see that this has a delay, but if done correctly, and if basically, if you build your empire the way that I'm about to show you, you'll be very happy in a year from now.
So if we go back to essentially the first phase right here to train the algorithm and to kind of make the algorithm aware who you are as fast as possible. Let me just delete this right there. As fast as possible.
There's only really one thing you need to do. You know, the only one thing you need to do, but I'll show you in a second. It's essentially getting your videos to blow up, right?
It's essentially getting what I call as many breakout videos as possible. Now you'd be like, what is a breakup video? Maybe you've heard of the term before, but usually growth is not like this, like we always show.
So in a sense, this thing up there is also kind of wrong. But if we zoom in a little bit in the micro level, we can see that usually this is, you know, this is the view of your daily views, let's say. And sometimes you're going to have like a video that breaks out.
And then again, and another time, another video that breaks out. And it's essentially these breakout videos that make your account grow. They hit a certain type of something, whether that is the messaging that you have, topics, the hook, or whatever it is about these videos, or just randomness, to be honest.
Sometimes it is randomness, but the more we do, the less it's random, obviously. And the more data, actual data we have. But these are the videos that we want to hit.
And in the first phase until you have, I would say around two to 5,000 views on average with each consistent upload, until you're there, all of your efforts should be put into trying to create breakout videos and trying to get the algorithm on your side. Okay? Don't try to be super artsy, artistic, creative.
Yes, there is a time and space for that later down the line, and even a little bit here. But the main focus should be getting the algorithm to notice you and strategically creating these types of breakout videos. Because ideally, if we zoom out, this is how the line is going to look like right now.
Most of your videos are not going to grow your account. That's a big misconception that I see. I've recently analyzed a bunch of creators in my creatorship.
And guess what? Most followers they gained come from one or two super breakout videos, right? Obviously, it's important to have these types of videos here as well, because the breakout people are going to come back and binge your other content if you've done it the right way.
So it's like this whole thing that plays together. But yeah, point being, let's create breakout videos. Let me show you exactly how to create breakout videos.
Ideally, you create a breakout video today after watching this video. And in a week from now, you come back here in the comments and you'll be like, Dominic, I've had a breakout video. And if you do, I'll send you a present.
Probably a cake or three monkeys or chocolate. Algorithm, just so you know, I'm not talking about trading exotic animals. I've had the issue once before when I said this.
So this is just a joke, okay? Now, how to create breakout videos, okay? Obviously, there's a system behind that.
Obviously, we have a bunch of systems in the creatormanship. By the way, we're starting a new cohort run pretty soon. Actually, depending on when you watch this.
But where I show all of these systems and more. But essentially, creating breakout videos, there's just two things you need to think about or do. Pattern replication, aka, you know, I don't wanna confuse you with these words, but aka market research, market research.
And hitting certain audience signals to kind of knowing which types of audience signals, certain videos, either in the market, in your competition, in your industry, or within your own videos. And then basically replicating this and strategically handling yourself up to get the algorithm more and more and more on your side until you have this baseline level that is about right here. Where suddenly the algorithm's like, oh, now I get it.
Now let me blow this mother up. Okay, now once you've done this, once we've done this for a while, just to show you what's about to come later, we're gonna, and I'll show you here in this video, go through what I call the 60-day framework, which is a framework specifically crafted to make you really blow up and get you really going. Now, all of this is what I'm gonna show here today.
So how are we gonna actually go about the actual nitty gritty stuff about creating breakup videos? First of all, it starts with market research. It starts with analyzing a lot of stuff, right?
And usually, typically, I have creators who come to me and they create on my ship. They do a lot of research. We actually help them with some research.
But for the sake of this video here, let me just show you the simplest ways of getting 80% there without any of these complicated tools or AIs that we have and stuff like this. So first of all, you're gonna need to research your niche, your industry, and you have to just know what's up there, right? You just have to be aware.
What are the videos that work? Who are your actual competitors or similar creators that are good and growing right now? So the first thing you wanna do is basically take a look, do some research and find breakup videos in your niche from your competitors.
The second thing is you wanna recreate them with your own spin, but still with a certain type of feel to it and with hitting certain triggers. I'll show you in a second. And then basically that's the only thing you wanna do for the next 30 days, right?
That's all, right? Don't get creative. Don't be like, oh, I'm a unique snowflake.
You are maybe, but actually you're not. We're not. Nobody is in a way.
But then again, everybody is. So how are you gonna find breakup videos? Like I said, we actually do have some tools in the Creator Mentorship for that.
In the cohort, I will actually give you exactly these tools and show you how to use them. However, the easiest way of doing things is literally just taking your phone, go into Instagram, and for example, search for your keyword, your broadest keyword that you have. In this case, let's say coding, okay?
So whatever that is. And instantly, finally, we have this on Instagram. Instantly, you're gonna see a bunch of highly performing videos right now in the coding world.
6. 3 million. So that seems to be a breakout video for me.
And we can see, okay, it's a very simple video, which is good for you because there's not that much to do. So what we wanna do is save it right there and then, and save it in a folder. For example, create a folder, recreate.
Okay, I'm gonna unsave that because I don't need that. And then we can look, Vicky, she's a coder. She pinned another video, breakup video of hers.
Cool? Also, very simple video. So kind of good for you.
But basically what you wanna do is go down there, scroll through, try to find different styles, different patterns, different content pillars. This website will make you a better programmer. Start by going to Google and- Perfect.
As you can see, type of content like this, you're gonna see over and over again. Like I said, you're gonna be able to spot a ton of patterns in terms of, what are the things that actually work right now? And if you see them in the explore page or in the search page, you will be able to see what works right now.
And yeah, basically do this and research a ton of videos. So how and what exactly? Because I know you wanna know the exact things of how things work.
So what should you do right now? Go ahead, try to find 10 competitors, 10 people that are growing right now, that are cool creators that you kinda like and find their top 10 performing pieces of content over the past, let's say three to six months. Once you've done this, you wanna analyze these types of videos, the top performing videos in terms of especially the hooks.
What are the exact words? What is the first frame? How does it look?
And what are some elements that these people use to hook people? And generally the structure of these videos, right? Write them down, have a spreadsheet, for example.
For example, I have a spreadsheet here. You can have the spreadsheet just down below. You know, there's a link.
Here's the spreadsheet that we use or part of it. And essentially just do a lot of research. I want you to actually do this manually because I want you to understand what's going on.
Don't use AI for this process right now because I want you to really understand, you know, for example here, really map out. What are the top performing videos of this creator? What's the hook, right?
What's the topic? So you start to spot patterns. There's no way that you're not gonna spot patterns.
Now we do have a few apps. We do have a few programs basically to help you with this. Obviously the in-platform one is the best if you ask me, but there's tools, for example, not sponsored, but I really love them.
Viral Stenzy, just search for it. Great tool where you basically can put in your competitor and rank the people by views or by likes or by comments. So you can go really deep and try to understand what's going on in your niche, in your audience.
If you've watched one of my recent videos, we also have a tool where we basically analyze your competitor's comments to see what's actually pressing, what people actually want. But yeah, that's not even the most important thing, especially if you're, like I said, in this first stage where you need to train the algorithm and get some initial traction, okay? Get some initial breakout videos with 10,000 views, 20, 100,000 views.
Now, once you have this, basically, once you have your list of these videos, what you wanna do is you just wanna recreate them, basically. So not 100% recreate them. So don't be a dick and do exactly the same, but take a look and spot the patterns, especially in terms of what is the topic and basically recreate them like that, right?
With a little bit of your own spin, but still having the same sort of hook or similar hook. Now, what I want you to do is next, and otherwise it's not gonna work if you don't do it exactly like this. You wanna find at least 20 reels, right, from this.
20 that you're gonna commit to recreate, okay? So write down the 20 next ones that you do, ideally more, script them and recreate them and commit to actually creating them and publish them within the next 30 days, okay? Really, really, really important.
If you don't do that, nothing else will work, okay? And this is already the first major sort of trigger point for the algorithm because if you do this or when you actually do this, there's a few things at play here in terms of the algorithm. First of all, it's gonna see you are consistent.
And second of all, it's gonna basically match the hooks and the content topics with already pre-validated, pre-existing data from other types of videos. The algorithm is smart with the AI and stuff. So it's gonna understand, okay, these people, this is similar content, so I know these are the people who are interested in that.
So this is actually doing the very first, really important part to training the algorithm and getting it on your site. Now, once you do this for 20 to 30 days, the next important part that you wanna do is basically tracking your own stats and seeing what worked, what didn't work and what's going on. So finally, we have the new edits app.
I'm gonna create a video about this pretty soon, but essentially there's a lot of more analytics in this edits app for Instagram. You're gonna be able to see stuff like your comment rate, your skip rate, how many people actually skipped, aka how much does your hook suck. But most importantly, we finally have retention curves again in the edits app.
And that's basically what I love so much because you're gonna be able to analyze all of these patterns just with edits app, basically to understand which content piece that you created performed well and maybe why. Because you might be able to spot, okay, the like rate is lower here, but here the comment rate is so much higher. So obviously getting people to comment on your video is gonna make a difference.
We'll get into that in a second with the 60-day framework. But the second thing being actually the retention curves because suddenly you're gonna be able to understand and analyze different parts of your video and how they held attention because after all that's the most important game here, holding attention. So for example, in this case, I would see there's a drop off at the end, towards the end.
Why? So go back, take a look. Oh, there's a drop off because I had a call to action.
Is that worth it? Is it not worth it? Depends.
Basically, once you do that, after the first 30 days of consistently posting, you wanna revisit this content, track and analyze it. Ideally also put it in some sort of spreadsheet. We have our clients do that actually.
Post consistently according to this, all what we just talked about and nothing else. Literally nothing else because you're just gonna confuse yourself and confuse the algorithm with this. Now, I do have some videos to kind of make you understand what the retention curves actually tell you, but essentially you don't want them to look like this where there's a big drop off at the beginning.
For example, the way I would look at it, and this is what we do in some of our sessions in the creative mentorship, for example, we'll literally take a look here. There's something right between these two spots. There's something and afterwards there's a steep drop.
Why? So we will literally go there and analyze and see what's happening. Sometimes it's literally, for example, for me, a lot of the times is when I show my face.
Retention curves like this, perfect. As soon as I show my face, drops like crazy. So there's that.
Now, once you've done that, you're gonna have some views, 100%. If you don't have views by this point or at least an upwards trend, probably your content sucks, right? Because obviously all of this combined only works if your content does not suck like crazy.
And if it's somewhat okay, but if it's not, we're basically here to start the second phase. Finally, the 60 day framework. The thing is though, if you're not ready and you start the 60 day framework anyway, based on what I tell you right now in a second, it's not gonna work as well because you need to have certain preliminaries at place.
And you wanna be sure that you actually have this and you can hit these numbers. So for example, you consistently, after this whole phase right there, you consistently need to have at least two to 3,000 views per reel minimum. Ideally more, honestly, ideally 5,000 plus.
But if you consistently are able to hit two to 3,000 views per reel and that's the thing, it's not or, it's and, you actually get comments that are more than just emojis where somebody's like, hello. Or comments that actually ask for stuff that are three words, 10 words, a paragraph and stuff like this. Beautiful, that's what you wanna have.
You also obviously need to have a consistent posting schedule. You wouldn't be here if you wouldn't have it. And you basically, based on all of this and understanding and tracking your stats and stuff like this, you basically understand your audience's needs and what they really want.
Because even with this sort of super simple framework, which is obviously part of the data -driven content framework that I basically teach in the creative mentorship. But based off of that, you're gonna already spot some patterns and understand some of the needs and the wants of your audience. And essentially what you wanna do then is start the 60-day framework once you take all of these things.
Which is basically the same thing that we just talked about before, just a little better and just a little more targeted towards getting the algorithm to understand you like crazy and making you blow up. If you do it exactly what I say, I can almost guarantee you will blow up. Recently, we've had lots of creators that we basically forced through this, creating this framework.
And the results have been amazing. With accounts that have had plateaued for months on end, accounts that seemed like the algorithm was just hating them. Nope, turns out it was just the algorithm just didn't care because the content was not good.
And the algorithm didn't exactly get the right triggers that it needed. Because why? There's so much competition right now.
So the game's a little different. Now, this is the framework, okay? Basically for the next 60 days, in some cases, even 90 days, to be honest, you wanna post consistently and do it with these three to four extra steps right there.
First thing, really, really important are lead magnets, okay? So what is a lead magnet? So for example, I have some videos where I say, okay, you wanna have my hook guide, comment down below and you'll get my hook guide.
So in my case, I know you guys are interested in hooks and understanding how to create hooks. So this would be something I figured out there. I know my audience's needs.
So I create content basically that fills your needs and that basically shows my lead magnet. Now, this whole lead magnet thing, let's not even get too deep into that for now, but it has actually two reasons for that or two benefits to it. First of all, it's gonna boost the algorithm, to be honest, with ManiChat.
If you attach ManiChat to it, people need to comment, then you'll send them a DM to get your lead magnet. So that's the first thing. That's actually the more important thing right now, if you're, especially in the first stage, right, still.
But the second thing is you're gonna be able to collect emails, which is literally the most important thing in the world as a creator, because yeah, the content creation game is crazy. The world is volatile. We don't know what's gonna happen in terms of the platforms and all the crazy stuff that's happening around the world.
So you're gonna need to start to collect email addresses, because you'll be able to basically become rich or at least become free just with your emails and with an audience. Let's not even get into that because I'm sure you know that. If you don't know that, let me know in the comments.
But basically what you wanna do is you wanna create over the next 30 to 60 days at least five lead magnets, different lead magnets that touch different issues, different needs, different wants of your audience slash resources basically. And you wanna create multiple because we need to understand, we need to use them to do audience research and also algorithm research and algorithm training still. And basically what you wanna do is post a bunch of content that promotes these lead magnets with many chat automations in place.
Yes, so you wanna at least five different lead magnets. And at least once a week, I want you to have a video that shills basically one of these lead magnets at least once a week. Let's not even talk about the stories.
Also once a week, do the same in the stories, but let's not even get into that right now. So the second thing is, I know a lot of you guys are gonna say, Dominic, you keep talking about this, but I don't have the trial reels feature yet. Yeah, if you don't have the trial reels feature yet, you don't have to do it, okay?
It's not the end of the world. Most likely people who don't have a thousand followers yet don't have the trial reels feature. Because why?
Essentially every reel is a trial reel because you don't have a lot of people anyway. So every reel that you post goes out to non-followers, okay? The other thing you wanna do is post trial reels.
And what we found out works the best in terms of maximizing the algorithm understanding, but also growing an audience, is basically creating three to five variations per reel that you upload. So three to five different hooks, different lengths, but ideally right now at the beginning, just change out the hook. Create three to five videos with different hooks.
Let's put it that way. And once a week, again, in addition to what you already do, also create one where you include a lead magnet with this and a Manichat DM automation. The reason for that is actually trial reels are actively looking for new fresh people in your target audience.
But if somebody actually comments and wants this lead magnet, it gives the algorithm an even crazier boost to kind of understand, oh, this is exactly the person in their target audience. So I know who else to show it to, okay? So that's the second part.
Just these alone are gonna get you crazy results, but let's even continue with something that has recently helped a bunch of creators in the creator mentorship, break out, like literally break out, go from zero to 80K and stuff like this. Basically what I'm talking about are signature series. So I'm sure you've seen this before.
Many series, that's the most important thing. It's basically a content series that shows people, basically you have a certain problem that your audience has. Nope.
You have a certain problem that your audience has, and there's a certain solution that your audience has. And with your content, you basically help them get there through your signature series, okay? So ideally that's a very short series.
So you don't wanna overwhelm people because people have commitment issues and stuff like this. So what you want is have, create a signature series of about five to 10 different parts, right? Ideally over the course of the next 60 days, you create multiple of those signature series.
And you also use this again to kind of understand what your audience likes. Obviously in this series, you attach also sometimes leak magnets, at least once in a short series. And you basically also use trial reels for this.
Let's not even get too deep into that. But this alone is gonna help you basically explode your account, right? Honestly, this should be a course.
There's courses out there that cost $1,000 that don't teach you this, that just teach you some outdated crap. Now, once you've done this for the next 60 days, come back and let me know actually what your results were. But essentially the third step of this whole thing right here is doing this whole thing over and over again, right?
This is essentially your life as a creator right now. Creating with a plan, understanding your content pillars that you've created based off of the data that you have, analyze what worked really in a deeper way with retention and stuff like this. And you just have to be aware that there is no easy way of doing things.
There's always people coming to me who are like, well, I want the easy way and I don't wanna put in a lot of effort. This is why I create on Instagram versus on YouTube. Let me tell you one thing, there is no easy way.
It always takes effort, but obviously the benefits of after a while are gonna be crazy. And you're gonna be mad at yourself, let's say in a year or two, thinking that you didn't start earlier. Because I can guarantee you doing these things, let's say everything is against you and nothing really works, doing this for a year straight, right?
If we go back here, we've literally had creators like this who five, six months were basically here in this phase and then blew up to seven, 800K followers. So the best time to start this is literally right now. And honestly, if you don't start, you're gonna be exactly in the same spot wondering a year from now, two years from now, thinking about why you never started.
I have to say I was in the same spot and everything, all of why I'm here basically just came down to the moment when I started. Sounds cheesy, but it's literally the moment that I always think about still after all these years.
