A lot of the people on here will tell you stuff like, I blew up my Instagram overnight with this one hook. Copy exactly what I did and you'll blow up too. It's super easy with the right strategy.
Truth is, it's not. It's actually quite hard. And that comes from somebody who's helped clients gain almost 6 million followers over the last year.
Even though this whole thing is hard and I'm not going to sugarcoat things, let me actually show you the real strategies and reasons behind these 5. 8 million followers so you can actually cut your learning curve and time to results by a lot. Now, we actually collect a ton of data from different creators in different parts of the world and in different industries, obviously, because we install our data-driven content framework for our clients, right?
I'll talk about this in a second. And some of the learnings that we've had this past year might actually surprise you and might give you some competitive edge in 2025 if you implement it. Let's get into it.
Let's talk about the most frustrating part of being a creator, especially on Instagram. Slow growth. No growth, basically.
The 200 view jail or whatever you want to call it. You put in the effort, create content, and it still feels like nothing is working. It happens actually a lot.
A lot of people come to us like this. Now, most people fall into the trap of thinking there's something wrong with the algorithm and then they start to create a new account, hoping this whole thing magically gets fixed. But guess what?
Most of the time, it's not going to change a thing. Actually, sometimes that's actually really bad for you if you start to create multiple accounts in the same sort of niche. And I'm definitely seeing that in my data right now.
It seems that you get penalized for creating multiple accounts in a similar niche. So first things first, don't create a new account. In most cases, it's fixable.
We have like out of 100 creators in the creator mentorship, probably two or three still have to create a new account. But that's about it. Now, the biggest reveal for me personally, though, over this last year was that the exact same approach and strategy installed for creator A might not work at all if we install the exact same thing for creator B.
And sometimes we actually can even see that with creators in the same industry or niche. And I was always like, yeah, probably it must be the algorithm being weird and just not knowing what's going on. But actually, you know, having done my research, it's actually the algorithm being really, really smart because what it actually comes down to is your target audience and their preferences.
They could be totally different from each other, even though it's essentially the same niche, essentially the same industry, could be that your audiences are just different from each other in terms of what they prefer. How can you actually use this for yourself right now? First of all, focus on the data that you get and work with it.
There's this one thing that people call hope marketing, which is what most people, what most creators do. They just throw out a bunch of content and they hope this whole thing will stick. And then they're like, well, it doesn't work.
And then they switch it up again, even though it would have worked just for the consistency and stuff like this. But the most important takeaway for you here is don't just throw a bunch of stuff out there. Approach everything with a system.
For example, in my creative relationship, we have creators post at least 30 to 45 days with their initial content strategy. And only if they really pull through with this exact plan that we lay out for them, then we start to measure, then we start to gather the data. And then we start to see, okay, what are the small switches?
What are the small tweaks we can do or big tweaks we can do to get this thing on the right track? For example, the average watch time that you get. Is it low?
Is it high? Does it change over time? Does it change with different content pillars?
Ideally, you also post the same content to another platform. We actually use YouTube Shorts a lot because we can actually dive a lot deeper into the whole audience and insights and analytics. You know, for example, the retention curves there to see exactly with this type of content, I'm reaching these types of people and they behave that kind of way, right?
And after a while using this, we can see, well, does that whole thing actually align with my goal and with my strategy? If yes, perfect, double down. If not, let's go back to the drawing board, flip some switches and we'll see.
This year, I've noticed that hooks have become a lot different than you might think. And I've mentioned this before, but hooks are evolving and it's not just about saying an attention-grabbing face in the first three seconds anymore. It's gotten so much more than that.
We actually typically spend 80% of the time to create the hook, to think about crafting this whole, it's basically an art form at this point. And in my mentorship, we obviously have weekly sessions just about hooks. And we actually go over your scripts daily to refine them because it's very, very important.
And even in my course, the IG Blackfile, we have a lot of resources just about the hook game. But let me actually give you the gist of it, how to craft an actual scroll -stopping hook in 2025 based on the recent data that we've got. Gone are the days where you're like, well, the first three seconds are important, you need to hook them, obviously.
But here are the elements that I actually need taken care of. First of all, you want to create an elevate curiosity in the viewer's mind as much as possible and as fast as possible. That's the most important thing.
That's a mistake that I see a lot, which means have a clear visual hierarchy in your first frame to not confuse people. Where does the eye go first? Where does it go second?
What's the hierarchy overall? And then you want to think of ways to create what we call a curiosity gap in some shape or form, which essentially means you want to get at least one question to pop in people's minds within the first two, three seconds. One thing that just makes them wonder, huh, interesting.
I need to keep watching. I need to get this question answered. Let me give you a short example actually right here, and I'll not get too deep into this whole thing, but just so you understand this whole thing on an actual practical level.
Let's assume you're a travel creator. You want to show people how you travel for free basically, which is something that just my inbox is flooded with that, my thing. Not that I want to travel for free.
I actually want to spend a lot on traveling, but it doesn't matter. Now what most creators do, and I see this daily in my feed, and they must think that it's a good hook because it technically takes all the boxes of generic advice. A lot of times it looks exactly like this.
Three travel hacks you need to know, but we're in, right? Would have worked actually, would have gotten you 50,000 views two years ago, but right now it doesn't work. It just doesn't cut it anymore.
Instead, focus on your audience and create curiosity gaps that aligns with them, with the rules that I just told you. This is actually how it should be done. This is how I would do it.
This is how we tell it. Three years ago, I was stuck in an office, hating my job. Now I get to travel the world and get paid for it, all thanks to one decision I made.
So let me show you. So first of all, the first frame looks clean, right? Doesn't look generic.
There's a clear hierarchy going on and the spoken hook does not repeat anything and it doesn't waste any time, which is the most important thing nowadays. Instead, it clearly paints a picture in people's head. But that's only one part of this whole pie because none of this would work if it weren't for the text hook, which instantly opens the curiosity gap because now people want to know the context of this short story essentially, how I travel full-time without a nine to five.
Plus at the end of this whole thing, of the spoken hook, there's another, yet another hook, basically another open loop, all thanks to one decision I made just to keep them interested. Point being, if you can't get your hook game to that level, nothing else matters. Just focus the next three months on nailing that down and the rest of the videos, whatever.
Now, in terms of the formats that currently work and that we've seen working recently over the past few months, that one actually has surprised me a bit because usually platforms each have a bias towards a certain content length or format. At the beginning of the year, it was clearly the six second B-roll reel. You've seen them.
Let's say for the past five to six months or so, videos with more substance, like 30 seconds plus ones, which is by the way, also what Instagram tells you in their best practices tab. These ones with an actual person talking maybe even to the camera or with a voiceover hearing the person and the real person behind it, not just some AI crap. They seem to be performing really, really well if pulled off the right way, more than average.
But that's the thing. On the grand scheme of things, according to my data, it still doesn't really matter. Short videos perform just as well as long ones.
And here's the thing. If you know me, you probably know that I always like to hate on the six second B-roll type of reels because they're sort of low effort. They don't really add something valuable.
They don't make you memorable. You know, they don't make you stand out from the rest of the crowd. They still can be a good point to, first of all, get your foot in the door in terms of the content creation game, to unlock the algorithm in a way because you unlock good watch time metrics if you pull it off and to kind of get the algorithm on your side and help it understand, help it find your audience faster, but also to keep you sane mentally because they're actually quite easy to do.
And that's sometimes very, very important because I don't want you to burn out. We've been there before. Content like this is better than having no content, which is something I should take my advice from that.
But we'll get into this whole thing in a totally other video. Something interesting that I found by just abandoning Instagram myself for a few months. Very interesting things I found.
Let me know in the comments if you want me to talk about this. Ideally, in the whole grand scheme of things, you have a strategy that's mixed though. And at some point, especially if you're on the path to become the number one creator in your industry, which is definitely what you wanna aim for, you more or less or slowly wanna start to weed those six second videos out more and more because people with really strong personal brands and the leaders of their industry, again, this is what you wanna aim for.
And if you don't aim for that, why are you even here? But these kinds of people almost never exclusively post these low effort B-roll clips, which brings me actually to a major key point of converting followers over because that's another thing I've noticed. One thing I'm seeing more and more is that it's getting increasingly harder to convert viewers actually into followers, especially for smaller accounts.
And that has multiple reasons. First one being that people actually know that the algorithm will bring them back eventually and there's no need to follow because they'll be back anyway. And with more and more creators coming to the scene daily, more and more sort of bad, mediocre creators, the act of following somebody actually has become a big sort of currency exchange.
And a follow nowadays definitely has to be earned way more than it used to be. The easy, I'll just follow anybody or days are gone. For example, reach has gone up among my clients over the past year.
The follower is actually gained if we kind of even this out and the conversion rate has declined over the past 12 months, which just goes to show we somehow need to get people to follow. So what do we do about that? Two things to keep in mind, actually.
First of all, focus on Instagram stories. We're going to talk about this at some point a lot more in depth. You need to be present there a lot.
You need to show that you're a real person that just goes beyond just posting reels and stuff like this. This is your chance to actually stand out, even if you just create these six second reels, people will still check you out. And in the story where the stakes are a lot lower, where it's basically a playground for you, there's no real rules, to be honest.
This is your time to shine. This is your time to get people to actually push them over the edge to follow your content. That's the one thing.
The other thing actually being, and that's an important thing, by allowing yourself to have opinions, allowing yourself to pick a fight. Yes, that's basically what makes people follow you way more than not. Because in my opinion, the death of a creator happens when they become boring and obsolete and replaceable by doing the exact same things the other people are doing as well.
So having opinions, strong opinions, you totally can allow yourself to have strong opinions. Don't be afraid. You actually want to attract haters to some capacity.
Greetings, shout out, by the way. You know, also allow yourself to create content that's just different. And that's just trying out new things.
Very, very important as well. Don't just. .
. It's important to keep aligned with the top performing content and kind of be there to find breakout type of videos. But allow yourself to create content that is totally different from that.
And that's trying out new things and that feels fresh. With that being said, the other part that's woven into this whole thing, and in my opinion, it's the number one factor among all of my successful clients this year again was, you might not want to hear this, but it's consistency, right? And before you like right now, well, I know everybody's talking about consistency all the time.
Just let me tell you this again, because this is actually based off of real data. Very, very important. You can have the best content quality.
You can have the best ideas. You can have the best hooks even. Everything we just talked about that is actually responsible for my client's growth.
And you can have all of that and still get zero growth if you can't keep up a regular posting schedule, which right now seems to be at least 10 posts a week, excluding stories, right? Don't go below that. And if you want to know how to build a consistent content strategy with content that's actually fresh and different, watch this video next, because I'll show you how to actually come up with super fresh ideas that make you stand out from your competition in an easy and awesome way.
