If you were to come to me and say, I want to double my Instagram followers, I want to grow to 10,000 followers as fast as possible, I'd say, well, totally possible. But first of all, you probably need to rethink everything you've been told about growing on social media and content creation, because the solution is probably not what you're doing and none of these growth hacks and small tweaks that you think about. It's most likely what you're doing wrong and some of the strategies that just keep you down.
So in this video, I'll give you a clear roadmap to follow. You'll know exactly how to identify and fix the things that you're doing wrong right now that keep you down. And afterwards, there's just no way you're not going to see growth.
So let me show you the two major bottlenecks I see over and over again. The ones that got a lot of my clients from being stuck, you know, not being able to grow to hitting 50K, 100K and beyond on Instagram, actually on the other platforms as well. But yeah, let's get into it.
So this first stage is absolutely critical. This is what currently keeps more people than anything else down. And if you don't fix this one, nothing afterwards will work.
Let me explain. Think of this whole thing as a restaurant. No matter how amazing the food is, if the place looks dirty, right, or the tables are just weird, sticky, or the menu is hard to read or even just looks weird.
Nobody's going to come in. Nobody's going to sit down. It doesn't matter how good the food is.
It doesn't matter how good you are, if you're the chef or whatever. People are just too picky to give it a chance. If the first impression is not really there.
Same thing actually applies to your content. If your visuals and first impressions don't meet a minimum standard, and we've talked about this before, and also we're not technically just speaking about the hook, what you probably might think right now. It's actually so much more than that.
People will actually scroll past you without even noticing who you are, if these things are, if these standards are not met. So if your videos are blurry or have that sort of low quality look to them, it doesn't matter how good your message is. You will not stand a chance.
By the way, I recently did a video on how to actually upgrade your visuals without getting a new phone, without getting a new camera, with your existing setup. So definitely check that out if you want to have a deeper dive. The important thing being, it doesn't have to be perfect.
Sometimes being too perfect in terms of the image quality, the way everything looks and feels, actually hurts, right? Because remember, we're still on social media. We're not at the movies.
The main thing is that your visuals need to feel aligned with your audience and with their vibe, right? And that's individual for everybody. So if your content feels out of place or too polished, it can create this disconnect, which is not good.
Right. So since I'm a very big fan of using data-driven strategies for content creation for this whole process, let's actually break this thing down into something you can use right away and where you can see, well, this is where I need to adjust some things. And this is how I adjust some things with this first important step.
Here's actually a checklist to go through your content for each of these points. Let me actually explain them further with an example in a second. So basically we have all these categories there.
And what you want to do is you want to rate your content or have ideally somebody else rate your content according to these on a scale from zero to 10. Lighting, and we're going to get into that with an example in a second. Audio quality, visual clarity, text and editing, and the whole consistency part.
Again, if you take a look at your content or have somebody else take a look at your content, rate yourself, add your score up. And if you're below 35, you've got some serious work to do, right? The thing is, again, it's not about perfection.
It's about finding areas where you can actually make simple but impactful improvements, right? We want to handle our way up to getting the algorithm on your site, which is, by the way, the second big bottleneck that we'll talk about in a second. Now, here's an example from one of you guys, from one of you dominators out there.
Let me know in the comments what rating you'd give her, actually, in each of these categories. It would be interesting. Okay, so this is English with Imola.
Hello. Yes, I check out the inquiries that I get down here in the description. Right, so let's take a look at this video right here.
Night and night. Sea and sea. Okay, so here's the thing.
Let's just start with the first category, which is sliding. I can actually see she uses sliding because in her eyes, we can see the reflection in there of some ring light or something like that. So there's that, but there's still something missing, right?
Because if we look, there's grain and artifacts going on. If you look here, it's very grainy footage, right? All things considering, I'd give it a six out of 10 as for lighting.
It's not the end of the world if this is a six out of 10, if the other parts are good. Let's talk about audio quality, and you probably already heard that. For me, it just hurts my ears in a way because, to be honest, audio quality is not good.
Audio is actually the most important part. The SS and the noise inside this video, inside the audio, it just hurts me in a bit. There's also a slight echo going on, which is also not good.
I suspect she's not using any microphone and her room is kind of blank, sort of like this room, how it was before. It was like a terrible echo. I put in some curtains, add some furniture, stuff like this.
Things will magically be better. And then have a microphone, or even, by the way, two microphones, yes, as a backup. So as for the audio, I give this whole thing a three out of 10.
Now, let's talk about visual clarity. In addition to the lighting sort of being average, but then again, it was okay, the image itself is not really sharp, right? If we just take a look here, I suspect she's using the selfie camera, right?
And not the back camera to film herself, by the way. Again, I have a video where I show you how to use your existing phone and have like an awesome video quality just from your existing setup. But yeah, this whole thing paired with the low light situation makes things a little worse.
So in terms of visual clarity, I would give this whole thing a five out of 10. As for the text and editing, as we can see, there's a few issues already. First of all, these things, let's just stop here.
It's touching the edge of the screen, which doesn't look good. Also, if we take a look here right now, the text down there is actually overlaying with the UI elements down there. So nobody's going to read that.
And on the other side as well with the like bar and stuff like this. Also, if we go a little back there, there's this weird wide transition and this weird low quality comment thing down there. People just don't like that.
So text and editing, I would give that a four out of 10. And lastly, the whole consistency part, and I'm not talking about the consistency that we usually talk about in terms of does she post a lot, but in terms of the visual consistency, meaning if people scroll through the feed, are they going to recognize her? Are they going to see, oh, I know it's Imola.
I've seen her before because they see the style and the look and the feel. Because basically people need to see your content over and over again in order to remember you and consider actually following you. There's the Google 7-11-4 rule, but let's not talk about this right now.
If we go to her profile, even though I don't think it's like the best, everything is the best in terms of all these things, but it is some sort of visual clarity. So it's recognizable. I would recognize her again, let's put it that way.
So let's give her a seven out of 10. So if we add things up, the total score is actually 25 out of 50. And guess what?
Yeah, we've identified one or actually multiple major bottlenecks that need to be fixed immediately, way before anything else, way before her content strategy and stuff like this and the algorithm, which we're going to talk about right now. Do this whole thing for yourself or again, have somebody do it in the comments. Maybe, you know, you can post it and somebody else will rate you.
Maybe I will do it at some point. And if you're below 35, you got some major fixing to do first. But the good thing is you actually know with this whole checklist where to begin.
For Imola, she has a three out of 10 with the audio quality. So that's the first thing to fix. Actually, quick fix.
Just get a microphone and then just handle your way up. OK, so we have the first bottleneck. Just fixing this will make your content stand out way more, will unlock more engagement just by default.
And I see this times again and again. But the second one, if you stack that on top of each other and fix these things, it's even more powerful. There's basically a few bottlenecks that we need to take a look at.
First of all, your engagement signals, because that's what the algorithm tracks. Right. And if people don't interact with you, especially your followers the way that they should, your reach will be kept down.
So the first thing that we're going to do is we're going to activate your existing audience and get them to engage with you way more than on average, way more than with some of your competitors using some of the strategies and some of the hacks that we have for you. And second of all, we're going to even increase that more using content. And you'll get the idea.
We'll take a look at this in a second. The thing is, the algorithm doesn't just magically know who to show your content to. Right.
It relies on data from you and your audience. And that can actually sometimes take a while because it needs to learn and stuff like this. Sometimes it can't take months, especially if it's confused.
But if you feed the algorithm with the right kinds of data and insights, things can get a lot faster. And there's a few things you can actually do to speed up this whole process. Let me show you.
In short, we need to get people to engage with us. Right. We need to get the right kinds of people to engage with us.
And there's actually sort of a hack for that. So let me get into it. Okay.
So if we break this whole thing down, we want your ideal target audience to react and engage with you. So the first thing to understand is how do we actually get our target audience to engage with us? Meaning what do these people really want?
And by knowing that we can actually give it to them. So think of their biggest pain point or need, whatever they have. So for example, if you're in the fitness niche, you know, maybe it's what they want is some easy to follow beginner workout plans for fast results or something like this.
For example, I don't know, lose 50 pounds in a week or something like that. For Imola from before, for example, this might be just a simple cheat sheet or something for the most common overlapping phrases that help you if you're in England or who knows where. Or if you actually want to go the extra mile, it would be some sort of quiz that rates their English skills.
The goal here for you right now is to think of and create something irresistible, a resource. We also call that a lead magnet, for example, that solves a real problem and touches an actual need of your audience. Right.
And then once we have that or multiple of these, we're actually going to use it to reverse engineer the algorithm in a way to unlock really awesome targeted engagement. And once you have that resource, we basically create content around it that really makes them want to that resource. Right.
Because it's a continuation of your content and it's exactly what they want and what they need. So the easiest way to start that is actually a six second B-roll clip. Right.
The things we've talked about this year before with some super valuable caption and then a call to action at the end or inside the video to comment a specific work. Right. Fun fact, you know, open ended call to actions actually work a lot recently.
So don't just say, well, comment the word X and you'll get my resource. You can actually say, well, comment X, Y or Z, you know, to have even more of a conversation going on because the algorithm really, really likes that. Ideally for one resource, you create a whole range of content, not just one video for one resource, because then it's going to get boring, especially for people.
And it's going to get repetitive. You want to go the extra mile. So create multiple videos, all eventually there to make people want your resource, aka you want them to engage with you.
So what I would do is create reels with different lengths, carousels, you can drop this whole thing, the call to action, the caption. You can also mention it in the reel itself and just play around with it. We're actually doing this a lot with our clients and with our own accounts.
And we actually use a tool for that, which is ManiChat. You probably have heard about this before. Basically, it's an app that you attach to your Instagram account.
And don't worry about it. People are always like, or my clients are always like, well, isn't that illegal? Isn't that what you always talk about, Dominic, to kind of get your spam score going?
No, ManiChat are actually an official partner of Meta. So it's not going to set off any spam flags. Essentially, then it's pretty simple.
You attach certain automations to trigger certain things. Like for example, if somebody comments a certain word on your reels, you can send them a DM and then follow up with this. So let me actually show you how to do it and what we set up to use this whole thing, not only to get leads and emails, which is not something we're going to cover today, but to actually handle your algorithm score up and increase your organic engagement.
Okay, so we're in ManiChat right now. Essentially, you can just set up simple triggers. So in this case, we're going to start a new automation, set a new trigger.
And in this case, you know, there's multiple things. We're going to first start with this. If somebody comments on your post or your reel, right?
Simple as that. And then what you can do essentially is either use a specific post or reel that you have, or all post to reels, which is also something that you could think about because obviously, and that's what I do a lot with my content, because people are going to comment and people still comment, even though I haven't posted in a few months, which is again, something that we're going to talk about in one of the next videos. But, or you can just say on your next post or reel, doesn't matter what you choose right now, continue.
And then essentially, we're just going to use a keyword that people should comment to you. Ideally, what I've noticed recently works better, generally, obviously not always, but to have multiple trigger words and to kind of start this whole thing with a question, because then it's more of a real engagement loop. And the algorithm also likes that.
So we can say, okay, for example, they start with, we can say grow, for example, common grow. And then the thing is, you can also say common growth, just for people who are, who don't really listen. And guess what?
A lot of people don't listen. And then another thing, what I always do is I type out any type of typos, type out any type of typos and just start your automation like this, continue. Another thing you can do, and which, especially if you're a smaller creator, I would recommend that if you're a bigger creator, I would not recommend that to kind of have automatic replies.
If somebody actually replies to, you know, types this keyword in or whatever in, you can automatically reply to that saying stuff like, well, send over detail sent. Honestly, I would always use way more than these. And that's a new feature of ManyChat by the way.
They kind of create some new unique ones. That whole thing actually helps you with the whole spam score thing. So we'll try to have way more because it's unique answers.
And once that is done, just click the save button. Essentially, if somebody comments that, we set up a new message that we sent them. So for example, I would do something like, well, thanks for commenting here.
What's going on? Thanks for commenting. Here's the free cheat sheet.
I promise or something like that. I promised. And here's the thing.
Now, this is where we get a little sneaky. Say, by the way, because we want to have conversations going. And again, the algorithm really tracks if people have conversations.
If you read between the Alliance Missouri and all these Instagram people, they always talk about DMing and sharing stuff like this. What they really want is people using their platform and interacting with it. So to be sneaky, we say, well, by the way, what's your biggest challenge you face in learning English?
Imola, you should actually use this exactly like I show you. And then you can say, is it? Is it?
I don't know. Q1 problem. Big problem.
One big problem. Two big problem. Three.
I'd love to know. And then what you do is essentially you add a button. You say website.
You can say, get it here with something like this. And then the website URL. Obviously, we're not going to, we don't have a website.
Does it work? Doesn't matter. That's essentially how it is.
That's all that you need to do. And basically just this, if you have this, if you install this simple thing framework in your content, it's basically like a cheat code to kind of handling, unlocking more organic engagement. Like I said, we use that actually a lot with our clients, with our own accounts.
You'll slowly step up the algorithm ladder by doing this. And this simple thing is actually like a cheat code and actually handling up your algorithm score and unlocking a lot more organic engagement. Because first of all, people start to comment and interact with your posts, with your reel, whatever it is.
So there's that. So first big flood of social signals, way more than you usually get. Second of all, this message that the algorithm really tracks, whether people message each other.
So if you message somebody and somebody messages back, you also get kind of handled up. You kind of raise your algorithm score, but then, you know, it's not ended there. Usually they click there and that's it.
But you actually have a question in there and people, some people, some of the right kinds of people who are actually your target audience will reply to you and say, well, yeah, my biggest issue is I don't know how to order beer because I'm afraid or whatever. Main thing being, once you get that, you can actually manually chime in. You have a conversation going, which is just a super hack to unlock a lot more engagement.
By the way, you can actually try ManyChat for free. I have a link down there. We can actually try that.
Like I said, we've been using this whole tool for nearly all of my clients and we've been using this for years for multiple reasons, by the way. We're not going to get into all of them. But yeah, here's where this whole thing gets even more powerful and sneaky because you're not subscribed to the Instagram mafia for no reason, because the engagement train, my friends, has not stopped yet.
Because what we want to do is we want to maximize your impact to grow fast even more. Right. And Instagram just actually launched a new feature globally called Trial Reels.
Right. We talked about this before. We've leaked it probably half a year ago or so, by the way, here on this channel.
And also way before people knew about this. So if you want to be ahead of the curve again, come here. Don't even subscribe.
I don't know. People are not going to hit the subscribe button anymore. That's a thing of the past.
I have my play button. You don't have to hit subscribe. Just come back.
Right. Every once in a while. And I'm happy about that.
Essentially, this whole trial mode lets you force Instagram to show your reel to a cold new audience. Right. People who are not following you.
And this really helps, especially if the algorithm is confused with your existing audience. Right. If your followers that by using this strategy that we just talked about, you can activate them.
But even if they're still a little confused and if this is a girl going a little slow, you can use what I'm about to show you with the trial reels to handle your way up even more to give the algorithm that extra nudge. So guess what? What are we going to do to make the algorithm think your content is extra special with new people?
We're going to attach yet another many chat automation or actually the same thing. You can just use the same automation. You know, ideally, you have two, three different resources, maybe even more multiple automations just so it's a little more lively.
What this is going to do is your reel will get pushed out to new people who've never seen you before. They see. Oh, interesting, because your resource targets exactly their needs and the video as well.
They'll be like, oh, this is this is cool. This is really cool content. And I want that resource because I'm the target audience.
I'm in the target audience. Let me engage. Right.
And then the algorithm sees, again, these people are engaging exactly these types of people. Now I know words about this account. Now I will unlock massive amounts of organic reach.
But guess what, my friends? We're still not done because now you're going to get a lot of people coming to your profile because your content's probably way better and makes people curious. So they'd be like, OK, who's that?
There's this cool resource. This is kind of where I want to go, but I want to know a little bit more about this thing. So you better have stories, IG stories in place, right?
Daily stories, you know, with with good content, ideally as well, that again touches these needs that people have. And guess what? You can also use ManyChat to get people to reply to you, you know, to your stories.
Wink wink. Because here's the thing. Story engagement is yet another piece of this puzzle to slowly make you a high trust score account, right?
To make you get more organic engagement. So another thing that we actually do a lot is essentially have the same automation that I just showed you. But if you have story replies, you can actually get a little bit more creative, right?
Let me actually show you an example. OK, so we're here again. We set up a new trigger and instead of using comments, we actually say user replies to your story and that unlocks some awesome things.
So, for example, you can auto like, you can delay, you know, to kind of pretend that you're real. I wouldn't really recommend that, but sometimes it makes sense. So we do that.
Somebody replies to your stories with any word or reaction or with a specific word. Ideally, we have the same thing. You have your resource or whatever.
Or if you want, you can say, if you want me to help you, let me know, blah, blah, blah. So we again say English, whatever, doesn't matter. And then you can actually go so much deeper.
So, for example, you could send a video like a selfie video, say, hey, awesome that you sent this. I actually have a question for you. What is your biggest challenge that you currently face with English?
Blah, blah, blah. So you can say video, but you can also, you don't have to start with a video, obviously. You can just send them, here's your resource, whatever, to add the button.
And then you can follow up with that and say, well, I want to have a multiple choice going on. What? Like, again, the same thing.
What is your biggest challenge? Or whatever that is that you want to ask them. And then you say pronouncing.
You can say writing, blah, blah, blah. You get the idea. And then you can kind of handle your way in and out.
Again, we're not even talking about collecting email addresses, which is another powerful thing. But yeah, essentially using these two sort of automations, automation flows, in addition to all of the bottlenecks that we just talked about today, there's just no way you're not going to massively increase your reach and massively grow on Instagram just doing that alone. And guess what?
I also have a video right here that walks you through the exact steps to 5x your story views, because this whole thing ties in together. By the way, it also includes this whole manage ad thing. And it's videos a year old, but it's still more than applicable.
So click here.
