When it comes to Instagram, should you be posting as often as humanly possible?
Or should you be focusing on making better quality posts?
Quantity versus quality?
That is the question that has been plaguing Instagram marketers since the dawn
of time. Or at least since 2010 when Instagram launched. Now,
a while ago I saw this tweet by Sean Cannell,
and he shared that his company makes up to 328 pieces of content on average
every single week to post across all platforms.
He grew his followings across multiple platforms by focusing on quantity first,
not necessarily quality. No offense, Sean, I haven't seen your content,
but I'm just assuming. So that got me thinking:
what really matters when it comes to your Instagram strategy?
Is it quantity or is it quality? And beyond that,
what actually matters when it comes to a business with a social media strategy?
Revenue. So I wanted to know,
could I post more and increase my followers and therefore increase my sales?
Plot twist, I'm on my mat leave, so I asked my team to pull this off.
I challenged them to post three times a day for an entire week.
And what we learned may surprise you.
It is Sunday,
September 10th and we are about to start the week where we wanna be posting
three times a day. I'm trying to get ahead of things here. We've got ,
my little setup, we've got two YouTube videos ready to go,
and I'm gonna attempt to make a cool Reel. So wish me luck.
Hey, it's Brittany from Team Elise.
Today I'm working on some emails and we're also working on a super secret
project that I can't say really much of anything about,
but we're brainstorming some cool ideas in Slack. So I'll check in later.
Hey, it is midday Monday and I'm getting ready to create a Reel.
I'm just gonna take a look at our B-roll folder,
try to pull up a nice clip to go with that,
and then pull up our brand guide so that I can create branded text on the
screen.
The last Reel was posted three hours ago and I wanna go to bed ,
so I still have to post a Reel.
I've decided I'm gonna roll the dice and I'm gonna schedule the third post
because really if we're gonna consistently post three times a day,
you would have to schedule in some way, shape, or form,
so you don't lose your mind.
I just attempted to schedule the third Reel of the day
and they just immediately post it. So I don't know. Anyway, it is what it is.
Day one is done.
So I've got a Reel to promote our new YouTube video today.
I need to write a caption very quickly 'cause I need to post this right
now.
If you're ever wondering if the Elise Darma team actually uses our own products,
yes we do, because I'm about to jump into Caption Vault and see what I can do.
Wish me luck. Just posted day two. I think it's going well so far.
Haven't seen like a influx of followers,
but what has been really cool is meaningful comments and the conversations we've
been able to have. I thought we would be getting more followers,
even though it's only been day two, it's going okay.
We'll see what day three has in store.
Hey, it's Brittany from Team Elise. I was off yesterday,
so today I am diving in and working on an outline for an email that's gonna go
out tomorrow.
And then I'm gonna do some really cool stuff with our On Video program.
So that's where you get five weekly content ideas and you can just take them and
adapt them to your business. So yeah, we got a busy day.
Okay,
it's day three and I think I'm gonna try something we haven't really done
before.
I wanna try to make a really quick video that's like "the person who sent you
this wants you to, you know,
know or be or whatever." I'll figure it out as I'm making it.
I'm gonna grab some B-roll that I think might work and we'll see how it goes.
This is a total experiment you guys .
Hi,
it's Thursday and I'm taking a look at our On Video content drops from the last
few weeks to see if I can find some good ideas to use for our Reels today.
So day four, one thing I've learned is that we are getting,
it's an influx of engagement and like when we post three times a day now it just
means we have a lot of comments to respond to,
because we wanna respond to every comment, right?
But It's a lot we're having a lot more conversations, which is good.
That's great. So it is day five at two o'clock,
logged in and Elise posted the baby announcement.
So like what should the next post be after the baby announcement? .
Because we have two left to do today,
and I just noticed we just hit 186,000 followers.
So when we started this, we were at 185,000, now we're at 186,000.
So that's kind of cool to see.
And I just need to say I've been working on Instagram on desktop all week.
Game changer. Game changer right here, .
Here's what we learned from this challenge. Now here is my account on day one,
and here is my account on day five.
This was after making 15 pieces of content over the course of a week. Now,
as you can see, we did see growth to our followers. In fact,
on day five of the challenge,
we saw an increase of 4,000 followers in one day. Not gonna lie,
we also saw a lot of spam comments. So the question is,
were those all real accounts? Time will tell.
But we do know that there were real people following us because we saw an
increase in our engagement. That's right.
By posting 12 Reels and three carousel posts,
our engagement increased by almost 1500% compared to the prior week
where we had only posted one Reel. And for my account,
we noticed something interesting.
Our Reels got four times the amount of engagement than our carousel posts.
I'm not saying that's gonna be the same for your account,
but it's something that I definitely recommend you test for yourself.
Now with this boost of engagement,
we saw tons more comments on our posts and in our DMs,
and what we discovered was this took more time to manage than we realized.
If we were to use this strategy going forward,
we would probably block out times in our day for our Support team member,
shout out to Keri,
to go into our Instagram account and reply to comments and answer DMs because
that is something that cannot be ignored. The people who are commenting,
and especially the people who are DMing you are your warm leads.
They're the people who are most likely going to become customers.
So like I said, if we continue on with this strategy,
we would definitely have dedicated support time to make sure that everyone's
getting a reply. Now, the question that we're all wondering:
was there an increase in our sales during that week?
We did not in fact see a noticeable boost in our revenue from that week.
In fact, creating 15 pieces of content took time away from the business,
and we probably could have focused our energy on a hundred percent tried and
true revenue generating activities to see that boost in sales. But alas,
we had this challenge and we set out to create more content. As you know,
creating content for Instagram takes time.
So it's a decision that you as a business owner have to make.
Is my time better spent making this content right now,
or should I jump on a sales call and book in a client? Now,
just because we didn't see an immediate change in our sales,
it's not to say that our new followers won't eventually buy something. In fact,
Instagram is generally a long game.
It's very rare that someone's gonna find your account and instantly become a
customer. I would say on average, just looking at our stats,
a customer will eventually buy from me after three to six months of following
and engaging with me.
So I am in it for the long run and I know that this strategy will pay off even
though we didn't see that immediate boost in sales. And going forward,
we would probably add in Instagram-only promotions during weeks like this so
that we can really test to see who from our followers are ready and primed to
buy. So what do I mean by this?
I would create a promotion that I would only launch to my Instagram following.
I wouldn't mention it anywhere else. I wouldn't even email my list about it.
I would simply launch the promotion to my Instagram followers and see what
percentage of people buy and see what kind of engagement we get to our sales
page or whatever the promotion might be.
That would be a really good test to see if our followers are the right people,
who are the best fit for our products and offers. So to sum up,
I would say our takeaway is less is actually more.
And this is a strategy and an ethos that I have followed for many years.
In fact, I have the seasons method.
I've been teaching about that on my YouTube channel here because I believe in
less is more, especially when you're a busy business owner.
But if your goal is to grow your following as quickly as possible and grow your
brand and grow your audience,
then posting two to three times a day could definitely achieve that for you.
If you wanna learn more on how to do less, but sell more through Instagram,
plus get a 30 day roadmap on how to generate your next $1,000,
I have a free training for you.
Click the link in my description and watch it now.
But if it's Reels ideas that you're craving because you do want to post more on
Instagram and you wanna grow your brand and your presence,
watch this video next.