- Does anyone else get the feeling that Instagram is dying?
I can't be the only one.
Comment if you are with me right now.
Part of the reason I feel like we're feeling this way,
is because TikTok is doing something
super super sneaky right now.
They are literally promoting content
that talks negatively about Instagram.
Do you wanna know how I know this?
It's because my most popular TikTok
is one where I talk negatively about Instagram,
and it's like 250,000 views.
It literally feels like this right now,
TikTok versus Instagram.
TikTok used sneak attack,
Instagram fainted.
But, I have hope for Instagram.
They're doing a lot of amazing things.
And I've noticed this after posting for 90 days straight
on Instagram, I have a lot to share with you.
So starting off with growth,
let's just use that as a giant umbrella,
cause I have a lot of data that I wanna talk about.
Number one, the most fascinating
data point that I collected through all of this,
is that I reached over
12.8 million accounts and impressions.
This was all organic and free 12.8 million impressions.
You know what that means? That means that this platform
is still important.
Okay, so let's talk about my following.
I actually gained 50,000 new followers in a 90 day period.
The previous 90 days, I only gained 21,000.
Now I know those numbers sound very big.
So here's another example.
Our intern Sean, who works at this YouTube channel,
posted for 30 days straight,
and he grew by 25%.
So he started at 200 and by the end of it was at 250.
So that just shows you by showing up every single day,
you will grow.
Now I do wanna just relate to you for a quick second here
because I felt this way too.
I was like, but what about the grid that consistency,
the colors, all the captions.
You just have to stop overthinking it so much.
Create different ways to make it easier to post more often
and you will grow.
So again, don't overthink it.
Just start posting.
Reels are becoming a very important part
of Instagram.
Instagram is slowly becoming more of a video platform
than a photo sharing platform.
And this is because they're trying to compete with TikTok,
like I mentioned at the beginning of this video.
So one of the interesting things that I wanna point out here
is that when I was posting every day in January,
numbers were high in February,
numbers were high, but right around March,
is when things started to decline
in terms of my reach in impressions.
And this is mainly because,
I wasn't posting as much video content,
and Instagram is pushing even more video content right now.
They're actually giving you
less organic reach on your photos,
and more organic reach on your reels.
And to prove this, is if you look at my reels,
my most popular reel has over 400,000 views.
And my most popular photo,
actually only reached
350,000 people in terms of impressions.
So right there that just proves an organic reach,
video is becoming much more important.
Okay, so I have some strategies for you to stay consistent
when posting every single day on Instagram.
So my growth over the last seven days.
I grew by 1,393 followers.
Let's take a deeper look at follows and unfollows.
Now I got 4,023 follows in the week,
and I got 2,630 unfollows in the last week,
which means that yes you are growing,
but your audience is always changing.
And here's the main tip that I want you to take away.
It's okay to repurpose old content or post it again,
because your audience is ever changing.
People are coming and leaving all the time.
All right so here's another strategy
that I noticed that worked really really well.
And this is a bit more of like a mindset shift.
And the main thing is that
every time you're about to post,
think about how you can serve your audience
or the person on the opposite end,
that's actually viewing your content.
For example here, a couple of weeks ago,
I posted this really cool photo of a Mercedes.
As I was sitting on the couch,
this was like the first thought for the caption.
Like I miss driving cars and
going around the world and road trips.
Do you guys remember road trips?
Can't wait to get back to road tripping.
What's the best road trip you've ever been on?
Comment your favorite road trip with a car emoji.
Like just you know,
you know those captions, we've all seen them,
cause I've also done them a couple of times, but whatever.
But instead of that, what I thought was
that maybe there's an opportunity here to teach a lesson,
to add value to my audience of photographers.
So what I did instead is let me read the caption to you.
Welcome to caption stories, by Christopher Hau.
"When shooting chase photos of cars,
"you don't need to be going fast
"to make the car look like it's going fast.
"The rule of thumb, or what I like to do,
"is to match the shutter speed of the speed of the car.
"So if you're going 50 miles per hour,
"shoot one over 50 shutter speed,
"save this for future reference."
Now that caption served the audience.
It got a ton of engagement.
People commented.
People liked it, but most importantly,
by power of suggestion saying,
save this for future reference,
I got 906 saves,
which if you watch my previous video
about the Instagram algorithm,
saves and shares are the most important thing
for getting high organic reach.
This is one of my top performing posts in the last month.
All right so I'm gonna call this next section observations.
So let's start with this photo right here.
Hey Chris, do you have a second?
I mean, not really, we're kind of,
kind of in the middle here.
Don't worry, I'll be quick.
Just ask Lizzie.
Storyblocks is an online platform that helps make
your stories more creative without sacrificing time, budget
or resources.
Where are you going? Okay.
I can't believe I'm the ad, I'm being advertised to.
Nope. No, not right now.
Ooh this is nice.
All that stuff you just liked, Storyblocks.
Sell it here, sell out this guy right here.
See, I told you I wasn't done.
Having unlimited downloads
to over a million royalty fee digital assets,
such as high quality footage,
templates, illustrations, music and sound effects,
with their unlimited all access plan,
means that you can tell whatever story you want
when you want to.
Now I'm done.
But I'm not.
So head over to storyblocks.com/chrishau to check out
all their flexible subscription plans.
We love story blocks on this channel,
thank you for sponsoring this episode.
Now let's go find that photo, this photo from Alberto.
The interesting thing about this photo,
is that when I posted it, I didn't really think much of it.
Even when I posted it, I posted on like an off time.
And I also wrote a caption
that is not related to the photo at all.
It's literally about how I'm getting laser eye surgery
and I'll be MIA for a few days.
But somehow this photo is my best performing photo
over the last 90 days in terms of reach and impressions.
This photo reached 350,000 eyeballs.
And why I'm telling you this,
is because I want to reiterate the fact that
by just posting and showing up every single day,
you're increasing your chances of success on this platform.
You never know what piece of content is going to do well.
So just post it anyways.
And the last thing I kind of noticed
is more of like a human thing.
The more that you can show your true authentic self
on this platform, you're gonna see more success.
For example, my best performing story
was something I just shot very very quickly.
Literally it's me like making a homemade vocal booth,
and I'm like having fun and laughing and just being myself.
And it's my best performing story.
People have very good BS radar these days,
but if you're just you and you're just showing who you are,
you're gonna see more success
because the more that I show my authentic self,
the more that I see success
in terms of marketing and numbers and views or whatever,
if that's even important, I guess it's important
cause we're talking about Instagram.
All right, so in this video, we talked a lot about
the results from a marketing perspective
when posting every single day on Instagram.
It's how many impressions did I get?
What was my engagement?
What colors performed well on Instagram to be optimized for
all the people to love me.
Those are all the things that we kind of talked about,
and they are important, but what's really important,
and I'm gonna quote Macklemore here.
Yes, the rapper Macklemore and his song 10,000 hours.
"The greats weren't great because at birth they could paint.
"The greats were great because they paint a lot."
And the results of posting every day are important
but not as important as actually developing
your creative skillset, becoming a better photographer,
a better editor, a better writer.
Those are the things that are important
because if Instagram died tomorrow, you would be left
being a better creative and that's what's important.
It's outro time.
I wanna do a cat outro, I gotta get the cat.
If you guys like this video, please press like
it actually makes a difference.
Subscribe, hit the bell to be notified for future videos.
And we'll catch you guys in the next one.
Do you have anything that you want to share with the world?
Really?