Hey guys you might notice that this video looks a little bit different today
and that was intentional, I wanted to have more of a heart-to-heart style sit down with you
because I wanted to be really candid and honest with you about something that I've been thinking
about for a long time and you know for a lot of us here on YouTube who are content creators we are
slave to an algorithm and we are slave to keywords that will perform for us so a lot of the time I'm
making videos that I'm doing my best to help you with but at the same time I do feel a little bit,
you know, bound by the parameters that I need to stay within so even though this video today sounds
potentially click-baity and potentially like you know I'm going for something specific I can
promise you that this keyword I haven't even looked it up, it's probably not even going to
perform for me and I'm really just using this video today as a way of connecting with you and
being very candid and honest with you about growth on Instagram right now, so Instagram is getting
increasingly harder, it's also like literally one of the most searched things on YouTube right now
all of my analytics tools tell me that it's the thing to go after however my account isn't big
enough to rank for the things that I actually want to talk about within Instagram so it would
essentially fall on deaf ears for the most part. I have been actually thinking about what moves the
needle on Instagram now because there are a ton of videos out, there are a ton of people going this is
what you need to do, this is how you grow in 2020 and it's all well and good but let's just address
something, a lot of those people making those videos have grown their following on YouTube first
and that has spilled over to Instagram because they push everyone that way so please keep that
in mind when you're watching YouTube videos it's incredibly frustrating to see large accounts give
you advice that isn't the most effective way for a small account to grow and it's dishonest because
their growth has come through virality on this channel or growth on this channel and essentially
they've funneled everybody that way and that's what I do I have no problem with that you know
as a way to continue to grow other platforms I just don't like it when it's positioned
in a way that's not completely honest and so for the smaller Instagram out there for the smaller
Instagram account out there I wanted to be really honest with you about what I've seen
within my clients and within my own account over the past three years that I've seen continue to
move the needle again and again and again so as many of you know I manage and create content for
Instagram accounts, I have a creative agency we do social media content, video, we grow accounts,
we manage accounts, I've grown you know accounts all the way up to 45,000 from scratch and I've
grown accounts from zero to a few hundred, zero to a thousand, we work with you know any size however
if the truth be told most of my clients are less than a thousand followers which
is interesting because my Instagram account is less than a thousand followers as well right now
and for anyone joining Instagram in 2020 and wanting to grow there are a multitude of different
ways to go about that and before I go on if you haven't yet watched it check out this video that
I actually created last year all about how we grew one account from zero to 15,000 in twelve months
it's basically every single thing that we did for that client and also there's this video that I put
out a couple of weeks ago all about how to get your first 500 subscribers on Instagram as well
and I've actually really been reflecting on that video and that's why I'm making this one now so
all of these things that I talk about in both of those videos are really really important you'll
hear me talk about hashtags, you'll hear me talk about you know the quality of your content, you'll
hear me talk about formatting and headlines and various bits and pieces and they're all
important and the information that I'm about to give you cannot be done in isolation from those
things you still need to have an account that somebody wants to follow, you still need to be
providing value, you still need to be clear and and simplify things
and create a feed that your ideal client or customer would actually want to partake in
right, so as I said you know upon reflection of my own brand and the clients that I currently have
I truly believe that the number one fastest way to grow your Instagram account in 2020 and probably
beyond is through collaboration and I talked about this on my Instagram account the other
day in one of my posts and and someone actually said to me: "well how do I collaborate like what
does that even look like?" which again is part of what got me thinking about this particular video
and I want to give you some examples from my own business but also look at some bigger examples
as well so you can see how people who are doing it well are actually using this concept
and this strategy far beyond anything else on their channel. To start with myself, I
went back through my analytics and thought about the time where I had the biggest jump in followers
in the last 6 to 12 months and that was I mean that was easy for me I actually remember it
I did a webinar for a business coach's group that they have and there was 40 people in that group 50
maybe and 40 of them followed me that was the biggest jump that I had. I taught on Instagram
they followed me on Instagram and I asked them to follow me the next time from memory that I
can remember is last year I spoke in Sydney at an event about content and I had my Instagram handle
on those slides at the end and I got a bunch of followers out of that and every single time
where I've jumped has been because I've been in front of a trusted audience so for that business
coach they already trust him so it's very easy for them to trust me because he trusts me right
and if they're getting value from him then they can trust that they're getting value from me
so it was a very easy ask and a very easy you know call-to-action for them to
execute and same with this speaking gig that I had, I stood on stage and talked for 45 minutes
and built trust with the audience at that time and it was easy for a lot of them to go and follow me
after and and the other time that I would say which is probably less of a collaboration but
needs to be brought up because you can use it to your benefit in other ways that's a little
bit more transparent is one of my friends has 13,000 followers at the moment and in the last
six months has, you know, mentioned me one or two times and every time he's done that
I've gained about 10 followers now for those of you who are thinking "I want 100,000 followers and
200,000 followers" 10 people here and 40 people there doesn't sound like a lot but when you have
under a thousand people on your Instagram that that that's really big jumps, that is a really big
jump in followers so I want you to keep that in mind especially if you are a smaller account that
if you can collaborate with people that's going to help you build a trusted audience much faster than
putting stuff out into the world and waiting for something to pop
the other way that I've seen this work is when I when I have clients who cross-pollinate
their Instagram stories with friends I actually had a client in the last year or so that had
a few friends in the industry and they would tag each other in their stories and they would
share the story and they would make the story go further and it was a lot of fun
but it increased their following, there was a point where where it did stop
actually doing that, but definitely in the beginning that cross-pollination
between stories just made it super easy for the this person's follower to follow that person
and I've also seen it with my clients where they show behind the scenes of their stories
and they tag brands in it and then those brands share it to their stories and again
it just becomes that trickle-down effect now some of you watching might be familiar with Gary Vee
and it's really interesting because I think he has right now maybe eight million followers
something to that effect and you know really with anything there is a threshold where people stop
growing and they plateau out because they've just reached a saturated amount for their market but
Gary continues to grow and what's really interesting is if you look at the analytics
for his channel, yes he continues to grow but around the beginning of Covid it starts to
taper off and then he started the show Tea with Gary Vee and then you'll see
the bump in the analytics go back up and continue to grow it's not exponential growth
by the way, for him that's the equivalent of the 10 or 40 followers but he'd be getting
you know a few hundred or a few thousand at any given go but it's incremental growth
but that is a perfect example of collaboration where Gary says "Hey I'll give you free business
advice basically you've just got to you know be the person who jumps on the call" and they do and
Instagram sends out you know they do it through Instagram Live, Instagram sends out a notification
to Gary's followers and to the person's followers that he pulls in and says hey this person's live
with Gary Vee and that immediately draws a new crowd if this person has been following Gary and
has 200 people that is following them then all of a sudden he's being exposed to 200 new people
and it's not just him, you look at Jasmine Star she's done this for a long time, Jasmine is known
in the social media/Instagram space and she has had a show for
a while I want to say it's called coffee and conversations but I haven't watched it in
so long that I don't want to misrepresent her so I'm sorry Jasmine if that's not what it's called
but basically she makes coffee and she brings in people to answer their business questions,
social media questions as well, it's very similar concept to Gary and she was doing it long before
Gary as well and she continues to grow in the space and she continues to have that authority
in the space so what I'm seeing time and time again is that as small accounts the fastest way
for you to jump up and get to that whatever the number is for you, I know a lot of people
say it's ten thousand but I really think it's, you know, one to two thousand where it starts to get a
little bit easier that's certainly what I've seen where followers start to happen a little bit more
frequently but it's it's probably one of the best ways at this point to to grow in a significant way
and build a trusted audience the best thing about collaborating as well is what I said earlier
if you collaborate with someone who already has a trusted audience then the people that follow you
are not following you because you had a piece of content go viral and they thought wow that's funny
and then you never put out something funny again and you're junk to them and they unfollow you,
you literally go and provide value to someone else's audience they already trust that person
that has given you that platform and then it makes it so much easier for them to follow you
and buy into you and be loyal to you, right, and that's what we want, we want loyalty and we want
to build with the trusted platform we don't want our engagement to tank just because we've got all
these new followers, we want to be able to have meaningful conversations with people. So I want to
finish the video with some tips if you are going to collaborate there's a few ways that you can
do it on Instagram there's obviously Instagram Live which which we've talked about with Gary
and Jasmine and then secondly you can do Instagram Story Takeovers that way you can feature people on
your feed and they're probably the biggest ways at this point to collaborate you could also use Reels
and use the functionality that Tik Tok gives you to do splitscreens and duets and things like that
together to potentially feature someone else in that regard but if you're not familiar with Tik
Tok or Reels don't worry about that last comment so much just focus on either using Instagram Live
or Instagram Stories or using your feed to cross-pollinate and then it's all about reaching
out, you know, using established connections or reaching out with new connections that might
have the same audience as you and perhaps if you want to see me do a video on how to make those
connections leave me a comment in the comment section below just so that I know that you want
that because I'm happy to put that together for you, I've done many a cold calling in my time and
you know my best performing video on this channel is all about how to cold message somebody on,
on LinkedIn sorry so it's definitely not something that's new to me I'm happy to put that together
for you but you need to let me know in the comments below, yes we all want to grow and I get
that and we get itchy feet around it, we we just want to get started and do the thing but remember
that even when you're not collaborating you need to be showing up on Instagram regardless, you
need to be on Stories particularly because they build depth they build trust they build connection
in a way that that you know a feed post can't, you also need to have great content on your feed
that provides value to your customer or your end client, you need to be putting out
content that they want to consume, that helps them that that gets them to from A to B,
need to be putting out great content that is just that's always a thing, that's always the standard,
it's never quality or quantity, it's always quality always and then think about quantity right so I
also highly recommend having somewhere for people to go, something for them to sign up to, an email
list, a downloadable, something, anything, have that in your feed because we need to be getting
people off the rented land of Instagram and into something that we own and we own the email list
so make sure that you have something like that and if you don't look into how to make a freebie or an
opt-in or set up a list and get people onto that as soon as you possibly can and then the final
thing that I'll add is populate your highlights on Instagram so that when people do come to your
account they can binge watch certain things about you whether that's FAQ's, whether that's
your services, whether that's, you know, the story about you, about the company, about the business,
how you operate, how you work, the things that you believe, get those highlights going as
soon as you can because they're really a good they're like a channel change on a tv right,
it's like okay now I want to watch a bit of this, now I want to learn a bit a bit more about this,
so populate your highlights feed. So the final thing that I would ask you to do from this video
apart from subscribe and like this video if it brought you value is in the comments below
as well as what I asked before, I want you to take this opportunity to network, pop in your IG
handle, pop in your ideal client and and what you do and the value that you bring and then begin to
network with one another in the comments, so just take this opportunity to network and start that
collaboration and build your Instagram bit by bit and that is this week's video all about the number
one way to grow on Instagram in 2020. If you want to reach out to me you can follow me here over on
Instagram, I put stories out every day, you can hit me up in the DM's, I am all over Instagram
as much as I am all over YouTube, probably even more because I am on Instagram daily so come and
follow me there, I would love to meet you, talk to you, answer any of the questions that you have
but otherwise that's it from me this week and I will see you in the next video bye bye