So why are my numbers actually down?
I have a few guesses today.
I'm taking you under the hood to take a look at my Instagram account with
160,000 followers. I'm going to show you my insights, the good,
the bad, and the ugly,
because the truth is my Instagram growth has slowed down and I want to
figure out why. So I'm going to bring you along.
We're going to decipher my insights. I've always wanted to do this.
I've always wanted to show my insights to show people like, Hey,
this is what happens when you grow.
But I've also been very worried about the judgment judgment that people are
going to say, Hey,
how are you an Instagram marketer when you're engagement sucks? You know,
there's always that voice going on. So I'm pushing past that today,
whatever you might assume or conclude about my account, that's on you.
I'm just showing you the facts and we'll take it from there.
[Inaudible].
So, as I mentioned,
my account growth has really slowed down the last few months,
especially compared to the last year.
So what I want to do is really look at the data, not just my posts,
not just my views, my comments.
I want to look at my insights to understand what the heck is going on.
So for a little background,
I was a business account on Instagram for many years.
And then in January of 2021,
I switched to a creator account.
So I believe that reset my insights.
So that's just something to keep in mind as to why I can't look back very,
very far in my insights. All right, I have my Instagram profile up.
What I'm going to do is now tap insights and voila.
Let's look at my stats so you can see right away.
The default setting is looking at the last seven days.
What I'm going to do is tap that I'm going to scroll over and I'm going to
choose the last 90 days because that's, as far back as I can go,
then I'm going to hit update. So let's look at what we're seeing here.
My accounts reached is down 53%.
My content interactions,
a hundred K we'll dig into that deeper to understand if that's good or not.
My followers have grown 5.2% seems a little low for 90
days. And then we also have a look at all my content.
So 11 posts, 525 stories, 22 reels,
five IGTVs and two live videos all within the last 90 days.
So this is a really good way to see where am I putting my focus? Clearly.
I'm good with creating story content, right? So keep that in mind.
Cause there's another stat we're going to look at posts.
11 posts is okay. 22 reels. That's okay.
But remember we're looking at like a three-month period and five IGTVs.
So the reason why I want you to keep my 500 stories in mind is
because when we tap on this area where it says accounts reached,
it's going to show me where I got the most reach by content type.
So the very best type of content for the most reach is reels.
So it makes sense that I posted 22 reels over 11 posts.
I focused on reels because I knew it was working next is posts,
which got me 147 K impressions or reach
after that was IGT videos. IGTV
and lastly was stories.
So stories actually got me the lowest amount of reach.
I guess there's live videos live is like the absolute lowest,
but it's interesting that I made over 500 stories and yet that's not
really where I was getting the attention.
So that's a really good takeaway for me to keep in mind. Hey,
maybe I don't need to focus on stories so much.
How about I make some more reels? So that's one awesome insight to take away,
less stories, more reels. Let's see what else we can dig up here.
So if we scroll further down, we can look at our top posts.
Now just from the previous of the posts, I can see a theme.
They're all meme based posts with animated gifts.
So this one had the most reach this one also quite a bit of reach
this one did well. Yeah, they're all mostly memes.
And then there's one post, which was,
I kind of made that animation up myself where the hearts are falling on me,
but it certainly didn't do the best. So this gives me a second takeaway.
That is if I'm going to create a post to my feed,
I'll make sure that it's a meme with an animated GIF.
Next let's look at my stories. So top stories in the last 90 days,
funny enough, my top,
most viewed story was one where I shared my new nails,
which you get to see right now. And I asked people, do you like them or not?
I didn't really need people's opinions. Like my nails were already done,
but it's so funny to me, how over a thousand people voted in this poll,
I think it was like 1500.
And the algorithm saw as people continue to vote in my poll,
it thought, well, this is some good content.
And it decided to share it with even more of my followers.
So don't be afraid to share innocuous little updates from your life
like your new nails and pop in a poll in your stories,
just to encourage people to share their opinion because people love sharing
their opinion and you never know it might be your top story.
So that's a funny takeaway and a good reminder for me to just share those little
things. Maybe the non-business things,
share those little things and gather people's opinion,
whether I really want it or not because people love sharing it.
And the algorithm clearly likes it.
Let's take a look at my second most viewed story from our latest Airbnb
rental for, in Vancouver for the month.
And just getting settled in. I want to show you this Airbnb,
maybe I'm a bad hipster,
but I just find it funny that everything is crazily labeled, like, okay,
oops.
So that's when I was in an Airbnb in Vancouver and I put our hosts on
blast because all of their dishware was metal.
And then there was a microwave with a sign saying, no metal dishware.
It made no sense. The second story will give you more context. Yeah.
So a lot of people replied to those stories.
I remember they were saying it's hipsters against microwaves. You know,
like why give your guests metal plateware if you can't use the microwave.
So it generated a lot of replies.
And I think that's why those stories got pushed out even more because it was
generating long conversation. So that's another takeaway for my stories. Again,
this is non-business related.
So it's a reminder to me to share the little things in life that make me smile
and engage with people, have those conversations with them next,
let's look at my top reels.
So this is generally where I've put the majority of my focus.
So let's see if it paid off now interesting that the cover images are
mostly with text as what you can see as the preview.
And two of them are screen grabs of me. So I don't know if that's a takeaway,
but it does tell me that it doesn't hurt to have a text-based
cover. Right?
So the very first one that has a reach of over 50,000
people, it's actually relatively new. Real.
Yeah.
What I did to make that real was I took a trending song, this older Drake song,
which has been around for a couple of years,
it was trending on TikTok for some reason.
And I also coupled that with data from later,
that revealed the best times to post your Instagram. And so I pieced like,
you know,
the education aspect together with the entertainment aspect and people seem to
have really liked it. It wasn't hard for me to film.
I just looked to either side and then I added the text in.
So that's a really good hint to me to continue to bundle the
education with the entertainment one or the other is fine.
But together that's when you're going to get really good reach.
Let's look at my next best real.
[Inaudible].
This, to be honest was a reel that I made when I was in a season of sales.
So I was closing the cart on my program, Social Bank,
and I knew this song was trending,
but I'm not really teaching a whole lot in that real, right.
This is a little bit more on the salesy side. How do you sell more on Instagram,
but do less.
And then I revealed the Seasons Method where the real info is,
is in my caption. So I drove people to read the caption,
to know what season they're in.
And so that must have driven because people were reading the caption.
It must've driven a lot of repeat views. That's my best guess there. Okay.
Last but not least let's look at one more real.
So this one was fun.
I took a trend that was popular on TikTok That song was really popular and
I spun it around. So, uh, you know, questions,
I get asked about manifestation. I wanted to surprise my audience a little bit.
I wanted them to be like, Elise, what are you on about?
Cause that was the point of that reel.
I don't get questions about manifestation and it was a really good way for me to
bring it back to why choosing one niche and sticking to it is important for
business and people really liked that. So again,
entertainment with education seems to be the winners for my reels.
Now let's continue on and look at my top IGTVs.
So IGTV has been a little hit and miss,
but I can see that one video we recently recently published was actually
a solid winner. It was this one on how to create viral reels.
You as a business owner can create.
So we're not going to show it in full because it is five minutes,
but that one did really well in comparison to selling your products using
Instagram. Now, if you haven't picked up yet,
our IG TVs are shortened versions of our YouTube videos.
So we're actually repurposing our YouTube content and publishing them as
short IGTVS and then directing people to our YouTube channel for the full
experience. So those ones did really well.
I think our sales focused IGTs, which were all about, um,
Social Bank and they were replays of my lives. They are not doing as well,
but that's fine. You know, when you're in a sales period,
oftentimes your posts that are used to sell,
they're just not going to get the same amount of reach.
So scrolling all the way down.
We get to see here that my impressions are down by 53%.
My profile visits are down by 40% and my website taps are down by
30%. So why is that? I mean, you might be looking at these numbers,
thinking this looks great. Your reach looks great,
but it's all in relation to the number of followers I have.
So why are my numbers actually down? I have a few guesses.
One. We typically spend quite a bit of money on advertising.
And in the last three months,
our spend on Facebook and Instagram ads have been down.
So I think the insights show our reach based off of our organic
reach and our ad space reach. And because our ads are down,
we're not spending as much on ads, then we're going to reach less people.
So that's one of my reasons,
that's one of my guesses and it actually doesn't concern me a whole lot because
I know it's all just correlated to how much money we're giving Facebook.
The second reason why my growth has slowed down is to be honest,
I'm just posting less.
I've been less consistent with all my up rootedness, my traveling,
my living out of a suitcase, moving to a new office space. You know,
I really miss my home office studio where all my equipment is just set up.
My tripods, my lights are there just mentally.
It's so good for me to know that it's all set up.
I just have to step in and perform. Whereas the energy it takes to reset up,
rethink about what I'm going to do, it's kind of draining. The other thing is,
is my team.
And I have been working on creating a consistent posting schedule so that we can
be more consistent. We see the results when I'm consistent with my Instagram,
our followers grow and our sales grow.
So we're really honing in on our process so that as a team,
we can make sure that it's not just all on my shoulders,
but we're all creating posts and contributing to the growth of my Instagram
account. Once we get that process nailed down,
I'm sure I'm going to be sharing with you one day.
The third reason why I think my account is down in reach and growth is to be
honest,
reels are way more competitive today than they were a year ago when they
launched reels, came to my account in August of 2020.
And I dabbled, but I didn't dive in.
And I just think what would have happened if I had really just given reels my
all in September, October, November,
like there are some accounts who have grown 90,000 followers in a month
or in three months, simply because all they're producing is video-based content.
They're not worrying about IGTs and carousel posts and regular posts.
They're just doing reels. Honestly,
it was an opportunity that they leverage and that's brilliant.
And a part of me wishes that I had that bandwidth and that focus to do so too.
I'm just not there yet. I find that reels, I really have to batch create them,
batch, edit, batch, write captions. Like I really like batching.
And I do look at the accounts who produce a reel every single day.
And I just think, wow, kudos to you.
Cause that must be taking like 12 hours out of your week. I'm guessing.
So I respect those who have done it.
I wish that I'd gone more in,
on reels myself because it's much more competitive.
Now I can see when I publish reels today,
they're just not growing and views as fast as they used to.
So after our little deep dive into my insights and seeing what's working
and why am I growth is down now,
I'm really clear that I should be focusing less on stories because I really
don't get very much reach with them.
And when I do post regular posts to my feed,
it's clear that meme and gift based posts do really well,
but truly most of my reach is coming from reels.
So if I wanted to be dramatic, I could do away with IGTVs,
even stories,
and just focus on reels and maybe GIF-based posts in my feed. I don't know.
Maybe I'm feeling dramatic. We'll see what happens.
I'm not a perfect Instagram marketer if it's not clear by now,
but I have been doing this since 2013 and I'm sure I have some gems and
nuggets for you.
So if you're interested in learning more about how to use Instagram to actually
grow your business, I have a relatively brand new workshop.
That's just for you, the busy business owner,
head to the link right below this video.
And let's spend some time together so that your Instagram account actually
brings in sales. To ease and revenue, I'll see you in the next video.
Thanks for joining me for today's look at my Instagram insights.
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