Insight with Chris Van Vliet - Instagram Growth Hacks - How Brock Johnson Gained 100k Followers in 3 Months and You Can Too!

Episode Date: September 10, 2021

Brock Johnson is an Instagram Expert and in this episode, he breaks down some helpful DO's and DON'T to help you gain more followers and exposure on social media. Earlier this year, he gained 100,000 followers in 3 months by utilizing "reels" and he explains how you can do the same and also how you can start to make money from your content. If you have been struggling to grow your account, this episode is absolute MUST LISTEN for you. For more information on Brock Johnson go to: http://instaclubhub.com If you enjoyed this episode, could I ask you to please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcast/iTunes? It takes less than a minute and makes a huge difference in helping to spread the word about the show and also to convince some hard-to-get guests.  For more information about Chris and INSIGHT go to: https://chrisvanvliet.com Follow CVV on social media: Instagram: instagram.com/ChrisVanVliet Twitter: twitter.com/ChrisVanVliet Facebook: facebook.com/ChrisVanVliet YouTube: youtube.com/ChrisVanVliet Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

All systems are going. Ladies and gentlemen, Chris Van Berlin! And here we go. Welcome back to another audio adventure on Insight. I'm Chris Vanfleet. So good to have you with us for what may be the most information dense episode of all time. There's just so much packed into this conversation with Brock Johnson, who is an absolute wizard when it comes to all things Instagram.

You saw the title of this episode. He got 100,000 Instagram followers in three months. And to put things in perspective, it took me around 10 years to get 100,000 followers on Instagram. Speaking of Instagram, give Brock a follow on there. He's a tremendous follow. He's at Brock 1-1 Johnson. And if you're not already following me,

it's just my name at Chris Van Fleet. And perhaps we can gain another 100,000 followers you know, by 2031 or something like that. Take a second. Make sure you subscribe to Insight wherever you're listening right now so you don't miss out on any more amazing episodes that we have on the way. All right, you ready?

Let's do this thing. Please welcome Instagram expert, Brock Johnson. Brock, so excited to dive into all of this with you. But first of all, thank you so much for joining us. Chris, absolutely. Thank you for having me here. I found you the way that I think that we're supposed to find people like you. I found you on the Explorer page because you've been doing such a great job with these reels.

Well, I appreciate it. You know, that's definitely the goal. I think that like word of mouth, people sharing posts between each other and then just finding each other through getting recommended on the Explorer page or the popular page or on TikTok, the For You page. I think that's really the power of social media. That right there is that's how you grow a business. That's how you grow a brand organically nowadays.

Yeah, it means right in the name. Social media. It's very social. I know that you won't call yourself this, but I will call you this. You are an Instagram guru. That's what you are. Thank you. I appreciate that. Yeah, I try to stay away from the word guru. And there's no college degree. I don't have a certificate in Instagram marketing, but I do appreciate that. So I found you, so first of all, let's back this up. You've grown about 100,000 followers in the last three months, which is, Unbelievable. It's taken me 10 years to get 100,000 followers to put things in perspective for everybody. I started following you around 160-ish,000. As we sit here right now, I believe you're at 205,000. What is the secret recipe here? Yeah. So the secret recipe, if I can boil it down to three things. Yeah. Step one, having a very clear niche. So for my first, you know, I've been on Instagram since 2012. My first five or six years on Instagram, I didn't have a business. So there was no niche. It was just posting pictures of myself playing college football and playing sports and

with my friends. That was what I did. That was what I shared. Then for the first two years of my business, I started to niche down, but it was still kind of all over the place. It was marketing one day and then Snapchat and we're talking about Instagram and we're talking about TikTok. It was all over the place.

But really in the last probably two years, I focused in on Instagram. And then in the last probably six months or so, I've hyper focused on Instagram reels. So that's my really specific focus is Instagram reels and teaching business owners how to grow their business using Instagram and really using Instagram reels. That's my very specific niche. And that's step one to growth. And then it's just showing up consistently day after day. The more you post, the more you grow.

And so for the last four or five months on Instagram, I've averaged, I think, two posts per day to my feed as well as, you know, dozens of posts to my stories. But two, two to three feed posts per day is what I've been doing for the last few months. And that's really the secret sauce to my growth. There's so much here I want to break down. I love this. So does this only apply to businesses? What if I'm, you know, just a person with my own personal brand. Does it apply to me? Yeah, I think it does. I think the struggle that most people have. there is if I'm a personal brand, I have a lot of different interests and passions and hobbies. So how do I niche down? And ultimately, you know, we're not in the days of the 2014, 2015 influencer craze where people were blowing up and having these massive followings just because, you know, they have some pretty filters on their photos and they're a quote unquote lifestyle blogger and they post about everything. Nowadays, even these influencers who we see

growing their page now and, and, you know, they post about parenthood or they post about their family or their life, whatever, they still have a niche. They still are talking to one primary demographic or they're still focusing on one specific thing. Maybe it's gluten-free recipes. Maybe it's parenting toddlers, whatever, whatever it may be. I still think that focusing in and picking out one of your passions or one of your interests or hobbies is the best way to grow on social media. Yeah, the idea is like become the expert of the one thing that you're super passionate about. And I think it's beyond just finding a niche, like find a niche, then niche down on that niche, make a hyper niche. Absolutely. I think I always say air on the side of specificity,

like get as niche as you can and then ask yourself, can I go farther? Can I go deeper? Can I get even more specific in the demographics that I'm targeting or in the area of expertise that I'm talking about? So I think it was really interesting a few months ago when Instagram basically came out and said, we're not a photo sharing app anymore. Their focus is now on video, which I think surprised a ton of people. Yeah. Yeah, it absolutely did. It sent shockwaves through the Instagram coaching community that I'm a part of. But it wasn't really that big of a surprise to me. And this wasn't Instagram making a random decision. This wasn't Instagram one day waking up and being like, you know what? Forget photos.

We're doing videos. Yeah. This was driven by the consumers. Instagram is a business, and they're going to respond to what the consumers want. And overwhelmingly, people pay way more attention and they're way more engaged when they're watching a video. Video is powerful. It's the most rich form of media. People love watching videos.

They love watching TikToks and YouTube's and Reels. And Instagram realized that. So all they basically did was let us know, hey, you guys love video. So we're going to keep showing you video and we're going to keep promoting video. That doesn't mean that photos are dead. And that's, you know, a big scare tactic that came out of this as a people were like, oh my gosh, photos are gone. Instagram's removing photos.

No more photos. We can't do it anymore. You can still post photos. You can still have success with posting photos. All this kind of announcement from Instagram meant is that they're really focusing on video. And that's because we are really focusing on video as the consumers. Well, and isn't the idea behind this when you're watching a video, you're engaging more in terms of time. It takes you a lot longer to watch a video than it does to look at a picture and then

swipe off to the next one. Absolutely. Absolutely. It's time on platform. T-O-P-top, time on platform. If you're watching a five-second video, even that super quick video, you're spending more time with it than you probably would if it was just a photo. So you've had so much incredible growth with Reels. And I think people are a little apprehensive when it comes to Reels because they're like, well, it's like TikTok. I have to dance if I'm going to get on the Explorer page. Is there any truth to that? Yeah, absolutely. So you should have a background in dance.

You should probably have a college degree in theatrical dance. No, no, absolutely not. Absolutely not. So let me backtrack and I'll kind of quickly tell the story of how my growth started. It was early April of this year, 2021. And I was like, hey, I'm going to challenge myself to do 30 reels in the next 30 days. Just going to challenge myself. Like, listen, I want to practice what I preach.

There's no way I can recommend that other people do this if I haven't done it myself. By the way, I think there's a lot of people who haven't even post 30 reels in total and you're going to bang out 30 reels in 30 days. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So that was the challenge I made for myself. And, you know, I'll backtrack even further. Reels came out in August of 2020. So I've already been posting reels for a year, a year, 13 months now. Yeah.

So anyways, April comes along and I'm like, I'm going to challenge myself. And I put it out to my audience. I was like, hey, if anyone wants to do this with me, go ahead. Like, if you want to challenge yourself too, I encourage you to do so. But there was no special, like, group. There was no marketing ideas behind this. There was, there was not a ton of thought. It was just, I want to challenge myself to see if I can grow.

And how many followers did you have at that time? 79,000. Okay. 79,000. And I remember saying to my fiance, I said, you know what? I'm at 79,000. So I'm 21,000 away. I bet at the end of this 30 days, I'll be.

over 100K. That was my bet. And I said on day one, I was like, I just, I have a feeling, you know, if you, if you post enough reels, some of them are going to go viral. And when they go viral, that's where the, the really massive growth kicks in. And we can talk more about going viral and that in a little bit. But at the end of the first round of 30 days, I was at like 110,000 followers. So I had passed 100K. And I had grown by pretty much about 30,000 in those 30 days. So I took the weekend off and I was like, you know what, let's do round two. So that next Monday, I started with round two and I did another round of 30 and 30 days. And now, now since then for the past three months, I haven't officially been doing a reel a day. I haven't been posting about and talking about the way

I did with round one and round two. But it's still pretty much been a reel a day for the last four or five months. All right. And how many of those reels were you dancing? Of those, I'm probably dancing in, I'd say 20 percent. But here's what I want to say. about dancing because I know this is kind of how we started this conversation. Yeah. You don't have to dance. You don't have to lip sync. You don't have to be goofy.

If that's part of who you are and that's part of your personality, let your free, your freak flag fly. I say it all the time. Like I love dancing. I grew up dancing. I'm very extroverted. I'm very energetic. That's who I am.

And so that's what I'm going to be on reels. And it works because, hey, it's entertaining and it keeps people engaged. But you don't have to do that. My fiancee, she doesn't dance on her reels. She's in school to be a therapist. It wouldn't make sense if she was dancing around on her reels and being goofy. She doesn't lip sync either. She doesn't use those popular sounds, but you can still be successful with reels,

even if you're just providing some educational value. Looking at doing 30 reels and 30 days, like seems really daunting. Like, I don't even know if I can come up with three ideas right now for reels that I would want to post. Yeah. Where do you come up with the ideas? I understand that. So I created a template after I did the first.

round to kind of make it easier for people just so it was totally thoughtless like, hey, here's the 30 that I just did. Go ahead. You can recreate them if you want. But really, Chris, that's how I come up with all of my real ideas. I'm not some creative genius. I'm not some, you know, marketing whiz. I just look at what everyone else is doing. And I'm like, hey, I was just scrolling on Instagram and I heard this same song eight times in a row. That's a little clue that this is a viral sound or this is a popular song right now. So, How could I take this sound or this song and apply it to my own niche? That's really all it is.

And what's cool is on Instagram, you can look at thousands of other examples of people who have also used that sound. So now I can look at a bunch of other niches and a bunch of other industries and people who have used that same sound. And I'm like, okay, these are all ideas of how I could put my own spin on it. And that's really all it is. So you're saying the focus should be on reels. Now, where does this leave stories or photos or,

carousels. Yeah, absolutely. So stories will not help you grow your following. See, this is big. This is big. Yeah, that's a, that's a huge announcement. That might shock some people listening, but stories will not help you grow your following. 99% of the time, they won't make a difference in your following. What they do, however, help with is they help with relationships. They help with letting your audience get to know you, building trust, building likability, building credibility. Stories are also a great place to sell because you can add what was formerly the swipe up link and what is now the link sticker. Stories are a great place for a lot of reasons, but not for growing your following.

If you want to grow your following, you need to be posting to the feed and the best kind of feed post right now in terms of reach and engagement and views is reels. But like we said, photos can still be effective. I've noticed that recently, when I post just a single still image, it gets way more like and actually way more attention oftentimes than my reels do. And here's why. Variability. People love when you shake things up.

People love when you're different than the status quo. People love when there's something unexpected or surprise. So if you're following me, you're used to seeing 80 to 90% of the time a real. You're used to seeing me on reels. And then all of a sudden, not only do you not see a reel, not only do you not see a carousel, you see just a still single image. And it stops you. It grabs your attention.

Like, whoa, whoa, whoa, what's going on? This is out of the ordinary. And so it grabs people's attention. And I use that to my advantage. So my still images have been doing really well recently. And then also one last thing I definitely want to mention is carousels. Carousels. And for anyone who doesn't know, those are like those slideshow pictures on

or posts on Instagram where you kind of like swipe through the different images on one post. You can do up to 10 pictures or videos in a carousel. Those are super effective. Because again, like we've been talking. talking about time on platform, carousels keep people on the platform. If you think about if you have 10 images in the slideshow, it's going to keep someone there longer than just one single still image most of the time. So carousels are a really powerful thing. I use them all the time. Most days, I'm posting one reel and one carousel. That way I'm kind of covering all my bases

and I'm super educational from my audience in that way. With everything you're saying here, Brock, it sounds like there's a real science to doing this correctly. there is yeah there definitely is a science and um the science is known as the algorithm basically right so instagram has been around for 10 years now when did you start to become so passionate about it yeah so like i said earlier my first maybe six years on the gram were just whatever you know i was a college football player i was just kind of posting about whatever drake quotes here and there and uh all that good stuff. Then in 2017, when I was a freshman in college, I launched my first business, which at the time, this is going to sound funny to some people, was helping moms keep their kids safe on Snapchat.

I don't know if you remember, Chris, but back in like 2016, 2017, Snapchat was as hot as like TikTok was last year. I remember how much TikTok was in the news last year? Snapchat was that, but in 2016, 2017, and people were really concerned about it because of the whole. disappearing messages and, you know, very easy to hide stuff on there. So that was my original business that very quickly morphed from keeping mom or helping moms keep their kids safe on Snapchat into helping these moms grow their businesses on Snapchat because now they knew how to use it. And they're like, all right, cool, I can keep my kids safe. But now I'm on this new social media. How do I grow my business on here? So I started teaching people how to grow their business

and market using Snapchat and Snapchat stories. And a year later, what happened? Instagram released Instagram stories. A bunch of people left Snapchat, a bunch of, there's a mass exodus from Snap, back to Instagram. And I followed suit. I went back to Instagram myself. And really about two or three years ago is when I started this journey,

teaching Instagram, growing my own business on Instagram first, and now teaching others to do the same. You've talked a lot about how people, if they have a business, you can really grow it through Instagram. Does it need to be an online business? Or could you grow any type of business? You can absolutely grow any type of business. I've worked with brick and mortars. I've worked with small mom and pop shops. I've worked with small coffee roasters in rural Montana. It doesn't matter if you have like a small physical in-person business or you have a national worldwide e-commerce store online. You can grow on social media. And that's really a powerful tool. Like 10, 15, 20 years ago,

we didn't have the power at our fingertips that social media. provides. It's it's free marketing. It's free advertising. You put a couple of hashtags. You put a couple reels up on your Instagram and suddenly you're reaching thousands and thousands of people for free. That's crazy. Well, you mentioned hashtags. So let's dive into hashtags. How important are they? Should they be in the caption? Should they be in a comment? What are we dealing with here? Oh, Chris, I love that we're talking about this. I love that we're talking about this because I'm going to say something that most other Instagram experts are scared to say. And that's that forget hashtags. Forget hashtags. And here's why. Let me explain. When I say forget hashtags, that doesn't mean don't use

them. I'm still recommending that you use them. When I say forget about them, I mean stop worrying about them. Stop stressing out and spending hours researching and studying them. And here's why. hashtags are just not reliable. They're out of our control at the end of the day. You could hire a team of experts and they could spend hours picking out like this best list of hashtags for you. And even that super research list, it's not going to be reliable. It's not going to, you know, hit a home run every single time. Hashtags are very hit or miss. So if they're unreliable and they're out of our control, then I don't think we should worry about them. And also let me also add this. It can hurt you. They can only help you. So if something can't hurt you, it can only help you.

It's out of your control and it's unreliable. I do not. think it's worth our time to stress out and spend hours thinking about and researching hashtags. I think that a lot of people use hashtags as their scapegoat. They say, oh, I'm not growing on Instagram because I just don't have that best list of hashtags yet. I just haven't figured out hashtags yet. It's not your hashtags. It's your content. And I know that sucks to hear. And that's why, you know, no other Instagram or actually, I should say not many Instagram experts are saying this because that's not fun to hear. It's fun to sell a course on, you know, how to pick your best hashtags. It's fun to create apps and software to find hashtags for your Instagram because that stuff sells

because it feels like it's solving a problem. But really, at the end of the day, it's your content. There's so many things that have to improve before worrying about hashtags. Well, I think the 2016, 2017 model was, well, Instagram allows 30 hashtags. So I'm going to come up with the best 30 hashtags from my business, cut and paste them from my notes section, and put them into every single post. You're saying that's not the deal anymore. Listen, that was exactly what I did.

And also, I should say, I had a course on hashtags. It was called Help with Hashtags. That was my most popular course. I taught thousands of people that model. And they had success with that model. But Instagram continues to change. So like you said, for a while, it was, hey, Instagram allows us to use 30. So use 30.

And then a few months ago, Instagram announced to, they had some conversations with Instagram experts. And they said, use 8 to 15. Because if you're using all 30, you might confuse the algorithm. Like, that's too many keywords. You're going to send the algorithm in a bunch of different directions. So we're like, okay, 8 to 15. But also they said, hey, it doesn't matter, caption or the comments.

And then now just a few days ago, the head of Instagram, Adam Mazary said that hashtags are only searchable if they're put in the caption and not the comments. So then everyone freaks out again. And they're like, okay, wait, wait, wait. So now we're supposed to use 8 to 15. We're supposed to put them in the caption, got it. And then I do my research and I run these case studies and these tests and I'm finding plenty of posts on hashtags that don't have hashtags in their captions. So they're literally not doing what the head of Instagram just said that they have to do. So all of this to just say they're confusing.

They're unreliable. They're inconsistent. So just take a deep breath. Take hashtags off your plate of things to worry about. And let's focus on creating more content, creating better content, engaging with our audience more. rather than stressing out over a list of hashtags. And being consistent, which is something you've mentioned a few times here. I want to touch on shadow bands because this is something that you talk about a lot in your feed.

And I think that people with a lot of followers who don't get a lot of engagement on their posts go, well, it's because I'm shadow banned. Is that a thing? Yeah. I will say this. 99.9% of people are not and will never be shadow ban. According to Instagram, shadowband is not a thing. Now, of course, they're never going to admit that it is a real thing, but from all that we can see,

most people are not shadow banned. Most likely, here's what's going on, Chris. You make a post and your audience doesn't really like it that much. So the next time you post, Instagram doesn't show your post to as many people. And then that means even less people like it. And now it's a cycle. It's a downhill cycle that the algorithm is learning, hey, when we show, Chris's post to X number of people, they don't really like it. So they start decreasing and decreasing

and decreasing your reach. That's not because they're trying to punish you. That's not because they're against you. That's not because Mark Zuckerberg and Adam Mosary, the heads of Instagram and Facebook. It's not because they have a personal vendetta out to get you or your political beliefs. It's just that your audience wasn't engaging. So that led to the algorithm showing your post to less people, which of course means less engagement, which means less people, less engagement, less people. less engagement, less people, and that's how it rolls downhill. And so I hear all the time on a daily basis from both ends of the political spectrum, they think their voices are being silenced on Instagram. It's comical to me. Literally yesterday, I had two direct messages back to back from people on

opposite ends of the political spectrum saying, Brock, listen, I'm thinking about leaving Instagram because my voices and my voice, my posts are being silenced. I think I'm shadow banned. Instagram is against me and my beliefs. Really what it is is when you're posting highly politically charged stuff on Instagram, people are like, ooh, I don't know if I 100% agree with that. I don't know if I love that. I don't know if I agree. I'll still follow you because I like you, but like I don't really like this post.

Yeah. So then the algorithm sees less engagement and the next post is shown to less people, which then gets less engagement. And like I said, it's a downhill cycle. And before you know it, you're so. far into the hole that you have 300,000 followers and your posts are being seen by a thousand people and they're getting 40 likes. Would you say that the engagement on Instagram is weighted? Likes versus comments versus shares versus saves? To a certain extent it is. But it's not as exact of an order as a lot of

people may believe. There have been some posts that have gone viral that say that a save is like a super like and that saves are the most important. And I would argue that's not true. I would argue that more than likely, everything is pretty equal, likes, comments, saves, and shares. And actually, Instagram tracks over 50,000 different data points when it comes to engagement. Wow. 50,000.

So we think of like the big four, like a like, a comment, a save, and a share. They track 50,000 data points. They're tracking how long you're watching. They're tracking if your audience is turning up the volume when they're watching you're real. They're tracking if your audience. is clicking from your post to your profile and going looking at your other post, they track so many little data points that like we could never even list them all and come up with every single one of these.

So pretty much all forms of engagement are equal. The one asterisks I will put on that is how we started today. Word of mouth, aka shares, those are the most powerful if you want to grow. Because if someone is sharing your post, that immediately means that at least one other person is going to see it. powerful. Everyone talks about the Instagram algorithm. Can you break this down in the most simple terms possible of how exactly the Instagram algorithm works? Yeah. The algorithm is all about attention. Do you have your audiences attention? And a synonym, another word for attention is engagement.

So like we were saying earlier, if your audience is paying attention, they're watching your videos, they're liking your posts, they're saving, they're sharing, they're sharing, their commenting. They're commenting with a multi-paragraph comment because they're super fired up by what you posted. That means that you really held your audience's attention with that post. And Instagram will reward you for doing so because let's think about it as it is. Instagram is a business. And as a business, Instagram makes its money through selling advertising, right? Like Instagram earned its money by selling ad space. That's how Instagram and Facebook makes their money. So, they want people on their platform.

They want to promote people. They want to highlight people who are increasing attention and who are increasing engagement. And so if you can create posts that increase those things, increase engagement and attention, the algorithm will reward you for doing so. And we'll show your posts to more people. And then it's a cycle going in the other direction because now it's being shown to more people and it's getting more engagement, which leads to more people and more engagement. So either way, on either side of the spectrum, it's a cycle either rolling uphill or down

know. This is so good. This is like a masterclass in how to grow your Instagram account. I love this. What about captions? You know, years ago, you used to be able to just put a few emojis and that was it. Yeah. Now you see people that are really like reaching to get engagement, like asking a question in the caption. Is that a good idea? Yeah. I love calls to action. So I don't always have every caption just be comment below if you agree because and I think people that kind of get stale and people lose interest in that. So the first thing I will say is it is powerful to have a call to action, either in your caption or somewhere in your post, be it an IGTV, a carousal, whatever. Having a call to action is powerful. It's the first thing I'll say.

Second thing I'll say is that variability is another thing that is useful. Remember earlier, we talked about how my audience is used to seeing me post reels. So all of a sudden, I post a still image and it grabs their attention because it's not what they're used to. The same thing with captions. If you're consistently writing, long, long captions day after day, multi-paragraphs, your audience might become bored with those. And so maybe a short caption grabs their attention. Maybe no caption grabs their attention. I do that every maybe 10 to 15 posts. I post with no caption at all. And I usually get about 20 to 30 comments on that post saying, did he delete his caption? What happened to caption?

No caption? What's going on? People pay attention. So I like to vary it up and really captions. here's what I'll say because for a while, the best practice was write long captions. Because if you can write a long caption, it's going to take people a long time to read it. And Instagram will reward you for that. Well, guess what? I hear from people every single day who are like, I hate reading long captions. I'm on Instagram to watch videos and look at pictures. I don't want to read like a four paragraph caption that you just wrote.

So again, it goes back to what we were talking about before, which is attention. Whether you're writing a long caption, a short caption, no caption, you're using emojis, you're asking a question. make sure that you can hold your audience's attention. If you can get them to read that entire caption, that's what matters. And if you can't write a long caption and hold their attention, then you better stick with short ones until you can learn how to copyright better. What would you say is a good engagement rate for some as a percentage? Yeah, it really varies.

I think, of course, as you grow, the engagement rate typically decreases, the smaller the account, the higher the engagement rate. I would say that above 3.5% is usually a good goal. I like to kind of keep myself and aim for that range. But I don't focus too much on engagement rate. I focus a lot more on overall reach of my posts. And I want that number to be consistently increasing. I want my post to be consistently reaching more people rather than having a super high

engagement rate. But what I will say about that one is if you have a smaller account, Like if you're listening right now and you've got a thousand followers, you've got 200 followers, stay super engaged with your audience. Comment with them, direct message back and forth. Build up those relationships while you can. Because when you get to 200,000 followers, it's going to be really hard to keep up with those relationships.

But when you're first starting out or when your account smaller, build those strong personal bonds, build those relationships. And brands are looking for that because look, I could find. ex-influencer who has 200,000 followers, but only gets like 15 likes on their post and their audience isn't really engaged and they kind of just follow them because, you know, they're pretty or whatever. I would much rather work with the person who has 300 followers, but those 300 followers are super engaged. And they trust and they know and they like and they love the person they're following. And a lot of brands are starting to make this transition from the mega

influencer to the micro influencer. I think that people thought for a long time that a good giveaway, or good hack was at giveaways. A good growth hack was giveaways. How do we feel about giveaways, Brock? I think that they should be done sparingly. I think again, just like, you know, we've been talking about is doing them really inconsistently, doing them not all the time. If you're doing a giveaway every week or every month, they lose their sex appeal. They're not as fun. They're not, you know, you know, it loses its luster, I guess I should say. I do giveaways maybe once or twice a year. That way, when I do a giveaway, everyone's like, oh, this is my one chance.

This is my, you know, I rarely get this opportunity. So I'm going to enter. If you do a giveaway every single week or every other week, it's like, if I miss this one, whatever, I'll get the next one. There will be one seven days from now and I'll try again. So I would say rarely do them. And then another big key is don't ask people to follow. you in order to win. That's a really huge mistake and something I see everyone doing is they say,

in order to enter into this giveaway, follow me and tag three friends. But here's what happens. You get a huge spike in followers because everyone's like, all right, I'm going to follow so that I can win this giveaway. And then when the giveaway is over, one of two things is going to happen. Those people are going to unfollow because they're like, oh, I didn't win. I didn't want to follow this guy in the first place, unfollow, which sucks. Or number two, and this one might be worse, they're going to still follow you because they forget to unfollow, but they don't really care about your stuff. They don't really care about what you're posting. So if Instagram does show them one of your posts, they're not going to engage with it. And that will contribute to what we talked about earlier,

which is a low engagement rate leading to low reach. So instead, what I recommend doing is when I do a giveaway, I say, just share this post. Share this post. That way, if they're sharing it with their friends, they're sharing it on their story, anyone who decides to follow me is doing so. on their own free will with no incentive. There's no incentive. There's no, hey, the giveaway's over, so now I'm going to unfollow him. They're following me purely

because they just discovered my account and they want to follow along. The United States Soccer Federation present the U.S. Soccer Podcast. My name is David Goss, and I'm joined by my co-host, Megan Clevenberg. And now we're giving people an inside look at the World Cup. Time's ticking.

I think you can feel the intensity. All the guys are wanting to really take their claimant. want to be on that World Cup roster. There's no doubt about it. Hosting the World Cup on the home soil comes with its pressures, but we're just really excited just as the people are. The U.S. Soccer podcast presented by Henko. Follow and listen on your favorite platform. Is there, you know, is there any tips out there for somebody who wants to make money off of Instagram? Yeah, absolutely. Sell less. Sell less. And here's, here's why. Most of us listen to everything you and I have been talking about so far. And you're like, oh my gosh.

more reach. I'm going to reach thousands of people. I'm going to have this audience where, you know, a bunch of people are looking at my stuff. This is a perfect time for me to sell. But there's a reason we don't watch commercials on TV anymore. Like I remember 10 years ago, you remember when like recording a show and like TiVo came out and you were just record your show and you'd fast forward through the commercials. And then now we all pay for streaming services. And if there is a commercial, we're like, what the heck? And you know the first thing we do when a commercial comes on, we grab our phone and look down at it. Exactly. Exactly. We stop paying attention. we change the channel.

If it's YouTube, we're just waiting to press the skip ad button. We don't like commercials. We don't like being sold to. So let's go back to the idea of attention. When you are selling and when your Instagram is a commercial and, hey, buy this product, buy this sale, flash sale, discount code, buy this, by this. People are changing the channel. They're unfollowing.

They're swiping on by. They're not paying attention to what you're posting. So here is the most simplest way I can put this flow. my feed posts, which again is my reels, my carousels, my pictures, the things I post on my feed, those are to serve and entertain my audience. Those help me grow and reach new people, but they also help me, you know, take care of the people who are following me already. That's the first thing.

The stories is where I start to build the relationship. Stories where I show you a little bit more in my life. Stories where you might see my sushi Saturday or you might see me with my dogs. You might see me snowboarding. You get to see a little bit more of what makes me. me, me. You start to trust me and know me and like me. Then sometimes maybe I'll say three percent of the time or less on my stories will I directly promote something. But I don't like to use the swipe up link or now it's changed to the clickable link sticker. I'm not a big fan of that because it's

kind of just like a commercial again. It's like, hey, buy this now. You know, call this number, click this link. It's kind of just like a sales pitch. Instead, what I like to do, is I invite people to send me a direct message, or this is a pro hack, I use that poll sticker. You know, the poll sticker where you can have people say like yes or no or this or that. I'll be like, hey, are you interested in learning a little bit more about Instagram automation? Yes or no?

And I always give them a no option because I want to give people the chance to say no. And for anyone who says yes, I reach out to them via direct message. Is this more time consuming? Yes. Is this more cumbersome? Yes. Does this require more work and more effort? Yes. But this is also way higher converting. And the reason for that is you're not being sold to at the masses. You're not watching a commercial with thousands of other people. You're having a one-on-one conversation with me.

I reached out to you and now we're having a direct message back and forth. I'm learning about your problems. I'm learning about what you're struggling with. And I know from talking to you when you're ready. I asked you, hey, would you like to check out this link? Hey, now that you know a little bit more, do you want a free trial discount code? Yes, I would, Brock. Okay, cool. And now I can send you a clickable link right there. And then just to cap this, this thought off, if I send you that link and I see that you don't purchase or that you don't sign up, I can follow up 15 minutes later and be like, hey, have you had a chance to check out that link yet? I didn't see your email come through. That's powerful. That's the follow up. There's this phrase, the fortune is in the follow up.

You can follow up when you're direct messaging with someone and you send them the link. You can't follow up if someone swipes up and then they get distracted and they click away and they go over to TikTok. You can't follow up and that's a sale that you've likely lost. Sell less. That is so good. Is there a certain time of day that we should be posting? It's different for everyone.

It's different for everyone. Later media, which is a great research agency for social media just came out with like their best times to post and everyone's trying it out and giving it a shot. but it's different for every audience. And some people, some audiences love if you post at like nine o'clock at night. My audience loves when I post first thing in the morning. So I usually wake up between like 5.30 and 6.30. First thing I do when I wake up is I just post something that I had made the day before.

And that's what works for me. But test your audience to figure out what works best for you. And is that by going into your analytics and actually seeing when your audience is most active? You can do that. The one thing I will say about that is the insights and the, the analytics on Instagram, they're not always the most exact. And what a lot of people will recommend, and I'll recommend it as kind of like a starting point, is to post right before your audience is most active.

So my audience is, the graph is kind of increasing and at noon is when they're most active and they're most online. Well, then I'll post at maybe like 10 a.m. So that my post has some time to kind of work its way into the algorithm and be seen by some people before everyone's online. Because if I post at noon, right, when everyone's online, well, guess what? That's also when it's peak. So on the other end of that is everyone going offline and missing my post altogether.

So that's a great first thing to test, but really just test different things. Because like we were just talking about, my audience is usually most active at like 1 p.m., but they do the best and they like my post the most at like 6 a.m. So just test it. Well, I think you know whether you have 1,000 followers or 101,000,000, followers, you know when you have something that's going to work for your audience before you even post it. I think you do. I think I don't know. I honestly don't know. Whenever I make a post, Chris, and I'm like, this is a good one. This one's going viral. Like, I haven't had a viral

post in a couple days. This one's going to do well. I post it and it's like average. I'm like, oh, this was random. And then I love, I had this example the other day. I had this reel that I recorded like three weeks earlier, but I hadn't posted it yet because I was. I was like, this just isn't very good. Like, I have better stuff than this. I'd rather make a new one than post this one just to post it. And then I think it was Sunday morning and I had just gotten home from a trip. And I was like, I don't have anything else to post.

So I guess I'll post this one. And also I should add, it was the weekend. So like posts usually do worse on the weekend. All of that should have pointed to a really poor performing post. And it went viral, of course. And I was like, oh my gosh. Like this post, there weren't even any transitions. There wasn't a hook.

there wasn't a call to action. It was missing so many key components that usually make a good post a good post. I posted it. I was like, whatever, checked it a few hours later and it was viral. And I was like, okay, of course. So what I will say there is oftentimes we actually don't know if our posts are going to go viral or if they're going to do great or not. I mean, sometimes we have a clue, but oftentimes our posts will surprise us. So the message here is just post. Just post. Just post. And honestly, go for good enough. Go for good enough because there's this huge debate of quality versus quantity. And everyone, I ask my audience this all the time, which one matters more?

Quality or quantity? And they always answer quality, right? I mean, as someone who's listening right now, you're probably thinking, yeah, broad, quality is what matters most. But here's what happens when we think quality matters most. Quality doesn't mean good versus bad for us. Quality means good versus perfect. So when you're looking for a quality post and you're trying to,

to make this high quality Instagram real. You're not trying to make something that's good. You're trying to make something that's perfect. Then we get stuck in perfectionism. Then we get stuck in procrastination. Then we get stuck in overthinking and over analyzing our own post. And we never post. So people are like,

how do you post so much, Brock? I struggle to make two or three posts a week. Most likely it's because you're trying to make two or three perfect posts. I've let go of that perfectionism. Thanks to therapy and a bunch of other things and years of practice. I've let go of that perfectionism. I shoot for good enough. I say this all the time.

My posts, I'm not trying to make A plus content. I'm not even trying to make A minus content. My content goal, I'm trying to make stuff that's like a B minus or a C plus level, just slightly above average. But I can crank out slightly above average posts. I can post two to three slightly above average posts per day. I can post multiple good enough posts every single day. If I was trying to make a perfect post, it'd take me all week.

If you're listening to this right now, I think you need to rewind 30 seconds and listen to that again, because I think there is a lot of people that are caught in that idea of it needs to be a perfect post every time. This post needs to be better than the last post. And the next post needs to be better than this post. You're saying just create content that's good enough. That's good enough. Just aim for good enough. Just try it for a month.

Like what's the worst that could happen? You're at the same place you are a month from now, but you have a lot less stress over this month because you didn't have to make anything perfect. Just try it for a month. Post more. but don't worry about making the perfect post. Especially if you are a smaller account, maybe you're only growing by 20 or 30 followers a month. What's the worst that could happen here?

I always say that. What's the worst that can happen? If your engagement sucks, if your posts aren't growing, if you're going in the wrong direction, what's the worst that can happen? Right. Do you work with people all the time now on this?

I spent a year and a half with six hours a day of one-on-one coaching. It was intense. It was me meeting one-on-one, just like we're having this Zoom call right now to record this podcast. And it was intense. And I learned a lot. And I had experience in just about every industry. I don't do one-on-one coaching anymore. I only do group coaching.

And I only have really one offer. I've gotten rid of all the rest of my courses. I've gotten rid of pretty much all the rest of my offers because I want to help the most amount of people in the least amount of time. That's my goal now. So how can people work with you and figure it? out what you're doing because what you're doing is working. I appreciate that. So my mom and I, which we haven't talked about my mom at all, but it sounds weird when I say my mom and I like,

what would his mom know about it? My mom has 600,000. I think she might have actually just recently crossed 700,000 followers on Instagram. She's the OG. She's taught me a lot of what I know. And her and I together, we have this club called the Insta Club Hub. And that's where all of my Instagram knowledge is owned. So basically, you join the club, you watch the quick 30 minute Instagram crash course right when you join. You watch that crash course to get a baseline knowledge of everything you need to know on Instagram. And then you're ready to crush it on Instagram, but you still have access to the club. And inside the club, there's like dozens of quick little bite sized lessons where you can like look over my shoulder what and watch what I'm

doing on Instagram. We do live trainings. My mom and I twice a month on advanced strategies. There's also templates in there for your reels and your captions and there's daily tips and reminders. And we also, every single week, we put out a blog update on all the new changes because we all know Instagram is changing features on like a weekly basis. So all of that is included in the Insta Club Hub. And if anyone wants to check that out, that's at Instaclub.com. We have a couple different membership options, but membership starts at less than a dollar a day, which is, I think, pretty no-brainer. And your mom and you, which is your mom's your business partner, really.

She is, yeah, definitely. It's the club hub. We are literally equal partners. Yeah. You guys also have a podcast, which is phenomenal. And people can listen to that where they're listening to this right now. So could you give us some more info about that? Yeah, absolutely, Chris.

It's Build Your Tribe. That's the name of our podcast. We do two episodes a week, one on Tuesday, which is like a quick tip. Usually they're like 10 minutes long. And then on Thursdays, we do longer episodes. And Build Your Tribe is about growing on all social medias, building email lists, outsourcing. We recently had like an Etsy expert and an Amazon reseller. So it's a little bit more all-inclusive for online business, not just focused on Instagram.

I know that we've talked about so much here. So for anybody that's listening right now, this is like we've just thrown a bunch of information at you. I would encourage you to go follow Brock. He's Brock 11 Johnson on Instagram. And success leaves clues. So take a look at what Brock is doing and then start to apply some of those things to your own life or into your own business. And I think that the only thing is going to happen here is you're just going to get better and better in your account's going to continue to grow. Absolutely.

Thank you for that, Chris. I really do appreciate that. Oh, it's a fact. It's been amazing watching what you've done. I need to start applying these to my own account. And I keep looking at reels and going, all right, what's the next reel I should make? And I don't know. I don't know.

So you've inspired me and encouraged me. What's the best way that people can support you? I think the best way is honestly, like you were just saying, just follow me on Instagram. If you don't think you're ready for the Insta Club Hub or you don't think you're ready to really start diving into Instagram growth yet, you're not sure if it's the right thing for you. Just follow me on Instagram. I encourage you, Jean, just follow me. I post at least one thing every single day that has some sort of educational value, some sort of free tip or advice.

So just follow along. You can watch my stories a little bit and you can send me a direct message and I'll do my best to respond. I usually respond to about 99% of DMs. So reach out there. Let's get connected on Instagram. And if you enjoyed this podcast today, Chris and I would really appreciate it. If you just like took a screenshot right now and shared it on your story, maybe tagged us or send us a direct message, that would be awesome. I love that.

I've always heard that the best thing you can do on Instagram is either entertain or engage or or, sorry, entertain or inform or entertain or basically give you some sort of information. Is that true? Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And basically synonyms of the same word, you know, entertain or captivate or hold people's attention. That's one way.

And another thing is, you know, inform or inspire or educate. And I like to merge the two words together and say, educational entertainment, entertainment. That's what every single one of my reels is. that's my goal. Well, that's what this whole conversation has been, too. So I end every interview with the same question. You see it behind me here. Be great. Be grateful. And I think that if you can be grateful, you'll live such a great life. So what are three things in your life right now, Brock, that you're grateful for? Wow, that's an awesome question. Right now, really grateful for the team

that I've started to build around myself. I've hired an assistant in the last few months. I've hired a designer in the last few months. I've hired an editor in the last few months. And that's just for me, personally, that doesn't include everyone else who's part of our staff at the Insta Club Hub. But the more I can outsource and the more control I can relinquish over my business, the more time I have to be a human being and take my dogs for a walk and watch Netflix in the evenings and actually relax and live my life. So super, super grateful for my team. Number two, super grateful for my fiance say for getting married in a year now, exactly like 12 months from today. Congratulations.

Thank you. I appreciate that. Yeah. I'm super grateful for her. She keeps me level headed and I love her to death. And then number three, super grateful for the opportunity that call it the internet or call it social media provides. We can look on the big scale and say, hey, we're able to reach thousands of people and serve people and connect.

Or you can look super small and miniscule like us having this. conversation, finding each other via social media, having a direct message conversation, and then now getting to meet each other face to face via Zoom and have a great interview and share some more information, which will be broadcast back over the internet. A bunch of other people will get to listen to it. I'm really, really grateful for that. And I'm grateful for you. So thank you. No, super grateful for you, Brock. This might be the most information dense interview that we've ever had. So I know there's a lot here. And for people that are listening, maybe you need to rewind. maybe you need to listen to the whole thing again.

But like Brock mentioned, if you enjoyed this, snap a screenshot, tag Brock at Brock 11 Johnson, tag me at Chris Van Fleet. And let us know that you're on this ride with us. Brock, thank you so much. Chris, thank you. It was a pleasure. All right.

Well, thank you so much for being with us on this episode, wherever in the world you are and whatever you happen to be doing right now. And a big thank you to Brock for sharing all of that wisdom with us. Oh, man. There's just so many things that, you can start doing right now on your Instagram account. And like Brock said, if this episode resonated with you, take a screenshot, share it on Instagram, and tag us.

Brock is at Brock-1-1-Johnson. I'm at Chris Van Fleet, and I'll leave you with this from Copernicus. To know what we know that we know, and to know that we know we do not know, well, that is true knowledge. Be great. Be grateful. see you on the next one for some more insight. Have a great weekend. Jim Rome takes on sports. Why? Because I have a job to do. With rapid fire takes. So I don't want

to hear from you lava pigs on this notion today. No idea what you're talking about. You're complaining more than you like to breathe air. It's like you get up in the morning only to complain and cry and moan on social media about things that you don't even understand. He's the spitfire of sports smack. Take advantage of it. But get up in here the Jim Rome show podcast what should be follow and listen on your favorite platform you've been warned