The Instagram Growth Tricks Most Marketers Are Ignoring | Bathroom Break #103

0:07Welcome to a new special series called The Bathroom Break. That extra 10 minutes you either have to listen to marketing tips or use the bathroom or both. But I don't recommend both, but that's your choice. This collab is going to be super fun. We have Daniel Murray from the Marketing Millennials and me, Jay Schwetelson, from the Do This Not That podcast and subjectline.com. each episode in the series, we are going to go over quick tips about different marketing topics. And if you want to be in the bathroom, fine, just don't tell us about it. Thanks for checking it out. We are back for another episode of The Bathroom Break.

0:42I'm Jay Schwettlson from Do This Not That. I am here with the legend, Daniel Murray from the Marketing Millennials. And we're going to be talking about some really awesome quick win things on social media and in different areas. But before we get to that, Daniel, I'm curious about something. I went out to dinner the other night and the waiter comes over and tells us the specials at the restaurant and first of all right out of the gate it was something gross and i'm like i don't want this thing but the waiter's going through like on and on about every sauce and every dot that was going to be in this in this special i feel like when you go to a restaurant you're a specials guy like like you would order the special over something that you see on the menu are you locked in on the specials at the restaurant or do you go with like whatever you think their number one thing is at the restaurant i'm not a special guy because three years ago i saw a tiktok and of the chef talking about how the specials are just food they trying to get rid of really yeah and especially like fish it's like fish they trying to get rid of and i they say never order the fish at the restaurant special because it's old fish that they're trying to get rid of and they're trying to do a creative plate for it so i'm not a special guy i'll go to the most popular thing on the Maddie.

1:51Wow. I didn't know that. That freaks me out. That's the most useful thing I've ever shared on this podcast by far. All right. Well, now let's get into actually useful stuff. We're going to go through a series of different quick win things that I think are not on everyone's radar, whether it's social media or email or whatever it is. So Daniel, you do stuff on Instagram that I need to learn from. So what's a quick win tactic that you're doing right now that everybody should know about. The one thing that Instagram launched months ago, but people are underusing is the trial reel button. So if you're a creator or a brand, this is the perfect opportunity, especially if you're trying to test into what's working or what not, hooks that are working, hooks that aren't working.

2:37You can go create a reel. When you're going to go post, there's a button that says trial reel. And what trial reel does is it sends it, not to your followers. So it goes to a test audience to see if it works. That is similar to what you have on Instagram to see if this post has legs or not. And if it does have legs, it's a perfect opportunity to either share it with, use a button after that says post live to your feed or what you could do too is now redo the post later on your feed and say, because you know it works. So two reasons why this is important. One is a lot of people don't want to test new things on their feed before putting it live.

3:31So this is a great way to test to see, is my hook good? Do people care about what my messaging are not saying? And also if you're trying to be a creator or build your personal brand and you're scared about the first couple of posts. This is a good way to get your cringe factor out and just try a bunch of things and see does the algorithm like this or not. Back in the day, you would have to just post and get zero likes and deal with it. And now Instagram gives you the opportunity to just send it out to a test audience. So you run it for, you say, 24 hours? You run it for as long as you want. But like Instagram has a curve that after a few hours that you know if it's doing anything so like after like an hour or two if your post is started they have they have great analytics that show um okay the post is starting to die or is it at a curve that's more like starting off that's better than your other post they also have now which i do look at a lot of the three second hook like how many people are watching out past three seconds and compared to your other posts and your average, like how many people.

4:42So it also teaches you like, is my hook bad on this post or not? Or where people are dying off on the video? Do I need to speed up the middle? Or is my CTA, are people not watching at the end? Do I need a better CTA? So analytics on Instagram teach you so much about your video. And then you can take these learnings and post it on other places. And that's what people don't do. So I think that's one thing people are underestimating. You know, let's stay on Instagram for a minute. We'll do other episodes on a bunch of other tricks and tactics and stuff. I want to stay on Instagram because I saw something this week.

5:15Adam Masseri, the head of Instagram, came out and he said this. And I actually don't believe him, even though he said it, the head of Instagram. He said that it is a myth that, let's say you post something on your company page, your personal page on Instagram, and then you share it to your own story, okay? Or if you repost it, you hit the repost button, that little thing with the circle arrows, whatever, or you repost it. Neither putting it on your story or you actually reposting it does anything to increase the circulation of the post that you did. I think that makes no sense. I'll tell you why.

5:55I think what he's saying is it's not going to go see, push it to more unfollowers. So what it will do, if you post it on your story, you could get more views because it's counting story views as well. But if you repost it, it's not going to have a better opportunity to hit the algorithm to get it to more people. Because when you're posting on Instagram, another metric you should look at is how many how is a like what's a percentage of unfollowers to followers so if you're if it's only hitting like it was hitting 95 of followers and like 5 of non-followers that means that it's not sharing it out to like the bigger algorithm if it's if you start getting more of a percentage and reels is the best way to get to non-followers um like If you do a static on-grid post, you'll see that it's mostly followers, that it hits, it doesn't get unfollowed.

6:51So what I've been doing too is like a standard grid post if you're just doing an image. Instead of putting it on an image, I'll put it as a reel, as a static image. Because if you put music behind it that is trending and it gets attention in the feed, it has more of an opportunity to go viral. sometimes it won't do as good as the grid post because it's not hitting the algorithm, but you have a better opportunity to get it to more unfollowers if he posts a reel from what I'm seeing. Yeah. My only issue with him making that statement, and I'll tell you why I feel like it's a little bit misleading because I get what he's saying.

7:30I get what you're saying, right? The algorithm is not going to pick it up, but you know, for a lot of people that they look at their stories more than they even look at their feed. Right. And then when you put something on your story, I reshare posts to my story when somebody likes it, right? Likes a story. You get a notification as the person that posted it, that put on the story, you get a little whatever. It goes into your kind of messaging, if you will. And then all of a sudden you have a direct dialogue out of nowhere with that person who interacted with your story, right? I don't think he's saying it's bad not to.

8:04I think people have a misnomer. like if I do this, it will increase my chances of getting in the viral. I think 80 % of activity on Instagram happens in story and DMs. Yeah, right. So your goal for Instagram is to get someone to press the repost button and share it to their story, and that's what you really want, or in the DMs because that will increase the chances of circulating. If you share it on your story, it just hints to some people. But I would look at the analytics because I don't share it to my story that much. But I would look at the analytics how many people are actually viewing a post that you put on your story.

8:49Like if that goes down versus doing a regular story post. Because I've heard also that the best thing to do, the first thing to do of the day is do an engagement story. So like a poll or a question or something to get people to start interacting with your story and then add it in there because now you have activity in your story and people, it's noticing. So before you post it, do something that gets interactions on your story and then share it to your story so you get more and more people seeing. I got you. I got you. All right. I'm screwing it all up. All right. Before we wrap up this episode, back to the dinner thing.

9:28Are you a... all right, now it's the end of the meal. It's been way too long. And now they bring out the dessert menu. Are you one of these people that are like, oh, I always have to order dessert. We always have to look at the dessert menu. Are you an instant, no, we're good? No, we're good. If I want dessert, I want to usually go somewhere else. Unless the only time I would ever be that, if that place is known for that thing, and I'm like going to the restaurant for that thing, I will get dessert. Or it's someone's birthday. Those are the two caveats. But if someone said, let's see dessert, I want to get out of the restaurant as fast as possible.

10:07I don't want to be there for three hours and eat dinner. I agree. That whole dessert thing is like an extra half an hour of nonsense. Let's get on with it. Who cares? They also scare you when they say, do you want to order dessert now? Because it takes 20 minutes. I'm like, no. It's a good tactic, though. It's a good tactic. It's absolutely not. Well, all right. We crushed another episode here. Go follow the Marky Millennials. Leave Daniel a review and do this. Not that podcast. We'll see you at the next one.

10:38Daniel, come on, man. I got to get back to work. Get out of there. All right. While he's still in there, this is Jay. Check out my podcast. Do this. Not that for marketers. Each week we share really quick tips on stuff that can improve your marketing and hope you give it a try. Oh, here's Daniel. He's finally out. Back from my bathroom break. This is Daniel. go follow the Mark and Millet podcast, but also tune into this series. It's once a week, the bathroom break. We talk about marketing tips that we just spew out. And it could be anything from email, subject line, to any marketing tips in the world.

11:12We'll talk about it. Just give us a shout on LinkedIn and tell us what you want to hear. Peace out. Later.