Are you struggling to grow an Instagram? Are you reviews way down despite trying every single different strategy out there? Do you struggle to differentiate between what to post on your stories and your reels and it feels like no matter what you do, you just can't
get the results you're looking for? Well, I hear you. Instagram can be a very frustrating, confusing, overwhelming place, and then you throw on top of that the dozens of content creators who call themselves Instagram experts who are teaching you strategies that are either outdated or never worked in the first place. There's a lot of misinformation, a lot
of rumors, and a lot of confusion going around on Instagram. In today's episode, I'm going to be sharing with you the 7 Instagram strategies that are oftentimes taught but might be actually killing your Instagram account. In case you don't know who I am or what my background is, my name is Brock Johnson, and I've built my Instagram following to over
700,000 followers over the course of the last five years. One of the world's leading social media experts, I speak on stages all around the world about how to grow on Instagram, and my Instagram courses help thousands of people grow to over 100,000 followers on Instagram. And a big reason behind my success is that everything I do on social media is very, very data-driven. I am always looking for studies and conducting my own. I am always researching
what is working and what is not working. And I'm always collecting anecdotal data from polling people and listening to stories in the comments section in the DMs on Instagram stories and across social media as a whole to figure out what is working, what is not working, what is being taught, and what is actually being put into practice. And so today there's some things I'm going to share with you that might surprise you, that might shock
you, that you might even be doing on your own account, maybe even on a daily basis. And I'm going to tell you to not only not do it, but to stay away from it completely. Now, whether you know me, you love me, you trust me, or take everything I'm about to say with a grain of salt. That is something that I would tell you whether you're listening to
me or any other social media expert out there. Take the advice with a grain of salt, because a lot of times the things I'm sharing with you, they might come across as something that you need to do, something that you have to do. But in reality, everything is just a
best practice, and everything is a generalization. There is no one size fits all. There is nothing that's true 100% of the time on social media, or else everyone would be doing it, and the algorithms and the social networks would be quick to make it so that it doesn't work for 100% of people. Now, I do need to quickly interrupt myself because I recognize that posting super consistently three or more times a day on TikTok can sound crazy if
you are juggling every other ball that a business owner has to juggle. There's a lot of tasks that could eat up your time if you don't have a team. And that's one of the tough things about growing a social media following and trying to build your business on social media is that all of those boxes have to be checked. You have to be responding to comments, staying engaged and answering direct messages, and you have to do all of the other things in your business. Oh, and by the way, you still only
have 24 hours in your day. So good luck exercising, spending time with your family, taking care of yourself or just doing anything else that you need. Luckily for you, we have partnered with Belay, who has the nation's largest pool of US based talent for you to hire. Whether you need help with accounting services or a virtual assistant, Belay has personalized matching services to help you find the right fit. See how belay can help you find the
right hire right now. Just text tribe, T-R-I-B-E to the number 55123 to learn more and get started. Again, that's tribe T-R-I-B-E to the number 55123 and they'll help you get started. So even though the things I'm going to be teaching you today might be the exact same things that I'm telling my students, they might be some of the things that I'm putting
into practice myself, you might be the exception to the rule. And so it's your job to take what I'm telling you today and to take really any strategy or tips that are shared with you on podcasts or YouTube videos or even on social media posts, take it and put it into practice, put it to test for yourself to see if it gives you the results that you're
looking for. The one last thing that I will say before we get into these seven strategies today is I'm not going to waste your time with the things that I would hope by now you know you should not be doing. I hope by now you know that you should not be in engagement groups because that's inorganic and it's going to lead to decreasing returns until you eventually end up worse off than where you started. I hope by now I don't have to tell
you that you shouldn't buy followers or buy engagement. I hope by now I shouldn't have to tell you that you shouldn't buy shout outs from major pages or you shouldn't steal people's content or rip people off. Those sorts of things I think it goes without saying avoid them. I hope it goes without saying that you should not follow unfollow in
all of the other strategies that were really popular in 2012. Instead, I'm going to be focusing on the strategies that you might not know are hurting your Instagram account or they might even still be being taught to this day and they might be widely believed to be effective but they might actually be hurting your account, be crushing your growth, be crushing your engagement or be crushing your sales. The first strategy that I'm going
to tell you to avoid is too much quantity on your Instagram stories. This comes in two main forms. The first form is in lengthy individual stories. Each of those little story clips can be up to 60 seconds long but they should rarely ever be. A very common mistake that I see people making all the time, myself included in the past, is taking up the full circle while recording the full 60 seconds and just kind of blabbering on to fill that space.
Some of you may or may not remember back in the day, Instagram stories when they first came out were only 15 seconds long and so you had to be very brief. Then Instagram said, hey, you can be up to 60 seconds long but we're still going to break it into four segments. Now you can be 60 seconds long and Instagram doesn't break it up. Let's think about what that's like for the consumer. They have to commit at the beginning of your
story to watch the full 60 seconds uninterrupted or else they're going to lose out. There's no way to fast forward or rewind. The only options they have are starting the entire thing over again which can be a pain. I mean, imagine if you were 42 seconds in to a 60 second story and the kids started screaming, the alarm went off, you got distracted, Instagram glitched, whatever and you lost your train of thought you just stopped paying attention.
Well now you're faced with either skipping that story altogether which is what most people do or starting and listening through the entire first 42 seconds again, it's very unlikely. So the first kind of one A of too much quantity on stories is the individual clips being too long. The second too much quantity on stories that I should tell you to avoid is too many individual clips. It used to be a best practice that the more stories you posted, the more views
you would get. And this was because essentially every time you posted a story, your little story bubble would move back to the front of the queue. The little profile picture that indicates that you have a story would move back to the front of the line and with us increase your chances of getting views. That's how the algorithm used to work. And so it used to be advantageous for you to post more than 10 stories in a day, more than 15 stories
in a day. The more the merrier, but now less is more. In fact, according to a 2024 study by Sprout Social, retention rate continues to decline as you post more story frames. A major dip from the first two frames. So after those first two clips on your stories, the third one in every subsequent story experiences a major dip. The median retention rate is at 81% by the fourth frame and dips below 75% by the seventh frame. So with each story,
you're going to lose more and more and more viewers. And that's not a good indication. As you're losing more and more viewers, the algorithm says there must be something wrong with this story. People aren't that into it. And so they're going to show your full story, the entire thing to less people. So less is more. I now recommend posting three or less
stories on the days that you are posting stories. That's one B now one C the third and final component that you should avoid in terms of quantity on your Instagram stories is in the individual days that you are posting on your Instagram stories. It used to be advantageous to have basically a never ending story. Basically every day you were adding a few things to your story throughout the day. And so even as things from the previous 24 hours were expiring,
you had new things to look at. But this essentially allows your algorithm to continue to decline in your retention rate to continue to drop and drop and drop lower and lower over time. So instead, it's best for you to take a 24 to 48 hour break regularly, even multiple times a week from your Instagram stories. With this strategy, I've been able to increase
my story views by over 500%. It's been crazy over the last few months. I've been posting way less stories, which means way less work, way less time, energy and effort for me, and instead way more views. And I mean, we're able to transition those viewers into customers which is awesome all by posting less stories. So less is more with your Instagram stories. And if you are someone who is notorious for doing those 60 second stories that take
up the entire amount of time, here's what I want you to do instead. I want you to take a solid color background, create a solid color background on your Instagram story, and then press the text to speech button and speak into your phone the thing that you would have just recorded yourself saying. Most likely that 60 seconds of talking that you're going to do will equate to about two to three paragraphs of text. Use that as a text post story.
This essentially allows you to deliver the same thing you would have delivered in a 60 second talking story, but it allows someone to consume at their own pace and to pause and hold to read. And here's the really cool thing and the reason why this really works within the algorithm. If you post a 60 second talking story, the only way that you can get a 100 percent retention is if someone watches literally the entire video from start to finish the
full 60 seconds. However, if you do a two to three paragraph text post story and someone holds to read, well, guess what? That text post story is only supposed to be up on the screen for three to five seconds. So if someone holds and reads, even if they're a speed reader and they can read that entire two to three paragraphs in six seconds, that's over a 100 percent retention rate. And that is great in the algorithms eyes and that will
help you be shown to more people. So less is more with your Instagram stories. The second Instagram strategy that is killing your views, your reach and your potential follower growth is what I call unit content. Unit content essentially means posting only one type of content. Now, this might be a little bit confusing if you're familiar with what I teach regarding niche. I believe that a niche is absolutely essential. And we're going to talk about that
a little bit later. That's not what I'm referring to in this mistake. What I'm referring to when I say unit content is that every single one of your posts looks the exact same. Maybe it was filmed in front of the same backdrop or it's filmed in the same setting or every single one of your posts is just a lip sync of a trending audio or every single one of your posts is a text post that just looks the same and sounds the same and is in the same
area. Basically, people will get bored. I also consider unit content to be only posting one kind of content. I'm looking at you if you're someone who only posts reels. I think there's a lot of people who got some bad advice who now in 2024 are posting only reels and they're not posting any photos or carousels. And this is a negative. This is hurting your potential reach and your potential growth. Having only one kind of content gets stale
very, very quickly. As I like to say, yes, variety is the spice of life, but also variety is the price of likes. So if you want more likes, more views and more growth, mix up your content and try out different things. The third Instagram strategy is one that pertains to your sales, your business, your lead generation. And that is relying on the link in bio.
Now, you can have a link in bio. Nothing wrong with that. But if you are consistently using that as the primary driver for your lead generation or for your sales, it's not going to be very effective. Or at least I should say it won't be as effective as some other strategies. If you're someone who is constantly saying, click the link in my bio, go to the link in my bio, visit the link on my page, whatever that is not going to be as effective as something
like DM automation. There have been numerous great studies done on the analysis paralysis that is created when you present people with multiple options. Essentially, if you give people multiple options, the likelihood of them choosing any of them decreases. So at the bare minimum, I would not recommend using a link tree or any sort of link menu in your bio. I recommend just having one single link, which is okay, but just don't promote it
or at least don't rely on promoting that link in your bio. Similarly, I wouldn't recommend even using the link on your stories that often. I would recommend using direct message automation as the primary driver for distributing links, getting link clicks, generating leads and sales and customers. We have seen significantly higher view, engagement, click through rates all from using direct message automation. In fact, I did an entire episode just about direct
message automation a few weeks ago. So I'll link that up down in the description below, but I highly recommend listening to that episode because it is mind blowing how many more comments and likes and views and followers and link clicks we receive when using DM automation
compared to when promoting the link in bio or even using the link on stories. So if you're a business owner who is taking Instagram seriously in 2024, whether that means you're trying to grow or you're trying to expand your business and get more money, make more money, make more sales from Instagram, you need to stop ignoring direct message automation. And I recommend using a tool called many chat. There are a few other tools out there, but many
chat is the most popular one. If you use the code Brock, BRO, CK, all caps, you'll get the first month of many chat pro for free. So you can essentially try it risk free. I would highly, highly recommend giving it a shot because it's a real difference maker in your Instagram. Mistake number four. And I should say that these mistakes are in no particular order. So this isn't like the fourth biggest mistake. This is just the
fourth mistake that I came up with on the list. And that is something that's still being taught, something that is very widely used and propagated and spread around by Instagram coaches, which is trend chasing. Specifically, what I'm referring to is the trending audio alerts that so many Instagram coaches are posting. You need to use this audio. It's about to blow up. And the reason why these coaches are posting this is not necessarily because
it's in your best interest, but because it's in their best interest. Either they created the audio and their page will benefit from you using it. Or if nothing else, they're trying to create a FOMO and that post of them making a trending audio alert, that's going to do well because it creates FOMO. It creates buzz. It creates energy and attention. When in reality, it does very little for you as the person who's actually using the trending
audio. But this doesn't just apply to trending audio as we can take a step back and say that this more broadly applies to just trends in general. If you're always looking around Instagram and playing catch up on what everyone else is doing, you're using the meme a few days after they are. You're using the pop culture reference a few days after they are. You're trying out that style of video a few days after they are. You're always going to be behind.
And it's hard to get a lot of followers if you're not being a leader. If you yourself are just being a follower and a copycat and you're recreating every trend that you see, it's going to be hard to differentiate yourself. It's going to be hard to stand out. And so instead, what I would recommend doing is either trend forecasting, which means looking ahead of what trends will be coming soon. And there are a few ways you could do this. You could
look at trending audio reports. We do send out a weekly one within the Insta Club Hub. You could look at what's trending on TikTok because that likely trends a few days before it trends on Instagram. Or you could just ignore trending audio is altogether. You could ignore trends in what's popular altogether. And just do what works for you. Do what makes you laugh. Do what you enjoy doing. Do the kind of content. Create the kind of videos
that spark joy and creativity in you. Do more original audios kind of like I do very often on my Instagram where I'm speaking directly to camera rather than doing a lip sync with someone else's voice. And that will generally help you not only avoid the trap of trend chasing, but it'll also help you bring some variety to your content.
League number five is doom scrolling. And this is a term that you might be familiar with, which generally means scrolling infinitely on Instagram, just consuming, consuming, consuming, consuming, wasting all of your time, consuming and being entertained rather than creating and being entertaining. I'm going to expand doom scrolling to include comparison. Because I think by now a lot of us have heard the quote comparison is the thief of joy. And I
think that aligns well with the term doom scrolling. Oftentimes when we are scrolling through Instagram, we're not only being entertained by the fun videos, we're also comparing ourselves to our competitors. We're also feeling less than because our live that we live every day doesn't live up to the highlight reel that someone is posting on Instagram. So try to limit the amount of time that you spend scrolling set actual limits in your
phone setting. So you get reminders set different goals for yourself, get an accountability partner or just find other things to do with your time rather than scrolling through your Instagram. There's actually recently been an interview with the guy who created the infinite scroll. He came up with the technology or the software that allowed you to just kind of scroll forever and feel like there is no bottom. And he has a lot of regrets around that
because it creates a lot of addiction and mental health issues around social media. But as someone like yourself who is a content creator or a business owner, you don't have the time to be doom scrolling and to be getting sucked into comparing yourself to others. You need to be creating content and to be posting content in order to be reaching more people in order to be reaching your ideal customers, clients or students. So you're doing
yourself and you're doing the world a disservice by infinitely scrolling set limits. And there is definitely a time and place to enjoy a scroll to check out to turn your brain off. So to speak. But I want you to make sure that you're aware of how much you're doing that and that you're intentional with your scroll. Strategy number six that is likely killing your account is what I like to call gimmick hacking. And essentially there are an infinite
amount of hacks that you could try out on Instagram. And Instagram coaches again, I feel like a lot of these worst strategies are propagated by Instagram coaches who might not have your best interest in mind. But there's this one very common one that I can think of off top my head is we're after creating your real you type out a bunch of keywords that describe
the real. And then you make the color of the text the same as the background. So maybe I'm going to make it like a gray so that it blends in with my shirt or I'm going to make it kind of like a off white to blend in with my walls in the background. So you make the text basically blend in and become invisible with the background. And then maybe you even like pinch the text together to make it really small. So it's like really hidden. But it's
still there. That's horrible. It's called keyword stuffing. And it was taught for a few months as a way to go viral on Instagram and tell the algorithm what your post is about. But now Instagram has literally come out and said do not do this. Our algorithms can pick up on when you're doing this and we will suppress your reach if you are doing this. So avoid it. Don't do this. This is a strategy that's literally being taught by some people.
And yet Instagram is saying do not do this. We know this is going on and we will limit your reach because of it. There are so many hacks that are always being come up with just the other day. I heard one where someone said that when you post you should tag at Instagram and at creators because then you're essentially telling Instagram that you are an Instagram creator and you want more reach. And so they will prioritize sending
you out to more people. No, these hacks, these gimmicks, they're always floating around. They're always quick to become ineffective. They're usually only very effective for the person who comes up with them. They work one time and that person teaches it to the world as if it's a fact. So do your best to avoid gimmick hacking. Avoid gimmick chasing. Avoid chasing the latest hack or strategy that is blowing up right now because those are
the things that are often very fleeting and very hard to keep track of. Those are the things that make you feel overwhelmed and make you feel like you can't sustain your consistency on Instagram. Instead stick with the strategies that are tried or true that are proven to be effective year after year for decades on end. And those things are rarely ever changing. Those things will allow you to have long term sustained success. Last but not least, strategy
number seven. And I feel like this one is more commonly taught on tip talk or even more commonly taught just in general with younger generations rather than I am a younger generation. So I'm going to let myself in with that category. But just generally speaking, this is more common. The younger you get, the younger the demographics skew. And that is niche hopping. I told you we would get back to niche and I told you we talk more about it. But having
a niche is step one for growth on social media. Can you grow without a niche? Sure. But it's going to be much, much tougher because let's think about it this way. When you don't have a niche, people don't know what to expect from you. People might eventually know you, like you, trust you and even love you. But it's very, very hard for someone to get to that point if they don't follow you in the first place. And it's very hard for someone to
follow you in the first place. If they don't know what your account is going to be about. If you post about all of your different interests and passions and hobbies, they don't know what to expect. They don't know what they're going to get. They don't know if you can solve their problems or fill their needs or if you have the kind of humor and entertainment that they're looking for. And so it's very unlikely that someone's going to follow you.
And so there are definitely creative ways that you can bring your interests and passions and hobbies and the different elements of your personality into your niche and relate all those things back to one central topic. But without that one central topic, it's going to be very, very tough to grow. And so whether you're trying to grow on Instagram or TikTok or YouTube or whatever, identifying your niche, your topic is step number one for growth.
I will say we've done a few episodes of Build Your Tribe recently about how to pick your niche. I think one of them was even called like watch this to pick your niche or something like that. My mom did it recently. I'll link that up in the show notes below. But hopping from niche to niche, talking about all your different interests and passions and hobbies
is not very often going to lead to sustainable growth. It's going to be very difficult for the algorithm to figure out what your content is about, which then makes it difficult for the algorithm to know whom to show your content to. It makes it tough for you to figure out what to post about because you could post about anything. And I know that sounds
like, well, if I could post about anything, well, then I'll have infinite ideas. But in reality, remember earlier, when we talked about the whole analysis paralysis thing, if you could post about anything, how do you differentiate what you actually should post about from day to day? So pick your niche, niche down, identify that topic. That's step one for growing on Instagram. If you want all the rest of the steps for growing on Instagram,
that's what we teach inside the Insta Club Hub. That is the Instagram growth membership that my mom and I run together where we do live trainings. We have pre-recorded lessons. We have personalized lessons based off where you're at. We have personalized content counters, one-on-one profile reviews, all that good stuff. And you can check that out and get full access to the Insta Club Hub for two weeks for just $7 by clicking the
link down in the show notes below or visiting Insta Club Hub.com forward slash trial. And depending on when you're listening to this, we might even have some free bonus offers available on that page as well. So again, just visit Insta Club Hub.com forward slash trial or click on the link down in the description below. Thank you so much for listening today. Make sure to check out the other episode that we did previously about niche if you haven't
already or if that is something that you are struggling with. And as always, happy networking.