Transcription
If I had to start an Instagram account from scratch, zero, zilch, NADA, this would be my exact plan to hit 10,000 followers as fast as possible. I'm talking step-by-step, what I recommend doing on day one, day two, and so on. Not only have I grown my own Instagram account, but I've worked with hundreds of students helping them grow. I audit my students' Instagram accounts every week, and these are the changes that one must commit to if you're serious about growing. As always, time stamps and resources are below. Grab a pen and paper, let's jump in.
Day one: Set up your account for a high follower conversion rate. What is a follower conversion rate, and how can you set up your account to get followers from the very beginning? Your follower conversion rate is the percentage of people who decide to follow you after they've visited your profile. So, if 100 people visit your profile, you want as many of them to press that follow button as possible. If zero of them follow you, that's an indication that something about your profile itself is off and needs to be fixed.
To set up your account for a high follower conversion rate, all you have to do is remember PBC: Positioning, Branding, and Clear bio, call to action, and category. For positioning, what type of content will you be creating, and who is your content going to be for? You have to know the answers to those questions. If you can't clearly answer those questions, then Instagram's algorithm is going to have a really hard time connecting your content to the right people.
Here's proof from Instagram themselves that this is what you have to do to see success on their platform. In a Meta article titled "Powered by AI: Instagram's Explore Recommender System," they say, "By building account embeddings, we're able to more efficiently identify which accounts are topically similar to each other." Instagram's algorithm first assigns a topic to your profile. If they cannot identify one topic for you, you will likely be posting for years and see very, very slow, if any, traction at all. Unfortunately, I've seen this happen time and time again to creators who are truly amazing, talented, but they don't want to pick one topic they're posting in. So many different topics, lifestyle, if you want to call it that, and they post for years and years and they're stuck at the same number. It's because they refuse to pick a topic. So, if you want to scale and grow quickly, you have to pick one topic.
Then, once Instagram can identify what topic your account falls under, what happens next? They say in that same article, "By applying the same techniques from their embedding framework, we can predict accounts with which a person is likely to interact in a given session within the Instagram app." AKA, then they can start recommending your content to different people on the app that are interested in your specific topic. This is why everybody says to niche down on Instagram because their algorithm is literally designed to favor accounts who have one clear niche. And if you don't want to niche down, that's okay, that's fine. Just go to TikTok instead. Don't be on Instagram. But if you're dead set on Instagram, you have to niche down.
So, for the example in this video, let's say that I'm setting up my account from zero. Let's do my positioning together. What type of content will I be creating? AKA, what topic am I going to create in? Running. Let's say I'm going to create a running account. Who will that content be for? I could see myself creating running content for beginners or people who want to start their running journey too and maybe don't have any experience. Now it's your turn. Pause this video, write down your answers to those two questions because if you clearly can't answer those two questions, then Instagram's algorithm won't be able to either.
Next, in PBC, we have the B, which is branding. This is where you're going to communicate your positioning through the app: the profile photo, username, and name plate, mainly for now. My positioning is posting running content for beginners. So, how can I make that clear through my profile photo, through maybe my username, and especially my name plate? With your profile photo, you want to make sure that it is a clear representation of you with great lighting. If you could match your photo to your niche, great. So, if I'm in the running space, it would be cool to have a picture of me running or in running gear, maybe outdoors, something that makes sense for the content that I'm posting. While your username doesn't have to be so niche-specific, like I don't have to say "Running with Millie," I could just say "Millie Adrien," you know, it could be my name. You still want your username to be simple, easy to remember, and easy to spell.
Then, the most important part is the name plate. This is the bold section of your profile. The reason this is so important is because this section is actually the most searchable on Instagram. So, if I were to go to Instagram right now and type in "running coach" or "running tips," anyone with that phrase in their name plate, in the bold part of their name, will show up in my search results. So, ask yourself, how do I want people to find me? How do I want to be identified? What are some search terms that my audience might be typing into the search bar that I could put in the bold part so I'm more discoverable? We have my profile photo set up, nice running pic. We have my name, let's go with "Running with Millie." And for my name plate, I'm going to put "Millie Running for Beginners."
Then, finally, the final letter in PBC is our C, which is really three different C's: we have clear bio, category, and call to action. The bio is where a lot of people mess up, and they make it about them. They're like, "Oh, I'm from San Diego," or like, they put like Pinterest quotes, and they're like, "Follow your joy." Not me making fun of my own quote, that would not be a good bio. And your bio is actually like a strong selling point to increase your follower conversion. So, your bio is actually going to be why somebody should follow you. You're going to communicate the type of content that they can expect from you or what they will gain when they press that follow button. You're basically telling them, "Hey, if you follow me, this is what I will do for you. This is how I'm going to show up for you. This is what you will learn. This is what you will gain."
So, let's set up my bio. I would probably say something like, "Helping beginner runners start their journey with practical tips and daily motivation." You know, it could be as simple as that, but that clearly tells them, "Hey, if you are a beginner runner and you want tips and inspiration, you're going to want to press that follow button." Your category is something that you could select when setting up your profile because, again, it helps Instagram understand what your account is about. Literally, under categories, they say, "Categories help people find accounts like yours." So, if there's a category that represents your niche, definitely use that. And then, finally, CTA, our strong call to action. I recommend every content creator has a call to action leading their followers someplace else. I'm biased. I am always going to encourage creators, even if you're starting from zero, create a freebie, get them onto your email list, make a digital product, you know, like take them somewhere that's beneficial to you and your business as you grow. Not just, "Oh, follow my YouTube, go check out my TikTok," not just things like that.
So, this is going to lead me to what I would do on day two. And that is: create a money magnet. Technically, this step is optional depending on what your specific goals are with Instagram. For me, I know when I was starting an Instagram account, my end goal was to make money. I wanted to be able to monetize being a content creator. So, if that's also you, then I would do this step. Basically, what we're going to be doing is setting up one stream of passive income now so that as your account grows, your income is growing with you. This is something that does not have to be hard to do at all. All you have to do is pick some sort of low-ticket offer that you think your ideal follower would find valuable.
For example, I'm creating running content targeted towards beginners. I'm going to start thinking about how can I monetize that. A few options: I could offer one-on-one coaching if I'm qualified to do that. I could create a guide or downloadable with running plans, maybe like a zero to 5K done-for-you running plan, or even a 30-day running challenge. If teaching and educating isn't the direction that I want to go, maybe I want to start a membership, which can act as like a virtual run club. If I'm already running every week, it would be fun to have a membership where once a week I'm like, "Alright, everybody, this is our run together. Let's take pictures. Let's share our journeys with each other. How far did we run today?" You know, just having a virtual run club could be fun. Or I could create more of like a running essentials guide where I list out all the essential products that you would need to get started and throughout your running journey, and all those products are linked to affiliate links. Literally, just start exploring all the different ways that you could provide something of value and sell it to a future audience.
If your answer is, "Oh, I don't really think there's a way to monetize this or to monetize or sell anything or to create anything," you probably have some sort of limiting money belief happening because there is always a way. If you don't know what to sell, you could: one, look at other people in your industry, other creators in your niche, check out their links in bio, check out to see how they're making money, and see if there's anything you can implement. Two, you can literally ask ChatGPT. I know so many people refuse to use AI, but I love ChatGPT. ChatGPT is so cool. You can literally be like, "Hey, I'm a content creator. I create running content to encourage beginners. How do I want to create a low-ticket digital product? What should I create? Give me a list of 25 digital product ideas that I could start selling to my audience for $10, for $47, right?" Like, give it as much information as possible. Ask it to come up with a list of digital product ideas for you, and it will spit out that list.
Once you have a product or some sort of idea for how you want to monetize as you grow, the setup for it is super simple. All you have to do is set up a Stan Store. Stan literally lets you monetize in almost every thinkable way as a content creator. So, Stan Store acts as your link in bio. Whether you're going to start a membership, sell a digital product, sell an online course, offer one-on-one coaching, no matter what it is, you can set that up on your Stan Store and have everything be handled, paid directly through there. There's like little to no tech involvement needed at all.
So, what I would do: I would create my digital product in Canva. Once I have it finished, I'm going to export it as a PDF. Head over to my Stan Store, create a new product, select the digital product option, and then fill in my digital product info. Going to give it a good title, good description. I'm going to say how much it's going to be, let's say it's $27. I'm going to upload that PDF right there and publish it onto my Stan Store. Then going to go back a step. We're going to add our call to action to our bio saying, "Download your 0 to 5K running plan here." Then when people click on my link in bio, they could easily purchase the product right there, one click of a button. It is that simple. I love Stan. I'm obsessed. I've been obsessed for years. I'm very excited to say that this video is sponsored by Stan. I've been talking about them for forever without them sponsoring my content, so I'm stoked to be able to work with them a little bit closer. So, if you want to set up your own Stan Store, I'll be sure to leave a link down below.
Okay, now that your account is officially set up to convert followers and sales, it's time to move on to day three. Day three: You're going to preload your content bank. This day is about one, starting to create your content bank, AKA the never-ending list of video ideas that you could pull from for when you choose to film, and two, choosing your first nine videos to prepare before you post.
Let's create our content bank. For the time being, we will be focusing on Reels. If your goal is growth, focus on Reels for the time being. That's because Reels is the only piece of content that was created with the algorithm and intention to reach new people. Instagram has said time and time again that Reels is to help you reach new eyes. So, in the beginning, focus on Reels. Don't worry about photos, carousels, etc. What you're going to do is open Instagram search and type in the type of content you're going to be creating. In my case, it is running. We're going to just take a look at what those other suggested search terms are. We see "running tips," "running motivation," "running outfits." Anything that feels in alignment with the type of content you're going to create, just select it. I'm going to take a look at "running tips." We're going to make sure we're studying just Reels here. And as we scroll, we're going to look at some of the most popular, viral Reels and save some of the most popular, viral ones to a folder to analyze and maybe recreate later. This folder I'm going to create is going to be "Running Tips." And again, I'm going to just save some of the most popular Reels to this folder. If you want to take an extra step, you can make sure that you're only saving recent Reels as opposed to Reels that are showing up from like over a year ago. So, if you could save Reels within the past three months that are performing well, you're going to have recent proof of what is currently working in your industry.
After I finish going through those Reels, I'm going to go back to search and do the same thing again with those other suggested terms. So, now instead of "running tips," I'm going to take a look at "running outfits." Create a new folder, start saving some videos there. I could do this with the suggested search results or other ideas that I have. So, if I don't see "running gear," I can still type in "running gear" and look for the top-performing videos there. Save. We're just kind of going into batch save mode, finding videos that we like. "Ooh, I like that. That makes sense for me. Let me recreate that later." And just saving them to folders. After about 30 minutes of building up all this inspiration, you're going to go to your saved folders, look through all of them, and you're going to pick nine videos to be your first nine that you post. The first nine does not have to be perfect. No, no, no, no. That's not where we're going for here. We are simply finding nine different video types to create and test.
So, one video that you're going to create in your first nine is going to be a talking head video. Maybe another video from the first nine is more of a voiceover video. Another one could be trending audio where there's just b-roll happening. Another one could be a lip-sync video where you kind of lip-sync what the audio is saying and then add some relatable text. You could also play around with delivering different types of value in your content. So, one video in the first nine could be educational. One video could be more inspirational. Another one could be focused on entertainment, maybe kind of like a more "run with me" vlog. And another one could be more like that lip-sync with the relatable text. You just want to have as much variety in your first nine as possible to one, push your boundaries a little bit, challenge yourself as a creator, create content that you wouldn't normally create, but also two, test to see what's going to work well in your industry for you, what feels good to create. And you're just going to be in like test mode. As you're going through your folders and you're finding videos that are like, "Ooh, this would be a good one for my first nine," you could add it to any sort of content calendar or notes app that you want so that you could keep track of like, "Okay, these are the first nine videos that I'm going to film." A lot of people like to use the Notes app. When I was a solopreneur, I was a die-hard Trello fan. Right now, I'm using ClickUp because I have a team. But find something that works for you where you can keep track of all the videos you'll be working on.
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Now, for day four, I'm going to focus on batch filming as many videos as I can. Day five is when I'm going to batch edit. When you are filming and editing your video, the one thing that I'll say here is to make sure you implement hook layering. I don't want to spend too much time on this because I already have a video that covers hook layering in depth. But to see the best results with short-form content these days, you really need to master the art of a good hook. And not just a good hook, but hook layering. Hook layering is when you layer multiple types of hooks within the first three seconds of your video. You have the text hook, which is the text that appears on screen of your Reel at the very beginning. The audible hook, which is what somebody hears at the beginning of the video. And the visual hook, which is what the person actually sees when watching your video. If you could implement all three of those things really, really well, you are golden. You are winning. You have really mastered the hook and the art of short-form content. Again, I'm kind of blazing over filming and editing because I kind of want to keep this video as strategy-focused as possible, and I already have lots of videos talking about hook layering. And I also have a video talking about how to film and edit aesthetic Reels. So, I'll be sure to link them all the places: card above, description below, so that you could watch those videos next for a further deep dive on those.
Day six: We're going to prep our drafts. This is where we're getting ideally our first nine into Instagram in the drafts with the text, with the captions, with everything set and ready to post. First thing you're going to do when you have a video uploaded to your drafts is to save the backup. I cannot tell you how many times I've had students be like, "Oh my gosh, Instagram just deleted all of my drafts," and I'm like, "Yeah, that happens sometimes." So, save your video. Even if it's like perfect, you're going to post it in an hour, just save a backup without the audio. That's fine. Do that.
Next, let's talk about captions. With your captions, again, if you're your goal is growth, you want to put in as many keywords as possible. Yes, there are creators that have fun in the captions and say things like, "Anyone else relate?" I've done that. But if you're trying to grow quicker, you want to help feed the algorithm what your video is going to be about. So, if the video you created was inspired by the Instagram search phrase "running tips," make sure you use that phrase in your caption, in your pop-up text, and maybe even your hashtags. This is important because not only does this help Instagram understand what type of content you're creating and know who to push your content to, but it also helps potentially rank your content in Instagram search. So, if I go to Instagram search and I look up "sourdough bread," if a video has "sourdough bread" with pop-up text or in the captions, they're going to pop up in my search results because that creator was very intentional with summarizing what that video was going to be about. They utilized SEO as part of their strategy. So, try to be as intentional with keywords as possible. If this whole keywords thing is confusing to you, again, I have a video teaching about Instagram SEO. So, go watch that video next.
Since I did touch on hashtags, what I would say for my strategy if I was starting from zero: I would have zero hashtag strategy. I would not care. I would not care. I would ignore them. I don't care. I would spend maybe 10 seconds being like, "Um, #runningtips, #amazonrunninggear, #running." Done. How long was that? What was the timer? That's how long I would spend worrying about hashtags because Instagram themselves have said before time and time again, hashtags do not help with growth. They do not help getting you followers. It is just an extra tool that you could use, but is not the make-it-or-break-it point. It's just not. So, I wouldn't even worry about hashtags other than 20 seconds of thinking about them.
Truly, with your cover photo on your Reels, I would make sure that all of my cover photos clearly explain what that Reel is going to be about. That way, when somebody lands on my profile, their first impression with my first nine, they see exactly "Five Running Tips for Beginners," "How to Breathe While Running." They see exactly what each Reel is, and they know exactly the type of content that I will be delivering. Therefore, it increases that follower conversion rate even more because there is so much clarity behind the content that I'm creating. So, yes, be intentional with your cover photos. Make sure the text is easy to read, especially from the feed view.
With our drafts prepared now and a backlog of ideas ready for you to film, how often should you post? Day seven: Let's talk about starting your posting schedule. The goal is to post as often as possible without getting burnt out. Obviously, we know the more you post, the more likely you'll grow quicker, but longevity is more important. Going viral rapidly, yeah, great, woo, love that. But what's more important for being a content creator is finding a schedule that is realistic for you to keep up with for two years. If you want to grow on Instagram, be an Instagram creator, you got to keep it up. You don't just do it for two months and be like, "Woah, I did it," and then never post again. You have to find a rhythm and a way to create on a consistent hamster wheel that doesn't burn you out in a way that matches your life and your unique lifestyle that you have.
Even Adam Mosseri, head of Instagram, has emphasized this. And it's funny because he was directly asked, "How often should I post?" And he doesn't give you a number. I don't think it's because he's ignoring, "Hey, you should post this much." I think he just doesn't want to say an unrealistic number for some people and then they burn themselves out because there's truly no magic number. It's: do what works for you. For me, on my "It's Modern Millie" account, I post three times a week. But we're talking about our running account today. Our running account that we're creating, let's say also for that account, I only want to post three times a week: Monday, Wednesday, Friday. That works well for me. That means that's three posts a week. If I have my first nine created, I'm actually set for three weeks: three, six, nine. I'm set for three weeks. Now I could go in and schedule those Reels to auto-post for me, or just post live every morning, Monday, Wednesday, Friday. Which actually gets you better results. For me, I've tested auto-posting and posting live, and I feel like posting live, my engagement is always better.
Now, days eight through fourteen: You're going to be mastering the hamster wheel. Now that you have started posting, in order to maintain whatever schedule you've created, you have to master that content creator hamster wheel because it never stops. You got to keep posting, and you got to find a system that works for you. If you were able to easily batch nine videos in a day after doing your content research, maybe that's your routine. Maybe every other week is batching nine videos. If that did not work out for you the first time around and you're like, "I did not batch nine videos, I got three done," that's fine. You tested. You tried to see what you were capable of for that day. Three videos in a batch session works for you, great. Ask yourself, "Should I do batch sessions once a week? Maybe twice a week?" Continue to test and see how content creation can fit into your day-to-day lifestyle. If you want to be a day-to-day content creator.
Day fifteen: Learn from the data and level up your strategy. I put this at day fifteen, but you might not have enough analytics yet depending on how often you're posting. Ideally, day whatever, you're going to analyze the first nine after they've been posted. You're going to study three signals in your insights: likes, shares, and watch time, with watch time actually being the most valuable signal. I feel like everybody says, "Oh, Instagram says shares is the most valuable." But recently, Adam Mosseri posted this Reel. He does say likes, shares, watch time, they're all great. But he says watch time is actually the most valuable signal. Watch time is basically how much of your video did somebody watch. Check to see of your nine videos, which video received the best watch time. Keep that in the back of your mind. Which video received the most shares? Keep that in the back of your mind. You could even check to see which video got you the most follows because if it got you follows, and you recreate that same type of content, you'll probably get more follows. So, keep that in the back of your mind.
Not only are you going to study which posts are working well and performed well, but you also want to keep an eye on the posts that didn't perform well so that you don't go down that same path of trying to create that same type of content, or you could learn and be like, "Okay, why didn't these perform well? Was it my hook? Was my hook layering lazy? Was I being lazy when I created that?" What do you need to do to improve on that concept? Studying your analytics is going to be key in unlocking the secrets to your specific growth because everybody's account is so different, and the type of content that's going to work for you is going to look differently than your friend and me. So, I recommend studying your analytics a minimum at least once every 30 days. If you're posting every day, Monday through Friday, maybe make it a routine at the end of the week, check that whole week's performance and see which videos were performing well and didn't perform well. You have to be willing to dive into your content from an unbiased perspective and very analytical to study and be curious and ask yourself, "Okay, what could I do? What's working? What are the numbers saying?" So, just get comfortable with studying and being curious about your content.
Day sixteen: Keep learning and trying new things. If you're a creator who is wanting to grow as quickly as possible on Instagram, I get it. I have been there. I remember being in the depths of like, like, "Okay, how do I make this dang thing happen?" The one thing that I know worked for me was just continuing to educate myself and being open to trying new things, trying new video styles, adapting to Instagram updates. Follow creators that teach Instagram strategies. Some of my favorite creators are Monty. I love Monty's content. He has an amazing membership where he helps you with creating Reels that'll help you go viral. Monty is such a great, not only human but resource when it comes to Instagram. He has both an Instagram and YouTube, so check both of those out. You could also follow Jade. Jade is a dear friend of mine. I love her so much, and I love how practical, straightforward she is with her teachings on Instagram. She has, again, Instagram and YouTube. Hey, Dominic here on YouTube. I love his style of teaching. It's very analytical, practical, straightforward. Again, I love the no-fluff type of approach, and I just love that he teaches based off of facts, stats, numbers, and proven methods that have worked. Those are some of my top people that I recommend following, whether on Instagram or YouTube. And if you do check out their content and you do love what they're creating, just let them know I sent you. Be like, "Hey, heard about you from Millie. So stoked that we're connected."
Now, the next thing that you're going to do is you're going to watch this video next because YouTube thinks you'll like it. Thank you so much for watching. I will see you in the next one. All your joy, bye.