Meet the Man Who Solved the Instagram Algorithm (Brock Johnson interview)

I just interviewed Brock Johnson; he has 735,000 Instagram followers, and this guy knows how to grow on social media. I can't wait to share with you what we talked about; he dropped some insane frameworks about how to create content that not only helps you grow your Instagram account but also to actually turn those followers into sales and customers for your business. I was taking a ton of notes; this is an absolute master class, not just about Instagram but about content creation as a whole. If you're someone who's been creating content, but it's just not performing that well, this is an episode you're going to want to grab a notepad for, because Brock does not hold back. Without further ado, let's get into it.

What is up, Brock? Welcome to the show.

Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here.

Yeah, I'm really excited to have you and grateful that we connected. You know, I went over your bio a little bit in the introduction. Um, is there anything beyond like the bullet points, the highlight reels, that you want to share or tell people before we dive in?

Sure. I, I think, you know, I, I appreciate you having me, and I appreciate, you know, the fancy introduction that that always is is granted. But um, I, I want to make sure as we get started today that I acknowledge that I first and foremost see myself as an entrepreneur, a business owner, more than a content creator. Um, and I just am in a unique position where my job as a business owner is to teach other business owners and content creators how to grow on social media. So I definitely don't have this all uh figured out; I don't have every answer. Um, so I'm just kind of figuring things out as I go and as I learn new things, as we try new things, as new, you know, studies come out, I'm just reporting on my findings as I test new things and I learn new things about my own account; I report on those um to everyone in my community and everyone who follows me. Um, and I do this full-time, so like my full-time job is dedicated to learning about the algorithm and learning about Instagram, and we have um about 5,000 people in our Instagram coaching membership, so I'm able to pull them and network with them and ask them questions and help them grow their accounts as well. Um, so I think that's another one. Last thing I, I want to say is I haven't just grown my own account; we've helped, you know, thousands of people grow theirs as well, so just excited to, you know, get to answer some questions, stay, and help everyone figure out the beast that is Instagram.

Yeah, well, I think a good place to start would be like I'm curious how you got into Instagram coaching. Like, did you start out doing more general marketing and sales, then Instagram started blowing up and you were like, "Oh my God, this is a thing; maybe I could teach this?" Like, tell us how you came to do what you do now.

Yes, so I think it's actually a pretty interesting story. So, so my freshman year of college, I needed a way to provide for myself. I was a student athlete, so I couldn't work like a typical 9-to-5 job. Um, so I knew, especially with my like family growing up in an entrepreneurial family, I knew that the only real option for me was to start my own business, to sell something online, because I knew I wouldn't be able to, you know, work that that nine-to-five job; I didn't have the time, the energy to do it. Um, and so when I was about 19 years old, freshman in college, I created a course, and at the time the course, and people always laugh when I say this, and it is funny, um, the course was teaching moms how to keep their kids safe on Snapchat. So totally different than what I'm doing today. Um, I, I like to joke that I was a paid snitch, snitching out on all my friends and all my um, you know, my sister and her friends because she, she was younger than me. Um, that was my first quote-unquote business, my first real business. Um, and that was the first time I sold something online in, in a legitimate sense. I had had, you know, the little odd, oddballs side hustles as a kid, but nothing that lasted more than a month or so. But so that was my first real business. Um, and after a few months of doing that, I had built a customer base, a clientele, um, who all of a sudden knew how to use social media, this new social media; they had already been on Facebook and Instagram, but now they knew how to use Snapchat. Um, and a lot of them were in network marketing, or a lot of them had their own side hustles, and they saw me growing my side hustle on Snapchat. And so I started getting a lot of questions, questions about how do you use Snapchat for marketing? And really, back in the day, Snapchat marketing was all about your Snapchat story; people were asking me, "How do you use your snap story to sell things and to promote and affiliate stuff?" Um, because I was doing all of that. And so I was like, "Hey, if I have this expertise, and I've learned a lot about this, and there's clearly a market because so many people are asking me about it, um, I should create a course for that." And so my second course, um, was still in the realm of Snapchat, but it was Snapchat, instead of for moms, it was Snapchat for business. So I was teaching people how to um, you know, grow and market and make sales on Snapchat. And then uh, there was this kind of fate type of moment where uh, everything looked really bleak and bad timing-wise, but it ended up working out for the best. And what happened was I was again, like I said, a college student athlete, and this was before the days of NIL where now student athletes can make all the money they want doing whatever they want. Um, back just a few years ago, you couldn't. Um, and so long story short, the NCAA was like, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, what is going on here? You know, is, is your business a real business, or is it just a way for donors to give you money um under the guise of a fake business?" And so for about six to eight months, I had to put my whole business on pause; had to shut everything down, take everything off the internet, you know, stop promoting. Um, I could still post on social media, but I wasn't able to sell or anything like that. Um, and eventually the NCAA cleared my name; they said, "You're good to go; this is a legit business; you can resume operations." But when I resumed operations, there was no one left on Snapchat; everyone had left because Kylie Jenner and a bunch of other celebrities and influencers were like, "Goodbye Snapchat; we're done with SNAP," and they were all going back to Instagram because this was right when Instagram released Instagram stories. And so everyone was like, "Screw Snapchat; we're done with Snapchat stories; we're not going to split our time and attention; we're all going to go back to Instagram and use Instagram stor—" Um, and so I said that, you know, it looked bleak at first because my business was shut down, and then I got my business back, but no one was on Snapchat. But it ended up working out for the best because when I was able to resume operations, it was very organic and easy for me to pivot, and instead of resuming operations on Snapchat, I just resumed operations on Instagram, and I transitioned everything that I learned about Snapchat stories over to Instagram stories. And so really my first initial niche, if you will, within Instagram coaching was I was helping people grow and market and make sales through Instagram stories. Um, and I've been doing that for the last seven years, so it's just kind of grown from there, and now I kind of teach all-encompassing everything you need to know about all the different areas of Instagram. Um, but that's kind of where, how we got to where we are today.

Wow, I like that story for a lot of reasons. One is just highlights the finding your niche is always a process of just moving forward despite the uncertainty. A lot of people are on the sidelines 'cause they're like, "What's my perfect niche going to be?" But you really don't find it like, "Here I am eight years into the coaching space, and just one year into helping people publish books." It's like you really just have to move forward, and it kind of finds you. Um, so you started out as a someone who helped with Instagram stories; that's something I'm curious about. Um, like I mean, I, we, we can dig into my Instagram history today a little bit because it's embarrassingly bad, and you can give me lots of [ __ ] Um, like one thing I don't do is post stories ever. You know, I mean, I'm not really focused on Instagram, but uh, I am curious like how important are Instagram stories for someone who has like a coach or creator business, and let's say they want to sell a course or a book or a coaching program; how important are Instagram stories to achieving that goal?

Totally. So stories, I can start by saying this: they do not help you grow. So if anyone's goal is growth—let's say they just started a new account, or they have a relatively low amount of followers, they want more eyeballs and attention—don't, you don't have to worry about stories. I'm not going to tell you to not post stories, but I'm going to tell you you don't have to worry about stories because they don't reach non-followers. And so by, by that same thought, they don't help you grow, right? If they're not reaching new people, then no new people are seeing them, so no one's going to follow you from stories. But stories are really essential for making sales and customer acquisition, lead generation. Um, and it's because of a few things. Number one, stories are meant to be a, a place that is very informal, a place that is very behind the scenes; it's very documentary; it's very in the moment; it's not supposed to be a place that is highly produced or edited. In fact, I like to tell people that if they're using Canva to create graphics for their stories, or they're ever opening like a video editing app to edit a video for their stories, stop. All you need for your Instagram stories is just the in-Instagram stories camera; like that's where all of your stories should be created, just right there on Instagram, because it's meant to be quick and easy, in documentary; that's their purpose. And because they're quick and easy and documentary, they show behind the scenes; they show kind of like a window into your life. Your feed should be niche-related, and as we've talked about the word niche, you know, the things that you're posting, the Reels, the photos, the videos you're posting to your grid, to your profile, to your feed, those things should be niche-related, but your stories don't have to be, because your stories are for the viewers who have already followed you; they already know your niche; they already know what you provide; they've already made the decision to follow you; now they're going to your stories because they want to get to know you better; they want to learn what makes you tick; they want to learn what makes you unique; they want to trust you; they want to learn to like you, and maybe even love you; that's why people go to your stories. Um, and obviously all of those things help in sales because so many of us are doing what other people do, or we offer the same sorts of things that other people offer. And so the way we differentiate ourselves, and the way we say, "Hey, you should work with me instead of working for any, working with anyone else," is through that know, liking, trust, through that personal relationship that can be built on Instagram stories. Um, and the final thing I'll say about Instagram stories is sales go down in the DMs; that is where sales on Instagram take place. Yes, like there is the link in bio, and yes, you can put a link on your stories, but for the most part, sales are going to happen in the direct messages, or people are going to get into like, they're going to become a lead; they're going to get on your email list through your DMs, and then maybe they're sold off of Instagram, but all of that happens in the DMs, and the easiest way to get someone into your DMs is by first watching your stories, because when they're watching your stories, there's that little reply bar at the bottom of the screen, and when someone replies down there, it goes into your DMs; boom, you're having a one-on-one conversation, and that's the first step in making a sale. So again, to kind of summarize all this: stories don't help you grow, but they are essential uh for building trust in your audience and for making sales.

Wow, that's really interesting because, you know, everyone says like to build a personal brand you have to uh like show parts of your personality, you know, the weird stuff, the quirky things that are your interests and your hobbies. I've always struggled to necessarily weave that into my niche content. If I'm writing a post about how to write a book to get clients or whatever, I'm like, "Yeah, how do I factor in snowboarding into this?" Let them know, you know—it's almost like you're saying you don't really have to worry about that. I don't know if you're saying that, but—

No, exactly. No, you hit the nail on the head. Like I can use snowboarding myself as an example; there has been one snowboarding post that I have made on my feed in the last probably two or three years, one single post. I snowboarded 65 days last year; it is a huge part of my life. Stayed up—I usually have like a strict bedtime of like 9:30; I'm lights out; I'm going to read, mean a couple chapters of my book, go to bed. Last night I stayed up till like 11:30, which for me is late, because I was like researching snowboarding stuff. So I say all that to say, I geek out over snowboarding; you do not see it on my feed because that's not why someone's going to follow me; no one's going to follow me because I like snowboarding; I'm not a professional snowboarder; I don't sell anything relating to snowboarding, so no one's going to follow me for that; they're going to follow me to learn how to grow on In—, and then if they're like you, maybe you followed me to learn how to grow on Instagram, but then you watch my stories and you see a clip of me snowboarding, you're like, "Gosh, I like this guy even more because we have the same interest," and that is really the, the difference maker there. So yeah, no, you were absolutely right.

Okay, that's really powerful, and I'm gonna, I'm inspired to start sharing more stories right after this. Um, I guess one final question about that is so if I'm kind of, you know, documenting—like I, I recorded a YouTube video before uh we hopped on here, and I'm thinking I could have gotten my phone and said, "Hey, this is my little YouTube setup; you know, it's nothing much; I'm about to record a YouTube video," kind of thing, like a little b-roll—how do you, is there, is there something that you do to actually initiate DMs so you're not just sharing behind the scenes, behind the scenes; how do you, of that corner, to try and encourage someone in the stories to reply so you can start that conversation?

Yeah, so I think initially, um, it's going to feel uncomfortable to be yourself and to post about all those like things that make you, you. I'll give you—but over time you'll improve, and over time you'll get more natural, and over time you'll get more um bold in how you talk about those things. It's very much like a relationship with, with like a friend; you make a new friend, the first couple times you hang out, it's vanilla, right? Like you're not really getting that deep; you're not talking about the stuff that makes you tick. Like you could hang out with someone five, 10 times, and you're still like, "I don't really know like their background; I don't really know like their beliefs and where they stand on things." It's not till, you know, a few months go by that you really unpack all of the layers of that onion, and the same is true on your story. So um, I'll give you an example that I posted the other day; I posted this story, and I, I kind of funny hook at the beginning of the story; I said, "Listen, you can unfollow me for this opinion if you want to," which of course makes everyone like perk up, and I said, "But I fully support having your Halloween decorations up on September 1st, and I fully support having your Christmas decorations up on November 1st; like that's the kind of guy I am, you know, shoot me if you don't like it, but you know that's who I am." Um, and that is something that is a little bit more bold of a way to say it, um, rather than just being like, "CU—" My original thought was I saw someone with like a jack-o'-lantern on their porch, and I was going to take a picture and be like, "Love this." That's kind of vanilla, right? Like saying, "Oh, this is cool; I love this;" that's, that's not that cool. But me saying, "Hey, that's the kind of person I am; I, I love having your decorations up early," that sort of thing. Um, I got a ton of replies from that, and that's a ton of just organic relationships and connections. But strategically speaking, now, especially for business owners, the best way to get people into your DMs, especially a DM that's actually going to make a sale—like someone replying to my story about the Halloween decorations and being like, "Oh my gosh, me too," or, "Oh my gosh, I, I put my Christmas decorations up in July"—that's not going to be a sale right then and there. But if I want to make a sale right then and there, and I don't want to get too lost in the sauce and the technical terms here right now, but I would recommend using a tool called DM, direct message automation, DM automation, which is essentially you can tell people a specific word to reply with, and then when they type that word, they automatically get a response that you have typed out yourself in, you know, whatever copywriting or sales lingo you want to use, and it's delivering the link for them. So I do this all the time; I did this on my story just yesterday; someone said, "Hey, I struggle with hooks," and I said, "Okay, DM me the word 'hook.'" I put this on my story: "DM me the word 'hook,' and I'll send you 25 viral hook ideas." Then I get thousands of people replying to that story with the word "hook," and when they reply with the word "hook," they automatically get the link to the free download; they're getting on my email list. And what's really cool about that is two final things I'll say before I stop my app in is number one: because that link is in the DMs, they're able to go back to it. I don't know about you, Brian, but there have been so many times where I've like clicked on a link on someone's story, and I've gotten distracted, or I've tried to like open it in another browser, or I've gotten a phone call, whatever; I've lost the link; now the link is gone; like I have to go back and find that person's story; what if the story expired? Like it's tough to navigate. And then that's the perspective of the consumer, so it's easier that way. But from my perspective as the business owner, I would much rather have someone in the DMs because then I can see who is interested; I can see who wanted the link when they reply to the story; that's a positive form of engagement; now my story is going to be shown to more people, so I'm going to get more views. If someone requested the link, they received it, but then they didn't actually purchase, or they didn't actually even click on the link, I can follow up and ask additional questions and just serve them better. Um, and so DM automation is a tool that I think every single business owner, every single creator, every single person who's trying to promote or sell something on Instagram, DM automation is a tool that they should be using. Um, and the, the platform that I use for my DM automation, it's the number one like most trusted; it's the one I recommend is called ManyChat (M N Y C H A T). Um, but that's definitely like, in my opinion, if there's any tool that you need in your tool belt as a content creator or business owner on Instagram, it's that.

Nice. Nice. So in, don't be afraid to post slightly polarizing content that states your opinion, and then drop like a free lead magnet; say, "Reply with the word," and then you set up that automated software, and then it's just like—just, that's pretty powerful, man. Um, I want to like—so we've highlighted how to nurture the relationship with your existing audience via stories and turn those into leads for your stuff. Let's zoom out for a second and uh, because I, I remember one of the, one of your Reels said, "Posting Reels is not a content strategy," or something like that; that resonated with me; I was like, "Oh, like there's more strategy to this than that," you know, like could you, could you give us the high-level overview of what is like the content strategy for Instagram, you know, as far as growth and nurturing along making sales? Can you kind of lay out the framework for us?

Yeah, absolutely. And I always tell people your uh strategy that you use is going to differ based off the goals that you have. Um, and unfortunately, a lot of times we are going to want to achieve all these goals at the same time, but the strategies required are almost opposite. For example, if your strategy is to make more sales, uh, you're going to use a different strategy and a different posting style than if your strategy is, or if your goal I should say is to, up, right? Like if you just want more followers and more eyeballs, I'm going to recommend different things to you than if you're like, "Hey, I don't need any more followers right now, Brock; I need people to start buying my stuff." And both of those are going to be a different strategy than if you tell me your goal is engagement; like if you're like, "Hey, I, I don't need more followers; I'm not in a launch or a sale right now; I just need people to pay attention to what I'm posting." Three different strategies for each of those different goals. Um, what I can tell you very simply is if your goal is to grow, the simplest answer I can give you is the more you post, the more you grow. Now, of course, that's an oversimplification. Um, if you burn out because you're posting more, you're not going to grow; if you can't maintain that consistency, you're not going to grow; if the quality level of your post significantly declines because you're trying to up that quantity, you're not going to grow. But as long as you can maintain a consistent level of quality, the more you dial up the quantity, the more you will grow because it's more at-bats; it's more reps; it's more opportunities to reach new people and to grow. And so really the, the biggest secret of my growth is not consistency; it's hyper-consistency—posting three or four times a day, every single day, for now, like three, four years straight. Um, and that's, that's really where the growth comes from; that's where the results come from. Of course, that's not sustainable for everyone. Um, and so that's why I never give like a blanket statement number of, "You need to post three a day," or, "You need to post twice a day," or, "You need to post once a week," because everyone's different, and everyone's in different seasons with different goals. But the facts are the facts, and the facts are that the more you post, the more you grow. If your goal um is more sales-oriented, then it's going to, you know, the strategy that you're using is probably going to be less overall posts and instead making sure each of those posts is a higher quality of post and still using that thing that we talked about earlier, DM automation, because you can use that on your feed posts just like you would use it in your stories um to generate leads directly from the comments on your post.

Oh, cool. So it can tell if someone commented a word on a post or in a story, and it'll DM them?

Yeah, cool. And what's the—you said there's kind of three purposes: growth, engagement, and—

Sales: What would be the purpose of having an engagement strategy?

Yeah, the engagement strategy is—I'm working with a client right now who—she's got a massive following, but she doesn't really want to make sales right now. Like, she gets brand deals and partnerships, but she's not, um, like a business owner per se, and she also doesn't want to grow because she's already at like over a million followers. So her whole thing is engagement; she wants a community of engaged followers. Some people just want that community because they want that space for, for people like them to be able to come together. Some people want to re-engage an audience in the short term so that in the long term they can sell to that audience, or they can, you know, use that audience to kind of launch a new product or a new service, software, whatever.

Um, if your goal is engagement, it is definitely quality of posts that matters more than quantity of posts. Um, but getting into the quality of posts that, that make engagement and that bring engagement, there's so many little factors that we can look at and so many little nuanced things. Um, and so for most people, they're going to benefit from increasing the quantity first because it's through that increase of quantity that you can learn what makes quality. It's basically like practice makes improvement, right? Practice makes progress. Um, as you're posting more, these aren't just posts that are in and of themselves and products; these are posts that are opportunities to learn, posts that are, are data points, posts that are opportunities to improve your skills. Um, because oftentimes people are like, "Well, I don't even know what makes a good post; I don't even know how to make a good post," and I tell them, "You need to make 300 shitty posts before you make your first good post." But the cool thing is, by the time you make that 301st post—the post that is finally a good one—people will then start showing up. They won't be around for the 300 shitty ones; they won't see it anyway. So it's kind of like there's no pressure, right? No one's going to see it. By the time you make that 301st one—the one that's finally good enough—uh, then the people will show up. That's really good. I want to, um, talk about one, one really dumb thing I did with Instagram that you're going to rail me for years ago and, uh, get your advice on what I should do for my account because it's probably going to be similar for, for a lot of people. So I had a thousand followers or something, and I bought a course, uh, where the guy was like, "You know, you have to get to 10,000 followers because people will take you seriously and you'll unlock the swipe-up feature," which—didn't you remember that when you used to have to, in order to get someone to go to a link? And so in the course—and this was Lou Louie How or Lewis How, you know, huge guru—like he's like, he's what he's like, "What you need to do, um, is actually talk to my guy who can get you followers." You, you pay—I paid $33,000, and I got entered into some sweepstakes and all these people from other countries followed me, and I, and I, I got up to 12,000 or something like that. This was years ago, and, uh, basically like it killed my account because, you know, my engagement was zero, cuz all these people just followed me to hopefully win a MacBook Pro or whatever. And so ever since then, like my following's been going down, and I've been posting stuff like, just, just writing, but, um, yeah, like, and I actually saw your post on Threads a couple days ago that was like, "In 2024, I'm still having to tell people not to buy followers." I did that, but I was like, "Could you speak on that for a second?"

Yeah, absolutely. So buying followers is like the biggest no-no of all time. A lot of people know that now, but not a lot of people knew that just 5, 10 years ago, and it used to be very common practice to buy followers, especially like you mentioned, uh, some people might remember, might not even know, but back in the day you needed 10K in order to unlock the swipe-up feature on your stories, which is where someone could view your story, and then they could like swipe up to get to the link that you were promoting. And it was weird that Instagram even like put that behind like a 10K follower amount—like, why couldn't everyone just have that? Um, so people were buying followers, and so buying followers has unfortunately plagued so many accounts, and you're kind of digging yourself into a hole. It's weird because you think, "Oh, well, I have 10,000 followers, so I'm kind of like boosting myself off ground zero," but instead what you're actually doing is digging yourself deeper into the hole. So I actually posted a story just yesterday, um, where I put—I think it was 10 things listed out—and I said, "If you check off five or more of these boxes, you might want to consider starting a new account." So I'll walk you through what those 10, those 10 steps on that checklist are. Okay, number one, uh, you have more fake followers than real followers. I don't know how many, you know, fake followers came from that giveaway, sweepstakes that you were in, um, and I know you—they might be like real people, but for all intents and purposes, they're fake; they're not following you organically; they're not following you, um, because they're interested in what you can do for them; you know, they're following you because they wanted to win a MacBook seven years ago. Um, so more fake than real, that's the first one. The second one: completely change niche. So in your case, I don't know if you had the same Instagram as you pivoted what you do a few times, but if you've had the same Instagram since back in the real estate days as you do now, that would be—you check off that box. Um, third one is your account is four or more years old. That in and of itself is not a reason to start over; I mean, my account is like 12 years old, but the problem with the older our accounts get is just over the course of time, you know, if your—if your account is four years old, let's say someone followed you four years ago—probably quite a few people followed you four years ago—maybe they're not on Instagram; maybe they lost the login for that account; maybe they, they aren't even alive anymore—like there are so many things that could cause that person to be just an inactive follower, and the more inactive followers you have, the tougher it's going to be to grow in the future because Instagram is always going to prioritize showing your content to your followers. So if it's showing it on the feed of someone who hasn't logged in in 3 months or who isn't even alive anymore, then obviously that person is not going to engage; it's going to hurt your engagement rate; it's going to hurt your growth. So that was the third one: account is three plus years old. Number four is engagement rate below 1%; so less than 1% of people who see your posts are interacting. Uh, number four—engagement rate is, or number five, excuse me, engagement rate is declining; so if month over month you see your engagement rate going lower and lower. Number six: you've been consistent for at least six months, and this one is huge because so many people are like, "Yeah, Brock, I checked off all those boxes; say my account's few years old; my engagement is super low; I can't grow my following," and I say, "Okay, how long have you been consistent?" And they say the last 3 weeks, for the last month, or even last two months, last 90 days—it's not long enough to start seeing results; it takes time to grow. Yes, you can grow faster on Instagram than you can on, um, a lot of other areas of your life, right? You can become a proficient Instagrammer, um, in a lot shorter amount of time that it takes to become a proficient like basketball player, um, but it's still going to take time, so you need to be consistent for at, at least six months. Um, I don't know what check number we're at now, but I think this is like number seven or something. Yep, your content is high quality and not forced. This is one where, you know, it's going to be a little bit subjective; you're going to have to look in the mirror and be like, "Does my content look like, sound like, um, is it the level of quality of other people in my field, other people in my niche who are growing and who are seeing results?" And really, you know, be, be a harsh critic of your own stuff there because if it's not—if it's below average—if it's content that's kind of just forced and produced because you had to make it, um, well, then obviously it's going to be really tough to grow with that sort of content. Uh, number seven, I think we're on, or maybe no, number eight now is, um, you've used inorganic growth strategies in the past, so that is one that you would definitely check off, um, you know, paid giveaways where you're a part of this big sweepstakes with 40 other accounts, uh, follow-unfollow, engagement groups, purchasing followers, which is something that a lot of people dabble in, um, anything like that would be an inorganic form of growth, um, so that would be a checkbox. Number nine: multiple community guidelines violations. So if you've had multiple posts that have been taken down, um, for whatever violations that Instagram claims you have made, that could be a reason to start over. And then finally, you had a viral post that's is not related to your niche. If you have something that reaches millions of people that has nothing to do with what you're selling, that's a huge problem, um, and that usually brings in hundreds, if not thousands, of followers who might be real, they might be potentially engaged, but they have no interest in what you're selling, and so they're not going to stick around, and they're not actually going to be engaged. So anyways, that was I think 10 or 11 on that list, um, and if you check off five or more, then it might be wise to start over.

Okay, that was super valuable, man. Thank you so much. So of course, is that why you mentioned that the feed content should be niche-related is because you have the risk of, of like getting people in who aren't going to support your future posts cuz they just liked your reel about you were in Bali overlooking the beach or something like that?

Yeah, no, literally. Um, a personal example of this is—this is what happened to me on TikTok. So I got on TikTok very early on in like 2018, um, and for the first year or two of TikTok being around, it was very dance-heavy, and I'm someone who likes to, you know, be goofy and enthusiastic and dance around. This was also still while I was a—while I was a college football player. And so you marry the fact that I like to dance and twerk and I have no like shame in, in being myself, with also I'm in like the most masculine environment possible, being an American college football player, um, that was like the recipe for virality. And so I had—I think over 10 videos in 2019 that hit a million-plus views on TikTok; some of them reaching like up to like 10 million, 15 million views on TikTok. And so I had 300,000 followers on TikTok by the beginning of 2020, which is when most people just found out about TikTok, which sounds great, and it's cool that I can like put on my resume, "300,000 followers on TikTok." Here's the truth: those followers did not care about my business; those followers had no interest in listening to my podcasts; those followers had no interest in becoming customers of mine because those followers only wanted me to dance in my football pads; they did not care for anything else. M, and so now fast forward to 2024, I've started over. Now I have a brand new TikTok account that does not have 300,000 followers; it has like 8,000 followers, and that account, while much smaller, while the views on average are lower, that account is ultimately going to be much better for my business; it's going to be much better for, uh, my lead generation than the 300K account that just had people who want me to dance. Um, and so yeah, that's why I tell people your feed posts should be pretty exclusively niche-related; it should be maybe 5% of the time, 10% at most, that are not niche-related.

That's great. Did you see the, uh, video or post that Alex Wosi made like sometime this year, as the beginning of the year, I think? You know how fast he's blown up on like social media, YouTube? He analyzed all the posts and found that the posts that weren't about business like didn't really help; like it created vanity metrics, but it wasn't actually driving leads for acquisition.com. And so they—he, and you know, the dude spends 70 grand a month on his organic content system; he's got tons of insight on what works—and their, their pivot the beginning of 2024 was, "We're going to go back to making only business content; we're going to stop making content about Alex's workout or his meal plan or, you know, Alex and Lila's relationship advice or whatever," and he's like, "You're—" he's like, "They're going to get less views, but we're actually gonna"—he, he makes more money off YouTube AdSense interestingly, and then more, uh, a lot more leads for his business.

Yeah, I haven't, I haven't seen that post, but that 100% tracks, and that makes sense.

Yeah, so one thing you brought up, uh, before we started recording was, um, the idea of share-worthy content, and that's something that's been useful for your clients lately. Could you talk about what that is, how to create it?

Yeah, totally. So let's start with like the why. Shares are the best form of engagement. I've been saying it for the last few years. Instagram CEO recently has begun saying it himself and confirming it, and it makes sense when we think about it, uh, because everyone's trying to figure out the algorithm and keep up to date with the algorithm, and that's because it's the algorithm's job to show our posts to people, right? The algorithm's job is to determine who would be interested in this and then to serve up our content to the interested parties. However, the algorithm is always changing; it's futile; it's hard to grasp, um, and sometimes even a post that you know your ideal audience would love to see, it just doesn't hit with the algorithm for some reason. Shares override the algorithm because shares give—they give the middle finger to the algorithm and they say, "I don't care who you think should see this; I as a human being, I'm going to send this person to the person who should see this; I'm going to send this post to the person who should see this." For example, if I see a post on Instagram and I'm like, "I—it's about me and my wife; like I find it super relatable," and I send it to my wife, the algorithm didn't have to do anything to show it to her; I showed it to her. Now that post is getting one extra view, and it's getting that one extra view from a perfectly ideal viewer—like the intended audience is seeing that post. Um, and on average, that might be just one view. On average on Instagram, one share equals 400 additional views, so you do the math there. If you get three shares, you're all of a sudden plus a thousand views, and then think about this, think about how this could like snowball. If only just three out of those thousand people—three out of the thousand—so 3% of the viewers then share it themselves, now you've got an additional 1200 viewers. So there—that's kind of how like share-worthy posts can, can snowball, and that's how they can go viral, and that's why I'm such a fan of share-worthy content. Um, also share-worthy content is generally the content that is, is entertaining; it's the content that gives dopamine, and, uh, you know, while I know a lot of people who create educational content—myself included, by the way, I create a ton of educational content—can be frustrated to hear that because we wish people would just want to consume our knowledge and want to consume our value. At the end of the day, um, value is best delivered; it's best, best consumed; knowledge is best gained and acquired when it's wrapped up in a nice entertaining bow, right? Because that's—it's kind of the, uh, there's this, uh, analogy of the, the chocolate-covered carrot; you got to lure people in with, with the entertainment, with the dopamine, with the thing that they think they want in order to ultimately feed them what you know they need, which is that carrot, in order to ultimately serve them with what you know will provide the most results for them. Um, so that's, that's why share-worthy content. And if you want, we can kind of get into my five different categories of what is share-worthy and, and what will make a post, um, highly share-worthy. I can, I can share those if you want.

Yeah, first question before you do that. So everyone, I guess, knows that something goes viral because the algorithm pushes it out to a wide group of people, but is the algorithm only pushing that piece of content because it's getting shared? Is that like the real, like steroids for a post—viral is it about shares?

It's kind of—that's—it's a little bit of like a, "What comes first, the chicken or the egg?" conversation with that because on one hand, when the post starts reaching more people, it will get more shares, but also because it's getting more shares, it will reach more people, right? Um, what I can tell you is that algorithmically speaking, the kind of engagement that the algorithm prioritizes the most is shares. So yes, if you get more shares—let's say you get, you know, you have a thousand viewers, and 800 of those people—people—crazy high number—800 out of a thousand share your post—even if they all share your post with someone who doesn't have an Instagram and that, you know, the person they shared it with never actually views it, so it's just the share that took place—there was no, um, views that came from those shares—the algorithm will still reward you for that; the algorithm will still push you out simply for the fact that people are sharing it. Um, and if you think about it from like Instagram's perspective, a share brings someone onto Instagram; a share connects people over Instagram; a share engages people with Instagram; so of course that's what Instagram wants.

Got it, got it. And yeah, I'd love to wrap up by getting your, uh, your framework for creating a share-worthy piece of content. That would be awesome.

Cool. Yeah, so I'll try to run through this. There's, there's five categories of share-worthy content. The first one is what I like to call the "Needed This Content," and a lot of the titles that I've come up with for these share-worthy things, um, is like the kind of things that someone would say when they see it. So what's the kind of post that you would see and you would say, "Oh, I needed this; I needed to see this; this was so good"? It's usually something that's motivational or inspirational. So that first category of share-worthiness is the, the content that is inspiring others; it's motivating others; it's the powerful quotes; it's the story of triumph; it's the, you know, recovery from failure. Those things—highly, highly share-worthy. Second category, um, is a call to arms. A call to arms—I wish there was like a single word that could encapsulate this; I've asked ChatGPT, and they haven't been very helpful—but a call to arms is essentially like the Rosie the Riveter; it's a "We're All in This Together," "We all need to help each other out." It could also be called a call for help. Um, the most famous example of this is like the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge back in 2013; that was like, "Hey, we're all in this together; let's all help each other out." Um, it was even part of the challenge that you were going to tag, AKA share the challenge with someone else; you were going to invite someone else to do it. Um, there's so many examples of this where it's like, "Hey, we, we got a band together; we need to help each other out; we need to help spread this message; help spread the word; help spread awareness." Um, so a call to arms. The third category is "That's Me" content. "That's Me" content is the relatable stuff; it's the stuff I was talking about earlier, uh, where it's like, "Oh my gosh, I can relate to this so hard." Uh, an example that I posted just a few weeks ago was, um, it was this like snippet from Seinfeld where Jerry was saying like, "You know, what are we doing? What is this life? Like, what are we doing here?" Um, and I put a caption—a title, if you will—above the video that said, "Every entrepreneur in 2024 who is being forced to become a content creator." So it's like a super relatable feeling that so many business owners have where it's like, "Hey, suddenly now I have to not just run a business; I have to make videos online." Super relatable. That post got—I believe it was last I checked—like a 100,000 likes, but it got like 120,000 shares—so more people shared it than even liked it. That post is now at like, I think seven or eight million views in just a matter of a few days, um, and so it went viral, and it did so well because it's relatable. So many people still—as we're talking right now—are sharing it to their story; they're sending it to their friends; they're like, "This is so me; I can so relate." So the, "That's Me" stuff—relatable content—super share-worthy. That's number three. Number four is what I like to call "FEARuffling," also known as controversial content, contrarian content, if you will. Um, it's not saying mean things and calling people names and posting your political beliefs just for the sake of doing so; it is talking about things that relate to your niche that might be unpopular, that might not be common practice. Um, an example that I have is hashtags. I'm not a fan of hashtags; I think that they're, uh, really overvalued within the Instagram community; people put way too much importance on their hashtags. Ultimately, your hashtags—like you can use them, but they're not going to make or break your post; they're not going to make or break your account; they're not as effective today as they were 5, 10 years ago. Um, and so whenever I post about that, it gets a lot of shares because people either agree, or they didn't know about this; they're like, "Wait, I had no idea," or they disagree, and when they disagree, they're going to let me know, and they're going to comment; they're going to argue, and all of that is just extra engagement. So I, I want people to always think about like, "What is an unpopular opinion in my industry? What is something in my niche that is unpopular or maybe controversial or maybe where I disagree with, um, the majority?" And so those sorts of things—highly share-worthy. And then the final category of share-worthy content, um, is the "In the Know" content. Um, the "In the Know" content is breaking news in some cases, but I understand, you know, not every industry has breaking news or has headline news that a lot of people would be aware of that relates, um, but it's just using pop culture and memes. Like today, at the, the time we're recording this, it's, it's day one of the NFL season; it's Thursday Night Football tonight with Chiefs-Ravens, and it's funny because people will hear this episode after the, uh, the game one is happens, but I, I would bet—I don't know where she is; I don't track her that well—but I would bet Taylor Swift is going to be there, and I bet if she's there, there will be memes that come out; there will be some funny face she makes, or there will be some moment where there's popcorn flying in the air, or she's like disgusted, and the person next to her is cheering; there will be some meme-worthy moment, and the people who can use that the fastest are the people who are going to get a lot of shares because they're in the know. Seven days later, when it's the next Thursday and some big corporation is still using that Taylor Swift meme, they're not in the know; they miss the trend; they miss the pop culture moment, and so it's no longer that share-worthy.

But when they take that moment, that pop culture, that breaking news, and they relate it to their niche, um, especially the more timely they can do it, highly, highly share-worthy, dude. You just gave a master class on post ideas. There, my head has been spinning the whole time. I'm like, this, this should be my posts, for threads, for LinkedIn, for YouTube. Like, this is all going to work better than what I've been doing, um, because it's more like attention-grabbing and, like you, it's more share-worthy.

The question, the follow-up question I have is, um, you know, I always think about like teaching people something in my content, like I'm going to teach them a tip about growing their coaching business or using a book to get clients or whatever. Um, how do you weave that into those five categories that you just laid out, or do you actually see educational content as separate?

I think you can. I think it's definitely a creative challenge and a skill that can be acquired over time, of weaving in the valuable knowledge-based posts into the five categories that I just listed. Kind of in the example of, um, like the controversial stuff, there was some value in there, right? Like I'm teaching about hashtags, but it's still a controversial opinion. Um, maybe you're going to use a Taylor Swift meme, and you're going to relate that, um, to, you know, getting clients through a book, and that's going to be the meme, so it's going to be share-worthy, it's going to be funny, but, but then the caption, you're going to give some tips, you're going to give some value.

Um, but I also think there's time and place for posts that aren't educational posts, that aren't traditionally valuable as we think of that word, um, that are just purely for the sake of engagement and giving people an opportunity to come together and to laugh and to relate to something and to be entertained. Um, you know, there's, it's just the unfortunate reality that if you are someone—I had someone ask me this yesterday; they called themselves a purely educational creator—if you see yourself as a purely educational creator, someone who is not going to dip your toe in entertainment or anything besides value and education and tips and best practices, um, then you just need to be realistic about the results that can be expected. Um, and the realistic truth is that for most people, most audiences, pure education is never going to perform as well, um, as mixing in some edutainment into your education.

Yeah, I love that. It's really, yeah, it's, it's more interesting, it's more entertaining, there's more—it reminds me of, like, you know, like I like mixed martial arts, and I like to watch the fights, but my brother and I always say, like, we're only into the fights that have like a backstory, where there's drama in the buildup to it. You know, it's like Conor McGregor is fighting this guy, and he chucked a water bottle at the press conference, pinged off his head, and you know, we got to see what's going to happen; they both said they're going to kill each other; everybody buys that one, you know, and it's still a fight at the end of the day, which a purist is going to appreciate, just like someone might appreciate education at the end of the day; that's probably why they show up on YouTube or Instagram or whatever, but it's this expert weaving of story—actually, Seinfeld apparently does that really well, like they weave in all these different story lines to like really rub you in.

Is there a, um, cadence that you recommend of like, okay, if I'm going to post on Instagram three times a day, like how many of the pieces should be like a pure education piece versus more of a share-worthy piece? What's your like post-frequency recommendation?

Yeah, I think, of course, it, it's going to depend on your goals, so the more followers you want to grow, the faster you want to grow, um, the more share-worthy content I would recommend. If you're in a season where you're trying to provide value, nurture leads to become customers, that's when I would, you know, lean more heavily into the educational content, um, because you're not trying to reach new people, you're just trying to make sure the people who are already there are, um, you know, seeing you as a thought leader or someone who can provide that value. But I also think there are ways that you can use the valuable educational stuff and use really strong hooks that speak to people's desires and their problems and their pain points and, uh, you know, creatively incorporate storytelling into your post so that even the educational posts are still entertaining; they might not be funny or relatable, but they're at least entertaining, they're captivating, they're going to have someone stick around. Um, and I think there, you know, of course, it's a skill, it takes time to, to learn how to do that creatively, um, but it's possible.

Awesome, awesome. I have to ask you one more question; I'm just dying, um, and then we'll wrap up. Uh, I wonder what you think about AI video creation, because I know for—I know there's like obvious downsides to this, like the lack of being genuine and authentic, but I know also that everybody, you know, struggles to record and edit a real and post it multiple times a day, and copy-pasting 150 words into something that made—like would theoretically be a lot faster. I actually made a video avatar of myself; I'll show it to you, um, like the other day.

Wow.

And you probably—that's 100% AI generated.

Yeah. I, I never recorded this, um, this is—wow, that's wild. Yeah, and it's like slightly off, like it has me like looking like I'm in deep thought when I'm just saying, "click the button down below," but I'm thinking it won't be long before it will be—actually will be indistinguishable. Uh, what are—what's your stance on all that?

Yeah, I think it's, it's such a broad conversation; like we could do an hour and a half just on AI and content creation. Um, you know, there's so many negatives that, you know, we don't need to get into. Um, there's also a huge upside. What I will say is this: um, I don't think, at least not in the near future, that AI will replace any content creators or any business owners, but I think that content creators and business owners who are using AI will replace the content creators and entrepreneurs who are not. Um, you know, like in that video that you just showed, while, yeah, right now you probably wouldn't post that because it's distinguishable, like people can notice it's AI, there's like weird little things. Um, I don't know if you've seen the side-by-side; there's like, uh, this famous viral side-by-side of Will Smith, uh, eating spaghetti, and there was an AI video of him eating spaghetti from a year ago, and it's the most weird dystopian, like, dream-like thing that, like, it's like his, the fork is becoming the spaghetti, and there's like a third eye, and like his skin keeps changing; it looks so weird, weird. And there's a video that was created within the last few months, and it looks real; it looks like it was filmed on his phone, like literally people are like, "Is this, is this actually a video you took eating spaghetti, or is this AI?" And so that's in a year, um, so you can imagine another year from now or even a couple years from now how good the AI is going to be; it's going to be indistinguishable, indistinguishable.

However, the thing with AI is it needs prompts; it needs us to tell it what to, to create. Um, I know there are AI that can create things for us, but ultimately there is still some user input needed. Um, and so I think being a prompt engineer or knowing the prompts that are going to deliver the best results is going to be an essential skill, if not an entire role within teams and companies, um, in the near future. I know we already have an AI engineer who's working on our team and helping us develop, um, some of our products that we deliver for our customers. Um, so I think that, you know, the future change is inevitable, um, and I think that people who are rejecting that change are the ones who are going to be left behind, unfortunately.

Yeah, yeah, I agree. I, I always say the one thing, uh, AI does can't have is a story, because it hasn't lived a life, so you know, it's still on us as creators to go out and do epic [__] that then we can then come tell people about on social media, and maybe we don't have to be the—maybe our job isn't to actually be behind the camera if AI can do a good enough job of that, so we can be out doing more cool stuff, changing the world, like you working with your 5,000 clients, you know, that's a real world, and then maybe you can spit out 10 times the reals a day because you've got like, you know, an AI avatar that can share things faster than you ever could; it's, it's pretty exciting. And yeah, I, I don't want people to get left behind that don't use it, um, but at the same, same time, yeah, it's, yeah, I, I don't know what to think about it, so I wanted to get your thoughts.

Yeah, yeah, cool man. Um, I'm going to put your Instagram in the, uh, show notes so people can follow you. Uh, where else would you like people to go to check out your stuff?

That's the best place, honestly. Instagram. Following me there, they'll get a ton of free value and tips every single day. I'm posting multiple times a day with tips and recommendations and ideas. Um, and then if anyone wants to learn more about like any of the free stuff that I have—free guides and downloads—um, they're all in my highlights, so if they click on those little bubbles on my profile, they can learn more about, you know, our hook guide or, um, you know, story ideas, real ideas, content calendars. Um, then if anyone wants to learn more about like actually working with me or or becoming a member of our club, uh, just shoot me a direct message, and I answer every single DM, so they'll get a response if they, if they shoot one my way.

Awesome. This has been a super value-packed episode, man. I really appreciate you taking the time to be on today.

Of course, Brian. Thank you so much for having me.

All right, see you later.