[Transcript starts at 1:27]
Hello, hello, hello my podcast people and thank you for joining me for yet another episode of my favorite podcast. I'm playing with the mic here. I want it to be in the right direction. Either way, welcome to the end of November. This episode drops on Monday, November 27th. I hope you had a phenomenal holiday if you celebrate Thanksgiving and a phenomenal holiday weekend. If you don't celebrate it, well, then I hope you still had a great week and weekend.
I got nothing to report back about my Thanksgiving or about my 20 year high school reunion. Old. Hashtag old. Because it hasn't happened yet- as the time- at the time of me recording this I haven't none of that has transpired. Thanksgiving hasn't happened. I haven't flown away yet. It sounded weird flown away.
I haven't left. We haven't gone anywhere. So i'll report back after all of that. Um, but one quick announcement before we jump into today's episode. We're talking about how to Increase your engagement on instagram, but before we jump in I'm gonna let you know that this upcoming Thursday's episode, it's episode 532, that's going to be a guest episode, kind of surprise guest episode, um, with Danny Matta.
I think I've mentioned this in a past episode, um, but Danny and I did a, we hopped on to chat for his podcast and I ended up asking him a lot of questions because we're, we're good friends and, you know, that's how the conversation goes. And so I was like, you know, we're both like, hey, let's just put it on both of our podcasts.
So it will be on his podcast, which is the PT, the PT entrepreneur, the PT Entrepreneur Podcast. That's going to drop on the 28th, which if you're listening to this on the day it drops, that means it will drop tomorrow. And then it will drop on my podcast. Um, on this one, Maestro on the Mic and also on YouTube um, on Thursday. So it was a great convo. I hope that you'll check it out. And yeah, I just want to let you all know that that's what's coming on Thursday.
So today we're talking about how to increase your engagement on Instagram. This episode is inspired by the bitching that I'm hearing on Instagram and the numbers that I'm seeing from folks.
And I think that a lot of this actually stems from the fact that some folks went viral during 2020, of course, cause like everybody was on Instagram, right? Everyone was online. So we saw people go viral during 2020. Um, and then like maybe like a year after the summer after the algorithm kind of quote unquote opened up again and people went viral again.
And folks I think got a false sense of how easy this is because online business is not easy and, you know, growing a following and using social media, using Instagram is not easy. It is a, is a long play game. It's a slow, slow, slow, slow, slow burn. And I think that when, you know, kind of the rocket ship happened for some people, then they were just like, Oh shit, now that it's slowed down.
Cause Instagram stays changing. They're just like, dude, what do I do? Like my engagement is trash. Like this is nothing new. I actually shared, this episode, what I'm going to go over in this episode, I said I shared as a post, as the caption of a post, but that post, that reel, was a repost from, I think I did it 65 weeks prior, because it just happens again and again, where people, you know, the algorithm changes, Engagement drops, and people lose their shit, and it's just like, This is nothing new.
It always happens. So you already know I'm going to tell you to keep going and to keep posting, but I also want to give you some tactical things to try. In fact, we're going to do six things that you can try if you're thinking you're finding that your engagement on Instagram is in the trash right now.
Three things that I want you to remember though, right off the bat, right? Number one, this shit is free. Not this podcast, is free. But Instagram, it's free. I understand the frustrations that people experience, but like, it's a free app and a free platform. So like, just always keep that in mind. Number two, you will never crack the code of Instagram.
You will never, ever crack the algorithm. All right. The name of the game on Instagram from Instagram from Meta is intermittent reinforcement. There's an actual term. It's an actual thing. Look it up. I'm going to actually give you the definition here. The definition of intermittent reinforcement.
Intermittent reinforcement is the delivery of a reward at irregular intervals, a method that has been determined to yield the greatest effort from the subject. The subject does not receive a reward each time they perform a desired behavior or according to any regular schedule, but at seemingly random intervals.
That is Instagram. That right there. It keeps you coming back for more, right? Meta monetizes via your effort and your attention. So it's like, we're going to reward you today, but not tomorrow. And you're like, what the fuck? Like I did this thing. I thought I got it. Keeps you coming back. It keeps you playing the game.
It keeps you pulling the slots. That is literally how slot machines work. Irregular, random intervals. You won, and then you're like, Oh, maybe I'll win. Literally, if you were to actually write down how many times you have won, based on how many times you've pulled that fucking lever, you win like never. But you remember that one time, and you're like, but maybe again.
And it keeps you coming back for more. So keep that in mind. You're not going to crack the algorithm, because when you think you have, it changes. And what we see is that some people, they kind of figure it out. They're like, okay, well, this thing's getting traction. And it's not as much as they figured it out.
It's that they got lucky. And Instagram keeps rewarding them, right? Because maybe the content they put out is good or the content that they put out is engaging. And so people watch it, right? Instagram wants people to stay on the platform. So if you create content that keeps people on the platform and keeps them watching, yeah, it can like that.
So if you create this and you happen to get lucky, because it's literally, you just fucking got lucky, and Instagram says, I like you. And it'll keep showing those videos, even though they may not be any better than somebody else's. So you think you've cracked the code, but then suddenly it changes. And you go from getting 300, 400, 500 likes to getting 30.
That's the game. That is literally the fucking game. So just keep that in mind, okay? And then number three that I want you to remember before we go into the tactics, the ideas is focus on comments, shares, and saves. If you must focus on metrics, focus on those, right? Comments, shares, and saves. People will look at reach and look at impressions and look at likes and those things don't pay your bills.
At the end of the day, you're using this thing as the top of funnel, if you will, for your online business, which means let's look at the things that actually going to contribute to your business, which is going to be comments, shares, and saves, which is actually interaction, excuse me, which is actually engagement.
People will say my engagements in the trash, but they typically mean like my likes are down, my reach is down. I care about your comments. I care about the shares. I care about the saves. If you show me your DMS. I'll tell you how your business is doing, right? We want that actual engagement. So keep that in mind.
Keep those metrics in mind. If you must look at metrics, keep those in mind as you create content and you're looking to engage the assessment. All right. Excuse me. Wow. Looking to, that was such a flip. You're looking to assess the engagement. Um, all right. So.
Six things that you can try if your engagement is in the trash.
Number one, keep posting and divorce yourself from the numbers. It's very tempting to think that you actually need to analyze anything and that insights actually matter. They don't. The algorithm is going to change and the best way to win at a game that favors luck and timing is simply to always be playing and to play as much as you can, right? That's how you win with slot machine. You do the max bet and you just keep fucking pulling that thing, right? It's not about like I have some fucking strategy and I'm going to assess this and I'm going to analyze this and I'm going to like write down the trends for this.
I have done that not because I wanted to, but to prove that it doesn't fucking matter. All right. I made a whole chart about, okay, here's the time that I posted. Here's the length. I use trending audio. Here's the captions. I made a whole entire excel spreadsheet. It doesn't matter, folks. It doesn't matter.
Folks will try to have you believe it and usually they're looking to sell you some course or something like that. It doesn't matter. It's always changing, right? It's always changing. So post and move. Post and move. Do whatever's going to keep you in the game. This is the, the quote, I don't even know who it's from, somebody that's, you know, far richer than I am.
But success in the online space, success using online, using social media, using Instagram, it's very similar to investing, right? Investing your money. And when it comes to investing your money, if you actually want to win, you actually want to like make money. It's not about timing the market. It's about time in the market.
This is literally math. If you're like moving your money around and you're like, I'm going to wait, I'm going to time the market. I'm going to, the best returns you're going to get is just simply by staying in and leaving it alone for the longest amount of time. Same, same for Instagram. Stay in the game.
Suggestion number, suggestion number two. Get in your stories and share your day to day. You should be doing this anyway, but if you're finding that your engagement's low, then I would double down on that. I'm really leaning to that, right? Bonus points if you throw in some very low stakes engagement strategies.
In this case, it would be like engagement stickers, so polls and sliders that simply allow people to talk about themselves and share their opinion. For example, What's your preference for vacation? The beach or the mountains? Very, very simple. I've been actually doing, not, not even necessarily strategically, but just because I like this, I like to use Instagram, but y'all know I got that cappuccino, excuse me, the espresso machine.
And so I've been sharing what my latte art looks like, which is a whole latte of nothing. But I put the, it's not even latte, it's a cappuccino, but um, I, I've been sharing that and being like, what do you see? I kind of like the Rocharch, Rocharch, I can't even pronounce the word, but the, the, uh, you know, the, the psychology, what is the word I'm looking for?
Those pictures that people will look at and be like, what do you see in this? And then they judge you. That I've been doing it with my cappuccinos. It's a way, it's a nice way to get engagement, but it also just builds relationships, right? It humanizes you, makes things more relatable. And from a business perspective, which is what I care about.
That's great. I don't care about you just getting likes. I want you to be engaged with your people. I want your people to know, like, and trust you. So get in your short stories, share your day to day, get into doing some of those engagement stickers, polls, sliders, things like that.
Suggestion number three, connect with your people on other platforms.
Yes, this means you're going to be moving away from Instagram, but you're still going to be doing Instagram. But look to lean into something else. Namely, in this case, email. There's a reason I stay preaching and teaching. about having an email list, right? You're still gonna be showing up on Instagram, but you can get that kind of connection and dopamine hit or whatever chemical it is when you interact with somebody, you can get it from somewhere else, right? So part of the thing I think that slows people down on Instagram or stops them is they're not getting that interaction. So they're like, what the fuck is the point? But if you can get that interaction and that hit from somewhere else, email, something like that, then you can keep going and kind of, you know, like borrow from this side, put it on the other side, uh, put it into the other thing. And it allows you to keep going on Instagram, right?
A podcast is is a tougher route because it's so unidirectional. Um, but you can still include those calls to interaction and those calls to action where you're just like, Hey, if you're listening right now, screenshot this, post it, share it to your stories.
Let's connect. Or, you know, why don't we do that right now? If you're listening to this episode, we'll love it. Let's see if you're listening. Screenshot it. Share it to your stories. I would love to just love on you. So that's, that's an example, but also I'm just, that's making it meta and asking you to do that.
All right, so that's number three.
Number four, lean into creating shorter content that is still related to your niche, your niche, however you pronounce it. IG, Instagram does tend to prioritize short reels as it relates to like pushing your content out to new people. So let's lean into that, but beware the temptation to simply pander and post nonsense. If you go viral for a stupid fucking video or a video of your ass, or just something that's not related to your niche, it will do zero to help you grow your account and your online business. Right. So we're not just pandering. We're not just trying to like, you know, it'd be like playing a slot machine that gives you fake money.
And you're like, I won. I'm like, but did you, I don't think you did. So from a tactical perspective, we're looking at videos that are- that have no talking in them. Right. So using a trending audio, you're not speaking. It's usually just music of some sort or like, you know, one of those like, uh, lip syncing kind of audios.
And they're typically less than seven or eight seconds. One of the reasons that this quote unquote works is that Instagram has always prioritized rewatches and like total playtime. So if it's a seven or eight second video, it's more likely to get rewatches because it's only seven or eight seconds long.
And it's more likely to get a hundred percent playtime because it's a short video. When you have a video, it's like a minute and a half. Most people may not, you know, rewatch the whole thing or replay the whole thing. And they may not even watch the whole thing to start off with because it's so long. So there is an asterisk.
How do you pronounce that? Here. This strategy can absolutely get you more views, but it doesn't necessarily increase actual engagement and the kind of engagement that we care about. It can be a little bit more vanity metrics. And I actually just did an experiment with this and got numbers that I'm going to use with you.
Wow. I'm looking at myself in the little viewfinder of my camera. I have got that sunglasses tan from Volleyball. Good, good. Okay. So did a little experiment with this. So I have, we can link these two posts. Thank you, Courtney. I did a longer video. Um, it's part of my, um, the videos that I share, the reels that I share that are clips from this podcast.
And I shared that not knowing how well it would do, but just because I share every Monday and Wednesday, excuse me, Monday and Thursday. And that video was a minute and a half. It was the Eminem video, right? That video was, that reel was a minute and a half, it was one minute and 32 seconds long. Got 12, 327 plays, which is actually much longer, much more than I thought.
You never know with this game, right? So it got 12, 327 plays, 547 likes, 70 comments. 40 shares and 83 saves. I did a video the next day about engagement being in the trash. It was that repost I spoke about. It is seven seconds long. There's no talking from me. It's like a lip syncing one. It's like a funny video, right?
Funny reel. That received 19, as of today has 19, 197 plays, 437 likes. So more plays, less likes in the longer video. It has 43 comments, 23 shares. And 41 saves, right? Remember the longer video had 70 comments, 40, 40 shares, 83 saves. All right. So just because you do the shorter video doesn't mean you're necessarily going to get the engagement that you want.
I got more quote unquote, uh, I will, I will say reach or, but it's really in this, it's impressions. Cause I can also look at, I didn't write it down, but the number of folks that are new to the audience. That are looking at it. So it's a little bit of a vanity metric with that, right? Of note, the saving grace for that shorter video in terms of why it actually got saves was because in the caption, I taught exactly what I'm teaching right now in this episode.
It wasn't just a short video to just to be funny, right, and just to have engaged quote unquote engagement. It was a video where I actually- the caption I use to teach things. So if you're going to lean into that shorter content, make sure that it's still relevant to your niche and that in the caption, you are teaching something.
Provide value. You are a business, right? People pay for solutions to problems. All right.
Number five, suggestion number five, go Live, right? Instagram Lives. I love them. Haven't done one in a little bit, but I do love them. And they're phenomenal way to build trust with your audience. Again, we're looking to use this platform, not just to increase, increase engagement, but to actually increase engagement that ultimately helps the business. So even if it's only a few people that show up to the Live, that's phenomenal. You can build so much trust with those people. Why can you build trust? Because you can't fake it because it's live, right? So focus on the folks who show up and if no one shows up, that's great. You can't mess up.
Number six. Experiment with different post types that interest you and force you to flex your creativity muscle. So if you're like, man, I got no engagement. These posts aren't going anywhere. Cool. You could, yes, very much, and maybe I should have said this, should have said this for point number one, just like repost old stuff, but why not try to create some new stuff?
Lean into being a con, lean into being a content creator and lean into creating content that you like creating and that's new. All right, this is helpful from a longevity perspective because it keeps you in the game. You're like, wow, let me try and learn this new skill and express myself in a new way.
This is why I got into video podcasting and editing and pulling and editing the clips for, for Reels. So I was like, I got to do something new. Like I'm bored with how, with, with Instagram. So I was like, let me use my DSLR camera and make things more difficult for myself. But it keeps me in the game.
This is, I have like a bullet point here and I'm hesitant to share it because.
I'm hesitant to share, but I know that it'd be helpful for some, because some people just latch onto this too much, but I am a big fan of mixing content type and looking to teach things in as many different ways as possible. Have it as a carousel post, have it as a reel, have it as a, you know, uh, uh, you know, a statement, singular statement.
But Instagram does seem to like when you create the same type of content over and over again and just do like Reel, Reel, Reel, Reel. If that, so, to that end, if that's you, if you're the type of person that's like, I just want to do the same format over and over again, Instagram will not penalize you for that, right?
I say this with hesitation because then folks on the other side are like, but if I flip content, will it penalize me? Longevity. Do what you got to do to stay in the game and… Let's think about reaching people in as many different ways as possible and teaching them as many different, teaching them in as many different ways as possible.
Meaning maybe Instagram doesn't show up to as many people, but you know, you take this Reel and you take the content and you put it into carousel posts. And for folks that really like reading content that lands with them and that lands you a client. Which is what I care more than, which is what I care about more than simply, you know, pandering to the algorithm and getting higher views, but nothing really out of that.
Right? So those are six things you can try if your engagement is in the trash. The most important thing as always is that you keep going. To that end, if- these accounts drive me crazy, but if following those accounts that are like how to hack the algorithm and do this thing, and here's this trending thing, if that keeps you in the game by following them and doing what they're saying, then cool, do that. I just want you to keep going. All right, the only thing that stays the same as relates to Instagram is the fact that Instagram will always change. What works today will not work tomorrow, quote unquote, work. So do what you got to do to stay in the game and creep, keep creating content.
Longevity reigns supreme, right? No reviews to read this time, but we are at 250 ratings for an average of 4. 9 stars. So. Thank you. Whoever just left that rating and put us over to 250, thank you. Don't forget this Thursday's episode is a guest episode with my guide, Dr. Danny Matei, and I would love for you to check it out.
Okay. Yeah. Questions, comments, concerns, requests, anything like that. Hit me up, shoot me a DM, text me 310 737 2345. Y'all know, I love to hear from you. All right. All right. And that's all I got for you. Until next time friends, Maestro out.
Watch this episode on YouTube!
My longer reel vs. my shorter reel
Catch me on the socials: Instagram | YouTube | Twitter | TikTok | Facebook