If you're struggling to get any type of traction on Instagram, maybe you've been hit by the latest algorithm change and suddenly your graphs look something like that and you just can't seem to figure out what to do to get the Instagram algorithm back on your site, I've got some good news. Because over the past two months, I slightly adjusted the strategies of some of my clients and things took a turn again. For example, this creator went from reaching almost nobody to getting some videos to blow up quite a bit.
We actually have tonnes of creators, so it wouldn't make sense to show you all of the examples, but I actually created about a month ago, a brand new fresh account with another client to see what's actually going on with the algorithm. And guess what? The very first post we published hit almost 800,000 views.
Actually, this is when I wrote the script. Now it's at 1 million already. So things are still happening.
Now, the good thing is you are actually here and all these hacks or strategy tweaks that I'm about to show you are not that hard to pull off. If you trust the raw data, your Instagram insights tell you. That's actually the most important thing I want you to understand.
This is what we do in my creator mentorship. We call it the data-driven content framework, and it's essentially the only thing you need. So let me show you what has actually changed recently and how you can use this whole data-driven content framework to blow up even this week.
Yes, you might not believe me, but some of you will. Now, remember the latest algorithm update, the one that was supposed to fix the whole thing? It's a little more complicated than that.
And the whole update was supposed to give you more reach among your non-followers, right? Which is obviously essential to gaining followers because if you can't reach non-followers, you won't be able to grow. So the first thing I want you to do is to take a look at how's that doing for you right now, basically your status quo.
Does the algorithm actually show your content to these non-followers, to people who are not following you? So go to your insights and check this circle graph basically. And if it's never above 20 to 30%, it means there's something seriously wrong, either with the way the algorithm categorises your content or understands your content, or which is most likely the case, your content just flat out sucks, which is also not that big of an issue because here on this whole channel, I talk about fixing just that.
Now, if every once in a while, or even more than that, you reach more than 50% of non-followers, but you still have trouble getting a lot of views, actually, it looks like the algorithm is trying to find somebody to like your content, but just don't like it. And usually when that happens, the problem lies within your hooks, aka the first impression people have when seeing your content. We've talked about this whole thing a gazillion times by now, but without a good hook, everything else you will do will not make any difference because people just will leave beforehand.
So you can create the best content ever without having a good hook. People are never going to see it. Here's an example, by the way, it's taken from my viral hooks database that we actually used to do research for our clients.
You can also get in there, but let's just take a look at the first frame of this video right here. Instantly, we see somebody's working on her laptop and the text says, I'm trying to work with family route, you know, and then some family members coming in. Everything that I just said happens within the first second.
And within that first second, basically when people swipe through to decide whether to stop and keep watching or not, everybody who works from home will instantly know what this whole video is about. And they will instantly relate because they'll be curious as to what will happen next, you know, because they have had situations like this before. And then they'll also send this to people that they know who are in a similar situation.
So it takes all of the boxes. Now, if it were a boring video with a bad tax talk and, you know, different first frame, for example, people would have not cared. And the algorithm would have buried it.
By the way, ever since this algorithm changed, which happened about two months ago or something like that, it seems like the threshold you need to hit. And we're going to get into what that exactly means in a second, but the threshold has basically gone up significantly. And that, you know, what used to be considered still good content, you know, just three months ago, it's most likely not good enough anymore talking about the hook.
So what does that mean? Go back, check all of your previous reels and find the ones with the most non followers reached, and then try to find out what you did differently, you know, especially in the hook and then make your next one more like that. Now, one thing that really bums me out still is that Instagram took away the retention graphs from almost all accounts.
By the way, let me know if you still have them. It seems like 99% of my clients don't have retention graphs anymore since this algorithm update and more than three months have already passed and we're still waiting for them to come back. Now there's something interesting though, because they didn't take away the metric called initial place versus replace.
And that actually got me thinking because if they leave that one in, it actually must mean something, right? So I actually did some research and fair enough. I found some patterns.
It seems like the initial versus replay metric is a little similar to the one that's called swiped away versus kept watching on YouTube shorts. And it actually tells us a lot about the quality of your content in relation to your audience and also how the algorithm kind of categorises your content, whether it's good content or not. Because if people watch a video more than once in the same session, actually, it must be good, right?
That's just how it should be. And analysing around 72 million views among some of my creator mentorship clients, I've noticed sort of a minimum threshold you need to hit in order to unlock more views. Now, obviously this minimum threshold depends on how long your videos are.
By the way, I have another very interesting video about the video length coming soon. So don't forget to subscribe if you don't want to miss it now, because it's not necessarily the way you think, but shorter videos, which is probably the majority of videos out there. And probably the majority of videos that you create, let's say six to 10 seconds need to hit what I figured out at least a 40 to even almost 50% watch rate in order to blow up meaning almost half the people that watch your video initially should rewatch the real instantly again.
So what can we actually do to make that happen? Let me actually give you another example. So you understand this correctly, the easiest way to getting there is the old B roll video, essentially, you know, 567 second clip of you doing something, for example, you know, basically B roll with a nice hook, right with a nice text hook, and a caption that takes at least double the time to read, then you know, the video is long.
You know, for example, something like that we see it all over Instagram, easy to create, to be honest, and it's actually a simple way of getting reach. Now, another thing that actually works really well to getting there is having some sort of unexpected twist at the end, because people will naturally want to rewatch it again, right? Also, with a twist, people are going to reshare it.
Just another thing. Here's an example. For example, this one right here, also from the reals database, kind of a twist at the end, slightly funny.
And just because people are curious, they want to see this whole thing again. Now, if your videos are longer, though, which is if you have longer videos, even better, you know, longer talk about one minute and above based on my data, your rewatch rate should still be around 20 to 25%. So actually quite high.
By the way, this whole rewatch rate doesn't mean that people actually rewatch your whole video twice, it just means they watch the first one until the end. And that's it. So we could actually say that the replay value shows us the amount of people who watch your video all the way to the end.
So really take a look at your replay rate within your videos. Do they fall within these numbers that I just talked about? If not, you might want to tweak your content to, to get there.
Now, this actually gets me into another point that our old friend, the head of Instagram, Adam Mazury kind of talked about a lot recently. Here's what he said. One of the most important signals we use in ranking is sends per reach.
So out of all the people who saw your reel or your photo, how many of them sent it to a friend in a DM? Now, first of all, it's kind of interesting that he mentioned that shares are more important than comments. And we'll also get into that in a bit, but he specifically said that the most important metric to track on Instagram are what he calls sends per reach or shares per reach.
Now here's the thing though, my data actually kind of tells me otherwise, maybe I don't have the full picture obviously. And yes, shares are of course important, but I actually think that just taking a look at the shares per reach, it's not going to get you anywhere. And I think Instagram takes a bit more nuanced approach with this whole thing.
Let me explain this whole thing. So I took a look at tonnes of data, obviously, and I don't think we can say, for example, your post needs to have a 0. 5% share to reach ratio in order to get a lot of use.
Actually quite the opposite. I tried to find a correlation between shares and reach. Actually most viral videos that I've recently tracked have had a reach to send ratio of about 0.
1 to 0. 3%, right? Actually not that much.
And here's the thing, some underperforming ones even had a way higher ratio of 0. 6%, for example, and they never blew up. So what I think is happening is they weigh your shares and with other stats, you know, like your replay rate, for example, and with your comments, it seems like, by the way, getting a lot of comments are also not a surefire way to explode anymore, like, you know, just two months ago.
So I think the Instagram AI, the Instagram algorithm got a little bit more nuanced and a little bit smarter, and it takes a look at the whole big picture. And also it relates it to similar content in your niche. And you know, if the big picture looks good, it's good to go.
There are still some things we can take away from this whole thing, especially if you remember the first example I showed you before the one with, you know, working from home, right? Because it's totally share worthy, obviously. And why?
Because it talks about something a specific peer group can actually relate to. In that case, it's people who work from home and those affiliated with them. That's all we need.
So here's what I want you to do now. Go back to your latest videos and, you know, really be honest to yourself. Would you have shared this with a friend?
If yes, why would you have shared this with a friend? If no, why not? What's missing?
I, by the way, actually have a checklist on how to create really share worthy content. So make sure to like this video right now. Uh-huh.
And let's say if we hit 500 likes, I'll make a full video about this whole how to get more shares. And I'll include this whole checklist that I usually only give out to my clients, you know, 500 likes because I base my self -worth into internet points, obviously. So please like it right now.
And then you'll get, get this video into resource, right? Now this one is what most gurus talk about, and I actually talk about it a lot. So it must be important and it is important, but I guarantee you almost nobody told you this before because just taking a look at your watch time stats alone, doesn't tell you anything about the quality of your reels, quite the opposite because watch time stats should only be taken a look at when you know the algorithm has shown it to the right people already.
If not, they're going to be totally off. And the algorithm takes a while seeing as shelf lives are right now, three, four, five, six weeks, even on Instagram. And especially if you have a new account, the algorithm will have no idea about your actual target audience, and it will just try to find the right people.
So a lot of the times you'll look at your amazing video stats and you see a low watch time number and you think, well, this video must be bad because it has a very low watch time stat when in reality, it's not bad at all. For example, remember the stats that I showed you earlier in this video, the first video I did with a new account with a client that blew up to now over 1 million views. Well, guess what?
Of course the video didn't blow up instantly and get 1 million views within, I don't know, 24 hours. Why would you even think that? That's not how it works.
Because I actually checked the video itself is 10 seconds long. And for about one week after posting it, it maximum went to 3,900 views, which is actually not bad too, to be honest. But the watch time number was at around six seconds.
So about 60%, kind of bad for a 10 second video. So just take a look at these stats would have told me, huh, bad video. People are not interested.
Maybe the hook is off. Maybe the whole packaging is off. The whole editing is off, whatever.
It's a boring video. But here's where the magic of actual data -driven content creation that we teach inside all of my programmes basically comes into play. Beforehand, obviously I had built a content strategy out with this client with different content pillars that actually target a very specific target audience, right?
And we had planned the whole, at least two weeks worth of content already, because I knew this is the content that is eventually going to attract the right people. We're not going to talk about this right now, how to do this, psychographics, avatars, stuff like this. But one thing I knew was we just have to give the algorithm time to figure it out because the algorithm is actually pretty powerful already.
So the only thing we had to do is keep creating consistent content according to this strategy I had planned out. Now, about two weeks later, this first video went from 3,900 views to climbing, climbing, climbing to 800,000 views or something like that, hitting now 1 million views. And guess what?
And that's maybe going to blow your mind or not. Maybe it just blew mine because I'm just a data nerd. Watch time right now is way higher than before.
Right now it's at 100% or 10 seconds. So the algorithm took a while to find the right audience. And this is why it's so important to trust the process and don't draw conclusions too early, right?
And if you actually want me to help you set up a similar strategy and content roadmap, that's actually handcrafted for your situation and your goals and your target audience, fill out the application form that you see in the description down below. You're going to hop on a call with either me or with my community manager, Florian. And in the meantime, this video right here will walk you through exactly how to implement this whole full data-driven content framework into your strategy so that you'll also be able to create content that attracts exactly the right kind of target audience.
