4 Hacks To Unf*** Your Instagram Growth

There's a reason why the video on the right got 1. 8 million views and the left one just 427. And if you also belong to the left category, where you kind of have trouble getting views or followers on Instagram or any of the short-form platforms, it basically comes down to these four levers or bottlenecks.

So actually let me show you how to identify and fix exactly these bottlenecks for your short-form content strategy to get your account to grow again. By the way, if you're wondering right now, why should I listen to this guy, to this cool uncle, but nonetheless, why should I listen? Yeah.

So we've been creating creators basically for more than seven years. I used to have traditional marketing agency. I still work with some major corporate brands, not a lot to talk about it, but we also work hands-on with creators, just like you building their content strategy for them.

And yeah, our clients consistently blow up. And that's basically why we have a lot of data in different niches, continually update based on all of that data. The first big lever, and to be honest, it's the biggest one is this.

Again, these two videos are essentially about the same topic. You know, it's a sketchbook tour, by the way, the left one was actually sent to me by one of you, one of the dominators here before our last live stream last week. And I didn't pick this for no reason because a lot of creators have exactly this issue.

So let's take a look first and then I'll tell you what to do to fix this thing. Come revisit my sketchbook with me. It's almost like I wrote more than I was sketching.

A lot of weird stuff on blank pages. Let's start with when I thought I could do this hundred heads challenge. Oh my God.

I'm not even sure what was going on with this guy's eye. And I kind of like this one. I like these.

Now you might've already noticed, but the major issue right here is the hook. And if I could just give you one advice that will change everything in your content game, it's to nail your hooks, which I'm going to show you how just now. And don't worry.

I'm not just going to regurgitate the basic old thing you've heard a million times. Like you need to have a hook in the first three seconds that gets them out of their autopilot. Wow.

Now I'm sure you know that by now, but essentially every day I see people make the same two to three mistakes again and again. And if you just fix these, you'll get more views. I can guarantee you that.

So looking at this video right now, there's essentially three elements, the text hook, the spoken hook, the visual first frame and the first line of the caption. Yes, I'm aware that it's four elements, but we're just going to focus on the first three for now. So whenever you make a video, whenever you think of the hook, it just needs to do this one thing.

It needs to make people curious. That's all don't over complicated. It just needs to have something that makes them want to stick until the end.

Ideally, you know, usually that's in the form of some sort of set up that makes people want to stay until the payoff, right? Basic storytelling. And that whole thing literally can be anything, you know, totally depends on your audience and it depends on their preferences, which is why I'm not really a fan of these, steal these hooks to go vile just because there's just no one size fits all.

And it's, to be honest, it's very stupid, but yeah, I get what they're all trying to say now in her auditory spoken hook, she says the following come revisit my old sketchbook with me. And as much as that might suck to hear, but people just don't care. Unfortunately, if they hear anything closely resembling to, we'll just look at me, you know, without being able to relate it back to them or, you know, to get sort of towards a payoff somehow they're gone just because nobody cares about you.

You, by the way, I'm sure you don't care about me as well. And I'm actually happy about it, but there's a few ways to turn this thing around, you know, to make people curious in this case, just talking about the spoken hook, right? This first element right here.

And without knowing Panjay, I hope that's how you pronounce your name, who sent in her content. I assume she creates content for other artists and those wanting to become artists, you know, digital artists and stuff like this. And just knowing that thinking about that person, somebody who wants to become a digital artist or who also already is a digital artist, we can pretty much kind of think about what makes them curious, right?

Just, just having this person in mind, I came up with the following changes just in the spoken hook right there. Want to see how bad my first few sketches were or think your old art is bad. Well, this was my first sketchbook or, and that kind of comes from another angle.

Here's what I learned from revisiting my old sketchbook, right? Instantly, the frame goes back from, well, look at me visit my thing. Cause nobody cares to offering either curiosity, some value or relatability, right?

Which encourages people to stick around and watch. Now that's just one part of the equation though. Cause we also have the first frame and that's actually equally important.

If not more, the first frame essentially is what people see, you know, what the brain recognises before you actually actively recognise it. And you know, if this is somehow off this first frame sort of first impression, people will swipe away without even knowing why. And that's what we have to counter here as well.

And if we look closely, there's actually some sort of micro shake at the beginning, and then it instantly pans out and even continues to be shaky. Just take a look at that and all combined. If you think about it, there's many different elements that are really heavy on the brain load part, right?

And there's actually science behind that. You know, it's not just me regurgitating crap, but for example, there's something called cognitive flow theory. And basically that means when a visual thing is cluttered or chaotic, or has too many elements going on at the same time, brain is not really able to process that.

And then it's out, it's done. And that's exactly what's happening here. Another thing that's at work here, which is also pretty interesting if you ask me, but then again, I'm a nerd.

It's been published in a study called attention, perception, and psychophysics by Harry Potter or somebody like that. It basically demonstrated that the brain, so my brain, as well as yours can recognise and categorise images in just 13 milliseconds. That's not a lot if you think about it.

So this cluttered image that we have right there and the micro shake right at the beginning are all it takes to make people leave because it all happens within the first 13 milliseconds. Kind of crazy if you think about it. And that's exactly why I always say hooks are the most important thing ever.

And people say that as well, but I don't think people actually grasp the importance of that. And I hope you really understand that by now. And, you know, if we compare this one again, Sue, the one that got 1.

8 million views, I'm sure you can already see why that's instantly better. We don't even have an audio hook right there, you know, because you don't always need that. You don't always need all elements.

It's kind of like it all plays together. But the most important element here is within 13 milliseconds, we know what's up. The brain just sees there's nothing that confuses us.

It's a nicely composed image, no shakes by the way. And it looks really easy on the eye with some white space and sets the context and actually makes us wonder, well, these sketches are amazing. I want to know what the other sketches are that follow, you know, obviously always relating it back to your, you know, the target audience.

Now, the second big clever we have, especially if you're just starting out is something that a lot of people neglect because usually gurus, they say, well, doesn't really matter. Don't ask me why they say that because whenever we with our clients improve that we almost instantly see returns. So there's that.

So we're talking about production quality and the look and feel of the image and everything, how it looks. Some people actually might call it branding. I would say branding, it even goes a lot deeper.

We sometimes have sessions at my career and ship about the actual parts of the branding where people, usually people cry within 20 minutes of these sessions. Cause we go really deep, but that's whole, a whole nother part of the story. Now I remember right now, people on social media have big trust issues and cause there's just so much content out there and there's just so many creators out there, mediocre creators.

And it's kind of hard to pierce through this cloud of bad content. And especially if you don't have a big follower number, people just don't want to follow you. We've noticed that a lot.

I've seen that in my data, people don't follow people anymore as much as they used to. So we somehow need to break this shield and actually get people to follow us. Cause that's another important indicator for the algorithm, obviously.

And one thing to actually do that is by having your content look like it's been created by somebody who should have 1 million followers, right? A lot of the times I see people who are like, well, I'm going to wait until two, 3000 followers until I put actually actual effort into my content. That's exactly how you should not go about it.

And people should instantly see that your quality is up to a standards, right? Instantly. And then they don't really care about the follower number anymore.

And essentially they instantly need to be made aware that you're creating content with a goal in mind with a purpose, right? Which I hope you do have a goal. If not, we have a whole different discussion, but I don't even want to think of that.

So actually let me show you the power of this whole thing right there and how you can replicate that as well. So instantly look like some awesome 1 million plus creator. Let's say you create talking head reels, and you only have your phone at hand, which is fine by the way, you know, just using the phone.

We've had, we have creators who have millions of followers just with their phone. Usually people, when people come to me or when people sent in their reels, I see they, they kind of put effort into creating and then they looking into the room and they're like randomly somewhere where they think it looks cool or clean. They just whip out the phone, the selfie mode, and then they start to create.

And usually it looks something like that, right? Not even that bad if you ask me, but it just doesn't look like somebody who has a million followers, right? Kind of boring.

Also a little bit of shakiness going on and just a selfie holding the camera. Selfie mode is almost never a good idea. Only if it actually fits the whole, but let's not even get into it.

So the first thing you need to ask yourself right now, where in my room or where am I apartment or wherever is there a place that kind of looks cool with some sort of background, just a white background usually is a little boring to be honest. And what's kind of interesting also think of angles and stuff like this, and then just try to sit down and do some test shots with it, you know, and just try to see what's going on. The other thing, by the way, is never use your front camera, the selfie camera, always use the back camera for that.

If you use your phone, the quality is just infinitely better and people will recognise that. So that's what I did here. There's this one corner here, actually opposite of me.

It kind of looks cool. I sit down, put the phone on the tripod. It looks better, but still not really.

And here's the secret sauce that I actually have for you. And you'll see that we'll be able to transform this whole video into something that looks a lot better without any extra effort. Almost, almost any extra effort.

The camera or the phone does not matter as much as the light. So don't buy a new camera. Instead, think of getting some new light, even some cheap lights, better than no light, right?

Some soft box off of Amazon for 50 bucks or something like that. That's how I started out or, and that's another thing that just personally, I love getting some practical lights. I just noticed one practical light just went off.

There's another practical light. So that's what we did here too. I turned on the practical light, playing around with that a little bit.

And then essentially all you have to do is turn on your actual video light, light yourself and turn off the actual room light. Now that's just, look at the difference of that. These two things that play with the iPhone, it's the same set.

It's the same camera. It's everything. Settings are all the same.

It's just the light is different. And another thing, by the way, because people are always like, well, it's kind of hard to see myself. If I use the back camera of the phone, if you have an iPhone, you can, I'm sure with Android it works as well, but you can actually mirror the image to your MacBook, for example, to see yourself.

And again, if we take, if we compare the first version or even the second version without the lights, it just looks so much better. And I would say it could look like this has been made by somebody who has a million fathers. Now we have that, but it's still not all.

Sorry to tell you that, but usually the texts that we have on screen is really, really important to, I mean, just look at how this very nice looking first frame from before totally can get destroyed by using cheap looking text effects or caption effects. Just doesn't look good, right? Instantly the illusion is destroyed.

And if we tweak just some things around to make things look a little nicer, by the way, let me know if you want me to make a video about that, how to exactly do that, what to look out for, but instantly looks like night and day. Now with these tweaks, you'll actually be able to get more views and maybe even the one or the other viral video already, but they're just not going to help you. If your profile is not optimised or you can't keep these viewers coming back for more content.

Cause at some point the algorithm will be like, well, you had your chance. Nobody's coming back. And if you want me to show you some examples, just like today on how to optimise your profile and build your content strategy in a way that makes people come back for more, make sure to subscribe right now.

So you don't miss my next video, which is going to show you exactly that, or it's already there. Depending on when you watch this, let me know if it's already there.