You still trying to figure out tick tock has your ig growth. Stalled well. Today today's show is exactly for you if you've been stuck at the same of followers on social media. Instagram facebook tick tock whatever platform.

It is like you had a certain number of followers and you can't seem to break that glass ceiling and get beyond it you're stuck today is a conversation that you can't miss we're going to talk about how to go from stagnant to snowball on social media. Welcome to this week in marketing. My name is jason pantana your instructor and i am so glad you're here with us today. If you're new to the channel.

Just make sure to head on over and hit that big red subscribe button and hit the bell next to it so that you get notified. Whenever. We publish new videos just like this one now true or false. The number of followers you have on social media.

So let's say instagram or twitter or tiktok or whatever platform. It is the number of followers matters and i'm gonna kind of fly in the face of popular conversation because we typically say no engagement is all that matters which i get it's true. I'm being provocative on purpose. I'm going to say that it does matter and the reason for my saying.

That is not because i think you're worth something more or less. If you do have followers. But because followers a steady rate of growth on your page is indicative of an account that's worth following so i look at an account that is coming by its followers organically. I'm not talking about buying followers or any bad practices like that but a page that is naturally coming by followers and it's growing.

My goodness. Something's working they must be creating content and community that causes people to say hey i want to click follow. Because this content is worthwhile to me so i do say that your followers matters. Because it's a signal of am.

I creating a page whatever social platform. It is am i creating something somebody wants to follow and if i am they're going to follow me. And if i'm not then i'm forced to conclude that something's got to be wrong inside of our coaching ecosystem. We have a member named phil gerdes phil runs an incredible real estate team in the entire state of maryland.

And they've just moved into northern virginia. As well anyways phil for years was stuck at around 14 000. Followers ish on instagram and you're like that's actually a lot of followers and i'm like that's true. It is a lot of followers only he'd been stuck there for years he up and through last year.

He wasn't growing at all and it lasted for a couple of years of just kind of hovering around the same status quo of followers now let me go on record and say phil never bought followers he earned those followers and then it got stuck and that's the specific use case. I want to talk about is why do accounts specifically instagram. But other social platforms. Too the same rules apply why do they get stuck they gain a certain amount of momentum and then they get stuck and i want to talk about the quantitative and qualitative reasons for why that happens so.

That you can break through the ceiling and start the growth up again on your social pages. So let's talk quantitative reasons. First and i mentioned phil didn't buy his followers. Now.

Let's talk about why buying followers impacts. The future prospects of growth for a page and then i'll get back onto the phil gerdes story in just a second here overall instagram's algorithm is looking at the rate of engagement of a given page. So for example. If a page has let's say.

10 000. Followers. Then instagram has a certain expectation of well they should get a certain number of likes a certain number of views a certain amount of comments. There should be a certain level of interaction and engagement that would signify to instagram's algorithm.

This is content. This is a page worth recommending to others that's an engagement ratio now i personally would strive to get around ten percent. So if i've got 10 000. I'd love to get as close to a thousand likes or something along those lines or some kind of signals of about 10 of my population of followers engaging.

I'll admit that's kind of lofty for most larger accounts. So going back to the idea of purchasing followers. Let's say that i bought. 10 000.

Followers. Well. They're probably dummy. Accounts and bots.

And fake inauthentic. Accounts. And so they're actually driving my engagement ratio down. No matter.

What i do i'm going to always be dependent on that paid engagement otherwise. I've got nothing because the reality is algorithmically. I'm sending the opposite signal to instagram. I'm saying like hey.

Most of my followers. Inauthentic bots or not are not engaging. Now. You don't have to actually buy your followers to end up with a bunch of bots or inauthentic accounts.

That's why it's usually good practice to prune off some of your least interactive types of followers because they're actually dragging that ratio down. So the first thing i want to talk about today as i kind of recap that is the engagement rate. The engagement rate ultimately. The algorithm is looking at the rate of engagement and so buying followers or somehow amassing inauthentic followers who aren't really there they're actually dead weight.

They're actually dragging you down in terms of being algorithmically recommended on instagram for instance. But the same basic principles could apply in other platforms now back to phil gertis. Who i already said was not buying followers that doesn't mean he wasn't dealing with some type of inactive followership. So to speak every large account at some point deals with that it's kind of like if you want to get new growth in the hedges.

Nothing makes new growth like trimming the hedges so it's like the metaphor is you got to prune your inactive followers to create growth. But i already talked about that let's talk about phil for a moment so back in december of 2021 at tom ferry's headquarters office in dallas. We held this private video mastermind. And it was kind of a small gathering of some of the top video creators influencers in our entire ecosystem.

And it was basically designed to be this workshop collaborative mastermind. Where we would all sort of just kind of ideate and then collaboratively give constructive feedback to each other on what was working what wasn't working best as we could all tell on each other's social pages. So anyways phil gerdes is up he's on the chopping block at the mastermind. And we all start kind of like weighing in on what works.

And what doesn't work and we're all kind of like man this content's really great it's high quality. He's amazing on camera. It's fun it's exciting content. It's really good stuff yet we noticed his following was kind of stuck and it had been stuck for quite a long time.

But we also noticed it tended to be the same people who were liking it and engaging. But it wasn't really getting recommended and it wasn't really growing and then we started realizing that it was almost like phil was keeping phil back in the content. Now i know in social media. Guru.

Land. There's a lot of talk about being authentic and all that kind of stuff on social media and candidly. I find a lot of that language to be vague and i don't always know and i don't think anybody always knows what it means. I think there's a general point of being your real self.

Because people are going to try to relate to you anyways. We notice with phil like you know it's almost like you're not inviting people into a story you're not being as transparent with your audience to get to know you as you could be so we talked about that as an issue and he told us that he every day writes in a diary kind of his own journal. His own thoughts every day and they're very very private to him. And so this idea for a video show of him basically talking about what he wrote this morning.

And what it meant as a short form vertical video. We talked about that as an idea and he decided he was going to execute on it and then we're in the room and glenda glinda baker's like sit down. I've got the name for the video. And she named it raided pg.

As in phil curtis. And the name was like ah. That's sticks. It's a perfect name and so phil went back to maryland after the mastermind and within like 48 hours.

The first video was up like the guy wasted no time and here's what's crazy that was in december of 2021. We met again in april of 2022 and between that stretch of time he had nearly doubled his instagram followers. And he started up on tick. Tock and went over 100 000.

Followers. In four months. And i would beg. The question.

Why well because he invited people into something meaningful in terms of his content growth on social media. There are some quantitative factors to it. But it really stems down to the community. The content the relationships.

It's a social network and if you can create that sense of social connection. Your page is going to grow and so maybe if you're stuck on social in terms of your following maybe. It's kind of like fill or your content maybe it is great. But it's not your greatest and if you really want to grow you got to give it your greatest content ever now here's some ideas to jumpstart your growth on specifically instagram.

I want to focus in on your instagram growth. If you want to go from stagnant to snowball or maybe from rookie to rockstar either. Which way these are some best practices to kind of generate and stimulate growth number one maybe consider promoting your organic content think about this for a second if you're making really good valuable content and like you've done your own acid test of self reflection. And you know the content deserves to be suggested in the explore pages and everywhere else.

But it's not getting the reach and distribution that it deserves well candidly you may have an underlying issue with your engagement ratio or something. Like that there could be another quantitative. Reason. Why you're not getting recommended.

Well fret. Not you should promote it just hit the boost button and if it's great content then target. It at the people that you would like to get to know you like in a 15 mile radius around your market area that'd be a great spot for getting followers people who actually live in the respective city. Where you do business or you could also say you know what just target people who are like my followers.

Basically as if to say to instagram. Hey. You know what i really like i'd really like if you would just do this for me like organically. Suggest my content to people who are likely to interact with it because that's kind of your algorithm's job.

But since you're not doing that i'm going to just pony up some dough. And i'll do it for you now. I know there could be some pushback where you're like jason if i pay them money to do what they should have been doing in the first place won't they just keep taking my money and i'm like we have no proof of that i don't think that's really a valid concern. But go with me for a second.

I said earlier. I think the main reason is probably a lack of engagement ratio in other words. You've got a lot of followers maybe they're inactive and they're not kind of interacting with your content like they're supposed to through the eyes of the algorithm so they're not suggesting you organically well. If you promote your best content.

And you basically say screw you instagram. I'm gonna go get those people anyways and then they elect to follow you well. I am naturally watering down the issue. So to speak in other words as i gain more followers who chose to follow me based upon that content.

It was just organic content that i boosted to them and they chose to follow me well they're likely to remain engaged. Which means. I'm actually improving my engagement ratio as i add those followers which means i may actually rectify the issue over time instagram tip number two for enabling growth is to utilize formats that are very growth. Centric ie i'm talking about reals reels are special because a they tend to be distributed to a wider population of non followers.

Most of your other content. Regular posts ig videos. Things like that they're pretty much distributed in instagram's main feed and in the main feed you as a respective user of instagram you're really only going to see content posted by the people you already follow for the most part okay for the most part. But reels literally gets its own feed.

And that feed is consumed largely by non followers. And so that's a massive built in advantage of why you should be making more reels because if you're making great content that if people naturally see it their response is to follow you that means that they're kind of your people your vibe. Attracts your tribe. So to speak.

And so reels are kind of the only format on instagram that have that advantage their own feed other content. I'm sort of you know hoping to the algorithm that i'm going to rank in the explore pages. But that's going to be very difficult to do and unlikely to happen. But with every single real live post.

It's going to go in the reals feed maybe not as far as some. But it's going to go there. And so i would say make more reals. I would even go so far as to say that when i post content.

That's not a real it may actually get a better rate of engagement than my reels. But just because they're reals. It's kind of like instagram says hey we want this and so thanks for the real. We're going to give it extra credit algorithmically because we're trying to win against tick tock and so we need reels.

So. Thanks. A lot. Let's be partners in this and so my reels.

Even if they don't have the rate of engagement as high as my other content. They still get more in the end because instagram is literally putting wind in the sails of the algorithm just because they're reals. My point to you is if you want to enable growth on instagram make reals and then my third tip to enable growth is somewhat involved in technical. But what else is new on this show this week in marketing and that is to try to dial up the time spent on post of every respective post.

Now. I'm going to toggle between talking about videos and reels and then just all kinds of posts. But let's kind of zoom out for a second um instagram's algorithm in particular pays attention to interaction. The interactions.

It monitors are things. Like likes comments. Saves. Shares.

Profile taps and then time spent on post. And so. The more interactions. A given post is able to garner the better it does algorithmically speaking in other words instagram's like oh great you get us more of that stuff.

We're going to give you a bigger audience because they're more likely to do that with your content than somebody else's and that's how i start ranking and getting suggested in the various feeds. And so forth. So those are the interactions they care about that one time spent on post. That one is special they really like that one another way of looking at that is scroll stopper.

What does it take for someone to stop scrolling and if you're the creator who provides the content to the feed that causes the viewer to stop scrolling instagram's like well done. I'm going to show you to more people now well done so how do i increase. The time spent on post. Well.

Let's kind of do a little partitioning between videos versus non videos just generic stuff that applies to all types of posts on instagram. I would say write a meatier beefier caption give something for people to open up and actually look at i would say really work your comments thread. I know a lot of viewers will look at the caption and then they'll see the comments and if they see comments back and forth. And you're replying to the comments and you're bringing people into the comments thread and you're pinning comments that comments thread is actually a massive source of keeping people on your content for longer.

Now. Let's go back to why that matters zooming out for a second if i can keep people on my content for longer. Then instagram is going to show my content to more people. And if they show my content to more people.

It's more quote unquote at bats to get more followers. This is how i create growth. So meteor captions really try to drive and dial up. The comments thread those are ways to do it in terms of video.

However i do see a big mistake pretty often and we've talked about it on this show. Before and that is to waste the first few seconds of the video that opening line on your video is critical to getting someone to commit to viewing. The video or at least a longer duration of the video. The mistakes.

I see most often are there's like a half a second where you don't know the camera's rolling trim that off that's like the scroll moment. If for a half a second. I don't see anything happening as a viewer specifically in the reels feed where i'm kind of flying through one after the next. I'm gone.

I would also say that introducing yourself hi. This is jason pantana. With blah blah blah. And then they scroll that's another mistake that gets made pretty often i would also say that a lot of folks go hire like a fiverr video editor to create some kind of a fancy branded logo.

Sting and that's another waste of space. Because they put it at the beginning of the video and then somebody immediately scrolls because they don't know what it is or why they're watching it it is so mission critical to hook the viewer in your videos. Straight away because if you do that they're willing to watch for longer if they watch for longer instagram says again well done you're hooking their attention. I'm going to show you to a larger audience.

Which again means a greater prospect for more followers that time spent on post metric matters. What are the ways you can turn the dial on it and keep people parked on your content for longer one. More idea before i move us on you can also use subtitles and captions. We know with videos in particular 85 of videos on average are watched with the sound off and so if you use on instagram the caption sticker or their auto generated captions or whatever that gives them something to read and thus keeps them on the content.

Longer and so they don't scroll and so you win. And it's not just captions per se. It could also just be random text and titles that appear it's just anything that can keep me as a viewer engaged even if the sound is off. Yes.

The size of your following on instagram or whatever platform. It is it does matter because it signifies. This is or is not an account worth following. And so.

If you've seen your growth. Flatline. It could be a quantitative issue or a qualitative issue. It could be some kind of an issue.

Where your engagement ratio is not where instagram or whatever platform wants it and so they're not going to recommend your stuff organically and we talked about ways to overcome that or it could be a qualitative issue. Where it's your content. We talked about phil gerdes and how like he was making great content. But it wasn't his greatest content and when he showed his viewership.

Who he really was the natural. Overwhelming response was follow follow follow follow and he went from stagnant to snowball. It's content. It's community.

It's all those things put together. I'm so glad you tuned in for this week in marketing and i hope you got some ideas in terms of how to create some growth on your social followings. It is worth it more followers means greater probability of more referrals more leads and more business coming your way social media is a marketing channel period. I don't really have a lot of desire for social media.

Apart from it as a marketing channel. And so i know you want to see it work for your business. But the way to make social media. Work for your business is to work with what it is instagram wants to see a certain level of performance.

And it will suggest your content. It's just a matter of cracking that code and really that code comes down to content and community. You can drive those two things you're going to win on social media and it's going to cause you to win in your business. I'd love to hear your thoughts or ideas in a comment below and if this video resonated or you liked it would you please tell youtube by smashing that like button that helps us out tremendously.

I'm so glad you watched and until next week. This is this week in marketing where could you go to get tuned up to get your mindset right to get an unlimited number of marketing and lead generation strategies to win even more listings. The answer. My friend is obvious the success summit in dallas august 23rd through the 25th.

If you want to be surrounded by thousands of like minded individuals that are not buying into the noise. But instead staying mentally tough. And most importantly earning the money that they desire then you need to join us so to make your reservation just go to townferrycom. Forward slash summit make sure you put in the promo code summit15 that's summit15 to get 15 off your ticket.

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