Looking for the rough full transcript? Click here → Ascend Viral Course Full Transcript

Last updated: February 27, 2022

IG Basics / Setting Yourself Up For Success

This is when the course actually starts. It’s going to be a bit slower-paced than the intro. 

Things I won’t talk about:

• Facebook / Instagram Ads
• Anything Black Hat or potentially damaging to your Instagram account
• Specific ways to make money on Instagram

I talk about Black Hat strategies a bit in the growth section… but most don’t work in the long run. I explain this further there.

Current state of Instagram

I don’t like Instagram that much. I want it to be better. Content creators will ultimately go to Tik Tok, not Instagram.

The Great Instagram Shift

Instagram is now your mobile social media homepage.

Instagram is now:

• A place where you onboard followers from other platforms
  • Specifically when it comes to Tik Tok
• Where you maintain relationships
• Instagram is where you sell things to your followers
• Showcase Yourself (aka your mobile homepage)

Instagram Stars are not being created anymore. Here’s a chart, basically showing the takeover of Tik Tok.

New Survey Underlines TikTok’s Rise Versus Instagram as the App of Choice Among Teen users

The first rule of Instagram Basics section: Download Tik Tok

Tik Tok is the best source for content (and inspiration) currently. Jordi Koalitic – A perfect example of someone using Tik Tok + Instagram correctly. The people who have gained the most followers this year “organically” on Instagram are Tik Tokkers.

We’re at a time now where MOST people would rather see your family do a Tik Tok trend than just posting a picture of your family. Simple call-to-actions on Tik Tok to follow your Instagram are really effective. Also, make sure you link your Instagram profile in your Tik Tok bio.

Think of your feed as your business card, and Reels & Tik Toks as your way of throwing a thousand business cards into a crowded street. Those videos are what brings exposure more than anything right now. I don’t want to spoon-feed you how to set up your profile. All profiles are different. Just do what works. Here’s a simple guide I wrote if you’re interested. Don’t overcomplicate it.

Your Instagram Profile Optimization Cheat Sheet

But in essence, there is no “wrong” bio or “right” bio. Here are two examples:

They both serve different purposes, and they’re both unique to that person.

• Do what your competitors are doing, but make it yours. Generally, it’s not a good idea to try and “reinvent the wheel” here.
• Know who your inspiration/competition is. It’s so important to have at least 20-30 accounts that inspire you within your niche. You should follow inspiration accounts and peer accounts.
• Find at least 20-30 accounts that inspire you. Also look for 20-30 peer accounts, too (accounts that are on the same level as you or in the same ballpark as you).
• For inspiration accounts, look for the top accounts in your niche that get good engagement, and for peer accounts, look for accounts about your size if not slightly bigger that post similar content to you.
• Make sure you’re in a niche that you actually care about & you’re doing something you’re passionate about.

There are 3 different types of accounts, there’s probably more, but this is the simple way of explaining it. Personal, Brand, and Niche.

1. Personal

A personal account would be like Bradley Martyn – are you sick of the gym references yet –

Lifestyle “niche” accounts can be tough…

Twitter Is Going Wild After This Influencer With Over 2 Million Followers Couldn’t Sell 36 T-Shirts

It’s tough being a mediocre content creator in a general niche, it’s easier being a mediocre content creator in an ultra-specific niche. So, the more specific, the better – especially if you know your content isn’t great (but obviously work to improve your content).

2. Brand

But the more specific with your brand you can get, the better. Do not make content about your brand if nobody has heard about your brand if you want organic growth. You CAN, make content about your brand if nobody has heard about your brand if you just want to spend money on ads and paid traffic. Then that’s fine.

3. Niche

A niche account is just an account that is specific towards….. a specific niche. Give credit if you re-post content. I phrased this really, really poorly, but there are three account types Instagram lets you select: Personal, Creator, or Business…. pick any of them… besides personal.

Your engagement is everything. Understand Instagram is going to value the 1% of engaging content on their platform. Do something to stand out if you know you’re not in the 1%. Posting viral content and going viral is always going to be the ideal option.

How Does The Algorithm Work?

Don’t listen to Instagram.

Shedding More Light on How Instagram Works

On the Value of Diversified Recommendations | Instagram Blog

Designing a Constrained Exploration System | Instagram Blog

It’s actually really easy to summarize how the algorithm works:

• If you get authentic engagement, then more people will see your posts.
• If you don’t get authentic engagement, your post won’t be seen very much

If Instagram thinks you’re gonna enjoy that post, and you’re gonna spend time with that post, it’s going to appear on your feed, and even if there are many more complicated factors in it, let me tell you this right now, it doesn’t really matter. Seriously. At the end of the day, just post engaging content.

If you want to read my take on Instagram’s algorithm, my article “The Great Shift” that I mentioned earlier talks about some key points that I’d like to reemphasize here:

• Instagram will punish you for niche switches
• If you remember when we talked about it’s better to be “Sarah the photographer” than “Sarah the influencer” in the previous chapter… this is why it’s important to have a niche, because if Instagram can define you more easily, and place you in the correct algorithms
• The time spent on an Instagram post is the most important engagement factor (everything else is just a natural byproduct of this).
• Instagram Reels don’t follow the typical Instagram algorithm.

Replace “algorithm” with “audience”

How To Go VIRAL with Mr Beast

So instead of saying “Oh I’m getting screwed over by the algorithm” in theory, you should be saying “I’m getting screwed over by my audience”. The 1% exception being if you’re trying to explore different types of content that is proven to be successful in other niches but your current audience isn’t liking it, then it’s not the audience’s fault, but it’s the algorithm’s fault.

Don’t intentionally make your posts “long” so people spend time with it. Don’t drag out something that’s not worth dragging out. Also, long captions aren’t the only way to get people to spend time with your posts. If you can encourage profile visits, story views, etc… that’s great too. Even if Instagram changed up their UI, I don’t really see this changing the “core” concepts.

Engagement = Reach.

Types Of Content

But first, let’s talk about YouTube.

Wendigoon

DankPods

Content Nativity

Content nativity means you are creating content that is meant for that specific platform. The biggest issue I see, specifically with brands, is content nativity. This is where inspiration accounts come into play. A good inspiration account will have native content, and you should see that they’re building content specifically for Instagram.

Native content is your gateway to engaging content. If your content isn’t native to Instagram, it definitely won’t be engaging. I emphasize this because it’s important. Make sure your content is native on Instagram, first and foremost.

Fashion Nova Men | Men’s Fashion Clothes

People are going to continue to find more native ways to incorporate content natively because it’s the best way to promote and not destroy your reach.

Stories

• Don’t overdue it
• Keep it short, less than 10 stories on a given day
• If people are skipping over your stories = bad
• Use stories to announce feed posts, Reels, etc
• Think of your stories as your “navigation” on your mobile website
• Your stories are a great place to drive sales & build your funnel
• Best way to increase reach for current followers – if you can make your current followers engage with your stories, then you can get more and more eyeballs on your feed posts, reels, etc.
• Do things to drive engagement (Polls, questions, likes, etc).

Carousels

• Multiple chances for engagement (they’ll show your carousel more than once)
  • Therefore, having radically different first & second slides can help
• Utilize call to actions in your carousel posts if you are creating infographics
• You can use carousels to tell a mini-story → Build relationships with your audience!
• If people don’t scroll all the way through your carousel – that’s a negative signal. You want people to engage with all the slides of your carousel.

Reels

• The Reels algorithm is slightly different – your content will be exposed to people in different niches
• Use Tik Tok to source inspiration for Reels
• There are a lot of “trend helpers” that can help you discover trends, use sounds correctly, etc. Check out Jera.Bean on Tik Tok
• The best way to know what works? Being addicted to your own Reels/Tik Tok feed and seeing what content consistently does well. Replicate that. Make that style or trend your own.
• Using Instagram’s filters and sounds will give you a significant advantage
• Max 5 hashtags per post is my general advice
• Make sure your Reel is properly formatted for the Instagram non-full screen display
• Subtitles help since a lot of people aren’t using sound
• Doing trends & going viral = more likes
• Original content & going viral = more followers
• Hook people within the first few seconds of the Reel otherwise you’re going to get skipped

(And then I rant about trends vs original content)

Instagram Live

• You probably never will “need” to go live.
• Only go live if it’s a feature of your account. Otherwise, it probably does more harm than good for 99% of people.
• Like any other form of content, if people don’t engage with your live, it’s likely going to hurt your overall engagement (feed posts, Reels, etc).
• If you’re charismatic, then live can be extremely helpful. Making announcements over live, giving people CTA’s about feed posts… that can all be beneficial if you can make it interesting and engaging.

Content General Rules of Thumb pt. 1: Branding & Posting Frequency

• Assume no one cares about your brand → don’t make content focused around your brand, make content focused around the ways YOU can help people (whether that be through entertainment, value, education, or whatever). There are some exceptions to this, but generally speaking… you need to give people a reason to follow you and interact with you.
• Continuously experiment with your content. Re-duplicate & re-imagine past content that received high engagement. Look for ways to keep your audience engaged. Feed the beast!
• If you can’t create engaging content → find someone who can create content for you. Hire a college kid or someone who knows how to properly do trends, edits, voice-overs, etc. Really talented people can still create bad content. If you fall into that category, definitely find someone to help you create content.
• Post as often as you can create engaging content in whatever format (Reels, stories, feed posts, etc). Stories are going to have the lowest barrier to post. Posting 5 times a week with 3 highly engaging posts every week is better than posting only 4 engaging posts a month. Don’t be afraid to post.

Content General Rules of Thumb pt. 2: Grid Advice

• Don’t focus too much on the grid aesthetics. You obviously don’t want a disastrous-looking grid, but if your grid is a bit funky… that’s okay. It’s okay to post content even if it disrupts your grid a bit.
• Engaging content is more important than aesthetics.
• Don’t prioritize the overall grid over the individual posts.

Content General Rules of Thumb pt. 3: Call to Actions (CTAs)

Not every post needs to contain a CTA. In fact, most posts probably shouldn’t. Use CTA’s sparingly for feed posts and Reels. Overusing CTA’s will make your account look spammy and promotional. If you can find places to include your username (in caption or infographics) – do it!

Anyways, here are some examples of CTA that you can creatively sprinkle in wherever you see fit:

• ”Check out the link in my bio”
• ”DM me if you want…”
• ”Swipe → thru”
• ”Watch this!”
• ”Like if you… (enter example here)”
• ”Share this post with someone…”
• ”Read This! (if caption is long)”
• “Save this for later”
• ”Comment if…”

Putting call to actions in your bio is generally seen as a smart idea. If you don’t have anything to sell, you can still do CTA’s with things like “check out my story” or “follow me for more”

Content General Rules of Thumb pt. 4: Hashtags

For feed posts: 5-15, a solid mixture of small, medium, and large hashtags that define your post. Put them in your comment section. If you think hashtags are super important (I tend to think they aren’t THAT important for most niches, you can look up hashtag laddering. For Reels, less than 5. Large to medium hashtags. No small hashtags. Put them in your caption.

There’s a lot of hashtag generators out there, but generally speaking I’ve found this one to be the best, and it’s free. So that’s great. https://bigbangram.com/instagram-promotion/hashtags/hashtag-generator/

A general rule of thumb: Look at what your peers and inspiration accounts are using for hashtags. Hashtags probably can’t hurt you, but at the end of the day, having incredible hashtags aren’t going to make or break your account. Your content will.

Content General Rules of Thumb pt. 5: Scheduling Posts

How often should you post? Like mentioned already, it’s going to depend dramatically on your ability to consistently create engaging content. It may be a good idea to schedule posts out a few days, too. Notion is an incredible tool for scheduling posts. It’s very customizable.

Your “best time to post” probably doesn’t matter that much. Don’t think being an hour or two late to your “ideal” time is going to make a drastic difference. Social proof plays a big role, but besides that, the algorithm doesn’t necessarily award “how quick people engage with your posts”, but it does factor in the first few percentage of people who decided to engage with your post.

Types Of Growth

Be in the 1% of content creators within your niche. Use reels a ton. Gain followers on Tik Tok & YouTube shorts and use it to push to an active audience on Instagram. Side note, you also don’t need to follow trends, or do Tik Tok dances, as long as your content is enjoyable and high quality, you can find an audience and grow.

Example creators:

Petey (@peteyusa) Official TikTok | Watch Petey’s Newest TikTok Videos

TikTok de georgie (@soupytime) | Veja os vídeos mais recentes de georgie no TikTok

Here’s the bear video that I love:

Petey on TikTok

1m followers generally equals about on Tik Tok = 100k on Instagram, roughly. So, organic content-only growth on Instagram, we practically already covered. That’s hashtag growth, people sharing your content, people finding you on the explore, that kind of stuff.

Types of Interaction Growth

$1.80 / Engagement Strategy Rundown

• Coined by Gary Vee
• Dropping comments everywhere in your niche (people you follow and don’t follow) and giving them your two cents. Do this 90 times a day = $1.80
• Somewhat outdated because action limits make it pretty hard to comment 90 times a day consistently
• The key is to make the comments extremely unique, helpful, interesting, value-adding, etc.
• No boring comments! No lame comments!
• Likes only engagement strategy? Completely worthless (unless your verified or something, then it works a little bit).
• Engagement groups technically fit in this category, but organic relationships that aren’t strategized is ideal. Keep interacting with new people!
• We’ll expand this in the next chapter

Follow/Unfollow Rundown Pt 1: Critiques

Biggest critiques are:

1. I don’t want to follow random people and see them on my feed

2. I don’t want this strategy to ruin my growth and engagement.

3. I already have a lot of followers, I don’t want to follow more people that will make my ratio look bad.

Follow/Unfollow Rundown Pt 2: “… but I don’t want to follow random people and ruin my growth & engagement”

• Please don’t follow random people. That’s bad.
• Focus on building healthy, genuine relationships with any interaction strategy.
• Following targeted people can be extremely, extremely beneficial for your business.
• Don’t always look to find “followers”. Look to find “customers” or “engagers”.
• You should use follow/unfollow to gather feedback on your content & improve it.
• Consider following someone to have the same effect as handing someone your business card.
• Some people aren’t going to like your business card. They’re not going to take it or they’re going to take it and throw it away. It’s okay to unfollow those people.
• Follow / unfollow should improve your reach and engagement if done correctly. If for some reason it’s hurting your reach and engagement, you need to find better people to follow.

Entrepreneur.com article “3 Simple Things Businesses Need For Instagram Growth”

Follow/Unfollow Rundown pt 3: “I already have a lot of followers, I don’t want to ruin my ratio”

I think this is fair. I think if you have 6 digit followers and above – you’re wasting your time a bit following/unfollowing… or there is a bigger issue you’re ignoring. The more narrow and specific your niche is, the easier it is to grow using follow/unfollow. If you have a very broad and general niche, it can be hard to find a specific audience.

Follow/Unfollow Rundown Pt 4: Summary

• Super effective if done correctly
• Find people who will support you
• Test. Test. Test.
• I have following limits & an action block guide linked here.
• Use this strategy only if you are attempting to build genuine relationships. Do not use follow/unfollow for spam growth. You will get bad results, and you’ll also be technically breaking IG’s rules.

Follow/Unfollow Rundown Pt 5: Quick Personal Opinion

• I’m on team Instagram, and you should be too.
• This section was too long. Thanks for hanging in there. 🙂
• Some IG marketers will overlook this strategy or demonize it for no good reason.
• There’s a good chance follow/unfollow can benefit you.

Collab Partnerships/Cross Promotion

Basically, this is when you grow your account through collaborations with other accounts. Instagram has a feature that allows you and another account to post the same photo, and then that photo gets shared on your feed and your collaborator’s feed. A lot of brands will do this with their ambassadors, if you want an example of this, the company MyProtein did this recently with their ambassador Israel Adesanya.

This usually benefits the smaller account more than it’ll ever benefit the bigger account. So, I think it’ll come down to how engaging the content you create is for BOTH of the accounts sharing the post. Carousel posts again are going to be your best chance at optimizing your engagement. There’s other ways to do collaborations without using the built-in collaboration feature.

“Instagram Takeovers” usually is an engagement nightmare.

External Growth Strategies/White hat examples

The only solid external growth strategy is bringing your followers in from other platforms. I don’t usually recommend external growth methods. These methods usually don’t fix the root issue behind your lack of growth.

Ads:

Generally speaking, most people don’t use ads to grow. They use ads to sell something or they use it for top-of-the-funnel promotions.

Shout Outs:

95% of the time it’s not going to be worth it. A general rule of thumb: Don’t ever use a website that sells shout-outs. Nearly all the accounts on those sites have artificially inflated their reach and their true engagement is pretty dead.

The ideal way to buy a shout-out would be to go through an inspiration account and ask them what their rates are. There’s no standard rate when it comes to shout-outs.

Giveaway Growth Services:

They will slaughter your reach. Do not recommend ever. Destroys your reach. Will likely hurt your overall engagement. None of the followers will be targeted, none of the followers will care about your account, and a large number of the followers will unfollow you after the giveaway ends.

Sometimes these are also called “loop” giveaways or influencer giveaways. A better use of money would be to run your own giveaway to boost your own engagement.

Blackhat Growth

Feel free to skip over this part, because there’s no real method here that I’d recommend.

No utility besides social proof: Fake Followers

No utility besides social proof: Fake likes / Comments Basically dead: Automation

Potentially dangerous, somewhat effective but expensive: Mother/Child Growth

Will probably get killed soon: DM Spamming / Mass DMs

Will probably get killed soon: Spam Comments Completely dead: Mentions & Story Viewing

Basically dead: Power Likes / Power Comments

Focus on Your Engagement

Having good call to actions is key. Get people to spend time with your profile & your posts. Continue to experiment even when you find things that work. Things can always work better. I’m a fan of “engagement tricks” or “engagement lures” or “creative call to actions” if they’re done tastefully. Some engagement tricks to consider:

• Having some kind of series with your content.
• Be intentional on when you like comments from your posts.
• There’s obviously a lot of things you can do to generate interest on your account (and we’ve covered a lot of them already in the content section).

How 99% Of People Should Grow on Instagram

So, on top of here we have the quality of content. On the left, we have 100% quality content, pure viral content. If your quality of content is at 0%, that means the only way you gain followers is by intentional interactions – you need to be following people, interacting with people, commenting, liking posts, etc. Most people lie within this red bar here.

The more your content increases in quality, the less interactions you’ll need to maintain growth, and if you increase your quality of content and keep the same number of interactions, you’ll find your growth increases.

• Follow 15-30 inspiration accounts, set their post notifications on – comment whenever possible, add value in the comments.
• Follow 40-80 peer accounts. Whenever they show up on your timeline, add value. Comment, like, engage, shoot them DMs.
• I’d say spend 80% of your time with the peer accounts, and 20% of your time with the inspiration accounts.
• Follow / Unfollow As Needed

Follow unfollow accounts that show up in the feeds of the peer accounts OR if you have specific target accounts or locations in mind, follow/unfollow those accounts. Then routinely go through and remove some of your follows (not followers).

Every 2 or 3 weeks, research and see if you can find more peer accounts, perhaps slightly larger than the ones you had before. You should be mindful of action limits. Consult the action block guide.

https://www.ascendviral.com/navigating-instagrams-action-blocks/

Here’s some examples of how you would go this strategy:

• Coffee shop in Dallas
• Photography Business

The underlying assumption here is that you are posting consistently, you are self-analyzing your content and attempting to recreate your most engaging type of content, you are actively trying to improve the time people spend on your posts, the Reels you create, the engagement you get, the story views you receive, and so on.

A lot of the interaction strategies are not as important as creating the best content possible in your niche. That should be priority number 1. Here’s my ultimate example of this method working:

All these accounts:

• Like each other.
• Comment on each other.
• Shout each other.
• Do promotions.
• Do all of that stuff.
• They do giveaways.
• Hashtag laddering.
• Basically everything I mentioned.

The 1% of growth here is happening from the accounts that create the best content.

Making Money on Instagram

This is a short chapter. I don’t like the idea of creating accounts for the sole purpose of making money, I’m not a fan of the idea. Don’t listen to people who say micro-influencers are making $10k a month on their account with 5k followers.

There are companies like:

• Aspire
• #Paid
• Or any other influencer network that you can join.

Keep promotions off your main feed, if possible. Stories are great for promotion because they’ll have the least impact on your overall engagement, typically (assuming you don’t promote in 100% of your stories, that is). Know your worth. Some small accounts make significantly more than larger accounts, but that’s generally not a good mindset to have, especially if your niche is broad.

If you are a company, I’d maybe do like a 90%/10% strategy if you have to. Aim to include your products naturally in your posts (straight-up ads should be avoided, ideally). Keep things native. At the end of the day, if you post good content & you are constantly interacting with people (including your fans and followers), then you’ll be able to sell just about anything.

Cool Accounts, Neat Examples & Things of Interest & Ethan’s Opinion Corner (The Finale)

So, let’s just take a look at some accounts that I like

• Varun.aditya
• Made.by.james
• Becca Means
• Max Taylor Lift
• SetActive
• Raddad
• Zach King
• Black

Now, this is an example of something really product-heavy, it’s going to be hard to reach anybody with this kind of content. If you’re expecting to use external growth methods and just blast this account with Ads – then this strategy might not be the worst, but there’s definitely better strategies out there.

Summary & Myths & Takeaways

• Treat Instagram like your homepage.
• Use Tik Tok.
• Don’t overcomplicate the algorithm. Whenever you get mad at the “algorithm”, replace that word with “audience”.
• Follow inspiration and peer accounts in your niche. Study what they do right.t.
• Add value in the comment section, but never hijack or spam someone else’s comment section.
• Avoid Black Hat methods. It’s typically not worth it.
• Instagram wants you on their content as long as possible, so the most important factor in determining “engagement” is the time they spend on your content and your account.
• Organic growth without reels is practically dead on Instagram.
• Instagram will go through some UI changes this year. I don’t think it’ll affect much of what I said in this course.
• There’s no follower “threshold” you need to monetize your account.
• Engagement is everything.
• A lot of the “old methods” don’t matter much anymore.
• A powerful engagement strategy or interaction strategy is necessary for 99% of people.
• Understand the fundamentals of business before selling things through your Instagram.
• Don’t switch niches on Instagram.
• Follow unfollow can be effective if you have your targeting method spot-on. Buying giveaway or celebrity loop followers are pointless.
• If you don’t accept the new meta of Reels, you’re going to get left behind.
• Avoid Echo Chambers
• Instagram gives unfair advantages to people who try their new features.

Random links

This is funny: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJ-d6FRmOhQ&ab_channel=AlexanderChalkidis

Shout out to Jack Gordan, he’s like if VSauce was a high schooler & cared about social media. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZ_7A9nh7V0&ab_channel=JackGordon

Shout out to Ben Leavit, one of the marketers who makes good content that I didn’t cover, who also wasn’t trying to sell you a course, you should check him out. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCs3lGJvaDVFOjQ3wnv_cggA