[0:00] Music.
[0:13] Hey, welcome back to another episode. Today, I want to give you some updates about things that are working really well for me on Instagram. And even I myself am kind of shocked and pleasantly surprised by these things. And so I want to share them with you in case they sound fun or interesting or exciting. So this episode is especially for the girl who might feel a little bit at odds with Instagram, especially Instagram Reels. Maybe you have spent a lot of time and effort working on them, creating them only to get crickets or very few views and you were left feeling frustrated or discouraged. And this episode is also for the girl who might be feeling the pull to put herself out there a little bit more, feeling the pull to be a little bit more visible to the world and, you know, possibly hopefully grow her following, increase her impact.
[1:05] Strengthen her message, strengthen her confidence. If that sounds like you, you're going to love this episode. So I've been running an experiment on my reels for the past month to a month and a half, and I'm kind of surprised but excited about the results.
[1:22] And I want to share them with you and share some things that I've been doing. This is going to make it sound like I went viral, but in reality, my highest viewed reel in the past month has like 37,000 views, which in the grand scheme of things is, you know, in comparison to some accounts, not that many. I feel like I see reels all day every day about people shouting about how they gained 50,000 followers in one month. And I'm over here like, I gained 100 followers in the past month, but I am pumped about that. And it's been so long since my Instagram has grown from anything that I consciously understood that I was doing intentionally. So sometimes it's just nice to hear from someone who doesn't have a bajillion followers already, that's me, but who is making progress and seeing things work in her content and is also making sales consistently from her content. So backstory, I was posting reels pretty consistently up until this past December and then something in my brain shifted and I was like, no more reels. I can't do it right now. I don't know what it was, honestly, because they're really not that big of a deal, but there was some kind of a block, some reason that I needed to take a break for a little bit. I started to notice that I was feeling a little bit pressured and stressed and panicked about creating reels.
[2:38] And they just weren't fun. I was like, if I could create a feed post that is a tweet style that has something compelling and fun to say, I can still nurture my audience that way and it's way less effort for me to create, I'm just going to do that. And I ended up taking a break from reels and I didn't post another one until like the middle of April. So it was an almost five month long break from taking, from posting reels.
[3:03] Something happened in April, early May-ish, where my creativity for Reels started to come back again. And I don't want this to sound like there is any content that is better or worse than the other, but I have always felt at odds with Reels. And I've always wanted to sort of figure out how to make this work because I see so many people making them effective. And I was over here like, when's my turn? Because I feel like my content is just as good. But something happened about a month ago when Reels started to sound really fun again. And so I started creating them again, but I started creating them with a different intention than I have in the past. And I don't know if I started this consciously, but basically my goal for my Reels this time, meaning within the past month or two, my aim was maximum visibility.
[3:57] And not because visibility is, the thing that's going to fix your business or that was going to fix my business, but just because it sounded fun. So my pure 100% motivation was to push and challenge myself, but not to get any certain result. I was not out there like, I'm going to grow my following with Reels. I'm going to go viral. I just wanted to play and have fun creating something new and something different in a different way than I ever have before. So there are some beliefs that business owners hold with Instagram in general, but especially with reels and especially with follower counts that are so limiting and so untrue that I would love to just break them for you forever today, once and for all. So some super common beliefs that a lot of women have with Instagram is that but your follower count equals success.
[4:57] The more followers you have, the more sales you get by default. More followers equals more money. And I have so much evidence now to prove to my brain that is just not true. And I know people personally and have coached women who have 100K plus followers and are making the same amount that I am. I also have people in my network who have 2,000 followers who are making three times as much as I am. So again, with my own evidence, my brain has had to break this paradigm that followers equals sales because it's not true. And I hope to give you some of my own evidence to prove that so that you can stop worrying about it so much, so that you can stop stressing about it, so that you can start selling to your current audience instead of feeling like you have to go viral and get a thousand more followers before you can sell anything. It's just not true. and I honestly think it's a little bit of a sneaky mindset block because I think for some of us getting more followers sounds easier than doing the work that it takes to make the sales.
[6:06] It's a different type of mindset shift to make sales versus just to go get more followers. For some of us getting followers sounds easy. For some of us making sales to the audience we currently have sounds really hard and so your brain might try to avoid doing that even though that is the thing that will help you actually get the results that you want. So once again, follower count does not equal more success, does not equal more sales, does not equal more money. In the same vein, going viral also does not equal more followers or more sales or more money. This is such an easy mindset trap to get into. If I could just create content that got thousands of of views and brought in a bunch of new followers, then I could make money. I promise you, if you are struggling to monetize the audience that you currently have, you will also struggle to monetize any future audience that you bring in as well. Sometimes I think business owners have this thought of like, I have sold out my current audience. They're sick of me. They're bored of me. So I need to go find new people.
[7:07] And if that's your mindset, Instagram is always going to feel hard to you. So I would love to release that or massage that so that you can come show up to Instagram with a belief that there is someone who needs you today. There's someone who needs your offer, someone who needs your services, your education, your teaching, your product, whatever it is. If you can show up to Instagram with that kind of belief, you will be able to make sales and serve your current audience, which will also grow your audience, but in a little bit of a backwards weight.
[7:39] Let's go back and talk about some of my reels stats. Again, it's going to make it sound like I have, like I have had these viral reels that I really, they have not been viral in comparison to some people, but for what the kind of volume of visibility that my content usually gets, it feels viral to me. But let me just say this. I think that view count, which is that number that you can see on the very top, the very actually bottom of your reel, when you look at your reel feed is the worst possible stat that people could use. And content creators are getting really smart and they're figuring out ways to make it so that people watch the same reel over and over and over again, which serves the algorithm, but really does not serve any humans. And so what I really wish was the case is that that number that you could see on your reels was either the reach, reach meaning the number of human beings, the number of accounts this piece of content reached or followers gained. Again, both of those are also not great indicators of how quote-unquote successful a piece of content is going to be because success equals the dollars that end up in your bank account and reach and followers gained also do not indicate either of those things. But I think they're a way better indicator than views.
[8:57] But if it's true that none of those stats equal sales, then what does equal sales? In my opinion, it's having an offer that's so good that people feel dumb saying no and having really good messaging that activates a woman's desire and helps her make a decision and putting that offer in front of her enough times that she's able to make a decision. That's what I actually think makes sales as a side note. But what's interesting is that some of my reels with a lower view count actually brought in almost as many new followers as some of my higher viewed reels. So just a reminder, check your insights, actually look at what's really happening with your content instead of looking at the views and letting that determine your mood for the day. I know it's so easy to do. It's so easy to let the high views make you feel like you're the biggest, baddest, awesomest business owner ever.
[9:52] And if you have a reel that tanks, then you just feel like garbage. I'm going to talk more about how to stop doing that in just a minute. But really look at your insights, really study them and see what is actually bringing me followers, which content is reaching the most number of accounts. You're going to have to click on a button.
[10:11] There'll be a little button that says view insights where you can click that and actually see that. And I would record it somewhere, write it down if you're a geek like me. I don't think it's something that you need to track on the daily and drive yourself crazy, but it will be useful for you to have data to use when you go to create more Reels because you'll be able to say, oh, interesting, this piece of content worked. How could I do that same thing again? This one didn't. That's so interesting. Ditch it and move on with your day and don't make it mean anything about you. So there are two major things that I've changed in my Reel content that I think are the number one reason why they're working so well. Why they're working really well for me, I should say. One is delivery.
[10:52] You've heard people talk about this on Instagram and they call it hooks. I actually like to use the word delivery more than hooks. And I used to be super annoyed by people talking about this, but now I have evidence to prove that the delivery is actually very important. So the reason I like to call it delivery is because I like to think of like, if you think of the way that a person tells a joke, the delivery is everything, right? It's the tone of their voice. It's the speed of their voice. It's their intonation. It's the punchline.
[11:22] That's basically how I think about the content in my reels. I want you to think of that as like the punchline of the joke, that it's kind of like, you kind of have to get it just right in order for it to land and not for that to put any more pressure on you than you are already feeling about creating content, about creating reels. But I do think it's important and worth paying attention to. So I think like kindergarten level would be finding an Instagram guru who has a list of a bajillion hooks that you can either download for free or they've already put it in a reel or in the caption for you. Save that. I have an actual folder in my saved reels. The name of the folder is called Hook Hunt. And anytime I find a reel that like catches my attention and I actually scroll down and read the caption, it's like, oh, something about the way this was worded caught my attention. I'm going to save that and put it in my Hook Hunt folder. And I just might come back and use a similar hook or the same hook in one of my pieces of content,
[12:20] because clearly that worked for some reason. So I like to think about, again, the delivery of the reel as in the delivery of the punchline of a joke.
[12:29] Something else that's really been useful or helpful is I have mixed in a lot more storytelling content. Before, I was doing a lot of tips and hacks and tricks and mindset shifts, which is awesome and is one pillar of my content, which is the education pillar. But I've been leaning a lot more heavily on a storytelling pillar where I'm telling stories about my origin story, how the heck I got here, all the random pivots that I've been been through, all the different businesses that I built and their individual success stories, or even just telling stories about what's happening in my world. One example that's coming to my mind is I posted this reel about how I was on a Zoom call with my greenhouse girls.
[13:11] And my babysitter is actually here, but she's putting my son down for a nap. And my daughter came in and asked for a snack in the middle of the meeting. And I knew that my babysitter was is busy. So I just walked out of the room in the middle of the Zoom call with 40 women, grabbed her a snack, gave it to her, and walked back in and sat down without apologizing. And I told that story in a reel that apparently people really loved. So mix in storytelling. If all else fails, what stories do you have inside of you that need to be told that would help people understand why what you do is so important to you? Why you are, I don't like to use the word qualified to to do what you do, but why you have some sort of valuable experience, more so than the average Joe. I also think you can tell stories that will build your authority to show people, look, I know what I'm talking about.
[14:01] And I've done this before. This is not my first rodeo. I'm doing this for myself. I'm helping my clients do this. All of those stories are gold. The second thing that I've done that's working really well is I am intentionally being not not vanilla.
[14:16] I won't go so far to say that I'm being like cayenne pepper spicy, but I'm definitely intentionally trying to be not vanilla, which is very Kaylin. Kaylin historically has been the people pleaser, the person who wants to make everyone feel comfortable and peaceful and not create conflict and have no one disagree or have any negative thoughts or comments to say. It is a huge witness to me or evidence to me of my own personal growth that I am starting to feel more and more comfortable saying things that might make people feel uncomfortable. That's not something that has always been true about me, but it's starting to come through in my content. I want to make people feel something when they read my content. It's funny for me to even like think about or say like I'm basically getting a little bit unhinged in my content because if you you look at my content, it's still very like pretty dang close to neutral. It's not like I'm saying anything that's going to get anyone riled up or angry at me.
[15:17] I'm going to say more about trolls and naysayers and negative comments in just a minute, but basically I just turned up the polarizing-ness a little bit. And I'm really leaning into this new belief that I discovered, which is that if you want to be like a magnet, if you want to attract people, you also have to have a repelling side. That's just how a magnet works. One side is attracting, one side will repel. And so that for me feels like a really comfortable analogy and helps me feel like, okay, so that's how magnetism works is you have to have something that turns some people off, for lack of a better word, or helps them have clarity that you are not for them. If you want to be someone who makes it super easy for the people who do know all they are for you to know very quickly and very clearly. So that has bolstered my confidence to be a little bit polarizing, a little bit spicy, mix in some flavor. And it hasn't been anything crazy. Part of me has like a little teeny sneaky goal or secret challenge for myself that I want to create a piece of content or pieces of content intentionally to see how far I can push the needle before I start to get angry comments, just because I think it would be a really good exercise for me.
[16:37] I'll keep you posted. I'll make an episode on that one day if I ever do that. But it is really unique for me to hear myself saying that because I have historically been so much of a people pleaser and that people pleasingness came out in my content all over the place. It looked like not being willing to not talk to anyone, right? Like I want to talk to everyone. I want to help I want to help everyone. I want to have inclusive pricing. I want to have inclusive offers. I want to be able to help everyone and serve everyone. And I want no one to be left out or eliminated. But what's really happened is that I've started to get more and more and more honest about who I can really help and about who I want to help in this particular season. And so...
[17:17] Because my own internal people-pleasingness is hopefully, I'm pretty sure, dialing back. It's starting to help me feel like I can say things more clearly and specifically in my content without feeling like I might possibly make someone out there somewhere upset.
[17:34] And if that does happen, I still feel good about myself. More on that in just a second. Okay, so if you want to implement a visibility strategy, there are two things that I would recommend watching out for. Number one is that getting new followers and getting a lot of views is a huge dopamine hit And so be careful when your content does start to work better than it ever has before Be careful to not connect that with your sense of self-worth You've probably heard people talk about this about when your business is not working very well To not connect your business to your own self-worth But I think it's important if you're going to do not do that When things are not going well in your business you also need to do the same thing when things are going really well. Because if you feel really validated and good about yourself when your content is killing it, that means that you are connecting your business to your self-worth, which is totally fine, just good to be aware of.
[18:28] But when things work really well, it's really easy to be like, look how amazing I am. I'm a genius. And in the same way, be careful not to let yourself get in your own head when things get difficult. But you have to stay disconnected no matter what's going on. Watch out for the dopamine spike. It's going to be there. It's going to be tempting you. That's when I think a lot of people become addicted to Instagram is when you feel that dopamine hit and you are like, that is awesome. I feel great about myself. self. Our brains love those dopamine hits. And if you're real, start to do really well, watch out for that and be consciously aware of that so you don't become addicted to the high of getting the dopamine hit, which sounds so funny, but I know you know what I'm talking about. Just be aware of that and be conscious of that so that you don't find yourself more glued to your phone when your content is doing well or checking often to see if you've got more DMs or more followers. You can continue the dopamine hit. It's going to be there. Be aware of it. but I want you to consciously keep yourself grounded no matter what's going on in your content.
[19:31] Next, I want you to watch and at least be aware that there's a chance that your
[19:35] nervous system might just a teeny tiny bit go into fight or flight mode. This did happen for me, which is why I want to talk about it. You've heard me probably talk about this before if you've listened to my past podcast episodes. This is a principle that has changed my life that I wish I knew sooner, which is basically that all of us have a thermostat or a set point inside of us, inside of our nervous systems, like coded into our actual nervous systems about how much our physical bodies feel safe to feel or receive the word safe in air quotes. But your brain can actually, in some cases, feel subconsciously threatened or unsafe with an overabundance of something. In this case, I'm talking specifically about visibility. If you're receiving an overabundance of visibility that you're not used to.
[20:27] Your brain might kick into a little bit of fight or flight mode and start to feel threatened and start to say, this is not safe for some reason. And so it's totally normal and it's not something to feel shameful or bad about. It's just useful to know that it's a real thing. So there was a day last week, a couple of weeks ago that I was feeling this and I just felt like, I feel like I had a tab or like an application open in the back if my brain was like an iPhone or computer. I feel I feel like I had an application running that was just draining all of my memory or all of my data. And I felt just a little bit, just felt like I was dragging a little bit. And then I put the dots together. I was like, oh, I think what's happening is that I'm bumping up against a visibility upper limit. And it is draining all of my energy because my nervous system is running in a little bit of fight or flight mode. And I noticed it because my brain, I had this content that was doing really well. And all of a sudden, I started to feel like, you know what? I'm just going to take a break next week. I'm just not going to post anything. I'm just going to hibernate for a week. Which, side note, I am not saying that you taking a break from Instagram is always a form of self-sabotage. I think regular breaks from Instagram are healthy and necessary. But in this case, I could sense in my soul that my brain was really resisting this experience. My brain was like, too much, overload, shut down.
[21:54] And, you know, I am an introvert to my core. I like to be in my shell. I like to be in my quiet, familiar world. But also, deep, deep down, I know that I do want to have a big impact through my content on Instagram. And another side note, that has taken me a really long time to figure out and
[22:13] be really honest with myself about. So So no pressure if you don't know if you feel that way too, or if you haven't decided yet. But I know that about myself, that I really do want to have a big impact through my free Instagram content. And so for me, there's like this friction between, wait, this is actually the result that I want and have wanted for a long time. But now my brain's resisting it, making it feel like it's this problem and I'm exhausted and tired because of it. So I reached out to my coach Amber about this and she sent me some really good journaling questions to help me work through. And like the phrase that I actually said to her was, oh my gosh, I am bumping against my visibility upper limit because she and I talk about this stuff all the time. And so she sent me back a list of questions and I wanted to share them with you in case they're helpful. If you've experienced bumping up against a visibility upper limit before, maybe you are right now, maybe you will in the very near future after you start implementing a visibility strategy with your reels. But here are the questions that she gave me. What great things are trying to come into my life? life. Why is this exactly what I want? What part of me is scared that I can't handle this?
[23:19] Why can I handle this? Why is this good for me, my family, my clients, and my audience? So the insight that I discovered here is that if you want to expand your comfort zone around anything, if you want to expand your comfort zone with money, if you want to expand your comfort zone with visibility, if you want to expand your comfort zone with feeling joy, Joy, that's an interesting topic for another podcast. You also have a comfort zone in how much joy you are willing to feel or receive. Super interesting. But if you want to expand your comfort zone in anything, you also have to be willing to expand your, this is my own phrase, your self-worth zone. The two have to grow in tandem. Because if your self-worth doesn't expand right along with, in this case, your visibility comfort zone, that's when you're going to self-sabotage and bring yourself back to your comfort zone because your brain's going to start going, you don't deserve this. This is a bad thing. This is a problem. This is too much for you. I don't think you can handle this. And so you have to consciously expand your self-worth zone at the same time that your visibility comfort zone expands too.
[24:36] So in this case, as my visibility grows, I open myself up to more naysayers and possible negative comments. That's like, that has always been a huge block for me. I'm scared of people saying negative things in my comments because it makes my sensitive ego, makes my feelings hurt. So I don't, that hasn't happened yet. But like I said before, I think it's really good for me to push myself and practice learning how to deal with this because again, I do want to have a big impact in my content and the more visibility equals more people are going to have alternative opinions. But this is the breakthrough that's been really important for me. The only time that trolls or negative comments or people who are angry become a problem is if they make you doubt yourself. And they can only make you doubt yourself if your self-worth has a chink in
[25:30] the armor or hasn't expanded yet. If your self-worth is at maximum capacity and it matches your visibility zone, then when someone comes in and says, this is a really dumb reel or whatever they say, you're like, you can let it roll off your shoulders. You can let it slide. You can roll your eyes or you can even be like, that's just flat out untrue because your self-worth is locked and loaded and ready for this.
[25:56] The only time that negative comments in your account are going to be a problem is when they start to make you question yourself or doubt yourself. Let me also say here, I am a huge fan of the delete and block rule, like the one strike rule. If you show up in my content with a super negative alternative opinion to my content, I reserve every right to block and delete you and you reserve the same right.
[26:20] And I think that's totally fine. And I think it's an intuitive decision to decide in which cases you need to remove someone from your following so that you know you can keep showing up there as your most authentic, vulnerable, transparent version of yourself. So just a side note, I'm a huge fan of the one strike rule, but I also think it's important for you to know that if you are afraid of people's commentary, complete strangers whose opinion has no weight on anything in your life and are generally usually people who don't really have a lot of good things to say about anyone and have all kinds of negative things to say. If your brain is willing to value the opinion of someone like that over your own opinion of what you think about yourself, that's just a really good clue that there is work to do here on your self-worth. And I'm here for that. And I want you to do that. And I want you to do it quickly, as quickly as possible, because the world needs you. The world needs your content. You have important things to say that, in my opinion, God put you on this earth to say that God put this phone in your hand with this amazing Instagram app that has only existed for the last, I don't even know how many years, probably less than 15.
[27:35] Let me fact check that really quick. Yeah. Okay. It was launched in 2010. So we're at like 14 years of Instagram on the planet earth. There's a reason why we have access to this resource. And if you are on this app for the purpose of promoting your business, my take is that there's something inside of you that you need to say, either just because it would be important and therapeutic for you to say, but mostly probably because there's someone in the world who could be lifted and served and blessed when you say the thing that you need to say with clarity, with spice, with maybe a little bit of a vanilla base, but at least with some marshmallows or some Oreos or caramel mixed in for a little bit of flavor. If you want to keep the vanilla, I'm cool with that.
[28:20] So to wrap all this up, if you are excited about the idea of expanding your visibility through reels, here's what I'd recommend. Number one, make sure you're doing it just for fun or just to challenge or push yourself and not for any other external result, aka followers or views or even sales. I love, I want you to aspire for more sales, but not in a way where you are like putting yourself out there in this uncomfortable way in hopes of receiving more sales. It has to be fun first it has to feel like part of your creative outlet otherwise this is not going to work this is not going to be sustainable this is not going to last you're creating your content creating your marketing can and in my opinion it's like 10 steps further than should like it is critical for that effort in your business to feel as good and as fun as creating everything else that you create because if it's not it's going to feel off balance because you are going to spend a lot of time doing this marketing work.
[29:20] So make sure that if you do have a desire to be more visible,
[29:25] that it's just for fun and just for the pure joy and challenge of it. Number two, focus on your delivery, aka the wording of the text on your reels. Use hooks if that helps you. I like hooks, but I think that what's even better than hooks is just telling stories from your own actual life. Number three, say something spicy. If you're the girl who typically takes the vanilla road, at least spice it up a little bit with something.
[29:55] Let yourself practice being polarizing. Let yourself experience the joy and freedom that comes when you say the thing that you actually want to say without filtering yourself, without qualifying yourself, that you can say it authentically and transparently, and you're going to get better and better at doing that. And that's what's going to make your content more effective.
[30:18] And finally, make sure that if you're going to expand your visibility comfort zone, that you also do the work to expand your self-worth zone simultaneously, in tandem. If you start to feel like they're out of balance, that's what could possibly cause you to sabotage or undo all of your hard work or just quit altogether or stop. And all those things are fine, but in your best interest, I want this to be an effort that you feel like you can sustain for a really long time, which means that your self-worth and your visibility have to match. So that when you put yourself in front of a larger audience, and that larger audience has a wider variety of opinions, and they respond to you with those opinions, you can stand there totally grounded, totally confident in you, completely compelled by your own opinions without believing or choosing to believe someone else's opinions over your own, without letting your brain do the thing that it probably likes to do, which is believing their thoughts and opinions more than you believe your own. All right, that's all I have for you this week. If you loved this episode, please send me a DM on Instagram and let me know or send this episode to a friend. I'll see you back here at the same time, same place next week. Hope you have an amazing week, my friend.
[31:37] Hey, I hope you loved this week's episode. If you did, I know you would love to be a member of my community, The Greenhouse. It's where I teach you how to build an amazing, fruitful life while you build an amazing, fruitful business. It is a movement for women who want to unsubscribe from the traditional success path that says that life has to be a struggle and instead learn how good making more money can get, how fun marketing can be, and how much joy and presence you're capable of feeling as a woman and as a mother. Find out more and join at kaylenpriest.com slash greenhouse. And I'll see you there.
[32:17] Music.
