About to give up, what did I do wrong?

Instagram Marketing
#1

(EDIT: my IG handle is: @crazy_funny_asians)

Six months, only 4k followers. I am not sure if I am just wasting my time. Your advice would be really appreciated.

So about six months ago I started to test if I could build an IG page using the “viral content” method:

Basically I have been re-posting videos which has been already viral in other social media. I only chose latest videos which have received at least 100k likes in other platforms. And I am sure such videos did have viral potentials, because when I see the same videos being posted by other instagram pages (often later than I did), they 99% of the times go viral, having 100k to 1M views in days.

The thing is: very rarely, if ever, did such videos go viral when posted by my page. The max view count of the videos from my page was 60k. And normally the view counts are like 500 to 2000.

I know my page is still small, which partially explains about the tiny view counts. But I did find that some pages with similar size often receives 10 times more view counts posting the same video, which results in way faster growth. And some big pages seemed to have such success already from the beginning also.

I did grow my page “organically”, meaning no botting or fake followers etc. So I don’t think the “trust score” of my page is the problem. And I did choose videos carefully, avoiding the non-viral ones. I spent a lot of time every single day finding videos, that’s why I got to post the videos with “viral potentials” usually earlier than any other page in my niche. So it should not be result of posting the worn-out videos either.

I also made sure to engage with my followers the best I could: always replying to the comments and often interact with their pages also.

I have done analysis of many pages in my niche which have more than 100k followers. It seems many of them did grow in a way as mine did: by posting viral content only, without doing F/U or receiving powerlikes from other bigger pages. One example: @outofmind. And that’s why I had confidence in this method.

So my question is basically this: how does Instagram “decide” which page it “lets” go viral? When a video is posted by one page, why it could receive 200k views in short time; while the same video could only receive 2k views when posted by another page of similar size?

To give you an example: when the page @outofmind or @processvideo post a video, that video usually receives 500k to 1,5M views, which could bring in 10k followers per day. I am curious what makes such pages “favored” by Instagram? Such pages have less than 1M followers, but their videos have view counts as high as pages with 10-20M followers do (such as @lmao, @9gag, @tiktok). And such “favored” pages even seem to be doing what IG “experts” like to warn against, such as posting the same hashtags in all posts.

So if there is something I should do differently? Thank you in advance!

2 Likes
#2

To give a more concrete example: the page @wodertime, a page with less than 100k followers. Lately it has not been doing so well, probably due to using banned hashtags. But before that, its videos usually received 100k to 500k views, despite having all the “disadvantages”: the owner apparently speaks no English, so the captions often don’t even make sense. The owner never replies to comments or interacts with any other page. And it often posts things which don’t even fit its overal niche/theme at all (such as this ), making you wonder if it changed owner. It seems its owner doesn’t put much efforts into growing it. But it grows fast.

Meanwhile, the same person owns another page of similar size: @puptsspress. When the same video is posted by this page, it usually receives only 1k to 3k views.

Could anyone explain about this difference?

#3

His engagement is god awful. I’d assume those are fake followers he’s gaining and he’s preparing to sell shoutouts.

Not sure how real the views are, or if they’re even going viral tbh.

1 Like
#4

Instagram is hard work, specially if you are reposting content, and given that you were growing it organically you are not that bad for 4k. I´ve spent years working hard generating my own content and I was at 3000 followers. So you are indeed lucky.

If I were you reposting content I will totally automate it. But now with all the bans you need to research a lot before doing it.

2 Likes
#5

Did you mean @wodertime?

Well, I was suspecting the same thing about pages like that one, meaning I also thought they must have bought followers/views. Cuz often times, it posts so many wtf content which didn’t seem to have any viral potentials. But when I checked it with igblade, it did show that this page was steadily gaining followers by 100 to 1000 followers a day for months. And the view counts do vary quite much sometimes for that page. And the more views its video has in a certain day, the more new follower it would gain for that day. I doubt this could have happened, if it had bought followers/views.

2 Likes
#6

Thank you. Well, I do have a photography page which is 100% of my own works. It took me much longer time to gain 5000 followers than this viral video page. And I am okay with that, for the reason you also said.

I feel I am wasting time with my viral video page, only because I have seen many pages in that niche grow much much faster. And the owners of most such pages don’t even seem to care about their pages. So it’s frustating to me to see my page grow much much slower, when I have been putting much more efforts.

#7

As I said, use automation, I was able to grow a niche page reposting content from zero to 6k in 3 months using Jarvee without doing much.

1 Like
#8

My contents come from other platforms, so I have no idea how to automate that?

#9

With Jarvee you can automate all, creat a folder with all your files and put your images with the captions in there. You need to study Jarvee, is a very powerful tool. And also read this post to learn about all the new IG limits:

1 Like
#10

Thank you. I’d like to learn to use Jarvee for sure.

I am sure it could save some time for me. But what’s more “urgent” for me at this moment is to understand what factors make the big difference in terms of view counts in the viral content niche.

Using the pages I mentioned above as examples: two pages owned by the same person posting similar videos, but vastly different view counts resulting in vastly different follower gains. Could anyone shed light on this “mystery”? :slight_smile:

Page 1:

puptsspress
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Page 2:

wodertime
wodertime1080×918 85.9 KB

#11

And here is the growth chart of my own page, look how pathetic it is :wink:

CFA
CFA1108×872 83.5 KB

#12
  1. change the name making it shorter and get rid of the underscore '_; …
  2. Stop trying to compare your page with two others 100 times your size – fix on your own account.
  3. Get two more new accounts – same niche in different comedy sectors – main stream etc…

Thats to start.

now for the mental stuff – STOP looking at other accounts as a hungry man looking at somebody eating dinner. You need to develop the skill of getting/making content. I believe you already have it – now go for the white western market – they are bigger and have bigger clout on insta ( more numbers – does not make them better or worse – its the business model i am talking about.).
have main – this account on this thread – like and follow said 2 – or more accounts you create.

do this for one year – see what a difference it makes.

8 Likes
#13

Dude this is better results than many people would even get with Jarvee F/U. I would be so proud to see those numbers. You are doing fine!

You have to keep at it. 4 months? You think you’re gonna be IG famous in 4 MONTHS? You’ve gotta keep at it, you’ll get there.

4 Likes
#14

i know others who get 4k in a year – -- if honor and prestige is very big – go and create a tiktok account and cross promote you IG page to.

3 Likes
#15

Great insight guys!

1 Like
#16

Yeah @abovetherim, be happy with it. My personal photo page is growing even slower than yours (at around 6k currently) and the engagement rate has tanked from 7% to 4% due to all the Instagram changes lately.

2 Likes
#17

Thank you so much Albert! Always appreciate your insights!

  1. I use “underscores” between words, because I thought they make the name easier to perceive. Or do you think that’s a bad idea?

  2. No, I was not trying to compare with other accounts. Of course I know they are way bigger and I can’t expect the same view numbers etc. for my page at this point. I was just using them as examples to illustrate something I have been wondering about: what makes some pages way more successful in terms of “reach” than others in the same niche, when these pages are of similar sizes and post very similar content? Why some pages seem to be much more favored by IG? And what could we do to have our pages more “favored” too?

Did you mean I should create two more accouts in the same niche but with different focus. For example, one account would post funny animal videos only. Something like that?

Did you mean I should post more videos which feature Western people or Western-culture related stuff?

Should these accounts be on different IP address, or does that matter?

Thank you a lot again!

#18

Thank you for the encouragement, man! Well, I wouldn’t have been so frustrated with my growth, had I never come to this board ;). But the numerous posts here made me believe 100 followers/day should be the minimum, otherwise one doesn’t know what he is doing. No sarcasm with that. I really thought that’s what I should expect.

Of course I didn’t plan to get “IG famous” in months. I just thought my growth is way below the “normal” growth speed people talk about here, so I must be doing it wrong. That’s why I asked. :slight_smile:

#19

What’s your thoughts on tiktok btw? Can you see it as the next big thing, and one should “establish” there ASAP, when it’s still relative new and raw, like IG in its early days?

#20

Funny my personal photography page is of similar size and engagement rate, and I am totally fine with its “slow” growth.

But with my new page of viral videos which was the topic here, I thought a much faster growth rate should be expected. That’s why I was asking for advice here :slight_smile: