0 posts in 30 days & gained 2K NEW followers

I took an entire 30 day break from Instagram, yet I still gained 2000 followers. How the heck did I do that? Hey, I'm Marissa Grace. I built my Instagram to 81,000 followers with over 20 plus million Reels views and I built my bridal business to half a million dollars in just three years. So let's get into it. So there's a couple things that we need to dive into when it comes to taking a break on Instagram and still gaining followers. So the break was because my mental capacity just wasn't there. So what I really want you to take away from this video is it's ok. Take a break from posting on Instagram. It's coming from the girl who used to post every single day for about two years in a row. Yes, I would post every single day for two years in a row. But we were moving and I just didn't have the mental capacity to move as well as post and create content because I'm a business of one. I don't have a team that is making my social media content. That's posting it, that's interacting. That's dming with you. No, it's just me here. So what I realize is I got to get my priorities straight and my priorities at the time was my personal life. So I had to dial back. So I got my priorities straight and I realized I'm not going to be posting for this amount of time and that's okay. So I took my focus from visibility with my Instagram and instead I moved it to building community. But you might be like, okay Marissa, you changed your focus from visibility to community, but you still were able to get visible and get followers. Now I have a few ideas of how I was still able to get so much visibility with my posts. Even though I wasn't showing up on my feed and I was only showing up on my stories. The first thing that I realized is that it came down to the shelf life of my posts. Now I used to hear that the shelf life of reels was about 90 days, meaning you could post a reel and it's going to circulate inside the Instagram feed for about 90 days versus a static post. A single post. A carousel feed post is only going to have a shelf life of about 48 hours. Now I'm calling total BS on that because the shelf life of my carousel post is really what was giving me so much visibility as well as my reels. So at the time when I took the break and then after the 30 days of not posting I looked inside of my insights and I was looking at my notifications and my notifications. I was still getting engagement, meaning likes, comments, shares on my carousel post that I posted a year earlier. An entire year ago, people were still engaging with it, which told me that your feet post can circulate for longer than 48 hours. That means that it hit the Explore page and it was getting me visibility and driving traffic over to my profile outside of that 48 hour shelf life window. Now why do I believe this? It's extremely unlikely that somebody found my profile through another piece of my content and scrolled all the way back to a year ago. Because I post a lot, so that is a consideration that could be likely. However, it's much more likely that somebody found one of my feed posts on the Explore page and then went and liked, comment and shared on that post. So for you, how can you capitalize that within your own content? What it taught me is that you absolutely can still get visibility and awareness and traffic from feed posts. And not just reels. Yes, reels is more so going to bring you people who don't know you yet, but your carousels and your feed posts can still do the same thing with the Explore page. So don't just post reels, you gotta post your carousel posts as well. They're just as important. If your focus is visibility on Instagram, meaning you want more followers, you want more brides to know about your services, you want more people coming over to your profile every single day. You want to make sure that you're focusing your content on something that's going to hit the Explore page. Posts inside of the Explore page have a shelf life past 48 hours. Meaning posts that are inside of the Explorer page isn't something that was just posted within 48 hours. It's a lot longer than that. Now, for your content to hit the Explore page and for it to actually get engagement past the 48 hours that you post it, you want to make sure that it's something that is capturing somebody's attention because we have these shortest attention spans. And for something to hit the Explore page, it needs to be a post that when you post it, it's getting immediate engagement likely within the first 24 hours. If you post something and it's getting a lot of likes, comments, shares and saves within the first 24 hours of you posting it, it's much more likely to hit the Explore page. The next reason I believe I was able to take a 30 day break from Instagram and still gain 2000 followers inside of that 30 days not posting on my feed at all is shareability. The content that I post it prior to me taking a break is very shareable content. Actually all of the content that I share is majority shareable posts, meaning somebody is more likely to DM it to a friend or share to their Instagram stories, which Adam Moziri, the head of Instagram came out a couple months ago and said this is the number one metric that they track in order to push out your content to more people. Which is something I've always focused on with inside of my Instagram strategy and it's something that inside of my program bridalpreneur socials I doubled down on because I know it's the most important metric inside of Instagram. My entire conversion content 10 strategy of how to turn your views into bridal bookings I break it down inside of bridalpreneur socials and we focus on the shareability content to join us inside, it's linked down below. However, getting back into the shareability content, what pieces of content did I share prior to me taking a break that were shareable Prior to me taking a break? I was posting a lot of reels which is more likely for somebody to share to a friend or DM it, AKA getting my content in front of new followers. That means are more likely to go over to my profile and want to follow me. There were two specific reels that were really the one carrying the team inside of this Instagram strategy. One reel got a couple hundred thousand views and another reel actually hit into the millions. They single handedly carried the team on their back this season. Well done Low bun disaster. Well done. And what this tells me is something that I've already known which is reels is single handedly the best way for you to get your content and profile in front of newer audiences. So for you, how can you capitalize on this shareability content? What I want you to do is go over to your Instagram profile, go through your content and what I want you to do is think of it in a lens of asking yourself these questions. Would I share this piece of content to a friend? Would I share this piece of content to my Instagram stories? If the answer is no, it's likely not a shareable piece of content. Now what kind of content do people want to share? Majority of shareable content is entertaining meaning something that's going to make them laugh or something that they enjoy. Something that makes them feel good inside. Right? Content that makes you lol irl. So knowing this, it Brings me to consistency of posting. So if you're somebody who's watching this video, if you're listening to this video and you're saying to yourself, I want to not post on my feed and still be gaining new followers daily, we're gonna pop back for a second and do a hot girl check in. Because I have to be so serious with you. This didn't happen overnight. And what actually was a big contributing factor was the fact that I did post consistently, pretty much every single day for two years in a row. And I was already building that momentum on my profile. The Instagram. Instagram algorithm knew my content. They knew what I was posting. They knew how to distribute it out to people who would enjoy that piece of content. So bigger audiences. And what I don't want you to take away from this is, oh, she had a reel that hit in the millions. This didn't happen because of one viral reel. And this wouldn't have happened if I only post it for one month out of the entire year. It happened because it was a buildup of momentum of me consistently posting on my Instagram since 2021. And it would be an absolute major disservice to you for me to sit here and say, you cannot on Instagram for 30 days straight and still expect to gain 2,000 followers. Now, if you are somebody who is posting consistently and you're building that momentum on your page and you want to take a break, it's okay. That's what I'm saying. Your Instagram isn't going to totally break, because you need to realistically ask yourself, would you want to follow somebody who's only posting once a month on their Instagram? Probably not. What's in it for them if they're not receiving content from you consistently? As humans, we crave comfort, reliability, consistency in all aspects of our lives. And that's what we like with inside of creators. And think about the creator that you absolutely love, the person that You Love on YouTube, the person that you always make sure you're checking up with them, even if you haven't seen your post their posts on your feed on Instagram, on TikTok, on any of those platforms, they typically post the same consistent things that make you feel good inside. So although I wasn't focusing on visibility and I was focusing on community, I stopped posting on my feed. But what I did was I posted more on my Instagram stories, and I was sharing more Instagram stories than I typically was because I wanted to make sure that I wasn't totally ghosting My people, I'm active pretty much daily while I build out your program that takes your bridal business from five figures to six figures. So my feed content has taken a little bit of a vacation, but she will be back. Enrollment for Bridal Boss Academy for your program that's going to take you from five figures in your bridal business to six figures opens back up in November. So if you want to hop in on the wait list and be the first to know with the guests exclusive access and those good pre sale deals, make sure you sign up for the waitlist link down below. So if you're somebody who's going through maybe a change right now, or maybe you need to work more in your business instead of on your business, meaning you don't have time to consistently post on Instagram right now. I want you to know it's okay if you can't post right now. What I want you to do is look at your calendar and say, what can I give to Instagram? What can I give to social media right now? And if it's not posting, what I don't want you to do is just totally go socials completely. If you can't post for the next 30 days, double down on showing up on your stories because that's easier to create inside in the moment versus something that's going to be staying on your feed. Right? Because if you've been consistently posting for six months to a year, it's okay to take that break. If you're just starting out, I don't recommend taking a break for you right now. What I would do is instead scale back how much you're posting weekly. So if you're posting five times a week, maybe scale back to two times a week. Because if you take a break from Instagram, your business isn't going to break and your Instagram isn't magically going to disappear. Now that we got some tactics on how to get visibility on Instagram so we can take a break and take care of our mental health first, I'd be doing you another massive disservice if I didn't talk about what kind of attention and what kind of visibility you actually want to track with your Instagram. So if you watch this or you're listening to this and afterwards you're like, okay, I heard the message is the shareability content. I'm going to go out and create that entertaining LOL content. What I need you to do is take a step back and think to yourself, if you're going to be attracting a bride or if you're going to be attracting a stylist, nine times out of 10, when I see stylists or makeup artists create entertaining content, what it winds up being is content that is funny to a professional. So it's something that me and you would laugh at. But if your bride saw it, she's not lol ing. She's like, feeling bad about herself. So what I don't want you to do is create that content that's funny to a professional if that's not who you're trying to attract. So if you're trying to attract a bride into your audience, ask yourself, what's something that she would find funny? What's something that you guys would talk about in person that would be funny? That's what I would create. If you're doing those meme reels or you're doing one of those sounds, let's do the audience attraction audit. Before you create it and before you post it, ask yourself, would this be funny to a hairstylist or to a bride? Would a bride share this piece of content or would a makeup artist. Will this attract brides as followers or will this attract hairstylists followers? Those are three things I want you to keep in mind when you're creating your content. Whenever you're ready to dive deeper into creating a conversion content strategy to turn your views into bookings, as well as getting your content more visible inside of the algorithm. I break everything down step by step inside of Bridal Preneur Socials, and it's linked down below. Can't wait to see you inside, and I'll see you guys in the next one. Bye.