How I get more views AND clients from Instagram (Strategy for results)

So after posting over a thousand videos on my Instagram feed, posting tens of thousands of Instagram stories, this resulting in hundreds of new clients and millions of dollars of new revenue, I can safely say that there is one strategy that has led to the most success for me. And honestly, it's something that every entrepreneur or anybody who's trying to build a personal brand can implement today. And of all the things you do on social media, this is going to be the most important because this is the absolute foundation for how you get business online. And that is proving to the audience that you are really good at what you do. In other words, proving competence. Proving competence is one of the most important things you can do online because it tells the audience, hey, I really know what I'm doing. I'm an expert, I've helped clients and I can help you do the same thing. And honestly, you don't even have to be a full blown expert at anything. You just have to have gone from A to B or helped clients go to A to B and now you can show other people how to do the same thing. If you're like me, you have a lot of knowledge to share, but sometimes you feel like it's too basic, or you may feel like, hey, I'm not a full blown expert. But that should not stop you from this strategy. In fact, sometimes the most beginner basic information does the best. So that's why I'm really stressing the fact that before we get get into this strategy, if you have knowledge to share, you're qualified to do this. And do not exclude yourself from this strategy because it will transform your business. So in this video, I'm going to give you the specific topics that really prove competence in the most effective ways on social media. And this blueprint is the result of me testing hundreds of ideas and finding out which ones resonate the most. Not necessarily in terms of reach and views, but in terms of respect from clients and generating actual business. Now, some of these videos have taken off and actually gone viral, but that's not necessarily the goal. And sometimes that's just happens by accident because you're doing such a good job at this strategy. Now, as far as platforms for where you should be posting these videos, I am getting the most results from Instagram because of two things. One is Instagram reels can have the potential to go viral for free. They can reach a lot of people, just like YouTube shorts. But for me, I really prefer Instagram because of the DMs. Your videos can lead to DM conversations most of the strategies that I teach lead to conversions through Instagram Stories and through Direct messenger, which is really only possible today on Instagram. So I would focus on there because it's the ideal demographic, it's the ideal platform for the content that you're making. And the DMs are the best place to create conversations and connect with more clients and get business. All right, so let's get into it. The first topic, and this is the one that I spend a lot of time on, is teaching information to the consumer. So you want to research what are consumers looking for. You can do this by going to sites like answerthepublic.com or Google Trends, and you can actually use ChatGPT as well for certain things. But you want to make sure you're coming up with the most up to date current information because consumer search behavior is always changing. What people are looking for today is different than last week, last month, or last year. So once you know what people are looking for, what are the questions on your consumer's mind? You can make content around those topics and teach them something. But here's the thing, you have to do it in an innovative way. On social media, you only have about 30 to 40 seconds. We've seen these videos perform the best somewhere in the range of 30 to 40 seconds, and you want to start them with a good hook. The hook is going to grab the viewer's attention and make them curious. The best hooks make people wonder, what are you going to say next? So even if it's a boring topic, you can take that boring topic and give it a strong hook, and that will keep the viewer engaged. Another way you can come up with topics to teach on social media is to make a list of the common questions you're getting from consumers and problems that you help them solve. If you keep this list running, you'll be able to take each one of those items and turn it into a compelling short form video on social. And again, you need to start these videos with a good hook, otherwise they're going to be dead on arrival. That is the only way that you can get free organic reach on platforms like Instagram right now. So I'll give you guys a quick example. I work with a lot of people in the real estate and mortgage industry and they might have a new product that would help buyers buy a home. And many people will make the mistake of talking about that specific product. They'll pop on social and say, hey, I want to tell you about the XYZ program that's going to Help you buy a house. Well, here's the thing. You do not want to talk about the actual product. You want to talk about the benefit of the product. So for example, if that product's benefit was it helped you buy a home, even if you don't have the best credit or you had a small down payment, then the hook for that would be, what if I told you that there was a program that would help you buy a home even if you don't have the best credit? And by the way, you don't even have to put a lot of money down. It's called XYZ Program and here's how it works. That would be the way I'd start that video in order to get more reach. So that's just a basic example, but you can apply this to any industry. You just want to put the benefit first and then talk about the product and then wrap it up. So one of the formulas could be hook, problem, solution, or you could just start with the hook and then get into the actual program or whatever it is that you're educating the audience on in that video. All right, so the next way that you can prove competence on social media is going to be to explain the news. At any point in time, for any industry, there's always going to be something going on in the news that affects your consumer. What you want to do is take that complex news topic and turn it into a 30 second summary for your audience. You're doing your audience a big service by distilling a complex topic into a simple short form video. So for example, again, going back to mortgage and real estate, I could say something like this. Maybe the Federal Reserve did something that affects the housing market. I would say, hey, here's what you need to know about XYZ topic in 37 seconds, here's the most important news that you missed last week. And then I would get into a 30 to 40 second summary of that trending topic because I know that this is something that's in the news and it's on everybody's mind. And by the way, if you have an opinion on the news topic and how it affects your consumer, make sure you insert that into the video because that's going to provide the viewer even more value. Stay on top of how the current events and news affects your consumer really positions you as a thought leader and is another way to really prove competence online. The next topic or way to prove competence is going to be sharing success stories. The reason why this works incredibly well is because nothing sells like results. People Love to see somebody get the same result that they've been looking for. And they can picture themselves in that position. What you want to do with these success stories is show how people went from A to B, the problems that you had to overcome, the things that you had to help them with in order to get that successful outcome. Again, looking back to a mortgage or real estate story, you could say something like, hey, this client came to us, they didn't really qualify, or they were having a hard time buying this property or the market was really difficult, but here's what we did to get them the result. And it wasn't easy. But I'm so excited because today they're getting the keys to their new home. And I couldn't be more excited for these people. And again, I'm just giving you this as an example, but you can apply this to any industry. The goal of a success story is to empower the audience and to qualify them. So many times people are watching social media and they're saying, oh, it's easy for him to say, it's easy for her to say, I can't do that. And they're disqualifying themselves. What you want to do is put out content that qualifies them. You want to show solutions. And when you show a real life example of one of these solutions, I'm telling you, nothing will work better than this. Now, these success story videos can go in the Instagram feed or they can go on your Instagram stories. And I'll give you a bonus tip here, which is a preview of an upcoming video. But when we post these success stories in our Instagram stories, we do a call to action right afterwards. And this results in a ton of new business. There's a formula for doing this in your Instagram stories, so stay tuned for that video, which I'm going to be posting here in the upcoming weeks. And another tip for doing these success stories is to try and get the client to do it. So many times when we will ask the client to send us a video, or if we're at a closing of a transaction, or if you're with the client, you could just shoot it for them. And if you ask them a question and they respond, they may not be the best on camera, they may give you a long winded answer that you you had. But the thing is, you can clean this up in editing. I recently had a client give me a testimonial. I asked them a question and they responded. And it wasn't really directed towards me, it was just More telling their story. This was a great success story, but the problem was she talked for over three minutes. I was able to cut the most impactful parts out out of that video, edit it down to about 40 seconds, and it turned out to be one of our best success stories. Now, the next topic that you can post content about that's going to prove competence is going to be sharing your opinion about X. Now, ideally, your opinion is going to be somewhat controversial or maybe something that is contrary to what the industry would normally say. The reason why this works is so many people are afraid to share their opinions because they don't want to offend people. But here's the thing. If you don't stand for something, then you stand for nothing. And according to the viewer, you just blend in with everybody else. In order to truly stand out, you have to share your opinion, and that does not mean that you have to be offensive with it. You can genuinely share an opinion that you have about a news topic, about something that's going on in the industry, about something that your competitor does that maybe you do different. Maybe there's a standard industry practice that you do different, that you stand against. And in that case, it's going to separate you from your entire competition. For example, in many industries, they take a cookie cutter approach, like an assembly line, and maybe you do things a little bit different where you take a custom approach, you go deeper with each client to get them better results. That would be something you could give your opinion about, which would separate you from everybody else. So really think about this one, because this one can actually lead to the most upside, especially if you do it correctly. Look at things that are happening within your industry and give your opinion on them. Look at things that are happening with consumers and give your opinion on them and back it up with results. And you'll see these videos connect with a ton of people. Now, the last topic I'll talk about in this video that really proves competence is showing how to do something. A tutorial. This is something that works really well because you're really teaching the viewer how they could do something on their own. Now, inevitably, they're going to reach out to you because they need your help with it. But people love to feel empowered. They love to learn something, especially millennials. And if you notice, millennials are the largest generation in the history of this country, and they are the biggest buyers of almost every product and service out there today. So you want to feed into this by teaching them how to do things on their own. So, for example, again, in the mortgage and real estate industry. Maybe it's a tip that you have to help get your clients results. Maybe it's something that they can do to improve their credit score. Maybe it's something that they can do to make a budget to come up with a down payment. You want to teach topics that would help them get on the right track, help them do things on their own so they could be in the best position to have success for themselves. Everybody loves the latest trick hack secret. So if you can show these in simple tutorials, that's going to work really well on social media. And keep in mind it doesn't have to be super advanced. Again, it could be something super basic. Because here's what most content creators continue to forget. If you you're doing something in your industry, you're doing it every day, 365 days a year, or maybe five days a week, 52 weeks a year. The consumer might do that only once in every few years. So in that case, even the most basic information is going to be valuable to them. Don't take for granted that hey, this is too simple, they're already going to know it. Most of the times you're going to be wrong on this. They do not know it. Somebody needs that information. You just have to present it in a way that's going to reach them and that they're going to save, share and really utilize the to build that connection with you. And for this topic, I would keep a running list in whatever notes app that you're using. Think about the things that you do for your clients and how you could show them on social media. Keep it simple and keep the videos again to about 30 to 40 seconds on the social media feed. If you want to make a longer YouTube video where you go deeper, that's perfectly fine. But for social, for the best reach, you got to keep it simple. And I'll give you one bonus tip here. If you're ever in doubt of whether you should put more information into the video or not, you can just give them the high level. In the video you want to leave some questions unanswered because you can address them in the caption or in the comments. Many times we'll leave things out of a video because the wheels are turning and then they're going to ask you a question. You want the question in the comments or in the DMs because this is going to result in more engagement and more conversations with your potential clients. And another way that you can come up with even more ideas for your Tutorial videos is going to be looking at, like, what are the things that you do to help clients? As far as, like, what do you think is a secret? What do you think is a trick that you use to help clients save time, money, anything like that, that's going to be really valuable to the viewer because here's the thing, if you have any competitors who are really good at what they do, just like you, it's not going to be a secret. They probably know the same thing and they're just reluctant to say it. But by you saying it, you really position yourself as a true expert and this is going to attract even more clients. I can't tell you how many times consumers have watched these videos where I was afraid to give away an industry secret. But then they turned around and that was the specific reason why they reached out months later to do business with us. So with all of the topics that I discussed in this video, if you think about doing this every single week, 52 weeks a year, it's going to compound and it's going to build you an insanely powerful personal brand. Now, there's other things that you have to do to make this successful, such as sharing more of your personal life, shooting these in the right way, engaging on the platform, but if you don't have this foundation of valuable content, you're not going to be able to generate the ROI from your social media. And for me, in the beginning, it was all about, hey, getting the views, trying to go viral. But at the end of the day, if you're in business, nothing moves the needle like getting more business results. And that's what I'm really focused on these days, is trying to get more actual results. And honestly, I've seen more videos take off using this formula than before when I was just chasing views and virality. It sounds a bit counterintuitive, but by doing this strategy, rather than just trying to go viral, you actually might go viral more often. Now, as far as how to shoot these videos and the other parts of the strategy, make sure you're subscribe to this channel because I do release more videos. And then to go really deep, we have a group that goes over all of this and more. We have modules, we have biweekly zoom calls. So if you wanna learn more about how to get into that program, it's called Neil's Content Accelerator. There's a link in the description below. We actually did a special deal for up to 25 people from this exact video. So if you wanna take advantage of that, check out the link in the description below asap. And if you have a question on anything that I covered in this video, make sure you drop a comment below and I'll answer each and every one of you. That's all I got for this one. I will see you guys on the next video.