How To Win On Instagram In 2026

Let's all be all welcome to another episode of sweat equity in this episode. So I packaged together essentially an entire guide on how to win on Instagram in 2026. It's going to cover everything that I've done as a creator. A lot of the things that we've even covered in cut 30 that then we bring over to the brand side. It's a lot easier to test things as a creator because you could flop and not have to answer to the. Yeah, to the higher up totally. So you're able to test a lot more shit, but essentially put together and on top of all the stuff that we do for brands. We work with 15, 20 different brands at a time developing their concerts, dragging, producing a lot of the content. And so with that, I've put together this, I mean, this is going to be a long episode. Which should not scare you because when you did this the first time, I remember it was your like how I went zero to 40k followers on Instagram. I would argue was one of the most valuable episodes we've ever provided people. You literally just gave you know, $200,000 worth of game over the course of like a single YouTube episode. So even though this one's long, I mean, I would recommend no taking it and actually paying attention because it's going to be fine. What does that appreciate it? So we're going to go into the first element is as a brand, if you're again, I want to prep us this with, these are for brands that aren't winning on social yet. Or maybe they've had like hints of success, but they're not, no, they're not the ALD. Yeah, yeah, right? Like they're not that brand in a moment. So if you're getting started and if you're starting to build out your content strategy, then you need to develop and understand what archetype you're going to fall into or develop. Right. And there's multiple archetypes that you can, you can essentially build out for your brand. The first one being a lifestyle archetype. Right. If you're trying to be a little bit more of a lifestyle integration and in, in integrating your product into a lifestyle, then you have to understand how to build content pillars underneath that. You could look at the sweet greens of the world, which honestly, they're, like I have a content playbook coming out about them, they're crushing. I would highly encourage you look at their, their IG where, you know, sweet green is fairly expensive for what you get. But it is more so about the lifestyle that it's the Lulu lemon individual. You know what I'm saying? It's the Lulu lemon individuals. A person that works out of collective equal. Walking around with the bull and kind of makes, you know, it's just case that it's, it's a, nobody walks around with a Chipotle bull. No, we have Chipotle on the way. Nobody walks around with a chipotle. I'm hiding that thing. We're hiding it. It's, you can't even see it. It's all who hovers the Chipotle bull in my passengers. Like I don't want anyone to even see it. 100%. It was, so we got it on the dash. Yeah. The, the lifestyle element of that is they look at the lifestyle that somebody that buys sweet green wants to live or the things that are important to them, meaning they want to see the, the farm that the chicken was raised out. Right. They want to see where their eggs are coming from. They want to see all of those elements that say, hey, I eat organic. I eat farm raised. Right. And so by focusing on a lifestyle archetype, you have to figure out the lifestyle that somebody wants to live and then you have to then understand how you're going to develop an archetype on social where you integrate that into it. Bandit runs another one where it is this individual. It's not the, the person that's probably like, I am going to the Olympic trials. It's the individual that takes running very seriously. But at the same time, they're, where a specific, you know, they, they, they're more high and fast. They picked up running in the last five years. It's a positive. A positive. Yeah. 100. It's a status signal rather than it is. But that's also a life powerful place to be the brand. 100%. The next one is an inspirational archetype. So I have this friend, Kevin, who he's the founder of one of the co-founders of everyday better club. I don't know if you've seen them on, on IG. I did 110,000 followers to the brand account in the last 30 days. Shish. 30 days. That's the multiple format that he's just scared. If you actually go to his page, you would see style. You'd be like, oh, I've definitely seen these multiple videos up down like 20 million views, 10 million views, five million views. Some got, I think one got 25 million views. But it's the same format just changing the text all playing into this inspirational archetype. Right. And so at that point, you're looking at the individual that is aspiring to, or sorry, that needs to be inspired to live some kind of, like, become some kind of individual and live some kind of way. And therefore you're the resource of inspiration. They see your brain as, as the, the, the, the brain that is going to inspire them to become that individual, right? It's like, it's like the bridge from who I am to where I want to go. Totally. Third is the aspirational archetype. I don't know how to say this name perfectly, but La Matazzoco, you know what I'm talking about, right? That espresso brand. Yeah, yeah. The aspirational archetype is your plane, instead of almost like that buck mason into, I was even put buck mason, obviously, into, into there. Mm-hmm. The person that's, hey, I don't, I don't have a old, like classic portion 9/11. I don't have, I can't, maybe I can't afford La Matazzoco espresso machine for my house, but I want to live that life's down. I'm taking steps every day. I'm willing to be of fan. I want to put you on my mood board 100%. Yeah. Like the perfect way to you. You want to be on my mood board, but I can't buy it quite yet. It's the mood board brand 100% the aspirational archetype. Then you have the educational archetype. This is, I don't know if you've seen the armor drink TV. Mm-hmm. I'll send it to you very good, just like, their whole thing is these beautiful, cinematic, how to make like this kind of drink, how to make this kind of like dessert or appetizer. But they play into the educational archetype where, hey, this, my page is a resource for you, right? You come to my page, you're going to learn how to make the best drinks. I mean, you're going to feel high class when you do it. Are these like mocktails or their cocktails? Summer cocktails. I love this cupid logo. They got go sick, isn't it? You're just sick brand. I have to do so much for their shit saved. Are they international data? No, they look foreign. Do they just the fashion? You can get away with growing up in Texas, but they look slot. They look hella fly. Yeah. Next you have, they're sorry, back to educational archetype. Your whole goal here, and I should establish this for each one, your whole goal here as educational archetype is to become the resource, right? As soon as you're the resource, then people are going to buy a few because it's the easiest way to build. And another way to think about that is like, what are you optimizing for? Because Instagram cares about a few key things. Yeah. So they care about watch time, care about likes. But I think with likes, they want to see a one to one likes to share as well as a one to one likes to bookmarks. Yeah. And so for this educational brand, like you're talking about, I think they're much more optimized towards you. You want to see that one to one likes to bookmarks on most of your content. And people need to be more dedicated to looking at their analytics. I'm waiting there. I'm getting there. And so now to bury the lead there. And then for this aspirational brand, that's someone you want to, you want a lot of shares, right? Yo, babe, we got to get this thing whenever we make it. Like, oh my God, do you see this? Like we have to buy this eventually. So you're getting shares from that, but education, I think you want to go more towards the book, weren't you? Yes. Then you have the documentary. And this is a, I would say a newer archetype that we've kind of seen rise to the top in the last few years. And so the documentary is the individual who's basically opening the door and saying, hey, like take a seat and watch the journey as, as it unfolds. Watches build. Typically it's a brand getting started versus a more established brand. Bad ominous. Obviously, one of the pod favorites is go to that this, you have softies, burgers, who I've talked about as well. Where so bad ominous talks about their journey of, of Hank quitting his nine to five job to build the frozen bean and cheese, Bredo company, softies, burgers, they take a whole different kind of approach where they document through the lens of we're going to drop an episode in that episode is going to focus on like one specific lesson. So it'll be like money problems. It'll be like hiring or etcetera, right? Like it just has a central theme for each episode. And the whole goal of that is to build affinity out the gate, right? And so as if you're developing yourself or, or you want to be portrayed as this archetype or develop this archetype, then you have to be essentially an open book and giving people a front row seat to your journey every step of the way. Then you have the entertainment archetypes. And with the entertaining archetype, you're going to pull, you could pull some elements of like documenting. You could pull some elements of lifestyle, right? But you could look at them in day squares who they're very, very entertaining. You could look at a nitro bar. You could look at rumies like they're thoroughly plain into an entertaining archetype where there has to be a main character. You can have a lifestyle archetype in higher actors, right? Because you're just trying to put it's more so a lot of times about the aesthetic in the world. Yeah. Whereas an entertaining or an entertainment driven archetype is really driven about the personality and the characters involved. And then lastly, you can create a fictional archetype, which is a lot harder and requires a lot more budget to do in a lot of cases. One of the best accounts I've seen at this, I don't think we've talked about them Fern. Have you seen them? If you are, look at them. Why you look at that up, I'll bring up the other one, Lake checkout. I've talked about them multiple times when they built this entire fictional world, all these different characters, but Fern literally builds like this, like house on the prairie, type five for their perfume. And company. Yes. Where they're producing legitimate movies for their collections and for their drops. It's sick. But as a coming for Laylabo, it's due. I love their contact. Good example of like, you know, why that one million followers, I'm just sleep, I guess, but no, I mean, seriously, like if they're coming for Laylabo, like this is a point of differentiation that Laylabo will never nail. Yeah. Right. Like I think sweet green you brought up earlier is an example of what this looks like at an enterprise level. That's probably a CEO who's cool with investing in the channel and then like that unicorn social person. Really hard to plan for having a unicorn social person. If you're Fern, like the way to displace these incumbent players is like to really lean into, you know, your content strategy and meeting customers where they are, not being legacy. Let me, let me send you probably one of the most crazy video clips I've, I've just ever seen that you're like, you see the first, it's called the wild apple heist. Hmm. They dropped this in autumn, 2025. They dropped this 16 weeks ago. They literally dropped a legitimate movie for this. Yeah. That's crazy. Talk about a fictional world. Like talk about a literal master piece of a piece of content. Yeah. That is just you see that and watch as it continues to evolve. Look at like the some of the things that are happening with like them climbing up the ladder and going into like, this is a fucking cinematic. It's a cinematic brain rot, which is maybe something that he will should be like. I love more. Yeah. Cinematic brain rot. It is. It is such a good piece of content. And I mean, it goes to show why they have a million followers. They have another one. How to, how to steal apples and get away with it, built taken from the same production that I'm going to, uh, get, going to drop for you. That's, I mean, it's just amazing, amazing content. But it's this fictional world that they've created around their brand that again, like this requires a big budget. If you, if you have an investment, like right, like if you, if you have $10 million in the bank, if you have $20 million in the bank, because you, you raised capital, go ahead, go this, you know what I mean? Like go this route. And if you don't like, you know, take this as inspiration, I mean, I'm not going to advocate. I'm not a big AI creative person, but at the end of the day, like you can, like this is an example of using AI to like really, you know, create an association with people and entertain them in a way that's not going to come off as, um, slop. Yeah. I feel like, I mean, I think, obviously the appreciation for this is probably a little bit of the production quality, but it's more so like what you just said, there's a lot of Easter eggs, like the climbing ladders made way through the run. Like it's, it's weird. Um, feels like some oompa lupus shit. It's crazy. Honest with you. It's crazy. Um, but yeah. So again, as a brand is, is, Hey, I'm going to tackle organic. You have to develop that archetype and understand what lane you're going to, um, really run through. Now, second is, as you evolve, as you get more established, let's say you've nailed the educational side. Hey, we're growing very fast. We need to add more layers into it. Now you can add other archetypes into your content, right? You could add a second archetype. It's more of now a, a hybrid approach. So I'll look at an established brand who does this very well, but they didn't start doing this very, or they didn't start like this. So I've talked about BP and a hundred times, right? But this would be one of one and for a different reason where BP and is multiple different archetypes in one, they have the aspirational lens where Nick is aspirational, right? And like everything that Nick does is aspirational to the individual that is doing high rocks and, and doing marathon. There's an educational archetype where they break down or he breaks down. Hey, here's how I'm eating. Here's how you need to eat. Here's how you need to train. Here's, right? Like there's a lot of how to's. But then there's the documentary archetype or the documentary archetype where I'm going to try to achieve this in the next 16 weeks. Therefore, I'm going to show you step by step. Now where it gets interesting, as you become better with content, which is the key element here, you can integrate a lot of archetypes into one piece of content, which is where I can send pillars. Would you recommend they nail it first? That's what I think evolved, right? Yeah, yeah. That's what I say. So after you nail one, I nail, let's say we nail lifestyle or you and I have nailed educational archetype, right? Maybe not the last three weeks for me, but you know, education. I know that I'm just again. Yeah. Now I'm adding in the documentary. That's how I know. That's how you know your boy is actually down bad when, when instead of roasting, you know, it's like, no, you got it. You got it. And you know like it has it been in. I was like, I can't kick about it. So, but like you literally saw me cut, do it today where educational dial. Cool. I know what's working there. Yeah, I'm messing with different formats. I'm going to build the muscle. Yeah, bro. Yeah. Now I am, I mean, like you walked in here and I said, hey, Brian, I need you to walk through that door again. I need you to get this clip. That'll be. Yes, for you. Like there's going to be a lot of documents. We're going to document how we're going to get to 100,000 subs because we're going to get to 100,000 subs. Please like and subscribe because that's the goal. But you can add these different archetypes into your content, but you do that as you win. Back at, you know, I think when I talked about the zero to 40,000, at that point, I was not doing YouTube. I wasn't doing, I didn't post on Twitter. I didn't post on LinkedIn. It was like, hey, I am only going to win on IG. So therefore I focused on IG. And then as I got better, I'm like, okay, now I'm going to do YouTube, right? Like that is you need to take that same approach. Now the next element that you need to focus on is your testing strategy. No one talks about this because they, they go into content strategy saying, Hey, I need to win out the gate. And therefore they think I'm going to put it together this master plan. And that master plan typically crumbles within a week. You know, like I know how I can grow. I can rip a good content, bad content, green screen right now. And I know I'll grow. But guess what? I'm doing a testing strategy right now. Like there's things that are getting 10,000 views, 15,000 views. And then there's something that gets 100,000 views. I'm testing a bunch of stuff and I'm testing religiously. I'm testing how close I am to the camera, how wide angle I am, where the text is, Val, probably hate how many times I ask her to change the text from up here to here to the color to it. Like I'm testing so many things. And so as you develop your content strategy, you have to have a testing strategy. And the way I would tell you to do this is develop one concept. And then you're going to test it, produce it three times. And you're not going to bat shoot it. You're going to produce it one at a time. That's key. You're going to produce one concept at a time. And then you're going to create that concept three times. And then every single time you make the next version of it, you need to make an iteration to it. So you're going to do three concepts with three iterations with a 3% difference every time. That is how you're going to test. You know, that's how you're going to test your concept. Two of that essentially get it to perform very well. And I'll give you an example. There is a show that we created called History of Leather for a brand. First iteration of the content got 10, 10, like 15,000 views on YouTube. We looked at all the things within the retention graph, three second Vray average watch time, which I'm going to talk about in a second. The next iteration of that all got 100 plus thousand views. Right. For a brand that that's never done any, you know, that format, any content like that. So the things that we change were our iterations were based on the opening frame, the action that was done, the angle that it was shot at, right? Like all of these different elements, but they were all added into the next iteration. And so as you develop these concepts, if something flops, that's okay. Look at the metrics like you were saying where something can flop and still have the right metrics to base it. You say this has potential. You know what I mean? Like if I do good content for his bad content and I see that one to one ratio, but I just see the average watch time a bit lower than it needs to be, then it's like, okay, like I have a scripting problem. Yeah, you concept. It's like you had a good hook rate, but the watch time is low. Yeah. Therefore somewhere around like the seven to 15 second mark, you should have introduced something a little more juicy 100%. Yeah. And so for I am an advocate for testing strategy because you want to have a testing strategy before grocery. You got a test test test. And then once you find things that work, then scale it, right? Then go into actually saying, and being comfortable with with testing is the biggest problem with, I think social is that when you put stuff out, you have this thought that everyone's going to look at it and also going to like everyone's going to see it and then also they're going to go back and reference it. And ultimately, that's just not the case. Like people are inherently seeing new things every day. They couldn't tell you five things they saw on their feed yesterday. So when you do create that outlier, that's when you can actually get their attention to make them have that lasting impression. But otherwise, bro, like, you know, it's so much more about volume and ability to actually ship other than, you know, worrying about like, and I think everyone's guilty of this. Like I over and next on a single like YAP TikTok video. And I'm like, wait, why don't I just like publish that if it flops or flops? Who cares? Who cares? Reality is like, if for me, if my video gets 10,000 views, that's not that many, like it's a lot of people that watch it, but it's also a lot of people that didn't watch it. You get them saying like, very sure. Hip based on my other sides of my audience, just keep shipping, knowing like it could ignore it for. But even that, that's actually like the perfect example of every single video is unique at that, right? 100,000. Because if you have 160,000 followers and only 10,000 people see it, like that's the exact example of what we're talking about. Like you should be creating anything because if the people who follow you, like aren't even going to see it regardless, right? Like every video stand on it's own anyway. 100%. So as we talk about three iterations, I need to break down. Number three, how to refine an actual view. Or sorry, how to refine an actual video. The first thing I'm looking at is the three second view rate. If that three second view rate is not above 50%, you're cooked. Yeah, that's a reality. If it's anything is below 50%, it is not going to be getting. I feel like the 55 to 60 is like, you're in a good spot to do well, but you're not going to go viral. You're getting that above the thousands. Right. And then the most 60s and then the best ones like 70 plus. Yeah. This is where you're like, absolutely 100% staffing. So if you have a low three second view rate, then what you need to be looking at or testing religiously is your hooks and try to really change three things, the angle, the aesthetic and the action. Like obviously the thing that you say, but reality is most people are consuming without sound dawn. So either break a pattern with the angle, get there, be visually appealing with the aesthetic or capture their attention with an action. Like as an example, we just filmed a hook where I came in, put my hand on your shoulder and hit a hook. I'm going to rework it and we're going to film it again where as I say that you're going to turn the laptop and show it to to the camera, all of a sudden it's like, what is he doing? I'm saying something, right? And that's that's a much better way of it or that's an example of how you can iterate the hook. If I would have published it in a different for a vlog, but like if I would have published it in the three second view rate, 45%. I'm like, okay, let me get it to 55. All of a sudden me adding in that action of you spinning it, it showing a number, me saying something is probably going to take it to 55%. But again, that is us iterating what didn't work based on the data. And then packaging the iterations, packaging the variables, right? So I mean, I hate to like use something that we haven't showed on screen, maybe we'll superimpose it. But like you put your hand on my shoulder and then I turn to the camera and I shook my hat. So variables that we could isolate from there is how that was shot. Like what if it was freehand and it's a little shaky and then there's a zoom in on my face when you say it's not enough and then I shake my hand. What if we just, it's freehand and there's no zoom? What if the zoom is on you? What if we, like there's different ways to like maximize your time efficiency in the planning process when you look at it from this component base view. Yes. And then you have your hooks with the right like indexing basically of like, okay, there's a first frame. There's an action. There's an angle like you're talking about. Now we're going to test three of each. And then that matrix of combinations goes a few of three different things across those three different components. And you combine them to test and individual ways. Like you now have like 15 different variations. 100%. Which you can rip every single one as a trial real. And like I get that that feels like a lot of work. But at the end of the day we're talking about trying to win. So yeah. I'm about to hit you with some sick in a second about trial reels from everyday bed and fell who again added 100,000 plus that's crazy. It's a crazy number. So 60 million views in 30 days. I mean, and to that point, most of those game from one video, 25 on one out of 60, like that's just always what the game is going to be. You're searching for that well. 100%. The other things that you can refine are average watch time. So what I found with my content and with brands content, if it's more dialogue heavy, 12 to 13 second average watch time is like where videos go to die. It needs to get above 13 and every hour or every few hours, it should be climbing second by second. Yes. So I've seen it where it's like, it goes, it starts at 12 to 13. And I'm like, okay, cool. Come back the next hour, maybe two hours. It's at 14 cool. If it starts to go back down, start like you're cooked. If it goes 14 to 15, 15, okay, 15 to 16, okay. That's how you know that the trajectory of that video is not going to. Instagram is finding better audiences. Yes. Over time. That's really what that number means is like every tranche of new views because Instagram will be like, okay, here it is for 50,000 view cohort of people. They're not watching it more. And so if they're continuously optimizing it, that means you got likes. 100%. When you're looking at your average watch time, you typically need to be able to look at it in segments. It's not just like one to 12 seconds. It's typically things fall in bucket. So are you changing things every five seconds? Are you changing how many shots somebody's looking at? And so where that drop off point typically is in a video that doesn't continue to perform, you need to be able to look at your average watch time and be able to be like, okay, do I introduce another like mini hook? Do I introduce a new character? Right. One of the things I'm introducing at that fall off point where my essentially people stop watching because that play every four seconds, too. I would say I feel like you have three second hook, then you have like a seven second drop off, then you have like a 12 second drop off and then a 15 and 20. It really is, I mean, we talked about the butt, therefore, framework a lot of the time, too. You can't just end this and this and this and this. It's like this and therefore this but this, therefore this, like when you kind of can zigzag like that, I think that's another good way. And so that's something we in our social shows that we've been implementing. Heavy is like at those like the most go to advice. But they're more by Southwest. It's actually so insane. It's great. Is is literally that element where we all will play in the script and then we could go to the script and we're like, okay, how do we add more tension? How do we add more hooks? And that's not being click baity. It is more so. I'm really back. You're so used to just keep like, you have to think about behavior. People are so used to just like seeing something for a little bit and continue to go like. Yeah, physically. You have to literally, yes, you have to literally get someone to stop for a minute, which is so hard to do. So you have to earn it. And so I have to think about all like these little elements when I'm making a piece of content. I mean, people like people will like and bookmark something and then still swipe seven seconds. You saw how like how many people like Dan Co had something go viral on Twitter, how to fix your life in one day and drive 200,000 bookmarks and I don't know, maybe or not 200,000, maybe like 20,000 or maybe it was the mind of like 200, 200,000 and like eight years out. Super super viral. Yeah. I think there's a move on Twitter as well to take anything that is like very long form and publish it as an article. They're pushing that. They're pushing articles crazy. Yeah. So I'm going to start publishing all these newsletters as articles and you should see what happens because I just wrote some bangers. Next you look at the retention graph. What I found is anything over 50% after three seconds is going to get 100,000 views from me. That's been my like my go to metric right there. So as your golden nugget, ladies and gentlemen, I mean that type of data. You just simply don't get anywhere else. That's what I'm talking about. Over 50% I'm aiming for that. That is why like today I'm going to film good content or a bunch of iterations of my content, but I am test. I'm going to film multiple hooks like in not what I say where I'm at how I come in a frame like I got to I got to fix it because they've been flopped. I've never had a good content. For his back content get 15,000 views to the point where like I archived in I was like let me just change like I'm changing out close. I am to the camera. I'm testing everything because I don't want to continue doing just green screen right like fuck. We have all this just you know means yeah, green screen totally. So that is what how I would be how I would refine the videos in the content is by looking at those metrics and then getting as crazy as I am and as we are about here's how we're going to get our view like our retention graph to be at 50% no matter what. Here's how we're going to get our three second view rate to climb from 45% to 51%. Like all those things those little iterations can mean hundreds of thousands of more views. Right. Right. Like that is that is the difference between the way when I talk to Kevin from everyday better club. He's like I will take a video that has an angle as in like or a in aesthetic whatever that I know works and I'll test like 8, 10, 20 different video iterations of the text on trial reels and then when it pops then I put it over to the main. So he's like he's showing me his trial reals. He's like look at these like these all have millions of views on trial reels right. So there's a lot that can be going on followers there too. Oh 100% yeah 100% have you reposted any of your stuff on trial. Yeah, yeah. The 2Js video went viral on it like a couple of different like bangers. Yeah. Yeah. Some didn't know which was interesting. Yeah, I did some of them. So they cracked down on it now. So now like I'll be sure I'll really get it. It's like who Adam said. I mean what's crazy is you you ripped the podcast club again. Did you change something or what do you do? No. You just let it fly. Yeah, let it fly. I added it in edits. Yeah. They love that. They love it. So I just like edits is also sick. It is good. I literally just added text on top. Yeah. Like swipe it out of screen and it popped. But like they want to push the you know this was made with edits or whatever it is. Right. Right. I've been seeing that ever. Yeah. So next element is you have to have a through line. I talk about the content narrative. That content narrative is that through line for all of your content. Don't make a bunch of random shit. You need to have the through line where it's not that every piece of content has to match. It's every piece of content has to match like this overarching narrative that you stand for or that you want people to perceive or associate with you. If not, you're literally creating a bunch of random shit and creating multiple perceptions somebody's head. If salt who is the lecture like brand, if they were like super comedic and then one day super inspirational and then so you know like that wouldn't work. They're literally trying to be like for the person who parties maybe on a Friday but they take work seriously right. Like it's more about the lifestyle of a specific type of individual. So their through line and their content matches, sorry, matches that through line versus them trying to be be he BPN one day trying to be you know element another day and then trying to be like more scrappy documentary style another day right. Like it wouldn't work and so you have to have a through line that's like, Hey I stand for this. I have this like story that I'm trying to tell and so therefore everything I test is going to hit that and match that story right. That's how my perception or anybody's perception because how somebody thinks of you is literally just memory right. Like it's just a bunch of content to form some idea that then gets stuck in printed on somebody's brain. Like that is all it is. And so that through line is that it is this overarching narrative that like over time you create content into compounds and it forms that through line or that that message and that narrative in somebody's head. That's why everybody rocks go on more. And I'm saying like that is that is why because all the content feeds that it doesn't happen on accident. Yeah. Then next is majority of brands if you haven't won you need to be focused on top of funnel content. As you win, develop your content funnel. Top of funnel content in this case is content to get followers. It's as simple as that. It is fucking commercial fishing. I am trying to catch as many fish as possible within my category and get them into my ecosystem. It is not plugging product. It is, you know, it doesn't mean product can't be integrated naturally but is not trying to push. It's not trying to sell. You know, I looked at out scoop. I think it's out scoop for the call me daddy. Call her daddy. Call me down me daddy. Damn, call her daddy. She's. She. Call her daddy. She started drink on well. You look neat straight in the eyes. I said that. I did to be honest and paused. Yeah. You let it marinate for a second. She dropped drink on well and like for someone that's so good at organic content. Yeah. I think I'm going well as I G's a fucking ad library. Same with I think Alex Earl did it like an electrolyte brand or something. Maybe that's what I was thinking about. Yeah. That's what I'm. Yeah, because like well, the thing is they they've reached macro influencer status which is completely different. Like once you kind of reach that upper level corporate stuff, you just believe in your distribution as like the end game, right? You don't have this philosophy what you're talking about which is like you are looking at every single individual metric to a video. Yeah. As important. They do not do that. They fill up a contact calendar and then let it fly. And what's sad about it is the art direction for the content is amazing. The actual content is bad. Art direction is not something that I think people are bad at. I think what we're describing is probably the biggest edge that people like you and I have on these traditional marketers is the understanding of the watch time, the shares, the like stuff. Because they just don't get that granular. Yeah. And they just don't care because they don't make it themselves. And so what was the incentive to ever look into these things like something either worked or didn't. But art direction is not necessarily as hard I think to acquire as an understanding. Because you could go literally on Pinterest for art direction and be like I want this higher someone they build that right versus I want 10 million views how it's hard to find the person that could get you 10 million. Yeah. Like how do I package this top of fund? What can I create like a strategy that allows me to do this over and over and over again? Yeah. And most brands spend 90% of your time doing top of funnel content. And don't like until you're at 10,000 followers literally don't do anything but top of funnel content. Once you get past there, then you can go to like 75% top of funnel and start mixing in middle of the funnel. I wouldn't even say do bottom of the funnel until you're unless you have a launch like in your launching product, it's different. Don't even start doing middle of funnel content until you're like 25, 50,000 followers. Or sorry bottom of the funnel content until you're 25, 50,000 followers. Middle funnel content for your followers. Me as an example, my top of funnel is good content for bad content. My middle funnel is going to be breaking down the pod how we're going to go to pod. You know, hopefully it gets millions of views. Chances are it's not. But I'd be happy with 50,000 views that send people to actually care about. Yeah. Yeah. Right? Like that is that's the goal. Because when people go by my followers. Yeah. Yeah. Like those are the people listening. And then bottom of the funnel how to get my followers to take action. This is more product driven. Like this is trying to get somebody to either sign up for a newsletter, go to an event, purchase product. I'm driving action here. And so when you look at content through that lens of like content to get followers, content for my followers, content for my followers to take action to get my followers to take action, it's very easy to bucket your ideas realistically to be like, oh, I've been spending all my time down here. I need to be here. No wonder shit's flopping. I can get past my follower base. No shit. Like you haven't made anything that's truly top of funnel content. I think what people miss in this whole entire equation as well is the brand equity you're building. Yeah. By being so full first and by, you know, having entertainment in your blood. Like the ability to get views on command is a brand and build brand affinity is something that is going to double triple quintuple your enterprise value. Because I think a lot about these brands that I know that are ripping on, you know, IG ads and then they are also crushing on Amazon. They're really healthy PNLs, right? Yeah. You know, maybe doing like 1/21/3/150, whatever. And I think there's an argument to be made at that level too that, you know, why even invest in brand until like nine figures in revenue sometimes, you know, like I know an electrolyte brand that is literally went like zero to 125 million in like two years. Who? Instant hydration. Oh yeah. They're cranking. Really? Yeah. It's doing really well. And they don't have like, there's nothing. There's no retraction. There's no like coherent real organic strategy. They're just like incredibly dialed at paid acquisition and like they do it better than anybody. Really? And now they're going to take that growth story into retail. And I think when that brand goes to try and sell, how they invested in a character in an ecosystem and world building and a lot of these different things that we talk about that scrappy brands do first. Yeah. You know, what does that do to the exit multiple? And that's really where you see that investment coming through. It's not necessarily like, oh, we're just lighting $50,000 a month on fire. It's like we spent a million dollars on brand building this year, which brought the valuation of our business from 150 to 300 because we have a die hard group of people that love what we do. I'm going to agree more. I'm going to try to speed right through because I'm halfway, which is crazy. Wow. Next is your content buckets. Content has gotten so good at targeting the right individual that your content buckets is actually knowing your customer, taking your customer segments and saying this is who we're going to make content for. Give you an example that I wrote about in yesterday's newsletter where if we take Solomon, and Solomon's, let's say their top customer segment is the marathon runner who is running their third to fifth, sorry, their fifth or more marathon. You can't just say like we target marathon runners. If that is your top customer segment, then you have to understand, okay, if that is it, how do I develop a content pillar for that individual? It's too broad to say I have an educational content pillar. So I'll actually take this into the next one. You have to add qualifiers now to your content pillars where it is, okay, our top customer segment is the marathon runner who's running their fifth or plus marathon. Maybe they're trying to qualify for a race. Therefore my content pillar is educational for the individual running their fifth or more marathon. Now you understand, hey, we're going to develop a series. We're going to develop a concept around that speaking to that individual because that's who we're going to target with the content. So your content pillars can't just be educational. It has to be like educational plus actually. So your content pillar now needs a qualifier. It needs that thing that goes a layer deeper to say your content is going to target this individual. We're going to build a concept around that top customer segment around that content bucket. The next element then is how to scale. When you find the winner, you then need to be able to distribute it amongst multiple formats. So if good content for bad content, if a performance lesson that you like a more classroom setting for Solomon is like the thing that works, et cetera, you need to then understand, okay, how do I take this and make it a 10 shot video, a vignette? How do I make it into a carousel format? How do I make it into right? Like you have to think about how I can take something, take the, or sorry, how I can take a winner, scale that across multiple formats and content types. That is absolutely key, right? And I think that's also something that brands or individuals that are, are winner on social don't think about every day better club. Watch what he does where he got one video that worked very well with one person running. Then he's like, what if I had two people? What if I had three people? What if I had four people? What if I just change the text? What if I just change the scenery, the location? Like all of these different elements where he just found something that's like, look, I'm going to keep reworking and repackaging this idea, this concept, right? That is our content pillar. I'm going to scale that content pillar until it doesn't perform anymore. Whereas everybody tries to think about reinventing the wheel. What about just fucking more wheels? More wheels? Like just more fucking wheels is all you need to be doing there. 100%. And anytime you crack something that actually works, it feels like it works. That's the thing that a lot of people don't appreciate enough. And honestly, you can really get high on your supply with that too. Or like you think it's something, you can just use it over and over again. But you're ready for Friday night. You can get high, you can get drunk on your own supply. I'm not going out this weekend. You're not. I'm too old, bro. No, this is what happens when you hit a bender the last weekend and you're like, absolutely wrecked, you're going through everything that goes through. Everyone's on this dry January shit, which I think is a sire. I think if you need dry January, you have a severe problem. But you should address year round. Yes. You should not be isolating your treatment, your rehabilitation to one another year. Motherfucker, you need to go get to check yourself into a facility. Or else you should be able to manage that shit. Well, I would accept. Which I'll be checking into mine within the next seven days. Lastly, or the last few elements. The last few elements is then how to differentiate. So there's category separation where if something is working within fashion, how do you bring it over to your burger company? It's not looking at the burger, all the burger companies are being like, how can I do the thing better that they're doing? It's cross-pollinate. 100%. Again, talking to Kevin, Kevin was looking at all these different categories and finding things that works and then spinning it to get it to work for him. So you want to look at category separation. Then you want to look at art direction. Art direction is not the content. It's how you differentiate the content. How you get someone into the world to be able to feel the content is not the content itself. And so those are the two things I'm looking at. One concept essentially, or category separation, via concepts, take the concept, add the art direction to then make it very unique to the world that you're trying to build. The last two elements, I think I've said the last two elements four times, is you need to build familiarity. That is the most important factor. I think going into 2026 is becoming memorable, making and adding unique and distinct elements that make your content memorable and familiar to the individual scanning at rapid paces. You take subway takes. Subway takes always start split screen and he goes, so what's your take? As soon as he does that, it goes to the individual that's going to respond. Every single episode, it's always in the same location. Yes, he changes sometimes to like a London subway, sometimes it's New York subway, whatever. But there's all the elements in it, all the repetitive elements, whether it's the visual hook, the title hook, whether it's the location, the characters, the host. These are all elements that make your content extremely familiar to the individual that is consuming thousands of pieces of content every day. So when you do this, you have to think about the repetitive elements that are going to be in your content. If all you have is like a character that can be repetitive, fine. But if then think about, okay, what's one element that I can add to myself as the character that is repetitive? Is it what I wear? Is it how I open the video? Is it the angle I start every video? Right? Find these little elements that make it very, very familiar to the individual consuming it. Then lastly, if you have budget or you understand those repetitive elements, then it goes into set building. Right? Like we are trying to build a set for sweat equity. So when you see it, you notice sweat equity. Because sweat equity is the location. Matt Choi's mile challenge, the location of the track is the set. And so you can think about sets as either locations, things that you rent or things that you build. Those are the three variants that you can have as a set. So if I do it on the street style, if you've ever seen street hearts, I don't know if you've watched that scene that showing IG, it's like a dating show thing that literally starts on the sidewalk and it's the same host. It is a location that they are using. It's not something they built, it's not something they rented. So therefore you have to think about the location as the set and then think about the little familiar elements that you can add to it that make it unique and distinct to you. Putting all of that together, that's how you're going to win on Instagram in 2026. And if you don't, then. Now you know. You didn't watch this episode six times. Yeah, you should watch this episode as many times as possible because there's a lot of little things we. We'll use chapters. You skip around. You know? I'll use chapters. If you enjoyed the episode, as always, please like, subscribe. We put a lot of effort into these things and the metrics that people who want to pay us for these things look at is engagement. So we've really appreciated it. You know, leave a comment. Like if you think Alex, I mean, you're kind of evolving into a new look right now, I think. I do. I wonder commentary on the hair. I was gonna say, I wonder if, you know, listeners, have you noticed that I cut the bun off? I cut all the hair off. Yeah. Right. And if you think I should get rid of the mustache, I get it. It doesn't stand out as much as you think it does or needs to. Which is. Don't worry anymore. It needs to. What you got? Keep it? All right. That's subtle. All right, guys, I'm gonna keep a roof in this 2026 guide for growing on Instagram. But please, if you like this subscribe. We're trying to get to 100,000 subs by the end of the year. If not, we're gonna figure out something painful to do. But please, 100,000 subs.