Talk to 10 bloggers or content creators and you’ll come across at least nine who are frustrated with Instagram. You’ll hear complaints about the algorithm, complaints about fellow users, complaints against Meta itself. Trust me when I say that I’m no different. I can control what I put on Instagram, I can make sure I have quality images, a call to action, and everything else that “they” say you should do, but ultimately I have zero control over what Instagram does with my content once I hit publish. Growing on social media organically is hard, and Instagram might be the most tricky. I decided to challenge myself to see if I could grow my account by doing what “they” all say to do–posting an Instagram Reel every day. I’m going to share my actual results with you but you should know, you might be surprised.

why did I post an Instagram Reel every day?

I started blogging in the fall of 2010. So yes–I’ve been blogging for quite awhile. Social media wasn’t nearly what it has become today and as a result, I feel like I’ve had to learn as I went along. If I knew then what I know now I would do so many things differently. Being present on social media is one of the realities of being a blogger. Due to that, I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with it. Combine that with the fact that the algorithms are a constantly evolving entity and lots of users will do anything they can to “beat” them, and it really makes a lot of us frustrated.

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It’s not a vanity thing either. Unfortunately, some business will only look at one thing–the number of followers you have on social media. In fact, I recently had a conversation with a brand where they said they required a particular follower and engagement number–yet I know a handful of content creators they’ve worked with who have inauthentic, inflated numbers. I’m actually really proud of my engagement on Instagram because I know it’s real. Regardless, I do want to grow and I’m constantly working on my blog and social media sites. I am definitely not afraid of hard work and I can take advice and criticism. With that in mind, why not challenge myself to post an Instagram Reel every day? In the hopes that:

• my followers would organically grow, even if it was slow
• my engagement would improve even more
• I would start to see some correlation in content I was sharing and what my audience liked

how would my Reels experiment work?

For this experiment I decided I would post one Reel to my account every day for four weeks, even on the weekends. Actually, it started as a two week goal, then grew to three weeks, then four weeks. I would post at different times of day to test how that affected my reach. That wasn’t the only thing I would test though. I would also look at the content I was sharing and tried to equally mix up funny Reels, travel inspiration, and motivational content. Likewise I would switch up the length and audio for my Reels. Some Reels would be short, some longer. Some Reels would have trending audio, some original, and some random. I even posted one Reel with no audio at all! Basically, I wanted to take every piece of Instagram Reels advice I’d ever heard and test it out.

what happened during my experiment?

First of all, I discovered I liked creating and sharing Reels. I would sit down and batch a few at a time, most of them were even made using video content I already had. Sometimes I would make a Reel on the fly and I realized I was changing how I saw content. Much like my brain had to be rewired when I started writing for SEO, I started shooting my content in different ways to make it Reel-ready. There were only two days of my experiment that I didn’t feel like posting anything, but I was still able to get a Reel up.

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The really interesting result of my experiment though was that I really saw no correlation, in anything. It didn’t seem to matter what type of content I posted, when I posted, how long it was, or the audio used. The response seemed to be completely randomized. Other than the fact that my funny Reels usually seemed to do a little better. The other weird thing though? What happened with my follower growth, or rather, the lack thereof.

That’s right, my followers went up by 0%. My reach and engagement skyrocketed, even among people that weren’t following me. Obviously people were finding my account, but they weren’t sticking around for the long haul. The thing is, I know my content is quality, but it doesn’t fit one particular niche. I love the things I share about though and there’s no way I could be blogging for over a decade about one niche and not get burned out. So I guess that won’t be changing anytime soon.

my conclusions:

I have come to a conclusion about what “they” say regarding anything having to do with Instagram. Actually, this is something I have felt for awhile but the results of my experiment just confirmed it.

What works for one person won’t universally work for everyone.

All of the accounts I’ve seen who say, “do this to increase engagement!” or “do that to grow your followers!” are very niche accounts. Most of them are some type of marketing or social specialist account. Of course they’re going to be able to grow quickly if they’re consistently putting out content–all of us are following them trying to learn how to grow! I also have a few friends who are super niche in shopping, home reno, or baking. I feel like these types of accounts are easier to grow. I’m not saying they’re not talented or they don’t work hard– but don’t assume that what works for an Internet Marketing Specialist is going to work to grow your motherhood account.

You can follow me on Instagram here!

I believe that another way I could have grown during my experiment is if one of my posts had gone viral, but that never happened. If you reach enough accounts the law of averages says you’d have to grow somewhat, right? So maybe if one of my Reels had done really well I’d have something different to share with you today. But that’s okay because I’m actually really pleased with my experiment. I increased my reach and engagement in a real, organic way. I legitimately “beat” the algorithm by posting an Instagram Reel every day.

Have you tried to post an Instagram Reel every day? What were you results?