So as you may have read in last month’s Instagram report, I decided to do LESS Instagram posts and focus more on product development to get the all-new SIB 2.0 launched this month. Needless to say, I wasn’t expecting a 115% increase in engagement or an increase in my following, but that’s exactly what happened! Read my monthly Instagram report below to find out how and what my plans are for June.

Ok, so I want to start off by sharing what my previous goals were to give you some added perspective to my monthly findings:

My May goal was to spend less time on Instagram content to continue to make more time for product development (aka prepping the marketing goods for THE SHOP LAUNCH).

My May strategy was:

• Use my content calendar to batch my Instagram captions and story content in advance to save time
• Continue to test new hashtags to increase reach and repurpose previously successful hashtag groups
• Go back to posting at 12-1230 EST manually with hashtags in comments
• Schedule some Instagram stories (yep, you can do that now!) to compensate for the time on my manual captions

May Instagram results compared to prior month:

• 98% Decrease in impressions
• 98% Decrease in reach
• 115% increase in average engagement rate by post
• 26% decrease in media posted
• 58% increase in likes received
• 49% increase in comments received
• 113 follower evolution

May Takeaways:

Overall, the decrease in reach and impressions was honestly to be expected because I intentionally planned to post less this month.

Though there was only a 26% decrease in media posted (the frequency that I posted in my feed) , there was a 98% decrease reach– which indicates that the new hashtags that I tried in May weren’t as successful at expanding new reach as the previous month.

That said, though my reach was significantly less month over month, my follower evolution (how many new followers I gained or lost) went up from -20 to 113 and my average engagement rate by post was up by 115%!

So how did I post 26% less on Instagram compared to the previous month and increase my following and engagement rate LIKE WHOA?

Three main things:

1) I went back to posting at 12 pm Eastern manually each day as opposed to scheduling my posts to auto-post,

2) I put my hashtags back in my comments, and

3) I had some crazy reach on a few posts that had the most engagement to-date– meaning it was a good bulk of the increase in likes and comments for the whole month.

So what’s the June plan?

• Replicate successful hashtags with the most reach.
• Create shareable content to increase my reach
• Test auto-scheduling at noon vs noon manual posting with hashtags in comments*
• Plan pre-launch content in advance to minimalize interference with other launch responsibilities

*The issue with the findings from April about auto-scheduling with hashtags in the post was that I did/had to do both simultaneously.😣

Because of that, I can’t identify if it’s the auto-scheduling tool itself that caused the decrease…or the fact that hashtags were in the post versus the comments– So I’ll be testing that more individually to get clarity.

I also plan to launch my shop in June, which means I will inevitably pick up the pace for posting with my pre-launch strategy and my goal is both new followers AND reach to make the launch as successful as possible.🤗

That said, make sure you get your booty on our exclusive newsletter list so you can be the first to know when we launch the all new membership platform and shop and snag some sweet promos. SIB 2.0 is coming SOON so stay tuned!