12 Instagram Mistakes Keeping You Stuck Under 10,000 Followers (and How to Fix Them)

[00:01] doing all the things you're supposed to do, but you're still stuck under 10,000 followers or even 1,000 followers, you might be making a few detrimental mistakes that are quietly killing your growth and keeping your posts from ever

[00:14] all the time with my BSP students who are trying to grow their personal brands. But the good news is the moment they fix just one or two of these take off, sometimes quite literally overnight. So, in this video, we're

[00:27] going over the 12 Instagram mistakes keeping your account stuck under 10,000 followers. And the final mistake is actually the number one reason why some creators will just never hit that 10,000 follower milestone. As always,

[00:40] timestamps are below. Let's jump into it. Number one, not knowing your unique edge. Honestly, this one fix can change everything for you. So, if you're going to focus on fixing one of these mistakes, please prioritize this one

[00:53] because this is the foundation for your social media success. One of the biggest mistakes I see creators make when auditing accounts is this. If I open up your profile and I can't tell within the first 3 to 5 seconds why your audience

[01:08] should follow you, that's your problem. For example, take a look at this For example, take a look at this profile. Three, four, five. Would you have followed that person? Was there like an immediate pull for your reaction

[01:20] >> "Oh my gosh, yes, I need that follow." >> Maybe not. How about this profile? Three, four, five. Would you be more likely to follow that person? Probably. And if you said no, you wouldn't follow that person. You probably have a very

[01:35] quick and clear reason why you wouldn't want to, and that's okay. You want to create that immediate yes or no effect when somebody lands on your profile. How do you do that? You do that by knowing your unique edge. Your unique edge is

[01:48] going to be the simple oneliner that you're going to put in your bio to one, convince your target audience to press that follow button, and two, stand out from everyone else in your niche. In order to identify what your unique edge

[02:02] is, you need to be able to answer these questions. What do you want to be known for online? How can you turn that into an identifiable niche? Who do you want to be creating for? What can you help them achieve in the next 30 days? Then

[02:15] with your answers, you just use MADL libs and plug your answers into any one of these formulas. With everything filled out, that is what you're going to put in your bio. Let's do another example together. This time, let's look

[02:28] at the wellness niche because I have a lot a lot of students who join my course and they share that they want to build a wellness brand, which is great, but also

[02:40] super broad and highly competitive. So, here's our example. We have Samantha, wellness and mindset. Her bio says, "Sharing healthy habits and daily positivity, helping you become your best self every day." While it's clear

[02:55] Samantha talks about wellness and shares habits, daily positivity, and just overall helps you become your best self, it's still so vague. And that's a mistake that I see a lot of creators and students do is they think that it's

[03:09] clear enough or they think that it's niched down enough. But when you say helping you become your best self every day, that is such a broad statement and different things to a bajillion different people. It's going to mean one

[03:22] thing for this person, another for this. So, you need to get so so so specific as to why somebody should follow you. Let's turn this bio into one that has a clear, distinct, unique edge. So, we have Samantha. This time, she's a wellness

[03:35] coach. Her bio says, "Helping busy women reduce stress and boost energy. Start your 30-day energy reset." This is much more clear who she's trying to reach,

[03:47] what exactly she's helping them with, and not only that, it tells them the immediate value that they will gain if they press that follow button. Now, with the formula and with this example, it's a 30-day transformation, but it doesn't

[04:02] have to be quite literally 30 days. For example, one of my students, we turned their unique edge into helping you build your art business in 100 days. Or if you're in the cooking niche, a broad bio could sound like helping you find new

[04:18] it's clear that you're in the cooking niche, but it's still very vague. Just helping you with recipes to share with family. Well, what kind of recipes? Why should somebody choose your recipes over somebody else's? So, a better example of

[04:32] a unique edge would be simple 30 minute meals with 10 ingredients or less. Instead of helping you organize your home, unique edge would be declutter your home with just 15 minutes every day. Instead of helping you find your

[04:46] style, more clarity would be outfit formulas for women who feel like they have nothing to wear. With your unique edge clearly communicated in your bio, it's going to make somebody follow you that much faster and make you stand out

[05:01] against all the other people in your industry because there is a clear reason why someone should follow you. Mistake number two I see all the ding-dong time number two I see all the ding-dong time is not using SEO. SEO is this phrase

[05:14] that might feel overwhelming to some or intimidating to others. And I understand social media, I would hear people say the word SEO or the acronym SEO and immediately my brain would be like and just shut off. I would be like, "Oh my

[05:29] gosh, that is way too complicated for me to understand. I cannot do SEO. No way, Jose. let me change my strategy to something else. But I have good news. something else. But I have good news. How SEO worked 10 years ago was probably

[05:43] very complicated. But now in our day and age, it's actually a lot more simple and totally manageable, totally realistic for anybody to apply in very simple

[05:55] ways. So SEO stands for search engine optimization. And really all that is is asking yourself what is the intentional steps that you will take to show up on Instagram search. How can you show up on Instagram search? That's the only

[06:10] question you have to answer and that's SEO. So let's simplify this even more. To show up in search, you need to reverse engineer what your target audience might be typing in the search bar. So let's start with your name plate

[06:23] the bold part of your bio, is actually one of the most search friendly pieces in all of Instagram. So, if I was looking for a tattoo artist, I would go

[06:36] to Instagram search and type tattoo artist, that is the phrase that I put into search and anybody who has tattoo artist in their name plate will show up in results. So, now it's your turn. You have to ask yourself, what do I think my

[06:50] target audience is categorizing my account? How would they label me? That's why we switched our example earlier to wellness coach because if somebody needs probably going to go to search and be like, "Okay, I need a wellness coach in

[07:04] the phrases they're looking for in the that to your advantage, plug it into that's SEO. You're just trying to read their mind so that you could show up on

[07:17] search results. There is so much power in this. I had a student just change their bio, just change their name plate in their bio and immediately started getting more followers immediately because they were leaning in to SEO

[07:29] strategies. There are other places to implement SEO to show up in search results. Some other places you can start putting keywords into is your captions,

[07:41] hashtags, and even the text that you're typing to pop up on your Instagram reels. So, I keep saying this word keywords. What keywords are you typing in? What keywords is your audience looking up? Keywords are just the words,

[07:54] the phrases, the questions, things that you think your audience is searching for. If I'm someone who wants to get a tattoo, I would probably be looking for different types of things on Instagram. I would look for a tattoo artist, an

[08:08] actual account to see who I could book, right? So, one thing I could look for is up. Well, if I'm not really looking for an artist yet and I just want an artist yet and I just want inspiration for a tattoo in search, I'm

[08:22] looking for like fine line tattoos. I really want to do like a fine line or small dainty tattoo. So, those are kind of the phrases that I'm putting into Instagram search to get results and see other videos. So, now instead of

[08:36] categorizing your account with keywords, you want to start adding keywords into your videos to answer your audience's questions. I have an entire video that breaks down Instagram SEO a little bit more step by step for beginners or if

[08:50] that explanation didn't quite click for you, I have another video on Instagram SEO that explains everything much more thoroughly. So, definitely check that video out next. Mistake number three I see creators make is creating for

[09:02] yourself and not your viewers. You may have heard the whole selfish content versus selfless content thing. I feel like those phrases are things that have like recently surfaced as like a new strategy over on Tik Tok, but this is

[09:16] something that I've been talking about here on my channel for years. And not only that, but it's just a classic marketing technique that's been leveraged for decades now. I'm going to try to explain this as delicately as I

[09:30] can because I don't want to say you cannot create what you want to create. That's not what I'm trying to say here. I think people just lean so far into, I feel like that day that they forget about the whole strategy foreseeing

[09:47] planning ahead. And then they're stuck in this loop of, okay, I'm just creating this. Oh, I'm just going to do this. >> And they never grow. I actually did a video on this where I posted consistently every single day for 108

[10:00] days. Didn't have a strategy. It was just whatever I felt like doing that just whatever I felt like doing that day. And my growth was so so so so so it was like maybe one follower, two followers a day maximum. And typically

[10:12] creators who are trying to grow, maybe like yourself, that growth is not what you're searching for at this moment in time. You're searching for more a more quick, fast-paced growth. And to help you get to a quicker growth, you need to

[10:25] kind of put those videos on on the back shelf of like, whatever I want. you need to kind of put that strategy aside >> and really start thinking, how can I show up for my audience today? What do

[10:37] they need today? One way to go about this is flipping your content. Instead of making it about you, making it about the viewer. This is just one example. I'm not saying you always have to do this, but an example is instead of being

[10:51] >> "This is how I make my salads. I really like to put kale and butternut squash, and I really like this." That's like me me I I I I really like this. I really like this. Instead, share a little bit about why it would be helpful for

[11:05] somebody else. So, instead of the >> oh, here's my favorite salad, la, >> say if you're looking for a salad to help you feel more satiated and full, this salad is my go-to that I have every single day. It's kind of leaning into

[11:19] what that result somebody could get from eating the salad. There is a psychological effect that happens when you lean into the words you yours at the beginning of a video. So, this is how you can grow on Instagram. If you're

[11:33] like using those words can connect to a viewer very quickly. I'm not saying I, me, my is bad, but again, this is just one example of how to flip selfish content to selfless content. So, stop just kind of casually creating, doing

[11:49] whatever you want on the day-to-day basis, and start taking a pause. Start planning ahead, doing some content research, seeing what sort of videos work in your industry. Even if they're me, my eye videos, you want to do your

[12:02] research, figure out what's working. Start planning ahead. Create with intention instead of just casually posting. Another mistake that I see creators make is not utilizing CTAs. CTA stands for call to action. This is what

[12:15] you tell your audience to do next after they consume your content. This is they consume your content. This is something so simple and powerful that so many creators overlook because they don't want to sound too cringy or too

[12:27] salesy or simply they just forget. But the truth is if your post gets zero traction, it might not be because people were ignoring your post. It could be because you hadn't given them a reason to engage with your post. So imagine if

[12:42] to engage with your post. So imagine if every piece of content communicated a next step to the viewer. What you would be doing is creating like an endless snowball effect of increased engagement and followers over time. Because once

[12:56] someone starts binging your content and they keep hearing and seeing those verbal call to actions or reminders to hey comment below, like, share, follow. They are more likely to take action on those things. only triggering the

[13:11] algorithm to boost your content and you even more. A quick little key is if your goal is to increase follows, use a follow call to action. If your goal is follow call to action. If your goal is to increase reach, use a share or tag

[13:27] call to action. If you want to increase the chances of a real going viral or getting more engagement, use a comment call to action. My personal favorite that I use on almost every single one of my Instagram posts is a comment call to

[13:41] action. You could simply ask a question that you want somebody to answer down in something simple like, "Well, what's your favorite podcast? Let me know down with the real you're talking about. And if you're talking about podcasts, just

[13:54] start the conversation. Or if you want to take that idea of a comment call to action and make it even more powerful, you would set up an automation where when somebody comments a specific word or phrase on your post, you

[14:09] automatically DM them a resource, freebie, or link that you are referencing in your reel. You probably see this a lot with creators when they say something like, "Comment chat and I'll DM you the link to blah blah blah

[14:21] blah blah." The reason so many creators do this is because one, it gives a clear call to action for something that their follower can do right away. Two, it instantly delivers extra value to the commenter. And three, because you're

[14:34] encouraging comments, you can set up an additional automation to reply to those comments, giving you even more engagement on the post, which then will trigger the algorithm telling it, "Hey, this post is getting good engagement.

[14:48] Let's push it out to more people." So really, it only helps your posts because you're nurturing and building the comment section up and creating more and could set up all these automations is through ManyHat, who is also sponsoring

[15:01] this video. And I want to show you proof that what I'm saying works. Here are two in the same location. They're on the same topic, and they're the same video think a minute and a half. But this video got this amount of views and

[15:17] engagement, whereas this one got a whole lot more. Why? This one had comment to DM automation set up so that it received way more comments because I was telling send you a resource to blah blah blah." So, it got comments from followers and

[15:33] then I set up an automation to reply to all of those comments. Again, getting more comments and ultimately helping the video perform better overall. I'm not just saying this. If you look at the stats, these stats performed way better.

[15:46] But the one stat that actually got 35 times more engagement were the comments. times more engagement were the comments. I set this up through ManyHat, which if by Meta. So, you can set up all of your automations with confidence knowing that

[16:02] it's not going to hurt you, your account, or your engagement or your reach in any way. There are a lot of other options and functions that ManyHat offers to help creators create more automations on their accounts and a new

[16:15] going to talk about in a little bit. But if you are somebody who wants to try out Mini Chat Pro for free for 30 days, then you can use the link down below with the code modern Millie and you'll be able to start your free trial today. The fifth

[16:29] mistake that I see make are people who are playing it safe. Sometimes I'll have students reach out to me and be like, "Hey Millie, I've been posting consistently, but I am not seeing any growth or traffic and I just can't

[16:41] figure out why. Can you look at my account, audit it, let me know what I can do to fix this?" So, I look at their account and this is when I notice they are creating the same styles of videos over and over and over and over again.

[16:55] There is no variety with the type of content that they're creating. Let's say it's a fashion account and all they are posting are what I wore today videos with the same text, the same editing style, the same angle, just all the

[17:11] same. So I scroll through and I'm like, well, you're doing the same thing and if it up. This reminds me of the quote, "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." So you have to be switching it

[17:23] up. There are so many different styles of content that you can create. You could do vlog style videos, behind the scenes videos, talking to the camera like this face to face or doing voiceovers instead. Not only that, but

[17:36] there's so many different shots and angles that you could shoot with one idea. So, if you're doing outfits and you just have something far away, well, change up the angle. Try doing like top down to get really cool angle. Maybe you

[17:49] could get closeup of details. Maybe it's the editing instead of one video you're to be a 7-second video and you're going to do quick cuts of like different poses edited to the music. So, even if you film the same space, the editing can be

[18:04] different. There's a bajillion different ways that you can alter and test your videos. Even with like the pop-up text, the fonts, the colors, you have to keep the more you create outside of your comfort zone, the better you become as a

[18:20] content creator. So you just have to stop playing it safe and creating only what you know and only what you're comfortable with. And you have to take the leap and start challenging yourself and your capabilities. That is how you

[18:33] will grow. Growth will not come from a place of comfort. Growth will come from pushing the boundaries and going to that next level of discomfort. If you've give this video a thumbs up. It's going to tell YouTube that other creators like

[18:46] yourself will find this video valuable and help the algorithm find the right by the end of the video, consider subscribing because I actually looked at a stat yesterday that what was it? 68% of viewers are not subscribed. What was

[19:00] of viewers are not subscribed. What was it? Let's look this up right now. 73% of people who watch the videos are not subscribed. So, if you learn two new subscribing because it's a simple way to support me and my channel and it allows

[19:13] me to continue to create free content like this for you every single week. The next mistake that I see creators make is ignoring their hooks or just not paying any strategy, any attention to those babies. Here's the thing. There are more

[19:25] than 140 billion reels posted daily across Facebook and Instagram with only 60 million users tuning in to consume content daily. That means there is more content being posted than there is being watched. So, you got to make sure that

[19:41] you are standing out with your reels within the first two seconds of that ensure that you're standing out and people are watching your videos and not anybody else's? A strong hook. I know everybody says this, so I want to break

[19:55] know, the hook is the first two to three seconds of your video. And ideally, you're using those first few seconds to stop the viewer scroll, capture their stop the viewer scroll, capture their attention, and convince them to stay and

[20:08] watch all the way through. I did a full deep dive video where I analyzed hundreds and thousands of short form videos to figure out what are the strongest hooks to that create viral content. And what I uncovered and what I

[20:22] figured out is something called hook layering. Now, I want to say I'm pretty teaching it a few years ago and now all of a sudden people are like, >> "Oh yeah, it's called the Hook Trilogy. It's called Hook something

[20:38] >> and like it it works. I did a deep dive. I figured it out. I taught it. Now because it's going to help more people." But I think I coined it. I think I started this. If I'm wrong, I'm wrong. That's fine. But I hadn't seen it taught

[20:52] Let's talk about that. Hook layering is hooks all within the first few seconds didn't have one hook. It had multiple types of hooks within those first

[21:05] milliseconds. There's a text hook, visual hook, audible hook. The text hook screen in your video and those first few seconds that somebody is reading to capture their attention. The visual hook is what is happening actually in the

[21:19] video that is going to stop someone's attention visually. Is it you thrown your phone up? Is it like a cool little like oh it goes into the camera like what is happening visually to capture attention and the audible hook is like

[21:31] to capture their attention? What are you saying? Is it what you're saying to the trending audio? So those three things all need to happen at the same time strategically. If you want again to see a full video breakdown where I explain

[21:45] to you how to use hook laying and what hook layering is and the different hook definitely recommend watching this video next. Or if you simply just want some proven hook prompts that can help you get started to create content or

[21:59] increase your video engagement, I have my 100 hook prompts downloadable that I will leave linked down below. The next mistake that I see creators make is ignoring your followers. While this video is about growth and reaching new

[22:11] people, if you are so focused on chasing a vanity metric of a like specific a vanity metric of a like specific follower number of like 1,000, 10,000, like you're just focused on a number, you forget about the real people that

[22:24] are choosing to follow you. Connecting with your current followers can lead the whole trajectory of your content, your future ideas, and your platform growth.

[22:36] you can get immediate feedback and questions to direct your next video ideas. Even if you have five people who are your target audience that are following you, you want to be connecting with those five people and figuring out

[22:49] how can you create content to help them even more to show up for them? What are they wanting today? So, some questions that you could ask yourself are, what questions do my followers ask me in the DMs or in my comments? Those common

[23:02] questions are video ideas that you can create. reply to those comments that are questions with more reels because those new reels answering those questions will attract the same people who have those questions in mind. On top of that, any

[23:16] new follower that you receive can give you more insight on what to make in the I was first growing on Instagram, I would actually DM every single person message and I would be like, "Hey, thank you so much for following me. just

[23:32] could I support you. Is there something that you're currently struggling with your content creation journey? Let me know. I'd love to help. Why would I do this? Because new followers, the moment they follow you, they are the most

[23:45] engaged. So being able to catch them in that moment and introduce yourself or ask questions and learn more about their interests or concerns, it gives you a unique connecting point with that person and unique insight on exactly what

[23:59] videos to create next because it's coming directly from your followers and what they need. Now, I'm not saying you have to manually DM every single person saying. You can do it every once in a while or you could even just create an

[24:13] every time they follow you. This is where the new mini chat feature follow to DM automation comes into play. It's the simplest way that you can send a after they follow your Instagram account. And you just make that like

[24:27] welcome message as personal to you as possible so it doesn't feel like a bot. I love all of the tools and resources that are in ManyHat. I actually have been a loyal customer of ManyHat since June 2022, as you could see here. And

[24:42] since joining, I've actually been able to grow my contacts list to over 18,000 people just from having DM automation set up. So, being able now to connect even deeper with my followers is something I am so genuinely stoked about

[24:58] and will 1,000% be using. Again, if you want to test out ManyHat, I'll leave a link down below where you can get Many Chat Pro for free for 30 days. Just make sure to use the code modern Millie when you use the link and you can start your

[25:10] free trial. Mistake number eight, you do not have a repeatable system. I was going to say this mistake is like, >> "Oh, you're not posting consistently." >> But really, when you dive deeper into the issue with my students, the

[25:24] underlying problem is not, "Oh, they're not posting consistently." The underlying problem is they don't have the proper systems in place to support them to create efficiently or consistently. Now, does this sound

[25:38] every single day and you ask yourself, "Oh, shoot. What should I post?" That stress of opening the app with nothing to post. And the pressure of trying to figure it out that same day is going to compound over time and lead to burnout

[25:52] because you are constantly sprinting on the creator hamster wheel instead of creating a repeatable system or repeatable workflow that works with you and your lifestyle at like a good pace where you could just be like jogging and

[26:07] Instead of sprinting and getting burnt out. Or maybe you're somebody. You'll have like this random burst of energy where you're feeling super inspired and you just like batch film 10 videos in a day and then those videos just like sit

[26:19] in your drafts for weeks and weeks until the original excitement of your ideas dwindle off and you look at your drafts and you hate everything that you did and that batch session because you also never felt like editing anything. I've

[26:33] been there. The reason both of those things happen is because you just don't have a system in place that works for you yet. So to fix this, you need to figure out what cadence can you realistically keep up with. You don't

[26:45] have to post every day. Is it every other day? Is it Monday, Wednesday, Friday? Just three times a week. What matters is you are telling the platform predictable. Even if it's just three times a week, your account is

[26:58] predictable. So I want you to kind of like audit your week for a week. Literally just analyze your week. Write down how you're spending your time every You're like, I did this from 8 to 9. I did this Do that for seven days and then

[27:11] look back and ask yourself, what are chunks of time that I could actually you're like, I actually scrolled on TikTok for two hours on Monday. Oh, yourself, are there things that I could swap where it's like, cool, every Monday

[27:25] filming there. Or content research every Monday. And then look at the rest of the research Monday. The rest of the week is a little busy. Maybe there isn't times where you could swap out. But if you're going to the gym, what if you vlogged

[27:39] you're already doing? So, you need to just audit your week and ask, "How can I fit content creation into my lifestyle instead of adding it as this extra layer?" When you figure out how to fit content creation into your lifestyle,

[27:53] something that can help you too is having a content calendar to organize your ideas. Plan ahead of time. I have free content calendars, so I'll be sure linked below. That way you could organize your ideas, plan ahead, know

[28:06] which videos are being filmed, which ones you need to script. So just find something that works for you. Content calendar systems that's going to help something called the mere exposure effect, which is the more we see

[28:19] something, the more we like, trust, and remember it. It explains psychologically why consistency works as a content creator, too. There's also something called the trust momentum effect which is the mere exposure effect applied to

[28:34] social media and algorithms. So the trust momentum effect is how sustained consistency sends trust signals that reinforce and compound both audience loyalty and algorithmic reliability resulting in exponential visibility over

[28:50] time. So like predictability breeds trust and then trust accelerates momentum which creates the snowball effect of you connecting with your audience and growing and growing that audience over time. Mistake number nine

[29:03] audience over time. Mistake number nine is not reviewing analytics. Ghsalytics. dissecting and I love trying to figure it out. And that's why I have this

[29:16] it to you. You probably already know that listening to your audience alone direction, but something a lot of people forget about is reviewing the content behind that. So, after you've posted consistently for 30 to 90 days, you have

[29:32] consistently for 30 to 90 days, you have so much data that you can get to learn from to figure out how to improve your content steadily over time. Analytics content steadily over time. Analytics are so so cool because they tell a

[29:44] story. They tell you which video connected with your audience. They tell you which videos maybe you need to refine and rethink a hook for. So, let's look at our analytics together. We're going to open up our Instagram app. Go

[29:57] to your profile. Go to professional dashboard. And here, if your goal is followers, let's go to the content you shared. We're going to go content from the last three months. And then we're going to filter this. Sort by highest

[30:13] going to filter this. Sort by highest metric follows. I want to see what videos are getting me the most follows and then I can lean into that topic, double down on it or even like answer questions with videos. So, we have this

[30:27] video has gotten me 5,000 followers. It's a huge standout among everything else. It is telling me this is why people are following me. This is the So, I'm actually going to go to that video. It was posted a little bit ago.

[30:41] Boom. I'm going to go to the comments. And as you can see, here's the DM automation. A lot of people are using it, which increased the analytics there. But I am looking for questions specifically. And these questions are

[30:54] going to signal me what to make a video on next. What are UGC? Okay, I need to do a UGC basics video. That's definitely a good one. I have to have a portfolio before sending a pitch to a hotel. No,

[31:06] all. So, let me make a video about like have a portfolio at all. What phone do you use to film content? Great, that's a video. How far in advance do you recommend sending a pitch for a hotel

[31:19] that's a new video. So, all those comments signal to me what to make videos on. That's just one way to dissect your analytics. There's so many different goals, but that again, if your goal is growth, that is one thing you

[31:33] could look at. Next mistake that I see creators make is blaming the algorithm. This mistake happens when creators are not taking accountability when content flops. I feel like it's so easy to post videos and then go, "Gh, I'm

[31:47] Gh, I hate Instagram. The algorithm sucks. The algorithm is out to get me." sucks. The algorithm is out to get me." What that's doing is that is you telling yourself, "I created a perfect video. I spent all of my energy, 100% energy,

[32:02] planning intentionally knowing, hey, this video will land with my audience. I worked on my hook. I did everything I could with my filming. I did everything the YouTube videos. I listened to all the podcasts. I applied everything

[32:14] correctly, 100% right. And it's the algorithm's fault because I did everything right. There's no way I overlooked anything. There is always somebody's like, "Oh, the algorithm sucks. It's the algorithm's fault."

[32:28] Really, you need to take a step back and ask yourself, "Where can I take accountability here? Did I get lazy and not want to focus on a hook? Did I just "Oh, shoot. Let me turn this into a video." Did I just see a trend and was

[32:41] for my camera and just like follow this trend." You need to take accountability as a creator because that is where you're going to kind of really see some more growth is like, "Okay, no, I didn't really do any content research. I didn't

[32:54] my audience was interested in. This was just something I felt like doing." So, blaming the algorithm is kind of like a copout in a lot of situations that I see. Not all. There are some where I'm like, "Okay, well, your content is doing

[33:07] great, so maybe we need to check your account status." But I will tell you, account status." But I will tell you, 98% of the time when I audit profiles, [laughter] There's always room for improvement with

[33:19] content. The next mistake that you're making is you're using AI wrong. You're either overusing AI or you're not using AI. There's like two sides of the coins here. There are creators who are so overly reliant on AI where they just ask

[33:32] be?" and they just take it word for word and they're like great. Can you help me script that? Copy paste. Hi, I'm a robot. I'm reading an AI script. And then it's like no personality. You overused AI and you just sound like a

[33:44] creators who are not using it at all and they're like, well, I have to do all the researching from scratch and trying to figure it out. But really, there's ways figure it out. But really, there's ways to work with AI to save you time while

[33:58] also keeping you your personality at the core of your content. I have a video on my channel talking about how to utilize AI to grow to 1 million followers. So, if you want more in-depth trainings or if you want to kind of hear more about

[34:12] this topic of like, okay, well, how can I work with AI instead of against it, definitely watch that video next. It comes with a downloadable where it has all the prompts for you to copy paste directly into chat GPT or whatever AI

[34:25] bot you choose and save time to work with AI, but don't be a robot. All right, our final mistake that will guarantee you will never hit your goals is quitting too early. I know this is a little cheesy, but stay with me here. I

[34:42] have had coffee with people who are like, I want to grow on my Instagram and I really want to do this. And I'm like, okay, great. Let's make a plan. We make a plan and it's a beautiful plan. It's so good. If they follow the plan, they

[34:54] will see growth. They stick to it for like three videos and then they're like, "It's not working." And then they give up. It just breaks my heart because I'm like, "You be so close. You could do it. I know you could do it." And and you

[35:08] know, sometimes content creation is not for everyone. That's fine. I talk about sometimes content creation might not be for you. You got to try it. You actually you're like, "Cool. I actually don't want to do this." And so it's not

[35:22] necessarily like quitting. It's just filtering out what is for you and what isn't for you. You need to understand that becoming a content creator is like that becoming a content creator is like a forever thing. I think people assume

[35:35] it's going to be easy. People assume posting consistently is going to be easy. It's not easy. It takes consistency. It takes accountability. It takes a lot of discipline. You have to show up for yourself because nobody else

[35:47] like, "Oh, I'm going to post for 30 days. I'm gonna go viral and then I'm a full-time content creator. I've made it. But once you make it, you have to keep posting for forever until you don't want to be posting anymore. So like I always

[36:04] tell my students like what's a posting cadence you could realistically stick to want to be in five years? You want to be a content creator in five years from now. That means you need to be posting consistently from now for the next five

[36:18] years. And I think people, they start posting and they realize, "Oh my gosh, can't do this for five years." And that's just because they like started like a little walk. You got to start with a little bit of this. So, a lot of

[36:31] people quit too early because they posted a few times, they didn't see the instant results, and they're like, "Well, I this isn't for me." There are creators like Mr. Beast, who posted maybe like 400 videos or a couple

[36:46] maybe like 400 videos or a couple hundred videos before a video took off. Creators like Marcus Brownley was creating for years before a video took off. Creators like It's Modern Millie started posting when she was in what,

[37:01] started posting when she was in what, sixth grade, seventh grade, and look at her now. Probably one of the staples in our industry. Let's be real. Literally is if you quit. And that's okay. Some people will learn that content creations

[37:16] is not for them. But if you just keep going, you will see success. Success is inevitable. So keep going. And then all the other mistakes that we've talked about today, make sure you're making those tweaks and making those fixes and

[37:28] success will come to you. I have a bajillion more mistakes that I'm like "Oh, shoot. I should have mentioned that." But maybe that'll have to be in a let me know down in the comments which mistake you think you're currently

[37:42] making that is holding you back from seeing success. And then watch this video next because YouTube thinks you'd like it. Thank you so much for watching. like it. Thank you so much for watching. I will see you in our next one. Bye.