SPI 911: The Master Guide to Instagram Growth with Brock Johnson

SPI 911: The Master Guide to Instagram Growth with Brock Johnson

Brock Johnson: I don’t care if you go viral, I care if you are putting food on the table, paying your bills. And on Instagram, the biggest difference maker is direct message automation. Promoting things on Instagram for the last 20 years has been click the link in my bio. And what happens when you say that is half your audience they’re not interested. But then the half that is interested, they are now being told directly by you, don’t engage with this post, go somewhere else, do something else.

If instead you use Direct Message Automation, where a creator will say, comment the word blank and I will send you blank, now your post is getting hundreds of comments, those comments are getting Instantly sent the thing that they want. You’re getting more engagement, which leads to more views, which then creates like a positive feedback loop, more engagement, more views, so on and so forth. And the fortune is in the follow up. It’s an absolute game changer. It’s proven to increase the vanity metrics of views and engagement, but it’s also proven to drastically increase sales, click through rates, and all that.

Pat Flynn: You’re probably curious about Instagram, right? Well, we got the master here, Brock Johnson. We’re gonna talk about tips, tactics, mentality on how to grow on Instagram this year because it’s a new year and we want to set you up for success.

Brock, welcome to the show, man.

Brock Johnson: Thank you. I’m excited to be here.

Pat Flynn: In the new studio.

Brock Johnson: Brand new. Yeah, I know. I’m fired up.

Pat Flynn: I don’t think anybody even really knows what this is about. So we’ll have to reveal that later. There’s a hook for you. I’ll share with you at the end, what’s going on. But Brock, I want to talk about Instagram.

You are an Instagram expert. You have students, you get to go to amazing places to speak about Instagram. I just want to start off really, really quick with a very kind of hard question, which is if somebody were starting Instagram today, zero followers, zero brand deals, zero experience. What’s one thing that they would do that would basically kill their chances of doing well right from the get go?

Brock Johnson: Yeah, I would say it is comparing themselves to creators who have come before them. I was tempted to answer your question by saying following people who have come before them. I think you can follow other people to get sources for inspiration to see what are other people doing that I can borrow for my own stuff or what are other people doing that there’s like a gap in the market and I can fill that need.

So I think that that can be helpful to a certain extent. But I think that comparing yourself to others, specifically in their outcomes, right? Looking at how fast they grew, how many followers they have, how much engagement they’re getting, that is going to lead to failure so fast because you are not going to see outcomes very fast.

You’re not going to see outcomes like they have for probably years and it’s just going to defeat you and leave you with this sense of like, oh, why not me? This victim mentality and it’s going to absolutely crush your chances of ever having success.

Pat Flynn: Because we hear stories all the time of the creator who just got started yesterday and then they’re blowing up, right?

What is a usual average sort of cadence of expectation for results on Instagram? Like, what can we expect if you’re just starting out?

Brock Johnson: Probably multiple months if not years. I believe the average growth rate for a small brand or business on Instagram is like 8 percent per month. Okay. So, that’s, that’s really a small amount of followers, right?

We hear about these like viral success stories and that’s what sticks in our brain, but it takes many months. I would say, usually, I used to say, commit for 90 days. And then I extend it to commit for 120 days. Now I say commit for at least six months, but the real advice is probably commit for at least a year.

And when I say commit, like consistency and all the other things that I’m sure we’re going to talk about today, but a year’s worth of that. And then you can go back to the drawing board and be like, okay, maybe this just absolutely is not working. But to take your first question, even a step further, what so many people do is they give up after a month or 90 days, or even I’ve heard examples of people messaging me, Hey, it’s been a week.

Hey, it’s been two weeks. What’s going wrong? And I reply, what’s going wrong is you’re expecting results after less than a month of work. So it’s going to take time, but you’ve got to commit to it.

Pat Flynn: Yeah. The commitment is important, but of course, there are many ways that we could approach Instagram. If you’re just starting out from scratch, what are you doing?

What are you posting? Are we doing Photos, carousels. I hear our thing Reels, stories. What’s the gist? What is your best strategy for somebody who’s literally just getting started?

Brock Johnson: Yeah. First, we need to identify what is our focus going to be, or our niche, or however you wanna say it. Like what is that topic we’re going to focus on?

Luckily, if you don’t know exactly what that is, you don’t have to have that ironed out before you start posting, but you usually have to have that ironed out before you actually start growing. So you can start throwing things at the wall into an experiment like, what do I like to do? What kind of content do I prefer to create?

What am I good at creating? Um, or to just practice if you actually want to see results and growth. It’s going to come from starting with that niching down, that getting focused. But then from there, early on, I would focus primarily on Reels. Well, I would say probably 80 percent of your focus should be on reels.

Reels, on average, reach more new people, like the non followers. And so, obviously, if you don’t have any followers because you’re just getting started, you need to start posting reels. But don’t neglect the other formats. Continue to post carousels, post photos. The format that I would say you could neglect the most early on, like early, early on, is stories.

Because stories are almost exclusively viewed by followers. And if you don’t have very many followers yet, at most you’re gonna be getting a couple of views on your stories. And not that those people don’t matter, but you know, just thinking about the return on your time investment, it’s probably best to wait on stories if you have to choose something to wait on.

Pat Flynn: That makes sense. So, short form video, I think we all know that this is where the attention is right now. Hmm. How often are you recommending we post? So this goes with the consistency thing. How often and how much?

Brock Johnson: This is such a great question. Probably the number one question I get and my answer is not a numerical value.

My answer is I think it’s an eight word sentence. The more you post, the more you grow, is that eight? Eight? Totally. Okay. Yeah. The more you post, the more you grow. So there’s a direct correlation between posting frequency, how much you are posting to your feed and growth rate, and that’s all the way to the furthest extreme, which I’m not telling people to post this much, but there are examples of accounts that are posting hundreds of times a day.

Hundreds a day. Hundreds. There was, there’s one viral example that it went viral because they showed their account to Mr. Beast, and so now his name is, you know, attached to it, but they’re like an E-news, like entertainment, news, yeah. Yeah. In the States, but specifically for Bollywood. And they have a staff of dozens of people, but they are posting hundreds of times a day about Bollywood news.

If you look at their account, they have like over 100,000 total posts uploaded, which is insane. Again, I’m not telling anyone to do this, but they’re growing hundreds of thousands of followers per month. They have like 30 something million followers on their account in a relatively short amount of time.

So again, not saying that anyone should do that, just giving that as an example. Even myself personally, and there are numerous other studies to back this up, but I did a personal experiment this year. For the first half of 2025, I posted 2.5 times a day. Okay. And I grew 20,000 followers in those first six months.

During those first six months, you could argue that that was one of the best opportunities for my growth ever because I got to interview the head of Instagram during that six month period. I got to do a bunch of collabs with like big accounts, the official at creators account on Instagram, which has like 20 million followers.

That period should have been optimal growth stage. The second six months of the year, I scaled from 2.5 posts per day to four posts per day, and I gained 60,000 followers. So, three times the amount of followers in the second half. Without the collab, without, without the collab, without the super cool interview, without like all these big things that we’re blowing up.

And so, obviously there’s a million other variables and obviously this is a small sample size but it’s again just the proof is in the pudding that the more you post, the more you grow.

Pat Flynn: The more you post, the more you grow. Which, at least for us old school creators who grew up in the blogging days, right, it was like you don’t post too much because it would overwhelm your audience and your subscribers.

But That doesn’t seem to be the case here.

Brock Johnson: No, it’s, it’s the TikTokification of social media, right? Where TikTok, the reason that it blew up in 2020 and has stuck around, unlike, you know, imagine all those other social networks that blew up, and Vine, and Foursquare, and BeReal, remember all these apps that like blew up and are pretty much non existent today.

TikTok stuck around because TikTok said, Hey, we don’t care who you follow. We don’t care who your social circle is, which is how Facebook worked, right? Connecting local college kids on their local college campus. That was Zuckerberg’s original goal. TikTok said, we want to show you what you’re interested in.

And so just because you follow me, if I post four times today, you’re probably not going to see all four. I’m lucky if you see one. But that one that you see is based off which one would be most interesting to you. So that’s kind of like the, the really great thing about this TikTokification is you could post 100 really bad posts and if they’re all really bad because they’re not engaging, they’re not captivating people or would not be interested, Well, the good news is they won’t be shown to people.

Like your worst work won’t be shown. Only your best work will be shown. So that’s kind of the real strong suit or the benefit of this TikTokification.

Pat Flynn: So what’s the point of trying to get subscribers or followers? Is there a point?

Brock Johnson: There is a point. The point is that they are slightly more likely to see your post.

They are more likely to use your word, to use your shirt, to become a superfan if they are first a follower. It’s just nowadays, it’s a lot tougher to get someone to follow in the first place. The follow is less valuable than it was 10 to 15 years ago, but it is still the next step in that journey. Very rarely are people going to go from just viewer, like non follower, to customer.

There’s usually the customer in between in the funnel.

Pat Flynn: And this is where we unlock the power of stories now in Instagram, right? Because your followers will see those stories. And that’s where clicks, call to actions, and things like that can come into play, which I found to be a huge benefit of getting onto Instagram versus something like YouTube Shorts, which is still great, and I’m growing hugely there, but getting clicks from viewers there is much harder than followers on Instagram who’ve seen my videos, who now follow, who then see a story where I’m saying, go here.

Brock Johnson: Yeah. Right? Yeah.

Pat Flynn: So if video is, in fact, what we should be doing, Let’s break down a video. What makes a great video that will get seen by a lot of people?

Brock Johnson: With short form, it’s the hook. The hook is beyond a shadow of a doubt, absolutely everything. 80 percent of the time, energy, and effort that you spend planning the post, scripting the post, coming up with what’s going to be in it should be spent on those just few seconds.

And I think within the world of small business owners and marketers and brands, we’ve over focused on the words of the hook, whether that be the text that they’re writing on the screen or the words that they’re saying, and we’ve kind of forgotten about something that I think you do a great job of, which is the visual.

The visual is so huge, and the audio. I think you do a really great job of those two things, and those are two forgotten elements, and we just focus on like, say this number of words, use this kind of words, use negative language, and like, those sorts of things can help. A shorter, more concise hook is usually going to be more effective.

A hook that is using simpler language that would be understandable by a drunk grandma. That is usually going to be more effective.

Pat Flynn: Should I open it or should I keep it sealed?

Brock Johnson: Yeah, like, I could tell my grandma that phrase and she would understand what’s happening. Especially if I’m showing her, like, a pack.

Right, right. But the visual, like, we’re visual creatures. So, Instagram, people have said, Instagram used to be a photo platform and now it’s a video platform. I disagree. I think Instagram has always been a visual platform. Short form video, and specifically the hook in your short form video, is just the most visually captivating thing that you can create right now.

Paying attention to what video elements are in there. Are there props that you can use? Are there visual cues that can clue someone in? Is there an interesting moment that is going to draw people in? Can you just show a face? Because oftentimes just showing a human face with eyes, it’s the same idea as like a thumbnail on YouTube, right?

If you have a face in it, people are more likely to click. And so, it’s those same elements apply to your hook on your Reels.

Pat Flynn: So, if hooks are the most important thing, what are some channels or examples from others you remember because of the hooks?

Brock Johnson: Yeah, one that does a really great job is WantsAndNeedsBrand_, I believe that’s them.

It might be underscore brand or brand underscore. They do a good job. And then Citizen_theartist, he’s a musician. They both do something that’s called hook swaps, where they take these sort of viral clips, viral moments, super curiosity driven, oftentimes like an underlying story element that get you to lean forward and be like, Oh, what’s about to happen?

And then you want to keep watching. And then before you know it, Wants and Needs has transitioned into selling their gray sweatsuit or Citizen the Artist has transitioned into one of his music videos. So they both do a really great job, but they do it a little bit differently. Wants and Needs uses preexisting hooks and swaps into their own.

So they use like. Already proven, like somebody else, somebody else’s viral clip, viral intro, and then it transitions into their own. That’s what it’s called. Stitch. Stitch or duet. Instagram changes the name all the time on us. And then Citizen the artist does higher production value, takes a little bit more time and creativity, but he creates his own.

And so just kind of different takes on the same essential strategy. They do a great job.

Pat Flynn: How is that not a bait and switch? Like, that sounds like a bait and switch. Here’s this thing that’s not what my thing is about, but I did it to capture your attention.

Brock Johnson: Part of it is playing on the, just the overconsumption of trends on social media.

There are differences though, because I think like the bait and switch or clickbait on YouTube is like making a promise that you are going to get this thing from this video. OMG, my grandma died. And then the video is like, my grandma died laughing, right? Like, that is, that is clickbait. That’s what we see on YouTube.

On Instagram, it’s more like taking something that is dramatic, and it is going to happen in the video, like Citizen the Artist did one where he Tripped and he literally tripped and it fell and it looked like he was in like Southern California. And it looked like he was going to trip and fall into a tide pool at the beach.

And he literally, in the video does trip and fall, but then it just seamlessly transitions from his trip and fall into his music video. So you’re still getting to see the the dramatic, interesting moment of him tripping, or in one case, getting his shoelace caught in like the door of a car, something like that, but also I think people, because it’s short form, they’re a lot more forgiving, whereas on YouTube it’s like, you just wasted 20 minutes of my time for your grandma to die laughing.

Versus on Instagram, it’s like you wasted three seconds of my time, but you were also really captivating and funny. And I got dopamine. So like my box is checked for this video.

Pat Flynn: And now it’s like, thank you for interrupting my thumb scrolling for this thing. Right. So the one that I remember seeing on a lot, like this was a trend that I saw on a lot of people’s Instagrams and TikToks was there was like a person sitting in a chair, tied up.

You don’t know why they tied up. Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes. There’s a rope connected to it in a car driving away. Mm-hmm . You can see the rope getting closer and closer to being tau and then sometimes it actually does pull the person.

Brock Johnson: Yeah. The Paul brothers did that trend. I did that trend. I feel like, oh, you did that?

I did that one. I did it with tied around my neck and I was standing there. It definitely took a few takes and like my heart was pounding because even though the rope wasn’t tied, I was like, what if it gets snagged? Like, what if I do get yanked right now and my wife’s driving the car is scary. But again, I also think that committing to your videos is something that isn’t talked about enough.

I think a lot of people are kind of mailing it in. They’re doing the bare minimum and I am all for low hanging fruit, easy content. But if all you’re doing is easy content, and people aren’t going to engage because it looks no different from everyone else. There’s nothing unique or creative. And so I think committing, like not necessarily putting yourself in a dangerous situation like tying a rope around your neck and tying the other end to a car, but committing to the bit.

And for some people that can be as small of a change as just going outside. Going outside and filming your Reels out of park or just in your front yard has been shown to increase engagement and views because there’s an underlying instinctual, oh, hey, there’s a little bit more variability here. Oh, hey, there’s a little bit more dynamicness going on.

That’s why like street interviews are such a popular style of, of short form content because who knows what’s going to happen, right? We’re filming on the streets. So I think the committing is big.

Pat Flynn: There’s a guy named Justin who lives in Hawaii who goes around and he finds people’s pets. He’s like, the, the videos start with, Hey, is your pet friendly?

And then he takes pictures of the pets. Mm. And then the end of the video is always the like reveal the climaxes. There’s these beautiful photos that he takes, but it’s the interaction. Yeah. Like, you know what’s gonna happen? He’s gonna find a pet and then he is going to take photos of it. But what’s that owner gonna take it?

What’s the dog gonna, is the dog gonna behave like we don’t know? So, he’s gotten to like a million followers just being a street photographer in doing that. He even said for himself, as an introvert, that this was a great exercise. He, like, the reason why he wanted to do this is because he was afraid to talk to people.

And this was his way to kind of document not just these amazing photos of people and their pets but his own journey of becoming now somebody who’s comfortable talking to people as a stranger. So, like, to me, that was like, oh, now I’m getting to know this person behind the camera. This trend or this thing. And funny enough, when I was in Hawaii for a Pokemon event, I was wearing like this bright Pokemon shirt and he was a fan of my channel. Oh nice. So I got to meet him. Yeah. And he interviewed me and I was like, I don’t have a pet, but you can interview me if you want. Yeah, I guess my Pokemon are kind like pets. But this repeatable format thing was really, really cool.

And of course, you know my show. Mm-hmm. Should I open your should to keep it sealed. Very repeatable format. It makes it easy for me to create, makes it easy for people to know what it’s about. Mm-hmm. What are your thoughts on repeatable formats?

Brock Johnson: One of my predictions for 2026, is that repeatable formats in the form of series or challenges are going to go rampant. I hope that it’s going to last the entire year and that, like, someone who is starting their own series at the end of 2026 can still, like, have this virality and pop off with it, but I definitely believe that at the beginning half of the year, There are going to be a lot of people creating these series or challenges and they’re going to have wild success because of it.

I mean, we could think of a million examples. There’s a guy named Gage who is running a mile for every follower that he gains. And he’s now got a million followers, and he was also, I think, over 400 pounds at the start. And so he’s now got over a million on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. He’s in the Deep Pocket Monster class, and he, he’s going to run a million miles.

Three million now. And he’s kind of come forward and said, like, I’m realistically probably never going to be able to run this many. Like elite marathoners aren’t running a million miles in their life, but he is running multiple miles every day. He’s documenting his journey. He’s lost almost 200 pounds, I believe, already, which is insane.

And he’s documenting it every step of the way. And he’s kind of now added challenges onto it. He’s like, well, maybe if I can’t run 700 miles today, maybe I can run a mile barefoot, or I’m going to run a mile. And he’s like doing these other little challenges, raising funds for certain things. So that’s one example.

There’s one guy, he’s doing it, he’s calling it the isolation year, and he’s literally locking himself in what’s essentially a prison cell, like a room in his house that they’ve built to look like a prison cell, for an entire year. And they’re going to document the entire thing. And again, I’m not telling people to do this level of extreme, but I’ve been talking to my community about these challenges, and I’ll hear people say like, well, I’m going to do a 30 day challenge where I’m making a different salad every day.

I’m like, I love that you have a series that you come up with when you are competing against a guy who’s running a mile for every follower or locking himself in a room. It’s not going to hit the same, right? It’s not going to drive that same impact. So I don’t think you need to go to an extreme level.

Anything that’s like, again, harmful or dangerous, but like what can you come up with? How would you change a day by day challenge? Yeah, so I would do for salad? Yeah. I would say adding one new ingredient to my salad every day until I reach 10 K followers. So maybe if you get to date 320, you have a salad with 320 ingredients and it’s hilarious and it’s funny.

Right? Yeah. I was talking with one of our other clients. She invented a at home workout device thing and I was talking to her about it, and she said, you know, it’s great because it allows people to work out from home, work out from anywhere, it’s easy to transport, and she said, what if I did a workout on it every day?

I said, well, you’re already doing a workout on it every day, so what if instead we did day blank, day one, of exercising in a new location with my, insert invention, and so now one day she’s going to be in a Target parking lot, one day she’s going to be on the top of a mountain, there’s this great guy who, his Instagram is called Discovery Deadlift, And he tredges into like high mountain peaks or middle of the backcountry or desolate beaches with a couple hundred pounds of like a barbell and some weights and then he does deadlifts.

And so it’s just kind of taking that same idea of like, what if I did an exercise in a crazy location? But she then is showing, right, that her product can be taken anywhere. It’s easy to transport. She can show different exercises that you can do with it. So she’s essentially selling her product in every video, but it’s a creative challenge in the process.

Pat Flynn: I like that.

A lot of these examples are big, grand examples, right, and I think there are many examples of other creators who are doing much smaller things that might be easier to grasp, but are still just as interesting. I’ve been following a couple people who have been challenging themselves to speak in public without filler words, like day one of trying to speak for 60 seconds without using filler words, and they’re on day, like, 200 now, and you can tell they’ve completely transformed their communication. And although there’s no crazy spectacle, there is a real relatable part of that, that I think is very nice for people to follow.

Brock Johnson: And I think it’s challenging, right? Like it is something that is a legitimate challenge. It’s not something that you would do anyways.

Also, it’s not something that they’re not necessarily inviting the community to get involved with. The community can get involved, but I think that’s a misinterpretation when we talk about this sometimes. People be like, well, What could everyone do with me? And it’s like, I would rather you challenge yourself first, and if people want to do it, that’s great, but that’s not the focus.

Pat Flynn: Right, right.

Brock Johnson: I have one of these challenges for myself that I’m going to do in 2026 where I’m going to write down the name of every follower that I gain from now until I hit a million followers. Which I’m like 150,000 away, which I did the math. If it takes me 10 seconds to write down a name and I gained just 250 followers, that’s going to take me like 40 minutes right down the name.

So it’s going to be far. Are you in that? I haven’t started it yet. So I’m going to be starting it right before the new year. So like I really hope I hit, I hope I hit it quickly, but also I know, and I’m going to get like a giant sheet of paper. And so when I get done, it’s going to be all of the names written down.

And you know, with, Obviously losing followers, it’s probably going to be 200,000 to 250,000 names I’m going to have to write down, but like if there’s a day where I gain 10,000 followers, that might take me legitimately hours to write down every single name. But I think the underlying message with that one will also be like every person matters.

It’s not just a number. It’s not just a data. It’s not just something to pat yourself on the back about. It’s like, this is a real human being. Right.

Pat Flynn: So, that’s cool. Speaking of data, once you start to get some bank of videos on your Instagram, what data are you looking at to inform how to do better in your next videos?

Brock Johnson: Retention is, is a huge one, which Instagram has given us a lot of new stats in terms of like, how long are people watching the video? What’s the watch rate after the first three seconds? I think those are key. And then depending on what your goal is, I might focus on different metrics. So if your goal was growth, I’m going to focus primarily on shares as a form of engagement and creating content or doubling down on the content that is getting more shares.

If I want more sales, I’m in a season of selling, I’m focusing more on comments or things that drive story views rather than shares or virality.

Pat Flynn: So when it comes to shares, what makes a video shareable?

Brock Johnson: I have an acronym. It’s the word share. Okay. S is simple. We’ve talked a little bit about like dumb it down, make it simple.

Use easy to understand words. H is hook. We’ve talked about hooks. A is authentic, which that’s obviously a buzzword. How do you be more authentic? I think that you reduce the time between idea and execution. The shorter amount of time you can get with short form video between I have an idea. I want to make a post.

I want to talk about this topic. I want to tell this story and actually doing it. The more authentic it’ll be.

Pat Flynn: The most authentic being like in the app.

Brock Johnson: In the moment like I just had this idea and like I’m in my car like how many viral car videos have you seen where a guy’s just sitting in his car talking to the camera yeah right that’s authentic that’s real not spending hours editing it filtering it refining it that stuff is great for a long form that stuff is great for a really beautifully told story but on Instagram like just give me the real so that’s authentic. R is relatable and my tip for relatability is that relatability comes from specificity. And what I mean by that is, when you are telling your stories, or when you are, let’s say, labeling a meme, get specific in your wording.

I’ll give you an example. Bad example would be if I were to post a trending audio of myself getting mad, and I labeled it, Me when my reel doesn’t get a lot of views. Relatable, right? Anyone in my audience can relate to not getting a lot of views. But if instead I get specific and I say, Me when I spend three hours editing a reel and it gets seven likes.

There’s probably very few people in my audience who have had exactly that experience, but because I’ve gotten specific, they can now relate with it more deeply and more strongly. So get specific there. For example. Instead of being vague, we have a tendency to like water ourselves down, thinking, well, appeal to anyone.

But the more specific you get, the more you can appeal specifically to people in your audience. Um, then E is Entertainment. The interview that gets all the attention that I did this year was the head of Instagram. The interview that should get all the attention is my interview in a backroom closet with the head of Instagram for business because he shared a lot more juicy stuff. Stuff that was not necessarily approved by Meta to share. Oh, really? But yeah, we could go into a whole side conversation about that. Did you have to keep, take it down? Not take it down. He was nice enough to say I didn’t have to take it down, but they asked me to no longer promote it or post about it.

So, I’ll mention it like here. It may or may not be. It may or may not be on my podcast. But. That’s interesting. Yeah. Yeah. It was. Why wouldn’t they want you to. There was just some things that he shared and tips and things that like were not Meta approved and they’re very much like a go through legal type of, type of company, you know.

Are these mind blowing things that like, I don’t know if they, I would say mind blowing, but definitely juicier than my interview with the head of Instagram.

Pat Flynn: If you don’t mind, could you share one juicy thing from that?

Brock Johnson: Yeah, what it is and what actually relates to this SHARE acronym is the E, which was he said that way too many brands and business owners are focused on educational content, giving tips and value and education, when instead they should be focused on entertainment.

He said a few years ago, and I’m paraphrasing, but he said a few years ago, brands and businesses should consider How Entertaining is My Content? He said, now it needs to be the focus. It needs to be the primary driving factor when you’re creating content, when you’re writing a script. How entertaining is this post, is this sentence, how necessary is the framing and the visual, and focusing on entertainment, we can, you know, get into how to achieve entertainment value because it’s not dancing and being a crazy, silly, goofy clown.

Pat Flynn: What is the definition of entertainment in that?

Brock Johnson: Yeah, I think part of it is something that you talk about all the time, which is storytelling. Is a huge part of entertainment. Part of it is the visuals that we’ve talked about so far. I think considering the stranger is huge. Which I think so many people when they’re creating content, they’re creating it from their own point of view.

But most people who are seeing your posts are either literal strangers, they’ve never seen a post before, or they’re followers but they don’t see posts that often. Most people are not like me watching Short Pocket Monster where I’m like watching every single episode every single night and I’m refreshing at 9pm like, where’s today’s episode?

Most people are just posting. Oh hey, this is the first post I’ve seen in a month. And so, with it being in mind for a stranger, does the first few seconds find that balance between grabbing their attention, but still making them curious to know more. Curious to know more, but not so curious that they’re confused and lost.

And just formatting it for a stranger is helpful. And then, to take it a step further and make it even more practical, with each sentence that you say, each word that you include in the video, Just asking, is this necessary or is it redundant? I hope you get fit, be lean, lose weight, and be healthy. You just said the same thing four different ways.

Like, can we say it one way? Because the more redundant you are, I’m going to get bored and I’m going to scroll away.

Pat Flynn: Yeah, yeah. Dang, that’s really good. Thank you. We’ll link to that exclusive secret thing. We’ll link to it somewhere. Yeah. As we wrap up here, you know, there’s a lot of business owners and entrepreneurs who are here who don’t just want to build a following and become quote unquote Instagram famous, but they want to do business, they want to generate revenue, and so I’m curious your thoughts on what is the best way for a person who now has a following, how might they then convert those followers into dollars?

Brock Johnson: Yeah, I’m glad we’re talking about this because this is the most important thing. This is what I care about the most. I don’t care if you go viral, I care if you are putting food on the table, paying your bills. And on Instagram, the biggest difference maker is direct message automation, which is essentially the tried and true way of promoting things on Instagram for the last 20 years has been click the link in my bio.

And what happens when you say that is half your audience or however much they’re not interested, which there’s always going to be people who are not interested, and they’re just going to scroll. Who cares? We do a better job of marketing to make them interested or whatever. But then the half that is interested, they are now being told directly by you, don’t engage with this post, go somewhere else, do something else.

And that something else is usually also like a multi step process of like, go to my bio, find the link, it’s a link menu, select the right thing from the menu. It’s confusing. If instead you use Direct Message Automation, which is that thing that I think a lot more people are familiar with now, where a creator will say, comment the word blank and I will send you blank.

Now, instead of telling people, hey, leave this post alone, you’re telling them, engage with the post. Now your post is getting hundreds of comments, those comments are getting Instantly sent the thing that they want, the guide, the course, whatever that you’re selling, right to their inbox, which shows up with that little red one.

And now they have like a reminder to go click on it. You’re getting more engagement, which leads to more views, which then creates like a positive feedback loop, more engagement, more views, so on and so forth. And the fortune is in the follow up. So when someone clicks the link in your bio, you don’t know who they are.

You don’t know who clicked when they click. You don’t know if they became a customer. All you know is tomorrow you can look back and Instagram will be like, 137 people clicked on your link yesterday. And I’m like, okay, I can’t really do anything with that. But if I use direct message automation, I can see 37 percent of people clicked on this link, 98 percent of people opened this message.

Okay, so maybe there’s a way I could get more people who opened to actually click. They were obviously interested. Oh hey, I can literally see the names of every person who clicked. And I can see that of the 10 people who clicked, only 3 purchased. So I can go manually follow up with the other seven, or I could even build automations to follow up, say, Hey, I noticed that you were interested in that thing, but didn’t see your purchase come through.

I want you to know that the sale ends tomorrow night. Are there any questions I can answer? You can then follow up with them. It’s an absolute game changer. It’s proven to increase the vanity metrics of views and engagement, but it’s also proven to drastically increase sales, click through rates, and all that.

Pat Flynn: What tool are you using for that?

Brock Johnson: I use ManyChat. It’s the most popular tool. There are some other tools that do it as well. ManyChat is the I think it’s the most popular, most trusted, and I believe it’s the only tool that is an officially approved partner. It’s not just like they have access to Instagram’s API, they’re literally, they meet every week with Meta to make sure that they’re in good standing.

Pat Flynn: Yeah, that’s important. Plus one on using ManyChat. We use ManyChat now, started using it. It’s been pretty amazing.

Brock Johnson: Yeah, and they have some amazing features that are coming out in 2026 or that came out at the end of 2025. One of my new favorites is the automatic DM when someone follows you. And so business owners are tempted to like, Hey, I got a new follower.

Let’s send them a message that’s a sale. I don’t recommend doing that. But what I turned on is I just say, Hey, thanks so much for the follow. I appreciate you. That’s it. No sale. And so now hundreds of times a day, people are getting that message from me and I open my DMs and it’s blowing up with people being like, Hey, thanks.

Hey, I appreciate that. Or like liking the message. And just like immediately creating that feeling of like, Hey, you’re welcome here. I appreciate you being here. And it’s just creating that engagement.

Pat Flynn: And then to finalize this conversation, how do you get people from engaging with you in that sort of non salesy way to then purchasing something from you.

Do you have a plan or a campaign or like, how are you doing that?

Brock Johnson: Specifically using many chat and that new feature? No, not necessarily. I just want to create this positive feeling. And it is shown on Instagram that when someone DMS you or you DM them, that you are more likely to see their next post. And so by them saying like, hey, thanks, they’re now even more likely to see my next post.

And if in the future I want them to message me a certain keyword, there’s already a DM conversation there, so it’s not going to be lost in the requests folder or they’re not going to be confused. It’s there. They’ve already opened a message from me in the past, so it just makes it that much easier in the future when I say comment this word or DM me this special keyword that they know how to do that and they’ll get the response they’re looking for.

Pat Flynn: And then do you run sales in an evergreen fashion or do you have like moments of the year where you’re running a campaign?

Brock Johnson: We definitely have sales, you know, like the typical Black Friday sales and that sort of thing and we have usually like one or two annual launches. Besides that, I am constantly driving people to free lead magnets.

I think that Instagram is a great top and middle of funnel and then to get people into a low ticket product or a free product, I think that’s what’s great on Instagram. I think, you know, The more expensive you go, the tougher and tougher it is going to be to actually close that sale on Instagram. I find it much more beneficial like up on a consultation call or something like that if you’re going to sell a high ticket mastermind.

Pat Flynn: Yeah, they want that conversation. Like, are you an actual person? Yeah, exactly. Great. Uh, what would be your final tip to leave people who are now either going to start Instagram or they’re there and they’re going to take some of these tips? What can the master say to help these people who are listening today?

Brock Johnson: Yeah, I appreciate that. I I think that’s not the sexy answer, but it’s the honest answer, and it’s just press post. Like, those are the three words that I live by. I wish I had been born 50 years earlier so I could have stolen that from Nike before they said, just do it, but just press post. You know, I heard this great analogy yesterday that you will love, which is, you can’t control how many fish you catch, you can only control how often you fish.

You say it all the time, you quote Alex in saying count uploads not views, count uploads not followers, and I think that going all the way back to what we were talking about at the beginning, don’t focus on those outcomes, the views, the followers, the things you ultimately can’t control, just focus on what you can control.

How can I improve my process? How can I become more efficient? How can I implement systems so that this isn’t taking hours, it’s taking a couple minutes a day? But ultimately, just press post. Because like, I could have shared a million tips in this interview, and Maybe zero of them are going to work for one of these viewers, but in experimenting with these ideas and in just pressing posts, you’re going to find what does work for them, right?

So, ultimately, just press posts.

Pat Flynn: And as you said before, the more you post, the more you grow.

Brock Johnson: Print it.

Pat Flynn: Thanks man, I appreciate you.