Instagram Growth Hacks for Dealers with Brock Johnson

Instagram Growth Hacks for Dealers with Brock Johnson

In this episode of Word on the Street, Andrew sits down with Instagram growth coach and content strategist Brock Johnson to talk all things Instagram — and why dealerships need to ditch the polished, cookie-cutter drone shots and start creating authentic, organic content that actually connects.

Brock shares why raw, real, and scrappy content outperforms traditional inventory ads on social, how to get your sales team comfortable on camera, and what kind of posts truly build trust with today’s shoppers. From the importance of a strong hook to the power of employee-generated content, Brock breaks down practical growth hacks any dealership can start using immediately.

Whether you’re managing your store’s social media or trying to build your personal brand, this episode is packed with insights to help you stop the scroll and start driving results.

👉 Listen now and learn:

• Why personality-packed, organic video beats polished ads
• How to get your team involved in creating content
• Brock’s go-to content creation systems and scheduling tools
• The myth of shadowbanning and the truth about hashtags
• Why the hook is the most important 3 seconds of your video

If you’re ready to level up your dealership’s Instagram game, you don’t want to miss this one.

00:00 – Intro to Brock Johnson & why organic social matters
 03:22 – The myth of polished content and why raw works
 06:10 – Building trust: what actually drives engagement
 09:48 – Real examples: the Utah DOT’s viral content strategy
 13:30 – Creating content that reflects dealership authenticity
 16:55 – Breaking through excuses to actually start filming
 21:45 – Brock’s batch creation system for busy marketers
 26:00 – The power of cross-industry inspiration
 28:32 – Why bad AI prompts give you bad content
 31:55 – Rapid fire: Instagram features & strategies
 33:20 – Hashtags: what the Head of Instagram really said
 35:45 – Best performing content types today
 38:58 – Making content that gets shared (and why that matters)
 41:12 – Brock’s take on shadowbanning myths
 44:10 – Organic content vs paid ads—what’s the difference?
 46:05 – Why scheduling content is a non-negotiable
 48:30 – UGC vs. EGC: The rise of Employee Generated Content
 52:00 – How to stop creating “middle” content that doesn’t perform
 55:30 – Getting started: What Brock recommends for dealerships

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Transcript

Ladies and gentlemen, if you are looking to ramp your Instagram content up and build your personal brand and maybe your business's brand, your dealership's brand on Instagram, you're in the right place. I'm Andrew Street. This is Word on the Street. I'm joined today by my friend, Brock Johnson, who is an Instagram growth coach and content strategist who's helped hundreds of thousands of people grow their brand and if you're not following him yet you should be following brock johnson on instagram he has all of the best practices on how to get your brand to grow to get people to follow you and then this is going to be a conversation that's going to help dealerships start with content get their team to Be comfortable on camera, but more importantly, to be social, to make your dealership be vibrant and relay the soul that the dealership has to customers. Enjoy this conversation with Brock Johnson.

All right. So like as we were talking about, like I do a lot of advertising with car dealers and we get a lot of super polished content when they're really making a deliberate effort to getting content. It's a drone footage shot of the dealer's logo. It's the three quarter panel video walk around in front of the new F-Zero Raptor. And it looks super manufactory. And, and I know you're a big fan of like, actual organic, scrappy boots on the ground, use your phone content. Where'd you come up? Like, what made you really notice that that type of contents resonating more? And do you have any examples of that working? Yeah, I think one of the best things that anyone can do is just look at the kinds of things that you like to create and the kinds of things that you like to consume even more so. As you're scrolling through social media or even as you're watching TV, what grabs your attention? What makes you lean forward in your seat and stop your scroll, so to speak? And that super polished, super refined, I got the sweet drone shot and I got the stabilizer cam as I'm walking around the new car. It's cool. It's pretty, but really what it feels like is an ad. It feels very sterile. There's no personality. There's no entertainment value to it. I could Google Earth what your dealership looks like and see what it looks like from that same drone angle. I could Google what the latest car is and probably see some really cool professional photos on Google Images if I wanted to see it. So that really sterile stuff, it doesn't connect. And at the end of the day... social media now more than ever is about entertainment. And when people hear that, I think they often roll their eyes and they think, oh, it's like gimmicks and it's dancing and it's being like this crazy over the top extravagant person or whatever. It's not. It's just about thinking, hey, if I have to compete with ten thousand other posts that this person is seeing today and the post that I'm sharing is a drone shot of my dealership and a slow pan of my logo, does that really make someone want to stop their scroll and pay attention? Or does this scream, hey, here's a new advertisement for our latest sale? And really, if you continue to ask yourself, going back to my original point, what do I like to consume and let that guide you, I think you'll end up making a lot better content that's more engaging, performs better, and ultimately drives more sales. Do you have like a hypothesis? I know you work with people from all different types of industries, but like, do you have a feel for what type of content would make you go from the place where you purchased your vehicle to maybe doing services at a different location or push you over the edge to purchasing from a particular dealership versus another? Yeah, yeah. And I think it really goes back to trust. Trust is like the biggest factor in the modern purchasing decision after price. Obviously, price always matters. Sales, discounts, people always love that sort of thing. But especially after like the last few years, people are just looking for someone they can trust. In every regards, what media can I trust? What politician can I trust? What news outlet can I trust? What social media can I trust? What brands and businesses can I trust? And so when they're looking on social media and to go back to the original conversation about like this polished, perfected content. There's no trust there. It's so sterile. There's no personality. There's no authenticity. There's nothing unique. And so I don't trust that dealership. I don't trust that repair shop or that place where I'm going to get my work done. And so because I don't have that trust, I'm not likely to engage and I'm much less likely to become a customer. And so I think that one of the best things dealerships or really any brand or business can do is empower their social media manager or their content team or whoever it is, even if it's themselves who's making the content to create faster. And I kind of think of it like sports, right? Like if you want to become great at sports, you don't only practice when things are perfect, right? Like If Michael Jordan only ever shot a perfect shot, he would have shot like three times in his life and no one would know his name. But you keep showing up, you keep putting the reps in, and time after time, you improve little by little. You make little tweaks and little adjustments, and that's how you get better. That's how your content eventually is high quality, high quantity, and you're not having to work very hard or very long on creating it. And the really cool thing is in the process of the improving and the focusing on putting the reps in and the focusing on, you know, just little by little, you'll see that some of those posts that you thought were not very good. Some of the posts that you were like, ah, this was kind of just like a throwaway. This wasn't the drone shot that we paid a couple thousand dollars for. Like this was kind of just like a random video we made on our phones. it actually ended up performing a lot better. And one example that comes to mind for this is kind of an adjacent industry. It's not exactly like the car dealership industry, but it relates. It's the Utah Department of Transportation. I'm from Utah. And so near and dear to my heart, but they do such a good job. And at the end of the day, they're like a government agency, right? And also I would argue one of the most boring jobs government agencies, because they're a government agency that handles road closures and, you know, this construction is going on and there was this car accident. So this lane is shut down. And they, I met and interviewed their social media director recently, and she has really been empowered by their leadership to kind of just like rip the band-aid off and yeah there are some checks and balances she has to go through and some like approval she has to get but she has a lot of freedom and flexibility and so their content is hilarious it's engaging it's captivating it builds more trust and likeability for the department of transportation and while doing all that it also gets its messages across like i don't know like i i lived in california that's where i was born and raised i lived in washington for a while I have no idea what was ever going on with the roads in California or Washington, but I'm very up to date on the roads in Utah because I follow this account and it's actually engaging to follow and pay attention to. And I'm learning about, oh, this pothole is being filled on this highway. And so it's going to be closed for this many hours. Oh, they're building a bridge over here. And it's really interesting the way that they've creatively done that. I feel like that is a super adjacent, not because it's just mobility, but it's like a brand that has headwinds and it has a tough reputation of long lines and people waiting for that. Same with dealerships. People have had the same preconceived ideas of it. But if the, if somebody can get on, provide content that can give some level of value or some level of a soul and a human feel for a brand, it can change people's opinions and kind of like tip the scales on their opinion. Yeah. And how they feel. I saw one really interesting example that just came to mind. I think I saw it this morning. And it was kind of a little bit making fun of like Gen Z brain rot, the horrible attention spans that people under twenty five have. And it was like that the hook or the text on the screen said how to get Gen Z to show up at your dealership or how to get Gen Z to buy a car. And they had a big piece of paper and it was and all those written on the paper was like, it was written in a Sharpie, the price, the down payment, and then the monthly payments that we're going to have to make. And then below that, they put an iPad that was just showing some Minecraft video or some highlights from some video games. And so it was like the Gen Z person was, quote unquote, reading the contract while also watching this edited video on their iPad. And it very much appealed to that younger age group. And it was kind of poking fun at them, but that's what Gen Z loves. They love to poke fun at themselves and poke fun at others. And that's something that really was engaging to them. And so that went viral. Did that generate a million car sales the next day? Probably not, but it got more attention and more eyeballs. And I guarantee you, anyone under the age of in that local area knows about, saw that video and is probably now following that dealership. That's a bold move. I like that. I want to try that out. And I hope the people that watch it give a tip of the hat, like, okay, you got me. I'm going to watch the rest of this and see how this person does in this level. Exactly. Okay. So going back to the DMV, it sounds like you consulted with them. They've got a social media manager. Do you remember what that first piece of content she created was? yeah so she's been like evolving over the last two or three years um but i went all the way back and it was interesting and i asked her about this in our interview um is that in those first couple of weeks honestly after making this change where before it was exactly what you would expect from the department of transportation it was generic cookie cutter uh graphics super polished images like the sort of thing that you would see on like a a like a poster or a billboard. And then they just slapped it on social media or they took an advertisement that they were going to run and they just slapped it on social media. And then you see this change where she starts posting memes and she posts, starts posting like little jokes here and there. And she didn't immediately go all in like zero to one hundred. But she started kind of sprinkling these more relatable, funny, entertaining posts here and there. And at first they were doing really poorly. And I think that's something that everyone needs to hear is whenever you change up your strategy, it's not going to go well at first because of kind of two things, the two A's, the algorithm and the audience. You've changed up your content. So now the algorithm has to essentially relearn who would be interested. And it's got all this data of who is not interested. And now you've changed your content. So it's got to learn, well, who would actually like to see this new style? And then the other A is the audience, the actual people who would be liking the post and who would be engaging the post. And they're used to seeing... the drone shots and the polished videos and the thousand dollar marketing campaign you just rolled out. And now they're seeing this much more raw, in the moment, unpolished content. And so there's kind of like a little shift that has to take place in people's mind. And so I like to tell people, give it two or three months before you look back and judge how it's doing. Oftentimes people wait like a week or two, and then they look at it and they're like, oh, well, it's, you know, I made these three posts and they did horrible. So this must not work for me and my business. Well, maybe you shot hoops three times and you're not Michael Jordan yet. Like give it some time, give it, uh, give it some practice. And after a few months, then judge what's working and what's not. Do you have like what I get, what I get from clients that we're working with when I'm like really pushing them and sending them guides on how to get started doing content. to help us with our paid advertising, to make it stand out where we can pull an inventory and things, and we can, but to have a video that is going to stop people's thumbs from scrolling. Um, I get a lot of, Oh, hold on. We got close out and we're busy or I need to, I was going to get a haircut. Not I next Tuesday, I've got a haircut already scheduled. You know, these things that are easy to just stop everything. It's easy to find an excuse to not do it. You have like some tips to help people break through that barrier. Yeah, I think ultimately a lot of people treat social, whether it's paid or organic social media, they kind of treat it like it's this afterthought. It's this thing that like, oh, yeah, I'll do it when I get around to it. When the most successful content creators or the most successful business owners who create content, which is how I see myself, are the people who put it on their calendar, just like anything else. If it's on your calendar, do it. add another layer to that don't just put it on your calendar have someone who's going to hold you accountable whether it's an employee staff or even just like another you know friend who's also a business owner or a spouse a loved one whatever having someone else who's going to like hold you to it um that is huge and then i think the third thing that i would say is try to create systems and processes to make it as easy as possible for yourself Hopefully, everything we've already talked about, about the raw, imperfect, in-the-moment content, hopefully that alleviates some stress and pressure of like, oh, hey, I don't have to spend a couple thousand dollars and get the drone charged up just to make a video today. I can just whip out my phone and create something in the moment. But the easier that you can make content creation, the better. And so I know something for me that I do is... A lot of people are familiar with batch creation, right? It's this idea of I'm going to make a bunch of content in one sitting or in one day, and then I'm going to space it out and use it over the course of weeks or even months. I like to take batch creation and even break it down into smaller pieces. So I won't say, hey, Sunday is my batch creation day. I'm going to make twelve videos on Sunday. I'll say Sunday is my content recording day. And so on that day, I'm not editing. I'm not planning. I'm not scripting. I'm not coming up with ideas. Those are all done at different times. I'm just blocking off maybe two, three hours to film, film, film, film as much as I possibly can. And then I'm going to have an editor edit the videos. I'm going to script write and come up with the ideas in the days or weeks leading up to that filming day. Because like we all have times where, okay, I'm going to go on camera. I'm going to record. I'm going to make some content. So you don't want to then have to stop and get out of that headspace. And then, okay, now I'm going to start editing my video. No, no, no. Just film as much as you possibly can. You can edit, you know, once the sun goes down, you can pass the editing off to an editor. You can do those little, uh, the things that have to be done. at another time. But there's certain things like filming the video that have to be done in the right timing, in the right headspace, in the right lighting, so to speak. And so don't let that time go to waste. So it sounds like you have a day where you kind of write down what you're going to do and then a day that you shoot. Is that pretty standard for you? More or less. I'm constantly collecting ideas. And I think one of the best things that you can do, especially if really if you're in any niche, but if you're a car dealership, let's say, don't look at what other car dealerships are doing, even the ones that are doing it well. Like I know I gave that example a moment ago of that funny video that some other car dealership did. Don't just recreate what other people in your industry are doing, because then at best, you're going to end up second place. You're going to end up a good copy. But at the end of the day, a copy. What I would say instead is consume content outside of your vertical. Like consume content in whatever other niche you like. If you love fishing, if you love hunting, if you love skiing, whatever, just like consume content in that vertical and use that content, the stuff that's doing really well in an adjacent or even a completely separate vertical and And use that to get inspiration for your own. And that's something I'm constantly doing. So I'm always just getting little ideas. Oh, hey, this video grabbed my attention. Why did it grab my attention? This video stopped my scroll. Why did it stop my scroll? I'm saving them into a folder. I'm writing little notes for myself. I'm just using my notes app oftentimes on my phone to just jot down little ideas. And that's kind of like a constant process. And this is what works for me. For some people... For some people, they can sit down and they can say, hey, I have an hour brainstorming session and they can crank out ideas during that hour. I don't like to force the creativity during a certain time block. I'm like, hey, if I get an idea during the week, great. If I'm watching a commercial on TV and I think it's hilarious, I'll write down an idea. And then I might spend maybe an actual block of time, like let's say an hour or two, Fleshing out those ideas coming up with like, okay, this one's one I could actually do. This one actually is sucky. This one's whatever. Oh, this one's good, but I needed to think about a little bit more. And then when it's actually like filming time, I'm ready to film. Like I have everything bulleted out or scripted out and I can just hit record and record as much as I possibly can. I couldn't agree more, too, about getting other industries to help inspire what you're doing. Because it's easy to stay in your lane and in your little silo. It's like when we're building a new website and everybody's looking at our competitors' websites. Find out who's the best at inbound advertising, whatever they're doing, like who's the best at pulling in traffic, giving people value, getting them to connect the dots with you on what makes them comfortable to communicate, whether it's chat or downloading a white paper versus let's be another me too. Agency and try and do what, you know, what, who we think it looks sharp already that we're already competing with. Yeah. So we're going to be a me too company versus, you know, let's look outside of it. And like you're talking about, like spend a little time on like what's analogous or what's like synonymous with what we do and how can we just translate that? Exactly. Yeah. Chat GPT to tell us what's synonymous and how can we tie this together and make us at least push it in the right direction. Yeah, yeah, and I think, like, I'm glad you brought up ChatGPT because it can be so powerful and it can be so horrible because there are some, and this is what I know is happening right now, there are some people who are listening and they use ChatGPT and no shame to them, but a little bit of disrespect is definitely met with what I'm about to say. What they're doing is they're logging onto ChatGPT and they're saying, give me twenty Instagram post ideas for a car dealership. And it's such a generic prompt that they're going to get such a generic output. But when you can give ChatGPT like a list of your own inspiration and you can give it this really complex, well thought out, well designed, engineered prompt, you're going to get really, really awesome results. Like some people's posts using ChatGPT are so obviously ChatGPT and some people you would have no idea. And really it's just the difference in the prompting. And I think it's silly to not use AI at this point. yes i agree yeah um yeah it's it you can lean on it way too much and then just sit there and read a script um can i do some rapid fire about like some features i just i just listened to your podcast you just interviewed the head of instagram and somebody else from instagram right Yeah, the head of Instagram and then the head of Instagram for business, which is like their official B to B communication channel, which has like twenty million followers. So I got to interview him and also like the CEO head honcho himself. Seems like a cool feather in the cap, and it would seem like super insightful, like the frequently asked questions that you were able to bring up with them are the same ones that everybody else has. It seems like that. that come across my, you know, our team. And like starting is like, we get a lot of people, what should, you know, should we hashtag? What do we hashtag? Do you have a philosophy right now with hashtagging on Instagram? Yeah, my philosophy with hashtagging has been the same thing for, About four years. And it's still controversial when I talk about it today, which is my stance is forget hashtags. Like they are so increasingly year after year becoming more and more obsolete, unnecessary. In the conversation with the head of Instagram, he flat out said, no, they do not help you reach more people. And this is also not something that was like the first time he said that. He's actually been saying that himself for the last year or two. They're moving away from hashtags. for a variety of reasons that we can get into. But the bottom line here is Instagram is moving away from hashtags. And so, ten years ago, they were like a super necessary and essential strategy. One of my first courses I ever put out as an Instagram coach was called Help with Hashtags. But hashtags are just no longer an important thing for growth. Um, and I think people stress out way too much over them and they forget about like, Hey, would I even like to watch this video I just made? Or did I just spend minutes instead of making the video better? I spent minutes researching the right hashtags to use. Okay. Do you feel like. Outside of that, like, have you found something that really seems to resonate and stop people? I know distributions come and go based on seasonality and holidays and what's going on in the world. But when you're having a piece of content go live, is there something that stops people more than others? Is it like a listicle or is it? jumping and screaming. I do think it definitely varies depending on the industry and the creator. For me, I found that listicles, like lists of ideas specifically, that can be very helpful in my niche. I was recently working with a nutrition creator and her best reels were like super aggressive in your face at Costco. And she had like the same hook in every single one of her most viral videos. And so that was a great kind of analysis for us to do like, hey, if you use this hook, it's gonna grab people's attention. The bottom line though is yes, the hook is the most important part, which is just like those first three seconds. I would put the majority of your time, energy, and effort into creating an engaging hook, something that's going to stop someone's scroll and grab their attention. And again, it's going to slightly vary for each industry. But the other thing that I would say is if you want to reach more people, go viral, you really want to reach the targeted people who are going to become potential customers, buyers, not just followers or viewers. Really, the key here is shares. Shareworthy content is what Instagram has been optimizing for for the last year or so. And it makes sense when we think about it. When we remove all these layers of algorithms and computers and whatnot, If my wife sends me a video, she shares a video with me, I am all but guaranteed to watch it. And that video just doubled in views. It went from one viewer to two. And I am an ideal viewer. I'm not a viewer who the algorithm thinks would like this video. I am someone who my wife... thought of me when she saw this video and sent it to me. I'm the most perfect person, at least in her eyes, to see this video. And so when you can optimize for shares and create the kind of content that is worthy of being shared, that's really like the ultimate growth hack to going viral and reaching the right targeted audience. I think that's amazing call to action. That's totally underutilized as if you're kind of blanket marketing, but you think you're getting in front of the right audience. Like when we're like, we do a handful of campaigns, like recruiting for staff, for salespeople, for technicians. And I like to have the call to action be like, do you know somebody That is looking to level up their career. Here's the signing bonus. And encourage them to share that. Even if I'm not quite hitting the right person, I want to get in within a grenade explosion of that right person so they can send it over to that somebody that they know on their end. Yeah, that's exactly spot on. And I like that analogy of like, I want to be grenade explosion close enough. I don't have to hit it right the nail on the head. But if I get it to the wife, she'll send it to the husband type of thing. Right. Like it'd be sweet if they shared it to just a post and they get their whole, you know, all their followers to maybe see it. But if I can just say like, you know, they can pinpoint the person that really needs to see it for me. Are you scheduling content? What do you use to schedule if you do? A thousand percent, I am. I schedule probably ninety to ninety five percent of my posts. I would not be able to post so much or be an actual business owner if I wasn't scheduling my posts. I use Metricool. which is the word metric plus cool, slam together, metric cool. I've used the Instagram built-in scheduler, which the CEO, he schedules the majority of his posts as well. He, because he's the head of Instagram, has to use the built-in scheduler. I'm not the biggest fan of the built-in scheduler because there's kind of like limited capabilities. You can't have as much control. And also because it's Instagram, there are glitches and malfunctions all the time. But the bottom line is that you can use a scheduling app as long as it's an approved partner of Instagram. You will not be punished. Your content will not be penalized. You will not reach less people or get less views for scheduling your posts. That's kind of an outdated myth. And I really believe that scheduling your content is one of the most important ingredients in staying consistent. Okay. Outdated myths. shadow banning. What did you learn about shadow banning? Yeah, there's no such thing. And, and, and I've, I, this is another one that's super controversial. There's no such thing as shadow banning. Yes, there are extreme cases. And this is something he directly talked about in our conversation. There are some niche extreme cases where someone is posting something that is like you know, something that we're not going to talk about on a podcast, something that's like that's on the deep web type of thing. And so they don't want that person to know that, hey, we're aware of what's going on because maybe they're working with authorities to get this person caught or something. And so that person will not be shown to more people. But what I think is actually going on is that people are experiencing low views or inconsistent reach or They're not getting the amount of eyeballs that they used to get. And so the first thought is, well, it's not me. I'm going to throw my hands up in the air and blame it on something that I can't control, which is the algorithm. And I'm shadow banned. That's very, very, very rarely the case. There are a lot of other things that are way more likely going on rather than Instagram just randomly deciding that Shelly Smith, who's got three hundred and seventeen followers, does we just hate her. All of a sudden, Mark Zuckerberg is mad at her and she's not going to get views anymore. Um, Instagram does ban just like every other social media app bans. If you violate their guidelines, the nice thing about Instagram is they, even though they do make mistakes all the time, and there are plenty of people who have had accounts removed and post removed wrongfully. Um, usually they'll at least let you know, like in your account status. And so that's just a ban. That's not like a shadow ban. A shadow ban would be them know removing your post or deleting your account without giving you any sort of heads up or or warning as to why or that that it was going to happen in the first place um so no instagram doesn't shadow ban ninety nine percent of the time uh it's just a matter of hey your content's probably not very engaging at the moment um yeah i get asked a lot And people are like, can you call them and ask? I think, I think they're shadow banning me. Cause last week this happened this week. I didn't need, my sister didn't even see it. And she, you know, blah, blah, blah. It's like always, you're probably not shadow banned. If you're banned, it's cause you did something wrong. Um, yes. Okay, do you have any like good deal for like what differentiates a good organic post versus like a paid ad? Do you really deliberately make a change for when you're doing a paid ad? Absolutely not. Our best paid content started out, originated as our best organic content. And so I'm constantly posting organic promotions and ads and whatnot. And if one of them pops off and does really well, we turn it into an ad because it's already been proven to be engaging. And so At the end of the day, whether you're paying to get shown to people or the algorithm is showing you to people, at the end of the day, there are human beings on the other end. And if you have a really engaging, organic piece of content, heck, put some money behind it, boost it, run an ad so that it can reach more people. It's already a proof of concept that it is engaging. And so you're just paying for more people to see that really engaging piece of content. So for us, the best ads always, always, always originate from the best organic posts. So it sounds like you're using Instagram posts, the engagement, visibility, the comments, things like that as the litmus test to say, okay, let's turn the gas up on this one. Yeah, exactly. That's pretty smart. Yeah, we've tested that. Like, okay, post on TikTok. If it starts ticking off, let's use that as an ad on Facebook and Instagram. And so you're doing Instagram coaching and all the direction or you're helping people and empowering people to grow their brand on Instagram. Sounds like it's not directly filtering out to other channels, but you can take a lot of the principles. Yeah, a lot of the principles. There are some specific things that are platform specific, certain features that are only on Instagram, certain rules or character limits or video length limits. But whether you're creating a YouTube video or you're writing a book or you're making an Instagram reel or you're posting on TikTok, The hook is absolutely essential, right? Like how many people have read the first page or paragraph or even chapter of a book and then never touched again because it had a shitty hook. It's the same idea with a reel. If the first three seconds, if the hook wasn't very good, I'm not going to watch the rest of the video. And so there's a lot of the same principles that apply principles about, you know, niching down and knowing your target audience, being able to create content that speaks to and resonates with that target audience. There's a lot of these same things that Apply whether you're online, offline or whatever social media you're on. And then, you know, some of where I really geek out is I love getting into the like the real nitty gritty about Instagram. And so that's why I like Instagram is my bread and butter. But again, I would say, you know, probably ninety percent of the strategies and of the techniques are the same pretty much everywhere you go. I feel like Instagram was a smart pick. It has the longest sticking power and staying powder, no matter what legislation and continued, you know, user base that are logging in. Yeah. Go ahead. No, I was just gonna say Instagram kind of, for me, it like it exists in this unique space where you have so many different kinds of content, right? Like some people hate long form video, right? Okay, you can create long form video on Instagram, but you don't have to. Whereas if you're on YouTube, that's really your only option. Like you're not posting photos on YouTube. You're not posting. Yes, they have YouTube shorts now, but for the most part, you're not posting short form clips on YouTube. TikTok is just like vertical video, whether it's short form or long form, it is vertical video. So there's no space for, you know, like Instagram stories or carousel posts on Instagram. There's that diversity of content. Um, but one of the biggest reasons that I've been in an Instagram cheerleader since day one is there was this study done by carrot financial where they analyzed how much revenue was generated per follower or subscriber for using YouTube's terminology. Um, and they found that Instagram was by far the highest, the average dollar that you can generate, the average amount of money you can generate per follower, uh, was higher on Instagram than it was on Twitch, than it was on YouTube, than it was on TikTok, Pinterest. And so when I saw that, I was like, well, it makes sense then that every small business owner should be on Instagram, at least in some capacity. If you can wave, like, go ahead, Ashley. I was just gonna say, I buy so much stuff from Instagram. Oh, totally. Yeah. Same. Like I've gone and done presentations where I'm like, this shirt is what I just bought. And then they retargeted me with like these pants that totally match it and this whole outfit. Yeah. But I'm a superpower ad clicking buying person just because I live and breathe in that arena. Any cool trends you're seeing right now, like content types or, you know, just trends that people are doing that's sort of getting some gravity? Yeah, I think that trends are so fast and they're so quickly changing. But I think in general, we're seeing a lot of brands really embrace the speed that is necessary in general to keep up with trends and to keep up with the changing of what's popular in this, I wouldn't even say week, but what's trending in this three or four day period, what's trending in the next three or four day period. And I think in general, a lot of brands are, are catching on. So that's kind of a trend in and of itself. But in general, I think there's like a growing divide in terms of what content is performing the best. And most people are creating the content that's in the middle of this divide. But on either end of the spectrum of what's performing well, on one hand, we're seeing super raw, super unpolished, super like, I've heard it called like FaceTime content where it's like, hey, I just whipped out my phone. I didn't edit a thing. I literally just recorded for like two or three minutes, very TikTok style, just organic. It feels like I'm FaceTiming a friend, super raw. That's on one hand what's performing really well. And then on the other end of the spectrum is the super well thought out. And when I say well thought out, I don't want people to think drone shots and the fancy logo and the panning, you know, video of the new car, but a well thought out, a well scripted, or even like a, like an entire skit really making your, putting like a high production value onto your, your videos, kind of turning them into, you know, I'm picturing like SNL level skits where it's that funny. There's character development. There's, you know, there's, there's humor involved. There's entertainment factor. But most people kind of just end up in the middle. They end up with something that is not super raw or unpolished or in the moment. It's just kind of edited. It's the expensive drone shot, but then it's just like a seven second video. And then it like fades into their logo where it's not high production. It's not low production. They're just kind of in the middle somewhere. And that's where I think everyone kind of just gets lost. That's where small business gets stuck of like, okay, let's start it out with my logo and then fade it into dark. And then we'll have something pop up that talks about, how we're family owned and operated. And these things that it's sort of been conditioned for this is how you do it. Or you come out and auto and you're like, we're the number one certified pre-owned vehicles three months in a row and we're here to save you. But you know, there's a good time to buy a car and it's right now. It's this month at the very latest, but get this by the end of the month because of this incentive. versus what I know to work better. And that's get that footage with your phone. don't even really need a microphone, but of a salesperson who's been there for fourteen years and now his son starting to work there and ask him what his favorite experience was connecting somebody with a vehicle. Yeah. And like that's storytelling. That's so powerful. That's so good. That's that's organic. And I think a lot of people are familiar with user generated content, which is where like your customers create content. I think a really powerful unlock that people can have is employee generated content where Exactly like you just said, the one guy has worked there for fourteen years and now he's telling the story of how he got his son to work there, too. And it's like that tells the story of family owned and operated. It's not just a tagline that has been said so many times now that it doesn't mean anything. Yeah, and it's just knocking the dealer into doing it. Or I'll go by and try and shoot it. And they're like a little bit like, what are you trying to do? So now I'm like scheduling it. I'm like, okay, I'm going to come by myself and we're going to shoot it. Get some people who've been there for a while or at least would be okay with doing it. And I'm not going to shoot them immediately. I'll sit down. We'll get comfortable. We'll talk about their experience working with the dealership. Go through some of the questions I think that might resonate. And then we'll edit it later and have a reason for me to want to go to that dealership to do my services because this guy's been doing Audis for twenty six years. I even know Audis were that. OK, cool. Well, this guy's been doing it and I see his face and he knows all the ins and outs and the difference between EVs and, you know, internal. OK, I'm convinced that that's the place if I want to get services. That's the guy. Exactly. Or at least he works at the right place versus a coupon or, you know, some silly branded ad. Yeah. Okay. I'm preaching to the choir. Well, Brock, I agree with you on everything. What, what would you recommend? Like, I know you've got some curriculums and courses that are really affordable for people to get started, but there's a ton of people in our industry. that need that little extra step, what are some steps that they could do with you? Yeah. The go-to best place to start is our Instagram membership. It's called the Insta Club Hub. It's a coaching membership. It's a course where you can learn at your own pace. We have live trainings. We have content calendars. We have a personalized, I shouldn't just say we have content calendars. We have a personalized monthly, a totally customized, here's what to post every day for the next thirty days. And it's not like every car dealership is getting the exact same one. It is totally unique and customized to you. So I'd say that's the best place for people to get started. Also, if they're still just kind of brand new to this space and they just want to learn a little bit more before hopping in, just following me on Instagram is usually a good first step because I post a couple times a day with some helpful tips, some ideas here and there. And I think it's also a good place for people to dip their toe in the water. And it's specifically prescribed for people wanting to grow their brand on Instagram. Would you do, if you were going to consult a dealership who's never done anything, would you have them starting to post content as the brand or as the sales person or both? I would say a little bit of both. I think that you can definitely grow and have success as the dealership. I think in general, people would rather follow people. So if you can really put some human personification to the brand... Where we're, like you said earlier, telling the story of the dad who now his son works at the dealership. Or we're showing actual videos of people talking. And it's not just a car dealership posting a cool video of a car. But there's actually people involved. We're seeing the sales process. We're hearing a story. We're watching a video with people talking. It doesn't have to be a personal brand or a brand built around the salesperson or whatever. But as long as there's people in the majority of the content, I think you should be fine to build around the actual dealership as the focus. Okay. And that's good for the dealer too, because that person's not going to quit and he's going to lose all that traction that person helped earn. Exactly. All right. So follow Brock, Eleven Johnson, J-O-H-N-S-O-N. And you can get a front row education on how to take your dealership to the next level on Instagram.