Grow Your Social Media in 2025. Strategies, Predictions and Trends for Instagram and TikTok Growth

1. Introduction: So many shifts are happening in social media this year. There is a lot to discuss. I decided to create this course because I work with many influencers, content creators, and brand owners on a daily basis. As my day job is being an online strategist and marketing specialist. And a company that owns the most advanced Instagram analytics tool, which has recently became the official meta partner. And I hear the question, Ashe was in and was out in the social media world right now, so often, like every day. And as I analyze the data and as I analyzed the clients strategies and track their growth, I notice so many shifts and so many new tendencies, why they are growing or why this growth isn't happening. And one thing is more than sure, all strategies don't work anymore. This year is already doing a huge revolution in social media world. And if you want to grow your Instagram profile the organic way without spending money on ads, there are some changes you need to know about new tendencies and new patterns. Today we need to say goodbye to old quick tricks and hello to year full of growth and real creativity. After this course, you will drop the outdated tactics that push potential followers away and embrace positive changes to attract new people. Your new followers in, you won't stick to strategies that are no longer effective or relevant. So what's in and what's out in social media world this year. That's a long story. But I will do my best to tell you everything I know, everything I've noticed, and arm you with practical tips and practical steps to improve your social media presence. And finally, finally, grow your account. Are you ready? Let's go. 2. Our Class Project: Class project. I deeply believe practice is an essential component of any learning experience. Today we are going to discuss the most important shifts in social media world, along with trends and tendencies that are taking place right now. I want you to grow your social media presence and stay ahead. I wanted to give you a complex class project, a complex homework, but then I realize the best thing. The best thing you can do after watching discourse, or actually during watching discourse, is analyzing which tendencies you can implement to your own content creation process, to your own social media strategy right away. Maybe even today or tomorrow if you are a procrastinator. But I hope not, that will make your social media group more possible and much quicker. So your homework is take you time to think about all the things we're going to discuss. Hold the course whenever you need it. Answer the question I will ask during the lessons. Watch the course. Listen to the tendencies I've gathered, and ask yourself, having this knowledge, what I can do differently, what I can improve from now on as I know what I know from the course. This is your homework because I don't want you to watch the course and then and you know, not. Yeah. Yeah, She's right. That's okay. I will think about it and then forget about all the things we've discussed. That would definitely break my heart. So please take a moment to reflect, open your notes, write a short note or to do a list of what you can implement from now on. And share the screen shot or a photo of this note, of this list in the class project section right here. Let's inspire and learn from each other. Share it with me and share it with our community so we can all be proud of you and support you on this Instagram growth journey. So yeah, I believe in you. 3. The Holistic Approach to Instagram (and All Social Media): A holistic approach to Instagram. Some factors and some strategies we'll discuss today are based on technical aspects, right? Others will be more about your mindset and your copywriting and filming short coning skills. If you are already an Instagram creator and you have been in the field for a long time, some titles may sound obvious to you at first glance and you might want to skip them. But please don't do that. Watch all the chapters, because sometimes the title is short and it doesn't fully represent what's inside. You know, in each chapter, I will share my personal insights, the tendencies I've noticed during my work, during analyzing other creators accounts. And in some chapters, I will discuss really a lot of insights. So the title might sound very simple, but actually what's inside this chapter may be very complex. Please watch them, because sometimes there are many surprises that are included, even in the chapters that you won't say they can be so complex. Today I want to discuss all the changes, all the shifts and all the trends and tendencies I've been gathering, observing my clients, and among them are many successful colent creators, influencers, and brand owners. So I really hope it will be relatable for you. And as a spoguler, I need to tell you to discuss a all we need to look at, Instagram. And Instagram growth more holistically and connect all these dots. I think the holistic approach is by far the most effective strategy you can have. And it doesn't just focus on one element of your Instagram presence, but instead it uses several effective elements to support each other. That way, we won't be focusing only on hash tags or keywords, or implementing all the Instagram SEO factors. In this course, we'll discuss many elements that support each other. And only when you implement most of them you will see the real growth. Because sometimes, and that's the thing I observed, very often people with terrible content are hoping keywords or hash tags will make their post, their content go viral. But all can be changed, and sometimes this terrible content can be easily transformed into something really creative and engaging for Instagram audience. So we need to start, we need to discuss all the factors that can be hindering your growth. And all the factors that can actually make this growth possible and quick. So I really believe in this holistic approach and that's what I needed to tell you right from the start. We'll discuss many factors and in my opinion, even if something may sound cliche or, you know, basically every social media code or social media guru is telling you your content has to bring value. It really is cliche, but at the same time, without value, without creating valuable content for your audience, they won't be coming back, they won't be hungry for more. And we need to discuss that this value isn't always about teaching, about teaching somebody something. It can be about entertaining, inspiring, or simply showing behind the scenes of your life. Because believe it or not, your Instagram, your Instagram presence will become a role model for so many people. Yeah, that's also important people I work with focus too much on technical aspects which are very important, but the basics are important too. We'll discuss it all as the holistic approach. 4. Engagement Metrics Over Follower Count: Engagement metrics always follows. Let's start with discussing your Instagram goals for this year. When I conduct an Instagram audit or Instagram consulting for my corporate or individual clients in my day job, many times they say their number one goal is to reach a certain number on their follower account. For example, this number, they're all about numbers. You know, we're starting a conversation and I always want to dive deeper into a person's goals. So just to, you know, have this broader image, if I can really help them, if their expectations are realistic. What we can do this year or this month is to become closer to the goal step by step. And sometimes most of the times actually people are all about the numbers. The numbers can be very different. We can care about the number on our follower account or the income we want to get every month from our action, from our accounting creation on Instagram or any other platform. But the most often, the most common answer I get is the certain number of followers. And that's just a number in my opinion. Very often people don't focus on the numbers that matter. I've already seen thousands of profiles that have over one K on their follower account. And yet these accounts were in converting at all. They were in bringing or generating any sales, any income to their owners, to the creators, and they also wear in building trust or building good brand image. Yet those people were spending horrible amount of time creating content, producing content, and trying to take their Instagram accounts to the next level, but during the way, they forgot about the basics. So that's why I always need to go back to the basics. And today we'll go to the basics as well. Because look, nowadays, when I observe the most successful Conent creators and most successful Instagram and Tiktok profiles. And believe me, I've analyzed thousands of profiles. Also, very recently this week because I was working on creating the biggest influencer list. The influencers who wrote the most last year for the company I work with. And I had to scan all the creators in the certain field, and then scan their profiles. And look and analyze their tendencies if they can appear on the list or not. And there's one thing all the most successful creators had in common. They create their audience very authentically, I would say, when you're just starting out, when you've been actually on Instagram for several years. But right now you want to take this growth much more seriously. It's much better to have ten K loyal followers who trust you, who can easily recognize your face or your content on their heads, rather than 100 K random people, Random people who don't even remember when or why they started following you. You know, I'm sure all of you have those profiles that sometimes you see their content on your feet. And from time to time you are beginning to wonder what account is that? When did I start following it? You don't want to become this kind of creator for many people. You want them to recognize your face. You want them to recognize your username. You don't want to be a random creator for a large audience. So I know this is the harsh truth, but I've seen many profiles with over 100 K on followers count who weren't bringing any income, any profit. And there is also one thing I need to mention. These followers weren't bought, they weren't fake. Because you may want to ask me if I scanned this. Of course I did. Those people, this audience was real. No no boat followers, no fake bots. They were just very random because of the strategy of attracting them. And on the other hand, I've seen many profiles with ten K followers on 20 K followers on the follower account who are selling their products or their courses like crazy. Because the thing is when people trust you, when people know you, they are buying more easily and they are more willing to buy something from you because they aren't feeling like you're working too hard. Like you are creating all these contents to make them buy something. No. They're seeing you as an authority, as a thought leader in your each and that's why the conversion happens more naturally and the numbers are growing, but you don't have to put so much energy and pressure into the act of selling something. That's the audience you want to create. Because the most successful content creators I worked with past years and this year as well, they've built this connection with their audience. People started to trust them. So I would say this key word for the whole year, if you want to grow your social media presence, is trust. We will talk about it a bit later, but people are tired of creators who are inauthentic, there's so many fake people on social media. And yet we are as a society more lonely than we've ever been. What do people need? Do they need another perfect content creator that is showing only the highlights of the life? Or do they need authentic real people who are willing to share honest insights, honest behind the scenes of daily life. Yeah, that's what they need. So even if you're a professional, even if you're building a very serious, very formal brand, you can still do so many things and show so many things that are authentic and that are building trust. You know, because you may think that I'm talking only about personal content creator, content creators who chose fashion niche, or beauty or lifestyle niche. And that's not the thing. I think it applies to all the niches, all the industries. Even when you're, for example, creating something that's very serious and you're, for example, a B2b business, you can still show your humanity more human side and people will like you much more. That's actually the fastest way to stand out because it takes courage to show yourself, to not fall into this cliche frap of sharing and copying others. I'm sure you've already heard about this one Instagram influencer with over 2 million, 2 million followers who couldn't sell 36 shirts. As you can see, big follower account doesn't always translate to sales and success. The authentic trust and connection always, always translate to sales and success. So that's a twist, right? So this year it's even more important to focus on the right numbers, on numbers that aren't deceiving like follower account or number of likes. If you won't be growing as fast as you wish to, don't get depressed. Don't get frustrated. The thing is, it's much more important to attract your right audience, your dream audience. And the people who are going to stay with you and get engaged. Who will love you, instead of people who will just okay, she's okay. I can watch her content from time to time. Your goal is to become one of the favorite convenent creators or one of the favorite brands. Not just okay, one of the 1,000 thousand profiles I follow to focus on the numbers and metrics that will be crucial for you. You need to know your Instagram goals. That's why I always start my consulting sessions with this question because it all depends on what your goals are. Now, I'm not talking about the goal like how many followers do you want to have? Because while attracting new followers is important, of course it is. It can mean nothing if they don't forward your business goals. Because if your goal is only to attract, for example, 50 K new followers, you need to understand the fact that even when you have this number on your follower account, these people may not be interested in what you have to say and what you're sharing. They may not engage with your content at all. So we'll only be receiving number and your engagement rates will be very, very low. That's why, in my opinion, number of followers shouldn't be your goal. For this year, for the next year, Ear. If your goal is to create an engaged community and sell your products in the future or now, then you should focus on building trust and sharing content That is building this lasting connection between you and the audience in all your potential followers out there. In my day job, I'm also working with influencer agencies and I know exactly which tools they are using to scan influencers to verify if they can agree to collaborate with them, if this collaboration is going to be beneficial for them. And right now, that's an important fact. I think it will be interesting for you if you want to collaborate with brands in the future. If you want to earn money that way, engagement rates are the crucial metric for influencer agencies and marketing agencies collaborating with influencers. And it's actually very surprising, but so many color creators with big follower count, but low engagement, are losing. Smaller creators with high engagement are winning big and valuable collaboration with brands they've been dreaming about. So I would say this year is the year for micro influencers and smaller influencers. 5. The Big Mistake and Why You Shouldn't Join Instagram Pods: Don't join Instagram parts. Do you know what Instagram pots are? If not, I will tell you what it is. In a nutshell, an engagement part is a group of Instagram connect creators who bound together to help increase engagement rates on each other's posts. This can be done through comments, likes, or follows. There are pills with over 500 active users, content creators, and influencers, and ones that have 100 or even fewer active participants. In theory, polls help condent creators get more likes and more followers. The idea is that if your pose get lots of likes on comments right away after posting it tells Instagram algorithms your content is interesting, so the next time you post something, it's more likely to show up for more of your followers. In theory, these polls can seem like a great shortcut to pump up your numbers and get the instant engagements. Yeah. In theory, the truth is it's so time consuming and it won't bring you meaningful results. This kind of activity between the same group, the same group does. Important of Conent creators and other Instagram people can seem suspicious to Instagram algorithms, so it works the opposite way. Unfortunately, there are still so many Conent creators who participate in parts and telegram or Whatsapp chats to create this fake engagement. And I need to tell you that I'm 100% against this kind of pumping your engagement rate. Because it's not going to help you in the long run, as the biggest companies can easily scan and spot this kind of fake engagement. And being in this engagement posts can be extremely time consuming. So it's completely defeating the purpose. It's not worth it. You will waste your time even though you will be satisfied with your engagement. Like you will say, oh that's great. I get 100 more likes on each post. People from this group are commending basically every post I publish. But this is fake engagement, this is not organic, this is not natural. And yes, algorithms also analyze this kind of interactions. You need engagement from real people, from new people, not the same group of people all over again. Of course, don't get me wrong because that may be misleading. I'm talking about Instagram parts, those telegram groups or groups on Whatsapp that are created, particularly with this purpose in mind. And there is nothing, absolutely nothing wrong with having your favorite group of condent creators and leaving common every time they share something. That's okay. If you're commenting on every post your favorite condent creator published, that's okay. I'm only talking about the pot. These groups are 100 or more people when they're commenting and sharing and liking every post. Because that's basically the rule, the written rule of the pots. You can see how strange rules of the pots of these groups can get right here. So as you can see, they have many written rules which you have to obey. And that's why it's so time consuming and it's creating fa engagement and it is doing on purpose, never fall into this trap that's nonsense. You can spend this time creating amazing contents. We will get this engagement. You dream of the organic and authentic way. So it's time to sum up the knowledge and the facts from the first lessons. First, this year, engagement matters much more than number on your following accounts. Many small accounts are generating bigger income, the big accounts. And they sell more because they build much more engaged communities. And that's important. Their audiences trust them more. That's the goal we should be keeping in mind while building our audience brands and influencer agencies. Collaborating with conning creators are scanning the people they want to collaborate with with different very smart analytic tools to check if their followers are real. That's why only the organic and authentic engagement matters. Don't join the engagement pods and engagement groups. Trust me, Instagram algorithms are smarter than you may think, and it's not an effective way to boost your reach. And now it's time for important questions you need to answer to focus on building your new strategy. What are my Instagram goals for this year? What is my number one priority right now? Do I want to attract and build and engage community around my niche to sell my products, for example, my books or courses in the future. Or maybe I need to build an Instagram profile. That will be my online portfolio so people can get to know about my services and the skills I have if they ever need my freelance services in the future. So take your time to think about it. What's your Instagram goal for this year? What's the goal of your profile? Of the profile you want to grow. And if you want, don't hesitate to share your answers in the discussion section. That way we can exchange experiences and hopefully you can meet and discuss with other ambitious commentators, entrepreneurs. Because I know that people who watch my courses here are super smart and super ambitious. So it's a great opportunity to talk and get to know each other and exchange interesting thoughts. 6. Storytelling Content is Much More Important Than Perfect Feed: Storytelling. Content is much more important than perfect aesthetic Content, real is always better than perfect. I'm sure you remember the times when all we cared about was the way our feet looked. And we were using tools like Unum to plan our feet in advance and the same light room preset to make all our photos and real covers look the same, look coherent. Well, research shows that people are now tired of those perfect feets with highly curated photos. They tend to more and more appreciate raw photos and posting real time without over editing your content. Personally, I'm not against planning your feed. And I have to admit I still do it. But we need to keep in mind that people actually love to see the cows and the vulnerability more than our perfect feeds. And the times of perfect feeds are over now. And from my research profiles, with this perfect idly, coherent feeds tend to have a much lower engagement rates. I know that in the past we started to believe that emulating this perfection is the key to gaining followers and making money on social media. What truly resonates with people nowadays is the messiness, the raw honesty. So embrace your true self in all forms. That's how you will connect with your target audience. That's how we will attract like minded people only by being yourself and not editing your personality or over editing your content. Look which feet would resonate with you, this or this one? Which one would make you feel like you want to read the captions and the confessions And the tips included there in the captions, because they might be written by somebody. Really intriguing. Interesting. If you've chosen fit number two, which I always bet you did, what factors were the deciding ones? Look, this fit has many important storytelling and audience attracting elements. Even without looking at the captions, we can tell that real covers give you a clear hint of what a particular reel will be about. And you can easily feel attracted to the topic and encouraged to click and watch it. And you can easily tell if that's something that's interesting for you, if that is something that interests you, you click it and then you watch it till the end. So that's why these kind of reels with covers like this one with text on the cover cover tend to have much higher watch time. These real covers include keywords, topics, or hooks that instantly catch our attention, the feed isn't very coherent. Photos are edited differently and then they aren't over edited. They aren't edited with only one light from pre set. But at the same time, this feed isn't very cardic. It's nice for our eyes, thanks to the choice of funds. Notice that we have only two funds used here, so there's a matching element on all the real covers. This feed looks more real like a personal magazine, like a journal like this. Feed can really reflect the author's personality. And we can get, you know, the creator more and more on the personal level and on this authentic level, key takeaways real over perfect. The years when the perfect coherent feed matter the most are the past. Now people get really tired of the feeds that lack authenticity and aren't spontaneous at all. You don't have to plan your feet in advance. Raw and messy feeds can be extremely successful too, and I know so many examples of it. Look, for example. Those are one of my favorite creators, and as you can see, they use different precess, different methods to edit their post. And yet they are extremely successful because people want to see the real side of your brand, your personal brand of you, not the over edited and plan vision, visual storytelling is extremely important. So make sure your feet and your post, as well as the real covers, reflect your personality. Choose the colors and phones that make you vibe and make sure that you really feel the choices you make. Don't follow blindly the trending colors and trending funds. Choose the ones that matches your personality and your brand on business image. You don't really have to overthink it. You can always change it in the future and switch to different colors and different fonts if you want to. There is no need to overthink it. There's no need to worry about it. All feel blocked because of perfectionism. Actually, perfectionism is your biggest enemy on social media. People love spontaneous content. It doesn't have to be perfect. Better yet, perfect and overladed content feels authentic to so many Instagram and Tiktok users. And it gets lower reach and lower engagement because people are tired of it. Don't post reels without real covers. Write something on them like this text. Let new people who find you via audio pages or explore pages know what this reel is about to encourage them to click it if the topic of it is in their interest scope. Because look, which of those two would you be more likely to click on if you saw those two on the air page, for example? Between those two, which one is your choice? I bet it's the second one. Use this power, use this knowledge from now on. Now, important question you need to ask yourself, was perfectionism holding you back in the past? Do you have some content that's left unpublished because you thought it was not good or perfect enough to post it? Look, this content, maybe the content you audience would have loved if you had posted it. This content could be a reason why they started to like you more. Because believe me, they surely aren't looking for perfection, for perfect people, for perfect businesses. We all look for things that are relatable and authentic. That's our human nature. You have the courage to post spontaneous content, for example, on your Instagram stories, and show yourself more authentically and casually in your reels. Think about some goy things you could include in your contents. What makes you you, not what makes you professional and distance. 7. Your Socials Should be More Social: Social should be more social and interm stories. Other way, people crave authenticity more than ever. We've already talked about it a bit, but there's so much more to discuss when it comes to authenticity in your content and the data from our social media landscape. This is still the year AI generated content is everywhere and it's getting better and better. Sometimes it's even hard to distinguish which parts we are created by a real human and which are the content created by AI, right? But with all the AI content all around, people look for more human interaction. You know, AI is undoubtedly transforming the whole marketing and social media industry. But we can't forget about the power of human connection. It makes sense that people are craving more authentic content. Real confessions, real stories, and real faces after this boost of AI. I see it on substack and I think that's one of the main reason substacks and other newsletter platforms for individual writers get such a big hype on substack. We don't care about SEO so much, we don't care about emogies, the algorithms. We just write spontaneously what we think, what we have to share. This content is also growing strong on Instagram and Tiktok. This year, people started to really appreciate real happy and goofy and honest captions. Because AI is filling the market, the social media platforms, with, let's say it, robotic content. So many coning creators don't even optimize or personalize the output from Cha GPT and all the other AI power tools. Sometimes I feel like I'm reading captions that don't evoke any emotions. They're just emotionless. And here is the thing that is extremely important this year. Social media should always be social. The human interaction aspect is necessary. Speaking from my experience and from my personal mistakes too. In my country we have this saying, Chef's best boot ji. Which means that when you're doing something professionally, like it's your day job and your main source of income, and you're doing it for other people, very often you don't have the time or space to do it for yourself. That's why I help other people grow their social media platforms. I analyze their growth, I track it, I help them, but after hours, I see it in other profiles. I see it in all the profiles that are successful, that the more they engage with other accounts and with their audience, the more successful they become. But I know it's easier said than done. So I'm going to give you practical steps and practical strategies to do it, because I know how challenging it can be in real life, it's easy to say you need to be really social on social media. But the real challenge is to do it strategically and naturally so you don't feel the pressure or you don't feel stressed about it, Don't worry, I have my tips for it as well. And that's sad, truth, harsh truth. But you will see your reach and engagement going down if you're not willing to show more behind the scenes of your daily life or your business behind the scenes. Because right now this year there are too many similar accounts. And you can stand out by showing you human side as often as you can. And you can also use Instagram stories to do it. That's a very smart conent format. I highly recommend using it to create this bond with your audience. But you know to create a bond with your audience, you have to already have an audience. So that's a recommendation for those of you who already have at least more than 500 followers. That isn't a lot, but I think that's a minimum. You should have to create Instagram stories actively because otherwise there is a chance that they will disappear and nobody will see them. There's also a remedy for this situation. You can share some behind the scenes, Share some good side of your business daily behind the scenes, then save those stories. Instagram story highlights. If right now you have a smaller audience, create interesting stories and save them. As Instagram story highlights, new people will click those stories and they won't disappear after 24 hours. Create funny, relatable stories and add them to Instagram highlights. My research shows that profiles that post consistently on their Instagram stories and show themselves ask followers questions, organize Q and A's and share the answers have so much more engaged and loyal because that's also important. Loyal communities in the long run, you don't even have to have a huge following to be successful. You need a loyal one. For example, in Poland, one of the most successful Instagram lifestyle creators is Alyssa Dre. And basically every E book she created is a huge success when it comes to sales. Because she's active on her Instagram stories every single day. She just mastered the art of showing up to perfection. Of course, every creator has a different personality in different boundaries as well. But in this case, her example is really worth looking at, because now she sells her products almost effortlessly. All she has to do is show up on her Instagram stories to create this storytelling journey around the product. Why? Because she always informs people in advance about what products she's working on right now and what she will be releasing shortly. She even asks her followers what they need from her. What topics would be interesting for them? What chapters of this particular book they'd love to read from her. And she listens to their needs. Her audience participates in creating her products. Sometimes she even lets her followers choose the E book cover. Their voting for the one and they like more. She's also asking whether the title of the E book sounds good to them, so they have this chance to feel really involved, really involved in the process. She's showing daily behind the scenes of the product creation process. The way she writes this E book, the places she goes to focus on writing. So she's basically showing her personal daily life, but at the same time she is building interest around the products she's creating and the products she is willing to sell shortly. So look for her followers. She's a real human like you and me. She's not a distant and perfect influencer or rich brand owner. She's a relatable person who is of course, very successful. But she is also sharing her ups and downs. And her audience always knows she cares about their opinion and she's chatting with them basically on a daily basis. I'm also observing many different influencers from many different countries and I would say does the smartest strategy that way you're building trust and growing your connection with like minded people. But you're not overs strategizing the process. You don't have to plan in advance what to post and what to show so much. You're just showing everything. As it goes step by step, it comes more naturally. And your audience will feel and appreciate it as well. They will feel involved in the process, in the process of your transformation or in the process of creating your products. Important question you need to ask yourself. Do you show up on your Instagram stories? Can you show up more casually? Is there a way to post more behind the scenes of your daily life on Instagram stories? What processes and what parts of your daily life could you share to post much more often. Do you see yourself posting this type of content on Instagram stories? That's an important question as well. If not, what's the biggest obstacle? That's really interesting for me as well. If you want, please share your thoughts in the discussion section. Maybe we can solve this problem together and find new solutions. 8. Why AI is Here to Stay: Yi is here to stay. We've talked about authenticity and vulnerability, but I'm not here to tell you AI is wrong and you have to do everything on your own. No, no, quite the opposite. You may not know it about me, but I'm a big AI enthusiast myself. But as you already know, I'm also a big human connection enthusiast. And today I want to show you how you can mix both things so you can stay true to yourself and your followers and authentic and engaging and at the same time optimize your content creation processes. Sounds interesting. Let's dive into it. As you know, I'm sharing insights from my day job as I work with many condent creators. And I observe what's working for them and what's not. There are a few really good Ols that will help you grow your Instagram account, also including GPT. But the most successful content creators I know are those who master the prompts and always put personalization. And those who don't rely on Ols too much in their content. There's still a lot of handwritten content that AI didn't touch at all. My favorite colonic creator uses ChargDB for brainstorming and concept generation. Idea generation. But then she elaborates on these topics herself in that way. She always has new ideas to write about, new ideas for her post. But her audience adores her writing style. And AI isn't taking it away from them or from her. This year, colonic creators more willingly embrace and harness the power of AI. I'm really witnessing it because in the past year, people were hesitating. Is it ethical? Is it moral? Right now they are coming to me, they're saying, I want to know how I can optimize everything with AI. I want to do that. I'm ready, I'm seeing a really shift people. Content creators are willing to learn AI to get good results. They're not hesitating so much anymore. That's a good thing because I can optimize so many things for us help save time. It's really good to keep up with it. Some fact, did you know AI is crowned the world of the year, of the past year by the Collins Dictionary? It isn't just a temporary trend that will eventually go away. No, it will only get better. And it's a worldwide tendency. Not even a tendency, a whole revolution. My first advice, explore all the ethical AI possibilities to not get left behind. At the same time, keep in mind that you can do everything with AI as you need to remember the things we have discussed in the previous chapter. People create authenticity and this raw, honest content from you, even with misspellings, even without makeup. You need this part in your social media strategy and the content you publish as well. You can't keep showing yourself when you want to grow your personal brand or become influencer and relatable. Successful content creator, entrepreneur. What content creators I work with use tools and they brainstorm new ideas and find new inspiration to create more content around a particular topic. They repurpose long folk content and to show the more educational pieces for Instagram posts or car results. For example, they repurpose the blog post and newsletters, Instagram posts and all the way round two the optimize, underperforming old content and refresh it so it gains new traffic, attracts new people and new followers. And it isn't wasted because when you publish something, for example, the content you've published in the past, when you had a smaller audience, the big part of your current audience hasn't seen this content. So you can actually post it once again, a bit refreshed so your new audience can see it and benefit from this content. They create a hopeful starting point for new content, which saves about one to even 3 hours per piece. And 65% of people I collaborate with say that AI is actually improving their Instagram content quality. They translate their content into different languages. In many cases, HGPT is even a bit better at contextual translation at Google Translator. And now task for you give GPT a go and find out if it can make your coding creation process easier and help you. For example, when you are stuck with creative block, I'm sure it will give you new amazing ideas for you on each ideas which probably haven't crossed your mind earlier. And if you're not sure what prompts you should start to bring some new ideas. Give these prompts a try. They're really good. As you can see. They include placeholders so you can personalize these prompts and make them work for your each key takeaways. I will keep on growing this year. It's not a seasonal trends, it's here to stay. So creators need to adapt more and more creators use AI tools to optimize coning creation process and boost their productivity. You should to experiment with the press props and give char GPT and other AI tools. Go to figure out that they are really helpful if you know how to use them the ethical way. But don't solely rely on I for your Instagram content creation. Because if you're thinking about relying 100% on AI to create and grow your Instagram profile, use tools to help, but if you outsource everything to AI, you won't grow as much as you wish. Low effort content and low effort Instagram profiles have very low engagement. They aren't building this long lasting connection and trust. And as you know, we needed those things. If you don't build the long lasting connections and trust, you can successfully sell your products or collaborate with big brands. Blending AI with human expertise leads to more personalized, more effective content creation. And your account can grow, but don't rely only on EI contents. 9. Social Media SEO is a Thing: Social media, SEO is a thing. Social media is quickly becoming the go to search engine. Yes, you heard it right. More and more users are using social media platforms like search engines. And that fact puts SEO at the forefront of successful conent strategy that will surprise you. According to Hab Spot's Global Social Media Trends report, 87% of Instagram and Tiktok marketers believe new users and new clients will find them via social media rather than traditional search like Google Bing. I think nowadays people see social media as a less biased source of information than Google being. And what's interesting, younger audiences prefer to use platforms on which they have already spent a lot of time. So platforms like Tiktok, Youtube, and now even Instagram. I need you to take a look at this research. According to reports from New York Times, Tiktok surpassed Google as Jen Z's primary source of information. That's huge. Let's look at another interesting research. Rice at seven, did a study of five K competitive industry keas across Google, Tiktok, and Youtube. And found out that 100 Kias on Tiktok and 100 Kias on Youtube are searched for more than on Google. And that was honestly shocking for me and for many people. I told you about this research. So probably you are shocked too. Here is the source if you want to read more about this research, and I think it's really interesting to read about it. So social media platforms, Tiktok, Youtube, Instagram, are doing their best to meet this demands and are developing the search engine all the time. All the time. Believe me, that's also why social media SEO has become a thing. We need to optimize our content to make it more searchable, To make it more friendly for those advanced search engines, how focus on creating practical and helpful reels, car results, and all the con, informats. Create reviews. How to use tutorials and hacks to easy double your organic reach and make your content more user friendly, especially for new users. Especially on Tiktok and now on Insipram as well. Create content that answers search questions. Check what questions about the topic people are asking. You can do that by checking the data from Google Google Trends, or see what Auto complete on Tiktok tells you exactly that way. Just type in the beginning of the question or of the keyword you want to use and see what questions are trending here. That's a huge source of information about the Tiktok audience. Then when you're armed with this knowledge, create, inspiring, entertaining and educational ecent to serve these questions people are searching for. When we are talking about social media E, we need to discuss keywords and harsh talks. What do you think? Are they still helpful this year? 10. Keywords over Hashtags: He was over hashtags. I'm sure you've already noticed it on social media, there's competition entering from every angle. We can stand out and double our content by optimizing your posts. So algorithms will love them more and they will become more searchable and more discoverable. But how can we do that? In the past, we had hashtags. Hashtags which were categorizing content and people were passionately following hashtags and browsing through them. It wasn't really long ago, but things have changed. If you hang around calling creators and social media marketing experts, you probably hear the word keyword being repeated quite a lot. Are you wondering if they are more effective than hashtags? And first of all, what's the difference between hashtags and keywords? That's an important question. Imagine you want to explore autumn fashion trends. When it comes to Google. You may start with Google searches like Autumn Fashion Trends, cozy sweaters for fall, layering pieces for autumn, or boots for rainy days. You catch my drift on Instagram. At least in the past, you would hand down hashtags related to your fashion interests, such as hashtag, atom style hashtag, full fashion cozy jumpers, coziness hashtag, leather boots. But looking for posts, you see, hashtag was problematic at times. Instagram's algorithm or actually algorithms are always on the move, swiftly adapting. That might surprise you now, even if you skip the hashtag symbol and simply search atom fashion on Instagram, you'll see what you're looking for. In this case, stylish outfits, perfect for pumpkin patch visits and crisp evening works. And this is the big change. We can skip the hashtag symbol and search for things just the way we would search on Google. How Instagram can filter content and give you the right results. Instagram search, much like Google search, also detects keywords included in your content in your captions. In other words, keywords using Instagram caption started playing a much more significant role in ranking your content than hash talks. Right now, hashtags are slowly beginning only to contextualize content rather than help your post get found on users, explore pages. Keywords on the other hand, function like search terms. Now helping the right people, your dream audience, discover your post and your content. Prioritize keys over hashtags were hashtag still exists, keywords in your caption hold more weight in the Instagram SEO game. My four rules for using Instagram keywords in the captions successfully. First research your keywords so you can be sure they can attract the right people, the new followers you want to attract. Keep it natural and try to add them to your caption text. It sounds good and naturally, for example that way. Here is the beginning of the caption. That clearly includes three strong keys. If you struggle with including keywords and your captions, you don't know where or how to add them, so they will look naturally. You can also tell ChGPT to help you because remember that you can copy paste You're already prepared caption and tell ChGPT to modify it. Your caption includes your most important keywords you want to rank for for that particular post. I'm not only talking about Instagram because Tiktok cell is also a big thing. Always prioritize your audience's needs. What are they actively looking for? What questions are they asking? Fill your captions with at least a few strong keywords, key takeaways. Instagram's ranking strategy begins to favor keywords over hashtags. Users can now search keywords and phrases in the search bar that way. What does it mean for you? Incorporating keywords in your captions. Display name in alt text can enhance your visibility in Instagram search results. And that's our goal. So you should do that. You really need to incorporate keywords in your Instagram captions. Because Instagram algorithms and scan your captions looking for them, how to find keys for your posts. You can research new keywords and search. For that purpose, you can use Goole Trends for example, or find out what Tiktok Autocomplete tells you and find breakout breakout trends on social media. Or using Tiktok's creative center to power your content and new ideas. Keep up with training topics to know what people in your niche might be. Act actively searching for. Right now, don't forget to add all texts with keywords to your photos in advanced settings right here. 11. Long-form Videos Will Make a Comeback: Long Phm videos will make a comeback. Sure. Many people have been so brainwashed with super short Tiktok and Instagram content that their attention span is super, super low. But at the same time, I've noticed that long Pm videos and talking reels and Tiktoks are doing better and better this year. Why? I think people are craving what is real when it comes to the information they're receiving. And want to feel more connected to connect creators they're listening to and shot content for example, seven or even 60 seconds, Doesn't always guarantee that. Very often not. Let's look at the past. The duration of Tiktok videos was initially increased to 10 minutes. 10 minutes does a lot in January 2022 and extended to 15 minutes in 2023. In November 2023, to be exit November 2023, Tiktok announced its expansion to 15 15 minutes videos. To be honest, this expansion into longer videos is a response to challenges and monetization and advertising. Tiktok, Why would Tiktok want you to create longer videos when you don't know the answer? The answer is money. Shorter video content just doesn't deliver the same revenue returns as long form content. And Tiktok knows that very well. Instagram two, I've analyzed many trade reports for this year and the tendency is clear. It's expected that long form videos on Tiktok and Instagram will shine brighter than before. Is that the good news for you? Yeah, in my opinion, there are many bright sides. Long form videos give us room for even bigger creativity and they demand this in depth storytelling, which can evoke trust much more easily. So sure you need to invest more time to create longer videos, but then they can have bigger benefits for you. So it's worth it to create them. He take ways and steps for you to take. Tiktok and Instagram creators who start to make a long phone videos can be really successful. I'm seeing they get more and more hype, so it's worth your attention. Try to create longer videos with your personal touch and include more in depth storytelling. 12. Focus on Micro-Influencers: Focus on micro influencers. This year, brands will be increasingly partnering with micro influencers to reach more engaged, niche audiences. Why micro influencers are being finally noticed by brands and businesses? Mm Hmm hmm. The answer is pretty simple. Forbes also agrees. According to Forbes research, micro influencers will play a major role in advertising this year as they have a higher engagement rate in their posts. These smaller influencers, though they have smaller followings and smaller number on their follower account, very often boast much higher engagement rates. And a more dedicated, more loyal audience than creators with huge profiles and people trust them more easily. I also see it in conversations with content creators. I work with many condent creators with ten K or 20 K follow with get better collaboration proposals than these closer to 100 K. I think people began to connect with content creators and influencers. Feeling these influencers, people just like them, yet often a content creator. When they gather thousands of follows and starts to lead this more glamorous, luxurious, electronic lifestyle, this ability to resonate with average person just disappears. They aren't relatable anymore. When they grow so big, people just don't find it relatable anymore. That's why smaller profiles are much more relatable for so many people. This power of smaller influencers lies in their authenticity and the trust they have and the trust they have built with their smaller audience, smaller but more loyal this year, they also win. And brands really start to appreciate that by focusing on these partnerships, these collaborations brands will be able to leverage the trust, leading to more meaningful, less random engagement on Instagram. So key takeaways and good news for you, it's pretty good to be a smaller con and creator on micro influencer. Nowadays, micro influencers are high on authenticity. They can retain followers more easily and they have higher engagement rates. And brands really started to notice it and they started to love collaborating with smaller accounts. Even brands like Sephora, Banana Republic, and Nike started to collaborate with really small accounts. So right now there's a chance for everyone, You don't have to wait until you have a huge profile. Going bigger is not always better. Research research really shows that people generally trust smaller accounts much more. And are more willing to engage with content from less popular content creators. Big influencers are becoming less relatable and less authentic that way. And micro influencers isn't a thing to be ashamed. Well, it never was, but now it's your time. 13. Ad Transparency and Your Own Products : At transparency and own products. People who follow many conent creditors admit they're tired of collaboration as and sponsored posts everywhere and want more story driven content that is isn't sponsored by any brands. That's why more and more content creators decide to sell their own products like horses, books, and give up partnerships with brands. People also admit that they lose their trust and content creators when they notice they aren't transparent about their *** and they're recommending the things they've been sent with vouch telling us it's a product placement, it's a PR gift, not an honest recommendation, not something they have bought with their own money. People are really tired of sponsored posts, especially since so many collaborations and partnerships misrepresent the truth about the quality of the product or service. There are more and more comments about it, on content creators profiles and here are some of them and I think many of you can relate. I just get tired of it because I don't even carry the post sponsored like get you back, get your expensive vitamins. But trying to hide it is just so irritating. I don't mind sponsorships at all. Just be clear about that and don't pretend you're not sponsored. I think these comments sum it up pretty well. That's why this year is all about a transparency and creating products that align with the creators mission. Because it's so much easier to create your own product that is okay with your standards, than to accept big companies products that are often, well, very low quality people aren't naive, they aren't naive anymore, they are really tired. Trust is already broken. What should you do to never lose your followers? Trust. Choose a transparency. Adding a PR gift or sponsor to your Instagram story doesn't hurt and many people will respect you more because of that honesty. Don't ever try to hide a sponsorship or hope people won't find out. People really know this. Do you think about creating your own product in the future? For most of the creators I work with, this is a much smarter option than relying on grand partnerships. Not only financially, but of course, with your own product you can earn much more. But also you're assured you're recommending and selling something you put your heart into, and you're the one responsible for its quality and value. You don't have to recommend something only because a brand sends you something or told you to recommend it. If you already created your product and you're selling it by showing it on your social media, Use testimonials to showcase what your product is really about. Collect and showcase genuine reviews to exemplify and prove the power of your product or services. 14. Photo Dumps with Videos: Photo doms with videos, just take a look at this carousel and this photo dom, short videos aren't only for reels and Tiktok but will also increase in popularity in Instagram carousels. Adding storytelling to static image carousel, like in an example I've shown you, is such a creative idea and it will shine this year. Also, carousels with Jeeps and mixed carousels are the next big thing. I've already seeing a lot of creators experiment with that. According to social insider research, carousels that mix images with videos bring the highest engagement rate per post, about two comma, 33% This approach appears to be effective as people on social media tend to engage more when presented with a diverse range of stimuli. Viewers are more likely to stop scrolling and engage with this type of post. You should give them a try. 15. Trust the Numbers - Analysis and Data: The numbers, analysis and data. Blindly posting without data and ignoring your social media analytics is like navigating the tuscany without a nap. You needed to understand what content is working and what isn't this year, I can't stress this enough. There is too much competition, too much competition to pose blindly without knowing what type of content your dream audience enjoys. The most you need to test and optimize and track results. Analytics gives you the insights needed to create content that resonates and engage your target audience. This is the smartest way to grow faster, because look, you can watch all the best courses in the world to read the most professional books from your favorite comic creators and social media experts. But if you don't look into your own analytics, nobody can really tell you what you should do. You are looking for the answers outside when the answers are already inside your analytics. Many of the most important answers in your analytics, this data, your analytics, can answer these questions. Which content format your audience likes the most? It can be totally different from the global general tendencies that are shared in the trend reports. Because each audience is different, each niche is a bit different. Does your audience prefer short or longer video content? You need to know that what topic interests your audience the most. So as you can see, these answers can be a shuttle game changer for your strategy for knowing what you should create next. And these answers can make your audience love, you, come back to your profile more often. So here's what I would do if I were you track strategic insights to gain a fresh perspective about your current audience. Yeah, about your current audience. That's important. Then translate this insights into actionable strategies to save your audience. Better, your current audience, because you don't want to lose your current followers while trying to attract new people. You don't want to lose the people who already decided to follow you because of course, your goal is to attract new people, but also to retain the audience you already have regularly track your analytics and track which content performs best to adapt your tactics and stay relevant and keep track of your audience preferences because they may also change with time. Then optimize your content with those data driven strategies. I'm all about tracking insights, about tracking data because your answers later think of analytics data as a cornerstone for your strategy for your whole Instagram or social media in general, strategy refine your content efforts. That way you can drive much higher engagement because your followers will engage more with the content they like the most. And you may want to ask, but how can I track my analytics? Is the Inp analytics enough and actually yes and no at the same time? If you want, you can invest in analytics and data tools, especially if you want your data to be presented to you in a more friendly way and you want to have all the data in one dashboard. For example, you can invest in tools like Hoot Suite Flick, Sprout Social or Co Haas Tag. They do that. And these resources will help you make informed decisions based on real time, real time feedback from your content performance. So you can track your content performance weekly and monthly to notice which content performed the best in those periods of time. That way you can tailor your content to your audience's needs. You can easily track which type of content they prefer because you know, you can also ask them, prepare Instagram stories and Q and A's to get this feedback directly from them. But actually data will tell you a lot more. So I prefer both ways to get to know your audience more. So track. Do they want entertaining or maybe rather educational content from you? Do they like behind the scenes reels or maybe they prefer watching behind the scenes on Instagram stories? They may have very different preferences and you have to track what the bigger part of your audience enjoys the most. Also, try to track what kind of audio in your ears do they like the most? Maybe they prefer you talking or maybe they prefer hearing trending audio in your reels. Which type of res Instagram reels do they prefer with this information? With this analysis, you can create content that truly resonates with the biggest part of your audience. 16. Instagram DM Automation: Instagram direct messages automation. Instagram DM automation is the future of generation on social media. Many content creators agree, and actually I also can't agree more. Instagram has recently allowed the use of DM automation tools. Like many chat. But first, I know some of you might want to ask. I haven't heard about it, what Instagram automation is, how does it work? Let's discuss it in a nutshell. With the help of software and code, DM automation allows you to have conversation with your audience or send them a product and a digital product you've prepared without having to manually respond to everyone. These messages are triggered by the keywords that you choose. For example, it can be a keyword strategy. These keywords can be left in the form of a comment under your post, like for example here, And how exactly does it work? You can publish a video post or an image post with a good copy. And with that important call to action, for example, comment with the word strategy to get my PDF. Then every person, every follower that left a comment with the word strategy in it would get a direct message with the PDS without you having to send the link manually to everyone that have left the comment. That's the automation, because the word strategy in the comment triggers the action, triggers the automation. That way you can automate Instagram messaging and run your lead generation much more effectively without having to send files manually. And sending this on the chill files manually takes a lot of time. So you saved this time and I really see more and more con creators are using this method. And it also has a huge side benefit. People are leaving comments with a magic word in it, for example, our word strategy. And the more people leave a comment under your post, the more interesting and valuable this comment appears to Instagram algorithms because you get such high engagement under the post, so many comments. Not only you have your Instagram messaging automated and you save time, but you also have higher engagement, organic engagement. That's why I think this method is golden. 17. Final Words and My Question: Final words. And my question to you, staying ahead in social media means embracing change. Never ending change. Adapting to the trends we've discussed today can be challenging, I know, but I really hope it will also be extremely rewarding for you. These trends, or actually these strategies will strengthen your social media efforts so much. And now I'm really curious, which tendencies are you most excited about? Let me know in the discussion or review section I need to know, so let's exchange our thoughts. And if you enjoy the course, I will be more than super, super helpful if you can leave a review. You know the review doesn't have to be very long. It can only be one or two sentences. Just let me know what you liked about the course. Which chapter was the most interesting or surprising for you? And what are the things you'd like to see? More from me. For example, maybe more questions or more examples, or maybe more insights from my clients. I try to do my best to make this course really practical, but I really appreciate the feedback and let me know what I could do to make this course even better. It will mean the world and it will help me make better and better courses for you. I hope to hear from you and it was amazing having you here with me. See you in the discussion and review section, so I can get to know you and get to know your goals and social media challenges you're facing. So see you there and then see you in the next one.