Let’s put the clickbait up front – this is how to get three million views on Instagram.
Sadly, there isn’t a single secret we can share – if there was, we definitely wouldn’t be putting it on this blog. The elusive million view Reel or Tik Tok isn’t actually about the post that gets the views. It’s about optimizing every post to reach your goals, and working towards incremental success – capturing and posting the right content, at the right time, with the right song, the right hashtags, on the right account. You can do all of those things right and find success without ever reaching a million views. Spreading the word about your brand, reminding followers of your happy hour deals or live music Thursdays, and building an ever-growing following are all valuable, especially if they reach the right people.
But every once in awhile, the stars align, the algorithm smiles on you, and magic happens. That’s what happened for Marie Callender’s. (Yes, the restaurants. Yes, they’re still open – in fact, they have a new location opening soon.)
Our million view reel hit two of our key goals for the brand. On the marketing side, we were promoting their bi-annual pie sale. On the branding side, we’re constantly trying to communicate that they make their pies fresh, in each location, every day. And as of right now, 1,682,521 people have spent more than 4,344 hours watching Marie’s Pie Crew making cherry pie, eight addictive seconds at a time. We’ll call that a win.
UPDATE: We’re now up to 2.4 million views and 52,353 likes and counting.
ANOTHER UPDATES: 3.1 million views and 73,775 likes, all organic
So, what happens after the lightning strikes and you get a million views, or more?
- more than 40% increase in followers
- demographic shift to younger customers
- increased reach to non-followers on all posts, averaging 50/50 followers/non-followers
- which goes with increased reach through the explore page
So, we can’t guarantee that any post will get a million views, but we’d love to tell you about our 2.2 million view Tik Tok for Wetzel’s Pretzels.