365 Day Instagram Algorithm Test

Author

Abe Colwell
February 01, 2025

Alex Armitage is a landscape photographer who has been on the road capturing breath-taking landscapes for >3 years now. He had been inconsistent on his social media, and was inspired by his friend Johnny’s 30 day test of algorithmic trends in both reels and consistency to see how he could grow his brand and business.

He set himself a goal to post every day for a year and shares 3 key takeaways that may help your content system.

  1. How to make a reel every day (as a still image photographer)

  2. Results of the algorithm test

  3. Secrets to success as an artist

Hypothesis: Consistency & Reels will make me go viral

We’ve all heard the creators claiming that (1) consistency is the key to social media algorithms; and, (2) reels are being pushed by Instagram because Instagram wants to incentivize users to create them. Instagram can better monetize reels in addition to increased user retention.

How to make a reel every day
Alex’s content cataglog is largely still images. His friend found the fix for that by adding typewriter text and the slightest zoom effect or rotating photos.

He learned the value of batch content creation. Sitting down for 1 session and creating 30-60 videos in a row really freed him up to just hit post each day in between sessions. This allowed relief of the daily pressure of find time for his content, he had to sit down once and instead find 30 seconds daily to hit post.

This is something I’m working on with this newsletter. Even if you create content regularly as needed, it’s still helpful to have backup timeless content for the unexpected

So how many followers did he gain?

May - October 2023 growth

Instagram stats only go back 90 days but Meta for Business goes back a bit further. He gained 1600 followers at a pretty consistent pace of ~130 per month. This doesn’t differentiate subs from algorithm exposures versus subscribers gained from his other content - like youtube and online publications.

In short: he concludes that he did not confirm the hypothesis.

But he did not fail.

Secrets to success
A few weeks after the challenge, he spent a bit of time editing a reel with content filmed specifically for a viral reel. He added the viral features to his video, and it quickly reached 180k users netting 500 subs alone.

This was a challenge to himself and he succeeded. 1 reel, every day, for 365 days. He defined success, and he achieved his goals versus allowing others to define him.

Key Takeaways

Alex admits–he did not play the game by the basic strategy. He likens it to chess. You know the rules and basic strategy, but you only move pieces forward, bullishly. You may win a small percentage of the 365 tries, but you’re not maximizing your chances.

The algorithm is the game. Sometimes it changes the rules, and that sucks, but if you play by them consistently and get incrementally better each time, you’ll be maximizing your chances for success.

The year following his experiment, he grew to nearly 18,000 followers. Beyond Instagram, he’s having great success on YouTube with 60,000 subscribers including nearly 10,000 new subscribers in the past 4 months.

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Warmly,
Abe Colwell
Creator in Public

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