Why You’re Already an Authority: The Instagram Method Built Before the Results Existed

You do not have a training course yet. You do not have an ebook. You have never been anywhere more exotic than your own neighborhood. So when someone tells you to build authority on Instagram, the honest reaction is: authority for what, exactly? Justin Holland built a quarter of a million followers across multiple accounts before he was doing anything that looked like the freedom lifestyle he was posting about, and his answer to that objection is worth sitting with.

He built his following through niche targeting, running separate accounts for separate interests instead of one blended feed, and through a posting rhythm simple enough to actually stick to. None of it depended on already having proof of success. It depended on showing up consistently before the results existed.

What do you actually have to offer if you have not made a dime yet?

Holland’s first move is to strip away the excuse before it forms. People tell him constantly that they cannot post training content because they have no training and no ebook. His answer is direct.

You’ve got training. You’re an authority straight away. There’s nothing stopping you from already being that authority figure that you strive to be.

The mechanism behind that claim is simple. Whatever you learned at a live event or from a mentor this month, you can record on your own laptop and teach it back the same week. He built one of his own lead magnets, a free ebook, out of a story he had already told from a stage. A cover made through a freelance design site, and the material became a credential. The pain underneath the objection is not lack of expertise. It is the belief that expertise has to be earned somewhere else before you are allowed to share it.

Why does the account have to look ugly before it looks good?

Growing a targeted Instagram following is unglamorous work, and Holland does not pretend otherwise. His rhythm is to follow and like fifty to sixty accounts, three or four times a day, targeting people in small, specific hashtag communities rather than the biggest tags. A hashtag with sixty million posts buries you. A hashtag with forty-three thousand posts filled with people who actually use that word to describe themselves gets you noticed, because there is a real person behind a small handful of likes who will actually look at who followed them.

Do that consistently and the account gets cluttered before it gets clean. Holland is upfront about the shape of that curve.

As he put it, describing that stretch honestly, “It’s going to look ugly before it looks sexy. It’s just the way it is.” Only once the following is established and engaged does the other half of the cycle start, unfollowing accounts that never engaged back, to keep the ratio and the feed itself in shape. Skipping that first ugly stretch to protect a tidy-looking profile is exactly how accounts stay small forever.

How do you keep posting from turning into constant self-promotion?

The structural piece that makes all of this sustainable is his 3-2-1 method for what actually goes on the feed. Three posts of real value. Two personal posts. One business post, and only one, out of every six.

• Value posts: quotes, short trainings, or the free ebook, seeded with the same link every time so a saved or reshared post keeps sending traffic back.
• Personal posts: whatever you are actually doing that week, travel or otherwise, shown honestly rather than staged.
• One business post per cycle: a soft, direct mention of what you do, with a simple invitation to check the link in the bio if someone is curious.

That ratio matters because the first six posts a stranger sees when they land on a profile decide whether they stay or scroll past. A feed that is all pitch reads as noise. A feed that is mostly value with an occasional honest personal moment reads as a person worth following, and that is the entire challenge Instagram growth solves: getting a stranger to trust you enough to click one link in a bio, without ever feeling sold to along the way.

The underlying benefit is leverage that does not depend on your calendar. A blog post or quote seeded with your link keeps working long after you posted it, and a following built through small, targeted communities keeps compounding while you sleep. That is the actual promise underneath the hashtag research and the follow-unfollow cycle, not a lifestyle photo, but a system that runs whether or not you are traveling that week.

The full session covers the account setup, bio structure, and hashtag research in more depth than fits here. Watch it in full, free, when you Create your free account.

The full session transcript follows below.

Transcript

Alright guys, who's pumped for Instagram? Alright, so I've been using Instagram for six months and there is like 475, can I get those slides on, that's alright, 470 million active users per month and for those who are under 35, this is your thing, 90% of Instagram users are under 35 years of age and that's not mine. Alright, so for those under 35, you're going to love this because it's just, posting pictures to Instagram is just so easy and if you don't have an Instagram account, download the app and just create an account.

So once this starts, we can get started. Here we go, that's better. Alright, let's jump through this. Alright, so what I want to start off with is, when this works, what way am I pressing this?

There we go. Alright, so niche targeting. When you have Instagram accounts, you can have multiple accounts, so a lot of you guys out there probably have one account, maybe a personal and a business account and that's fine, but you guys can target so many different niches and I spoke the other day about how I had. I have a quarter of a million followers on Instagram and it's not from one account, it's from multiple accounts and I build that through different kind of niches and for me, I like to travel a lot and I can use travel in all different aspects, so I like to scuba dive, I like to trek, I like to hike and I can target different kind of niches in each of those different accounts.

So there's also like, you can also do anything, cooking, stay at home mums, even network marketing, I try to stay away from that kind of stuff. I don't like to go and target other MLMs. So, and then we're going to come to the Instagram bio, which I want you guys to be able to implement straight away today. So what we have here, at the top we have travel underscore Justin, that's one of my accounts and you'll notice that when I put travel underscore Justin, you know it's a travel account, there's no, there's no confusion.

So then we move, we move down into the profile picture. It's so, it's so, it's so important to have your face in there and make sure that they can see who you are. So make sure that you are very, make sure that you are, you know, personal, just like a Facebook page, right? You want to make sure that you are right there and they know who you are straight away.

And then I move down into my bio and I like to do a list format and for those who have iPhones, you can do it as a list format in your notes and you can see I've got separate lines. Because I'm… In Instagram, I don't actually allow you to do new lines. But yeah, we can do that in notes in your iPhone or even if you've got an Android or something else, you can jump into Facebook Messenger and do it in there.

And then what we've got, we want to make sure that your description in your bio has a hook, has a great call to action that makes them want to keep reading and looking through your pictures. So what I make, what the kind of leads and hooks that I do, there's two options. I have travel, travel.justinsmovement.com. Justins Movement is my brand and travel is my sub-domain.

So you see how I've related the name to the bio and then down to the URL. And for me right here, that's a capture page. But then I'm going to move on to other hooks and other lead magnets that I use throughout my pictures. Posting on Instagram, there's a method that I use and I call it the 3-2-1 method.

Three value posts. Three value posts. Posts could mean a few different things. It could mean quotes, it could mean trainings, e-books and the like.

So don't confuse yourself with e-books and trainings for business posts because they're value. People want to see stuff from you and people always ask me, but I don't have training, I don't have e-books. What you're learning from me today, you can go home and make a video on your computer. You've got training.

You're an authority straight away. There's nothing stopping you from already being that authority figure that you strive to be. So don't let yourself down in that aspect. An e-book?

We spoke about that a couple of days ago and when I told my story on stage with Nathan and Phil, we literally told our stories. You can pop that into an e-book. Go on Fiverr.com, get an e-book cover made and you've got an e-book. You guys can see my e-book right there.

A free e-book has e-book.justinsmovement.com. You'll notice that I keep seeding my blog every time I keep seeding it. So if someone doesn't want to put in an e-book, they can just go straight to my blog. So every picture.

You can see here again, you actually can't see it. I think I have a bigger one later, but just in case I don't, I have a quote right in the middle there, down the bottom, and it has the quotation in there and under it always has justinsmovement.com. Every single time. If someone takes my quote, then I've got free traffic.

You'll notice that in a lot of people's accounts that they go and take pictures and quotes from other accounts. That's fine. It's not good. Instagram don't love it, but again, they're going to keep going back to the other person's link, which is not yours, so you don't want that.

All right. So. When we talk about the three-two. one method, we go into two personal posts, and what that is, is simply two personal posts of me.

I've been staying at a mansion with a few of our freedom printers for the past week, and I've leveraged that all week. All right. I've got coconut drinking over there in Bali. I've got us at the Sheridan, then a couple at the mansion, and I've got my e-book and my quote.

So. It's not specifically following the three-two-one method, but it's along the same lines, and it's, when I first started, I was not travelling the world. I wasn't. So the three-two-one method was perfect for me.

I could give three value posts, which were easy. You know, e-books, trainings, and quotes. Two personal. Easy.

I can go out on a weekend, have fun. For me, it was always travel. So I always liked to go and do cool things on weekends, whether it was hiking, trekking, going for a swim at the beach or whatever. And I can take some cool photos doing that.

So just, you don't have to, you don't have to, for me, I didn't have to be travelling the world to promote my travel, because I still travelled around where I lived. It was fine. I still did what I did, and I still came to these events, which I'm going to get into in a second. All right.

Value examples, as I mentioned. We have our training, our free e-book, and quotes. You could actually have, you don't have to put, I don't have to put, I don't have to put, I don't have to put, I don't have to put, I don't have to put, I don't have to put, I don't have to put, I don't have to put, I have this free Instagram workshop training that I did six months ago. I literally just started in Empower Network.

I went to my first event in Nashville, and I literally just did a free Instagram workshop from the training that I learnt at Nashville. So you guys can go home and do that. And then we come to quotes. I want you guys to be quite careful with quotes, and not to go and take pictures from anywhere.

What you can actually do is go into Google, and you can type in kind of pictures that you want, and there's a modification search where you can actually, I think it's called Available for Reuse. When you go into Images, there's like a Tools, a More Tools section, and then you can click on something like Available for Reuse, and you guys can use that free, and there are plenty of other websites where you can get free pictures from. But be very careful not to take other people's pictures, because it could come back to bite you in the butt.

All right, so business examples. This is what I do. So one business post, every six posts. You have to remember that when someone goes into your account, the first thing they see are six posts on your bio.

So the six posts are always so important. That's why we do the 3-2-1 method. And there's always one business post. And as you can see here, I'm leveraging a workshop, the Freedompreneur workshop, which we did in Bali just a couple of months ago.

Right? I teach Instagram. And now I'm able to leverage what we've done here today, or yesterday. And I've just taken a photo of us here, and I've been able to put that up on my Instagram posts across multiple accounts.

So just remember, as the leaders here keep telling you guys, get photos and get interactions with all the leaders, because that's going to be so much value and so much leverage for your business. And you think about what you could say under these posts. For me, I would say, I'm so proud to be here and teaching others to learn Instagram. I'd love to show you guys a little bit more about what I do.

If you guys want to click the link in the bio, you guys can check it out. But if not, that's fine. So very, very soft sell. Everything I do is through traction marketing.

I don't do any hard selling and the like. And then if I come over to the Fight the Forces of Evil picture, I would just be saying something like, I'm so excited to be here with all my fellow freedompreneurs. Sorry, all my freedompreneurs, that's what we call ourselves. But all our other entrepreneurs.

And I could simply say something like, I'm learning off million dollar earners on how to boom my business. I'd love for you guys to check out a little bit more about what I do. So click the link in the bio, and I'll see you on there. All right, so we're going to come into the hustle now, which is probably the most important thing about generating leads and building your accounts.

The hustle in Instagram is something that some people struggle to get consistency with. So I want to get you guys consistent. And it's pretty easy. Research hashtag.

I want to make sure that you guys are laser targeted. Right now, I'm going to be doing a little bit of research. Now, I'm going to keep going back to my travel accounts, because it's what I do predominantly. And we're going to go through some tags here that I've searched.

So when you jump into your tag searches on Instagram, you can type in travel. And as you can see, there's something like 63 million hashtags for travel. If I jump into that account, if I jump into that tag now, it's going to have pictures from all different travel, which is cool. And I'm going to show you some examples of what kind of pictures are going to be in that.

And that hashtag, compared to I love traveling on the right-hand side, which only has 43,000 posts. You think about when anyone travels and they use Instagram, they're going to put travel. Whereas I love traveling, 43,000 posts, you can certainly find someone a bit more engaging in there. Let's jump on to the next one.

All right. So we actually have two pictures here. And we have on the left. On the right-hand side, we have nearly 7,000 likes under the travel hashtag.

All right. So I've got that under the red banner there, which is just too many. If you went and liked someone there, you went and hearted that post, they're not going to heart you back. They're not going to follow you back.

But if on the right-hand side, this person's a traveler. She's got 25 likes. So I want you guys to know that if I liked her page, if I went into her account and followed her, liked a couple of her photos, gave her a cool comment saying, sweet, sweet, awesome pics, the likelihood of her checking out my bio, it's so high. It's high compared to the one before.

So what I want to get onto now is I've actually finished my slides. So I just want to talk a little bit more about… About actually following people and how many kind of people you guys can follow throughout the day. So when you guys are going into accounts, like I just showed, you're going into hashtags, you're finding the really small ones with only a few likes, they're the people who are going to engage back with you.

I would like you guys to be following 50 to 60 people at a time. And you do that. You do that three or four times a day at different intervals. So think about it.

We all go to the bathroom a few times a day. So there's no excuse not to do it. You don't want to be there anyway at work. So why not take an extra few minutes to go do a few likes and a few follows?

All right? I did that for so long. It's crazy. But I was my own boss, so I just went, well, that's cool.

I'll just keep staying in there for a bit longer. So I want you guys to do that every day. Follow 50 to 60 people three or four times a day. And I also want you to do 50 or 60 likes three or four times a day.

You think about how many hundreds that is a day, thousands per week. And I understand that after a while, those accounts are going to look quite ugly. So what happens is it's a bit of a yo-yo effect. So what happens is you're going to go up.

You're going to get your account looking ugly. It's going to look ugly before it looks sexy. It's just the way it is. And that's okay.

You're building a business. You cannot build this overnight. It takes time. So I want you guys to build it up.

And then what you can do, once you guys get to a comfortable stage of people generating, of people coming onto your page, liking, following, and engaging, you guys can start doing the other side of the yo-yo. You can bring it back down. You can unfollow. You can unfollow the same amount of people that I just mentioned a few times a day.

Okay, so basically I want you guys to be consistent. Because every day you don't do this is a day you lose in your business. I use Instagram pretty much 100%. And I pay next to nothing to run my accounts.

I do have different niches and I do have multiple accounts. So I do outsource some of it. And I'm sure you guys know of different outsourcing companies that allow you to, have that more time freedom. So those who want to get different niches in your accounts, go for it.

You can get up to five new accounts on your phone. So there's no excuse for you guys not to have five accounts on your phone. I'd love for you guys to jump on and get them going straight away. If you guys are a bit overawed by that, it takes some time to get used to getting through and liking and following the right people.

So maybe start off with one account and do it for a few weeks. And once you're comfortable and get it really, really down, you get down to a fine art. I can do five accounts in a few minutes. It comes quickly, it comes over time.

You got to log in, log out, log in, log out. It gets a bit annoying, but it's certainly worth it. So that's about it for me today, guys. I hope you guys enjoyed what I had to say.

Give it up for Justin Holland. Justin Holland, everybody.