101 We Did a Month of Posting 4 Times a Day... Here’s What Happened

Over the past month, I decided to run a little experiment in my business… and honestly, it was a bit of a wild one.

I set myself a challenge to post four times a day on Instagram, every weekday, while testing some of the newest growth strategies (including trial reels). The goal? More visibility, more followers, and real data on what actually works right now.

But here’s the truth… what I expected to happen and what actually happened were two very different things. So in this episode, I’m breaking it all down for you—what worked, what didn’t, and what I’d genuinely recommend if you want to grow your audience without burning out or wasting hours on content that goes nowhere.

📝 What We Cover in This Episode

• What happened when I posted 4 times a day on Instagram for a month 
• A behind-the-scenes look at trial reels (and whether they’re worth your time) 
• Why more content doesn’t automatically mean more followers 
• The biggest mistake people make when chasing Instagram growth 
• A simple way to test content without doubling your workload 
• How to use keywords to attract the right audience (not just more views) 
• What “visibility content” actually means (and how to use it properly) 
• Why polarising content can dramatically increase reach and engagement 
• The power of content series to build trust and consistency 
• What to focus on instead of chasing every new social media trend 

💡 Key Takeaway

If you’re wondering how to grow on Instagram as a dietitian, this episode is your reminder that it’s not about doing more… it’s about being more intentional.

Because the goal isn’t just more views—it’s getting seen by the right people who actually want to work with you.

🔗 Links & Resources

• Social Media Made Simple
  https://www.sarahalmondbushell.com/social-media-made-simple 
• DM me “SMMS” on Instagram if you want to chat about whether the course is right for you 

✨ Gentle Next Step

If you’re feeling a bit stuck with what to post, or like you’re putting content out there and hearing crickets… you’re not the only one.

This is exactly why I created Social Media Made Simple—to help you build a strategy that

Lets keep in touch!

Website:  https://www.sarahalmondbushell.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dietitiansinbusiness/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dietitiansinbusiness
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@BeyondTheClinicPodcast

FREE Workbook - The Master Plan

Discover the 22 steps you need to take (in the right order) to build a successful business so you can earn enough to live the freedom lifestyle you dream of. https://www.sarahalmondbushell.com/master-plan 

Work with me:

• Business Coaching: https://www.sarahalmondbushell.com/mastermind
• Sarah AI: https://www.sarahalmondbushell.com/offers/AYjozgYc/
• Book a discovery call: https://thechildrensnutritionist.as.me/discovery

Transcript

Today's going to be a really interesting episode because over the last month, I decided to run a bit of an experiment in my business. My team and I made March my growth month. We wanted more eyes on my business and more followers. So I thought, right, let's actually go for it. I set myself a challenge to really push my social media content. And when I say push it, I mean properly push it. I ended up posting

four times a day on Instagram every weekday. And this is something I have never done in my business before. And not only that, I was testing out some new strategies when it comes to growth, including trial reels, which are a fairly new feature on Instagram designed to help you grow your audience. And to make it a bit of fun, I decided I'd do 10 boxer style skips for every new follower I gained. My PT was very proud of me for that one.

But the reason I wanted to do this episode is because I know so many of you are also wanting to grow your audience and be more strategic on social media, but don't know what to do and also don't know how much of your time is actually worth dedicating to this. Maybe you've seen people talk about how effective things like trial reels are, but haven't really seen results from it yourself. Or maybe you've never even heard of trial reels before.

and I haven't got a clue what they are. And that's absolutely fine because I'm gonna explain it all in this episode. So in this episode, I'm gonna give you a completely honest breakdown of how that month went. What I actually did, what worked, what definitely did not work and what I would and wouldn't recommend you do if your goal is to grow your social media audience right now. And before you run away thinking,

She's going to start to tell me to post four times a day on Instagram. Hell no to that. You'll be glad to hear. I will not be telling you to do that. Okay. Let's get into it. Shall we? Okay. Let's start with the main thing that I focused on during growth month. Trial Reels. Now Trial Reels are a fairly new feature on Insta designed to push your content out to non-followers. So these are not shown on your Instagram grid.

They're only shown to the people who don't follow you. However, for trial reels, the content needs to be completely new and unique to anything you've ever created before. Otherwise you get zero views. So naturally, when this shiny new feature came out, everyone got quite excited about it. All the Instagram gurus were telling you, you need to do trial reels if you want to grow on Instagram. And yes, I definitely jumped on that bandwagon.

because on paper makes complete sense. If your goal is to grow your audience, you want your content in front of new people, not just the people who are already following you. So I went all in on this. A lot of people were recommending posting trial reels as frequently as possible with some suggesting three to five times a day. So I thought, you know what, why not try it? So I ended up posting three trial reels alongside my normal

one grid post per day. And most of my energy during that month was really going into reaching non-followers. So I was testing a few different things

I'd seen working well for trial reels. People were suggesting strong hooks, of course, but trending audios and making sure they were low usage and longer captions so that videos would loop in the background while people were reading and increase views that way.

So I wasn't just posting and hoping for the best. There was always a strategy behind what I was doing. Now, in the beginning, I actually started by posting the types of content that I know usually perform really well for my audience, like inspirational content around leaving the NHS and money-focused topics. Because on my grid, that kind of content tends to do really, really well. But I learned that it didn't land in the same way with a completely

brand new audience. So then I started to switch things up, testing more humor based content, more tutorial style content, and more proven hooks for trial reels designed to help get people onto my page. But even after making those changes and doing all of those things, the results were still pretty underwhelming overall. Some of the trial reels

did get decent views, but interestingly and frustratingly,

the results in reach and followers didn't quite match the level of effort that I was putting in. Even when I tried different content types, different hooks, we tried B-roll versus tutorial style. Even when we really focused on the right keywords, even when we tried jumping on trends.

The reach was nowhere near as high as I expected it to be, and neither was the number of new followers as a result. And this is definitely wasn't what I expected to happen when I increased output this much, especially using a feature that's specifically designed for growth.

But recently it's now come out that while trial reels can be helpful, they're not as effective as we were initially led to believe. So this isn't just my experience, which I'm really quite glad about. Only the other day, Instagram growth coach, Brock Johnson was talking about this and he's one of the best in the industry when it comes to Instagram growth.

got inside access to the head of Instagram.

And honestly, what he was saying didn't surprise me at all after the results I saw. So the question you're probably wondering is, are trial reels really worth it? Well, I'm not going to tell you not to bother with trial reels because they can work and they did work a bit for me. They can get you in front of brand new audiences. And yes, some people do get great results with them. But what I am going to say is,

don't believe everything you see online about them because when trial reels first came out, there was an awful lot of hype. People were saying things like, just use this hook or use this trending audio or follow this exact formula and you're going to get amazing

but the reality is it's just not as simple as that. What I found and what's now coming out more widely is that most of the time trial reels

don't actually perform that well. A lot of them actually get pretty average or actually below average reach and views. Yes, some do better than others, of course, but it's not a guaranteed growth tool. And that's really important to understand because otherwise you end up putting a lot of pressure on yourself thinking, well, why isn't this working for me? When actually it's just the nature of the feature. They are for trialing and experimenting.

Now here's a quick practical tip if you're thinking, I don't have time to be posting tonnes, but I still do want to test out trial reels. One way you can approach this is to use trial reels as your testing ground first. So instead of creating separate content for trial reels and your grid content, you could post something as a trial reel only, see how it performs. And if it does fairly well, you can then repurpose that onto your grid.

When you're doing this though, it's important to think about the purpose of your content. If a piece of content is designed to attract new people, then it makes sense to post it as a trial reel first with the intention of sharing it to your grid if it performs well the next day. So you're creating it once, but you're using it twice. But remember, if a piece of content is more about nurturing and speaking directly to the people already following you, then that just needs to go straight on your grid.

So overall, my take is this. Trial reels can be something you test and experiment with by all means. Learn about them, give them a good

but they are definitely not something to rely on. And they're definitely not a magic solution for growth.

Okay, that's enough about trial reels for now. So what else did I do during my growth month? Well, another thing I really focused on was keywords. So having as many terms that my ideal client would be searching for in my content as possible. And I have another really simple little hack for you here that you can start using straight away. You can hide keywords within this content. Now stay with me on this because this is actually a really useful thing.

for helping control who your content gets shown to. So when you're creating a reel, for instance, you've got a few different places where keywords can live. Typically, it's in your onscreen text, so your hook, your caption, and in your hashtags. And I definitely recommend trying to get as many keywords as you can into those places. But what I started doing was also adding a few keywords directly into the reel itself. So not loads.

I was only using about three per reel, say. So I'd think about key search terms that my ideal client would be using. So for me, that's things like dietitian, dietitian business coach, that kind of thing. And then I'd place those keywords really small somewhere in the video so you can't actually see them. Now, this is a really great hack because whenever you post something, Instagram scans your content to understand what it's about.

So when Instagram is deciding who to show your content to, those keywords help give it context, meaning you're more likely to be shown to the right people. And that's the key thing

This isn't a hack that's suddenly going to get you thousands of more views and reach overnight. Unfortunately not. But what it does do is help you get seen by the right people over time. And that's ultimately the most important thing when you're trying to grow your audience. Because yes, things like trial reels can increase your reach, but if it's not reaching the right people, it's pretty pointless as it's not going to convert into followers or clients anyway.

So if you're going to bother with trial reels, make sure you're focusing on your keywords as well. Now, this hack is something that I've only started testing more recently with my content. And I've been doing it for trial reels and also on my grid content. I haven't really given it enough time to see any huge results from it yet, but it's definitely one of those longer term strategies that when done consistently, it's going to support growth in a much more targeted way.

Okay, so what else did I focus on during growth month? I was also really intentional with the content that I was posting on my grid. And this is important because your grid content still plays a huge role in growth. Yes, trial reels are designed to get you in front of new people, but your grid content is also shown to new people too. So I started focusing on the type of content that I was putting out there.

I leaned more into what I would call visibility content. So there's lots of different types of visibility content. And one of the best in my opinion is polarizing content. So when I say polarizing content, I don't just mean posting

controversial content for the sake of it. What I mean is taking a position and saying something in a way that reflects your clinical reasoning or how you work with clients, even if not.

everyone would agree with you. One of my best performing posts in my nutrition business was a post that was polarizing and slightly controversial. And it did so well. I ended up putting some ad spend behind it to get it in front of even more people. Now I have another podcast episode I've recently recorded all about this and how to create polarizing content in your business. So make sure to go and check that episode out after this. I'll put the link in the show notes.

There are tons of other types of visibility content too. And one that's becoming really popular at the moment and something I've been testing myself is creating content in a series format. And the reason this works so well is because it brings people into your world in a more structured way. So instead of just seeing one random post, they start to recognize a style and a consistent type of value from you.

And it also gives you the opportunity to share genuinely useful, actionable content in a way that leaves people wanting more because they know another part is coming. So this is something that I have been trying recently and I've definitely noticed some good results from it, enough that it's something I'm planning to stick with. What I'm aiming to do is to run a new series roughly every six weeks or so. And with that, I'll post one episode a week, usually a talking head style of real.

where I'll focus on one specific practical tip on the topic. So for example, this month I'm running a series on my Instagram called, Dietitians Do Business Differently. And each week I'm sharing a really useful implementable tip around growing your business and getting clients, but in a way that actually fits with being a healthcare professional. Because as we know, business advice doesn't always translate directly into healthcare. So it's about bridging that gap.

And the kind of content that not only helps with visibility, it also builds trust and it positions you as someone that people want to learn

Okay, let's remind ourselves what we can learn from my growth month experiment. Well, I think the main lessons are more content doesn't automatically mean more followers and shiny new features aren't always the game changer they're made out to be. What actually matters is that you're being intentional with your content.

Now, of course, knowing your ideal clients, including what they needed to hear and what they're actually searching for is still and always has been the most important thing. It's what my social media made simple course is all about. So take what feels useful from this episode, test it in your own way and focus on building a strategy that actually works for you, not just what everyone else online is telling you to do.

Let's face it, a lot of social media advice out there just doesn't translate well into healthcare either. And that's exactly why I created social media made simple. The goal of this course is to cut through all of that generic noise and make growing on social feel simple and actually doable for you. So you're not wasting hours creating content that

doesn't get you any results. It's designed specifically for health care professionals trying to grow profitable, ethical private practices. Inside the course, I walk you through how to create content that gets you seen, but more importantly, gets you seen by the right people. So not just more views for the sake of it, but attracting the kind of people who are actually likely to follow you, engage with your content, and eventually become clients.

My students have seen some amazing results from this course. So go and check out the sales page in the show notes if you want to have a nosey. And of course, if you've got any questions or if you want to see if the social media made simple course would be a good fit for you,

just DM me with SMMS on Instagram and we can chat.

You can find my Instagram handle in the show notes or by searching Dietitians in Business. Bye for now.