I’m trying to understand the current logic behind how the "Following" list is ordered when I am viewing a profile that I do follow, but looking at their list of who they follow.

I’ve noticed a specific account consistently appearing at the very top (top 1-3) of a friend's following list. I want to know what triggers that high of a ranking.

Here are the variables:

• Mutuals: The account has about 15-20 mutual followers with the person I’m viewing.

• My Account: I do NOT follow the account that is ranking at the top.

• Frequency: This account stays at the top regardless of when I check.

My questions for the experts:

1. Is the "Following" list still sorted by interaction (DMs, profile visits, likes) from the account owner’s side?

2. If I don't follow that top person, why would Instagram prioritize them to me over other people they follow?

3. Does being in the same physical city (Geo-location) influence the rank of their "Following" list when I view it?

4. Is it possible for an "old" follow (someone followed years ago) to stay at the very top if there has been zero recent interaction, or does the algorithm require recent "signals" to keep them there?

Looking for a technical explanation of the current 2026 API/Algorithm behavior if anyone has insight. Thanks!

Hey. I’ve posted a few times here trying to get better at my sales skills but I’m back trying to learn more.

I used to be pre production only doing drone video work then going to full commercial videography now my company offers the marketing of the videos too. The marketing side I have someone else (business partner /friend) do that if it pops up but I’m still learning how to market for my business.

I want to get better at two specific things:

First, video structure for advertising. How to structure short form video content that actually performs in paid campaigns. The hook, the middle, the close. What works and why. Not just “grab attention in 3 seconds” generic advice but actual frameworks people use.

Second, marketing and sales language. How to write copy that converts. How to talk about what you do in a way that makes people actually want to hire you. The psychology behind it.

Every time I search for this I get bombarded with course ads promising to teach me in 30 days for $997. I am not interested. I want to know what people who actually do this stuff read, watch or follow. Books, YouTube channels, subreddits, specific creators, anything that is the real thing without the noise.

What would you point someone to?​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Hello So a customer that was unhappy contacted me about it.

I gave him the email contact of the company and asked him poletly to ask there his question and they will be happy to help.

Obviously we have 1 person as a customer service rep when we should have 2.

The gruntal client is now back in my lap he is extremely stressful and just won’t leave me alone how would you solve this problem ? He is also trying to sue this is the main issue.

Not me but the company that has hired me as an Smm freelancer

Thank you

I am currently working for a patreon(advertisement for them on 18+ sites) and, am happy with the client the way he helps me at every step.

The pay is good for the amount of work. I met him on Reddit( the first person who didn't scam me lol).

I want to expand this managing service, as I have a lot of time on my hand. But I don't have experience reaching the clients..

Not just this but also other social media management. I can do editing as well ( not at a professional level yet)..

I read several comments here–some people here are professionals in this work. I want your advice.

How do I look for potential clients ? Any platform I should try. How do I actually initiate the conversation ? since ofc they'll feel like somebody is gonna scam them kinda vibe.

Please Ask Me Anything Regarding this— if needed for narrowed down advice.

A really annoying place I’ve been stuck in for a while is not having many followers, but that’s also probably preventing me from growing. Especially because I make educational social media marketing content as part of my own marketing strategy, I don’t know if not having many followers myself is discrediting me?

Basically, I want to have others have any tips for getting out of this chicken or the egg situation? TIA

Hello, I would like some advice on this! My current client has been satisfied with the way I edit their videos and make their graphics; however, I am struggling with giving them the exact caption that they want every time. Some days it is a hit and some days, they go in to edit them.

My captions do not have any grammatical or spelling errors, but they always seem to have an issue with the tone. First, I was asked to change the happy and ecstatic vibe of the text to a chill, punk voice (I helped them figure out their branding and voice), then I was told that the posts and captions are "too propagandist." Now, ever so often, my client comes in and changes the captions on my posts. I have been correcting minute details, but it seems like I still struggle with getting the tone they like.

What activities and questions do you ask to help you understand your clients' wants more?

I was a social media manager for a large international company for 4 years, and we used Sprout. I loved it, honestly.

Now, I work for a small company, and social will be one small aspect of my job. We have 3 platforms to post on, and maybe 2 users.

Sprout doesn't make sense for us. It's far too big. I'm looking at some smaller options like Buffer, Loomly, OneUp, SocialBu, etc.

However, what I really loved about Sprout:

- Ability to internally tag posts so I could look at them later by tagged category.
- Fast reports, that I could again narrow by my internal tags
- Social Listening (this would be really great for my company, particularly on Reddit and X, where we don't post.)

Does anyone have experience of something, preferably under $50/mo, that offers those options?

been working in the space for 4 years now, still amazes me how I do get comtent all the time, would love to hear from professionals and experts alike, where and how do you get content ideas for the accounts you manage? especially for a SaaS company. and of course possible tools that helps with your work, how do you structure your content, the best hooks to use, the prompts you use and all. would love to hear them all. thanks!

130 days of shorts, posted every single day without missing one. Here is what the numbers actually looked like because I have seen enough vague 'my results after 90 days of reels' posts that say nothing useful.

We started this as a proper test. same niche, same topics we already post about in other formats, just committed to doing one short form video every day for as long as we could sustain it. We tracked website visits from video traffic, profile clicks, DMs from new people, and actual leads that mentioned finding us through a video. We were not just looking at views and follower counts because those numbers lie to you constantly.

In quick context, we do organic client acquisition work, helping people get clients without spending on ads. The shorts were directly about that topic, tips, breakdowns, things we had tested, stuff we normally write about but now in video form.

Here is the honest month by month breakdown:

days 1 to 30, the views were embarrassing. Most videos got between 200 and 800 views. a couple hit 2k. total website clicks from video traffic in month one was 34. not 34 a day. 34 the whole month. zero inbound leads mentioned in the video. follower growth was about 180 people over the full month. I genuinely considered stopping at day 22.

days 31 to 60, things started to move slightly. average views per video went up to around 1,500 to 3,000. We had two videos that hit between 8k and 12k views each and those two videos alone drove more profile visits than everything in month one combined. website clicks from video that month were 190. still no one booked a call mentioning video specifically but we started getting DMs asking questions, which was new.

days 61 to 90, this is where it got interesting. One video hit 40k views. That single video sent 280 website visits in 4 days and we got 3 DMs from people who were clearly potential clients asking about working together. two of those turned into actual calls. one signed. so one client directly attributable to shorts in month 3.

days 91 to 130, average views settled around 4k to 8k per video with occasional spikes. total website traffic from shorts in this period was around 900 visits across the 40 days. We closed 2 more clients who mentioned video as the first place they found us. DMs were consistent, maybe 3 to 5 new ones per week from people who found us through a specific video.

total across 130 days,

* roughly 1,200 website visits from short form video traffic

* 3 clients directly attributed to shorts

follower growth of around 2,100 people in the niche

* DM volume that went from zero to consistent weekly conversations

now here is what the data actually showed us about what worked and what was mostly pointless.

The videos that drove real traffic and leads were all teaching something specific. a 47 second video where i walked through exactly how we structure a cold email that gets replies did more for us than 3 weeks of other content. The specificity won every single time.

videos where i shared a result or a number in the first 2 seconds consistently outperformed ones that built up to the point. people scroll fast and if the first frame does not tell them why to stay they are gone.

trending audio helped views but not leads. We tested trending sounds on about 15 videos and they got more views on average but the profile visit rate was lower and the DM quality was worse. People who found us through a trending audio video were entertainment seekers, not people with a problem we solve.

longer shorts, 45 to 60 seconds, outperformed 15 to 20 second ones for us specifically. our content needs a little setup to land properly. quick takes felt incomplete and people did not follow through to the profile.

The consistency piece is real but not in the way people usually explain it. It is not that the algorithm rewards you for posting daily. It is that when you post daily you get enough volume to figure out what actually works and what does not. The first 40 videos were basically paid practice. The learning from those made the next 90 significantly better.

In keeping up with daily production, we brought in a VA through u/offshorewolf to handle video research, caption writing, hashtag research, and scheduling. genuinely one of the smartest things we did because production was eating so much time that the content quality was suffering. The person we got was sharp, proactive, and picked up our voice and style faster than I expected. The difference in how much we could actually focus on the strategy and filming side once admin was handled was night and day. We paid $199 a week full time and the output they handled was the kind of volume that would have taken us the entire day to manage ourselves.

things we got wrong:

We did not set up proper tracking until day 18. The first 2.5 weeks of data are rough estimates based on memory and rough analytics. If I did this again I would have a tracking sheet ready on day one with utm links on every bio link and a way to tag which DMs came from the video specifically.

We also made the videos too polished for the first 3 weeks. good lighting, edited transitions, music underneath. The videos that performed best were shot on a phone propped against a book with natural light and no music. The polished ones looked like ads. The rough ones looked like a real person saying something useful.

I also should have engaged more in comments in the first month. We were so focused on production that we treated comments as secondary. Replying to comments is what turns viewers into followers and followers into people who eventually DM you. I probably left real relationships on the table by being too heads down on just posting.

what im still not sure about:

whether 130 days is enough to really judge this channel or if it takes 9 to 12 months before the compounding effect really shows up. The last 40 days were the best 40 by a wide margin and I do not know if that trend continues or plateaus.

also genuinely unsure if our niche is easier or harder than average for short form. Business and client acquisition content has a large audience on these platforms but it is also extremely crowded. Someone in a more specific or unusual niche might see faster traction because there is less noise, or slower because the audience is smaller.

If you are thinking about committing to a shorts strategy and want to see the exact content structure we used for our top 5 performing videos, comment below and I will share the breakdown. The format is pretty simple once you see it laid out but it took us about 60 videos to actually nail it.