Three DMs in one week, all asking the same thing: do I need to start doing talking head reels like Jessie Gene? The short answer is no. The longer answer is this episode.

When you see another creator absolutely blow up on Instagram with a specific format, it's so tempting to think you have to drop everything and copy it. But that's almost never actually the move, and in this episode I'm explaining exactly why.

I'm breaking down why what feels effortless for her can feel forced and awkward for you, how to test new formats without blowing up your whole strategy, and the data that's already sitting in your own account telling you exactly what your audience wants. If you've ever spiraled a little after watching someone go viral, this one is for you.

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Show notes: https://nicoleialeggio.com/episode71/

 This episode is inspired by three different DMs that I got this week all about the same thing. And if you're in the online business world, you have probably heard about Jessie Gene and her YAP launch that got $1.2 million.

And if you haven't, it was really cool. She grew her following from zero to 300,000 very quickly in just a few months, and she did it mostly with talking head reels. She calls them yapping reels. Yapping is a term that has been around for a while. A lot of creators use the term yapping. It's not like she created it.

But she put her own spin on it, and she's been practicing s- public speaking for a long time. She's had multiple different businesses, so she's had a lot of practice doing this. And she decided to start a new account and grew it super freaking fast, which is amazing for her. The reason why people are in my DMs asking questions about it is because they feel like now, with all of this, they have to only record yapping or t- what I call talking head style reels.

And that's just simply not the case. If it's something that you like doing, go for it. If it's something you're interested in trying more of, go for it. And I'm always up for learning new things. She is very good at talking head reels. She's very good at it. She's able to make her audience feel seen and heard and validated really well, and it's something that I would love to learn how to do better at.

I love long form talking content like this podcast or like one-on-one consults with my clients, but I find it really hard to get everything that is in my head across in just like a minute or two minute long talking head reel on Instagram. So she does a fantastic job of it. But the thing is, that's not gonna work well for everybody, and some people might freaking hate it, and that's okay.

You can not do certain types of content and still grow. Now, the other thing that was brought up is there's another creator in Jordan Dooley. She has grown her influencer account to a lot of people. I don't even know what she's up to right now. Um, but she has started a new account for business and like for how to grow on Instagram, and that's fantastic.

The thing is, she does it all through carousels. So she is growing her following through carousels, and that's great. But that does not mean that you only have to post carousels. What I do for my clients and what I always recommend to everybody is that you try out a well-rounded approach. We do single graphic posts.

We do carousels. We do B-roll style reels. We do talking head reels. We do all of it to figure out a few things. One, we wanna figure out What your audience really likes and what you really like creating. I promise you're gonna be way more likely to show up on Instagram if it's in a way that feels good for you, and that's why it works for those people.

Jessie is really good at talking head style reels, and she does a great job of it, and she likes doing it. They're easy for her. She says it herself. She says, "This is the type of content that feels really easy for me with a toddler." And Jordan says all the time, "This, carousels are the type of content that feel really easy for me as a mom of..."

I don't know how many kids she has. I think she has three or four kids maybe. "As a mom of young kids, this is what feels easy for me right now." That's amazing. Work with what works for you. When I'm working with my clients, I have them do talking head reels, I have them do B-roll reels, I have them do carousels, I have them do single graphic, and the main reason is everybody is gonna like a certain type of content And you're gonna like creating a certain type of content.

So if you can figure out what that is, and if you find one that you like doing that brings in followers, that makes people happy, keep doing that. Now, I think I basically just said the entire episode in these four minutes , but let's kind of get into a little bit of the mindset stuff because I know that you start to feel like kind of good with your content, and then what happens is you stumble across somebody like one of those two that are absolutely crushing it with a totally different format, and then you're like, "Oh my gosh, I have to do that now, and I have to ditch everything I was doing before."

That's just not the case. My, my clients have been here. I, my clients all the time will hop in a- and send me like a new thing that's going viral, and they're like, "We need to do this. We need to only do this." I'm like, "No, we absolutely don't. We need to stick with what's been working, and we can totally try out a new strategy.

I'm definitely up for that. But we do not need to change our entire strategy to only go with what's working for one person." This literally happens to everybody, and I would be lying if I said that I didn't feel a little like, "Oh my gosh, I should be doing more talking head reels." I already do two to three talking head-style reels a week, but seeing her growth and her amazing energy that she portrays on Instagram, it's like, "Oh, maybe I should be doing one every single day."

No, Nicole, that is hard for me. It's hard for me to put all of my thoughts into just a minute, and it's hard for me to film and edit those with my kids running around like crazy people. So for me, those are kind of hard ones to do, unless I can maybe lock myself in my car. But you need to know that the format is not the reason why these people are winning at what they do.

There's a lot more underneath it than what you can see from the outside, and I just really want you to focus on all of that. So let me explain exactly why copying someone else's format will almost never work for you the way you think it's going to, and then I want to give you a much better question to ask yourself instead.

So number one, what feels natural and easy for her might feel completely forced and awkward for you. I touched on this a little bit. But she is really good at talking to camera. She feels very confident doing that. Jordan is very good at carousel. She enjoys doing it. It feels easy for her. If carousels feel hard, they're gonna look hard when people are reading it.

They're gonna have a hard time following it. If- Talking on camera feels really hard for you, it's gonna be hard for your audience to watch it too. Right now, the yap style, talking head style content is huge. But listen, when someone that's not a natural talker tries to talk on camera just because they saw someone else doing it, the audience can really feel that discomfort, especially if it's forced.

It can read awkward or stiff, and it actually can, like, hurt your trust instead of building it. That's not to say I don't want you to try. I always want you to try talking head style reels. I would want you, though, instead of, like, having ChatGPT or Claude give you a script and then you just kind of read off a teleprompter, I would much rather just hear your thoughts on, like, a specific topic.

Like, let's think of, like, maybe a DM that you got from somebody. You're like, "Oh, I could do a post on that." Why don't you just, like, get on camera and talk about it really quick, 30 to seconds to a minute, I'm gonna start doing this more too, and see how that performs for you. Listen, the best format is the one that's gonna feel the best for you, uh, because you're gonna actually stick with it, and then you're gonna be consistent.

And consistency is what is going to help you grow your following on Instagram. All right, so let's get into how we can kind of fix this. So instead of asking what format is working for all of these other people, let's think what format feels the easiest and most fun for me to do, honestly. That's the main question we need to answer.

Do you love talking to camera? Fantastic. Do that. Do you love writing and breaking things down? If you do, then carousels might be your thing. Do you maybe just love sharing a quick in-the-moment thought? Then you're gonna do a single graphic or a B-roll or maybe just stories for that day. I want you to start with what you actually enjoy creating because you're much more likely to do it.

And if you don't know what you like creating yet, use what I use for my clients and do a well-rounded approach. Try a little bit of everything, and that's how you're gonna do it. That leads me into fix two, and that's test. Test before you abandon something completely. If you genuinely wanna try a new format because it looks fun or interesting or it feels exciting for you, absolutely try it.

But I want you to give it a real test of at least six posts before you decide if it's working for you. 'Cause if you do one talking head reel and it does not do well for you and you never do another one again, you're never gonna know if that was actually the thing that was gonna work for you. You need to give it time, and especially talking head style reels because there's no trending audio on that, it's going to take a little bit of time for that to gain traction.

Usually, as soon as you post it, you don't get very many likes, save, shares, any of it. But look at it in three days. I promise it's going to be bigger and do better than it did before. And listen, if you have one carousel that performs really well, that does not mean that you now only need to do carousels.

I want you to give yourself enough data to actually know what's going on before you make big decisions about your entire content strategy. Fix number three, I want you to t- to look at your data on your page, not hers. Looking at what works well for other creators is great. It's fun to, like, think about how you can do it for your account.

But I don't want you to stress over it, so just go into your own insights, look at what your audience likes and responds to. Think about what formats are getting you the most saves, what are people watching all the way through, which style of content maybe is bringing the most DMs or sales. Your audience has already been telling you what they want from you.

That is the data that matters. When you see somebody crushing it on Instagram with a specific format, that is not a sign that you are less than or that you are doing something wrong. That's literally just one person finding what works for her. And I'm gonna bring up another creator, Dr. Beach Gem. If you follow her, she's a pediatric ER doctor, and her style of content is very laid back.

Literally, she just opens up her phone, she's never scripted unless she's doing an ad, and she just talks to the camera and tells you a story about something that happened at work, something you need to know, something about her personal life. She treats it more as, like, her stories than she does an actual reel.

And that is something that a lot of creators are seeing massive growth with as well. So I really just want you to lean into what you like and what your audience likes. Remember, what feels easy for someone else might be, might feel forced and awkward for you. And remember, your personality, the way that you work, the way that you portray information is the thing that is actually going to help.

And something that's crazy to think about, too, is that there is literally somebody out there right now who is looking at your content and thinking, "Wow, I need to do more of that. That was really good." You have a format that is yours, and if you don't know what it is, it, all you need to do is test more.

You have a voice that is yours. The goal is not to find some magical format that's working for, quote, unquote, "everybody else" and only focus on that. The goal is to find the format that works for you, works for your audience, and then get really stinking good at it. I promise that chasing someone else's strategy is gonna feel super exhausting for you.

You know that you're doing it right when deciding to do your own content feels energizing and exciting. And the people who grow consistently are almost always the one who stopped looking at everybody else and started just going deeper into what was working for them. As with all these episodes, I love ending with a recap and an action challenge for you.

So the recap is two reasons why copying format is not going to work for you is, one, what feels natural and effortless for one person might feel forced or awkward for you. There's so many other things. Offers are different. There's so many other things that are going to hit differently account versus account than it will on yours because you are a unique person.

The three fixes are, one, ask what format feels easiest and most fun for you. Two, test new formats before abandoning them. Like, give them a real shot. And three, look at your own data to see what your audience is already liking from you. Your action challenge. This week, I want you to go back through your last 20 posts and find the three that perform the best by watch time, saves, and shares.

Look at what format they were. What do they have in common? That is telling you something about what your audience actually wants from you. I want you to write it down and let that guide your next few posts instead of whatever trend you saw this week or figuring out what's working. And listen, if you want to take the guessing out of which format to use and what to post every single week, that's exactly what Plugin Post is.

Every week, I give you a mix of formats already planned out, hooks that are working right now, and an AI tool that makes it specific to your niche and your audience. All you have to do is show up and execute it, and it gives you a really good idea of what a well-rounded, evergreen style Instagram page should look like.

I would love to have you inside. I'd love to chat with you more about that. The link is below. We'd love to have you join our Plugin Post membership. We also have live Q&As. Really fun time. I hope you have a fantastic rest of your week, and I'll catch you next time. Thanks for hanging out with me today. I hope you're walking away with at least one actionable takeaway to make creating content easier.

If you loved today's episode, it would mean the world if you could take 10 seconds to leave a review or screenshot this episode and tag me on Instagram. I'd love to connect and see your new content. Always cheering for you. See you next time