Back in May 2023 I started a little social media experiment. I transformed my Instagram feed into a 9-grid; a monthly e-magazine cover that allows you to click in to read carefully-curated tips, trends, insights, education, motivation and encouragement to help you navigate the constantly-evolving world of small business marketing.

I called it The MixTape; your monthly marketing compilation. 

My reasons for starting The MixTape were threefold: 

1. Allow me to get back to more long-form content writing that I enjoy.
2. Reduce the mental load of managing a social media account throughout the month. 
3. To experiment and discover what would happen if I didn’t “feed the beast” and continue playing to trends and showing up in my Stories regularly. 

I’ve had lots of questions regarding what impact this change had on my Instagram analytics, so here I’m answering everything you might have wondered or wanted to know! 

THE FIRST MONTH

May was the first month of The MixTape, and as you can see from the analytics below, it looks like it produced a positive spike in my reach, engagement and followers compared to the previous month. 

But this is a skewed metric. I had only posted twice in April so it wasn’t going to be hard to improve on my previous numbers! A more accurate comparison would be to January, where I’d posted 9 times in the month — exactly the same as I now do with The MixTape. 

Here’s that comparison.

(Note: May 1 in Australia is actually April 30 in North America, where these analytics are collated, hence the dates shown above.)

My Takeaway: Posting 9 times on one day versus 9 times across the month hardly made a difference to my analytics! If anything, they were better and required considerably less mental energy on my part.

But what if we put that down to the “novelty effect” of it being the first month of The MixTape? Surely only posting on one day of the month could not produce the same results as posting multiple times!

I was sceptical. So I decided to try the comparison with November 2022, when I organically posted 16 times and shared Stories, and July 2023, when The MixTape was no longer a new concept and I shared a few Stories across the month. 

My Takeaway: Posting 16 times across a month or 9 times in one day had absolutely no impact on my follower growth! My impressions and reach were considerably down BUT—and here’s where it gets interesting—I had exactly the same number of clicks through to my website in November 2022 and July 2023, and my profile views were up 22% in July 2023 compared to November 2022. Interesting, right?

Here’s a few more numbers you might find interesting.

In the 4 months before starting The MixTape: (January → April 2023)

• Follower growth rate was 5.9%. 
• Total impressions was 25,443
• Average reach was 114 accounts.
• I had 983 profile views.
• 62 website clicks

In the 4 months since starting The MixTape: (May → August 2023)

• My followers growth has been 7.4%
• Total impressions was 26,619
• Average reach has been 109 accounts. 
• I’ve had 1292 profile views.
• 41 website clicks. 

THE PAST 12 MONTHS — POST PERFORMANCE

• Out of my 15 posts that have had the greatest REACH over the past year, 12 of them are from The MixTape.
• Out of my 15 posts that have had the highest SAVES over the past year, 12 of them are from The MixTape.
• Out of my 15 posts that had the most ENGAGEMENT over the past year, 11 of them are from The MixTape. 

THE PAST 12 MONTHS — REEL PERFORMANCE

• Out of my 15 reels that have had the greatest REACH over the past year, 4 of them are from The MixTape.
• Out of my 15 reels that have had the highest SAVES over the past year, 5 of them are from The MixTape.
• Out of my 15 reels that had the most ENGAGEMENT over the past year, 3 of them are from The MixTape. 

Now that’s a whole lot of data to take in, I know, but I wanted to be completely transparent with you about the results of this little social media experiment. 

Let’s wrap it up with what I see as the “pros and cons” of this 9-grid approach. 

THE PROS

• I’ve thoroughly enjoyed sitting down to research and batch write content for The MixTape each month (and seeing the cover that Julia from Luminous Lines designs!). It’s allowed me to be more thoughtful and intentional with what I create, and encouraged me to think more broadly about how I can bring value with my expertise, rather than putting a focus on whether something would “perform well”. Finding that joy in writing again and being excited about my marketing has made this exercise a huge win for me, regardless of what the data says, so I’ll continue with it for a little longer yet. 
• May to July this year were the busiest 3 months I’ve had since launching The Strategy Studio. I’ve been putting 90% of my energy into serving my clients and have not had the mental capacity to keep on top of my email marketing or social media engagement. Knowing that on the first of each month I’ve prepared and posted 9 valuable pieces of content—even if I don’t show up in my Stories or do any other marketing over the following 29 days—has been a relief and stopped me from feeling like I’ve neglected my community when things have been busy. 
• While I went into this with very few assumptions as to what might happen with my metrics, I’m genuinely surprised at how little it impacted the numbers! I tried so many different combinations and comparisons when preparing this summary, and it was impossible to find a month where the data was drastically different pre and post MixTape. 

I didn’t “feed the beast”, I haven’t played to trends, my account didn’t tank and I’ve enjoyed my marketing! That’s a win if you ask me. 

THE CONS:

• Creating community and maintaining engagement is hard when you’re only posting once per month and aren’t active in your stories. I wouldn’t recommend this approach if that’s your #1 priority at the moment. I’ve been fortunate to have a lot of presenting and speaking engagements over the past few months, and those have been driving inquiries for my business. If I needed social media to be generating inquiries for me, I’d have to be a lot more active on my own account, interacting with others and driving conversations through my DMs. 
• This approach isn’t great for reels as it’s hard to maximise trending audio only posting on one day in a month. This doesn’t bother me too much, however, as my preference for longer-form content is more conducive to carousel posts.
• It doesn’t necessarily make the content creation process any faster, if that’s what you’re hoping for. I still dedicate two days each month to preparing The MixTape content.

Keep in mind that a 9-grid doesn’t have to be something that’s only used with a once-per-month approach, as I have done with The MixTape. There are many different ways to incorporate a 9-grid into your marketing.

Here are some occasions when a 9-grid approach could work for your business. 

• Special launch: You can use a 9-grid to make a splash on your socials and really capture attention around a new offering you might have.
• “Out of office”: When you’re heading away and want to detox from social media but not completely ghost your followers.
• Your busy season: When you don’t have capacity to be as active in your feed.
• Shake things up: If your social media has been feeling a little stale and you want to try something different to get you reinspired! 
• Diversify: When other marketing opportunities are generating inquiries and you’re not reliant on social media for business.

What do you think? Has this surprised you or tempted you to give it a try in your business?