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How I Grew My Instagram to 1.4M+ Views Per Month

I honestly wouldn't have thought this was possible in 2025

Welcome to this week’s VIP Deep Dive. VIPs get the full video and audio versions, plus complete access to our entire coaching archive. Click below to subscribe today:


In Tuesday’s coaching session, we heard from Julia DeSerio, Owner of Four Points Media & Marketing, discussing some of the branding, marketing, and social media services she offers her clients.

For this week’s VIP Deep Dive, I wanted to give you an insight into how I managed to achieve this:

I’ve always loved the creative side of creating content, but to be honest, by the beginning of 2025 it had become a complete chore. The things that used to work for me weren’t working any more, and I was seriously doubting whether genuine organic growth was possible on a platform such as Instagram in this day and age.

I have to give a lot of credit to my friend Gracie Pfaff who first floated the idea of using comedy (in the form of memes) as a way of sparking real growth. I think I initially tried it for two reasons:

  1. Pure frustration out of posting so often for so little reward

  2. Recent advances in AI had made it possible for me to generate cute stylized images (I can’t draw to save my life)

One of the first ideas I had was a Zodiac-themed post, but in pageant form:

I describe in the video how I initially thought I had done something catastrophically wrong when I woke up to hundreds of notifications on my Instagram. I’d never had a post do remotely as well as this, and it was built on two simple levers: comedy and culture.

Oddly enough, I had been playing around with the idea of “The 5 C’s” to spark organic social media growth for a while, but this was the first time I’d seen real results from it. I go into more detail in the video (subscribe as a VIP if you haven’t already done so to watch it), but the 5 C’s are:

  1. Controversy

  2. Comedy

  3. Culture

  4. Collaboration

  5. Conversation/Community

Memes obviously rely on comedy, but a good meme also relies on knowledge of the culture - in this case pageant culture. In other words, you need to be able to “speak pageant”. This is where my years of experience and hundreds of interviews have come in very handy, helping me coin phrases such as “Never trust a pageant girl who says she’s retired” and “The best way to succeed in pageantry is to create an amazing life outside of it”.

As a pageant contestant, obviously you don’t want to court controversy too much, but there are intelligent ways to leverage it that won’t ruffle any feathers.

Have a look at the 5 C’s and have a think as to how they could apply to your social media presence. Maybe comedy isn’t an option, but culture always is - whether it’s speaking the industry language or leveraging the latest Taylor Swift album.

The interviews I’ve done are obvious forms of collaboration - working with others helps you attract a new but similar audience. I haven’t had as much success leveraging conversation/community yet, but it’s worth giving them some thought as well.

I’m well aware that these concepts might be easier to apply to a brand or business than to you as a pageant contestant, but the principle is the same - you have to find some way of stopping the scroll and then sharing value.

And yes, making someone laugh is providing them with value.


I offer a limited number of private coaching sessions per month for women serious about elevating their pageant journey. Click below to book yours.

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