My NEW content system is crushing on Instagram

Here's how I scaled to 28,000 followers in 45 days

Author

Kane Kallaway
June 12, 2026

I'm scaling @kallawaymarketing on IG from 0 to 1M+ followers (and millions in annual profit).

I’m currently 6 weeks in:

  • 28,000+ followers

  • 1,700,000+ views

  • 10,000+ newsletter subscribers

My strategy is absolutely crushing right now.

Btw, I’m going to make this a monthly series to update you as I scale this. I’m writing these posts to share my learnings to help you grow faster!

I’ve tried several different social media growth strategies over the years…this one is by far the most effective at driving targeted traffic from a specific viewer avatar that actually converts into leads & sales.

I was 100% confident it would work, but actually shocked at how well it’s working and how quickly.

To be clear, the reason this is outperforming, especially on the conversion side, is that I’m not doing what the typical content strategist would advise.

Most strategists advise things like:

  • Be yourself and talk about whatever interests you (you are the niche)

  • Ignore data, AI, and any systematized workflow, this will cause you to become a derivative

  • Pick broad TAM topics to drive max views top of funnel and play the math game to convert

  • Don’t burn yourself out with too much volume, post what you can when you feel inspired

I’ve played that game before and let me save you the trouble…

It leads to high views with extremely low conversion potential. Approaching social media like this makes it a hobby, which tbh, I don’t want.

Here’s my playbook instead (for building a content machine that actually drives revenue):

  • I’m intentionally trying not to go viral (antiviral)

  • I’m staying extremely disciplined on my topic selection (only things I know will be valuable for the people that would convert)

  • I’m fully letting the data guide me on where to double down

  • I’m being as creative as possible on the takes/angles (coming up with the most nonobvious and interesting things I can)

  • I’m posting 7 videos per week, at the highest quality I can execute

  • I’m connecting each post with a super aligned and high value lead magnet

  • I make videos in weekly batches of 10

I call this The 10x Batch Strategy.

This is my favorite content system because it doesn’t require me to constantly hunt for virality, so I can zoom out and play the long-game with less stress.

It’s also the main strategy I help install for business owners in Short Form Academy because it’s so easy to get started and relies more on data than intuition to keep going.

The 10x Batch Strategy

Here’s how you start running it…

  • Step 00 — Based on your core offer (or intended offer), define your ideal viewer so you know exactly who you're making content for. In SFA we have an exercise for doing this that makes it super clear - do this once!

  • Step 01 — Build a watchlist of competitor channels that make content for that audience. Use sandcastles.ai to find the topics that are already winning across those channels. This video shows you exactly how to do that - do this once!

  • Step 02 — Based on the top performing videos, pick 10 that talk about a topic you know something about. Keep the topic the same/similar, but come up with a new take or angle based on your own experience/expertise. Pick any format from this database, mirror the hook from the original outlier, and keep the script a similar structure, with tweaks to make it sound like you. The goal isn’t to become a copycat creator, it’s just to get your first 10 data-driven videos posted so you can start studying your own data - do this once!

  • Step 03 — After you’ve posted 10, analyze your own data, extract the winning patterns and roll them forward into the next batch. If your first 10 don’t net any winners/insights, go back to step 02 and repeat again for another 10 - repeat every 10 videos

  • Step 04 — As you surface those winning insights, apply them to future batches, and continue compounding the learnings forward

As you can tell, the strategy is fairly straightforward…

But here’s where most people get stuck:

  • Knowing how to spot the patterns across the 10 videos you make

  • Knowing how to improve your next 10 based on the patterns you found

When I review people’s videos live 1:1 in SFA, most of what I’m focused on is helping to unearth these patterns so they know exactly what to keep doing moving forward.

I’ve also found the Sandcastles MCP plugin for Claude to be insanely useful for helping with this.

Here’s how I run this analysis in Claude to make spotting these patterns a lot easier…

How to analyze your own videos to find nonobvious patterns (Sandcastles MCP in Claude)

After your first batch is posted, go back into Sandcastles.

  • Go to Videos tab

  • Click The Channels drop-down filter

  • Click your channel

  • Posted in last 1 month

  • Sort by Views

  • Press “Analyze” on all 10 of those videos and wait until you see the green “Analyzed” check on them. If you hover on any video, you’ll see the word “Analyze”

Now that those videos have been analyzed, you can access that data in Claude directly through the MCP. If you’ve never set up the MCP, watch this video (it only takes 60 seconds).

Here's the prompt you can drop directly into Claude…

I'm going to share data from my last [X] videos. I need you to do four things:

  1. Identify the outliers. Don't just look at raw view counts — define the threshold statistically. Which videos significantly outperformed the rest based on the distribution of the data? Label those winners and the rest losers.

  2. Compare the winners to the losers across five dimensions:

    1. Topics — what were the winning videos about versus the losing videos?

    2. Angle Framing — how was the idea positioned? Problem-solution? Contrarian take? Personal story?

    3. Hooks — how did the first sentence or two differ between winners and losers?

    4. Storytelling Structure — how did the story flow? What examples were used? What specific language or phrases showed up in the winners that didn't show up in the losers?

    5. Other — what am I missing that is clearly driving the winners but not present in the losers?

  3. Give me a ranked list of the topics, hook styles, and framing approaches that correlated most strongly with high performance.

  4. Tell me exactly what I should do differently in my next batch based on what you found.

Be specific. I want actionable patterns. Visualize all data in a modern, minimal design where relevant.

Claude will then take your actual video data and map out what the patterns are.

It will tell you which topics outperformed, how the hooks differed, and what patterns show up consistently across your best content. It gives you a full digest across everything that matters.

Once you have that, you know exactly what topics to make more of and what to stop doing in the next batch.

That's the shift from batch 1 to batch 2, and so on.

Competitor data got you started with your first couple batches. Your own first-party data takes over from there.

The loop from this point forward: post a batch, analyze the data with Claude, extract the patterns, build the next batch from those patterns, repeat, compounding those learnings as you go.

Every batch gets smarter and more refined than the last. 

I’ll be back in a month with a deeper recap of my exact learnings and how they applied moving forward as I scale from 25K → 50K.

Or, if you want to see what I saw in my first batch, you could run the Claude MCP Analysis flow on my channel and ask it to give you the insights 😉

Talk soon,

PS – If you’re ready to take content seriously, we just opened up a few more spots in Short Form Academy.

If you want me to personally review your videos, help identify the bottlenecks/patterns, and help install the 10x Batch Strategy, reply back with “System” and I’ll send you more info.