My favorite content marketers on Instagram

Helloooo content connoisseurs.

It’s Perrin from Content Bites.

My favorite content marketers on Instagrams are the ones who really know how to leverage their audience into more content and more customers. I also have a favorite. Today, I want to deconstruct their best stuff and (hopefully) see what we can steal.

• Appetizers: Links from Marketing Profs, Details, Gaps, and more…

• Main Course: Breaking down my favorite content marketers on Instagram (and seeing what we can steal)

Let’s dig in.

Appetizers: Content about content 🤯

• 64 Statistics That Will Guide Your Content Marketing (link)

• How 16 Companies are Dominating the World’s Google Search Results (link)

• Simplifying User Journey vs User Flow for Newbies (link)

• B2B SaaS SEO: A 5-Step Strategy to Drive Leads & Signups (link)

• 13 Advanced Link Building Strategies You (Probably) Haven’t Used (link)

Main Course: Breaking down my favorite content marketers on Instagram (and seeing what we can steal)

TWe talk a lot about website-based content here because it’s such a big percentage of what content marketing is – or at least it’s a big percentage of what we all think of when we think of content marketing. 

Even when we promote content on social media, for the vast majority of businesses running content marketing campaigns, the idea is to get people back to the website.

And because of that, the content often lives on the website. 

Or at least that’s how it used to be.

The creator economy has shifted sh*t around pretty considerably. There are now truckloads of businesses that have started as creator-first enterprises. 

And even though the majority of this audience is not creators first (most of y’all are in-house marketers, agency owners, or founders), these businesses are really worth studying. 

Should be pretty obvious why: creators – those successful enough to launch truly defensible businesses – are better at social media than most of us are. They know what gets views. They know how to build audiences. And more importantly, they understand how to turn audiences into tribes. 

So let’s look at one. 

But let’s not just look at them. Let’s bring out the ol’ marketing scalpels and try to peel off a couple lessons we can shamelessly rip off and use. 

Because let's be honest: if we want our businesses to get any traction at all on social media, we have to move away from business as usual and into the realm of the creators. 

Here’s the business we’re going to talk about (this links to their Insta): Men With The Pot.

I found them because they got me, y’all. 

They got me with their content. I’m a follower. I’m an admirer. And I was this close to becoming a customer (and would have swiped the ol’ credit card if it weren’t so close to the holidays, so instead, I put their stuff on my wishlist).

But they’re unbelievably good at content, and they’ve built a dope business. So let’s take a look under the hood and steal some sh*t. 

Who are the Men With The Pot, and why is their Instagram-led business so good? 

At their very very most basic, Men With The Pot is a cooking account, which is a BIG category, of course. 

In big categories, to a certain extent, you can just ride the wave. As long as you’re half decent and a little lucky, you can usually build a bit of traction.

But a little bit of traction generally isn’t good enough to build a business on. 

Grain of salt here (I’d never claim to be a true Instagram expert), but for my money, the best creators on Instagram – even when and especially if they’re in a big category – find some kind of cool angle.

And that’s what Men With The Pot did. 

They take a couple of cool/interesting angles to make them stand out:

• They usually don’t have any music

• They never show their faces

• They cook outdoors by a river

• They throw produce in the air and cut it

• They put cameras on their knives

If you haven’t yet, take a quick peek at some of their videos.

There may be a few other people doing these things, of course, but as far as I can tell, MWTP was the first I’d seen do (I think) any of these things, and they appear to be a category of one when they wrap all this up into a cohesive brand. 

It’s all very easy to like. And it’s worked. 

As of the time of this writing, they’ve amassed 1.8M instagram followers. 

And on the back of that bigass following, they’ve built a fantastic business. 

According to SimilarWeb, their website generates about 40,000 views per month. Some of that is from the familiar “link in bio”, which they also do (screenshot). But some of it is from their brand (they have a lot of direct traffic, meaning people navigating to the website directly), and they have a fair amount of search traffic. 

The main feature of MWTP is their knives, which are super unique and designed for the wow factor (examples). They’re the star of the show for this company, although they also sell spices, rubs, that kind of thing. 

But mostly, it’s the knives, which are about $90-$200. 

If we assume that traditional e-commerce benchmarks apply, and they’re converting about 2% of their traffic into customers (and I wouldn’t be surprised if it were higher, since their brand is so strong), and assuming their LTV is about $200, from that 40,000 visits, they’re likely generating about $2M of annual revenue. 

Super, super solid for what appears to be a very small team. 

Cool, right? Cool. 

Now, let’s talk about what we can steal from them. 

1. Their instagram channel isn’t about their product, but their product is in every video. 

To sell on Instagram, or most social really, you need to build a following, and it’s VERY tough to build a following if you’re just hawking your stuff constantly. 

That’s not what the best creator-led businesses do. 

Instead, they work hard to make the content itself interesting and then to FEATURE the product while they are doing content. 

For MWTP, they just made a badass cooking account in which every single part of the brand supports the almost-idyllic knife lifestyles (knifestyle?) they’re selling to their customers. 

I’m sure we can all imagine the kind of content the Mr. Mediocre content marketer would produce for these knives. They might show the knife off. They might have some cool music and some cool cuts. They might even show a bit of how it was made. 

And that might get some traction. But it would not build an audience of almost 2,000,000 and revenue of $2M/yr. 

The lesson: On social media, think audience first, product second. When you have the audience, feature the product however you can in the best content. 

2. They used their instagram momentum to start building other marketing channels. 

These folks could rely on their instagram following and just sell stuff to that audience. But the MWTP team are long-term thinkers. 

On the back of their Instagram success, they’ve started to build an organic SEO channel and paid channels.

They’re not nearly as large as their instagram following currently (of course), but they’re working, and they’re deploying lots of the best practices we talk about here. 

For example, a few months ago, we talked about the importance of “reviewing” your own products (in this post). MWTP is doing that in their article here: The Best Knives for Outdoor Cooking and Camping Trips. 

If I was their CMO, I’d be doing a lot more of this. It’s super smart, and I hope they scale it like crazy, because there’s probably a lot of money in it. 

The lesson: When you hit scale with one content channel, use that revenue to invest heavily in other marketing channels over time.

3. They put the highest value on being interesting. 

Let me compare this to a company who doesn’t do Instagram well, despite having all the advantages and revenue in the world. 

And no shade here; I actually love this group of companies, and I’m planning on doing a case study on them, but they just don’t do Instagram well. 

I’m talking about Hims and Hers – the DTC phenoms that sell more taboo men’s/women’s health items but with a much better, more dignified, more modern experience. 

Here are their instagram pages:

• Hims

• Hers

Look at the difference between those channels and MWTP. It’s night and day. 

And guys… Hims and Hers are massive brands. They have all the money and talent in the world. They’re also in spaces (health) that would/could/should be BANKING on social. 

But they’re not.

And why? It’s just run-of-the-mill canva bullsh*t. Image about a topic w/ a text overlay.

That doesn’t cut it anymore. 

MWTP is trouncing them. And probably with a tenth of the budget. Because they’re focused on producing content that is really and truly interesting. 

The lesson: It’s almost not worth being on a social channel if you’re not going to try to produce content that people on that platform will actually like. So don’t dive in unless you’re ready to really dive in. 

How we can roll this out to our own businesses:

Warning here: this is much easier said than done. 

• Audit content to see how it stacks up against the best creators

• Make a plan for how to get it there, including budget, resources, etc.

• Produce content audience first, product second

• Make interesting content first, but feature products in the course of the content

• Use this to reinforce brand & send people to conversion points

• Measure & repeatt

That’s the issue. If you missed last week’s issue, you can read it here.

Go forth & conquer.

—Perrin