Field notes
Playbooks, teardowns and the occasional argument — everything we have learned helping creators grow across every major platform.
Platform analytics stop at the platform. Tagged links tell you which post, which platform and which campaign actually sent someone to your site.
A giveaway that attracts the wrong audience costs more than it gains. Here are the rules to publish, the entry mechanics that work, and how to draw a defensible winner.
Instagram allows 2,200 characters in a caption and shows about 125 before the fold. Everything that matters has to be in that first line and a half.
Instagram fonts are Unicode substitutions, not fonts. They work in bios and captions, and they are unreadable to screen readers. Here is how to use them anyway.
Instagram gives you 150 characters. Here is a template that uses them, examples by account type, and the mistakes that waste the only line strangers read.
Instagram Story size is 1080x1920, but the top and bottom bands belong to the interface. Here is the usable area and how to design a template once.
An Instagram Reels cover is shown at 9:16 in the Reel and cropped square in your grid. One image has to survive both. Here is how to position it.
Instagram carousel size is 1080x1350 per slide, and every slide must share the first one's ratio. Here is how to split one wide image so the seams disappear.
Instagram growth comes down to three things: being shown to non-followers, earning the save or share, and a profile that converts a visit into a follow.
A good Instagram engagement rate depends on your follower count more than anything else. Here are the bands, the formula to use, and how to compare honestly.
Instagram allows 30 hashtags per post. Using all 30 is not a strategy. Here is the number that works, the mix, and where placement actually matters.
Every platform recompresses your upload. Compressing first, correctly, is how you control the result instead of letting their algorithm decide.