Field notes
Playbooks, teardowns and the occasional argument — everything we have learned helping creators grow across every major platform.
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.
The honest answer to how long 1,000 subscribers takes is arithmetic on your own growth rate - not an anecdote from someone who got lucky.
Shorts pay from a shared pool at a 45% creator share, not from watch-page ads at 55%. That structural difference explains everything about Shorts income.
A banned hashtag can quietly suppress a post, and no platform tells you. Here is how to test a tag before you use it, in order of likelihood.
LinkedIn has no documented hashtag limit, but three is where the convention settled. Here is why more looks amateur and what they actually do.
TikTok engagement rates look higher than every other platform because they are usually calculated against views. Here is what the numbers mean.
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.
There are four common engagement rate formulas and they give different answers. Here is each one, what it is for, and which to quote to a brand.
TikTok hashtags work as topic signals, not reach multipliers. Here is how many to use, why specific beats popular, and what actually drives the For You page.
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.