The 10K Challenge: Growing IG with AI
Week 1 Lessons & Surprises
📊 10K Challenge: Week 1 Progress Report
The first week of the 100-day AI-powered Instagram challenge is in the books! Here’s a look at the numbers:
🔹 Accounts Reached: 645 (+220.9%) 📈
🔹 Accounts Engaged: 81
🔹 Follower Growth: +3
🔹 Top Performing Content: Challenge Kickoff Reel + Birthday Reel 🎉
🔹 Total Content Interactions: 166
🔹 Engagement Rate: 10.22%
💡 Key Takeaways:
Massive Reach Growth 📢 → AI-powered strategy + consistency is key and already expanding visibility.
Engagement is Strong 💬 → Folks are interacting and next focus is on conversion to follows.
What Worked Best? 🔥 → Reels with personal storytelling + a strong CTA outperformed.
Next Focus 🎯 → Better hooks and value-driven content to drive follows.
As the first week of the 10K challenge draws to a close, I realize there are some great takeaways—because you don't know what you don't know, and at the end of the day, you have to just dive in and get your feet dirty. But doesn't this apply to everything in life?
I kicked off the challenge with a bang. It always brings with it so much energy. I also took advantage of the fact that it was my birthday, so double the pleasure, double the fun. But once the announcement dies down, this is when the true work begins. And that started yesterday.
I felt myself scrambling, panicking almost, as I asked myself: what in the world am I supposed to post now? Since the idea for the challenge began, I have been feeding ChatGPT my play-by-play. It has been a really positive experience with tireless, positive feedback that is necessary, especially if you have lofty goals such as this one.
Now, where I thought AI would do a better job was with new ideas. Ha! Here's the moment of truth: Not only are these tools only as good as the prompts that you feed them, but you still need to do your research and be the creative engine. Otherwise, you will just have generic, evergreen content which is fine, but truthfully boring, and will not make the impact that I'm looking for. So, excuse my redundancy if you know this rule of life: There are no shortcuts—you simply have to put. In. The. Work.
I decided to go back to the basics, to the pods and the substacks that inspired me in the first place. I consumed all the stuff that excites me. There is always so much happening in the space where AI, creative, and marketing intersect (maybe I'll call it "Creative AI" to keep it simple)—enough to fill my cup and inspire me like crazy.
One of my favorite newsletters always does a great job keeping me on top of what's happening in the branding and social media space, providing ideas for fresh content, usually what's trending on TikTok, which is always fun to explore. I was particularly inspired by the concept of premium Instagram and how you can now find content that is sophisticated and has incredible production value. These cinematic posts like this one from Meller really do look like mini films and were a pleasure to watch.
What I'm Listening To
I am always on the hunt for great podcasts, especially when it comes to AI and marketing. This week, a friend shared Marketing Ink: Big Ideas for Local Businesses, which coincidentally just released an episode on marketing automation. They shared the usual suspects like ChatGPT and Canva but also Flux and Lora—models that you can train to get an array of photos for social media posts and B-roll in video content. I am totally going to learn how these models work.
Interesting Stories This Week
Adobe's New AI Agents
At the Adobe Summit in Las Vegas, Adobe launched the Adobe Experience Platform (AEP) Agent Orchestrator, a tool designed to help businesses build, manage, and orchestrate AI agents across marketing and customer experience workflows. This includes a suite of ten AI agents that enhance content production, data insights, audience segmentation, and site optimization.
Adobe also introduced Brand Concierge, an AI application that helps businesses deliver personalized, conversational experiences across digital platforms, improving customer interactions and sales. Strategic partnerships with major companies like IBM and Microsoft ensure seamless integration of these tools across various industries.
As companies continue to figure out how to implement AI into their workflow, innovations such as these promise exciting transformation and adoption. Will keep an eye on these for sure.
eBay and Etsy's Social Media-Inspired Shopping
I don't know about you, but one of my guilty pleasures is shopping for vintage finds on eBay—tea cups in particular, which I recently started to collect. So when I read that eBay (and Etsy!) are considering adding a "feed-like shopping experience," I was pretty pumped.
There's something sweet about shopping on these sites, which still feel bare bones and nostalgically clunky. But there's definitely room for improvement on the customer experience front.
Both eBay and Etsy are leveraging artificial intelligence to enhance the shopping experience and introduce social media-like features aimed at personalizing product recommendations. They're tapping into AI to recommend products based on shoppers' individual interests, much like TikTok's algorithm.
This trend, which has been seen in platforms like Pinterest, is becoming more widespread as retailers seek to integrate social media-like browsing experiences. With advanced machine learning and large-language models, both companies are making their vast inventories more accessible and tailored to user preferences. AI-driven personalization is expected to transform the retail landscape even further in the coming years.
AI Revolutionizing Influencer Marketing
I've been fascinated by influencer marketing for years and find the whole ecosystem intriguing. The $266.92 billion influencer marketing industry is mostly managed by human workers (I envision a recent grad doing all the grunt work of managing mailing lists and sending out product samples to creators).
Well, the new startup Agentic Marketing Technologies (AMT) is revolutionizing influencer marketing by using an AI chatbot, Lyra, to streamline campaign booking, tracking, payments, and influencer interactions. This AI agent can autonomously find influencers that match campaign goals and engage with them using natural language, making influencer marketing scalable across hundreds of campaigns.
By leveraging AI models such as OpenAI's, Google's Gemini, and Hume AI's tone analysis, AMT delivers a more personalized experience by understanding influencers' content and tone. Launched just three months ago, the company has already attracted notable clients and is poised to disrupt the influencer marketing industry. AMT says its AI-driven approach can reduce the time spent securing influencer partnerships from nine hours to just five minutes.
That’s it for today. 📌 Follow my journey on Instagram @kryptorina and DM me your thoughts!