Google Search Console is the free report that tells you exactly what people type before they land on you. And since July, you can connect your Instagram as a property too, so your social content shows up in the same reports. No website required.

Here is what mine told me this month, and how to read yours.

The big number is 1.1 million views on the account. That is the top of the funnel. Underneath it, 10,900 impressions in search, 98 clicks, and an average position of 6.3. Position 6.3 means when someone searches a term I rank for, I show up near the top of page one.

Most people stop at the big number. The money is in the small ones.

When I sorted my queries, one cluster jumped out: everything about Trial Reels. “Trial reels on Facebook.” “Should you share trial reels to everyone.” Those are ranking on page one and getting almost no clicks. That gap is a gift. It means people are searching the exact thing I already talk about, Google is putting me in front of them, and there is room to pull them in. So that is what I make more of.

If your Story views dropped off a cliff sometime last year and never came back, you are not imagining it. It happened to a lot of accounts. Over the past few weeks it started working again for a lot of creators, and the fix is a specific order.

Here is the sequence:

1. Post 1 to 5 normal Stories first. Whatever you would post anyway, even one with a new-post sticker or a link sticker, the kind that usually drags your views down. A little birdie even said you can post your regular feed new posts with stickers and links and not get dinged. I personally would not do more than one of those.
2. Make your last Story an “Add Yours” template. You can find these at the top when you add to story, usually the first option on the left. You can use trending ones there. You can also find and follow creators who make those. These create awesome engagement.
3. Pick the “Add Yours” template with as many uses as possible. One with 1.3 million uses beats one with 27,000 every time.

This is the question I get more than any other, so I wrote the whole answer down. If you are deciding where to put your marketing budget, the piece walks through what each one actually gives you, what it costs you, and which one fits the stage you are in.

The short version: an agency runs the work. A fractional CMO owns the strategy and makes sure the work is the right work. The wrong choice is expensive in both directions.