5 Instagram lessons you have to steal from this accountant 💸

even if your world has NOTHING to do with $$$

When I teach about Instagram, one of the first things I say is this:

Seriously—the best way to improve your social media game is to look at what others are doing well. Look at the style, the length, the format, the design, and the topics of high-performing content. Then apply those insights to your content.

Note: The people, brands, accounts you look at do not need to be in your industry. In fact, it’s usually better if they’re not. There’s so much to be learned from other niches and business types that are pushing the envelope creatively.

Shall we try doing this exercise together?

I’ve chosen the incredible Rachel Harris from @accountant_she to analyse. Rachel is doing amazing things on Instagram in a niche that many would deem boring.

Let’s take a look at 6 lessons we can all learn from her social media content.

1. Turn everyday moments into educational Reels

Rachel is brilliant at turning everyday moments—a trip to Joe & The Juice, a countryside run, a branded photoshoot—into educational Reels.

Notice the plays on these Reels: 60k, 83k, 2.9m.

These perform so incredibly well because:

• The video is authentic and clearly captured on a phone (vs. highly produced video captured by a professional videographer, which doesn’t usually perform as well)

• They’re short (usually no more than 5 seconds long)

• The hooks—the ‘title’ written in text over the top of the Reels—are specific and intriguing: “3 things you need to understand to claim food & drink to save tax” / “6 quick tips to save $16,00 in tax before the end of the month” / “The 6 things HMRC look at when you’re investigated”.

• The ‘answers’ to these hooks/titles are written in the caption. This makes the Reels ‘stickier’… i.e. rather than just watching the video for a couple of seconds and then scrolling on by, people watch the video, get pulled in by the hook, and then expand the caption to read the answer.

Takeaway: Educational Reels are one of the best ways to grow on the platform. Whether you’re an accountant, an interior designer, a copywriter, a boxed wine brand, [insert niche here!], you will have SO much useful information inside your head that you can turn into helpful video content. Make a list of common questions that your ideal customer has. Now turn these into short Reels with juicy hooks written in text over the top.

2. Re-use the same video clips

Looking through Rachel’s content, I noticed at least one video clip she’s used for three separate Reels. This is a fantastic reminder that you don’t need to be capturing fresh video footage every single day.

Takeaway: Capture video clips when you can during the week and store them all in a dedicated folder on your phone. That way you’ll never run out of content for Reels. If you want to re-use a video clip several times, make sure to leave a gap of 2-3 months since you last shared it.

3. Always use a killer hook (+ subtitles)

A hook can make or break a Reel.

But knowing what makes a good or bad hook can feel a little nebulous.

Imagine you’re scrolling through your busy Instagram feed. A Reel pops up. It has one of these two titles written over the top.

Hook #1 = 3 reasons why accountants have to use practice management software

Hook #2 = What is practice management software?

Which do you watch in full?

I bet you’re thinking #1.

Here’s why:

The first hook is specific. It includes a number. It speaks directly to the target viewer. And even if the viewer doesn’t know what practice management software (PMS) is, they can see by the hook that they’re going to be given an explanation and a rationale for why it matters to them.

That’s not the case with the second hook. With this hook, the viewer isn’t being given a clear reason as to why they should keep watching. They think—hmm so this account is going to tell me what PMS is, but are they going to tell me why I should care?? SHOULD I care?? I’m not sure. Maybe not. There’s not much urgency here…

It’s a subtle but hugely important difference.¹

Takeaway: Spend some time thinking about the text you will add over the top of a video (what is known as the ‘hook’). Try to be as specific as you can. Treat it like an email subject line or a blog title. Tricks like using a number, starting with words like ‘How’, ‘Why’, ‘The secret to…’, and speaking to your viewer (‘Why you have to stop…’ / ‘When you finally…’) work very well.

4. Focus on education + behind-the-scenes

The focus of Rachel’s Instagram strategy is to educate. To demystify the world of tax and accounting for business owners who find it mostly very intimidating.

Most of her content centres around tax/expenses tips and tricks. Not only does this position her as a trusted expert in her field, but it’s also a powerful growth driver on Instagram. Some of the biggest accounts today have grown quickly because they share ‘edu-tainment’.

Alongside this kind of content, Rachel gives her audience a sneak peek into her world. She shares photos and Reels from events, almost every day she posts her work schedule on Stories, and she’s even started a new ‘7-figure business owner Whatsapp chats’ series, which is just genius.

“Every single post has a purpose. Whether that’s driving a pipeline of new members of staff into the practice. Whether that’s taking the team on holiday to create content to further grow that waiting list. Whether it’s bringing clients in. Whether it’s selling our online course that teaches people how to start and scale their own [accounting] practice, every single piece of content you see has huge amounts of marketing strategy behind it.” — Rachel Harris

Takeaway: Lead with value but don’t be afraid to pull back the curtain on your world, too. Sharing behind-the-scenes posts like your daily/weekly routine, what’s been going on in your business, and moments from events and days out humanises your account and builds trust with your audience. It’s also fantastic for engagement.

5. Don’t hold back in the captions

Looking back through Rachel’s content, her captions (for photo and carousel posts) have always been great. However, it seems that her approach to video and captions has changed over the last year.

Her Reel captions used to be very short, sometimes only a sentence or two long, with most of the ‘meat’ of the post being delivered in the video.

Now, Rachel has optimised her content so that rather than create longer Reels with all her wisdom shared in the video, she creates short videos to hook people in and then delivers the education or the storytelling in the caption.

Takeaway: Don’t scrimp on your captions! Captions are your opportunity for connection and engagement, and you’ll never get this by writing 1 or 2 sentences and not including a call-to-action.

💡 What did you think of this account analysis?

Do you have questions?

Would you like more of this in the future?

I’d love to hear from you in the comments below. Let’s chat!

1. Incidentally, hook #2 is a hook that Rachel has used before. However, I’m going to let her off the hook (sorry 😬) because 99% of her hooks are so, so, good.