I teach how to accomplish your daily social media check in with only 15 minutes a day. So most of the time, I skip over these basic kind of lessons. For me, they are rote. Mundane. Common sense.

But more and more often, I remind myself of a basic truth. What comes easy to me might be someone else’s big breakthrough.

Three Quick and Dirty Instagram Engagement Lessons

So in all of three minutes of my social media time of the day, I created the content for this week. This is three quick and dirty Instagram engagement lessons all garnered from a quick scroll through my feed and likes.

1. Appearance is Everything (Until It Is Nothing)

This is a fancy way of saying less is more. And it’s inspired by an Instagram user who put a quote on their feed. Quotes are rampant on Instagram, but this one stood out to me. It’s not in a flowing script font. It’s quite boring actually, some Arial lookalike black text on a white background, all the same size. No design sense, whatsoever. Again, that’s not so surprising as I see tons of poorly designed graphics on Instagram daily.

So why did this stand out? The user posting it is a stylist. And she’s quoting Marie Forleo, queen of first impressions, styled video shoots, and leader of the B School, the womens’ entrepreneurial gateway to business success.

Lesson learned? Just throwing a quote on your profile won’t help. It needs to fit your tone, your brand. But it also needs to fit the content of the quote!

2. Flattery Will Get You No Where

Daily, I get people who follow me and then unfollow the same or next day. At least 40 times per day. I know there are services out there who do this, but it seems like a whole lot of wasted effort to me. Following me will not make me follow you unless you’re posting about a topic I’m genuinely interested in.

This is tribe building, and if you don’t like the tribal word, think of it like a group of friends. Adding more people to your group of friends for the sake of adding more people is silly. It’s clunky. It will decrease the quality of time you can spend with each friend. It will make planning get togethers and social events difficult. It’s only worth it if it’s a great person, a great fit.

If you’re just looking for numbers, you’re not interested in authentic followers. And I’m not interested in following you back.

3. Planning to Win the Lottery is a Recipe for Failure

Stabs in the dark, mass commenting, following 2000 people… why? Does anyone actually think I’m going to believe someone randomly commenting on an Instagram photo? If you have the time to cold comment, you’re probably not making the millions you want me to think you are.

It’s like expecting to win the lottery and never lifting a finger to work. Winning the lottery would be great. But making that part of your life plan is recipe for failure.

Keep these three tips in mind and you’ll have plenty of fodder for your 15 minutes a day of social media engagement. I’d prefer seeing you thoughtfully engaging on one Facebook business page, one Facebook group, two Tweets and Two Instagram posts a day than 100 random comments. And I’d rather see you with 500 engaged followers on each platform than a page with 3000 likes but crickets in the comment department.

Make your time count.