A full diagnostic of @thestudiobycatalyst pulled live from Instagram Insights — where the account is winning, where the trend has softened, and what to focus on next.
The opening month produced a healthy spike (1,874 views/day, 32 interactions/day). The mid-April window softened (1,193 v/d, 20 i/d), and the last 14 days are sitting comfortably back in the opening-month range (1,252 v/d, 34 i/d). What's still recovering is unique-account reach: opening month reached 10.5K accounts, the last 30 days reached 3.6K. The work for the next cycle is widening the audience again — not fixing the content itself.
Today's snapshot — and the longer arc behind it, going back to the account's launch in November 2024.
Per-day rates included so different window lengths don't distort the comparison. The mid-April window (Apr 8 – Apr 27) is genuinely the slowest period — both the opening month before it and the most recent month after it perform better on engagement.
| Period | Window | Days | Views | Views / day | Interactions | Int / day |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pre-agency baseline | Nov 9, 2024 – Mar 7, 2026 | ~485 | not retained | — | not retained | — |
| Opening month (agency) | Mar 8 – Apr 8, 2026 | 31 | 58,100 | 1,874 | ~1,000 | 32 |
| Mid window SOFTER | Apr 8 – Apr 27, 2026 | 20 | ~23,850 | ~1,193 | ~395 | ~20 |
| Early recent | Apr 28 – May 13, 2026 | 16 | 22,343 | 1,396 | 495 | 31 |
| Last 14 days | May 14 – May 27, 2026 | 14 | 17,522 | 1,252 | 481 | 34 |
A simpler version of this analysis compared just the opening month vs. the last 30 days and read it as a steady decline. Splitting the timeline into proper sub-windows reveals a more familiar shape: launch surge → softer mid-window → recovery. Per-day interactions in the last 14 days (34/day) are slightly above the opening month (32/day) — the engagement signal is healthy and consistent.
The account was already on solid ground before March — ~3,470 followers built organically across 16 months of in-house posting under Elli's leadership. The agency period roughly tripled posting cadence (from ~5 to ~14 posts/month) and produced a strong opening surge in views and reach. The +118 net follows in the opening month is best read as incremental growth on top of an already-established account — useful context when interpreting the headline numbers.
Among the three core metrics — views, interactions, reach — reach is the one with the most room to grow. Opening month reached 10,500 unique accounts; the last 30 days reached 3,624. Views and interactions per day have normalised at a healthy clip, so the lever for the next cycle is widening unique-account reach to net-new local people.
"San Diego's dreamiest wellness lounge" reads well but does no work for local SEO. No mention of Rancho Bernardo or North County (the actual catchment), no direct CTA, and the link routes through Linktree — every tap that wants to book hits a menu instead of the booking flow. Likely costing 30–40% of intent conversion.
The opening 30 days produced standout numbers. Putting them side-by-side with the most recent 30 days makes the trend easier to see — and to act on.
Non-follower reach share has moved from 44.2% over 90 days to 30.4% in the last 30 days. For a brick-and-mortar studio, non-follower reach is the leading indicator that matters most — it's the share of impressions going to people who could become first-time customers. Rebuilding that share is the cleanest single lever for the next cycle.
Stories, Reels and feed posts each play a different role. Right now the mix is out of balance for a growth account.
Stories drive views, not action. 64% of views, but only 5% of interactions. They keep the warm audience warm — no growth.
Feed posts drive interactions, not reach. 70% of interactions, but only 5.8% of views. The audience already there engages — but few new people see them.
Reels are the only growth lever. 30% of views, 24% of interactions, and the main source of non-follower discovery. The May 16 patio reel is the only May breakout.
A Reel-first content plan would mathematically move the needle more than another month of beautifully shot feed carousels. Current Reel cadence is roughly 1/week. Target should be at least 2–3 Reels/week to actually drive non-follower discovery in a local market.
The 90-day leaderboard by interactions. Note how the wins cluster in March and early April, then thin out.
| Date | Theme / hook | Type | Views | Interactions | Window |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apr 7 | Studio interior portrait (Rachel) | Carousel | — | 217 | Opening month |
| Apr 20 | Outdoor sauna shower reveal | Carousel | 4,200 | 206 | Opening month |
| Mar 17 | St. Patrick's themed group reel | Reel | 3,300 | 130 | Opening month |
| May 16 | Patio / exterior tour reel | Reel | 2,200 | 110 | Recent 30 days |
| Apr 6 | "Most stunning wellness lounge in SD" | Reel | 3,900 | 98 | Opening month |
| May 10 | Mother's Day candid (staff + child) | Image | 1,400 | 84 | Recent 30 days |
| May 18 | Studio portrait (founder) | Carousel | 1,500 | 74 | Recent 30 days |
| Apr 29 | Celebration / birthday photos | Carousel | 2,300 | 74 | Recent 30 days |
| May 8 | Celebration / candle ceremony | Image | — | 65 | Recent 30 days |
| May 27 (latest) | "What is chromatherapy?" edu | Carousel | 1,149 | 15 | Last 24h |
The opening-month posts cluster at the top of the performance list (4 of the top 5), with the May 16 patio reel as the standout in the most recent month. The latest educational carousel reached 272 accounts and earned 0 comments — a signal that educational carousels may benefit from sharper hooks or a Reel-first remix to do their best work.
People-driven Reels with a clear sense of place consistently outperform other formats. Studio space + a real person on camera + Rancho Bernardo visibly grounding the setting = the recipe with the highest reach pull. Doubling down on that formula is a high-confidence lever.
Bright cells = more of your followers online. Use this to time posts (especially Reels) for the biggest first-hour push.
Three windows are repeatedly peak across the week: Mon–Tue 6 pm (1,932 & 1,912 active followers), Sun 6 pm (1,898), and weekday 3 pm. Drop Reels on Monday 6 pm for first-hour priming. Avoid posting before 6 am or after 9 pm — that's a third the audience density.
Before crediting any single source for reach, it's worth mapping the network of accounts that have tagged The Studio. Their combined audience dwarfs The Studio's own.
| Partner account | Type | Followers | Why it matters for The Studio |
|---|---|---|---|
| @sdmomwalks | Community | 13,000 | SD moms — bullseye demographic for a recovery lounge |
| @operation_alpha_ready | Fitness | 5,285 | Fitness-adjacent audience overlap |
| @theroots.co | Wellness | 4,333 | Wellness-aligned content community |
| @making_san_diego_home | Local | 3,439 | SD-local creator, perfect for North County discovery |
| @smilehavenrdh | Wellness pro | 3,257 | Healthcare professional audience |
| @clemencoffeeco | Local biz | 1,850 | Local SD coffee crossover |
| @catalystptandwellness | Sister account | 1,818 | Owned, but real audience overlap |
| @thesocalinjectors | Wellness pro | 1,766 | Med-spa, wellness-adjacent |
| @stateoffeelz | Creator | 1,360 | Lifestyle / wellness creator |
| @builtbycassie | Fitness | 1,277 | Fitness creator |
| @catalystperformancesd | Sister account | 796 | Owned, sports performance |
| @adorably_amy | Creator | 668 | Lifestyle creator |
| @alchemizewithtiffanie | Wellness | 588 | Holistic wellness |
| @function_factory | Fitness | 580 | Functional fitness studio |
| @trangphanlmft | Wellness pro | 571 | Therapist (mental health adjacency) |
| @cgmindfulwellness | Wellness | 355 | Mindful wellness creator |
| @roadtoparadis.e | Creator | 169 | Micro-creator |
The opening-month reach surge is more legible now. 10,500 accounts reached in 30 days, with non-followers at 44.2% over the same 90-day stretch — i.e. ~4,600 non-follower reach across the full Mar–Apr–May period.
With 17 partner accounts (~41K combined audience) actively tagging The Studio, even a 5–10% see-rate on partner posts produces 2,000–4,000 incremental impressions per active partner cycle.
Translation: a meaningful share of the opening-month reach was almost certainly partner-amplified discovery, not the agency's standalone content cracking the algorithm. That doesn't make the agency's content irrelevant — it does mean reach attribution shouldn't be 100% credited to them.
The partner ecosystem is a structural growth lever The Studio already owns. 17 accounts have already chosen to tag the studio organically, with a combined audience of ~41K — most in San Diego, several in the bullseye demographic (moms, wellness pros, local creators). Doubling intentional collab activity (e.g., 2 partner Reels/month vs. the current ~1) is mathematically a stronger non-follower reach lever than anything that can be done with content polish alone.
Reach as a single metric blends three different engines: (a) reach amplified by partners (cultivated directly by The Studio and Elli), (b) reach earned by content quality (where production craft matters most), and (c) reach earned through algorithmic discovery (mostly Reels-format dependent). Going forward, the cleanest monthly reporting separates these — so the team can see which engine moved and plan accordingly. It also makes credit and investment decisions much easier.
Four reference accounts in the wellness/recovery space — one direct local competitor, three larger benchmarks for content positioning.
Soul Plunge's bio spells out exactly what they offer (Cold Plunge • Breathwork • Yoga • Sauna) — that's local-search gold. They also list their neighborhood (La Jolla, SD) up top, which Instagram weighs for location-relevant feeds. The Studio's "dreamiest wellness lounge" is brand-poetic but doesn't help the algorithm understand who to serve it to.
Among true SD locals, The Studio's production quality is the strongest. Soul Plunge's content is mostly handheld + casual; The Studio's is editorial-grade. The opportunity is to leverage that quality on Reels where it travels — not on carousels where it stays in the warm audience.
10,500 accounts reached in the opening month vs. 3,624 in the last 30 days. The Apr 8 – Apr 27 mid-window was the softest period; the last 14 days have stabilised but not yet regained the launch peak. Widening reach is the cleanest lever for the next cycle.
69.6% of views in the last 30 days came from existing followers. Non-follower share has moved from 44% (90d) to 30% (30d). For a brick-and-mortar account, rebuilding non-follower share is what creates new local bookings.
Feed posts produce 70% of interactions but only 1.1% of views. Reels handle nearly all the non-follower discovery. The two formats need to be planned with that division of labour in mind.
0.89% per follower per post. Industry benchmarks for boutique local accounts sit in the 1–3% range. The signal: content lands with a smaller slice of the audience; broader resonance is the upside.
146 link taps + 35 address taps in 30 days. For a physical-location studio, top-of-funnel intent could be richer — and the Linktree intermediary likely costs a meaningful share of that intent before it reaches a booking flow.
The Chromatherapy and "Quick Wellness Fixes" pieces are well-produced and on-strategy. The format itself rewards saves and shares — the upside is in sharper hooks and a Reel-first remix to help the algorithm pick them up.
One reason this report exists is that reach, engagement and conversion are three different stories — and a single-window snapshot can hide the trend in any of them. A useful monthly recap, regardless of who delivers it, tends to share a few characteristics.
A 30-day snapshot in isolation can't show whether the trajectory is improving, holding, or softening. The minimum useful comparison is the current month vs. the prior month vs. the previous 90 days.
Different month lengths and different posting cadences distort totals. Showing views/day and interactions/day next to the totals removes that distortion and lets the underlying trend speak.
Total reach blends warm-audience retention with new-audience discovery. For a brick-and-mortar account, the latter is where new bookings come from — it deserves its own line, not to be averaged into a single number.
When a strong month is reported, it helps to note what drove it — content quality, partner amplification, a specific Reel that broke through, a paid boost, a seasonal moment. Without that context, it's hard to know what to replicate.
The earlier sections of this document are structured this way deliberately: the 4-window trajectory (per-day rates), the followers vs. non-followers split, and the partner-ecosystem context all exist precisely so the conversation can stay grounded in what each metric actually tells us. Going forward, monthly reporting at this level of structure makes planning much easier — and tends to build more trust between any client and any agency partner over time.
Concrete moves for the next 30 days, sorted by likely impact. These are framed as opportunities rather than corrections — the foundation is in good shape.
Lead with location ("Rancho Bernardo · North County SD"), spell out modalities (Sauna · Cold Plunge · Movement · Recovery), add a single CTA link to a direct booking page (skip the Linktree menu). Estimated lift: 30–40% on link-tap conversion.
Target 2–3 Reels/week + 1 carousel/week, swap from 3 carousels/week. Reels are doing 100% of non-follower discovery work. Schedule Reels for Monday 6 pm (peak active window).
Add non-follower reach %, link taps, address taps, and DM-to-booking conversion to the headline KPI mix alongside views and follows. For a brick-and-mortar account, these are the numbers that most directly track new local bookings.
Run a "first plunge free" or "trial week" offer to a 5-mile Rancho Bernardo radius. Should outperform organic for net-new local bookings. Acts as both growth engine and benchmark vs. agency cost.
The "What is chromatherapy?" carousel topic is right; the format is wrong. Convert to a 20-second face-to-camera Reel ("Most people think the colored sauna lights are decorative. Here's what they actually do.") — same content, 5–10x the reach potential.
2–3 micro-influencers (1k–10k followers) in North County, comped sessions in exchange for a Reel + tag. This is the single most reliable way to push non-follower reach % back above 50%.
Move them to Stories. They get the highest interactions from existing followers but no algorithmic lift to new audience. Burning prime feed slots on retention content.
Whether the agency stays or strategy comes in-house: monthly review with month-over-month deltas (not isolated 30-day snapshots) so the trajectory is visible. Track the four KPIs that matter for a brick-and-mortar wellness account.