In Glasgow and Edinburgh, Slàinte Scotland went from 422 people reached to 2,780, and from no comments at all to 41

What does an account do with 1,981 posts behind it and nobody answering any of them?

Slàinte Scotland had 15 whisky and Highlands tours listed and priced, an audience of 4,025 people, and no hour in the week to put one in front of the other.

Slàinte Scotland runs whisky days and Highlands touring out of Glasgow and Edinburgh. 15 tours, 11 of them bookable, every one already photographed and priced on a booking platform. The account was not new either: 4,025 followers and 1,981 posts of its own.

What it did not carry was a feed anybody answered. In the 61 days before this started, Instagram's own account insights recorded 422 people reached, 63 interactions, and not a single comment.

No advertising ran on either side of the start date, so every figure on this page is the account's own. The windows are 61 days rather than 90 because that is the whole time this operator has been live, and both windows move together.

What did Leanboat Studio do?

Leanboat Studio built 31 Instagram posts from Slàinte Scotland’s own tours and photographs and published them on Slàinte Scotland’s own account, across 61 days.

1. Read the catalogue. 15 tours from the operator's booking platform, 11 bookable, photographs included. We asked the operator for nothing new.
2. Composed the weekly rhythm. 31 posts: 24 single images, 3 carousels and 4 stories. No video, no reels.
3. Sent every post for approval. Approval was the operator's only job, and nothing went out without it.
4. Published on the operator's own account, each post carrying one keyword.
5. Answered the keyword by direct message. A follower who comments the keyword gets the booking link back, so a comment on this account is a request for the link rather than applause.

Four of the 31 posts, published on the operator's own account. Nobody picked these four as favourites.

How was this measured?

Leanboat Studio measures account-level reach across two equal windows, the days before an operator's first post and the same number of days after it, using Instagram's own account insights.

61 days rather than 90, because that is the whole time this operator has been live. Stretching the before window without stretching the after would flatter the result. Both move together.

Account-levelcovers the operator’s entire Instagram account, not only the posts we built. That is the harder number to move and the honest one to report, because the question you would ask is what happened to your account, not how somebody’s posts performed.

It also means other things the operator does land in the same figures: their own reels, a promotion, a busy season, money they choose to put behind the account. We do not strip those out, because an account is a mix and the mix is the point. A daily rhythm underneath it is what makes the rest worth doing, and the question each page answers is whether the account as a whole got better.

What were the results?

On this account, people reached went from 422 to 2,780, and interactions went from 63 to 486.

Every figure above comes from Instagram account insights for the two windows named. Post counts and formats come from Leanboat Studio’s publishing record.

What changed on the account

What this does not show

• No advertising ran on either side of the start date, so nothing had to be subtracted out, and this case offers no evidence either way about what spend would add.
• The operator's own reels sit inside these figures and none of them are ours: 575 of the 2,780 people reached came from reels, and that part is claimed nowhere on this page.
• Every absolute number here is modest, and belongs read against the size of this account rather than a larger one.
• The before window is too low to carry a rate, so the claim is the move itself: 422 to 2,780 on reach and 0 to 41 on comments.
• Reach counts the same person on more than one surface, so the surface figures do not sum to the account total.
• Accounts engaged and taps on the profile link carry no breakdown from Instagram, so no organic value is read off either, and saves are netted against unsaves so 0 to 26 is a direction rather than a count of people.
• 61 days of posting ran alongside everything else the operator did, so this is a before-and-after on one account rather than a controlled trial.
• Nothing here is a booking. Instagram does not report what happens after a link.

Is this typical, or is it the best case?

Leanboat Studio does not publish a cohort comparison yet, so this page cannot tell you where Slàinte Scotland sits against every other operator.

There was one here, and it came down. It was assembled from a sweep across every partner at once, and a sweep is exactly the thing that hides a bad figure inside an average. Every partner is now being read end to end on its own page, and a median goes back up only once that is true of all of them.

Until then, read this as one operator’s result. It is not an average and it is not a promise about your account.

Measured by Ygor Fonseca, Founder and Systems Lead at Leanboat. 14 September 2026.