In Istria, ThisIsIstria went from 151 people reached to 1,177, and from no comments at all to 26, in 61 days

What happens to an account whose only living surface expires in a day?

ThisIsIstria had 8 tours in the wine and truffle country inland from the coast, 7 of them bookable, and a feed nobody was looking at.

ThisIsIstria sells inland Croatia out of Višnjan: the cellars, the truffle country, the hill towns most visitors drive past on the way to the coast. 8 tours, 7 of them bookable, already photographed and priced on a booking platform.

The account was well established, 2,497 followers and 176 posts of its own, but the feed had gone quiet. Across the 61 days before this started, single posts reached 19 people and carousels reached 39, while stories carried 86 of the 151 people the whole account reached and 24 of its 28 interactions. An account whose only living surface expires in a day starts again from nothing every morning.

In the 61 days after, carousels reached 671 people and single posts 612, against 350 on stories. All 26 comments and 19 of the 20 shares came on posts we published, and the operator's own reels account for 28 of the 1,177 people reached. No advertising ran on either side of the start date. The windows are 61 days rather than 90 because that is the whole time this operator has been live.

What did Leanboat Studio do?

Leanboat Studio built 26 Instagram posts from ThisIsIstria’s own tours and photographs and published them on ThisIsIstria’s own account, across 61 days.

1. Read the catalogue. 8 tours from the operator's booking platform, 7 bookable, photographs included. We asked the operator for nothing new.
2. Composed the weekly rhythm. 26 posts: 20 single images, 4 carousels and 2 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 26 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 151 to 1,177, and interactions went from 28 to 221.

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.
• Every absolute number here is small: 2,497 followers, 1,177 people reached, 221 interactions and 26 comments. Read them against the size of this account rather than a larger one.
• The before window is too low to carry a percentage, so the claim is the move itself: 151 to 1,177 on reach and 0 to 26 on comments.
• Reach counts the same person on more than one surface, so the surface figures do not sum to the account total.
• 2 of the 26 posts return no per-post figures, so the 3,731 reach summed across the other 24 is a floor rather than the whole of what we published.
• Saves were 0 before and 0 after, and taps on the profile link moved 0 to 2, a count too small to build anything on.
• 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 ThisIsIstria 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.