Through The Marketing Lens

Up Your Instagram Game Authentically

October 20, 2020 Katrina Aronson Episode 6
Through The Marketing Lens
Up Your Instagram Game Authentically
Show Notes Transcript

We are talking about how to up-level your Instagram with a few ideas that are effective and easily implementable no matter where you are in your business. It is not all about how many followers you have, but rather, about attracting and nurturing the people and businesses that actually care about what you are putting out there. 

You will learn: 

  • How to grow your followers with a 5-min per day strategy that works 
  • How to get more engagement and create a buzz around your brand consistently 
  • How to create more credibility around you and your business immediately 

Instagram is a really important tool in marketing strategies right now and we need to pay attention to it, but it is also just one part of the marketing puzzle. This episode is all about getting your mind around Instagram in a way that is both effective and simplified

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Hello there, welcome to today's episode of The Marketing Lens, and today I'm going to focus on social media specifically Instagram, and how to really up your game.

Everyone is always talking about social media and Instagram seems to be the popular girl right now and it's obviously a really big part of digital marketing right now. I want to dive into a few things that can really help to uplevel your Instagram engagement, following, and most importantly what I really want to talk about and that's improving your follower's trust. So I constantly hear people talking about their following, sometimes it borders on excessive. Of course, it's really important that the business world that we live in, but I just don't subscribe to the follower game, it is really easy to get sucked in. But I want you to listen, the content that you're posting, and the way they're actually growing your following is way more important than just getting followers that don't care to actually buy from you.

I know this to be true because I know plenty of six-plus figures people and businesses that just don't focus on the following parts. It's only a part of their overall strategy which is really where I want you to be thinking, Yes, is an important part of the puzzle but it's just a part of the puzzle and if you treat it that way, it's far more effective for your business. So let's go into a few things. One, I'm going to start with increasing Instagram followers and give you a legitimate strategy to help you do that, and then we're gonna talk about creating engagement and the buzz around your brand, consistently, and then we're going to talk about building that trust for your brands. So number one, increasing your followers. I'm going to assume that you know the basic ways to increase your followers like using hashtags. If you don't, you have a lot of basic steps to get into and there are so many resources out there that are awesome on Instagram. I'm going to jump ahead and give you one strategy that I really like that can help you to authentically, grow your following with quality people for your brand, which is really what I care about. So I want you to search for a hashtag for your ideal follower. Okay, and your ideal follower or viewer would use this hashtag, for example, if you're a brand expert living in Miami, Florida, who is wanting to work with local businesses that are also in Miami. I want you to search the hashtag Miami Small Business because that is what a small business who you want to work with, not because it's what you would use, it's what they would use. So I want you to find a few people or businesses that are using this hashtag online. So those are your ideal clients, spend a few seconds picking the businesses that you want to do this with, and that stand out to you can literally go into who pops up into that hashtag. And just, whatever pops up to you. I want you to pick a couple of recent posts of theirs that speak to you, and comment on them, and then go into their stories if they have a story for that day, and immediately comment on a story, and say something that's authentic. Like say I really appreciate this post, I totally agree, or whatever it is, and add some value. Major notes here. This is not a gimmick.

This is purely about me making a connection so make sure what you're saying is actually valuable, and you're not just dropping into their DMS and being cheesy they're going to delete you and block you do this, authentically for five accounts a day and see what happens, this should take you about one minute per account once you get pretty good at it so this is five minutes a day, and I want you to just give it a few weeks and see what happens to your account.

Okay, so now we're talking about creating engagement on Instagram and a buzz around your brand. And I'm going to give you a couple of really good ideas on how you can authentically, encourage your followers to engage more and just be more interested in what you're putting out there. This is a nurture strategy so it's really effective and getting people to know you and to be excited about you, this isn't necessarily a growth strategy so people aren't going to be finding you off of this you're just going to be showing the people who already follow you, who you are and what you do. And that's really really important. Right, we want those people who are following us to actually care, because you are.

You want to stay interesting to them, if you're just posting kind of BS and random quotes and things that aren't really showing us who you are, it's not going to keep us interested for various reasons.

One thing that I really love is taking us behind the scenes, so I want to see what your process is actually like, and one of the things that I see all the time. And I'm certainly guilty of it too is, once you become really, really strong in your industry and you start speaking that language, you forget that other people don't necessarily understand the process that goes into that industry right so it doesn't necessarily feel sexy to you, but it is the people who don't know a ton about what you do. So, for example, if you are doing branding photoshoots, take us behind the scenes on those branding photoshoots show us what it looks like so whether that means you have to hire someone to come and take those video on their phone, or you can have your mom coming through, it doesn't really matter. This does not have to be fancy, but we want to see the behind-the-scenes. If you're someone who's constantly at a computer and you're doing an Excel spreadsheet, show us what that Excel spreadsheet looks like and I know that might not sound super exciting to you, but we don't understand your process, so I promise you we want to know more about how you do this, we want to know the hard work you're putting into this, it's going to also build your credibility, too. So, you know a lot of people just imagine that what you do just happens, if you don't explain to them what the behind the scenes what process looks like your kind of doing a disservice for your own pricing as well so it helps you in a lot of different aspects. Alright. So, another thing that I love is posting a video weekly around a topic, so I post noteworthy Wednesdays on my Instagram stories. If you don't follow me on Instagram, these are basically quick lessons that are meant to give you something to think about in your business that's been showing up for me or my clients, so it's like a mini-podcast and I do this every single Wednesday. I see a ton of engagement around this, and it's probably because people learn to expect it, but also Instagram really likes that you do this consistently so I get rewarded in the algorithm they know I'm going to be showing up every single Wednesday and doing something around this. Additionally, people get used to seeing you do this, so some people even go on looking for it, you know I'm trustworthy, and that trust goes a long way and that's really what we're talking about over and over. If you feel that throughout this. This is about relationship building, nothing that I'm telling you is, again, this is just showing you how to actually build those relationships and what works, what works for me what works for my clients. So credibility which I keep mentioning is what we're going to go into last, and this is about building your trust. This is kind of everything. This is the whole point of what we're doing, you guys because trust essentially is what people buy from people who want to believe in you. And if they believe in you if they believe that you are good for them and they believe that you will align with them, if they believe that you're going to show up for them in a way that's really powerful. Then the sale becomes pretty easy because it's really about a relationship, you're not selling to them, you've been marketing to them the whole time and build that relationship.

So, how do we actually do that one really powerful tool is by giving social proof. This is something that you can do pretty easily in your stories on Instagram. And one way that I talk about all the times and you've heard me talk about this but this is something I want to drill into you and that is testimonials. So how do we use testimonials on Instagram? If you have someone that texts you something you can screenshot it and share it, it can be that simple. I also want you to do other variations of it too. I don't want to just see the text messages I also want to see if you ask for testimonials from clients that will rave about you and you know that you can put those into a pre-Canva template that you create. And then you can actually take those and put them into the highlight so you can create a highlight reel around your testimonials. You can also get testimonials that are sent to you in video form, which people love, because one of the issues with any testimonial is, of course, you don't know if that person completely made it up, and hopefully, they wouldn't, but it happens. And so one way to kind of help that is by getting the video so people can see the face, they know that it's really true. That's a wonderful way to boost your credibility.

If someone sends you an audio, text which happens with me because I work a lot with my one on one clients that work with me for four months. We talk over Voxer, which is like a walkie talkie app, so sometimes they'll say something to me on the walkie talkie app, and I will ask if it's okay to transcribe it into a testimonial, and then I'll use it sometimes on Instagram sometimes on my website, sometimes in emails. You can obviously repurpose them throughout too.

I also have templates that walk you through how to use these testimonials, how to get them from clients, and these are pre-composed emails that you can basically copy and paste and send out in a drip campaign, which is just a fancy way of saying, sending them a couple of emails in a sequence. So, if you want that template that I'm talking about, you can hop over to my website where it's live there right now. And you can grab it for free, or you can go into my private Facebook group which is also called through the marketing lens, the same name as the podcast, so you can get immediate access to it in the guide page of the Facebook group, along with, like, 10, other free PDFs that are so freaking good these are freebies that I've created for clients that are basically asking for it and I know it's a good way to show up for you guys. And it's all in there, and if you sign up for the Facebook group, you get automatic access to all of them. So that's a couple of things that you can be doing right now, to your Instagram game.

What I want to drive. Major.

Is your social media like your Instagram is only going to take you so far. Is it a crucial part of your marketing? Yes, but it's only a sliver of everything I'm using it in a way that really allows you to conduct a build up credibility, and really only getting followers who care what you're doing. That's so important. And I want you to give people a reason to find you. Elsewhere, like your Facebook group, or emails or your websites where they can learn more about X, Y, and Z, or a video series or podcast. People do purchase off Instagram, of course, but depending on your price point is truly a nurturing place where you can create loyalty to your brands. And that takes more work than just, okay I have all these followers let me sell. Right. When I get lucky sometimes, of course, Instagram is free, but if you're offering membership or a high ticket offer or you want to increase the cart average sale which is really important if your products based or service based but certainly if you're a product-based that's really where you need to be focusing and this is where going outside of Instagram is really important. Okay, and it's also really necessary to seek consistent sales because you don't want them to just have a one-time purchase, we want them to be invested in our brands.

Okay so let's review here. We are using Instagram to grow our following and lead people to find us and I shared a really cool strategy that will take you about five minutes a day to help you to do that. We are also nurturing our followers by showing them behind the scenes and peeking their interests.

And we are also building our credibility and showing people how many other people are enjoying our products and services through testimonials that are legitimate and putting those into our stories. So I hope these effective tools are insanely helpful in your Instagram game.

You guys, as always I'm endlessly grateful for you trusting me with your time. These episodes are made with love and they are meant to propel your business forward because I wish I had someone who's guiding me.

So if you like what you're hearing, please, please rate and review this podcast for me, that is how these little engines grow. I will see you next week on Through The Marketing Lens.