Lessons
Class Introduction
03:51 2Why Instagram
05:02 3First Steps: Goal Setting
04:12 4Instagram By The Numbers
04:06 5Business Profiles
08:30 6Profile Setup
13:33 7Content Best Practices
21:37 8How To Leverage Hashtags
19:27Lesson Info
Social Media Voice
Social media voice. So regardless of what social media platform you're using, it's really important and helpful to develop a consistent and strong social media voice. This is important for many reasons. It really helps to show your audience who you are on the inside and on the outside. So like any relationship, it's really about letting people get to know you in order to build that trust. People wanna see the personalities behind the brands that they're following. In terms of developing a tone for your voice, you wanna have a different tone depending on whether your goal is connecting versus informing. So if it's something like you're connecting or networking with people, it can be very casual but if it's something that is more informative, you might wanna be more authoritative about it and take on that different tone. Generally speaking, you wanna choose one tone or the other to be sort of that voice that you follow, that you stick with throughout your social media time and I like to ...
do this cocktail party, this cocktail party analogy. So really, if you envision yourself at a cocktail party and you don't know anybody in the room. We're all at this cocktail party. If I come up to you and I say, hi, my name is Pei, do you wanna pay money to come take my photography workshop, that doesn't give a great first impression, right? That's like not a good way to get people to buy into your product or who you are or what you're selling. What you should do is say hi, I'm Pei, who are you, what's your name, get to know the person. I'm a photographer here in the Bay Area. Oh, you're also a photographer? That's really cool, what kinda work do you do and then if you're interested, later in the conversation, if you're interested, if you're a photographer, I'm also teaching a class in Santa Fe at the end of this month. Maybe look into it if you're interested, right? So it's about approaching as yourself in a way that's genuine so you get to know a person before you make that hard sell, right, and there doesn't even have to be a sell, right? It can just be the networking piece of it where you're getting to know the people that you're meeting and letting that relationship build over time. In finding your voice, it's really important to think about who you are and what your business is. You should ask yourself as a business what your goals are and who your audience is and if you are especially this is important if there are multiple people running the same social media accounts so if you have a social media marketing team and five people are running the Twitter account or the Instagram account, it's important to have guidelines that tell these people how they should be interacting and what tone that they should be using on social media. Once that's been developed, revisiting it over time is really important because a business changes over time, your goals change over time, your audience changes over time so what you established a year ago might not still be relevant today. In selecting your social media voice, you really wanna strive for a balance of personal and professional and you want it to be authentic, relatable and really easy to maintain. I think that's the key thing that it has to be easy to maintain. If it's not easy to maintain, you're not gonna be able to stick with it over time. It's best if it's something that feels good to you. I feel like I have a good social media voice but it's just my voice. I'm not trying to adopt any persona. I've thought about working for companies in the past that had very strong distinct social media voices. One of them was a photo company that had, it was more like a fun, peppy vibe and they were like, can you write a blog post in our voice and I sat down and I literally could not do it. So I didn't apply for the job 'cause I couldn't do this other social media voice. That didn't feel real to me. So that's really important. When you're hiring people to be your marketing team, think about whether or not they can actually maintain this for you.
Ratings and Reviews
fbuser e957a995
I thought this class was great. It was more of like a beginner's crash course into Instagram, so I would have liked more specific actionable steps as to how one could grow an audience versus an overview of what Instagram is. Yet, I would still recommend the class to people since it's a good launching pad into instagram.
Margaret Lovell
For the most part, I used Instagram in the most basic way. Because I want to promote my photography, I have to get better about how I use it. I took this class because Pei is also a photographer, and I specifically sought out her opinion on the platform. For those more intermediate and advanced users, they might not get as much value from it. However, I recommend the course to others who want to build their profile and understanding of how Instagram can be beneficial to their business.
chrissy hormann
Definitely not for "growing" your audience. Class is for absolute Instagram beginnners. Worked for me, but the title is misleading. She teaches the basics of setting up your profile, etc. I was expecting to learn some tips and tricks about photography for IG, given that she is a photographer, but it was more about administrative things, captions, connecting with your audience. All good points, just not quite what I was expecting. Glad I got this on a large discount deal. Ok at that price but I'm glad I did not pay full price for this.
Student Work
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