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Lesson Info

Brainstorm Story Content

Okay, step two is brainstorm your story content. What kind of content can you share for your launch and your stories? Like that is the question. So you wanna, remember when we went back to the pre-launch promotion, we talked about all the things that you need to get together for your collateral, so just like your feed and your photo shoot, storyboarding for your stories is a little bit different. I should be endorsed by post-its too, (laughing) I'm just gonna throw all these brands out there, 'cause I have like every color post-it note all over the place. So you can storyboard using your post-it notes, and have color-coded post-its, smiling in the back, love it. With what, you know, when are you gonna, you know, have the call to action? Where is, you know, the movement, the video? Until you're comfortable doing stories in a way that's gonna drive traffic to your feed, and where you're trying to get people to go, use post-it notes, and put it on the wall, and you can look at the post-it...

notes while you're, like, in the throes of the story, and just check it off. Now when I did Instagram stories takeovers for Adobe Spark, and Social Media Marketing World, and Later Media, and a few other brands, that's what they wanted me to do. They wanted me to storyboard what I was gonna share in three to five clips, and I had to stay on the story, like I, you know, they only wanted a certain amount, which is hard for me sometimes, 'cause I can go down a rabbit hole. But I was purposely sharing from the story that I had, the story board from the post-it notes to give the whole story, which was the value for the content when I did the Instagram story takeover. This is another way that you can get new followers is by doing an Instagram story takeover with someone who has the audience that you have or you want to have. You can message them and you can share story takeovers. The way that it can get a little tricky is that password log-in situation, and giving that away. Don't give it away to anybody, don't give it away. I have so many people that message me that they say they lost their account, can I help them? I do not work for Instagram. Cannot help you, sorry. (laughing) But what you can do is you can do the stories, you can save them to your camera roll, upload them to a Dropbox link, and then download them, and this is what I did with Marie Forleo, when I did a launch with her. I had asked her a series of questions that I had written out, and I had sent, emailed them to her, and Marie sent me back all of them, answered, in a Dropbox folder, so that I could do a q and a in my stories. And if you look at my feed in Instagram, under my stories, it now lives as a highlight. I have q and a for my clients, but I got the idea that I should go do more q and a after I did it with Marie. So if you've done something that's successful, like this q and a that I did with Marie, I'm like, wait, I should be doing that with my community, let them ask me questions, I'll answer them, and those answers can live on forever in highlights that we'll talk about. Okay, step-by-step process. Everyone has a step-by-step process on how they do things, right? So that's interesting to people. How do you do your Youtube channels? How do you batch your Youtube channels? How do you set yourself up for success for a photo shoot? How do you make a smoothie? How do you lift weights a certain way so you don't hurt your back, or pull your hamstring? What do you do if you pull your hamstring? Like what's the step-by-step process of doing something a certain way, and teach that, and just workshop it out on a post-it note. Also, blog snippets, so I talked about blogging earlier. You can talk about a snippet in the blog to get attention back to your website, back to your blog. Interviews, interview clips are great. It's a great way for you to bring in someone else's energy into your story. So often I will ask people for, I'm gonna ask you guys, for a clip at the end of teaching, and I'll say do you wanna be in my stories? I will tag you. People will see you. It's a beautiful thing. You can tell me what you learned from me teaching today. And everyone's like, "Yeah, I'll tell you." So I did this at Social Media Marketing World, and I had like a hundred people around me wanting to do a clip, and it's great. So think about how you guys can bring in other people. Again, remember, having variation is important, seeing different faces. So you can just ask people for the clip, they can send it to you via text, they can send it to you via direct message, and you can upload it into your story. Event highlights. We're at an event, Social Media Marketing World. The highlights, what's going on that's not in the room? You know, what's going on in the room? What are the highlight? You can share those. Behind the scenes, everyone loves behind the scenes. If people could only see you from the internet writing all your notes right now, (laughing) they'd be like, "I wanna be in this seat next time," so maybe you guys can apply (laughing). And then the exclusive deals. We talked about this earlier, exclusivity, having something only available in your story that you don't offer in your feed, so that will keep people coming back. And then showcasing the company culture. Everyone loves to know, like we, on our account, the SPZ team, we often show the company culture. Rachel Morgan and I, when we travel together, like the situation with our outfits, with the green juices, where we're goin', the blow-dry, like all the things that we do sitting down planning our meeting, like, people like to know the company and the people behind the business and the brand. So let's look at Crazy Richard's Peanut Butter, company culture. Love this. They are all about philanthropy and doing... This is a family-run business, as I said earlier. On the weekends, they give away free breakfast, then lunch on school days, they go out on the weekend, tonight we helped pack enough weekend bags for 500 students for two months. I love the cause marketing piece of this business and brand. They are do, and you see all the family members, and they talk about their aunt who works there. And you get to know Nanette, you know, they show you all the peanut butter on the shelf, and then they have the company culture photo, that was a video at the end, but you know they're ready to roll, they're all in their branded t-shirts, they've got their color, the teal blue, so this is a really great story. It sits in giving back, which is a highlight, so if you go to their highlight, you can all see this. It's there right now. So this was a story that was well done, and they kept it and saved it as a highlight called "Giving Back." That's one of their highlights. Okay, so your stories should build upon the value you offer in your feed. There should not be a disconnect. People should feel that same consistency that we talked about earlier. You wanna make sure that you are sharing exclusive content, and you wanna use both a mix of video and photos in your stories. Let's look at May Designs, back to May Designs. So a great way to get engagement, let's talk again about the algorithm, is to get people to take action in all the neighborhoods of Instagram, whether it's the feed, stories, live, it all affects the algorithm and the engagement, so... They were launching, or actually, they wanted to get people to vote for what your favorite pick is, there were two more photos, I couldn't fit it on the slide, but they had all these great journal covers. Remember I said this is how their business started, and they're starting to launch clutches based on designs? And they're getting people to vote on which is their favorite. Now getting people to vote and doing polls is activity in your stories. It's action in your stories. But that little airplane icon in your stories, you can share any clip that you watch in any story to any of your friends on Instagram. Did you guys know this? Few of you did. Few of you don't. Okay, so tapping the airplane icon, if you wanted to say, "Oh my gosh, they have llamas, "my mom loves llamas," and you ask your sister, "Should we buy this for Mom "for Mother's Day?" You tap on that airplane icon, you send it to your sister, and she's like, "Buy it, that's great." So you can quickly just share your favorite business or brand right within Instagram stories. Here's another example, Living Proof, Inc. Anybody know this awesome company? They're based out of Cambridge, Massachusetts, MIT start-up. I don't know if it's start-up, it's manufactured right across the river from me. And so they had given me bunch of samples that are amazing, I love the shampoo, it works really well. Can you tell I like hair products a little bit? (laughing) But anyway, what's really good about this is that they alternate, this sits in their smooth highlights, that's why their name's not here, I listed it here for you guys, and they alternate video with high-quality photos, product shots, we talked about this earlier. And she's happy, she's smiling, the videos are really good. This is high production, this is a brand that has high production assets from, you know, I'm sure they have a photographer, a videographer on hand, and they consistently use their branded color, notice the text, notice step one, step two, and they're sharing that step-by-step process, and that's it. And then they said shop, at the end they give that call to action, and you can swipe up and you can go right and buy the Restore Smooth Blowout Concentrate. So right from your story, you can drive traffic. Once you have 10,000 followers to swipe up and go buy. Okay, so I always say that it's the real, the raw authenticity that really connects you to other people. So show that in your stories. Show the real of the behind the scenes. What it takes to do that blowout, do it right. Well right is (laughing) or the way you want it, like this really, connect to your audience that is interested in the product that you're selling. Here's an example of me doing a oh my gosh Instagram breaking news, I have an Insta-news in highlights, and so I went on video, because I like to let people know stop, there's something new you need to learn. This was only two clips, and this was a story that was like the beginning and the end, and I just used OMG, and you can now tag, use hashtags, and at-mentions in your bio. And so for those of you that have two Instagram accounts, you can link your personal account to your business and vice-versa, or maybe you're in a brand partnership for the week, or you wanna link Creative Live, and let people know you're here in the audience. You can put that in your bio, you can change it at any time, you can change your hashtags at any time, and that was news, and I wanted people to see it. Now down here, on the bottom, for those of you that don't use stories, I want you to know that you can view how many people have seen each clip along the process of the story.