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Instagram® Monetization Strategies

Here's a photo of my adorable twins on the right. They actually let me take this picture. Usually like Mom. Really? Another picture? Mikey. I need it. So what's so cool is the artist that drew. This is on the Google hang out on the left. Her name is Holly, and Holly sat at my round table when I was teaching Instagram at Mass. Massachusetts Women's Conference in Boston. I did a workshop on INSTAGRAM, and how do you create a featured account? She's one of these artists, like many of you who was confused with Do I keep my art and my personal feed? Do I take it out? I'm a bridal fashion illustrator. I don't know what to Dio and again because she's young. I'm just so attracted to these young entrepreneurs and trying to make it happen. I told her that you are so talented I would totally show your stuff in a separate account. So she created her own featured account on And remember, I talked a little early about the watermark. Well, here's her watermark. That's oh so faint, but nobody can stea...

l it if they re post that you see it. So for my daughter's graduation from high school. I created this image for them and they were like O M g Mom, this is so awesome. Is she famous? I'm like, Yeah, I think she's famous and if you know whether she's famous need. But a year from now, I think she's gonna blow up because she's so talented. And so what's really cool is not only is Holly on the call, but we have Kate and Sam on the call who are friends of Holly now. Kate searched the hash tag custom illustration, because that's what Holly does. That's one of her Hashtags and found Holly's account and loved all the images that she saw and decided to purchase one. Because she doesn't just do model, she also does. Still, she does gorgeous macaroons, and she does hydrangeas, and she's just so, so talented. So Kate bought one of her pictures, and she posted it on their one of their account. Sam and Kate Design and tagged Holly at mentioned Holly and Holly reposted it because that's what you do. Someone's going to show Let me repost it back to me and they became, as they said, BBs on Instagram. I don't even know if they've met each other in person. And so they collaborate on product projects on a regular basis and on giveaways. Teoh. So this is a great segue way into a lot of what you are asking on how they're doing. Just that. Let me just pull up their account names so you can see that. And we can We can bring him on creativelive. Hey, Holly. Hi. How are you? I'm wonderful. Okay, so that is an artist studio. You're rocking. The group will hang out right now. Okay. So, um, and is Kate, and you guys aren't too. Okay, Just give me a sec. I'm sorry. It's like I got to get the questions for you guys because they're different for everybody. Hey, you guys Okay? Okay. So I'm gonna ask this question to both of you. And since Kate and Sam, you're on right now and you look fabulous. We wanted to hear from you. How did you turn your passion into a business and because you to have two different accounts? I think that would be kind of fun for you to tell your story. Okay. So, as Sam and Kate Photography, I'm Kate this is Sam. We are natural outside light photographers in Arizona. Our business comes to a screeching halt once it hits 90 degree, though, because we're outside all the time on. And we made secret camera straps for ourselves. Just a cute photo shoots and our clients loved him. So we're sitting here going, Why don't we make these and sell them for a little extra money in the summer? We had no idea that response to our product we set up a featured account of salmon Kate design are Sand Kate. Photography is our original one. And, uh, we set up Sam and Kate designed for market research. We linked RFC account in the bio and, you know, all let loose, and it's been incredible. We've been using our passion of photography to make incredible, attractive photos to market our product. And we've had amazing results in the last two months, and we've been living it without the effective hashtags that we learn from sue and interacting with this instagram community. We would not have had the same results, so it's been amazing. Um, yeah. Okay. Holly, I'd love to hear from you as well. Absolutely. My mom as you mentioned started with you. We met at the Masters women's conference in December. I sat around table like you said, um, from there, and made my featured account. Um, I started networking with fashion bloggers who are pretty much my biggest market right now. Um, I work closely with one blogger named Lauren Ash with a towel, and I illustrate one look for her every month. And from there, I think other bloggers started to recognize me. Um, similar to Sam and Kate. I have my FC, um, link in my bio. So that leads people who are looking at my instagram toe where they can purchase all my prince and custom illustration. That's great. I wanted you to talk about, um, you know the process. You and I spoke about this earlier The process that you take your order like how you take your orders and how you become selective at who you're taking your order from. Because you're inundated with people now wanting you to do their to do art. For them to do custom work for them, right? There's been a huge demand since I met. You want to comment on my post and say how do I get this custom illustration? I love it. I want one. Um, I point them in the direction of my bio, which has my email link or my website link. Either that or directly just write my down my email for them to contact me at, um, once they make the initial contact, I asked them what the direction they want to go in. They send me photos like photo reference photos of themselves and the garments they want illustrated. And from there, I make her sketch similar to what I did with you. Love what you did. It was fun. The whole process is fun. She even sent me videos of the process of her creating them. It was great. Let's stay on you, Holly, for one more minute that I'm gonna go back to Sam and Kate. So because you're creating art for other people, do you feel the pressure to constantly be creating art for your instagram feed? And is it just is it just your content for your feet? Or is what you're showing on your feed? What you're commissioned to dio and sharing what other people are paying for you to dio. So the balance of that. Yeah, it's kind of a combination of bulls. I really love the custom work. I love pretty much everything I do. But as far as the things that are not custom, I research what's trending, and I do my sketches based off of that. So, for example, right now pineapples are huge. They're everywhere they're in, they're in fashion, their art. They're everywhere. So I just recently did a watercolor illustration of pineapples with the hashtag pineapples and pineapple print pardonable watercolor. And that's kind of how I attract people. A post I recently saw. I think it was your last one. It was a fashion post and there was an anchor bag in it with that bag a designer bag that hired you to do that illustration. Or did you do it and use the designer Thio Thio, gain more followers? That's actually whether my very close friend streams Lindsay Tia, she owns Wendy. Tia was the handbag line. Okay, She's also for Massachusetts, So I did the sketch for her. We have a bunch of events coming up, so it's kind of another girl promoting another girl. Yeah, yeah, and it's great that you can draw in whatever you want to promote into your illustration, right? Absolutely great. Thank you. Okay, so we're gonna go back to Kate and Sam. I would love for you ladies to share how you leverage your featured account to bring people back to your photography, which is the core business that you're in. You just I happened to stumble upon this awesome opportunity is designers and creating the sequin strap and your used and that's your more active account. But that's like what I've been teaching them is don't you might go down one path and think this is it. And then you might have a turn and you need to adjust. And you're the perfect example of we're photographers and we have an INSTAGRAM account, and it's great, but we just created the sequence straps, and that's what people really want. And that's what we're selling. But we love doing photography. So, talking about that balance of the two accounts, we left portrait photographers Sam and Kate photography. We found it very challenging. As you just said, Teoh gain more followers and add traction to our instagram account. So we decided that research has shown us that people gravitate more towards products and war towards cute things that they can like versus clients, faces or strangers faces. And so we decided because of that research that we've branded our feature account of Salmon Kate design. And by doing that, we've strategically pushed our salmon Kate design followers back to our Sam and Kate Photography. And by doing that, you're not only getting us to tag or salmon Kate photography and all of our design aspects, but it's also giving us new followers going back to see him and Kate Photography and gaining new people. That's that's a great strategy because we talked about earlier of featured account and how to balance. So are you both managing both accounts? There's one of you managing one, and one of you is managing the other. No, I do all the social media. So I do the Facebook, the instagram and all that. And she's the I'm the man photographer. Got it. Nice balance. Yeah. Yeah. So if you guys were gonna leave a tip specifically, I would say to photographers, you know, although you're talking to artisans because of your straps, so I won't limit you, you You know Teoh, how about, say, things. If you can come up with three that you would share with everyone starting out as either a photographer or an artisan. To do that, you know that you've learned from your instagram journey because you started somewhere. And now you're somewhere else. That was not what you thought you were gonna be. Oh, yeah? Well, we had no idea which direction the sequence camera straps would go. So it was just an incredible explosion, and we knew that we had to keep our brands in focus. You know, ask photographers as Sam and Kate Photography. We have that brand. But how do we keep this dynamic eight design fluid with it? So we've consistently, um, and pay attention to key words here. Way we use always natural lighting. This is a huge tip for you guys. Make sure your products your colors or vibrant. You know your your pictures. Air clear. Make sure it's bright enough in the room. This is so important because that'll go with your flow of your visual story. If it's to Dr Room, you're gonna have color dull, grainy photos. Sorry s photographers. We really want to hone in on this one and then also pay attention. Your format. Either you're using filters or you're not using filters. You're either formatting all your pictures to be skinny. No, wait a little. Get in the way we want to hear coming late that you want to make sure that when people see your photo, they see you before they look at your user name. That's your brand. That's your aesthetic. Your look And that was so important for us creating a featured account. Like, how did we encompass us in that? So, you know, without posting the personal posts, though, you know, we answer your question Natural lighting, I think it's great. How about you, Holly? What would you say? Pretty much the same thing. I, um the quality of photos. Very important. Nice, clean, crisp photos. Um, also same thing that you keep on mentioning. I don't like to mix my personal photos with my art. It gets people confused us. So what they're looking at, um and also I do my etc sales based on follower milestones. So I just hit at 5000 followers last week, and I did a huge etc sale in this sale the sales were great and result of that. And I'm about to hit so and I will probably have another sale. That's awesome. Holly, I want you to share with everyone your work journey, Like what's happening this week for you. Because this is really a big success for you. Yeah, you have about toe leave my full time job to pursue this full time, which is amazing. It's more than I could ever have dreamt of. And I'm so happy and very excited Toe continue. I'm really I'm really excited for you. It's been great. Yeah. So, everyone you have to check out these two. They're just amazing. These three sorry, thes two accounts or three accounts? Actually, Holly, thank you so much. I'm really glad that you're here and again. Your your background. I mean, look at that artist. If you guys didn't take a picture of that, that is the instagram. Thanks, honey. Thank you. Around. Wow. Huh? Young entrepreneurs making money, doing what they love. Nothing better. So now that you've listened to them, does anyone have, like, ah ha moment or something? You want me to help you work through that? You're struggling with? Well, I'm somewhat of a creative visual artists. And so I'm loving thes two that you had a Z artists. I am listening to them. I struggle with this personal account verse I don't have Ah, What did you call the other major? Yeah, future. I can I don't have one set up. I don't know if I should or not. Um, but I'm loving there like having them. This resource is I'll go look at them. Yeah. So if you have any more advice about, um, how you are an artist, sort of, I don't know teas that apart, too. Yes. What I can say is, before you worry about having a featured account and a personal account, I say master instagram and all the buttons and understand how to use it as an application because you can add your feature account at any time and know that that's a goal. And maybe it's in three months. Or maybe it's in six months. But But I think feeling comfortable with your posting strategy. And you might even say this is what I'm thinking of doing on my featured account. Let me see how my personal friends and followers like it cause, quite frankly, on your personal account, it's people that know you personally, and your featured account is people from all over the world. So I love how Kate in Sam just happened to decorate a sequence strap for a photography shoot, and that is now a business that they have and that is the leader to their featured account. And when you look at the in, what's great is they have great photos, obviously of those products, because they're photographers. So I think that that is just so cool that that happened. And as an artist, I think that there's so many opportunities to celebrate and show what you create and see how people responding to your art. I liked, although that Yeah, yeah, I'm so partial Teoh. I mean, I think because I met Holly and person when she was kind of miserable at work and not understanding what to do and hear her announced that she's going to go full time fighting because artists struggle with time social media, creating my work and doing what I love. But they love being on Instagram and you can feel it in their the way they said it right? E o have that. I want you all Teoh experience the fun in the energy there. It really is. You just have toe own it and stake your claim. Thank you, Gloria. Eight actually brings up a really good point. I wanna I wanna put out here. You do keep, uh, really applauding the young entrepreneurs, but Gloria says something that I think it's great. It's people who are so young. Do you also have much to offer? And much to accomplish, Of course, were a mixed group rare, and it's inspiring for them. But there's so many other stories to of women that aren't young entrepreneurs having success. Exactly. Yes, I'm I'm I think partly because I have a 22 year old so and I started my first business, a 22 and I kind of wish I had a mentor. So I'm a little the the reason I'm so into these young entrepreneurs. I just love seeing that figure out at that young age to do what they love. And it's not a job. It's what they love to dio and women in their forties and older or just in general, I should say, when you wake up every day and you do what you love. That's the best feeling in the world when work doesn't feel like a job. But it's what you love to do and who you are. That's what we that's what we all want. And I really think we all can have that be when you're on instagram and rocking out your brand. Yeah, yeah, I mean, I could have said it better. Um, it just transcends age and culture and everything else that some people would think would be a barrier. It's just really tapping into what it is. And sometimes it's more that soul searching, isn't it, Like figuring that out and then take it off and using this as a amazing tool? Yeah, you know the word soul searching. I think you can do a lot of soul searching on Instagram, and it could just be from one post that you're a little vulnerable about posting about and telling a story that you're wondering if anyone's gonna like it or comment on it. And then, boom, you get 50 comments and you're like, Wow, I need to more of that. Anybody can do this. It's not right. It's not exclusivity. I mean, we've heard from 17 year old and, you know, successful businesses brands, you know, like you said, it's transcends any generation. And, yeah, the middle of the road age group. Yeah, basically, I had a job change, and so I had my ah ha moment. And, um, now I'm trying to transition that into doing what I love, and I really tried to make instagram a part of that. So, you know, maybe my ah ha moment wasn't because of instagram, but I'm incorporating that into what I'm doing, and this is a small success story, but I really didn't know anything about instagram. I started out I had about 30 followers. Basically, that's my friends and family on. And, um, you know who. Just like I kind of want to know where I'm traveling. Teoh and I started focusing on instagram. Probably I probably Metsu about six weeks ago or something like that at a at a conference in upstate New York. And, um, I'm up to 120 followers, just kind of really doing a few a few of the things that you've been teaching. It's hard. Teoh kind of absorb everything But I'd say, you know, taking three really major takeaways out of the things you've been teaching. One of them being the hash hash tag strategy has really been responsible for that growth. Because because these are people that I do not know these air all you know, people that have a presence on Twitter that I'm pulling over to instagram. Well, I think that's a huge success. Your number. I mean, you you implemented a hashtag strategy. You're attracting people you don't know. That's what's cool when it's not people in from for your family people that you're bringing over specifically from Facebook. And I think that's worth applauding and celebrating. Cheers. Thank you.