Lessons

Lesson Info

Most Common Instagram® Mistakes

these mistakes that you're all gonna put up your hand and say, I promise I will not make any of these because I am a business owner and business owners don't do these things. Okay, The 1st 1 is a poor user name. One that does not match up to your brand has nothing to do with who you are and what you're selling or what your services are. And again, I talked about this earlier. When you have a numbers in your name, it's just confusing, so it shouldn't be difficult to find. And it, you know, most people say to have it be a short as possible. But I say haven't be what represents your brand. I mean, simple green smoothies is a long user name, but they're owning that. They got it on Twitter, and they're very consistent. So I think I might just ask anybody here. I changed one user name in the live audience because she had numbers. But is there anyone that's not happy with their user name? Yeah, we were trying to raise him. So should I talk about Holly for a second? Just to let people know wha...

t we did? Well, I got an instagram, I think when I was in London and I first heard about it. And so Holly is a pretty common name in London, so I just had to do it with my eyes, like Holly in 1963 because that was I would remember that. So I was looking for more like I had to remember it. I say. So that's how it went. But now you put it to my whole name. So that's a yes. So was your whole name taken? No, it's Holly Tanner style. So it sounds very official. Yeah. Yeah. So you're all fixed up your good? I'm good. And now you can announce that on Twitter and Facebook and or Instagram. You can just say you user name, but I am curious because I actually go by traveling artisan on my Gmail in my other accounts. And when you say other accounts, what accounts? My my website, you, Earl and my and my tag when I'm talking in creative life and things. So I don't know if that is your days. Is everybody or Yes. So you need to decide. Is it your name or the name of your business? um, it's OK if you have a different user name than your website. Okay, Um, but in your bio, which I'm gonna talk about next, you should reference that. So people know and you have the opportunity for a language I'm gonna talk about as well. Mona Lisa, you want to talk about yours? Um, yeah, I just, um mine is my name. So it's Mona Lisa on Davia. And it's different than my twitter because it's too long for my twitter. So then I have ML on Davia and that I have morally sound to be a And, um, you were talking about this earlier. So what would you signature? What? Do you have a website as well? Yes. Any website is the same thing. Mona lisa, India dot com. So I think you're okay, cause your website go there if any. And you can't change it on Twitter because it's too long. You only have a certain amount of characters. And are you very active on Twitter or not? Really not Really. Okay, so then I don't think it's the issue, because if you have instagram be the place where you're gonna stake your claim and own it and become a leader. What you do? I think you're good. Okay. Okay. I actually have a question. So I was recently, like, called out on my instagram name, which I have everything across the board as my first name. My first name dot com, My first name on Twitter but on Twitter and on Instagram, I started it off with an underscore. And then somebody said, Don't do that. Don't start it off is an underscore And then your name Is that a big No, no. Like here, you know, under school not Is your name not available? Is that why it's not so? And you have a lot of Twitter is Twitter? I see you do tweet. I do? Yeah. I mean, I wouldn't say I have a ton, but I have some. And what can I ask you? Why They said no on. I don't know. I just I don't know anything about instagram until now. I think the fact that you're consistent on both people will will start to recognize that. And I think it's pretty unique. Like I when I went to your twitter when I was about 4 30 this morning, you were up six, and we were tweeting. I saw that, and I thought it was eye catching in different. So you stood out because of that in my eyes. Now, actually, the reasoning that was given is that when they were searching for me on instagram, they weren't finding me by my name, like typing it out. But if I said underscore, she said, Well, actually, when I do underscore, you're the only person that comes out. So there you go. I said, So you might want to say in your Ohio, you know, like jokingly say underscores. Okay. Like, we could come up with a little at a little fun thing to say about the underscore. Okay? And I think it works because you have it on both. Okay, Great. I did notice that this morning, and I thought it was unique and different, and I don't know anyone else doing it. Wow. You can stand out in your I'm a Trailblazer, Chris. And when you start your instagram account, we'll see if it lines up to 20 0 Okay. So the second thing is no bio. A lot of people are guilty of this. They have a name. They have a website. I'm like, what do you dio? And I'm not clicking your bio to get off Instagram to go find out. So I need to know right here and you have 100 and 50 characters and you can even use emojis, which is awesome. I like emojis If it works for you in certain parts of the bio, just kind of, you know, some people do it in a really creative way, and I've seen people for their email Just put an envelope, Um and that just is their email address. So you can see what other people doing and what you're attracted to in the bio. And this is me being a bad a bad into user because there's no bio, and there's no, um, you are out like this is really a you on instagram. Um, So the other thing is that I see frequently is that there are blurry images. Okay, so this is a day with blurry images. In my opinion, there is no reason to be posting anything blurry when you have a phone that could take 100 pictures quickly. I have one exception to the rule that you know, right? Lynn because you did it back. Okay, so I want to tell the story. My one exception to the rule is if you have a picture with someone who you deem famous or is like a celebrity in your eyes and it's only one and it's a little blurry. I say rocket out on instagram. I say use the filters, do your little magic. There's 20 filters and now there's 10 changes. And I think Lynn, that's how you and I first connected. You asked me It's OK. OK, OK, so go ahead and tell your story. I think this is good for me. What? I think it was when you were on the hang out with Martin Barrington. Yeah, and, uh and you said this rule and then I posted it was geared with Gary V. Oh, yeah, I was at his book signing, and my girlfriend, like, took the picture really quickly at the end while he was signing our books. And it was a crappy picture, but so I think what I did is I made it black and white. You know, you do the job like I would totally post the blurry picture with Gary and they came back. He said, Yeah, I posted. Yeah. Hey, you. It's blurry. Which is that? What? I remember seeing in smiling. So she asked. Yes. So she did. Exactly what I said was okay. The coolest thing is is that Gary Vaynerchuk went back and left a comment. Said, Yeah, okay. And I just thought that was so cool. Like, he's the other person. He's a famous guy in the photo, and now he's engaging with her. And you must have been beaming when that happened. Right? Hey, horse like Okay, okay. And then the earl. So you have one. You are l where you can link Teoh. And we talked about this a little earlier. I want you all to know that you can change it at any time. Okay, so you might be running a contest for a short period. You can get in there and change it. I recommend creating a custom bit Lee where you can track the girl. I do that for my instagram. You are also I know how many click throughs air coming over from looking at Bentley dot com so bitterly dot com is a web base where you can create your own custom. Um, U r l and track it, and you can also use Google analytics on and set it up so that you could just see what's coming over to your website with Instagram. But that requires a net expert to help you on that. And that's not my space. But I do know people that have tracked the traffic from instagram right to the website, and I'm gonna talk about a little bit later in detail of the Bentley so that if that was a little confusing, I'll go through it a little bit, and then this is the one. This is the one that I just can't believe. I see over and over again that the setting is on private. I just if your settings on private, I don't even ask if I can follow you because it to me it says you're not seriously in business, and I don't want to go in and figure out what it is that you're doing now. If you it's a personal account, that's totally fine. But business owners, it's just This is not what you dio. You want it to be public unless is an example, unless you were trying to put all your artwork in doodles in one space and your re configuring your account is reorganizing it. Um, Carolyn Lim is an amazing artist. Um, look, A line is her account ally and l I n a life. And see, I think I might not be saying that I have to look that up. Oh, it's right here. Yeah. L I c o l I n e is her her actual account. This is one of her featured accounts. And when you get to her, she is what brought me to pumpkin and sunshine because she's an artist and she drove Drew a picture of pumpkin, which is the dog, and I connected all these amazing accounts all from her. She is an amazing artist. Um, I think we have some of her artwork celebrated over here that we can pick out later. So I saw that she had done this like, That's brilliant under construction. Wait till it's done, and then you can go in and see what I got going on. So for those of you that want to delete accounts and reallocate, delete photos or video because they're not quite lining up with what you think you should be doing now, Based on what you're hearing here, it's OK. You can just go in and tell me you're organizing and then put it on public. So I thought that was really clever. And I learned I saw this a couple weeks ago. So again, you know something new that I discovered that if that was really smart, especially for artists, Right? Um, and then here's what I see a lot of a relevant content for the content curator. So the jewelry makers posting pictures of fancy cars or the health nuts posting pictures of eating at McDonald's, you know, or the business we don't need to see if your if it's a business account, we don't need to see pictures of your dogs and your kids all day long. This is what's gonna turn people away if you start posting these kind of things in your account, so you want to make it very relevant to your work. Okay, My classic one is like, I don't want to see the elevator buttons in the hotel when you going up to your room? Because I've seen that, too, like, really show me build and so This is what we've been talking about. Hashtag strategies, right? You want to get You know, I always say that the magic to Instagram is in the hashtags. I mean, that's the magic, because when you start using them strategically, you start seeing engagement go up. Likes coming in. You heard Natalie talk about her hashtag. Although all the guests on the Google hangouts have a custom hashtag have a strategy, did the research you can use up to 30 hashtags proposed, which we talked about not necessarily need to dio. But what I want to say to all of you as a homework assignment is I would come up with your 30 relevant hashtags and you might start at the top of your marketplace and then niche down so that you get more specific about what makes you different than the travel agent. What makes you different in the jewelry designer or the photographer? But what type of photographer are you? And then we heard this from Emma Johnson. She said it beautifully. We you don't need to overshare like over sharing is gonna turn me off if you keep sharing, you know too much content and clogging up my feet with things that are just all of the same for that day. It's to sales. It's to me, me, me and not giving so. And even though people eat 3 to 5 times a day, we don't need to see your food 3 to 3 to five times, and that's the most. That's the most popular thing that you see is food, because we're eating often. But unless you're a foodie and that's your space, you shouldn't be showing it or something like that. Absolutely. So I said, if it's not your space years, if you're in the health space or if you're in culinary or if your chef absolutely show it in the context of what you're doing. But for people that are literally just showing their pizza and they're they're like, you don't need to see that right And then this is one of my really big pet piece is buying followers. It's so easy to Dio. It's like so easy to say. I want 1000 followers okay and I could buy them for $10. I want people to think that I'm fabulous on Instagram and this will come through right away because if your conversion is you have 400 post and 30,000 followers and no engagement on your post. It's so easy to see that you bought followers and anyone can click in to who you're following. And if they see blank avatars, they'll know that you purchase followers. So if you're starting that in a place of being, um, not authentic, they're not gonna trust you, in my opinion, So there's a lot of people that do by followers. I don't endorse it. I don't suggest it suggested all, Asai said earlier. We all started. Zero. It's OK. It's exciting to kind of watch your progress and track your progress.