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How To Get More Instagram Fans

All right, so let's talk about instagram now, okay? So we've talked about facebook and I know so much of that content just went into facebook. I promise we'll get our break soon, but facebook is a really complicated beast. You know what? The algorithm and we're figuring out how to use it. So that's, why we spent so much time on that instagram is a lot easier, but I want to go through that in case you're wondering also how to get more fans. So, um, what I want you to do for everyone out there, if you haven't already, is to make lists of hashtags that you think your customers are likely to use, okay? And if you already have that list of hashtags, chances are you probably want to tweak that a little bit, okay? This is an ongoing thing. This research is going to take some time, but I'm going to talk to you about some of the tips that I found to be kind of best practices for figuring out what the best hash tags could be for you. So when you have these hashtags, what you can do is whenever i...

t relates to the post that you are posting about on instagram, you can use that hashtag use that list of hash tags you can save it in your notes. If you have an iphone there's a notes app or you can save and into ever note make it easy for you to just copy the list of hashtags and then paste it over into instagram so what this what this is going to do for you is when you have someone who's browsing the hashtag feed for just you know they're just browsing on there and if they if you have your photo tagged with that hashtag and if they like your photo they're going to come over and they're going to like it and I'm going to check out what other stuff you do s o that's one of the ways it's just a good practice a good habit to get into is to start hashtag in your photos and here's here's a really great strategy that I actually learned from susan peterson of freshly picked if you guys are familiar with her she makes these adorable baby moccasins and she has a huge instagram falling she was on shark tank I'm a big fan of her so this is the strategy that she used to grow her facebook page her instagram page really quickly was she has her list of hashtag she goes in there and into she searches that hashtag and then she she can bring up a feed of all of the pictures that are tagged with that hashtag and then she'll go into all those pictures and she'll start liking every photo and what you can do is if you find a photo that you really like leave comments, comments, work better than just liking because when you do this what's going to happen leaving comments are liking is that person is going to notice that you've left a comment or that you've liked their picture, they're going to get a notification for most of us who have it turned on or even when you log in, you know how that the red bar pops up to say, like, how many new fans you have any comments and likes? You have come up the orange bar? Sorry, not red, so they're going to be notified when you've liked they're pictures or commented and if they're interested in to see like, oh, who just checked out my profile who just liked my posts? They're going to come over to your own instagram profile and if you have a great feat, if you have a great bio, they're going to follow you. So I want you to create a daily schedule, a routine for doing this so like two or three times a day or at least at least once a day make it a habit before you go to bed before you have breakfast or before you have lunch just make it a habit it's pretty easy with one hand you can gold scroll through and like these photos and this is also what I found online there's a five three, one rule where for every five likes and three comments, you leave for every person, you're going to get one new follower and that's been pretty consistent. I mean, of course, it's not always one hundred percent accurate, but it's a pretty good, um, return rate let's talk about choosing the right hashtags, so really think about your customers think about the ideal customer you have on instagram what air they posting about? Oh, um, and when they post something, what hashtags are they using to post with those pictures? What are your customers posting about? So this is a major mistake that I see a lot of makers and artisan designers make is unless you want to attract other people like us. It's not always a good idea to use your materials or supplies this hashtag so as an example hashtag sterling solar hashtag leather hashtag yarn hashtag palmer clea your customers are not using those as hashtags unless there are other makers and if other makers were customers. That's fine, write what you really want to kind of mind read, and this is where knowing your ideal customers really important you want to we we get in their minds think about what are they posting on instagram? What hashtags are they using? And again, creating this hashtag list is going to take time to research what you're going to spend a lot of time going into instagram trying to find your ideal customer. But what's going to happen is when you're you basically start off just making your first educated guess with what you think your customers are using. So in terms of my own jewelry brand, because it's such a food themed brand, I think about all of the people who are posting pictures of their lunch off their meals on dh then I go in there and then I start so I start with like hashtag food. Now hashtag food is a very general hashtag it's, not a good idea to use general hashtags and talk a little bit more about that, but I start with that and then I start looking through all the posts and then for any posts that I find interesting, I want to tap into that and I'm gonna check out the person's profile and I look at all the other pictures she's posting and I try to see like, is there someone who could buy my jewelry? Is this someone like this, her style match my style, and if she does, I might choose to follow her or I'll go into the post the pictures that she posts and I try to see what other hashtag has she been using for her pictures? So from that I was able to find hashtag nom nom hashtag nami hashtag foodie heaven hashtag foodie gaz um, you know it's only hashtag like that there are more specific than just hashtag food or even hashtag yummy think is going to be a little bit too generic, so that's kind of the process that I normally go through when I'm trying to figure out what hashtag stu's starts somewhere and then just start looking at pictures and see what pictures stand out to you, what pictures are coming from people who you think would like your stuff. So in terms of your posting schedule, it's a great idea to just post once a day that's pretty good that's what I do for my tiny hands jewelry instagram account if you want to check that out, it's currently got twenty point three thousand followers twenty thousand twenty twenty thousand three hundred followers and that's all they do just once a day, you know, it's pretty low maintenance, you don't have to post any more than that and again, go backto icon of square, and you can check out when when is the best time for you to keep posting that and here's here's, an interesting piece of information that I found when I, you know, doing my research and when I'm consulting with some of my one on one clients is in my time and instagram, I've seen a lot of great feeds like amazing photos really branded feeds, but then it's really surprising to see that some of these feeds have, like ten followers, two hundred followers. So what I'm trying to say here is that just having a really great feat of really great photos and if it's really on brand with your brand and your aesthetic it's not enough to attract someone to come like and follow your page, right you after you actually have to do the marketing, so this is, you know, going back to that if you build it, they will not come if you have a great instagram feed, just because you have a great instagram feed doesn't mean they'll come. So what I want you to be posting like the actual content is kind of mix it up. Post pictures about your product, post pictures about your life and your business behind the scenes. Obviously, you want to strike a good balance, so people really come to your feed. I'm not gonna talk about this in a little bit, so you you're actually a shop, right? Your first priority is you're there to sell something, so make it clear that your shop so if all of your posts are pictures of your kids and pictures of the food you ate and then like ten rolls down, you see a picture of your product that's not enough you need to make it very clear that when someone lands into your page that they start to see pictures of your product, make it clear to them your shop with something they can buy. So people who follow you follow you for several reasons one they want to see more of your products they want to see, but they also want to see that you're a human being they want to see the person behind the scenes so don't feel shy that all you have to do is just post pictures of your product. I've seen instagram feeds that do that and it pencil kind of boring it's not interesting there's no real incentive for people to follow you. So really think about posting those lifestyle photos. So remember going back to, like, go up to your studio wherever your studios is, go down our upper left or right and take pictures of your studio take pictures of those lifestyle pictures that are more candid that don't have the perfect lighting that's all fine and honestly like if you go to my tiny hands jewelry instagram account it's not the prettiest feet out there I have photos with bad lighting with like bad product placement and it's it's not the perfect thing but I get great fans and I great getting great engagement on and it works so then going to your bio is it clear in your bio that you are a shop? So what I've seen for most people is that you start to add if you start to edwards that are redundant or have nothing to do with ask your shop um take it out right? You want the first few words that you have in your bio should even be your tag line your shops tagline if you have one right like handmade jewelry but canada or for my case centered food, jewelry, supercute scented food, jewelry and then after that as a second line before you finish off, you can tell a bit more about who you are mom of two you know, get into a little more of your personality, so I'm not saying that you don't have to tell them who you are. I'm just saying that the first few words you want to make it clear what you're selling and what your they're on instagram for so another great way to gain new followers on instagram is besides that, you know, going into your hashtags and liking other people's photos this is a strategy that I've used to it and I used this strategy to grow my instagram account ten thousand you followers in ten short months so that's about a thousand new followers on average every month, right? So what I want you to do is start create a spreadsheet off influencers and what I mean by influencers this social media accounts primarily instagram because we're talking about instagram, your occasionally going to find instagram profiles that have hundreds of thousands or, you know, like even fifty thousand followers, huge accounts like that. And if you find those accounts and you think that this is a great person who like your stuff that's, someone that you could potentially work with, so take their information, put it into a spreadsheet, so basically you want to look for people with large followings but was also as important as a large falling is you want to make sure they have a high engagement rate, so look for anywhere between five percent is a good number. So for example, actually, I haven't example coming up, so let me keep going here, but what I want you to do on your spreadsheet is to also have their email address. You'll find their first name, find their direct email address and then send them an e mail and then offer to send your product as a free gift to them in exchange for them. To feature you on their instagram page so this was something that I did for my instagram account I worked with this, I actually found this singer who was on the voice on dh when I found her instagram profile I didn't know who she wass by look to report profile and I was like her outfit and her design in her aesthetic her style totally matched my jewelry brand and I really wanted her to wear my jewellery, so I found her email address, I sent her an email, it went to her publicist, but her publicist relate that information to her and she was interested in getting a bunch of different products, so I sent them her way and when she got the male, she just took a picture of she didn't even wear it. She just took a picture of on the table of all the jewelry unpacked she posted a picture on instagram and in forty eight hours I got two thousand new followers and it's what's nice about this is this is the same thing as buying fake fans thes air people from this really persons instagram feed who saw my pictures and who was like, wow, that's really great stuff I want to check this person this tiny hands jewelry account out and see if I like it and so those two thousand fans are at my ideal customers basically so you want to make sure that when you do this that they at tag you or they mention you in the post because that's the only way for them to send their interested fans your way so going back to the engagement weight as I mentioned it's as important as the number of followers they have for example you could have fifty you could work with someone who was fifty thousand followers but if they average around two hundred likes proposed that is equivalent to a point four percent engagement that's not really good then you might start to think like where do they get their fans from? Are they fake followers? Are they people that they got through giveaways for giving away money people who aren't really that engaged with this influencer compare that with someone who has ten thousand followers it's less than fifty thousand but if they get an average of a thousand likes proposed they're getting a ten percent engagement so I would rather work with someone who has a smaller size following but with the better engagement so as a general rule the larger the following the better but you definitely need to check the engagement wait ok it's really easy to see someone's how many followers they have and once you've identified while this is a pretty good size following, then take it a step further and check through their posts to see if they're getting a good response rate from their fans um so I should let me show you do a really quick walk through here on my phone to kind of just show you a few ways of how to do that liking strategy so I'm going to go into my instagram here oh, there it is susan peterson um so some of the hashtags that I like to use for example is like hashtag nom nom and what I really like about instagram is they recently pushed this out but now they have this top nine posts that are the top posts so it's a top post because these posts have gotten a ton of likes so if a good indication that the person that posted this photo could be an influencer could be someone with a large following right? So go to these top posts and check these people out so like someone like this who has some really great food photos um there's a chance that I might want to work with her and then in terms of the liking strategy you know I'll just go in here see a photo of someone who posted this picture and I'll just double tap and then go on to the next photo and if I see a really great photo then I'll type in a comment and just say hi and if I like someone's photo a lot then I might want to be there I might want to follow them s so that's that's, really, this top post is going to make it a lot easier for you to start finding large accounts that you can collaborate with. Um, but that's all I have, I think for this group's right? Turn that off. Oh, thank you. Okay, so that's all we have for this first segment on dh if you guys want to find in social media, you can find on instagram at creative hive co on twitter at at me underscore park at facebook at facebook dot com slash creative hive co and if you guys here or in the audience, if you want more support or you have any additional questions, you can join my private mastermind facebook group at this link bentley slash maker a mastermind thanks so much, man was wondered if anybody here had questions for may. I was just wondering if when you're posting on instagram, if you're also using the option to post on your other social media having that post go up on twitter or facebook, are you doing cross post like that? So I used to do that. Andi, I see thee with twitter, I do, andi I used what's called if this, then that and it's I f t t dot com and what it does, is it automatically? Well, you can tell it to automatically um, you can tell it to say that when you post a picture on instagram, automatically post it to twitter so I don't have to take that extra step of okay after I posted this, then share it to twitter. You know how that there's that extra step so I f t dot com automatically does that for you with when it comes to facebook, I tend tohave my own content on there, so it doesn't mix as much. I don't normally cross post between those two, and this is actually a good thing that you're bringing up because it's important to create your content specific to to the social media that you're on. So between instagram and facebook, it's less clear, the lines are a little bit more blurry because square photos do really well on instagram, and so the square photos also do really well on facebook, but if you're for example, thinking about pinterest where those square photos they're not going to do on pinterest, so you're gonna wanna get those longer taller photos on pinterest so don't share the instagram to pinterest I'm not even sure if you can do that, but in terms of twitter, twitter actually the native twitter what works best is a horizontal picture, so if you're going to share a square picture. And if you have texts, say, on the top part of your picture, no one's going to see that text unless they clicked on it. So for that way, I like doing it. I like cross promoting to twitter, just because and shows people that, hey, I kind of exist because nothing is a bigger turn off than when you were a customer. You're tryingto shop it, someone's shot, and then you check out their twitter profound the last time they post it was like a year ago. It kind of you don't feel like you can really trust this shop, you know, like, if I buy something from them, are they going to actually ship up my product? Basically, you might ask yourself, so I hope that answers your question. I know it was kind of like a roundabout, ok, good.