Lessons

Lesson Info

How to Guarantee Social Media Success

We're gonna get into How To Guarantee Social Media Success. And there was one thing that my mom always used to tell me, drive me crazy as a kid. And now I just say it all the time. "If you fail to plan, you plan to fail." So how can we guarantee that you are going to get more followers? And then how do we guarantee you can get more followers and you're gonna get those followers to engage? And then how then do we guarantee that once you have more followers, you get them to engage, that they will then become customers? We're gonna get into a quick video as to what I firmly believe people online desire when they follow our accounts. Into that now. We are in the studio today back from a really wild and long day yesterday, I hear you guys went out to eat? Yes. You guys get drinks? Yes. You guys better have got drinks. (laughs) I'm like. We had a Bahama mama and a Mosconi. Wow you guys are living your best life. I love that. Okay so we had a great day yesterday. What we wanted to...

do was yesterday focus on who we ultimately want to attract right? We have to create content that's gonna start bringing in the type of customers we wanna work with all the time. Now we're going to focus on taking that content and building a strategy from it. So we're gonna have a 30000 foot view of what we're going to do in our businesses for the next 30 days and then walk away with a step by step plan on how to implement on that from the back end. I told the girls, the ladies, our Boss Babes that it's gonna feel like we're drinking from a fire hydrant and I get that. But I believe that when you hold your feet to the fire, you become callous and ready to walk the long walk that it's going to take to actually put this into action. So welcome to day two. If you thought yesterday was a long day, (claps) let's get some caffeine, let's get you hydrated, this is gonna be the formal start of actually our strategy component for this boot camp. But before we get there, I really wanna get calibrated and understand how you guys are feeling after yesterday. So I think it would be interesting and helpful for people who are investing in a branding shoot to talk about how they feel the second day. Having not seen the images, having thought of what they could have, should have done or what are you feeling after yesterday? I'm excited to see the photos actually. But I was always just kind of the wheels were turning like. What we can do for future. What we can do with those, already thinking ahead like how to relate that back to our ideal client or. Well even the difference like in the flat lays, like the way that we've done them in the past was different than the way and it's made us rethink it. Like after watching you like thinking about our ideal clients. So how did you do it before? Well like we always felt like we had to have our product in it 100% and like our products are big and hard to photograph and so like they never looked quite right. But now I feel like we wouldn't, you don't have to have your product in it as long as it's something that speaks to your ideal client. Absolutely. So cool. Cool that's good. I'm excited to see them. I think it was a good experience being in front of the camera cause I was not thinking I'd be like in front of the camera as much, I thought the brand, it was just gonna be my brand and I'm just a little bit separate I guess. And so I'm excited to see it and see how it's incorporated and where that's gonna. And I think you guys will see distinct events. Now I can obviously push you Caitlin or encourage you to get into one direction but when you go back home you're gonna know what's best for you. And I gave direction. I think it gave me a whole new perspective I was like okay I need to be a little bit more like in the forefront here and show up instead of just hiding behind. (laughs) We discussed the other thing too. Good. Then I don't have to convince you all of anything. I mean it might take us some time to get confidence but. Absolutely absolutely. We're gonna talk about why I feel it's important. Do I feel like it's important for every single business? No but do I feel like it's important for a lot of the businesses in the marketplace? Yeah. And specifically in competitive market places and we'll get to that in a second. So as long as we're on that same page, I love that. So I know that a lot of us have these conversations about social media struggles and I feel like after listening to it, like I speak to thousands of business owners and a lot of times that I hear is people are like I don't feel like I'm being authentic or I'm being my true self or I don't know how to show up. Which boils down to a word that I call known. I don't know if I'm known and I know that people don't have conversations over drinks with friends. Like I don't feel like I'm known on Instagram but at the core of it, it's kind of like I don't know how to be myself. I don't know how to be comfortable. And even on a deeper level, people are like what are people gonna think? Well I think our issue is like, we don't know how much to share. Good. And especially with it being a product based brand, even though we are behind the brand. So like what do we share about our personal, you know like. How much and what's too much? Great we'll get to that when we start breaking out what the brand looks like and what ultimately you guys wanna be putting out. So then another struggle would be, I don't know if people are seeing my posts right. I don't know if they actually connect with me and I don't know, it's like I feel like whenever I'm putting something out, people don't talk back to me. So we have three main pressure points. Now people don't sit around like, I don't know if I'm known, seen and heard. But at the end of it, y'all have nodded to the overall overall sense. So those are gonna be the big focuses. We want to get you known. We want to get you seen. And we want to get you heard. And how do we know people are hearing you? When they talk back to you. So those are gonna be our three measurements of connection. So we need to know precisely what you're about. We need to know precisely what makes your business special and we knew precisely your industry differentiation. So this is not about being cool, it's not about being popular. This is about y'all showing up in a big way and people saying this is what Caitlin's about in her industry. This is what Highway Three is all about. And guess what? It's not about your services and it's not about your products, but we're gonna get to that. Now that we've laid the foundation that I have identified at least one or a few things that you could possibly be feeling about your Instagram or Facebook or any other social platform accounts. The thing we're going to have to do is that in order for us to be authentic. In order for us to feel comfortable, we have to set the parameters. And we set the parameters by telling people exactly what it is we do and who we are. And we have a very small amount of time to actually do this when it comes to Instagram and Facebook and Twitter and LinkedIn. You have your bio and we've created a system called a Boss Bio that explains exactly what people should come to expect from your account, which will then empower you to be authentic, to speak your truth and speak what you are comfortable with about now. So in this next video we're gonna walk you through step by step how to create a Boss Bio that will empower you to know why you're there, what to say and what people can expect from your account. I'm gonna go into that right now. So first things first, I want to focus on a Boss Bio. So on Instagram and on Facebook your will, in this particular bootcamp we're gonna focus on two of the biggest platforms. The same things apply to Twitter, to Pinterest, to YouTube. We will answer questions about that. I use all of those things as part of my marketing strategy. But if I had just to pick like the top performers, it would be Instagram and Facebook. So we're gonna spend more than 90% of our time there. And even on Twitter and even on YouTube the same way as Instagram and Facebook, you have a bio. This is gonna be your opportunity to literally, this is your business card. What does your business card say about your company? So we're gonna first we are going to fix the bio before we can fix the feed. So the bio is the foundation that we build the house on. So we're gonna move forward with that. So there's gonna be five pieces to a Boss Bio and what we really wanna do in step number one is we wanna get focused with your title. Like people need to know like when they're sitting with their girlfriends, when they are Christmas shopping and their sister in law comes around like, I don't know what to get my mother in law, they're gonna say you have to follow this brand because what? We need to start teaching people how they're gonna describe us. We wanna use words and I often tell people, I need you to explain what you do like I'm five years old because we have all seen people be really like emotional or sentimental about what they do. Like I'm a purveyor of fine goods and family heirlooms that last a long time. You're a photographer. Like we need to know in the simplest term specifically cause you have 150 characters on Instagram. So how do we, how do we get concentrated? You are known because you're a what? And I don't want, so okay, I need to take a sit back. When I get so focused about business, I become a little like, this is how it's done. But for the sake of growth for the next 30 days, I know there's a ton of shades of gray but for the next 30 days I want it in black and white. And I know you can disagree with me but just like Mr. Miyagi and Danielson, you don't know why you're waxing on and waxing off like trust me, at the end of 30 days we're gonna look back and be like oh, that's why she was so annoying and said this. Okay so I know that I'm coming in like real hard, but real hard can get a sharp angle so that we can start growing. So I explain it to me like I'm five years old. I want one or two word description about how they can describe, why are they gonna be saying you have to follow Highway Three, shop Highway Three in Instagram. Why are they gonna say you have to follow Indigo Tide Market? So we're gonna dive into number one, Shop Highway Three. Okay here we go. At the time when I shopped your businesses prior to our shooting, when we had first decided to collaborate, you had 81000 followers. You're following 7500 followers. You're description Highway Three, Erin and Trisha at Highway Three and co. sisters, moms, friends. Modern personalization for everyone. Shop here. So we're gonna get into how we can kind of tweak this to make this better. But if we're getting into a description, prior to not me knowing what you guys did, I went to your Instagram account right? I went to your Facebook page. I looked at this and I was like I don't know what you do. So our Boss Bio. We don't know what to say. We're gonna work through that. So the good news is I'm not gonna leave you hanging. We're gonna work through that. Okay so. Cause that's I think one of our main thing. Like when someone asks like what do you guys do? I'm like deer in the headlights. We're gonna work on what we call the elevator pitch. I did not make up that term, but we want. We are terrible on elevator pitch. Well we're actually gonna reframe every time I see anyone here frame something in a negative, I'm gonna stop you and for the next two days we're gonna stop that like I'm terrible at an elevator pitch. No you're learning how to create an elevator pitch. So there we go. So Indigo Tide Market. Three followers. You're currently following six people. Wholesale and retail marketing. Creative team of Amazon marketing and resell specialists. Helping brands make more money by telling their story well on Amazon hello@indigotidemarket.com indigotidemarket.com. So we're not gonna talk quite yet. We're gonna get through the five pieces of Boss Bio then we'll revisit this. However step number one of the Boss Bio was a description. By your bio's can I describe what your business does? That's gonna be the barometer. Let's get into part two of a Boss Bio. We want to list the benefits for your followers. Why are these people going to follow you? Because what happens is that I know your business is great and you know your business is great and your daddy knows your business is great. But on social media when there's a stranger they have to say always is, how does this benefit me? And often times categorically it's I'm getting educated, I'm getting entertained, I have a form of escapism, these are helpful, I am intrigued, it's aspirational. People have these buckets of why they follow people. Now if you're not telling people why they should follow you, they're not gonna know why they should follow you. So always lead with what do you get by following my Facebook page? What do you get by following my Instagram account? So a few benefits for people. These are just a few ideas based on different businesses. Do you offer weekly tutorials? Do you offer daily recipes? Like follow me why? You get creative inspiration. Follow me because we give you ideas on how to be the best gift giver. Like you're telling people what they're gonna get. We have to understand that your Instagram account isn't about you. If you have a personal Instagram account, I want it to be all about you. I don't care what you post, your fruit loops, your kids, your dogs, your family vacations, unedited, all 100% you. You have to understand that your business account is only what you do for your followers. What do you do for them? As a business you're in a place of service, you're not in a place of popularity and you're not in a place quite yet of profitability. When you lead of service, everything else falls into place. Number three part of the Boss Bio is who's your account for? We wanna be super specific. Now I understand so yesterday we worked through your ideal client profile. We know who we're going after. I want you to identify and re-identify who that person is and say it again and again and again. Because what happens is when you can identify a segment of people, you're gonna be drawing in that circle tighter, tighter, tighter and when you have a really tight circle, these people believe in you and they say you're perfectly made for me. So a few categories is your account for busy moms? Is your account for young entrepreneurs? Single dads, fashion lovers, adventure seekers? You guys will attract 1000% people who are not in this category. We know that but when you put a stick in the ground and say this is who I'm for, you're clearly delineating who your account is for. You will attract other people. But the kind of like looky loos on the outside, people who are like, oh I don't know what this is about. If your account is vanilla nobody knows what you're about. Pick your tribe, serve them well because I have come to know after working literally thousands of businesses is that when people feel like an account is like tailor made for them, they're like, I have to follow Caitlin because I am just starting my Amazon business and I just don't know what to say. I don't know how to show up. When there is moms that are following you because they're just like me. We could drink Bahama mamas together. (laughs) Like when you have that, they only buy from you even though you have a ton of competitors. They only tell their friends about you and then they post about you because they feel like they're part of your journey. And we feel like we have that kind of, I mean a little bit. Good. Good we're gonna exactly. You guys do have that. You guys have the girls next door. You guys have the moms that's relatable. The fourth part of a Boss Bio is going to be how do people contact you? I know it's super basic because it's easy to say, well my link is there. But how can we create personal relationships with people? Well a couple of ways when you list your email, your phone number and address, if you guys have a physical location or even if you just hashtag what you think would be powerful. So hashtags in your bios are searchable on Instagram. So if you wanna be found in the local market that's great. Probably not as applicable to these two businesses. But if it was a florist, if I had a gym, if I was a private trainer, a personal chef, having that hashtag is pretty darn amazing. So what we want to make sure is we have the four pieces, we have a description, we have the benefits like why are they following you? We know who this is for. Then we now know how they're gonna contact you. And the last and final piece is what I call party favor. You wanna give a gift so that you get a very very important piece of their personal information. And that is their email. One thing is that you can have a strategy on your social platforms. We can have a strategy that diversifies how you're connecting with your followers. I've come to believe that I cannot depend on a platform that is constantly changing information I do not own. The thing that I own is my newsletter list. I am actively building that again and again. Our sales are driven, I can't speak for every business, but I probably could have a safe assumption that if you're using an email list with a strategy that's gonna be your biggest driver of sales. And this is coming from somebody who loves social media. So you can go deep with your audience via newsletter. They become like they trust you, they feel like they're the first to know things. So for me, I want to leverage social media to point it back to a list that I own. Because the thing is is like on people on social media, number one question is Jasmine, how do I get more followers? Cause number two is Jasmine, how do I get more customers? I have noticed that the two don't go hand in hand. People think if I got more followers, I would get more customers. If you're not converting the followers you have now getting more followers does not gonna get you more customers. So how to get more customers? You go deep with them. You figure out how to sell to them in multiple platforms and show up in their inbox and not hoping or relying on an algorithm. So how do you do this? How are you gonna build your newsletter list specifically from social media? You are going to create resources for your dream customers. This is what we're gonna do. You're gonna work active at this and you're like oh, this is another thing to do. If you had to do anything first we're gonna focus on those resources. Resources like it could be an Ebook, it could be a guide, it could be a checklist, it could be a video tutorial, it could be a quiz, you can have a book. So a lot of times when I see people are like if you pay the shipping fees, I'll send you my book for free. And so they call it shipping and handling. So they cover the shipping they add like one or $2 extra to cover the cost of the book and then they send it and then people have to submit their newsletter, their email and then you have people in an email sequence to build up to a customer. So I believe that what happens often on Instagram which is totally understandable people say their exit link is to a blog post. Their exit link is to a YouTube video. Their exit link is to an about me video. All of those are great, but you don't get any customer information. My exit links will always go to, how can I go deeper and build a list of my own? Now you could say some people might be watching and say I've done it, it doesn't work. I am here to tell you that when I kind of pivoted my business and when I started laying down a strategy, I started off with one like freebie, well I use interchangeable so freebie, opt in, resource, those are all the same things. if you hear me say that. I started off with one and it did nothing, started off with two, it just did nothing. And I was creating resources that I thought people are gonna love this. This is definitely what they want. And it wasn't. So I started making a list. The top 10 questions that I'm asked, I've run through my head I'm like, I'm always asked this, I'm always asked this, I'm always this. And then for two weeks I just kind of kept a tally oh I got asked it again. I got asked it again. I got asked it again and then I took the top three questions I'm always asked and I said okay, let's make a PDF. Now that's what I'm always driving to. I make a PDF based on the most frequently asked questions. Now when it comes to, I just think specifically for product I love love love. Like mother's Day is coming up in May. I would be running an opt in to ads for a mom gift guide and then I would be targeting men between 25 and 40. During Halloween it's like your Halloween checklist. This has nothing to do with your product but what are you doing? You're building out your database for your black Friday for your Christmas sale. So you're creating things that moms are looking for on the Internet. You're gonna design it super cute. It's gonna be bright, it's gonna be brand reflective and all you're doing is positioning yourself in a place of value and benefits. Caitlyn you offer services. You don't have to say like download your list of how to work with a Amazon marketing specialist. No one's gonna do that. They're gonna say like, how do I get my first thousand dollars on Amazon? Like we wanna go to what are the questions that people wanna know? Create resources for them, point them back. And then on social what we're gonna do is as we dive in to connecting with our followers, now that I have a resource, a book, a video, a guide on the most popular questions when people are DMing me and be like hey Jasmine, I can you look at my Instagram account? And the answer is no, I don't do Instagram critiques. But if I just said no, that kind of leaves them hanging. I say I do have an Instagram marketing resource you can download it here. Jasmine how do you prepare to go live? Well I can't give you all the questions but here's a resource on how I go live. Jasmine I'm really trying to look my brand I don't have I'm like, I'm not taking consulting on the side, but here's a free branding guide. Every single thing on social points back to building the list. So we have to really focus on the bio before we move forward. We're laying the foundation, five pieces description, benefits, who it's for, contact information, give them a party favor. So let's look at how it's done on my account. My description, business strategist, photographer. Who is it for? Entrepreneurs. What's the benefit? Growing their social platforms. How do you contact me? There's my email address. Get free photos and video tutorials for your business here. Thanks. That's so good. I mean and actually the the round of applause it makes me like, oh look, I just got the chills I was like no. I was like because what I wanna do with this bootcamp is like, can I save you time? Can I save you the back and forth of trying to figure out what the heck we're actually doing on social. So we wanna make sure that we're using your Instagram bio as your business card. We have 150 characters. Use them judiciously and choose that link with a strategy. And I just know you guys are gonna come up with so many good opt ins. Like you're going to build that list, you're gonna put them in a warm and fuzzy funnel. You're gonna lead with your personality and then when the time comes to sell, you don't sell immediately again and again you give them resources, give them resources, give them resources, highlight, make their mom live, have pictures of you guys drinking Bahama mamas and be like we've got away from the kids this weekend, cheers. A boomerang moms will just be like, oh they're living their best life. (laughs) That's what we need to do on social. So Highway Three, let's just work through, I specifically, oh we don't have to get in the most perfect one right now. But I wanna shape yours a little bit. Caitlyn, I feel like yours kind of really was strong. Yeah I felt like. Your says what she does. Exactly. It tells exactly what she does. If you know how many tries I had before. Right right right. Okay I want you to take back and weigh something a little bit when I check in with you in about a week. I love what it says. Like I got it, but I'm also in that world. Yeah and that's. So for somebody like when we think like, forgive me Chrissy, your dream customer. Yeah. Yeah. Very good. Chrissy (laughs) so Chrissy is, has a skin care line, where is she at in her process? Would she read her, your bio and be like, oh I get it Or she at the point of like, I know I need to be on Amazon or I know I need like do resale like ah like where do I start? Like if she's newer in the process of selling online specifically on Amazon, your description is gonna have to be a little bit dumbed down. Okay and that's what. Like speak to her. Struggle like how do I dumb it down a little bit more because like I want the people that are already on Amazon but that are struggling you know they're like. Great well then good. Then if that's the case then I would, if possible, see if you can play with pointing out point cause what you say is we help brands on Amazon tell better stories to make more money. I think that that's great. It's a little nebulous right? I love when people just put a stick in the ground like. Okay. We help struggling, I'm just saying, I'm not saying you should do it. No I need all of this. See how it feels. See how it feels it's like we help struggling businesses on Amazon make more money. Okay. And that would be, that'd be amazing because that's more like. But remember when I say something, settle it against Chrissy. Settle against where you're going. Like let it marinate and then keep me posted. How it feels. Okay. So good. So what we're gonna do right now as an exercise is work through Highway Three a bio rewrite. Now let's describe your business right? Cool. Okay. How many SKU's do y'all have? Just off the top of your head. Well I mean with color variations and everything there's a lot but I mean probably like 300, 500. Okay. With the colors. Okay so to bring everybody up to speed SKU is basically like a product number right? Just in the dumbest form. Like we only have like 40 products or something. So 40 products, but 300 SKUs because of the colors of the text and all that other stuff right for the product. Okay what do you think is your biggest seller? What brings in the most profitability? Blankets. Second highest? Towels. Yeah beach towels. So between the blankets and the towels, how much percentage wise of revenue do you think that they're bringing in? Compared to the other products? Well we are looking at 100% out of the whole. 75%. Okay. Okay. So I'm wondering how it feels, I'm all about suggesting if you have two SKUs that bring in 75% of your revenue. Why have anything else? Well not why have anything else, but what if you pit a stick in the ground, say personalized blankets and towels for and then we're gonna describe the fabulous mom, the hardworking mom, the tired mom, the stressed mom, the thoughtful mom right? We're going to just test this out for a little bit. Now the more you say it and the more you grow you, I promise you you're gonna change it. But for right now when we're coming out like let's carve a tiny piece in our market and be known for that thing and drive it home again and again. I'm gonna have you, I'm gonna revisit this back in a week in our online call. But I just want you to make a couple of notes right, description. I'm just gonna throw it out and then we'll kind of judge the 150 characters. But it's like we provide personalized or customized whatever, blankets and towels for, I want an adjective, blank moms, busy moms, fabulous moms, great moms, thoughtful moms, okay. And it's okay it could be, it could be tired and frazzled moms, like we have to remember we're talking, she's from what part of Texas again? Houston. Houston. So we don't know. We don't know if she is like old money, oil money and we don't know. But we don't know if she comes from like just a hardworking blue class family that's working her way on up. We are gonna talk to those people differently. So and I think to note and then we are going to remove sisters, moms and friends because remember we wanna lead with the benefit. Okay. So it could be we provide personalized or customized blankets and towels for the modern mom. And what's the benefit? Benefit who wants to be known as the best gift giver? Who gives thoughtful gifts? The benefit be like we provide blankets and towels for the modern mom who wants to stay on the cutting edge of motherhood, whatever. And then we're gonna buttress this notion, this big claim by the free gifts you guys give away. Okay. Cool so we'll play with that a little bit. And then I would love if you guys could put in an email address or a phone number. I have all of our customer success reps, everybody on our team has an @jasminestar.email address because anytime I cc somebody, I wanna make sure that everything's on brand. So definitely invest in that. I think it would be worth it. And Caitlin, I would definitely start right now for you to have two separate email addresses so that people don't feel like they have direct access to you. And even if at this point in time you are the person who's corresponding, that's fine. But I would yeah, I wouldn't know if right now due to the volume in your business so for those of you, for people who aren't quite familiar and we're gonna get to your business structure, it's not like we have like a plethora of clients in your business. And so to me in my mind we'd be like, let's use our money judiciously. And so right now I would just break up the email addresses and then if you put out contact information it would go to probably you but not have it be like caitlin@indigo. Okay perfect. Okay. So that was a lot of information. 150 characters was like a 40 minute conversation. But it's so important if you're saying I'm having a hard time showing up as me, we set the parameters and we exist within this parameters. One thing I wanna point out cause we brushed over it really quickly is the importance of what are the questions that people are asking you the most. Just take some time and keep track of it. And of those top three questions that people are asking the most, could you create a very simple PDF? I am not talking about anything complicated. And then use that to grow your newsletter list when people ask because people like DM me and it's like they want like a personal consultation and I was like isn't that happening in the DMs? And I feel like I'm only gonna be losing in that situation cause I'm not gonna answer in the way that they want cause it's not long and thoughtful enough and I don't want to ignore it because I want to make sure that I'm responding to the DMs that I'm getting. In order for me to create a win, I created a resource where I feel is the best representation of my business, I can give somebody a freebie, it creates a brand recognition and a brand experience and I'm growing my newsletter list along the same time. It takes a little time, but you build a customer over time. So we're gonna get into questions and answers and we are getting in towards the end of day one. So let's shake it out. Bring me the energy that we need. And if there is anybody who would like to take a hot seat, we are going to be giving that opportunity. So what we're gonna do is we're gonna go into some online questions. And so if you have an in person question, not the hot seat quite yet, if you have a question, can you please raise your hand and we'll get the mics great so we've got one, two and we have another one back over there. So April, what if we are more interested in showcasing my product more than myself? I'm more interested in getting people to recognize my product within a specific geographical area and not casting a wide following outside of my area. Beautiful April, I love that. I want people to recognize your product. My question then to you April and anybody else who feels the same way is are you selling something that is so original and patent pending and proprietary? If it is not those things, you're selling the same thing somebody else is selling. That's just facts. So if you're saying, I wanna lead with my product and the product is being sold by other people, how then do you stick out? You could show photos of yourself, but if you're so against that, then darling you have to do something interesting. You have to reinvent the product in a new way. You have to hire models to do the thing that you don't want to do yourself. All of that is okay. I am just saying to have a strictly product driven Instagram account feels like QVC on the IG and nobody wants that. So April you don't wanna lead it with you? No problem gotta work a little harder to think about something creative. But I stand by that ardently. We'll go to a question in the back. Hi, thanks very much for spending the day with us. Thank you for being here. I love this stuff. My question is how do you pivot your business? So I am a container garden designer and garden photographer and the more questions I get is not about container design, they're more about how do I do Instagram stories and use gardening in my business and tell better stories. And so I am starting to answer what people are asking of me with my PDFs and I just don't know how to serve both of those audiences and segue onto my new audience for what people are asking for. Can you explain it to me like I'm five. What does your business do? I'm a container garden designer, so I plant flowers in pots and take pictures of them and travel around the world taking pictures of gardens and getting those into magazines. But more people are asking me how do I do the social part? And how do I grow my garden design business or landscaping business. So cool man. So freaking cool wow. Like you're living your best life. [Female Audience Member] Yeah. Like who did this thing? Okay keep up on the reals. She plants in containers and takes pictures of them and she travels the world to take pictures of gardens. And nobody asks me how to plant plants in pots. They're more interested in the photography part. So I'm trying to answer that. Have you thought about monetizing that? Yeah I've done one in person workshop with a nursery that's developing their online business. And I have got a couple of talks lined up but I'm just trying to figure how to segue into the new market So people are asking, so are we talking about other plant containers? People who want. No nurseries, garden centers, landscapers. So incredible. [Female Audience Member] Yeah. Like that to me shows that there's a market with money who want to pay you for what it is you do and you're not. And I firmly believe that stories are a great way to build relationships, but the minute that it gets into full on educating via DM, that's your time. Protect your time. So I believe that depending on who is asking, you would have like a different avenue. So when somebody asks me to be on a podcast, I have a very specific way that we go through that. When somebody asks me to speak on a stage or speak at an event or ask me a question, there's all these different avenues. Now obviously the people who have a budget and in your case, the nurseries, in your case, the landscape architects who have budgets, I would send them on a very particular path. I would love to know, so my response would be, I'd love to know a little bit more about what you are really intrigued with. And then the more you ask these questions, it will then guide you on how to create the content that will first start off with the freebie most likely and or get personal attention from you. And you could charge a premium for that. And you know there's, you can just screen record your phone, if you're using an iPhone, you just swipe up, you'll see the screen record, you screen record and you create a short video tutorial on what you do for your stories and talk about the byproduct because people don't wanna do the work blindly. People wanna do the work knowing the results will come. So how do you get John Doe nursery in New Jersey to buy a $49 PDF with an accompanying video from you when they can Google it? What they wanna know is how are you doing it in my market and you're developing your following. I wanna know what you do and that's what you charge for. [Female Audience Member] Okay. The market is talking to you. And when the market talks, I do not automatically say, of course you should do that. When the market talks and you say I think I would really enjoy that. Then you start creating products. Will it happen next week? No. Will it happen next month? Probably not. But when you start facilitating those conversations with the landscape architects and with the other nurseries that have money, then you know how to position it in relation to results. Foster the relationship on DM, have them send you an email and then you guide them to where they need to go from there. But I think what you do is so incredible. Did we go deep enough in the answer? [Female Audience Member] Sure. That's not an answer. What do we wanna do next? Well my question was currently under graded and it's just pretty pictures of plants and I get engagement with a good combination, but it's not, I'd like to say we're more into showing somebody how to use Instagram and it's a different audience and so I'm trying to figure out how. Actually I think that might be a story you're telling yourself because I think it's the same audience, but only a portion of the audience will pay for it. [Female Audience Member] Okay. So I know we got some eyebrows raised okay. I know the large majority and this statistically when you sell on social, when you sell online, you get anywhere from a two to 4% buy in. So rule of thumb, you wanna sell something online, two to 4% of the thing that you're selling people will buy. So two to 4% of your audience will buy a thing. But when you start creating like tutorials and like in your highlights, people who are following you, they want to do the thing that you do, even if they have a business or not. If they don't have a business, they're not gonna pay you because they have no way to monetize what it is they know but they wanna know what you're doing so that they could do it in their home garden in springtime in Illinois. And they're gonna love you for it cause you gave it to them for free. And then you're gonna build trust with the people who do buy and then navigate that conversation, create the resources and create the funnels. Is that a little bit closer? [Female Audience Member] Yes. Can we go any deeper? I don't want people walking away being like, oh I didn't close it the way that I want it. [Female Audience Member] I am even sure what questions I wanna ask yet. Okay no problem. What we've got, we got three days. We got three days. I know we have, I don't know if we have any other online questions. We'll get this populated. I know somebody else has a mic and then as the questions come, like please don't think like I've used my time. Like that would annoy me. Okay. On every Instagram bio you popped up, you noted the amount of people that were following them and the amount of people that they were following. Does that matter? We follow more people than follow us. I don't know. No it doesn't matter at all. Okay. It has no impact on the algorithm, it has nothing. The word of caution that I would encourage people is not to follow out of obligation. This is where we teeter on the follow for follow and then people get really annoyed. So the follow or follow is people wonder Jasmine, I gained four followers yesterday and I lost five followers today. Well I don't know who the fool was to say this is how you grow your Instagram because it does work, but it's so shady. It's go through and follow 50 accounts in one day and then you wait two days and then you go back and you unfollow all of those accounts because people are being polite and they follow you back. So what that account ends up doing is getting a follower and unfollows you and this is so strong and prevalent in what is happening on Instagram. So what happens is, and I'm definitely not saying that this is happening for you, but if you're following a lot of people to be polite and then you go into Instagram and you're like, I don't know who, I don't know who I'm serving, I don't know why I'm here, I don't know why they're here and it's convoluting then you take a step back and be like okay, who do I want to follow? So you will follow people who inspire you, empower you, educate you. You also follow people who could become potential customers. And in that case you do you. But I only want to encourage people to not follow people, to be polite. I love politeness. But when you follow out of just like gumption, that's inauthentic. You should really look in an account, be thoughtful about it and say I think I can offer value and I think they can offer value. When it's mutual, it's a win. But no it has no bearing whatsoever on the algorithm if you're following more people than are following you. I love that question thank you. Okay. Question. Easy task. Can you speak to the straight like email opt in link a versus link tree tap bio, things like that. Okay. A link tree tap bio, when you go to link tree, you will have a link in your Instagram account and then it takes you to a page with a bunch of different links that people can find what it is that you want to point them to. I don't necessarily have a problem with link tree, but I also know that when people have to make a decision and they get overwhelmed, they don't make a decision. That's like science, is proven. And so if I know that I can get somebody and give them exactly what they want, there's a higher likelihood of them opting in. Nine times out of 10, what I see on link tree is sign up for a freebie, my YouTube channel, a recent blog post, what I did on vacation and the minute somebody else goes on a trail, I lost my customer acquisition, link tree did me a disservice. I have seen people use like an exit link. I saw this on the inside of the social curator group and I thought it was fascinating. I think I'm just gonna start testing it. Is having my exit link to a blog post and in that blog post, my top five most popular opt ins, so I could change my exit link to download these free resources for your social media growth or get more followers. I would find out what that little copy is gonna be to get them there. And once they're there, the only thing they can do is opt in and even if they get overwhelmed, I don't know which one to choose well at least you're gonna choose one that's gonna ultimately lead to where I want you to go, not sending to other things. No tea, no shade on tap bio. I think it's beautiful. I think it's sexy, it's fun. It's also super distracting to me. I think it's so rad, but it feels like it's an app within an app and it's not getting people to where I want them to go. So I know Jesse, I have no, like I have love for him, he's a great guy. He's a brilliant developer. I just know my people and how I'm using it for business and it wasn't synergistic for me so. Thank you. Thank you. I love that question thank you. Online Claudia, what's the benefit of Instagram TV versus stories? Stories disappear after 24 hours IG TV is your own video channel on Instagram. I cannot say enough good thing about IG TV. I just can't. I feel like what we're looking at is a stinking gold mine of opportunity. And guess what? I'm not talking about it in the bootcamp. I don't have a section for it because the boot camp, IG TV isn't part of the system. It doesn't hinge on the system and I don't want people to get overwhelmed. I will absolutely talk about it. The Minute IG TV came out, I saw it and then my eyes melted and I was like, this is YouTube for people who missed the YouTube bus which was yours truly. And I was like okay. And everybody was taking their old videos in horizontal and putting them in IG TV, which were causing people to flip the camera. But because I'm a nerd, I was doing a lot of research and in the Snapchat world, studies had shown that only half of the people, not even half of the people, some huge number of people is when the people were made to flip their phone, they swiped away from the story entirely. That says a lot about human behavior. So when I knew that and I saw IG TV came out within the first week of it, I put out a poll and I said can you help me decide? Should I do IG TV horizontal or vertical? 90 plus percent of people said make it vertical. So then I was like okay. So I'm working with the videographer, now before anybody thinks anything over a decade, I've made my own videos and I edit them in I movie, it kills the game you could do magic in nothing. I just got a little like I just, the business grew and I was like I need to start outsourcing. I found a videographer. The content that I create for YouTube is the same content that I create for Facebook. I post my Facebook videos and these videos range anywhere from four to six minutes. I post my Facebook video on a Monday. I post my YouTube video on a Wednesday. I'm staggering the content and then I ask my videographer to please edit the same video but vertically for IG TV. And just recently, a couple of weeks ago, I posted a 60 second video, so you can post up to a 60 second video on your feed on Instagram as a post and now you can incorporate your IG TV videos on your feed. It's a setting, you just have to set it and it'll go there. Now I wanted, I'm all about testing. So I posted a 59 second video on my feed and it did okay. It did okay. Like it was on 11000 views. I went back and I talked to my videographer and I was like, that seems a little funny to me. That didn't seem like it felt right. I asked him to add four seconds to the video. I was like, I don't care what footage, add any footage so that the minute it goes over a minute, it automatically catalogs in IG TV. The same video with an extra four seconds in IG TV got 60000 views. Instagram is prioritizing IG TV at least right now cause not a lot of people are using it. Whenever I see something like that in social land, I'm like, go there, go there, go there, go there. So now my objective with my videographer, I was like I know this is not gonna last. This is just like a fluttering thing. The YouTubers who killed the game are gonna go to Instagram and start creating for Instagram. The minute that happens and there's this avalanche of followers there, I lose like the little kind of like oh, got the jumpstart and that's okay. I'm here for whatever ride I can get for free okay. And that video, all organic 60 plus thousand views, all organic promoting an Instagram challenge I was doing, I'll take that every day and twice on Sunday. So the difference between IG TV and stories, stories disappear, IG TV becomes your own TV channel on somebody's phone which is mind blowing. Like do you guys understand the renaissance that we're living in? There were times 20 years ago where five men who lived in an upper class life who had a lot less melanin in their skin than I do in mine were determining what we were all gonna see on any given night of the week and now we get to say who's gonna watch our stuff and we win. So I think to myself as a business owner I have my own marketing channel. I have my own TV channel and I have a group of people who wanna see the thing that I wanna do, hot day. How can I not follow my dreams? My grandparents fought for their child to live in a different country, to do something magical that wasn't in a sweatshop sewing bathing suits she couldn't afford for her kids, sewing shoes she couldn't afford for her son. It is a shame if I don't take the tools that I have been given to change my life. That's why I'm passionate, not about social media. Next month if something comes out called Babu beep and it's free and you can go and do that, I'll be on Babu beep. (audience laughs) I'm just saying we have the tools. Who are we not to use them? People are like, oh but I don't have a videographer, I don't know what to do. You wanna know what those thing is called? YouTube. It'll teach you how to edit. You create content that doesn't have to be great but speaks to the heart of your customer, you're winning. You don't believe me? Try it. And for the first 20 times you do it, you're gonna suck. It's gonna be awful. (audience laughs) But the people who win are the people who take that one degree of change, that one degree of change, that one degree of change. That's the game so long answer to what's better. All of it depending on who your customer is and how they wanna see your content. So there's that. One thing to say too about Instagram live, I'm just riffing now so if there is another question please like please ask cause I also wanna do a hot seat. I'm also testing, I like just to talk about what I'm testing. So I go live every Tuesday and then one other random day of the week. This goes back to what we were talking about Rebecca, people need to develop a level of consistency. So every Tuesday between eight and in the morning, Pacific Standard Time, I host coffee and conversations. People come on Instagram live and they ask me questions. I do real time talking back to people and coaching. I hate the word coaching but it is what it is. So we do the coaching and then I do this another random time of the week. I asked my videographer if I were to save the live because we do a live round 25 to 30 minutes and let's be real not every question is great. Not every answer is great but every so often you hit one that the audience just like really pops on. And again I only listen to the market when I see a bunch of comments, when you see a bunch of likes, I'm like okay, this is the fire one. I save that one and then I send it to him and I say, I did an Instagram live and this is going to disappear in 24 hours but I save it and I say can you clip from this minute to this minute and can you edit it so it's just my face, this face, my face, both their faces, add some memes, add some text. And what we took from an Instagram live, we condensed it to an IG TV. It's not about working harder, but working smarter using the content that the market has spoken that they really like.