So I put a message out into my free private Facebook group. I asked what people wanted to know, what they were looking to understand, and they said Instagram marketing. And I’ve used Instagram marketing myself to close more than 12 clients this year by just providing value.
Now I wanted to give you the secret sauce into what I’ve been doing for the past 6 months and how it’s been working well for me.
So I have the Instagram posts that I posted with all the info, and then I have my phone, a live feed here as well. Then I’m going to use both of these in tandem to get this done. Now Instagram is getting rid of likes, but it’s all good.
You don’t need likes, it’s all about the engagement, comments and your DMs. Those are the main locations where you’ll get the most action. So I wanted to break down: I got 12 clients in the last 6 months, using free strategies on IG anyone can implement.
And also, this is without being verified and having less than 10,000 followers.
So let’s go ahead and dive in, I’m just going to go ahead and click this. The first step is, you want to set up your profile for success. Now I have my profile right here–you want to have a clear headshot, as you can see with my pic here, my amazing photographer, Aziz, took me in and did some great work.
And then lock it in around your head, so potential followers can get a good look at you. Just a nice, clean head shot, with you either straight ahead or maybe three quarters of the way. You also want to use your name as your username, like as you can see right here at the top.
Right here my name is my username, and I always recommend that, just because it’s great for when people are searching for you specifically. It also indexes on Google, so people can find your Instagram page and so forth.
Now when you’re using your actual name, which is here–mine is tips on marketing and money, because that’s what I provide every day on a daily. I post family pics, but the most—the bulk of my feed is marketing and money, right? So let’s go to the next one.
So set up your profile for success, break down your bio, include tagline. Mine is geek web dev and digital marketer. Title, I usually have founder at 5four Digital and blackwallet.org–those are my two main businesses right now.
Great thing is if you hit it, it goes straight to that page, so it’s a good way to tag and get more traffic for your additional pages.
Also include your pastimes, your lifestyle, anything that explains who you are. And then also include a call-to-action. My call-to-action is right here, "Get my NEW book below!" They click that link, it takes them directly to the link to buy my book.
So always have some type of call-to-action on there, use emoji’s—I like to use emoji’s here as you can see—and line breaks to really break up the content and make it easy for viewers to see your content in an easy, concise way.
Next up, content, right? You want to have a theme, so I usually do three types, three to four times a week. I don’t post every day, I’ll usually organize content at the beginning of the week, and then will help my team disseminate it across Hootsuite or direct to the platform.
And so, you want to have value-based content for one, right? It’s funny, this is like kind of like post-ception or inception. Because this is like, I’m using this, and this is my value-based content, and I’m providing that value-based content to you, so anyway…
Provide actionable tactics that they can use in ease-of-use chunks like this one. So, if you go to my feed for example, this is the most recent one, you click it. I usually post this directly to Twitter, so, I get some retweets and some engagement there.
And then I’ll just screenshot and post it to my Instagram. It works really well, because people love to read it, and then, of course, you can add up to 10 images. So as you can see, it’s a really easy to digest piece of content.
Not only does it work well on Instagram, but you post it directly to Twitter, screenshot it and then post it to IG, and it works really, really, well.
So that’s one of the main things, I just posted this a couple of hours ago, as you can see. Great engagement there, tons of comments from folks. I also post family and lifestyle, here’s my little guy Logan, as you guys can see.
I also try to tie in business tropes with what’s going on with my life. So I talked about how he’s a problem solver, and then I talk about for me being a sponge and absorbing information and getting to know things. And it’s a great way to provide a look into your family, while also providing value on the business side, so I hope that helps.
All right, next up, we have Instagram stories. This is where you will receive most of your inquiries, this is where I received most of my inquiries. This requires work, so you will have to do it on a daily basis, or you can prerecord video content and then disseminate it over the course of the week.
Now, post daily into your day, with actionable tidbits in your business, so think of it as a behind the scenes mixed with a value addition. If I go here to my feed, for example, today, I posted my little guy Logan and our movie room, and then I have a blank paper I was working last night, and I’m talking a little bit about my course, right? Creating urgency and excitement for my upcoming products.
And I talk about how people are commenting on my content, and then I show "Hey, this is a lookout or wire frame, now I’m going to prototype the design and place it into sketch."
So it’s just an inside scoop on my day-to-day on the business side. And again, you don’t have to post content for hours at a time, you can post a few pieces each day, just so people can see a little snippet into your lifestyle.
This is another one I’m talking about. My last post, I’m actually talking about this post, which is funny.
So, mix that content up, post daily and think of it as behind-the-scenes with a value add.
Also, in my example I post the creative process of web design, so I’ll share a wireframe designs, ask opinions–here are some more pieces on my content. So I show some of our SEO work, I show some website traffic, I show some projects that we’ve redone and redesigned, I just go through all of this, right? You can see a full archive on my Instagram there.
It’s a great way to engage the audience, and you keep the Instagram algorithm happy. If you’re not posting everyday on your feed, it’s a good idea to post every day on Instagram stories, because it will keep your engagement at a good rate.
Let’s go to the next one. Also mix it up, so, post maybe eight to 12 stories per day, 5 days a week. Mix it up with content, with personal stories, struggles, workload, marketing tips and more.
Now don’t just show the good side, show the gritty side, show the late night, show an issue you might’ve had with a client. People want to see that you’re human, that you make mistakes, yet you’re amazing at what you do. But you’re also—there’s also a big human element in that.
Also use ghost tags. This is a great, great tactic that I use. I’ll show you guys on Blackwater how we use it on a consistent basis to build this page to 150,000 active followers.
And so let’s go to here–now you can’t see it, but behind this is a hashtag.
Now what I’ll do is, I’ll go to one of our followers, right? Let’s do Kiddie Kredit for example. Let’s see, I love this quote, "Action is the foundational key to success." So I’ll hit this, I’ll hit add post a story, and then what I’ll do is, I’ll add a hashtag, and what a hashtag will do is it’ll increase the scope of people who you reach.
So, I’m going to put a #BLACKEXCELLENCE, right? Because that’s our main target with that specific page. Now I’m going to tap it, I’m going to tap this image, and now you can see that it’s behind it, right? You can’t see it, but it’s there.
So I’m going to hit Send To, I’m going to send it to everyone in our feed, and it’s done, right?
Now that’s in our feed, right? So we’re getting all that reach with the hashtag, but no one’s going to know that we’re using the hashtag. It’s a great way to use the ghost tactic to get that done.
Lastly, you want to make sure that you—I’m going to go back to my personal page here, all right. So last thing you want to do is make sure you respond to every comment, respond to DMS and answer questions people have. Even if they put a statement, just to make sure you comment, because that helps the Instagram algorithm in helping people find you.
So if you’re seeing a downtick in your engagement, I always ask a question and answer it through story. You can ask a question like, for example, if I put like a new post, I’m just going to do like a black screen, let’s do this, right? Okay, and I’m going to say go here, and I’m going to put questions.
"What marketing questions do you have?" And then I’ll also have a hashtag, so I’ll do digital marketing, okay, I’ll make that small, and then I’ll put it behind it. Now you can’t even see it, and share it to my feed, all right?
So that is that, and then lastly, try these tactics for a month straight. I guarantee you’ll see traction, you’ll see an increase on your reach and you’ll gain some leads from it. Just be sure to respond promptly to your leads and your comments, as you can see here.
As soon as someone comments, I make sure that I hit them with a response and then set up quick replies to answer FAQ’s and simplify your process. I’ll show you an example of that and then I’ll let you go, because I know this video is getting long-winded.
For example, with DMs, a lot of people ask us for one of our pages to—they want to send info in regards to sponsor posts. So we actually created a quick reply here, where if you go here, it says, hey, if anyone asks, "Hey, do you do sponsor posts?" I tap that, and now it already has the post already pre-made.
So I say, "Hey, our sponsored posts offering is simple, complete payment here, complete the questionnaire, we post your story you post, that’s it." And then I send that, and that makes the process really easy, drops it into a Google Doc, but I can get into more of that later.
Anyway, I hope you got some value from this. I’ll talk to you guys soon.
