Promote Using Instagram-NEW

>> Hi there. I hope you're feeling like you're getting your footing in the online world of social media because in this lecture, we're going to focus on another popular online platform, Instagram. Instagram is currently the second most popular platform out there with over 700 million users and growing daily. Despite Facebook being considered the most popular social media platform, Instagram users are actually twice as engaged per follower as Facebook, so definitely a platform worth engaging on. Even though Instagram is growing at a rapid pace, it's still a relatively uncrowded market. Now maybe you're not familiar with Instagram, so before we go further, let's talk about what Instagram is. It's a social media platform that uses photos and videos to engage with an audience, whereas images are secondary on most other social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter, visuals are the king in the world of Instagram. A strong image or video matters more than the words underneath it. If you're planning to use Instagram to market your business, we'd first recommend setting up an Instagram account that's solely dedicated to your business and kept separate from your personal profile. Now that isn't to say that your business profile can include bits of your personality and personal life. On the contrary, people love feeling like they're getting a glimpse into the person behind the business. So it's not just about your products and programs but about you as a personal brand. Similarly, you don't want your business Instagram feed to seem dry with just posts about your business, and your clients, your services. Incorporating your personality will make it engaging with your Instagram account more entertaining, which will lead to more followers, more engagement, and more clients from this platform. We'll talk more a little later about finding a good balance between business, education, and fun for your posts. Now that you've got your business profile set up, how do you make Instagram work for you? Let's look at the top five marketing strategies for Instagram. Number one, leverage your bio. The bio section of your Instagram profile can be a really powerful tool to drive traffic and sales, yet it's very often overlooked by businesses marking themselves on the Gram. So how do you make the best use of your bio? First, you want to keep in mind that social media is considered a top of the funnel marketing channel, which means that it's meant to drive traffic to your blog and your website, not necessarily be a platform for sales. Now consider the funnel you want to take your Instagram followers through. They've started following you on Instagram, they're engaging with your content, what happens next? You might want them to check out a blog you wrote that includes a link to join your newsletter or you might skip right to having them join your newsletter in the first place. Whatever you determine the appropriate next step is, include that link in your bio, the link to your blog, the link to your website, whatever it is. You can always change this link. So don't feel like you have to get it just right. You can experiment with different links and calls to action to see what brings the best results. Number two, gear your channel toward your target audience. This is absolutely key for attracting the right people to your brand. Get to know your target market inside and out, then create content for Instagram that will speak to those people. Want a cheat for this? Take a look at both the people you admire online and your competition to see what they're posting. What kind of content are they sharing? How are they varying up their content? Get really specific on the customers you're going after, and then try putting yourself in their mindset to gain an understanding of what they're looking for. Make it about your audience instead of all about your business, and you'll be amazed at the growth and followers you'll experience. Number three, vary your content. Now that you've got a firm grasp on what your audience is looking for, it's time to deliver. Whatever you post, make sure it's professional in quality. Now that doesn't mean you have to have all stock photos or an elaborate photoshoot. Just make sure that the images you're using are clear and compelling, not blurry or overexposed or too dark. Of course, any live videos you do, don't have to be perfect. In addition to photos and videos, you might include quotes and other inspirational content on your feed. This helps with varying the content, plus people love to share these types of posts. Here's a good framework for breaking up your time on Instagram to promote your business. Forty percent of the time, talk about your niche and things relating to your business. This can be client Success Stories, tips, photos that link back to your blog. Become a source of consistent, valuable information that helps establish you as an expert in your field. Thirty percent of the time, like or comment on other people's posts, reply to comments on your posts, and search for other accounts you might be able to connect with. The key here is to engage in meaningful ways to build relationships online. Twenty percent of the time, aim to post something more personal such as a photo of you with family or out with your friends so people can get to know you more personally. Remember, they buy you, not just your coaching. And 10% of the time, promote yourself and your business. You can do this by inviting people to join your free challenge, or sign up for your newsletter, book a Health History, etcetera. As with your other marketing channels, you'll also want to keep your Instagram presence consistent. Consistency is key for establishing your brand and your reputation for providing valuable content. Number four, make use of hashtags. When you post on Instagram, include hashtags either in your post or in a comment below the post. This will allow your post to become searchable, so you can reach more people, not just the people currently following you. You can create a list of hashtags by checking out the hashtags other people in your niche use, by using Instagram's Explore feature, or by using a third-party website to find out what the top trending hashtags are for your audience. Here's a hint for you. You can also see how popular a hashtag is by checking out the number of times it's been used. So when you start typing a hashtag, suggestions should appear. Next to the suggestion is the number of posts that used that hashtag which would indicate that tag's popularity. Number five, cross-promote, network, and share. Networking, as always, can be one of the most powerful tools in business. It also just happens to be trendy on Instagram to share the love. Now how can you do this? You can do it in a couple of ways. You can share the love by reposting something someone else has posted. Maybe it's a funny meme you saw that you think your audience would love. You can repost that image and then tag the original poster in your post. You can also share the love by tagging people in your own images. For example, let's say you made an acai bowl for breakfast using acai from Sambazon. When you post a picture of your acai bowl, you can tag Sambazon in the image. This provides them with free publicity and, who knows, they might just repost your image on their account. Now you don't have to just focus on really huge Instagram accounts to get value from this. You can focus on smaller accounts that market to a similar audience but who still have more followers than you to tag and post or share their post. The likelihood that they return the favor is probably better than the larger accounts who likely get tagged in lots of posts on a daily basis. Finally, you can build relationships with influencers on Instagram by just promoting what they're offering. You might see this on other people's Instagram feeds where they show a picture of a green juice and say, "Juice Press has the best green juice. Check them out." By directly promoting their product, you're building online rapport with them. All right, so now that we've looked at some of the best ways to use Instagram for free, let's look at how you can use paid options on Instagram to promote your business. Believe it or not, when it comes to conversion rates, sponsored ads on Instagram are actually more successful than their counterparts on Facebook as their ad placement is much more organic. So instead of your ad popping up in the sidebar of someone's Facebook feed, it's showing up right in their Instagram feed as they scroll through recent posts. Now some of you who are familiar with Instagram may be thinking, "Well, what about links? You can't include a link in your Instagram post, only in your bio." And that's correct. Except with Instagram advertising, you can include a link in your ad. It will show up as a button with a call to action such as Sign Up or Learn More, such as what you see on your screen right now. So let's say you want to start advertising on Instagram. How do you get started? First, you'll need to make sure that your Instagram account is a business profile. And you'll know if you have a business profile because it will show the Promote button when you look at your profile page. If you don't currently have a business profile, it's really simple to change that. Just click on the gear icon in your Instagram profile and select Switch to Business Profile, easy as that. Now let's look at how to promote a post. This means you'll be taking an existing post intending to have it reach more people. To promote a post, navigate to your user profile on Instagram, then click Promote. Recent posts will show up. Select the post you'd like to use for your promotion. You'll then see a screen that asks you to choose what you want to do with this promotion. You can choose either get more profile and website visits, this is probably your most likely option as you want to drive traffic to your Instagram account and your website to generate more leads for your business, or you can reach people near and address, and you'd use this if you were promoting an in-person event that you wanted people to register for, or to reach more people local to your area if you do in-person coaching. Whichever option you choose, you'll then be asked to provide more specifics for your ad such as a website URL or location. Then you'll want to set your options for your audience. Instagram will automatically, just like Facebook, select an audience. But again, we recommend further specifying the criteria for your ideal target market so you're reaching exactly the kind of people you want to reach. After you've selected your audience, you'll need to set a budget and duration you want your ad to run for. Again, you want to run your ad for at least a week so you can see how the ad is performing. After a week, you can check out the insights for your ad to see what worked and what didn't so you can tweak before running another ad. Before your ad is finalized, you'll need to submit a payment option. But don't worry, you won't be charged any recurring fees. You will just be charged for the budget you set for your promotion. All right, we've covered a lot about Instagram. So let's recap a bit. We talked about using Instagram as a free marketing tool. I mean, who doesn't love free marketing, right? We discussed leveraging your bio, gearing your content towards your target audience, posting a variety of content, using hashtags, and using Instagram to grow your network. Then we talked about how to create a paid ad on Instagram to boost your reach and increase conversions on your posts. So what do you think of using Instagram as a marketing tool? Is this something you're excited to try out or perhaps, something you've already dabbled in? Which of these tips are you most excited to try out? Head on over to the Facebook group and let us know. And we'll talk to you soon. Bye for now.