A week ago today, I stumbled upon some great Instagram marketing tools, they had high claims, and like you reading this now, I wondered… will this really work.
So I put it to the test.
To be honest, I missed a day, I forgot to post once, and I wasn’t particularly committed. I had spent months and hours on hours getting to my 100 uninterested and unengaged followers… Did I really want to spend more time on this?
But I have to tell you, it worked!
And not only did it work, I now have over 1000 followers, they are engaged, they comment, they like, I even had two consultation requests – without even pushing for it.
Now for the good stuff. What did I do?
1. What’s your content strategy?
It’s important to have a content strategy in place. This can be as simple as a 1 paragraph note scribbled on paper. But plan out what you are trying to achieve, and what content will help you do that.
2. What’s on your bio?
Your bio is incredibly important. Quickly explain how you help people, and who you help – and then link them to your website/ebook/free download.
The goal is to find a way to capture their information. This is the hardest part of Instagram because the actual feed doesn’t contain links. This is why you’ll see ‘Link in Bio’ a lot. Use it!
3. Know your target market.
Obviously, they use Instagram, and your clientele is not location-specific. But what else do you know about them? What kind of accounts do they follow?
Write down a list of the Top 10 Instagram accounts where you’re ideal clients hang out.
Don’t know?
Find out! Call your best clients, do an email survey, ask the question on Facebook. But find out which pages your ideal clients are following already.
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4. Start creating some content.
Even if you have no followers yet. Depending on your industry this could be your own photos, quotes, or product images. Whatever is going to work with your content strategy and your customers. You want to make sure you have at least around 50-100 posts before you get to the next step.
Two wonderful tools I love are Word Swag and Typorama – They are perfect for putting text on images and adding your logo.
Make sure your branding is on most posts, and each photo is beautiful
5. Now comes the fun part.
You need to make sure you’ve done the above steps before you do this. Use a tool called crowdfireapp.com This is how you are going to drastically improve your following.
What this app allows you to do is follow those who follow other pages, so if your idea client is in love with Apple, you can follow all those who follow Apple. Or you might be a wedding photographer, so you can follow the followers of other wedding photographers.
And as you know if you’ve used Instagram when someone follows you – you’re always curious to check out the account – and if you’ve got a great account. You’ll get new followers by the dozen!
6. You need to sell.
One last note, you want to make sure you still push for and drive traffic to a landing page to collect user information. Whether it’s by hosting a challenge, giving away an eBook, or giving away a consultation – You need to sell.
This is the part I didn’t do particularly well at during this first week, I did it once, and I still got leads from it. But I’d love to do it with more intention.
I’ll keep you posted on the new things I learn but I’d love to hear about your successes! Make sure you follow me @brightredmarketing – and say hello!
IMPORTANT NOTE: Something to consider when you begin your following – you eventually want your follower to follow ratios to even out. Until you get to your first 1000, don’t worry too much about it, but then you’ll need to spend some time evening those ratios out. Instagram has limits on how many people you can follow/unfollow per hour. So just make sure you spend some time ‘unfollowing’ those who don’t follow you back as well. You don’t want to have 1000 followers, but you follow 5,000…
