Transcript for Instagram Marketing Made Easy
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[00:00] Hey, hey there, Edgar Community. I am Megan coming at you here. We’re gonna get started with our Instagram Marketing Made Simple workshop in a few minutes. We do have our lovely head of the customer experience team, Kristina, who’s gonna pop in and help out with our chat on the right-hand side of your page. So pop on in there. Let us know who you are, where you’re coming from. Ask questions throughout this. We love being interactive. So make sure you’re connecting with each other and all letting us know where you’re coming from and who you are. And Kristina will be manning that and we get started here in a few minutes. Super excited to chat Instagram with you all. Thanks so, so much for taking a few minutes out of your day today.
[01:29] Alright, I see a few new popping on in here as we get a little bit closer to 10 a.m. Pacific time, 1 p.m. Eastern time. I’m so excited to have you all here. Like I said we are gonna get ready to chat some really, hardcore, actionable Instagram tips today. So get ready with your pen and paper out to take these awesome tips and put them to use after the webinar. Because remember the best time to put anything to use, the best time to get motivated is right after you learn it. So we’d love you to go ahead and pop into the chat as well. Ask questions. Let us know what goals you’re working on, on any social network really. We love feedback about webinars too. Let us know where you’re coming from and chat with each on over there. Christina will be helping me out in the chat today.
[02:11] I am Megan. I’m one of the onboarding coaches at MeetEdgar. If you’ve been following along with our webinar series, you know we like to cover a ton of different topics. As small businesses, we are so, so lucky to have all of these platforms in order to get our message and get all of our value-added content out to our followers and Instagram is definitely one of them that we haven’t touched on in these webinars very often. So really excited to dive into some of these tips and tricks. Let us know what your favorite one is. Let us know how you’ve seen success on Instagram or what challenges you’re focusing on these days as well, over in the chat section. If you do have any questions as well that we don’t get to, please feel free to email support @meetedgar.com. We love chatting with the community there as well. Anytime throughout this webinar, you can ask questions over in the chat like we said. It is getting to that time to start now, so I’m gonna jump right on in.
[03:03] So Instagram Marketing Made Simple is our webinar today. Now if you haven’t followed us on Instagram yet, our handle is @meetedgar and you can see some of our awesome new content creation. We are going throughout this process of getting our Instagram up and running in a really full swing now with one of our newest team members, Maura Hughes, if you didn’t catch her on our Facebook Live the other day, be sure to pop on over to our Facebook page. She has so much valuable knowledge to offer to you all. So check her out there. Say hi to her over on Facebook as well. And she’s the one who is curating our awesome Instagram posts and we are going to dive right into some tips and tricks here.
[03:42] So why you should be on Instagram? I’m sure you guys realize that Instagram is one of the most popular networks these days. It has almost a billion monthly active users which is pretty insane when you think about that. So if you’re following the trends of social media, you know Instagram is definitely the place to be to catch people’s attention and to get all of your awesome value-added content out there. Since Instagram’s creation, it’s really grown into the ultimate platform for sharing visual content like photos, graphics that you create, anything like that. So if you guys are creating anything visual, Instagram is the place to be.
[04:19] So more than 60 million photos are actually posted each day on Instagram and 1.6 billion daily likes are given out on Instagram. These numbers are insane guys so if you’re not on Instagram, you’re definitely missing out on a lot of brand building and a lot of exposure there. So definitely not a network to ignore and miss out on these days. Instagram is a really great place to grow your brand awareness.
[04:44] One of the first things we want you to think about as you’re starting to set up your Instagram, is that you actually have two options of the type of account that can you use. The first option, I’m sure you all know, if you have your own Instagram, is a personal account. Personal accounts you can make them private or you can make them public. So you can use a personal account for your brand or business absolutely and still get that great public reach. It does have a higher organic reach and it has the ability to connect multiple Facebook pages and profiles, which is really nice.
[05:12] Also, however, Instagram does now offer business accounts. And I would love for you all to kinda consider what a business account could get for you. A business account has some really clear benefits. You know, for example, followers can click on your contact button to get in touch with you right from your Instagram page. Always making yourself available to your followers, to your community is gonna be a great way that you can differentiate your service and you can really show up for your followers. So that’s an awesome feature there. You can add your address and location if you’re a physical business, so definitely a plus if you have an actual, physical store.
[05:47] Analytics, guys. Analytics is huge for anything on social media. It’s kinda like we never want you to just be swinging a golf club in the dark and not getting that feedback and not ever improving on all the hard work you’re putting in there. So a business account can offer you some really awesome analytics right within Instagram as well. And ad capabilities. So this is similar to Facebook ads. It’s a paid way that you can get your content out and get a little bit more reach on Instagram. And you can do this in both the feed as well as the story section, but only if you do have a business account there.
[06:19] If you guys do have to follow up questions about if a business account or a personal account is right for your business, like I said, go ahead and email support at @meetedgar.com and we can chat through that a little bit more. So once you decide on if you want a business account or a personal account, your next step is gonna be as usual, what we talk about, coming up with your brand voice. Now your brand voice across all your social networks should be pretty consistent on what you want to convey, who your team is, asking those questions about what kinda content you put out there. What tone it’s in, so your followers know what to expect and you’re attracting your tribe and you’re attracting the right kind of people who really see themselves in your brand. And who connect with you in a way they become raving fans, they become what are called super fans who wanna get out there and essentially market your business with you because they care so much about and they care so much about your product. And Instagram is a great way to be able to do that consistently with visuals.
[07:16] So when we’ve talked about brand voice before, it’s been a lot around language, it’s a lot around the types of articles you share, stuff like that. On Instagram with the filters, with the ability to go ahead and mock up a lot of your photos and images, we really want you to take some time to sit down and create a style guide that goes along with your Instagram account. You wanna give your followers a place to know what they’re gonna expect. The types of photos that do well and the brands that are building the biggest followings really do have accounts that are really, really streamlined. So the one you can see here on the screen, you can see they go with a really clean style, super fresh bold images there. Other accounts that you see do well, you can see have really kind of a different vibe. If you go to Edgar’s Instagram you can see we do a little bit softer of a color, not as much of a harsh kind of black and white lines like that. But you know what to expect.
[08:05] So it’s not only knowing what to expect within Instagram, but this is also such a huge thing for brands who have consistent coloring. If you’re out in the world and you see that coloring or if you see something reminds you of that brand, it triggers that memory of like, “Oh yeah, that looks like XYZ.” In one of our past webinars we looked at Glossier, a make up company who does this so well that when people see their color pink out in the world, a lot of the time they’ll take a picture and they’ll hashtag it glossier pink on Instagram because they’ve done such a good job branding with colors.
[08:36] So I know it sounds a little bit like maybe this isn’t something you have to focus on but let me tell you it is so big for brand awareness. So definitely don’t waste time thinking too hard about what you’re going to actually create on Instagram until you come up with those consistent colors and with your game plan for your Instagram branding.
[08:57] Awesome. So as we go a little bit further here, we always want to start out knowing on each social network that it is all about keeping social and social and that means showing your personality and humanizing your brand. SO as we always say, people buy from people, not brands. And in order to get that purchasing power and in order to get that awesome value-added content to your followers, they wanna know you, they wanna like you and they wanna trust you. And that makes the buying process of being able to say, “You know what, I actually do believe in this product and this is what I need right now,” a lot easier of a decision for people to make. And it also makes the sale a lot more elegant for you.
[09:36] So you can see right here in this post, this is our founder, Laura, who does a lot of podcasts. And it’s a great way to pull back the curtain, get that behind the scenes as well as humanizing the branding, you know, showing we are real people, this is the amount of work that goes into creating this product and we do this because we care about our followers and we care about our community so much. And Instagram is an awesome way to get that personality added in a little bit more. So definitely don’t be afraid to share your face on Instagram every once in a while to get that awesome no like and trust factor going, so that people can really get to know you. And it works for any industry really. Not just a SaaS one, not just a product that might be only online. It’s also a really great way that you’re able to get your face out there without forcing people to buy your product. Again that no like and trust factor.
[10:25] So I also wanna touch here before we go into some Instagram posting examples, is if you have a lot of followers on your personal account, make sure you’re actually taking advantage of that and linking some of your posts, within your account to your business page, if you’re starting a new one. You know we always wanna be cross promoting on our platforms from Facebook to Twitter, stuff like that, to let our followers know that we exist in other places. But you can actually do that within Instagram as well. So make sure you’re tagging your actual business page or tagging your second brand page if you’re making one on your personal account to let people know it’s there and to build your following a little bit faster.
[11:03] Super simple to do, especially in your stories. Stories will disappear in 24 hours so it’s not anything that’ll be linked on your personal page for too long. This is a great place to it. Super simple. You’ll tap the camera in the top left of your screen. Go ahead and put that Insta-Story photo up there, tap the little AA letter icon and then you’ll just put the @ symbol followed immediately by your new brand’s username. And it’s a great way to drive people from your personal account to your new brand.
[11:32] Cool. So let’s talk a little about Instagram’s algorithm here. So each social network has its own algorithm, has its own way of what post they’re feeding up to make sure they’re showing you content that you care about. So Instagram’s here is going to have three main points. The first being interest. So Instagram’s gonna look at all the posts and say, “How much will this person like this piece of content?” And this is gonna be based on the past content that you’ve liked from brands, the past profiles you’ve clicked on. So it’s going to track your user’s behavior and it’s gonna be serving up posts from those people that you like more often or from those pages you visit more often.
[12:09] So this is also a really important thing to keep in mind when you’re creating your content, because if you create really diverse content or really share-worthy content where people might like a really funny quote or a meme that you post, that’s gonna say, “Hey Instagram, they like seeing post from me. Show my next post to them as well.” So that’s a really great way to diversify your content, make sure you’re getting people to like it, even if it’s not directly related to selling a product or driving traffic to your blog or anything, make sure you’re getting those nice, value-added posts out there to show Instagram’s algorithm. People like the content you’re putting out there.
[12:45] Recency is going to be the second thing that the algorithm looks at. So that’s gonna be how often or how recent a post has been shared. And it’s gonna prioritize those that are gonna be really timely over the older ones for people to see. And relationship, so how close you are to the person who shared it. So it’s gonna give higher ranking for people that you’ve interacted with a lot. So direct messages, commented, hearts, stuff like that, which is also why we really encourage you to get out there and do some community building of liking other photos, commenting on other people’s Instagram photos, DMing people. These are really great ways to also show the algorithm that you have relationships with your community and they want to see all of the posts you’re putting out there. So keep these things in mind as we go throughout these Instagram examples today.
[13:33] Some of these little tips on the bottom there are also things you can do again to build relationships. I always like to suggest, you know, going into Instagram, searching a certain hashtag that has to do with your community. So for us here at Edgar, for example, we could search hashtag small business or hashtag blogger and that’ll go ahead and populate all of the posts that other people have used that hashtag on and it’s a great way for you to then go in, start commenting, building relationships with these other people, to let them know you exist and your product might offer them value depending upon what you find in that hashtag related search you did.
[14:11] So you wanna make sure when you’re doing this that it’s not just you go through and tap, tap, tap, like, like, liking or copying and pasting the same comment on every photo. Because Instagram really does want, like most social networks these days, those authentic, real connections. So make sure you’re jumping in there, making those awesome connections and it’s a great way to start to build your following. Cool. The next thing I always recommend doing, especially if you’re getting starting out, is research bigger brands that are in your industry or in your niche. Cause if you think about it, it’s likely that they’re marketing department has spent a ton of money doing a lot of research on the types of posts that work really well, the times of day to send them out. They’ve probably done a ton of content relation testing about what type of content your followers like to see the most. And you gain insights from looking at other people in your industry to see what’s worked with their followers. And not exactly copying their strategy because you are the only you in your business, so you wanna make sure it is completely unique. But it’s a great way to start generating ideas of what works well. So pay attention to these bigger industries, pay attention to other people in your niche and see what’s been working for them, to start to know what kind of content your followers and your specific audience likes to see on Instagram.
[15:29] Awesome. So as we were talking about at the very beginning today, Instagram is so visual. So if you have a physical store or physical product, I really encourage you to try to look at the spaces or look at the packaging that you send it in and start to think about the experience that you can provide to people that they would wanna take a picture of. So this becomes really important because it’s essentially like free marketing. If someone’s taking a picture, tagging your business, tagging your industry in it and posting to their Instagram account, they have just opened up your brand to their entire followers as well, which is just.
[16:00] They have just opened up your brand to their entire followers as well which is just incredible free marketing, free brand awareness for you. You can see in these pictures you know you can see this really funny sign, I called shotgun infinity when I was 12, so many people can relate to that experience, really funny thing, super eye-catching, a lot of people taking pictures and posting it on Instagram, what great brand awareness for this restaurant. If you have a restaurant or a store think about the spaces that you can make a really creative wall people would love to take their picture in front of or a really creative sandwich board sign out in front of your store even and you’ll start to really see a lot more shares out there.
[16:38] With products you can see here this is an example from Glossier the way that they ship your product to you is in a really eye-catching, really good way that people like to take a picture of it and share it out on their own Instagram again. Start to think about these little things that you can do to really encourage other people really promoting your brand on Instagram.
[16:58] Cool so now that we’ve gone through a little bit of the set up we want to jump right on into what the heck else can I post on Instagram? It’s gonna be really, really similar to other networks but because it is visual we wanted to go and do a few of the sort of nitty grittiness of how Instagram works way better than other networks with photos.
[17:20] Similar to other networks like Facebook and Twitter we always want to be thinking about the posts of how we can teach people something and this goes along with that value-added concept that works so well on social media. You know people are following your brand because they want to know and they want to like and they want to trust what you’re sharing because they know your offering value in every post you serve up. Think about some hot tips or some fun facts that are around your industry that you can create and share out on Instagram, you can see here this is a post we did on Meet Edgar and you can go ahead ask a questions in it and let people know what to expect when they go ahead and click over and get all of your really great information.
[17:58] Teach something on Instagram and make sure you’re giving your followers a reason to come back, if you’re just promotion post after post after post that’s not gonna be a really compelling reason for people to want to go to your page and see your content or continue following you, you want to give them a reason and things to look forward to and teaching something and educating people is really one of the best ways to keep them coming back for more. You really also want to make sure that you’re staying consistent across any social network and this also goes along with the idea that you want to make sure people know what they’re gonna get from following you. Think about doing things like tip Tuesday or motivation Monday so people know, you know what? Every Monday when I log on to my Instagram this brand is gonna serve me up a motivation quote and get me ready for the week. A lot of creative ways to stay really consistent on Instagram but remember each post again should be value added to your followers.
[18:53] Next product updates, products updates are gonna be huge if you are a business or service who changes things or who upgrades their features a lot online or maybe you had a new shoe or a new dish at your restaurant these things are great to be announced right on Instagram because even if you send out emails announcing these everyone’s not gonna open every email you send and they might prefer to go to Instagram more often.
[19:18] Think about ways that you might be educating your community on your new features and how to use them in your email sends and how you can then go into a site like Canva, create a graphic, to actually go ahead and alert people on Instagram too. A really great way to go ahead and do that is again going into a graphic design feature and making a feature alert like this so every time people see this on Instagram their brain is triggered to go, oh great I better check this out, I recognize that brand color, I recognize that it’s a new feature from Meet Edgar that I want to learn about. Think about keeping your feature alerts really consistent in color and branding as well so people know that they want to click and pay attention to that post. Next thought leadership, so we chatted about know, like, and trust at the beginning and we touched a lot about how you are the only you in your business when we were talking about researching other industries but I wanted to touch on that a little bit more as we go throughout thought leadership as well because really what differentiates you from anyone else in your industry is going to be the way that you value and the way that you have built your business and that’s gonna be something that we really encourage you to share on Instagram. You can see here this is a quote from our founder Laura and it’s super simple, again, just to make quotes like this really pop on Instagram in a design app like Canva, you don’t have to have a graphic designer to make it really poppy here. Just share some of these tips and tricks here that you have learned from your business and things that really inspire you to show your followers what you value and to show your followers who you are.
[20:57] If you’re not really comfortable in front of a camera like we were talking about with your face thought leadership is another way to really get your personality out there and humanize your brand. Think about the things that you can really do again to keep your followers coming back and wanting to learn more about you. When you think about this kind of behind the scenes pulling back the curtain, showing who you are, please also remember that it is so important for your followers to know you but they also like to know you. If you think about like celebrities who go out and they share about their lives on talk shows and stuff, why do they get so many viewers? Because people want to know the person behind that, it’s a really great way to get that human connection, we are all hardwired to want human connection in life and Instagram’s a great place to go ahead and show that off for your business.
21:45 Next is visuals on Instagram again can really help to show a story within one post. You can see here this from Refinery29 is a great way to be able to make numbers a little more interesting. I don’t know about you guys but I am so terrible with numbers and I am not someone who is really interested in getting into a spreadsheet and reading a bunch of numbers, my eyes will probably glaze over. If I see this, this is really really great information that I can quickly digest and I can quickly understand so if you have interesting facts or if you have any data is really really compelling for people to want to look at.
22:21 Again they want to bridge this gap in their mind about saying, “Huh, I don’t know this piece of information, I want to know this piece of information, this brand is helping me get there,” so again that goodwill of teaching people and offering value but also Instagram is a great way to make sure that you’re catching people who might not want to read all of the data that you have and make it in a really nice eye-catching way for your followers to see so think about the different types of numbers and data that you can turn into a mini infographic like they have here.
22:51 Next is humor relatability and tagging. Guys we cannot stress relatability enough on social media these days, if someone can see themselves in your story, if someone can see themselves in your brand that is gonna create this really awesome moment where they look at it and they say, “Huh, me too. That’s something I feel as well,” and it creates that bond with your brand that they’re gonna remember that the next time it comes up in their life. You can see on this post here that we’ve said anyone else feeling like this, everyone has had days where they feel like they need a couple more hours in the day or a couple more hands to get stuff done so it’s a really relatable post that also brings humor into it.
23:32 Social media in general anything humor, anything optimistic is gonna be really important to share as well because people want to go there to be uplifted and to kind of escape from either a stress of their day or just to relax and humor’s a great way to get that sort of relaxed feeling in your head. Never underestimate the power of a smile that can really create a great connection with your brand as well as anything that you can think your followers will see and say, “Huh, this brand gets me, this is a brand I want to hang out with,” because that’s what you really want to accomplish on social media is being a brand that people want to hang out with.
24:08 Again it all relates back to you don’t want people just to follow you and forget about you or buy from you and never want to follow you on social media so you have to give them a reason to keep following and that is gonna be making yourself a brand people want to hang out with and say this brand gets me, I see myself in this story. Think about any sort of humor, relatability post that you can get going there. The last thing on this that I wanted to touch on is tagging within Instagram whether it’s in a story or within a post itself you can actually tag similar on the way you do on Facebook and Twitter just with the at symbol and someone’s handle and another really great way to connect people and create community on Instagram.
24:48 Next behind the scenes, so we’ve touched on this a lot with the humanizing brand but I wanted here to chat a little bit about this idea that you want to give your followers something that other people can’t get. If someone’s following you they feel like maybe they’re a part of a little bit more of a secret group that they’re getting something that others who are not following you can’t see. Offer things up to your followers that really help show them that you want to bring them into the brand and you want to again be a brand they want to hang out with.
25:17 It’ll also compel people to share your Instagram account with their friends because they want to feel helpful to their friends, it’s one of the strongest drives in social media sharing is that people want to be helpful and people want to go ahead and be seen as someone who’s really great to their friends and they can say, “Hey I’ve been following this brand, they do a lot of great bring the scenes content like I see that you need a social media automation tool, I’d love for you to get to know them by following them too,” and again the behind the scenes content is gonna be what really compels people to get to know, like, and trust you as well as giving them that little feeling that other people don’t get to know your brand as well who aren’t following you so behind the scenes content huge, huge, huge.
26:04 Reviews, so reviews are great for social proof, we talk about them on every single social network. On Instagram I wanted just to chat a little bit here about the idea that if you have a really great testimonial or review from one of your members or from someone who bought your product again make it really visual and eye-catching by popping into Canva or popping it into whatever design tool you use and create a format that can be consistently shared. You can just swap in and out this as seen on with the other brand names, swap in and out the photo of the person who did it, and go ahead and put their quote right in there.
26:38 Again it creates that consistency that when one of your reviews or social proofs come up people get that awareness that they know what they’re looking at right away. It said it takes about six seconds to process any sort of image so it’s a great way there to take some of that down so people who are moving really quickly through their feed might see that and say, “Huh, I want to stop, I know I like content from this brand.” It’s also a really great way that you don’t have to reinvent the wheel each time so if you have these consistent templates saved somewhere definitely make use of them so that you can jump on and be recognized quickly.
27:12 Contest, contest, contest it’s a great way to motivate people to hop on your Instagram and want to go ahead and join in the fun. Think about ways that you can compel your followers to want to interact with you with a contest. Hashtags are a really great way that people do this so you can go ahead and hop on and say hashtag your picture with some custom branded hashtag that you have and then you can choose a winner from that. There’s also a lot of different websites that will go ahead and help you with Instagram related contests, if you’re interested in that go ahead and email support@meetedgar.com and we can offer you up some of those.
27:52 With contests I also wanted to mention that you can create custom landing pages for the contests where people can then go and enter their email addresses allowing you at the same time to build up your email list. Think about the ways that you can go ahead and compel people to follow you on Instagram to enter the contest, share a picture with a branded hashtag to then again open up your brand to their followers and then have a special landing page if you have a URL in there that people can be directed to.
28:24 Next is educating people again but also driving traffic. Instagram’s an interesting one because it’s really easy to grow your follower account on Instagram but not as easy to drive traffic and this is because you can’t actually put a link in the comment section if you don’t have more than 10,000 followers. What I suggest always doing is creating a short link here like you can see that ACLU did, all they did was create a custom short link with Rebrandly that says ACLU.org/blog, super simple to remember it’s not a long URL that they have to go to, super simple that someone could actually type that in since you can’t click on it in the comments. Think about if you can if you need a link right within that comment section making it a nice easy one that people can type in.
29:11 For your blog posts again as well when your sharing a blog post on Instagram make sure you’ve gone ahead and pulled out a great graphic from it, overlaid some text, because the same rule of headlines applies for Instagram as well. You know people really read a headline half the time and not a whole article before they share it and before they think it’s helpful so go ahead and brainstorm different headlines, put them on your images here so you can share out some awesome headlines in your Instagram posts and still get them really visual.
29:43 This goes along with the idea of Evergreen Promotion which we all know Meet Edgar is really great at but sometimes it’s really hard to Evergreen promote on Instagram in the way that it’s set up. That doesn’t mean you can’t do it and it’s an awesome platform to keep re-sharing your content just again in a really authentic way. Why it’s really important on any network really is because two million blog posts are released to WordPress daily which is an insane number so in order to get your blog post showing or in order to get your content out there you oftentimes need to share it multiple times and you never really know the type of headline or the type of image that might grab someone’s attention.
30:23 If you do have content that’s Evergreen, so that content that makes sense to send out no matter what time of year it is, I would really suggest you sit down and you create multiple images for that blog post or you create multiple headlines for that blog post so you can overlay on those images and then creating that schedule of being able to re-share them on Instagram is another great strategy to drive more traffic to your site. Do not count Instagram out for re-sharing multiple images in Evergreen content because you never know what images and you never know what headline is gonna trigger someone and make them say, “Yes I need to know this information.” Test it out creating multiple ones and don’t be afraid to re-share Evergreen content on Instagram, it’s a great strategy.
31:08 Another great strategy we want to talk about here is we saw in the ACLU post that you can put just a short link that people can type in but what you’ll see a lot people on Instagram also do is say to click the link in the bio. This is because the link in the bio is actually the only place you can have a clickable link right there. What we will do here at Edgar a lot of the time is when we share a blog post well say click the link in the bio for more.
31:33 What’s really cool is there’s also this website called Linktr.ee, L-I-N-K-T-R- dot E-E so when we do this we actually send people to this link you can see here and when you click on the link in our bio it actually has multiple things. The multiple things have been shared over the last couple of weeks, we’ve had posts that say click link in bio and when people are clicking the link in the bio it’s taking them to where you can choose from these different options and what this really-
32:00 … to where you can choose from these different options. What this really does is it allows your content to live on Instagram longer than it appears in people’s feeds. If you’re clicking that link the bio from a recent post that we posted you can see all of the other links that we’re trying to drive traffic to, and that we’re trying to offer our followers value from, from previously in there. So, you don’t have to have just one link in your bio and change it out all the time. I would really encourage you to look into this service. It’s a great way that we’ve seen a ton of more traffic come from Instagram because we’re allowing our users, and we’re allowing our followers to self-select what they’re interested in here. Also again, making sure these posts live longer than the feed.
32:42 See we also always want to know that you don’t have to again use Instagram just to drive your follower count, or just to drive traffic to your website. You can also take your relationship with your followers off of Instagram and right into their inbox to help build your email list. Catskill Animal Sanctuary does this really well. You can see here right within their bio that they actually mention that as a call out, and they put that link there because they know that email is one of the best direct ways that they’re going to reach people. If you’re trying to follow-up and you’re trying to build your email list right now I’d encourage the link in your bio to be direct to where people are going to have that place where they can signup and opt-in to subscribe.
33:53 … bio. It’s taking you to a place where you can put your email address in and you can get that free download email to you. It’s a great value to you because you’re getting that. She’s getting a really great way to build her email list and keep contacting you about all of her great value-added content. So again, think about these ways that Instagram can be used not only to grow your followers, or not only to drive traffic, but also to grow your email list and offer value to your followers. If you’re doing this think again about ways you’re not only leading people just where they’re putting their email address in a form to join your newsletter, but they’re taken to a landing page where they’re able to put in their email. You can put in any other fields that you’re interested in learning about, of course, and get that free download to help build your email list right from Instagram.
34:43 Cool, so talking a little bit more about some of the other features Instagram offers, it does have a Carousel feature, which is really awesome because this gives you the ability to share multiple images within one post. You can include up to 10 images and videos in a single post and it’s great if you have a brand, or you have a service that you need to demonstrate instructions from. When you’re demonstrating instructions, again, you can see here how Buzzfeed Tasty does this in multiple videos that people can scroll through and see. It’s great for you to be able to show and tell that.
35:22 All righty here, I am getting a little bit of feedback that maybe these slides aren’t showing up. So sorry guys, let me go ahead and reset this.
35:58 Thanks so much for your patience guys. We are almost there to reshare these slides.
36:25 All right, so we should be back up and running now. Thanks so much for your patience. So as we were talking about here, it’s a great way to also not overwhelm all of your followers. It’s a great way to be able to post multiple things without having to have multiple posts go out for the day. Think about the ways that you can use Instagram’s Carousel feature. One of the ways that I’ve seen use it really well to drive more engagement is to be able to share trivia questions as well. When you’re sharing trivia questions it’s a great way to drive people to want to participate and get that kind of Q&A thing. With the Carousel feature you can ask a question on one, and then reveal the answer on the other, which is awesome. Going further on the Carousel feature you can reward your followers with first looks at new images, or first looks at new products. You can go ahead and think about that as well as you’re using the carousel feature here.
37:20 Going further, social media one-on-one is all about getting people to reply to you, getting people to go on in and chat with you. This is going to be about asking questions, so I love this one here by MTV saying, “Hey, which one of these looks is your favorite from Emma Stone?” It’s again, a great way to get people to engage a little bit more with your content. It’s also a really awesome way that you’re able to go on in and caption multiple quotes. Think about the ways that if you’re in [inaudible 00:37:52] and you’re making multiple quotes out of it, and if you’re making multiple great images that you can go ahead and put that right on your Instagram here.
38:04 All righty … I’m hearing that the slides are not coming through. I’m so sorry guys, one second and let me go ahead and troubleshoot this here. Appreciate you staying with us we are almost there.
39:51 (Silence) All right guys, not sure why these slides aren’t going through. So, so sorry, so I am going to pop on in here. The slides are actually going to be available on SlideShare after the webinar today. We will go ahead and make sure that you have access to the slides. Super appreciate you sticking with us here today, and I’m just going to chat here a little bit more about Instagram as we do start to get these slides working again. Thanks for sticking around here. All right, so going a bit further on this Instagram feature, with the Carousel you want to make sure when you’re using the Carousel feed remember you can add up to 10 photos to it at a time. You can go ahead and get all of these awesome value added ideas out on your follower’s pages quite a bit more.
41:02 Going a little bit further, we also always have Instagram Stories available for us. Instagram Stories are really short formatted stories of 15 second videos that last 24 hours on your Instagram feed. Why this is really, really, cool is because it allows you to do a little bit more information that is going to be a little bit more out there and the ways that you can test different things on Instagram Stories. Testing things on Instagram Stories is really cool because you’re able to do these short videos if you’re not someone who’s comfortable in front of the camera you can hop on in and say, “Hey, this is an awesome place for me to go ahead and test out being on camera because it’s only going to live for 24 hours in my feed.” Super easy to consume, people are really highly addicted to Instagram Stories right now especially because they are right there on your feed. So right on your feed it’s going to be able to show you at the top little icons that you can click on, and it’s again, a great way for you to go on in and connect with your members that way. Going a little bit further with Instagram Stories …
42:10 I’m so sorry about the slides guys. Working on seeing why the screen share isn’t coming through. Those will be available for you afterwards though.
42:19 But going a little bit further with Instagram Stories, things that you can do with it is you can share limited time discount codes on stories. So, you know saying something like, “Hey we’re having a Labor Day flash sale, get 20% off,” or, “get free shipping from this.” It’s a really great way for you to compel people to check back in with your story quite often because checking back in with your story is a way that you’re able to get people to say, “Hey, I want this content. I want to be able to know when they’re running deals.” If you do it consistently it’s going to really drive behavior where your followers are excited to see your content.
42:54 Instagram Stories are really awesome for events as well. If you guys are going to a live event, or if you’re going to any sort of event where you have a presence there go ahead and offer your followers the ability to see that you are at that event in your stories, and it’s not something that’ll live in your timeline. You can also tag the event to get a little more reach out there, and to get a little bit more connected with the event itself, and to let your followers know where they can see you in real life. Remember, keeping that social in social is so, so important. It’s again, a really great way you can tag the event, let your followers know where you’re going to be.
43:36 Instagram Stories are also a really great place if you find something out there online that’s a really great deal, or if you find a product that’s a really cool product, but you don’t necessarily want it on your actual feed. Adding it to your stories is a great way to train your followers to know when they go to your story they’re going to get all of this awesome curated information from you, and they’re going to get to see that right in your Instagram Story. So, Instagram Stories is also a really great way to cross promote on your other pages. If you’re doing a Facebook Live, or if you’re doing a Twitter chat, make sure you hop in to your Instagram stories and let people know what your Twitter handle is, or when your Facebook Live is going to be. Show your face out there, get people excited right in your story, so you can start driving some of your Instagram followers to your other pages.
44:26 The last thing we’re going to talk about as a concept here is an Instagram takeover. Now an Instagram takeover is actually going to be where you are giving permission from other people in order to takeover your Instagram account and go ahead and share content that they create right on your Instagram account. Now one of the reasons this is so powerful is because it’s user generated content that might be a little bit more purple cow content about … people are not knowing what to expect from that content. It’s that idea that if you’re dragging past a field of brown cows, but there’s a purple cow in there you’re going to pay attention to it. It’s a great way to get that sort of vibe out there. So takeover again, is just a way that you’re inviting another brand to takeover your Instagram Stories so they can share what they’re up to with your followers, and you can do the same with theirs. You want to find someone whose stories align with your brand, and you want to make sure you’re giving that guest control of your account so that they can offer to your followers.
45:29 Now when you’re doing this we also want you to consider using something like Trello, or a Google Doc where people can go ahead and put in the actual stories that they want to share, the photos that they want to share so you don’t have to give out your password to your Instagram. You can create systems that you can share content with each other, but you don’t have to actually share your Instagram password. Another great thing to think about when you’re doing Instagram takeovers is letting people know that you do Instagram takeovers. That can be with a custom landing page, or a custom email form that can go ahead and show you, hey we do Instagram takeovers. This is the information we need if you’re interested in taking over our Instagram email it to this email address, stuff like that. Consider making a custom landing page for your site that has that, or posting on Instagram in a post itself letting people know.
46:23 So again, some of the tips and tricks that we’ve gone throughout today are really awesome to just start building your Instagram following and giving people an idea of what they can expect from you. It’s a really great platform right now for any visual content.
46:37 I am so, so sorry about the slides popping out today guys. You guys are rock stars for staying with me. You have no idea how much I appreciate it. Like I said the slides will be available on our SlideShare account after the webinar today, and we’ll go ahead and get that out. Email support@meetedgar.com if you do want them as well though, and we can always email them to you there.
46:59 If you are not a MeetEdgar user yet, and you are on this webinar and you want to test MeetEdgar out to help manage your social media we have a great deal going on for showing up live to this webinar. I’ll go ahead and put the signup link and coupon code in the comments of this video in a couple minutes, but you can go to our signup page and use the coupon code, Octopuswebinar18 to get yourself a free month of MeetEdgar. Like I said, I’ll go ahead and put that code in the comments of the video. Please let us know any feedback, please let us know what goals you’re working on in the comments below. Subscribe to our YouTube channel so you never miss one of our webinars, and email us what goals you’re working on so we can always make sure we’re providing the most up to date best information for you guys. Thanks again for joining. Super appreciate it, and we will go ahead and get those slides up on SlideShare, and please feel free to ask any other questions along the way. Thanks so much guys, and have a really awesome rest of your day.
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