Master the Instagram Game as a Course Creator

Are you leveraging Instagram to its full potential as a course creator? If not, you're leaving money on the table! Today's episode promises to enlighten you on the nitty-gritty of the Instagram algorithm and how to make it work for you. We'll explore the intricate ways of creating content that appeals to the algorithm and gets your course in front of those who are keen to devour it. Get ready to discover the art of crafting content that signals the algorithm on the relevant audience for your offerings, guiding them to become your course clients.

We're also taking a deep dive into the importance of a well-defined funnel and building a robust email list, elements that are often overlooked but could be your game changer. Learn how to determine if your current audience is the right audience for purchasing your course and how to adjust your content accordingly. We'll also discuss how to use these insights to create compelling Instagram content, even for those who don't follow you yet. Listen in, as we share tried and tested strategies that have worked wonders for my clients and can do the same for you. Get ready to transform your Instagram game and boost your course sales!

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

If you are frustrated as a course creator with creating content on Instagram or any other kind of short form social media platform, I definitely want you to listen to today's episode because it might blow your mind a little bit, as I share some different thoughts that I've been having about Instagram content and how to really maximize it as a course creator. So stay tuned. What change becomes possible when 100,000 people are impacted by your work? This question came to me one day and I have been working to find the answer ever since. Hi, I'm Jess and I help online course creators amplify their influence and create a movement with their message, and on this podcast, I am sharing the simple strategies and systems to help you impact more people with your programs so you can create quantum growth in your industry. You are listening to the Quantum Course Creator podcast. Hey there, and welcome back to the Quantum Course Creator podcast, jess, here and today I am dishing all on the Instagram algorithm or just Instagram in general. I feel like Instagram or other short form social media platforms like TikTok or Facebook even are really maybe not even Facebook, now that I'm thinking about it, whatever, tiktok or Instagram are really kind of a necessary evil in your business and we end up using it as like a marketing channel in our business, but a lot of people don't really know how to maximize it as a channel to really make more money and get more clients into your business and, honestly, that's because Instagram is constantly changing, so there's a really good chance that this episode is no longer going to be relevant in the next year, but I want to share with you what I've been seeing about the algorithm and how I have been using content differently from my clients and seeing amazing results from it, and so really, the way that we think about content and the way that we think about content on Instagram, in my opinion, as a course creator, is wrong, and you're not doing it wrong because you're not doing it right necessarily, but the way that other people are creating content and teaching you how to create content does not work as well for a course creator, necessarily.

Speaker 1: 2:22

And with the rise of TikTok and Reels and all of these things, there's become this new era of content creators people whose goal is to get more eyeballs, go viral, get influencer style, brand deals, those kinds of things, or just become an entertainer. There's a lot of people who create Reels and TikToks just to entertain with no real business focus. But, as a business owner, following trends and creating entertaining Reels is not a very effective way to grow your business. It's not a very effective way to get more clients into your online course, and, unfortunately, there's so much information out there about how to build that kind of social media, but not that much out there about what's actually working as like a return on your time investment in getting course students into your online course, and this is something that I've been researching and playing with for a few months now and really seeing how do we create a tangible strategy that works well for course creators, and I feel like I have finally cracked the code on this. It's working in so many of my clients' businesses in different niches and different audiences, and so I'm super excited to start sharing this more with you, and so this really comes down to this core premise that I want to instill with you today, and that is you need to stop creating content for your followers, and I know that that doesn't really make sense. You're like, well, who else would I be creating content for? You need to start creating content for the followers that you want to attract, and my big realization about this ultimately comes down to the algorithm.

Speaker 1: 4:07

We hear a lot of negativity about the algorithm, like oh, the algorithm sucks, it's not showing my stuff to my people, I don't know what to post, I'm not getting like getting the kind of views that I want, etc. And that's because you're creating content that you think that your existing audience wants to see. But your existing audience is not actually who you should be creating Instagram content for. You should be creating Instagram content for the people that you want to attract, and when you look at Instagram as a audience attraction platform and not as much like an audience nurturing platform, that's really when you can start to partner with the algorithm and get the most out of it. And this was a big realization that I had that Instagram doesn't want to show your content to your followers, which is weird. Right, you would think, like I'm a, I'm a massing follower so that Instagram will show my content to them.

Speaker 1: 5:05

But the predominant content that you see on Instagram, especially since the creation of reels, is people that you don't follow. It's people that end up in your reels feed. It's people that end up in your normal feed. Instagram does not show you content from people that you follow. It shows you content from people that you have interest in consuming their content. It's like, all of Instagram is now the explore page, which is all just algorithm based and has nothing to do with who you're actually following, which can be frustrating if you spend all this time trying to grow a following but that's not actually who you should be creating content for. And so, with this shift in mind, how do you start to create content that actually serves your business? And it's this shift that's going to make Instagram so much more profitable for you. So the algorithm is your friend when you know how to use it and when you start creating content that tells the algorithm who to show your content to, that is when you'll start attracting the right people and moving them through the funnel into becoming a course client.

Speaker 1: 6:17

And so the first piece of this is your content should have a clear who. Who are you talking to? Who will this resonate with? Who will watch this and share it and keep watching right? Who will read that caption? Who's going to consume this content the most? And this really becomes like an aggregate thing. All of your content should have the same who, because Instagram is going to start looking at the people who are consuming your content and build a profile of who they think will like your content People who are watching similar videos, people who are of a similar demographic, in a similar area and it will start showing your content in their feeds. And so when you create content that has a clear, consistent who, then you're telling Instagram who to show your content to. And so if you're over here like, well, I don't want to niche down, I don't know who my who is Like, you'll probably want to figure that out if you want to grow on Instagram or you want to use Instagram to grow your business. And so, for me, my who are course creators, and so my who are people who have an online course, who have an online business, who are watching other content about online marketing, online courses, online businesses right, those are my who. And by creating content that speaks very much to my who, then Instagram can start to learn. Oh okay, she creates content for course creators and people who consume content about online course creation, so I'm going to put her content in front of people who like content about online course creation, because it has a clear who.

Speaker 1: 7:54

The second piece of this is having a clear problem, so your content should have a clear problem that you help people solve. And again that you may be thinking why don't want to narrow down? I solve a million different problems. These are bigger problems than I'm here to solve today on this episode. But by having a clear topic and a clear problem that you help people solve, then it's going to know who to put your content in front of. Again, you are training the robots who to put your stuff in front of. And if you've ever watched reels, if you watch the same kind of reel over and over again, you're going to see more of those reels. Right, you're going to see more of that content. And that is exactly what you are training the robot to do with your content is to show more of that kind of content to people who like that kind of content. And so by having clear topics, clear problems, a clear who that you solve that problem, for you're going to get in front of the people who have that problem and then can find you and say, oh my gosh, she knows how to solve my problem.

Speaker 1: 8:57

And the third piece of this is that you want to create content that is binge worthy. Now, this is a different kind of way of creating content, not so much the kind that we think of where we're looking to create like viral content, right? We are often told like follow trends, trending audios, create things that follow a trend and then you'll get picked up on that trend. Unfortunately, what happens when you do that is that you end up being picked up in a trend that has absolutely nothing to do with your who or the problem that you solve, and so you're not actually attracting aligned people for your course. Instead, you wanna create content that makes your who want more. You want them to want more. What is the next question that they have? What is the next topic that they're searching for an answer for? What is the next belief that you can help them with? What's the next thing that they wanna see?

Speaker 1: 9:53

What you want them to do when they stumble across your reel is not scroll to the next reel, right, it's to click on your profile and look at your reels and your content and binge it. You want them to scroll through all of your reels and be like, oh my gosh, this girl is amazing or this guy knows everything. You want them to binge your content because a binge becomes a follow, a binge becomes a link. Click becomes a list. Growth, becomes somebody opting into your webinar, becomes somebody purchasing your course, and so you don't like, you want that behavior to keep watching, keep consuming more, keep scrolling through your content. You don't want them to keep going on the reels that they were on. You want them to click into your profile and keep going for more.

Speaker 1: 10:43

So creating content that has a cult to action, to more content to watch another reel, to follow the next thing, right? Oftentimes on TikTok we see this as series, right, you want them to want the next one in the series, you want them to watch the next reel, you want to answer the next question, and so creating those open loops and creating content that's binge worthy, that is really high value and like answers what they're looking for, will get them to keep scrolling through your content, searching for more and more and more of that. When you're also looking at that on like a profile cause, the point is to get them to your profile. You want to make sure that you have like topics and like hooks and questions that are really clear so that they know what they're getting into, that they know that they're going to answer that question in that video or in that carousel or in that post, and so having really clear like visually they know what they're getting into when they click on it will keep them clicking for more. And again, making sure that all of that content is about one problem that you help people solve for one specific person, and that's going to teach the algorithm how to get you in front of the right people.

Speaker 1: 11:57

And you may be thinking, well, my audience now doesn't want to see that. Well, then you have the wrong audience, right, this is how you create content for people who are going to purchase your course, and if you have course, or if you have followers that this content isn't relevant for, then they're not potential buyers for your course, right, and so that's really a good like barometric measure, I guess of like. Is my audience the right audience? Your audience should be people who are interested in purchasing your course, and if they're just hanging out on Instagram watching your life content because you've thought that that's what you need to do to create trust in your audience, they're not actually potential buyers for your course. They're not entering your funnel through your bio link and they're not ultimately buying your course, and that's a problem. So we want to create the kind of content that's going to weed those people out, answer questions for your ideal client and to get them into that funnel.

Speaker 1: 12:52

Obviously, the next step from this is having a funnel, having an evergreen webinar, having some kind of call to action link to get them on your email list, to get them into the next thing, but that's a topic for another episode. Really shifting the way that you think about content, becoming a friend of the algorithm and creating content for people who don't actually follow you yet is going to be the shift that you need to start creating better Instagram content that actually leads people to purchase your course. So I hope that this was helpful. I've been in the process of developing a training that teaches you how to do this, and I'll have lots of information about that soon. So make sure that you are on my list if you want to be the first to find out how to get that, and I can't wait to see you in my next episode Dammit.