67: 3 Pinned Posts Every Solopreneur Needs (And Why Yours Aren't Working)

Someone lands on your Instagram profile. You have two or three seconds before they decide to follow, look around, or leave. If your pinned posts are random, outdated, or nonexistent, you are handing a new potential client a business card with the wrong number on it. In this episode of *The Creative Bodega*, Em breaks down the exact three pinned posts every service-based solopreneur needs at the top of their grid, what job each one has to do, and why she brought this framework inside The Content Coven as an April challenge with results that genuinely surprised her.

Check out the full show notes for this episode HERE.

*Things I cover inside this episode:

- Why going viral is *not* a good reason to pin something (and what to pin instead) - The About Me post: what it must communicate in 30 seconds or less 
- The Work With Me post: why an outdated offers list is actively costing you clients - The List Builder post: why this is actually the most important of the three
- How I structured the April pinned post challenge inside The Content Coven (including what surprised her most) 
- Why your pinned posts should be treated as a living, rotating strategy, not a one-and-done task

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🫶🏼 Check out The Content Coven Membership

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Transcript

Speaker 0:00

here's the thing about someone landing on your profile. You may have legitimately two to three seconds before they decide if they're gonna follow you Three seconds, that's not a lot. And if your pinned posts are random, or if you don't have any at all, you're really wasting your three seconds. and you're basically handing somebody a business card with the wrong- Number on it. Welcome back to the Creative Bodega Podcast. I am your host, Em Connors, and today I wanna talk about something that has been probably sitting on basically every female service-based solopreneur's to-do list forever. Uh, and if you're anything like the women inside my membership or me, you've been meaning to deal with this for months, if not years. I'm pretty sure it's been a thing that you could do for years. it's your pinned posts. Today we're going there, and I promise this is gonna be one of those episodes where you finish it, open Canva, and actually create these things. Okay, but first, I need to get a little something off my chest. I wanna talk about grid aesthetics and the type where, like, every graphic bleeds into the next one. Like, you know what I'm talking about. Like, so if you have three pinned posts across the top of your Instagram grid, like, one goes into the next. and it's like you almost have to, like, look at the three posts together just to see what the full image is. I remember, like, two years ago, maybe more, somebody was like... I saw a post about a nine-grid, and I was like,"What the hell is a nine-grid?" Like, I'm the first to admit, I'm not, like, on the cutting e- like, and then I w- I wouldn't even call it cutting edge, but I, I just didn't even know what the heck this thing was. So I think it was one of the worst ideas in the history of Instagram when I actually learned what it was, and that was quite literally Like, I don't even know how they did it. I guess they just didn't post new stuff. But they basically had nine posts in a row, so three rows of three, right? And it be- it made like a puzzle. And everything bled into it. It looked like one big image as a, a nine posts all together, but nothing about each individual graphic made you wanna click on it. I still don't even understand. It basically was for, uh, people who really didn't wanna post. But that's... I don't know. But no one's doing that anymore, right? And it, it probably took a ton of effort into creating it. And whenever somebody reaches out and they're like,"Do you know how to make like a seamless carousel?" And I'm like,"No,"'cause why? Just why? Like, why do we need to make seamless carousels? Uh, why is that even a thing, to be really, really honest? someone literally came up to me at the Canva Create event in LA, and that was what they asked me. And I was like,"Yeah, no," because I just don't understand. Why does every slide l- have to look like it bleeds into the next? I, I don't... We're never looking at them side by side. I just, I don't, I don't get it. And it's giving very, like, 2020 energy to me. So whatever. Bold opinion, but if, that's been on your radar or something you wanna try, I just wanna lovingly talk you out of it right this very second. And I'd rather you direct your energy, somewhere that will actually do some heavy lifting for you, which takes me to today's topic. So what is a pinned post? Just in case, if you're newer to Instagram or you don't pay much attention to this feature, let me just back it up real quick. A pinned post is a post you've chosen to permanently display at the top of your Instagram grid. You've probably seen it when you land on someone's profile, and they have an image at the top with a little pin, like a, like a thumbtack-looking thing in the top right-hand corner. and again, when someone lands on your profile, whether they found you through a reel or a share or somebody tagged you in their stories or something, and they decided to actually, like, click through and check you out, the first three posts is what they're gonna see. At the very top is your pinned post, and then anything new that you make or publish after that goes underneath it in row number two. So you can pin three. That's it. There's three spots. So they sit right there at the top, and it is prime real estate, my friend. Before anybody scrolls down to see anything else you've posted, like, here's the thing about someone landing on your profile. You may have legitimately two to three seconds before they decide if they're gonna follow you or look around or scroll or just leave. Three seconds, that's not a lot. And if your pinned posts are random, or if you don't have any at all, ugh, like, you're really wasting your three seconds. Well, not your three seconds, their three seconds, and you're basically handing somebody a business card with m- the wrong- Number on it. So we're gonna fix that today. the real problem with most people's pinned posts, and this is what I see a lot, is, um, they're posting consistently, they're showing up, their content's actually quite good, but the pinned posts are just kind of there. They actually typically choose maybe something that went viral. but just because it went viral doesn't mean that there was any true goal behind it. Or, like, it's not getting people to do anything or engage with you. It's just that the numbers are big, and so you feel like that's, like, flexing your, you know, your content creator muscles. But they pick something that had good engagement at the time, or they chose something that looked nice, or they haven't pinned anything at all. And whatever three posts happen to be the most recent are just sitting there by default. They're not pinned, they just happen to be the last three posts. And that just is not strategic, and we are not on Instagram to play games, and we are not there for fun. So your pinned posts are not supposed to be your favorite content or your most viral moment, okay? They're supposed to answer the question that every new visitor is asking when they land on your page. Is this for me? Does this person get what I need, or are they gonna help me solve a problem that I have? What do I do next? Okay, and if your pinned posts can't answer those three questions, they are not working hard enough. They're not doing their job. So the three pinned posts that every service-based solopreneur needs is exactly what I just listed, and we're actually gonna go through them one by one. And this is precisely what we tackled inside the Content Coven, my membership, for our April challenge. And I'm gonna walk you through exactly what we covered, because the results were so good for the members, and I felt like everybody really needs this framework. So three posts, three very distinct jobs. Let's get into it. Post number one is your about me. Think of this as, like, your first digital impression, right? When somebody clicks this post, the goal is that they immediately think,"Yeah, I'm in the right place," or"You know what? I, I like this person. I can relate to a lot of what they're saying or their story of how they got here, why they do this." This post needs to clearly state what you do and who you help. Not vague, not like everyone is my client. In a very specific, this is exactly who I serve and how I serve them way. It should give people a sense of results Or it should support your offer, and it needs just enough personality that someone feels like they can get to know you. it really probably shouldn't be your entire life story. I see this a good amount. The About Me post, can turn into, like, a five-paragraph essay covering your entire career for the past 30 years, and your why, and your dog's name, and your coffee order, and like, s- you know. Somewhere buried in the middle is what you actually do for people. But we're not doing that. I want you to keep it clean, focused. Someone should be able to read this in 30 seconds and know exactly if you are for them and if they like you, right? And a good gut check is if your best friend forwarded your About Me post to someone who had never heard of you before, would that person immediately understand what you do? And if the answer's anything less than a confident"Hell, yes," it needs some refreshing, okay? The second post is your Work With Me post or My Offers or Offers, right? This is your conversion post. Its entire job is to show people how they can take the next step with you right now based on your current offers. And that last part really matters. Your Work With Me should reflect what you're actually offering today, not what you offered a year ago, not anything that's outdated. If you pivoted, if you added something new, you retired a service, this post really needs to be updated pretty frequently'cause you don't wanna confuse. You confuse, you lose. If you include your current offers, a clear explanation of who each offer is for, and a simple call to action, that's it. That, post is doing the heavy lifting for you. Where do they go? What do they click? What do they comment? Should they DM you? Tell them. Make it supremely obvious. People are not gonna hunt for the next step, I promise you that. You have to hand it to them on a silver platter. Post number three is your list builder post. You know me, and you know your girl loves an email list. And my client journey does not end on Instagram. That is never the goal. The goal is to get them onto my email list, a space that I can control and I own, okay? This is about your current priority, your freebie, your email list, your membership, whatever you're actively trying to grow right now. But I feel like for me, it's my best-performing freebie, my best-performing free resource, pinned up there to get people to comment a certain word to get them on my email list And I get it. It doesn't feel as, as exciting maybe as the other two, but this post might actually be, like, the most important one. Because as we know, Instagram can change the algorithm tomorrow. It is an uphill battle for us to get our content in front of anyone and everyone, including our followers. And our followers, and we, are at the mercy of the platform. Your email list is yours. Your membership is yours. so use one of your three pinned posts to drive people there. Promote your freebie, maybe tell them about your membership, or give them a reason to go beyond Instagram and into your world, where you actually control the narrative and the visibility. And update this one as your priorities shift, or if you retire a freebie and you introduce a new one that has, like, a great funnel attached to it, shift out the old and bring in the new. If you have a freebie or if you're pushing a different offer, if your strategy evolves, this is a post that can absolutely rotate. In fact, I was on a one-on-one call with a realtor yesterday and I told her, like,"Just swap this out literally whenever you get a new listing or you, have a new sale." Like, this should be just ever-evolving and fresh for you if you are a realtor. So I want you to think of it as like a living slot, not something you set once and forget forever. It should be kind of refreshed. so we made this our April challenge inside the Content Coven membership, and I have to tell you how it went, because it genuinely made me, like, so ecstatic. The overall theme of everyone's feedback at the end of this challenge, which is actually today, today was the last day, was,"I am so glad I finally did this. I feel such relief. This was really fun to do." And that was it. Like, the vibe across the board was so positive, because for so many of the women who participated, refreshing their pinned posts has been sitting on their to-do list for months, including me It kept getting pushed back because it felt like one of those tasks that just wasn't urgent enough to prioritize, but was important enough to feel guilty about by ignoring as a solopreneur. And this challenge gave them a deadline, it gave them a framework to use, it-- we gave them, uh, AI prompts to figure out what the copy should be. I provided Canva templates, of course. And that combination was apparently exactly what everybody needed to cross this off their to-do list finally. We also did what's called a Make It With Me call, where we all customized one of the templates together in real time, which everyone loves. This is one of everyone's favorite call because it takes the guesswork out of the design side completely. I'm sharing a Canva template. I am walking you through exactly how I would update it if I were you. And then the members can submit what they've designed inside our community for feedback before they even publish it. We're looking at the design, we're looking at the words. This is all completely optional, but a lot of people took advantage of it this month, and it gave them so much more confidence before actually hitting post. I think the specificity is what made it really work too, right? It wasn't just like,"Let's improve our profile." It was like,"Here are three pinned posts. Here's what goes into each one, and here are your templates. Let's go." Right? And people did it, and they were really proud of themselves when they finished, and honestly, that was the whole point. So your action step for today, I want you to go to your Instagram profile right now, or the second you finish this episode. Look at your three pinned posts if you have them and ask yourself,"Do I have an About Me, a Work With Me, and a List Builder post? Are they current? Are they doing their job?" And if the answer is no, my friend, that is completely okay. This is a fixable thing. Start with whichever one feels the most urgent. If someone's landing on your Instagram profile and they have no idea who you are, start with the About Me. If you have a freebie, nobody seems to be finding, make that your List Builder. And if you don't do all three today, that's perfectly fine, but just pick one and get going. So if you want the templates that we shared, if you want this challenge brief, if you want the AI prompts, if you want the Make It With Me call replay, and a community of women who genuinely cheer you on while you do it- That's what we do in the Content Coven. And here's the part I really want you to hear. If you join today, you can go back and access every single past challenge we have ever done, including this one. The templates are still there. The challenge brief is still there. The call replay is still there. You are not too late. And challenges inside the Coven are always optional. No one's grading you. No one is pressuring you. but they're there when you're ready and when you need them. And if you've been on the fence about joining, the doors are always open. You can find all the details on thecreativebodega.com or find me on Instagram at the.creative.bodega. That's what I got for you today. All right. Go check out those pinned posts, refresh what needs refreshing, and I'll see you on the next episode