104. My top tips to help you get to 10K on Instagram [QUICK MINUTE]

In this episode, I share my personal tips on how to grow your Instagram account and why you should be striving to get beyond the 10k. If you're a business owner and you're not using this platform to help grow it you are missing out!

While I am a huge believer in growing an email list because we simply don't own our Instagram and Facebook accounts and followers, there is still a massive amount of opportunity there.

I also share my new free training on how to Become an IGTV Superstar. Sharing my top tips on how to use this fast-growing video platform!

Grab a copy here: http://bit.ly/igtvstar

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

Hey everyone, welcome to the dream Hustle podcast, this show that shares authentic and unfiltered advice on how to build and grow a successful jewelry business online. I'm your host Shana recker. I'm a business, an online entrepreneur and I love helping women bust through the fears and find the strategies to make their dream business come to life. My guest and I keep everything super real here for you guys with our stories and tips for success. So let's dig in to today's episode everyone. Okay. So today I want to talk to you guys about

Speaker 2: 0:32

some truths around building your Instagram account. So most of us, I believe, who are probably listening to this podcast, have an Instagram account. And if you don't and you own a business, you need to get on Instagram. And it's actually one of the fastest growing platforms right now with over a billion users on Instagram. And it is growing every day. Facebook I still think is the giant when it comes to social media, but Instagram is fastly growing. It's a second place as far as most used platforms and a, it's got a lot of cool features. And, um, a lot of people are on there and that's just the bottom line. If you want to be seen, uh, definitely you need to be on Instagram cause most of your ideal clients probably I think anyone from, you know, ages of 15 upwards to, I see a lot of people's parents are now on Instagram and I'm in my forties and so that must mean they're in their seventies and they are on Instagram as well. So the age range is huge. The amount of users on there is huge. So it's definitely a place that you're going to want to play if you have a business and you want to be seen and, and you want people to find you. So absolutely. Um, everybody needs to be on there and so I want to talk to you guys about growing your Instagram account because it is not, it is not as easy as it used to be. When Instagram first came out, people first started using the platforms. There was a lot of things that you could do that would help boost your followers. Things like, um, you know, having an influencer of some sort share when your posts, you know, it was like if they shared it and they had, you know, hundreds of thousands of followers, you gained like a ton of followers because if they shared your content, then all their people were seeing it and they'd go, who is this person? And they would just instantly follow you. Yeah. That doesn't really happen anymore. So you, those influencers who are sharing your stuff, if that happens, it's really not going to get you a ton more followers. So it's a lot harder to get people to click that follow button than it ever used to be. Um, people are getting very particular about who they want to show up in their news feed because here's the thing, we are inundated with information and social posts and photos and videos and stuff all the time. You know, you jump on Facebook, you're inundated with it, you're jumping on Instagram, you're inundated with it. If you're using things like snapchat and other things, there's just so much information coming at us that we're now beginning very choosy in what we want to see and what we want to show up in our social media sites when we down and go on our phone or on our desktop. And I know for me, I'm somebody who like, I can't handle having negative posts or negative stuff showing up in my social media. I just don't have space for it. And so if I see that kind of stuff show up, I instantly unfollow, right? So people are being very particular about what they're looking at because it can affect us, right? So if they're seeing things that they don't like, they are will unfollow or they won't follow you at all when they go and check out your profile. So it is a lot harder to get people to like your counts or follow you. And so, you know, we want to use this platform and we want to gain a lot of followers because those followers could potentially be clients. Um, but it's harder to do. So how do we do this? So, first of all, before I get into some tips on how to grow your account, let's talk about some of the benefits that when you have a higher number of followers, what are the benefits that come from that? So number one is you get the swipe up. So we all know about this, wipe up a, it's a feature that clicks in when you hit 10,000 followers on your Instagram account. From a business standpoint, it's an awesome piece to have. It makes it easy for people to check out your content, your information, a link to something, whether it's a registration for a webinar or a free download or a product or a service, or you want them to just check out anything. Um, that is absolutely one of the ways to really get their attention and get them to look at it quickly is the swipe up feature. Now, it's not an absolutely necessary. I actually still like to direct people to jump into my, my, my direct messenger as well so that I can have conversations with people. So sometimes I might even say like, if you want to know more about this, you know, send me a DM, let's chat about it versus saying, you know, just swipe up, right? So there's definitely some advantages to having the swipe up for sure. Um, but you can still, you know, play nicely and Instagram without it, even if you don't have it yet, you can definitely direct people to move to your dms. Number two is people, if you have a higher number of followers, people are more likely to follow you. It's just human nature, right? So we learned at our mastermind that people are 10 times more likely to follow you when you have a higher volume of followers. So for instance, if someone sees your profile and you have 6,500 followers, yeah, they might follow you, but they might not. But if you had 65,000 followers, they're more likely 10 times more likely to hit the follow button. So there is some human nature, some human behaviors, um, that happen when you have more followers, people are more likely to go where they think everybody else's. That's just human nature. So having that higher number of followers can definitely help you build a bigger audience. Um, when you have a higher number of followers, you have potential to get some paid influencer gigs, which is kind of cool. You know, and I'm a big believer that, you know, if someone, if a brand approaches me and asks me to, um, share their products on my profile, only if I absolutely love the brand, will I participate in that kind of thing. If you become, you know, if you get, if you do every sort of paid influencer thing that comes your way, you're going to start to look like you just, you're, you're, you really don't like things you're just trying to share for the money or you're sharing for the free stuff. So be very careful and cautious around that. But when you have a higher number of followers, you can become a paid influencer in Instagram, especially if you're doing great content. Um, and you're showing up, you know, and you're positive and outgoing, you know, brands will see that and see the number of followers and they could potentially contact you and ask you to, you know, if they gave you some free stuff or possibly even pay you if you would show their products and your profile. So that is absolutely an opportunity in a benefit that can come your way when you grow your Instagram. And actually it's cool, Gary Vee, and I'll put this in the show notes. Gary Vee did a great podcast episode about Instagram influencers and how the space right now, where big brands should be playing is in that Instagram influencer space of people who have anywhere from like 10,000 to 30,000 followers, that that's a great niche for them to move into because those people are not necessarily, you know, looking for high dollar value in order to share some stuff. You know, for me, I love if I love your brand and you, you happen to give me a free necklace or a free something and I absolutely love your brand, I'll wear it and post it because I authentically actually like it and it doesn't, you know, I'm not, I'm not hard to persuade. I don't need a lot of money in order to to be able to share something that I absolutely love. Um, so that's just a way that it works. And so I'll post that link to Gary V's, um, is podcast episode on that in the show notes, that chain of record, our com cause it's a really great episode and it's a great space as a business owner, if you're listening to as a business owner and you want to have somebody share your stuff, you can be looking for people in that niche and, and just ask them like, Hey, if I sent you this, would you share it? You know, I see that you really love, you know, fashion and jewelry. I'm actually a jewelry designer. If I sent you a couple pieces in it and you love them, would you share them on your Instagram? And a lot of people in that niche will say yes. So it's a cool space to be, um, from a business standpoint too, to connect with those people in that space. But also if you have that many Instagram followers, it's a great place to kind of be able to start dabbling in that. Then obviously the larger, the other benefit of having a larger number of Instagram followers is that that's more people for you to talk to, for you to connect with, for you to give value to that will hopefully want to work with you. So as an online business coach and strategies, I am looking to connect with people who are newer entrepreneurs who are looking to either start a business or get their grow their new business. And so the more people that I have following me when I'm sharing my content, obviously the better chance that I'm going to connect with somebody who's looking for my service, who's looking to work with me, who was looking for a mentor to hire. So it is very important to me to grow my Instagram following, to have that larger pool of people to talk to. So it's a, it's a huge benefit to have that bigger number. Now those are a few benefits of growing your Instagram account. Now let's talk about how do you grow your account? Now I'm going to just state right now I am not a social media guru. I have, I'm not an Instagram expert. This is just based on my opinions, my experiences growing my Instagram account. I do listen to podcasts, I do read books. I do have friends who are social media influencers who are teaching people how to grow their accounts. Um, if you would go to at Brittany Jones CEO, she's one of my friends who's a big social media girl. Um, so lots of places where I've learned things about growing your accounts. But let's talk about this. So first of all, you need a public Instagram account. If you are on Instagram right now and you are trying to use it to grow your business and you have your accounts, that's a private, you're not going to get the followers. Because people, that's a path of resistance for people when they see that they have to request access to see your account. I know for me, I feel like, Ooh, she doesn't want me to follow her because I don't know her, so I'm not even going to bother asking. So the minute that I see that it's a request of thing, I instantly untapped it and take the follow back. So you want to make sure that you have a public account. And then on top of that, I would go into your settings and change your account from personal to business. And the reason being is that when you have a business Instagram account, there are insights that you can see on your posts. So when you tap the view insights on your posts, which only show up if you have a business account, you can actually see how many people liked comment. Uh, how many views that postcard. You can see all kinds of stats around your posts. And what that does is it helps you to figure out what kind of content your audience is loving, what kind of content draws in more followers, what kind of content gives you more comments and likes those comments and likes you guys help build your algorithms, which helped get you seen on Instagram, which helps find the followers, right? So absolutely. Number one is a public business account. Number two is you must, you guys, you must curate good content, especially content that is sharable. So you need to think of your Instagram account like a mini blog. So it doesn't mean that every post needs to have, um, you know, 10 paragraphs of earth shattering copy. But it does need to give some sort of value. I always think of you need to be entertaining, inspiring, or educating people in your posts. So what are you doing? Is if you're just posting a picture of your cat and going, oh my God, I love my cat so much that doesn't give any value or entertainment or inspiration to anybody and nobody's really going to like, or comment. Maybe a couple of friends might like it and go, oh yeah, your cats so cute, that's fine. But it's not necessarily going to bring any value to anybody's life. So people are going to skip over it. They're not going to spend much time with it. So practice like start this. Like if you're like, okay, well I suck at writing Fi's, I'm the worst writer in the world and I still make a choice. I still challenge myself and make an effort to make sure that when I'm posting something, I'm giving some sort of value in my post that is absolutely good. Content is always good for business. And when you create a post that is um, giving value, especially inspiration, there's a chance people might share that post and their stories. And that is a fantastic way to help grow your network. Because when someone shares your post, that means their entire network is seeing your posts and there's a good chance that those people will click on it and hopefully follow your account if you have an account that has good curated content. So your bio is set up nicely. It says what, who you are, what you do. A couple fun things about you. Um, you don't have it just with nothing or you don't have it with, you know, a 500 emojis. You want to keep it to what it is that you do, who you are, what you love. Give them a little taste of who you are in your bio. And if you're looking for examples of how you should set up your bio, go to some of the, you know, people that you love to follow that our top influencers and see how their bio's are set up. Um, there's a good chance that their bio is set up in a, in a great way to help you, um, get an idea on how to set up yours. Number two, um, to grow your account is collaborate with others. So who do you know in your network that you could collaborate with and the way that you can collaborate? Guys, there's a couple of different ways. So number one, you can do Instagram live interviews or talks, um, through your Instagram live app. So you can actually have two people on one Instagram live. And when you do that, you are actually sharing each others network with each other. Because when you go live and you bring in your friend, your friend's network is getting a notification that they're alive with you and vice versa. So now their friends are saying, oh, she's live with so and so on. I'm going to check that out. And then there, if you're giving good, valuable content in your live video, then there's a really good chance that they are going to go to your profile and they're going to go like, oh, this girl's really cool follow, right? So you can collaborate by doing insta live chats. You can also collaborate by doing insta story takeovers where this is where you record a couple sets of videos. Um, you can actually record them in your stories and then just download each one and you don't have to post it. You can just create the slides in your stories, download each tile and then just discard the post and then those tiles are saved into your phone. Then you can send those tiles to a friend who can then upload them into their stories and tag you in it. So we did that in my mastermind group. There was a bunch of us who are launching different programs at the same time and so we just recorded these little videos and we were able to share them with our networks and they were able to post them on our behalf, tag us, and that helped open us up to other networks of people. So that's another great way that you guys can collaborate with others to help grow your Instagram account. And then of course, brand partnerships. So much like I said, by being a paid influencer, if you have brand partnerships, which means you have somebody that I'm in a brand partnership with, an awesome company called rocking vibe. I am an ambassador for that company. Um, we have an amazing relationship. I love their jewelry, their pieces, and I'll put a link to them in my show notes here, but I post on their behalf, sharing their jewelry and they share my posts on, on their page as well. And so that helps us get exposure to me and I also give exposure to them. So it's a collaboration. It's a give and take. And so when you grow your account, there's a lot of opportunity for those kinds of brand partnerships. So that's uh, again, like I said, a benefit, but it's also something that you can do to help grow your own personal Instagram account. Now the next thing is, is you want to be doing your stories every single day. Okay? So when you to grow your account, you need to be consistent. You need to be showing up consistently. So as, uh, for posts on your account, I would say three to four posts in a week would be a good consistency cause it is hard to write full on blog posts in your Instagram every single day. Some days I just don't have it in me to write content. Um, some days it's a couple days, I don't have it in me to write content, but stories, I try and be in my stories every single day. Cause here's the thing, when you post a story, your little circle goes to the very front of the line to everybody who is following you. So if you want to be relevant and consistent and be seen on a regular basis, every time you upload a story or little circle moves to the front of the line. And so that allows people to see your content. And now, um, if you use things like hashtags on your stories and Geo Tags, which is location tag. So if you could say, if you took a video and you were on the beach and you said, um, at, you know, um, I'm gonna use a beach close to my home, which is Graham men, you know, catching the sunset at Graham. Ben, look how beautiful this is. And I tagged Grand Bend in that post. Then all the people who are following that Graham Ben Location, cause people can follow those things. They are going to see my story. If they like my story, they may choose to follow me. So there is opportunity to grow your account using hashtags and Geo tags on your stories as well. So be consistent and sharing both in stories and in your profile and you guys in. The next way I'm to share is using platforms like Igt, TV. Now I g TV is a video platform that's connected to Instagram. Ige TV is on the move right now. It is growing really fast and Instagram wants Igt to grow. Video content is the way everything is moving. So if you are listening to this right now and your feet and palms are sweating because you're like, oh em, gee, I hate doing videos, it's time to get comfortable girlfriend with doing videos because this is the wave of the future. People like to digest short video content to learn about all kinds of different things. And Igt v is making a run for being a front runner in video content. Now the cool thing with Igt d is your videos can only be 10 minutes long, so you can give good value, but it doesn't have to be, you know, an hour out of your day. So using ige TV is going to help you grow your followers because Instagram is pushing ige TV videos into people's news feeds. They are favoring this kind of content right now. So, um, you can also, when you upload an Ige TV, you can post it to your Instagram profile and you can post it to your Instagram stories. And now IGT videos are actually being shared on the explorer page depending on how, um, how many hits and stuff that your videos get. So if you're listening to this right now and you're like, what is Ige TV? How do I do this? I don't even know the first thing about this, and this is all new to me. Don't worry girl. I got you. If you go to Shana recker.com I created an awesome how to guide on how to become an IGT the superstar. So this guide is going to walk you through step by step on how to use this platform. I give you tips for success. I give you how to upload all the, all, everything. You need to know how to use ige. TV is in this document. So go to Shannon, record.com you can download it. It is 100% free and I give you what you need in order to start using this platform today. So you want to make that a priority. If you are using Instagram for business, you want to be getting on Igt and sharing content in that way. People are loving it and video views, you guys are being seen three to 300 to a thousand percent more than they were when I GTD first came out. So you can see that Instagram has really given this a lot of attention. So that is absolutely, um, a way to grow your Instagram account. Okay, so the fifth way you guys, and this is the way that's a little bit controversial, not everybody agrees with this. I actually did an Ige TV episode on this not too long ago. So if you go to at Shana recker you can find my IGT video where I talked about this, but you can hire somebody to help you grow your account. Now the keywords there is hire somebody, a person, not a Bot, not an app that automatically does things for you. You want to hire somebody who's real, who's a person to help you grow your account and there are a lot of different people out there who do this work. Now, why do you want to hire somebody to do this? For me personally, I don't have the time in my day. I mean, maybe I could spend 15 minutes to do a little bit on my own here and there, but I don't have an hour each day or a couple of hours each day to go and find accounts of people who are my ideal clients and sit and follow them and try and connect with these people. Because here's the thing, when you follow somebody, there's a really good chance that they're going to follow you back. If your content is good, if they check out your profile, everything looks nice and pretty and you know you've got good content, you're posting regularly, there's a really good chance that they're going to follow you back. But I personally don't have the time in my day to do that. I'm busy creating content. I'm writing, recording podcasts, I'm teaching my mastermind students. I'm creating an online course right now, like I'm in, I'm in hustle mode right now with my business. I don't have time to sit and do that. So for me, I've hired a, an awesome company to do this work for me and they are real people who I had to give them an Avatar, I had to show them the kind of accounts that I'm looking for, my ideal client, and they go on my behalf and they find those accounts and they follow them for me and create those relationships. Now I do this because personally I don't have the time and I know the benefits of growing my account and I really, as a business owner, it's a smart move. I need to grow my numbers so that I can talk to more people and find the people who are looking for me. Okay, so some people are really anti, oh my gosh, the follow unfollow thing. That's so bad. But you guys, this is part of the instant game. This is part of showing up in the business. This is part of creating a follower. There are many ways to grow your followers. And I, I, it's just between doing loops and the follow on, following all the different things. Those are just parts of the game. And if people are following your account and then they unfollow you later, it's just because they think that you might have a need for what they have to offer. You don't have to follow those accounts. I'll follow you. You don't, that's a choice, right? I am choosing to follow you or I'm choosing to have this company follow you on my behalf because I think he might be a fit for what I have to offer. If you're not, that's okay. You can unfollow or leave my content and, and, and I never have to see you again. That's totally okay. But if I unfollow you, it's because I can't have 10,000 people that I follow. I would never see the content that I actually want to see in my newsfeed. Right. So again, it's a choice. So, not everybody, not everybody that follows you, that do you have to follow and people will follow you because they think that you might be a fit for what they have to offer. And what I truly believe is that there are people out there looking for my services, looking for my help who are sitting there struggling, wanting to build an online business but have no idea how, and they don't know how to get help. So I haven't to follow that account and they happen to follow me back and they see that I am the answer for them. That is like, that's why I'm here. That's why I'm following them is to find those people who are looking for me. And if that's them, if that's you, awesome. Stay following me. If it's not, that is okay. So there are companies out there that will do that for you. So know that that's just a part of building your business online. It's part of the Instagram game and anybody who's on Instagram who has a business, um, or has a product, a service or whatever is most likely playing that game. So I think we need to kind of just release some of the like, I don't know, achiness around it cause it's not, it's just part of being on this platform as a part of growing a business is growing your Instagram followers, hiring somebody to help you do that follow unfollow. Um, it's just part of the game. It's my, my belief, my opinion. You may not agree with that and that's okay. Um, but that is part of growing your Instagram account. You guys. Um, and you can message me if you want to know. I'll put in the show notes, some of the people that I've used in the past to help grow my Instagram accounts. You're welcome to check that out as Shane record.com and if you, you know, I'd love to hear your comments on that and you know, let me know if you, uh, if you use somebody or if you agree with it, to me it's just part of the game. So, so that's my message today guys. Some of the benefits of growing your account is you get the swipe up, you got people more likely to follow you. There's opportunity for paid, influencing, our paid paid advertising stuff for, for brands that you love. You obviously have more people to talk to you, right? And to grow your account does serve you quickly, you know, make it a public account, get that business, um, set up going on so we can see the insights. Create good content, collab with others. Make sure you're showing up in your stories everyday. Use Instagram TV, grabbed my free guide at Shannon, record.com if you don't know how to use it, you know, be consistent. Absolutely. Being consistent is important to growing your Instagram. And of course if you need to or you want to, you can hire someone to help you grow your account. There is nothing wrong with that. In my opinion. You are in business girlfriend and, and this is what we need to do. So

Speaker 1: 25:42

play the game. If you're going to win at the game, you gotta play the game, right? So there you have it. I hope that you guys found some value in this today. If you enjoy this episode, if you bought some value out of this, if you download my Freebie and you love it by screenshot at Sheridan, your insta stories tag me in it so I can send you some love. Um, I'd love to have a chat and your dms and I appreciate you guys being here. Go get your free five right now. All right everybody, we'll talk to you soon. Bye for now.