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How-To’s
How to Streamline Your Content Creation in 2019
How To Streamline Your Content Creation in 2019
This week, learn how to streamline your content creation in 2019. These strategies will help you create better content faster for all of your clients. We have compiled our best tips for making the most of your content creation time and for keeping your creativity flowing.
For a digital marketer, content creation can be a slow and tedious process. As a content creator, it can sometimes feel overwhelming and
Content is everywhere. Everything you encounter from the moment you wake up can be considered content. That text from your mom? Content. That cute puppy picture on your Facebook feed? Content. Even the news alerts you receive on your phone are, you guessed it, content.
For a business, content helps you interact with your customers, give more information about your business, create a brand voice, and much more. In this article, we will give you 7 of our best content creation tips and tricks to make your content creation processes quick, easy, and, most importantly, fun!
7 Content Creation Tips to Streamline your Content Creation:
1. Keep all of your ideas in one place
Great ideas can hit you at any moment. To take advantage of these aha moments, make sure you have a dedicated space to write them down. Whether it’s a post-it note, a journal, or a Google doc, make sure you write it down. This will save you time and energy during your brainstorm sessions later.
Don’t have a specific idea? No problem! Write down larger, broader topics to get your creativity flowing. Once you have your ideas and topics down in one place, you can track the topics, using applications like Mention, to see how popular the topics are and how well content involving those topics are performing on social media. This will save you time in the long run and ensure that the content you are creating has a high probability of helping you reach your content goals.
2. Repurpose Content
Who says that the content you create will go out of style? By putting time and effort into your content creation, you can reuse top performing content later on. Lots of your past content can be expanded upon and given new life. Some of our favorite ways to reuse and recycle old content are:
- Turning old blog posts into downloadable guides. Have you blogged about the same topic a few times? Combine them, update them, and turn them into a definitive guide that can be downloaded by your customers.
- Turning research into an infographic. Not only are infographics informative, but they are one of the most widely shared pieces of content. Having important or interesting data and research about your company can help those in companies similar to yours.
- Turning data into social media posts. Everyone loves a good statistic. If you have solid stats, turn them into small, shareable posts and tweets.
- Turning blog post information into newsletter topics. If you didn’t promote your blog post in a newsletter when it was first released, try mentioning the topic in your next newsletter and linking it back to the original blog.
- Turning a blog post topic into a podcast episode. Podcasts are huge right now. Not only will it recycle your content, but it will create even more content for your company.
3. Have a Social Media Content Calendar
Social Media Content Calendars save lives. Not only will it map out your month, including holidays and other buzz days, but it will show you how many pieces of content you will need to create ahead of time. Content calendars can…
- Help you break up your content. Looking at your content laid out for the whole month can help to ensure that you have new and fresh content going out that will keep your audience engaged.
- Get your team involved. Having the content calendar located on a Google Drive makes it easy for your team members to divide up the work and give you input on your content strategy for the month. If this calendar is for a client, this will allow them a sneak peek at what is going on and time to make any changes before the content is published.
- Allows you to plan ahead. If you are working with a larger team – copywriters, graphic designers, videographers, editors – then it gives them advance notice as to what needs to get done and when it needs to be done by.
In short, if you don’t have a content calendar yet – GET ONE!
4. Utilize Templates
With content creation, it is not important to reinvent the wheel. If you do your research and preparation correctly, there are templates you can use for your content creation process. Whether it’s a free template from a digital marketing resource or a template specific to your company, templates can come in handy when developing content.
Templates can be used for:
- Always having the correct post dimensions for every platform
- Content Calendars
- Social Media cover and profile photos
- Content reporting documents
Overall templates make your life easier and help you to create content faster. Having a template you know you can go to can take some of the stress and anxiety out of content creation.
5. Look into Your Analytics to Determine What is Working
It is crucial to monitor your social media analytics in order to determine which posts are performing the best. Instagram and Facebook make it easy for businesses to view insights on how well posts are performing, how many impressions their page has received, and even who their target audience is. You can also research analytics for content creation using tools like Google Analytics,
Doing a social media audit for the previous month before you begin your social media preparations for the next month will give you a better idea of how your business is performing online and which posts are receiving the best reaction from your audience. Looking at your analytics can also help you determine which content you would like to repurpose in other ways.
6. Scheduling is a Marketer’s Best Friend
If you are a social media marketer running multiple social media accounts, remembering to post for every account, on every platform, at the best time can be a struggle. Lucky for us, there are platforms available to us to help us manage our workflow and schedule out posts. There are many tools that can help in this, but one of our favorites is Hubspot.
On Hubspot, there are tons of tools to make a content creator’s life easier. Hubspot can help in all areas of content creation from Content Planning and Strategy to Content Creation tools to Analyzing Content.
7. Use Google Alerts for Blog Topic Ideas
Blogging is great. But sometimes it can be a struggle to find a great topic to talk about. Watching the news and looking at what friends and competitors are doing can be a big help when brainstorming ideas. However, it leaves a broad range to choose from. If you have a client in a niche industry, set up Google Alerts for niche topics and keywords. This will inform you whenever there is a new blog or new story published and send a link directly to your Google inbox.
Google Alerts may be useful for more than just getting blog topic ideas. They can also let you know when your content has been indexed by Google, identify bloggers and other companies you can collaborate with, and monitor your brand and brand voice.
Today, we reviewed 7 of our favorite content creation strategies to streamline your content creation plan. I hope that these tips have helped to ease your creative mind. The content creation process can be challenging, but it is one of the most important things to help build your following and brand. If you are a content creator – we see you and appreciate you!
If you have any other tips and tricks that we didn’t mention, we would love to hear them! We are always looking for ways to spice up our content creation process!
Comment below if you ♡ content creation and share this with a follow content creator who may need some new tips and strategies!
9 ways to Grow your Business Instagram Presence
Our social media guide below contains 9 ways to help grow your business Instagram presence Organically – Let’s dive in –
Instagram is probably one of the easiest platforms to create an account on. However, maintaining a successful business account is a whole different ball game. Before we jump into the 9 ways that I have used and applied to help grow a few different business Instagrams, let’s review some key stats about Instagram and why your business needs a strong Instagram presence.
It’s no secret that Instagram is considered the focal point for many businesses and digital marketers. According to Falcon, the engagement rate on Instagram is 10x higher than it is on Twitter. Think of it this way – Instagram is considered the sweet spot of the social media scene for marketers and business. And I don’t think I have to explain why I mean unless you’ve been living under a rock or something?
Falcon states that Instagram has 1 billion monthly active users, Of those users, 50% are following brands. That’s a pretty good number if you ask me, with high chances of business opportunities!
Businesses have the capability to market on platforms. Social media platforms allow them to reach their audience in real time, with the message they want to tell and collect the data needed to further remarket to their potential clients. Despite all of this knowledge, statistics, videos, and content, online business still
In this article and I will point out a few ways that business can build and maintain their Instagram presence by providing examples from my own experience with helping business accounts grow their Instagrams.
There are a total of 25 million business accounts on Instagram, and this number is not slowing down. Because social media has such a positive impact, it continues to be one of the strongest ways to communicate with current and potential clients in real time. Statistically speaking, organic Instagram usage costs your business nothing and makes the most sense. If you don’t have an Instagram presence, you should probably STOP reading this blog and create one right now. Need help? Read this article provided by Instagram on how to create a business Instagram account. If you already have a business Instagram account – take notes!
As promised, here are 9 Ways to Grow Your Instagram Presence
1.Strategy
Listen up Business Owners – When creating a business Instagram account you must first create an Instagram business strategy or action plan strategy. WHY? Let’s review a few more stats created by our friends over at Wordstream.
- This year, 70.7% of U.S. companies will use Instagram for marketing, edging out Twitter for the first time.
- 50% of Instagram users follow at least one business.
- 60% of users say that they have learned about a product or service on the platform.
With Instagrams immense community, how is your business going to stand out? How are you going to go after your audience? What brand message are you advertising? What call to actions are you going to use? What design aesthetic are you going to use? How often are you going to post? How can your brand be seen to new potential clients? These are only a few questions you should be asking yourself which is why strategy is step one.
Think about when you first created your business. You obviously had to create some sort of plan on how you would get from point a to point b, created goals and then steps on how you would accomplish those goals. Welp people, this isn’t rocket science. Your Instagram strategy is pretty much the exact same thing as your business strategy.
Your Instagram marketing plan should be clear to the point and discuss what you want to accomplish for example:
- Your goals
- Who your target audience is
- What story you want to tell.
- You’re brand design or aesthetic.
2. Research
Research is very
No one wants to reinvent the wheel, nor should they have to in today’s technological world. There are many ways to see what your competitors are doing such as…
- Have you performed a Social media audit? The purpose of the audits is to evaluate and optimize a business’s profiles and strategies. In ways, they have increased and can increase their original goals. This article contains a FREE template, provided by Hootsuite, on how to create a social media audit.
- Another key tip with research is knowing and understanding Instagram statistics and analytics. All business accounts should utilize Instagram analytics and insights. Social analytics will tell you your audience, demographic, trending post and so forth. Check out this article provided by Hootsuite about the top 24 Instagram statistics you should be aware of in order to help grow your Instagram presence.
- It is key to understand Instagrams News Feed Algorithm and trends so that your business can stay at the top of your follower’s feeds.
- If you an e-commerce shop, apply for Instagram shopping. You can click here to apply for your Instagram shoppers account.
3. Goal setting
No one wants to work harder. The goal is to always work smarter. Let’s discuss Smart Goals. In order to create a successful strategy, you must create goals with action plans. The key is to create SMART goals, which help you determine if the goal can be accomplished and the steps needed in accomplishing these goals.
Check out this blog provided by mind tools which explains what smart goals are and how to implement them in your strategy.
4. SEO
Yes, I said it. Instagram SEO! Creating an SEO strategy for your Instagram account is vital in today’s competitive business world.The two key areas that affect SEO are…
- Your account handle. This is the ‘@’ name that you register your account with. This should clearly reflect the sector in which your business operates.
- Your account name. This appears under your profile picture and should reflect your account handle and industry.
Looking for more tips on how to create and optimize SEO-friendly Instagram handles and names that will increase Instagram engagement? Check out this Linkedin blog all about creating the perfect Instagram name.
5. Consistency is key, Always!
There are many successful Instagram accounts that are a beauty to watch blossom as they have been consistent since they created their accounts. Some key pointers would be:
- Limiting your range of filters to one or two and applying them to every photo.
- Think of creating a photo grid to plan out how your posts will look digitally.
- Create a niche for your account, this will help with brand recognition,
- Keeping your storyline and postings consistent with the filters and a clear goal.
- Creating a social media calendar will help you stay on track with your content and audience building. If you just do not have the time to invest in Instagram, then try a posting platform such as Hootsuite.
- Stay up to date with the news and latest trends in your industry. Provide value to your followers by posting this information on the stories, posting curated user-generated content you curate, from blogs, polls, videos, and images.
- Utilize your Instagram analytics and insights when creating content, as this will help you determine what your customers want to see and the best time to post this information.
- Hashtags, or tags however you would like to call them, are still crucial for business owners.
According to our business partners over at Hubspot, Instagram posts with at least one hashtag averages 12.6% more engagement than a post with no hashtags. Hashtags are like categories, for example. Instagram is essentially an online photo album and hashtags are the categories for your photos. Hashtags help your post get discovered by viewers most interested in seeing it. When it comes to hashtags…
- You should always try to vary your hashtags according to your posts. Try not to copy and paste the same hashtag every time as tags should be relevant
- Stay active in your Instagram community. What are others doing? WHY NOT PARTICIPATE?
- Try running a contest using your keywords as hashtags.
6. Business Biography
Your Social Media biography should clarify your Business’ purpose. Your profile’s bio is the first thing users see when they are on your Instagram. You should have a creative, well-crafted, clear message that you would like your audience to view in your biography. Put yourself in the consumer’s shoes – would you want to follow an account that is unclear of their own goals? Your Instagram bio can also include:
- Keywords
- Call to actions
- Hashtags
- A link your website to your business bio
- A link your other social accounts
This will make it easier for your clients to visit your website and or social profiles.
7. This saying will never get old – CONTENT is KING
Provide value. Why would you follow a company who provides no value? Always put yourself in the consumer’s shoes. Don’t have great content of your own to post? Try user-generated content on Instagram. This is a chance for followers to involve themselves more deeply with your brand while also reducing marketing costs because the content is being created and approved by your audience.
For example, you can ask a question and create a social poll around a trending topic that you know will attract buzz. You also want to aim to create viral industry content. How? Simple. What’s going on in your industry? Stay on top of the latest news and trends, and then relay this information with your audience.
When choosing and creating the content that will go on your Instagram page, keep in mind your business’ design and aesthetic. Try not to overwhelm your audience with design or to much content. Remember to keep your audience in mind while curate content. Specifically tailor your messages to them, keeping postings and descriptions clean and consistent. You can spice up your business’ content in a number of ways. Some of my favorites are:
- Adding videos and boomerangs to your stories
- Producing Instagram Video content that doesn’t require sound to be engaged. Roughly 85% of Facebook, Instagram’s parent company, users play videos without sound, and the numbers are similar on Instagram.
- Add some humor and personality to your descriptions
- Use clean images
- Add stickers and gifys to your stories.
- Basically, be a human behind a brand, not just a brand.
Which leads to tip number 8…
8. Build relationships
You are a human, not a robot. No one wants to follow a robot. Show some personality in your brand’s content and postings. It’s much easier to build a relationship and get invested in a brand when you are interacting with an actual human. Would you agree?
Show emotions while posting and try to remember the audience you are targeting. Sometimes it’s okay to not ask a question but, instead give a command. For example, try telling your audience to Double Tap If they agree with X Y or Z issue. Building a trust with your users, engaging with them daily, staying active and consistent in the Instagram community, and cross-promoting will help your brand more than you may think.
9. Make your brand credible.
How? Here’s the secret sauce: ENGAGE. You can engage in many different ways with your audience. However, some of the most popular ways are…
- Commenting. Do this, and this will benefit your Instagram account. Instagram cares the most about engagement. When a post receives a bunch of likes and comments, Instagram sees this as “quality”, remember to post engaging valuable content that more people will want to see and interact with. (Take away tip: Remember people buy when they trust)
- Don’t only comment but write useful comments. This provides value to the interaction. This can be done by offering tips or sending links that can help the users.
- Participate in social communities
- Join and create engagement Pods
- Reach out to Influencers and see if they would be interested in partnering with you. This will help you advertise your brand’s message and/or products
- Likes. More likes = more cred for your brand
- Interact with your followers. This is your community, your audience. Communicate with them by liking, commenting, following and messaging. Ask them questions such as what could you do better, what type of content would you like to see more of?
- Try Instagram live. Get out of your comfort zone! I’ve said this several times and will say it once more, do not be afraid to show personality behind a brand. People want to interact and get to know YOU.
In the end, review the data and research you collected and utilize it by providing curated content, with a clear goal and high levels of engagement.
That’s all folks, I would love some feedback, have any of you tried any of the tips I’ve mentioned above? If so I would love to know your experience and thoughts. Comment below and I’ll be sure to reply 😉
9 ways to Grow your Business’ Instagram Presence
Our social media guide below contains 9 ways to help grow your business’ Instagram presence Organically – Let’s dive in –
Instagram is probably one of the easiest platforms to create an account on. However, maintaining a successful business account is a whole different ball game. Before we jump into the 9 ways that I have used and applied to help grow a few different business Instagrams, let’s review some key stats about Instagram and why your business needs a strong Instagram presence.
It’s no secret that Instagram is considered the focal point for many businesses and digital marketers. According to Falcon, the engagement rate on Instagram is 10x higher than it is on Twitter. Think of it this way – Instagram is considered the sweet spot of the social media scene for marketers and business. And I don’t think I have to explain why I mean unless you’ve been living under a rock or something?
Falcon states that Instagram has 1 billion monthly active users, Of those users, 50% are following brands. That’s a pretty good number if you ask me, with high chances of business opportunities!
Businesses have the capability to market on platforms. Social media platforms allow them to reach their audience in real time, with the message they want to tell, and collect the data needed to further remarket to their potential clients. Despite all of this knowledge, statistics, videos, and content, online business are still struggling to maintaining their social media presence. Why, you ask? Simple.
In this article and I will point out a few ways that business can build and maintain their Instagram presence by providing examples from my own experience with helping business accounts grow their Instagrams.
There are a total of 25 million business accounts on Instagram, and this number is not slowing down. Because social media has such a positive impact, it continues to be one of the strongest ways to communicate with current and potential clients in real time. Statistically speaking, organic Instagram usage costs your business nothing and makes the most sense sense. If you don’t have an Instagram presence, you should probably STOP reading this blog and create one right now. Need help? Read this article provided by Instagram on how to create a business Instagram account. If you already have a business Instagram account – take notes!
As promised, here are 9 Ways to Grow Your Instagram Presence
- Strategy
Listen up Business Owners – When creating a business Instagram account you must first create an Instagram business strategy or action plan strategy. WHY? Let’s review a few more stats created by our friends over at Wordstream.
- This year, 70.7% of U.S. companies will use Instagram for marketing, edging out Twitter for the first time.
- 8. 50% of Instagram users follow at least one business.
- 9. 60% of users say that they have learned about a product or service on the platform.
With Instagrams immense community, how is your business going to stand out? How are you going to go after your audience? What brand message are you advertising? What call to actions are you going to use? What design aesthetic are you going to use? How often are you going to post? How can your brand be seen to new potential clients? These are only a few questions you should be asking yourself which is why strategy is step one.
Think about when you first created your business. You obviously had to create some sort of plan on how you would get from point a to point b, created goals and then steps on how you would accomplish those goals. Welp people, this isn’t rocket science. Your Instagram strategy is pretty much the exact same thing as your business strategy.
Your Instagram marketing plan should be clear to the point and discuss what you want to accomplish for example:
- Your goals
- Who your target audience is
- What story you want to tell.
- You’re brand design or aesthetic.
- Research
Research Is very important for any business creating an online social presence. You should be asking – What is your competition doing? What are the other businesses doing? What hashtags are popular in your industry? Who in your industry is having success via Instagram?
No one wants to reinvent the wheel, nor should they have to in today’s technological world. There are many ways to see what your competitors are doing such as…
- Have you performed a Social media audit? The purpose of the audits are to evaluate and optimize a business’s profiles and strategies. In ways, they have increased and can increase their original goals. This article contains a FREE template, provided by Hootsuite, on how to create a social media audit.
- Another key tip with research is knowing and understanding Instagram statistics and anayltics. All business accounts should utilize the Instagram anayltics and insights as this will tell you your audience, demographic, trending post and so forth. Check out this article provided by Hootsuite about the top 24 Instagram statistics you should be aware of in order to help grow your Instagram presence.
- It is key to understand Instagrams News Feed Algorithm and trends so that your business can stay at the top of your follower’s feeds.
- If you an e-commerce shop, apply for Instagram shopping. You can click here to apply for your Instagram shoppers account.
- Goal setting
No one wants to work harder. The goal is to always work smarter. Let’s discuss Smart Goals. In order to create a successful strategy, you must create goals with action plans. The key is to create SMART goals, which help you determine if the goal can be accomplished and the steps needed in accomplishing these goals.
Check out this blog provided by mind tools which explains what smart goals are and how to implement them in your strategy.
- SEO
Yes, I said it. Instagram SEO! Creating an SEO strategy for your Instagram account is vital in today’s competitive business world.The two key areas that affect SEO are…
- Your account handle. This is the ‘@’ name that you register your account with. This should clearly reflect the sector in which your business operates.
- Your account name. This appears under your profile picture and should reflect your account handle and industry.
Looking for more tips on how to create and optimize SEO-friendly Instagram handles and names that will increase Instagram engagement? Check out this Linkedin blog all about creating the perfect Instagram name.
- Consistency is key, Always!
There are many successful Instagram accounts that are a beauty to watch blossom as they have been consistent since they created their accounts. Some key pointers would be:
- Limiting your range of filters to one or two and applying them to every photo
- Think of creating a photo grid to plan out how your posts will look digitally
- Create a niche for your account, this will help with brand recognition,
- Keeping your storyline and postings consistent with the filters and a clear goal.
- Creating a social media calendar will help you stay on track with your content and audience building. If you just do not have the time to invest in Instagram, then try a posting platform such as Hootsuite.
- Stay up to date with the news and latest trends in your industry. Provide value to your followers by posting this information on the stories, posting curated user-generated content you curate, from blogs, polls, videos, and images
- Utilize your Instagram anayltics and insights when creating content, as this will help you determine what your customers want to see and the best time to post this information.
- Hashtags, or tags however you would like to call them, are still crucial for business owners
According to our business partners over at Hubspot, Instagram posts with at least one hashtag averages 12.6% more engagement than a post with no hashtags. Hashtags are like categories, for example. Instagram is essentially an online photo album and hashtags are the categories for your photos. Hashtags help your post get discovered by viewers most interested in seeing it. When it comes to hashtags…
- You should always try to vary your hashtags according to your posts. Try not to copy and paste the same hashtag every time as tags should be relevant
- Stay active in your Instagram community. What are others doing? WHY NOT PARTICIPATE?
- Try running a contest using your keywords as hashtags.
- Business Biography
Your Social Media biography should clarify your Business’ purpose. Your profile’s bio is the first thing users see when they are on your Instagram. You should have a creative, well-crafted, clear message that you would like your audience to view in your biography. Put yourself in the consumer’s shoes – would you want to follow an account that is unclear of their own goals? Your Instagram bio can also include:
- Keywords
- Call to actions
- Hashtags
- A link your website to your business bio
- A link your other social accounts
This will make it easier for your clients to visit your website and or social profiles.
- This saying will never get old – CONTENT is KING
Provide value. Why would you follow a company who provides no value? Always put yourself in the consumer’s shoes. Don’t have great content of your own to post? Try user-generated content on Instagram. This is a chance for followers to involve themselves more deeply with your brand while also reducing marketing costs because the content is being created and approved by your audience.
For example, you can ask a question and create a social poll around a trending topic that you know will attract buzz. You also want to aim to create viral industry content. How? Simple. What’s going on in your industry? Stay on top of the latest news and trends, and then relay this information with your audience.
When choosing and creating the content that will go on your Instagram page, keep in mind your business’ design and aesthetic. Try not to overwhelm your audience with design or to much content. Remember to keep your audience in mind while curate content. Specifically tailor your messages to them, keeping postings and descriptions clean and consistent. You can spice up your business’ content in a number of ways. Some of my favorites are:
- Adding videos and boomerangs to your stories
- Producing Instagram Video content that doesn’t require sound to be engaged. Roughly 85% of Facebook, Instagram’s parent company, users play videos without sound, and the numbers are similar on Instagram.
- Add some humor and personality to your descriptions
- Use clean images
- Add stickers and gifys to your stories.
- Basically, be a human behind a brand, not just a brand.
Which leads to tip number 8…
- Build relationships
You are a human, not a robot. No one wants to follow a robot. Show some personality in your brand’s content and postings. It’s much easier to build a relationship and get invested in a brand when you are interacting with an actual human. Would you agree?
Show emotions while posting and try to remember the audience you are targeting. Sometimes it’s okay to not ask a question but, instead give a command. For example, try telling your audience to Double Tap If they agree with X Y or Z issue. Building a trust with your users, engaging with them daily, staying active and consistent in the Instagram community, and cross-promoting will help your brand more than you may think.
- Make your brand credible.
How, you ask? Here’s the secret sauce: ENGAGE. You can engage in many different ways with your audience. However, some of the most popular ways are…
- Commenting. Do this, and this will benefit your Instagram account. Instagram cares the most about engagement. When a post receives a bunch of likes and comments, Instagram sees this as “quality”, remember to post engaging valuable content that more people will want to see and interact with. (Take away tip: Remember people buy when they trust)
- Don’t only comment but write useful comments. This provides value to the interaction. This can be done by offering tips or sending links that can help the users.
- Participate in social communities
- Join and create engagement Pods
- Reach out to Influencers and see if they would be interested in partnering with you. This will help you advertise your brand’s message and/or products
- Likes. More likes = more cred for your brand
- Interact with your followers. This is your community, your audience. Communicate with them by liking, commenting, following and messaging your. Ask them questions such as what could you do better, what type of content would you like to see more of?
- Try Instagram live. Get out of your comfort zone! I’ve said this several times and will say it once more, do not be afraid to show personality behind a brand. People want to interact and get to know YOU.
In the end, review the data and research you collected and utilize it by providing curated content, with a clear goal and high levels of engagement.
That’s all folks, I would love some feedback, have any of you tried any of the tips I’ve mentioned above? If so I would love to know your experience and thoughts. Comment below and I’ll be sure to reply 😉
How to Optimize Instagram Direct Message for Your Business!
In today’s day and age, “sliding in the DMs” is such a common phrase.
So known in fact that it’s a negative connotation! Sliding in the DMs would mainly refer to trying to talk to your local Insta hottie and seeing if you’d want them to come over and “Netflix and Chill,” with you…. but that’s a story for another day.
I’m here to tell you that using Instagram’s Direct Message is a great thing, and should be used entirely to nurture your leads and execute on your sales pipeline. Today we will Learn How to Optimize Instagram Direct Message for Your Business!
Our partners at HubSpot define lead nurturing as “The process of building relationships with your prospects with the goal of earning their business when they’re ready”.
Using the Direct Message feature on Instagram makes it easier for your business to capture inbound leads and turn them into sales in a jiffy.
Here’s an overview of the 4 topics I’ll be addressing — scroll down for more context.
Lead Generation
- By using Instagram (link) posts and stories to show off your business, direct messaging the people who engage with your content can be extremely valuable to generating quality leads
Sales Execution
- Knowing your sales pipeline in relation with your DMs will give your business the ability to close at a high clip
Networking
- Regardless if that contact doesn’t become a lead, you can still add them to your contact list for collaboration and referrals
Value
- Now that your content team understands the importance of connecting with their ideal persona, they’ll take the time to produce content that provides value to your future customers
Learn more about these topics below!
Lead Generation
Of course, we’ve used Instagram in its entirety for our personal use, so why don’t we use it for new business? Quite possibly, like most professionals, they’re afraid of being too “unorthodox” in their outreach.
To which I say, they’re simply afraid of taking the chance to be successful. They’ll never go for it!
Kevin Gibbons with State of Digital sums it up well, “Everyone wants to be innovative, but no one wants to make mistakes – those two things don’t go hand in hand.”
Us digital marketers are always looking for new ways to be successful, but how can we find success in new areas if we’re afraid to fail in new avenues of business?
The answer is…we can’t!
Not to be clique…but did Jordan stop when he got cut from his high school basketball team, or Edison when he found 10,000 ways not to make a lightbulb, even Elvis didn’t quit when he was told he “couldn’t sing.”
If they can do it, you can do it.
Here is a step-by-step process on how to get more leads via Instagram DMs for your business!
- Post an engaging post/story on your Instagram timeline that drives engagement
- From the engagement shown on your content, determine which genuine profiles match your ideal persona
- Compile a list of all the profiles that fit your ideal persona criteria for this one specific post
- Once you have a detailed list of profiles, start contacting them via Instagram DM! Your script should mirror something like this:
- “Hi! Thanks for liking our picture. What did you like most about it”
- “Do you have any questions on our new offer we’re giving out this week”
- “What do you think our team could do to make our profile better for you?”
Pro Tip: All of these scripts will give you data that your lead gen team can use for future business, and more importantly, the person you’re talking to gets the genuine vibe that you truly care for them and their opinion.
- Once you’ve received feedback, you can start implementing changes in your lead gen strategy to generate a higher conversion rate!
Check out our video showing you how to engage, and monetize leads with Instagram.
Sales Execution
This is where the fun begins.
Finally, you have compiled a proper list of your future customers. Now…it’s time to put that to use!
At this point in the HubSpot Sales Process your future customers should be in the Consideration Stage. They understand what your company does and who your audience is. The lingering questions they’re now faced with are…why should they buy from you? Do they even have a problem for you to solve?
Now depending on each customer, this is different. It’s important to continue to use the power of Insta DM to help with this.
So what’s next? You’ve gotten their attention, whether they replied back to your lead gen strategy or not. The next steps are essential to creating a solid pipeline.
Here’s what you need to do…
Track their future engagement
- Make a mental note on who continues to like and comment on your content, and who simply only liked your post once out of curiosity. This is where you find your true audience
Those who continue to support, thank them!
- You don’t have to go all salesy yet…first thank them for the consistent support and love on IG! Without them, your page wouldn’t have the popularity it does today. Take the time to thank them.
Follow-up!
- After thanking them, make sure you follow up with questions like “Do you have any questions on our current products? Have you been involved with *Your Niche* for a while now? Do you love it? What problems do you have now?”
Empathy first
- Once you find out about the person and their likes/dislikes with your industry, empathize with them! Tell them you’ve been in their shoes and that’s why you took the time to develop a product that does everything you need it to! Now…you need to understand you’re playing with fire. If you come off as fake, you could be blocked and even go as far as receiving a bad review on Google! Always be sure to act genuine and take an interest in what your future customer is saying. After all, like your Instagram popularity, where would you be without your paying customers? Nowhere!
Then Cash the Check
- Now that you’ve built a strong relationship with your future client, you know their likes/dislikes, hobbies, you’ve arranged to get drinks this week and also be the best man in their wedding…kidding of course. The connection doesn’t have to be that dep obviously, but the more you’re connected with them, the better. Finally, this is where you ask to schedule a meeting, give them a promo code, ask them when they think they’d order your magnificent beauty cream, etc! This is where you go in for the kill and cash the check. Going in for the kill isn’t the right phrase…the better phrase would be to help them with whatever problems they had to begin with! Bingo!
Use these helpful tips and you’ll be on your way to Insta DM sales heaven!
Networking
Now sadly, sales aren’t all that glamorous as we know. You get told “no”, “I’m not quite ready”, “I need to talk it over with the husband” too many times to count. You’ll accept the sad reality that most people won’t buy your product..and that’s ok! It’s not that you or your company are bad people, those people simply don’t need your product! They already have a solution to the problem you’re trying to solve, and they’re happy with it. Sure, you can keep trying to convince that person your product is better, and it might be, but at the end of the day, it’s what the customer wants, not you. At the end of the day if you still have no sales, don’t walk home defeated! Look for the opportunity in failure. One of the biggest parts of the business is networking. Use your failed sales attempts to turn the business relationship into a casual one! Add them on Insta! Facebook? Sure! Twitter? Oh yeah, meme city! The more people you know at the end of the day, the better. Why? Because they can refer you to people that could possibly want to buy from you! Ultimately, your network is your net worth…so make new friends! Using Insta DM is so easy because you don’t even need to talk to people face-to-face! So from those introverts out there, I don’t want to hear it. There are no excuses!
Take it from J.K. Rowling in this Huffington Post article, who talks about the possibility of Harry Potter never having been written!
“I had been writing almost continuously since the age of six but I had never been so excited about an idea before. To my immense frustration, I didn’t have a pen that worked, and I was too shy to ask anybody if I could borrow one.” -J.K. Rowling
Despite your own fears…there is always a way to grow your network, even if you’re shy.
Value
Now throughout this article, I’ve talked about a lot of things that you can do to connect with your customer. What’s better than that? Giving your customer something…for free! That’s what your company is doing with each Instagram post and story you send out. First and foremost, the value is your top priority whenever you post. If your first inclination is to think about how many sales you’ll get from this new post, you’re not thinking for your customer, you’re actually being quite selfish. The true way to “get sales” is to actually provide valuable content to your customer. Whether that’s a podcast, quote, cool design…make them love what you post! Help your audience in the industry you’re in! It’s simple..if they have a problem..work with them to help them solve it! You’ll be going the extra mile with them and providing them with actual help instead of asking with your palm out what the CCV of their card is. In fact, if you overemphasize and triple-down on providing value…the leads and sales will take care of themselves!
Just to review…here are the 4 topics I mentioned to optimize your business!
Lead Generation
- By using Instagram posts and stories to show off your business, direct messaging the people who engage with your content can be extremely valuable to generating quality leads
Sales Execution
- Knowing your sales pipeline in relation with your DMs will give your business the ability to close at a high clip
Networking
- Regardless if that contact doesn’t become a lead, you can still add them to your contact list for collaboration
Value
- Now that your content team understands the importance of connecting with their ideal persona, they’ll take the time to produce content that provides value to your future customers
To those who made it to the end, thank you!!!
My name is Sean Boyle, Sales & Business Development Manager at Momentum Digital. Follow me on LinkedIn and Instagram for more information. Leave any comments and questions below for more details!