Episode 79 – Instagram with Jenn Herman

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We discuss the Instagram with Jenn Herman in this episode of Business Growth Time

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About Jenn Herman:

She’s a social media consultant, speaker and globally recognized Instagram expert. She is the forefront blogger on Instagram marketing and her blog, Jenn’s Trends, just won the title of Top Social Media Blog in 2014, 2015, and 2016. Through her blog, consulting and speaking, Jenn provides tips, resources and training for small to medium businesses that need to structure the social media strategies. Her business background includes administration sales, human resources and marketing. She enjoys bringing all these skills together to help you grow your business.

Jenn has been featured Inc, Yahoo finance and numerous other podcasts and publications. She’s also the author of the “Ultimate Beginner’s Guide to Instagram” and Stop Guessing A Step-by-Step Guide to creating a social media strategy.

Time Stamped Show Notes:

01:34 – Let us know Jenn Herman

04:03 – What is Instagram stories?

Here’s the thing, Facebook is now rolling out an update that’s gonna do the same what you see on Instagram stories like hijacking everything Snapchat does, which is good for innovation. It’s good for people to get opportunity to try new things and do things differently.

Jen said that she accepted Instagram stories and still doesn’t use them frequently for her own brand because, “it doesn’t align with me and the audience that follows me on Instagram actually don’t use a lot of stories either.”
So you need to know your audience and where people are
You have to think about the business application
Understanding what Instagram does and what Instagram stories does is two completely different platforms, different strategies,different expectations, different engagement- they’re completely different on one platform

06:36 – Break down stories and pretend like people haven’t seen stories and don’t know what they are-10 second videos, 10 second picture with stickers, text, etc. some have access to an external link….to an opt in..etc.

Right now, some have access to put an external link in their stories which means you can actually send people directly from a story to your website or to your like opt-in or to your download or to your registration or your whatever.
They are really trying to push stories to a different audience and they’re really testing out certain things and stories and they’re doing other things on Instagram.

*Instagram is really focusing on businesses where Instagram has traditionally been like- no we’re not dealing with marketers, no we’re not doing anything to benefit marketers and they’re focused on the end user.

Stories on the other hand seems to be very focused towards what marketers are talking about. Putting ads in stories, they’re talking that they’ve got these external links that you can get access to everything when you communicate via a story you can’t like or comment like you do on Instagram, instead you send a direct message to the original poster.

Taking the communication from public into a private form rather than a public forum which again for marketers is much more customer serviced, ratings is much more independent of that kind publicity and everyone seeing what you’re saying,, you can deal with things, take orders or handle resolutions, There’s a lot of things that stories are putting much more emphasis and support behind marketers, which is very unique.

09:22 – Instagram in the old days!

Instagram used to be very organic, you see very raw, you would just snap a photo and that was what you uploaded. Now there’s levels of expectations and standards and criteria and it’s like a beautiful gallery at all times. Stories is going back to being raw. A lot of people migrated back to that because they love that kind of raw nature that Instagram used to be. So, it is there it again as a different expectation of quality.

The nice thing about stories too is the content disappears. So, just like Snapchat, if you upload a photo right now to Instagram stories and 24 hours it will disappear. So, you can choose to save the content to your camera roll, so you can retain it but it disappeared from your story.

So, unlike Instagram where that content lived on, stories are meant to be more spontaneous, they’re meant to be more random because they disappear. They’re not going to live on forever for people to see two months later or even two days later.

11:17 – The difference between Facebook stories Vs Instagram stories

Instagram audience is over 600 million monthly active users and over 300 daily active million daily active users, so there’s a huge audience on Instagram obviously and the Instagram audience tends to be that younger audience, tends to the demographic that’s more in line with Snapchat, tends to be more of a kind of 35 and under it tends to just pull that audience. But Facebook by contrast tends to be a slightly older audience.

Introducing stories or whatever they’re going to call it on Facebook is their way of pulling in that younger audience, it’s trying to get them back. That’s the one place Facebook has struggled is getting that younger audience to stay active and if they’re getting such amazing results. Instagram stories has blown up. I think it exceeded their own expectations in terms of the levels engagement with the level of involvement, the amount of content that’s being created.

14:42 – How long has Instagram stories been out?

It was last year and they launched it and it was fully functional without any issues. I mean it was very, very successful quickly! Like Instagram stories are here and within a very short period of time, everybody has it.

18:45 – Things that you should do in Instagramming

*There’s one thing I always tell people especially from a marketing perspective, any single business out there can use Instagram successfully and that doesn’t mean every business should. So, you need to decide if Instagram is the place for you, is it something you’re going to enjoy doing, are you going to stay active on it and is your audience there. I mean if your audience isn’t there. I mean, if your audience isn’t there do you really need to be there? Maybe not! Even if you love it and you can do it and be passionate about and build an audience. If the audience isn’t really there for you, than it it might not be worth the time.

Get on Instagram, set up an account, you absolutely have to pay super, super close attention to both your username and your name. So your username is how you are username when you do anything on Instagram, that is how you are known by your username you post, you comment, you like, you do anything, you are your username. So you want that to be how people are going to recognize you, if you want that to be your personal name, if you want that to be your business name, if you want that to include keywords.

(e.g), Say your name is Joe Smith, but you are a photographer, you might want to say jay smith photography as your username, something that people would associate with your business.

*Jenn’s Tip for Success: Use a consistent username! Use something that your friends, family, audience, customers, and fans will recognize. I recommend using the same name you use for your Twitter handle. Instagram doesn’t make it very easy to search for people so using a name that your audience recognizes, increases your chances of having them follow you. Avoid using weird or jumbled variations of your name – these will make you hard to find.

*Your name is what goes in your bio when you go to your profile and you see a name in big bold letters that’s different than the username and so if you can make that your username, your brand name, that makes the name your personal name or whatever but here’s the thing you need to do:

When you go to search on Instagram it literally only searches the name and username so if you search for photographer, it’s only searching name and users, its not searching the bio it’s not searching the hashtags, it’s not searching your content. So, whatever you want to be found for in search, that keyword must be in either the name or the username. So, if you are a Podcaster, you’d want to put that in search, that keyword must be in either the name or the username. So if you are a podcaster, you’d want to put podcast in the name or username.

22:09 – Pick a really good username!

You can change your name as often as you want once your username. Once you’ve picked it, you don’t want to change it, you can but you don’t want to. Because now you started creating backlinks and you started creating content around a username that people know and recognize. You don’t really want to change it, if you don’t have to, so think about it! Pick a really good username and then feel free to change your name within your bio format, when you want to change that keyword or mix it up or do something different.

22:35 – Then, your bio is where you want to show off your personality!

Understand that the bio on your Instagram profile will probably only be looked at once and that’s the first time someone comes to find out who you are
Your bio is basically like your LinkedIn summary it is what people are going to look at
Be fun use Emojis and put personality in there and and tell people what you do
Have personality make it fun, usually use emojis and fun little characters or things like that to really draw in that personality that people will connect with
And then the URL in the bio is the only clickable link anywhere on Instagram outside of Instagram stories

…Because the bounce rate from Instagram is pretty much zero when you get someone to that link and they get to your website they want to be there. They click on the link in my bio they go to my bio they click on the link they get to my website. Therefore you are capturing high quality traffic you may not get as much traffic from Instagram as other platform with the quality of traffic is so far above and beyond better than anywhere else.

Make sure that the blink that they’re clicking on goes exactly where you want to go so if you said click on the link in my bio to read my blog post it’s better go to my blog page that don’t send them to your homepage and then they have to navigate, if you’re saying sign up for this free webinar click the link in my bio that link had better be the signup page, because if they have to navigate you already make them to taking two or three steps to get to that link. Do not make them take another
You can change that URL whenever you can, use that URL hourly, you can change it for the period of a campaign that you’re running whether it’s day couple days a week you can change that URL, you know for every week if you have a different blog post you want to promote.
Make sure that that link is going exactly where you’ve told them to go so they don’t have to do any more work!

28:30 – How do you gain attraction on Instagram?

Here’s the thing when it comes to Instagram, opposite of what we talked about in stories that comes in here and all you need is to have beautiful photos, if you’re going to get attraction, it needs to be something that is visually appealing, it needs to stand out in the speed that people are going to see it.
You have to be very strategic and the quality of content that you’re creating it has to be strategic especially as a brand from a marketing perspective, every single post should be serving an end-state, so if your goal is to get traffic to your opt-in, then every post should support that if your goal is to get people to your blog, every post season subway support that, if you’re trying to sell products every post should support that.

It doesn’t mean every post is promotional to that purpose, but it should all be a part of that strategy meaning brand awareness, education, entertainment, value added whatever that content is you want to make sure that you’re always providing in some way a direction towards that anything that you’re looking for.

30:29 – The importance of “captions”

Captions a great photo is only a half of the step on Instagram because the photo gets their attention but the caption is where you make the conversion, so you need to have a caption.
You should have at least one, two, three paragraphs that take this story that much further it can be a personal interaction it could be informational. Click this link etc.

31:14 – Hashtags in Instagram

If you have a hundred followers or a hundred thousand followers. you’re only going to have so many people on your profile that see your content vs if you use hashtags you’re getting in front of a whole new audience.

You need to make sure that you’re using recommended 20 hashtags per post no matter what size your brand.
The average business should be 10 to 20 hashtags per post, they’re all relevant to your content so it should be industry-specific, it should be your specific niche, it should be about your brand and it should be with the content in the photos.
You want to find that variety of really popular hashtags and moderately popular, that keeps attraction long-term. Those super popular one you’re going to get a boost of like in a matter of seconds or minutes and the moderately popular stay active for hours.

Even if you have a hundred followers, you’ll get 20 likes that you wouldn’t normally get when you use hashtags properly. If you have a hundred thousand followers, you might get you know a couple thousand like from using hashtags. In order to get those results you have to be strategic.

35:17 – Getting profile set-up, making sure you understand what you want people to know about your account, think about your content strategy, think about the hashtag strategy. Remember Instagram is photos, that it’s fun and while you do want to have a strategy, that it’s meant to be social, it’s meant to be interactive, it’s meant to be engaging and Instagram wants to be most interactive platform out there!

Have fun, have that comfort level and just really embrace it!!

36:31 – Instagram Algorithm

The Instagram algorithm is individually based. Meaning it’s going to show me content as a user-based on my interactions, not based on your interactions. So, if I always like certain people’s posts, they’re going to show up high in my newsfeed, if I like it , this certain companies post that has no impact.

You want to make sure it is content they are interacting with, because the more they interact with, the higher will show up in their feed and the more likely they are to continue to interact with. So, if your audience wants videos give them videos, if your audience wants photos or they want educational content or they want funny content or they want whatever it is.
Make sure you are experimenting with that and giving them as much of that content that they want that you’re constantly showing up where constantly engaging and you’re all gonna win in terms of that content sharing on Instagram

37:45 – Where to find Jenn Herman

Where to Find:

You can pretty much find everything you need to know about Jenn Herman there are all my blogs always come up there, plus all my services and information.

Jenn’s Friends Membership– A membership program called Jenn’s Trends which you can go to learn – learn.jennstrends.com and it’s a monthly membership program dedicated Instagram marketing all the things we talked about today!

Where to find us:

Twitter: @bizgrowthtime

Join us in our Facebook Group: Business Growth Time

Looking for content ideas to post on your Social Media sites? Then you will love our Guide! You can Download the Ultimate Guide to Social Media Content Creation…and it is absolutely free.

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