How To Grow Your Business Using Instagram

(Instagram Ultimate Guide For Entrepreneurs)

This post will cover every question you have about Instagram and how to grow your account to your first 1k – 10k followers. For easier access to this info, download a free copy of the ILC Ultimate Guide To Instagram For Online Entrepreneurs. Get this post and bonus trainings to help explode your Instagram and build your business faster!

What Is Instagram? The History of Instagram!

Most entrepreneurs aren’t getting the results they want, but they keep on keeping on with what they are doing so they don’t risk having to change. Change can be scary, change is hard,. But staying the same as everyone is easy, and is the last thing you want in order to stand out online. Easy requires to risk and no effort. That usually results in less reward.

Instagram was launched in 2010 and is the second largest social media platform next to facebook. It has over

Instagram was purchased by Facebook April of 2012

Why Use Instagram To Explode Your Business?

Instagram combines the best of both worlds when it comes to getting your message out to the right audience.

In 2018, 54.8% of U.S companies with 100+ employees used instagram for their marketing activities.

Engagement with brands on IG is almost 20x higher than Facebook, 60x higher than Pinterest, and 90% higher than Twitter.

When your marketing is done right, each piece of content is like a soldier working FOR you.

Your story is being written everyday and you have control of what the next chapter says. Instagram is a great place to write and document your story. Jim Rohn said “If you’re life is worth living, it’s worth documenting”

How To Get (Serious) Started Using IG (Setting Up Your Account)

Create a compelling profile – If you want to inspire people to follow you on your IG account, you need an effective and attractive profile. You profile should:

contain the same handle as other social media platforms if possible (Fb, twitter, youtube, etc.

A friendly picture of you smiling and easily recognizable

A quick description and link leading to a closer connection, fb profile, capture page, fb group. Youtube video

Use keywords to make it easy for people to find or discover you. Use the search bar in IG to research keywords in your niche i.e. health and wellness, beauty tips etc

3 Steps To Crushing Instagram: Build, Engage, Solve (Sell)

Just like any social platform, or any business online for that matter, the formula for success remains the same. Build an audience, engage with that audience, find out what they want/need. And dedicate your channel to helping them solve their problems. For instance. This post is helping you solve a social media problem you may be having with instagram. Intentional Lifestyle Creators is committed to helping you use Instagram to grow your business.

Instagram has 30x more engagement than other social media platforms. Meaning this formula works for ANY medium you choose to grow your business, but the use of this formula can be much more effective on Instagram.

You build your audience on Instagram through followers. The more people following your account, the better. Follower on Instagram will see your content. If someone is not “following” you on Instagram, they don’t see your content, unless shared, hashtags, or they find you through the search feed.

Your goal should be to get to 10k followers to start. It may sound like a lot of people, but it opens up features to get more exposure to your products/ services. Its important to understand that each large account you see on IG started at “0”. So no matter where you are today, just keep moving forward. Hit 500, 1k, 5k, 7k, 10k and more! You can do it!

As you build your audience on instagram, we move into step 2, engaging your audience on instagram. (Belief Breakdown -Engaging doesn’t always have to take place on Instagram. You can build an audience on Instagram and engage them other places if you’d like. On facebook, facebook groups, Youtube, email, and more. The choice is yours.)

Engaging your audience on Instagram can involve posting and commenting on other people’s posts. Replying to comments, on your content and others. Don’t ever get too busy to reply and connect with your tribe.

Instagram Live & Instagram TV are great places to increase engagement on your channel. You may be wondering what you should post, and what to talk about. Engaging means talking about the problems your audience wants to hear about. They have interests, wants, needs, desires, and problems. They want to hear from you about all those things.

Step 3, solve your audiences problems. Many marketers label step 3 as “sell”, but when you dedicate your mission to solving problems, selling comes automatically. The problem that most business owners fall into with this step is solving surface level problems. Your audience doesn’t want their surface level problems solved. They want their real problems solved.

The reality is, no one cares about your products, programs, or services. What they care about is how your products, programs, and services will make their lives better. Focusing on what they care about, as in how you are going to make their life better in someway, is vital to creating a tribe of loyal followers who become your customers for life.

The truth is, you have a purpose! You have a mission as an entrepreneur. You have a solution to your audiences pain. Using Instagram as the start of your funnel is an effective way to create authority, credibility, and celebrity status, while magnetically attracting your perfect prospects. But first, you have to start with making your content all about your prospect and what they care about.

For the most part, there are two types of people that are running businesses on Instagram. The first type is the spamming type. This is the type of person that would go to a bar and ask a random stranger to marry them on their first date. Unfortunately, this is how most people are running their businesses on Instagram.

The other type of person is the person that is to check in to make a move. This person does a good job of cording their prospect, but never seems to ask for the sale or move them to a place where the sale would be almost automatic.

Only a small percentage of business owners use Instagram, or any other social media platform for that matter affectively enough to actually take someone from cold stranger I had no idea you existed to extreme Superfan and solve the audiences problem while making a lot of freaking money in the process

Commit to this formula every day in yo

Its Time To Launch Your Insta-Brand ?

You may already be on IG doing everything wrong. Don’t get discouraged, we can always may adjustments and fix mistakes. We have made plenty of mistakes, the cool thing to remember is that most people will never actually recognize the mistakes you’re making as mistakes. They are too worried about their own lives. And second, if you’re putting yourself in front of new people everyday. New people only judge the version of you that’s in front of them today. So focus on being better and better each day.

In some cases it may be time to re launch a completely new profile the right way. Nothing wrong with starting over and creating the persona and message you want to on Instagram.

Instagram is all about aesthetics. So first get really clear with your message and mission for your new page. If you’re not quite clear with your message yet, that’s ok. Use the account you have right now to speak up, speak out, try new things, and that will help craft your message. “If you never take the chance to speak up, you’ll never find your true voice.

Have a good color scheme and filter process. Meaning, be as consistent as possible with the filters you use and your posting strategy.

The age old question is still, should you build a personal brand or company brand? The answer is that both work and both work well

Turn People Into Paying Super Fans On Instagram

The worst thing we see on Instagram is people able to build a “following” of 15k, 50k, 100k people and not monetize the right way.

Monetization is just a fancy word for “covert into”. Could be leads, viewers, money, etc.

There are so many ways to monetize the audience you build on Instagram. What you choose is up to you of course, and your particular business model for starting your online business.

You can monetize your audience (convert them to) customers by sending them directly to a sales page or order page. Just be sure that you own that order page. You will want to be sure that the page has the pixel set up correctly so you can follow them around the Internet with various ads and calls to action.

If you choose to send people to a sales page or order page with out capturing their information first, you have no idea who lands on the page and no way to get back in front of them.

You can monetize your Instagram audience by sending them to a funnel. You can send them to a live or automated webinar. You can send them to download a free guide or pdf. You can allow them access to a free video series or even an online survey.

The best way to choose which way to best monetize your audience is to really know the process your customer must go through to trust you enough to send you money. Instagram is most used for awareness. The awareness stage of marketing does not have many conversations directly to a sale.

How To Get Followers and Grow YOUR AUDIENCE –

Following Other Accounts – Following other peoples accounts that already influencers and competitors in your niche. The concept is simple. If you are in the women's fitness niche, and you are looking to grow a fitness account following people that already follow someone like Jillian Micheals would get people who are already expressing interest in fitness to your page. 

Tips on using this method: 

• Tip 1: 
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Engaging On Post: Leaving noticeable comments.

Tagging & Sharing: When posting on IG, your content needs to be clear, consistent, and CWORD. One way to gain an egaging following (key word engaging) faster is to create content that people want to tag their friends in and would want to share privately.

On IG you will see big accounts create content and use their CALL TO ACTION as “Tag 2 Friends That Need To See This. This gets more people viewing your page and more followers that will likely enage with your content and continue to share with their friends and so forth. You can see, with the right post, how this could be a never ending domino effect of gaining new eyes. Much easier said that done, but it only takes one post to explode your exposure.

Tips for using this method

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Using Hashtags Correctly: TBD

Tips for using this method:

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Land In The Search Feed: TBD

Tips for using this method

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Shout Outs and Story Tags – TBD

Tips for using this method

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Your Social Media Accounts – TBD 

Tips for using this method

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• Tip 3:

Target Market (Your Perfect Customer)

TBD TEXT

How To Use Hashtags Correctly To Grow Your Audience

First if you don’t know what a hashtag is, its just short phrase with the “#” in front of the phrase. This allows people to quickly search things on social media platforms. You can use hashtags to turn phrases into searchable links! This makes it easy to search topics, names, or products. They can also be used to organize content and track it as well.

Hashtags are a very helpful way to “mark” your images so people searching for things find your pictures and videos on IG (Instagram)

So, for example if you have a weight loss product, you may use a hashtag with #Muffintop or #HolidaySlimDown with your posts. When people search these tags, they have the possibility of coming across YOUR content and getting into your world.

Lets say your product is leadership you may use a hashtag around #johnmaxwell with your posts.

Typically you should use anywhere from 5-28 hashtags in any give post. Do not over do it. IG will max you out at 30. So be sure to count if you’re above 20 to be sure your post is NOT taken down.  Also, post your hashtags as the first comment of your post, not in the text itself. It is more pleasing to you reader

Use the not app on your phone to stash your hashtags away for easy access for your next post. You should have anywhere from 30 – 75 hashtags for your particular page.

Take some time and research for you list of hashtags. This may not happen over night, but this is one of the most important steps for LONG-TERM success on Instagram! Pay attention to competition, pay attention to trends, and come up with a unique to ONLY you hashtag that you use for each post.

Overall, instagram for network marketers is not a place of sell sell sell, its more about attract, connect, solve. Follow this advice with all of your social media platforms. “GIVE, before I Receive.” This means 80-90% of your post should be about providing your audience with insights on what you’re learning through your particular journey, tips to help their life improve, your story, family, and your future/vision. The other 10% can be about what your product “does” not what it “is”. Stop telling people what IT IS, and show them what it is DOING! This is what your audience needs from you. This is VALUE

Instagram Lead Generation

TBD

Your goal should be to end up in the search feed

Get people in your sales funnel. It could be 6months for a cold person to become a customer. Remember the sales you make everyday are because of the impression you left 3-6 months ago.

27 Day IG Blueprint/ Action Guide

Direct Message Etiquette (It Goes Down In The DM)

The Instagram inbox is a great place to connect with people but we can’t tell you how many people treat the inbox or “DM” the wrong way. We want to use this feature while making sure we don’t rub people the wrong way.

– Should I send an auto message
One thing I can’t stand is when people send an audio message on Instagram that is blatantly, and obviously an automatic message. I feel as if when this is extremely noticeable the member of your audience immediately disengages with you.

The auto responder message feature on Instagram is a feature that should be used to engage with your audience and possibly move them to the next step. Using this feature is very useful when looking to create conversation with your audience. Asking an open ended question to get your audience to connect more and open up to why they are on Instagram and what their main problem or desire is

How To Best Use Your ONE BIO LINK

On your Instagram profile you’re only given one link to use when sending people to a particular website. The mistakes that I see most entrepreneurs take when using this feature on Instagram is sending people to a website that you have absolutely no control over.

For example, we see a lot of people in the network marketing space sending people to their company replicated website on their Instagram profile. The mistake with this action is that one, most people that find your Instagram profile are not ready to buy, and those websites are designed for a person that is already ready to purchase and is at the end of the buying cycle. The next big problem with sending someone to a company replicated website, is that you don’t have the opportunity to pixel that person and follow them around the Internet. The third big problem is most company replicated websites don’t allow you to collect prospect/lead information. So if someone visits the website you have no idea if they liked it, And less they actually take the time to send you a direct message, which is very unlikely due to the lack of attention we have in today’s society. And we don’t know if they didn’t like the website for some odd reason that now we can’t explain because likely they’re onto the next thing.

Use your link as a place to take someone to the next step in your sales funnel process. Remember the dating example we spoke about earlier your prospect needs to be quoted in the word into buying from you or becoming a team member or client, or customer. Sending someone to connect with you in messenger, email, a Facebook group, YouTube video(on your channel of course), Capture page, are all great ways to utilize your link on your Instagram profile.

A cool tool to use, is a company called Linktree. Wintry is a simple application that you can use on your Instagram profile to have your prospects go to one or more links. However again as most pad business owners are good at doing, we take a really cool feature in somehow find more ways to miss use it. Most people that we see using the link tree put links to five or more options for their prospects to choose from. Leaving a prospect more confused than ever.

However, again as most pad business owners are good at doing, we take a really cool feature and somehow find more ways to miss use it. Most people that we see using the link tree put links to five or more options for their prospects to choose from. Leaving a prospect more confused than ever. Depending on your business model you either want to have 3 to 5 offers on your link tree. No more than that remember confused people don’t buy, confuse people don’t stay, and confuse people don’t come back. We recommend sending your audience member to a free area where they can connect with you more possibly a YouTube channel, a free download solving their biggest problem or most ass problem. This can be a problem that you get asked the most often. Example, if your prospects are always asking you what to post online to create curiosity, creating a curiosity post free giveaway (PDF) would be a smart idea.

Where To Take People After Instagram

Your profile link is not the only place to get people off of Instagram and on to the next step in your sales funnel. Once you have 10,000 followers on Instagram you can use the swipe up feature on your Instagram stories (which will go over later) you can use this feature to send prospects to various things.

TBD – Facebook messenger, Fb group, phone/zoom, Youtube, Funnel Opt In.

You can always send people to these various things outside of Instagram from Messenger inside of Instagram, I G TV, and direct calls to action from your post itself. Please remember don’t waste space posting links inside of your Instagram feed post, these links or clickable so your audience member has no chance of clicking it and going to the desired site.

Ask yourself this when is the last time you took the time to ride in a URL in your browser if you can’t Click it no one is going to it simply tell your audience what to do direct them back to your link in your profile and give them instructions on what to do next be very clear with your audience.

What scripts to use when connecting with leads on IG

TBD

Building Trust Through Your Blog

TBD

Posting Schedule  & Posting Strategy 

You don’t need to post on Instagram all day everyday! Posting 1x per day is essentially all you need to do. And that isn’t always mandatory either. Although in the beginning you want to be active. For the first three months of actively growing your audience on Instagram

The Strategy – IG can help you get attention for what you do and attract people who may want to buy your products, join your team/communities, etc. Before you the “Share” button, you need to have a solid strategy for why, when, what, and how often you post.

Great content is an obvious thing you would want to post on any social media platform, but your content will only move people what you decide the STORY YOU ARE TELLING. When your content is tied to YOUR story. Thats when people engage, share, and move through your sales process.

Ask Yourself:

• WHO is my ideal prospect – what kinds of people are best fit for my products and business?
• What kind of posts does this audience want to see? What content or ideas would be interesting and helpful to them?
• What do I want my audience to know about me, my team, the product, or my opportunity/business
• When does my audience seem to engage with my posts? What are the best times for ME to post (this is different for everyone)
• What is the story/ journey I plan to share? Check out how to craft your story

This will help you create content your followers will look forward to seeing. Over time, you can build a REAL connection and authentic relationship that leads to sales for you and more importantly improves the lives of your tribe!

Provide value & Pick 3 things your channel is about

The Best Pictures, How to take awesome pictures/ post on IG

Instagram is mostly about pictures. Although you can use video on your feed and throughout the app. It Can be extremely effective using pictures to illustrate your life and how your business so I was your customers problems.

Using IG Stories To Grow Your Business Daily 

In the past you could post on social media all day every day anytime you want to and it seem to work well. Now on many social media platforms the algorithms are set up for quality over quality. Instagram stories allows you to allow your prospects into your daily lives see behind the scenes and get your daily thoughts without having to put everything on your feed.

Instagram stories is a great way to increase the connection with your audience while giving you a less resistant way to promote what you have to offer.

As an example if you wake up in the first thing you do is grab your journal or devotional and read in the morning sharing a quick snippet of what you got from that is a great thing to do that’s the next thing you do is make a shake sharing your ingredients in the shake it’s also fun. This is the lowers the subway to really connect with your audience with all the things that go on in your daily life. Stories are extremely vital what it comes to growing your business, being an effective storyteller is probably the most important skill you can learn as an entrepreneur and online business. With that being said it’s not that ironic that a feature on Instagram is now called stories. One great thing we love about Instagram stories is that it can be connected to Facebook, so when you post on your Instagram story you can simultaneously post on your Facebook story. Another thing I absolutely love about Instagram stories as it shows you exactly who sees your stuff. This is great for connecting with your audience and building your list. So periodically go back and check to see if new people are watching your story, if so Jot their name down and those are the people that you want to connect with when it comes to your product services or opportunities via direct message. A lot of people shy away from direct messaging because they don’t want to bombard people, however these are people that are already warmed up to you, these are people that know you, Like you, and I already trust you. Not connecting with them would be mean in some cases.

Using IG Stories

TBD

Some of the features on Instagram stories are really cool to connect with your audience more and see exactly what they need. For instance polls is a great feature to use when finding out what your audience wants to see.

Countdown feature

Questions feature

Love feature

Take people on your journey

Daily activity -team, reading

CTA

Using Polls

How To Use Story Highlights

TBD. Story highlights are the perfect place to share your best and favorite life moments. Each of us has pillars that make up our life.

Instagram TV

TBD. Instagram Tv is a really cool tool Instagram rolled out in 2018

Instagram Resources

Resources

TBD – Tyler Chartier, Kim Phillips, Alex Beadon

Outsourcing

Tyler Chartier

Upwork

http://apps4lifehost.com/Instagram/CaptionMaker.html

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