Transcripts
1. Welcome to the Class!: If you're an artist or
creative looking to promote or sell your
art on social media, then Instagram may be a
perfect platform for you. Instagram allows
you to connect with your ideal audience and
potentially have thousands, or even millions,
eyes on your work. But growing organically
on Instagram can be a daunting task if you don't
know how the algorithm works in what and when to post. In this class, I will
show you how you can use Instagram to grow
your creative business. How to understand the algorithm, how to create a professional
looking profile. What content to
post to grow more quickly and maximize your
chances to go viral. I'm Anastasia and I'm an artist, educator and content
creator with over 88,000 organic
followers on Instagram. And I'm here to share my
experience during these years spent studying and using this platform In
this master class, you will learn everything
you need to know to start growing
organically on Instagram and get more exposure for
your brand and for your art. No more aimless posting, wondering what works
and what doesn't, and spending hundreds of hours on creating content
that just doesn't work. At the end of this master class, you will know the
exact steps you need to take to make
your page look amazing, create beautiful and
engaging content, and develop your
Instagram strategy. Are you ready to start using Instagram to its full potential? Then I'll see you in the class.
2. Why Instagram?: Welcome to the class. Five proven strategies for
organic Instagram growth. Anastasia. Again, you can find
me on Instagram as natura, illustrata, or make
art with confidence, all divided by underscores. In this class, I
will be showing you some examples of my
own Instagram feed, how I curated, how
to create your bio, and I will be using the
examples of my own platforms, so my own accounts. This is where you can find me. Today's class is all
about Instagram. And you probably know
that Instagram is one of the most important platforms for creatives, content
creators, artists. I will tell you in just a few moments why Instagram
is so important to us. Of course, there are other
social media platforms available out there. That's why I wanted to show you this scheme here real quick. I know if you are
just starting out, it can seem confusing what
you should be focusing on. Because there are a lot of different social
media platforms, and let's be honest, it's impossible to develop
them all at once and hope that they will all be
growing at the same pace. So if you are just starting out and if you
are thinking what you should be focusing
on in the beginning and if you are operating
in a creative field, I will highly recommend you to focus on Instagram personally. Instagram is something I
started early on in my career, and honestly, it was one of the best decisions I could make. And that's why I'm sharing
here all of my experience on this platform during these years in business as an artist. Let's see why Instagram. First of all, Instagram is
the most visual platform. Instagram was born as
a photo sharing app, but now it's not
a secret anymore that it's also a video
sharing platform. Videos and photos are two main pieces of
content on Instagram. Instagram is really visual. As I said, it's
all about images. It's all about the
visual impact. What is also interesting
about Instagram that I think this is still a platform where
aesthetics really matter. We will be talking about
the aesthetical aspect, your Instagram in this class. Don't worry, you will
be all covered also. Different age groups. Instagram at different people, different genders,
different age groups. On Instagram we help
both very young people, mid aged people, and
more mature people. It's very user friendly
from this point of view. It is attractive for
different generations. This is a good thing. Also, Instagram is
creative oriented. What I mean by that
is that a lot of artists, creatives in general, musicians, filmmakers, any creators or content
creators are on Instagram. It's an amazing, amazing
platform to build your network. Sharing an Instagram, it's not only somehow like
a one way process, it's also about exchanging with your audience and exchanging
with your community, with the people in your niche. These things, that's why if
you are thinking about using Instagram as an
instrument to grow your brand or grow
your business, You need to think about it
as a place where you can connect both with
your audience and also with your colleagues. So it's very important also. Instagram, in my opinion, is still a place where
you can grow very fast. I think there is this false
belief that people think that growing quickly on
Instagram is now impossible, that it's over saturated
too much people. But actually I think
it's not true at all. And actually I had
various proofs of that because some people
I personally follow really started to grow exponentially in the
last couple of years, or even in the last couple
of months actually. What I think is that growing an Instagram right now is
easier than ever before. I'm not telling, it's
going to be super simple, I'm not telling you that it's
going to happen overnight, but I think there are
instruments out there that can bring you to having this exponential organic
growth much faster than a couple of years
before I will be talking about these
instruments in this class. Let's just continue. I will
tell you everything you need to know to grow an
Instagram organically quicker. Also, what I wanted to show you a couple
of statistics here. Instagram is the eighth most visited website
in the world. It's pretty impressive also. Instagram is the fourth most
used social media platform after Facebook,
Youtube, and Whatsapp. Also, what is important
about Instagram is that it is the most downloaded
app in the world. This one is pretty
impressive in my opinion. And also what I wanted to point out is that Instagram
is a mobile app. Facebook. Still, a
lot of people use Facebook on desktop,
Youtube, the same. I think a lot of people
use it on their desktop. Instagram is mainly used
on mobile like Tiktok. If you can still open your
feed on Instagram on desktop, it's not very user
friendly out there. I think it really goes with the trends of how our
contemporary world is evolving. Because mobiles are
becoming more and more, it's almost permanent
in our life. We bring our phone
everywhere with us. It's important to think about the content that
is accessible on mobile. Instagram, as I said, is a perfect place for it
After this quick introduction, in the next lesson, I
will be talking about how Instagram can help you to grow your business
and your brand. I will see you in
the next lesson.
3. How to Grow Your Business with Instagram: Welcome back. In this lesson, I will be talking about how Instagram can help you
to grow your business. This class is not only for
those who want to develop their Instagram as a personal
thing just to test it out. It is also for those who
want to monetize Instagram. I don't mean getting money
directly from Instagram. I mean how Instagram
can help you to develop your brand
and your business. First of all, Instagram is a great place to find
an audience that cares. When you put your
content out there, it will start automatically
attracting the type of audience that really likes
what you are here to offer. By putting what you have
to offer out there, you are starting to attract
the right people and potentially transforming them in your perfect clients
in the future. It brings us to the
point number two here, which is connected with
your dream clients. I want to make one
thing very clear. Your Instagram followers
does not equal to your Um buyers to your clients, but they potentially could
become your clients. Instagram is a very great
starting point of studying the portrait of
your ideal customer and creating this portrait
of your ideal customer. We will be talking about the analytics tool and
this is the place that really can help you to make this portrait more
and more detailed. We will be talking
about it in this class. But first of all, before I
wanted to tell you that it is important to know who your followers are and it is important to know who
your clients are. And again, you can make your followers become your
clients on Instagram. Also, this platform is a great place where you can
show your product or service. It's not the same as
showing your product or service on your website,
because on your website, if you have one,
probably you have very polished pictures,
everything is perfect. But on social media and on Instagram things
are different. So you have the possibility here to show the
behind the scenes, to show your creative process, to show what it comes into
creating what you create. You can show your
character, your values. Because what really
distinguishes us, like small business owners, from big brands, is that the only thing we have
special is ourselves. Basically, people are not only buying what
you have to offer, they don't only buy your
product because it's good, they also buy you because
they love who you are. Maybe they know
something about you. Um, so there are
different things why people can become emotionally
attracted to you. But Instagram is
a very great way of where he can create this, a closer connection
with your audience. As someone who made several purchases from people
that I follow on Instagram. I know that for me,
it was very important to see more about things
that these people create, how they create them. And also to know more
about the creator itself. Who is it, where they're living, what their life is, what their interests are,
these kind of things. And I think Instagram is a
very great place where you can show these things in a very informal
and personal way. Also, Instagram is
a very great place where you can educate people on how to use
your product or service. Again, if on your
website or elsewhere, it's just pretty
straightforward. On Instagram, you also have the chance to actually
show your product in use. For example, let's say you are a jewelry maker.
Jewelry creator. You can show people how they can pair your jewelry with clothes, what they can wear
with this jewelry. Or if you're an artist, you can show people
how they can frame your artworks or how can
showcase them in their interior. People actually really look for these ways of learning
more about products. Because people want to imagine how this product will look in their lives or how they
can use this product, how it can make their life better or their
apartment more pretty. These kind of things, when
you show it to them directly, people will be willing to buy from you easier.
This is important. Also Instagram is a
place where you can study your competitors or you
can call them colleagues. Instagram is a place where
all the creators hang out. If you know some people
from your niche, it's very likely that they
are already on Instagram. This is the place where you can really create your network. Instagram is not only the place where you just share and
share, and that's it. It's not one way
direction relationship. It is sharing. And then you have
your audience that is responding to your content, to your products, or
to your creations. And also you have other people that you can create
a relationship with. So I am talking about your competitors or
your colleagues. It's a very nice way
of where you can actually start to
create a network. And I suggest you to do so
later on in your career. For example, me when I
was just starting out, There are people that
I've been following for years and we grew together on this platform and we've
been following each other for several years, where in the beginning we both were just like a couple of
thousands of followers, and then we grew together. When you start to develop these relationships
on the early stages, very likely you will become friends with these
people and who knows, maybe collaboration will
start, for example. That's what happened with me
with some of my colleagues. It's a very nice way of how you can build this network early on before these creators and yourself get bigger
and less approachable. Also, Instagram brings can help you to bring
people to your website. The thing I wanted to
mention here, Of course, Instagram is important
and it can give you a very nice potential
followers and client base. But Instagram should not be your only priority
in my opinion. Especially imagine
if you put all of your effort into
only developing your Instagram and tomorrow this platform shuts down,
what are you going to do? So it's not going to be a
fun situation and you don't want to find yourself
in this situation. That's why it's important to
think outside of Instagram, your website, your other
platforms, your e mail list. Instagram is a very great base, like a fan base, let's
say followers base, that you can actually
transform into something else. You can invite these people
to join your e mail list. You can invite these people to sign up for your newsletter. You can invite these people
to follow you somewhere else. That's why I think Instagram
is also important to build your network because
your email subscribers are much more valuable
than your followers. Because when people
gave you their e mail, it's like an invitation
in their lives, you have a much more direct
relationships with them. Of course, not all
of your followers will want to become
closer to you, let's say it this way, and give you the access
to their inbox. But when it happens,
this is when you really start to convert your
followers into your customers. That's why don't
underestimate the power of Instagram of actually finding new clients for your business. In the next lesson, we
will be talking more about your brand and how Instagram
can help you to develop it.
4. The Importance of Personal Brand: In this lesson, I wanted to zoom in a bit closer into your brand and how Instagram can help you to refine it or to build it. I prepared this little
diagram for you here where in the middle we have
you and your brand. Then on the left
side, you can see the community in our case
Instagram community. And then on your right side
is your creative practice. Let's think about this way. Your creative practice is something that you
put out there, then you expect people
to react to it somehow. Again, as I mentioned before, it's not only like a one
direction relationship, it is actually a circular
based relationship. As you can see here. You put your art out there
and then you get a reaction, and then you have this input
to then create other work. That's why I'm talking about it, because your creative
practice can actually change better when you have this community that
is in front of you. All this will benefit your
brand and will actually allow you to understand what
your brand is all about. What the values of
your brand are. What is the aesthetics
of your brand? Can really help
you to refine it. Actually, you don't have to have everything figured out
since the beginning. So don't think you need
to come on Instagram with a perfect brand, perfect image. You need to have it all sorted. Actually, you are figuring
it out as you go, you start to put your
creations out there. And then you are, um, you know,
learning from there, you're getting the opinions
of your followers. You are rethinking
certain things. Maybe you try to understand
what is this perfect point of where the things that you really like to do meet with what others
people want from you. I'm talking about
business here, of course. If you are doing
something personally for just a creative sake,
don't worry about it. But if you want to sell your creations or
monetizing your creativity, you need to understand if
what you have to offer is actually attracting and
resonating with people. It doesn't mean that if you're struggling to
find the right audience, it doesn't mean that something's wrong with your creations. Maybe it's something wrong with the way you presented,
first of all. And maybe you just haven't found the right audience
for what you have to offer. But in any case,
Instagram can be a very nice way of getting
feedback on your work. That's why I always
suggest to my students, don't be afraid of
sharing your art. If you are an artist,
don't be afraid of it. Because the more you
keep it in your drawer, the more you are feeling
ashamed or insecure, You are just postponing
your success this way. Start sharing your stuff as soon as possible and
you will figure it out. As I said, there will be
people that will start to give their feedback positive or
sometimes negative, who knows? But it's always something
you can start to work with. Also, what is important
about brand is diagram. Here I wanted to show you your
brand is like an iceberg. What other people are seeing is actually the
very tip of the iceberg. This beautiful thing, this beautiful curated
image of yourself. People automatically
think that that's it. They don't dig deeper from
the first point of view. But actually what it comes into building your brand is a
lot of different things. As you can see here,
skills, focus, experiments, consistency. All of this is this
invisible work that any brand put into in order to create this polished,
beautiful image. Instagram is the
place where you can actually explain people a
bit more about your brand. Don't show them just the
tip of your iceberg. Don't try to show them just perfectly like refined things. And that's it, because you
can do it on your website, but also show them
what is beneath the hard work that goes into creating what you
are creating here. Show off your skills. Show off your dedication to your craft. Actually, people will
appreciate it and people will perceive the
value of your product. Better when you show them what
it comes into creating it. Before we dig deeper into
the actionable steps, I wanted to tell you this thing. If you are new to Instagram, if maybe you already
have an account, but you are starting out. I want to tell you one thing. I know it's easy
to get overwhelmed by all the different
functions of Instagram, by all the different things
we need to pay attention to. On Instagram, we have hashtags, post real stories,
lives, Analytics, DMs, your feed, have
your color palette. Looks like the captions. So a lot of things
to think about, but I want to tell you that even though everything is important, you don't have to take care
of all of them at once. I would suggest you to focus on a few things and then
build up on there. Also, I wanted to tell
you one more thing. Some of these things are more important than
the other ones. I will tell you a bit later on in this master
class, for example, this is my personal opinion, but I think that there are things that can really make
a drastic change for you. For example, being
consistent, making posts, making reels especially is
very important stories. Thinking about your aesthetics, checking your analytics,
these things are important. But what is maybe
less important, in my opinion, are,
for example, hashtags. Hashtags alone will not make
you come to the next level. Reals can do that,
posts can do that, but only hashtags will not do that if your content
is not good. This is what I'm talking about. If your content is not good, there are no hashtags
that can save you. There are no captions
that can save. The most important thing on
social media is your content. Your content should be good. The first thing to blame if your account is not going
well is your content. I don't mean that if
you are like stuck on the same number of
followers for months. It doesn't mean that
what you share is bad. But you can still understand what you can tweak in order for your
content to go better. For example, sometimes there are a minor adjustment
you need to make in order for your
videos to go much, much better or your
post to go much better. One of them is paying attention to your light. It's
your lightning. If you're taking pictures
of your amazing, beautiful works with
horrible lightning, these pictures will
gain zero attention. Same thing if you are doing amazing videos of
your art process, but you are using
poor equipment. You have shaking video, you have bad lightning. How can you expect people to
engage with this content? That's why I make sure that the content is good and that the quality of
your content is good. I don't mean that you need to buy expensive
gear or something like this. Actually, what you
need to have in order to create great content
now is just your phone. You just need to have
a decent phone with a good quality pictures or videos in order to
create amazing content. This is just to encourage you to take it one step at a time. Don't be overwhelmed and think about your
content first and foremost after
this introduction. In the next lesson, we will be focusing
on the step number one of how to grow
organically on Instagram. See you there.
5. Step 1: Understanding the Algorithm: Welcome back. In this lesson, let's talk about the step number one for your organic
Instagram growth. And this is understanding
the algorithm. Instagram algorithm
has this reputation of being something very
unpredictable, very strange. This very strange creature
that punishes us for no reason and doesn't show our posts to people.
These kind of things. So I want to
demystify this thing. Instagram doesn't do
something to you for no reason just because
they hate you actually. Instagram algorithm is a set of algorithms and set of metrics that help Instagram to understand what content
to show to people. One crucial thing I want you to understand
about Instagram, or any kind of social
media platform in general, is that their goal is
to make people stay on their platform for
as long as possible. If you are helping
Instagram to meet this goal by creating
engaging content, by creating content that people are enjoying and
spending time on, then they will reward you. This is the most important thing Instagram can understand. If your content is good, I don't mean it's not
a universal thing, it's a very subjective thing. Good means that it
is getting likes, comments, shares, and says. These are the four
main metrics that Instagram uses to understand
if your content is good. The Instagram algorithm is
the set processes Instagram uses to understand what
users like the platform. Uses this information to show
people more of what they enjoy by predicting what content someone will find
interesting and engaging. If you pay attention to what
you're seeing your feed, you will actually
understand that this is the reflection of what you've
engaged with in the past. Let's say if you really
enjoy watching travel videos and you watch them
till the end you love like travel content
like I do for example, I engage with this
kind of content a lot. Then I will find the videos, these posts in my feed of the creators that I follow
or on my Explorer page. If I open my Explorer page, I will find their contact
that Instagram suggests me because Instagram thinks that's what I will find
interesting and engaging. That's why it is very important. Your behavior on this
platform is important, and the behavior of other
people is important. As I said, there are several metrics that
can help Instagram to understand
whether your content is important to share or not. As I said, likes,
comments, shares. And your goal as a
content creator is to make the viewer consume your content for a
longer time possible. If it's post, you need to make sure that people don't
just blindly keep scrolling. Because we are living
in the time when people are just scrolling all day long. If your content does not engage them to the point
for them to stop scrolling, it means something's
wrong there. That's why your
content should be scroll stopping your picture. Should invite them to see it. Go read the text,
maybe go in comment. Same with your videos. You are aiming to
make people watch your video till the end because it's a very good
metric for Instagram. And it will then show
it to more people, especially if a person watches your video several times.
This is even better. I will be actually sharing
you some tips with you in this class on
how you can make people watch your
video several times. And this will be so valuable. There are actually tactics
that you can use to make this engagement
time bigger. One of them is
creating carousels, because when you create
just a single post, inevitably people will decide in a matter of seconds if
they like it or not, if they need to keep
scrolling or not, and if they want to
engage with it somehow. With carousels, the story
is a bit different, because carousel is
composed of several images. If the person is
invited to swipe and see what happens in the next
slide, what happens then, If there's some kind of a
story telling going on, then a person will
naturally stay engaged for a longer time just because
it takes more time to see five pictures
than one picture. That's why creating cells
is a very effective way of keeping people engaged. But if you just put a bunch of random pictures
one after the other, this is not going to
really work this way. Because people will
not see the interest of actually swiping and
seeing what's next. That's why incorporate some a
storytelling in your cells. Maybe the first picture
is a picture and then in the second one you are putting a picture in a text
text right on the picture. You are telling something and inviting them to keep swiping
and seeing what's next. People want to be
engaged and entertained. They want to know what
will happen at the end. Also encourage people to
interact in comments. This is a very good thing. Comments are the sign for Instagram that your
content is good, people are engaging with it. People have something
to say about it. This is always very
positive thing. Encourage, ask for
their opinions. Ask about their experience. Find a way of how you can encourage them
to write a comment. Not only like say,
hey it's beautiful, but actually encourage meaningful interactions
in your comments. Also write thoughtful texts
the same if you are just posting your artwork and saying in the text like oil on canvas, this size, this here, blah, blah, blah, title. That's not going
to be interesting. People will not engage with these texts because
they will see, okay, this creator just shares pictures and not really pays
attention to the texts. They will not pay attention
to your texts in the future. But if you start to create thoughtful texts where you
express your opinions, where you give tips,
where you tell them more about the creation process,
something like this. People will then get the habit, if they're interested
in your content, to go and read also your texts. And by consequence, spending
more time on your content. Also make beautiful and
engaging videos and photos. As we said already, your content is the
most important thing. The quality of your videos
and photos is your priority. The first thing to look for is to make sure that
your content is good. Also, one more tip
is to repurpose content that had most success. That's why you can always go back and see what really worked for you
well in the future. And use this knowledge, maybe you can create more of a similar content of
what went really well. For example, if you see
that the videos where you show yourself really
perform better, then use it and
show yourself more. If you see that close ups or your images work
better, then do more. Close ups also
repurpose the content. For example, if one of your videos went
really well on reels, you can then take the same video and maybe change
something in it. Maybe add text, add a different
caption and repurpose it. Or make a video that
includes this video. Use the knowledge of what works for you and use it
in your advantage. In the next lesson, we will be talking about what
metrics you should really pay attention to in order to succeed on Instagram.
See you there.
6. Metrics & Analytics: Welcome back. In this lesson, let's see what are the important metrics that you should be really
paying attention to. First of all, reach. Reach is a very big number. Reach means that how
many people will have your posts or your
content appear in their feeds? Reach doesn't mean that these people actually paid
attention to your content, it just means that it
appeared in their feed. If they were looking somewhere
else or just scrolling, they will still be this reach. Pole reach is the biggest
number then we have. Likes are usually
the second metric. Not all the people that saw your posts will actually engage with your
content and like it. Because every single action requires an effort
from these people. Even if it seems so
easy to put Ali, not all the people will do it. Likes are usually
the second metric, which are very important. Because if people are
seeing your content, but no one likes it, it's not a very good symptom, not a very good
metric, for Instagram. After that, we have
comments and it can depend. Sometimes they can
be more comments, sometimes there
can be more saves. Same thing with shares. First of all, let's
talk about comments. Comments is a very
good metrics and of course not all the
people that liked your post or your story or your real doesn't mean
everyone will comment. Comments are precious. Saves are also very precious. Because what saves are, saves means that someone
saved your content for later. This is a very valuable thing, and Instagram really pays
attention to these things. Because when someone saves your video or your photo,
Instagram will think, oh, the person found it that valuable that they wanted
to save it for later, to go back to it later. That's why saves are
something we want. It's easier to get saves with a certain type of
content than with others. Of course, if you
are creating art, let's say, it's not
easy to get saves, but it's easier if you
create a beautiful content. People may want to save
it for inspiration, for see it later. And getting inspired by it, maybe use it for the reference. Also, what gets a lot of are this content that
gives them value. Any educational conti, that you're teaching
them something. And they want to
keep track of it, they want to save it to then go back to it
if they need it. That's why if you create any tutorials or any kind
of educational content, you are very likely be
getting a lot of save if your content is valuable. If people find it valuable also, what you should pay
attention to is what countries and what places
people are following. You are to be able
to understand it. You need to use analytics. To be able to access analytics, you need to be on a
professional account. So make sure that you are on a professional
account, not personal. And make sure that your
account is not private. Before we move forward, you need to make
sure of these things because some people expect to grow their Instagram
and then they realize that their account
was actually private. You cannot expect people to come to you if your account
is not accessible and then if you want to access the analytics you need to be
on a professional account. It's very easy. You can
find it in your settings. If there is a phrase,
switch to personal, it means you are already
on a professional account. But if it says switch to business or like
switch to professional, something like this,
it means you are on a personal account currently
and you need to switch. The switch is instant, you don't need to do
anything special. Um, so don't worry about it. Once you did it or if you already have a
professional account, you will have the access
to your analytics tab. And this is the place where you want to spend some
of your time because it will give you some
important metrics on your followers. One of these metrics is what countries they
are living in. You have your top cities, your top countries and
why it's so important, because you can then adjust your posting times according
to these countries. For example, let's
say my example, I live in Italy. But it happened that my content attracts
English speaking audience because I communicated English. By consequence, I have a lot of Americans
that are following me. My main audience is in the US. It clearly shows
in my analytics. It means that I will adjust my posting times according
to the US audience. Also, what is
important is gender. Why it's important? Well,
because you want to know who your ideal follower or your ideal customer is
because usually they match. I am mainly followed
by women, for example. It was not, it was
not a surprise for me when I saw that 99% of my
customers are also women. So it's very important to understand who
you're talking to. And you can then adjust also the way you communicate
with these people. Because when it's somehow like, if you don't really understand
who this person is, if it's a man, if it's a
woman, what age they are, you don't have a clear vision of how you should communicate
with these people. When you have a
clear understanding who they are, what
their gender is, then you can understand
how to talk to them more effectively so that
they can get your message. For example, the way
I communicate with my audience is like with a
female friend basically. Also what is important is age. Age is important because
this way you can also understand your
ideal client even better. What age group they belong to will help you to understand what kind of lifestyle
they're having, if they're having kids or not, what their problems are. This is a very important
piece of information. And also what it can help
you is to understand what other platforms you can
then develop in the future. For example, if you see that your audience is very
young, like 18, 25, then you can consider
to develop your Tiktok in the future because a lot
of young generation is there. On the other hand,
if you see that your audience is like
40 plus 45 plus, then you can consider
developing your Facebook. Because more of an older
generation is on Facebook, this will really help
you to understand your future strategy and your long term
strategy in general. One more important thing before we pass to step two is what matters for your
existing followers and for the explore page. As I said, these two
things are very different. We have our feed and we
have the Explorer page. The feed is something that
someone you followed, someone you followed,
will appear in your feed. Explore page is different. Explorer Page is basically the people that
you don't follow. But Instagram thinks that
you will like this content. We want to end up on
people's Explorer page. And I will tell you more in this webinar and
how you can do it. But these are two
important things. Also, if you are
following for example, 2000 people like I
do automatically, you will not be able to
see all of their posts, of all of these
people in your feed. That's why it is
also so important. If you want to see certain
content in your feed, make sure that you really engage with the accounts of people
you want to see more. Because if you followed someone, but you actually never
interacted with their content, you never liked it
left to comment, then Instagram will think
that you simply don't like sorry content and it will not show
it to you anymore. That's why you can also train Instagram algorithm to show you more of the stuff
you actually like. You can also educate your
followers to do the same. You can actually tell them, hey, like if you really
like my content, consider engaging with it so
that you can see more of it. This is just one
more tip for you. In the next lesson, we will be talking about step number two. I
will see you there.
7. Step 2: Provide Value: Welcome back. In this lesson, let's talk about
step number two, which is provide value. In 2024, content should
meet the needs of the consumer or follower and add value to
their experience. The amount of content on
social media is huge, and people will only interact
with your content if they really think it actually
provides them value. This piece of advice
I'm giving you here is probably one of
the most important ones. Again, it goes together with
the quality of your content. Make sure the visual aspect
of your content is good. But also think about how you can actually provide
value to people. Because I think there are four main ways of how you can actually do so,
let's look at them. The first is entertain, then inform, educate,
and inspire. If you use one of them or two of them and somehow include
them in your content, I'm sure it's going
to be more successful than the one that was created for the
sake of you making it. You don't think that
content creation is just purposeless posting of something for the sake of
posting it for the sake? Oh, I need to make
one post today, so I will just post anything. This is counterproductive. You want to make sure
that you are not only posting high quality
content visually, but also high quality
content in terms of its value before posting anything, ask
yourself question. Is my content entertaining? Is my content informative
or educational? Or is it inspiring? If it's not any of this, just ask yourself, why am
I even wanting to post it? Because as we said
nowadays you want to attract the attention
of your target audience. Your way of doing it is
providing them some value. By entertaining, I mean you're showing them
something funny, something. Cute animals videos are
entertaining people. Some people find it valuable
because they want to relax. They just want to
consume this content. In my case, for example, I am in the art industry. I could inform my followers about the last
trends in my niche, or what happens, what events are happening
right now in our niche. This can be valuable for people, you can educate them. For example, my own example. I give tips to people. I show them tutorials, I show them how they can quickly paint something realistically, these
kind of things. People appreciate this content because they actually
learn something from it. Then of course, if
you're an artist, this one is the most
straightforward one. Inspire because art
is usually beautiful, it's very visual,
it's inspiring. If you're an artist,
it's already easier for you
because you will be at least inspiring people with all the single
post you're making. But what I actually
noticed is that the educational aspect is what I think is currently
working at its maximum. For example, I
have two accounts, one is Strata and the other one is make
art with confidence. They both have good
amount of followers, so one is 75 K, and the other one is almost 14 K. The difference between them
is that my first account, it took me years to grow it. My second account, which is
make art with confidence, it took me a couple
of months to grow it until 14,000 which
took me years with my other account only
because I solely focus on educational
content at, on that page. This is what the power of
inspire versus educate. With mint page, I
mainly inspire people. People really need to love what I create to follow me closely. But if you give them value, if you educate and make
them learn new things, they're going to follow
you more likely. That's why one more
tip that really works. If you want to grow quicker
or go to the next level, educate people because
they will appreciate it. How. Let's talk about the how. First of all, of course,
know your target audience. In order to provide them value, you need to understand what your people are
actually looking for, who these people are. You can learn it by
asking them questions. Make polls in your stories. Ask questions in your comments. Try to make this picture of your ideal follower even more
bright, even more detailed. The more you know
about your followers, the more you understand what content you can offer them that they
will actually enjoy. Also, solve their problems. Again, to understand
their problems, ask them and then
solve their problems. If you do so, they're going
to be obsessed with you. Absolutely do this. If you want to grow
quicker, be inspirational. Again, if you are an artist, this is one of the
easiest thing you can do. Inspire people, inspire
people to create. If there are also creatives, tell them about your
behind the scenes, inspirational post,
beautiful content. Go behind the scenes. Again, this is how
you can attract their attention and how
you can provide value. The best way, in my opinion, to go behind the scenes
is in your stories. If your posts feed more of a curated place that you don't want to put necessarily
your everyday life. You want to make
sure your everyday life is well presented. If you want to show it or in
your stories for example, if I am an artist and I
have a professional page, I will not in my my pets or
my food, stuff like this. I will probably post
it in my stories because this is where I'm
going behind the scenes. Make sure that your feed is
actually well curated and you don't clutter it
with irrelevant things. If people want to
know more about you, who you are, um, at home, what PGs you're wearing, you can share it
in your stories, but not in your usual feed, in your like posts. Also very important,
give exclusive content. By exclusive content, I mean people always want
fresh content. It doesn't mean you
should stop creating what you create and focus entirely on social media and on
content creation. But still consider finding some time in your
week, for example, half a day or the entire day to create your content for a
week or for your whole month. And this way, you are ensuring
that you are creating enough content so that you
are not worrying every day. Oh, what should I post today? Oh, I need to take a picture. Oh, it's nighttime. My lightning will be horrible. What should I do to avoid finding yourself
in this situation? Plan your content creation in advance and
take it seriously. This way, you are assuring that your content
is always on top. In the next lesson, we will talk about
some best practices on Instagram. I
will see you there.
8. Best Practices: Welcome back. In this lesson, we will be talking about
best practices on Instagram. We've talked a lot about
some of them already, such as this first point here, which is post high quality
photos and videos. As I said, your content quality
is the number one thing to look at if you are struggling and if you're seeing
that you are not growing. Number two is equally
important is be consistent. Again, consistency can be
different for everyone. It doesn't matter. You
should post every day. It just means that you need to set yourself a
certain schedule. For example, you
decide to post week, but you stick to it because
there's nothing worse than posting seven days in a row and then not
posting for one month. Because this will actually what will make
Instagram punish you. If you have a certain consistency
and you are active on the platform with a certain
pace, then it's okay. But if you do a lot
and then you stop, what you will end up is
basically by starting over. Every time you do this big stop, Avoid finding yourself
in this situation. It happened to me
multiple times, so I know what I'm
talking about. I just suggest you have
a certain schedule. If you don't have the
possibility to post four times, five times a week,
stick to one or two. And then in the future, you
can increase this number. Engage and create engagement
again in your stories, in your posts and your reels. Encourage people to
interact with you. Be personal. Invite people to connect you with your brand, with your personality, in all of the content
that you are sharing. Because again, you don't want to post just for the
sake of posting. You want to post to create
engagement community. Because in the future if
you want to sell or if you are currently selling something and you don't have
the community, it's going to be difficult to transform these random
people into your customers. What we just said before, before posting, think about
what purpose this post, or real, or whatever serves, entertain, inspire,
educate, inform. These four things
are very important. Also choose best posting times. As we said, analytics is your
go to to understand this. Also cross post from and to
other social media platforms. This is more of a tip
about time saving. For example, when I was
just starting out I knew I had limited time to
dedicate to my social media. I decided I will post on
Instagram and I will then connect my Instagram
with my Facebook and I will be automatically
growing to audiences. This strategy really worked
for me in the beginning. And then if you really want to continue growing on Facebook, you can then have a separate strategy for Facebook and post
specifically there. But I think it's a
good strategy for the beginning when you
are limited in time. The only advice for me
will be that pay attention to what platforms you are
cross posting from and to. For example, if you connect Instagram and
Facebook, it's fine. But if you start posting
your Tiktok on Instagram, this is not good
because Instagram detects the logo
of Tiktok once you downloaded the video from there and it will not show it
to anyone. Don't do it. Also, I think it works
badly the other way too. If you are on Tiktok, I think it's counterproductive
sharing your Youtube or your reels there because again, there will be Instagram logo on them when you download them. This is something that
doesn't work really well. But what you could do, you could upload
your Tiktoks and your reels to Youtube
shorts, for example. As for my experience, I didn't notice any punishments from, from this point of view. Growing Youtube is difficult. If you want to make it painful and save yourself
some time, you can do that. Post reels and your
Tiktoks there also. Next point is create content
strategy and content plan. It's easier to tell than to do, but you really need to have one if you want to
grow consistently. Again, set your posting times. Understand when you will
be creating this content. Set yourself some time apart
only for creating content, because creating content
on a go can work. But until a certain point, if you really want
to grow quicker, you need to put
intention into creating your content and you need
to dedicate time to it. Also use analytics. So very important you need to understand what works
and what doesn't work. And you need to create
the best picture possible of your ideal
follower or customer. And then study your
competitors or study your colleagues,
See what they're doing. If you follow some successful
accounts in your niche, understand what their
strategies are. So it doesn't mean you should repeat exactly what
they're doing. But you can get
inspired by it and use some of the tactics that
they are using successfully. In the next lesson, I will be showing a bonus tip with you that I think
will be super valuable. So I will see you there.
9. Bonus Tip!: Welcome back. This is
time for a bonus tip. This bonus tip will
be about aesthetics. Aesthetics really matter. I will read you some of the important things that
you should think about while you are setting up
your account or your bio. I'm talking about these things. I will then walk you
through each one of these points one
by one so that we can zoom closer and I can show you the real life
example of my own account. First, create an
informative and clear bio. Choose a profile picture that represents who you are,
preferably your face. Add a link containing all the useful links
to your website, your shop, or your
other social media. You can use Link Tree
or Tap Link for this. Make sure your highlights
are well presented. You can create custom
icons for them for a clear and professional look
I will be showing you mine. And then make sure
your feed is cohesive. And pay attention to
the cover pictures, both of your posts
and your reels. Now let's dive deeper
into each one of these. First of all, let's have
a look at your bio. I circled it here so
we can see I have my, my nickname, then I have my bio. In my bio, I think it's very
important to tell your name. Even if my account
name is Natta, I still want to tell people
what's my real name. That's why I put it here. Anastasia Mozova. Then I put, and then the
name of my brand, Natta. I think it's important
to give yourself a name so that people can
know how they can call you. After that, you find
information about me. I have four or five
lines here, I think. Four, yes, four
lines and a link. The goal here is to explain
them what your page is about. In a very short form, they should immediately
understand what your page is about and what they can
expect to see from you, to learn from you, or what kind of content
you will be posting. A person makes a
decision very quickly. If you are clear about who
you are and what you provide, you have much more chances for
gaining this new follower. If your buyer is confused, it's difficult to read, or if it's very minimal, like there's one
phrase and that's it. It's if you already have a huge account,
don't worry about it. But if you want to
grow your account, I think this is
the place you want to present yourself in
the best way possible. You can see my example of
how I am presenting myself. First of all, I'm
saying who am I? I am an artist educator
in digital nomad. Then I tell them what
this account is about. I say tips and inspiration
for creatives. After that, I have a line where I tell them about
my other account, Make art with confidence, which is the account
for my course and for the tips I'm
giving to people. If you don't have this account, other account, don't
worry, don't put anything. And then I have this
line here saying, free master class with an arrow that shows below
and then I have the link. Usually as a last phrase, I am promoting something that I'm currently wanting
to bring people to. For example, if
it's a free class, in this case I want people to go and sign
up for this class. I put it there if I
want to promote course, for example, if I'm currently
in the sales period, I will put the check out my new course or something like this if I want
to bring them to my shop. If I want to sell my art, I will tell them
shop my art here. You have this
opportunity to bring them somewhere after that. You see below this one
link, It says Tap link. As I said, this is
the provider that can help you to group all of your useful links in one short link that you can
then share here on Instagram. Because Instagram allows
you to share only one link, instead of just putting
your website there, you can create this one link containing all of your links. As I said, there is tap link or link tree that provide
the service for free. It's very easy to set
your account there. You don't need to know
anything special, just go on their
website and check it. I will also show you
how it looks from the inside in the next slides, after that, we have
your profile picture. The profile picture is this
round picture, small picture. This is a very important
piece of information for people because they want to know who they will be following. Choose a picture that
represents who you are. If you're an artist,
you could possibly put a piece of your art there, but I would still suggest you
to put your face instead. Also, if you want to
get meta verified, and we'll be talking about it here in this master
class as well, you will be required to
upload a picture of yourself. I think it's good
to have one and it gives your account a
more personal look. People know how you look, like they have
more trust in you. Right below, you
see my highlights. Basically, highlights
are grouped stories To be able to
create a highlight, there will be like
this plus Icon. Instagram will
propose you to go and select some of your stories
and group them in highlights. It's very useful if
you want to give your followers or
potential followers more information on some topics. For example, I have
highlights about my course. This is where I put
all the information, all the stories where I
talk about my course. Then I have like
skillshare, for example. This is where I put all the information about all of my Skillshare classes
in one place. Then for example, if
you're an artist, you want to share with
people what inspires you. Inspiration. You can make
a folder where you put all of the things that inspire you. Again, you grab them from
your past stories and so on. Process about me. You can come up with
different things if you want. I think it's important to have at least four or five of them. Because if you only
have 12 or three, I think it's going to
look a bit poor visually. I think it looks better when you have several, at
least four or five. I think it looks
better visually. Then Instagram will give you the option to select the
cover for your highlights. You can select one,
a part of the clip, like a frame from your story as a cover for your highlight. Or you can upload
the custom picture. You can just select one from your gallery or what you can do, you can download or create
yourself these custom icons. There are many
websites where you can actually find them for
free, for example, on Canva or free, different websites where you can download royalty free images. You can use them then
for your highlights. For example, I downloaded mine. Don't remember where.
Probably on Canvas. Then I think I
changed the color. And there you go, I have a very professional
looking highlights. I like how these
cute plants look. It gives a uniform
look and I think a more polished image
on your profile. So I think it's important. Next, let's see what Tap link
looks like from the inside. When you click on this link, you see here underlined, you will be brought into this page where you
see different links. You have my profile
picture and then you see free master
class skill share. Start easy and watercolor
my website, so on. You can also change the
order of these links and decide what you want to
promote in the first place. For example, I say in
my bio free class, you see that the free
class is number one link. People will be able
to find it easily. Then you can change
it with time. For example, in two weeks
I will be promoting, let's say my shop. I will put shop as a first link. Next thing also, you can adjust the color
palette of this page. It's free, as I said, the customization
will be limited. But still, even on a free plan, you can select your
color palette. I selected this orange palette, I think it looks very cute. As for your feed, this is one more
important place. Make sure your feed is cohesive. And pay attention to the
cover of your pictures. As I said, color
palette is important. If you see at my feed, you can see that I use certain
colors recurrently greens. Browns, for example.
White, Because I paint on white paper. So these are the main
colors I'm using because I'm using them
throughout my whole feed. It looks cohesive. Or what else you can do
if you're an artist, you can take the pictures
of your artworks always on the same background and
this is what going to give your feed this
additional cohesive look. Also, one more tip,
use close ups. You see that when I
post my artworks, I show them really closely because I want
to showcase the details. And also because I noticed
that these shots work better. They gain more engagement. They gain more likes. If you made an artwork but you took a picture
from a very long distance, like from top, it's going to be difficult
for people to really appreciate all the
details and understand what's going on there already. Like the square post is already very small
and if on top of it, you're making it difficult for people to see what's
going on there, they're just going to scroll. So use close ups
also show yourself, not all day, every day, but I think it's still
important to have a couple of posts showing who you
are showing your face. Again, if it's a
professional account, maybe you want to select
pictures that are more professional looking like representative of who you are. Maybe not you and your PG's, but you holding brushes,
something like this. Then after that, make
sure that if you post reels in your feed, make sure that the cover
picture looks good. When you post reels
on Instagram, there's an option
to select a cover. If you don't select any cover, Instagram will pre
select a cover for you and it's not
always a good option. You can select, choose a
frame from your video and use this one as a
cover if it looks good or you can upload
a different picture, find one in your gallery. Make sure it is relevant
to what you're actually posting so that the cover is not completely different from
what is in the video. Then use this as a cover. Then make sure
that there will be a preview that will
actually allow you to adjust this picture of how it will look
like in a square. It's important because
you want to make sure that any important
parts are falling off. Also, if you're using
texts as cover images, make sure the texts are like in the middle or somewhere
in the visible area. Because if the text
is falling off, it looks very ugly,
very unprofessional. Make sure it doesn't happen. Last point I wanted to talk about here in this
lesson is meta verified. You may be wondering,
these blue check marks, do they really worth it? Why do you want to have one
before they were available? Only for celebrities, like famous people,
things like this. But since last year, Instagram also
allows normal people to have meta verified
bench if they pay monthly. The cost of it is approximately
17 years a month. You need to pass like
verification process, so you need to answer
some questions, upload a picture of yourself, upload your document, and
then once it's approved, you will be getting a badge, and then you need to
pay for it monthly. Why people are
getting these badges? First of all, it's
an additional layer of protection for your account. The first step to protecting
your account is to make sure you have two factor
adentification on. This is very important
because a lot of people lost their accounts because
they didn't have this on. Really, make sure you have
it because there are people out there that want to
steal your account. Unfortunately, make sure
you have at least this on then This is just an additional layer
of trust for people. People will know that this
is your official account and if someone wants
to impersonate you, it will be more
difficult for them to trick people because you
have this badge here. I don't know if this is going to last for a long time or not, but I think it's still
the case that people have more trust in the
accounts with this badge. So it looks like you
look more professional, they have more trust in you. If you're selling services
or products like I'm doing, I think it's important to have this additional layer of trust. I would say it this way. This
is all for the bonus tip. And in the next lesson, we will talk about the main Instagram features
I will see there.
10. Step 3: Main Instagram Features: Welcome to this lesson
where I will be talking about the
step number three, which is use all main
Instagram features. You will not achieve fast and consistent growth by only posting pictures and
occasionally sharing stories. This is the hard truth,
I think, to say. But this is not a
secret anymore, that Instagram is not only
a photo sharing platform, now it is also a video
sharing platform. Currently, Instagram really
pushes the video harder, in my opinion, than pictures. That's why if you've been procrastinating and
avoiding making videos, this is your sign that you really need to start doing them. Because I already, we'll be
spoiling this right now, but reels is the
feature that will actually make you grow
quicker than anything else. Right now we will be
talking about reels later. But now let's dive deeper into the main
Instagram features, why it's important
to use them all. First of all, because they all serve to different purposes. Let's see what they are. Three main pieces of
content I will be talking about now are
posts, reels, and stories. It's important to do all
of them because as I said, they all serve
different purposes. First of all, reels will serve
you to gain new audience. In most cases, reels are visible outside of current
follower space, even though some of your
followers will see your reels. I think what
currently happens on Instagram is that
Instagram shows your reels mainly to the people outside of
your existing community. Which is good from a certain
point of view because this way you are actually gaining more exposure and more
followers potentially. Stories is something you are using to engage with
your existing audience, Is not something
that will be visible outside of your follower base. But it is a very nice instrument to engage with your
existing audience and create a deeper
connection with them also, which is somewhere
in between posts. Serve to both of these
purposes, in my opinion, gain new followers and also engage with your
existing followers. That's why it is very important to understand
the difference between these and also adjusting your
content accordingly. It means that in your stories you can go very personal
because you know it is your followers that
are going to see it real. May be something where you want to experiment maybe a bit more because you know that it's not something only your
followers will see, but also people outside of them. This way you can test new types
of content, new concepts, new ways of making videos. You can test it out and see if the audience resonates
with it or not. Also why I tell reels are
so amazing because again, it's very difficult to go outside of your existing
followers base. You can use hashtags to do so, you can use other features. But the most powerful
feature that allows you to go and search for new eyes and eventually go viral appear on
explore page are reels. That's why don't
underestimate their power. Also additionally, when you start to get a bit more
experienced on Instagram, I think it's important to
go live from time to time. I did not include this in our standard set of
Instagram features, but lives are still
very important. The only advice
would be don't do lives if you have just
a couple of followers, because nobody will watch it. But once you start
to gain audience, I think it's important to
engage with them this way. I think you're live
should have a topic. Don't just pop on
live and expect people to watch you
telling how your day was. Make sure you provide
value in these lives. Maybe select a topic and inform people in advance
what it will be. Why lives are also very effective is because
when someone goes live, you will see this icon in
your stories of this person. And it will be saying
this person is now alive and it's
going to appear as a first icon in your stories
tub what it does for you, it allows people to
remember that you exist. And their attention will
be immediately on you. Because if they're
watching stories daily, you will appear
there immediately. Very likely they
will click on it and stay for at least some
time to see who you are, what you're talking
about, trying to understand if they're
interested in the topic or not. Your real very engaged
followers will even come on purpose to watch your life if the topic
is really interesting. For example, what
I did in the past. I was making painting sessions on Instagram,
showing them tutorials, showing them quick tips, and people were really coming and actually creating with me. So it's a very nice
way of how you can actually create this stronger
community on Instagram. In the next lesson, I will show you
some and does and some top tips I can give you on Instagram.
I will see you there.
11. Top Tips: Welcome back real quick. Let's see what are the top tips I can
give you on Instagram. First, create posts
reals and stories. As we just said, don't
neglect any of them. It doesn't mean you should
post every single day, make a real every single day. But as I said, find a schedule
for yourself that works. And then as for stories, because it's more
of a fast content, you don't have to worry that
much about the aesthetics. And make everything
look perfect polished. You can make them
actually every day. This is what I would
suggest to you. Be more personal on stories and just show your
everyday life. If you want to connect with your audience on a deeper level, once you have your larger
audience, start going live. As I said again, if you want
to maintain this connection, make people remember you make people know how you look
like, how you talk. This is important. Also, try all the new features that become available on Instagram.
Why am I telling this? When reels were released, actually not a lot
of people were using them because people
were saying like, oh, this new feature, don't
really know how it works, don't really know the purpose. People were really
procrastinating on using it, but at the end of the day, we all have to use it now. The quicker you start, the
better it's going to be. If you see that in the future, Instagram releases
something new, make sure you are
starting to exploring it, because usually this
is what Instagram will reward the
most at this time. When Instagram releases
something new, they expect people
to start using it. They want people to use it. And if they do so,
they will reward them as it is still for reals, even though it's
not a new feature anymore, it still works. Also create interaction. This one is very important. Again, don't forget that we are still
interested in likes, shares, comments, and saves. You are getting those by
creating interaction. Also be personal,
especially in your stories. And as I mentioned previously, post something about yourself, a picture of yourself
from time to time, show your face and your reels. This is something that
always works, really. Of course, if you're
not this type of person that wants to show
your face, it's okay. You don't have to
do it if you feel like horrible about it. But if you just feel
a little bit shy, I still suggest you to
try it because of course, your first video
will feel awkward of your first talking on
camera will be weird, but you will get used
to it eventually. Maybe you will even like it, try it and then
give it a judgment. But I would highly
recommend you trying it, because as I said, it can
really boost your engagement. Also engage with other
accounts in your niche. If you follow some accounts that do similar things to yours, why not reaching out to them? Just by? It's a friendly
way of saying hi, introducing yourself, maybe collaborating in
the future. Why not? As I said in this master class, it's easier to create these
connections early on. When you are reaching to
the account of your size. Or just a bit bigger?
Just a bit smaller. It's okay, you are
talking to them as equal. But if you are reaching
to the account that is significantly more successful
than yours at this time, chances are that the person will not see the interest
of collaborating with you. Oftentimes, these people
are just really busy. Maybe they are getting hundreds and dozens of
messages like yours per day. And it's just not humanly possible for them to
reply to all of them. That's why I told you, if you are planning of
developing this network, make sure you are
constantly working on it. And you will see
that you will be able to grow together with these people and maintain these connections
throughout the years. Hopefully, also reply to
comments and relevant DMs. This is something Instagram
pays attention to. If you have a lot of
unreplied messages, a lot of unreplied comments, Instagram will notice it and will punish you
a little bit for it. But also, I think it's just
not very nice for people. If you humanly can
respond to everything, do so of course, if you have some spam, DMs, some scam going on, you don't have to reply
to them of course, but do reply to all the relevant messages
even if it's just high. Like I love your work, I think it's still nice to say thanks, something like this. Because people then
will know that you are friendly and they will be like more encouraged you to interact with your
content in the future. And that's what we
want because if people see that you
never reply to comments, you never replied to DM's. What's the point of even
writing or commenting? You need to be friendly with people and really encourage
their interaction. Because remember that
every single action they're making is a effort. Make sure you are thanking
them for this effort. One of the most
important things, as I said, be consistent. Consistency is key
in social media. Make sure you are consistent. In the next lesson, we will be talking about the
don't. I will see you there.
12. Don'ts: Welcome back. In this lesson, let's talk about the
domes of Instagram. There are not a
whole lot of them, but I still wanted to mention these ones that I think
are very important. First of all, don't over engage, respect the limit of 1,000 likes and 200 comments per day, which is approximately
350 Es per hour. It means that if
you over engage, you may get temporarily
blocked if you are just blindly liking a bunch of people without really
seeing their content. This is something Instagram
will not appreciate and you're going to
get punished for it. So you can get blocked temporarily
for a couple of hours, a couple of days, or
even for a month. Blocked means that you can
still see the content, but you cannot interact with it and you cannot post anything. This is quite
frustrating actually. You don't want to
find yourself in this situation because
as I said previously, if you start like your
engagement, if you stop, sorry. Um, your normal
activity on Instagram drastically from one
day to the other one, it's going to reflect
badly on your engagement. Instagram will punish you. And you will need to start
everything all over again. Almost, I would not say
from zero, but from zero. From the point of
view of engagement, you don't really
want to have that. Don't just think that by
blindly liking people, you will attract more
likes or more followers. Of course, it's
important to like others but still respect the normality. Don't over engaged. The second point here, I think it is also related to this activity that
gets punished Instagram, which is the, the apps that allow you
to grow your following. You know, these apps that are sometimes free, sometimes paid. But that promise you to
give you tons of followers. Actually, you will be seeing these followers coming to you, but the only thing were going
to be like ghost accounts, fake accounts, people
that even random people that have no intention of engaging with your
account or liking it. Most of the times
it's going to be just dead accounts, basically. You're not getting followers, you're just getting numbers. You're just getting
numbers on your account. Actually, what it will
bring you to is having a very low engagement rate, because Instagram will see, oh, she got 10,000 followers, but out of these
10,000 followers, only 500 people interact. Well, it's weird. This is what will happen if
you use these apps. I don't recommend
you using them. If this activity will get
noticed by Instagram, you will also get
punished for this. You can get blocked, your
account can get suspended. Different things can happen that you don't want
to happen to you. Really make sure that
you don't do that, because again, it's
counterproductive for you because these people are
not bringing you anything. You don't want dead
accounts to follow you because they will never
engage with your account. Also, because this
is punishable. It's not a win win situation. You see, basically these
are two main big don's. I would add here, don't
stop posting drastically. Again, that's a big don't, but we've already covered it. Don't post like for two weeks, very consistently in a row, and then don't post
for one month. This is very bad for
your engagement. I know that life can be
very busy sometimes. But don't go into this
tunnel of not posting. And then you feel guilty about not posting and you
just keep not posting because you don't know
what to post and you think people forgot about, you
know, these kind of things. Try to remain active. Maybe you will not put as much thought and as much
attention in your content, but it's still better than
not posting for weeks. Make sure you are not having these gaps in
your posting activities. That's it for the dots. In the next lesson, we will be talking about
hashtags, see there.
13. Hashtags: In this lesson, let's
cover hashtags. Hashtags is something that
you want to use if you want your posts or reels to get discovered outside of your
existing followers space. Before reels came here, hashtags were one of the few
features that were available to make your posts available
to a larger audience. As I mentioned earlier
on in this class, is that in my opinion, hashtags alone will not make
a big difference for you. As you remember content, the quality of your content
is the most important thing. If the quality is not there, hashtags will not help you. But if your content
is high quality, I think hashtags are good to give this little additional
boost to your content. Also experiment with hashtags. I did experiment with hashtag. I tried to put the
maximum hashtags. I tried ten hashtags, five hashtags, no hashtags. My experience was that
hashtags still do work. It still makes
sense to use them, to put them, but I think it's important on what
hashtags you are using. Let's cover this a bit
more in detail right now. First of all, the number, how many hashtags you should put. The Instagram limit
for hashtags is 30. You can use maximum 30 hashtags will not allow you to
put more than that. Instagram recommendation is
to use maximum five hashtags. My experience is that
I've tried 1020 hashtags. I think I did not see any significant difference,
510-20 hashtags. Honestly, it may be
different for you though. But one very important thing that you want to
know to use hashtag effectively is use
specific hashtags if you use very broad hashtags. If you try to research like
trendy hashtags, this stuff, there are apps that help you to create like a perfect set combination
of your hashtags. Research the most trendy ones. Some of these apps
are even paid. But I think it doesn't make
a lot of sense doing it, because a lot of
these hashtags that these websites or
these platforms propose you are very general. For example, like maybe there is a trending hashtag
which is like art. Yes, it's trending, yes, there are billions of
posts under this hashtag. But what is your chance of getting seen if you
use this hashtag? If you have a small
account equal to zero, it makes really no sense
of using this hashtag. In this case, if
you are an artist, instead of putting hashtag art, think about something
more specific that really describes what kind
of art you're making. Are you making
realistic landscapes? We'll put something like realistic landscape or landscape art,
something like this. If you are making abstract
art, use abstract art. Abstract art is also
quite competitive. So we can go even more niche like contemporary
abstract art or, I don't know, colorful abstract
art. Make your research. A good option for coming up with ideas for hashtags is
actually start typing it. And then on Instagram where
you're making a post, then Instagram finish
the phrase for you. It will allow you to pick
from the hashtags if you writing like contemporary
art or something. It will offer you different
similar hashtags. It will show you
how many hashtags, I think already, how many posts were made
using this hashtag. It's not shown directly
when you type. If you want to make
this research, you need to go to
the search bar and select it, look for it there. But actually I'm
thinking about it now. I think it's even shown
when you're typing them. Try to yourself and see. But mainly what you
want to aim for are hashtags that don't have
millions of posts under them. Because what will happen if this hashtag is super popular?
Everybody is using it. It means that the accounts
that are bigger than yours have more chance
to win the competition. Your post will probably
get lost under all of these more successful posts of more successful accounts. So that's why I tried
to come up with more niche hashtags that
really describe very, very well what your
content is about. One more idea about hashtags, just look and see what your
competitors are doing, What your colleagues are
doing in the same niche. It's important that you research in the same niche as yours. See how they are using hashtags, how many hashtags,
what hashtags? And try to use the same
ones and see if it impacts your reach and
interaction in any ways. It's really about
trial and error. I think it's still better to use hashtags than not using it. And the most important thing, it should be relevant because
if you post something and you put hashtags
that are too broad, it's just going to be useless. But if you put something,
let's say a painting, and then you put a hashtag that has nothing to do with it, like something
completely random, I think it's even
going to make things worse for you because
Instagram will be confused. Why is it there? Avoid using it, as I say, the hashtags that are appropriate and accurately
describe your content. And also use hashtags that are selected accordingly to
the size of your account. If your account has
1,000 followers and you are using hashtag painting
or hashtag creativity, don't expect it to help you go more niche and really see how many posts were
made using this hashtag. You don't want to use
hashtags that are very small. For example, like under 1,000
followers makes no sense. Or even under 5,000
posts makes no sense. Use those that are
like in between. But I think hundreds of
thousands and millions are really not appropriate
if you have a small account. Okay, so that was a
little introduction to hashtag, as I hope. Now it's more clear to you. As I said, use this tool, but don't overcomplicate it and don't spend much of
your time on it. As I said previously, this will not bring your
content to the whole new level. Let's be clear about it, what will is your content, spend more time on your content, on creating good
quality content, then on your hashtags, and it will definitely
pay off more. Okay, so in the next lesson, we will zoom into the separate pieces of content such as post
stories and reels, and break them down. And see what tips you can use to create them
better. I will see you there.
14. The Function of Posts, Stories and Reels: Welcome back. Now let's zoom
into posts a bit closer. As we said, first thing you need to think about is
inspire, inform, educate. These four things we were talking about in
the beginning of this class post really mainly serve you to maintain relationships with your
existing followers. But in some cases your posts can also be shown outside
of your following base. Hash tags that we
were discussing previously are one of the tools that can
help you with that. What are the main things you should pay attention to
while making your posts? First one and the most
obvious one is to, to use high quality images. Again, make sure your
lightning is good. This is one of the most
important things because even if you post a great
picture of your artwork, let's say an artist, but
the light was horrible, you will not be
gaining attention. Same thing with videos. Make sure that your light, first of all, is good. This is number one requirement. Then make sure that everything
there, it's not blurry. Make sure image is not shaking. These things. Also, avoid
doing a lot of heavy editing, especially using the direct Instagram app editing service. Instagram will offer you different crazy ways of making filters and
this kind of stuff. Avoid doing that. You can
still do some adjustments to your pictures if
you made a picture. If you want to work on it. What you can do, your options, are you can bring
it to Photoshop if you're familiar
with this program. Or you can use the editing
app there is on your phone, for example, I'm using iphone. And on the iphone you can
adjust your pictures directly there or you can your picture directly
in the Instagram app. You can actually adjust
quite a lot of things. The most important
thing you need to think about is what is the
look you're going for? For example, I use Instagram a lot to adjust
my photo slightly, but I always use the same set
of presets, the same tools. And I know this will make
my pictures look uniform. What I like to do is to bring
up the lights a little bit, open up the highlights
a little bit. Maybe do some
vignette if I want to concentrate the attention of the viewer on the central
part of the image. Sometimes I like to add a
little touch of saturation, a little bit of contrast, but always a little bit, make sure you are
not overdoing it. And especially make
sure you're not using any prebuilt crazy filters because it really
looks very bad. Also, one more tip
is huge close ups. As we already said, because this is proven, close ups work better than images taken from
a longer distance. Just because it gets more difficult to understand
what is on the picture, You want the person to be able to see what's going
on immediately, especially if you are
doing any paintings. Like very detailed paintings, it is just a pity to not
showcase the details, even if you want still to show the whole image,
you can do it. Make sure that then you post also a picture
of a close up. Also, think about
the color palette. One way of how you
can actually plan your feed is to use
one of the apps. For example, I've been using an app that is called
Grid for quite a while. This is the app that can allow
you to plan how your grid, how your feed will
look in advance. You can upload your
pictures there, the pictures you're
thinking about posting. You can play around with it, move them around and see
what works better with what. Because an Instagram
sometimes it's important if you the next post, how it will appear next to
the previous one and so on. You want it to be cohesive
and visually appealing, but sometimes it's difficult
to calculate it in advance. That's why this app
comes in very handy. I think it's free and there
are other different apps or programs just tap
something like grid. I think you will find
it. Instagram Grid Plan, your grid, something like this. Also. This is the
tip number five. Use people centric
photos, not every time. If you are mainly sharing pictures of your
artworks, keep doing that. But I'm just saying
that from time to time, you could also include
one image of yourself and I think it will look nice. Next, let's talk about stories. The main focus of
stories, as we said, is create deeper
relationship with your existing followers
With stories, as we said, go
behind the scenes. Be personal. Use both
photos and videos. This is important, I think. Don't underestimate stories. Don't just put a couple
of pictures there with no explanations and
expect people to engage with it because it's
going to be boring to people. Instead, if you have a couple of pictures you
want to show with them, maybe like pictures of a landscape you took today
that you found very beautiful. Why not telling something more
about what is this place? Maybe use stickers of location
in this case, or add text. Tell them about
your mood that day. I don't know, Come up
with something also. You know that sometimes I think storytelling
is very important. Instead of just posting
random pictures, try to figure out how you can
create a story out of it. Each story should leave
the next one and so on. Try to do this, this
storytelling approach will be very much appreciated,
because otherwise, if people lose interest
on the first story, they will just start scrolling
and don't see the rest. Also, make sure. This is
a very important tip. I think if you're doing stories, the first story will
always have most views. This is just normal because some people
will start to scroll. That's why to capture
the attention of people. It's, if you want to make
a series of stories, it's important
that the first one is like the most beautiful, engaging, entertaining,
something like this. Imagine that it's
the same principle as first 2 seconds
of your video. You need to capture the
attention of people in the first story. Whatever is, it's a
picture, it's a video. But make sure you capture
the attention there. And then encourage them to
also see your other stories, to go and see what happens next. This will really help you to create this engagement
and maintain it this way. People are not leaving after
seeing your first story, but they're actually
staying to see more. Also repost content
of other accounts. I think it's something
that creates connection. For example, if someone
posted something about you reposted
it on your page. Or if you want to give a
shout out to some accounts. For example, if you really
like an art account, if you want to share this
account with your followers, you can put it in your stories. Just don't forget to tag this account to put a sticker with the name of this account. Tag them so that they know
you did a story about them. Maybe they can share it
in their stories as well. Nice collaborations can
be created this way. Don't underestimate this. Also use again, people
centric photos. What I noticed when I put picture of myself
as a first story, it usually gets a lot of
attention or like picture of my family or something
like me and my husband. I think people are liking spying your personal
life a little bit. Sometimes when I want to boost my engagement
just a little bit, I like to post the picture of myself or of me and my husband
together as a first one because I know a lot of people that follow me and care about what I do will appreciate it. They will maybe like it. And if people are
liking your stories, it's very good too. This is one more idea. Also use captions. So use texts. As I said, for example, I take a lot of nature photos during my walks,
during my hikes. If I was just
posting these photos without commenting
them in my stories, it will be a bit boring. If you still want to
use these photos, try to add some element
of interactivity to them. So maybe add a text
explaining what is this mushroom you took a picture of or like where you found
it? Something like this. So that it becomes more
interesting for people to actually watch your stories. As I said previously,
create storytelling, storytelling is a very
powerful tool that I think is number one thing you should be thinking about when
you create stories. Make it as a. I want to say TV series, but make people
feel entertained. Because stories, I think it's
more about entertainment, probably also learning, but I
think mainly entertainment. That's why be inspirational
in your stories. Go behind the scenes
and try to make them, it should be interesting for them to go and check
on your stories. Also, one more idea
is to use quizzes, polls, questions, and other stickers you see on Instagram. When you post a story, you can then tap on
this sticker icon. There are a lot of options
you can choose from. You can make polls, ask them questions,
a lot of things. Make them vote for something. These are very nice ways of
how we can boost engagement, and I highly recommend
you using them. Use those, it's very fun
and it creates engagement. As I said, create stories
every day if you can. I know it may seem
like a big commitment. But as mentioned previously, stories are a fast content. You should create it fast. And people will consume
it fast because they last only for 24 hours. It makes no sense
that you download incredible like templates and spend hours on
creating your stories. Make it simple unless
you really want to create a brand that is hyper
focused on aesthetics. And you don't want anything to be left without
the attention. Like you want to care even about the
aesthetics of your stories. You can. But again, if it's not the priority
for you right now, just create content. Stories is about fast content. As for reels, this one
is very important. Main focus of reels is to
entertain, inform, and educate. As usual, the people will see Your reels are likely
outside of your community. You can use reels to
attract new audiences. What is important about reels is to create short form videos. You can go up to 60
seconds on reels, but I highly recommend
you to make short videos, especially in the beginning. It may sound, as I
said, really short, but five to 8 seconds is
probably the best timing. Now, it's easier
to go viral with five to 8 seconds videos if you are wanting to
create something more long. I just suggest you to
remain under 20 seconds. In any case, don't
put long videos. Don't put videos of you painting for hours and working on
the same small detail. It's not going to
be interesting for people unless you don't put some content on top of it. I mean, some text
that people need to read while they
see you painting. This one tiny detail, if you see an instrum, a lot of people are using
this strategy now. They put a random video, a very simple one of
them doing something, then nothing happens
in the video. The video itself is
not interesting, but what is interesting
is how they use it. They put a text on top of it. Now, the interest of
the video is not only make you watch what
happens in the video, but also to read
what it says there. Then what they do often is they bring you and they
encourage you to read the caption where they go into this topic
even more in depth. It also works a lot with tips. For example, a hook
is very important. Let's say you are putting a
very boring video of you, I don't know, sitting
and drinking coffee. But if you put a really
interesting hook, let's say this is the tip
that helped me get clients. This here or something
even less sales. I don't know a tip on this
thing really helped me to create more beautiful
art, something like this. Make people interested in
what you have to say and then invite them to read
more in your caption, in your text section. Also use vertical videos,
not horizontal ones. This is crucial. Reels are made to be horizontal. If you have vertical
videos and you want to adapt them to reels,
it's a bad idea. You need to shoot
videos directly for reels in horizontal mode. In vertical mode, what
am I talking about? Use vertical videos,
not horizontal. Vertical. Horizontal,
because your video occupy the entire screen. If you're using
horizontal videos, you will have this
black space on top on the bottom of your video, and it's going to be super
ugly. Don't do that. You need to shoot videos on purpose and make sure
they are vertical. Vertical format for your reels. Make videos that go in loop. This is one more epic
advice I can give you. It really works when
your video ends. And it's seamless, like we
have the idea. It's endless. This way people will be watching your videos over and over
again several times. And it will really help
you to get more views. People engage with your
content for more time. It is really effective
to go viral. Use this a tool. Use trending Music
This is something incredibly effective for
reels, it really works. I will not go much in depth
about going very good going. Music But I have a
skillshare class where I actually go
in depth about it. It's called really making Magic. I will be talking about
this class later on here. But if you really want to
learn how to make better, better videos and
potentially go viral, go and watch that class. Because I teach everything
I know about reels there. But as I said, trending music is important. And make sure you use music that is the best is under five
K reels made with it. Make sure that the first
original video made with this music has 1
million of views. If you have these two factors, chances are that this
particular song will go very well or like a
snowball effect if you did a reel with this music
highly chances are that Instagram will push your reel as well into
will gain more exposure. This stuff really works. Trending musical also
create dynamic videos. Make sure your videos are
interesting to watch. Again, if you want to add more dynamic to your videos,
use cuts again. You don't have to
have any software. You can edit your videos
directly on your phone. Again, if you want
to see how to do it, go and watch my reel
making magic class. I promise it's going to be very valuable if
you want to make reels. Also, a good tip is to
include captions in your reels target
peak viewing times. Well, this is quite obvious
post at a right time. If your audience mainly in the US and now it's
midnight for them, like in the middle
of the night, makes no sense to post right now. Wait until it's going to be a better time for them to post. As I said previously, add your own real
cover to your reels. Don't leave it by chance. Don't let Instagram to
choose it for you by chance. Make sure you select it
and you curate your feed. Okay, that was it for the
three types of content. In the next lesson, we will be covering
the step number four of Growing your organic
following. See you there.
15. Step 4: Viral Video Content: Welcome back. In this lesson, let's take a closer look
on step number four, which is create video content. I wanted to give you a
couple of statistics here. First of all, 91% of marketers are using
video content in 2023. It means that video content is getting more and more effective, not in terms of
entertaining only, but also in terms of actually selling what
you have to sell. Also, the popularity of streaming video
services has increased since the Covid 2019 pandemic. Of course we all know that. But now it really became like an integral
part of our lives. Video content is here and
it's not going anywhere. That's why you should need to start making it if
you are not doing so. Yet, the most effective
and engaging video content on Instagram is Instagram reels. As I told you already, I'm a huge fan of reels
and should you be, because if you want
to grow haster, you need to make reels. Let's see, I have a
couple of tips for you on how you can actually
go viral on Instagram. As I said, if you want to
learn more in depth about it, go watch my real
making magic class. But first of all, let me give you
these few tips here. Main focus, entertain, but
also inform and educate. I would say entertain
or educate will be the best short videos. I said under 15 seconds here, but I think the ideal length is actually five to 8 seconds. Use a trending sound with under reels actually
better five K reels. Use the rhythm of the song. Try to put your cuts where the rhythm of
the song changes. Dynamic videos, different plans. Again, you can
make these videos. I told you about a boring video
with an interesting text, or if you don't use any text, your video needs
to be interesting. If you want just to use video without the
text layover on it, make sure you are
making some cuts. Don't show your process for ten entire seconds
of you doing one thing. But every couple of
seconds, even 1 second, every 1 second and a half, you are changing the video. So for example, if
you're painting, you can start by showing
them your supplies, then you show how you dip
the brush in the water. Then you show how you do
the first brush strokes. Maybe after that you put a
time lapse of how you paint, then another detail, then maybe like a shot of
yourself painting. So make sure it's like
engaging and different. So make sure that every
single piece of video is different in that
you are creating this dynamic effect this way. The key of making these videos is actually
making lots of videos, lots of short videos. And then you will have plenty
of videos to choose from. Again, if you want to learn
more in depth about it, go and watch the other class. Also use captions. It's important encourage people to read the text
as we said before, because it allows you to keep their attention for
a longer time and also encourage people to engage. I encourage people
to leave a comment, for example, or save
your reel for later. Creating viral reels is the easiest and fastest way to grow organically on Instagram. This is what I was talking about when saying that I
have the secret tip for you and how actually
now it's easier to grow than ever before
thanks to Instagram reels. In the next two slides, I will be showing you the
examples of my viral reels. Actually, what
happened to me is that I currently have 75 K followers and half of them thanks to these two viral reels I
will be showing to you. Now. You will see that one
of these videos is simple. You will see it yourself. The other one is a bit more sophisticated, but
still very simple. You will be able to see
the numbers yourself. I will show them to you now, and then comment them right after we finish watching
them. Let's go. So as you can see,
this first video got 1.9 million views, 89 K, like 320 comments
and 624 shares. And it was a very simple video. You see it's only
five or 7 seconds. Nothing special happens, just
me painting at the beach. You can hear the waves. The image quality is nice. You can see what happens. You can see the drawing. And then it just goes in loop. You can see that we
don't really notice when the video ends and
when it starts again. Basically, it made
people to watch it over over again for several times, which is also why it went viral. And also because of the music. The song I chose was very trendy at that
time. I hopped on it. When it was still emerging, then it got a very big exposure. It really helped my
reel to be pushed. Also, if you want to check
this reel out yourself, this is the link where
you can find it. Let's see the second reel. The second one got 1.2
million views, 190 K S, which actually higher, 390
comments in 1.391 shares. It's interesting because
comparing to others we have less views but more
engagement in more shares. This real was very
successful too. As you can see here. What was interesting
is that I shared them a process of how I painted this flyer,
Garc Mushroom. You saw that I was using
short video again, here I used the principle
of making a dynamic video. You see that the cuts
were quite fast, so I was showing one thing, then another one, and all
the images were different. There was this interest. I kept the level of
interest very high. And then again, very short, I think 7 seconds. And again it goes in loop. Once the video ended, it starts again also trending. Music Same thing, you see, you should have
the combination of factors to really be
able to go viral, but it is still
possible even now. As I mentioned previously, if you want to learn
more about how to actually make more
engaging reels, maximize your
chances to go viral, and just learn everything in
depth about Instagram reels. I highly recommend you watching
this class on skillshare, which is called
Reel Making Magic Instagram Reels for
Artists and Creatives. This is where you will
learn everything you need to make better and
more successful reels. Now let's see what happens if your real got
viral in what you can do. You can create new
versions around the same theme, style or music. If something went really well, it's a good thing and you
need to learn from it. You need to understand
how you can repurpose this content or
create more similar content. Or re use the same song. This one works
very well as well. If the song you used is
trending, it keeps trending. Use it again. Make one
more video with this song. Trending music really does influence the success
of your reels. Don't underestimate it. Don't just put random music
without doing any research. Again, if you need
help with that and go and watch the reel making magic class where I show you exactly how to find
this trending music. Also share your reel
Instagram stories. If your reel is going very well, why not spreading
awareness about it in your stories as well so that you can attract more eyes to it? One more idea is to
use the same video, again, Maybe not right away. Maybe you do 34 other reels and then you use the same video
and you repurpose it. Maybe use a different song. Maybe you put captions on top
of it, something like this. But use the same
video and see if it goes really
well again or not. One more tip is to promote
this viral going video. I would recommend, I think, if your video really got very, very well and if you have
like a small budget, you can boost your post and see if that got you any
more engagement. I would not recommend it doing on videos that went average or below average because it
will not help you to thing, you will be basically
wasting your money. But I think if your real
go viral or close to it, I think this is when you can invest a little bit
to boost your real, don't do it right away when
it's just getting popular. Do it when the
popularity is going down a little bit and you
want to boost it a bit more, then spend, I don't know, 2030 Os on the promotion
and see how it works. And then see if you're
getting any results from that very obvious one. But still post more reels. If your real got
viral, keep posting. Because once you got this one viral reel and you post other videos
right after it, very likely these videos
will go well or even viral. If you see in my feed, my two viral reels, we're very close one
to the other one. Once you hit this viral trend, I think you should really
use it and try to make one more video viral or
several videos viral. Just keep pushing,
keep creating videos. Okay, in the next lesson, we will be talking
about the last step, number five. I will
see you there.
16. Step 5: Your Content Plan: Welcome back. In this lesson, we will be discussing
step number five, which is create a
social media strategy. Without a clear strategy, you will be potentially
wasting your time and energy to grow
more with less effort. You need a clear action plan for all of your
social media content. I know it's easier
to tell than to do, but this is something you really want to think of if you are serious about growing
your Instagram and your social
media in general, and especially if
you want to use them to potentially
sell your products, find your clients and connect
with your ideal customers. When you have a clear plan, everything just starts
to get easier for you. As I already mentioned,
if you have a day when you batch produce
your content, everything, it becomes easier because
you don't know to wonder every single time
what you should post, so on and so on. It really saves you
effort and time. Let's see why why having
a clear content plan, A strategy helps you to
allocate resources effectively. Time and effort can be
focused on platforms that bring the best results
for your specific goals. That's why in the beginning,
also of this class, I was talking about all of these different
platforms and how it is important for you to focus on a few things
in the beginning. It's the same thing here. You can focus your effort and
you can focus your time on specific things that you really want to develop and it
really works for you. And this way you will be
attracting your ideal customers. And also the thing I want you to understand
is that you don't want to compete
for all the people on Instagram's attention. You don't want to compete
for the attention of all people out there. You want the attention of a small portion of these people. You really need to
understand who they are and how to target them,
how to come to them. This way, you will be
putting less effort and you will not be trying to
attract every single person, but you will know
exactly who you want to attract and how this
is quite crucial. One more reason why having a
content plan is important, because establish and maintain a consistent brand identity. To establish and maintain a consistent brand
identity across platforms, this builds trust and recognition essential
for organic growth. Here you can see
some examples of my moodboards that
I use for my brand. For example, here
on the left side, you can see a mood
for my website. On the right side, you can see a moodboard for my
Instagram page. You see I've put the icons for my highlights here, My logo, this little preview of how
my grid will look like, some of my favorite colors
I'm thinking about using. Really, this helps people
to learn more about your brand and understand what your brand is about and
recognize your brand. Most importantly, for example, if people are on your
Instagram and then they click on the link and
they go to your website. You want them to find the
same aesthetics there. You want them to feel like
they're in the right place. Because if your Instagram
is like pastel colors, very muted, and then
they go to your website, it is all crazy,
super bright colors. They're going to be
like, whoa, whoa, Am I even on the right website? You want them to feel that
they are in the same place. Your mood board, your
aesthetics guide really can help you to maintain this consistency across
different platforms. No matter if people go and
see you on your website, your Facebook, your
Instagram, you or whatever, if they find the same
aesthetics everywhere, it will just increase
their trust tremendously. As I again, why having
a content plan? It's important because
there is this balance between your time
and your resources. Time is your resource. If you are wasting your time on creating content
that doesn't work, or if you are wasting time on targeting audiences
that is not perfect for you, essentially, it's just
like wasting money. Be aware of that.
Really keep track of the time you spent
on your content. And as I said, to
save this time, you can really start to
plan things in advance. Plan your content in advance. Select a number of topics you know you
want to talk about. For example, this month you want to focus on this
big global topic. Then break it down into
smaller, smaller topics. And then break these smaller
topics into like posts and real ideas and go from there once you will have
this bigger picture. It's just going to
be easier for you to plan all of your
content for the month. This is only Instagram, but when you have a
bigger content plan, maybe other social media
is involved there, maybe your e mail
is involved there. In this case, it's especially
important to have. Have this plan so that your communication is consistent everywhere. Keep it in mind. Last tip I want to give
you is to be consistent, embrace your journey,
and be consistent. As I said, consistency can
be different for everyone. But the thing I want you to do is to really
enjoy the process. Because if you're
not enjoying what you're doing, you
are going to quit. You need to find
the enjoyment of creating content
and of sharing it. And it should feel good for you. Because if it feels bad,
you are going to quit. Find the interest for yourself. Find this something that will motivate you
to move forward. Remember, social media
is a journey aim for a consistent growth
instead of overnight success. We're not here to become, to gain 1 million
followers tomorrow. We're here to grow consistently. Again, I showed you here
on how you can massively grow your followers
in a shorter amount of time using reels. But even in my case, of course, I said that half of my followers came to
me thanks to my reels. I received over 30,000 followers
in a matter of months, which was a huge change for me. But it did not happen just
because I had a magic wand. Actually, I made a
lot of reels previous to that that were not as successful as these
two viral reels. I did a lot of bad
reels in the beginning. I got better after, but it still took me several, I think even maybe hundreds
of reels before getting to make these two very
successful ones keep going. And eventually you will create this one incredible piece of content that will bring
you to the next level. Just don't give up just by
simply go moving forward, you are already ahead
of your competition. Just keep going. And of course not blindly, but analyze your mistakes. Analyze what's going wrong
if something is wrong. And analyze what is going well, and use it to create better
content, adapt and evolve. Social media platforms evolve, should your strategy,
should your content. If you see that there are
this new trends, for example, now I see that a lot
of people are making these very boring videos with text on top and
they go very well. Well, I will try to do the same. See, see for the trends, see what people are doing. And if it resonates with you, do the same and see if
that works for you. Adapt to stay ahead in the
ever changing landscape. Again, Instagram
reels is the place where things change
super quickly. You need to adapt quickly. As I said, if you saw
a trend today and you were thinking for two weeks about making a video about it, then in two weeks probably
it's not a trend even anymore. With reels, you
need to be quick. Also with songs, if one
song is trending today, it doesn't mean it will
be trending in one week. You need to be quick. From this point of view,
very important today. Today is the best time to start. Don't overthink and just start simple and you
will not regret. You will thank yourself a year from now if
you start today, I promise the last tip before we go is how to
save time on social media. This is like one more
bonus tip for you. First of all, use AI
for texts, for example, a GPT is amazing for captions,
for writing scripts, these things also, if
you feel like chat GPT is giving you these cliche texts,
sometimes it happens. What you can do
instead is you can write your own text and then ask cha GPT to correct
it or make it better. For example, me as a
non native English, I'm not a native
English speaker, but I do communicate in English. When I write something
I then ask ChaPT to correct just to make sure that I'm not making
any mistakes. This is very helpful, especially
if you are a foreigner. If you're not a mother
tongue and you want to communicate in English or any other language
that is not yours, then you can use
the same method. Also, as I said, cross posting, we already discussed
it. This one is good. You can schedule your
posts and your reels directly on your Instagram app. There is a function there that allows you to schedule them. This way you will not
forgetting about posting. And you can really
choose one day a week where you will be making your
content and scheduling it. Then imagine you are free
for the rest of your week. Your content is scheduled, everything is running by itself. It's good. The only
thing is that it's not the kind of thing you
can do and forget about it. Because you still need
to go on Instagram and check on comments,
reply to people. Stay engaged on the platform.
This is still important. Keep that in mind. Also,
batch produce content. As I said, don't just make the video before
you want to post it. And just content for the sake of doing it, produce
content intentionally. If you know you want to produce several videos for
reels of like, let's say, short tutorials, why not picking a day
sitting there for 1 hour or two and shooting
these videos in a row, and then having
them also republish some of your best content
we've already told about it. But repurpose your best working content
in different ways. We've already talked about it. It will save you
time, first of all. And it will allow you to
bring more followers to your page without really necessarily inventing
something new. You can recycle your previous
content a little bit. Just try to not make it super, super often because you still want to give people
fresh content because otherwise they will be tired of seeing the same
things over and over again. Try to mix new content with a little bit of your old
best working content. I think this is an
optimal solution. All right, that was
it for this class. Thank you so much
for your attention. I really hope that you learned new things in this class
and that it will allow you to improve your
Instagram communication and grow your organic
Instagram following. Please share your projects with us in the project
section of the class. Thanks again for watching.
17. Final Words: Thanks for watching
the master class. I really hope you enjoyed it. And if you found it useful, please consider
leaving me a review. It will help me a lot. Don't hesitate to show your progress in the class
section of the class. You can show any
improvements you made to your content or to
your page in general, and I will be glad
to give my feedback. You can also keep in touch
with me on social media. You can find me on Instagram as natura illustrata or make
art with confidence. All divided by underscores. Thanks again for
watching and I will see you next time. Bye bye.
Natura Illustrata, Anastasiia - Watercolor artist
