INSTAGRAM GROWTH HACKS IN 2021 FOR ATTRACTING AN ENGAGED AUDIENCE

1. Welcome: Hi guys outta here and welcome to the latest Instagram hacks to attract and engage audience in 2021 and beyond, Instagram is more crowded than ever. You might have already noticed a significant drop in the overall engagements on your post. Additionally from that, it's become much harder to get your photos discovered organically and also rank up in the Explorer page. Well, let's face it, instagram has evolved from glossy photos were smart caption to more video focused platform and which we showcase snippets of our lives. So is it still possible to attract and engage audience and grow your business with Instagram? Well, the answer is yes, It's just the strategies to do so have evolved. My goal in this class is to help you get unstuck. We will dissect the updated algorithms. You can better understand the type of content that is prioritized in the feed. I will reveal, I'll delete as growth hogs that influencers are using to continue growing their account, we will review the type of content you should be posting to amp up your engagement and also get your content discovered. And finally, I will also debunk some myths around hashtags. This class is for anyone who wants a fresh perspective on what's currently working from artists to content creators and business owners alike. So join me so we can do a little bit of housekeeping and take your Instagram marketing game to new heights. So who am I exactly? Well, my name isn't a Vega. I'm a digital marketing consultant, author and international speaker. I've been in the industry for about 15 plus years and worked for a list of Fortune 500 companies helping them manage their digital marketing campaigns. Needless to say, I'm passionate about the subject and I cannot wait to share my knowledge with you guys. 2. The Algorithm: Let's discuss the algorithm and how it's currently ranking content. Now there are a lot of myths around the algorithm, and I will hear people blaming the algorithm for low engagement when in reality the majority of the time, the quality of the content is there reason. However, in this chapter, I'm going to help you understand what factors are taking into consideration when Instagram decides to serve your content to your audience. As a quick side note, I really want to encourage you to watch The Social Dilemma on Netflix. Many of you might have already watched it, does a great job explaining how the algorithm works to keep us glued consuming social media content. And I really feel it's important as a digital marketer to be informed on the impact we have on society. Consider watching it if you haven't already. It's also going to provide you with a new perspective about the impact of social media and how the algorithms work. Moving on. So how does the algorithm work in prioritizing our post? Instagram tries to serve as content based on our past interests. So meaning what we have engaged with or clicked on in the past, it will aim to service more of that content. It will look at our past behavior and serve a similar kind of content. Therefore, if you like gardening posts, for instance, it's going to show you more gardening post for instance. It understands what your interests are based on what you've clicked on in the past. So you can see more of that similar content in your feed. Next, it's going to look at your relationship with a specific account. Therefore, if you have a friend or an influencer that you follow, let's say, and you always click on their photos. You're always commenting, saving it, and you're interacting with them on Instagram stories. Well, instagram will understand that you like that kind of content and hence is going to feed you more of it. And I will share specific hat. I will help you get your content seeing by your followers are four relationships is fairly important and something to keep into consideration and family. It looks at timeliness and hence always prioritize fresh new content. Hence, the importance of being consistent. Simply put, if you're engaging regularly with an account, the algorithm is going to pick up on that and push it to the front of the queue. Not all content is created equal. And I'm simplifying this, but I felt it was important for me to create this chart to help you visualize how content is ranked. And a lot of it also has to do with how big your following is and how big your engagement is. So needless to say, photo post are going to be much harder to rank and the feed slash explorer page, simply because there's a vaster competition, bigger accounts with more followers and more engagement will have the upper end here versus real stories. Igtv is going to be easier to get people outside of your network to discover it simply because Instagram always loved push its latest feature and also you're competing with less people. Less people would be vested in creating video content, if you will, Valley, you have paid ads, which I personally love, Instagram and Facebook as a pay-to-play pot form these days. If you're spending money, paying for ads is going to guarantee your content will be discovered. So something to keep into consideration. And again, take this with a grain of salt, but I just wanted to share this chart so you can better prioritize this type of content you should be putting out there. So how does this affect you as a brand slash content creator? So you have to be consistent and you have to be posting daily. Ideally, you might have noticed when you don't post for a week or so, your engagement will drop substantially. That's mainly because your audience has an engaged with you for a while. So it tells Instagram may, Let's put this on the bottom of the list. Needless to say, posting regularly makes all the difference. Next, it's going to look at how much people are engaging with your content. Are they clicking, liking, commenting on your photos? Are they saving your photos? Have you ever noticed whomever you message to most on Instagram, Deanne will always show up on top of your feed and more on this later. To summarize here, the name of the game is consistency and relevancy. If people are engaging with your content, then Instagram is happy. So you might want to stop me here and say, well do I already knew I have to post relevant content. But what does that mean? Let's go to the next slide so I can answer that question for you. In the last years, Instagram has evolved from a more glam photo-sharing app to a functional behind the scene informational video sharing app. Between the introduction of stories, IGTV and reals, Instagram is actively working on keeping up with its competitor while keeping us entertained. While before the focus was on having a beautiful feed, which was a while before the focus was on having a beautiful she'd, which may people dream, Instagram has transition more into unfunctional feed. It's no longer about having something that is beautifully aesthetically pleasing. It's more about providing value to your audience, whether it's inspirational quotes, tips, sharing your personal story, et cetera. So Russell Brunson, who is the founder of click funnel, a landing page software for eyeline entrepreneurs. He does a great job sharing bite-size content, encouraging you to further dive n and look at a speed. Now, influencers always do such a great job posting beautiful photos. And I'm not saying completely shy away from that, but don't put so much importance into it. I rather have someone posts on a daily basis versus taking a week to figure out what to post on their Instagram feed. And as a result, because they're being perfectionist, never posting, your goal on Instagram now should be to share the story behind your brand. Why did you start your brand? How are you helping people in your niche? So if you're again and the gardening brand share why you love plants, share how people can easily care for indoor plants, share the benefits of owning a planet home. All of this information can be through photo, post, real stories, IGTV, et cetera out. So food for thought to get you inspired. And so you can start coming up with some ideas. So to recap, so I'll go as prioritizing Instagram accounts who are posting relevant, consistent content, which is why frequency is key these days. So try to post anywhere between once a day to three times a day. I personally like to post reals for my clients if I can only post once a day simply because Instagram will always prioritize content that is brand new on the platform, reals, being it right now, as a side note, I also want to add, this doesn't include Instagram stories. Make sure you're always active on Instagram stories. Next, you want to focus on having your audience engaged with you. You will accomplish this with Instagram Stories and we'll go over the exact tactics you can use in the following chapters. And finally, it's all about fostering a deeper connection with your audience. Let them in on behind the scenes what it takes to run your awesome gardening store a live Q and a. And the best way to do this is with video content. So either by doing a live posting, an IGTV, longer format video, or various stories simply because through video, you can really get a sense of people behind the brand. And it's just more effective than photos. People are just going to better relate with a brand that's active doing video content. Now that you have a better understanding of how the algorithm works, let's discuss hashtags and more. 3. Hashtags Decoded & More: Hashtags are an important part of content discovery. So in this chapter, I will share different types of methods and tools you should be using in order to have a great hashtag strategy in place. Now we're also going to go over different methods as well to help get your content discovered. So let's get started. Hashtags are important to get your content discovered. However, it's important for you to focus as well on your creative execution and how consistent you are versus trying to have the perfect hashtags strategy in place. Why do I say that? I see often a lot of content creators and brands putting so much emphasis on their hashtag game, and as a result, they're creative. Often lack luster, dust may boring. What will that do? Well, yes, people will see your content, but most likely they won't click on it because it just won't resonate with them. So hashtags are not DND of B all. Yes, it should be part of your marketing strategy on Instagram, but it also needs to be a cohesive strategy that takes into consideration consistency and creative execution because they're just as important. Additionally from that, consistency helps the algorithm Show your content more frequently. People will see your content more frequently, then they're more likely to engage. And if they're more likely to engage, well, they're just going to continue seeing it. Therefore, it's in your best interests as well to keep that into consideration. Now with that said, let's go over a couple of housekeeping items. First, you need to make sure your profile isn't private. If you want to get to the Explorer page and get this covered, your account must be open. Second, you need to use hashtags on post and also your Instagram stories. Actually using hashtag on your Instagram story is going to increase your chance of getting your content discovered. And there's couple of ways by using fonts that match your background to hide them as well. And on a story you can use up to 10 hashtags and for your posts you can use up to 30 hashtags. The other thing that I've seen a lot of people do is that they're putting their hashtags in the comments section. The following is a no-no. I've actually tested the following. You need to make sure that it's in the caption. It's going to outperform hashtags that are in the common section. So I'm going to show you this in just a minute. But overall, generic way to look for hashtags. It's to go to your export page and you can add generic hashtags are specific to your niche. So in this case, I have an example of coffee lovers. Now, you're going to want to create a mix of different hashtags, and I'll go over that. Listen next slide. You also want to review what kinda hashtag your competition is using. And then we're going to create a hashtag groups. Let's go over to my phone so I can show you exactly how to do the following. I have type coffee lovers and the Explorer page. I'm looking at the different tags and as I scroll down, I can see how competitive these different hashtags are. So you want to have a mix. In this case, there's a five k1 coffee lovers as pH. So that's probably Philippines. Coffee lovers, PR. So yeah, it's coffee lover plus a location. So something you might want to look into. For instance, in this case, let's put coffee lovers Denver, just to get a sense, if your coffee shop, let's say it was in Denver, for instance. Just to get a sense. Okay. Only one posts. So you definitely do not want to use that. I mean, Or you can and start a trend. But just note that your content will get this covered. Essentially, you want to go down the list and see what would work for you. So coffee lovers, VIP, that could be a good one. Coffee lovers who have a little icon as well. That could be a good one as well to try. Now let's look at our competition and what different hashtags they're using. A good way to do the following is using the most popular hashtags. So let's go to, let's go to coffee lovers, 7.2 million. And you're going to see some of the top posts. So this one's a hot if this post has 693 legs she posted two days ago, then she's probably a pretty popular bloggers. So if we scroll down, we can see some of the hashtags that she used. So this is just to exercise of going through all these different accounts to see the kind of hashtags they're using. This could be something interesting. Coffee addict, could be something that you could also include in your list. So essentially the exercise here is to go through and see what the competition is using, and then also get a sense of some of the hashtags you could be using to leverage within your research. But all these different hashtags within a Google Doc to help you expand your search. I wanted to provide you with a checklist of different types of hashtag groups you should have when you create your groups of hashtags. And you want to have a mix of all these different groups. It doesn't have to be a specific order. Just know that you're going to increase your chances of getting discovered if you have a healthy mix between products like service hashtags or niche industry hotshots, community hashtags, special events, location, daily hashtags, et cetera. Take a screenshot of this page so you can have it as a reminder and know that your goal is to look for hashtags for all these different groups. Now, before we dive in further, I want to share different tools that you could leverage. My favorite is up flake dot tech, which is actually a desktop app. And this is what I'm going to show you how to use in a moment. I also like hashtag expert. It's actually a downloadable app on your iPhone. And you can simply have high-level hashtags like coffee lover, and it's going to help you generate a list of different hashtags. So if you're feeling lazy, you of your house hashtag research and that's fine. You can use hashtag expert and it's easy to copy and paste and include within your post. Keyhole and hotshots hurry and hash tag. If phi are more expensive solutions, there are solutions that work well for bigger brands are asleep. I like flick and I'm going to show you right now exactly why. All right. So we are inside opt-out flipped up tech and I've already included different hashtags that I'm interested in further exploring. And the reason I like it is that it shows you look competition, medium competition, and high competition. So note that you want to have a mix of all these different items. So obviously go through the list and then you select the type of hashtags you're interested in having. And what I like about this is that you can save it to a collection and you can create a collection. So I'm going to do collection and I'm going to call this drop shipping one for instance. And then I can create this. And the beauty of this is that when I go back to my search and I go to Etsy seller, I can also add, for instance, some of these items back into that collection or a concrete another collection. So this will make your life much easier when you're creating different groups. Essentially what you want to do and I'm going to show you now. All right, so what you wanna do, and I personally like plan Ali, it's a scheduling tool for Instagram, is create different types of hashtag groups. So you can do which is great as essentially, Let's do drop shipping to and then go back to the list that we put together just a few minutes ago. And you can just copy and paste and then save. So extremely easy, this is why I highly recommend you use flake and then finally for scheduling. Finally, something that is often overlooked if adding additional alt tags to your posts and you can find the following under your advance setting when you are actually posting. Now, by all means I understand that if you're scheduling this, you'd have to go back and include them, but that's fine. The reason the following will help you is that it makes your content even more searchable. And essentially it also provides a description for the visual and hearing impaired. These are all essentials you need to get your post discovered. So don't overlook any of these steps. Now that we've been through each of the basics to help get your content discovered, less discussed, the hacks. See you in the next chapter. 4. Engagement Hack: Wondering how to increase your Instagram engagement. Ha, Well that's the $1 million question, isn't it? In this chapter, we will discuss hacks to help you get your audience more engaged so they can see your content. And luckily, it's not as hard as you may think it is. A key component of the Instagram algorithm is relationships. Hence, our very first hack, incentivizing your audience engaged with you, see your content is brought on top of their feet to explain someone who actively DMZ you on Instagram is more likely to see your IG post than someone who barely engages with you. So hence, why this hack is so effective, like we reviewed in the algorithm chapter, Instagram is prioritizing content based on relationships. So a great way to increase your overall engagement is by either damning your current audience, by simply checking up on them. And you could say something as easy as, Hey, thanks for following me. Let me know what you're working on and start building a rapport with them. It's just a great way to check in with your audience by simply starting a conversation with them and it doesn't have to feel spammy. The only side note I'm going to give you is don't go crazy spending everyone. Make sure you don't DM more than 20 people per day and do not use any bots to do this, do this manually or this will ban your account. And again, no, it doesn't have to be spammy. Simply ask a question of where they are in their journey and how you can help them. Whether you are a product brand or you are a service based brand, makes sure that it relates back to what you're providing them. Next, you want to make your stories interactive by using story stickers. And you can create polls, you can create quizzes. You can ask me anything stories. It's a great tool to build relationship with your audiences. This is where you let your hair loose and showed the real person behind the brand. The more people interact with your stories, the more likely they will see your content. And again, this is going to increase your overall engagement because people are going to feel more closely connected to you or your brand. Make sure you're posting stories daily. And I'm going to provide you an example like here. If you have a brand, for instance, ask your audience for feedback and general influencers do a really great job interacting with their audience. And they use this feature a lot. So don't be shy, used to Instagram story stickers help here followers get to know you more. It's a great opportunities for your followers to really feel like they have a better connection with you and provide them more information about your services, your products, be open, share your truths. And again, look at influencers within your niche to get ideas and inspiration of how you can do the following. Finally, you also want to comment on other people's posts within your knees. So whether influencers or you can also use a few hashtag that relate back to your services or products or niche and follow and comment. A lot of us selfishly want people to comment on our post, yet we don't put any effort to do so and actually comment and be part of our community. So it's important that you do the following. How can you expect people to comment on what you put out there if you never take the time to comment and be social, I know it feels like a lot of work, but it's a necessary evil to grow your account give and you will receive. The goal here is to be social and best way to accomplish this is through sending personal messages to people within your network, interact with them via Instagram, stories and comments, be part of the larger community. So to recap, the algo is prioritizing relationship and engagement. So you want to make sure that you build a deeper rapport with your audience by first dm in your audience to check up on them, see how you can serve them, see how your products can help them, et cetera. You also want to interact with your audience via Instagram stories. You want to encourage them to reply back to your story. You can provide them a specific offer, a specific coupon. You can give them insights groups within story, this is their opportunity to connect with you on a deeper level. And then you'd want to foster a deeper connection as well by commenting, either commenting on your followers post or commenting on two different hashtags that relate back to your industry. And most importantly, remember to have fun with this before you can grow your audience, it's important that you build a deeper connection with the people who already are following you. And I know there's an emphasis in gaining more followers and absolutely you will get there. However, by having a deeper connection with the people who already follow you, it's only going to first help you create better content because you're going to have better insights as to what's resonating with them. And hence, automatically, it will help you grow your account. So let's go through the next chapter and discuss the next hack. 5. The Power of Pinterest: In this next hack, we're going to discuss how you can leverage the power of Pinterest, which in some shape or form is a search engine and itself. And it's often under utilized by digital marketers. So I'm going to teach you exactly how you can post your Instagram and how it's going to provide you with referral traffic. So let's jump right in Hack number 2, sharing your Instagram post on Pinterest. In this chapter, we're going to discuss the power of search engine optimization by sharing your post on Pinterest. Pinterest is a search engine. And the reason I loved as often overlooked method is because since Instagram post have a short lifespan by claiming your Instagram account on Pinterest and then painting your Instagram post, you can drive more traffic and engagement to your Instagram content over a longer period of time. For example, if you run a fashion account on Instagram and pin your Instagram content to a fashion boards on Pinterest, those spins might be saved to others user's boards and spread across Pinterest. From here, more and more people will see it and click through to your Instagram account, which could result in more followers and engagement on Instagram. Pinterest is great for helping you increase your referral traffic to your Instagram. And this, my friend can result in some serious boost to your Instagram engagement and more followers. So let's dive right in. The first thing you'll want to do is claiming your Instagram account on Pinterest. And let me point out done in order to do so, you'll also have to make sure that you have switched your Pinterest to a business account. Let's dive in really quickly so I can show you how to claim your Instagram account with Pinterest first and foremost, if you don't have a Pinterest business account and make sure to check out this link. And you can easily link your current existing account and make the switch. Now, what's clean your business? Now let's go through claiming your Instagram account. It's very simple. Go here under Settings and then right here, claim, and you can see, you can claim your Etsy YouTube website. In my case, I just wanted to claim the Instagram to show you how to do that. And then if you have a Shopify store, it also recommend you to install the app. Now, let me point out that when you're posting your Instagram content on Pinterest, if your goal is to grow your Instagram account, you publish your content first to Instagram and then pin it to your relevant boards on Pinterest. This is going to make sure that you'll get the proper attribution. Now I'm going to show you two ways of doing the following. Now, the more complicated way, which will get you actually more better results is actually uploading the photo that you have on your computer. So ideally, every time that you do a post, you should save that photo. So you can upload it to Pinterest. And then you can include the proper keywords based on your research. So in this case, business, well, sorry, I can't even spell business tips for entrepreneurs. So again, like your headlines should be something that would be searchable on Pinterest. In order to do so, I just encourage you to do a search here. Use this tool and just look at the kind of key words that are coming out. This will give you some high-level insights of what types of keywords you should be using. All right, so headline would be irrelevant keyword. Then you'd write your description and very important here. So obviously this, Let's say that this is the same photo and the same post, and obviously it's not. But again, just want to show you how to do this. Make sure you're including the link. All right, so this is the best way to do it. It's more time-consuming, but you'll get better results. All right, so now I'm going to show you the lazy way of doing things. You'd go into the post, you would copy the actual URL of the post. Then I'm going to show you the lazy way of doing it. So you'd go back to Instagram. You click on the post, you'd grab the URL of the post, and then you're working to create a new pen. We're going to say from site. And what that's gonna do is that it's going to grab the image. I don't know why it's not working here, but you get the gist of it. And then you can include your copy accordingly and then select obviously the board, in my case would be digital marketing and then publish. All right, so these are the two ways of doing it. And you can also do it directly from your phone. So just wanted to show you these two options. Finally, always have in mind the type of keywords people would be using on Pinterest and add relevant keywords on Pinterest that are specific to your business and aligned with what your target audience is searching for. The same way you create content that's optimized for relevant keywords on your blog or website. So the best way to do this is by creating a pin from scratch and copying and pasting the URL for your Instagram posts like I've already showed you. And that's it guys. Pretty self-explanatory. I guarantee you you'll be seeing results if you stick to this method, Let's move into the next chapter. 6. Video Hack: Hack number 3, prioritizing video content. Video content is at an all-time high and is becoming the most consumed form of content on Instagram. This trend is likely to continue to grow. Video is great because it shows the real you if you're a personal brand or as a business, you can also share behind the scenes. And video also enables you to connect with your audience. So let's dive into this chapter is you can start brainstorming about the type of content you should be creating. Focusing on IGTV, lives are reals will increase your chances of being featured in the Explorer slash discover page, along with also being seen on top of the feed. The good news is, you can be creative with video content and you can create a stronger bond with your audience. Not only do they get to better know you, they see your energy, the work behind your brand, your values, your personality. For audiences to be drawn to you, you really must show all the facets of your brand. It makes it real and honestly too often people overthink videos. Remember Seinfeld to TV show, wasn't it a show about nothing? Yes, providing value is important, but being creative and just typing something you're known for is what will differentiate your content. So let's take a closer look first. Get inspired by YouTubers. Look at the kind of content that is working for them. Something as simple as replicating a Day in the Life where you show you packing orders and how much work you put into the brand. You can also go to Starbucks and share valuable tips and you can call as wild as you want. I also wanted to share Mr. best, he became popular for as out of the box content. He did a video where he was counting to a 100 thousand in one video. He's also done videos where he's donating thousands of dollars to strangers and has a lot of different pranks. So don't be afraid to look at what other brands are doing in your niche and get inspired. Another place to get inspired if you're feeling stuck, is I really encourage you to check out Tiktok and look at some other trends that are going on there. The creators on tiktok are pretty creative and it can help you get even more inspired. There's a lot of tech talkers are doing interesting transitions. There's a lot of different creatives as well who really go out of the way to provide and create very unique looking videos. Now, you don't need to dance when creating reels. And personally, I really think it's corny and overdone. If you're in the information space, if you're a coach or a marketer, you can simply just provide bite-sized information. And if you're having a hard time getting started, really don't overthink it. Just tested out and build your creative muscle. Now I'm going to give you a little pro tip. When you're creating IG Reels on tiktok, simply do it on tiktok just because I feel like it's way more robust when it comes to editing. Now, keep in mind, IG Reels or between 53 seconds versus TikToks are 15 to 60 seconds. So make sure that on tiktok, you do 60 seconds max, but your video is no longer than 30 seconds so it doesn't get cut off on Rails. And then another pro tip is to download tick save app on your phone. So it takes off the Tiktok watermarked. Now you can get fancy and save the video without music. I personally save it with music. I heard that it doesn't help to ranking. Personally, I don't care. I'm also very active on tiktok and I just feel dots posting at least an IG real with the music that's from tiktok, it's totally fine. So I just want to show you a trend and you probably saw this trend last year, the shoe throwing transition. And this again is just an example of something that started on tiktok and then one viral on Instagram. So again, use TikTok as a way of coming up with different ideas and see what fits with your brands. Because perhaps trends is something that you don't need to apply. Just try to find ways of being creative and don't be afraid to test things that have never been done before if you're still struggling to come up with ideas. I also encourage you to check out Cora and Facebook groups based on your industry. Look at the type of questions or people are asking on Quora and get inspired from those questions to create content accordingly. Or I also love Facebook groups. In this example I shared is simply a women sharing her journey, losing weight with a keto diet. So, you know, join all these different cattle groups if that's what you're promoting and see what people are struggling with. C, what are some of the questions that they're having? See how you can provide value to them and figure out how to make it into an actual piece of content. That's video, either IG real, or Tiktok. Use your creativity here, like everything we discussed in this course, being consistent is what will make all the difference. Don't be a perfectionist. You're better off who's seeing something that's mediocre? Yes, I said it. You are only going to get better by posting and perfection is not going to get you anywhere. I really encourage you to post one IG real per day. You don't need to have a polished cover photo. I've, I've actually done the test myself. And when I post the first image is actually performing better than when I have something that is more polished. And why is that? Well, because people simply like authenticity and that's what they're looking for and more and more. All right guys, so I have attached a link here. It's a YouTuber providing you a tutorial on how to create an IG real it, this is something you struggle with. Checkout does video. Another way to help you rank up into this cover page is by going live on Instagram wants per week. Ig Live is a great way to get a pulse on types of issue your audience are having and specific questions they have. And it's also a great way for them to connect with you. Plus did I mention how much she algo loves IG live content. If the first couple of time you do this, no one joins, you don't get this courage. Again, consistency is vital here. You can announce to your audience that every Tuesday at four PM you're going live. And then more and more of your audience will start showing up. Finally, you might want to consider posting on IGTV as well. Here you can repurpose some of your YouTube videos as it allows for longer format. Something I also forgot to mention is you must always add caption. Audiences on Instagram often watch videos with no sound. So whatever video contents, so IG real or stories or IGTV, make sure that you have captions available. And an app that I like to use to adding captions is makes captions are I guy so I know I'm sounding like a broken record, but be consistent when going through this course, it's important that you apply what I'm sharing and that you do this consistently because it takes at least 30 days for an account to start growing. And if you give up after just one week of trying, it would be a shame. You must be dedicating. And to growing your account, you need to have an editorial calendar and planning what you will be posting in advance. This will make all the difference to help with your sanity, you can schedule all your photos, post and stories, and advance, and stick to posting or organically your IG Reels and your longer format IGTV videos. Now, finally, I wanted to share some different kinds of Instagram account for you guys to look at as well and feel inspired from a friend nerd, who is an illustrator based in New York City with a very quirky sense of humor. To Tom below from Impact Theory Podcast to Frank body, a beauty brand. These accounts have very unique styles and share engaging content. My recommendation when coming up with ideas is to create an Evernote folder and clip everything you find. And from that research, create about 10 to 30 ideas. You don't need to come up with the flushed out idea right of way, but just jot down so you can further expand on these ideas once you're ready. Personally, this is my favorite part of being a marketer, the creative aspects of it. This is where you can have so much fun. So don't feel overwhelm and really just go with the flow. Let's jump in into the next chapter. 7. Shareable Content Hack: Create shareable content. Does hoc my seem a little obvious, but too often this is something that's smaller. Instagram accounts don't include within their strategy. Including inspirational like content that gets your audience amped up is a great way for them to share your post. And if they're sharing it, while more people will get to discover your account and follow you. So let's go through this. You're too creative to have a 95. This is a simple to the point quote, which gets any entrepreneur riling up and wanting to share this with our friend Tom blue, an account which I shared in the previous chapter does a great job sharing his truth bombs, if you will, his motivational quotes like this example here. So wondering where to come up with these ideas, simply go on Pinterest and search her quotes. Now, don't copy them word for word. Add your own twist. As an example. This quote on the left from Nelson Mandela, It always seems impossible until it is done. Could become aim for what seems impossible and prove the heater is wrong. See, this is an easy way to get inspiration from something you find online and provide your own twist based on what makes sense for your brand or business. Now, I also encourage you to post carousel type content naturally since users have to click to see more photos and increases your engagement rate and tells Instagram that people are liking your content and hence providing you more opportunities for more people to see your post. Share some bit size knowledge like sharing headlines of a blog post you wrote for instance. So your post is jam packed with value. If it feels too overwhelming, I get it. Keep this in the backburner until you have a team who can help you with this. Really, for now, just focus on reels and be consistent. Don't add so much to your to-do list. But again, carousel post something. But again, Tercel posts is something to keep into consideration. Let's move on to the next chapter. 8. Stories Hack: Amp up your story, game. Stories. Oh, do we love stories? Did you know that people spend more time watching Instagram stories than they do on the actual feed? Yep. And too often, IgE account and brands don't maximize their stories content. So let's further diving. Here's why Instagram stories are amazing. More than 500 million users watch Instagram stories on a daily basis. It's also a great way to boost your engagement with your audiences, like we've reviewed in the previous chapters. The more people engaged with your stories via stickers, the more they will see your IG content. I additionally, Instagram Stories is also great way to get more cells and I have an entire course on the following which I encourage you to check out. And some ideas could be providing a behind the scenes look. Yeah, I know it goes without saying Instagram story helps you connect deeper with your audience. So let's break down some tactics here to help you encourage more engagement from your audience. So aim to post at least three to ten times a day on Instagram story. Create a thread throughout the day showing the progress of you doing a product launch or you throughout your day. Tell us what problems you have encounter or new features you have included after listening to your customers, use stickers, create polls. Do you ask me anything questions asked people to DMU so you can give them access to your special discount code. The more people engaged with your stories, the more they will see your post. Hence, why Instagram story is key in boosting your overall engagement. Here are some examples for you, dead inspired from influencers. They aren't afraid to ask her followers for a suggestion and neither should you. I also included kind of stories you could include to get people and cite an Instagram story funnel in qualify them for a product that you're selling. Have them answer a few questions and provide them with a solution. Bingo, this method is extremely effective in getting people to care and opt into your offers. Now, another little sneaky trick is to use hashtags within your stories. You can easily hide them by having the font be the same color as your background. And you can use up to 10 hashtags on your Instagram stories. You can also use geolocation stickers, especially if you're a local business. This is something that I highly recommend you leverage. And here I included an example for you so you can get inspired to how you could potentially leverage hashtags. And don't be afraid as well to tag people because most likely they're going to share it with your network. And again, this is going to help you grow. So another way to help with your growth is by partnering up with influencers. Start small with influencer who have less than 5000. So any sort of micro influencers figure out a deal that is mutually beneficial for you. Asked him for a shoutout in exchange for products or in exchange for a shot from you as well. Build a relationship with them, network with them by sending them an authentic DM. Please do not send them a spammy DM because I see that too often because it's going to get you dismissed and it feels like you took no time to look at their feet. Instead, write something personal, like how you resonated with one other posts, et cetera. Now some influencers might want to get paid for the following. But before you pay them, use an influencer engagement calculator like hype auditor, h y p0 auditor, and look at their overall engagement rate to ensure their followers are authentic. And again, just pick a few tactics from what we covered here. Remember, less is more consistency is what's the most important. 9. Giveaway & Paid Ads Hack: This is our final hack for this class, giveaways and Instagram ads. Now, I advise to use caution when running giveaways as the quality of followers you will gain can be subpar. Personally, I love running paid ads, but it does require to be somewhat knowledgeable to get the best results. So let's dive into these tactics giveaways. First and foremost, let me warn you by saying that you should never boost or advertised through Instagram ads, your giveaways. There are a no-no, and we'll get your Facebook account banned. Facebook is simply trying to minimize spammy like ads. And hence, don't even think about this. Now for the giveaway methods to be effective, I would recommend you partner up with a list of influencers. You'll have to pay them for them to agree to do this. Or you can figure out a way so it's mutually beneficial for the booth of you. Some I do it for free, and it really depends on what product you're giving away and what's in it for them, spent at least one week pre promoting this giveaway. So you can build some momentum around it, whether it's your e-mail list, other social media accounts, et cetera. Have people comment on your post and have them share it with their friends. And then you can pick a winner and announced them on Instagram stories. So let me show you a quick example for you on how you could be structuring this. Here's an example of something that Forever 21 ran a while back. You can see the rules of the giveaway are clearly stated in the caption. And really it's really up to you. You can set whatever rules you want based on what your goals are, gaining followers, et cetera. So you can take a screenshot of the following. If you need this for inspiration, then a tool that you'll want to use is suppliers.com. And this is going to help you pick a winner. It's pretty easy to use. All you have to do is paste the link of your post and it's going to randomly picked a winner for you. Again, this is not my favorite strategy to grow an account, but this is something I felt was important to include in this class because it's a method that can help if you're considering beefing up an account in a fast manner. Next, and this applies specifically if you have a service sure. Coach or you have a specific product that you're selling if you're an e-commerce brand, is to actually run Facebook ads. Now, I'm not going to be able to cover this in much detail. Take me about two hours to go through this method. And I have a class which I'll share in the next slide. But essentially you need to make sure that you need to have a business manager and place mixture that your Instagram is also set up as a business slash creator. I've included the link to business manager you, so you can go ahead and go to this link and set up your account. You're going to want to enter the name of your business, et cetera. And you're also going to want to verify your website. These are all the prerequisite to run Facebook ads. So I have an entire course available to help you deep dive into Facebook advertising in which I share the latest updates to the platform. So again, something else keep into consideration. Now, a caveat that's actually quite important, and I repeat, do not boost your posts. Instagram is often going to encourage you to do the following and boost, opposed and promote. But it's a complete waste of your money. Why? Because this is just a vanity metric. Yes, you might get a couple of likes and comments. But what will that really accomplished for you? Absolutely nothing. Yes, you could potentially be retargeting your advertising individuals who've already engaged with your post. But there's really more effective ways to advertise. And once you set up your business manager, you can actually run conversion campaigns. And he's conversion campaigns is to get people to show their email address with you to actually purchase from you. D's conversions are going to get you more for your buck than running a boost campaign. So really stay away from this method. All right guys, well this wraps up all of the hacks. And the next chapter I'll share some final thoughts along with list of outdated methods I don't recommend you use. So see you in the next chapter. 10. Conclusion: Hey guys, So congrats on finishing this course. As a bonus, we're going to go over what not to do and what to do. So a little bit of housekeeping for your overall Instagram and going through some of the older methods which no longer work. And if you found the class useful mixture to share your thoughts to help get it discovered, please provide a review. I just want to ensure to help you catapult your Instagram account to new heights. So let's go through the list. So let's go over some of these old methods. If you will, do not follow and unfollow accounts, following no longer works and a will surely get you bend as well from Instagram. Do not as well use high-speed automation bots. This is a method that was used a few years back, but Facebook again or Instagram is banning the following. And then mixture that you don't have too many IP addresses as well on your account. Something that I want to point out if you have other individuals on your Instagram, first and foremost, make sure that you've switched to a business or creator account. Then you want to go to your Facebook panel and make sure that they've been added as an individual who can manage your social media account. Let me show you. Okay, so what you will want to do is go on your page, go all the way down to settings, and then go to Page Roles. And this is where you going to assign roles and include different individuals or agencies to make sure that you have all the editors and whatnot. These are the individuals who are able to manage your page as well as your Instagram as well. Now, let's go through your to-do list. First and foremost, like I've been mentioning through the entire course, make sure that you're posting daily at the bare minimum of one IG real per day. And then three to ten and surrounds stories while implementing some of the strategies that we talked about in this class. And then finally, something to keep into consideration is using alternative platforms to grow your account. I really love clubhouse. I don't know if you spent a lot of time there, but it's a great way for networking and also building your own community, as well as Tiktok or YouTube shorts. These are other channels that will enable you to grow your brand personally. I'm really starting to love tiktok. I just feel that it's a platform that allows for a lot of growth. And it also is a great way to helps you grow your Instagram. It's a wrap. Thank you guys. I'm hoping that I was able to provide you with a ton of value. I would love to hear from you. Feel free to ask me any question by reaching out to me specifically on Instagram. You can also post any of the questions that you have here in the platform. And I would love to hear what you're currently working on and how I can help you. And if you're watching this class, more than happy as well, to repost your stories of you taking the course to help you grow your account as well. I'm here to help you along your journey. Good luck and really keep me posted on your progress congratulation guys.