Transcripts
1. Introduction to Instagram Marketing: are you an artist on Instagram, but have had trouble growing. You're following. Or maybe you have a following. You just want a better system on how to edit your photos and videos and get them up faster . High mining Micheli hits and I am an online marketer. I have been marketing online since 2000 and four. I built my very first website over 12 years ago, and I want to tell you I love marketing. I love social media marketing especially, but I never really got into instagram marketing until I dove into the area of art. Art and artists are just abundant on Instagram, and so that's where I decided to really sink my roots and put my artwork up online. In just over three months, I've grown my following toe over 2800 and it continues to grow every day. There are some very specific things that I have learned. I have learned things the hard way. I have searched and searched and scour the Internet for these tips and tricks, and now I'm going to share them with you. I want to help you reach more people with your message. That's my passion as an author coach. But as an artist, I would love for you to just reach more people with your are to be able to even potentially grow on art business and just a have fun. But not only that, to save time. So the things that I'm gonna teach you in this class will help you. To save time, you'll be able to get your pictures edited. They will look great and you'll be able to get them up in a much faster amount of time. Same with videos. I'm gonna teach you systems. So what I always say is my secret sauce because I'm very prolific. I've published over 50 books. I am just able to do multiple things. And many people ask me, Shelly, what's your secret? Well, I really believe that my secret is simply systems. I develop systems that work for me and that I can repeat easily on a daily basis. And so, with Instagram, I have developed my own personal systems, and now I'm going to share them with you. Whatever works for you do that. You don't have to use the exact absent I'm using, but I am going to be focusing on the iPhone. I have an iPhone, and so that's what I'm gonna be focusing on in this class for iPhone, APS and how to do everything from within your iPhone. I will show you from my iPhone screen. I have software that will show my screen of my phone, has I go? And so you'll be walking with me, step by step through my systems that I hope now could become your systems. Images and pictures are so important on Instagram, it's a visual platform. If your images are not well edited or your videos are not done well, it's gonna be a lot harder to grow a following. So I want to help you to take your instagram marketing to the next level. Are you ready? Let's get started. Click and roll and I cannot wait to see what you do on your instagram profile. With everything you learn in this class,
2. Where to Start: in this video. I want to talk about where to get started, just like building a house when you're marketing online or offline. If you don't have a strong foundation, If you don't have your focus right, it's going to make your efforts less successful. And I want you to be successful. And so the very first thing you need to think about with Instagram is what is the focus of your account. So I currently have two accounts. I have Micheli dot hits account, and that's my main account for my author coaching and that sort of thing. And so when I started my art, I decided to start a new account. And that's color my world. Beautiful. I hope you'll join me over there to follow my art journey, but you want to have tried toe have a singular focus of your account. So if you're doing multiple things, it's probably going to be hard for you to really grow and attract your audience unless you really decide to have a singular focus for your account. I I don't really recommend having a ton of accounts unless you have a team that can help you, but I do recommend having a singular focus as much as possible for your account for my art account color. My role. Beautiful. My focus is on all things art create are posting art each day sharing tutorials, posting videos to inspire. And so I post any type of art. The lettering watercolor. But I do focus a lot on the lettering because it's very popular right now and people are very interested in it, and they love watching it. And so I do focus a lot on that with my account. So the first step is to know your focus. That's like the bull's eye of your target. You know, if you're doing archery, that's what you need to know. Then you want to know a little bit about your audience. Who is your audience? Who is your target audience? What age group are they? What do they enjoy? What do they like? What do they? What do they want to see? One way you can really get to know this is by going to popular instagram accounts in your same niche, and a niche is just your same topic. So your same topic area and look at what really gets a lot of views on videos or likes or comments. What really gets a lot of traction and interaction Start paying attention to those things. And one of the things I started to notice for the lettering community people love videos and I've had several videos get over 30,000 views with just under like 1000 Followers. It was crazy, and so you can really get a lot of traction with video. And so that's why I'm going to teach you the system I use for video. It's a lot easier than you think, and you can start posting videos as well as an author coach. I really teach this to my clients who are authors now. It's a little bit different system, but I go into kept on finding your target audience, doing a brainstorm. How to do it in my free training. You confined at Shelley had stopped com for it slash platform challenge. It's all about building your author platform, which instagram is part of your platform online, so that might be of interest to you. You'll find the training on target audience on Day two of that challenge is completely free , so if that interest you at all. You can dive in deep there. Ultimately, when you're online, when you're doing any form of marketing, you really want toe offer value. You want toe offer something that's going to give value to your target audience. So those that follow you on instagram what you're posting should offer value to them. You don't ever want to spam your followers or you don't want to get to off track of your topic. Like I see people doing this an instagram stories and sometimes I actually unfollowed them because I'm tired of seeing the off topic things about their food or this or that in instagram stories. That's not why I follow them. So you want to make sure you offer value. What kind of value can you offer? Your value can be to inspire it Could be the beauty in your heart. It can be how you share what you did to create that art. I do that a lot. It's kind of a mini tutorial, and people love that. But I'm a teacher. That's who I am. Maybe what you're gonna offer is gonna be a little bit different. But I encourage you to really consider how can I add value to someone else? And how can I add value through my instagram account? Next, I want to talk to you about really connecting to your audience, and that's part of letting your personality shine through. So I don't want you to try to be like me. I don't want you to try to be like other instagram profiles. You see that I have grown fast or growing astronomically. I want you to be you. And when you are your self, you were being your you know, unique personality. You're letting your personality shine through. It's going to attract the right hon Ian's. So when I teach marketing, I teach it like you want to think about it like a magnet. So one side's gonna attract your target audience, and they're gonna love what you have to offer and another sides going to repel others. And so when you're marketing, don't be afraid to take a stand for something. I talk a lot about my faith. I post Bible scriptures. I share my testimonies about Jesus. I say the name of Jesus a lot in my post, and if that offends you, that's okay. You can follow me and you can find other lettering accounts that will inspire you personally. But those of you who are Christ followers who appreciate that kind of encouragement will be attracted to that and will be like, Whoa, another thing is, I love watercolor. I love watercolor, and so I integrate that into my lettering in my layouts. And so if you really love watercolor, you'll probably be attracted to that. So be you and allow your personality come out in your descriptions instead of just posting a really generic description about your piece or just posting some hashtag share a little story. Stories sell, and it's not like you're trying to manipulate. You're trying to build relationships with the people on instagram that follow you, and so you want to tell stories. Tell a story about that. Relate somehow to your post. Maybe it's an image you created, or it's a phrase that you lettered or at something that you can relate to a different part of your life, and you can share a little story. Or maybe you're having a crazy day, and you just spilled coffee everywhere and stained all your clothes, and it was just all you could do to get a post up, and so you share that. It's just real life and people love that. They connect to you, they get to know you. And that's how you build loyal followers is through those connections. You can tell stories very easily and instance stories. Just again. Make sure you stay on topic if you get off topic like there's times I want to share things about my personal life and I'm just like, uh, it doesn't relate to art. And so I think I'm just not going to share that because I don't I know I don't like to be watching things that are just like food, or this is what I'm doing or not. It's just that's not why I'm on their for following their accounts. I'm on there for inspiration and to see things. So the moral of this story is stay on track, stay focused on your topic. Whether it's the insta stories or your regular posts and connect, find ways to connect with your audience through storytelling, it will make a huge, huge difference. The final thing I want to tell you in this foundational video is to be willing to put yourself out there good, bad and ugly, because what happens is sometimes we just put this ultra perfect appearance on social media , especially if artists I know a lot of artists are perfectionists. I am not. So that probably helped me to be able to put myself out there. I don't care. I'm just enjoying art. I just enjoy creating. I'm a creator, and so I'm not a perfectionist, But I know many of you are probably perfectionists. If you are, let me know in the discussion because I know I work with a lot of perfectionists in my author coaching business, and it's a mindset issue that can stop you. And it can really, really stunt your success with marketing. So I'm not saying you're You should air your dirty laundry for everyone on instagram to see . No, there are certain things you will not post publicly online ever. However, don't be afraid to put an art piece out there that doesn't meet your perfect standards, be willing to share and to share what you're learning, even through that process. And, you know, I really have seen a huge transformation in me and my business when I've really dealt with some mindset issues. I have a class here on skill share. It's called Embrace the Artists in You, and it's all about overcoming some mindset issues. And so if you know that you have those minds that issues, I would stop this class right now. Go over to that class and take that. It's just a really quick and easy class. Has five affirmations to really encourage you in this journey. But it's really key, because if you're not willing to put yourself out there, it's going to really limit what you can do on Instagram. Plus, people are really attracted to authenticity when I am riel, and I share things that I'm struggling with. Like today. I just shared in a post that I have a very riel addiction to sugar, and it affects me in many ways, and I've been having some inflammation and my neck and my arms. It affects my ability to do my art and to work on my computer. When I shared that in a description, I've already had several people commenting that they also struggle with that and and saying , You know, they'll pray for me and it's a connection. I'm not saying you have to post everything. I'm not saying you have to put yourself out there in a way that's uncomfortable to you, but it is important to get uncomfortable. Put yourself out there, Be willing. If you never do it. You never know what's possible, what could happen. And I just I just think it's just endears people to you. So I hope this foundational video helped you know your focus. Who is your target audience? Offer value? What can you do to offer value to your followers? Inspire and share with them in your description to connect with your followers. You could also use instant stories to connect and be willing to put yourself out there. The good, the bad and the ugly. Be willing sometimes to share behind the scenes to share what life is really like for you and the struggles that you're having as well as the victories. All right, so now that we've covered the foundation, let's get into the nuts and bolts
3. Tripods: the most important tool you need for INSTAGRAM marketing is obviously your smartphone. I'm gonna be talking about the iPhone because that's what I have. I currently have the iPhone seven, and I personally got the one with the most amount of space I could the 256 megabytes just so I wouldn't run out of space with videos. But I will teach you some different strategies you can use if you don't have a ton of space on your phone either. So you'll need your iPhone. But in order to really take great videos, you will need a tripod. The tripod can also come in handy for taking pictures of your artwork as well. But I just want to go through the tripods I currently use. There are a ton of different options out there. I am not 100% satisfied with my tripods, but they work. You can get a tripod for about $15 on the Amazon, and it makes the world of difference with what you can create and share on Instagram. So the tripod I use the most is this one. It is a banks B e n chaos. I got this on Amazon. I think for about $15 or less, and it's not perfect, but it works. So what happens is you attach this part here. You can't attach it to your table if you want. But what I found is that my table, then while I was painting and writing would move, and then the video would move. So what? I dio and you just have to find what works for you. What I actually do is I use one of my dining room chairs and I put it on the chair, and then I use this for overhead videos. So let me show you what I mean. So here's the chair that I use, and I just put this on the top, and then you just tighten the clamp to make sure it's really nice and study. And so what I have done is it's already it's already curved and placed in the way I want for overhead recording. I'll put my phone in it, and then from my phone, I can see if it's framing the artwork correctly. So you want your artwork to be framed correctly. You want to be able to see what you're creating and one of the things I'll do is I'll put the paper that I'm gonna be working on on my work area here, and then I will get up and I will look and make sure that it's all in the video frame. One thing you can do is if you have a big piece of paper, you could put your finger down here and make sure your finger is still in the frame. I do this sometimes, and just that way I can see where is gonna go off the screen and where I might need to. Once I get to a certain point in the in the lettering piece or in the art piece, I might have to move it up a little bit. So it stays in the video because what you don't want to do is record your video and then realize that you're our work. Was not even in in the video that you were lettering off the video, and that has to definitely happened to me before. So this is the first tripod that I really think all artists need. You need some sort of overhead tripod, a tripod that's going to get that overhead view of your artwork. If you don't have something like this, save up 15 bucks and get it. In the meantime, this is not ideal, but you could stack up some books or get something that kind of gives you some vertical space. I've used a really tall coffee mug before, but then what you do is wherever your camera is on your iPhone, make sure that sitting over the edge of those books and that you can still get your your artwork in the picture. Sometimes you know the books will show in the picture, so that's a way to do it with something that you have around the house. So other than the overhead tripod, it's also nice sometimes to get a close of a realtor time lettering or artwork. And I remember asking. Kelly creates on Instagram one time how she did hers, and she's like, I just put my phone in a mug thought, Oh, I'm gonna try that. I have a big mug here and then I just put a lid. This is a lead to an old mayonnaise jar, something that fit in there, and that just moves my iPhone up a little higher. And then what I do is put my iPhone in here. Then I can have my artwork right in view, and I can't let her and create a video with that up close lettering. So I'm gonna show you my system in my process of how I then edit that video. So it looks right because what will happen is it will record it up and down. And yet I will show you later how to record that so that you have that square video for Instagram. So how I normally set it up is I have my paper in the center and then I have my mug off to the side, My left side Because I'm right handed now. I also realized the other day I also have this for my iPhone. It came with something I ordered way back when. But it will hold my iPhone, and I realized this is the perfect size for what I need to do. And then this will adjust so I can adjust the angle. So I really like this. It's just a little stand for your iPhone. So the moral of the story is get a dry bod. I recommend at the very minimum, get an overhead tripod, but you can use what you have right now at home to get started. Whether it's a stack of books, it's a mug. Whatever it is, you can start recording videos for Instagram, and I am excited to take you through the process. But first I want to talk about lighting, and then I want to talk about staging before we get into the nut symbols of editing, So let's go into lighting.
4. Lighting: when you're recording your videos or taking your photos for instagram, lighting is important. However, I am going to show you in some APs for the iPhone later how you can correct a darkly lit shot for photos. However videos, it's a little bit harder to correct that, so it's better toe. Have some good lighting now. The best lighting is natural daylight lighting. So if you're able to record in a room has natural daylight. Just make sure that daylight is coming directly and shining down on your work, so your table would be here and the daylight would be coming in right here. However, I know everyone's situation is different, and you may not have an ideal lighting situation in my art studio. I have lighting over here. We have some sliding glass doors, and that's where the natural lighting is. I have a little bit of natural lighting in the other room over that way, but it's not ideal. I personally because of my business and all the video and webinars that I do, I have purchased. Ah, higher end lighting kit is called the Diva Ring light, and you can see I'm using it right now. you could probably see there's little circles in my eyes from where the diva ring lightness is going. I'm gonna go and turn it off and just show you the difference without the diva Bring light . All right, so this is how it looks without the lighting. Huge difference, right? And so if you're really going to want to take your videos to more professional level having professional lighting, you don't have to start with the devouring light. I know it's several $100. You can start with a $70 lighting kit on Amazon. That's what I started with, and I will include links to all the things I mentioned in your class. Resource is, so let me turn the light back on so you can again see the difference. See how it took away shadows from my face? It just lit up the whole area. I had a shadow on my face from a piece of hair right here. And so the devouring light is great. I love it, and yet you could do a lot of things without any professional lighting kits. I also have this little light. It's called a chap light. It's really inexpensive. I think maybe $20 what it does is it will clip on to your iPhone. And so you just want to make sure you don't cover your camera wherever your camera lens is , and you can clip this on here and then turn it on and it will have light for you, whatever you are recording. And so this is a nice thing, especially if you're traveling. Um, I haven't been too impressed with that as faras for Instagram just because I have professional lighting and so this just doesn't compare. But it's better than nothing if you're in a really dark place, especially for videos, videos need lighting. So this this is definitely something toe look into. It has different adjustments. He can do it medium, and you could do it higher. I don't know if you could see the difference when I did that. So I'm without lighting again and I will show you just how this lights me up so you can see it kind of lights me up. You can move it around, find a place that's good, but it's definitely not gonna replace professional lighting, however, a very inexpensive option if you're going to invest in lighting. I would recommend saving up for the $70 lighting kit on Amazon something like that instead of this. But this is definitely something to think about as well. Also, when you're using natural light, you can use a piece of white paper to reflect that light on an item. So my natural light comes from this direction. If I was photographing this art piece and I had it laying town, then I would have the white piece of paper on this side because having it here, you're going to reflect the natural light down on there. And so that's something that you can consider a swell professional for Tarver's use things like that all the time. I remember when I was getting a photo shoot once for my business. They had big pieces of white paper and the position it to reflect the sun onto onto my face because we were all side. So that is definitely something you can try as well
5. Staging: Let's not talk about staging. So when you're staging your photos and videos, you want to think about what's gonna be around that photo. What's going to be the environment of that photo? I typically tend to take my photos and my videos in one of two places. So this is my actual work space right now, and I will take. But my video's here. One thing that I want to mention is I currently have this little cutting board. That's glass. I love it, It's called Is from We are memory Keepers. I got it at Michael's with the coupon Love my Groupons. I love it because the glass cleans up easily and I do a lot of water color and splatters. And so I love this for the ease of cleanup. However, for photos and videos, it will reflect. So if you see right here right now, it's reflecting my devouring light, so that's not good. So what I've had to do is just instead of having the lighting directly on my video, I've had to move it to where the lighting is just more coming directly at this wall instead of down on my workspace. So you know that's what I'm working with right now. I know your situations are all different, and then one thing that's good to Dio is to include the supplies you use in the shot. So if I'm using watercolor, I may take this water color palette and put it on the side, and that looks kind of cool. I mainly out my brushes or my pens and put them out there. I may have the ink or the watercolor that I used in the bottles laying out next to my piece . One thing to do to get inspiration is this. Watch some of the other Instagram accounts and see how they set up their layouts to get ideas. If you want to find some other artists and letters toe follow on Instagram, you can see who I follow at my account, which is at color, my world beautiful, and you can get a lot of great it counts to follow that way. Now, just to be very riel. The other place I do. A lot of my staging for my photos and videos is my table right here. It's my dining room table. My art studio is actually in our dining room, and we have a small condo. But you know what? Use what you have, And so this table, this brown table, if you followed me, you'll see the Brown would background. But I just posted today this piece of artwork, and I had some staging. I had some pink office supplies that I put around it. I got those very inexpensively at Michael's. It matched the color of the peace, and then I was able to do some staging that way. Something else to consider for staging is greenery. These air just a few things I found at Michael's or at the dollar store, and then I could just add them to the side of my picture and use them for staging. That way you might also want to use colored backgrounds so you could have different colors of card stock that you've cut out. And then you could have that as the background for your picture, for instance, for this one, because it has blue and I could have used the blue paper and framed it that way. You can also take other sheets of paper and start framing them different ways that way, so I know it was kind of hard to see the staging stuff, but I think you can get the idea. It's just use what you have and pick up things as you can when you see them. Maybe at the dollar Store. Michaels Air on sale. Use what you have at home, but in the beginning, just use your supplies. You know, put your pens and markers and paints around those pictures and videos and use that for staging in the next video. I'm going to start getting into editing, going to share the APS that I use, the systems that I use and how I edit my photos and videos, So I hope you really enjoy the's next videos.
6. Editing and Posting Photos: in this video, I'm going to show you how to edit your photos in the system I use. So there are a ton of different APS. There's a tentative for things you can use, but the APS that I use most is what I'm going to show you in this video. So for just my basic shots, where I have a fairly good lighting, I use the app in the upper right hand corner called photo Toaster. It is a paid out, but I really like it. It's really simple to use and has another app that works with it that creates a system that is very easy for me to do. And I'm gonna show you how this works. So just click on photo library, and then I'm gonna click on the most recent picture I took. Gonna click on the little crop button and the top left hand corner, and I'm gonna choose rotate so you can rotate to the left or rotate to the right. Those buttons are in the bottom left hand corner. I'm gonna rotate to the left. Then we would choose. Okay. Now, when I take my photos, I take them in square format so they're already in square format for Instagram. You also want to make sure to clean off the lens of your phone to make sure it is clean. That's both for photos and videos, because sometimes it gets in your purse or it's you. It's in your pocket and it smudges. Do you want to make sure you get a nice, clean photo? So the thing I like about this AP Photo toaster If you click the icon in the bottom left hand corner, it will come up. Ah, bunch of different filters and they come pre set. There's a ton of different filters, but the one I use almost every time it's clarify. It's the very 1st 1 there. I'll just click on clarify and look how immediately it brightens it up. So see, that was as taken when I click on this clarify boom and it looks really nice. And then all I do is I click that icon in the top right hand corner, and then I use photo toaster with the apt title FX. This is also a small fee in the APP store, but again, like I said, it's going to save you a ton of time, it's going to be able to clean up your photos really quickly, really easily. And then the title FX. I'm gonna click on that. It's going to export the picture into their and what this does is it puts my watermark on there. So any time you post pictures on instagram or videos for that matter, people can actually steal them and use them and not give you credit or people may share it and it might go viral. And if your name or your your URL is not embedded into that photo or video, guess what? Your work just goes viral without you getting credit for it. So I think it's really important to do this and you can see right here I have a preset. You click the A in the top left hand corner. When you're creating a text in here for the first time, you can choose save as default state, and this is something I love. So every time I import a photo from photo toaster into title FX, it automatically has that in there. I don't have to re type it. It could just double tap it, and I'm gonna go ahead and return this. You could do it on left, a line right? Aligns center, align when I click the little arrow. And then there we go. I like to sometimes just keep my website and my extra graham a little bit more subtle, so I could if you click the middle button, I could change us to a bright white. And that looks cool, too. But sometimes I just like to keep it more subtle and at least just still have my branding on there. You can also come over to the A. You can change the size of this. You can change the angle if you need to change the angle for a certain shot. And then, if you swipe to the left holding swipe, you could do characters facing lines facing so you have a lot of different options. Swipe again. You could do transparency so you can make it more or less transparent than just click on the A again to make it go away. So on the middle you can choose the different colors, the F on the very left hand side. You can choose different fonts I'm using future, and so if you want to use Ah font similar to mine I'm using future, but you can come through, scroll through and see what you want. You just want one that's easy to read. You don't want something too fancy or too script like, because people are just gonna be glancing and you want them to be able to read it. And then under the FX, there's other things there. I mostly just use the size and the angle, or I may change the color. Like if I'm on a white background, I may choose the dark gray or the black so you can do any of those and then you'll just click the top right hand, but in to export this and I usually just save it to my photo library. You can go straight to Instagram, but I like to have it on my phone as well. Just toe have it as a backup. All right, so now that you have it saved to your phone, now it's time to go into Instagram, and you can actually do a lot of editing and instagram click the center, but in and you're gonna click next. Let me just share here on the filters. I used to use these built in filters. There's some that I like Juno Claritin sometimes, but I don't use these as much. But if you do use these and you want to reorder, um at least right now, if you just hold it and swipe it, it will change it. You can also manage your filters over here, and you can move them around from over there and Instagram is changing all the time. So I just want you to know that this may the way that this is set up may be may change by the time that you see it. So the way that I normally at my photos, once I get on instagram, as I do a manual edit so usually you don't want to just choose a built in filter for this only choose brightness and you can brighten up your photos. You Kenbrell down the rightness a little bit, depending on how you want it to look. And then contrast could do a little more contrast. I don't really think either those changes it that much. You could do some highlights and shadows. I typically will go down a little bit. I think I kind of, like, a little bit of shadow on this. But once you change it, you can see if you put your thumb on the picture and hold it, it's gonna show you the difference. So see the difference that that made in my photo. So I always home. I almost always at it. The photo. Further, once I come in to instagram and a little tip if you want to do photo editing on Instagram without actually posting it to instagram but still getting it saved on your phone, you just need to go into your settings and make sure you have selected that you want to have the original photo saved to your phone and then use your phone in airplane mode, and that will do the trick for you. So if I go to next, this is where you're going to write the caption so you can write the caption. You can tag people just by tapping, and if I want to tag myself, I could do that. I accidentally tax someone, and I want to remove the tag. Just, um, tap that tag again and then tap the X so that you attacked people. You sure to Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, flicker, swarm. There's some other things. You goto advanced settings and turn off the commenting if you want. I typically I mean 90% of time. You're not gonna want to do that with the captions. One thing I want to show you is how you concurrently format into paragraphs on an iPhone. So when it android from my research, I found that you can do the paragraphs be seeing easier. But if you see when I tap the ABC, there's no return space. We have to tap the 123 in the bottom left hand corner, and then you'll see the return key in the bottom right hand corner. So click the return key, and then one thing. You have to make sure if you put a space after the line at the top, it will not work, so you have to make sure there's no spaces after the line. Then you're gonna click return, and then you just need to put something here. You can put a period, but what I like to use I click on the pound plus equal sign right above ABC, and it gives me more options, and I like to use the black dot on the second line on the far right. So I like to use that and then I'll press the return key again just next Next line in return. Next line return. And this is the only way I have found to put spaces between your words on Instagram. So I'm just gonna go ahead and post this just to show you how it works and that I'm gonna go ahead and delete it. But you'll see if I do this now is all on a new line. So I'm gonna go ahead and delete that since it's not time for that post. But let me show you in a recent post here, what I do then is I go into my comments right after I posted it, and I add hashtags. So in a later video I'm actually gonna give you all of my hashtag is that I have personally researched and I'm going to share with you a super fast way to add all of these hashtags with just a few keystrokes. So I think you're gonna really enjoy that. But I'm gonna share that in a later video. So that is the basics of how to edit your photo and then post it on Instagram. However, I want to show you one other trick and one other app that may be helpful to you. And it's the app in the center called faced face. Tune to now you can use a paid version, but I'm using the free version. So if you click face tune and then you quick the, um three icon on the upper right hand side next to last, you can scroll for your camera roll to find a picture. I'm gonna use this one. So this one, I actually staged it with white posterboard behind it. So you could just get some white posterboard at your office supply store if you don't have a nice table or background and then you can put your artwork over top of that. But with this white, sometimes it doesn't get white enough when I take the picture. So with face tune, you can whiten it up and it's like magic. So you click the white button and that the bottom left hand side you distract your finger across the white areas and you get all of that white and make you know it's making it wider , so I'm just dragging my finger across all of that way area. So now once I've done that, there's a little slider bar. You can bring that slider bar up all the way and you could see how it made it even whiter, and I'm gonna accept it. Now I'm gonna click on Whiten again. I'm gonna do it another time. And what you can do then is you can really get your background super white. Now, one thing you do have to be careful of is, if you put it your finger over your artwork, it may wash out the colors. So can you see how white that is? Right now it is super white Gonna accept that. So let me go ahead and save this to my camera roll. Just click the top right hand corner and saved the camera roll. And the reason you want to save it to Kimbrel and not just posted immediately to Instagram is that you want to put your URL on there. So now I'm going to go ahead into photo toaster just like I did last time. I'm going to click on the bottom left hand corner click on Clarify Going to click the top right hand icon. Click on title effects, and once you get used to this, it will go really fast. So see, my name and I G handle is already there when a change it too dark gray because this time it's a white background. And look how quickly I did that and then I'm gonna save it to my photo library. And then from here, I composed a tow instagram with my caption and my hashtags. So I hope you found this video really helpful on how to edit your photos easily and quickly with just a few clicks of a button again, the APS that I used our photo toaster title, FX and Face Tune to. And in the next video, I'm going to show you how to edit your videos and post them to Instagram
7. Editing and Posting Videos: There are three APS I use the most for videos. I'm movie hyper laps, and von hyper lapse is an up you can record into. And then you can change the speed of the video so you can get a 40 minute video down toe one minute. Now, one of the things I learned by researching is that when you open hyper laps, you can actually tap with four fingers and it will open up a new beta feature. Now, let me just show you real quick. This is just my keyboard. When you record a video, there's a slider over here and it shows you this is for X. I have all the way up to 40 X. You don't normally get that. That was unlocked with the hidden features. And I had to try it over and over again to try and that you just happen with four fingers. But, you know, if you try it, you can then unlock faster speed. So, no, I'm going to take that video I just recorded in hyper lapse into my movie. And the reason I'm gonna use it into my movie is I need to change the orientation of the video. So in my movie just can click on that video where it's yellow around it and then at the top . If you put your fingers on there and then you turn to the left, you can reorient the video. And so I needed to reorient it toe horizontal. Here. You can also edit out anything you might need to like here. In the beginning, I can just cut off that beginning part. So tap on the video, then tap on split top on that initial part you want to get rid off and then in the right hand corner tap, delete. So now I can just go through the video. So the water color video And at the very end, I was having problems ending the video. So I'm just gonna go ahead and split and delete that part two and then I'm gonna click done and I'm gonna click the center button in the bottom and click save video. So I'm going to save it, and I usually choose the highest quality. Now, depending on your iPhone and the space that you have, you know, you may want to choose a slightly lower quality toe export your video because it will save space. But let me go ahead and finish exporting this now. It was exported to the photo library. So now I'm gonna go into Avant. I'm gonna click on the camera, but in in the bottom center area, I'm gonna click load new video, click camera roll. And I'm gonna choose that video I just edited in I movie. Now, a lot of the times I will crop it to square and I'll show you that in the next video. But I'm just gonna use original video cause I need it to be the full length for this particular video. And then what I can do is I can just tap on here at text, and this is where you can add your You are all and such in there. And you can put that in there. You can change on the style. You can change the font color. Click done. Um, tilt. You know, you can tilt it as much as you want with the plus and minus buttons or the slider. The text is where you can change the text. Size can change the size. So there's a lot you can do with this And then once I have the text on there, you'll see there's a red mark across the top and along the left handed bar of the video, and I'll just drag that bar and I'll just see where my kind of watermark ends up throughout the video for this one. I think I could put it up here and I could change it toe white and maybe just tilt it a little bit to fit right in there and then just at the very end of disappears. But I think that's really good. And so sometimes what may happen is if you have your cursor in the middle of the video and then you tap on it to add tucked. Just gonna say testing. What will happen then is you can if you top the testing, see that orange bar, the bottom it's on. Lee gonna show that text for half of the video because you started it right? You know, you you added the text at that part of the video. So to correct that you can just drag that bar all the way over, and now it should show up for the entire video. Yes, so there's testing and there's the other one. So that one, if you cook the arrow to the right or just swipe it, then you can delete that. And then once you have your text where you want it, you're gonna click the bottom right hand corner and again you could do full HD, or you can just do regular H two you and export. It saved the video. So if you have limited space, you're gonna really need to be careful that you're constantly backing up your videos. I use dropbox so you can use Dropbox to back up your videos. Or you can use air drop and you can air drop them to your to your computer if you have a Mac computer, so if you air drop it, you know you can transfer your videos. That way, if I go to my videos and photos, I can click, select and say you wanna just send all of those. Then when you choose the share button, you can choose the airdrop. It should start to show up on there. The other thing you can dio is you could just do like one video and save it to Dropbox. So let's say you wanted to save it to your Dropbox, you could save it to whatever folder you wanted, and that way you have it backed up, and so you'll just need to develop whatever system works best for you. I back up my photos and videos on Dropbox, and then I just right now I have enough space on my phone. I have 256 Mega writes. I haven't run out of space, but then I just delete the the images and the videos on my phone that have been backed up. You don't want to delete things if you don't have a backup, because you may need those videos or photos again later. So when you post to instagram, you show you here. Here's the video and in the left hand corner you can make it bigger. So for this particular video, I want to be full screen landscape, and then I'm gonna click on next, and then you can confuse a filter I usually don't. If you don't want any music or sound, just click the little icon in the top center to turn the sound off and then you know, if you want to change the cover image of that video. Tap the bottom right hand corner cover, and what you can do is you can slide through the video and you can choose a section where you know it's really shows what you're doing. Maybe, like right there would be a good cover when you're doing lettering near the end where they can see the lettering is a great place to have a cover image when you go next, the caption and everything is the same that I showed you previously with the photos. The main thing with the video is whether you want the sound on or off and the cover much. Make sure you put a cover image on their to know me, assure you one more way to edit videos and these air the close up videos. You're gonna go into my movie, click on the plus tab and movie. Then you're gonna click on the video and create movie. This one in particular is one that I did with the close up method, and so I'm going to edit it in I movie, and then I'm going to import it into Avant to crop to a square image and add my watermark. Okay, so now that I'm in I movie, what? I'm gonna do something Quick play, and what I try to do is dally anything that's unnecessary. So I'm gonna tap on that video split, gonna press play again, and then I'm gonna wait until I start writing again about right. They're gonna tap it in and click split. Now, I'm gonna top that piece that I don't need. I'm gonna click delete in a move on and here I'm gonna adjust the screen. So I'm tapping the video, tapping the magnifying glass, and I'm pulling it down a little bit just so it stays centered. I like to have a state centred, and it could also almost be just a little more centered on a tap. It split, and I'll play it until I know it's gonna come to the next part. Now I could hear a little bit of noise in there. If you want to remove the noise here and I movie, you could just click the video clip and click detached. That blue part will be there. That's the auto. You just click delete. So that's a way you can remove the audio from the video I recommend doing it at the beginning before you split it up. So you just have to do it once for the whole video. But you can also remove the sound from within instagram like I showed you earlier. Let's go ahead and continue finishing the editing of this video. And I don't worry about having my videos perfect when I know I'm going at it and I movie because I know that I can take out any mistakes and really just take out any spaces that I want. All right, So I'm just gonna click done, click the center icon, Click Save, and I'm gonna save this to my phone. Then I'm going to come into the vaunt app and I'm going to load a new video, Gonna click camera roll, and I'm gonna choose that video I just edited. I'm include choose crop to square. Now. This is where you're gonna have to increase it. Just pinch it to where you want it. Sometimes you may have to move it around, depending what kind of video it is. Click done. And then this is how you will have your video cropped a square ready for instagram using the up close method that I have showed You gonna add text so you can add your instagram text. They're gonna put this at the top of the video. And again you can click style and choose a different color. I'm gonna choose, actually choose Gray and what I like to normally do, it's just scroll through, see where it's gonna be. And I might want to just have it over to the left a little bit me up just a little bit. And then I'm gonna click the bottom right hand icon and click export save video. And once you get used to the process of how this works, it's going to go a lot faster for you. Then what? You go to instagram, click the center button and there is my A video in a click. Next for this one, I'm gonna make sure this sound is off, and then I'm gonna click cover at the bottom, so I like showing it in action. So I'm gonna choose that for my cover, and I'm gonna make sure this sound like I said is off and click Next. I can click em in real time. I'm gonna go ahead and post this to Facebook is it's my art by Shelley Hits Page and I do want this video to post their when I click share. And then I'm gonna add my hashtags in a comment. And again I'm gonna show you in the next video my system for the hashtags. So no. Within just a few minutes I recorded my video. I edited it. I added my watermark, and I added, My hashtags, this has become a really simple system for me, and I could do it very quickly. People love these videos, and it's a great way to offer value and to build a following on instagram. And so I hope that you really enjoyed thes tutorials on how to edit and post your videos. Like I mentioned in the next video, I'm gonna talk with you all about Hashtags in the system. I used to add Hashtags super fast
8. How to Brighten Your Videos for Instagram: in this video, I want to show you a quick way to add brightness to your videos. So I found this free app. It's just video filters. It's the one right in the center. That's what it looks like in the apple store. And then you'll choose the video you want to brighten. It will give you a preview, and then you click. Select in the right hand corner, and then once you're on this screen, there's a bunch of different filters. There is a white and but the one I have found works better, is brighter. So it's, you know where the text is. Brighter is the one right above it, and then you can preview it just to see what it will look like. A little bit brighter. You can see that's the brighter. That's the original. Let's go back to a brighter you can see. It definitely looks better. Click export in the right hand corner. It will process up to 100% and then you'll click Save to save it to your to save it to your phone. So this is a super fast, super easy way to brighten up your videos, and I have definitely been doing this more often, and so wanted to share this free up and this technique with you. So just click save video and you're done.
9. Add a Watermark to Your Video via iMovie: in this video, I'm gonna show you how to add a watermark to your video inside I movies so you don't have to use a separate app so you can start a new movie. But I'm just gonna go ahead and use this video I just created. And what you have to do is for every section of the video. So if you cropped out this video at all, you'll have to add the watermark again. So instead of doing that, I'm just gonna go ahead and save my video. So I just have one videophile and then I'm going to start a new movie and then going to load that movie. And now it's just one video file. There's no separate videos because what happens is you would have to re add it to every single little file. And that takes a long time if you've edited a lot. So what I did in the beginning was just add this little text in the corner. But if you want to crop it to square on instagram, that's not gonna work. So you use your standard and this is what used to confuse me. You don't have to use all of these, you can just type on an X them out and you could just use this bottom one. I'm just gonna touch and hold. And when you select all that, you can just put your cursor in there. Now you can put your instagram user name. You can put your website, so I'm just gonna put my website in here. And then there it ISS, and I can't really move this around or anything, but right there on the bottom in the center is perfect. So now you can see my you are Ellis on there for the entire video, and so I can click done, and I'm gonna click the export button and save the video again. So it's going to save it twice. And you could just delete that first video if you want from your phone so you don't have extra video on there. But what this does is that it allows you to do everything from within I movie. Okay, so now I'm gonna go to Instagram. And when I click the plus but in and I go toe load that video, it's right there in the center frame. Now I can make it bigger if I want, but I want it to be a square because that is what is pretty much acceptable on Instagram, and then the rest of the video is the same. You quick on the cover image and you'll want to, you know, choose a cover image that you think would be of interest. Probably something like this. See Price, something like that. But then you'll just click. Next, you add your description and you'll post it. And so that's how you can easily add your watermark from within. I movie without using another app. I hope that you found this video to tour all helpful.
10. Hashtags on Instagram: one of the biggest things you need to know for marketing on Instagram is all about Hashtags . So hashtags are the way that people search for specific content on instagram instagram. Currently, as of the time of recording, this video allows you to put up to 30 hashtags in your videos. And what I'm realizing is that sometimes I want to go back and add specific hashtags or I want to create my own hashtag to search for certain tutorials to easily share with people where those tutorials are. So my recommendation is to put maybe 27 to 28 hashtags at the most in your captions. And so let me just show you on this most recent video I just posted this morning, and you can see in the comment I have hashtag specific to the A B. C's so specifically for the letter O for several challenges than I have hashtag specifically for Crayolas. And what happens is, then your content gets seen in those lists. So if I click on Crayola graffiti and I scrolled down, there's my video right there under Most re sent my videos right there and now that I have some decent followers. I mean, I just posted this this morning, but I have noticed that my post do often end up in the top post now for different hashtags , which will give you even more visibility. And I think you get in the top posts just by how many likes and comments and things like that that you get. So that's how hashtags kind of work and what you need to do is you need to actually search on instagram for the hashtag, so there's a little magnifying glass on the bottom row. 2nd 1 in you just click on that magnifying class. It will take you to the search section of INSTAGRAM. You'll click on the search bar, and then you want to click on tags, and it will show you some of your most recent tags. But let's just say I'm just searching for the first time on lettering. I could just type in letter like a type in letter, um, lettering. And then what it will do is it will bring up a bunch of different tags, and it will tell you how many posts have been shared with that tax on the lettering tag. 4.7 million post. That's a very popular tag that would be a great one to use. You have lettering challenge lettering with positivity. That's a specific challenge. I'm gonna be talking about challenges in my final video. On other tips, lettering art has 100 20,000 so there's a bunch of different ones. Here's lettering, video lettering daily. So what you could do is you can research all of these, and you don't really want to say Use one if it's less than 1000 posts, unless it's your personal branded hashtag, or unless it's just a very small niche, you want to try to find Hashtags that are actually being used because that's how you're gonna become discoverable. The other thing is to use Hashtags that very so to have different sets of hashtags that you use for different things. So it may come back over to my profile again. This other post I just posted this morning I showed you this how I edited this picture in an earlier video. It turned out really good, very white background, but for this post, it's more based upon some of my Christian beliefs, and so I used a whole different set of Hashtags based on Bible by our scripture of the day , things like that. And so what it does is it reaches a completely different audience. This post will reach a completely different audience with the Hashtags, Then my lettering video and what you want to do is you want to vary your hashtag so that you're reaching different audiences. And if you just use the same hashtags over and over and over and over your reaching the same people over and over and over. However, to type in 30 different hashtags every time takes a long time. Not only that, but it takes hours to do the research. I mean, I have done the research on all sorts of things. I did the research on like that Bible and I looked all that stuff up. I looked up the research on watercolor. I looked up the research on Sharpies and Crayolas and all of my research is available to you in the class. Resource is so I have a word document for you rule where you can just coffee and faced and used the same hashtag if you want or just choose the ones that you want and use, you know, don't use the ones that you don't want. So I just basically made a alphabetical list of everything that I am currently using, and it's gonna change, and it's gonna continue to evolve. But I just wanted you to save a bunch of time. I've done the research for you. So you go to the tab, your project on skill share, and then and currently you have to be on a computer or a browser, and then you'll see on the the right hand side, you'll see the downloads. So make sure to download that one for sure, because I have done the research for you. So once you have all the hashtags, let me show you a really, really amazing trick that's going to save you tons of time. You're going to get so much time back and you're just going toe. Love it. You have to set it up once, that's all. So let me show you how it works. You're gonna go to your settings? Yup, in the iPhone. And then you're gonna scroll down to general. And then when you get to General, you're going to scroll down to keyboard and on keyboard you're going to choose text replacement. This is amazing. You can use it for anything but let me show you This one here I don't know if you noticed when I was in vaunt the vaunt app I just typed in at a I G and it pre filled my website and my i g profile. That's because I set this up in text replacement. So I recommend that you do this as well. Said this up. Just put your shortcut. Could be whatever you want. I just chose at a I g and them put in whatever phrase you want to have watermarked on your videos. So this was my ABC one that I included on the learning video I just showed you. So what I basically do is on instagram. I just type the pound signal or hashtag ABC And then I click this the space bar on my phone and it pre populates with all of these hashtags. It's like magic. I have this one. This is the 1st 1 I use. I don't use it as much because I've started to get more specific. I have a Bible one a Bible journaling one which is Bible J Bible video. Crayola in. Boss, I have iPad I videos. If you do digital lettering, you can use that. And then the ones I probably use the most our letter and letter to. So those are both just general lettering. Um, Hashtags And I use that I have a Michael Sharpie and watercolor. So let me show you how this works in instagram. So let's say I am going into this post. I just posted it and I put hashtag ABC. And then can you see that second thing? It's already pre populating. All I have to do is click the space bar and voila. All of that is in here. So I could do that with any of those text replacements I have created, so I could do hashtag letter boom and all of my ash dogs air there. Am I blowing your mind right now? Is this something so amazing? I hope that this is so useful to you. And all you have to do is set it up once. So I've provided for you the word document with all of my hashtags. So all you have to do is set these up once and you are good to go. So one of the things that you may want to do is use Google docks. Google docks is a app you can add to your phone and then I have right here on Google docks . This is the entire document that I created for you. I first created it in Google docks because that's how I copied it from my phone into this document. And then I ended up saving it for you as a word document. So this would be a super easy way. You just copy and paste all the hashtags from the word document into Google docks, and then you have it on your phone through the Google docks, App to use. You can also use something like Dropbox or whatever you use. You can text it to yourself, you know, I mean, however you want to do it. I just recommend going in setting this up, set up these text replaces for other things, too, things that you're writing all the time on your phone. I did that for my hope filled lettering challenge. There's a certain phrase I'll add at the end of each post, and so I just created a text replacement. That way I don't have to keep typing it every day. You know how many minutes? How many hours? How many days of my life I have saved by doing this? And do you know how many more people I've reached by doing this? It is incredible. When I forget to add Hashtags, it's almost like my post doesn't get seen, you know, it's just like it's invisible. But when I add 20 to 25 to maybe even up to 30 hashtag, you cannot up to 30. It's just amazing difference in the engagement I get and the people that see my posts and definitely the videos have gone viral for me have had very specific hashtags em. They've gotten into the top posts for those hashtags, and I really believe that's how I've grown my following as quickly as I have over the last few months. And you may think, 0 29 2900 followers isn't that much, you know. But it grows like when I first recorded the introduction video for this class, I was at 2800. Now I'm a 29 100 you know? I mean, it's growing rapidly, so I hope you will put this to use search for your specific Hashtags like I helped my husband. He's a running coach, and we just, you know, typed and running. Found a bunch of different hash tracks for him. I am an author coach, so I could look up, and I have different hashtags for writing. But whatever your topic is, whatever your niches, I guarantee there's Hashtags in there. So do your do your searches if you were in tow. Art. I've already done a lot of the research for you. You can just download that were documents, Put it on the Google Dogs or something like that and get these het up. Do it's going to save you so much time in the next video, I'm gonna talk all about instagram stories how you can use it to build a connection to your audience, but also how you can use it to drive traffic to your products to your post and to really add even more effectiveness to the marketing you do on Instagram
11. Instagram Stories: Okay, so let's talk about Instagram stories. This is a really powerful way to connect with your audience, and I try to post at least once a day. I think you do need to be careful about not over posting and again, Like I said in the beginning video, you want to still make your content relevant to your audience. So when I click on my picture, you can see right here. I'm talking about editing these videos for this glass. I'm showing a review of some new watercolors I got. That's a post I just did, and so unable to interact with my audience in a very specific way. So what you do is you click the camera in the top left hand corner. Right now, you can see my keyboard, but you can take pictures or videos and then along the bottom, you can also go live. Now this is really powerful for being able to demonstrate things I got on the other day when I was practicing my alphabet. I was just gonna be practicing anyways, and I interacted with people. There were people that have taken my skill share classes, and I was able to add more value to them. People that were interested in my lettering. Practice sheets after that. So live video can be very powerful if you're having a product launch or if you're having something special like that that you can demonstrate on video and interact with people. But even if you just want to show your painting process or whatever you're doing, that's a great way to do it. So once you have your picture, you can do different things on it. You cannot stickers. You can add lines you can draw on. It can undo click done. You can add tax A surprise, the one I use the most. And one of the things that I didn't realize that first is you can change the size of the text cause I would type in something like hope filled lettering, and the last letter wouldn't fit and you know I would finish in. I try to squeeze it, and it's like No won't work. If you click on the A in May, you can make it bigger or smaller, and so that's one way you can get Sure text if it if you want a background behind your text so that you can see it better. I recommend using the little icon in the bottom left or corner, making the size bigger so it doesn't take a long to do it. And then you just kind of swipe your finger so that it shows behind the text. So it's really easy to to use. Instagram stories also like to create little arrows up to my profile. That's probably a little too thick. I already had it thick from that So and what that does is if I'm telling them you know, Link is in my bio or this is my latest post. It's going to drive traffic to either whatever you're promoting with the link in your bio, cause if they click your picture in the upper left hand corner currently, it will take them back to your profile, and they can see your posts and other things. You can also say message me and then put a narrow down. So if you're asking for feedback, if you're trying to, you know, interact and connect with your audience, you can say message me and arrow down. One thing I did that worked really well. They said. If you want me to a letter, Your name message me and I got a lot of people that message me. And then I did a name collage, and then I posted that intact Everyone, let me show you where it is. Here does. I did a video, and so I did those names, and it's a way that really helped me connect with my audience, and I was able to offer value to other people cause they were watching my lettering. And so that's a great way to use instagram stories as well. So I hope that this helps you get a feel for how you can start using instagram stories to better connect with your audience to drive traffic toe whatever you're promoting and back to your posts again. You want to remember those key things I mentioned and foundational video about marketing. Make it about them, adding value, making about a connection, telling stories and stay on. Focus off what your profile is all about. In the final video, we're going to talk about additional tips that will help you grow your following on instagram, and I'm excited to share that content with you and
12. Other Tips to Grow Your Following: in this video, I'm going to talk about some additional tips. W grow your following So one of the things you can do is run contests, and it doesn't have to break the bank, even if you're not sponsored by companies. I've already run three contests, and what it does is it helps generate new followers, and it helps build goodwill and connection with your current followers. Here's an example of my 1000 giveaway, and basically, you just want to create something that your audience wants. And so I was giving away some Tom Bo pens, some marker paper and some custom art you can see on this post. I had over 103 comments and I was able to give value, and it really didn't cost me that much to do this giveaway. I also recently did a giveaway when I reached 2500. So again, I just grab some supplies that I had around and some custom artwork, and I put together a giveaway. This one did not yield quite as much. It was 44 comments, so it's probably based upon what I gave away. People really wanted more. The Tom Bo pens and marker paper. So it's helps you get to know your audience to of what they really want, what they're really interested in. And my very first giveaway wasn't Everyone wins give away, and I gave away digital prints from my Etsy shop. So in your class, resource is I will include seven steps to an effective instagram give away, and that way you have all of that information right there. And I'll even include a sample entry of what I have used, and you can feel free to just adapt that. Use it like a template. Um, you do want to make sure you tell them how to enter aunt who it's open to. You also want to make sure that you say it's not sponsored or endorsed or associated with instagram. And there's some different giveaway hashtags you can use, so I'll include all of that in your class. Resource is for you, so make sure to download that click on the your project tab, and it will be on the right hand side. You have to be on your computer or on a browser to see that. The second thing I want to talk to you about his challenge is now in the whole world of lettering. There are, Ah, Brazilian lettering challenges, and they're popping up more and more every month. But these air popular because this is a great way to practice. I have found an account called lettering Challenges, and what she does is she repost the challenges every month, and so this is a great place to go and find lettering challenges, and participating in a lettering challenge is a great way to gain visibility with the others that are also participating in that lettering challenge. So the person who's hosting it's gonna notice you more. If you're very active in their challenge, you're going to be seen by the people also, and participating in that challenge of following the hash tag for that challenge. And so I have done several different challenges, and I talk. Try to participate whenever a cam, but on this account you can just scroll through, and you can see what different types of challenges there are. One of the challenges that's very popular is lettering with positivity, that one gets a lot of interaction and so you can scroll through and see which ones interest you. This is the challenge. I recently started hope filled lettering. And so how you get your challenge featured on this account is you just tag them and add their hashtag for the lettering challenges. And so participating in challenges or hosting challenges is a great way to get visibility. Now hosting a challenge is a lot more work, so I don't recommend just jumping in and hosting a challenge unless you have a real specific reason to do so. I had a very specific reason. I started the hope filled lettering challenge, and you can find out all about why started it and about the challenge at Shelley hits dot com or it slash hope. Another way to grow your instagram count and to connect with others and network is to feature other people's accounts. And so I started doing this. This was one of the videos that I featured, and you can use the app repost. It's down here in the bottom center. Or you can use in stuck repost, those air, both re posting APS that make it very easy to repost. And then you can see here. I said, I need to do this with my watercolors and I have sense. This is my pick today for Shelly's favor of the day. So I created my own hashtag, made sure nobody else was using it. And if you click on Shelley's favor the day, then you could see all the different accounts that I have featured over the last couple months. And so I think, things that I really like or I want to share and I feature them. And that is a way to build a following, because sometimes, like this video was very popular. You know, there's over 5000 views and you know, it's good content. This one was a great lettering video. You know, there's just a lot of great things that you can share. You also get on the radar of the person that you're sharing their information. So if you want a network with someone who is bigger in your niche or in your topic area, you can do that. The other thing is, if you are running your own challenges, you can feature people like this. And so this was from my hopeful lettering. I feature the accounts. I tagged them on here, and so if you participate in my challenges, there's a chance that you will be featured. So those are different things you can do now for this type of a feature picture. The app that I use is the layout up, and it makes it really super easy. You just choose the four images you want to feature click that top right hand button. I choose Borders, and then you choose save, and that's as easy as it is. So I just take a screenshot of the actual post initially. And that's where I got thes thes pictures from these air all screenshots. You just take the screenshot and then you can feature them that way. So that's one way to do that as well. Another tip is just simply to network. So what? You what I mean by networking is commenting on other people's posts, liking them, replying to their instagram stories. So I will often watch the instagram stories. And if there's something that I enjoy, you just swipe up and you can write them a message. And so I will often write messages to people, and there are people that have really big accounts, but they know my name because I have been messaging them in building a relationship with, um, again, marketing is about relationships. It's about know, like and trust. It's building that know like, and trust with others. So they start to know you. They start toe like you, they start to trust you. And so if you can interact with people personally now, obviously you can't do this all the time, all day, every day, or else it's going to take up your whole life. So you need to do it in the time that you have you set a timer. If you have to interact, look at some post house, get a ton of information from other people's posts anyways, and so that's a great way to interact and to build your profile as well be consistent. So when you're posting on Instagram, you want to be consistent. I usually post anywhere from probably 2 to 6 times a day. Now some people say, Don't post six times a day. I've been posting a lot because I'm very prolific, and I just that's just the way I am. But I would recommend posting at least try to post once a day and try to stay consistent. You can always prepare things ahead of time. So sometimes what I'll do is if I'm in a certain challenge, I will write up in a letter all the different things at once. I'll take the pictures of them or I'll take the videos all in one chunk of time. If I have an extra hour on Saturday or something like that, and then I'll post them each day and it just takes me a few minutes to actually post it. So that's an option for you is to batch your posts but then actually publish them on a daily basis instead of just all at once. You really want to be careful not to spam your audience with too much content. You want it to be valuable and also try to spread out what you do. So like, I have a video, a picture, a picture video picture picture, video picture video and try to spread out what you're talking about. And you know, some people will say, you know, try to make your your grids on Instagram look good and match, and I don't really think about that or pay attention to that. I just try to add good value, be consistent and try to vary the content that I'm posting so that it's of interest to my followers. And then the last final tip is toe have fun. So if you're not having fun, if you're dreading it, if you're not enjoying it, it's just not gonna work. It just isn't you're going to not be putting your heart into it. And so I encourage you to go and instagram not just for the purpose of I need to make money but to have relationships toe have fun to be inspired. And to be honest, I didn't even intend to make any money off of my art. It's just naturally come about as because I'm a teacher and I love to teach and I love to share. And so it's my It's just a passion and it's a hobby and it fills my heart. And so I love it. So I just encourage you to not be on Instagram, you know, just for the purpose of I need to get this money followers or I need to sell this money things, but to really just enjoy and have fun. I hope you enjoy this class and I cannot wait to see your project. Your project for this class is to post one photo edited and with your watermark and one video edited with your watermark. I would love to see a photo or a video that you've edited with the tips you have in this class. I want to see that there's Hashtags in your comment and then just leave me the link to your profile and what post it was that you did with this class. So go ahead and post your project. The photo and the video you edited with the new tips you've gained from this class, I cannot wait to see your photos and videos, and I'm so excited to see how this class helps you grow your instagram following.
13. Next steps: There you have it. We have covered a ton of information. Oh, my goodness. I hope that you've gotten so much value from this that you have tips and APS and processes and systems that you cannot put in place to help you reach more people on Instagram to grow your following and to share your art with more people. I really hope and pray that this helps you to grow your instagram account in just amazing ways. If you enjoy this class, I would really appreciate you simply taking a moment to post your review here on skill share. There should be a pop up at the top of your screen that says, Would you recommend this class to other students? Simply click yes and post a sentence or two about what you learned, what you appreciated or what you've gained from this class, and it would mean the world to me. It also helps to reach more people with this training. And so I appreciate you taking a moment to do that. This is not the end. It's just the beginning. Social media is always changing. There will always be new things, and so stay in tune with your tribe continue to post great content, continue to interact with them, and I really believe you'll find success. I hope you'll join me over on my instagram profile. Color my world beautiful and I will see you over on instagram again. This is Shelly hits on other Coach, an artist, and I'm on a mission to help you reach more people with your message. It's time to let your light shine. Thank you so much for joining me in this class. If you would like more marketing training. I have a ton of marketing training for authors that you might find helpful on my blog's Shelley hits dot com. For it slash free, you'll find all my free trainings, and I would love for you to check it out. I also hope to see you in my other skill share classes, and I will see you in the next class
Shelley Hitz, Watercolor and Lettering Artist
