Transcripts
1. Introduction: Hi, welcome to how to grow on e-cigarette from 0 course is beginner's course will guide
you through the process of creating an optimized
Instagram account. So you can build your following. Create content that really
matters to your audience and achieve your goals with this
amazing social platform. My name is Alex football Scott, and an e-cigarette specialties and social media
market there we have our three years of experience in building and growing
Instagram profiles, working with brands and creators for many different industries. What are the most
common struggles of every Instagram beginner? But it's time to
complete this course. You'll be able to find your specific niche and
targeted audience. Increased discoverability with an optimized Instagram
bio and hashtags, create a visually
appealing profile. Use Bravo Analytics
to your advantage. Read content that matters, reformers that
mattered the most, the most important Instagram
on this and features and use Instagram tools that makes managing your
profile much easier. The next 60 minutes, I'll
take you through 14 chapters, each filled with step-by-step
tips and guidance for Instagram profile based
on real life examples, you'll find a checklist with an action plans of
evolved after completing each chapter so we can immediately implementing
new strategies. This course is supposed to help everyone right at the start of their Instagram
journey or anyone who strategy doesn't
seem to be working. So if that sounds like you, then you're in the right place. Feel free to take a look through the course
description and let's sit your Instagram
account on the path to success.
2. Chapter 1. Define your niche and purpose: When you're starting
out on Instagram, the first thing
to think about is your profiles,
niche, and purpose. Instagram audience
I carry out for my clients still show
that these are one of the most overlooked elements
of planning and building a successful Instagram
profile without establishing your niche and setting clear goals
for Instagram. None of the pieces
of advice I have for you in this course
will matter at all. I realized that you just wont
to get the ball rolling, but before you start posting
and getting your content out there to find your niche known
as your field expertise. You are starting your
profile for a reason. Maybe you have your
jewelry brand, you write a blog about fashion, or maybe you want to become an influencer in a
very specific field, no matter what it is,
I think what is that? One thing, your own special thing you want your
profile to be about. Once you answer these questions, think what makes you
stand out in this field? Or is there some kind of
knowledge you can bring to the table that no one else
shares and most importantly, be very specific about it. Here's an example of how you
can narrow down the niche. Let's take a wedding
florist named Kate. She's based in Adelaide, Australia and she wants to use her Instagram to promote
her fluoro surveys. There are thousands of
wedding florist on Instagram, but there are a couple of
things that makes her unique. First of all, her field of expertise are rustic
thing to weddings, but that's not everything. Let's remember that
Kate happens to operate in Adelaide, Australia, which means that her
service won't be probably directed to
everyone in the world, but mostly two capitals looking for wedding
floral designers. In this aria, instead of reaching out to an enormous
audience looking for general wedding floral
inspirations are people based on the other side of
the world who aren't here, potential customers, she can
narrow down her niche to the wedding florist and
stylists based in Adelaide, creating timeless floral designs for rustic deemed weddings. This way she didn't only
define her field of expertise, but also specifically
named her target audience. Does the action
plan you should try to follow when deciding about your niche to attract the right people to
follow your profile. I've always been overly generic. Fashion isn't really a niche, but a professional wedding
style is who help you find your perfect wedding dress
is thanks to this approach, people will start to associate your profile with a
particular kind of content and you'll gain
recognizability much faster. Well then you've
established your niche. So now let's look into
your prevalence purpose and note this is not
the same as your niche. Your profile purpose
is defined by the set of goals you've chosen
for your account. In other words, it says what you need your
Instagram profile for. Do we want to
promote your brand, your service or product, expand your mailing list, or show your expertise
and get your clients. Let's take our wedding florist
Kate as an example and try to set some goals for
her Instagram profile. The goal number one
could be promoting her floral business. Then she could use Instagram to expand their customer
base in Adelaide, or maybe tried to set herself as an expert in drastic theme
floral designs for weddings. Now, you decide on
what you want to achieve with your
Instagram profile as it will affect your
content strategy and the way you communicate
with your audience. A clear niche and purpose of
your profile will help you immensely to answer
other questions regarding your
Instagram strategy, like what to put in your bio to capture your ideal audience, what your profile should
look like based on your specific niche
hashtags, should you use? What kind of content will resonate with your
target audience and what kind of content
will achieve your goals. So take your time and
make sure you get this out of the way before
you dive in any further.
3. Chapter 2. Find your target audience: Your contents can
attract Everybody. There are over 2 billion
Instagram users on Instagram, so you can add most reach a tiny fraction of these number. Remember that you won't be able to please everyone because you simply can't be
everything to everyone. That's why in your
Instagram strategy, you have to focus on people
who really matter to you. And they are exactly this
tiny little fraction of Instagram users known as
your target audience. In other words, a
specific group of people interested in buying
your service or a product, a target audience
may be dictated by gender, age, location, interests, future plans, income, and many other factors
relevant to your niche. Let's go back to our wedding
florist skate and try to fill these gaps to identify
hair target audience. So you can do the analogy
cool thing for your profile. Target audience's gender
can be both men and women. But from my research
profiles in the wedding, and these are mainly followed by women and they are the
main customer base. So let's say def, case
target audience's gender are mostly women. In terms of h, we should
look into the average age of our costumers and
they're mostly couples in their late 20s, early 30s. So we can assume that
their target audience ages between 2535 years old. We've got location, in her case, they are couples
based in Adelaide and other locations
near Adelaide. Next, there are interests. Kay specializes in
rustic themed wedding, so her profile will be
interesting for people looking for rustic
wedding inspirations. Future plans are pretty
easy for this example, we're probably talking about couples planning to get married. And the finally,
we've got income. It will vary depending on your prices and where your base. So I'll leave it blank, but I'm sure you can
predict what should be an average income
of our customers. These kind of audience
research will help you craft relevant content that leads
to higher conversion rates. You'll know exactly
who you're talking to, what kind of communication
will be relevant to these people and what
are their expectations. Once you pin down who's
your ideal followers, you can look for inspiration in other profiles in your
niche to see what works in their
Instagram strategy that attracts people you'd
like to connect with. You can look into their visual
identity content strategy and the way they engage
with their audience.
4. Chapter 3. Business vs Creator Account: Okay, so you've already figured
out what's your profiles, niche and purpose, and who
is your target audience. But no matter what it
is and who they are, you will only achieve
your goals with a business or creator account. The most important
advantages of switching to one of the professional
accounts is that both of them give you
access to your profile analytics as in contact buttons, they do, however, have
some differences that should help you decide
which one suits you better. I'm going to set
one up right now, so grab your phone
and let's do it. If you've just set up your Instagram profile
and you haven't done anything about what
type of accounts you have, chances are it is a
personal account. We're going to change
this right now by going to your
Instagram profile, you'll need to tap on
the hamburger icon and go to settings. Then go to account. Scroll down to the
bottom of this menu and click Switch to
professional account. Instagram will show you what
are the features you'll get by switching to a
professional account, you can familiarize
yourself with all of them. And once you're done,
hit Continue and decide about the category that best
describes your profile. If you don't see category
specific to your needs, you can also look it
up in the search bar. For example, for our
wedding florist, Kate, I could look
up a term, Flores. And as you can see
on the screen, it is also available as
one of the categories. So I'll go for this one. Now click Done and you'll
see this pop-up message that allows you to confirm
that you really want to switch to a
professional account. We've just agreed that
this is a necessary step, so just hit Okay. Give it a second to
process and voila, you're in the final
screen that allows you to decide what type of
accounts you want, business or creator based on the category F chosen
for my profile, instagram suggests that I should go for a business account, which is a good
suggestion because Kate has a local thorough
business in Adelaide. So that's pretty easy. But if you have any doubt about what type of account
you should go for, here are some tips that
should help you decide. Business account is best for more traditional business
models like retailers, so-called businesses, brands, organisations are
service providers. So if you're a business looking
to create a following on Instagram and use the platform
to build brand awareness, increased sales, or
reach new customers. This is a perfect
choice for you. It matters, especially if
you're a local business, because this option
also allows you to display your address
in the contact button. On the other hand,
creator account is best for public figures, content producers, bloggers,
artists, and influencers. So people who aren't necessarily business owners,
but for example, wants to partner
with businesses, build fan communities,
or personal brands. You should go if
creator accounts, if you fit into
this description. Now if you're ready
to make a decision, select one of the
options and hate next. If you chose a business account, you will be able to feel
your contact info and decide if you want to
display it in your profile. Then if you have
a Facebook page, you can connect it to your
Instagram profile right away. But if you're done, just click, Don't connect to
a Facebook page. Now, the final screen
will be the same for both a business
and a creator account. So it will see Elisa
things you can do before going live with
your brand new profile, like getting inspired by exploring other
profiles in your niche, inviting new friends
via Instagram, e-mail and so on. Creating a post or familiarizing yourself with insights and adds. And that's it. Your professional account
is ready to rock the world.
5. Chapter 4. Optimize your bio: Another important element
of your Instagram strategy is your business card
known as Instagram bio. Whether you're showcasing
your personal brand or your company's brand, all of the elements of your Instagram bio can
grab the attention of your potential followers and get them to click
the follow button. You only get a tiny
bit of space to tell people who you are,
who your profile is. For wire visitors should care about your brand and also
how they can reach here, your bio is a representation of your brand's personality and values to make it a good one. Remember that there
is much more to it than a few lines
of text right now, I'm going to discuss
all the things you should remember about when creating your bio and L
duties based on an example, you've already met our
wedding florist case, so I'm going to write a bio
for her Instagram profile. So you know exactly what you
should pay attention to. I can't stress this enough, so I'm going to say it again. In the first step,
you need to switch your profile to a business
or creator account, just as I mentioned before, professional accounts over extra features and
let you expand your bio with more information like your address
or contact details. They give you access to
the mighty analytics, which we'll discuss
later in this video. Next, remember to use a
recognizable profile peak. This is the first thing
people see in your account. It's there when you make a
comment on somebody's post, when you pop up notifications, when you add new
stories or feed posts, it's important for people to
essentially recognize it. Whatever they see it. They said, What are
a photo of yourself or a brand logo will
be a better choice. If you're a business,
your luggage should become your
profile picture. If we're building
a personal brand, you should consider using
a photo of yourself. No matter if it's your
headshot or your logo, you want it to be high-quality, big enough to be
seen on mobile and match your overall
profile aesthetics. In case of our
wedding floor escape, her face is the face
of her business. So in this situation, we can use her head shot in a nice flowery setting that
indicates what she does, but also it's high-quality
and will stand out among other
creators in this niche. When you're done
with your profile pic, make your username, account name, and your
profile description searchable if possible, use keywords in each of these
components to rank higher in search results, keywords
identify urination. So for example, a
wedding florist, like Kate may want to put a
word Flores in her handle, then she can be even
more specific with for a display name that
also appears in search right below
the username and say that she's a rustic
wedding florist. Then take it a step further
and clearly stated in the proposal description
what type of wedding floral designs
she specializes in. In this example, it
could sound something like Adelaide based
wedding Flores and style is creating timeless floral designs for
rustic themed weddings. This way, her profile
will be more discoverable for people interested
in her surveys. Another thing to
remember when writing your profile
description is that you only get 150 characters, so you should really
use them strategically. What I mean by that is that
same as with a business card, you will need to use your
creativity to optimize those few lines of texts and
show your brand personality. Clearly define who you are, what you do, and why
people should follow you. Try to answer all
these questions before you write your bio and check out a few profiles in
your niche for inspiration. Now, here's another thing
your bio can convert. So you should make
sure to use it to encourage people to take action. What are your
profiles goal is to drive more traffic to a website, building a community or selling your service
or a product, you need to tell
people what kind of action you want them to
take on your profile. Use a call to action in your bio to achieve
any of these goals. For example, if your Instagram is all about delicious food, you can say follow me for daily
recipes or go with sharp. Now, if you just launched a
new product or sign up now, if you're a building
and mailing list, Our wedding florist, Kate, On the other hand, could go with a call to action like book a consultation or get your free wedding pack where
she presents her offer. Your bio is also a perfect place to help people find
your elsewhere. Your call to action can go hand-in-hand with
your link in bio, if your goal is to redirect
people to your blog or business website or your
product landing page. A good city a and
a link in bio are essential for achieving
your objectives. But there's more you can do to help people find
you or reach you. You can also add a button
with your contact details and your business address
to make it super easy for our visitors to
get in touch with you. For K, it will be
the best idea to display all of her
contact details since she runs her own studio. But I also added the link in bio that leads people
to hear, offer. And finally, don't
forget to find a strategic use for your
stories highlights. Maybe they're not officially considered as part
of Instagram bio, but they can work as an
excellent extension with marketing information
about shoe or a business, you can use them to
showcase your product. Create an About
section where you tell your audience more about
yourself or your business. Answer frequently
asked questions, or maybe share some
behind the scenes from your day-to-day business
or personal life, whatever you decide
your highlights to be, think of them as your
priority content you want your audience to see. First, keep in mind
that people are more likely to follow visually
appealing profiles. Your profile doesn't
need to look perfect, but it should correspond with your overall branding because people will recognize
you for it. You should apply this approach
not only to your feed, but also your
stories highlights. At the end of the day,
they can really grab people's attention if they
have a creative design, you don't need to read for
expensive tools or hire a graphic designer to make your highlights
look professional. At the beginning of
your Instagram journey, you can do it yourself with
a simple tool like Canva. Here's a project I've created
for kids highlight covers. I've used a couple
of images that refer to the rustic style and
feel of her business, but this is not the
only way to go. You can also go for
infographics that referred to contents
of the highlights. For example, something
like for this profile, it felt right to create
an About section where kids can say
more about herself, her passion to rest, to
get them to weddings, and her florist experience. Then the highlight
with some back of the scenes from her studio where she shows the process of creating beautiful
flower arrangements. If portfolio section, because
if you think about it, had customers will make
decisions about hiring her based on her past
work and experience. And finally, a frequently asked questions highlight
where she can give her clients exact
answers they need without having them to
look for them to heart. And that's it. This is how they
look in her profile. And then we can follow this
exact process to create beautiful highlights for
your own Instagram account, you should make sure that
your key highlights stay at the front where people
can see them on mobile. It will be four to five
highlights displayed at the front and there'll be the most viewed by your visitors. They are organized in
chronological order. So every time you add a new story to one
of your highlights, that highlight will be moved
to the front of the line. That will be it for crafting
an optimized bio for your brand new are already
existing Instagram profiles. So let's move to
the next chapter.
6. Chapter 5. Create cohesive visual: I think we all know that
Instagram is a visual platform. The moment when someone visits your profile and decides
to stay or go less, maybe a couple of seconds. Most of the viewers won't even scroll through the
first two lines of your posts if they're
not driven to your profile by
something unique, I'm sure you're full
quite a few profiles on Instagram yourself. So you should know this
from your own experience. Are you more likely to
follow a protocol that's visually appealing?
I think we all are. That's why you should
be intentional about your profiles, design,
well-crafted bio. The first thing that
catches people's attention, they get the initial idea
on what to expect from your profile and if that's something they are looking for, but if they experience
isn't pleasing to the eye, they'll probably
leave your account without giving it
a second thought. The way you present
yourself visually on Instagram is a substantial
part of your branding. You want your Instagram
stories, highlights covers, your profile photo
and your feet bows to correspond with your
brand's visual. The best way to start planning a consistent feed is
identifying your style. Does your brands need a more elegant and
minimalistic approach? Does have a retro feel to it. Or maybe it's all about
contrast in colors. Go like some inspiration is to find the best fit
for your brand. Once you've established
your visual direction, you'll be able to choose
your brand scholars. Not only will they help you
create a dam for your feeds, your stories and your
highlight covers. And you will also become
the representation of your profile and make your followers think
of you whatever they see content that
represents your style. A good way forward is to
create a color palette of two to four colors so they won't lead to too much visual chaos. And at the same time, they will give you some creative space. If you don't know much
about color theory, you can easily generate
beautiful color combinations. We free online
tools like colors, use a color wheel or
expert colleagues from your photo
inspiration in Canada. Or if you're an Android user, you can try a mobile app
called just palette. Let's jump into these
tools and you'll see how easy it can be to generate
your own color palette. Let's start with colors, that code, I mean, their
homepage right now. And as you can see
on the screen, you can choose to generate your own color palettes are explored, they're
trending palettes. Let's first have a look
at the trending ones. There are in sets of
five or even ten colors are beautifully
complementing each other. This is honestly a very easy
and also sufficient way to choose leading colors
for your Instagram account. If you're going for a bit
more minimalistic look, you don't need to go for
five different colors. You can stick to free and that
will be completely enough. Each color has an individual
code is called a hex value. You can copy this code by
double-clicking on it. Now you may be asking yourself, what am I supposed to do
with a code I need to color? But don't worry, is
there for a reason? You can use these codes to apply the exact same color you've
found in the generator. In any graphic design tool you will be creating
your content wave. Again, I usually
work with Canvas. I'll go to one of
my designs in there and add this color
to my project. Let's say that I want to change the background of this image. So I'll go to the
color selector, click on the plus icon in the menu that appears
on the left side. And all I need to do now to use the color I've chosen
ink colors That's coat, is to paste my hex value in the box that you
can see right here. You can do the same thing for each element of your design. I think that's a
super smart way to start creating a cohesive feed. Now let's look at
the other option. Go back to the homepage and
select star, the generator. In this case, you can create your personalized color palette and it is also super easy. Right now, we see a set
of five colors and I'm going to generate some
random combinations. For that. I'll hit space bar on my keyboard and the platform
will generate new sets. But let's say I'm not
happy with any of them, so I'll go ahead and create
a custom color combination. To do that, I'll need to
select the first color either by choosing it from
one of the example says, or by using a tool
called a color picker, I'd like to select
colors that feel appropriate for Cates
drastic floral design. I think that natural
color will be appropriate for this
type of accounts. Some greens, whites,
and this kind of thing. So this is the first color
I'd like to go with green. In order to use it as
a reference color, I'll need to lock it so the
platform won't change it when I start generating
other four calories, okay, the color is locked and
all I have to do now is hit the Spacebar again and again as many times
as I need to find the right color corresponding
with the first one. After fighting the
second color alike, I'll do the same
thing as I did with the first one and lock
it for a reference. I think I'd like to go
for something brighter, so let's keep looking. Okay, this one is fine. So now I'll carry on with the same process to
get the full palette. And that's it. Another super easy
way to generate a color palette East to use
Canva color generators, the platform offers
two ways to do it, and they are totally free. The first one I'll show you is the one that uses a photo as a reference and creates a full color palette
based on that example. So right here I'll upload one of the photos that represents the style of content I'll be posting for Cates
floral business. Let's say that this
one is quite accurate. And voila, you have four
colors you can use in your graphic posts that have the same feel as your photos. Now let's look at
another kind of a generator that
uses a color wheel. You can select your
reference color by moving the color pickers
on the wheel and changing the tones
with the slider. And once you've picked
your main color, you can select one of
the color combinations. Want to know more
about what they mean. Canva explained it very
well in this text, I've chosen a triadic
color combination. I think it looks pretty good. And it took me a few
seconds to do it. Just Pilot App works
in a very similar way, but you can do the
work on your phone, on the Android users
will be able to use it. So if you're a lucky
Android owner, just go ahead and
download the app and create some amazing
color palettes. The next step to achieve
a cohesive visual art and your profile is finding
the right fonts using random phones in each post
can make your feet look a bit messy rate to less appealing and readable
for your audience. Add some consistency
in these areas. Select one max two
for fonts you'll be using in your graphics
with quotes and carousels, not all phones go together. So in this case, you can get some assistance
from Google Fonts. All the typeface is listed in Google fonts directory
are open source, meaning that you can use them
freely for any web page, commercial or
non-commercial purposes. You can also find great font
pairings on font paired.co. Font per provides a visual
example of the font pairings. So it is much easier to
imagine how are they going to look in your posts once you find the font pairings you like, you can check if
they're available in Canada, for example, this one is a combination of a font called Nando and Florida. They look pretty good. Let's go to canva and see
if they are all there. Yep. They're both available, so we're good to go. The last thing you
want to keep in mind is that the easiest way to maintain a cohesive feed is planning your content ahead. It will not only save your incredible amounts of
time on content creation, but it will also help you avoid
any errors in your grade. You can use apps
like preview later plan only or plan that
it is different layouts for your content and
see what kind of great pattern works
for your best to keep things interesting combined
different forms of content like video,
graphics and photos. And if you're running
out of ideas is an excellent place to find beautiful and customizable
graphic templates. I've talked about this so
quite a lot in this course, but I believe it's using
too many tools can be confusing at the beginning
of your Instagram journey. So the most effective
way to go is to use one and muster one. And after awhile when you feel
that's kinda isn't enough, you can go and
explore other tools. We've been appealing,
consistent feed your Instagram profile will
look much more professional, enhance your credibility
and help you stand out in the over-saturated
instagram environment. So it is worth it to pay
more attention to it. To sum up this part of
the course where we've discussed the exterior
of an Instagram account, like the Instagram bio
and profile anesthetics. I'd like to show you
the final look of the Instagram
profile I've created for our wedding florist, Kate. Based on everything
we've discussed, this is how I'd imagine a profile like this
should look like. It can decide for yourself if the information
and the content you see here is appealing and worth clicking
the Follow button. I hope it is.
7. Chapter 6. Create valuable content: Okay, so we've covered
all the basics. You know, your niche,
your profiles, purpose, you've created a strong bio and decided on your
visual direction. Now it's a great moment to
talk about your content. What are you going to post? The only way you'll
be able to create content consistently and deliver value promise in
your bio description is creating content pillars. Content pillar is also known
as content buckets are content categories
are a foundation of your content strategy. They consist of the most
relevant topics for your target audience and should support your overall
Instagram goal. Think what kind of
themes would be the most interesting
for the audience. For example, content pillars for Kate, our wedding florist, could be sharing expert
knowledge like which flowers are the best choice
for us to get into wedding. She could be also sharing inspirations for drastic
weddings as well as photos and videos of the wedding projects
that she worked on. And then she could also pose graphics with for
clients testimonials, which is always a great idea. To give you another example, someone like a nutrition
coach could share content with meal
prepping clients, success stories and
inspirational content. Tips on how to live
a healthy lifestyle, but also nutrition problems
and their solutions. On the days when your head feels completely drain out of ideas, you'll be grateful to yourself for taking the time to pick the 45 topics for
your profile that you can always refer
to after awhile, your post analytics will determine what type
of content generates the most engagement
and help you to narrow down your content
pillars even more.
8. Chapter 7. Figure out your posting calendar: Now let's talk about
your posting routine. Instagram algorithm
favors active users. The more you post and engage, the higher your ranking
your followers feeds and your target audiences
explore pages. However, quality always
says before quantity. So before you decide on any
possible posting schedule, tried to answer
these two questions, the question number one, is what posting frequency
sustainable for me? And a Question number two, will the chosen
posting frequency affect the quality
of my content? The best boasting frequency
is the one that you can maintain without affecting
your content value. You don't want to be
flagging your audiences Facebook posts that don't
resonate with them. Posting less doesn't mean that your profile won't grow at all. It means that it may
grow at a slower pace and will require a bit
more patients from you, which is absolutely
fine and normal. Not everyone can afford to
hire a social media manager, so it's okay if you
decide to go slower, let me give you an example. Three posts a week should be a reasonable number
to show up regularly, deliver a variety of content, for example, one real
one graphic posts plus one photo post and maintain
consistent growth. Instagram stories are a
great way to show up for your existing audience
and we recommend sharing them on a daily basis. It sounds like a lot, but if you don't overthink
them to match, you realize that there
are much easier to create an almost every single
activity during your busy day is a great
starting material. Also remembered that they
go away in 24 hours. So really there's no need to
stress over them too much. The row behind the
scenes moments as a personal touch to your brand and are way more compelling for your followers
and another perfect image share good quote
that inspired you. Ask everyone how
are they dealing with another Monday
or snap a pico, be chilling with your pet
after a long day of work, the possibilities are endless. Once you settle on
your posting frequency created content calendar based on the best posting days and times for your profile. Do you know how to
figure that out? That's right. You'll find this info in your
profile status, which we'll talk about
later in this course. Once you apply this
posting approach, you'll be able to tweak
your content plan as you learn more about what works
best for your profile.
9. Chapter 8. Intro to hashtags: A stunning feet and
milk out bio and great content mean nothing if no
one finds your account. That's why hashtags are
very important for growth to your Instagram posts are
not showing up in hashtags. It is not because
they aren't working. It's your hashtag strategy that may need some improvements. If you use them correctly,
they can become one of the most valuable assets
in or Instagram strategy. So there's absolutely
no need to avoid them. There is still the best
organic way to expand your reach and deliver
your posterior target audience their work exceptionally well
for micro accounts that rely on new audiences and their primary
source of reach and engagement comes from hashtags, take full advantage of
the power of hashtags and uses many of them
as you can every time you post each
hashtags and opportunity to get your content
seen by new people. I'm not trying to
say that you should always use 30 allowed in a post, but I definitely recommend
to use as many hashtags as you can that describe your
content and your audience. Very specifically,
especially if you just started building
your Instagram presence. Here's a couple of
tips that should help you find
effective hashtags. First of all, do your research, check your competitors
profiles because account size is
similar to yours, large accounts will most likely use high-volume hashtags just in millions of posts and they are very difficult to compete with. This is Bravo's of your
target audience and see what hashtags they
follow on Instagram, this will give you an
idea of what hashtags best describe your niche
and your audience. Go to a chosen profile, click on following and right here on the list of
followed accounts, you'll find hashed x followed
by this profile as well. Another thing to remember is that repeating the same set of hashtags in every single post
is not the greatest idea. And you should use a
couple of new ones every time you post to
reach new audiences. Remember to keep your
hashtags in the caption. This tip came straight from
Instagram headquarters, revealing another piece of the mystery known
as the algorithm, as good enough reasons
to follow this advice. If you want your post to be
more discoverable in search, your hashtags and keywords should be placed in the caption, not the comments held the algorithm with
the right choices. The more specific you are with your hashtags is
the easier it is for the algorithm to index
your content and your profile. Avoid popular hashtags like fashion using over a billion of posts and instead
try with something smaller like minimal
fashion style, which is way more
specific and has been used in less than
20 thousand posts, your content will be much
easier to find and student, you should notice an increase
in reach and engagement. And here comes my
final hashtag advice. Whenever you ran out of ideas, use hashtag research tools like IQ hashtags, hashtag
search engine. It will improve your
hashtag research and help you find those that work. To give you an example,
I've just looked into my IQ hashtags
profile and I'll use the hashtag search
engine to find hashtags relevant to a post
about Instagram tips. In a second, you'll see loads of hashtags related
to my search term. And here they are. I can easily filter my
results by the hashtag size, average comments and
likes count per post, which is an absolute
time-saver and helps to find even more
targeted hashtags. All you need to do is to select the ones that work
for your post. You can copy the entire set of hashtags and pasted
in your new posts. But you can also save them as a collection so you
can refer to them in the future when you post something that relates
to the same topic, I'd say, here's your secret
recipe for hashtag research.
10. Chapter 9. Understand your analytics: Understanding your analytics
is the only way to guide your Instagram
strategy to the next level, your profile insights hide important information
about your followers and your post performance. This precious data carries an enormous amount
of value because it helps you to generate
content that your audience will
actually love. Now you're probably
wondering how some charts and numbers
can do that for you. I have at least three
good reasons why you should pay attention
to your insights. You'll get to know
your audience. You will find out
where they're from, what age and gender they are. This data will help you
to determine whether your followers match
your target audience and incorporate elements
in your posts and videos that they
will appreciate. For example, if you design wedding dresses and heavily
tool studio in London, you will hypothetically
want to reach London-based woman
between 2535 years old. But then you've
just learned from your Instagram insights
that majority of your followers are women in their forties and they
are based in Liverpool. Because why not? You
know very well that this data does not describe the majority of your customers. So what can you do about it? If your followers aren't
your target audience, you need to research
what type of content and
communication strategy will resonate with them. Explore your
competitors profiles with a target audience
similar to yours, and make a note of what
could be working for them and what's missing
in your content strategy. Another benefit from tracking your insights is
that you'll find out the best time to post your profile insides
still you'll win. The majority of your
followers are on the line. You can use this
information to post at peak times when the
majority of your followers are active on the platform
to maximize the number of people seeing and interacting with your photos and videos. Your profile is xyz are
also amazing for finding trending content with data
for specific post stories, videos, reels and live videos, you'll be able to
check how each one performed and how people
engage with them. The metrics will
pay attention to the most depend on your goal. If you're building a community, you'll pay attention
to the number of likes, comments, shares, and saves if you care about your website traffic
and how many people clicked on the link in your bio, you'll check the number of website visits generated
by your posts. There isn't to do all of that. Is that after
awhile when you see that some post work
better than others, you can prioritize this type of content in the future
to provide better value for your audience and see how it increases your
profiles engagement. Instagram insights hold is very valuable data about if you're serious about
your profiles grove, you can analyze more than your audience's demographic data from a more advanced
tools like IQ hashtags, which I've talked about
in the previous chapter. I've already told
you that age is an amazing platform
for hashtag research, but it is way more than that. Instead of looking up
profiles and your followers base to have a better
understanding of who they are, you can simply check your IQ hashtags profile
and see what kind of content they consume the most based on their interests, hashtags, and taxes they
use on the platform. The profile we're
looking at right now shows that the majority of its followers are people who use hashtags like
social media marketing, digital marketing,
or women in base. Which is great because
this account is all about Instagram marketing, so it reaches the
right audience. A great way this propyl
can benefit from this information is
to use these hashtags in their content to connect with more like-minded people and expand their
followers based with a very targeted audience.
11. Chapter 10. Use trending formats: In 2021, that video format slowly but surely became
the king of Instagram. Tiktok with his
growing popularity became a real threat
to the platform. So they had no choice but to
adapt to the new reality. Reals became insanely
popular and to this day are the number one strategy to organically expand
your profile page. I'm not saying stop posting
photos or graphics dry. Now, maintaining a variety of content is just as
important as ever. But you have to remember
that the reals are heavily promoted by Instagram. That's not going to
change this year. Head of Instagram atoms, sorry, and now that the
platform is going to double down on video format in 2022 and continue to push
reals into everyone's faces. The simple conclusion
is that if you're serious about growing
on Instagram in 2022, you should incorporate
rules into your Instagram strategy and take advantage of their
incredible growth potential, or at least give them a try.
12. Chapter 11. Take advantage of new features: Instagram is an
ever-changing environment and so should be your
Instagram strategy. Every new feature into resisted a platform is your new
growth opportunity. Same as we've
released, instagram encourages users to test new products by rewarding them with better
reach and engagement. That's why you should
be flexible and open-minded when a new window
of opportunity opens up. Right now, you should
definitely take advantage of the latest features like
Instagram collapse. Loves allow you to invite
another creator to collaborate on a regular
post or an Instagram real, the pulse will be coauthored and displayed on both users feeds. What's so great about it, your content will be seen by two different audiences
and each interaction, meaning likes,
comments, or shares, will be summed up as one. If you want to
supercharge your posts reach and gets new
eyes on your content, it's time to start experimenting with this exciting feature. New updates for life stories are definitely worth
mentioning as well. Instagram doesn't only
allow you to schedule your lives up to 90
days in advance, but because also introduced a new feature called
practice mode. Breakfast mode allows
you to test some ideas, check your setup and see
what works best without putting too much pressure on
yourself before going live. Stories lives can
be a great element of your content strategy and help you to
authentically connect with your followers
in real time. You can use it as a
storytelling platform. Start a conversation
with your audience, answer their questions
about you or your brand, or maybe talk about
your product. They can be a great way to increase engagement
in your profile. So you should
definitely consider incorporating lives into
your content strategy. Another new exciting
upgrade to stories that can be a great reach and
engagement booster is add your sticker that allows you to start a thread your followers can respond to with their content once
they join your thread, photo or a video will appear in their stories with
your sticker on it, allowing their followers
to join the game as well. It is a very effective
form of interaction with your audience
because it's really fun and very easy
to engage with. You can start your own
thread with a simple call to action like show me the book
you're reading right now. If we're followers
pick up on this game, you have a chance to reach their followers and their
followers, followers. So the whole thing
can blow up with an incredible chain of interactions that
lead to your profile.
13. Chapter 12. Avoid rookie mistakes: There's no words
discouragement and building a successful Instagram profile than not seeing any
growth results. Here are the three worst
Instagram mistakes that can kill all of
your Instagram efforts. The first mistake is
a really famous ones, so you've probably heard of it, but it is really important
to say it again. We were talking about
posting and ghosting. This is one of the best
and most common ways to sabotage your growth. Ie, the first 60 minutes from the moment your post goes live, the algorithm boost
content-based on his engagement. The more interactions
with your content, the better your chances to rank higher up and your
followers feats and more users explore pages. And besides the
technical aspect, taking part in conversation
builds relationships with your followers and gives them a reason to connect
with you again, another way to easily kill your Instagram F force
is boosting your growth. We've bought the
reality e staff and building a successful
Instagram profile requires a lot of patients. And yes, constant changes on the platform don't really helped us stay on
top of the game. So it is normal that
you look for shortcuts, both our advertisers and efficient way to
improve your day to day Instagram routine
by saving you a lot of time on
manually following, commenting on posts or taking other actions that increase your chances of getting
your followers. Nonetheless, even if automating your account seems
like a strategic move, this can lead to many
serious consequences, including getting
your profile band. Remember that both aren't
real human beings. They are not sensitive to the subject they're
commenting on. So you might end up leaving
comments like great content under a heartfelt posts about
someone's life struggles. Another downside to this
growth methods is that people can easily recognized
comments that come from bots. If you'd get caught and exposed, it will completely ruin your credibility
with your audience. People expect authentic
interactions with you, and only you boss
will never be able to step into your shoes and connect with your
audience the way they do. Boss will never be
able to step into your shoes and connect with
your audience the way you do, are these good enough
reasons to avoid boosting your growth
with a fake audience? I think they are, but if
you're still not completely convinced that this is
not the best way to go. There's the one last thing you should consider before
giving it a go. Instagram can punish
you for using third-party apps or services
that generate interactions, may temporarily
block or permanently bind your account
without any warning. Don't waste your time and money on this side of services as they won't bring any value to your Instagram account
in the long run, the last but not least, rookie mistake you
should not be making on Instagram East and meaningless
engagement is great if you understand the concept of Instagram being a social
platform where you need to interact
with people in order to grow and build relationships. However, only genuine
engagement shows results. Spending 20 minutes
riding generate comments like wonderful or
great posts and your target audiences fees will unlikely resonate with anyone. These approach shows
that you haven't really read the caption
and you were there only to attract attention to yourself when you decide
to leave a comment, right, a DM, or respond
to a post your tag, then make it valuable. Show real interests in what
the author had to say and share your own experience or
expertise in the subject. A portable communication can
inspire followers engaging the future builds trust and
long-lasting relationships.
14. Chapter 13. Protect your account: After putting so
much time and effort into implementing your
Instagram strategy, you definitely don't
want it to go to waste because you didn't
keep your account secure. Remember that your profile
is never entirely yours. And at the end of the day, Instagram decides
about its existence. You can get on Instagram as
block-based in multiple ways, like using hashtags,
being spammy on the platform, or using bots, including being
rightfully accused of violating Instagram's
community guidelines, our terms of use, and the last one is the
worst one because you will have absolutely no
control over it. Fortunately, last
year the platform introduced new
transparency tools that help Instagram users to understand what's happening
with their accounts. Unlike the old days when
your account could get temporarily banned
without any explanation. Right now you can monitor your account status and learn what you can
do if your posts are actions go against Instagram's
community guidelines to avoid repeating
the same mistakes leading to your account
being disabled. If Instagram sees any unwanted activity
from your profile, you'll get notified about it in account status with
instructions on how to fix it. Remember that instagram
also makes mistakes. If you disagree
with their review, you'll be able to appeal to their decision directly
from account status. You have no guarantee
that something like being disabled by Instagram
won't happen to you. So make sure to check your
account status once in a while to avoid losing access to your account
in the future, make sure to also set up two-factor authentication
for our Instagram profile. Click on the hamburger
icon in your profile, go to Settings security, and switch on two-factor
authentication. With this feature on, you'll receive a notification
or be asked to enter a special login code
when someone tries to login into your
account from a device, Instagram doesn't
recognize this way. You'll protect your
account from hackers.
15. Chapter 14. Audit your profile: Just like I said at the very
beginning of this video, your Instagram strategy requires
an individual approach. You can apply all of the
advice I've given you, but the most important part of the work needs to
be done by you. You'll need to draw conclusions from every action you take on your profile and decide
on what works best. A strategy that
will work for you right now may not
be as effective in six months time because Instagram is
constantly changing. So make sure to
stay up to date and review your action plan
on a regular basis. If you feel that you
need another pair of eyes to examine
your profile and identify any errors that might be affecting
your Instagram growth. Then you should also consider booking a custom
Instagram audit. Right now, you can book an
Instagram audit with me and my social media partner
in crime, Kate, we will review your profile and deliver a complex PDF that includes identification of a provost strengths
and weaknesses, your bio content and hashtags review with
tips on how to optimize each of these components of your profile and a
couple of strategies, suggestions based on our
findings in your account. If this sounds
interesting for you, we are running a special offer
on IQ hashtags.com so we can book your audit to right now and we'll get back to you
with all the answers.
16. Outro: Building a successful
Instagram profile doesn't happen in a day, so don't worry if you feel
a bit lost right now, things will get
easier as you go. And whenever you
need some backup before you're next
Instagram Live, you can always go back to this course and review
your checklists. Good to locket of growing
your Instagram profile. And if you enjoy this
course and make sure to leave your rating and review so more people can start at Instagram journey
with less effort. Thank you so much
for being here and hopefully I'll see you
soon on Instagram.
Alex Popowska, Marketing manager
