Instagram Marketing: How to Cash in on Your Passion

1. Introduction: everybody. How's it going? This is Patrick staying here. Now everybody uses Instagram, and we all know that it's one of the fastest, hottest growing social media platforms in the game. The challenges that for a lot of people who are businesses, entrepreneurs or freelancers, you know, we use it passively, but we don't really know what to do to take it to the next level. And at the same time, it seems like all these other people have figured out how to make full time living off of Instagram. So this court's where we're gonna do is we're gonna take a look at the digital marketing and business side of things and how to set up your account so that you could be ready to build a really engaged following. They're not gonna be any spammy tactics, no follow for following no cheap tricks. We're gonna show you a clean, legit way to build a following on instagram so that you could eventually monetize that count. Whether you're building your personal brand, whether you're a business selling a product or service or if you're somebody that is a creative and you wanna work with advertisers in the future, so we're gonna show you all the fundamentals on what advertisers look at. And the great thing about this course is that we're going to show you what the top Instagram accounts are doing to grow their following organically, whether they're artists or a freelancer entrepreneur or even a business owner. We're going to show you all the tips and tricks that the top INSTAGRAM accounts are using so that you could take some inspiration from them and grow your own INSTAGRAM account to. The reason why I create this course is because, you know, I'm on a mission to inspire people to make a living from what they love and because Instagram allows us to create a following around anything we're actually interested in. I want to teach you from the business side of things how to position yourself so that you can actually make money off of instagram in the future if you're looking to take your instagram account to the next level and really set yourself up so that you can sell a product or service in the future, even work with advertisers. So I encourage you to take a massive action and enrolled in this class and take your instagram to the next level 2. Choosing Your Niche & Passion: Hey, what's going on? Guys? Welcome to the first session of this course. And in this specific lesson, we're gonna teach you guys specifically how you can figure out a knish that you can build a following me around and making sure you're actually passionate about that niche. Now the thing is, a lot of people think that you have to build on instagram account around what people want or what you think they want. The reality is because Instagram is so big and there's new users coming on every single day . You can literally build a following around anything, literally, anything that you're interested in. So if you're into fitness, photography, film photography or macho green tea, or even just like high end fountain pens, you can build an INSTAGRAM account around that. The reason why I encourage everybody to build a following around what you're actually passion about. Whether you're entrepreneur, freelancer, business owner or if you're building your personal brand is because you know you're gonna be on instagram every single day and you're gonna post content multiple times a day, engage with your following in the comments and reach out to people and essentially going to spend a lot of hours on instagram. So if you're going to spend the time, you will mind as well make it something you're passionate about. And when you're actually building in accounts around something you care about, you're gonna have the energy to go on every single day. You're gonna be consistent and you're gonna actually like building a following and talking to your community. So you gotta think about it long term, right When you're building an engaged following, it's gonna take some time. So pick something. It's so important to pick something that you actually like. Now, when it comes to, you know, setting goals for how many followers you think you should get, you want to be realistic of what you can do, right? Some of you guys have a couple 100 followers. Some of you guys air starting your instagram account for the first time. Other people watching this you might even have a couple of 1000 followers. But you want to take things to the next level. So you got to be realistic, you know, in you know, one month you want to think about, you know, can you get 1,015,000 depending on when you're at. And you know, every month you just have a milestone of what you're trying to reach now, you know, and every niche is going to be different, right? So if you do something more general, like, if you're into sports or like, uh, your photography in general, you might get more followers, and it might be faster. So when it comes to setting milestones for the amount of followers you wanna have over time , you want to be mindful that every nish is going to be different, right? So if you do an account on sports in general or like photography in general, you know your account might grow a little bit faster because you appeal to more people. But if you choose something really nish, let's say you know, macho green tea and you know a specific Japanese Monta green tea or something like that. You may not get as many followers as quickly, so you know, that's why it's hard to say, Like how many followers you should have in one month, three months or six months. You just have to understand your initial very well and, you know, set realistic goals on followers, the followers that you want to get for specific time periods. So now we're gonna go into some specific examples of people who have built in scram followings using a specific niche. So the first guy we're gonna actually dive into is this guy named gave scan you. So what he is known for is he does a lot of aerial photography, specifically drone photography. So when we're looking at his account, you know, first thing you kind of notices, like, writes from Los Angeles. Um, you know, and you go down to his feet and there's a certain theme he's actually using right, And when it comes to colors, So you kind of look at his account. You see a lot of drone aerial shots over here. So you know, a lot of people who are interested in drone photography with this certain aesthetic are gonna instantly follow him, right? So you want to, you know, his niche that he's going after is people who are interested in really beautiful drone photography at the same time, you know, there's a couple of videos that he's putting in there and mixing it up, and he's also putting you know shots that aren't necessarily drone shots. But then it kind of demonstrates the lifestyle that he lives and the type of works that he does. So I think it does a really good job in going after that knish. And if you kind of notice he has actually over 200,000 followers on INSTAGRAM. So you know, if you pick a knish that's like drone photography and you have a certain aesthetic and you go after it, you couldn't build a huge following doing that. So another example we're gonna use is artist named Taco. So Ta K, you talk. Who beats? He may. He's a producer and a photographer, and he actually works of a lot of brands like Adidas Puma. Um, and if you kind of see in his profile, he's a brand ambassador for Sony Australia. So if you kind of think about what kind of nish he's going after, um you know, obviously people follow him because of his music that he makes, but also the photography or pictures he has. So you kind of notice he's like very VSE Oh, heavy on the filters. It goes after a certain aesthetic, right? Um, and you could kind of get a vibe. Words very street Where, um, I guess Sophisticated Street where if you were to put it in some some kind of form and, you know, here's some shot he did probably influencer brandy. Oh, he's doing with Puma over here on. And you kind of tell can tell that his demographic is obviously people who are more fashion forward, more interested in sneakers but also interested in a very minimal aesthetic. You want to be surprised if they read kinfolk or like cereal mag. And if they listen to probably listen to, like so selection music like that, they're very hip hop electronics influenced. So in that case, it's hard to really describe what kind of demographic he's after. But if you were to kind of put it in words for an advertiser, it would be a, you know, fashion Ford, um, creative type that you know, is into photography city photography, sneakers. You know, I guess that would be a couple of examples. But again, then you could build a following off of something as vague but specific in that way. And, you know, these are you can kind of tell these of people they're going to be be interested in fashion , street fashion, um, and sneakers. So that is his demographic that he's going after. And he has, you know, 280 k followers pretty shrunk. Another example we're gonna go after is the community called Team Cozy over here and again similar to otaku beats. And he's actually one of the founders of team cozy. They're creating content for the urban street, where kind of demographic and, you know, sneaker influence, obviously. So they could work with a lot of brands who, you know, sell sneakers or so, um, clothes that appeal to a urban demographic urban demographic, right? Um, yeah, so that that's their nish that they're going after. It's very sneaker focused, but, you know, going to you guys, you know, I'm just showing you things that I'm naturally interested in. But if you're interested in, like a certain ish of, like illustration like hand illustration or cartoons or, you know, specific type of like fitness, then you could create a whole INSTAGRAM account about that. And, you know, don't worry about how many followers you think you're gonna get, whether it's going to 160,000 plus even a 1,000,000. Think about how engaged your following will be on. But I think the important thing is like just make sure you have an engaged following. You know, there's a rule of 100,000 true fans. You know, you can make entire living off of 1000 fans if they're truly, truly engaging your content. So the way I look at it is create high quality content that people want to see and that they're excited to see every day. And when they go on Instagram, they look forward to what you're pushing out. And, you know, as long as you're a passionate, you're truly interested in the euro is gonna have a ways of coming up with new content to create. So again, don't worry about the followers. You know, if you grow organically and your consistent with the type of work that you do, you're gonna build a following around your niche. Just make sure it's something that you actually care about, and you wanna, you know, work on for years and years to come. Because when it comes to picking Ornish, uh, it's something and building your instagram account. It's something that you're going to do for years to come, and you're gonna make money in the future. But just make sure that you're really passionate about what you do. You know, passion is the key of this game. If you're not passionate about it, you're just gonna quit later on, or you're gonna be like, this is boring. You're just going to stop and you're not gonna reap the fruits to your labor. So do things that you actually care about, You know, make it authentic, be passionate and, you know, looking forward to showing you what's in store for the next lesson. 3. Optimizing Your Profile & SEO: Yo, what's going on, guys? So in this section, we're gonna teach you guys how to optimize your profile pages. Now, some of you guys who already have been using Instagram for a while might be thinking like, Hey, I already know how to do this. I really know what's going on. You don't have to teach this and I totally get where you're coming from. But here's the thing. A lot of people I know who are using instagram, you know, they don't really think about what kind of user named they're picking and they don't think about what they're writing in their bio, and so they're actually missing out on a lot of opportunities to be discovered. So, you know, what we're gonna do today is we're gonna show you what some of the top instagram accounts are doing to make themselves more discoverable on instagram so that more people check out their page and the more people check out their page, they can get them to actually taken action, like hitting that follow button or using a specific hashtag or even going to the website to eventually by something. So we're gonna dive into all the tips and tricks on how you can do that, too. So when it comes to optimizing your profile page or two goals, you want to keep in mind. The first is you wanna accurately reflect what your page is all about, so people have a really good idea of you know whether or not they should follow right in that moment. The second thing that you want to emphasize is you want to make it very easy for people to find you via search. So when it comes to picking a user name, you want toe. Do your best to make sure you don't have any periods or dots or underscores in there, because when people are searching for a specific thing, you want your name to be the first thing that pops up. So no dots no underscores if you can. But if you absolutely can't, then it's OK if you're a business. Obviously you're gonna use your business name, so you want to make it easier for people to find you. And it's all unified. Um, and And if you're trying to promote your personal brand, obviously just use your personal name, and that's gonna make it for people to easily find you as well. And again, I want to emphasize no dots. No underscores because when people type in the search, you want to be the 1st 1 that pops up, whether it's your business or if it's your personal brand, because you know you want to make it easier for people when they put your name in there. All right, let's go ahead and get into some examples of people who have some pretty good biopics. According to me, the first person gonna look at is this brand I like called published brand, and they were the originators of the jogger pants or popularized it, at least so if you look at their user name is published brand but the name they decided to use. The hashtag hashtag published brands encourage people to use that hashtag eso their bile, says a casual yet intelligently sophisticated menswear brand home of the original jogger pants tag published brand Ash tag team publish at published brand. So you kind of look at what they're trying to do. Essentially, you know, they give a brief pile of like what they're all about, and they encourage people to use their hashtag so that they can get more exposure on to instagram with hashtag discoveries. And if you click over here, there's gonna have they have a little link that leads to their Web store page. So when you're on the instagram account, click on it now, you can actually buy something from their website. And so, you know, if they ever posted anything in their pictures that they put out and say like, yo link in the bile for our latest collections, you can shop now. So you go there on the page and you click it. Boom, you're there. So they have pretty clean. Um, pretty clean bio page, really easy to understand. You get an idea of who they're all about and how to use their hashtags properly. And, you know, they have 100 60,000 followers on instagram, which is pretty strong. The next certain person we're gonna look at is Theis Publishing Company called Hype Beast High peace dot com. So, you know they're using high peace for their name and user name, obviously, because it's a pretty strong name and their bios gonna be Get the latest news and follow the day to day of the high peace team for even more behind the scenes constant follow Snapchat height Beast. So what they're trying to do is they're using a strategy where they're getting all their traffic they're getting from their instagram page, and they're pushing it onto Snapchat to grow their following their. So if you have multiple channels that you're trying Teoh, you know, build up, you know, use a cross promote. You know, if you if you want to build your twitter, you get people on instagram follow you on Twitter or if you get them to go on Snapchat wherever you're trying to get them to go or even if it's your website. And if you click on the little link that they have over here, um, check it out. It's going to lead to their website. And so they're probably doing an advertisement deal with was his guardians of the galaxy. So they're trying to get My guess is they're trying to get as many cliques as they can to get more advertising dollars. And yes, so it's, you know, leveraging your instagram traffic and diverting it into different places where you need that traffic to go. The last example we're gonna get into is this YouTuber? I like checking out. His name is M K B h d. Um, And you know what he does is he makes reviews for, like, tech Ray. And so he doesn't very simply where he just says, Look, I promise I won't overdo the filters and then he has a link to his YouTube over here. So you know, when you're thinking about, like, what to put in your bile, Sometimes you want to write something that really explains, Like what you're all about. And other times, if you have a big brand name or you just try and divert traffic, you sometimes you just want to make it really simple. And when people calling your pay should get curious, that click on it and boom, you get them to where you want them to be. So those are a couple of tricks you can use to optimize your profile page. So rather than just writing like whatever, Andi, just I'm really thinking about it. You want to be intentional, you want to think about like when someone goes to my page, Do I want them to follow me, get and get an idea of who I am. Get them to use my Tash Hashtags. Or do I want them to, you know, go to my YouTube page or website, or I would do I want them to buy something. So I mean, I'm showing you a couple examples here, but the theme is Think about what you want your followers to do. When you go on your page and optimize that way, that's gonna be it for the optimization section. And next, we're gonna move on. Sue, how to create content for your nish piece. 4. Creating Authentic Content: Hey, what's up, guys? So now we're gonna dive into what it's like to create content for your specific niche. And to do that, we're gonna go through a couple of specific examples of people. I think we're doing it pretty well. So let's go ahead. Say you're an illustrator and you just want to showcase the type of work and you don't want to reveal too much about your personal life. So there's a pretty good example Tokyo Mo am I really like this designer? And what she does is she does these hand drawings with farm Starbucks cups and that's her. That's her thing. And she puts one of these out every single day. So in this example, you kind of see like if you're just interested in in showcasing the type of work you do, you could just straight up, you know, post up something like interesting like this every day, and it's very specific to your style and and people are gonna want to follow it because they think it's interesting, right? But to take it to the next level, I see a lot of people you know, not only do they put the type of work they put out, but they also review a little bit about their personal lives. So one person I really like is Christina Park or pack him, not really sure how to pronounce your last name. But I like her as a photographer, so correct me if I pronounced it wrong. So for her, she kind of shows like, You know, she's into rap concerts and, you know, she puts into, um, puts behind the scenes work a little Uzi vert over here. Um, so it's like she puts in her commercial work and the behind the scenes behind her work and just things that she's naturally interested in. And that's the thing that people want to follow. So there's no really rules in terms of like what you should be posting. You just think about what's authentic to you, what you actually like. And then if you have the I four, take a picture of it and put it online and see what people think, right? And it's an experimental kind of kind of thing. So again, it's just like pictures off who she hangs out with, um, commercial shots over here. And, um, you know, if you're trying to promote anything, Put that out. And, um yeah, so, yeah, just keep it. Really. I think that's the most important thing. Keep it really showcased anything you think is personally interesting People who are not going to be interested, you know, there are gonna follow you, but, you know, the ones that are actually genuinely interested in what you got to offer those other ones I gonna follow you, and that's where you're gonna build your audience. Now, the last example we're gonna go through is K C. Nice that I'm sure all of you guys know this guy. So you know, he's youtuber filmmaker, a tech entrepreneur, and he showcases, like, you know, places he's been. So you know, he's in Los Angeles over here. Um, he also showcases the type of gear that he uses that people are always interested in knowing that behind the scenes. And you even see him, you know, behind the scenes and a helicopter over here. And I'm sure he also has some commercial work that he Sprinkles in here and every now and then. So again, Man, what you gotta do is just make it very authentic to you, whether it's you know your type of work that you want to showcase your behind the scenes, who you're hanging out with, what you're doing, You know all these things people are actually genuinely interested in. And don't worry if, like, you know, some people might be positive, receptive to one thing and not to another. Just got to keep pushing stuff out there and seeing how people react to it. And then you can then start thinking about what kind of strategy and what kind of content you want to put it out to build up your following. And remember, you know, the people who are going to be very interested in you and actually care they're gonna follow you and the ones that aren't they're gonna leave. And so that's okay, because you want to build a strong following, and that's how you're going to create an engage following that you could use later for, you know, monetization and actually doing something with your brand. Now, if you're like a brand that sells product like, let's say you're a clothing brand, it might be a little bit different. So you know what? Let's go ahead and go into supreme. You know it has a big brand, a lot of people, no, 3.9 million followers. So for supreme, they don't really do much behind the scenes. It's more of a lot of product shots, and you know, pretty much the things that you find in there look book. And whenever they're going to release a drop where they want to hype up, whatever they're gonna put out, they just put it over here. So, you know, if you're if you're a brand, you know, one thing you could do is, you know, not only put out product shots and, like things used to promote your brand and the clothes you put out. But you could also put in the behind the scenes of the people working on the stuff you know , designers or the manufacturers. I think people are always interested in knowing how things are made, because now you're just not pushing product that somebody. You're actually telling a story of how you make it and you know the story behind, like what the brand is all about, why you even doing it in the first place? And that's the thing people care about. People love great stories So when you think about what the post on instagram think about, how do you create a story for your brand and how do you tell your story to your audience so that they have a reason to follow you? You know, a shop that I really like in Los Angeles is, uh, here we go. Formerly. Yes, I've been there myself. And you know this There's a couple that, you know they own and run it together and at this super cute and they have a dog. So they do a really good job in that. You know, they kind of just post pictures about their lives and their lives running a business in Los Angeles on. And so here they are with their little dog and food. Um, and so, you know, here they are just going to Paris and hanging out, so, you know, it doesn't always have to be product shots like this is a shot of, you know, the inside of their store. But they're kind of telling this story like, Hey, this is our store. But we're gonna be in Paris, right? And so, you know, you want to make a mixture of like the product that you sell, but also the people behind the store of people behind the brand. People really want to know. You know who's running at thes days and people like transparency. So if you could tell a story about, like not only what type of product you sell on what you make but why you made it and you the process it took to make it and the intent and ideas that you had When you're thinking about like what? To carafe or an audience? That's what people really want to see, man. They wanna be. You know, if you want to build a coat following and you want people to be attached to your brand, you know, don't just push product and be mysterious. You know that works sometimes. But you want to just, um, tell a really good story of who you are and what you're doing and why you're doing where you're doing. And really just trust your aesthetic in your eye. And, you know, just don't think about like what you would find interesting and put that out there, and the people that are gonna resonate your brand, they're gonna find you, and they're gonna follow you. And that's how you build an authentic brand over time. So don't worry about what people want to see. Put out what you care to see and put out what you care about. And that's how you gonna attract the right people to your instagram account. 5. Curating Relevant Content: Alright guys. So, obviously creating content is one way to, you know, create something people want to see on Instagram. But the other thing, if you don't have enough material or you want to build a community, another thing you can do is curate content. So what that really means is, you know, finding videos or photos on instagram that relates to you know, your instagram page and posting it on your own page while giving credit to the photographer or video agua for who took it. So let's go ahead and dive into some examples of people doing this pretty well. So if we go on the Instagram right now, let's go ahead and go into Herschel Supply. And so, for her show, you know, they got this hash tag well traveled city limitless over here. And so what they do is they encourage people to use it, and they're gonna feature these photographers onto their instagram page. So I'm gonna pick around the picture eso this one, Herschel supply design driven to stand out and perfectly blend in its surroundings. The trade luggage in Sweden with Nana ha. So essentially, what they did was they took this picture from Nana Hot over here and just kind of featured her on their account. And you know, as long as you tag the person that you're using their photo and you mentioned them in the description, then it's OK. I think most people, when they're actually a little bit flattered when you use their pictures and give them credit, just make sure that you give them credit. Otherwise, that's stealing another person that does. This is hype beast. So you know, they put the obviously create their own content and they push it on their INSTAGRAM account . But the same time, you know, they use other people's content. So let's go ahead and pick a random photo. Um, here we go. I mean, this is just a picture of the easies, and it says, Ah, high peace feet perfect combination photo by Ari Petro or however you pronounce this guy's name. So if I was this guy, I would be like, Wow, that's pretty cool that high peace would feature me on their page and you know, it gives them more exposure and they're getting their credit. And, you know, if you're the ones that are re posting other people's images, then you know you're never gonna run outta content because you can kind of look on the Internet or on instagram for this type of content and put it on your own feed. The last example we're gonna use is drone Heroes drone heroes over here and for them, you know, their instagram community where they feature other people's drone shots. So, you know, this shot was done by, uh, ocean dimensions. And Ronnie Brower's running by was photographer, right? And so you can kind of just go on this guy's page, take a couple shots that you like and then, you know, distributed onto your instagram feed over time. So you know, whatever you're trying to sell or whatever it is that you're your instagram account is about, you know, there's one aspect of creating original content and pushing it out there on the other end. You can know so curate content that really relates to your brand. And, you know, just remember to tag the person that you're borrowing the photo from and mentioning them in the comments, making sure that they get credit for actually taking the front photograph. So that's kind of how you build a community around your instagram page. So an example of using this properly is if you're a clothing brand and if anybody takes a picture with her clothes in in the hash tag, you're tag you in it, you could go ahead and take that photo, feature it onto your instagram page and give them the credit. So it's kind of like, Wow, this guy sees me. They recognize my work, and now I feel more attached to their brand. So that's what you want to do, man. You know, you want to create content, you want curate content, use that combination together, build a community, get people using your hashtag and stay consistent. And next thing you know, you're gonna have thousands of followers on Instagram's in a clean, legit way. And so you know, those are a couple examples of how you can curate your own contents. And so the next part we're gonna get into is the posting schedule. You know, now you know how to create content. You know how to curate content, But when is the best time to post? Let's find out 6. How to be Discovered using Hashtags: Hey, what's popping everybody? So in this section, we're going to show you how to properly use hashtags and how to avoid a lot of the common mistakes most people make on Instagram. The reason why you want use hashtags is because it's one of the best ways to be naturally discovered on Instagram. So a lot of people are going to be think of it like this. People are dying to find good content, right? So they're gonna type into the search box, and you want to make sure that you know whatever they type, you're using the proper hashtag so that you're the first thing that pops up when they're going for that search. Now, when you comes the hashtags, a lot of what you can do is you can put them in the description and you can put them in the comments. A lot of people make the mistake of using too many hashtag so instagram allows you to have around 30 hashtags per post. And the thing is, you don't have to use all 30 when you use so many and you put them in your caption or you put them in the comments. It kind of makes you look a little amateurish and, you know, actually prevents people from following you. So what you want to do is you want to post are put up 5 to 10 hashtags, max. So anywhere between 1 to 10 hashtags is pretty good. I hear on the side of, you know, 1 to 6 hashtags per post, and you just want to make sure that these hashtags are highly targeted. You don't want to go for the very general big ones because it's gonna be so tough to get discovered, So I'm gonna go in and give you some examples of that. So we're going to the INSTAGRAM account right now when we type in inspiration. So if you kind of look at inspiration hash tag, you we have 66 million people using it, right? So if you type in inspiration, you gotta think about if there's 66 million people using this hash tag, what are the chances that your photo is gonna be one of the photos that pop up here and it's actually pretty low when you think about it? Um, so that's the reason why you want to avoid really big hashtags because they're actually not going to get you much exposure because you're just gonna get drowned in the sea of people using it. So you want to be a little bit more Pacific in the hashtags that you are using, And so let's go ahead and try something else. So a lot of people know this magazine called kinfolk, right? So we typing king kinfolk over here, we see that the kinfolk hashtag has about a 1,000,000 people using it in their posts. So if you use the kinfolk hashtag, nobody's going to find you because they're just too much content to sift through. What you want to do is you want to get a little bit more specific. So let's say I see over here kinfolk home, right. So, you know, kinfolk is Ah, I guess it's a lifestyle magazine. But you kind of has a certain aesthetic here. So if you use a more specific hashtag like kinfolk home on Lee, 10,000 people are using this Hashtag hashtag. So when people go on, they look for stuff. You have a higher probability of being found here, right? So again, you know, this guy's using around probably 10 hashtags but yeah, So you want to think about Hashtags? Aren't that aren't so big yet, But you feel like they're coming up and you wanna think of it like investing. You want to invest in a hash tag that you think is gonna blow up so that when people search it, you're gonna be the constant career that comes up. And the thing is, if you constantly, you know, uses Aaron hash tag, and you're consistent with the content, people are engaged and the lichens high quality, You're gonna end up at the top over here, which is the top post, right? So your goal is to keep using a hash tag and eventually get to the top post. And this is how you're gonna be discovered when people search for it. Nothing is. You know, you don't have to be super big to reach the top post like this. Guys at the top for Kim folk home. Here's 185 likes, so you don't have to be big. This guy has 1000 800 likes this guy over here has 66 likes. So as long as you're consistent and you have high quality content and people are engaged with it. When you put it out, you're gonna end up at the top so again to kind of recap all that. What you want to do is choose specific hashtags that, you know our people are using in your community that have, like, 10,000 people using it, or 50 or even 100,000 and use those and only use between 1 to 10 hashtags. I recommend around five or six per posts because you don't want to look like an amateur. You know, you just want to be very specific on who you're targeting and build up your audience for that demographic on. Do you know there's a lot of tools out there that allowed our like, hashtag generators? You know, I've used them before on the problem is that there's nothing wrong with finding what hashtags or trending, But just make sure you don't use ones that you know everybody else's using because the more people use it, the less chance you have on being discovered. So you want to do a work up front and find Hashtags that you think you're gonna blow up, invest in them and get at the top of the top post when people search you up 7. Growing Your Following: Hey, what's going on? Party, Pete Boat. So we're gonna get into to my favorite section, and that's gonna be growth strategies using likes and comments. Now, one of the best ways to grow your INSTAGRAM account organically is to build and be involved in the community, depending on what your nish is. The first thing I'll say is that there are a lot of people out there who use bots to go out and liking everybody's photos and, you know, leaving generic comments like Nice shot or like awesome man. And you do not want to do that. The reason is because, you know, and you know, also like people use bots for, like, follow Pete following people and unfollowed them. The reason why you don't want to use these strategies because sure, you'll gain some followers in the beginning. But for the most part they're all going to be very low quality followers because you think about it. You know, if you're just following, if you're just following someone just to get them following toe, so if you think about it, if you want to follow someone just to get them to follow you back, you unfollowed them you're not really building a real community. You're really just trying to game a system here, right? So if you want to build a clean, legit following, here's how we're gonna do it. So when it comes to likes, the general rule of thumb is just like whatever you generally find interesting. And that's it, you know, like if there's no significant benefit toe, you know, liking 50 to 100 or 1000 photos per day. Um, it just doesn't really help. What does help is leaving thoughtful comments on pages on People's Instagram post. So you know, when you leave me a comment, what happens is that person sees it. They check out their page or your page, and yet they decide if they want to follow you. Not only that, but the people that engage with that specific individual also sees your comment and might engage with you. So the trick is you want to write a comment that actually is intellectually stimulating or , you know, isn't something so generic like, Oh, nice shot, like actually you know, right about something that relates to the photo or the caption and really just be involved in the community and be a normal human being, you know? And that's what is going to get people to actually like you. And eventually you're gonna build up your following that way organically. Another thing you can also do is like other people's comments and, you know, just to show that you're there and you show support again, that may not necessarily do much in in general. But what you want to do is you want to keep showing up in a community. Um, and when more, more, more people know you and they keep seeing you consistently, eventually they're eventually gonna follow you. So you know, keep like what you like. And don't go overboard with that because it doesn't help comment on other people's photos and just make sure you're actually leaving something valuable and thoughtful, and people are gonna be receptive to it in general. And when it comes to liking, are commenting other people's page to try to get more exposure. You want to make sure that if you comment on someone who has a big page who has like a 1,000,000 followers, sure there's more people looking in the comments and more followers. But then your comment, county gets round out in the sea of people, so you want to find smaller accounts that have that don't have too many comments. So you want to make sure that more people see your comments and you want to make sure that the person that posted the photo read your comment as well. And that's how you're gonna build that organic community when it comes to when people comment on your post. What you want to do is read the comments. You wanna like their comment to show that you actually read it and you acknowledge them. And if it's interesting, replied to their comments, you know, you might not be able to ply everybody, but, you know, just answer them, you know, like be engaged in community and and be involved in the dialogue and have conversation. You know, in general, you know, being involved in the in the comments really gives you a real post on what people are thinking about certain topics or certain type of niches, and that's going to give you that insight and and give you ideas, the post new content based on how people react. So, you know, post react. Um, so again, you know, comment on other people's photos, comments on your own photos and reply to people like other people's comments showing that you're there and just constantly be involved in the community constantly. I mean, Instagram. Sometimes it's a game of whoever shows up the most. And if you just keep showing up and you're there in the Commons and you're posting consistently, that's how you're gonna build your following. Now there's a trick that a lot of people don't know about Instagram, and that's when it comes to likes. So at a low trick I'm gonna show you guys is you know how you can trade likes for likes. So, for example, um, after every photo that you post the next eight photos that you like, they're gonna show up in people's news feeds. So going. So let's go ahead and go into the instagram account, and I'll show you exactly what I'm talking about. So when we go Teoh the fee the heart button over here, right, and we go the following you see where you know it, says Taylor's keep like eight post J. P. Q Z like eight poster roti DTL a right a like eight post. So the thing is for people you're following what you're gonna do, what happens is when they post the photo, you're gonna see the next eight photos that they like after that in this feed. So what you can do is you can, you know, get your buddies and say, Hey, um, you know, after you post a photo, do you mind if you like a couple of mine photos and I'll do the same for you? And the reason why you wanna have that cross over is because, you know that's how you exchange followers. So if you constantly like someone else's photos every time you post your own photo, then you're gonna share that person's content with your audience and they're gonna pop up in here. And so they cook it like, Oh, that's pretty interesting. Let's let's check this person out. So if you you kind of think of it like you're trading likes for likes, right. So, again, after every photo that you post the next eight photos that you like, that they're going to show up in this feed so you can trade up to eight likes per photo. So if you want to do that with a couple buddies, then that's how you can cross promote with each other without having to, um, you know, do anything without really having to do much. Really is just trading likes for likes, and that's another strategy you can use to grow your INSTAGRAM account. Now those are a couple of tips and tricks for comments and liking photos on. And you know, if you kind of just stay consistent with that, that's a really great way to get started in building your instagram following. 8. Working with Brands Fundamentals: what's going on? Everybody. So in this section we're gonna do a brief introduction on how to work with brands and how to get paid doing it. Now, the way you want to look at it is you brands have budgets every year, right? And they need to promote and so more product, and you need to make their brand really cool. So more people like it. So as an influencer. If you have a strong following and they're really engaging, your content is really good. Of course, somebody would give you money to promote their brand. You know, you wanna have this abundance mindset because your audience is very valuable and people are really willing to pay money for it now. Three elements that brands look for when the deciding to pick an influencer for it to be a brand ambassador or it may be just to do a little advertising on your INSTAGRAM account. Now the three are gonna be first. How big is your following? So how many followers you have to how engaged are your following? So the percentage of people that actually like and commented on your photo based on, you know, running that against how many followers you have. And the third thing is growth. How fast is your account growing every month. It's not always about how many followers you have. Obviously, the more followers you have, the more money you can make for that following. But the thing is, advertiser now they're looking at engagement. So if you have 100,000 followers, but your photos only get, you know, like 500 likes per photo Yeah, that's like OK, but if you are, you know, someone that has 10,000 followers. But every photo you put out gets, you know, let's say 1000 likes, then you're gonna be a lot more valuable to an advertiser compared to that other person who has more followers but doesn't have as much engagement, right? And so again you know you. That's why it pays off to build a legit clean, engage following. It's gonna be worth so much more in the long run when you're starting to advertise and when you want to work with brands because they're not dumb, you know they don't care about fake followers or they don't. They don't want to see people who aren't engaged. You want to build a really engaged community, and people can tell when you actually have it. The other thing I talked about is growth. Now advertisers look at how fast your account is growing because they want to, you know, reach a fresh demographic every time. So they keep advertising your account. They don't want to always advertise the same people over and over, because then their advertisements might become stale. So if your account is growing, that's really exciting. Because when you're putting out new content, you know you're reaching a new demographic in that nish every single time, and it gets better and better and better over time. So you want to position yourself so that you know you have, ah, you know, healthy follower account. And it's growing very sedately, with new followers coming in every single day, and you want to make sure that you're getting the proper engagement to match that following . So when it comes to prices on how much you should charge for advertising, it really is going to depend on what you're doing, you know? Are you going to be taking photos of the product for your client? Are you gonna be selling your advertising space in the picture or in the caption, So I really all depends. And you know that itself can be entire course eso to kind of keep things simple for this course. Here's what you gotta think about Whatever you're trying to charge somebody, all you got to do is ask three other people in your space how much they charge. Just act as if you were an advertiser if you want to work with them and just asked them like, Hey, man, how much do you charge if you take pictures of a product or if you sell your caption space where you sell your photo space and, you know, taken aggregate of whatever their prices are and kind of think about like, OK, I have this many followers compared to them, So you kind of do the math, and that's how you come up with your price. And so when advertisers want to talk to you, just kind of given that price, see what they think. It's too high, it's too high. If it's too low, increase it, you know. So you know, you just want to play off it and you know there's no right answer But the thing is, you want to get paid for what you're worth, that's the most important thing. So when it comes to getting paid for brands, um, you want to just get paid for whatever you think you're worth and you just understand, Like, what the market rates are going for, the type of work that you're producing and make sure it is a line to that s so nobody wants to get ripped off. You don't want to get ripped off brands. I want to get ripped off. So just be honest, be fair and just understand the market and what people are charging and you'll be OK. So I mean, that's really just a basic introduction. But in the future, I plan to have courses on, specifically had a handle, um, advertisers and how to really work with brands and reach out to them and things like that. But that's going to be for another course. For now. Uh, you just gotta know the basics, you know, followers, engagement and growth. And those are things you want to focus on. And as you get bigger, then you could start thinking about what it's gonna look like when you wanna work with brands 9. Conclusion: Hey, what's popping, everybody And congratulations. You guys just finished the instagram course to kind of recap everything. There's a lot of things that we've learned today, right? We learned how toe set up your account for S CEO and picking the right user name and name. Learn how to create and curate content and when to post and what time to post. We also learned how to use hashtags on instagram and how to organically be discovered. And we also learned a couple growth strategies on commenting other people's photos and liking other people's photos and how you can trade likes for likes. Finally, we learned a little bit about how advertisers work and, you know, some of the key metrics you guys should be using to grow your following. Now the kind of toppings off. If you do everything that you learned in this course and you're actually consistent with it , what's gonna naturally happen is you're going to really grow a large followings of thousands of thousands of people. And you know when you consistently do that and you kind of create great content that people want to see that's going to open the doors for you to work with brands and advertisers in the future to monetize your account. And it's also going to give you an audience for you to sell a product or service to in the future. Now, we didn't go too deep on exactly the monetization aspect of it, because this course really is how to build that organic, legit, clean, following and in the future. What I'm gonna do is I'm gonna create courses on specifically how to monetize your account and what that specifically looks like in creating a product or service. Or, you know, how much to charge an advertiser. And you know whether rates other people are using so that's going to be in the future to come. So if this cost is something you found a lot of value and go ahead and follow me, you know, because I'm gonna be releasing a lot of content in the future on, you know, really, how to dig deep into instagram and how to make a full time living off of it, doing what you love. You know, The reason why I created this course in the first place was because I really want to help people make a living from what they love doing. And I thought Instagram would be one of the best ways to do it. And there's so many people out there making a killing off Instagram. So I thought, Why not everybody else, you know? So I want to make this information public for everybody. And so I really hope you guys got a lot of value out out of it. I hope you guys execute and stay consistent and kill it. And I want to know, You know, if you found a lot of success from the strategies that I've taught you today, then you know, go ahead and send me a comment. Sent me a message. And I'm so excited here what you guys have to offer. So if that thanks a lot for taking this course, I appreciate it. And I'll see you guys next time. 10. Next Steps: Now, if you're getting any value out of these courses, make sure to leave a positive review. Sharing your experiences. I read every single review, and I really do appreciate your feedback. And if you want to see more videos like this, make sure to follow me on skill share so you could be notified on when I release my latest courses.