Organic Instagram Growth: Create Shareable Content

1. Introduction: Have you ever scrolled through your feed on Instagram and then all of a sudden it feels like you have blinders on your face and you are laser focused in and something just caught your attention. This post just made you stop and think. You hit that little airplane emoji and you just sent it out to your followers in your stories and you sent it out to a few DMs to close friends. Now, hundreds and thousands of people get to see that post too because you shared it. That is the power of shareable content on Instagram. Hi, my name is Emelina Spinelli and I'm the top ranked Instagram marketing expert on Google. I'm also a YouTuber sharing videos on Instagram growth and marketing. I work with celebrity clientele, public figures, and big brands like Fox, Facebook, Google, and Honda, and not to mention, I've also grown my social media following from scratch to over 100,000 followers combined. I've not just done it for myself, but I've even done it for many, many, many of my clients. They've grown collectively hundreds of thousands of followers of the last few years. I'm going to teach you everything I know about Instagram shareable content, because the reality is that shareable content is the pinnacle of digital word of mouth marketing. It's like getting a ton of free referrals and free marketing on Instagram that helps you grow, it helps you get clients, it helps you get noticed. Not to mention, it establishes your expertise, your authority, and your influence on the platform. In this course, we're going to cover the process of creating shareable content. You'll discover your core unique message that you can use to create inspiring, engaging content, where to source your own unique creative inspiration, so your creative well is always full of new ideas. I'll show you how to design your new Instagram shareable post and what apps and software to use. I'll share with you the five shareable content formulas so you can create Instagram shareable content effortlessly. I'll teach you how to write the best magnetic captions for your posts, gain additional engagement from those captions, and then of course, we will cover how to plan for organic growth and amplified reach. I'm so unbelievably excited to share these skills with you because I believe you have a message inside of yourself that is worthy of being shared. I truly believe that you make the world a better place by stepping up and stepping out and creating content that inspires people. Without further ado, let's jump right into the course and make some shareable content together. 2. What to Expect in this Class: Hey. So happy you joined me. Welcome to my course on how to create your very own Instagram shareable content and grow your brand organically on Instagram. Today I'm going to show you how to create your very own Instagram shareable content so you can grow organically on the platform. You'll discover my effortless method for discovering your core message and then I will teach you how to package it in a way that followers are inspired to share. Before our class project today you're going to create your very own shareable, original Instagram piece of content and then share it with us over here on Skillshare. When you're scrolling through Instagram, and you stumble on shareable content, you may think that all of these pieces of content are actually super unique to each creator. But I have a secret for you, 80 percent of all shareable content that I've seen on Instagram actually falls into five content formulas that I'm going to teach you today. At the end of this course, you're going to be able to quickly be able to whip up your own Instagram shareable content to establish your expertise, your authority on Instagram, share your valuable core message on the platform and grow organically. For this class, you're going to need a pen, a few pieces of paper, and of course, an Instagram account. It'll also be helpful if you have access to some free design software or even Adobe Creative Cloud to design your posts, and you're definitely going to need a positive creative attitude. Throughout this course, I have many interactive activities that I've planned for you to participate in. They're going to help you create the original ideas and concepts for your new shareable content. I am unbelievably excited to help you create your own shareable content. So let's jump right in. 3. What is Shareable Content: In this video, I'm going to share with you what shareable content is, how I create organic Instagram growth, and why you're going to love it. What is a shareable content? Shareable content is digital word-of-mouth marketing. In simple terms, it's other people recommending your content in your profile to their friends and their followers. It's content that teaches a concept in a single image or a post. It inspires the viewer so much, that they want to share that inspiration with their friends and their followers. It creates a moment of impact, in someone's day, to the point where they want to facilitate that impact for someone else they know. It's something that's really easily communicated, and quickly read and text plays a large part in shareable content. You get it, we know what it is. Simple, easy, got it, I'm all about it. Here's why you're going to absolutely love it. Shareable content is one of the few types of content that actually accelerates growth on Instagram. In very simple terms, it grows your audience. It establishes your expertise and authority on a specific topic, and positions you as a leader or a thought leader in that topic to your followers. It helps establish you and your expertise as the go to resource for your audience and your followers on this topic. Let's jump right in the meat here? How do shareable content actually promote organic growth on Instagram? How can you grow your account using this type of content? When people are inspired by the value that you share in your posts, they share your post to their stories and to their followers. This is effectively a referral. It's called word-of-mouth marketing in the world of marketing. The person who just shared your content, takes it upon himself to promote your account and tell all their friends about it. Honestly, I don't know if you could pay for a better promotion tool. We are talking about some real coveted growth mechanisms here. This is why we all go to Instagram, is so that we can promote ourselves and our brands and connect with the people we love, and develop beautiful, thriving online communities. When other people share your content onto their stories or through DMs, this effectively bypasses the algorithm. Your content gets in front of new people without having to work with or against the algorithm, without having to play by all of Instagram's rules. It's just simply by appealing to people, by appealing to the needs of your audience. All of those new people that see your posts have an opportunity to then track back over to your profile and hit that Follow button. Like anything, it's not guaranteed there's actually another person on the end of the other account, that gets to choose whether or not to hit that Follow button. But at the end of the day, you get the opportunity, of getting in front of so many more people than you would otherwise because you inspired someone. The beauty of all of this, is that social media as an entirety of platforms, are based on the concept of sharing experiences with friends. Sharing is a big concept of what makes social media what it is, regardless of whatever is on trend right now. The conceptual idea of sharing has been baked into every ounce of Instagram as a platform as well as all the other social medias, even before creating shareable content was a thing. Ultimately, the beauty of this type of content is that it's native. It's part of social media. It is what makes social media beautiful. This is the pure essence of what we love about social media. I'm going to teach you how to wrangle that essence, put it into your posts, and use it to build positive momentum for your brand and your account today. Now you know what Instagram shareable content is, and the opportunity that it provides for your own growth and marketing. In the next video, we're going to explore the process of creating a shareable content. 4. Shareable Content Process: Let's talk about the simple process of creating shareable content. Shareable content is both visually and intellectually stimulating. It's a little different than just a basic photo post on Instagram. Although we all love them, I absolutely adore my photo posts on seeing them for my friends. The ultimate goal of this type of content is to inspire your viewer to actually share it. It's easy to share a beautiful photo, but the key to creating engaging educational content is a combination of your messaging, understanding your audience's needs and desires, and then packaging your information in a way that is visually appealing. Here's everything that goes into the shareable content process. First you want to get inspired. Then we're going to focus on discovering and finding your core message which is nested within your experience. You're going to discover how to expand upon that message and draw out specific practical items that other people would want to share with their friends. Then you're going to focus on writing your magnetic caption, and then of course, publish and promote your content. Overall, the process is pretty easy, I'm really excited to go through it with you guys. In this video, we learned the key things to think about in the process of creating shareable content. I know it's a lot, but no worries. As we dive into the course, we're going to deep dive into each of these elements, and I'm going to make them really easy for you. Up next, I'll show you where to source your creative inspiration so that your creative well is always overflowing, and you always have brand new ideas for shareable posts. 5. Where to Find Inspiration: In this video, we'll share with you a couple of really easy ways to gather inspiration for your new shareable posts. That way your creative well will flow on-demand for when you need it. My absolute best inspiration comes from actually just scrolling through Instagram. When I see a shareable post, I stop and I save it to a collections on my account. Saved posts and collections are like Instagram's version of Pinterest boards. I don't know how many people know or use them, but I absolutely love them. So when I find a post I loved, generally, I'm actually scrolling through my Explore page and that's how I find a lot of the shareable for inspiration. I save that post using the little bookmark feature on Instagram and then I create a collection which is like a Pinterest board equivalent and I name them boards shareable. I save all of the posts that I've stumbled upon that I really love into one collection. So that when I'm looking for inspiration later and I need to create some new content for my feed, I know where to go to find some really great creative inspiration. Typically when I'm saving content, I'm usually looking for something that made me stop and think or something that allowed me to resonate with the content or that would've prompted me to share whether it's a quote, a carousel, a really great list of cool article built just into a single Instagram post. These are the types of content pieces that I look for in the Explore page and then I quickly save to my collection. To save you guys some time on this, I actually put together a number of guides on my Instagram account. If you go to my account which is ecspinelli on Instagram and toggle over to the guides tab. It has a little icon that looks like a book. I've created six guides for you where there's a long list of creative inspiration for carousel, tutorial posts, living quotes, graphic quotes, how to visualize information graphically, and so much more. I know you're going to love it, just check them out. I've probably got like 50 or 60 different posts for you to use to jump-start your creative inspiration. You're welcome to add any of the items I've created into your own collections or to search through your Explore feed and look for some of your own inspiration. I'm hoping this serves as a little jumping-off points so you can just start with something and get creating. I also love to jot down accounts that I feel like make amazing, creative, shareable content, and sometimes I'll just take a spin through their feeds to get my gears flowing to help me get some new creative juice to create something new. A couple of accounts that I love personally to like for creative, shareable content as Mel Robbins and heyamberrae. But I definitely encourage you to go find your own creators that really inspire you in this area. Now that we've learned how to get creative inspiration, in the next video, I'm going to share how to discover your own core message you know, the one that people will want to share on Instagram. 6. Discover Core Shareable Message: Now that you've found your inspiration and you've got your creative juices flowing, let's jump right into discovering your core shareable message. Everyone has a core message inside of them that they can share. It's just about discovering what that message is for you and bringing it to the surface. Your core shareable message will be something of a combination of your core beliefs and values and teaching something you know to others. Teaching publicly is actually one of the fastest ways to grow influence and develop your following on Instagram and on social media. Even if you don't consider yourself a teacher, or maybe you don't know how to teach, I think you'll find that you're actually pretty good at explaining something to someone else that's really important to you, and that's what teaching is. Honestly, I think that teaching is actually super underrated. When you teach what you know, you establish expertise, you establish authority, and you gain influence. Not only that, but you actually get to share something with the world that you love and other people want to know. That's value, that's valuable. That itself is what truly creates great shareable content and inspires people to interact and engage with it online. Now, here's my guess. You probably fall into one of two camps. Either you don't know what to teach and you don't know that you can teach and you need help figuring that out or you already have a set amount of skills and expertise that you're knowledgeable about and you know exactly what you're going to be teaching. Regardless whichever camp you fall into, I'm going to help you discover your message in this video. I'm going to share a secret with you. The key to discovering your core shareable message is doing some deep reflection. I recommend getting out a notebook, a pen, or your laptop. I'm going to take you through four key exercises or messaging prompts that should begin to expose what you're going to be talking about and what you can teach on social media. This will be a great starting point to expand on your messaging, the things you're passionate about or really good at, your strengths. Throughout this content and this course, we'll be revisiting the content that you're going to be reflecting on and writing on right now in this video to begin to flesh out and build your Instagram shareable posts. You're welcome to pause the video as you go and take part in the activities or you can take notes now and then answer the questions in the messaging prompts after the video is complete. Our first messaging prompt is surrounding passion. Just take a quick moment to jot down a good list of everything that you're passionate about. What are you passionate about? What do you feel inspired to talk about and share on social media? When you're done writing your list, go ahead and circle your top three passions. This question is really great to help you identify what topics you're going to have the most energy to talk about and teach. Messaging prompt number 2 is identifying where you have experience and wisdom. What major life challenges or adversities have you experienced and how did you overcome them? Answering this question will reveal where your true core experience is. It will help you identify and connect with what makes you authentically you. It's a deep question. I do hope you go deep with this question and not just answer it at the surface level, but that's up to you. There's so much opportunity for really deep midi content that people will want to see and share that will inspire others on social media, just nested within this question. After you answer this question, you're going to have at least one or two big insights. Take a moment to reflect on your answer and then list out the key skills or solutions you gained or learned by moving through this challenge and then answer this question, "What skills, solutions or mentality helped you along the way?" When you've completed this messaging activity, just circle the top three items that you're the most passionate about and we're going to use this later in the class. Messaging prompt number 3 is surrounding expertise. Now I want you to think about what your friends, family, and colleagues are always asking you for help with. What is that one or two things that people always think of you and reach out and call you to seek your advice and counsel on? Then answer this question, "What expertise do you have that you can teach others who want to learn it?" Then make a quick list of things that you have expertise in that you would be able to teach. Now, go back through your personal reflections and the prompts that I just gave you based in passion, experience, and expertise. Glance through the topics that you had circled as your top passions and star the top three priorities that you have the most interests in speaking about. Messaging prompt number 4, we're going to go through outlining our teaching concepts. Now, go ahead and make a list of 4-6 headlines that identify the specifics of something that you can teach. Think of this section like you're writing headlines for a blog. We're going to be using this later to actually create shareable content. For example, if people are always asking you for life advice, you could write down a list of topics that you could teach like, how to overcome adversity, how to cultivate a positive attitude even when you don't feel positive. How to reduce anxiety, how to make fast decisions, how to set healthy boundaries, how to begin a project that you've procrastinating and meaning to start. Now, go ahead and try this exercise for yourself. Here are a few more ideas or thought starters to get your mind creatively rolling so you can think about some great headlines. For example, how I got blank results in blank time, or three myths about blank. Fill in the blank with the thing you're teaching. Or you can think about listing steps out like, how to do blank. In the blank again, is the thing that you'll be teaching. Another good headline example is x number of steps to achieve blank, the thing you're teaching. These questions may seem simple, but I promise you they are the very beginning to discovering your inner genius. These are the beginning of your core message. They're the beginning of what will inspire others and prompt them to share your content with their friends, family, and followers. As a quick recap, in this video, we did a deep dive into some personal reflection material with four easy writing prompts to help draw out the core message that you have deep inside of you that will inspire others, make the world a better place and connected deeply to your authentic inner experience, which brings a whole 'nother dynamic level to your presence on Instagram. It'll make it feel real and authentic and people will want to engage with you. These prompts should have turned your gears a little bit and inspired you to figure out what it is that you're passionate about and what you'd be willing to teach to others. In the next video, I'll share with you how to design your posts so they are beautiful, they stand out, and they look great so they prompt and inspire your followers and your audience to share them. 7. How to Design Shareable Posts: In this video, I'll show you some really easy and effortless ways to design your Instagram shareable post, even if you don't really have any experience with graphic design. The first thing we want to do is create a branded look and feel for your post. Overall, this should match more of your gallery feed and the colors that you typically use. Don't worry, I have a really easy way of breaking down how to brand and graphic design the overall feed and make everything feel and look like it's part of the same brand and cohesive. It's really easy. The first thing I recommend is choosing two fonts and only using a combination or going back and forth between these two fonts on your posts. After you post a variety of sharable content, when it shows up on someone's feed and you typically use the same fonts and the same colors, people will begin to see that immediately as being your type of content and will be able to begin recognizing your brand. Another quick suggestion I have is to pick three colors for your brand and pretty much stick to those three core colors in your shareable posts. You can think of it like having a background color, a pop color, and then something that is an easy to read color for your text. Another thing I love to do to create a set brand and look and feel is go over to stock photo platforms and select an array of photos, curate them into a collection that are the same. For example, I might download a bunch of photos that are of oceans or beaches and another set of photos of forests, or there's a brand I run that is all surrounding rebels and music. So I select all black and white photos with musicians. I love looking through stocksnap.io, pexels.com, and unsplash.com for great amazing photos that are for creative use in the creative comments. Essentially, this means that you can use them on Instagram and promote yourself without having to pay additional royalty fees to the creators or other platforms. Of course, you're welcome to use paid stock photos as well. I just loved these couple of three platforms that feature content from the creative comments. I love to grab a quick collection of photos and then I save them to a folder on my desktop computer. You're welcome to do this on your phone or anywhere else that's convenient for you so that I am ready to go when I want to create new content, and I have access to everything I need. As a quick tip, make sure that the photos that you select and curate for yourself are either all under the same theme, like type of photo, for example, nature, or they're under the same color palette. So if you're using pinks, which I see on Instagram a lot, perhaps all of the photos that you're choosing, although one is a beach, maybe one is a woman, maybe something else is a fashion shot but they're all involving the color pink so that they begin to brand in that way, or another color, whatever you want to choose. Another important aspect of design is creating a template for yourself to use for your own brand for your shareable post. I really love to batch my content and do all of my shareable post or at least a month worth of shareable posts all at once because that works the best for me when I'm in that creative vibe. I do that really easily by creating a template for myself for any brand that I'm working with. I create a template personally in Keynote on the Mac that already has my fonts and photos selected, that already has pre-designed content that all I personally have to do is go into my own template that I've created, swap out some texts and copy, and now, all of a sudden, I have new sharable content ready to go that I can export as JPEGs and publish on Instagram. If you prefer using a desktop computer to do some of this design work, I highly recommend using any of these software platforms. I love the Adobe Creative Suite Photoshop and Illustrator are great if you know how to use those programs. If you're not a designer and you want something that's really easy and gives you all of the resources and tools to design effortlessly, I suggest checking out canva.com. If you're somewhere in the middle and you want something that's easy and effortless on your computer, ready to go that you can pre-design, I really love using Keynote and you're also welcome to use PowerPoint. These are both PowerPoint programs, presentation programs for Mac and PC, respectively. If you're more of a phone user and you really want to actually just create your shareable on your phone, here are some great apps I recommend. I love PicsArt on the phone, it makes it really easy to create really stunning graphics. I love the story apps, Unfold, and what I would recommend for something like that, is that Unfold makes it really easy just to swap out texts in a really beautifully minimally designed. Then what you can do is download those to your phone, even though they're going to come out in the larger story format and just crop them for Instagram. Another really easy way that you can design your shareable post is actually going straight into the Story App on Instagram and selecting "Creator Mode". From Creator Mode, they give you a gradient background. You can just select if you're in the pink, hues, or the green, or the blue, select your background, and then just go ahead and add your text in the two sections or wherever you're going to be adding the type for your sharable content. Then you've download that to your phone. You can re-upload it as a post. Just keep in mind when you're creating in Stories using the Create Mode that they are taller than a typical post. So you just have to crop out the top and the bottom of the post and keep the text more centered in the middle. Last but not least, you can always outsource your design content and shareable post to a graphic designer with online marketplaces like Fiverr or Upwork. I'll even be taking you through storyboarding some of your posts throughout the lessons in this class that will be very easy to pass to a designer if you feel so inspired to do so. Now you know how to design your Instagram shareable post and begin branding your account and the expectations that people have of your content. You learned about choosing fonts and three colors for your brand, selecting stock photos, and designing quickly in Instagram's Create Mode in Stories. I even walked through a quick tutorial on how I like to design templates over in Keynote. You know that at the end of the day, you can always pass off this work to a graphic designer if you feel inspired to. In the next video, I'm going to share the easiest type of sharable content that is to create and the formula behind it. 8. Shareable Content: Quote Posts: In this video, I'll share with you arguably the easiest type of sharable content to create, and that is quotes. We'll cover the three types of quote posts and what goes into each one of them. Quotes are great because they display life expertise and they share great tips. They're one of the most common types of sharable content. There are three ways to create quote content on Instagram. The first are graphic quotes and they are designed quotes. They're really beautiful typography, lots of colors, they're just really visually interesting to look at and can even include animated concepts. What I love about graphic quotes is they so visually stimulating, they stop you the moment they're going down in Instagram feed and are just so highly sharable. The next style of quotes are what I like to call expert quotes. They are the typical quotes that you see on Instagram that are screenshots of Twitter posts that people just repost to Instagram. A lot of times, these quotes and screenshots are then added on top of a prettier background, a nature photo perhaps, or something like that, which then makes them a little more visually interesting. What's really great about these Twitter style quotes is that they establish expertise and thought leadership. If you're an expert or if you're known for something out there in the world then this type of quote will be an amazing addition to your sharable content posts. The third type of shareable quote content is what I like to call living quotes. Now essentially a living quote is a quote, it's just built into the environment of a photograph. So for example, if you think of things like where people take photos of themselves and they also have a letter board with them that has a sign or a quote on the letter board, or they have a whiteboard with them with a quote on the whiteboard or a chalkboard with the same scenario, the quote is then baked into the actual environment of the photograph and becomes part of the photo. That's why I call them living quotes. I've found that living quotes are actually just as effective as graphic quotes, if not more so for gaining additional engagement and shares and interaction from followers. What I love about sharable content is that it's really easy to create. It's easy to find quotes from yourself or things that are unique to you that you can say on specific topics. Quotes are a more typical type of Instagram contents. They're also really easy to find and source content that you can reshare on your account as long as you give the creator the appropriate tags and mention in the caption. The only other thing I would suggest to think about is that quotes are actually a more common type of content, which also means that many other people are creating them, so they're just a little bit less unique than some of the other types of sharable content, but what's really great, is there a lot easier to create. Now, I would love for you to go back through those reflection exercises that we did earlier in the class, skim through your notes, and pull out something you said, pull out a unique quick quote that you mentioned in one of your prompts. Something that you think would be really valuable for someone else, a viewer or a follower. You want to skim through your content and look for something insightful that would make an impact in another person. Something that gives you that little heart flutter like, Oh my gosh, or triggers something in your mind like, Oh, I never thought about something that way, wow. Those are the types of content in quotes that you want to grab and use because they have more opportunity to be shared across the platform. All right, amazing. Now that you have some ideas to quote from your own experience, let's take a look at the next Instagram sharable content style, which are tutorial carousels. 9. "Carousel Tutorial" Posts: In this video, you're going to learn how to break down a teaching concept that you can teach actively in tutorials for carousels and Instagram. Carousel tutorials are really, really quick keynote presentations. They're really amazing to communicate a solid idea across 2-10 slides. Because there's so much screen real estate space with being able to swipe in between slides or content, there's so much more opportunity to be in front of your audience, create a really great touchpoint and deep impression while teaching them something which inherently builds your influence. For me, I love to think of using the carousel slides as communicating 10 different points of information. If you were to break down a topic, concept, or idea that you know really well and you want to teach it to a friend, you just break it down into 10 steps and those steps become your slides. You also get to choose the order, and they show up sequentially and you literally just swipe through and can see and read all 10 posts. Some of the benefits of this sort of content is it actually helps you it really roots and establish your expertise in an area or topic, one that you're talking about in the post. I also love that with carousel post, there's an opportunity for someone to share on 10 different occasions. If you upload 10 images into the carousel, the viewer actually has the opportunity to share any one, if not all of those 10 images. If you're communicating information that requires more depth and uses all 10 images, I have literally seen people on stories share 2-7-10 different images from somebody's carousel post. By inherently sharing the value and using all the real estate space in carousels that Instagram allows you to upload, you can really amplify and extend your reach by inspiring someone, teaching someone on the other end of the screen that wants to share that. Just a small downside to this type of content is that there are more slides, the designs to the little more design heavy and conceptually heavy, but if you take the time to do it, I think you'll find that you love this sort of content. As a tip, the biggest reason why I love carousel posts is that you know how you scroll down your Instagram feed and you see all the posts. While in a carousel, when someone scrolls past your posts, will see the first image on the slide. However, if they don't interact with it, if they don't pause and stop, if they don't look at the post or engage with the post by liking it, Instagram will give a second shot to you, the creator, by showing the second slide in the carousel in the next round of their gallery feeds. The next time they look through their gallery feed because they didn't interact with the first slide of the carousel, Instagram will actually show them the second slide in the carousel and see if it was a little bit better for them, resonated better, and safe to engage there. What's extraordinary about carousel post is you actually get two chances to get in front of your audience with the same content. Keep this in mind when you're designing your carousel post, because the first and the second slides in the post, I would create both of them to be an ideal image that would want to be clicked on or engaged with. Think of your first two slides in your carousel post as great thumbnails to grab the attention of the viewers and get them to continue to swipe and read the rest of the content you've posted. Now, I've got an activity for you. Go back through your notes and the core reflection messaging exercise. Look through the list of topics that you said you could or would be willing to teach and select a topic to expand upon for a carousel post. Here's what I like to do. I grab a fresh sheet of paper and I love to write the topic that I'm covering at the top of the page. This is going to be your signature headline for this post. That headline could be something as simple as six tips to get whatever result you are going to be sharing or something to that matter. Right under the headline, you can write 3-9 tips that actually take your user's step by step through accomplishing what you said that they would receive in the headline. Each tip should just be one sentence, and each sentence is going to show up in a single slide in your carousel. Think of this just like a blog article you'd find somewhere out on the Internet. Instead of going super in-depth, we're actually just going to be doing a Spark Notes version. It's your job to communicate your points as succinctly and as quickly as possible with as much impact as you can write in a sentence at a time. After you create your outline, you're going to create a quick storyboard. Create a series of boxes on your sheet of paper that are empty and open for you to draw within. You're going to make one box for each tip that you included and add one more box with a title slide. If you want to capitalize on the tip that I mentioned earlier with the algorithm actually shows your posts first with the first slide and then with the second slide, you can actually create room for two title slides, for two alternative designs to get the attention of your viewers. Then simply what you're going to do is just write each tip that belongs in the boxes sequentially and draw anything you want to add into there, even if they're a little stick figures. Any visual elements you want to add into your post should show up in your storyboard. Then you can just jot any quick notes underneath each box for things to keep in mind or ideas you have when you go to the design process. As a quick ending tip on the last slide that you have available, you can always ask people to share the content with their followers and friends if they found it useful, and you can put a little arrow pointing down to where the share button is on Instagram. Amazing. Now that you know how great carousel tutorials are as a shareable content mechanism, in the next video, I'm going to teach you how to create shareable content from quick tips or fast facts that you know. 10. "Fast Facts" Post: Let's talk about what I call fast facts or quick tips. This is one of the easier types of content that there is a design for shareables, which is why I really like it. If you've ever seen a blog article that has many different lists, they're called listicles where you see a number,. Maybe there's 10 tips, it's like tip 1, tip 2, tip 3, tip 4 and it just keeps going. Those are called listicles. That's how I see this type of content that I call fast facts. These are single image posts that are heavy copy-based. It's just text, top to bottom, literally running in a list of tips or facts for your viewer. Conceptually, this post is just like the carousel post, just instead of being able to swipe with one idea per slide, all of the ideas are chronologically ordered top to bottom, where you're teaching something completely in one post. At the top of the post you place a title and text that's like, X Number of Ways To Gain This Result or whatever your headline is. Then, you immediately lists the items below it that teach how to achieve that result. You can usually fit between three and 10 facts below the headlines. That's what you're going to want to do for this post. What I love about what I call fast facts is these types of posts get shared a lot in Instagram and they are not designed heavy at all. They are literally just straight copy text posts. It also feels really easy for me to plan a post like this because it just feels so simple, natural, and to the point. The only thing I don't love is that they're not very visually stimulating and it is really copy-heavy, but I'm telling you I see these go viral all the time on Instagram, so they're a really great piece of content to focus on. I have another activity for you as promised. Go back and look through your core message exercise. Look through the topics that you're willing or able to teach about and select one headline or topic that's the most interesting to you right now, I would select a different topic than what we've been covering in previous videos so that you're actually developing out quite an array of shareable content through this course. Once you've got your topic, this exercise is really simple. Just take out a sheet of paper, write the title, whatever you're communicating to your audience, what you're teaching to them at the top of the page and beneath the title you're just going to jot down bullet points, probably 3-6, up to nine different bullet points of what you are going to be teaching right below it. Just add them like steps in a blog article, literally one short sentence or fragment at a time that communicates a single idea solidly. The tips should be quick. They can be fragments. They should be short and to the point. Like I've mentioned in a previous video, again, this is just like the SparkNotes version to a longer, lengthy blog article that you would write where you're going really in depth. The point of this sort of content is to show that highlights of what's going on so somebody can have a fast aha moment and then go deep later on their time. Think of this post like a helpful tip card that you would keep in your wallet to remind you of things that are important or to give you quick steps to do X, Y, Z, whatever the result is that you're looking for consistently. After you jot down your quick tips, you're going to be ready to take this to the design stage and then get it ready to post for Instagram. Now that you know how to create content based in quick tips or fact facts for your audience, in the next video, I will show you how to create, compare, and contrast posts, which, PS, these are also some of my absolute favorite types of shareable content. They're so visual and fun. Let's jump right in the next video and check them out. 11. "Compare & Contrast" Posts: I love compare and contrast posts. They quickly communicate a concept or idea and they make a fast visual impact on the viewer. This idea follows that there's a normal to doing something and then there's a completely alternate reality of that. It's like a contrasting truth. You can think about this like the Instagram versus reality trend and how drastically different they can be. It's kind of a comedic game of timing where you amplify the game. You have something that's normal and then a contrasting truth that's really drastic, dialed up and dramatic. That's how I like to think about compare and contrast posts. Visually these posts are split into half. There's usually the normal on the left side and then what we're comparing it to the more dramatic version on the right side. The left side is where you get to establish what has already existed in the field you're in and the expertise, what people assume or think about a certain topic. Then on the right side you get to explain your expertise. You get to showcase that on the list on this right side of the post. This side imparts the new attitude that you're sharing, that generally speaking, involves your expertise or expert direction on the topic. Now, quickly glance back through your notes from the core messaging exercise, the reflection we did in the beginning of this class. Again, in the list of topics that you said you'd be willing or could teach, you're going to select another topic. I do recommend picking a new topic so that by the end of this course, you will have several different shareable post, fleshed out and ready to go for you to begin posting on Instagram with this content. Grab a brand new sheet of paper. At the top of the sheet of paper, you're going to write your topic or headline. Then what I want you to do is take your pen and draw a line down the center of the paper, splitting the page into two columns. On the left side of the page, you're going to write what people think about, dot, dot, dot. On the right column, you're going to write at the top of the column what it actually takes, dot, dot, dot. This is one of my favorite formulas. It's performed well for me and other accounts that I know on Instagram. Then you're going to start writing. An example of a post like this that I did recently is, I showcased the topic of building a personal brand online, which is an expertise of a space I've been in for a long time now, and on the left side of the post, I put what people think they need to build a personal brand which includes a 100,000 followers, brand deals, posting pretty photos online, having a pretty website, and on the right side, I have the contrasting truth of what people actually need to build a personal brand online, based in my almost decade of expertise and experience in this area. I sat on the contrasting truth, what they actually need is a small core audience, a business with a core offer, how to understand what your audience wants' and how to communicate that and public speaking and communication skills. Go to your exercise and activity now and on the left side of the page write everything you've heard other people say or assume that they need to do, know or master in order to get the certain result or topic to what you're teaching. This list can be 3-8 points long. Then on the right side of the paper, you're going to write a list of what it actually takes based on your experience. Likely and actually more importantly, they should almost battle, they should be pretty opposite. The more drastic the differences between the left and the right-hand column, the more that this content will actually incite interest and be able to inspire someone to share it and actually teach them something in the moment, in that quick fleeting moment that they're looking on the post on Instagram. That little moment is so special because all of our attention, it's fleeting, especially on social media, so you really have to make an impact quickly. The more drastic the difference, the more that impact is shown and faster communicated to your audience. Generally speaking, there's always an expectation and then a reality for almost every situation we've all encountered, we're dealing with these differences all day expectation versus reality, expectation versus reality, it happens all day, everyday. In these posts, it's just our job to point out the expectation and the reality of whatever the topic is that you're teaching. For example, if we go to a really easy topic like weight loss, the expectation is, people think they can eat slightly healthier, maybe skip out on the brownies and the pizza for the week, that if they put in a little bit of effort and not worry about anything else, that they'll lose the weight. But the reality of losing weight and being healthy about it is that you would need calorie restriction paired with daily physical activity and healthy eating habits in order to get the results you desire. Now as a health coach, that would be a really great topic to tackle and to show just the contrasting differences to make your point quickly in a really great shareable post on Instagram. For Instagram, if we take it there, there's always just the expectation that if you post a pretty photo, you'll get followers. That if you use pretty filters and you put up the right content that you're following will grow. But that's just not necessarily true. There's a lot of competition in Instagram, there are a lot of different expectations from different audiences. The reality is that you need to really inherently understand your brand and really know and understand your audience and your market inside out. You have to know what they think, you have to know what they desire, how they want to get there, you have to know what their problems are and how to help them overcome them. Now you might think that that's a lot for Instagram, but I treat Instagram like a business. Instagram is a business. The act of gaining and keeping attention is a business, so treat it like a business. Like any good business, we would really strive to understand our market because the more that we understand the people that purchase from us in the case of a business, or the people that pay attention to us in the case of social media, the more we can serve their needs and give them more of what they're looking for, establish more expertise, establish more influence, and actually help people and make the world a better place along the way. Please take a quick moment to think about the topic of your choice that you're passionate about teaching and educating about after you've outlined your columns and you have the compare and contrast elements written down, you are ready to take this post to design and then to completion. In the next video, I'll share what it takes to create really visually stimulating information in a post. 12. "Visualizing Information" Posts: This is a take on like infographics but with just a few short pieces of information. Visualizing information is where you take the core central message that you want to communicate to the viewer and then you create image or data visualizations to communicate that message faster. This is done through images, GIFs, or icons. This is also a great time to use visual data tools that explain the information for you. Like for example, a Venn diagram or a wheel graph or chart that communicates information. Pi graphics are really great for this, or even what I would like to call a cycle visualization which is where you have a cycle circular item that says, this turns into this, which turns into this, which turns into this within the cyclical nature of whatever you're communicating. Think of a cycle visualization, like spring turns into summer, which turns into fall, which turns into winter which turns into spring. That's a really easy way to communicate it but it is a cyclical item. Again, the point of this is to immediately communicate data visually. The benefit of this type of content is that it is highly sharable if you really think about it and you can communicate that information quickly. The drawback is that generally speaking, data visualizations take a little bit more time to concept and think about and might take you a moment to figure out how to design it in a way that communicates what you're looking to speak about. All right. We're jumping right into another activity here. Go back through your reflections in the discover your core message exercise and pick another topic of passion or of interest. Then make a conscious choice of what visualization you would like to use for this topic. Think about whether or not you want to use a Venn diagram or a wheel or pi graphic or the cycle visualization or even what's called an iceberg visualization, where you see the iceberg and the 10 percent at the top is what people see and then the 90 percent under the surface is what people don't see around a specific topic. Now, grab another sheet of paper and add a storyboarding box. This is where you're going to begin plotting the information in the storyboarding area with how you'd like to visualize your concept. Literally jot down notes for your concept. For example, if you're doing the iceberg one, I would draw, even if you're not good at drawing like a funky little iceberg and the water surface and then just start putting lines outside of the box and write what you're going to be typing into this when you go design it. Make sure you take an extra moment just to think about what it is that you're looking to communicate and then how you can make that more visual and how you can increase the impact with the words and visualizations that you use together in combination. When you're done, you're ready to take this from the drawing board and bring it into the design software and then get ready to post on Instagram. Now that I've covered the five most common types of sharable content formulas and broken them down for you to recreate, we're going to dive right into writing the best magnetic caption for your post. Let's jump right in in the next video. 13. Write Engaging Captions Formula: Now that you have some amazing unique concept ideas to build your shareable posts, it's important to make sure that you re-communicate your idea in the caption and add even more commentary into the post. Contrary to popular belief, people do read on Instagram. I've heard so many people just be like, "Nobody reads, that's why I don't write captions." No, I promise you people read. Most people actually read the caption, especially if you've a shareable piece of content that's really stimulating and engaging that immediately brings their eyes to the caption to see what else you have to say on the topic. With that in mind, there are two places to gain attention in your posts. The primary area of attention is, of course, the visuals, and the imagery, and whatever's showing up in your actual shareable post. Then the secondary area is whatever you are embellishing on and writing within the caption itself. Here is my magnetic caption formula: communicate a single idea concisely, expand on it briefly, create one impactful statement that ties it all together, ask for engagement, and then add your hashtags. If I were to break this down even further, I would say communicate your idea in one sentence as the first sentence of your caption. The second part of your caption would be explaining in three quick bullet points expanding on the first sentence. This is where you get to expand on your key takeaway and really drive home three key points. Then end with a powerful statement, which generally speaking is just going to be a spin on the first sentence that you wrote. Of course, at the close of your post, make sure you're asking for engagement. Remind your viewers that they can share this post to inspire someone. You can ask them to comment below in the comments and tell you XYZ, whatever it is you want to know about the post. You could say something as simple as, I'd love to hear your thoughts below in the comments. Another option to close for a call to action or a call for engagement is to gently remind the audience looking at this post that they can follow you and your account for more content like this. The call to action to follow you is really great if your content ends up showing up in the Explore page, in the Discovery page, because when people stumble across your content on the discovery page, they actually don't know that they're not following you, so in the caption if you remind them, "Hey, you may not be following me, come up here and follow if you'd like this sort It's just a good call to action to get some more followers when you're gaining new views. At the close of the post, I like to close out with between five and 20 relevant specific hashtags to help me get on to the Explore page and get into the hashtag discovery fields, which, of course, gets more new traffic and that's where your real organic growth is going to come from besides the act of sharing and referral of the content. Now, go ahead and use this formula and write a caption for one of the posts that you've been concepting through this course. Something to keep in mind: when you're finished writing your actual caption, you do want to make sure you're adding hashtags. The key to hashtags is they have to be relevant to what you're talking about or showing within the post. The Instagram algorithm is actually intelligent enough to scan what's in your post visually and then vet it against the topics and the hashtags, and if those things don't match and if the caption doesn't match as well, then it won't feature you or show you within the hashtag feeds. Relevancy is key, please make sure that you are using hashtags that are literally relevant to what you're posting. For example, if you're posting something really motivational and inspirational, it would be smart to use the keywords motivation and inspiration in your caption and then in the hashtags to tag motivational Monday, motivational Tuesday, whatever other their tags, and to then also include inspirational tags as well. This triggers to the algorithm that there's relevancy in both your photo or image. Your caption and the tags is what triggers to Instagram, "Hey, my content's really authentic, I'm not just trying to game the system and get fake traffic, I actually have something really valuable that people are going to love. Please place me in your hashtag feeds and get me on the Discovery page." Now let's jump in to talk about the size of the hashtags because the size of the tags relevant to the size of your account really matters as well. The smaller your account, you want to go for hashtags with less results, the larger your account, generally speaking, you want to go to hashtags with more and greater results. If you're a smaller account, I would probably think anything under 50,000 followers, you want to stick to using hashtags that have between 50,000 and 500,000 results. When I say results, I mean that there are literally 500,000 posts that have showed up in a specific hashtag feed. You can tell how many results there are in a hashtag on Instagram when you type in the hashtag symbol and then start to type in the tag. It will actually tell you how many results or posts there are in each hashtag. Generally, you can access this information or data on a desktop computer too just viewing Instagram hashtags. If you're a larger account, you can use something between 500,000 results and let's say 4-6 million results. But most of you probably will be on the smaller size, so I would suggest staying within or under the 500,000 results policy. If you're a micro account, an account with maybe under 10,000 followers, I recommend using hashtag results that are smaller, use a series of tags with between 10 and 50,000 results and then a series of tags with results that are between 50 and 200,000. Hashtags are a bit of a science, but this is a general overview just to get you some direction with your caption so that you can get the organic traffic that comes from hashtags and gain the organic traffic from the discovery feed as well as the referrals from sharing. Already now you know how to write the perfect caption, the magnetic caption, for your post. In the next video, I'm going to share with you how to plan for growth and amplify your reach. 14. Plan for Growth and Amplify Your Reach: In this video, I'm going to share with you how to plan for account growth, more profile visits, and gaining additional reach on Instagram. There's nothing worse than putting all of your energy and attention into creating beautiful, brand new, unique content on Instagram, and then it goes viral, which is amazing, but you realize that your account wasn't tagged or someone ripped the content off and just re-posted it and you didn't get any credit. I know this sounds gross and like Emily, "Now, why are we talking about this?" The reason why I'm bringing it up is because I've seen it happen. I haven't been on the negative side of it where I've seen it happen, where people haven't gotten any credit. I'm going to get into some of this, but I have seen posts being constantly repost, gone viral on much larger accounts and the people that were the original creators were very lucky and I say lucky, but actually it was planned, they knew things like this would go viral so they tagged themselves in the post, and they ensured that they would always gain credit for their work. Which leads us into the primary tip in this section, which is to tag your work. Think of yourself as an artist, you are an original creator. You want to make sure that your signature and your handle tag is on every single piece of sharable content that you put out there. Re-posting is a huge part of Instagram culture and there are so many feature pages and other larger account pages that left to cherry pick the best work that there is out there that has the best chance of going viral and sharable content is some of that work. If you're producing shareable content, make sure you tag yourself in your work. You want to make sure that you add your Instagram tag, profile tag somewhere that is nested within the work where it can't be cropped out. I know it seems crazy, but I have seen other accounts that repost literally just crop the tags out so take your tag and put it somewhere in the middle of the work. It can be so small but it still needs to be legible. Find a way to nestle your tag somewhere within the middle or center of the work so it can't be cropped out and so that you'll always get credit no matter where it's re-posted. I've actually seen posts jump off of Instagram and hit the front page of Reddit and I was so happy that the creators took the time to make sure that they tagged themselves in the center of the post so that even though they were reposted on Reddit, the Instagram account handle wasn't tagged on the Reddit post. However, at least you can visually see that this person's tag and handle, the original creator was actually nested into the overall work itself. Another aspect of tagging your work that's important is when you go to publish on Instagram, I recommend tagging yourself within your own work, not just visually, but also tap on the photo within Instagram and type in your tags so that if your post actually does hit the Explore and Discovery feed, which I've seen happen a lot with my clients and other accounts that I run, that when a new potential follower and new traffic taps on your post, they will see who is being credited for the work which I know many people do when they want to see who the work is done by and who they should go over to follow. Another tip to grow and amplify your reach is to take your post and share it into your stories. That way you gain the additional reach from your stories and your followers can see that you have a new post and then go back over to your profile and check it out. I also recommend DMing your post to a few close friends and family so you can get some initial traction on it and get some initial feedback. Another item I would recommend when you go to publish your post is to add a call to action in the first comment after you publish. This could be something like asking an engaging question and then asking people what their thoughts are on this within the comments. I love adding an engagement prompt in the first comment, because when people go to view the post, the first comment always shows up right below the caption, actually even ahead of the full caption before you select read more for the full caption, they can see the comment. That call to action is really clearly placed for people to see and then begin to engage with your account. Another item I would recommend is to sign up for a creator or business account, even if you have a personal account on Instagram, I recommend signing up for creator or business account because it gives you access to Instagram's insights. They'll actually give you a breakdown of the metrics of where your followers live as far as countries and main cities, you'll be able to see when your followers are active on Instagram, the best times to post and so much more. The insights will share particularly how much reach and how many shares you gained per post and they even track and follow how many followers you received per post on an account. So you can analyze which post gain new followers, which post gain new more shares, and those things can be different based on the variety of content that we all post on Instagram. You can see your specific insights right in the Instagram app, or you can track over to Facebook's Creator Studio on the desktop and you can see them there as well. The last tip I have for you to increase your reach and growth on Instagram is to tag feature accounts in your sharable content and then share your content via DM with these accounts. Look for accounts that are posting and re-posting content based on the topic that you're going to be sharing about. Generally speaking, these are called feature accounts, where they re-post work from other people. Of course, you want to only look at feature accounts that give appropriate credit, tag the original creators in the caption as well as the post themselves. After you find accounts that you want to tag in the post, then when you hit "Publish", make sure you also send it to them as a DM and tell them that you would be so flattered that you feel like this actually fits the content on their page and that they would maybe love to post it on your behalf while of course, appropriately tagging you. Doing this is like getting a free shout out on another page that's bigger than yours, that has more reach and more exposure so this is a really great tactic that I recommend to start getting in front of more people in addition to the referrals that you gain from shares and the hashtag traffic and the traffic from the Explore page. There are so many areas that you can gain new traffic and new followers on Instagram. I like to go after them all. When I first started my Instagram account and I was in New York City, I posted a lot about coffee and matcha and one of the ways that I was able to grow to my first 5,000 and then first 10,000, 12,000 followers, is I would tag feature accounts that liked to repost coffee shop photos, repost latte photos, I repost matcha photos, and I would send them the post and I'd be like, "Hey, I think this fits in the vibe of your feet and your gallery. I think you'll really like it. I would absolutely love if you could repost it." Many of them did, they would tag me appropriately and then I would share that as well. Now you know how to plan for growth and amplify your reach on Instagram with your shareable posts, you learned to tag and credit your work, share your post to your stories, add a call to action in the first comment prompting your followers to comment in your post, sign up for a business or creator account to gain that really great insights and analytics from Instagram and send your published work to Feature pages to repost. In the next video, we will recap everything we've learned and I'll go through your class project. I'm really, really looking forward to seeing what you guys are going to create. 15. Tying it All Together: Congratulations, you made it. We covered so much in this course. Here's a quick recap of everything you've learned so far. Why sharable content is the key to Instagram organic growth, how to identify your core shareable message, and topics for you to share and teach about in your content, where to source inspiration for these posts and how to quickly design them. We covered the formula for the five most common types of shareable Instagram posts, quotes, carousel tutorials, fast facts or quick tips, compare and contrast posts, and visualizing information. Don't forget we also learned how to pair extraordinary magnetic captions to your posts, and even how to plan for organic growth on Instagram. I hope you found this course to be insanely valuable and useful. I posted a project in the project section below, I would absolutely love to see you create your very own original piece of sharable content for Instagram, and share it with us here on Skillshare. Remember to add a link to your Instagram account and your Instagram handle so that everyone here can find each other over on the app. If you're ready to publish your shareable post, please share them with the world. Remember to tag me in your posts on Instagram so I can actually see them go live, or feel free to send them to me in the DM. I am so looking forward to seeing the content that you guys are going to be creating. I know you are all so creative and there are so many people with such a variety of beautiful expertise that can be taught that are just watching this course alone. If you loved this class and you want to learn more from me, please follow me over here on Skillshare, and of course you can find me over on Instagram and also on YouTube, where I share videos on how to grow your Instagram account and all about Instagram marketing to help you further along on your journey. I'll tag my profiles on the teacher bio below. I can't wait to see your projects. I'm so excited to see what you've created through this course. I look forward to watching you grow on Instagram. Until next time guys. Thank you so much. It has been such a pleasure to share this expertise with you. I really look forward to seeing you somewhere on the Internets and Interwebs. I truly hope you enjoyed this course, and until next time I will see you later.