Transcripts
1. Introduction: Guys, welcome to my
course on how to effectively grow on Instagram in 2023 and onwards over the
last 12 months or 24 months, instagram has grown
significantly for those of us who've been using
Instagram for a long time, or even the new abusers, a lot of the old
content out there will be telling you things
that are outdated. And in this course,
I want you to be up-to-date and
be able to build a strategy that is going
to allow you to grow thousands and thousands of followers on Instagram
is not easy. As we approach 1.3
billion users, it's becoming more
and more saturated. But it's never been
better to actually grow, to actually be able to build
a brand and community. And that's exactly my goal. Every time I post and grow
an account on Instagram. So we're going to
be running through my mindset throughout that, covering basics
such as hashtags, SEO, but then more, some of the more advanced stuff. But no matter what
level you are, everything that I talk about, you will be able to apply
and add to your strategy. Over the last 12 months, I've been able to
grow over 500,000 followers on a variety
of different accounts, whether that's themed pages, influencer or small businesses. The goal of this course is, I'm gonna be covering
a range of topics which are commonly
asked Questions. And I'm going to
cover each of them, but also I'm going to
make them relatable to the Instagram
algorithm as someone that's been using Instagram
for the last seven years. I've seen how the
algorithm has changed and how important it is to
be up to date with it. So it's extremely important that you understand
these strategies and apply them in
2023 and onwards. So by the end of this course, you're going to
be able to go off and really build a
strategy that is current and that will put you in a skyrocketing mood. Stay tuned. Let's get started.
2. How to do the course: Hey guys, I'm so
happy that you've decided to take this
course and take action and become a part of this Instagram growth journey. Now, a bit about how
to take this course. I want you to have a
notepad and pen ready, as there's going to
be a lot of things I'm going to talk about
and it's important for you to take notes and remember certain things
that apply to you. Also have your Instagram
account ready so that you can monitor things and analyze things as we talk about
different topics. As it's important to see
where you might have gone wrong in the past and
where you're going right. And then from the course
you'll be able to see which parts you
need to improve on. It's going to be a
journey. Don't rush it. By the end of the course, you will be in a
position to grow and really shine out to your
potential audience. Let's go.
3. Consistency - What does it take?: When it comes to consistency, don't be scared and don't
think that you need to post four times a day or
overdo it consistency. And the number one
thing that I want you to remember is that
the goal here is for you to not burn
out consistency is very important to the
algorithm as ultimately, Instagram is competing with
TikTok or YouTube, Facebook, Pinterest, all of
these platforms which are essentially
competing for our time. So the longer that
someone can stay on your profile and on Instagram, the more Instagram is going, would you an expose your
content to be consistent? There are a few things that
I want us to remember, and by the end, I'm also going to mention something that is
very important. The first thing I
want to discuss is posting and your scheduling
and how to do it. Now, the number one thing I
recommend is that you have to be planning in advance and you have to be using
the scheduler. There are numerous software
nowadays such as later, sweet, even the Metta suite, which allow you to build
a preview and put all of your content on there and to build a schedule for
the next few weeks. This will allow you to not only avoid burnout of just
doing it every day, but also allow you to
plan your content. Everything needs to be a strategy and
planning in advance. It allows you to
tick these boxes, feed the algorithm, and
also fulfill your goals. So using these
scheduling software is essential for you to do so, especially if you're handling multiple accounts and on these softwares
and on the metal, you're able to actually
post things automatically so you don't have to post
pictures, reels, etc. Every day you organize the
post. You put the caption. If you put the hashtag and it will just let it out for you. Not only is it going to
save you so much time, it's going to feed the
algorithm and it's just going to give
you what you desire. Now, when it comes to
consistency, of course, it's great to plan as
we just mentioned, it's good to make sure that
we're able to avoid burnout. But one thing when it
comes to Instagram and to other platforms is that
there is waste trending. Always. Stuff that we
need to jump on as a social media manager is something that is
critical to grow. What I want you to do is basically plan your
continent advance, but always leave opportunity
for you to jump on a trend. So e.g. if there's
a trending audio in your niche or you're somewhere
outside and you think, Wow, I could record this right now and post it didn't do it. You need to have a percentage
of posts which are dynamic. These types of posts are much
more likely to go viral, especially if you're jumping
on trends and you need to leave opportunity for
this in your schedule. Essentially how I do
it when I schedule is I just plan my
posts for the week. If I decide to do something one day which is
off the schedule, I will just push everything forward and insert today's post, which I want to go viral. What I think might go viral, you don't need to be
doing this every week is just really when you think something is going to work or you think the
team should do it. And as it influences,
you think, wow, this big influence has
just posted something and it's telling other people to do it. So let me do that. So guys, make sure that
you're planning your content, make sure that you're scheduling your content and
make sure you're leaving opportunity to
host dynamic content. And the algorithm will
reward you for this.
4. Hashtags - How important?: One of the first things
that we're going to discuss is hashtags. As obviously hashtags
is very important bits also developing and changed
over the last 23 years, over the last 12 months, might strategies
have changed a lot. So that's one of
the first things that I want you to understand going forward and when you're implementing it
in your strategy, let me give you a
quick rundown on how hashtags actually work. So hashtags allow you to
categorize your content. And that was the initial goal
when hashtags were first created and thoughts about when you're typing in a hashtag, you'll be able to see how popular the hashtag with the number that comes up, e.g. it's quite obvious which
hashtags are going to be huge, more popular a word is, or the more popular
the category is, the more popular
that hashtag is. So e.g. hashtag food is
going to be absolutely huge. And this is where
the next steps, and you will notice that food is an absolutely huge
hashtag and as we basically niche down
in that category. So e.g. let's say we have food and then we put
down American food. But hashtag will slowly
decrease in size. Then we put California and
it will decrease again. And then we put mac and cheese, and then we put cheesy
mac and cheese, and then we put cheesy
mac and cheese holes. Now each time it's gone down in size and it's become
more and more niche. Basically, as you do hashtags and with your
hashtag strategy, you should be including
a mixture of these. I think a lot of
time in the past, people used to say
you use 30 hashtags, but from my experience, hashtags have become less
and less effective with, by putting so many that I
do a mountain now is 3-7. You just want to make sure
that the Instagram algorithm understands exactly the type of content that you're doing, but also the hashtags actually
won't make your video go. Viral. Hashtags are actually very
useful when you're starting, when you're in your first
thousand followers as you grow. And lots of my accounts, which are 200,000 plus, I do not use hashtags as
the algorithm already understands my audience and they're not
necessarily important. The Instagram algorithm now has a lot more SEO potential with other variables which I'll discuss later on in the course, hashtags are less effective in that way for bigger account, if you're a smaller account, use around seven
hashtags and use a mixture of big ones
and really niche down. So if you're posting travel
content, do a big one, light summer travelers or
something that is quite big, I wouldn't say always go for the really obvious
and big ones as it's going to be really hard
for you to rank in those. Sometimes the bigger
ones also can be. And if they're
extremely popular, so be careful with those ones, but try to get one or two in the millions and then
get the main bunch in the hundreds to 500,000 and
then niche down from there. But I would say the
optimal amount for you to go forward is around
seven hashtags, especially if you're below 20,000 followers
don't rely on them too much and don't spend
too much time on hashtags, guys, this whole
course is about you being efficient and
not burning out. I will tell you now when
I'm preparing my hashtags, it takes me about 1 min now, or 30 s or even less than that. And I usually do it manually because most of the
time I'm posting reals. I just quickly,
depending on the video, will do my hashtag manually. One of the great tools
that I use is in flat. And you can just Google that, which is a platform that allows you to generate
the hashtags. But the issue and
what a lot of people recommend is using these
softwares and these tools, but I don't recommend
using them as a lot of the time
they will scrape huge hashtags and
they don't count hashtags that have been
banned or anything like that. So I would suggest
doing manually, doing three to seven hashtags
and going from there.
5. Captions + Call to Actions: Guys, when it comes to captions, captions are critical
to build engagement, deliver your message
for call to action, and also just to make sure that people understand your brand. And it's a way for you to
communicate your message that the actual pose to
the content might not be able to with captions, I would experiment, have some shortcut options and
have some longer captions. Use software such as
Grammarly to make sure that the captions are concise and
that the grammar is good. And the mindset that
I want you to have every time you
create a caption is, am I providing value? Or I might incentivizing
people to comment one of the classic captions
that I've seen or used myself
when creating e.g. content, which is funny, I will put caption this. I'm then incentivizing
people to comment and actually interact with the post by them captioning
the post for me. But then if I have some
educational content or something that I want
to deliver a message on, I will provide a caption
that is full of value. It's more likely
that they will save the post going onto
call to actions. Ultimately, when we're
posting on Instagram, we are trying to
get the users or the consumers to
actually do something, whether we have a product
we want them to buy, or we want them to visit a website or sign up
to our mailing list. We are able to do this
with call to actions. Now, I'm going to just run
through some examples of different call to actions
that we can get people to. Now the first thing is to save, making sure that people save our content is critical
as it's one of the best metrics to tell the algorithm that
people like the content. So something that you can
write in your captions is make sure you save
this post for later, or make sure you save this post. Save this post so
you don't forget, save this post and
revisit it weekly. Another metric which
is critical is shares. The call to actions
are going to be amazing for you to
get your shares, shared this with a friend
who's struggling with. Share this in your story
and let people know. Share this with a friend
who needs to see this, like this post and let
other people see it too, guys, if you enjoyed this
post, please double-tap. If you like this style of post, make sure you tell me by
liking comments again, are critical in terms of
engagement and you can incentivize this in your
captions with the CTA tag, someone in the comments
who needs to see this? Do you agree? Comment below, comment below, and the best one
gets pinned, guys, use your captions wisely, incentivizing engagement
and use call to actions.
6. SEO - The Future: Instagram has changed
way more to be like an SEO platform over the last few months and it's
going to continue doing so. Seo stands for search
engine optimization. What essentially it
means is that it's basically like
Google's concepts, but now in Instagram, so all of the keywords and everything that you're
inserting into the app. It's going to help
your content and profile get exposed to
the right audience. So using the right
keywords here and in certain places is going to make sure that you're going
to grow much quicker. Instagram SEO is
booming right now, but still very new. So if you can
capitalize on your SEO, you're going to put yourself
in positioned for growth. First thing I want to
discuss is your profile. Please go to profile and optimization class
if you haven't, as that will put your profile in the best scenario
possible for SEO growth. You want to make
sure that you have the right keywords there. You are being exposed
to the right audience. Hashtags again, are going
to be important for SEO. As I mentioned, I have a hashtag clause that
I want you to watch, used three to seven
hashtags in your posts. Guys, anyone telling
you to do more does not understand how the SEO
algorithm is working right now, guys, there's now a
place when you post in advanced settings
called alt texts. And most people actually
don't know about this. So I will need to go in there
when you post and just add some keywords that actually match the content
that you're creating. This is going to help the algorithm
understand what posts, understand what the
content is about and put it in front of the
right people guys. Use these small tools, the Instagram of
forever improving and introducing to really
make your account boom. This is so new that most
people don't know about it. And if you're able
to use it now, it will put you
in pole position. As I mentioned in the captions, closed captions are essentially
where the algorithm is going to scan and see
what keywords at the end, understand where they need to put your content on
the Explore page. Make sure that whatever content you're creating that you're using your caption to
put the right keywords, the right hashtags, and utilize those words to make sure
that algorithm understands. It's relatively simple, that
makes such a difference. So use your captions and make
sure that you add keywords. And if you are able to take away and understand all
of these steps, profile optimisation, hashtags, alt texts,
and your captions. You will be making sure
that the algorithm understands what audience you
want to be put in front of.
7. Reels - Everything you need to know: Instagram, Rails. Now, if you've done any
research or try to get any tips or any advice in the last few months
or the last year, everyone is telling you to post roads, they
are not wrong. Instagram rules are
huge right now. Short-form content. Every single platform is
promoting them heavily. Since TikTok has boomed, everyone is now competing
with that style of content. And Instagram rules
are really effective. It's really important for you to have them as part
of your strategy. And today I want to give you some key tips that
are going to change the way your Instagram Reels perform when it comes
to Instagram rules, short-form content is
what everyone is pushing. So as I mentioned
earlier in the course, we need to feed the
algorithm, the rights, fundamentals and
the right variables for us to be boosted
onto the Explore page. Now, when it comes to rows, the way engagement is measured really is through
the watch time. So if unreal is 50 s, then we need to get as
much watch time all the way up to 50 s
as much as possible. If we get 45 plus
seconds or 40 s, the algorithm is going to think, Wow, this is good
because people are watching over 90
per cent railroad. Now, this is where
some of the tips and hacks that I want you to
do for reals comes in. Instagram really
likes short rules. So the first trick and tip
I wanna give you is we need to make sure that our rules
are getting solid watch time. And the way around this
is for us to create rows which are 7-9 s long. The reason we do
this is because that means that people
are more likely to watch 100 per cent of the
real and even rewatch it, which is going to tell the algorithm that this
post is incredible. Not only that is
at seven to 8 s, the row actually loops. So it automatically,
again for the consumer. So not only are they
watching 100% of the room, that they actually
rewatching it again, giving more and more
love to the algorithms. So guys, I want you
to start posting seven to 8 s on Instagram
growth right now, you need to make sure
that you are doing this. And this is going
to generate you way more views than anything
that you were doing before. Now the next trick and understanding that
I want you to have withdrawals is that the
first two 3 s are critical. You need to make
sure that you're able to hook the person. You are, whoever watches
that real into your video. That's the mindset. I can't tell you what to put there because I
can't see your video, but I can tell you, make sure that you
go straight to the action and remember
if you're making videos, does seven to 8 s, make sure that the
first two, 3 s, you're going straight in because usually anything
that's kinda dynamic, we lost that length anyways, so try not to have a long intro. Let's say you're
doing a fitness video and you're about to do a rap, don't make the free,
wait too long. Just stop the video
doing the reps, people watch the
78 second video, that algorithm will love it
and people are going to be. The next thing that I
want you to do is make sure that you're using
trending audios. Trending audios gives
you another layer, another opportunity to go viral. And nowadays, audios from
TikTok common to Instagram and even Instagram has
its own audios which are trending
and going viral. So you need to pick audios
which match your video, match the niche that you're in. So potentially go
on to competitors, see what videos
do well for them, see which audios are
doing well for them, save them, then you use
them on your own audios. You'll notice that
so many audios are seven to 10 s long because people understand that this is a great length of
time for Rails. Trending audios, make videos
that are seven to 8 s long. Make sure that you have
a really good hook in the first two 3 s. And then finally,
I want you to make sure that when you're
picking your rules, that you are picking the right
thumbnail URL is going to go into your page and people
will see on your grid, even when it goes into
the Explore page, the roof thumbnail,
it's going to make people press the video. So you need to make
sure that you are putting the best
thumbnail possible. And something I want
you to remember is when you go into or cover, you can actually zoom in. You can zoom out. You can go around the
page and you can pick the best spot which people
are going to press. I like to pick spots
which I think are clickbait which incentivize
people to press the video. Guys thumbnails are really important when it
comes to rules. And it's critical that you
make the most of them. The next steps when
it comes to rows, I want you to make your content in batches or prepare
it in batches. If you're an influencer
or a business and you create content or
someone creates content, Few, get them to create
that content in batches. So they create
numerous at a time. This will make sure that the process sufficient
for you as tracing rules on a day-to-day basis can be time-consuming
and not effective. Make the content give
it a week, two weeks, or however much you make, analyze it and go from there. So make sure you create
reels in batches. And guys, when it comes
to creating your rules, make sure that you
prep beforehand. So have an idea of how
you want it to look. Remember, fiction is
not the goal here. What you want to do
is post and move on. Rules are going to be
a critical part of growth for 2023 and onwards. So make sure that you have it reals as part
of your strategy, as ultimately Instagram and the
algorithm pushing rules heavily right now. So it's critical that
you jump on rules, guys, whether you're an
influencer or business, there's ways to make rules
and be smart about it. You can create rules with just a video clip and
text on top of them, similar to how people
do it on TikTok. And that also can go very viral. And you can also put pictures. You can use templates, which is a new
Instagram feature. So there's lots of
ways to make rules. It doesn't just need to be a
cinema piece of videography. There's ways to combine different styles of
content to make rules. So it's definitely worth experimenting and
going from there.
8. Content - Styles And More: This one I want to discuss
Instagram content on a whole and how to best effectively use it when
it comes to content, it's important that
you have a strategy. So you have an idea of how you're going
to get your content, how you're going to create
the content if you're leaving it to last minute and
doing it on a daily basis, it will cause you to burnout
and it will cause you to potentially stop
and just give up. So really you want
to be able to create everything in efficient way. Now there are different
styles of content. I'm going to start by discussing the carers cells
or the swipe pose switches when you
have a graphics or pictures and you're able
to swipe through them. You can do up to ten at
the moment on Instagram, this is a great way to provide
value to your audience, to make a slideshow
of pictures and to just really tell a
story similar to rules, you're able to really
keep people on the post, making sure that people
stay on the watch time in this case will be
really high if you are able to provide a concise story which is
interesting combination of swipes and rules are the best to Brian now in terms of
content that you can post, I would have a template
that you can use or a style that you go to every
time you make a carousel. Not only will this look
good on your grid, but it will make it much easier when you're
creating the content. You can use Canva to create your graphics or you
can pay someone, but in reality, you
want to make it as easy as possible for you so that
you can be consistent. Thumbnails are going to
be extremely important just to make sure people
press your content. Make sure the first slide
is always clickbait. And then as you go through, you've hooked them
on the second one, which will make sure that
they read the whole thing. Guys, be small. Remember, what you're
looking for is saves likes and comments. I made a whole class on rails, so make sure that you
watched that one. But rules are going
to be very important as that's exactly
what every platform, especially Instagram
is pushing in 2023, is short form content
making rules as part of your content strategy
is going to be critical. Now single posts and
pictures are still a great tool if you
are able to use them, is so important for you to
post this type of content, but you need to make
sure is that you have a caption
which is engaging. Remember we want to keep
people on the posts as long as possible and without a
real or without the swipe, there's less with them to
look at and to engage in. So make sure that you
concentrate on the caption and probably combined a single post with a strong caption
would allow you to compete with your
rows and your swipes. Now with your stories, stories is slightly different. You can be much more
experimental on, and you can also engage with
your consumers a lot more if you're a brand influence or even potentially
a theme page, you can get your consumers to actually interacts with you. One of the most popular ones
that I see influences use or brands is asked me anything when it comes
to commenting on posts. You're going to have
your hardcore fans which are going to
always come in. And people which you're
engaging with their content, though engage with yours. People are much more
likely to interact, especially if it's a question, because no one else is going
to see that some people, even online or shy, if you have a serious page, maybe your story will allow you to be slightly more comedic. One of the best things
about stories for me, for businesses is that you can really sell on your stories, whatever business you are or whatever product
you're trying to sell, you be able to use your stories, press here and direct
them to the website. And it's going to
be very important for you to use this feature. So stories is definitely something that you
should implement. I like to also share a new post Sunday at something
creative to it. You can share old
content directly there. You can repost some stuff. So there's loads you can do. There's lots of
features such as poll asked me anything, gifts. There's a lot you
can do an experiment that's the key
there with stories. But I would aim to post
one story a day for sure, especially on days that you
potentially aren't posting, utilize a scullery feature
and don't overthink it. Finally lives. If you're able to go
live on Instagram, can definitely do so. I wouldn't recommend
going live until you have at least a few
thousand followers. As you will be able
to make sure that at least some
people will attend. It's great way for you
to collaborate if you're an influence where
people can ask you questions, same with brands. So definitely utilize
the live feature, but I would have that
at the bottom of your priority list and make sure that you can
check list everything. First concept is going to be
a key part of your growth. So make sure that you come
up with a strategy that works for you that is able to represent your well effectively, but ultimately won't
lead you to burnouts.
9. Profile optimization - Stand Out: One of the most important
things you need to do is to optimize your profile. Your profile needs
to be appealing to the potential consumer
to make them fully. At the end of the day,
when people go to your profile in
the press follow, they need to go through
all of that and they analyze your page
and decide from there. So first thing is your
content needs to be good to initially attract them, but then they'll go on to your
profile to press follows. So we need to make
sure that we're in a good state and that we are visually appealing
to that consumer and to the ideal audience. The first thing I want to
make sure that we're doing is make sure that a profile
picture is professional, whether we're a brand, whether we're an
influencer theme page, make sure that it looks
professional so we need to act. All costs. Avoid blurry photos. If you have a
blurry photo there, it's going to be the first sign that you are not really caring about your profile and that you are not so professional entity, whether you're an
influencer or a brand's, if you're a brand, get a logo, get it done professionally. Make sure that it's hate. D, as that's the
first thing that people are always
going to analyze. If you're an
influence or someone who's trying to
brand themselves, makes sure that you get a
professionally done photo. It's worth the money as
you'll be able to use that photo on all platforms
and especially on Instagram, you'll be able to showcase yourself cleanly
and without below. Now, the next thing that I want you to do is make sure that you pick a handle that
is easy to remember. Don't want to pick a handle
which is over 15 characters. And also that
really doesn't have too many numbers or
ideally no numbers at all. And as little spaces, adults and underscores as possible and be
creative with it. I know that a lot of the
handles nowadays are taken, but there are ways
to be creative. And I think these
fundamentals when it comes to setting up your profile and make
sure it's optimized. It's going to take time, whatever position you're in. If you already have an
account with a handle, it might be worth changing. If you think that
it's not easy to remember and it doesn't
reflect your brand properly. So remember those
points and take that forward to optimizing
your profile. The next thing I need
to make sure that we're doing is in the bio, we need to make it
clear exactly what the consumer or our
potential audience can expect from us
when they follow us. That's essentially the
most important part. Remember, they're going
to come in our profile, analyze our vote to
analyze our bio, analyze the whole
thing put together, we need to use this space effectively and really
told them why they should follow us
if they've watched one of our dog
videos and they come onto our profile when it says we post the best dog videos, they're going to be much
more inclined to follow us. We need to make sure that we put the right information
that puts something about exactly what you do and what the audience should
expect from you. Now, the next thing we
can do is put a CTA, which is a call to action telling them to
actually do something. And this applies for even
our current followers. So the, when they
go on our profile, we have a CTA because ultimately whatever type
of account we have, we're going to be trying to send the audience
somewhere else, whether it's a website or to
the shop or whatever it is. And we can utilize
this space to do that. But one thing I want
you to remember is that only put one CTA here. Do not make your bio spammy
and just selling because that's not going to get your sales and it's not
going to get you followers. So put one CTA there, make it short and sweet. Visit our store for the latest offers or
if it's Black Friday, black Friday offers available now point down, and that's it. That's enough. People will convert from that, but you don't want to
appear too spammy. So guys, make sure that
you've written this down. You've analyzed your profile so far and that you're
taking these boxes. And the next and final thing is, is your story highlights. Story highlights are great to make your page
look aesthetic. Get some story highlights
which fits your brand. Don't put pictures of
random things as either. Think that it effectively
benefits your profile. What you need to do is whatever colors
you're branding is, add that to your
story highlights. If you're a travel page, you can put some different
countries there. And if you're a small business, you can put some products. Make the products look good, make them name look
goods that you can put offers, special offers. If you're a gym, you can
put some of your classes. You could put some
of your posting. You can put some of your PTs, use platforms such as Canva to create this story highlights. But they are great to just add an aesthetic
to your profile. And for people who are really
interested to press them, this will be the least
engaged part of your bio, but they are critical part and I always
recommend using them. So guys, make sure that you have applied this to your profile. Definitely use this section
to optimize your bio and build something
that the audience are going to follow you
and remember you for
10. Competition - Mindset: Competition and competitors, no matter what type of
account and you have, competitors are going
to be all around you. We live in a saturated world, especially on Instagram
with 1.3 billion users. But something that has changed the way I grow on my
Instagram accounts, all my competitors,
competitors throughout your journey are going to be
critical for your growth. There are going
to be competitors which are growing
really quickly, and competitors which are going to be not doing that well. And what you want to do is keep analyzing those 23 accounts, which are growing really quickly around the
same level of z. So if you have 5,000 followers, find a few competitors
which are similar to you. And you want to
make sure that you keep changing these competitors every 10,000 followers and keep finding the ones
that are growing quickly. Because what is going
to happen is you might not be in
Instagram expert now, but the way they're growing, you're going to be able to
analyze that and understand after a few days or a few weeks why they're
growing so quickly. And you want to check
everything that they do and implement some of those
strategies onto your own profile. Saying all of that, not only the strategy but the content
they're posting, audience that they're
using, the hashtags, the way they communicate
with the audience, etc. You want to be able
to take this from two or three different
accounts and apply it to your own profile. If you're a social media
manager and you're running a few
different accounts. This is going to be critical as they do a lot of the
research they're growing. So you can literally take their strategy and
add it to your own to make sure that
throughout your growth journey, you're finding two or
three competitors. Makes sure that they're
always growing. Make sure they're around the same followers is
you and in your niche, competitors are
great for growth.
11. Niche - Understanding: The next thing I want
to discuss is niche. It's obviously, even if you're a business or an
influencer or theme page, is still very important to have a particular niche and stick to it no matter what type
of account you have, if your content is to sporadic and two random people
won't follow you. People like to follow accounts where they expect
a certain style or expect a certain bunch of content that the user
will stick to that guys, when you're picking your niche, make sure it's something that
you're passionate about, making sure it's
something that you can actually post consistently and make sure that you have
enough ideas where you can rotate four or five
different styles of content around that
particular niche. And it's very important
that you don't start to post things
outside your niche, especially because the
algorithm will get confused. Nowadays, the algorithm
is really trying to understand every time
you post what content, who to share it to. The more outside
your niche you go, the more confused the
algorithm is going to get, and probably the less engagement you're going to get
from the onset, make sure you pick a niche
that you're passionate about. And make sure you pick
a niche that you're actually able to
create content for, that you see that
you're going to be able to do this for a while no matter if you're a small
business or an influence. So you can pick a niche and
you need to stick to that, an appeal to a certain
type of community. So guys, it's very
important to pick a niche.
12. Common Mistakes: Guys, here are some mistakes
that people are making right now on Instagram and that will be affecting your
growth heavily. If you're doing any of these, then make sure you stop
and rethink your strategy. First one is only posting rules. If you're only posting rules, you're not optimizing
the resources that are available to you. Make sure that you
start using swipes, need to start being creative
with your content strategy, not search, optimizing
your caption. If you're not using the right
keywords in your caption. Making a lot more difficult
for the algorithm to understand exactly what type
of content you're creating. Stop thinking that IG
has shadowed band you. Shadow banning isn't
excuse for when the engagement has dropped
and you're just being lazy. So guys, please stop thinking. You are shadowed band. That's not the case. There's definitely
improvements that you can make to optimize
your growth. You need to be engaging with your community and with bigger
accounts in your network. If you're not doing this, this is a mistake and I really advise that you start
doing this, guys. You need to be
asking your audience and people in your
industry for feedback. Feedback is the best
way for you to grow individually and
your creativity. So it makes sure that you
are trying to get feedback. It's fine to copy others, but if you're not
innovating and trying to improve those ideas and
adding your own twist, then you're not really doing
much apart from copying. So please avoid that. You've had content that is doing a lot better than others, you need to repost. It makes sure that you are
re-posting that content as it's good enough
to be re-posted, trying to make the perfect post. If you're spending too much
time making the perfect post, you are failing at Instagram. Instagram is about consistency, moving posting and moving on. If you think posting time
matters, it doesn't. The Instagram algorithm has
changed the way that it shows content is no longer chronological and it's
down to engagement. Of course there's
going to be hotspots, but essentially
posting time is one of the least important factors
when it comes to posting, guys now I know this
course is about Instagram, but if you're creating content only for Instagram,
that's a mistake. You need to be cross
platform posting. If you're creative,
short-form content, it's likely that
content, YouTube, it can go on TikTok,
Pinterest, etc. So make sure that you're
posting elsewhere as well. Posting and ghosts and
guides you need to avoid posting and then going
away for a few weeks, coming back and going away, as I mentioned earlier, you need to post consistently, but make it realistic and make
sure that it's achievable. Don't do sporadic posting. Stop thinking your content is perfect, nothing is perfect, so avoid that mistake being afraid to post
your best content. If you have great content ideas, then execute them, guys
do not use 30 hashtags. That is a massive mistake. Guys, avoid all of
these and you will put yourself in a
path to success.
13. Story Ideas for Engagement: Guys, instagram stories are a great way for you to
connect with your audience. It's a great feature that is extremely underrated
in this class. I'm going to share with
you a bunch of ideas that you can do for
stories right now. You can use it as a bonus. So let's say you've
got a new post, you can share that and add
additional information that if you've posted a real
and the caption is not long and he wanted to go
for a shortcut option. You can use your story to
reap, share that content, and also add some texts, which is bonus information. Host a competition on your page between different accounts
or your own account. Start building incentives, which is going to
be great to build a community and just to get overall more engagement
on your stories. One of my favorite stories
is behind the scenes, whatever industry you're in, you can show people, e.g. how you've created
some of your content, or just show them a
day in your life, you can do IT industry quiz
or a quiz about yourself. You can ask people questions. Get people to comment
the right answer. If you're an expert
in your field, you can test your audience and
see how much they know and people love to interact
with that type of stuff as they probably
know, you're an expert, whatever industry you're in, whether you're a brand or an
influencer or a theme page, you can use your story to sell your services and show potential
client transformations, success stories, and give more social proof to your audience without
sharing it on the feet. And it's a great way to get them to understand you a little more. You can share old
content of yours. Old content once it's posted doesn't mean it
can never be seen again. You can post a few
weeks later on your story and relive
that engagement. As I said earlier, you can quiz people about your expertise. You can ask your audience to see how much experts they
are in certain topic. You can also ask
them questions such as what tools they use
for certain things, what they think about
certain topics. Or if you're a brand
and have a product, you can ask them flavor they liked the most cities,
definitely a lot. You can do that to get customer feedback and
customer advice knowledge. Just find out more about
your ideal consumers. Guys, if you're an influencer, you could give a random
of fan shout out, you can share even more
value if a sudden door to motivational thoughts or motivational quote
that you love, share it to your audience, share it with people. Because the more you give, the more they will love you. Post a Q&A session. One of the stick is, is asked me anything and I
think that's one of the best ways for any type of Instagram account to
interact with the audience. So make sure you're doing
that and you will definitely be able to boost up the
engagement on your stories, TCO, audience with
upcoming content. If you're starting to
build a community, you can drop snippets of
content that's coming out soon, whether that's real as etc. that you've patched
created just to build up anticipation and just to
build up that engagement. If you're an influencer
or even a brand, do polls on which they prefer. If you're a food brand and you
have two types of burgers, you can ask them which they
would prefer for lunch, given limited time discount wherever you're trying to sell, wherever you're
trying to achieve, give them a little bonus, guys, one of the best things you
can do with stories is cross-promote your
other platforms. So if you have a TikTok
or a YouTube channel, you can use your
Instagram stories, send traffic that way. Guys stories are a great tool to just get people to
interact with you more, to send them to your website, do things that you might not
normally do on your feed. So use stories wisely. There are so many tools
out there to help you. You can schedule them
automatically on the metal where you can use platforms such as later
to schedule them. You'll have to do it manually, but there's a lot you
can do on stories. So make sure that you're
using them effectively. Build a plan, rotate around those types of stories
and go from there.
14. Tools - MUST Use: Guys, no matter what type
of account and you have Instagram tools and software that is out there is going
to help you grow quickly. And in this class, I'm going to quickly run through some of the best tools out
there that you can start using straight away. Now, when you're researching
content and coming up with ideas or trying
to get inspiration, some of the best places
to do that research, or Socrates, Google
Trends, Pinterest, Quora. There's a lot of places that you can find exploding topics. These websites and
places are going to help you find and
research content. The best place for you
to begin in terms of content creation is
Canva on comfort. Not only can you create
graphics, swipes, edit pictures, you can also
create videos and grills. Canva is going to be your
best friends If I recommend any software for content
creation or websites, It's Canvas for graphic
resources for images. I would use Canva pro
version and also Pixabay. Pixabay is gonna be
your best friend. When it comes to captions, you want to make sure
that it's concise, that the wording is clear, and that the grammar
is top-notch. Use a platform such as Grammarly to make sure that
you're able to deliver that. For hashtags, use
flick and use inflect, type those on Google. And they will give
you the tools to be able to generate hashtags. But really guys, I
want you to be in a position where you're able
to do hashtags manually, as that's how
you're going to get the best niche hashtags
for your industry, for video creation,
you can use in shorts. And finally, you can use TikToks editing
software cap cut, which is now available to
everyone for content planning, you can use Google Sheets or Notion, both great platforms, ways for you to just plan
how things are going to go over the next
few weeks or months. For content scheduling,
I would recommend software such as
later HootSuite, order matter, create a studio. They're going to
allow you to schedule your content and make sure that you are anti burnout guys. Use these tools and
you will be able to create a strategy which is
going to help you grow.
15. Additional Extra Tools: Guys, here are some bonus tips. If you want to write
captions, right? Engaging posts ten
times quicker using copy.ai if you wanna
do social media scheduling on
autopilot, meet Edgar. Captions plus dot
app will give you 700 templates of captions
for a variety of niches. These script edit your
videos through text. Pfp maker, if you want to get
a professional photograph, professional display picture, use this inside the text dot io. You want to write like a
native speaker used this guys, when it comes to Instagram, there are so many
tools nowadays for us to grow and so many tricks. But one thing I want
you to remember for 2023 and onwards
is collaboration. Collaboration is a great
way for us to grow with Instagram's new edition
where we can collaborate on posts and share
each other's audience. So find competitors
who you want to expose each other to each
other's audiences as this will be a great way for
you to grow and just get overall engagement and
profile visits on your page. Smart with your collaborations is actually a lot better to collaborate with people than to see people as competitors. In my earlier class, when I spoke about competitors, I meant it in a way. You want to use people
as they are doing well, but you can also use people to collaborate and come up
with great concepts. Videos provide value and
use each other's audience. So collaboration is going to be a great way for you to grow.
16. Project - Complete It: Guys, for the
project, it's simple. I want you to optimize
your profile. I want you to put yourself in the best position
possible for growth. Why I want you to do
is make sure that your profile picture is the best it can be and
is professional. Makes sure that in your bio, you tell people exactly what
to expect from your account. And also, I want you to put a
call to action in your bio. Simple and concise
use Canva to create some story highlights that match your brand and our simple, but that just add that
extra twist to your page. I want you to make sure
that your username is clear, concise,
and searchable. Your bio, I want it
to be three lines. I want it to be about you, your audience, and the CTA. And if you already
have some posts, didn't pin your top three
posts, guys, do this, share it in the projects
and I'll be able to analyze it for you and
give you any feedback, but it will put you
in the best position possible for growth.
17. Outro - Thank you: Guys, thank you for reaching
this point in the course, and I just want to wish you
good luck on your journey. I'm sure if you've understood everything I've
discussed, taken notes, and applied it to
your own profile that you without
doubt will be in a position where
you're going to grow quickly and effectively
organically. Remember, this is a journey that's going to be ups and downs Bayes rule about adding the right variables
to the equation, which will lead
you to grow guys, my name is Alex, and I hope you've enjoyed
it and take care.