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FREE Instagram Training – Top 15 Tips: Part 3

Instagram is the premier platform for growing your tribe. Learn how to excel here!


Did you miss Part 1 or Part 2? Click the links to read the first eleven tips! 

This is the final post to wrap up these tips, so let’s get right into it.

12. Use a business account. 

Yes, I know. I didn’t want to switch from a personal to a business account, either. But the benefits to having a business account versus a personal are too valuable to ignore. If growth in your field is the goal, then utilizing a business account is going to be the most profitable. 

By using a business account, you can use the available tools built right into the platform to see what engages your audience the most. 


To do this, click the menu button at the top right of your profile page (the one that looks like three lines). Once you open the menu, you will have access to the “Insights” page. (Keep in mind, this is only available for business accounts.) 

This will show all of your posts from the year, sorted by those with the most engagement at the top. As you can see in my example, the posts with most interactions (a combination of likes and comments) were images involving beauty and makeup looks. That means that my tribe prefers these posts by preference. With that knowledge, I can now deliver more of what audience likes! 

By utilizing the free tools available to business accounts, you’ll be able to optimize your instagram to attract your tribe. 

13. Define your niche 

This one is the most difficult for me! I’m a jack-of-all-trades. There’s hardly a thing that I don’t enjoy pursuing and learning about! But if you are going to have a successful instagram, you are going to need to use some self-control and keep it on topic. (I’m preaching to myself the most!) It’s hard to narrow your topic down when you don’t know what you want. (More on that in the next point.) But once you know what you want to accomplish, you will know better what to share.

For example, if you want to build a tribe of people who love to sew, sharing images of your makeup looks won’t unite those people into a common purpose. If you have a lot of things to share that are in topics that aren’t laterally related, you can have more than one instagram! For example, I have a beauty and brand instagram, a personal instagram, a cosplay instagram, and an art instagram. While some of my followers might like all of those things, most people enjoy only one of those at a time. By dividing up my topic among those different accounts, I’ve helped tailor my content to my tribe’s need and interests. 

14. Define your purpose

This is probably the most important aspect of all this training because it will be the north star of everything else you do. If you don’t have your purpose clearly defined, it will show in your feed. 

Ask yourself,

a. What am I passionate about?
b. What do I want people to know?
c. How can I help in a way no else quite can?
d. What would my friends say is my soap box?
e. Who and what do I care most about?
f. What are my unique talents and interests? and How do they fit into my passions?
g. What do I want to do?


The last one is very important. You will never succeed at something you do not want to do. Your desire can be a guiding light to what you are meant to do. In Proverbs, we are told that our desires are placed their by our Creator. Wisdom is knowing the difference between innate desire and aimless lust. For example, you might desire a inspiring and creating healthy relationships. An aimless lust would be to make a lot of shallow friends, or to aim to have many people like you. It might seem like it temporarily fulfills your desire for deep and rich relationships, but in the end, it isn’t what you meant to have. Knowing your innermost desires intimately is the key to ignoring to wasteful wants. 


You will never succeed at something you do not want to do.

15. Pimp your profile

Now that you have the meat and potatoes of your purpose and niche, you can finally get your profile prim and polished. So what makes a great profile? 

Go to some of your favorite successful bloggers. While each has their own style, you will find some common building blocks that appear on each page. 

a. Heading and niche in title
b. Purpose statement
c. Expected content
d. Call to action

A. Heading and niche

Your account title will automatically default to the name you provided instagram at account set up, but you can change these easily in your profile settings. You can include your name if you wish, but definitely include content keywords. The name bar is searchable, so whenever someone is looking for makeup, my account will be somewhere on the list. It is also beneficial to help people associate your name with content. 

B. Purpose statement

My purpose is “supporting and educating fempreneurs.” I want to help women feel confident about themselves, whether that’s how to apply the perfect lipstick or learning how to pimp their instagram. Make a concise, one-line purpose to help guide your content and attract your audience. 

C. Expected content

What do you plan on posting to meet your purpose? What kind of posts can your followers expect? This is as beneficial to you as it is to your tribe. 

D. Call to action

What do you want people to do, and what can you offer them? Direct them to a link to fulfill this action. Since instagram only let’s you have one link, I highly recommend Link Tree. Link Tree basic is free, allows you to have unlimited links, and is easy to use. 

The same rules apply for links as the rest of your instagram. This is not place to link to my illustration portfolio. Everything here is related to my business. That might change in the future, but it is easy to edit and it updates immediately. Keep your links clutter free, on topic, and up to date. 

And that’s it! 

Way to go! If you follow these 15 tips, you’ll be well on your way to a better, more brilliant tribe of engaged followers on instagram. 

Have questions? Comment below. Want to join a tribe of supportive women? You’re welcome to join the club! 

Toodle pip!

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FREE Instagram Training – Top 15 Tips: Part 2

Did you miss Part 1? Click the link to read the first six tips! 


In the first post of this series, I discussed the first 6 of 15 tips to grow your instagram. Let’s jump right into the next five! 

7. Engage your niche

Get to know your audience and other content creators in your niche. You probably already know you should do that, but how, exactly? Start by going into the hashtags of your posts and find other creators. Comment! Ask questions! It is best to spend five minutes a day getting to know other people. Are you a makeup blogger who admires someone artwork? Send them a message and ask if you can do a makeup look inspired by their creation! It is always flattering to see your content inspire someone else to create something more (But remember, ALWAYS ask permission and ALWAYS credit appropriately). By getting to know your community in the daily interactions, you will naturally thrive and grow organically. 


ALWAYS ask permission and ALWAYS credit appropriately.

8. Interact with your audience

When you post, try asking your audience an open-ended question. (For a quick refresher, an open-ended question cannot be answer by “yes” or “no.”) Simple posts asking “Which is your fave? A or B?” or “Using one word, describe your day!” are effective because they require very little feedback from your followers. One word or simple answers are best for the casual follower. Be sure to reply and like every answer you receive on any of your posts. Your followers and their interaction are golden, so treat them like royalty! 

9. Utilize Videos

Using video on instagram is a great way to increase engagement. It also allows your viewers to see a different side to you. I can’t give you advice on what to post in your videos, but I can tell you how to spiffy it up! First of all, youtube is a great resource for learning how to edit. My current favorite video app is InShot. For a few dollars, you can purchase the pro version and access many more features and eliminate their watermark from any saved files. If you have any specific questions about videos, ask in the comments and I’ll do my best to answer. 

10. Add to your Story

Since the change a few updates ago, Instagram has jumped into the story-like format, mimicking the very popular Snapchat. Since this addition, almost all of the accounts I follow utilize this feature. It’s a great way to let people into things like “behind the scenes,” “a day in the life of,” and offer teasers for upcoming content. You can make announcements for your blog, go live for a demo . . . the sky is the limit! This is a great place to let loose and have fun. Unless your instagram is only about being comical or sarcastic, be consistent to a theme and keep your feed in accordance with your theme. In your Story, however, you can be whatever you want! 

11. Use the available Tools

There are a lot of apps out there that are helpful to someone who really wants to take their instagram to the next level. In my upcoming Instagram Training, I’ll be taking you through a deep-dive of my favorites with live demos and more. But here, I want to focus on just a few. (Keep in mind that I have an Android phone, but most apps available for Android are also for iphone as well.) 

For quick reference for hashtags, try a hashtag app! Hashme, All-Hashtag, and Display Purposes are all great places to start. Sometimes, you will get suggestions that are completely useless. That’s the downfall to automatic algorithms. But what they lack in perfection, they make up in ease. Simply weed out the ones you won’t use, copy, and (here’s the magic) paste it into your notepad app. That way, you don’t have to keep waiting and weeding out results. You can just copy and paste at the end of your post! Be sure to check the relevancy of your hashtags at least once a month and update your notepad “cheat sheet.” 

That’s it for this post! Subscribe for part 3, the conclusion. If you want to dig deeper with direct mentorship, post prompts, photography tips, and more, then be sure to join my Facebook group to take advantage of my FREE training course!

Ciao! 

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FREE Instagram Training – Top 15 Tips for Growth

Do you want to grow your instagram community? Have you struggled with gaining traction or knowing what to post or when? Then you are in the right place! In the post, I will share my top 15 tips for growing your influence on instagram. And if you want to dig deeper with direct mentorship, post prompts, photography tips, and more, then be sure to join my Facebook group to take advantage of my FREE training course! No email list sign up, no gimmicks or hidden fees, just me showing you what I do!

Top 15 Instagram Tips – Part 1

One: Be consistent
Whatever this means for you (once a week, once a day, morning, noon, and night), keep it consistent. Consistent content is going to improve your ability to be seen within Instagram’s algorithms.  While I won’t get into teaching the algorithms in this post (that will be in my upcoming free training ), I will recommend you post at least once a day!

Two: Utilize all your hashtag realty
If you were to pay for an ad in printed media, you would be granted so many words. A wise advertiser would work his thoughts into concise, action-oriented directions and use every single word available. So why not use all of your advertising space in hashtags? Not using all of your hashtags is like stopping at offering your name in an introduction.  You get THIRTY hashtags! You should use as much of those as you possibly can, and no less than twenty every post. Need ideas for helpful hashtags? Feel free to follow me (instagram.com/ambertheblog) and steal my hashtags, join my group for the free training, or study some of your favorite “grammers” for inspiration. You get free advertising. Be sure to use those hashtags!

Not using all of your hashtags is like stopping at offering your name in an introduction.

Three: Post your hashtags with your image
You’ve probably seen two types of grammers (that’s the term for people who use the gram, aka instagram). There are those who post their content and hashtags together, and those who post their hashtags in a comment. You can do it either way, but the most effective way to be at the top of the hashtag feed (which is how others will find your content) is to post your tags along with your image. The delay between adding the tags in the comments can be the difference between someone seeing your content or seeing what others have posted!

 

Four: Offer value
The number one mistake people can make is to use instagram as a marketing tool.  Instagram c an be and is a very powerful marketing platform, but it is not by actively marketing that you build a community. Consumers look for products. Communities look for service. A product is the same whether you get it on Amazon, in Wal-mart, or Target. Where do you buy it? What drives your loyalty? The service. The dictionary defines service as the following:

1. the action of helping or doing work for someone.
synonyms: favorkindness, good turn, helping hand;

Wow! That is definitely different than simply marketing a product. What do you offer your community? Position your service, not your products.

Consumers look for products. Communities look for service.

Five: Practice your photography
There’s no getting around it – instagram is a visual community! If you want to get attention, you need to up your photography game. As a retired wedding photographer, I can definitely write way too much on the subject! While I plan on getting more involved and doing a photography workshop during my instagram training, I will keep this portion here brief.

Remember the phrase “shoot in the shade.” Direct lighting is going to be the harshest to view and hardest to correct. Look for shade and indirect lighting or shoot on an overcast day. This is going to get you the softest shadows and the most flattering lighting for just about everything!

Utilize your camera’s brain. Unless you’ve done training on using a camera in manual mode, learning what auto settings are available are going to be your best tool. I specifically purchased my Samsung Note 8 because I liked the options it had as a camera. Get to know everything about your camera and you will inherently learn how to take better photos!

Use apps to improve your photos before uploading. I suggest Facetune, Pixlr Express, Handy Photo, and PicsArt. I’ll show you how to use them in detail in my training! Facetune is great for polishing up portraits, while I use Pixlr for cropping, adding text, and basic color correction. I use Handy Photo for the amazing magic crop feature, as well as making my backgrounds have that studio feel. Seriously, this app has so much power! It’s like Photoshop on my phone. Try them out!

Six: Eliminate ghost followers
While it might really stink to intentionally make your follower count go down, it is actually imperative to building an engaged, organic community. Plants need pruning to grow to their best potential. Your community is the same way. Spam account, ghost followers, or automated accounts that never engage with you are actually harmful to your engagement percentages, which ultimately tells instagram that your content isn’t that interesting to your followers. And then it decides that it won’t be that interesting to new people, too! Yikes! Culling disengaged followers is an imperative step to keeping your community to members who enjoy in what you have to offer.

That’s it for part one of my Fifteen Tips for Instragram Growth! Be sure to subscribe for part two and three, and join my facebook group for the free intensive training to make your instagram rock!