Lessons

Lesson Info

Think Visually for Instagram

So when you think visually for Instagram I want to first go over instagram basics because some of you might not even yet be on instagram. But is everyone here on the audience on instagram? Let's see the hands. Okay, good. All right. So you're all on instagram. So I just want to go a few basics in case people are not. And you need to understand the language just like we went over on Twitter. So ah, hashtag hash tag. If you don't know what hash tag is yet, this is a hashtag. And so whenever you put a hash tag in front of a word on instagram, it becomes curated with that content, make sure that there's not a space, because if there's a space after the hashtag, it will not be part of that conversation. Part of that content And as you know, the hashtag that we are talking about over and over again is super get social and that you all could be a part of that conversation on Twitter and on Instagram as well. On Instagram. It's visual conversation and that's why I love it because my brain proc...

esses visuals so much faster than text In fact, most people process visual 60,000 times faster than tax. So I'm excited about that and explaining to you guys that when you just you get searched and found on instagram, the more hashtags that you use for your business. The magic number here on INSTAGRAM is to 11. Poor proposed, but you can use up to at mentions. This is when you get mentioned in a comment on you. Get a notification that you were mentioned and everyone like It's a happy day when you get that mentioned because you see the little yellow number that you've been mentioned and your eyeballs always goes to that at mentioned. This is why I always teach it. It's so important to be tagging toe at mentioning and tagging brands and people on Instagram, because that's how you get their attention on your content. Tagging is when you literally tag a photo, so I'm gonna When I go to the phone later, I'm gonna get show. This is an example again. But I tagged all the speakers that have been joining me here on stage so that it would make it really easy for everyone who is following along for this course to know who the speakers are so that you can easily find them on Instagram and I have to go search for them. That's when you actually tag a photo with the person and you can tag up to 20 people per post and then a direct message. And I am going to show you a direct message that I received last night from somebody watching, which is so exciting because I did spend some time on Instagram last night. Of course I did, and I engaged. And I got this lovely direct message from an artist who's listening, who sent me a direct message thanking me for coming over liking her photos. It's one of Johanna's friends, and I started following her. Yes, that's the one that you're gonna recognize, which is really exciting. So so direct message you can share a direct messages is a private message toe one person at a time, or up to 15 people at a time, and this is a really great place to thank people for following you, or to find out why they followed you. I do have a welcome video that I have. I take people from off the soup Zimmerman account to our business account. The Instagram expert. I thank them for following me. That and then I tell them to come on over the business account so you could do a 15 2nd video or you can share text. One of the new features is that the direct message feature is now let all the conversations in one place. So when you have a conversation with anyone via direct messages, stays there just like it does in a Facebook chat. Or just like in a text message. Okay, so Instagram is I think it's right for everybody's business, but these are some of the highlights. If you want a no fuss platform that's easy to understand and is insanely effective if you consider yourself at least moderately creative because you have to be somewhat creative to get into the instagram mindset. If you want to promote your your product or service is in a very simple Martin way because Instagram is modern, its mobile. You heard Brian say you heard Steve say everyone's taking their phone everywhere, and everyone's on instagram all day long, so you can easily get someone's attention globally or you can upload a photo. People are scrolling throughout the day. I find that people are going to instagram for a creative outlet and they're going there during the diet downtimes of their day, so down times of the day or typically when they wake up and they're just getting a day started or it's lunchtime or that afternoon and your brains just had enough because you just need a break. Instagram, I say, is a digital magazine. We can literally look at the things that make you happy and the things that inspire you, educate you and give you some inspiration beyond just the image. So I love going to Instagram, and I'm definitely in there throughout the day so that I can engage with all the comments that have been exploding over the past two days because I want to make sure that everyone knows that I appreciate that engagement in that connection. So you need to have a visual and creative mindset. And basically, this is what I say. Beauty is literally all around you. You just have to have this mindset that okay, I'm gonna take my phone with me. I'm gonna make sure that it's charged I'm gonna bring an extra battery pack that's on 4% all the time. And whenever you see anything beautiful and beauty could be just simply the sunset or the fall leaves or just a building that has painting on it. But if you have the mindset that I'm gonna capture beauty that I can use that will resonate for my industry, my followers, the people that I'm trying to engage with. Just you have to be ready to be able to take those pictures and those of you that know me well know that my foot, my phone is like a looks like ready for the photo, ready for the opportunity to share, ready for the opportunity to broadcast, which you can clearly see. It's happening here on the tag board. So just know that you could be looking up. You could be looking down on Instagram. The idea is that you want to bring people into the photo with you into that experience with you, the more that you can make people feel like they're with you, the more you will attract your ideal follower and Johanna, you do such a beautiful job with this. I just want to give a shout out to you sitting in the front row with beautiful dress on because you make me always feel like I am. They're while you're drawn while you're drawing, I feel like I'm there watching you draw, and this is not just on periscope. This is when I look at your instagram account and I can't wait. Have you talked more about it later? But I just want to give you a little shout out that you do that so well now, a lot of people on instagram I don't understand that if you're here for business, you need to be very focused in your business content. So there's the personal account and there's the business account. And when you mix the two up and it's not clear you're not gonna attract your ideal follower, you need to make sure that your content for your business page is all based around the products and services that you want ultimately sell because people that are following you there are following their for the reasons that you're providing that value the minute you start showing your kids or your vacations of the foods that you're eating. If it doesn't align with your branding. It's confusing. And if you confuse your followers and they followed you for one reason and you're confusing them cause they're showing pictures of your cat, most likely they will follow you in time. So the message here with a business account is really to be hyper focused in your market niche. And the more you could be focused in your content, really focused in your content. And I'm gonna go back to using my daughter. Lila is an example. She has a per personal account. She's a college student. It's a private account, so you can't really? No, actually, she took it off a private cause more people to get in touch with her as of late. But her business account is at fresh and fit and fearless and all that. You see, there is anything in the space of healthy eating, except you see the picture of me and her today on create lot. However, all her friends constantly ask her if they'll put them on her feet with her, and she says no. And if they say Look at my food, I took a good picture. It's not her standards, so she won't compromise her standards. So I want you to always have high standards when you post on your business page. And I like to say that your photo is literally the North Star. And if your photo isn't awesome in all aspects of your photo which I want to talk about in a minute, you shouldn't be posting it. So think about how you want people to feel when they land on your instagram account. What is that emotional pull to you and who you are in your business. So I'm going to show you some pictures of me. You guys in the live audience can write down five words of what? What This makes you feel like when you look at it. But I'm just gonna throw some of my words out back to you. I know this is really colorful, but this resonates with who I am. And this is on point with me as a person in my brand so contentment I'm grounded. I'm confident I'm carefree. I like selfies. I'm satisfied and enthusiastic because seriously, if you don't love what you do every day, you should not be doing it. So it's all about the in my mind. It's about building that feeling. And for me it's having fun, doing what I dio and is the sense of overtone, of collaborating with others, who, with me higher and the bottom row are so many of those people. So we've mentioned about Chris broken with the quote. You see Ian Cleary from Razor Social? He's awesome. E m dot Cleary on instagram. And then you see Vincenzo, Rachel and Michael Steele's inner from social media examiner. So I am big on collaborating as you know. And I'm big on broadcasting other people and giving shoutouts to them, and that works well for my business. Okay, so let's talk. I mean, there's a lot in the composition, so let's just highlight the composition. So I'm literally dropped jumping off a park bench. I was I was on a walk with Jay Z on my team and, like, Wait, Jen, I need a picture. I didn't post one today. Wait. There's a park bench. I'm gonna jump on it. You lie on the ground. I'm gonna jump on it. So it looks like I'm really high. I can jump really high. What do you want me to dio like on the ground and we'll take This will be really fun. And so she took the picture for me. But here's what I did. I took the same picture for her, so I'll get on the ground for her as well. So So anyway, So we got that picture. And that really resonates with me on my colorful energy, my nautical energy and just again, back to great lighting, great composition, different angles. Don't you guys kind of feel like you're with me and some of these photos? Right? It's that emotional pull. So that's what I really want to bring to your attention. And then I want to talk about the value of the composition. So I said, You're photo is the North star of your content. This is at rustic cuff, and I know this brand well. I follow them on Instagram, and I love the composition of this for a jewelry company. So if you are a creator, know that. Okay, this is called a hashtag risk party on Instagram, and I love this risk party. And this is because I wear his party's mind isn't quite right. That's a rainbow in the sky. As far as I'm concerned. So everyone loves a rainbow. It's a it's a crisp sky, and the composition of this is just beautiful. So let's go through what that looks like. So the subject again is the North Star. And if you're gonna focus on something, just, you know, having it be off center and having some white space is often what people want to look at. So the lighting when you use natural light that is the best source of light. You can use white foam board if you're an artist tuning in on and reflect the light off the phone board. Or you can get near the window to get that natural light if it's too cold outside to get it. But you want to bounce the light off, and you can do that with the phone board on. And I've been teaching you guys that you want when you're taking the yourself bees and everyone here I'm making you go to a window because the lighting from the natural light in is such a good picture. And I'm all about having the best quality photo. So that's the lighting, the editing. You want to make sure that you combine filters and tools to edit to brighten the image if it needs to be brightened, and I recommend sticking to the same look and feel of how you're editing your photos. You saw Sonny letter doozy. She has a lot of high def photos, and she crops her photos a certain way. So when you look at her feet as a whole, it's very consistent. It's not just one photo with that look and feel it that magazine. It's when you scroll through her whole account. You're feeling like you're in that same magazine, and Sunny does that so beautifully. So again, let's talk about the angle So much. So many photos on Instagram I think that get a lot more engagement is the angle like the food might be up or out, or the arm upper out. Sometimes the shot is from high to low or low to high. These interesting, intriguing angles. It's not you with your hands on your hip, taking a selfie as if you're at a sorority party or something, and you have to put your hand on you want to make it. You won't make it feel like people are there. You want to feel that energy because you're just looking at a photo. So those are examples of the angle. We talked a little bit about the clarity I want to really hit home with you never, ever, ever want to post a blurry photo if you open up the instagram app and you go to the tools 2nd 1 from the left and scroll all the way to the end. It's one of my favorite tools, which is a sharpening tool where you can literally bump up. If it's slightly Billary. It's the only photo that you got with the person you really want to get it with, and you really want to share it. You can definitely go and sharpen it if you need to do that. And I talked a little bit about that white space. In this case, it looks cloud as the white space and the sky, but having space so it's not soak lottery in the photo really help, so you can have 1/3 be white and 1/3 you know in the recipe your object. So I just wanna I wanted bounce to the audience for one second to just check in with you guys when you're posting your photo. Do you feel like all these elements? All these six elements are in your photo or have you experienced? Yeah, I get it. And now I know what I need to dio. So I just want to hear from anyone you honey want to talk about because yours are coming in from the top down a lot. That angle, right? Yeah, yeah, Yeah. Just, um You mean, like, when I do my the pictures off my deals, for example? Yes. Yeah, I haven't just, like from top to have, like, the rial doodle in there. And I also like to have my just like I have a picture of my sketchbook and a little bit of my desk next to it or my hands Also. Yeah. So people feel like they're with you. Yeah. Has anyone else felt like all of these six elements are going on in their instagram feed? No, Andy, you dio Let's hear it. They do. Now that I took your training, I took your training on Instagram. And then I had this moment where I went back through my instagram feed, and I have to be honest and say I deleted about half of the photo because they were awful, you know? And I didn't know they were awful until I took the course, But But now it is really something that I pay attention, Dio. And it's really easy on Instagram cause they have those grid lines. Right? So now I'm like, OK, if three squares aren't white, I need to refocus or retake the picture and kind of use that as a guide to help kind of meet these these guidelines. Is it getting easier for you to understand that your photos, the North Star and that you can upload getting better? Yeah, okay. Definitely. Anybody else want to add to this? Yes. Picky. Yeah, I just want to share that. My instagram photos were not very great either. But what helped me was following, like you mentioned yesterday, brands that you look up Teoh and have, like, a look and feel that you want to incorporate in your brand. And I like on my phone, they have a lot of screenshots of photos that they take. And then I would bring storm and look at what they have and kind of like try to incorporate in my That's perfect. That's perfect. And I love that because Sonny did talk about that when she spoke. It's like find the two brands that you really worship and you love and learn by them, not copy them, but learn by them because they have a big you know, budget. And they're paying a big advertising firm to do what they're doing. But you can take aspects of what they're doing and that that resonates your business. So that's great. All right, so that was awesome to hear from you guys. So again, we always go back to growing the email list every where we are, period. And so for us, it looks like this. This is my personal accounts to be Zimmerman. And if you're not yet following me over here on Instagram at to be Zimmerman and in the link is our instagram strategy guide most of the times. Right now, it's the creative live link. But we do switch this up. You can switch it up any time you want to throughout the day or any time you want to. So this is what the only link that you have, the only place that you have, where you can actually drive traffic. And so when you click that you get are free Instagram Strategy guide and I invite all of you to grab this strategy guide, which also sits on our website. So this is what we give away for free to build that that trust a bill that, like no one trust factor And once you give someone something of such great value and what we often hear Morgan, Rachel and I often hear is Oh, my goodness, that is so amazing. I would have paid for it. It's so good. And that's what you want to hear. You want to give away something so great that they trust you and they want to get on your email list and then they want to hear what you have next. And if you're selling something after that, they're going to like, Oh, my goodness, if that was for free, I can't imagine what I'm gonna get if I pay for something. So you want to give away some really juicy things. People hold back their best stuff, and I'm like, share it here it here, a lot of my YouTube videos that I share and teach that content is also in my courses. It's not. I'm just I'm not keeping it all for the paid content. I'm sharing it in the free basis as well. So I just wanted to point out that we do grow are often our email list from Instagram between 115 to 200 people a week, and we do have multiple accounts. We have six in total, but we have four very active accounts, and it all goes to the same place. Each account has a custom Bentley link, so we know which account has the best results. So for us, it's the super Zimmerman, and it's the instagram expert and the instant Al I've also which is down here on the left corner that is also one of our instagram accounts. Eso you can go check that one out as well, so you need to have called toe actions to get people to actually click that link, and you can't assume that they're just gonna click it. You have to tell people what you want them to dio. You kind of heard Steve say to ask and sue gets If you don't ask, you don't get anything, so I want you guys to click the link in my bio. And so I tell you, click the link in my bio or I might want you to watch a video YouTube video that I just uploaded. And there's a thumbnail Click the link In my bio. Sunny does a beautiful job this as her teaser, as you heard her say earlier, where she shares a 15 2nd video to get people over to YouTube or if you want something to shop, shop with the link in our bio. So a lot of artists are on etc. And this is a great way to bring people. So actually, if you're trying to make a sale, one of the strategies that I see a lot of the big brands doing is the link that you're sharing in your bio literally takes you to what you just created in Instagram like the art. So I want to use Johanna is an example. So if you're selling one of your prints, one of your quotes and that quote is the photo, you can say click the link in my bio to head on over to my Etsy store to buy this right now. I mean it could be in that it could be that kind of real time. So if you're selling something and creating something, each time you upload a new photo, you can create a different link to drive traffic to your store. If that's what you want to take him. I don't recommend doing that in every post as we talked about. You want to build trust and get him on your email list, but you also want to be selling. Remember the cycle. So when you're ready to sell, that's where it is. And then another call to action is to view the latest vlog post. So many people are bloggers, and we just heard from Steve that you, you know, and we do this. We in bed. Are you two videos in our blawg? So this is all good for Seo. So occasionally you might want to send people to your blog's, especially if you're not getting a lot of traffic on your blawg and you want people to comment on your block. You can save you my blogging. If you go there from Instagram, please let me know by leaving a comment on my block. You literally have to say in your mind like what results are you trying to get? You have to say them. You can't assume that anyone knows what you want. I always say it's like Is if you're talking to a 10 year old like it has to be that simple, the directions.