Brad_7373
Contributor
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
300%
- Mar 26, 2013
- 24
- 72
Hey guys, I used to read a lot of content here and MJ’s book is my favourite, I’ve recommended it to a lot of people… that’s what happens when you create a quality product. Thank you MJ!
I want to give back as best as I can to this community.
I run the Instagram page @buildyourempire_ which is basically an entrepreneur motivation page. I’ve been running it for 18 months now and have grown it to a following of over 350,000 people.
I recently wrote a short 17 page free ebook called “Building Your Instagram Empire”, which is available from my website, but I’m not going to spam you with the link. The ebook is for email subscribers as we’re starting a daily email service, where we send one entrepreneur article or interview every single day via email only.
MJ if you are reading this, feel free to send me a message if you’re interested in doing an email guest article for us every now and then, and we’ll plug your book and your second book if that’s still in the works
We’ve accumulated 15,000 email sign-ups in the last 17 days with a goal of 100,000 by the end of the year.
Social media including Instagram is a game-changer for businesses guys!
I noticed lots of people have no idea on how to most effectively use Instagram for their business.
So I created this book as a how-to, that covers the basics of using Instagram effectively to grow your business by getting you more highly engaged followers that will eventually be driven to your businesses website.
I thought I would post this here for anyone who uses or is thinking of using Instagram for their business, as I have received a lot of positive feedback from it.
These following tips are a very condensed version of the ebook, each tip is discussed in more detail in the book, so if you want the full 17 pages, feel free to message me and I’ll send you the download link (no need to sign-up on my website, I just want to give back to you guys!)
Anyway, good luck!
Let me know if you have any questions
Have an Attractive Username.
Having a good username is essential to having a successful Instagram profile. As well as the “username”, you also have a “name” section that must be utilised properly as well.
Add an eye-catching biography.
You will definitely need to pay attention to your Instagram bio. Every time someone clicks on your account, your bio will be right in front of them and they will almost always read it.
Link to your website and Email list.
Unfortunately, Instagram doesn’t allow you to have links in the caption of your photos, this is to prevent spam. But they do allow one clickable link in your biography which you will find in the “edit profile” section. Obviously you will want to capitalise on this by sending your followers through to your website by putting your website link in the space provided.
Make your own photos and watermark them.
While it’s quick and easy to just repost other people's photos and credit them, you do need to go to the effort of taking your own photos.
If you run a motivational page, make your own motivational photos.
If you run a pool-cleaning business, take your own photos of the pools you have cleaned with a before and after photo.
If you’re an athlete, take action photos of you competing, training, etc.
Check out apps such as Wordswag, Instaquote, Piclab and PhotoMarkr
Write highly engaging captions with your photos.
Even with high quality photos that suit your niche, you will still need to write an enticing caption that builds a relationship with your audience.
Make 80% of your posts value, and the other 20% can be selling your products.
A general rule from our observations on Instagram is, it’s best to make about 80% of your content engaging, value for free posts, while making the other 20% advertising and content relating to the selling of your products or services.
Use other peoples photos, but give them credit.
Generally, most people are okay with you reposting their photos as long as you tag them in the photo and give them credit in your caption.
Post at least 3 times a day, but at the right times.
Most of your followers would rather have you post at least three times a day instead of once or twice a week. Considering they are following you for your content, it only makes sense. Not only will your current followers see your posts/brand more often, but you’ll also get more followers with more photos. You’ll end up with more likes, comments and on more tags.
Hashtags!
It is essential when starting out that you use the 30 available hashtags. Yes, all 30 available per photo! Some may consider it spam to use all 30, but we don’t believe so, we strongly believe that in the early days of your Instagram page you need to get your brand out there with whatever hashtags people might search for.
Have your own hashtag.
A great way to connect to your audience is to start a hashtag that is unique to your business allowing followers to further connect to your brand. Even though they can tag you in photos they want you to see, followers want to be reassured that you will see their photos. So a promise of “use the hashtag [HASHTAG]#xyz[/HASHTAG] for us to see your photos you want us to repost!”
For example, the hashtag we use and check the feed of is [HASHTAG]#buildyourempire[/HASHTAG]
Tag your relevant photos to celebrities.
You can tag up to 20 users on each photo you post.
A great idea in the early stages of your page is to have your photo appear in as many places as possible. To do this tag your photo with celebrities relevant to your niche.
As fans of these celebrities are likely to check the photos celebrities are tagged in, your page will get noticed more. Sometimes even the popular users you’ve tagged will see your photo and check out your page.
Talk to your followers directly in comments.
Another powerful way to build rapport with your followers is to talk to them directly via comments and respond to their direct messages.
This relationship building can end up in more sales or more recommendations to their friends.
Give genuine comments on the photos of other people.
Another way to be seen by your target audience is by commenting on their photos, and on popular pages they will be visiting.
Try and comment on at least 20 photos a day with a genuine comment, it doesn’t take long.
The idea of a genuine comment is basically it should not sound like it was copy and pasted.
Make sure you tag them in your comment.
Use third-party apps for statistics.
A good idea to keep track of your statistics is by using third-party apps. A popular one is followers+.
Followers + keeps track of your Instagram statistics regarding lost/gained followers, your best/worst engaged followers, your average likes per photo, and much more.
Online, two great statistic based websites for Instagram are SocialBlade.com and iconosquare.com, so be sure to check them out!
Another recent tool we’ve come across is socialrank.com, which is also currently free! Social Rank allows you to sort your followers a variety of ways including most followed.
Seeing your followers sorted by most followed is absolute gold!
This allows you to reach out to the accounts that are following you that have a big following, as they will be more likely to respond to your message because they like your page!
Use video creatively.
A great way to break up all the photos is to utilise the 15-Second videos Instagram allows its users.
You can have videos showing people using and enjoying your products or services.
Making multiple accounts.
Depending on your niche, a good idea can be to make more than one Instagram account to grow your brand quicker.
Having more than one account allows you to shoutout all your own accounts with each one, so they all grow at a faster rate.
Don’t buy fake followers.
This is a necessity! It may be easy to fall into the trap of paying some cheap fee to get a boost of 50,000 followers to make your Instagram look good, but what your real followers will pick up is the lack of engagement on your photos.
Using kik/email/dm to network/shoutouts for shoutouts.
A great way to fast track the growth of your Instagram account is to do shoutout for shoutout’s with other accounts that are similar in size and niche to your account.
If you’re going to buy paid shoutouts, do it right!
Although not needed, a great way to fast-track the growth of your account is to buy shoutouts from much larger accounts in the same niche.
Run competitions!
Another great way to get more followers and build rapport with your current followers is to run competitions on your Instagram page.
Experiment, especially in the earlier stages.
Test, Test, Test and then Test again! Some things from this book may work extremely well for you, some may not work at all. You might even occasionally get a negative outcome, but it’s all part of the process.
The best way to go about creating your successful Instagram page is to test everything from shoutouts, captions, picture filters, your biography and even your profile picture.
Be patient, it takes time.
Building a massive following takes time and a lot of work, so be patient. The good news is it gets easier over time as you grow faster and faster.
Three extra followers today, could be 100 extra a day in a few months time. So be persistent and dedicated!
Good luck!
Brad.
I want to give back as best as I can to this community.
I run the Instagram page @buildyourempire_ which is basically an entrepreneur motivation page. I’ve been running it for 18 months now and have grown it to a following of over 350,000 people.
I recently wrote a short 17 page free ebook called “Building Your Instagram Empire”, which is available from my website, but I’m not going to spam you with the link. The ebook is for email subscribers as we’re starting a daily email service, where we send one entrepreneur article or interview every single day via email only.
MJ if you are reading this, feel free to send me a message if you’re interested in doing an email guest article for us every now and then, and we’ll plug your book and your second book if that’s still in the works
We’ve accumulated 15,000 email sign-ups in the last 17 days with a goal of 100,000 by the end of the year.
Social media including Instagram is a game-changer for businesses guys!
I noticed lots of people have no idea on how to most effectively use Instagram for their business.
So I created this book as a how-to, that covers the basics of using Instagram effectively to grow your business by getting you more highly engaged followers that will eventually be driven to your businesses website.
I thought I would post this here for anyone who uses or is thinking of using Instagram for their business, as I have received a lot of positive feedback from it.
These following tips are a very condensed version of the ebook, each tip is discussed in more detail in the book, so if you want the full 17 pages, feel free to message me and I’ll send you the download link (no need to sign-up on my website, I just want to give back to you guys!)
Anyway, good luck!
Let me know if you have any questions
Have an Attractive Username.
Having a good username is essential to having a successful Instagram profile. As well as the “username”, you also have a “name” section that must be utilised properly as well.
Add an eye-catching biography.
You will definitely need to pay attention to your Instagram bio. Every time someone clicks on your account, your bio will be right in front of them and they will almost always read it.
Link to your website and Email list.
Unfortunately, Instagram doesn’t allow you to have links in the caption of your photos, this is to prevent spam. But they do allow one clickable link in your biography which you will find in the “edit profile” section. Obviously you will want to capitalise on this by sending your followers through to your website by putting your website link in the space provided.
Make your own photos and watermark them.
While it’s quick and easy to just repost other people's photos and credit them, you do need to go to the effort of taking your own photos.
If you run a motivational page, make your own motivational photos.
If you run a pool-cleaning business, take your own photos of the pools you have cleaned with a before and after photo.
If you’re an athlete, take action photos of you competing, training, etc.
Check out apps such as Wordswag, Instaquote, Piclab and PhotoMarkr
Write highly engaging captions with your photos.
Even with high quality photos that suit your niche, you will still need to write an enticing caption that builds a relationship with your audience.
Make 80% of your posts value, and the other 20% can be selling your products.
A general rule from our observations on Instagram is, it’s best to make about 80% of your content engaging, value for free posts, while making the other 20% advertising and content relating to the selling of your products or services.
Use other peoples photos, but give them credit.
Generally, most people are okay with you reposting their photos as long as you tag them in the photo and give them credit in your caption.
Post at least 3 times a day, but at the right times.
Most of your followers would rather have you post at least three times a day instead of once or twice a week. Considering they are following you for your content, it only makes sense. Not only will your current followers see your posts/brand more often, but you’ll also get more followers with more photos. You’ll end up with more likes, comments and on more tags.
Hashtags!
It is essential when starting out that you use the 30 available hashtags. Yes, all 30 available per photo! Some may consider it spam to use all 30, but we don’t believe so, we strongly believe that in the early days of your Instagram page you need to get your brand out there with whatever hashtags people might search for.
Have your own hashtag.
A great way to connect to your audience is to start a hashtag that is unique to your business allowing followers to further connect to your brand. Even though they can tag you in photos they want you to see, followers want to be reassured that you will see their photos. So a promise of “use the hashtag [HASHTAG]#xyz[/HASHTAG] for us to see your photos you want us to repost!”
For example, the hashtag we use and check the feed of is [HASHTAG]#buildyourempire[/HASHTAG]
Tag your relevant photos to celebrities.
You can tag up to 20 users on each photo you post.
A great idea in the early stages of your page is to have your photo appear in as many places as possible. To do this tag your photo with celebrities relevant to your niche.
As fans of these celebrities are likely to check the photos celebrities are tagged in, your page will get noticed more. Sometimes even the popular users you’ve tagged will see your photo and check out your page.
Talk to your followers directly in comments.
Another powerful way to build rapport with your followers is to talk to them directly via comments and respond to their direct messages.
This relationship building can end up in more sales or more recommendations to their friends.
Give genuine comments on the photos of other people.
Another way to be seen by your target audience is by commenting on their photos, and on popular pages they will be visiting.
Try and comment on at least 20 photos a day with a genuine comment, it doesn’t take long.
The idea of a genuine comment is basically it should not sound like it was copy and pasted.
Make sure you tag them in your comment.
Use third-party apps for statistics.
A good idea to keep track of your statistics is by using third-party apps. A popular one is followers+.
Followers + keeps track of your Instagram statistics regarding lost/gained followers, your best/worst engaged followers, your average likes per photo, and much more.
Online, two great statistic based websites for Instagram are SocialBlade.com and iconosquare.com, so be sure to check them out!
Another recent tool we’ve come across is socialrank.com, which is also currently free! Social Rank allows you to sort your followers a variety of ways including most followed.
Seeing your followers sorted by most followed is absolute gold!
This allows you to reach out to the accounts that are following you that have a big following, as they will be more likely to respond to your message because they like your page!
Use video creatively.
A great way to break up all the photos is to utilise the 15-Second videos Instagram allows its users.
You can have videos showing people using and enjoying your products or services.
Making multiple accounts.
Depending on your niche, a good idea can be to make more than one Instagram account to grow your brand quicker.
Having more than one account allows you to shoutout all your own accounts with each one, so they all grow at a faster rate.
Don’t buy fake followers.
This is a necessity! It may be easy to fall into the trap of paying some cheap fee to get a boost of 50,000 followers to make your Instagram look good, but what your real followers will pick up is the lack of engagement on your photos.
Using kik/email/dm to network/shoutouts for shoutouts.
A great way to fast track the growth of your Instagram account is to do shoutout for shoutout’s with other accounts that are similar in size and niche to your account.
If you’re going to buy paid shoutouts, do it right!
Although not needed, a great way to fast-track the growth of your account is to buy shoutouts from much larger accounts in the same niche.
Run competitions!
Another great way to get more followers and build rapport with your current followers is to run competitions on your Instagram page.
Experiment, especially in the earlier stages.
Test, Test, Test and then Test again! Some things from this book may work extremely well for you, some may not work at all. You might even occasionally get a negative outcome, but it’s all part of the process.
The best way to go about creating your successful Instagram page is to test everything from shoutouts, captions, picture filters, your biography and even your profile picture.
Be patient, it takes time.
Building a massive following takes time and a lot of work, so be patient. The good news is it gets easier over time as you grow faster and faster.
Three extra followers today, could be 100 extra a day in a few months time. So be persistent and dedicated!
Good luck!
Brad.
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