Ep. 29: Simplifying Instagram Posting Productivity

Looking for a way to simplify your Instagram posting schedule?  Listen in!  *This episode contains either affiliate links or links to my products. Should you choose to purchase, the show will go on! Woo hoo! Click below for shownotes! Simplifying Instagram Posting Processes Ruthie: Today I have a very special guest, my daughter Hayley who […]

The post Ep. 29: Simplifying Instagram Posting Productivity appeared first on Authentic Online Marketing.

Looking for a way to simplify your Instagram posting schedule?  Listen in! 

*This episode contains either affiliate links or links to my products. Should you choose to purchase, the show will go on! Woo hoo!

Click below for shownotes!

Ep. 29: Simplifying Instagram Posting Productivity

Simplifying Instagram Posting Processes

Ruthie: Today I have a very special guest, my daughter Hayley who works for me and has been helping me with my coaching and clients. She’s going to share some things that she’s already learned from the Intensive herself! Now, bear in mind Hayley is young, she’s in her late twenties, and she is the one that introduced me to Instagram.

I think that was about 12 years ago, so it’s funny to me that she would even be learning from me at all! It’s also an honor. So, we’re going to talk about a few of the things that she’s learned from working in the Intensive that she didn’t know before. First of all, Hayley, welcome to the show! Tell the folks a little bit about you.

Hayley: Thank you! It’s good to be here. A little bit about me, I guess like you said I’m young and have been using Instagram since it was first developed and much more just about taking pictures and putting fun filters on them. The way I came to work in this field was seeing that there’s such a need for people who know how to work Instagram, right? People who know how to create visuals and stuff– that’s kind of what I do. 

I’m a creative and I like to make things look good. I had a few jobs helping with social media and working with Instagram and other social media accounts, and I just eventually realized that my favorite thing to do was the visual side of it. You had a need for that kind of help and you’re pumping out all this awesome Instagram content so I ended up helping!  We laugh a lot each day and we get a lot done.

Ruthie:  I have never been fantastic with graphics and I had started encouraging you to try to get in the online space as far as doing more because I know you like working from home and I knew you’d be good at it.

Hayley has always been an artist and a creative ever since she was three years old and started drawing on the walls in red ink. She is very good at it and I just knew that she had the eye for this. I think at first, you didn’t really know if you would enjoy something like that, did you? 

Hayley: Correct. I wasn’t sure how I would enjoy it as a job, but then once I started just helping you make pins and stuff, I realized that I had a lot of fun putting together the visuals. 

Ruthie: So, for anybody else out there that’s thinking about doing a side hustle or a job from home, that’s how she started with me. She made Pinterest pins for me and then I handed over my Pinterest account to her and she started running it. Eventually, I knew I was going to have to have somebody that was more than part-time, and that’s when my business started exploding. Now, we’re a dynamic duo! 

Learning New Concepts for Instagram 

Ruthie: Today, we’re talking about how, like I said, she’s been on Instagram for a long time but she’s already learned new concepts in these past couple weeks of the Insider Intensive that started in early January. She learned them from her old ma, who would’ve guessed?! 

Hayley: When I started helping with the back end of editing podcasts, editing blogs, and making the visuals for the different forums, I ended up reading a bunch of stuff that you were teaching that I didn’t know.

One of the bigger things that I just really didn’t know anything about that I feel like I’ve learned a lot about is just how many analytics there are that can help you with Instagram posting productivity. I feel like those analytics were kind of just hiding in there for a little while.

Then, you started teaching about how you can look at them and the different ways you can kind of structure your account so that you can utilize them.  I didn’t really know about changing your account to a business account or that you could kind of change between different types of accounts in order to give yourself a little more insight on the analytics side of things. 

Using Analytics to Aid in Instagram Posting Productivity

Ruthie: That is the first lesson we always start with in The Insider Intensive is I will have everyone log their analytics as far as their number of followers, the number that they’re following, and just a few other little things like that but then we dig in really deep in the first episode.

I teach where to find various analytics to aid in Instagram posting productivity which is kind of new because Instagram reformatted the place they put the analytics and how many you can have. So, tell us a little bit about some of the analytic work that we did and some things that you uncovered in the first lesson of the Insider Intensive.

Hayley:  You were just teaching everybody how to easily use analytics with their past few posts and I thought it was cool how you encouraged everyone to find their top certain number of posts to basically find the common thread. 

Ruthie: That’s always a revelation to people when they start digging in and seeing what their audience likes and engages with, and if you back to episode 27 about decoding Instagram Analytics with Amber Cullum, of Grace Alone podcast, you can learn more about that.

She and I were chatting and she mentioned how much stock do we put into analytics and really what she was talking more about was the days and times that people are online and how much you should pay attention to that.

It’s just 12 minutes long if you haven’t heard it yet. That’s one side of the analytics, but let’s go even deeper into what Hayley’s talking about. There’s just a lot of clues if you just dig deep into your analytics as she’s found. What’s something else you’ve learned? 

Posting Less to Gather Likes and Boost Productivity

Hayley: Before I started helping with the Insider Intensive, I thought that posting all the time meant that you’re going to get more likes on that one post instead of just a bunch of spread out, smaller number of likes. Consolidating into one post makes it more likely for that to pop up when others get more engagement. This method is such a game changer when it comes to Instagram posting productivity. 

Ruthie: Yes, I think that concept you mentioned is a common misconception. Most people think they need to post at least 5 days a week if not 7 and then some people post 2 or 3 times a day. You can get away with that if you’ve got a hundred thousand followers, but if you have a small amount of followers you don’t want to blow up their feed and repel them.

Follower research shows that a post can live up to 36 hours, and if you really work hard crafting that one post and paying attention to the post and making sure that you’re getting engagement, Instagram pushes that post out and you get more engagement that way.

So it can just live on and on and so you don’t have to do as much broad work in Instagram posting as you would maybe think you would.

Hayley: Yeah, that was cool! It was cool to learn because I feel like it’s overwhelming if you think about it that way. You may have to put a little more planning into creating one solid post, but it saves you from having to plan so many posts at once. 

Ruth: It’s true, and the Insiders were also quite surprised and relieved at that too because I think their tendency is to think they need to be Instagram posting at least once a day, when really, you only need to be posting once every few days instead. 

Hayley: That may have helped you a couple years ago, but I think where a lot of people are getting that is if you if you do a Google search about how often should I post, you might get a bunch of people saying that you should post every day like you were saying.

Balancing follower ratio to posting frequency

If you do have a very large following, it may work for you, but not while you’re still growing your target audience.  If you’re making sure that you are engaging with others – which is the whole point of social media-  if you have a dream of being able to build your business through Instagram, your product that you’re not really building relationships but that’s really the best thing for your vision is to build those relationships. 

Ruthie: This actually kind of leads us into the last thing that you mentioned about the smaller your account is the more you should focus on sharing real life. 

Hayley: Yes, you’re saying if you have thousands and thousands of followers then you could maybe get away with boosting a bunch. I feel like it’s the same thing with your product, if you already have a ton of followers like tens of thousands of followers then you can maybe just post about your product constantly. At that point you’re just kind of a business account.

So, if you’re still trying to grow your brand, it’s really good to focus on just the personal side of things because you’re still getting to know your audience and you’re still forming your target audience. 

Ruthie: Yeah, you need to deliver lots of value and give a lot, and that means giving of yourself too. This is so that you can sort of ease into it knowing what you should post, what people like, and sort of test things out. It’s fun to post things like your habits, your hobbies, and things like that. It’s not so much that it’s all about you, but stories are way to experiment with that and a lot of our members realize that some of their most popular posts were about them sometimes.

Hayley: You know, I think that’s why selfies tend to do well. Even if it isn’t the best picture, people want to see you and know that you’re a real person that they’re following and not just a robot.

Ruthie: That’s true, they don’t want to be sold to like 24/7. They’ll want to leave you if you’re just going to blow up their feed with all kinds of products or whatever all the time. They want to know that you really are a real person who cares about other people and that’s that’s the main thing right there– you have to develop that “Know, Like, and Trust” factor before you can ever market your product. 

Utilizing Stories to Boost Instagram Posting Productivity 

Hayley: Going off of that, we discussed something relative during the hot seat Zoom call. This is basically where we focus on two people in the group and address their strategy questions. You mentioned if you’re concerned about getting your message out and making sure people are aware of what you’re selling or promoting, you could use stories. 

Ruthie: You always want to test or poll your audience in and find out information about them and what they need or want or expect. You know, their likes or dislikes, things like that. The nice thing is that there are five different neighborhoods on Instagram now.

You can use the four different kinds of video which is Stories, Live, IGTV, and Reels. Including the feed there are 5.  I always encourage followers to take advantage of some of those or at least one of those video aspects. The easiest one to start with for Instagram posting is stories. 

Hayley:  It’s true! Interactive stories are just a great way for you to show your audience you care about them.  Also to get some interaction that can help them feel like they’re cared for in your little corner of the world. Using stories to supplement your feed is such a great way to achieve that Instagram posting productivity. 

The post Ep. 29: Simplifying Instagram Posting Productivity appeared first on Authentic Online Marketing.