173. How do you maximize an hour on Instagram?
Wish you knew the secrets to Instagram growth?📈You’re in luck. In this no-nonsense episode, hosts Phil and Lauren divulge tactics for maximizing growth on Instagram. By following a set series of steps in the first hour of posting, you’ll jumpstart conversation, increase your exposure, and catapult your followers over time. Listen to learn!
Episode transcription
Phil
Welcome to Brand Therapy. I'm Phil.
Lauren
And I'm Lauren.
phil
And this is the podcast where we help you position, build and promote your brand. Listen, we're glad you're here. Listen, again, this is gonna be a very productive use of your time, because that's what we're talking about today we are talking about time, specifically as it relates to Instagram, and how you can maximize the minutes you have to put toward Instagram, growing your Instagram growing and followers growing an engagement. These are the topics we're going to tackle today. We're excited because this also aligns with our latest freebie.
Lauren
Yes. So what we're going to go over today is all the different things that you can do to maximize an hour on Instagram. This strategy is inspired directly from our Brand Therapy friend, Lucas O'Keefe, who I could just go on for about 30 minutes about how amazing he is. But long story short, Lucas has grown to well over 230,000 followers on Instagram. Is that right?
Phil
Well, no, I've lost track. But it's more than that keeps going up.
Lauren
And there's a few reasons for that. One, he's really consistent and really great with his Instagram. Two, he's a teacher by day, and so teaching comes really naturally to him. But three, the other component is that he's very good at drumming up engagement outside of his channels, which contributes to growth. And so we're going to be going through three today.
Phil
Yes, we are. Yes, we are. I said at the top of this episode, by the way that you can download this freebie on our website, philpallen.co/freebies. It's going to be the one that's closest to the top of that page. Since it's new and exciting. philpallen.co/freebies I'll give you that link, because there's probably more on there that you might want to download and use and implement. We have over 10 freebies. So go check them out. Let's get started.
Lauren
Okay, great. So first things first, before we actually get into the tactics, which there are a lot, I'm gonna give you a heads up. But before we get into the tactics, I kind of need to set the stage. Phil and I had been trying to figure out what that secret sauce is for our clients to grow on Instagram, that instead of relying on a fluke post going viral, we wanted to help our clients become a bit more intentional on how they use the platform. And I remember Phil, you said gone are the days where you just post like a monkey on Instagram.
Phil
They're gone. That's a direct quote. Yeah.
Lauren
Can you elaborate on that statement?
Phil
Well, just posting isn't enough. Posting isn't enough. I think users are savvier now, right. And so to create content that we're proud of that we think is going to resonate with our audience. Even if you're working from templates, it still takes some time, it takes a significant amount of time now that Instagram has become more complicated. You've got to write a caption, you have to choose hashtags. If you use hashtags on your posts yesterday, are you tracking them? Are you seeing which ones are successful? Like there's so many parts to this, that I think we focus so much on just getting the content out that we forget that that's actually not the most important part of this. Even if you posted less, and spent more time engaging, that's a better use of your time. And that kind of hints at where we're going today in terms of telling you exactly how to use those minutes.
Lauren
So minimum number of posts per week, the recommendation is four. Now, these posts can be in the form of reels, they can be in the form of like a picture carousels, whatever it is, but hold yourself to task and ideally post four times a week, at the same times every single week. And think of it like a workout schedule. Think of it like a class that you're signing up for this is a task that you cannot wiggle out of take your posting time seriously. And then the reason for that is because all the other tactics are we're about to go through will depend on the regularity of you posting to your feed.
So for example, we have one client, Custom Design and Construction, amazing people, we are recommending that they post Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday at 8:30am Pacific Time. And the reason for that is because the person who's going to be managing their community and the engagement that we're going to be going through doesn't work on the weekend. So we didn't want to schedule anything on the weekend. But if you have a bit more flexibility, you might want to consider doing Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Sunday or whatever days work for you. Days that you post matter less than just being consistent about when you post.
PHIL
Yes 100%. I actually just came off a call where I ran an event a workshop on behalf of Adobe Express and it's a lot of fun when I do stuff with them. But the question that I get almost every time I do some sort of event or workshop is Phil how often should I post on social media. And I didn't actually didn't answer with that specific cadence. I didn't say four, I said that matters less than showing up consistently in the capacity for which you can commit to it, it's twice a week, because that's based on time and business goals, right. And by business goals, I mean, you know, Instagram might be a platform that you like to create on, and your audience might be there. But let's say you're also you've got an audience on LinkedIn. So you split your time across both of those platforms. Maybe you can show up twice a week, great, whatever, you commit to stick with it, don't post 10 times this week, and then ghost us next week. I'd rather you post twice a week, for the rest of the year, if that's what you can commit to. And that's what Lauren means by consistency.
Lauren
Yes, good point. Our friend Lucas also recommends showing up on Instagram stories every single day, definitely showing up on days where you're posting to your feed. And we'll get into how to do that and the what's what behind that. But just also know that when we're saying posting a few times a week, we're also meaning posting to stories. Okay, Phil, let's go through the perfect hour.
Phil
Yes, let's dive into the perfect hour. But I think I'd like to make a little disclaimer at the beginning of this, we typically say this hour should coincide with every time you post on social media. Sometimes that's not going to be possible, so just do your best, just do your best, we're going to assume that you've got that hour today, if you're posting let's say at noon, then this hour falls right in around that time. So we would say for that one hour around the time you're going to post, spend 15 minutes doing this first thing, engage with five commenters on the most recent post of five large accounts, you follow. Let me repeat, and then Lauren's going to explain it, engage with five commenters on the most recent post of five large accounts that you follow.
Lauren
So what this means in terms of a step by step is your I would recommend going to your feed because the large accounts that you follow, have a lot of power algorithmically on Instagram, and they're gonna come up. I opened up my feed right now, and what do you know, Lauren Bostick with 1.1 million followers is the first photo that comes up. So if I'm doing this from my account, I click to go or tap I guess you're not clicking, but you could click if you're a desktop, I guess but tapping from my phone going to Lauren Bostick Instagram page, I click on her most recent post, and I can see that she has 116 comments on that post from two hours ago. I tap to view all comments, scroll down a little bit. And I can see right away there are a whole bunch of verified accounts, posting and commenting at the top. So someone, she's basically announcing her new collection called the obnoxious collection, which is such a funny and delightful branding. So someone commented saying good thing I have my credit card info memorized. So I would reply, which is so funny. So you, I would do something like replying back to thank God, I thought I was the only one or you know something to not just like and go. That's so funny. But you want to be a little thoughtful, a little cheeky, a little like conversational with your comments. Someone else commented, oh, my God, these are the best. I would reply something along the lines of like, how amazing is that pink sweatshirt, sign me up? Ideally, you can comment with a question a joke, agreeing with their point, but you're wanting to leave a door open for future conversation. You're wanting to intrigue them so much with your charming reply that they go check out your profile and potentially give you a follow. So you do that with five commenters on the most recent posts of five large accounts you follow. So you will be doing about 25 comments total across the five big accounts.
Phil
We estimate that it should take you around 15 minutes, guess what the first time you do it, it's going to take longer, it just is. But you will get in the habit of doing this quicker. And I would say remember that when it comes to comments, it's not just hopefully getting a follow back from that one person that you engage with, but commenting, this is visible for everyone who goes on that post. So it's not even just that one person you're replying to, it's the fact that you're leaving a thread that is visible for others to see you. Social media is about visibility. It's about staying on people's radar by you participating in the conversation that makes you more are visible, not just to the person you're applying to, for example, but to everyone that has eyeballs on that piece of content and scrolls down to the comments section, which for the record I do on almost every post that I find exciting or interesting,
Lauren
I do, too. I love looking at the comments. Love it. It's so fun, like a little sneak peek into someone's world. Anyway, OK.
should we go through the second one?
Phil
Let's go through the second one. So we estimate that this is going to take you oh, let's say 10 minutes, okay, 10 minutes. And this action item is as follows. Watch and reply to 10 stories of accounts you don't follow, I'll repeat and Lauren will explain, watch and reply to 10 stories of accounts that you don't follow.
Lauren
Okay. Now, Phil, I'm curious to know what your approach to this would be. Because basically, to find accounts that I don't already follow my gut feeling would be to search for a hashtag related to what I say and then click on the stories that automatically show up under that hashtag. Is that what you would do?
Phil
No, but that's a way you can do it. So what I what would you do, I probably wouldn't start with a hashtag even though you absolutely can and could and should, I would probably start with a key word that then might be a hashtag. But I also might filter by location. So we're, the difference between a keyword and a hashtag is just the number sign, I probably wouldn't put the the number sign actually I'll do it right now. Going to Instagram type in Instagram, I'm going to go to the search tab, which is a second icon on the bottom. I'm going to type personal branding as a keyword just as a word right? And so then I can filter by five different things, top accounts, which is a great as a great tab to find some people that might be interesting accounts. So that's filtering specifically by accounts also very useful for this audio, tags, and places. Those are more self explanatory. Okay. And so I might in this case, I'm going to go under accounts, and I'm going to click on this first person named Monique, Brian, I don't follow her. But I am going to watch her story. And I'm going to reply to her post about a workshop upcoming that she has, and I'm going to say this sounds awesome.
Lauren
And then by the question being like, when's that happening? Or how can I attend? Or, you know, I attended exactly what was something to butter them up.
Phil
Yeah, exactly.
Lauren
You know, I gotta say, Phil, I prefer your approach of typing in the keyword looking at accounts, because then you can just see everyone who has stories right up at the top.
Phil
It's a little bit easier. Now the other there's one other way that came to mind. If there's someone that I've been thinking about or I've been following, or I've been really engaged with their content lately, I might pull up their profile first, and then click on the people they follow. So for example, Ugmonk, Jeff Sheldon, I just love the products he creates. I love his brand. He's a tastemaker, you know, I would go look at some of the brands that he's following, and discover some new accounts that way, and then just look to see whose display picture is illuminated, click on it, engage again, watch and reply to 10 stories of accounts you don't follow. We're only giving you about 10 minutes to do this, because it should be fairly quick.
Lauren
Okay, the next thing that you'll do, we're approximating it will take about 15 minutes might be faster, really it might be faster, is to support the most recent posts of 10 or more small accounts you follow. For this, I would personally go back to my home feed and scroll through posts. I see one by Adam Grant. I know he's huge, so I'm not going to bother with that I see one again, by Skinny Confidential, I must really like her stuff, and Instagram knows it. And I just keep scrolling until I see a post by someone who's maybe in my immediate circle, or maybe I think has a smaller following. I can't necessarily remember why I followed them. Now in terms of numbers, small can be whatever you deem it to be. I would personally say under, I don't know 10,000 followers. Yeah. Would you say that Phil?
Phil
I think that's fair.
Lauren
Yeah. And don't worry too much about the actual follower account. Again, our goal is just be churning up conversation outside of your existing channel. So don't be too hard on yourself. And don't be too selective. We're trying to really, really maximize every minute on this platform. Absolutely. And so, in terms of when you're at what you're actually doing to support the most recent posts. Once you find the account, you'll go to the most recent thing that they posted, and then leave a thoughtful comment, give a like, and then move on to the next small account.
Phil
The next one is save three posts from the explore page. Very simple. The idea here we're making the assumption that posts you save, serve as inspiration for you, when it comes time to creating content. I know I save at least probably five posts a day from people that look at and go, oh, that's really good. If you can do the same thing, and know that you can always go back to your saved posts. For reference, when you're creating content, I think that's a really good way to use a post productively, a lot of people make the mistake of saving, saving, say saving posts endlessly, and then never look at them, again. Don't be that person. Save with purpose. So again, we're asking you to save three posts from the explore page, it could be a post, it could be a reel, it could be a story that you like, you know, if it's a story that's expiring, and I'd take a screenshot of it, save it in a folder, save it somewhere central, so that you got one location, ideally, or a handful of locations where you can go and quickly look for inspiration. And I would say don't worry about saving stuff that's only in your industry, I would do it., really anything that grabs your attention, be a market or not a consumer be aware of like, wow, what they created really just stood out to me and I took note of it, you know, that kind of thing.
Lauren
Mm hmm. We went over this in Episode 154. With Jesse Golden. Yes, we did. This isn't this is essentially what Jessie does to blow up on Instagram reels, she goes to the explore page, she sees what reels catch her eye. And then she basically just recreates them with her own twist, which is so smart because she's riding the waves and whatever is trending or whatever is working. And that's that's really helped her. So I think putting the time those 10 minutes into saving posts, or reels that inspire you is critical for you to just keep a finger on the pulse of what's going on.
Phil
Absolutely. And I think the biggest takeaway from that episode with Jesse is that you don't want to overthink it. Create this workflow for yourself to like actually be able to create it even if it's not perfect. Great. I would keep going. The final 10 minutes of your perfect Instagram hour that fifth one is this engage with five accounts from niche or niche depending on how you pronounce it? What do you say Lauren niche or niche?
Lauren
Niche, I’m Canadian see niche Canadian say niche.
Phil
More of a French influence on the language because to me niche sounds like something you'd find in your hair that you wish wasn't there like a little niche.
Lauren
Niche is a problem to phonetically to me, it's like something that you want far away from you.
Phil
Niche is a problem that only tea tree oil can solve. Engage with five accounts from niche hashtags and locations. Lauren, please explain.
Lauren
Okay, so before you do this, I would recommend jotting down a bunch of different hashtags and locations that you can just refer to, and you can cycle through as you go through these 10 minutes. So you want to do a big brainstorm beforehand. So that way, it's a little less daunting. When we say niche hashtags,I feel like the smaller the better for these hashtags, I would say we'd want to be looking for under, I don't know Phil under 50,000 instances. Is that even dead low? No, I think that's good. Yeah, so we're not going for hashtag sunset here. Right? We're not going for what sort of being used 75 million times. The more precise, the better. Of course, you don't want to be going after hashtags that have under 1000 usage, because that is very, very, very specific. We're wanting to go for kind of a sweet spot here.
Phil
Let me give a range, let's say 50,500 1000 might be a good sweet spot. That's a wide range. But I feel like that'll least give you some specific parameters.
Lauren
Love it. So you'll be looking up five different hashtags with that range, as Phil mentioned, and look at the top posts that come up and engage with the account that posted that image, real video, whatever it is that you're seeing. By engaging with them, that might mean sending a direct message, it might mean commenting and leaving a like on their most recent post, the whatever you're doing, I would make sure that the way you engage is something that they can notice. So just saving their post is not enough because they're not going to be aware of you saving it. So be sure to send a direct message you want to get a turn up contact of some kind.
So do that with both hashtags and locations. For locations if you are a brick and mortar business if you have a shop or clinic or an office and you're hoping to use Instagram to drum up business in your area, then you might want to think about where your ideal customer or client or patient is spending their time. So with Custom Design and Construction, they're based in the South Bay Area in California, a lot of ritzy people with big homes along Manhattan and Hermosa Beach. And so I feel like their ideal client is probably shopping at Whole Foods Market. So look at the Whole Foods in the areas, look at maybe the upscale shopping areas, like nearby, just kind of use some creative thinking to consider where your ideal audience is spending time. Now, Phil, I want to know your thoughts. If you are a remote business like us, what locations would you look up?
Phil
Um, I would still keep brick and mortar in mind. I know that's like a controversial opinion. But let me give an example. We're completely remote. But I still think locations have significance in our business and the type of clients that hire us. Not always. But in most cases, our clients live in cities, our clients live in affluent neighborhoods and areas of cities. If I was to make the list, even countries, even countries are useful, like the majority of our clients are in the US. I still think geography matters. In this case, or at least, it gives you a parameter to find interesting people that are worth communicating with. So I've actually gone through and listed out all of our clients, well we have a spreadsheet with all of our clients listed, that's how I know how many we worked with total, which is on the homepage of our website, but I added a field, which was location, city, country. And that way, I know like, we have a lot of clients in New York, we have a lot of clients in LA, we have a lot of clients in Denver, right? We have a lot of clients. So I would consider where our clients shop in Denver.
Lauren
Or where they eat food, or the I think our clients would probably eat food at, you know, they'd have special date nights at pretty ritzy restaurants in Denver, like or our ideal client would.
Phil
Where they work out, maybe where do they eat? Where do they shop? Where do they go for fun? I don't know, I think location is, in this case is better than hashtags? In this case, if you can figure out a way to use them.
Lauren
Yeah, stay away from tourist traps.
Phil
Definitely. Because those are people that are not really indicative of that industry or that neighborhood or, you know, yeah, that gets a little confusing.
Lauren
Unless you're selling very specific travel products, then you must refer the tourist traps. But I feel like at least for us, our ideal client wouldn't be like spending casual Saturday afternoon in Times Square.
Phil
So that's your perfect hour, we have a few other best practices, well, two best practices that we should keep in mind. The first one is to reply to all post comments and direct messages. Ideally, you do it as soon as possible after your post goes live. You don't want to leave people hanging. Also your replies to people's comments count in that overall comment count that's displayed. And Instagram looks at that as a metric of engagement, excitement response from people. Notice how you always see on social media, Facebook, Instagram, you name it, you always see when people get married. When people are celebrating graduate graduations. When people are celebrating really important things. It's because the social media algorithms go wow, look at this. There are so many people replying so quickly after it's been posted, we better show this to more people. More people are going to be interested in this life event and this significant event, and this controversial opinion, whatever it is that you've posted.
So you want to think about making sure that you've got lots of comments on there and your own comments count. So that's why we say reply to post comments and direct messages as quickly as possible in here we're not including spam or all No, we're all you know, recipients of dumb spam messages mine are get featured in his publication get featured in his publication like no call away. Yeah, so it's best practice number one.
Lauren
Okay, best practice number two, to share your most recent feed post to your stories. So once your feed post publishes and you're about to start your hour, you'll want to actually share the post to your stories as well. So followers are aware that way if Instagram’s algorithm isn't working in your favor, there's two different avenues that someone who's following you might be aware of your new post.
When you do share. It's also recommended to add text that explains why the post is valuable. So for example, if you've got a kitchen you need to read this If you're posting a gallery of kitchen renovations that you and your team have done, and you can also add an engagement sticker like the slider, which Phil loves.
Phil
I do love a good slide, big fan of the slider or a poll, something like Were you aware of this fun fact yes or no. And you want it to be more of a you want it to be a teaser.
Phil
You also want it to be something that people are going to be excited to see what the answers are. So that's why they engage. Do you ever find yourself in that position? Like my wonder if people said yes or no, I'm curious. So I'm gonna vote.
Lauren
I do it all the time. I actually, I feel bad. I've probably have ruined so many polls in my life, because they'll be like, working Mama's only. And then I'll want to know the answer. So I give, I give my vote. And I am not a working mama, but I don't know the the suspense of it is just, it's irresistible to me. So yeah, so polls are a really good one.
Phil
Well, that's enough information for you. listener, we've given you a lot. The good news is you can go download all of this visualized on one page, philpallen.co/freebies, where you'll find our social growth checklist. Or maybe I'm calling it our Instagram growth checklist, I'm gonna call it that. Go check that out. It's on our freebies section.
What did you think of this episode? Let us know I'm @philpallen on social media.
Lauren
I'm @thelaurenmoore on social media.
Phil
#brandtherapy to continue the conversation. By the way if you liked this episode, you'll know what to do.
Lauren
Five stars five stars.
Phil
Or leave us review five star five star it helps other people discover
Lauren
Like you’re leading an auction.
Phil
That helps other people discover this podcast we work very hard to create. Until next time, we will see you back here. Have a good one. Thanks for hanging out with us on Brand Therapy.
Lauren
Bye bye
