Your Guide to Dominating Instagram

THE GRAM

Instagram has over 1 billion monthly active users around the world and is arguably the most popular photo-sharing application on the market. What originated as a platform for showcasing memories, a virtual photo album if you will, has now become a channel for doing business. As of August 2020, 31% of Instagram’s active daily users were making $75K/year on the platform. Whether you’re a local business, physical products or services business, e-commerce business, or personal brand business, you can utilize Instagram as a tool to drive sales. Unfortunately, there is not a single rule book on how to dominate Instagram, but there are a few strategic methodologies and tactics that can help you organically gain followers and drive revenue via Instagram. 

THE INSTAGRAM DOMINATION METHOD 

  1. Create a compelling Instagram profile with a clearly defined niche

  2. Create engaging contact that your audience loves

  3. Rapid growth acceleration strategies to explode your follower count fast 

  4. Convert those followers into subscribers & customers 

CREATING CONTENT THAT SPREADS LIKE WILDFIRE

  • Create content that adds value to your audience and is relevant to your business

  • Be prepared go the extra mile when it comes to creating awesome content (i.e. people want to see authentic and unique content)

  • You don’t have to spend all day creating content 

  • Designate one day a week to knock out a lot of your content creation 

  • You don’t have to be solely responsible for all of your content — you can repost the content of your customers using your product or pay influencers to create content for you: 

    • If you post content from someone else, then you need to make sure to credit the creator by tagging the post and mentioning them in the caption of the post 

  • Strategically post customers using your product or service and make sure you grab a “before and after” because it’s important to show how customers utilize and get results with your product or service 

  • Money posts are user-generated content with a purpose:

    • Money posts should include:

      • People using your product or service

      • Before and after shots

      • Strong CTA

    • Recommended to have about 10-50% (1 in every 8) of your content on Instagram to be money posts 

HOW TO GET ON THE “EXPLORE” PAGE 

  • 3-second rule: Instagram’s algorithm promotes posts to the “Explore” page when there is high engagement (i.e. likes, comments, shares, etc.) within the first few seconds of posting 

  • The best way to get on the “Explore” page:

    • Interrupt patterns with your imagery 

    • Hook their attention in 3 seconds with a custom, eye-catching graphic (look into Canva for creating awesome designs) or a high-energy, informative video 

    • Get people talking and liking by showing them how they can envision using your product or service in their day-to-day life 

TURN YOUR FOLLOWERS INTO DOLLARS 

  • Utilize the bio formula:

    • Get as many people as possible to click the link in the bio or swipe-up

    • Please note that before you implement this step, you must have a solid funnel and proven sales process in place 

  • Make sure your link in your bio takes followers to a mobile-optimized page that clearly showcases your product or service offerings

  • You have to know what type of content will make your audience want to click your link in the bio or swipe-up (i.e. money posts, giving away a free e-book, etc.)

  • It might not make sense for you to ask for the sale straight up. Instead, you first might want to implement some of the following lead gen tactics:

    • Free consultation

    • Free e-book

    • Free training

    • Exclusive content 

  • You can gather email addresses via Instagram and then begin to nurture them

  • The biggest thing about generating sales on Instagram is that it doesn’t happen on Instagram; it happens off Instagram:

    • You need to ask yourself what you’re doing to turn leads who navigate to your site from Instagram into buyers 

  • You should constantly be posting on your Instagram story and try your hardest to get to 10K followers so you can activate the swipe-up feature 

  • People will not do something unless you actually spell it out for them (i.e. click in our bio to find out more, click on the link in our bio to access free shipping, etc.) 

  • Try to implement scarcity-based offers in the sales process in order to get people to take action, for example: 

    • Businesses that offer physical products can have a special offer 

    • Digital businesses can offer an e-book

    • Local businesses can offer a coupon code