A (12:41)

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C (13:32)

The next Instagram measurement that is super important for you to understand is your engagement rate. Higher engagement means you're probably going to grow faster because the algorithm is going to keep sharing your content to more and more people. So engagement with your content relative to your follower account, that is what engagement rate actually is. So while it might be tempting for you guys to compare your engagement rate to these bigger brands like Nike and Kim Kardashian, that's not something I ever want you to do. You have to understand that these global brands are obviously going to have really good engagement rates because everyone knows who they are. For someone like me or Miss Sally over here, people don't know us, you know that well, we're not going to get millions of likes off of every single post. It just just doesn't happen. So make sure you have, you know, realistic goals in mind when it comes to your engagement rate. And make sure if you're a social media manager too, make sure you're delivering that to your business or brand as well, letting them know, like realistic expectations when it comes to engagement rate. So the way that Instagram like formulates your engagement rate is it's your total engagements divided by your follower count times 100 and that gives you your engagement rate. So reporting on this metric over time will give you a sense of overall performance trends. So if you keep seeing like a steady increase in your engagement, that means that you're posting content that resonates with your audience. You're doing a good job, Keep it up. The next metric that is super important is obviously your follower growth. Now I do want y' all to know this is a vanity metric, but I personally have seen the more followers I get, the more I sell more digital downloads or coaching calls or get more clients. So it just, it is what it is. Follower growth is it's either steadily inclining or it's declining. I wouldn't say like putting a number like, oh, we're going to get 10,000 followers this month, that's just not realistic. And I'll tell you something, when I get a lead for social media management, if their first question is how many followers are you going to get me in the first month? That's a red flag to me because nobody can tell you how many followers you're going to get unless they're buying your followers. And that is not a good thing to do by the way. So don't be following buying your followers. But what I can promise them is that they are going to see a steady increase in their reach impressions, their followers, because we're going to be putting out valuable content consistently and spreading that brand awareness. So be realistic here guys. When evaluating a growing or shrinking Instagram follower account, context is super important. Especially if you're experiencing like a random spike in drop offs due to something like a one time promotion or a paid ad. That's probably why you're seeing a dip in followers. If you're seeing a big spike in followers, it's probably because something went viral. So, you know, keep that context in mind when you are looking at this information and make sure to measure your follower count over time. Ideally, you're seeing sustained gradual growth over time, which indicates that people are liking what they see from your content and they want to make sure they see more of it. Obviously, you know, understanding what is or isn't working is also essential when it comes to your Instagram marketing strategy. You want to make sure you know the types of content to continue creating and what needs tweaking. Though your total follower account may seem like a vanity metric, again, I do think it's a vanity metric. It ultimately represents the potential reach of your content, whether you like it or not. So more followers means you're probably going to reach more people. Now, I know a lot of you are probably like, all right, Caitlin, give me some quick tips on how to improve my follower account. And I wish that I could tell y' all the secret sauce to improving your followers, but I can't. But what I can tell you is you can up set, set yourself up for follower growth success if you do a couple of these things. So one is posting reels. Again, they're being prioritized by the algorithm. So you have a potential to reach more people. And if they resonate with your content, hopefully you turn them into followers. Um, the next one is, you know, collaborating with other accounts, maybe doing an Instagram live. The cool thing with Instagram Lives is that when you go live, it, it alerts your followers that so and so is going live. And so if you go live with another person that maybe has a bigger account than you, it's going to also tell those followers over there so and so is going live. So you get yourself in front of more people. So that's a really good strategy to keep in mind, too. If you were to do, like, consistent lives, maybe every Thursday you go live with a new account. That's going to get you in front of more eyes, too. Um, collaborating with a reel or a carousel obviously is going to introduce you to new followers as well. You have the potential for them to follow you if they like your content. And then another piece of that is engagement. I think engagement is super important for your follower growth. Make sure you're spending time in the app, commenting on people's content, replying to stories, maybe heading over to bigger accounts in your industry and just starting a conversation there and building a community there. That's only gonna help your. Your engagement and your follower growth. Another important metric that I like to watch personally is my hashtags. Now, I like to use Flick for this because they do all of the heavy lifting for me. But you can still go to an individual post on your profile and click View Insights for that post. And Instagram will tell you if people found your post from hashtags. So that's a pretty cool insight to do. So to view that, you'll just go to your profile, tap a post that you want to look at, and click View Insights. And then once you do that, you'll be able to scroll down and see all the insights from that post. You'll be able to see if you got new followers from that post, what the engagement was like, the reach, the impressions, all the above. Another analytic I want to look at is Instagram stories. Analytics. Those are still very important too. I always tell people, say sell on stories. That's where you've got these warm leads. People that are already following you, that already probably trust you, they kind of know who you are. So Instagram stories are the best place for you to really sell. Chances are you already probably look at your Instagram story insights in real time. Like when you post it, you'll scroll up just to see who's looked at it, how many people have seen it. But there is a way for you to look back on this stuff even after 24 hours. So to view insights on your stories, you're going to go to your story by tapping your profile picture on the top of your feed or your profile, and then you'll just kind of swipe up and you'll be able to see those individual insights right there. Now, if you want to view one that's passed, you'll just go back to your profile and find your archived post and switch it over to stories, and then you'll be able to see like your best performing stories. You can also just go to your professional dashboard where all of your analytics are, and you'll be able to see your story on analytics in there as well. So here are some of my favorite metrics to track as far as stories go. So one of them is story replies. Story replies are the number of times somebody Instagram DM'd you from your stories. And getting these replies from stories means that you're nailing your content because people are actually engaging them. Now, if you're lacking story replies, you might want to consider being more direct with responses to your post, like maybe asking them, hey, swipe up and let me know what you think about this, or hey, send me a DM and let me know what you think about this. Like asking them your call to action, asking them to engage with you is probably going to help your story replies. Story exits are also a really big metric to look at. What that means is that it's going to show you the number of times that people swipe to stop viewing your story, maybe because they were bored or they don't want to hear from you. These are very important. If people are exiting your story, you're not posting good content, or maybe you're posting too much content. So keep that in mind. You know, while story exits don't necessarily mean that your story was bad, they can signal one of these three things. So one, your series of stories was too long. If you're posting more than like 10 story slides a day, you're getting a little too much there. Your content was repetitive or redundant. That's going to make someone click off as well. And then maybe your audience just wasn't interested in that story that you had that day. So keep those three things in mind when you are looking at your story exits. Now. Pro tip if you want to increase your story views again, I think I talked about this at the beginning of the episode. You want to use engagement stickers. So when you scroll down or when you go to post a story, if you swipe down, you'll be able to see all these different stickers and there's like the poll sticker, the question sticker, quiz sticker. Those are my top three that I like to use to get more engagement on my stories. I'll use the poll sticker and kind of act ask like a very easy to answer question. I'll use the questions box to do kind of like a ask me anything. Now when you do ask me anything, if you've got a big following already and you don't want to have too many stories up to where people are exiting, make sure you pick and choose what stories you reply to on stories. And then you can also just reply to people in their DMs if it's like a one off question that you don't think anybody else would be wondering about. And then the quiz sticker. I like to use the quiz sticker to kind of gauge what my audience wants from me. Even though it makes you put in a right answer, like you could honestly, all of them could be a right answer. And you can still swipe up and see which answer was clicked so you'll still be able to understand, you know, what content resonated best. Okay, so now that I've kind of went through the analytics with you guys, let's talk about how you can improve them. Now. One of the biggest metrics that I like to improve on a weekly basis is my reach. Because the more people that you reach, the more potential you have to get in front of a potential customer. So there are a couple different ways that I improve my reach. These are all tips that you guys can use to help improve your content, reach your impressions too, and hopefully get more followers with these, with these tips. So the first tip I have for you for increasing your reach is going to obviously be creating engaging content. This includes content that you created yourself or content that's been posted on Instagram before. But what you need to do here is keep it engaging, get people to comment. You know, calls to action don't always have to be salesy. They could be something like double tap if you agree or send this to someone in the DMs. But getting them to engage is going to help you. So always have your audience in mind when it comes to posting your content. Now, super engaging content is typically, typically shareable content. So that can be like funny memes or content that makes you relatable to other people in your industry or maybe just relatable to your audience, your followers, your potential customers. So when you think engaging content, think call to action. Shareable, relatable. Hopefully that helps you guys. The next way to increase your reach is collaborations. And that can be through posts, that can be through reels, that can be through Instagram Live. So I want to give you guys some examples here. Now, when you do a collab post, you don't always just have to partner with someone else in your industry. Think about people that supplement your industry. So let's say you are a realtor. If you want to go live with someone, but you don't want to go live with another realtor, then go live with a mortgage broker or a home inspector or home insurance person and give continue to give your audience value with stuff that supplements what you do. Same goes for like, maybe you're like a mental health coach, maybe you do a live with a yoga teacher, maybe you do a live with another psychiatrist. You know, that's different from a mental health coach, but they're actually like a certified, They've got a PhD. Think about if you're a baker, you could do a live with someone in the event space. So, so you see how you see where I'm going with this. I'm picking people that supplement what you do. They're not exactly competitors, but they help you with what you do. So that's super helpful when it comes to collabing. The next one you can do is using keywords in your content. Please make sure that they are relevant to what you are posting. Please do not keyword stuff. I don't know if y' all have seen it all over Instagram, but people were telling you to like write all these keywords on your, on your reel and then shrink it down and hide it. Don't do that. What I've read is that meta can actually see when you do that using their AI and they'll see that as keyword stuffing and they will not favor your reel so just be authentic and genuine with your keywords. You know, make sure you're adding keywords into your title or your hook of your reel. Make sure you're adding those keywords into the caption, but don't just stuff them on the reel for no reason. That's so dumb. The next one is use your favorites feature where you can do close friends. Now, a lot of people don't take advantage of this. I don't take advantage of this myself. I use it on my personal profile, but not my business profile. But think about if you made a close friends list of like your VIP clients and you share discount codes or new offers with just that close friends list. That's a really good one. You could also do, you could also segment your close friends list based on different products. So maybe like for, for the month of March, you're just going to focus on people that have bought this one specific product or service. So then when you share stories, it's just going to be talking to them. That, that close segment of people. You see where I'm going with that? Like you're, you're putting content just for them and what that does too, it's like a psychological thing on their end because when they see that you've added them to that green circle, they feel special. They feel like a vip. So, so that's a really good way to connect with your audience, build a deeper relationship and hopefully they'll refer you to friends that way. The next way that you can increase your reach is obviously to monitor your analytics. And I told you guys, at least on a monthly basis, you should be looking at your numbers. Um, if you really want to get jiggy with it, start checking your analytics on a weekly basis and deep dive into specific post. Go look over on your Instagram dashboard on your professional analytics. Look up what got the highest reach for that month, like the top three post, then repost those for the next month. Maybe you change out one thing about that post or maybe you just directly save it and repost it again with a different title. I don't care how you repost it, but repost it. Repurpose content when you can because your audience has already said, hey, I really like this content. So there's no reason for you to keep recreating the wheel every single time. Take what's working and redo it again. Another important status that you can check on to make sure that the algorithm is not hiding your content is to check your account status. So what you can do here, if you see that you're not eligible to be recommended under your account status. That means that something's going on with your profile. Maybe you went against community guidelines, but you can fix that as long as you know where to look. What you can do is you. You can go into your settings and find account status and just make sure there's no derogatory remarks on your account. There are. Fix whatever's going on. And once you're green again, Instagram will start sharing your profile again. This is a common misconception too, is that people think if they get one hit that they're never going to be shown again. And that's simply not true. As long as your account's in good standing, they're going to continue to show you to more and more people once you figure out what went wrong. Lastly, post original content. Don't screen record someone's content and repost it. Don't steal people's reels, don't steal people's carousels and graphics. Be your own person. Be original. People want original thought. You know, people hire you for you, not for what you do, but they hire you because they like who you are as a person. Maybe you're funny, maybe you're just genuinely. You care about people. People understand that and know that, and that's why they buy from you.

A (29:45)

So be yourself.

B (29:46)

Engagement is still possible. And your account is not dead. You just have to put in a little work. Imagine what 28 days of guided actions.

C (29:55)

Could do for you. Okay? Could blow up your engagement. So let's just wrap this up.

B (30:00)

Engagement doesn't die forever. It just needs a little reset. And the truth is, you don't need to reinvent your business or burn out trying to post more. You just need a simple step by step plan. That's exactly what the Instagram Engagement Reset Challenge gives.

C (30:17)

You.

B (30:17)

Each day for 28 days, you'll get one action to take. It's doable, it's consistent, and it's proven so that by the end, you'll not only see engagement rise, but you're gonna feel connected to your audience again. And that's what actually drives sales and clients is that connection. If you're listening to this and nodding along, this is your sign. Don't just listen. Join us inside the challenge today. I'll leave the link in the show notes, or you can head to my Instagram and send me a dm. I'll send over the challenge to you that way too. But the easiest way is going to go to the show notes that you're listening to right now, I cannot wait.

C (30:50)

To see the results you get.

B (30:51)

Like, once you start that first week, I want you to screenshot me your results.

C (30:55)

Let's talk about it.

B (30:56)

I can probably help you supercharge them.

C (30:58)

A little bit more. But all you have to do is.

B (31:00)

Decide to start, and let's decide that today, because the more engagement you get, the more you're going to move that needle in your business, and you're going to use Instagram as a business and not a hobby. All right, thank you guys so much for listening today. I will see you next week.