Kaitlyn Rhodes (0:00)

Why should they follow you? What. What do you help them with? Keep your target audience in mind when you are coming up with that page name. Be smart whenever you're choosing your username. What's up, everybody? Welcome to another episode of Call Her Creator, powered by Stan. I am your one and only the Kaitlyn Rhodes over on Instagram, and I am here today to help you guys start your Instagram from scratch. Whether you're starting it from scratch or maybe you started a profile and then you just kind of let it go. Maybe you ghosted it. Maybe it's just sitting there and you don't know what to do. We are basically going to create a strategy for you so that when you get off of this episode, you're gonna say, oh, my gosh, I can optimize my profile so that I can attract the right people. I'm gonna have my content pillars in place so that I post the right content. I'll even talk to you guys about my engagement strategy and hashtags. And by the end of this episode, you really should be on to creating a very successful Instagram account. Okay, I'm super excited. All right, so before we get into today's episode, if you are new here, please go ahead and download this podcast. This is how I measure my success. I also really need your help sharing the love. So if you could send this to a friend or a family member or someone in the digital space or entrepreneur space who just needs help leveling up their business, I would greatly appreciate it. I am trying to blow this thing up so that we can have more strong females and males out there just killing it in the online space, making money, providing for their families, and just. I'm. I'm really excited to get the word out there. Okay, so let's just get into it. Today, we're going to optimize your profile for search. Then we will go over how to craft a bio that actually converts people once they do land on your page. Then we're going to talk about content pillars and something that I call the power method. That is my signature method that I use for all of my content. And then we'll also talk about hashtags and engagement. So let's just start off with your profile. All right, these are six key things you need to know when creating a bio that is not only going to attract the right audience, but help them convert. So you need to make sure you're looking at your profile picture, your username, your page name, your bio, your link in bio, and your story highlights. Those are six Things that are very important when it comes to people following you or not. So let's get in depth about what those things mean. Breaking that six point checklist down. First, you're going to look at your profile picture. If you are a brand that has a face to the name, or you guys really want to humanize your brand, you need to have a clear photo of your team. If it's more like, like if you're a huge brand and your logo is very recognizable, then obviously your logo can be your profile picture. But you have between the two to pick. I personally am the face of my brand, so my profile picture is my face. This might surprise you, but when you see people on Instagram stories that have that bright color in the background, that is a strategic move on their part. They are taking their profile picture, they are dropping it into Canva, they're removing the background and they're putting that bright color behind them to help capture your eye and your attention so that you go to their profile. But truly, that is a strategic move. They know that this bright color is going to pop up on the story highlights. So, like, if they share a story, your eyes are going to go to them first because they pop out on the, on the feed up there. Brock Johnson does a really great job at this. Who else does this? I know. What was her name? I can't think of their names right now. I know there is a couple of. There's a lot, there's a lot of creators out there that do this and, and it's not just because they like that color. They're doing it to catch your eye. So keep that in mind when you are coming up with your profile picture. The next part of your profile that you need to pay close attention to is your username. Your username needs to be simple enough to where people can spell it. They can type it out. If you're doing like a username with hard spelling or something that doesn't make sense to your brand, or maybe it has a lot of numbers in it, I would just cut that out and really dumb it down. Because at the end of the day, when people are looking for your Instagram handle, they want to be able to type it in easily so that it comes up in search. And if it's really super hard to spell or it's just this crazy name that doesn't make sense, they're not going to be able to type it and then Instagram is not going to pop it up on their search. So be smart. Whenever you're choosing your Username. Now your page name, which is completely different from your username. Your username is basically your Instagram handle. Your page name is what shows up on your profile. If someone goes to your Instagram profile. So for example, mine right now says Caitlin Rhodes, social media agency plus podcast host. You know why it says that? Because I want to be found for those two keywords. Pay close attention to your page name on your Instagram account. You want to go ahead and put your first and last name there. And then you want a keyword or phrase that your target audience would be searching for when it comes to finding your page. Because guess what? Instagram indexes those words, those keywords, those phrases. So when someone's searching for social media agency, I want my name to pop up. When someone's searching podcast host, I want Caitlin Rhodes to pop up. So keep your target audience in mind when you are coming up with that page name. The next thing on your profile checklist is going to be your bio, which is 150 character limit. So you, you don't have too many words that you can put there. You need to be strategic about this. You need to really think, okay, what do I do? How do I help? Maybe put your years of experience so they can see that you're an expert. So I typically tell clients when they come to me, all right, what is it that you do? What do you want to be known for? That's going to be your first line. Then your next line is going to be why should they follow you? What, what do you help them with? So for example, my profile right now says the poster child for take messy action. Because at the end of the day, I want to inspire people to take action. Do it. Don't stop, don't stop. Don't get in front of yourself. If you want this business to work out, you're just gonna have to take messy action. And then the next part is something like, I help people make money and grow from social media. So your next, your second sentence in there needs to be something powerful that makes them be like, oh, I wanna follow her, cuz maybe she'll help me do X, Y, Z. And then after that I end up linking my agency and then my podcast. Cause those are my two babies. They mean a lot to me. And that's at the end of the day, those are the businesses that I want to push. But for someone like you, you could if you have another account to link to, cool. But if it doesn't make sense for your business, don't worry about that. Instead you could focus on telling them about your years of experience. Like, have you been in the business for 15 years? Have you won top Instagram coach? Like, what is it that makes you stand out from all the rest? That's what you can end your bio with. And then the last thing there on your profile is your link in bio. Now, I use a stand store and I have made lots of money using a stand store. I used to just push them to my website. It conversions weren't that great. The cool thing with my stand store is that they've just made it such an easy checkout for anybody that wants to buy from me. They have it to where I can put lead magnets in there. They have it to where I can put external links in there if someone wants to go to my YouTube page. So. So if you haven't used Stan yet or if you've not even heard of it, I will link it in the show notes for today because Stan Store is what I highly recommend for people that really want to take their social media seriously. Grow from it, make money from it. Stan's your man. Okay, I'm really surprised that more people aren't talking about this, but if you change your Instagram page category to entrepreneur, you will unlock so so many new features from Instagram that you won't get as a regular business page. All right, Once you have your profile in line, I do want you to note that when you're editing your profile, you can actually go in there and choose a category for your page. So I recommend for people that are trying to monetize their Instagram or grow their following for their business to make it a business page so that you can see all of the analytics that Instagram has, but also change your category to entrepreneur. Whenever you do that, you unlock the music library, which allows you to jump on any trend for reels. You also can get really cool analytics as far as your top posts, the top shares on those posts, who's liking them, how many views, not who's liking them, but how many people are liking them. The top views are you getting found by certain hashtags. All of that information is found inside of a business category page. So keep that in mind. And then business profile category, entrepreneur, do that. If you haven't, you will thank me later. Now, the other side of your profile is your story highlights, which I don't feel like people talk about enough. But story highlights are a really great way to not only brand your company or your business, but also just to tell people who. Who are what you're all about. So I have a couple story highlights on my own profile. One is my intro. I want people to be able to land on my page and. And if they really want to know who Kaitlyn Rhodes is, they can click on the start here, which is my intro. And it's basically just me, like, introducing myself, how I got into social media, what I like to do, and maybe some fun facts about me, but it's really just all about me. Usually I tell y' all to make your content and your profile about your customer, but your intro can be all about you. Boo boo. The next one is typically like a service spotlight. So if I have a service that I really want to push, I'll make a highlight just for that that talks about that service. Then testimonials are super important for me to show off. I want you to know that I've worked with others, that they've loved working with me, that I've been successful in helping them. So I've got some testimonials saved there. I also have another highlight about my membership because that's another, like, product that I want to push. I also have a story highlight for all of my links because I use. I go between mavely and like to know it. So I link, like, my fashion, my tech, all of that good stuff. People sometimes will ask me in my comments, like, oh, where'd you get that sweater? I can always just say, hey, it's saved under my story highlights under links. And then they can go there. And then the last story highlight I have is like Q&As, because I used to do a lot of Instagram lives or just like the question sticker on my stories and answer a lot of questions. So I've saved the really important ones to a story highlight. So again, if someone comments on my content, I can just revert them back to a story highlight. So those are some of my favorite story highlights to put on my page. And if you have Canva, if you're used to using Canva, you can go in there and type in story highlights. And Canva has a bunch of different little story highlight covers that you can use to really level up your branding and your marketing on your page. If you want to use those really highly recommend doing that just to make your page look very professional. Okay, so we've got our profile dialed in. Now we need to get our content dialed in. So there's something that I coined, and it's called the power content method. This power content method is going to help you get the most engagement it's going to pull people in, it's going to convert them, it's going to get you comments like shares. So the power content method stands for pull in. That's the pull in. Grab attention with a compelling hook, offer, offer value. Spark their interest with content that speaks to their pain points. Win them over. That's the W. Tap into the emotion, showing how you solve their problem. Then we've got encourage action. That's the E. Guide them toward taking a specific action. And then the R for power is repeat. So you pull them in, you offer some value, you win them over, you encourage them to take action and then you repeat. Super simple power content method. If you can put this method to use every single time you post, I promise you, you will start seeing really good results from your content. People will start to comment like share. Your engagement will go through the roof because you are putting your audience ahead of your own, your own needs. Okay, so when it comes to content for the week, I've got a Monday through Friday schedule that I think you guys could steal, especially if you're new to Instagram. But even if you're not, like, these are just great content pillars to keep in mind when you're going through the week and posting. So the first one is Monday motivation. You want to start people off motivating them, inspiring them. Think about their goal. At the end of the day, what is your target audience? Who is your target audience? What is their goal? At the end of the day? How can you inspire them to get there? So that could be motivational quotes. That could be a reel with something motivating written on it. That could be you telling your story of how you went from this to this. Anything that really evokes emotion and motivates them is going to be your Monday motivation. The next one is tip Tuesday Tip Tuesdays are my favorite because I love educating. So obviously tip Tuesday is going to be all about giving them an educational tip based around your industry or your expertise. So this could be you answering a frequently asked question. Or maybe you're just like, hey, pro tip, if you want to do X, Y, Z, then you need to do Z, Y, X. And that's your real or your carousel, whatever it might be. Side note, going back to Monday motivation real quick, that is your share worthy content that I was talking about. So when people give very inspiring quotes. If you guys ever see memes being shared or like those little screenshots of Twitter, people writing stuff like those are share worthy content because people read them and they're like oh my gosh, this is such a good quote. I'm going to share it to my stories. So that can be Mondays can be when you focus on that share worthy content that Instagram is pushing. Wednesday wisdom is when you give your Wednesday when you give your wisdom on something happening in the industry. Now the best way keep this in mind to use a Wednesday wisdom topic and is when you use the green screen effect on reels. So obviously you would have to record a reel for this. But go screenshot like some industry news, something that's in the news. Or go take a video or take a picture of something, put it behind you with a green screen effect and talk about it. Give your wisdom on it. That is your Wednesday wisdom. Super easy, super fun. And something about the green screen effect works really, really well on Instagram. Now Thursdays are for you to sell. Thursdays. What I like to focus on are testimonials. I need y' all to know that testimonials don't always get the best engagement, but they do help you sell because they see you helping someone, they see you being successful, they see you being that industry expert that you want to be. So I use Thursdays as a time to share a testimonial, whether it's like a screenshot from a Google review or maybe I tell a story or maybe like with us being a the social media space, my team will do things where they show like a before and after of them working on a profile grid, an Instagram profile grid for someone. There's so many things you could do here. Say you're like a med spa person. You could show a before and after and tell the story about that person. If you were a realtor, you could take a picture of these people that just got their new home and tell the story about how you helped them buy the home. The big thing with testimonials is that you want to tell a story. Storytelling is what connects people to people and humanizes your brand and helps you really hit home and hit that emotional side of things. And that's what social is meant to be. Social, right? So storytelling and not just putting like a graphic from Canva with a quote from your client, but instead telling the story is what's going to help you again. It may or may not get the best engagement, but people are reading that, they're looking at it, they're taking note of it and they're saying, you know what, I want to hire him or her because I saw that she helped so and so get XYZ results And then Fridays are fun Fridays again. This is where you can lean into the share worthy content. Lately, for Fridays, I've been leaning into either people that are in my own industry or people that are in my own industry, actually. I just think about things that would make me laugh as a social media creator or a social media manager. And I try to do like, relatable skits or like fun, funny trends, and I share those on Fridays as like a fun Friday. Not only do they get good engagement because people can relate to them, they're usually relatable and funny, but they also share them because they are relatable. So for you guys, kind of put your head into, I guess, your own head. What are some things that get on your nerves? What are some things you make fun of in your industry? What are some things that make you quirky and real and authentic? Like, lean in on those if y' all want a good example of this. I have so many funny ones right now. There's one on my page right now at the Kaitlyn Rhodes where I talk about how it was like, point of view, you bossed up a little too hard. And now hold on, hold on. I have to find it because it's so frickin funny. Okay, Says point of view, when you bossed up a little too hard and thought having your own office would be cool, but now you're all alone. And so it's a reel of me, like looking out of my office at my employees with my hand out and the songs, like by Myself. Love that. Love that I sing for you on my podcast. It's funny. It's really, really funny. I got a lot of good engagement on that. What did I get? I've already had 388 likes. How many shares do I have? Let me look real quick. Hope y' all can you hear that? Okay, 23,000 views. I just posted this, like two days ago. 23,000 views. And then how many interactions do I have? Okay, I've got a thousand interactions. So it performed really well and it's relatable and funny. What's another one that performed really well? That was funny? Oh, we did a really funny one where the girls got behind the desk and they did Point of View. You're in charge of training the new hire. And it's Darby and Gracie behind the desk with our new hire, Alex. And basically there's things. Hold on, I have to play it. Okay, so the audio is, it's looking at Darby and Gracie and they go. And they're looking at each other like they're hiring, like what? What should they teach this girl? And then Gracie goes, want to be here? And then Darby says she's 4. It's a funny trend. It's on my page if you guys want to steal it. It'd be super duper funny if you're training someone. If you have like a new hire, it's a really great way to introduce a new team member. It's funny. And let me get the analytics for you guys because, oh, it's not going to show me the insights because it was originally posted on my agency page and I'm just a collaborator. But I can see that. I got over 10,000 views, 31 comments, 131 likes. So again, that share worthy content is really, really working. I've got a bunch of examples on my profile if you need to really dig deeper into what shareworthy content looks like. So just go over to my page if you're struggling with that. Now, when it comes to engagement, I still try to spend 15 to 20 minutes a day. I still try to spend 15 to 20 minutes a Day commenting to other people, replying to stories. I leave genuine comments like I don't comment on anybody that I don't want to comment on. I go to my Explore page and look for posts that pop out to me. And so I spend time on the app and I know that spending time on the app helps the algorithm to understand my behavior on the app and also serve my content to new people and help serve new people to me. I also am still a believer in hashtags. You can use up to 30. I don't use the full 30 anymore. I probably use about 10. But I always focus on whatever my post is about so you don't see me copy and pasting the entire same hashtags every single time. I've also heard that that can be spammy to the algorithm. I don't know for sure if that's true or not, but I will focus on whatever that post is about that will help me come up with what my hashtags are. And then of course, I use industry specific hashtags as well. All right, that's the end of this episode. It's. It was short and sweet, but it's something that a lot of people that are just getting started just need to hear. Like optimize your profile, make it make sense. Make sure you're using keywords, make sure you're thinking about your audience, but make sure you're also explaining who you are and what you do so that you can connect with the right people and then focus on your content. Focus on content that's going to convert people, pull them in, engage them, get them to comment on your stuff, get them to send stuff to people. The shares that I was talking about, Instagram is pushing those shares. So get people to share your content. If you find that this episode was helpful, I really hope that you would leave me a review letting me know, like give me some feedback on it. And if you have any questions, feel free to send me a DM over on the Caitlin Rhodes on Instagram. But I think this is a super helpful episode for those just getting started. And if you can follow what I said, I promise you you will get into your own groove. If this is your first episode listening to me, I highly recommend going back to the episode where I talked about leaving my nine to five. It was either episode two or three, year four. But that's a good next episode that would go good with this. That would pair well with this episode. So thank y' all so much. I will see y' all next week. Peace out and don't let the algorithm make you cry. Bye. Bye.