← Grow Your Local Business
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You are listening to the Grow youw Local Business podcast where local marketing expert and life coach Leslie Presnell shares the strategies and the mindset to help you reach more people in your city and bring in a steady stream of clients. All right, let's dive in.
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Hey, welcome to episode 132. Today I want to talk about one of the things that I know frustrates a lot of local business owners and that the fact that a lot of Instagram growth advice out there does not work for local business owners. We aren't able to really apply it to what we are doing on Instagram and really get it working for us. When I started my first local business in 2010, I started joining all of these online marketing courses and I instantly realized that the advice that I was learning from huge online marketing experts who are amazing at what they they do and who definitely know what they are talking about. I just realized that what I was learning from them wasn't going to work for me as a local business owner who wanted to reach people down the street. So my brain has started to naturally think like this and has been naturally thinking about this for like 15 years now and problem solving in this way. Like, how do I take all of this online advice and make it work for the local business owner and do, you know, like as a marketer and coach myself now, of course the algorithm on Instagram shows me a lot of marketing and social media advice. So I see it all like the post on how to get a thousand followers in the next 30 days or how to get your next reel to get 10,000 views or how to get your next 10,000 followers or whatever it is. Like all the super high numbers. It all sounds very sexy. And not that any of it is bad advice or that it's wrong. Like obviously it is working for someone. They're teaching people how to do it and it is working for other people. But I always scroll through and I look at it and I'm always thinking about you guys and I can always just see right off why it isn't going to work for the local business owner. Like, why is this piece of advice not going to help you reach someone who lives in your city? And that's what I want to talk about today because I know how frustrating it can be and how kind of hard it is to understand. And I have students come to me all the time and they're like, I've taken this Instagram course or I've done this 30 day reels challenge with this person. I've done this, and I've done that, but nothing is working. And they. They say the two most common things that I hear over and over. And that is one, I do everything right, I do everything I'm told, but I just get more people in my industry following me or I get people all over the world following me. I don't get people in my city who can actually hire me following me. I even met with a home organizer recently who had followed some Instagram advice and she had gone viral and she had grown her account to over 10,000 followers, which is like everyone's dream, right? But no one in her audience lived in her city. No one was even able to hire her or work with her. And this is becoming more and more common. And I see so many people scratching their heads, like, what is happening? Like, I'm growing. I'm getting the views, I'm getting the followers. I'm following the marketing advice, but I don't have any clients. No one is paying me, like, what is happening? So I wanted to record this episode and tell you why it's happening. So, inside the localpreneur Academy, I teach a local follower system. And my goal is that with the steps that I teach you in this system, that you grow your local following by at least 100 new local people each month. 100 local followers. And look, when you compare 100 people to some of the bigger numbers you hear out there, like a thousand people in 30 days or 10k views on your next reel, a hundred people doesn't sound that sexy. But I want to tell you why a hundred people is way more sexy. Because a hundred local people are people who live in your city. They have the real potential to work with you, to pay you, or they have the potential to refer you. I always say everyone you meet in your city has the potential to either work with you or refer you. So every single person of those 100 local followers is highly valuable. Like, think about how much your service is or how much what you sell is. Like, think about, if Your service is $350, like, for example, then that means each local follower is worth potentially $350. Or if you have repeat clients, like, if your clients can work with you over and over again, then they're worth way more than that. But as a local business owner, if you end up following all these online strategies to grow by like a thousand people or get 10k views or whatever, if you end up growing your following with other people in your industry or with people all over the world, you may have more followers but those followers are worth $0 at that point. I would rather you have a smaller following that's worth thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars than a huge audience worth $0. And anytime a local service based business owner, if you are growing a following with non local followers, that's what you'. Building. So we want the highly valuable audience, the one that is full of local followers. So let's talk about some of the online tactics that are being taught that get you the opposite of that. So I'm just going to run through one example that I've just seen. I see so many on Instagram, but I recently saw advice to grow by a thousand followers on Instagram in 30 days. And look, if you ever see some something, feel free to send it to me on Instagram. Be like, hey, why wouldn't this work for me as a local business owner and I can help break it down for you. But this was just one example I saw. And again, a thousand followers in 30 days sounds super, super sexy. And the advice was to post five reels in a week, post one story a day, post three carousels in a week, reply to comments on all your posts, leave comments on other people in your niches, post and engage with recent followers. So that was the advice. If you do that for 30 days, you will get a thousand followers. At first I was like, okay, kind of sounds like a lot, but will it get you more followers? Sure, absolutely. Like if you stick with all of that for 30 days, I have no doubt you will get more followers. For will they be local people ready to buy your services? Probably not. And here's why. So the main content that was suggested here was to publish reels and carousels, like five reels a week and three carousels a week. So what's that, like eight pieces of content a week? Now reels and carousels in this case are all about reach. In other words, if you just go and start posting reels and carousels without localizing them in any way or without optimizing them for local in any way, you are going to reach people all over the world. Instagram is just going to show them to whoever or no one. It's not going to just start showing them to people who live in your city automatically. Or it's going to show them to other people in your industry because the algorithm is going to think that those are the people who are most interested based on the content that you are both producing. Now the other thing that was recommended was posting one story a day. Now that's great. I Love posting on stories. I love a good active story. However, I don't believe stories are great for growing a following. Like, that's not going to help you just get more followers. I believe stories are great for nurturing your current audience. Stories are great for building relationships with the people who are already following you or to make sales for the people who are already following you. I don't necessarily see stories as a huge follower gaining tactic. Now the other thing that was recommended was to reply to all the comments that you get. And that's great too, and definitely do that. But that's not gonna work unless you're actually getting comments. And I know sometimes when you're first starting out, it can be crickets. So just coming out the gate like, yeah, I'm gonna do this in 30 days and get a thousand followers. It might be crickets for a while. And, and I usually tell my people like, let's anticipate that it's gonna be crickets for a while, but we're gonna keep going anyway. So replying to comments, I'm thinking that's just kind of an ongoing thing. Again, more of like a nurturing the people who are already there in your audience instead of like a follower tactic. Now the other thing that was recommended was engage with recent followers. Again, they're already following you. That's not going to get you more followers. But again, you need the followers. You, you actually have to have the followers to, to do this. So again, so it's great if you actually get them. The. The other thing that was recommended was to leave comments on other people in your niche. This is advice that I do not recommend as a local business owner, unless you want a follower list full of other people in your niche, which this is just the number one thing people come to me saying that they have. So I don't want you to do this. I'm going to tell you what to do instead in a minute. But I would just stay away from this. I would rather you have followers of real local people who live in your city and who want to buy something from you. So how do you do that? Like, yes, you create content like reels and carousels, but not just any content. It's not about blasting out reels to the world and hoping for the best and just hoping that the algorithm gets it right. You want to make sure your content is seen by local people and that means localizing it, making it clear your post was created for the people in your city and positioning yourself as the local solution to the very specific problem. Or problems that you solve. You also want to think of Instagram as your local networking tool. So like the other example was talking about engaging with other people in your niche and on comments and all that. I want you to engage with other local accounts, people, businesses, organizations, influencers, anyone who is part of your community. Again, I think of Instagram as a local networking tool. It's as if you were going to a networking event, but you never have to get up off of your couch. So doing this and less time with other people in your industry, more people with just more time with just other local accounts. And you need other people in your city talking about about you on Instagram. That's how you tap into audiences beyond your own. So you do this through collaborations, through partnerships, through media, or even just getting clients or followers, sharing your post or sharing about you. And you need to make sure that your post can get found locally. So that means like checking off all those local details like hashtags, keywords, your locations. Like these are all the small things that get you on the Discover page, that get you showing up in search results, that get you into your ideal followers, suggested feeds. Now, here's the thing. Knowing what to do is one thing, but actually weaving this together into a repeatable monthly system that brings in a hundred new local followers consistently, that's the part that most business owners miss. And that's exactly what I teach inside the LocalPreneur Academy. Because it's not about doing just more, more, more on Instagram. It's about doing the right things locally and doing them consistently. So here's the thing. You don't need a thousand random followers or a thousand people in your niche. You need 100 local people who can actually buy from you. A hundred people a month. A hundred local people a month are worth way more than that. And 100 local people every 30 days, it's not just possible. It's actually really predictable when you follow the right system. So inside the localpreneur Academy, I walk you step by step through exactly how to grow those 100 local followers every month so you can finally become fully booked. That fully booked. Go to person in your city if you are ready to really stop worrying about all the other vanity metrics and start actually building the audience who can pay you and really work with you. Come join us today. Like click the link in the show notes. You could be starting to grow your local following today. All right, my friends, that is what I have for you today. I will see you right back here next week. Hey, if you enjoyed today's episode. I want to invite you to check out my program, the LocalPreneur Academy. This is the only program for small business owners who want to become the local go to in their industry with a steady stream of clients. You can find more information@lesleypressnel.com and I'll see you inside.