How to fix your (low) Instagram engagement! - Shiny New Clients!

Summary

Podcast Summary: Shiny New Clients!
Episode: How to Fix Your (Low) Instagram Engagement
Host: Jenna Harding (Warriner)
Release Date: May 5, 2025

Introduction

In the episode titled "How to Fix Your (Low) Instagram Engagement!" of Shiny New Clients!, host Jenna Harding (Warriner) delves deep into the prevalent issue of low Instagram engagement that many service-based business owners face. With her extensive experience from working with over a thousand business owners through her program, Magic Marketing Machine, Jenna offers insightful strategies to not only understand but also effectively address and improve Instagram engagement.

1. Challenging Common Misconceptions

Jenna begins by addressing the widespread tendency to blame external factors—primarily the Instagram algorithm—for low engagement rates.

Jenna (00:00:45): "We don't want to blame the algorithm because what you're doing is treating the Instagram algorithm like an entity that has control over you…you take away all your power to fix the situation."

She emphasizes that attributing low engagement solely to algorithm changes is a defensive mechanism that relinquishes control. Instead, Jenna encourages listeners to recognize that the Instagram algorithm responds to strategic, high-quality organic content.

2. Understanding Low Engagement as a Symptom

Moving beyond misplaced blame, Jenna explains that low engagement is merely a symptom of underlying issues within one's content or messaging strategy.

Jenna (00:02:30): "Your low engagement is a symptom. It is not a sickness."

She categorizes the root causes into two main areas:

Messaging Symptoms: The disconnect between the content creator's message and the audience's understanding or needs.
Content Format Symptoms: The way content is presented, including visual quality and format adherence to platform preferences.

3. The Importance of Effective Communication

A significant portion of the episode focuses on the critical role of communication between business owners and their audience. Jenna asserts that as professionals become more adept at their craft, they may inadvertently alienate their audience by using industry jargon or focusing on aspects that don't resonate with their ideal clients.

Jenna (00:04:10): "When you get really good at what you do, you get bad at talking to people about it."

Using an analogy from her personal experience, Jenna illustrates how overcomplicating content can lead to misunderstandings and disengagement.

Jenna (00:05:00): "One of the main reasons why people are not getting engagement in their content…it's because you're saying things that aren't relevant to your ideal client."

4. Introducing the GENIE Method

To bridge the communication gap, Jenna introduces the GENIE training, a core component of her Magic Marketing Machine program. This method focuses on aligning the business owner's messaging with the exact language, needs, desires, and wishes of their ideal clients.

Jenna (00:06:20): "We call it our GENIE training and it's in our messaging module. And that's the type of homework that serves you for years and years and years."

The GENIE process ensures that content creators speak directly to their audience, making the content feel personal and highly relevant, thereby fostering increased engagement.

5. Practical Strategies to Boost Engagement

Beyond communication alignment, Jenna provides actionable tips to enhance Instagram engagement:

Optimize Content Formats:
- Video Length: Utilize shorter videos (under one minute) as Instagram promotes brief content to non-followers.
  
  Jenna (00:07:50): "We know Instagram now promotes videos that are under a minute long to non-followers."
Enhance Visual Quality:
- Clarity and Presentation: Ensure that visuals are high quality, avoiding issues like blurry images which Instagram's algorithm tends to downrank.
  
  Jenna (00:08:30): "If the visuals look a little bit more high quality, they're going to be more likely to promote it."
Improve Content Readability:
- Font Size: Use larger fonts to ensure readability, preventing loss of audience attention due to small text.
  
  Jenna (00:09:00): "Maybe you need to write your font a little bit bigger because people can't read it because your font is too small."
Strengthen Content Hooks:
- Engaging Openings: Craft compelling hooks to capture immediate interest and encourage viewers to engage further.
  
  Jenna (00:07:10): "Maybe you need to tighten up your hooks."

Jenna highlights that while some factors like visual quality can be technical adjustments, the more impactful changes stem from aligning content strategy with audience expectations and needs.

6. Emphasizing Ownership and Responsibility

A recurring theme in Jenna's discussion is the importance of taking ownership of one's content strategy rather than attributing failures to external forces. She stresses that recognizing and rectifying internal misalignments can lead to sustainable engagement improvements.

Jenna (00:05:45): "We're not going to blame the algorithm and we're not going to blame the people who are consuming the content. We're going to take full responsibility for our engagement."

This proactive approach encourages business owners to introspect and refine their strategies rather than seeking quick fixes or excuses for underperformance.

7. Encouraging Continuous Learning and Adaptation

Jenna concludes by promoting continuous education and adaptation through her Magic Marketing Machine program. She invites listeners to access a free training session titled "How to Get Clients from Instagram Without Wasting Hours Glued to Your Phone," aiming to provide further strategies and insights into effective Instagram marketing.

Jenna (00:10:20): "If you wanna know the exact strategy that my clients use to get clients from their content, there's a free training under this podcast episode…join me in Magic Marketing Machine."

Conclusion

In this episode of Shiny New Clients!, Jenna Harding offers a comprehensive exploration of the factors contributing to low Instagram engagement. By shifting the focus from external blame to internal strategy alignment, she provides listeners with both philosophical insights and practical tools to enhance their social media presence. Through methods like the GENIE training and actionable content optimization tips, business owners are empowered to transform their Instagram engagement from a mere metric to a dynamic driver of business success.

For those seeking to delve deeper into boosting their Instagram engagement and attracting ideal clients, Jenna’s Magic Marketing Machine program serves as a valuable resource, promising to equip them with the necessary strategies to thrive in the competitive social media landscape.

Resources Mentioned:

Magic Marketing Machine Program
GENIE Training Module
Free Training Session: "How to Get Clients from Instagram Without Wasting Hours Glued to Your Phone"

Note: This summary is crafted to provide comprehensive insights from the podcast episode "How to Fix Your (Low) Instagram Engagement!" by Jenna Harding (Warriner) on Shiny New Clients!. For a more detailed understanding, listening to the full episode is recommended.

Transcript

Jenna Warner (0:00)

Welcome to Shiny New Clients, the marketing podcast that helps you attract shiny new clients to your business. We'll talk about social media, what makes people buy, how to go viral, and marketing psychology all in 20 minutes or less. Whether you're a coach, a stylist or a wedding planner, if you've got a service based business to sell, this is the show you need to fill your calendar. I'm Jenna Warner, your new marketing coach and this is Shiny New New Clients, how to fix your low Instagram engagement. Oh, friends, did I ever grapple with how to deliver this episode to you? I want to give you the answers, but after working with thousands, and I will, I will give you the answers. But after working with over a thousand business owners in my program, Magic Marketing Machine, I know that there are different angles to this. And the reason that you're searching and searching online and you can't find an answer, that's just pointing point blank how to fix your Instagram engagement. And if you did find that answer and then you tried something and it didn't work, there's a reason for that. Because you need to think like you're inside an ecosystem. Okay? A content meets business meets you ecosystem. And I think at the end of the day, explaining that to you so that you can more objectively look at your own content and your own business and the choices you're making and your content and how you're making them. I think telling you that in this format is going be more valuable than saying, just go do this post and put this hashtag on it, because you're going to do that and it's not going to work and there's going to be a deeper reason why it didn't work. I don't want to do you dirty because there is a deeper problem. The thing is, your low engagement is a symptom. It is not a sickness, it is a symptom. And it could be caused by a few different categories. It could be a messaging symptom or a content format symptom. Now, first things first. We don't want to blame the algorithm. You're going to be tempted to go, well, it's the algorithm. And I read this article about an algorithm change and it's algorithm, algorithm. Don't blame the algorithm because what you're doing is treating the algorithm, the Instagram algorithm, like this entity that has control over you and is willy nilly and wild and you are just going to be at its whim. And if you do that, you take away all your power to fix the situation. If it's true that there's just this algorithm and it decides who gets and who doesn't get, then we now like, what's the point of even playing? Because it would be like you're gambling and you're not gambling with organic content. There is a strategy to organic content. Many of my clients have made ten thousand, fifty thousand, hundred thousand dollars from their organic Instagram content. There's a strategy to it. If it was the risk to be posting content, then you wouldn't see this many businesses participating in it. Okay, so we don't want to just blame the algorithm and give away all our power. I worked in a comedy club for like eight years or something and so I've seen a lot of comedians come off the stage and blame the audience. That's another thing we do. We blame the audience, they blame the house. Blaming the audience doesn't help you. It's another cop out. It's another way to go. There's this big this power that be power at be. Powers that be. I always mess that up anyway. There's this, this power that I can't control. Instead of looking at your own act, instead of reflecting on how they could have worked the room a little bit differently, instead of using the tools in their tool belt, they're just going to blame the audience. It's a defense mechanism and it's a way to save our ego. But at the end of the day, the job is to entertain the audience. You know, listen, man, I used to do that too. I used to come off stage and be like, ugh, it's a bad house. Or when I was in theater, we would do a matinee and it's like, oh, you know, matinees are usually lower energy than evening shows. Are they, Are they globally? Is that really true? Even if it is true, is it serving you to cop out to that? Is it serving you to just assume that that's why you didn't get the response you wanted from these people? Because it's the afternoon instead of 8pm we're making excuses for ourselves. We're not going to blame this all knowing algorithm and we're not going to blame the people who are consuming the content. We're going to take full responsibility for our engagement and I'm going to tell you something that might be happening in your head that's making you want to blame those other things instead of taking that on. As soon as you get really good at what you do, you get bad at talking to people about it. Specifically, you get bad at Communicating with your leads. You learn all this new jargon, you hit a new level of awareness. You know all these new things, things your leads don't know, and you stop speaking the same language as your leads. There's an immediate misalignment. So this is a sign that you're really good at what you do. So we do have that to ride on. We can be proud of that. Here's an example. I remember this story where my great aunt went over to my grandma's house. I think that's who it was. It was, you know, decades ago. And so my great aunt goes into my grandma's house, and my grandma's helping her cook, and she's like, oh, I can't cook at all. My grandma's like, okay, I'll help you. And so the recipe gets to a point where it's like, add a boiled egg. I don't know what they were making. Jello salad. Half of this story isn't true. We're just trying to make a point here. The recipe says, add a boiled egg, and my grandma says, add a boiled egg. And my great aunt goes, I don't know how to boil an egg. Now, the recipe isn't breaking down the part where it says, boil an egg. It's just assuming the person reading the recipe knows how to boil an egg, because the recipe book is too smart. It's too smart for its own good. So. So it's not properly communicating with its ideal client, because it doesn't even realize that the ideal client isn't going to know the egg thing. The things that interest you are not the things that interest your ideal client. The things you think are cool and neat about your industry are not the things that your ideal client is gasping at. The jokes that you and your colleagues laugh at are not the jokes your ideal client laughs at. You're on completely different playing fields. You're concerned about different things, and that's why they need you. That's why they need to pay you for that expertise, for that knowledge. One of the main reasons why people are not getting engagement in their content, it's not hashtags. It's not because you're not charismatic on camera. It's not because you need a fancier camera. It's none of those things. It's because you're saying things that aren't relevant to your ideal client. You're not tuning in to what they really, truly care about and what's going to get their attention and what's going to make them write a comment on that post in my program, Magic Marketing Machine, my clients use a method to prove that they are talking to their clients. This is very important because we need to get engagement so we can get eyeballs, so that we can sell to the people whose attention we now have. This all works together in this ecosystem. We make sure that they are using their clients exact language, that they are tuning into their exact needs, wants, desires, wishes. We call it our GENIE training and it's in our messaging module. And that's the type of homework that serves you for years and years and years. When you get good at this, when your content hits home with people, they engage with it. And sure, maybe you need to tighten up your hooks. Maybe you need to try some shorter content that's under a minute long. We know Instagram now promotes videos that are under a minute long to non followers. And it's hard to get content that's over a minute long as of this recording to go out to non followers. It could be a little glitch like that. Sure. It could be. You need to wipe the thumbprint off of your camera because it's making all your videos look a little blurry. And we know Instagram doesn't like to promote low quality content. So if the visuals look a little bit more high quality, they're going to be more likely to promote it. It could be something like those things, but the content skills, those are easier to learn. You can get the content skills, you can follow me on Instagram. I give content skills away all day long. Maybe you need to write your font a little bit bigger because people can't read it because your font is too small, small. You know, it's, it can be silly things like super simple things like that, but after working with a lot of business owners in a lot of different industries, I can tell you it's probably coming down to aligning your brain with your ideal clients, bro. Marketers will sum this up by saying, well, the issue is your content. Oh, your content's not good. I, I hear that all the time. I don't like it. I don't think it's an empowering way to talk. But you know, they're trying to get attention and maybe some people, that kind of language resonates. But I don't like it because it's not that it's shit, it's that it's misaligned because you are too smart. You're too smart for your own good. And as soon as you start getting good at something, you lose sight of your ideal clients. What they're going through and the words that they're playing inside their heads. So when you take those words, when you use our GENIE process to take those words and, and put them into your content, suddenly people are like, wow, wow, you see me. Wow. It's like you're inside my head. These are the comments you're gonna start getting. It's pretty miraculous stuff. It's pretty game changing and that's why your engagement is actually broken. And that's what you need to do to fix it. So if you wanna know the exact strategy that my clients use to get clients from their content, there's a free training under this podcast episode called how to get clients from Instagram without wasting hours glued to your phone. If you've listened to of these podcast episodes and you've never gone down and clicked that, now's the time to go down and click that. Now's the time to come join me in Magic Marketing Machine. It's going to tell you all about the strategy my clients use and then invite you to join the program. It's not going to be around forever. It is a very generous training. Enjoy it and I hope you start getting all the clickety clicks that your heart desires over on Instagram. I'll see you in the next one.