58. 4 Strategies to Grow Our Following on Instagram

(Part 1 of 2 with Jeremy McGilvrey)

Facebook used to dominate as a social media platform for advertising. Though it has more active users than Instagram, the stats show that the median Instagram engagement rate per post is 1% across all industries in comparison to a 0.08% median engagement rate per post on Facebook (Source: Rival IQ). When it comes to influencer marketing, 90% of US marketers consider Instagram the most important social media platform (Source: Sprout Social).

Jeremy started his entrepreneurial journey very early on when he was just a kid. When he was a child, he started shoveling people’s walks for just $2. He then took what he earned and invested it in baseball cards. It’s very similar to what he’s doing today in his business: building his brand and investing most of the revenue back into growing his business. Jeremy believes that many of us have a job for the safety of the paycheck. Working for an employer is easy at the beginning but then it gets hard. When we work for a company, we just need to do what they ask us to do because they have systems and processes in place. This is very unlike entrepreneurship, which is really hard at the beginning but then it gets much easier.

When we understand that anything in life is really just a process, it’ll help us build successful systems. This is one of the things I like best about processes. They help us to consistently do the same thing over and over again. When we put a process in place, we don’t have to be waking up every day and wondering, “What am I going to do today?”.

“It seems like the greatest victories happen when we consistently implement effective processes to help us accomplish the things that matter most.” -Nathan Gwilliam

Why Instagram Dominates Every Social Platform

In his book “Instagram Secrets”, Jeremy talks about 12 reasons why Instagram dominates every social platform. He believes that one of the best things about Instagram is that it’s an extremely affordable place where entrepreneurs can connect with influencers in their niches. When influencers endorse our products or services, the influencer recommendation can increase our credibility and conversions much better than paid ads.

Jeremy tells us how to connect with influencers on Instagram. Whether it’s through Telegram or reaching out through the contact information in their bio, there are many ways to catch influencers. He advises keeping it simple and friendly. We need to express genuine interest in their work and what they do. Influencers usually have a lot of people trying to connect with them. They get tons of messages so entrepreneurs who want to connect with them need to get their message across in as few words as possible. It’s good to tell them how our product or service is going to elevate their brand. What’s in it for them? Jeremy also says that while it’s extremely affordable to work with influencers, we can’t expect them to work for free. These are people who invest a lot of their time and put in all the hard work to build their following, so it’s only fair to pay for their services.

Strategy 1: Select a Great Instagram Name

Jeremy believes that when thinking of an Instagram name, we need to begin with the end in mind. This means deciding on the direction the business will go before we pick a name. It’s important to think about the benefit that people would get from engaging with this name. Jeremy explains that Instagram is moving more towards search engine optimization. This means that a great Instagram name must be concise, clean, and benefit-based.

Strategy 2: Instagram Bios and Profiles

Jeremey told me that a bio needs to be concise and clear as well. If someone is going to promote affiliate products, they shouldn’t be using those ugly affiliate links that look spammy. Instead, for just $8 or $9, they can buy a benefit-based domain name through GoDaddy.

Jeremey pointed out a great resource, leandomainsearch.com, to find a domain name based on a certain keyword. The website digs up available domain names that have this keyword in them. The next step would be to go to GoDaddy and buy the domain that looks most clean.

Strategy 3: Drive Customers to Free Offers

When I asked Jeremey about which rules he thought were the most important, he told me that it no longer works to drive people directly to paid offers. We need to give something for free. For example, this can be a free PDF or an ebook that offers valuable content to customers. This will drive the leads to leave their email to get the free offer. Free email traffic like this will continue to grow the email list that we can market indefinitely.

Strategy 4: Model Successful Instagrammers

I asked Jeremey about how to learn from people who have already done that and who have been quite successful at it. Jeremey explained that this was how he built everything in his life; by modeling what successful people have been doing. Jeremey believes that we should never take advice from someone we wouldn’t trade places with. So when looking for a successful model to follow, we first need to make sure they’ve been successful at achieving what we are trying to achieve. We don’t need sophisticated software to figure that out. Jeremey says that some common sense can go a long way. We need to measure the number of followers someone has on Instagram up against the level of engagement (likes and comments) they get. If someone with 600,000 followers and they have 2000 likes on their account and only four comments, this can’t be a real following.

Jeremey recommends doing a little research first. It’s quite simple. Just document a 15-day average of what those Instagrammers are posting, their likes, and comments. This will show if they’re authentic or not.

“Successful people don’t fear failure but understand that it’s necessary to learn and grow from” -Robert Kiyosaki businessman and author

Connect with Jeremy McGilvrey

If you enjoyed this interview and want to learn more about Jeremy McGilvrey or connect with him, you can find him on LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/jeremymcgilvrey, or visit his website www.jeremymcgilvrey.com and subscribe to his blog.

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Jeremy for sharing your stories and knowledge with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

1. Practice what we teach so we have “been-there-done-that” credibility.
2. No matter how many setbacks we face, never lose our enthusiasm to keep moving forward.
3. Working for an employer may seem easy at the beginning but then it gets very hard, while entrepreneurship will seem hard in the beginning and then get easier.
4. The greatest victories happen when you are able to consistently implement effective processes to help achieve the things that matter most.
5. Customers are no longer being driven effectively on Instagram to paid offers.
6. A great Instagram name is concise, clean, and benefit-based.
7. Before we model successful Instagramers, we should do our research and model the most successful ones.

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