How To Grow Your Business On Instagram With Successful Entrepreneurs!

Key Takeaways

hello everybody and welcome to today's webinar we have some incredible panelists that are going to be teaching you instagram tips and tricks to help your business thrive in the social world so um we're gonna run a format this evening where each of the panelists will share their knowledge as an opener tell you a little bit about themselves and then we have some questions that you have all kindly sent us in advance and so we will answer those questions for you and at the end of the introductions and the q a you will be able to come and ask a question of the panelists direct so i am your host i am simon squibb i am the founder of the purple sword project and i'm an entrepreneur who started my first business at 15 years old i found it hard to learn business on my own and that's one of my motivations today for starting the purposeful project whose mission is to help 10 million people start and grow a business for free we will never charge you for help we're here to help you and make sure that you enjoy your business journey and i want to thank the panelists in advance for giving up their valuable time to give us their knowledge hard-earned knowledge knowledge that it's valuable and i want to thank them up front for giving the time to share their knowledge with you all this evening i also want to take a moment to say thank you to tide they are our partner for this webinar this evening they help us put it all together and they are a big part of what makes i think the future of entrepreneurship very bright they have an absolutely fantastic product that helps people open up a bank account register your company and we will put right now in the chat a opportunity for you to open up a bank account with tide which i've done myself recently is so easy and when you do it you get 50 pounds just to help you on your way and so i cannot recommend tide enough it's not just because they support this webinar that i talk about them i will be talking about the belief if they hadn't they were great products who care about the people that are banking with them so i want to thank tide myself we operate every single week um at the purposeful project webinars and events we have a podcast series we have all sorts of entrepreneurs helping entrepreneurs networks from discord to uh to of course platforms like instagram where we aim to give you knowledge so if you ever need any help beyond what we hopefully will teach you this evening you can always reach out to us at purposefuldashpeople.com again we'll put the links down below all of the panelists and and they're connected uh instagrams and connected social networks we will also put into the chat so if you want to follow them connect to them and continue to learn from them then please do follow the panelists now we're going to go in no particular order around and talk to initially drew because i know drew has a four-month-old that she has to look after so she that she'd be up first to share her knowledge first so thank you for for joining us drew i know it must be quite hectic with a four month fold so thank you for taking oh not a problem i'm so happy to be just to be away for just really well just have some me time and what that's like well why don't we start maybe you could share with the audience a little bit about um who you are and what you do and then i've got three questions that were sent in for you which i'll ask you but maybe we could just start off with a little bit of a download from you yeah okay no problem so my name is jory clark i am the founder of dw cosmetics and also recently just launched unaltered basically both of my businesses are about empowering women and making women and girls across the world feel confident in their bodies because as somebody who has had a bad body image in the past that is kind of what i want people not to have and not to feel like so that is exactly what i'm getting especially after i had my little girl i was kind of introduced to a whole new world a whole new side of myself that i didn't even know existed and any moms watching you i'm sure you'll understand what i mean your body changes your mind changes so my main focus of my business is just kind of making women feel heard and accepted because so many times in womanhood you are comparing yourself to other people you're maybe compared to somebody else and it's nice to just have a brand that you can trust that doesn't do that and it's more about celebrating who you are and not trying to change yourself so that's kind of what my businesses are based off and why i started them that's that's amazing and uh true maybe um we could start off by you just perhaps telling everybody listening how you managed to grow your profile from zero to fifteen thousand followers and what your best tips for a business trying to gain followers is yes so i started off as a makeup artist about seven years ago my whole instagram facebook everything was just makeup i done little tutorials i taught myself how to do it so other girls were kind of like oh i thought you had to go to like a school to do that and personally i was not very smart in school i wasn't the brightest and loads of people told me that makeup wasn't going to work and i i wanted to prove them wrong and proved to them that you know makeup can really be an amazing career and for me that was kind of how i started off my instagram that was how i and i to be fair my makeup side of my life was a very small part of that following kind of starting to grow because i'm not sure if you remember when instagram started doing stories i started showing like the behind the scenes of my life like kind of what went on in my day-to-day like life to be honest and that kind of engaged the audience a lot more people were more interested in my life than they were me doing makeup and then i slowly slowly came away from doing makeup a little bit i was just more interested in showing what i got up to because it was so nice to be able to relate to other people so i try and be as transparent as possible because as everyone knows instagram can be just a highlight ring and for me i wanted to make a difference i wanted to show people kind of like the realistic side of life and that was how i started to rapidly grow people were interacting with me more and saying that you know they understood how i felt and they felt to see him and i started to build this community of people um men and women who kind of understood where i was coming from they saw the highs and lows and they related and even with my business i will always show yes of course all the orders coming in i'm packing the orders but equally like you said i have a baby she is my whole entire life so when i'm doing all that i have to try and do it when she's sleeping or when she's sitting there calm because she is only four months and it is very much unpredictable how she's going to be so it was just kind of showing the real side of my life was how i grew my following being really engaging doing polls and stuff on my stories i find especially when you do like q a's um stories and you kind of ask your audience what they want to see more of i always do that i'm like you know what are you guys interested in seeing from me and especially with my business one of my biggest tips for growing your business through instagram um how i did it anyway was my audience and my following are my customers so they are the ones i'm trying to engage with more often every single day without feel i post one story on either profile my own or unaltered so i always post i never not post even if i have two minutes of the day i'll just quickly post something and i always post one grid feed post today as well i just think it's so important that as long as you as a business are your branding is right and it's standing out you know your audience have something that captures them for example mine is more about you know self love and self worth so with my leggings that i'm selling i show all different body shapes people with stoma bags people with bloating people who've just had babies c-section moms postpartum everything so that it's not just a leggings brand it's so much more it's a community of women who can kind of go you know when you're seeing someone leggings you know that they've saw the same things that you saw so you've all bleed you're all believing in the same just the same ethos and my bread and butter my business is just empowering people and i think when you have that in a business if you're a business owner right now and you know you're kind of starting off my main tip for you would be to find your your like uh target audience and figure out what they want to say what they want to hear from you and really listen to them that's like my main my main thing is just to listen to what your audience want and that's how you grow it sounds so obvious doesn't it listen to you oh yeah you say i've actually made a note myself you know it's such a good point to remind ourselves that we're we're there to serve that audience and to listen to them so it's a great point do you use um one of the other questions that was sent into us i wanted to ask you do you use a content calendar to organize your posts what tools do you use to be honest i used to a couple of years ago i would have had all these apps and things to kind of schedule how my posts went and some days if i was having a really bad day that post just didn't suit how i felt so i'd be like right now scrap that i'm only going to do what suits me and when i want to post so this is my bible my diary i will write down you know what time i want to post at so when arya is sleeping i will have all of this ready to go so i'm not sitting there going right what needs posted but no i wouldn't really have a set schedule such especially with a baby it's really hard to do that i just try and work around myself and what suits me and just kind of look at what times my audience is online at so a lot of my insights will show me that they're on like six and seven o'clock at night so i'll post them and that's kind of just how i schedule my days they don't have any apps or anything like that it's good to know i think we all think we need to find a tool to make it easier for us sometimes it sounds like it's just fitting in your own lifestyle is the best way to do it and the final question for you um what's the importance of collaborating with other brands and influencers on instagram do you have a strategy around that yeah so do you mean like for example if i was your hygiene influencer to work with my business yes yeah yeah um i think influencer marketing is so underestimated like a lot of people pay thousands for google ads and all that stuff and i've done that before myself and it didn't really get me the audience that i was really trying to capture so my my focus now when i'm getting influencers on board would be is their ethos the same as ours are they promoting the same message as me again empowering women and making them feel really good about themselves i will go out and try and find influencers from anywhere any shade any size doesn't matter i'm just wanting them to have the same values as me and my business because if they have the same values as me they that will shine through when i send my leggings to them and they're wearing them and they're talking about them it will it will engage their audience too and that then will send them towards my business and then they will engage with my audience and then that kind of boosts your business so influencer market is incredible and it's so underestimated like a lot of my business that i've recently got in the past month has literally been from michael influencers just posting and re-sharing my photos or my tech talks you know people just commenting underneath them and getting small creators involved and doing little photo shoots and little things to make people really excited it's not so much about finding someone with a hundred thousand followers because a lot of the time they're maybe promoting so many different brands at once that the audience isn't really captured whereas when you get somebody who's a little bit smaller um and they really really appreciate what's being sent to them they have so much value and honestly i just think influencer morgan is incredible for any business great tips and insights drew thank you so much so anyone that wants to follow drew or no more we're going to put drew's contacts again in in the message to follow her and true um we know you might have to pop off and look after your full unfold but we will be asking or answering questions live at the end of this first round of chats with the panelists so do stick around till the end and you can ask her a question she's able to pop back so um yes true thank you next up is marvin marvin how are you really good thank you afternoon or morning depending on which part of the world you're in yeah definitely evening for me here in in london but um marvin maybe um you could kick off by just telling us a little bit about you and and i just recently started following you and absolutely love what you're doing but maybe you could share with the audience who you are and what you're about yeah sure my name is marvin harrison i'm the founder of dope black dads uh and then i've also founded other community groups under the name dot black and dope black dads was set up uh as a an abyss for me to yell into as male parenting uh eluded me uh for the first two years and then very quickly it became a place where other men could come and change and have the conversation um and we then turned our whatsapp group into a podcast and we've gone on since to win uh some awards uh a webby screen nation and a few other no no accolades around the podcast work that we've done we've also did an editorial stint on uh the bbc sounds and one extra talking about fatherhood and then shortly afterwards we moved everything over to facebook groups and we've since grown to three and a half thousand dads in our facebook group and we've grown our instagram channel from zero to twenty thousand um during that time um and we use our instagram channel as a way of i suppose we do have a framework of celebrate educate inspire and heal and so we want to celebrate fathers we want to inspire fathers to do better we want to educate them on some of the biggest issues around parenting um and then you know from and they want to introduce them to self-healing and things like self-care and just things that they need to do to improve their own outcomes and that's what we use our instagram for i definitely need to be a better father i've got a four-year-old and always feel guilty that i'm i'm not doing enough so there's plenty on there for you so yeah that can really resonate with with what you're talking about here and then i guess one of the questions that uh someone sent in for you was how do you create an effective pro instagram profile and choose what to post it's an interesting one so um originally we were using it just to repurpose and um compost user generated content for our fathers doing incredible things and being cute and families and babies and we've got a lot of engagement on that but what we quickly realized is is that it doesn't the the use and power of just repurposing nice fathers of images of black fathers was quite limiting and what we wanted to do is be useful and we wanted to be able to stand and actually help people so we started focusing way more on the more educational things things that we think are important for dads to to read learn understand and we got actually less engagement but the sentiment that we would get um in our dms and people calling us out really really uh increased and so we would get pages of people talking about the challenges that they faced because we're hitting actually people's hearts rather than just like lots of sort of mindless amazing pictures of black men doing stuff so we you know it's been a bit of a long journey but i think you know integrity the integrity of what we do is about helping people more than just having a giant page of just like cute stuff and um you know we realized that people when they do come to us they really need our help and we've become really useful yeah i i think it later back a little bit what drew was saying as well it's not about the size of the following it's about the engagement and being as as you say useful i think that's really uh really useful insight for especially people always think it's about getting big numbers and somehow that that proves that your page is working but what you're talking about there is the engagement versus versus necessarily the size of the instagram it's also just very difficult because there's also the balance of economies of scale and you know you're working with partners and they want big um but i know that those 20 000 are really with us every step of the way and so the impact we can have in the influence we can have is greater than if you know there are other pages that have hundreds of thousands of followers and they're great and i follow them too but i don't know if they try to tell men to you know look at a particular area the other day we did a campaign and prostate cancer you know how much people would listen to to that um and i think that's the important work that we need to do so we're slightly different i don't see us as an instagram channel i see us as a social movement so um i think the way we use it is different i love that and do you um is there any particular strategy you have on like reels versus uh you know image posts is there any any any particular thing that you follow there strategy wise yeah we've seen um feed feed uh posts are being suppressed especially feed video and reels are being a lot much more amplified um stories are vital because most people uh review stories on an ongoing basis and then that pushes that content into your feed so we prioritize reels first story seconds feed third i'm very aware that if it is video it has to be a real so a lot of it is just about editing content sizes and knowing so we have to make sure we can template um different types of content that means that we can post it quickly because i think a large part of it is when you have something that's urgent you know it's not laborious to make it and make it appropriate for the platform that is needed and we always try to use as many native tools as possible on the platform because i think it also helps to amplify um the content to audiences yeah and by native tools you mean like editing the reels inside the app that type of thing right yeah but also like stickers and um different features questions polls all of those elements also add a significant amount of value i think it also makes it i think there's a habit of wanting to post once um everywhere and i think that doesn't work and you've got to take your time and post bespokely for every single platform that you have and they do encourage it with like posting on stories to facebook and instagram at the same time but i realize that when you do that the engagement just isn't as good so it's best just to focus on the platform you're speaking to and finally is there any particular time of day that works do you think is there any any way you you figure that out yeah we normally do 9 and 7 30 gmt um and then because of our pages have audiences in south africa and uh the us we tried to adjust that for those times also um we probably post two two three times a day but we then you know i think our goal is is to increase the frequency um there are some pages i know that post every two hours but um because of our focus on quality that probably won't be possible but we do want to post more often and we do want to make sure when people wake up and do that morning um look online we're there and then after work we're there as well um i'm making notes i've had to quickly rush to unmute because i'm actually writing that down yes great stuff no i think so yeah that's fantastic i mean um we're going to have questions at the end from the audience so um plea please don't go anywhere and and and hang out with us and uh you know we've got questions coming in on the feed i can see already so we'll we'll come back to you but that's such great downloads thank you so much and um next up is uh kailyn would you mind i'm miking and telling everyone a little bit about yourself and um and what you know yeah so hi everybody my name is kailyn ann and i am the founder of girl talk agency which is a social media agency where i work with faith based businesses on basically expanding their brand awareness on social media and then i'm also the founder of the girl talk with k podcast where i interview um women entrepreneurs um and just like faith faith entrepreneurs on how to really advance as a faith faith entrepreneur so yes love that so caitlyn um i wondered um if you what are the three ways for business to boost its engagement on instagram and your in your view yeah so um i would say really like just keep it simple so um making sure that you're like commenting back to those who are commenting on your photo um and i think a lot of times people would like to like no i want to just i want to wait till i get as many comments and then i'll respond but actually instagram they see that you wait and so you have to be um consistent and you have to be urgent when it comes to people doing any type of engagement on your content so i would just say making sure that your comedy back as soon as possible on your phone you know on your photos um another way i would say too is you know creating video that's like the main thing right so reals that's the thing right creating rules as much as possible and not even having to like making sure that it looks pretty but just putting it together in a way where you're telling a story i feel like will do you better rather than trying to wait and making sure that it's trying you know being perfect i think that's the thing too people notice when it's so perfect or it's not natural and it's not authentic people can see that and you're you know your audience can see that so i would just say making sure that you're you know you have that video feed so making reals commenting and then also too i said to um post oh yeah post uh post your audience post when you're oh yeah post when you um when your audience is online right so it wouldn't be smart of me i'm in the u.s in dallas texas um so it wouldn't be smart of me to post at three o'clock in the morning right here if my audience here um or if the majority of my audience is in texas so i need to make sure that whoever is following me that i want to make sure that i am on present on social that means that i'm you know in my stories i am posting content the times that they're on i'm seeing a bit of a theme around everyone that knows what they're doing on instagram um yeah work within your time zone is a good example of that so yeah good good reminder i know you help a lot of clients get leads how do you how do you do that what what's um what's the lead strategy so for me um i i do marketing and social media so basically i'll kind of help create my clients marketing plan and also their social media plan so for me that's organic content and paid content and so for those who don't have a big budget so the organic content making sure that you um are communicating with your audience telling them exactly what you're selling if you're selling something and then just being present and being consistent right so a lot of times again like i said people think it has to be perfect for people to follow you for people to respond or to grow your social media but that's not true it was back in the day but now people want to see authentic they want to they don't want to see pictures with filters on it they don't want to see all that they want to see you they want to see the behind the scenes of what you're doing your life and all those different things so i just really tell my customers be yourself right you know don't be afraid to do do you right don't be afraid to do something different than everybody else is doing um because you're going to stand out and then your audience knows that that is new and then they're going to be able to trust you so then now they see who you are that you have value and that you have purpose now they're going to trust you with your business so i just always tell you want to make sure tell my clients to make sure that you are creating content about you about your mission um and mix it up too with the sales as well it's a nice trend to see actually that it's not just about a nice picture anymore and there's an email and that's actually a really good thing i think where as you say uh people share their authenticity so that that's really amazing i guess um do you i know you you talk in some of your content about building communities is there anything in particular you think around building communities that you can share yeah um honestly i would say if you don't have a business yet like start building that community i feel like a lot of people think they have to have the business down pack before you start creating the buzz and awareness around your business but i would say to do it in reverse um creating that content or creating that community on facebook on instagram and literally that just means responding to people right like um commenting back on their stuff and also taking an initiative to um like their pictures uh comment on their photos right and just build that um that likeableness too right and so it makes it feel people want to feel like liked and they want to you know they want to feel um like what they're doing is good enough and you know when someone is shouting you out or someone commenting on their photo it's like oh thanks like you know i didn't you know that could make somebody's day right if you you know encourage them so that's what i like to tell like my clients and even too with even building my brand um with my podcast too and with my clients is like most of my customers and most of the people that i've interact with is people that um have found me because of how i act interact with everybody right i want to make sure that i am empowering everybody i want to make sure that i am um speaking my truth and being myself 100 and um it's it's almost funny because my audience knows when i'm outside of that box right then you can tell like you're not operating in your your zone of genius right so i would just say making sure that you build that trust with um your followers and you know dm them you know and you don't have to want something you don't have to sell something just creating that conversation right now will be great because when you do launch the product when you do have that business they're gonna remember you totally right i'm actually live on a few platforms right now i think live's become such an important part of instagram actually all social media so i'm live on tick tock live on instagram you are getting a lot of hearts by the way right now oh thank you appreciate you enjoying your knowledge and uh that's really awesome so thank you for that and so um again anyone that wants to follow taylor will put her um handles in in the chat i can see a few questions coming in so we're going to get to your questions in just a moment once paul's given his download you can actually raise your hand if you click the raise hand button we'll even bring you onto stage to ask your question if you feel confident to do so and this uh recording of this um download today will be online for later for people to to learn from your question so your question is important i'm sure your question is a question a lot of people will have so feel free to raise your hand now and then we'll bring you up on stage you can ask these experts some questions and after paul we will do that so um paul welcome to the stage um again tell the audience a little bit about yourself and and uh yeah let us know what you know thank you so much thanks for having me uh i'm paulo tolte so i'm the co-founder of heavy box and our mission is to help just create a world that utilizes powerful plants for daily personal for daily personalized needs so that's performance that's period pain unlocking nature's true power and i guess that journey has taken us to launch your selfridges so we've been in selfridges for like a year now and it's a theme that i carry on in my own personal life so i i got platforms around i guess 80 000 of us where i share general tips and natural hacks on on just boosting your wellness naturally so yeah that's that's about my my background i really love it so maybe we you could share a little bit about how you've managed to grow your following and what your strategy's been around that so for me it's always been about value right giving value consistency consistent to people so i guess for me on with the conversations that i have behind the scenes you kind of know what people want right so when you're speaking about your brand what kind of questions do people ask you offline translating those sort of questions offline online and giving value to people consistent value just allows people to buy it into you and what you do so that's a theme that i've always i think i've been on social media now for years from youtube instagram and my main thing has always been about giving value just learning myself and then using what i learned to help educate people and off the back of that i've been able to grow my email list i've been able to grow my my youtube page my social media platform even i read i've written a couple books off the back of that i've been able to sell i think over 15 000 uh books so given value you know it does a couple of things for you for one it also helps you be seen as like an expert in your space so when somebody has or wants to speak about this topic that you speak about all the time who do they think of you because you're consistently giving value to people and it just builds up trust with your audience so that's how i've grown it yeah again it sounds like common sense but we do forget it sometimes when we're busy i guess almost selling what we're doing we forget that actually we've got to bring value if we expect people to to buy from us and engage with us so it's such a good good reminder how do you come up with your content every day yeah i mean it goes back to similar thing right so what sort of questions like if i was starting from scratch what sort of conversation do i have in real life right what do people call me for in terms of my own personal expertise translating that to content and then once you start i guess building a little bit of content let's say it's a month or two i now go back to the data so there's something i use quite a lot which is instagram insights i'll go back to instagram insights for example and i'll check okay in my instagram insights which post had the best reach which post had the best clicks which post had the best favorites or saves and off the back of that i will know what's that what style of content that my consumer wants to see and replicate so i'm uh i'm a bit of a fan of if something is working do it more because for one that might mean that that's on trend at the moment so once you start finding out things that work with the insights you replicate and post more and then if you have like a second platform or like a like an email list you're building you can put pixels and things on your website like google analytics so google analytics is something i use and what google analytics allows you to do is see what your audience likes or other things that your audience likes right so you might find that i found out my audience likes uh beauty they care about skin i found that my audience likes like house plants they like uh luxury goods so other things that's in line with the lifestyle that i'm adding value to i might speak on so i might speak on let's say if i'm talking about herbs i might talk about herbs for for skin or the importance of the liver but the reason why i understood this content is based on other elements that i found my consumer to careful and another key thing is right it's just it's speaking to your audience so i read every comment i try to reply to every comment and people also tell you what kind of content they want to see next so they might comment or they might comment a question to a post you made previously then you might follow up with your next post being about the the comment that was given before and that does two things it shows your community that you listen and two it also allows everybody who saw that post is interested in a follow up to go to go and check out your next post too i think that we have this habit sometimes of over complicating things um i'm a guy that likes to i like to go to the root the fastest way possible in a simple way because it's all about i guess utilizing time right and to utilize time you have to understand what tools you can use whether it's instagram analytics um you know your your facebook analytics understand what your consumer wants by speaking to them whether it's going on lives whether it's doing stuff on your story and people will reply they will ask you questions and that just enables me to get somewhat think out of the box with with some of the content that i create and especially when you've been in the space for so long because i've been you know in the health and wellness space for like 10 years thinking of new creative content isn't easy because health isn't that complicated it's just you know eat good sleep well then exercise right so thinking of new creative content you have to be in tune with your audience to some extent so being in tune and planning ahead i think um is a good way and also testing but i guess the last key thing that i i try to do for for my personal brand and herbie box is understanding what key dates are happening throughout the year you know christmas whether it's boxing day mother's day father's day and you can also plan some content ahead of time for these things right so valentine's is coming up i might speak about you know something valentine's related okay uh you know here's some tips to spice things up for example right but it's that understanding of key dates can trigger stuff in your mind to help you plan content ahead of time so hopefully that's helpful thanks for reminding us all that valentine's is coming up good point yeah no i mean that that's absolutely fantastic paul we've got some questions coming in so i think um i'll open this up to the floor and again um for anybody that wants to or feels confident enough um we've got a couple hundred people on here you know there must be people confident enough to come up on stage and ask the question you can hit the raise hand button and and we will bring you up on stage if you feel confident and so but i can see the questions coming in the q a section so we will also answer those now um just before we do that i just want to sum up what what i've uh noted from from each of our experts today so drew said just show your life your day-to-day life i think that's such a good tip and be transparent i feel that's also so useful to remind ourselves and maybe leverage just you know being authentic build a community um ask your audience more often what they want and um you don't need to use the tools uh you can you can be manual i know everyone thinks that the tools will save them time but maybe they also mean that things go out at the wrong time and uh partnerships are really key especially micro influencers and i've had personal experience i've invested in quite a lot of businesses and business i invested in recently worked with micro influencers and it was hugely successful and previously they worked with uh influencers who had had millions of followers and it wasn't as successful as the micro influencer campaign so so definitely that bit of advice from drew really resonated with me i think marvin was sharing about like be useful um you know be educational focused which i again is i feel so true reels are amplified right now you're hearing that a lot but maybe we just need to remind ourselves sometimes just posting a picture is a little easier they're coming up with a good reel but i i see it too the reels are getting definitely getting pushed more right now on instagram and use the native tools so um be that the the the questions or or the polls um the stickers or even editing the actual video inside the app will make uh instagram feel that is being made natively um and and um post in your time zone sounds so obvious doesn't it but wherever you're trying to target just just make sure you're you know you're engaging with the audience that you want to engage with and so uh and kailyn said some so many great things and she said you engage with the comments uh as quickly as possible you don't need to let all the comments build up and then engage it's good to consistently engage on the comments front i actually have made that mistake myself so i made a note of that one for myself i often um go in reply to the comments and go away again and so but having that consistent uh regular engagement instead of that one-off i have seen that actually now i think about it in my own analytics and so it resonates with me that that's such a good piece of advice build a community not a following i think is another great tip from kailyn be consistent and create videos that tell a story totally makes sense again she also said be authentic so there's a theme there isn't there i think growing in social media in general and um and you know that organic versus paid mix can be a good way if you're looking to get leads from it to leverage both ways of reaching out to to your audience and then paul um again loads of great insights from him again some of it sometimes sounds obviously great to write down give value and what what paul said that i think just adding to give value is like online and offline you know i think that's a cool such a cool point you know sometimes we think we can do it all online but there is ways that we can bring value offline and and bring connection and support i personally use voice clips for example in in the dms and have a human connection with people beyond just typing things and show that it's really me some people don't believe it's really me there so i used the voice clips in the messenger dm to say hey got your question this is what i think you know that in my mind is kind of an offline approach and don't over complicate things i think we all do overthink our posts right so paul's just highlighting that totally agree review your analytics there's some great tools within the system and a lot of people don't use them i still think i've got the new iphone 13 i don't know how to use 90 of that phone but learning to use the tools we've got and plan ahead plan ahead um and don't forget it's valentine's day coming up so all really useful so um now um we're going to take questions so again please raise your hands i think we've got one guest come up on stage uh queen if um are you there would you would you like to um mike and ask the panelist a question oh yes hi simon hello simon hey henry yes we can thank you very much okay thank you simon for this program this uh meeting has been very helpful to me the panelists have been great they've been awesome great advice out there so my question is um when you're starting out business what what what advice do they have for us concerning um starting out a business and then opening a new instagram page how do you you know build your followers how do you keep up with them sometimes you know when you start a business most people don't respond initially so how do you get them to respond how do you put your content out there supposing you have two followers what kind of content do you put out when you're starting out and then how do you build up so that's my question and i'm i'm queen from nigeria i'm from nigeria joining for manchester united thank you very much if anyone the panelist wants to answer this feel free to unmike i'll just quickly say if you've got two followers research who they are and find out what they need um okay no no i wish to have two followers but have two true fans would be a great way to start but um if any of the panelists want to unlike marvin i see you i might do do you want to add some advantage sure um firstly just shouts to nigeria just for being nigeria thank you for being here um and i think what for me when i look at these types of things is that i i stick to my original vision for a fixed period of time usually 60 or 90 days because i think it's really difficult um to start taking feedback too early you can find yourself in a bit of a rabbit hole and so i think get your idea and your vision out of you get comfortable with um what you believe the viewpoint is and then start to look at the success of some of the posts so when we start new communities we just launched dope black hair and uh we've got 233 followers in two months which is small but we're not doing anything aggressive we're just playing around with the tone of voice and so it does take a little bit of time to figure out what it is so just take that time and then research what the successes are and then make changes after that okay thank you very much uh uh yes um i've helped a few friends grow their pages um i'm not saying this work for everybody but this is um what i've done of what i've told them to do and i've been pretty handsome um essentially like so let's say the brand is about a specific thing right what are people asking questions in regards to that brand so is it the ingredients when they're using let's say moringa from nigeria you might provide a lot of education so what i've done for them is you know helped them create just value so it might be 15 posts that are incredibly full of value right um and then after that and this this requires a little bit of a budget just putting like five pound per day on your most successful post and boosting it and what that does it just kind of expands the reach of that post and with each of these pages because if somebody sees the value in that one post that they see as an ad they will come to your page and look around and especially if the audience is relevant and if you've got about 15 posts then each of them are of value right i don't know a lot they'll stick around they'll stick around they'll buy into your brand and these are not like it's not like fake followers these are relevant people to your audience especially if you're diving into you know their their interest because you can do that whilst you boost the post so one of the pages got to 3k in four months and they sell watches and they've sold they sold a lot of watches so that's what i would do if i'm starting the same formula i've done with football friends for different pages but it takes a quite a bit of time to actually create content that's relevant and it might feel that you're getting one like you're getting two likes or that's nothing but when you get one like that's one person who's a human being so one person who's a human being can tell five of their friends so i take i take the numbers as actual people and that makes you feel better even though you're starting small with a community of 100 people you can still make um good income so that's i guess the formula that i would use if i'm starting again and and trying to grow a page hopefully that's helpful it is helpful thank you very much you're welcome and so i think we have someone else come on stage but i'm so sorry i don't see just his speaker it doesn't i don't see a name oh hi there do you have a question for the panel yes i do so i'm very new to uh instagram probably about four or five years grown organically and i was just looking through my feed and thinking about all the posts i've done previously um would do you go back and delete them or do you just keep building up because i've probably got like a 1200 post i think or something which is that too much um i do i saw kellyanne i don't want to judge but like i do and i i curate and clip often because um not many people go back down the feed and look at it but for me it may be just a preference of mine that i like to look at the most extinct and best content that we have also design styles usually evolve over a period of time and so it's good just to run out again have a bit of a refresher and what's great about instagram now it has an archive feature so you can archive rather than necessary delete so if you ever feel it comes of use again you can repurpose that content later on down the line so do you do that every like quarter or so or would you go back and do a year's worth no i would never get that far down i think i think quarterly is a good marker but i think you gotta look at time frames for you and usually depends on your frequency of post and how much change you've had in that time frame there's no point culling if you're posting once a week and then you're trying to then call a quarter's worth it's just not really worth it but what you're doing daily two times a day three times a day and you're playing around with you know feed and captions it after a while you realize there's an inconsistency of styles that may occur so then i i normally do a color or an editing where possible and then represent the content down the line okay thank you i hope you found those answers useful and today's webinar useful yeah absolutely i think it's fantastic i'm taking down loads of notes so i appreciate that thank you very much oh caleb sorry yeah i wanted to say something so personally i have a um personally i would um archive a lot of um posts that don't relate to my current content but i would say is like you're building a business um if you don't have the history or if you don't have the content i would say to just let it stay but if it's if it doesn't like correlate with your mission right now in your vision right now then i would definitely say archiving but sometimes it's good to just have that history there so people can see like where you came from they can kind of see your story too um in a sense so that's the only reason why i would say to kind of keep it if it's related to your mission right now that's a really good point actually because i've got a personal account and a business account so um i should just do for both yeah that makes sense thank you so much caleb no problem you have a lot of questions coming in now even on uh my tick tock i've got so many questions coming in as well but uh but diego you're up on stage next um what question do you have for the panelists can you hear us it's a technical problem we can lip read i think let's try okay sorry so um my question is um wait i got a small i got a business investor i'm gonna go an ice cream shop we talked before so basically some people i for what you say is we have to make it personal but then other people telling me you shouldn't make it personal with your business so it's a bit confusing because you know like sometimes i don't know how to if i should get more involved into the post and all the stuff and showing me making stuff or and talking to people or i should just keep it playing with with what the business is or not you know so it's uh some people tell me you should other people tell me you shouldn't so it's a bit confusing so you guys obviously know better so would you recommend me and my basically partners to be more engaged within the post like talking in the post and all that stuff oh i i would let the data decide but i would say to you like um personal content is usually better when there's a good story um and the quality is of a good quality um i think it could be great for you to explain you know why you have an ice cream shop and then you know talk about your the flavors that you have while you've chosen them you know your memories of ice creams ice cream diaries you know whatever the the thing that you create could be a really nice way to present it but i think you have to decide whether you feel you're able to get that message across and it will be understood and then the quality of what you're able to create um and if it isn't quite right then you know just do the test and learn and see when you just post picture of ice cream versus you explaining flavors and ice cream and techniques what does better uh and the people will tell you very quickly okay yeah that's very interesting we all wish we had uh not only had an ice cream right now but we always always wish we had ice cream as a tool we could use in our social media posts i mean i i would just add that you know sometimes i think business is very personal despite what people say don't take it personally don't agree at all if you've got to take it personally and maybe it's a personal decision for you if you like doing social media and you want to be a part of that post then i say do it i mean there's plenty of people on platforms like tiktok that just making ice cream all day and have millions of followers so if you enjoy that then do it i say um i think i'm inspired a bit by drew as well she was saying earlier you just be authentic by yourself share your story and if you're comfortable doing that you'll enjoy the process right drew you're not even yes glad you can hear me can you yeah we can yeah yeah yeah sorry i came back i fed her she's she sorted yeah thank you very much we appreciate it no no problem at all well i think we all want to can you put your handle in the chat by the way because i definitely want to follow uh someone's ice cream story because i'm not allowed to eat ice cream much these days so just i look at pictures please put your handle in the chat okay okay don't worry i know i make low fat and no added sugar they all specialize now don't do an ice cream these were wonderful no thanks thanks i hope those answers were useful to you yeah thank you very much before we move on has anyone else got anything they want to add to diego's question just make sure i haven't okay good 100 correct in terms of just this testing and i think sometimes why we don't want to be out there is you know sometimes a bit of fear you know in terms of like what people are going to say about us do we ruin our brand's perception but i think you i think as a as a brand it's good to test things and let your audience decide because at the same time people do buy into people so putting yourself you're you're handsome chap you know got a good smile to try it out and then if it works it works that's one of the things that really sometimes you put you off because sometimes you you you know all social media and everything is about looks and you see all these fake stuff happening and people going with this amazing everything and you know when you go up there you you in a way you feel a bit down because you're like oh my god no like these other people and these people are amazing and they showing you know ferraris and all that stuff and you go there with a little ice cream and you're like yeah look this is my ice cream and uh sometimes what i find very difficult is to keep the things up you know like to to try to keep the motivation to okay i'm gonna keep doing it i'm gonna do this and stuff because sometimes you get very good like people engaging and stuff and some other times you just go down to the drain and you lose motivation as well if you know what i mean and it is the whole pressure of everything coming together all the all the competition and everything you see daily like because you get bombarded with different kind of every single day so it's yes it's insecurity yeah i'll just i'll second the hardest thing is just test it out and try it see how you see how it goes and you know one thing that nobody has against or no one can compete with us on is being ourself you know there's no other brand that could that could do that as good as you so yeah at a point you you'll find the tribe like when i started my social media journey if you watch my old videos they were terrible but it makes you grow as a person and people buy into you after a while so uh i'll end on that good luck thank you i tell you i'm pretty certain uh you've got a real nice way about you're very authentic and i think that is the way uh true social media is going where you're really socializing with people you be yourself diego and i i think you'll have a lot of people that will love you for being you i have a feeling so don't worry no one cares about the ferraris we care about ice cream definitely stephanie would you like to unlike and perhaps ask a question of the panelists yes can you hear me okay we can all right um good morning evening afternoon to everyone i'm calling from california um my question um i already typed it in was directed more to caitlin but anybody is more than welcome to answer um i just mentioned you know i'm a third generation uh minority small business owner my family originally the original business is restaurant but my business is more so in education consulting and then small business development i recently went through like my first phase of basically i don't i don't believe in failure i don't believe in like um mistakes i just believe that you know i i came to a realization that my foundation wasn't solid um moving forward i'm rebuilding and i really want to convey um god first and in my business being faith-based and so i want my my potential customers and our clients to not necessarily have the same belief but to know that that's going to be a part of my model um and i just wanted to get your advice on best practices or or any you know heads up that you can give um i would just say stephanie um to really just make sure your mission and your vision and your purpose is aligned with like what you want and not to compromise it um based off of money and business and so um i don't believe that you have to stay who you stand for i believe in your customer service your way of speaking to each other you know you're the way you're doing business your excellence is going to show people who you're serving and so um just keep that in mind so it doesn't have to be like like everywhere i would just make sure that you are representing and your employees are representing who you believe in and so um just with that being said yeah um best practices for me is not to compromise who i believe um who i believe in and also too if it doesn't feel right i don't do business even if it's a lot of money associated with i feel like the biggest lesson that i've learned last year was um to you know making sure that i'm led by my purpose and my mission and if that is off then um my business is going to be off so yeah and we can talk more offline too you can reach out to me we can definitely have a conversation i'm up you know i'm here to help you with anything you need thank you and i also just wanted to um note that your instagram is beautiful um i like the layout it's very inspirational it's bright it brings a light so i think you are doing a great job and i look forward to the future um interaction [Laughter] my bad i didn't get yours i'm on the way it is true though kaylin's is beautiful so good shout out thank you stephanie thank you for your for your question and i'm i feel like um the uh the zoom system is is mucking up a little bit with people's names so i don't know if speaker is your name or that someone new or someone from previous so i'm not quite sure but i don't want to miss anybody out so um if uh speaker are you are you are you not called speaker are you really there or is it a little glitch with zoom perhaps a little glitch okay so puyan um would you like to unlike and ask the panel a question maybe maybe not okay well we we've done really well not to have any sinking out or anything go wrong with this webinar so i'm going to say thank you for that and just assume at the end we're always going to have a little something but just double check so puyan can you hear us can you um mike do you have a question speaker are you um are you there hi good evening i think i have a problem with my microphone that's the reason i couldn't speak you guys cannot hear so yeah my name didn't show up on ebenezer my name is jessica so i have i come in this uh coming to rest to this ebb now because i would like to improve my business how i have three not just one i have three business one so one is the food one is as cosmetic the other one is that one is help provide service for other people who need so then that's the reason that i'm just quiet he absorbs all the experience that people have got here in a group wonderful do you do you have a question no at the moment i'm fine fine i'm just listening and taking notes basically fair enough okay well thank you very much my pleasure so everybody i hope that you have enjoyed this evening and um we are now exactly one hour in so feels like we uh we we covered everything i've i've personally learned i've been doing instagram for like two years non-stop and i've learned so much tonight myself so i want to thank the incredible panelists here for their knowledge and taking the time out to share that knowledge for free being kind and and doing that and i also want to thank ty who i know um are in the audience uh for supporting this initiative at the purposeful project to bring knowledge to people for free and everybody deserves access to to this sort of knowledge and so it's very important to us that we we do these activities not doing the upsell we're just here to bring knowledge to people and so i wanted to thank ty for supporting that want to support the psych thank you the panelists for supporting that we have another webinar coming up which we will be talking about tiktok i have personally over 400 000 followers on tick tock and we'll be sharing with another group of incredible experts um knowledge on on how tiktok works and we also have a webinar coming up about linkedin similar formats incredible people who are going to share their knowledge about how they've managed to make linkedin work for them so make sure you sign up finally just want to say um that tied a very kind giving 50 pounds to anyone that signs up for an account so do feel free to go and click the link if you haven't got a bank account we've tied to go clean your 50 pounds and do that and i can't recommend them enough as far as an ecosystem is concerned helping entrepreneurs once you sign up i think uh someone's trying to speak maybe there's one last question before we go is is someone trying to speak so i heard someone on mic uh yes sorry um my internet was um cutting in and out but at one point you had tried to unmute me so i could ask my question you could be our last question before we end for the evening go ahead okay um so for all of our panelists um you guys have created a brand identity and you've developed a community with your brand if instagram has decided to shut you down like in my case um and you lose your username you lose everything how would you um go about to actually develop a community again with a new identity brand identity because you don't have access to the old one i would say um well because instagram has shut down before so for me i've always thought that it's you know i don't own instagram but i want to own a platform so that's why i have my podcast um i had i own that content um and then also my emails too so i always try to direct people to um you know my email list um just so i can connect with them and then their numbers as well so i would say um you know you just have to kind of re rebrand um yeah you're just gonna have to kind of rebrand and i would also connect with somebody who can kind of help you get a head start with that so you know if that's a consultation that you can kind of um book with someone to kind of get you um in a space to creating content creating the same content um and also to just kind of being aggressive with basically restarting over again i would definitely suggest that yeah i would i would second that advice good or five sec thank you and everybody listening if you probably picked up that every single one of these very busy experts will respond to your comments so if you have questions i can see a few questions dropping in right now in the q a on tick tock on instagram you can go follow these folks and you can ask them the questions in the comments they they will reply to you some will be quicker than others but everybody will reply so so do go ask your questions in the comments do go follow all the panelists and you will continue to learn today beyond the webinar and so if you learned anything of value i would really appreciate it if you went on twitter and tweeted it and did at uh simon squibb or any of the panelists i personally will retweet any knowledge you've learned i wanted that knowledge you've learned tonight to go further than beyond just yourself so feel free to go on the twitter and share the knowledge and at the purposeful project myself or any of the panelists and we will share your tweet and also hopefully amplify what you have learned and make sure what you have learned gets to other people too so i love the butterfly effect concept so perhaps together we've all learned stuff this evening and if we share that knowledge more people will have successful businesses that they enjoy so again thank you to the panelists thank you to ty for supporting and thanks to everybody that's attended i'll um see you all soon and this will soon be up on youtube and other channels so so you can listen to it later so if you are listening to it later thank you you can ask questions in the comments below in the youtube video so feel free thank you everybody