E24: Instagram Strategies with Caitlin Durling
“Do not put a sales pitch in the [DM] message. It is not about selling. This app is simply to grow your community and share free value”
- Caitlin Durling
Instagram Guru Caitlin Durling loves connecting with people all around the world. She creates content, develops strategies, and trains students on IG lead generation. After Caitlin grew an IG following from 18k followers to 500k followers in less than a month for a local non-profit in the Philadelphia area, she decided to build a business around her talent. Her business has two aspects, management of business’ IG and other marketing accounts, as well as training business owners how to grow their own IG following in order to reach their goals.
PERSONAL VERSUS BUSINESS IG ACCOUNTS
There’s some buzz that moving to an IG business account can drop your engagement but there’s no real substance to this. A business account is great because you can see the back end analytics. There are many underutilized features that business owners can take advantage of that give feedback from clients so that you can pivot your marketing based on what clients are liking, commenting on, engaging with, and rewatching.
It’s important to hit your metrics as well as constantly reach new people. New followers will come with an increase in new viewership.
INSTAGRAM STRATEGIES
Take advantage of the features IG offers as they are there to help you reach more people!
Location - using the Add Location tag is important especially if you’re positioning yourself to be an industry leader in your area. Use a hashtag for your business location as well as locations where your clients live and spend their time.
IGTV - this feature is not as saturated as IG posts yet which allows for a lot of growth with creating episodes and showing up live for your audience.
Be authentic - In all areas, be your authentic self. Within messages, DMs, and while engaging with clients, show that you understand their needs and emotions.
HOW TO CREATE A STUNNING IG FEED
There’s not a one size fits all formula for your IG feed. What kind of feeds do you enjoy seeing? What feeling do you want evoked within your feed? It could be colorful and bubbly, dark and moody, elegant, soothing, or anything in between. Consistency with color, feeling, and branding is key within your IG feed.
Presets and filters for photos can give your feed a cohesive color flow. Lightroom is a useful app for image manipulation. Pintrest is also a great resource for preset downloads that allow for quick and easy styling of your photos.
Work some graphics into your feed to break up the photos. Pintrest offers great professional branding graphics.
Open up a conversation starter with your audience. Ask a question, ask for feedback, ask for opinions...anything to get people engaged with your post.
“Instagram is a great avenue for all of us to connect and seriously feed off of the energy of one another.”
IGTV & YOUTUBE
Always add captions to your videos on IGTV, Facebook, and YouTube. It allows people to watch your video and not disturb others and expands your audience to include the hearing impaired. You can use an app like MixCaptions or AutoCap for creating captions.
Breaking down videos into smaller 6-10 minute clips is a great way to repurpose video content. You can have an IGTV or YouTube channel and break down a longer video into smaller episodes or training videos.
Use both IGTV and YouTube as a way to reach a larger audience. YouTube is owned by Google which means you’ll have increased SEO (search engine optimization) on that platform. One platform could have a video teaser for users to link to the other platform.
IG DIRECT MESSAGING STRATEGIES
It’s important to know who your target industry and audience is. Get to know them and how they feel. Use DM to open up a conversation by talking about the emotions they have in their work or industry.
Do not put a sales pitch in your DM! This is a way to grow your community, share free value, and develop relationships. Be responsive in your follow up to questions and you’ll gain a following that may eventually lead to sale through a phone call or store visit.
To search for potential clients in your industry, you can use location, hashtags, or even look at others’ accounts to see who they’re engaging with. One of the best ways to get to know a potential client better is to look at some of their recent posts. If they just had a milestone in their life, be sure to mention it in the DM when you’re reaching out to them. Take the time to quickly skim through their feed and acknowledge something important to them to show you’re interested in their life.
Especially now, while we are all separated from each other, Instagram is a great way to connect with people through posts, IGTV, DMs, and even using audio on DM for a more personal touch! Don’t let the lack of ability to meet clients in person keep you from connecting with them. Now more than ever, use Instagram!
Don’t miss my lightning round of questions with Caitlin - she has a really fun non-superpower power!
CONNECT WITH CAITLIN
Online merakimediamanagement.com
Instagram @meraki_media_management