Today we bring on a special guest to our blog. Not only a guest but a friend to NeONBRAND, a frequent attendee at our Social and SEO Meetups. She is the founder of Girl Chat Sports, a niche video/podcast show targeting women who love sports.
How Jamie Uses Instagram
I originally asked Jamie to talk about Facebook and how she was doing community management on her page. To my surprise, I found in Jamie a very excited Instagram user that had a few growth hacking tips to give out. After all, she was getting very cool results that were 4x her engagement rate per post.
Here Jamie explains what she does to generate more engagement on Instagram:
Instagram Growth Tips
We talked about a few great points worth mentioning on this blog post.
The topic that started the conversation was regarding adding value to our audience. Social Media in general is not a place to sell, but if you add value to your audience, asking for something every now and then becomes more accepting.
During our chat around Selling vs Value, we used Heather Giustino as a strong reference point of how to add value to your audience.
Heather decided to document her weight loss through Instagram through a very clever way. Every week she would draw her net gain/loss for the week.
Before doing this, Heather would receive a few likes here and there. After implementing weight loss tracking via Instagram, which in my opinion is incredibly inspiring to others who want to do the same, Heather began to receive higher levels of engagement.
Here’s the breakdown:
- Heather decides to document her weight loss on Instagram
- Devises a clever way to show her progress through an image
- More people began to like her posts after Heather began to document her weight loss
- Lost over 75 pounds and gained a lot of followers
Here’s what Jamie did:
- Decided to begin eating healthy
- Began taking pictures of her healthy food
- Began receiving more engagement on her Instagram posts
- Her value is in the motivation she gives to her audience to eat healthier
During our conversation, Jamie decided to take a picture of her delicious vegan lunch to show us how her engagement is going up through the roof.
- She snapped a pic from above
- Added relevant hashtags
- And posted the picture
As you see, Jamie shows us that it isn’t that hard to gain traction on Instagram. The main focus anyone should have is:
- Knowing your audience
- Posting frequently
- Use relevant hashtags
- Engage with people who comment on your post
Have you ever asked yourself what inspires you? Jamie realized what inspired her. She enjoys reading quotes, high quality images of food, great images in general that tell a compelling story such as Heather Giustino weight loss content.
The Mindset of a Social Media Person
You have to give people what they want. Once Jamie started connecting with what she liked, she stated posting more content to please her. By using hashtags, she was able to find an audience that enjoyed consuming her content.
If your brand is inspiring people, they will keep your company in a special place when they think about you. Thats the promise of Social Media, to allow to authentically speak to you audience. That’s why we highly recommend that you respect your audience by not selling to them via Social Media.
If you do not know what to post to your channels, always revert to quotes with awesome images in the background.
With this simple shift in strategy, massive results begin to show early on. It’s almost like learning how to speak a new language, once you get the accent right, people will begin to understand you.
Branding Your Company
Surround your company with content that motivates people from within. Then apply strategies used by Jamie to connect with your audience using Instagram.
- High Quality Photos
- Great Storytelling
- Inspirational Quotes
- Always add value to your audience
It’s really not that hard. The hardest part is making all those pieces come together and being consistent about posting your content as frequently as possible.
Jamie is already engaging her audience. Now it’s your turn to give it a try.