My Wonderful.

Alright.

Howdy. Howdy. Howdy. Howdy.

Cool. People are joining. I’m gonna let that happen and get a little adjusted here.

Cool beans.

Good.

Okay. How’s everybody doing?

Having a good start of week so far?

Wow. Everybody hates Monday. Okay. That’s fair.

No prob alright. Alright.

Yeah. Full on hate of Monday. Nobody even reacted other than Sarah.

This is bananas.

Okay. Alright.

I’m gonna I gave a thumbs up.

Okay. Okay. Good. I missed it somehow.

I’m I’m just I just rolled out of bed, so, you know, I’m not quite all here yet.

What time zone are you in?

It’s ten, but I’m kind of a night owl. So I I go to bed really late, and I get up nine ish. Oh, okay. I’m having my morning coffee right now.

Oh, that’s good. I am the opposite. I’m asleep.

Why I never I never make, Verona’s groups because they’re I’m still sleeping.

Yeah.

Alright.

Well, cool.

Awesome. So today, you are here for the one session that I would not have paid any attention to years ago at my own peril. So I don’t have a whole bunch of regrets in, my business, but not getting started on social media sooner is is one.

As Nicole, who’s our social media lead, like, drinks her coffee feeling perfectly confident in her role. She’s like, Joe needs me. True.

So it’s a thing that my team has tried to get me on board with before.

Years ago, Mike was doing this big YouTube initiative, and I was like, no. It’s not leading to anything blah blah blah. Shut it down, and now it’s fully his job.

It’s like all YouTube, almost all the time. Nicole is our full time social media lead focusing entirely on Instagram.

And, yeah, these are things that I learned a little late. So I wanted to this is important for a lot of reasons. I’ve told you already that we have this, like, intensive starting in April, for new people who are looking to get, on track with having a much more, lucrative freelancing business.

And in that, we’ll be teaching a framework that, a model, basically, that then leads people to need to use social media a lot more. So today, we’re gonna focus on Instagram, because it’s really critical for the things that we’re going to teach going forward.

There’s a lot that if you’re not on Instagram, it’s really gonna be a struggle, some of the training that we have going forward, and you’ll be like, oh, I wish that I had done something. So just start today. If you’re already on Instagram, cool. If you’re not, honestly, I hope you heed my advice.

I really regret not being on Instagram earlier. So, I would strongly encourage you even more than building your list at this point, getting on Instagram is a pretty big deal. So we’re gonna talk today about, your Instagram posting calendar because one of the biggest challenges that I know I had and that people have is, well, what would I like, what would I even share? Like, Instagram is this visual medium, and I’m a writer.

What am I gonna talk about other than here’s how you should be writing copy, and do I really want to teach how to do things on social media? Like, is that how is that gonna work for me in getting clients? So a lot of good questions come up. And if you have any questions about using Instagram or frustrations or anything that you want to share, chat them out. We can start talking about those or just, like, come off mute and share anything that you might want to about hesitation around using Instagram. But we’re gonna dig in and come off at any point, by the way. And I will eventually hear you talking over myself in case I don’t see you.

But do come off and feel free to share anything as we’re going. I am gonna dive right in to sharing the, the worksheet that we have prepared for today.

Okay.

Again, for those who just joined, I was saying that not getting on Instagram sooner is, one of my business regrets, and I really, really, really encourage you to take it seriously starting now. Don’t worry about how many followers you do or do not have. We’ve got, what, eighteen thousand followers. It’s not a huge following at all, but it’s good. It’s good and only bound to pay off further.

So we can get into more of that, and we will get into more of those things as we move on in our training.

Just because we’re focusing on Instagram doesn’t mean that other social spaces aren’t important. As I mentioned, Mike owns YouTube for us. LinkedIn is currently not a big thing for us. We have lots of followers on there, etcetera, but, we’ll talk about LinkedIn as we move forward, and we’ll be using LinkedIn more for sales reasons going forward.

But just put aside any, like, oh, I just wanna work on LinkedIn, or I just wanna do Pinterest or something.

Let’s just focus on Instagram. Also, Nicole was doing, Pinterest stuff for us, and the results very quickly were, like, not there. So, we paused on that in case you’ve thought about, like, other things that you could be spending more time on. If you’re gonna make, you know, quote posts for Instagram, then you might as well make them for Pinterest too, but but you really don’t wanna spread yourself too thin.

Just keep that in mind. Okay. So this little framework, this little model showing to the side here is like our sunshine growth model. It looks like a sun.

That’s why it’s called that.

And we’ll be getting into that in the intensive freelancing.

If you choose to participate in that, it’s included for you anyway. So, it’ll be really good to participate in that if you want to starting in April. More about that in Slack soon. Okay. But this is really critical now because, Meta has recently, and this may not be news to some of you and it will be to others, has added features to Instagram that are purely for business purposes.

So not at all for personal fun stuff, but just for business. Knowing that and then seeing what they’ve added as we go, we’ll get into more and more of that. It’s a really it’s it’s clearly their future strategy is more around making sure businesses are using Instagram as much as possible, and there are a lot of cool solutions out there that make that even easier. And I’m not just talking about schedulers, but way better stuff.

Again, as I mentioned, for some of the things that we’re gonna talk about going forward in CSP, you will need to have an Instagram account. If you don’t, you’re just gonna, like, skip that week. And then the next month, you’ll skip another week.

And, eventually, I think you’ll see that there’s a need for this and have to go back and retake those lessons. So you might as well just start right now.

Like building a list, building a social following is something that probably should have started yesterday, but definitely not tomorrow. Not continue don’t continue bumping it down the line like I did.

And I’ve heard this a lot. So some of the challenges or reasons not to use Instagram are like, well, my audience isn’t on there.

I only speak to, you know, enterprise level businesses, and they’re not on Instagram. And it’s like, well, you’re not going after the business account because you’re gonna talk to the social media person there.

It’s definitely I mean, the data shows that Instagram is filled with CMOs.

A lot of CMOs, forty seven percent of CMOs in America are women, and half of people on Instagram are also women. That doesn’t mean that half of the women on there are CMOs or anything weird like that, obviously.

But just know that with so many more women becoming CMOs and so many women who are CMO aged on Instagram, it’s a really good opportunity that feels silly to disregard just because your mom has an account on there.

So and even if it’s not your mom, it’s it’s a big opportunity.

People who are not targeting people that you might be targeting are all over that. People who are targeting your ideal are also all over Instagram, so get your butt on there.

One of the things also that stands out as an objection to getting on Instagram is, I don’t have a designer, Joe. And, like, I I can’t I’m not a designer. Now some of you actually are designers.

But if you’re not, I’m not. And before I had somebody, on my team who could design things for me, I used, creative market a lot. Creative market is a very good solution. You can go here, to get a whole bunch of templates. You have to pay for them, but it’s, like, nine dollars to download, like, an incredible amount of Canva templates for Instagram. So don’t let that stop you, from moving forward with some really cool stuff. Okay.

So the thing that we’re trying to solve today is not, hey. Do Instagram overall, but you should get on Instagram. You should keep on Instagram if you’re already on there.

And then we need to figure out what goes on your Instagram. So we’ve spoken already in Coffee School Professional about your red thread, your one thing, whatever, like, you basically specialize in and own or working towards owning, obviously, that’s a really good starting point for the content that you’re going to put on Instagram. But, like, where do you go with that? So a good, a good practice is to theme as much as you can, especially if you plan on handing this work over to a VA, which is a very good idea for a lot of you to do given that a lot of VAs are already skilled in, if not coming up with ideas for Instagram, in taking your Canva templates, putting in stuff that you tell them to, and then scheduling that in Sprout Social or whatever tool you might use. So but what they need is direction on what it should be about. So a good rule of thumb or not a rule of thumb, actually, a a good practice is to theme as much as you can.

Theming goes a long way. This is not my recommendation. This is my coach recommended this to us, one of my coaches, which is to theme your, year. So each month of the year, go through thinking about your example, like, your thing that you own and theme it. So you can say in the month of January, you’re gonna focus on for me, I would focus on specializing.

February could be a month that’s focused on tools. That doesn’t mean you only ever get to talk about tools. You can still say on Valentine’s Day in February, something else, But this will at least help you set up a plan for what you will talk about, generally speaking, each month. So if you’re like, okay. I need quotes. If you go to your VA and say, quote post as we actually know at copywriters quote post do pretty well.

So if you’re like, look, VA, in April, we’re gonna do systems training on Instagram.

Can you go and pull, you know, thirty quotes for me on systems, on systems for freelancing, systems for business, on why systems are important, on why nobody likes a system until they get a system, etcetera, etcetera, or do whatever you wanna do with AI to generate stuff like that.

But then at least you’ve got something to hand them. Right? You can say here’s what to do, and they can go forward and do that. Without a theme, you’re just like, I don’t know.

Copy?

So we want to, theme our months. There’s a worksheet in here for you.

And within each of those months then, you will need a subtopic.

So, obviously, a subtopic for, like, systems is is really, really dry. But if we were to do, like, November geek systems are important, by the way, but also quite dry. Geeking out on research, then week by week, you might have your different subtopics on research. Like, week one is gonna be all about serving.

Week two is all about interviewing. Week three and so on and so forth. Right? So we can write those out.

And now even further, we know or our VA knows what to talk about in those months or in those weeks. Sorry. Months overall.

So what I would like you to do is before we move on, I’d like to pause and have you go through and just for the next six minutes, just jot out just from April through to the end of December what those themes might be for your business to post about on Instagram.

Okay?

Doable?

Alright. Cool. Six minutes, then we’ll come off mute.

This.

Cool. Cool. Sorry if you have to click a button again to agree to stay in the meeting.

We’re gonna do the subtopics as well because I don’t want to kind of just start the work and then bail on it.

But I what I wanna talk about before we get into the subtopics, unless you already started, which is cool, is that there are so many kinds of content you can put out there. It’s really like, bananas to me to think of all the different formats in which you can share a message so that it doesn’t if you’re like, oh, this is tiresome, which is my thinking on a lot of stuff. It’s like, how how what else how else do we say this? And sometimes it’s just say it in a different format.

Right? So it could be the same message shared in lots of different ways. But what I would like you to do is not necessarily use this right now, but really kind of just scan this if you didn’t already when you got the worksheet earlier. If you haven’t had a chance to look through it, now is a good time to look at the very many kinds of things you can share and then, of course, the format that you’ll share them in.

We do have Nicole here from our team. If you have specific questions, I didn’t tell her that I’d be offering her services to you today.

I’m not necessarily. But, if you have questions because I don’t do the posting, so it’s not like I’m part of the creation of the content, but I don’t I don’t know what happens. Like, I don’t do anything after that. I send we have a drop box where I drop a bunch of stuff, like videos I’ve recorded or photos or whatever.

And, we have a channel for social media stuff in Slack, and then we also have, like, Google Sheets of ongoing quotes and other things that we might wanna add to social media. And then we have this mechanism, which is important, which is at the start of every week, Nicole and I have a meeting about what’s coming up that week. And then at the end of the week, Nicole shares out results in Slack so that everybody can see them. And that’s a mechanism that, Chris, the CEO of Wistia, shared with me that he did that, and I loved this.

Just really straightforward. Like, I know we don’t wanna have more meetings in our lives, but we kinda have to have some more meetings in our lives. So if you do have a VA or somebody else on your team who’s gonna be posting for you, then it’s really good to have a meeting with them at least once a week to just see that you’re on the same page with the content that’s being shared with the message, with how it’s written, especially if you’re getting a VA to do it, and they might not be a copywriter or have the same sense of what’s important that you do.

And this having something like this sheet showing on the screen right now is also useful because then they can come up with more ideas, and you can also say, like, oh, man. We also have a content meeting at the end of the week. Just a side note as I’m looking through this, because a lot of what you’re going to do throughout the week is content you can share. It just doesn’t feel like it.

Right? So snippets from client calls can be, something that you share out. Obviously, not the part where the client is talking, but where you are. There can be really good stuff hidden in all of the work that you’ve been doing all week long, but your VA or the person working with you on social media won’t know know anything about it if you don’t share it with them.

So we actually have another meeting, which I was just mentioning, on Fridays where the team gets together, and it’s called, get content out of jail or something like that. And we have a worksheet, that or a spreadsheet where we all throughout the week type in things for meetings like this meeting. Like, Joe, there was that moment when, Katie asked you this question and you had this answer.

That should be shared on social media, your answer. And so it’s a mechanism, like, another mechanism to make sure that we’re getting the most out of the existing content we have. So it’s not always a matter of sitting down for a block of time and just, like, recording yourself talking. That’s good too. But there’s lots of places where content is, like, hiding, content you could share. So refer to that sheet and start, like, coming up with ideas.

What I would like you to do for just three minutes, if you haven’t already, is get into assigning a subtopic for the month of April.

Okay?

Week by week. Cool. Cool.

Alright.

Cool. So with that, I’m going to speak to this last part, but that’s really a, like, a homework for you to do going forward.

The last part is a, weekly calendar where you’d put in what the week is, what your subtopic is. And then, again, this is if you struggle to come up with what, to post about. If you already have this, obviously, as I’ve mentioned, you’re good.

But here are some these are actually really common themes, so it might be possibly too common going forward. Again, this is something that my, coach shared with us.

But, actually, some of these are shifted around. So I I tried to get a little more creative than just sharing exactly what my coach said for us to do. Motivation Monday, so that could be, like, where you’re just talking to your audience about something to be motivating for them. Trending topics, Tuesdays, results, Wednesdays, those are case studies, other things basically that you’ve done to prove out results.

Thorough Thursdays is going long on something, going deep on a topic, really digging into it, in a in a quite thorough way, and then q and a or ask me anything or FAQs, Fridays.

Those are just ways you can come up with content.

And then, again, the more you’re assigning this for somebody else to do, the more you can say, okay. I know I have to make some, q and a videos for you for Friday, so I’ll get those to you on Tuesday. And really does better work with them so that you stay on track and actually get results out of the work that you’re doing. Obviously, we’re not talking here about measuring how things are going. That’s not the subject for today’s training. What we just wanna do is make sure that we’re starting to get to a place where you are posting and then going back over later and making sure that it’s working, and your frequency is working, and the topics you’re sharing are working for the goal that you have in mind. So these are worksheets that you would fill in weekly, like the week before, or have them all ready to go well in advance depending on how you like to organize your time.

So that’s all I want to share with you for Instagram posting today. But what I really can’t emphasize enough is how important it is to get started now or to keep going if you’ve been doing it and, like, you’ve been sporadic about it or you just maybe you like, it’s easy to give up. I find it easy to go, like, well, forget it. There’s only one of me and there’s just not enough time, but worth it.

Try to find a way to sneak it in. Try to find things that are gonna shorten shorten the time for you to actually get that stuff out there. Don’t force yourself to post five times a day if you can’t even post once a day. Just start with once a day, and then go from there.

Okay.

Any questions or thoughts on this? How are we feeling about Instagram or our businesses?

Yeah. Katie.

Okay. I just wanna share, like, this is really well timed for me because I the last couple weeks have been playing this game with myself where I’m trying to get, like it’s, like, twenty five points on Instagram every week, and, like, a reel is, like, three points. A story is one point. I’m trying to, like I’m, like, going for volume.

Yeah.

But, yeah, gamifying it a little bit.

So if anybody is with me on trying to, like, get more out there, then that’s the strategy I’m Okay.

Tell me more about this game. I because I love it. How does it work? What do you do?

Like, what is the scoring system?

It’s literally, like, three for reals, two for stories, two, like, two well, two for post one and then one for, like, minute that I talk. I do a lot of when I go pick up my kids from day care, I do, like, talking head story. That’s my easiest one.

Reels are the hardest because I hate video editing.

And, this is really interesting, this what you’ve just shared because I have started doing all of my Instagram myself again because I found that it was, like, way too much back and forth with my VA. Yeah. She’s, like, not a design person or a copy person. So, yeah, this is me, like, taking back the reins from Instagram and trying to just see how much faster I can ship things than, like, putting a big strategy behind it, and making it, like, a bigger thing than I think it needs to be.

Okay.

So and the game does the game exist to make it so that you want to do this stuff?

Oh, sorry. No. Go ahead.

I track, like, micro wins in my paper diary, and that’s where I just give myself points.

Okay. There’s no I mean, the question about what’s your prize, I’m like, oh, yeah. I should probably give myself a reward of some kind, but I haven’t been doing that so far.

Oh, now you get to come up with a a prize.

That’s fun. It’s awesome.

Cool. Who else wants to get in with Katie and make a game out of it?

I love this. Yeah. I don’t know. I think anytime we can have a game involved, then you’re just like, competition’s on.

You gotta do it. No? No. Fun. Anyway, I love that, Katie. Good job. And I know that it can feel like a lot, to have to put together these systems, like SOPs to document all this stuff, all the work upfront, in order to hand it off to a VA, but it is the leverage that will help.

Right? So if you can get to a place where you can document this the work and have some themes, have templates in place that are like, don’t mess with this, especially, like, if you buy something on Creative Market and say, this is how it’s gonna look for the next three months, just use these templates, then that might be something because, obviously, there’s lots of ways to spend your time, and social media is important.

It’s just not gonna be, obviously, forever the most important thing for you to do. Has anybody read the E Myth Revisited yet?

Read it. Yes.

Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. I’m not done the I scanned it years ago, but a lot fell out of my head. And, I’ve been listening to the audiobook, like, while I was painting this wall and, when I’m just, like, getting dinner ready and stuff like that.

That’s really interesting, when it comes to systems and the smart way to get yourself out of working in your business and more on your business, which is obviously the goal for basically everybody. Yeah. The E Myth Revisited. It’s a horrible title. I have no idea what he was thinking.

There’s no E Myth, and I don’t know about revisiting it. So it it’s very odd, But behind that horrible title is is a very it’s a good book. It’s a good book for a small business, especially if you find yourself expanding only to shrink because something got hard because the VA sucked at that or whatever that thing might be. And so you’re like, oh, I’ll just do it myself.

Oh, okay. I’m gonna grow. No. I’m just gonna do it myself.

It’s it’s really good at coaching you through that. And so yeah. Have a look.

Okay.

Anybody else working on Instagram? Anybody wanna share anything they’re doing on Instagram, Abby? Yeah.

Yeah. Instagram is, like, the debate of my life at the moment. As I said, I’m trying to grow my following on that, and I’m just finding it really hard. I wonder if you have any tips around visibility because I I’ve had, I think I mentioned. So I have my VA basically repurposing my LinkedIn content, and then I make some videos and stuff. So we’ve been posting every day ish for about three months, and I’ve gained maybe, like, a hundred followers, and no no results.

So, yeah, do you have any tips, like, getting in front of the right people? Like, using hashtags? Like, do I need to be engaging with accounts?

What’s the yeah.

I think there’s probably a lot that, like, Nicole and even Mike could say about getting putting content out there that people like. I if, Nicole or Mike, you wanna think about anything you’d wanna share there.

Come in here real quick if you’d like, Joe.

Yeah. So I just wanna before you jump in, I just wanna preface it with sometimes getting a lot of followers isn’t the point. Okay. Go ahead, Mike. Sorry. Thanks.

Yeah. It’s funny because, like, this is a a bit of an aesthetics we’re talking I’m coming from a YouTube perspective, but, like, I’m going through a a course right now called channel jump start for YouTube, which is kind of like done run by Daryl Eaves, who’s like mister beast’s data guy when it comes to YouTube. So he’s a YouTube guy. Right?

And the one thing that came away is a really big He doesn’t even care about subscribers. He cares about, like, who active viewers are. So I know Instagram, YouTube, not quite the same thing. But one technique that’s being done for the research side for us is we’re actually doing what’s called a dummy account.

And we what we do is we actually I’ve created a YouTube channel or a YouTube account that’s, like, not even I don’t touch anything, but I only make sure I go and watch the stuff that’s really hyper relevant to my niche. And then what’s happening is the algorithm’s gonna start suggesting that stuff to me, and then you take the the cues from that to say, okay. Here’s how people, like, edit it. Here’s the topics.

Here’s how the sort of thing. I don’t know if that would come across for Instagram, but it feels like something that could probably work where you actually created a separate Instagram account where you you’re just really hyper focused about only looking at stuff that’s, like, really relevant to your niche and then seeing if the algorithm will start suggesting more stuff to you, and you can take cues from that as, like, okay. How are people talking? Like, what’s the stuff that’s getting engagements?

What are people reacting to? And what’s the structure of it? Because just like copywriters with a a framework, you kinda break it down and figure out what the, what framework these creators are using.

Because most of them are playing you know, you start seeing the same stuff over and over again Mhmm.

And maybe not necessarily in a bad sense. But if the two things to look out for there is just, like, is it getting lots of attention and is getting lots of recent attention, I think is what you wanna look at. Because if something’s got a million views from, like, three years ago, it’s probably not relevant now. But, like, stuff that’s, like, hot and fresh right now, that’s probably where you wanna be looking.

So is it enough to just think, like, if I create better content, better relevant, likable content is gonna get seen? Is that kind of Yeah.

I’m just gonna kinda jump in here if that’s okay, Mike.

Yeah. So, I think with Instagram, like, it is a quantity game, but it is still quality over quantity, if that makes sense.

Like, if you’re just putting out whatever things that you haven’t really spent any time on or haven’t really thought through, it’s not going to get a ton of engagement, because people can kinda see through that. Like, people are looking for quality on there.

But, one thing that I find kinda helpful is going through kinda like what Mike’s saying is going to, like, the really popular accounts, like, in your niche or in your specialization and searching through their account, like, within the last few months and finding, like, the reels that have the most views, the you know, anything that has a lot of comments, lot of likes, and things like that. And then just kinda take you’re not stealing their content, but you kinda take it as inspiration for your own. And it’s like, hey. What did they do that did so well, and how can I kind of make that my own?

And then it kinda makes your strategy a little bit easier too because you’re not constantly just trying to come up with ideas out of nowhere.

So Mhmm.

Yeah. That’s helpful. Oh, sorry.

Go ahead, Adam, please.

Yeah.

No. I was just gonna say yeah. Because I feel like my content’s good quality, but it’s kind of boring. Like, I don’t feel like the hooks are good enough, and I don’t, yeah, maybe, like, that would help kind of, yeah, watching their videos and stuff and seeing, like, how other people are hooking people in because I just feel like I’m kind of sharing good stuff, but, like, no one cares.

I think you’ll notice too, especially when it comes to, like, video content, like reels, YouTube shorts, that sort of thing, like, hook becomes so important because, you know, they have the option to swipe away so quick. So you have Mhmm. Like, the three seconds to really get speak directly to what they’re actually interested in and then deliver on it.

It’s so hard. So it’s, like, legit so hard.

And we will get into like, the more we’re out there trying different things, we’ll be sharing those here, including, like, rules that we’ve developed for editing videos, and things like that so that the pacing is really good, because that’s obviously important. Right? But it’s like, if you don’t have rules set out, like, a basic checklist of this must be true as we move through a video, then you’re you’re just not gonna do it. Right?

But it’s as simple as just often as simple for me to say. Nicole and Mike are like, hold on. But it’s as simple as just putting together that list of, like, what are some of the rules we have? Like, every three seconds, the scene has to change, things like that.

Right? That can get people watching. But, again, Abby, I wouldn’t worry too much about all of the followers. Like, the one of one coach I have that I didn’t find on social, though, I found through other memes.

He has very low following, like, given the size of his business, but it’s just for him, not about that. It’s like he just wants one good follower that he can then connect with and close.

And so I know it can be frustrating, especially since number of followers is a bit of a signal to the world.

Yeah. That’s oh, you’re a big deal or you’re not, but I wouldn’t worry, honestly, too much about that.

Yeah. I think because the purpose in my head of doing Instagram is because I wanna get invited to podcast, and I want I want people to reach out to me. So I feel like all the while I have, like, a tiny following. Like, it’s like not only do I not look like a big deal, but I look like I’ve I’ve been in business for five minutes, which isn’t true. Yeah. So that’s kind of my, like, thinking with the with the followers.

Yeah. Makes sense. I mean, yeah, it does.

And it’s been like I know for Nicole, we have an objective for her by end of twenty twenty four for how many followers she needs to have. But as we go, that could change because it could become very clear that number of followers, again, not that important. It’s important, but what is something else that would matter for a podcast for somebody on podcast to invite you? What are some other things that need to be true that you could actually solve?

Yeah. I feel like once I get to a thousand, I’ll stop worrying about it. I just feel all the while is under a thousand. It’s just too small.

Yeah.

Well, it’s I’ll take it.

Comment.

Yeah. Well, no. We will because, again, every new follower is an opportunity. Mhmm. So yeah.

I can second that. I don’t manage an Instagram account for myself, but I manage an Instagram account for one of my clients. We have a thousand followers, and I get messages all the time. It’s a very niche industry.

It’s, commercial beekeepers. Not everyone who reaches out to us is relevant. But, yeah, I get messages all the time from beekeepers all over the world. Mhmm.

And then the other thing I’ll say is it took a lot of experimentation.

I to be perfectly honest, I really hate social media. So I came in knowing almost nothing about it. But it was my first client, and I I need to get started.

And we did a lot of experimentation, and we got very, very little engagement. And then all of a sudden, I posted, like, a video that one of our one of the people from r and d took with his cell phones of putting queen bees in boxes, and it was, like, forty five seconds and that was it. And it got fourteen thousand views. And it was, like, no high quality production, just, like, an interesting an interest like, a tiny little element of a larger research study with very little context, but it was authentic and it was interesting, and people liked it. So, like, I would say a lot of experimentation will get you there because you can’t always predict what people will like and what people won’t like.

Mhmm. Yeah.

Cool. Thank you.

I love that. And I second an interest in beekeeping.

Yeah. Can you drop the account in the chat? I wanna I wanna see.

Local gardening center has a beekeeping class coming up, and I’m like, I might wanna learn about bees. Could be I don’t wanna keep them, but I wanna make sure I’m not killing them for starters.

Interesting. Okay. Cool. Yeah. So and, like, I’m I also I know nothing about social media, hence, taking so freaking long to do anything about it. It wasn’t until my friend, Jia, was like, Joe, get on social media. And I was like, oh, it’d probably be on social media.

And then we both Mike and Nicole went on, and that became their core focus.

But I didn’t and that’s why I don’t like, we have I’m learning a lot and hopefully sharing the good stuff as we go and then the things to avoid as we go. But, yeah, one of the bigger takeaways for me so far in the last year of finally taking this more seriously is don’t worry so much about followers. Like, Mike, like you’ve said, worry more about, like, are they watching or a lot of people watching your stuff rather than that. So can you make it more interesting?

And then you can, of course, pin the really popular ones to the top of your Instagram page. Right? And that’s that’s maybe even a better signal for people who would book you on a podcast. If you have, like, three really core videos or whatever that have lots and lots of views, then that can look really good to that person who’s gonna book you versus lots of followers, which which could mean nothing.

You can buy followers.

Although This could also be a good opportunity to, see where to find good content.

Like I said, if you got, like, a an account with a thousand followers, but they got a video that had fourteen thousand views, that’s a pretty good signal that the content is really resonating with people because it’s reaching outside of their own grasp. And like I said, if someone has a thousand followers, who knows how many of those are actually active followers too? Because a lot of people subscribe and then just don’t see stuff. Right? So, I mean, like, it’s yeah. When thinking about your content, just try to find the stuff that’s, like, really performing well outside of what their actual, sphere of influence is, and then that should be able to take some good cues from that.

Yeah. Thank you. Can I ask a follow-up question, Jo? Or does anyone else wanna jump in? Because I’ve asked a few.

No one put their hand up. Go for it, Abby.

Yeah. I guess it’s kind of, like, maybe a mindset question. So when I’ve been looking at other accounts to see what content I like, like, I obviously like yours. But I think what what I like about yours is it’s it’s very divisive, and you just you speak with such authority.

And I I struggle to do that or to take kind of hot takes or be edgy because my kind of it I’ve kind of just approached my content, I guess, more with, like, curiosity and being like, oh, one thing that I’ve tried that’s quite cool, but it’s not it’s not hooky. It’s not punchy. It’s not divisive. And I’m just still kinda like, well, who am I to really talk with authority about this stuff when and, I mean, who who is anyone really?

Because it’s like with marketing, it’s just every you know, everything goes. It’s all just bullshit.

Honestly, I mean, I do think a good point that you need to keep in mind is who is anyone, really?

Like, I don’t know.

It’s like, really. Like, I think of one person in particular who I am now like, you are so full of shit. You don’t know, like, what?

But man, does he speak with authority, and so many people buy into and it’s like, he’s a good dude, etcetera, etcetera, but so full of shit.

Seriously taking something that one person told him, and you find the source and go like Mhmm. Fucking stole that from that guy and didn’t cite him either. And now you’re acting like it’s your idea. It’s so annoying to watch, but it does speak to, like, who is anyone anyway. This guy, you don’t have to be him to do it right. Right? But but I think a good takeaway from knowing that some people are full of shit is you’re not full of shit.

So why people should find you. They should find you. Right? Like, it’s better for them if they find you than if they find the people who are full of shit. But the ones who are full of it are out there chirping up a storm. No one can stop them.

Meanwhile, you’re being reasonable and thinking, well, why should I say that? And should I say it that way? And they’re just like, and everyone’s loving it.

So I don’t know. To me, I’m like and it it’s not gonna click immediately, but I think this is maybe gonna start you down the path of appreciating that you have good stuff to say. I said I said the s h I t word a few times there.

But, but, yeah, nobody like, some people are really, really smart, know a lot of things, and they’re typically the one you find way far down the road after you’ve sorted through all the nonsense of people who are just full of crap.

So the more you can share yourself more loudly I know it doesn’t mean you have to be divisive or divisive, however you wanna pronounce it.

But what can you say and then boost? Spend a little money to boost that thing, to get people to maybe ignore the one who is full of crap and listen to you. And I do think that a good person to follow, who I do not think is full of crap, is Alex Hormozi. If you’re gonna do stuff on Instagram, just be the you, the Alex Hormozi of your world.

Honestly, I think, like, we can all just freaking copy the best. He’s not full of crap. In my experience, who knows? But doesn’t seem full of crap. So I don’t know if that’s helpful to you. Like, just, like, borrow his confidence and just do it.

Yeah. I mean, it’s Right? Like, you don’t have to be anything different. You can still be Abby being that. Right?

Yeah. But Abby isn’t getting engagement. Like, it’s not you know, I don’t think I just don’t think my approach is is engaging.

Like, I’m I’m not engaging the way I’m showing up on social media. Mhmm. Like, there’s gotta be another part of me that I can channel.

Yeah.

Because, I mean, it’s not like I care so much about course creators thinking, like, I’m full of shit. It’s more like, I don’t want, like, you or Prana to, like, roll your eyes at something I put out there. Like, that’s more the fear.

Oh, no. Don’t worry about that. Not to roll my eyes. Honestly, it’s, I was in a session, book writing session, and I we posted about this on Instagram.

I was in a book writing session with Donald Miller from StoryBrand who has published fiction. I didn’t know that.

And he was saying that you wanna make sure you don’t do anything.

Basically, you have this whole spiel a spiel about don’t humiliate yourself. Don’t embarrass yourself.

Important people are gonna be reading your book, so make sure you have created something that’s that they wouldn’t think is dumb or something. And I was like, but that’s where, like, scared writing comes from. Then you write really contained stuff. Like, Gertrude Stein didn’t give a shit what you thought about her. And then everyone was like, I love Gertrude Stein, because she was reading the craziest stuff. Like, that’s not a sentence. That’s not even a book.

But she didn’t care about that. And I think, like, don’t care about that. Don’t care about what I might think or might think. Honestly, don’t care about it.

Tarzan k doesn’t give a shit what I think about her stuff because I’ve rolled my eyes a million times at that shit, but I respect what she’s doing. I think you can do the same thing too. I would not don’t let people in there. Don’t let me or Verna or anybody else in there at all, please.

It’s just gonna hold you up.

Can I can I also offer a suggestion? Because I’ve been reading a lot of content, Abby, and I think it’s really good. But I think that, sometimes you write a lot, and you may wanna, like, experiment with different, like, styles. Like, maybe it’s not a controversial thing. Maybe it’s just, like, formatting, like trying sometimes do something a little bit shorter or, like, playing with shorter sentences or just because, sometimes it’s it’s hard to read a lot on social media. Like, it might be you may not have to be a personality that you’re not if you’re not a very controversial, outspoken person, if that’s not natural to you.

Like, may maybe maybe that’ll help, but it it may be, like, there might be things in writing that could help people actually get through the the message.

Because you have a lot of interesting things to say, but it’s just a lot of content.

As long as they I mean, it’s it’s good content.

I just think that for like, if you broke it down into several posts Yeah. Then Usually, I write, like, blog posts as on LinkedIn.

Yeah. No. That’s that’s really helpful feedback.

Well, that’s a good thing too because if you got a giant piece of pillar content, you can turn that into so many pieces of micro content too. Right?

Are you familiar with, Gary Vaynerchuk’s sixty four pieces of content strategy or whatever?

Oh, I’ve heard of it, but not for a while. I’ll check that out.

Yeah. The big basis is you just have like, he usually says, like, you take a big podcast or something like that. Right? And then you just keep going.

One thing is a reel. One thing is a quote post. One thing is a little video snippet. And so from you know, it’s not about reinventing the wheel now.

So if if you already got these nice long pieces of content, then you can just turn these into so many pieces of micro content that speak and fiddle on those gaps.

Mhmm. Yeah.

Oh, this has been so helpful.

Abby, Stacy asked, and I wanna know too. What’s your, insta what’s your Instagram?

It’s at AC content. Follow for follow.

Love it. Okay. Hold on. I’m looking at that. Talk amongst yourselves.

I’ll put it in the chat.

There’s, one thing I did kinda wanna mention, that can be kinda helpful for getting engaged is kind of coming up with just, like, your own little engagement group. So you can have, like, a group chat on Instagram, and then every time you post, you just post in that group chat saying, hey. I just posted. And then everybody commits to liking the post, leaving a comment, and then sharing it on their story or whatever.

And then you just kinda keep doing that, every time you post. There’s just, like, a small group of, like, no more than ten people, but that can help your reach a lot.

I know it’s worked for other people. So just a suggestion.

Yeah. Katie, Jessica, Caroline, anyone who’s doing Instagram.

No. I have a question. Can I ask a follow-up question about that, Nicole? Sure.

So I heard someone recently talk about these again again because this was big back when I was doing my first online business in network marketing. Like, that was the thing. You create a pod, you know, whatever. But what I was wondering was, how does that jive with the, training the algorithm?

Like, for example, I’m not really a course creator that right now, I suppose. That ab that would hire Abby right now. Right? But then and we’re all kind of copywriters.

We’re in different niches. So how does that because I don’t know. I just all I know is eventually, ecommerce people. And I would imagine other people feel that too.

So how does the pod does there is there an impact? Does it just don’t worry, focus on the engagement? What do you think about that?

Yeah. That’s a good question. So the algorithm is kind of funny like that because everybody has their own personal algorithm. So whatever’s coming up on your feed is the stuff that you’re just interested in.

And so, like, yes, if you are liking other people’s content and their course creators, then, yes, you’re going to end up seeing more of that on your feed. Yeah. But it’s not going to help, like or it’s not going to hurt, say a bunch of course creators are liking your content, but, ecommerce people are as well. It’s not going to make less ecommerce people see your content just because course creators are liking it and stuff, if that makes any sense.

No. It makes sense. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

Cool. So, like, I wouldn’t worry about that. Like, I think it’s good to just get general engagement off the like, right off the bat. And then that way, push it to other people who are interested in it as well.

Okay. Cool. Thanks. Yep.

I have a question for somebody who knows more about Instagram algorithm because based on what what I understand, you wanna have one audience that you focus on. And that’s one thing I’d like, I just noticed on on Abby’s, profile. She’s got two completely different audiences that are labeled in the, you know, sell more courses with day one evergreen or become a nomad copywriter, which would seem to be, you know, a splitting of attention there. And would it be a good idea for her to have one focus instead of having two different things with different audiences?

Yeah. My BA told me to do that.

Oh, but that’s a good question. Because at one point, Joe, wouldn’t you have kind of had that? Because you kind of have you have multiple audiences, freelancers, and then the not, I guess, everybody else. But right? You have that.

Yeah. But we have had to make a call on who we want to target. Okay. Yeah. So we really Yeah. Refined that. That’s pretty recent, though.

So yeah. But it’s Yeah. Fair.

It’s a fair I found that just targeting, like, a specific like, we’re targeting, freelancers who are, like, wanting to grow their business and, like, take the next step.

Like, that’s our main target, and it’s, like, a certain caliber as well.

We end up getting other people, of course, like, as you will, but, like, it’s just like it’s just like copywriting when you’re writing for one reader. Like, you’re thinking Instagram account’s the same way.

So it’s like, yes. Some of our content speaks to a broader audience, but for the most part, like, when we’re thinking about it, we are just targeting just one.

Yeah.

It is worth thinking about too in terms of strategy because, like, if all the stuff, AI algorithms, all these things, it still comes down to people.

So, I mean, like, if you think about who if you have a really hammered down avatar, like, not just like, oh, I’m going after twenty five to thirty five year old women that want this if I’m going after Lisa. Lisa’s twenty seven. She’s a grad student. She did this.

She did this. She did this. She likes to watch when she’s not online, she’s reading this book. She’s playing this sport.

Like, if you start figuring out who that one person is and your content speaks to that one person, you’re gonna probably start resonating more. Because I think if you like I say, if you spread too thin, one risk you do have is, like, if it doesn’t serve that person for what they signed up for off the value prop of the content they maybe followed you for and then they get something different, it might send them to feel like, yeah, they’re not really, feeling it the same way as if, you kinda keep consistently messaging to that person. So I think that’s one thing that it is one thing to consider, I’d say.

You can also, like, base it on different channels. Like, when I’m posting on LinkedIn, I’m a lot of times, I’m talking to investors more so than, like, beekeepers or growers for this specific account.

But it also can depend on the time of year. Like, when it’s sales season, I might talk to the customer. And when they’re trying to raise a a round, might talk to investors. Like, there is some room for flexibility either on different channels or different times of the year based on your priorities.

Can I just add, we’re not talking really about what to share, on social media right now, but I I think a good rule of thumb is not to share how, if you can help it? We’ve had to pull way back on sharing how, and, so far, it’s been useful to do that.

Leave the how for when they hire you or buy your product or whatever that might be. But try to shift away from from teaching how to write copy, how to plan something, Abby, in your case, how to do day one evergreen, more about why you should, where you should, when you should, all of that kind of stuff, what to do, but not how to do it. So I think that can be useful to keep in mind, especially if you’re finding that a lot of copywriters are following you. Jessica, for you, they’re often, like, if you have how content, copywriters will follow you, for sure. So try to shift away from that, then you might get fewer of the wrong people. Yeah.