In this episode, Dave got Russell Brunson, co-founder of Clickfunnels and author of "Traffic Secrets" to share his best tips and tricks for mastering Instagram.
You can get a free copy of "Traffic Secrets" from Russell Brunson (just cover s&h) via my affiliate link at https://gambrill.com/traffic <<
You can follow me, Dave Gambrill on Instagram at https://instagram.com/gambrill and Russell Brunson at https://instagram.com/russellbrunson/
2:15 Understand the History and the Goal
4:10 Find your Dream 100 on Instagram
5:28 Create your publishing plan
7:30 Create a compelling bio
8:05 Profile/bio strategy
8:55 JK5 Method (Jenna Kutcher)
11:45 ABCDQ Test
12:50 Inspire, Educate, and Entertain
13:15 Powerful captions
14:40 Hashtags
15:55 Call to Action (CTA)
17:30 Instagram TV (IGTV) Strategy
20:55 IG Stories
23:22 IG Stories Highlights
23:50 IG Stories Mini Webinar Hack
25:35 Instagram Live Strategy
26:45 Your Instagram Publishing Plan
CONSUMER NOTICE: You should assume that we have an affiliate relationship and/or another material connection to the providers of goods and services mentioned in this episode and may be compensated when you purchase from a provider. You should always perform due diligence before buying goods or services from anyone via the Internet or offline.
Welcome to unleash the awesome with Dave Gambrill. All of us have unique skills, talents, and abilities that aren't being used to their full potential. Our mission is to share the people, tools, apps, and other resources that will help you unleash your awesome on the world. Yo, what's up? It's Dave. Welcome to another episode of unleash the awesome today's episode.
I am delighted to share with you some incredible information from my friend Russell Brunson. If you've been following the podcast for a while, you know he's been on a couple of times already and this time what he's allowed me to do is share one of the chapters from his book traffic secrets. And this particular chapter is all about leveraging Instagram. And it's chapter 10 or secret 10 from his book called Instagram traffic secrets.
So if you've been trying to figure out how to master Instagram, how to leverage it for your business, Russell is a great guy to learn from. And in this chapter he shares techniques and tactics from other people that he's learned from. So this is kind of like a best of the best on how to build your Instagram following. And ultimately if you read his book traffic secrets,
which you can get via my affiliate link for just the cost of shipping at gambrill.com/traffic if you read his book traffic secrets, you'll realize that the entire book is all about building your email list and your customer list, which he talks about a lot in chapter five. But all of these strategies including this Instagram strategy is about building a following and an audience and ultimately driving them to your email list.
So without further ado, let me turn it over to my buddy and co founder of ClickFunnels, Mr. Russell Brunson, Secret number 10 Instagram traffic secrets. Over the past few years, one of my favorite social platforms to spend my personal time on has been Instagram. One of his core features, Instagram stories has become my favorite way to document my daily journey. Personally,
I believe that it's the most powerful of all social tools to build a relationship with you, the attractive character and your audience. A lot of the strategy I learned originally when I set up my account was for my friend and amazing entrepreneur, Jenna Koocher. In this chapter. With Jenna's permission, I'll share many of the concepts we learned from her. I'm so grateful to her for allowing me to share them with you.
Step number one, understand the history and the goal created by Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger in San Francisco, Instagram launch, October six 2010 it's fast paced. Growth was unheard of. 100,000 members in the first week, a million members in the first two months and 10 million members in the first year, and in June, 2019 it passed over a billion members. In 2012 Facebook bought Instagram for 1 billion in cash and stocks.
While the story is fascinating, I think the more exciting story occurred in 2013 when Mark Zuckerberg offered to buy Snapchat for $3 billion after Snapchat, founder said no. Facebook decided that instead of buying them, they would just try to beat Snapchat at their own game. Over the next few years, they added all Snapchat's core features into Instagram. Then in August, 2016 they threw the death punch.
They replaced Snapchat signature feature by launching Instagram stories soon, Snapchat stock plummeted. Users migrated in droves from Snapchat to Instagram and almost overnight Instagram became the second largest social networking site in the world, Mark Zuckerberg. His goal when acquiring Instagram and ripping off Snapchat's features was to find more places to leverage attention and place ads where you're spending your time looking at your feed,
exploring various things and watching other people's stories. If you were working your way in, then you win this game by attracting followers and creating content engages them and keeps them coming back to the platform for more. As you do that, you can use the tension to get free organic traffic into your funnels. If you are buying your way in, you win by showing your ads to your dream 100 followers and pushing them into your funnels.
As with all platforms, I believe that we should be playing both sides, working our way in and buying our way in. Step number two, find your dream 100 on this platform. The first step as you'll soon see with every platform is to identify the dream 100 that have already congregated your dream customers on the platform that you're starting on. Follow each of them and set up a plan to spend a few minutes each day viewing all of their stories,
posts, and ads. This will help you to identify the patterns that are making these people successful. Each day. I spent three to five minutes viewing my dream. One hundreds posts looking for what pictures hook me and make me want to read the caption. What captions make me want to take actions? At the same time, I like the post my dream 100 I comment on at least 10 of my dream 100 posts each day digging my well,
I'll spend five minutes watching Instagram stories for my dream. 100 looking for cool ideas on ways they're engaging. People, checking out where their swipe ups are pushing me to messaging or deeming on at least 10 of their videos, digging my well and looking for the swipe up ads that are shown to me and funnel hacking them, swiping up on them. Remember,
you're now our producer of social media, not a consumer. Don't get caught in the trap of falling tons of interesting people who will distract you and waste your time. Follow only those people who are already successfully serving the market that you want to serve so you can understand what messages they're sharing. Then you can figure out your own unique angles inside of that ecosystem and unfriend and unfollow everyone else.
Step number three, identifying the publishing strategy and create your publishing plan. There are many ways to publish content on Instagram and each section of the platform has a different strategy for how to publish and how to monetize. To make it simpler, I'll break down each of the core sections in Instagram and explain the strategy for how you use each one. Here are the core areas of the platform.
We'll be focusing on the first I call content hooks, where you're producing images and videos in a way to grab your dream customers and turn them into your followers. We rarely, if ever actually sell anything in this content. We only focus on getting people to like comment and follow. We do this in two sections of the app, the Instagram profile, your gallery and Instagram TV were produced video content.
The second section of the app is your house. This is where you're able to direct people into your funnels and actually sell. I'll show you the strategies behind how we sell in this chapter, but for now understand that the areas that you'll be able to sell your products and services are Instagram stories, your reality show and Instagram live your live show. Again,
I want to mention that these platforms, their features and the strategies for them are always evolving, so view this chapter as the baseline and watch your dream 100 closely so that you can model and innovate. Not any and all algorithm changes as they come. My biggest fear in telling people to model their dream 100 is that they think that they should copy their dream 100 again,
copying is not the goal. On the contrary, copying is illegal and unethical. Modeling is watching what others in your market are doing so that you can get ideas of what you can create to have success on Instagram or any platform you have to be you, your brand and your personality are the keys to getting people to follow and engage with you. The differences you bring into the ecosystem that you serve is the secret that will create your true fans.
Jenna Koocher once said, a brand is the image and the personality that the business applies to it's offers. The attractive character is the voice of your company and what you're doing on social media is creating the image and personality they can connect with people and lead them into your funnels, into your offers. The first step then when setting up Instagram is to quickly communicate in your bio who you are as the attractive character.
When people find you on Instagram, the first thing they'll do is check out your bio. You only have 150 characters to make your first impression and get them to click on the follow button. You also get one link that you can use to direct people back into one of your funnels, converting them from traffic that you've earned into traffic that you own. There are a lot of thoughts and beliefs on what you should write in your bio,
but I suggest looking at your dream one hundreds bios, seeing what's working, choosing what you like and modeling them to create your own unique biome Instagram profile strategy, your gallery, your Instagram profile is the core foundation of your Instagram strategy. All focus on this first section of the platform because it is the key to increasing your followers and will be the fuel for your Instagram stories and they're powerful swipe ups,
Instagram lives IGTs and more. The hook your pictures after someone looks at your bio. The next thing they'll see is the grid of all of the pictures and the videos that you've posted. Each picture is a hook that can potentially grab someone who is scrolling on Instagram and pull them into your funnels. People are automatically able to see all the pictures on your profile and if you post them correctly,
they'll also be able to see them inside of their own newsfeed. When I started using Instagram, I had no clue what types of pictures I should post. If you scroll back to my profile, to the very first pictures, you'll probably get a good laugh seeing all of the random stuff I posted. As a result, I had low engagement because I had no idea what I was doing.
Shortly afterwards, I heard Jenna Koocher give a presentation on her J K five method framework. I started using it a few years ago and I still use it to this day because it makes posting to my profile simple and fun. Using the JK five method will help you to create connection beyond just what you're selling. And to do that, you'll need to post more than just your work.
To implement the JK five method, you first need to create five main categories of things that you're passionate about. This will help to give you a recognizable brand and as you post images, you'll simply rotate through these categories. So that your followers get a good understanding of who you are beyond what you sell. For Jenna, her five categories are married, body positivity,
photography, fashion and travel. If you scroll through a profile, you'll notice that she cycles through these categories. As I created my categories, I thought about things that were most important to me that I wanted to share with the world. The categories that I came up with for my brand were family funnels, faith, entrepreneurship, and personal development. Jen explained why the JK five method helps to grow your brand and increase your audience.
When you adopt this method, you not only create a versatile, well-rounded, and connected brand, but will also create an interesting feed that earns you the ability to sell. No two categories live next to each other on the grid, giving you extra visual element, but also giving people a way to find a way to connect with you even if they currently are on the market for what you're selling.
Oftentimes someone will follow you for just one of the categories while they get to know you, like you and trust you, priming them to become a paying client in the future. It's important we talk about the overall vibe of your grid. Essentially your grid is what users see when they scroll down and see multiple images all lined up in rows of three. It's easy to get obsessed about your overall grid aesthetics,
but what I love about the J K five is that it gives people an overarching view of your brand when they click to see a full profile. If you truly follow the five category rotation, viewers will see more than just what you sell, but be able to see if they can connect to your account enough to follow you. When someone lands on your page,
they have about 10 seconds to make a decision on whether or not they want to follow you, and so we want this overall grid to create a connection right off the bat. When you're posting on your profile, never post in real time. Your post should be thought out and strategic. Real time posting is for Instagram stories to curate photos for your profile.
Most phones will allow you to set up albums for your pictures. I suggest creating a new album for each of the five categories in your JK five. Then look back through your camera roll and move all the existing pictures you've taken in the past into these albums. Chances are this exercise alone will give you a few months worth of the perfect images that you could start using today moving forward.
When you take new pictures with your phone, always add them into these albums. Each stage you're looking for new pictures to post. Go into the album on your phone and quickly grab the perfect picture on top of pictures. Instagram also allows you to post videos on your profile that are under 60 seconds, so as you capture short videos that Finch your JK five,
save them on your album as well. Before posting any picture or video, though I highly recommend using Jen is a, B, C, D Q test to see if it's on brand and therefore worthy of your profile. Here's the test a aesthetics. Does it visually show something that fits the personality of my brand B brand? Is it aligned with my dream client or something?
They will engage with C consistent? Is it consistent in terms of the color or quality to fit within my overall feed di diversity? Is this something different than my last post? Does it create recognition beyond what I sell? Queue quality? Is this up to the quality I want my clients and followers to expect? If this stood alone, would it fit my brand?
The story captions? After you run through the a B, C, D Q test and you're ready to post images, you need to think about what arguably the most important question of all. What am I going to say about this picture? The picture is the hook that brings people in and grabs their attention, but the caption tells your story and tries to engage the reader before you make your offer or your call to action goal.
The post, each post you make should have one goal. As I post any picture and a writer's caption, the first thing I do is decide if the hook is meant to inspire, educate, or entertain, inspire. It compels others to feel inspired and capable of big things. Educate it teaches or educate your followers on a subject. Entertain it provides entertainment for your followers type of caption.
After I decide the goal of the post, I try to figure out the type of caption to post. According to Jenna, the three most common types of captions and how to use them in your business are first, tell a story. The posts that do the best on Instagram have one thing in common. They invite you into the story and make you feel part of the moment as if you're experiencing a beyond the screen.
I often pay attention to the little things or thoughts that happen in my days and turn those things into short stories. I tell through captions. I'm not talking once upon a time type stories, but relatable life experiences that others can connect with. Number two, ask a question. Having an audience, whether it's 10 people or a thousand people, gives you access to people that can help you create the perfect offer.
When you're not sure what to post, ask a question. People love to feel heard and be able to share their opinion at least once a week. I love to ask a question. Often it's as simple as what is the best book you've read recently or as complex as tell me what you're struggling with when it comes to Instagram. I can help you.
Questions can be directly related to your offer or just another way to connect with your audience. Plus questions about engagement onto your feed. Number three, make a list. You have a lot of fun with captions by sharing a short list. Some examples including three things people might not know about you. Five facts about your business. Three ways to use your products or the seven best books you've ever read.
Lists are a fun way to deliver a caption that's easy to read or interesting. They can also further connect you to your followers in an unexpected way beyond the traditional brand stories you tell. We love sharing lists of our favorite things or writing an introduction type posts. We share more about us after all new people find and follow our account each week. Hashtags,
so what is a hashtag and why do you need it? If you think of Instagram as a huge filing cabinet and the hashtags are the filing folders. When someone searches the hashtag, Instagram finds all the images that are using the same hashtag and gives you a gallery of only those images. For example, if I post a picture with the hashtag potato guns and someone searches for that hashtag,
the picture I post will show up in the hashtag potato guns gallery. If they follow that hashtag because they love potato guns. Any new picture I post with that hashtag could show up in their newsfeed. You can use up to 30 hashtags with each post to help your images or hooks show up on the searches and the feeds of your dream customers. Hashtags are the equivalent of keywords in search engines.
Sometimes you can put your hashtags in the actual caption. We call these overt hashtags where your audience will see them, but typically most of your hashtags will be posted in the first comment. After you post your image, we call these covert keywords. There are many online research tools that help you to figure out the best hashtags for your posts, and I do recommend using them,
but the easiest way to research what hashtags you may want to use is to go back to your dream 100 they're already serving your dream clients, so what hashtags are they using to get in front of them? Look at their hashtags, each stage doing your research and keep a list of the ones that will work for you to the offer. Your call to action.
The last step in creating your post is your CTA. Every single post needs a CTA. It can vary from being a very small ask to being a big call to action. Examples of small asks include double-tap. Hit the like button, post an emoji or common below. Examples of a bigger call to action include, share this post tag three friends, click the link in my bio or sign up for blank.
Calls to action are important for a lot of reasons. Ultimately, they help to get people off Instagram and onto your list, but maybe even more importantly the help the algorithm know if people like what you're posting. If your audience comments likes and engages with what you post, the algorithm will assume that you're creating content that people want and they'll reward you by giving you more exposure.
When people comment, you should be responding to their comments. This will get them more likely to comment in the future and it gives other people extra motivation to comment as well. Now let's quickly recap the basic process to follow when making posts on your Instagram profile. Follow the J fide method and create five main categories of things you're passionate about each day. Posts up to two pictures on your profile,
rotate through your JK five categories. Decide the goal of each post. Inspire, educate, or entertain. Decide the type of captions. Use story. Ask a question or make a list. Choose the hashtags. It will make your post show up for your dream customers and add a CTA to your audiences to engage with you. If you need more examples on how to do this,
then look no further than your dream 100 if they're successful, you'll see this pattern within their posts and you can model it for your own posts as well. Instagram TV strategy, your produce video content. Instagram TV was originally created to be a competitor of YouTube. Most people use Instagram as an app. You scroll through during your in between moments and they wanted to create something that would keep you in the app for longer stretches.
The time part of our consistent publishing plan is to test out hooks and test our material as posting pictures and publishing stories. I'm looking to see what people respond to, what questions they keep asking me. What subjects and topics are interesting when they see behind the scenes of my life, what parts do they want to understand more? After identifying their interests, all create a more produced piece of content that answers these questions or expounds on certain subjects.
These videos become episodes on Instagram TV. Typically anything over 60 seconds is made into an IGT post and they can be up to 60 minutes long. In our market. We found that the sweet spot for video length is about three to five minutes, so we'll spend that time answering a question and diving more deeply into the topic. These videos become our IgE TV episodes.
The episodes will show up to your fans and followers just like a normal picture or video that you post on your profile would. After people watch the first 60 seconds, Instagram will ask them. They want to continue watching the rest of the video inside IETV making a vital for the first 60 seconds to hook them into watching the full video, or you'll lose people before they see your full message.
Watch the ID from your dream 100 and see what types of videos they're creating and how they hook people and pull them into their content. Instagram stories strategy, your reality show. When Snapchat first came out, they became famous for their core feature, letting you create short ten second videos. That disappeared after 24 hours. I spent over a year growing my Snapchat following it had mild success with my stories there.
The platform was hard to use. It was almost impossible to grow an audience, and the stats they showed were almost useless. However, early trends showed it was going to be the next big social network, so we put in the time to try to make it work. About a year into my Snapchat journey, I embarked on a charity trip to Kenya with a bunch of big influencers to help build schools.
On the second day after we finished working and playing with the kids, we came back to our camps and checked our phones that very day. Instagram launched their new stories features. At first we were skeptical. Honestly, we didn't want to make a shift to this new platform. After we spent so much time building up Snapchat. Reluctantly though, we decided to test the new platform the next morning,
we East may the same posts on Instagram and Snapchat. Then we watched our stats closely to see which of the two platforms brought us the most eyeballs and engagement, knowing that this was a new feature to Instagram, I had a gut feeling that Zuckerberg was going to bribe us early adopters with tons of free engagements that we'd switched platforms and that's exactly what he did.
Despite the fact that my Instagram audience was small, about 30% the size of my Snapchat audience, I got four times more views on each of my Instagram stories than I did on Snapchat. As I shared my stats each night with the other influencers on the trip, we found that all of our stats were about the same. Over the next few weeks, I started posting more and more on Instagram and less than less on Snapchat until one day I stopped logging into Snapchat and eventually deleted the app altogether.
So what exactly are Instagram stories and how do they fit into your Instagram strategy? At the top of the Instagram app above your feed, you'll find a section showing the stories for each of the people that you're following, your dream 100 if you click on one of their pictures, you'll see all the short micro videos they posted in the past 24 hours. Each video is just 15 seconds long and you can post as many each day as you'd like because they disappear after 24 hours.
You don't have to be as methodical about each post caption in CTA as you are with your profile posts. These stories are more freestyle. Personally, I look at my Instagram stories as my personal reality show where my fans and my followers can see behind the scenes of what I'm doing each day. I'm literally documenting my journey through the day in short, 15 second mini videos.
When I wake up in the morning, I may make a quick post. As I'm walking into the gym quickly mentioning why I'm excited or what I'm dreading about the workout, I may make another post during the workout if I'm doing something new or funny that I think it would be fun to share with my audience after I leave the gym. I may post a quick video with one of my kids who just got out of bed and had a funny bedhead or I may have them share a funny or scary dream.
Then I get ready for my day and I may make a post when I'm about to get in my car, telling them quickly about what I'm excited about for the day or what I'm learning during my morning study. Do you see how this works? I'm taking them on my journey during my day and sharing the highlights, giving them a glimpse of what I'm actually doing behind the scenes as they get to the office,
I may show them something I'm working on is I'm doing it. For example, I've posted Instagram stories almost daily for the past few months showing my followers the process of me writing this book each day. I know there are tens of thousands of people who watch these quick videos of me talking about this book and showing the new concept of sketches I'm developing as I'm doing it in real time.
Can you imagine how many of them are anxiously waiting? The second this book is done so they can buy their copy by letting them participate in the process, they're more invested in what I'm actually been doing. They're more likely to buy what I'm creating when it's ready. Instagram stories are the most powerful way that I've ever seen to have your audience build a relationship with you as the attractive character.
Another great way to use Instagram stories is to promote things you're working on in a cool way. I can show people my product or behind the scenes of how I fulfill my service and then I can give people a call to action to go and buy one each day. I usually try to make at least one pitch for something. I'm excited for Instagram stories or my home where I'm able to push people into my funnels and actually sell to them.
When you first get your Instagram account, it isn't easy to promote products. Usually you have to tell your followers to click on the link in your bio to get taken to your funnel. After your account has grown to 10,000 followers, though you can unlock a really cool feature called swipe up. If you've been following others on Instagram, and you've undoubtedly seen people do this before,
they make a pitch for something until you to swipe up to get access to it. When they swipe up on the screen, you'll be redirected to any link you want. Every day. I try to make between 10 and 30 posts on Instagram stories throughout the day, documenting my journey. I'll typically make one that drags people to my profile to comment on whatever picture I posted that day.
I'll also make one with a swipe up CTA such as getting them to visit a funnel. Listen to a new podcast episode, watch the video on YouTube or engage with me outside of the Instagram platform. Story highlights these show up under your bio and above your grid. The way use highlights ties back to the JK five method. When you pick your five categories that your brand will become known for and you create a highlight for each one.
As you make cool stories that tie back into one of those five categories, you can save them as highlights and they will automatically be saved in this folder. This is a really cool way for people to see the highlights over the past month or years tied to your core categories. Highlights mini webinar hack. We have a little trick that we use to leverage highlights to sell a lot of products.
About once per month, I pick one of my products that I want to promote. I block out a full day in my story's devoted to promoting that product within a mini webinar. Basically throughout the day. I'll post 15 to 50 stories going through a scripted presentation to sell one of my products. Of course, I'll usually make a ton of sales on that day,
but because I save it as a highlight, it will continue to sell for me every day. Let me walk you through the script for this mini webinar. In the first three stories I asked three yes or no questions that I know will hook my viewers. For those who have read expert secrets, these questions will seem familiar as they sync with the perfect webinar script.
Question one is about the vehicle that we're trying to get them into. Question two relates to their internal struggle and question three deals with their external fears. I ask each question and then I let my followers answer yes or no. My next few stories will relate back to the questions I just asked. I like to use the framework Phil felt found. I might say something like,
I understand how you feel. I felt the same way and this is what I found. Then I make a few stories introducing a special offer I created that will solve the problems people said yes to. In the first three stories over the next five to 20 stories, I'll show the proof. I'll say something like, don't take my word for it. Check out what others are saying.
Then I'll post as many proof images, slides and videos that I have related to the offer. After all my proof, I'll make a few stories recapping the offer they're getting that day. Finally ended with a few stories talking about any urgency and scarcity that I have related to this offer. This is one of my favorite ways to get consistent sales from Instagram as people add on your profile and start following you when the first things they look for are your highlights.
So having a few in there that push your front end funnels is a powerful way to make the conversion into traffic that you own. Instagram live strategy. This last way to publish on Instagram is Instagram live because Instagram live and Facebook live are so similar in their functionality in use. I won't be spending much time on Instagram live. In fact, I purchased the second phone with the sole purpose of being able to go live on Instagram at the same time I went live on Facebook.
That way I can stream the same message at the exact same time to both platforms. One difference between Facebook live and Instagram live is that all lives on Instagram are stored on the platform for only 24 hours and then they're gone on Facebook. However, your lives are stored on the platform forever so you can continue to boost and promote your lives. I'm eagerly waiting for the day that Facebook and Instagram will just let you stream one message to both platforms at the same time.
Until then, if you don't have a second phone, you may just want to borrow a friend's phone anytime you go live to get the extra eyeballs to your message on Instagram. Or you can also do your Facebook live from your laptop and then Instagram live from your phone. If you're not able to live stream on both platforms, I suggest you focus all your live efforts on Facebook as your message can get more views over the long run.
We'll talk more about the strategy of lives in the next chapter with Facebook, but just know that this is the other area of the app that I treat like my home. In other words, I use this feature to sell things. My existing followers, your publishing plan, each section inside of Instagram has different strategies on how you should be publishing. It's a lot.
I know I get it. When I first started looking at this platform, I thought that publishing on it would be another part time job. So for me to get this to work, I had to build out a publishing plan I could do in less than an hour each day and it was simple and effective enough for me to stick to it. Using this publishing plan will help to make sure that you're using every second on Instagram to its fullest.
You can follow my publishing plan to a T or you can tweak it to fit your own process. To see my Instagram publishing plan. Make sure to look at the supplemental PDF where you can print it out and keep it by your computer. Number four, work your way in. As you're following your publishing plan and posting your content hooks using the right hashtags,
you're gonna start showing up in the feeds of your dream customers. Having great content for a consistent period of time is the baseline strategy for growth. The next level of growth starts when you tap into your dream 100 and they're following using the power of Instagram TV. I told you earlier that we use IETV to publish produce videos, answering questions that our audience has been asking us.
The only problem is that the only people who see these videos are the ones who follow us or those who happen to see our hooks in their feed. As we thought about this problem, we wanted a way to stimulate growth in our channel a lot faster and that's when it hit us. We could do a question and answer collaboration or colabs with our dream 100 let me explain how it works.
A while ago. I got a question for one of my followers who was trying to figure out why they were struggling with growing their company. I could have easily made a video response and post it, but then I had an idea. There are other people who are actually more qualified than me to respond to parts of this question, so I messaged Steve J Larson and told him that someone had asked me a really good question and that I was going to answer it on video,
but I love if he'd answer it too. He agreed it made the video response and send it to me. I also made a video response then took our two responses and I created an Instagram TV video and I posted on my profile and tag Steve in the video. A huge number of my followers watched the video, heard seizure response and went and followed him.
I then gave him the same video and asked him to post it to his IgE TV. He posted it, tagged me, and I got a huge stream of new followers from his account as well. This CoLab added thousands of new followers to my account almost overnight. We now try to do these colabs with my dream 100 as often as possible. Often we'll do questions swapping where I ask them a question and then they'll ask me a question back.
We posted on our feeds and both channels grow. You can do similar things when you meet your dream 100 in real life at conferences and events. Take a picture with them posted to your profile, tagging them and had them posted to their profile and tag you. The possibilities are endless. Creative ideas like this are the key to working your way into the following of your dream 100 step number five,
buy your way in to quickly grow your Instagram following. You need to show up on your dream 100 channel. Our favorite way to buy our way in is by getting a shout out. A shadow is exactly what it sounds like. Basically one of your dream 100 posts on their profile or in their stories about you. In their shout out. They'll usually mention you by name,
tell people to follow you and they'll tag you. The tag makes a clickable link on Instagram where people can click on your tag and be taken immediately to your profile page, which is why it's so important to optimize your profile page. For example, we found someone on our dream 100 list at PR boss babe sent her a copy of my 30 days book when it first came out and paid her to do a shout out.
She posted a picture of herself with the book, told the story of the book and then shouted me out by tagging me. This tag directed people back to my profile to find out more. She made the post on her profile and she also published a few stories with swipe ups that took people directly to the book funnel. This post was shown to her over 82,000 followers and receive 4,978 likes and drove hundreds of people to start following me.
You can approach people in your dream 100 to do paid shout outs. There's also a lot of agencies that specialize in getting shout outs for you. You can hire them and they'll do all the work to find the right people, get you the shout out and get people on your profile page. Step number six, fill your funnel. The last step in this framework is to use all of this exposure and engagement to convert all this traffic into traffic that you own.
The first phase is creating your publishing plan and putting out your content hooks to start growing your following and build a relationship with them. We use your Instagram profile and TV to find people and turn them into subscribers. We can work our way in with colabs and buy shout outs to speed up the growth. As your following is growing, you can then start using your Instagram stories and get people to swipe up and push your followers into your funnels.
You can also use our highlights mini webinar hack to create many webinars on your highlights that will presale your people on the products or the services that you are selling in your funnels. The last step is to start running prospecting ads as shown in secret number nine, to find more of your dream customers and move them to your retargeting buckets so that you can get them into your funnels.
Everything you are doing now is all for the purpose of moving these people into your value ladder and ascending them up so that you can serve them at a much higher level. Thanks for listening to unleash the awesome. Please be sure to subscribe, rate, and review wherever you listen to your podcasts, and please share us on your favorite social media platforms using hashtag unleash awesome.