Welcome to episode 390 of Hit the Mic with The Stacey Harris.
Last week I got a little soapboxy talking about investing and so today I want to take it back to the core, back to what we do. I’m doing a weird dance that you can’t see while I’m saying this, but let’s move right along. Let’s shift right past that. I want to talk about Instagram business accounts and why yes, you should convert yours. Here is the deal, Instagram is becoming a non-negotiable for most of you listening to the show. Now, I want to put a little asterisk next to that and say, as a footnote, there is no one network that is for literally every business, but for most of the people listening to this show yes, Instagram is a powerhouse, is a really powerful tool so it’s time to get on board.
With that said, you get a lot of additional power when you go pro and invest your time in setting up a business account. By investing your time I mean the 38 seconds it takes to do and if there’s any conversion confusion about how to do it I walk you through it in module one, I believe, it’s either module one or module two of the Instagram guide inside the Mic Backstage. There’s really, really no excuse not to take this step.
We’re going to break down the three reasons why I highly recommend, all caps, you take your account to business level, status, whatever. I want to make sure that we don’t go too quickly into that because I want to remind you that if Instagram is someplace you want to invest your time, and I’m guessing it is because you’re listening to this episode, Hit the Mic Backstage does have that full six guide module … or six module guide on setting up and rocking out your Instagram, plus some bonus Instagram trainings, and if you’re looking at Instagram ads you learn how to do that inside of the Facebook guide, which is also inside Hit the Mic Backstage. Point being, get your booty into Hit the Mic Backstage.
Moving right into our three reasons.
Number one, scheduling.
Yay. Let me just say, that I don’t mean in the way where you set it all up and then it pushes to your phone, and you have to actually push it out to Instagram. No, I mean legit fully automated, wonderful scheduling. Instagram earlier this month, it was either late January or early February, rolled out the ability to schedule, however, it’s only coming to business accounts.
Now, it’s happening not directly through Instagram, but rather through third parties, so they actually added the functionality to the API. As of right now, you can do it with Hootsuite, and later on a couple of other tools. You guys know, I’m a huge fan of eClincher, that’s going to be rolling out to eClincher very soon. I think I got an email from them this week, it might’ve been last week, saying that that feature was on its way. We’re seeing it roll out, but that’s a huge, huge benefit of a business account is you can schedule.
I use Grum to schedule, I really like it. Full disclosure, once eClincher, finalizes that process of being able to fully schedule through there I will likely use eClincher just because I literally use it for everything else. I can’t emphasize enough the power of scheduling when it comes to consistency and the importance of consistency when it comes to Instagram. We tested this a couple of times over the last couple of months where I’ve gone radio silent to see what impact it would have on my numbers and not only does it slow my growth but it impacts me negatively when I don’t show up. I mean not doing stories, we’ve tested it where I’m doing stories but not posting stuff to my profile.
When I don’t get that daily profile photo up, that gallery curated image into the newsfeed even though yes … and it seems really common in the last couple of weeks for people to be complaining about the algorithm and seeing images four and five days later, and I get that, and I agree. I we prefer to be in chronological order, but when I’m not doing that it massively negatively impacts my ability to grow and to reach new connections. I highly, highly recommend consistency and that comes from scheduling. This opportunity is now available to business pages, so you have to take that time, that step, and set up your business account.
Reason number two, insights.
Here’s the deal guys, we only are making guesses if we’re not first laying out, “All right, this is what the numbers tell us,” if we’re not first laying out this is what the data shows, if we’re not first laying out, “Here’s what I think is going to happen. Sweet, here’s what happened. What did we learn?” We have to, have to, have to, have to be making that decision on data and that comes from insights. Instagram will give you the answers. Instagram will give you the information about most popular posts, and when your audience is online, and all of those things, and what’s working and what’s not working if you take the time and effort to look at the numbers.
Again, that comes with a business profile. You actually have insights of your audience is, and what’s happening, and where you’re seeing the most engagement, and what hashtags are working because you’ll see what your engagement’s like based on what hashtags you’re rolling out. That’s powerful stuff. You don’t get that if you’re not using a business account, so you’ve got to take the time to set up a business account.
Number Three, Go Pro
The third and final point I want to make, as we wrap it up, is you’re running a business. You’re using this as a marketing tool. Make sure you’re going pro with the tools you’re using. We see this in a lot of instances, we see this in using a Gmail account instead of a branded account. We see this with using a regular personal profile instead of a business profile on Facebook, which is by the way against terms of service, so it’s really going to hurt your business. We see this also with Instagram, if you’re using a personal profile and maybe you’re using it because you also share your personal stuff there. If you want to use this as a legitimate marketing tool, if you want to drive traffic to your site, if you want to drive sales to your business you got to go pro with your tools.
This is one of those instances where going pro with your tools is not costing you anything. You don’t have to pay for a business account, you don’t have to upgrade a service. No, this is a 100% free situation. You just got to click a couple buttons and you get a lot of benefit from that. Go pro, step into this as a tool that grows my brand, this is a marketing effort, this fits into our marketing strategy. Here’s how we use this tool. It is a pro tool for a pro-business. Go pro, upgrade to the business account. Yes, I say upgrade because you get things like that contact button, which I haven’t even mentioned yet, you get a contact button. You get those insights, you also get the ability to run ads. You also get the ability to schedule. You’re getting a lot of stuff here. Make sure you’re utilizing the tool for the job and the business account is the tool for your marketing.
I’ll be honest, I have non-business accounts. I have a completely personal Instagram account that is private and locked up, and just for friends and family. It’s the one place where I show pictures of the kid and things like that. No, it’s not a business account because it doesn’t need to be. That’s not what that tool is for. However, The Stacey Harris business account, Hit the Mic Backstage business account. Both of those are tools I’m using to grow my reach, grow my brand, and yes drive traffic to my sites. It’s a no-brainer that these be business accounts.
That’s it. If you have questions, if you have confusion, if you don’t know how to do this but I have totally sold you on doing it hitthemicbackstage.com is where you will find the Instagram guide. Again, it’s 100% included in your cost of Backstage, so if you’re already a member go check it out. If you’re not a member yet well, fix that. All right? All right. I will see you guys very soon.
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