a lot of you probably think well that's
definitely not enough followers to be
making consistent sales right
wrong you actually don't need that many
followers it's more about the quality of
your followers and attracting customers
than it is about the number of followers
you have small business owners
i totally understand and feel your
struggle i'm still
going through the same growing pains
that you guys are going through right
now
the only difference is that i have spent
about a year
trying different methods and tactics to
turning my instagram page into like a
money-making machine for my businesses
and i'm sharing with you the ones that
actually work so that hopefully you
don't have to go
and make the same mistakes i did and
lose a bunch of time and money
trialing methods which aren't effective
i remember when i first started my
brands and i started my instagram
channel and in my head i was like
i need a lot of followers otherwise no
one's gonna trust my brand i just had
that in my head
so i spent a lot of time just being like
i just need followers it doesn't matter
who they are
i just need followers because then
people are going to land on my page and
they're going to think
that's that's a legitimate brand because
they've got tens of thousands of
followers
however i quickly realized that that is
not the case and that's not actually how
the world works
whilst a lot of followers can give you
credibility unfortunately it can also do
the opposite effect to you and it can
actually devalue your brand
if you have just think about it this way
right if you've got a brand
and you have spent no time improving
your content
you have spent no time you know working
on the different things which improve
your engagement for your channel
and instead you've just bought a ton of
followers
what you think you've done is purchased
like credibility right
so you think it doesn't matter that i've
not spent a lot of time on my content
and i've not nailed down my strategy
because now that i've got so many
followers
people are going to trust my brand
anyway wrong
if anything people will be turned off by
your brand and not trust it at all
because you've not spent any time
working on your strategy people can see
that it's obvious
and if someone lands on an instagram
page and they just think this page is a
bit of a mess
i don't get their content i'm not clear
on what they're selling
but yet somehow they have 50 000
followers that is alarm bells will
immediately sound off in their minds
like consumers are so clever
like they will immediately think
something's not right here i don't trust
it so that's not what you want to do
instead
having a page where you don't have as
many followers it's quite small
but you've got good content and you're
growing at a steady pace
that is far more trustworthy and that is
far more likely to translate to sales
okay so the tip that i'm going to give
you is a bit of a basic upfront one but
i feel like i
have to say it otherwise this video is
not correct
if i've not discussed this topic so you
have to make sure that your profile is
optimized shall we say and by that i
mean look at your bio
look at your profile photo look at your
highlights
are they all correct and are they giving
off the right vibe and information about
your brand
so if you are a product product based
business
do you have instagram shopping set up on
your brand
do you have you know is your instagram
channel named after your brand
i've actually got a video on picking a
business name if you're at that stage
and you need some help so i recommend
checking that out i'll link to up here
and is your profile photo of your logo
and is that logo
clear and do you have your url linked
in your bio an obvious one do you have
your usp
such a unique selling point is that
clearly linked in your bio
things like that which you have to just
think when someone lands on your page
they need to know exactly what it is
that you sell
what it is that your brand is called and
how they can shop your products so if
you follow those three things there's
three guiding principles
and ensure that your bio and your page
clearly communicates each of those three
things
then your page will be fairly optimized
and that means that we can move on to
some of the other
parts and more complicated um strategies
that i use in order to make sales on my
so one of the main tips i want to give
you and one of the main things i want to
discuss
is to really think about what your key
content pillars are
so what i mean by content pillars are
basically groups
of different kinds of content that you
want to be consistently pushing out on
your channel
so for example if we look at real london
i have a few different content pillars
so one pillar
is kind of aesthetic content so these
are your interim posts which i get
from different sources different
instagram pages sometimes from pinterest
and the whole purpose of these posts is
that it helps tie your entire page
together and
gives off this really great cohesive
theme or vibe to your page
another pillar that i have is my
influencer
photos so i kind of alluded to this
before this
is such an important part of your
content and i'm actually going to talk
about that in a bit more detail in a
second
but what i like to do is ensure that
every other or every few photos i'm
using an influencer photo and the reason
why
as i mentioned before is because
influencer photos do a great job at
showing
potential customers what my products
look like on
you know that's the kind of stuff that
people want to see so therefore
including that in my mix
and as one of my content pillars is also
really really successful strategy for me
the third content pillar that i have
which is more of an emerging trend which
i've recently started to trial
is sharing quotes and the reason why
i feel like these are so important and
why they're really helping me is because
quotes
are shareable content right so it's not
um
you know an influencer pick which some
random stranger is probably not going to
reshare or put on their stories
quotes are something which could be
applicable to anyone and which could be
shared by anyone
and when someone shares your post you
are allowing
several hundred several thousand more
people to see your content right you're
massively improving your reach
which is why incorporating some form of
shareable content into your content
strategy for instagram is really really
important
and then the last content pillar that i
have is product
shots so these are shots that i've taken
myself and they only feature the
products so they are completely focusing
on my bag or my bikini and i don't tend
to use a huge amounts of these but you
know i use them on occasion and i like
to throw them in the mix
so those are my key for content pillars
so that
every single time i post i am posting
one of those things and what that means
is that i'm able to consistently hit
those four key content pillars because
each of those content pillars do their
own thing and have their own job
and also it means that all of my content
is really streamlined and it all has a
focus
so it basically just helps me tie the
entire page together so another
tip kind of links into what i was just
talking about and that is all about
product
proof so what i mean by product proof is
basically if you imagine right you're on
you're scrolling away you see a post
from a new brand on your explore page
right you click on that post and you
look at that
instagram pages content and you think oh
okay
they sell dresses i really like these
dresses and i really want to get one
i'm a bit worried though like i don't
know this brand very well i'm not
familiar with their products like i hope
they're legit
oh i know what i'll do i'll look at
their content see if they've got any
photos of their customers using their
products i'll look on their tagged
images
you know has anyone ever tagged their
products if you do all of those steps
and you realize like okay so this brand
isn't posting any photos of customers
using their products
there's no tagged photos there there's
no evidence that anyone has ever
purchased from this brand
and received the product that evidence
does not exist right
you go on their website and there's no
reviews which is a whole other video and
but the point where i'm getting that is
that these different
things that you want to look at these
reviews the tagged photos
the um customer photos those are proof
points
they're things which give your brand
credibility
so as a small brand on um instagram if
you don't have a huge following it's
really important that you are showcasing
your customers in your products in order
to install
trust in people landing on your page so
the main way
there's a few different ways you can do
it and i i've mentioned some of them
already
but making sure that your tagged photos
are turned on and that you're
encouraging people to tag
you when they upload photos of your
products
and another way to do it is to you know
work with influencers so that you've got
influencers showcasing your products
i like to find that the most successful
way that i do it is by
encouraging people to tag me in their
stories and then saving these stories
onto
a highlight so on my rare london account
it's called as seen on
and on my lilo london swim account it's
just got those like
eyes you know there's like how do you
even do that you know the emoji was like
that
eyes like popping out your head it has
that
and the little emoticon says spotted
right so what i basically do i can't
just done that on camera so what i
basically do is
save any photo from an influencer from a
customer
from anyone who is using my product in
that photo and i save it to that
highlight so that
anyone who lands on my page for the
first time they can click on that
highlight and just see
endless amount of photos you know when
you look at a story and it's got loads
of tiny little bars at the top because
there's so many photos on there
that's what they see and immediately
that installs trust they're like i mean
i can clearly see as i'm tapping through
this person's
instagram highlight that tons of people
have purchased their products
and loads of people are happy with their
products therefore i have trust in them
if i like one of their items i'm gonna
buy one
okay so another tip that i'm gonna give
you is to
build relationships with your customers
so the reason why this one's so
important is because again we're talking
about small instagram accounts or small
businesses which might not have a huge
following
we're talking about converting that
following into customers that's what you
want
you don't want a whole page full of you
know nosy
like buggers is that the fret nosy
buggers
that's just sounds so like old school
british doesn't it you're nosy bugger
um what you don't want is like a bunch
of followers who are just nosy
they just want to sit there and just
look at the different stuff that you're
posting nobody
needs those we don't know we don't need
those people in our lives those aren't
people who are trying to get
on our instagram page we are trying to
get people who like our products and
want to purchase from us
so what you might do is that you might
have a list of people who are following
you already and they are
they have the potential to be customers
right but you haven't nurtured the
relationship with them
there are a bunch of different ways that
you can do this the first way
is using interactive features on your
instagram stories so using things like
polls and open-ended questions you know
when you use the question box
stuff like that which allows you to
build a deeper relationship with your
customer
and this is powerful for quite a few
different reasons the first reason
is that it helps boost your content on
instagram's algorithm because people are
engaging with your content and therefore
instagram thinks this is really valuable
so i'm gonna push it
up and more people gonna see it so
that's a clear benefit to that
another benefit to it is that these
types of engagement and features
give you a really unique opportunity to
get to know your customer a bit more
like you know ask them which product do
they prefer you know
ask them you know if you're about to
drop um a product
ask them you know which one would you
like them to drop first
and ask them which colors you think are
really in this season
anything you can be asking them such a
range of different stuff
which really will help you build a deep
relationship with them but also gain
some really good insight into what your
customers want
also there's simple tricks like when you
write captions ensuring that
not all of your captions are sales
focused some of them are just
conversational ask your followers
questions and encourage them to write
the answers in your captions
again this will help boost your posts on
instagram but also
help you build a relationship with your
customers as well which is super
valuable
another key and this is the last tip
what i'm going to like end on but it's
linked in to the whole building
relationship with your customer point
and that is
utilizing direct message so this is
especially important for service based
businesses
and if you are looking to to attract
customers or clients
and you are not using your direct
messages you are missing a trick
that is incredibly important for
service-based um companies but it's also
important for product-based companies
and it's a tactic that i've started to
incorporate on my brands more often and
i'm seeing some really amazing results
so it could be something as simple as
uploading a photo
and saying um do you like this bag dm me
for a discount
i do that quite often the reason why
that works so well
is it gets people into your inbox so you
can start a dialogue with them
and also it tells instagram's algorithm
that you are actually
friends with this person who's dming you
and then your content is going to show
up
higher on that person's feed from now on
so you already know they're an engaged
person and they like your products
because they engaged with that
caption so now you're gonna offer them a
discount they're probably gonna purchase
but after all of that they're also gonna
see your content more often because
instagram is gonna now start to boost
your content on their feed i hope that
made sense
um let me know if you didn't but that's
one reason why dms are really really
powerful but they're also just a great
way to you know touch base of your
customers and ask them what they like
what they enjoy
you know when someone tags you in a
photo send them a dm and say thanks so
much for tagging our products
we hope you loved you know you loved
your dress or your bag or whatever
for people who are working in a
service-based industry your dms are your
opportunity to build a relationship
with your clients and at the end of the
day that is what's going to get you
sales more than anything else so that's
why dms are
especially important for you that is it
for me
today i hope those tips were super super
useful
as i mentioned i release content which
is
all about helping you level up your
hustles whether you're a brand owner
whether you're an influencer i'm here
i've got some tips for you so if that
sounds like stuff that you're interested
in which you must be because you made it
through the video
please subscribe to my channel i release
content every week i will see you on the
next one