What the hell the battery is dying again.
I'm so confused. Ellen,
a Mandarin teacher based in Singapore recently sent me this DM asking if I could
put together a video for service-based businesses so that they too could get
clients directly from Instagram. You're in luck, Ellen,
as well as all my other service-based provider friends out there,
because in today's video, I'm going to show you exactly that.
If you offer a service, I'm talking real estate agent, dentist, freelancer,
agency, chiropractor, anything like that,
where you are offering a service to clients or customers,
and maybe you've struggled to get more leads and sales,
especially from social media platforms like Instagram,
today's video is exactly for you.
I'm going to share with you exactly how Instagram can become your secret weapon.
And stay tuned until the end where I'm going to share with you the number one
way to always grow your account,
no matter what the algorithm does so that you have a long-term strategy in
place, no matter any changes that might come from Instagram in the future.
What I'm about to share with you has worked for Ebony, a tarot card reader,
who was able to quickly monetize her business and sell more of her services,
soon after joining InstaGrowth Boss.,
Ebony has so many wins. I'm just going to sprinkle them up here on the screen.
I'm Elise Darma and I've helped thousands of entrepreneurs, freelancers,
and creatives like yourself use Instagram to actually grow your business.
I'm talking dollars. And in today's video,
I'm sharing how a service-based business can get more clients all through
Instagram. First thing's first,
when you are a service-based business on Instagram,
your profile needs to be on point.
This is the first impression that you make to someone when they're deciding
whether to keep following you or send you a DM.
So when it comes to your profile,
the very first thing to make sure is that your username is close to your brand
name, if not exactly your brand name. For most service providers,
that's going to be their personal name or the name of their business. Next,
I want you to go to your profile picture and I want you to upload a headshot of
you. I don't want to see a logo or a favicon. A lot of businesses do this,
but the thing is, people do business with people.
So I want you to show your shining face and your smiling headshot
over in your profile picture. Next is your name field.
So this is where you don't need to repeat your brand name,
but instead you can drop in key words that your target follower is searching
for. Now, hot tip here. If you are a local based business,
like a doctor or a real estate agent,
you definitely want to have your city name or your location name in your name
field. Because again, this part of your profile is searchable.
When it comes to your bio, this is really key to make a good first impression.
And I have a full video on this topic right here.
But the key thing to know about your bio is that your first line should share
who you help and how.
You want to capture their attention right away so that they know you're talking
to them.
So you need to explicitly say who you help and how.
What is the end benefit?
What's the transformation that you give to your clients?
The second line is what makes you unique and different.
So when I'm checking out you as a service provider,
tell me why should I choose you over Sally Joe over here,
or Harry Moe over there.
You need to tell me why exactly you are the best service provider for
me. So in the second line of your bio, I want you to explicitly say this.
Is it your years of experience? The number of clients you've helped?.
Is it any awards or recognition that you've received? Is it your training,
your background?
Is it simply a personality quirk as to why people really like working with you?
It can be that simple. At the end of your bio,
I want you to lead people to the next step that they should take.
Should they book a call with you?
Are you going to give them a free consultation?
Should they send you a direct message where you can chat about their situation
privately there?
I want the last part of your bio to give them a call to action,
an action to take so that they can connect with you to find out if you are the
service provider for them. Last but not least is your highlights.
These are saved Instagram Stories that live right below your bio.
Now with your highlights,
I have a full training on what to do with them right here,
but the short answer is,
go ahead and create highlights that replicate the menu of your
website. Think about your website. You have a homepage and about page,
a contact me page, a services page, maybe a client or testimonial page,
a services page - I said that one - Um,
but go ahead and replicate those topics that you already have on your website
in the navigation menu and start creating stories that you can save to live
on your profile as a highlight permanently.
I have so many videos on all these topics that I just quickly breezed through.
So go ahead and check out all these videos for deeper trainings on all of these
topics. Next, after your profile is your content.
While your profile is the first impression,
your content is what's going to attract people to your profile.
So especially when your content goes viral or goes on the Explore page,
that's what its job is.
It's meant to attract to the right person over to your profile.
And then your bio and your profile will lock them in because they'll know that
you are for them. When it comes to your content strategy, yes,
you can post a video. You can post an image. You can make a Reel,
you can make an IGTV, all of these great ways to create content,
but as a service provider, the number one thing I want you to keep in mind is:
how do you allow your follower to really feel the benefits of your
service?
How can they step into the shoes of your client and really get a sense of what
it's like to work with you?
That's what I want you to think about when it comes to what type of content
you're going to choose, whether it's a post, a graphic, a video,
the medium isn't as important as you making sure that your follower really
gets a sense of what it's like to work with you and the benefits of your
services and how it improves their life. So I want you to create videos.
I want you to bring people along in your day so that they get a sense of what
you do. I want you to show client testimonials, ideally in video form.
I want you to walk people through your offers, your services,
how exactly you help them and change their lives through your services.
I want you to make it feel as tangible and real as possible.
Then I want you to think about how you can deliver free value to your
followers. So that's typically in the form of education, inspiration,
or entertainment.
Now I've got a whole video on how you can plan out your content as well as your
themes right here.
Go ahead and check that out for a full training on how you can deliver value
through your content. What the hell the battery is dying again?
I'm so confused. Okay. One charge battery and a nap later.
Let's continue. Now,
while you are showing the benefits of your services and delivering value through
your content, you also want to show your face.
This is key as a service provider, because while you might have a brand,
people are actually going to be hiring you.
So the more that you can show up on camera in video as a real
person, the more your followers are going to feel like they can trust you.
So this will be really,
really key for your content strategy outside of content for your feed.
You're also going to want to show up in your Stories.
Stories are disappearing clips.
They only last for 24 hours.
So your content in your Stories doesn't need to be polished.
It doesn't need to be all business or professional.
It actually is designed to show people a little bit more about the behind the
scenes of your business.
You can also share a little bit more about you personally, in your Stories.
Again, it doesn't have to be all business.
So take your followers along with you on your morning walk or
show them a behind the scenes of a call that you have with a client.
One key here to boost your engagement of your Stories so that more of your
followers see these Stories is to use the stickers that come with the
Instagram app. So I'm talking the slider sticker, the poll,
the question sticker, the quiz.
As much as you can build these into your Stories and encourage your followers to
engage,
the more the Instagram algorithm is going to show your Stories to
more followers.
For 12 free ideas that you can use in your Instagram Stories today to
grow your service-based business, check out this video right here.
Last but not least, when it comes to your content as a service provider,
why not consider creating an Instagram guide?
This is a relatively new feature within Instagram.
I have done a whole video on it already, which you can check out right here,
but a guide allows you to repurpose some of your older posts.
You can curate them all into a guide and add commentary and kind of walk your
follower through what they need from this post to this post, to the next post.
But that's just one example for a guide,
you can also create them based off of locations or places that you recommend as
well as products. So again,
check out my full video on Instagram guides right here.
Now what's the proven way to get clients over to your service-based business,
no matter what the algorithm is doing or what new features come out?
The way is through relationships.
And so after you have your profile down, your content strategy down,
you need to get your relationship building strategy down.
In this next part of the video,
I'm going to walk you through exactly how you do that as a service-based
business.
The whole reason why you are on Instagram as a service-based business is to
build relationships so that you can generate leads and turn those leads into
clients. So the first thing I want you to remember here is to engage,
engage more than you post content.
A lot of times people view their Instagram feed as a channel to
broadcast their content. Yes, it is that,
but I want you to spend majority of your time,
either engaging with other accounts or getting your content out there versus
creating content. Let's say 80% of the time,
I want you to spend 80% of the time engaging and interacting with other accounts
and sharing your great content and only 20% of the time creating it.
This is how my students with less than a thousand followers are able to book in
clients leads and sales from Instagram.
It's because while their numbers might look low with less than a thousand
followers, they have really strong relationships going on behind the scenes.
And that's really a result of the direct messages, the DMs.
The DMs are your friend as a service-based business. With direct messages,
you can send an unlimited number of links. You can send voice notes,
videos, photos.
This is where business happens on Instagram and for a full training
on how to generate sales through the DMs, this is the video for you.
Now, beyond engaging and beyond replying to your DMs and building relationships
there, I also want you to post consistently. So for me,
I post three times a week at most, and that's what works for me.
There was a time I was posting daily,
but I do find that if I show up at least three times a week in my feed and spend
the majority of my time answering my DMs and commenting and engaging with other
accounts, I see sales back to my business.
So for your own content strategy and how you can get consistent with your
posting, check out this video right here.
The last thing I'll say about strategy is on the topic of hashtags.
Hashtags are Instagram's way to categorize your posts.
It's kind of the SEO of Instagram.
So I do want you to continue to use hashtags,
even if you see weird things happening,
like your post isn't showing up for that hashtag or hashtags look like they're
banned. You know, there's a lot that changes with the Instagram algorithm,
but as of filming,
hashtags are still a great way to get in front of your target audience.
So don't forget about using hashtags with your posts.
I have done a whole video on hashtag strategy right here that you can go
ahead and check out. So there you have it,
your entire strategy laid out for you and your service-based business,
all the way from your profile to your content,
to your growth and engagement strategy.
Now you might be feeling a little overwhelmed at the thought of getting all this
going. So I want to take one of those tasks off your plate.
How would you like to have 300 caption templates already written and done
for you that you can plug into your business so that you can keep posting?
I'm guessing that your answer is yes, I would love that.
So I invite you to check out Caption Vault.
Caption Vault is 300 Instagram caption templates written for you.
It's over 20,000 words and the caption templates have been
divided up by your business model depending on what you offer.
So you'll see a hundred caption templates for a coaching based business,
a hundred caption templates for a service-based business and a hundred caption
templates for a product based business. Beyond the templates,
you're getting so much more,
but you'll have to check it all out CaptionVault.co. To ease and revenue,
I'll see you in the next video. I'm going to share with you how...
This is no bueno.... Focus. Okay. What the hell?
The battery is dying again? I'm so confused.
Forgot my sentence. What was my sentence?