Social Media

  • Three Must-haves in an Instagram Post, Darling

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    Sweet, short and to the point. That’s what we are going for today. Instagram is THE place to be in terms of social media. Don’t get me wrong. I still love Facebook but Instagram is fun, and a heck of a place for a business to show up.

    So, as a business owner, you want to craft the perfect post. A good image is a must, obviously. It is Instagram and it’s all about the pictures. But there are three other things that your post must include if you want to maximize your marketing potential.

     

    Numero Uno is hashtags. You want to grow your audience and one of the best ways to do so is to include hashtags. You are invisible on Instagram if you don’t get seen, obviously, and one of the best ways to be seen is through hashtags.

    Best place to include them? Don’t put them in the caption. That just looks like you’re an amateur. Put them in the first comment. Even better put them in the comment like this:

    Why are we doing it this way? Well, when you post it this way in the first comment, the hashtags are tucked neatly within the post and not showing up like some annoying little sister (not that I have one of those. Melissa, I meant someone else’s sister. Not you. Stop crying.)

     

    The second thing you must include on a post is a call to action. What is the point of posting if you don’t want a little action from your audience? If you aren’t looking for action, you might as well be on a personal account posting about your children or your cat. So, include your call to action to get your audience to click on over to your website, leave a comment, tag a friend in the comments, etc.

    I can’t tell you how many times I have seen a t-shirt on Instagram and all it was was a post of a cute shirt a business was selling – but didn’t have any directions on how to buy the shirt. I always think – what are you bragging that you have this shirt and we can’t?! How rude. No, I don’t think that in real life. I just think how sad that this business is losing out on money and the chance for me to buy that shirt.  And I guarantee you – your customer is not going to go out of his or her way to hunt this shirt down. There are a million distractions online. Make it easy for your customer to buy what you are selling. Post your shirt. Post a short description and tell them to click on the link in profile to buy the shirt. Sold!

     

    Which brings me to another point – the ever so important link in profile. One time I found this cute shirt on Instagram and the business was on their game and told me to click the link in profile. So, I did. I went to their profile and easily found the website I was supposed to go to so I could easily buy this shirt. But I went to the website, and the shirt was nowhere to be found. They had a TON of products. A ton. I clicked on the ‘shirt’ category and I swear every shirt that was in America was on this website. I did a few searches and then I left. It was just too much. Want to know how it could have been really simple even with every shirt in America on their site? Ok. Let me take a sip of water because this is a good story.  Once upon a time, I started using this awesome tool called ‘Link in Profile’. It is a life saver for me because I have three websites for my business. And that means a lot of links. So each time I post an image on Instagram – I can say in my caption ‘click on the link in the profile’ and then when people go to my link and click it they are taken to a site that holds all of my Instagram images. And then they can easily click on the image and it whisks them away straight to where I want them to land on my website. If I wanted to post an image about this blog post on Instagram, then tell my audience to click on the link in profile to read it, they would click on the link and see the image and then click that and end up right on the blog post on my website. I have been using it for about 5 months and it has made my Instagram so much easier to manage, and it has made my traffic increase and my audience ends up in the right place on my website.

    ***UPDATED: While Link in Profile is a great, reliable service, I have started using linktr.ee because it’s free and I like it.  

    So if that business owner would have had Link in Profile – I would have ended up right on that shirt listing on their website instead of lost. And they would have made the sell. And we would have lived happily ever after.  (And, yes, I pay something like $9.99 a month for Link in Profile, but it has made sells for me so it has been worth it).

    Want to try Link in Profile free? Click here and get a trial. You don’t have to enter your credit card information so if you don’t like it just walk away. Yes, that leads to an affiliate link but I wouldn’t promote it unless I used it and loved it. 

    Do you use Instagram? I am assuming that if you got to the end of this article, you do. You can find me on Instagram here. Let’s be friends. And if you want some of my Instagram business secrets, download my free guide here.

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  • The Quick and Easy Way to Proofread

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    If you are short on time and attention span but know proofreading is a must then let me share my quick hack on proofing the quick and easy way.

    Once I write out my blog post, or other lengthy write-up, I then copy the entire text.

    Then I hop on over to  Google Translate (https://translate.google.com/) where I paste my text into the left side box. Then press the speaker icon and listen to your story. Sweet and simple!

     

    As I was publishing this little post, my 15-year-old son walked by and told me about Grammarly. It’s a free Chrome extension and is very easy to use and install. I just installed it and used it on this post. I’m impressed. So there are now TWO Quick and Easy hacks to proofreading. Is the word ‘hack’ overused? I bet it is but ‘tip and trick’ is old too. I’m leaving as is because I think you will understand.

    Have any tricks you want to share? Let me know in the comments and/or follow me over on Instagram or Facebook.

     

     

    Never miss a post, tip, freebie or sale. Sign up below! We would love to have you join us.

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  • Why Selling on Social Media is Hurting Your Business

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    Hi! Okay, I am going to make this quick and painless. Hopefully. Here are 3 reasons you are potentially doing damage to your business and stunting your own business growth if you are selling on social media:

    Selling only on social media and not being able to send your customer to a real live website hurts your appearance and professional standing. It’s like going to the mall and having one of those girls in a kiosk asking if you want to have your hair straightened or maybe have a massage. In the middle of the mall. My first thought is that if their product is so great why aren’t they investing in a real store front? Same with social media selling. If you have the good goods and you are going to be around for awhile, set up a real store front online (AKA a website). Are you a running a business or are you playing around with a hobby/sort of business? If you are running a business – get a website.

     

    When you sell on social media and you ask your customer to leave their size, state, and email in the comments you are putting their information at risk. If (and when) a spammer, spambot, creepy hacker type automated program gets a hold of their very visible email address you just bought your customer trouble in the form of a ton of nasty spam to something worse. I am sure you value your customers so stop doing this at once if you are guilty of this.

     

    When you post on social media the goal is to get them to your website. When you send them to your website the goal is to get something from them – whether it be a purchase, a newsletter signup, an entry to a giveaway, etc. And it’s even better when they do multiple things on your website. When I see a post on social media selling a cute t-shirt, as a consumer, I go through one of two processes (yes, I buy t-shirts online way too much. Follow me on Instagram and you will see me often giving shout outs to businesses and showing off the t-shirt I just bought from them). Stay with me. This is good insight here.

    Scenario one (the almost sort of winner): I see a post on Instagram where this business is selling a t-shirt and I want it. (I almost always do because I am an easy sell). If they ask for my email address and size, I cringe because I don’t leave my email address on social media because of Reason 2. So sometimes I skip on by because it’s too much work to buy their shirt. If I really want it, I will DM them and give them my info. Not a great sell because they left money on the table. Tsk! Tsk! Where did they miss out on more money? Well, they missed selling me more. They did nothing to retain me as a customer and no relationship was formed. Read below.

    Scenario Two (the real winner): I see a post on Instagram of this must have t-shirt. They give me all the info in the post and tell me to click the link in the bio to visit their website. Sweet. I skip on over to the website, see the awesome shirt I want, and add it to my cart. Am I done? Nope. I check out their other products because while I’m here I might as well scope out the store. And I might find more t-shirts I want and therefore spend more. Even better is they offered an incentive to sign up for the email list/newsletter. So now in two weeks when I have forgotten about this store because I have moved onto something else they send me a newsletter to my email inbox telling me about a sale they are having. So, I have just been reminded of this business and I remember the last time was a great shopping experience so I click on over to their website again and potentially give them more sales. Winner winner chicken dinner. I win as a customer because I have found a great little place to shop and they care enough about me to send me info on their latest happenings so they win, too.

     

    If you are in it to win it and you want to see your business become something solid take the time to learn the best strategies for selling on social media. I know you have better things to do than to guess what works on social media. If you want to dive in further, download my free guide here. It won’t launch you into making millions overnight (I so wish!). But it will show you 5 successful things I do for my own business on Instagram.

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