Rachel Bell

We’re ready.

Ross Johnson

We’re ready.

Rachel Bell

Yeah, you made a good point just now which is saying “No” to certain platforms that you can focus and grow on the ones that matter.

Rachel Bell

Right now, I feel like Instagram is one of the things that matter most. I have three reasons why use Instagram, why it’s killing the game right now, why everyone should be taking this seriously, especially in this period we’re in, which is a fantastic opportunity.

1. It was acquired by Facebook.

If that doesn’t say something to you about the potential that Instagram has to grow, then I don’t know what will because Instagram is acquired obviously by Mark Zuckerberg, who is one of the most innovative people in the social space right, and probably forever. We don’t know if he’s an alien or human or whatever, but he’s doing some crazy things to innovate that space.

Rachel Bell

We know Instagram is not going to go away anytime soon. It’s still the number one photo-sharing app in the world right now.

I think he’s just going to continue to optimize that platform and make it more accessible, user-friendly, and engagement friendly than you’ve ever seen before.

Rachel Bell

You know if you have a business page on Facebook, things have changed a lot with the algorithm. Things have changed a lot with organic reach.

Luis, I know you’re a pro with having organic reach on Facebook, and I know you’ve taught me a lot of things with that as well. You understand the value of organic reach as that continues to diminish, and as it continues to be a little bit higher barrier to reach because they want you to pay. They want influencers and people like us to pay to have reach to our audiences, and that’s cool. But, if you know how to utilize the organic reach, then that’s amazing too.

Rachel Bell

Right now, the reason why use Instagram and it’s the king of engagement is because it has 58x higher engagement than Facebook, and 120x higher than on Twitter. That per-follower engagement rate is 4.21%. That’s significantly higher than any other social platform we see right now.

I just read an article a couple of hours earlier today, and they did an independent study that said that Instagram had 70% higher engagement rate than Facebook.

Right now, the organic potential for Instagram is insane, and that brings me to my third point to why use Instagram.

Rachel Bell

3. Organic growth is still promoted on Instagram.

The Instagram algorithm has changed apparently a lot since Facebook picked it up and people are complaining about,”Oh no, I’m not getting as much reach,” or “Things are changing, and I don’t know how it works.”

To that, I say, that’s going to be a problem for you if you’ve been using black hat techniques to grow your account.

A lot of people have been using automation like Instagress, Massplanner, FollowLiker, LeadFriend. We all know about this automation software that had been successful to use, but Instagram is cracking down on that. They’re sending letters to these companies asking them to shut down.

Rachel Bell

And so, everything is changing on Instagram. They’re cracking down on spam accounts, automated accounts, accounts that are buying followers and likes, and fake engagement. They’re bringing back the organic magic of Instagram that we started with.

I’m a pro for it because Ross and I all along have been using white hat techniques to grow this. We are 100% organic. We’ve never used a bot. We’ve never bought anything shady, and so we’re excited about it because it’s going just to boost our engagement, growth, and reach on the platform. That’s another reason why use Instagram.

Ross Johnson

Yeah, absolutely.

Ross Johnson

One of the best techniques and it seems so obvious right out of the gate is that to be social on the platform. That’s super important. That’s the exact reason why people have been using bots and automation and buying likes, comments, followers. It’s because they’re trying to trick the Instagram algorithm and to think that they are very social and when you are very social, you get rewarded for that type of behavior.

We’ve been doing everything organically. We work a lot on Instagram. We do a lot. We spend a lot of hours on it, and because of that, we’re able to get rewarded.

Ross Johnson

One of the number one tips I would say to anyone who’s trying to start or grow their Instagram account is you have to build a network on the platform. You have to connect with influencers or people in your niche and collaborate with them, exchange engagement. What that does is it allows you to reach their audience.

For example, if you have a car account and you connect with 40 other car accounts, then, exchange engagement, it’s going to make easier for each other’s audiences to see your content. That’s huge on Instagram and another reason why use Instagram.

Rachel Bell

Yeah, definitely.

Rachel Bell

I would say our network is one of the biggest things that have helped us grow fast and form relationships that we can cross promote and cross pollinate with. That’s where you’re going to get most of your power on Instagram as just an Instagram influencer.

To become an Instagram influencer, your power comes from your network.

It’s just like in business, your network is your net worth, so you want to make sure you’re reaching out to people who have a similar following or similar engagement as you want, and just becoming their buddies, giving themselves engagement, and making sure they’re exchanging that with you as well.

There are tons of tactics we use. I can’t staple one thing and say that’s the one thing you need to do because it’s such a holistic practice that we have as organic Instagram growth experts.

Rachel Bell

We would recommend utilizing the right hashtags. That doesn’t mean just hashtagging fitness because look at how many people are using that hashtag. You have no chance of ranking in a hashtag. You got to be smart about what hashtag you use, and if that’s going to allow you to rank in that hashtag or not, and what that means is getting you to the top.

We use hashtags, our network, and great content. That’s one of the things that’s going to make people follow you instead of just like your content.

Rachel Bell

You want people to become followers that can become leads so that eventually, they can become loyal clients who love you and follow your brand.

Your content is going to be one of the main things you want to pay attention to and pour your energy into as well.

Ross Johnson

Also, I would just add one more thing, which is consistency.

Rachel Bell

Yeah.

Ross Johnson

You have to be super consistent.

Rachel Bell

That’s a good question.

Ross Johnson

There’s like this whole underground world that people have no idea about on Instagram like third party apps like Telegram, Whatsapp. There are some other ones, but mainly, they’re just messaging platforms where people create those big group chats that are like 3,000 people. Then, they’ll all decide to like and comment on each other’s stuff at a specific time on specific days.

Ross Johnson

For example, every day at 3 o’clock ET, everyone joins that group and everyone posts immediately at that same time, and then everyone likes and comments on each other’s stuff.

That is an effective way to grow. That’s one thing people don’t know about, and it’s just like a growth hack.

Who cares if they follow you? That’s not the point of it. The point of it is to get a lot of engagement on your content fast so that you’re either able to rank for the hashtags you’re using.

Ross Johnson

Like Rachel said earlier just so everyone’s clear on that is ranking in the top nine famous photos for that hashtag, which means you got the most engagement or the fastest engagement. That’s going to help people see your content.

Another way you can get followers is by landing on the explore page. If you hit that little magnifying glass on Instagram, you’ll just see a bunch of content that Instagram thinks you might like. You’re going to land there on a couple 100,000 people’s Instagram account. You’ll get thousands of followers in a day.

Rachel Bell

Yeah.

And, you’ll know when you hit the explore page.

Rachel Bell

If you have the business settings activated on your account, you can see how many impressions you’re getting, and if you get a million impressions like we did just last week, you’ll gain thousands of followers in a day.

Ross Johnson

Yeah. We get around 3,000 followers in 30 hours just from hitting the explore page because we got there and we were so discoverable on that platform.

Ross Johnson

We did that by using great content, manufacturing engagement at first, but once you get the ball rolling fast enough, Instagram picks it up. They promote you organically, and then you got tons of followers who have never seen your content before. They don’t know who you are, and they’re new people who can see your stuff.

Rachel Bell

Yeah.

Then, just one of the things about taking Instagram to the next level and what people should be focusing on these days is just taking it seriously.

Rachel Bell

There are many businesses and business owners I talked to now who are like “Yeah, we have an Instagram.” But I look at their Instagram, and they have around 200 followers. They’re posting once a year or something like that.

Ross Johnson

They’re following 8,000 people.

Rachel Bell

They’re following 8,000 people, and we just look at this, and we’re like, “You have so much potential to reach a 700 million-follower network that you’re just underutilizing like crazy.”

People don’t take it seriously for a lot of different reasons. But even when businesses do take it somewhat seriously, and they try to create a presence on Instagram, they’re not doing fundamental things. They’re not putting a customized link in their bios so that they can track clicks, and track conversions to see if they’re making sales or to gathering leads from Instagram. They’re not treating it as a traffic source, and the qualified traffic source that there is.

Rachel Bell

If you are to planning on using Instagram for your business, make sure you have all the tracking on there, and that you’re tracking your success. Make sure you can measure everything you’re doing so you can improve and make pivots if needed.

Rachel Bell

When you start an account basically, there are two different types of accounts.

You have a personal account, which is an account that follows the life of you, what you do on a daily basis. It’s more like about a public figure.

Rachel Bell

Then, there’s an account that you can make called the branded account, which is just a curated profile that either reposts content, or it creates content that’s according to a particular aesthetic and theme.

You’ll see a lot of car themed accounts or luxury themed accounts like we have one.

Ross Johnson

Like fashion.

Rachel Bell

Fashion, make up. You’ll see business accounts, quote accounts, motivation. These are all huge on Instagram.

Rachel Bell

Now, here are the reasons why use Instagram, and everyone’s creating curated content account:

1. It’s easy.

It’s a lot easier than creating a lot of your original content every single day that has to be high quality.

2. You know how it can perform.

If you’re repurposing content from other accounts as a branded account, you can go to different accounts and see what photos are performing way better than the other ones. You can take those pictures and post them on your profile so that you know every single photo that you post will perform better than 99% of the other content on Instagram.’

Rachel Bell

A lot of people are kind of growth hacking their Instagrams by using best performing content and posting that on theirs.

The advantage of using a curated content profile is the fact you know what’s going to perform, and what’s not going to perform, and you’re able to skyrocket your growth from there.

Rachel Bell

When we’re managing accounts for brands and businesses, we’re saying, “Okay. Do we have your permission to leverage our content? It’s because if we can, we can grow you like crazy.”

If someone wants to grow with their original content, that’s cool too. It just has to be stellar and high quality. You’re going to grow a little bit slower, but you still will grow, and the quality of your followers will still be very high.

Ross Johnson

And it’s just untested.

Ross Johnson

If you want to post your content, it’s untested. All these other content that you can find on Instagram is established and tested. We know it’s viral. We’ve seen it go viral on multiple accounts, on multiple occasions.

For some reason, that piece of content gets 10x more engagement every single time, and then you would know if you posted that and did a similar strategy, you would able to get very high engagement with that also.

Rachel Bell

Yeah, exactly.

Rachel Bell

We both recommend research.

Ross Johnson

Content research.

Rachel Bell

You have no idea. Ross spent 20-30 hours of ongoing research doing our hashtags because it’s like a constant practice.

Whenever we set-up with a client, we say, “You know what? This is going to be a regular practice. You’re going to outgrow certain hashtags. You’re going to want to expand out of certain hashtags, and you want to test them, obviously.”

The thing I would recommend with your hashtags is not just choosing them willy-nilly. Don’t just pick the obvious ones like #fitness, #fitfam. Don’t just do the obvious ones. Those are going to be important so that you can train Instagram’s algorithm to associate you with other fitness related accounts as well.

But, you have 30 hashtags that you’re allowed to use per post.

Rachel Bell

Make sure you’re utilizing those 30 hashtags in all different ways which means you can use those by having either big hashtags in there like #fitness and then you can have smaller ones like #coloradofitness. That’s more niched down. It’s a little bit more targeted, and you’re still able to rank in those top nine, which will eventually attract more followers from that type of community.

Ross Johnson

Right.

Ross Johnson

If you’re running a local business, you can use local hashtags to make sure you’re connecting with individuals in that city.

For example, we just moved to San Diego from Boulder. But if we were in Boulder, Colorado, everyone knows there are mountains right there in town called the Flatirons. They’re super iconic.

If we were working with a business in Boulder, we want to attract people in Boulder. Flatirons might be a hashtag we’d use because the only individuals who are going to be tagging that are people in that city probably.

Rachel Bell

Exactly.

Rachel Bell

The key to grow your Instagram is to treat your Instagram account like an entire business. We don’t just start an Instagram account for fun anymore. We used too, and that was incredible. That taught us a lot, but now, we invest the hours and hours of research into competitors, influencers, niche, hashtags, and how we can reach our target audience. We do it so we’re not just doing it, wasting our time, spinning our wheels, and wondering why we’re not getting leads from Instagram.

If you’re business-focused when it comes to Instagram, you need to treat it like a part of your business and do the upfront research it requires.

Ross Johnson

There are a few companies that have done $20million+ in Instagram only. Frank Body is a face scrub. They did $20 million their first year in business all because of Instagram. MVMT Watches did $40 million last year from sales. Two-thirds of their sales were directly from Instagram.

If anyone has a brand or has business that has a product like that, you need to be using Instagram. It’s going to be huge, especially for connecting with the younger demographic. As time goes on, it’s going to be pivotable to your business.

Rachel Bell

Exactly, pivotable, because that’s an awesome word.

Rachel Bell

It’s better than using regular words.

Rachel Bell

Create your words. That’s fantastic.