Solo episode
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[00:00:00] Hey business besties. Welcome back to the female founder world podcast. It's Jasmine and the host of the show and the creator of the female founder, bold universe. Before I jump into today's episode. I want to give you another podcast recommendation. This podcast is a new one that I came across. It's called marketing ATM. And I have loved it.
It's by two experienced founders and it's all about marketing trends and insights. And if that's your world, I think you are going to absolutely love it. I'll put a link in the show notes. Also it's marketing ATM, wherever you listen to pods. Today, we have a solo episode on the pod. It's just me. And I'm talking you through something that we've been thinking about a lot in the female founder world team recently, and chatting about all the time. It is Instagram.
And I know that sounds like, oh yeah, Jocelyn. We know all about Instagram, obviously. No. I feel like we have really, , shifted to focusing on tech talk, which we absolutely love [00:01:00] tech dog. It is an amazing channel that has democratized, entrepreneurship and audience building for so many people. And it has this like real potential to convert people quickly.
But we've just found recently that Instagram is converting a lot better and I feel like we've unlocked. This way of really building. Not a huge audience. We don't have hundreds of thousands of followers, but it's still a very, very significant sales channel for female founder world. And that's because we have created truly a deeply engaged niche audience that clicks what we give them.
That shops, when we offer them something. And that is genuinely a community and not just an audience. And I want to tell you about how we've been doing that because we're an Instagram account. That's only been around a couple of years, so it's not like we built this big following in 2017 or 2018 when. You know, there weren't wasn't that much content on [00:02:00] Instagram and it was kind of easier to build following. This is all happened really recently.
And I want to tell you exactly what's working right now and the lessons for you as a consumer brand builder. An entrepreneur, somebody in the marketing space because these hard won insights. And I think they're going to really, really help. The first one, I want to talk about the buckets of content. I think about content under two kind of categories.
And this is about the perceived value from the person who is seeing your content. The first bucket is me too content. And this isn't me to, in terms of the feminist movement. This is me too, in terms of content that makes people feel sane. And I'm going to talk about that in more detail in a second. And then the next bucket is helpful.
It's hell, it's kind of a, makes people think. Hmm. Helpful. Thank you. And that is another kind of way that we [00:03:00] organize and the lens that we want to create our content. Through. And I'll talk about that and give some examples in a second as well. But first of all, may too, it's kind of your emotional entry point to connect with people. What you can do is sit down and write out a bunch of different things.
Attributes, interests that are very specific to your target customer or your audience. And. We did this in a Google document during a zoom call with our team. And we just wrote down all of these things.
So, for example, for the FEMA founder, world community for you guys, you're probably working from different cafes and different places. , all the time, you might not have dedicated office.
A lot of you will, but a lot of you won't, you'll be going between coworking spaces, cafes working from home.
You also are likely somebody who is mostly bootstrapped. We do have a bunch of people on the pod. And in our community who are venture backed, but the [00:04:00] majority of folks in our community at building businesses that are profitable, and that is a very unique experience in the world. And there are obviously lots of other things as well, but that's an example of the kind of experiences, maybe the point of view that a lot of people that are our target audience, our target customer, that they hold. And then once you have this idea about kind of like, what, what is the through line about the personality traits, the experiences that the worldview and the opinion of the people you want to reach and connect with? Then you can create this all the column in your table, or, you know, at this other page in your document, which is content ideas based on that.
So for example, , we create some, , some content that's gone quite viral that is specifically about, uh, trying to get your brand into independent stores about working from cafes. Funny stuff that is. Just not, and not even funny, just, just, just so niche that when somebody sees it, they're like, [00:05:00] this is so specific to my personal experience. And they are going to like it, but they're probably also going to share it with somebody who is there.
You know, we call them business besties, but somebody else who they know has that similar experience as well, just to be like, , it's a, it's a way to trade intimacy on the internet. You kind of sharing someone and being like, oh, this is us and we've all done it. And it's something that's really hard to quantify, but as a content creator and a brand creating content on the internet, that's kind of the way that you should think about it to do that. And truly that is the way that you create content that is going to perform really well all the time. That's one of the ways to kind of build trust and build connection with these people, but then you also have to just like establish yourself as somebody who is adding a lot of value, particularly in our place, in our space. Be my founder world is not the only community for business owners, but we have a really clear point of view about this very [00:06:00] specific kind of entrepreneur who has just been left out of the conversation. Our businesses are not getting profiled and business insider and tech crunch.
We are probably not raising millions of dollars. Like the big conversation for us isn't oh, how do we get more venture capital venture capital funding? No, it's how do we retain most of the equity in our company? ? How do we create, not take an idea and create something that we love out into the world?
And we want to add a value for those people as well. And we do that a lot through carousel posts, these perform really well. And I think about something that is a very specific niche question. There's somebody in our community will have that question might be. How do I slide it into an influencer or a celebrities?
DMS, because I'm not paying for an agency. I'm not pets paying $10,000 a month to work at the big PR agency. I want to do this myself. Oh with my team, my small team. How do I do that? And so we'll create an [00:07:00] Instagram carousel about that. We have our own way of kind of harvesting the expertise from across the community to make sure that is excellent.
Excellent quality content. And. You go, if you think it's good, you need to go one step further. You are competing, not just with other people in your category. You're competing on Instagram with. World-class professional full-time media companies and content creators who are spending their. Entire days, literally thinking, how do I make this piece of content go viral?
So nothing can be an afterthought if you've got that gut feeling of like, oh, this is. This isn't quite there. Do not post it, keep working on it until you are sure that that piece of content is adding so much value. When you're creating these Instagram carousel posts, I want you to forget about this really beautiful post.
Yes. It needs to like align with your brand and all those things. But the number [00:08:00] one thing truly is. Have you used an image that will stop people from scrolling and is the text big enough? For people to read on your carousel and not just read, but to skim, like they are spending seconds and then they're saving or sending it to someone. So you want to make sure that that is really, really clear.
Go and have a look at the female founder about Instagram. You'll see that. Our carousels perform really, really well. And that's because we prioritize these things, adding values, so, so much value. To a very, very specific person. And making sure that it is a thumb stopping, you know, scrolls, topping image and a great headline. In large text and it sounds like really simplistic. But so many people aren't doing this. And you'll kind of, you know, if you work with a graphic designer to create templates for Instagram, They always going to come back with a lot of white space and small font that you can't read.
And I work with the graphic designers [00:09:00] all the time. We love them, but I'm constantly going back to them and saying, you need bigger font. You need bigger font. It needs to be clear. This isn't your website, where you have an opportunity for lots of storytelling. You need to grab people in a fraction of a second and you need to make it easy for them to know what it is that you're trying to tell them. And a real no-brainer. [00:10:00]
then there are some things that you should be doing to optimize your content.
And the first thing is. Optimizing to share on direct message. And we are finding that increasingly Instagram is becoming a more kind of like private messaging space. We're not seeing as many as much [00:11:00] conversation in the comments as maybe five years ago, but we're seeing that people are sharing and having these private conversations. About our Instagram content in their DMS. And the way that you do this is of course, you know, creating that me too, kind of content those buckets and creating the educational content that makes people think. Helpful.
Thank you. But it's also about explicitly telling people to share your content. You'd be surprised how well this does. With an Instagram carousel save is also something that is a really intuitive action. So we often will just say right at the beginning. Save this, or share this with X, you know, what person would somebody share this with?
And it's not spammy. It's not, you know, explicitly asking for that. It's just a reminder. It makes people think. Yeah, actually so-and-so would love this or like actually, yes, I do want to revisit this later. I'll send it to my team or whatever it is. So explicitly call that out and ask for it [00:12:00] and really, um, really optimized for that. At that direct message as your ultimate engagement metric. So as an example, you know, we, we dropped a video a little while ago with Lindsey Carter.
You heard her on the podcast, she's the founder of this incredible active wear brand. Called set active. And from that podcast interview, we created a bunch of clips and one of them was where Lindsay was really talking about just this shitty time that she's had in her business recently and how she's come out of that. And that conversation has already had nearly a hundred thousand views across our platform.
And that's because people are sharing it. They're sharing it with people who. They know, I having a hard time in their business. They're sharing it with people that they're having these conversations privately. With and that trust. Helps you helps you connect with more people. It helps you. Yes go viral, but really create deeper resonance with the people who are already following you.
I also want you to optimize by [00:13:00] creating a content for Instagram first. We could very easily create a top level kind of, you know, interesting things about a podcast episode, whatever. No, we take the information and then send people to listen to the podcast, but no, we take the information from the podcast and we turn it into something that works for Instagram.
First. We're not trying to get people necessarily to listen to the podcast. We want them to get the complete story and all the value. On the platform that they're on. So that's another thing that you need to think about and something that I think people are getting wrong still on Instagram. Another tip is Instagram stories.
This should not be an afterthought. Instagram stories is one of the, is one of our top converting tunnels. It is one of the few places on Instagram where you can easily and freely link to anywhere on the web. We can tag multiple people, have them share it is, and it is still just this afterthought for so many people.
I think when Instagram stories was [00:14:00] added, it was kind of like. To share what's on your feet or, you know, post some quick things. No. I want you to think about your Instagram stories in the same way that you think about anything that you're posting to your feed, because also Instagram stories like. It's easy to stand out there because people are not doing a good job. And if some, if the user behavior for a lot of people, it truly is. Swiping through the Instagram stories because they are accounts that they already liked that they already. Trust.
And so you can just continue this like deep conversation with people who have already discovered you through your feed. And if you just pay attention to that channel, I think that there is a huge opportunity there that a lot of people are missing and really disregarding. So don't sleep on Instagram stories.
Think of it in the same way that you think about. Any of your other kind of in fade channels, like reels or still images or carousels? , there was just so much value there.
Another point I want to [00:15:00] bring up is collab pers too. Many of you are sleeping on collaboration posts on Instagram. These are just the most incredible way. To tap another person's community, whether it is co-creating content with them, finding people who have bigger audiences and might want your type of expertise on their channels.
I want you to really be going out and intentionally finding these distribution partners for your Instagram content. And collaborating with them. It is a very simple feature. When you post, when you post on Instagram, instead of tagging someone, you invite them to collaborate. They accept it. And then it's shared to both of your followers. So is, this has been something that we've done.
That's helped us rack up. Over 11 million views on Instagram in the last year. And it's. Because we've really figured it out. We've identified some great collaboration partners. And it's really helping with outreach. And so I definitely recommend that you do that. It [00:16:00] doesn't necessarily have to be some move with a huge audience or, you know, a huge following.
It could be somewhere. , or someone that has a really engaged following, but make sure you're thinking when you create the content. Who could be. Distribution partner for this specific piece of content or for a series of content, and then go out there and reach those people and actually cannot believe that I'm coming away, all of this stuff because. This has been really hard, won knowledge. And so please, if you're enjoying this, like I'm actually getting a bit nervous about giving away all of this advice.
Can you please drop a review of the podcast if you're enjoying it and. Maybe I'll tell you about our newsletter strategy next.
I have one last, super actionable recommendation for you. And that is to sign up for a tool called many chat. Or kind of hacky away to. Replicate it's process yourself manually. And I'll tell you how now. So many chat is a, is a tool. You can use it on [00:17:00] app. You can use it on desktop. I find it way easier to use on the computer, but it does work on an. Up to, and it's essentially, you've seen, you've seen people use it.
So when a lot of educators course creators content creators, when they ask you to comment, a key word, To send you a free download or cause, or RSVP to a webinar or something like that. If they ask you to comment on a post with that, they're probably using many chat to then automatically send you a direct message with the link to enter your email address and get whatever that thing is that they've promised you. This is such a good feature.
If you. Want to sign up for many chat. It's not super expensive. I think it's like $20 a month. But you can of course, test this yourself without figuring out the platform. You can simply manually send those DMS to people. But the reason why many chat is great. It's because you can enter people into a flow [00:18:00] of DMS, so you can send a followup direct message.
You can. Ah, tag them in your email list, according to what they downloaded through Instagram, DM, like it is an amazing automation tool that a lot of people in the CPG and consumer brand and product based business base just aren't using. I don't know why that is. If it's just. Still within like this course creator realm and they haven't moved into this new category yet, but I really recommend trying it out. And the use case, right?
I think this would be super helpful for a lot of you is when you are launching a new product or launching a new brand and you're building your waitlist. I would create a very specific offer. Something like 20% off for 24 hours. When we drop this product, you'll be the first day her about it. Plus, you'll get this discount that you can't get anywhere else.
It's only for people on our wait list. Comment white list and we'll direct message you the link to sign up. [00:19:00] People seem to do that action much more regularly than they do. Uh, clicking on a link on Instagram stories. Even those stories are still great. , the comment to DM feature just generates a lot more. Email conversions.
And so I highly recommend, I feel like you'll be one of the few consumer brands doing it. So go and try this out while it's not super, super saturated in your category. It's such a powerful marketing tool, and God knows when Instagram is going to shut this down. I don't know. , for now it seems like they're all integrated.
There are no issues. Um, it's very much a loud. We haven't been, you know, shadow banned or anything like that. Instagram seems totally cool with that. Go and do this now get the email addresses of the people that are following you. 'cause you know how it goes a little algorithm shift. Um, losing access to your account. And all of a sudden, all of that hard work that you've done in building Instagram, you've lost that relationship with all of those people.
So [00:20:00] that's just a great way to make sure you're getting the email addresses and kind of moving people off the platform or having another way to communicate with them so that all of your. All of your ducks are in a row and you've got a, what were the plan in case something happens to Instagram account. Okay.
I hope you guys enjoyed the Charlotte. If you did, like I said, please leave us a review. If she share it on Instagram stories tag at female founder world. So we can replace this. Or at Jasmine Ganzi, I will repost it. And give you a little visibility as well to our super engaged community of folks on Instagram stories.
Thanks ever on chat T next week. I just wanted to jump in and end the show with a quick thank you and shout out to all of our paid business bestie subscribers for 9 a month. Business besties bypass literally years of networking by getting access to all of the people that you need to build your dream business. Besties get access to exclusive in [00:21:00] person meetups in cities all All across the U S Australia and the UK, you get access to our group chat and you get to bypass the wait list.
You also get invited to exclusive monthly group business coaching call sessions where you can speak to experts and founders and ask them all of those questions that you just can't Google. It's 9 a month. You can cancel any time, head to bestie. vmarfounderworld. com or click the link in the show notes for more.
