 Okay, how many of you guys are using Instagram right now? How many of you guys are using Instagram for business? How many of you guys are satisfied with the amount of business you're getting from Instagram? Okay, so hopefully we can help you improve that today. I'm going to share with you some tips really quick about how you can generate leads utilizing Instagram. A little bit about me. I've been in corporate America over 10 years. Work with some of the larger corporations, AT&T, YP, Web.com. And I developed a passion for online. I still do it today. I help businesses create a 24-7 online sales force, also known as a website. And then from that I show them how to generate new clients and leads utilizing Instagram, Facebook, and PPC. So that's just a little bit about me. Let's dig in right now. This is going to be hands-on to get your phones out, if you like, and get on Instagram because I'm going to take you through some steps that can improve what to do. Why Instagram? Instagram has over 800 million users. I hear this from so many people. My customers on on Instagram, it's for teens, right? No, it's not. 33% of all Internet users are on Instagram and they're between the ages, and I think about 24 and 49. Your customers are using Instagram. It's got more engagement than any other social network out there right now. I say it all the time to people. It's white, hot. It's owned by Facebook. If you know anything about doing business on Facebook, Facebook has turned into a pay-to-play atmosphere. I feel like Instagram is going to go that way, but it's not right now. Ten times more engagement on Instagram. Over 70% of businesses are on Instagram, and they're not just playing around. They're doing business on Instagram. One of the things you can do is every business has a visual story. That's what the platform is all about, creating a visual story. This is a room of creatives, so everyone has a visual story to tell. So look for your visual story. So let's get into it. How to attract your ideal client with your bio. I don't have a lot of time today, so I'm going to give you some tips and tricks with your bio. Number one, use a close-up profile photo. I was going through Instagram yesterday and saw someone, they've got a full shot of them. When that's on mobile, you can't see it. If your face represents your brand, use your face. If it's your logo, use your logo. If it's an avatar, use an avatar. I use my avatar everywhere. That's just my brand. The other thing on Instagram, a lot of people don't know, you've got two names. You've got a username. Now the username, that's the name you utilize when you first set up your account. Okay? So that's usually your company name or your brand name. The other name you've got is an Instagram name. And a lot of people, they miss this because Instagram is searchable. People are searching on hashtags for things that you do and services that you offer. A lot of times people say, no, that's my brand. I'm leaving it just the way it is. But you know what, if no one knows you, they're never going to find you. That's one of the only searchable areas in your bio. So I suggest using keywords in that. If you do web design, make sure you include web design or Atlanta web design. So that when people type in, for instance, with me, social media marketing tips, my goal is to either come up under top people or hashtags. So make your utilize keywords in that bio. That's huge because people want to be like, oh, I'm a guru or this, or I'm a king of this or this or that. No one's searching for that. They're searching for products and services or things that they can get help with a lot of time. And they're also searching for recreational things, which also people offer those services as well. Other thing, a website link, step back real quick because if you don't have your Instagram account set up as a business page, you need to do that first. You get analytics with that. On that website link, make sure that you use a website shortener, like a Bitly or a Google, so that you make it trackable so that you can get analytics. You'll know how many people are clicking on my link. There are also other tools out there that will allow you to utilize multiple links. One is called Link Tree, where you can utilize multiple links to send them to different calls of to action. As the gentleman before me mentioned having a landing page, and that brings me to another thing. You want to have a call to action before they even click that link. Give them a freebie, give them a tip, give them a reason to click your website link. Also a bonus tip on this, use your notes app. You can use Evernote. You can use one that I like a lot is called WordCounter, because you've got 150 characters in that bio to tell who you are, what you do, and how you can help someone. Utilize those tools. The Character Counter or Word Counter, I love that because it'll tell you you've got 150 characters and you're good to go. Also utilize emojis in there. It's a great atmosphere. Have some fun. Strategies for Instagram success, again use Instagram as a business page. Uh oh, make your profile public. I've seen a lot of businesses. They have a business page, but then it's private. No one's going to find you. Also link your Instagram business account to your Facebook page as well. Uh oh, hold on. I'm getting clicker happy here. Let me make sure I got those. Tips for engagement. You want to follow, like, and comment on related accounts, especially like competition or accounts that you admire that do similar things to what you do. Engage with their followers because they're obviously interested in what you do as well. Make your feed visually appealing. Again, we're in a room of creatives. That shouldn't be hard to do at all. Look at what some other people are doing. I've seen some great things from graphic designers out there, people in fashion. Kim Kardashian, look at her feed. It's visually appealing. Another thing, use relevant hashtags. That's a whole other subject matter in its own because, again, Instagram is people are using hashtags to search for entertaining things, services, things that interest them. I've picked up web design projects on Instagram. I've picked up social media accounts on Instagram. I've hired a writer on Instagram. Business is being done on Instagram, and it's white hot right now. Also use Instagram stories. 300 million people are using Instagram stories. That's a way for your business to have an online television show every single day. And you get a lot of engagement with that as well. Also, again, get inspiration for other Instagram accounts. Five common Instagram mistakes, how to avoid them. There's no clear message to what you do or what you offer. People come to your page. They don't know if it's your personal page or your business page. Keep them separate. If I'm coming for Instagram or social media tips, I don't want to see what you ate last night. Save that for your personal page. Putting links in your caption. You've got that one clickable link, and that's in your bio. I've seen people put links in their caption or description. It doesn't work because it's not clickable. Buying followers, trying to be like the Joneses. Your engagement's going to suck. And the other thing is that, it reminds me of a quote I read one time. Once, everyone starts at ground zero on Instagram. And then the other, don't compare your chapter one to somebody else's chapter 40. Took a lot of hard work to get there. Be patient with the process and it'll happen. Also using Instagram as a billboard. Me, me, me, me. No one wants to hear that. Help people. Give advice. Show some behind the scenes stuff. Show you working on your last website project. There's a ton of different things you could do. And then occasionally throw in the promo. And people will appreciate that more. The other one, no hashtag strategy. Because again, no one's going to find you. I've had people say, no, I don't want you to want a hashtag. Okay, what you're doing, you're limiting the amount of people who can actually find you for the types of services that you offer. Because that's a key strategy to Instagram. And that's a whole nother can of worms right there. What I'd like to do is invite anyone who's interested here to Instagram hashtag strategy workshop for businesses. It's absolutely free. It's this Thursday from 12 p.m. to 1.30 p.m. I'm going to cover things like how to use hashtags in 2018 to promote your brand. Why hashtags are a must on Instagram. Which hashtags to use? How many? That's a question I get a lot. How many should I be using? How to do proper hashtag research? Because you can't just say, hey, I'm going to use hashtag I love. Hashtag happy and expect to be found. It doesn't work like that. There's a strategy to it and I'm going to show you that. And again, this is going to be an absolutely free workshop. Also, how to use hashtags to spy on your competition. How to organize your hashtags as well. And then some of the best hashtag tools as well. So if you're interested, all you have to do is text IG hashtag to 38470. The other thing, if you guys are interested in a deeper dive into how you set up your bio, I've got a step by step video on YouTube. All you have to do is go to YouTube, type in your marketing lady, and you'll see that video. It's probably about five, seven minutes long. Maybe a little longer because it goes into detail. I'm going to show you step by step what I just covered for you in terms of how to optimize your bio. And you're also welcome to follow me there as well, because I'll be sharing weekly social media tips. Questions? Right there. Every day if you can. If you're doing it for business, I maybe use it three times a day at most. Sometimes I'll use mine only once a day, but I'll add to that story throughout the day. That's a whole other subject as well. And in fact, I'm going to have a workshop on that coming up soon, because I was in your same position. I was hearing all this Instagram stories, and it's not that difficult. Again, it's like your own television show. You've got 15 second clips to basically tell little tidbits about your company things you're doing that day. And you can add on to those clips as well. So that's like, I can't even, I don't have enough time to go into that. I wish I could. Effective both ways, but the strategy behind putting the hashtags in the comments is so that it doesn't look spammy. Because you get up to 30 hashtags, and a lot of people will tell you, well, you need to use three hashtags to start, then use seven hashtags. No, use between 15 and 18 hashtags. My theory behind that is I've got 30 lottery tickets I want to give to you. How many of those do you want? And that's what I'm saying. There's no difference in that. The biggest difference is that one, you just got a lot of hashtags after the other. If you put them in the comment, it hides it so it doesn't look as spammy. So both of them are going to get found. If you're using the right hashtag. And there's again a strategy behind that because hashtags that gets millions and millions of searches, it's going to be, you're going to get buried. Your goal is to be discovered. They send you reminders, most of them. Some of them do auto posting, but they won't include hashtags. I usually, I do my posting manually still. I'll use Buffer to remind me to post. Even for my clients, I still post manually just because of the hashtag strategy. I use Planoly just to visually look at mine before I'm posting. Yeah, this class is on hashtag strategies, but there's going to be some tools for hashtags. I also do workshops and things all the time. We're talking about different tools to you. So that those will be coming up. And I always take input from what people are wanting. I couldn't hear you. The best what? Best verify to get it verified on Instagram. For one, you need a huge account. So that's a whole nother topic in itself. And then there's a lot of misconceptions about how to get verified. You've got a lot of people put these hacks and things on there where they show you how to get verified, but only you can see it. So the bigger thing now is worrying about building up your community. And then you can take that step next. Any other questions? Great question. How do hashtags work and why do people use them? When you go to Google, you're looking for something, right? So you're typing in a search query, right? That's the same concept that people utilize on Instagram, except they're using hashtags. So even if I type in social media tips, it's going to give me top. It's going to give me people and it's going to give me hashtags. So even if I'm searching that way, and unless I'm hitting on a person, I'm going to go to a hashtag and there's going to be a bunch of results. There's going to be top results and recent results. So I hope I answered your question in the sense that it works similar to Google, the way that people are actually searching. All right. So folks, Tanya is local here in Atlanta. She gives workshops like this one that she mentioned all the time. So