 So all right. So let's talk about Instagram strategy as a creator or as a business and let me start with what you might typically hear out there As as the Instagram strategy and by the way, I'm not making fun of anybody who's teaching Instagram. I'm just basically saying Listen, I've heard about these strategies. I've read about them I've tried them myself and I don't think they are the most, you know I would call authentic and and simple Ways to to build an Instagram sort of presence. All right, so first of all You might hear from people that I'm just going to stop the screen share because The document keeps turning different colors depending on who's highlighting it, right? So the first thing that you might learn elsewhere is oh, if you go on Instagram, you got to post pretty pictures The the the most the more striking the images the most the more beautiful and artistic the images The more likes you're going to get and the more followers you're going to get and isn't that what we're all after more likes and followers I'm pausing for effect because Well, it's a good question, right? Are we just trying to get more followers and more more more likes on our things? and maybe You know, I'd be curious to know what your kind of initial responses to that Are we simply trying to get more followers and more likes and more comments and more shares? I'll just put I'll throw those in too right Well, I'll I'll keep going here my answer is no We're not trying to get more followers or likes or comments or shares Unless they are the right followers and the right likers and the right commenters and the right sharers Because it's actually not hard to get hundreds of likes on any instagram image. You just post a pretty image preferably of you know a model looking person So I put myself out of the running right there You post a pretty image, right? And then you use hashtags like happy and love and Popular hashtags that will get get you hundreds of likes in no time like that. Is that a good strategy? You'll get lots of followers. Maybe you'll get over the 10 the fabled 10k, right? Or at least the initial 10k But then what happens is you have an audience of people who don't actually care About your products or your services or your real message and what happens when you have a fake audience on instagram Is that when you start posting your real message, right? Not just your pretty pictures and whatever but you're actually You're posting messages related to your business the organic Reach is going to be so pitiful because The way the organic reach works works on instagram and so this this is the same as how it works on facebook as well is that Instagram will show your image or your video in batches They first show it to some organic some of your organic audience meaning people who already follow you And if they scroll past it if they don't care about it, right? then Instagram will will will basically Kill it. I mean in the algorithm in the news feed. They're not going to show it to a lot more people But if the original the first batch of people you they show it to Good engagement, right? Especially meaningful engagement if there are comments that are just more than hearts hearts fire fire or whatever But if there's some meaningful comments or even shares or saves of your instagram post Then they're going to show it to a lot more of your followers So in other words, if you're building an instagram following that is a fake following meaning people who don't really They just like because you have pretty images and you use popular hashtags Then when you start using real messages, you're like, how come My my organic posts are getting dead zero reach unless I post a pretty picture with popular hashtags Well, now you know So it would it's actually more Like I said, I think it's more authentic, but it's also more sustainable of a strategy When you just try to reach the right people because then your data is always correct and you're always growing at a very Uh Actually manageable pace because you don't want to suddenly get flooded with a bunch of spam and direct messages There people trying to pitch you on different things So it's better to grow at a manageable pace With the right followers because then your organic algorithm reaches always going to be quite quite the same and growing Okay, so that's that's good. So um, so yeah, so posting pretty pictures, especially selfies My my other kikas complaint around that strategy is that It, uh, have you have you heard of the fixed mindset versus the growth mindset? It's from a book called mindset by carol dweck stanford Researcher and it's a fantastic book. Um, but the basic idea. I'll just summarize it for you real quick Is that you can either? Reminds me a little bit of that story of the bad wolf and a good wolf inside each of us, right? You can either foster a fixed mindset within yourself or growth mindset a fixed mindset is Okay, I only have a certain amount of talent that I was born with and I have to keep proving My talent and my excellence Otherwise, um, you know, I'm going to be irrelevant uh to people and unloved and unrespected and not have the Opportunities, etc. So the fixed mindset is I got to keep proving myself. I got to be perfect I got to make sure I'm always looking good and make sure everything's always good I don't want to disappoint anybody right the fixed mindset. I'm probably butchering it a little bit But it's basically like that whereas the growth mindset The growth mindset which you can also nurture within yourself is basically hey, there's nothing I can't accomplish If I set my mind and heart to it if I have enough practice in other words, uh thoughtful practice creates growth right and so the the so that's why like when people post selfies I'm like, okay, but you're just you're just emphasizing your fixed mindset subconsciously within yourself Whereas the growth mindset is really about growth related messages. It's it's okay to make mistakes um that that type of stuff so So that typical strategy like I said not good for authenticity for also for sustainability The second the typical strategies use lots of hashtags hoping you get discovered I've already said you get discovered by a lot of the wrong people The third typical strategy is that oh on instagram It's very easy to get lots of followers You just go ahead and follow a lot of people and then they'll get curious about your profile and then come to your profile And they'll follow you back some of them will and then you can you and then after you follow you back You can unfollow them so that your ratio is nice and balanced You know you follow a hundred people and then after a week you unfollow the ones who didn't follow you back It's a very hacky Sort of gimmicky strategy that is being taught out there and like you know what I don't have time My life purpose isn't about this. Okay. It's like yeah, it works. Sure it works You can follow the people In the audiences that you want to follow you back and then hopefully but it's like what happens is You will notice when you go on instagram That there is a ratio meaning how many followers do you have versus how many people you're following Now it's okay to have more people you're following than are following you But you'll notice if some people are following Thousands of more people than are following them It doesn't look credible right especially for a business so You know, it's better to have either similar range of followers follows or even more people following you than you're following meaning You're actually follow So the best thing that you you actually want to follow the instagram profiles Like the nasdaq entrepreneur center That you actually want to keep up with that you actually care about their content You want to make sure you see their latest content or you want to support them? It's either a creator or a company or or a friend that you want to support or that you're actually genuinely interested in their updates Follow them Don't just follow people because you're hoping they'll follow you back because then it messes up your ratio And it's just not a good use of time. Okay all right Other simple strategies occasionally post testimonials about your product or service. That is a good thing. I would recommend that Occasionally post videos. I would recommend that as well Post stories, you know stories are basically 24 hour posts They disappear from the news feed from the timeline of your followers after 24 hours They could know but they're very they're very visible in those 24 hours at the top of the timeline Postos I would agree with that except I'll show you the way that I teach it is different It's a little bit more sustainable But typically people post stories with like countdowns and other kind of gimmicks. I'm like, yeah, but I don't know It's it just doesn't feel credible to me Anyway, another uh, you know Another of strategies you pay for thousands of dollars for highly produced one minute instagram video ad And the problem with that is If you have money to throw away go for it right to experiment with go for it. Try it out You know thousands of bucks is no big deal for you to create a one minute Great, but for most of us we can't afford to experiment like that because who knows that one minute video ad Might really not work or might draw the wrong audience. How do you know? So I really prefer to kind of grow in a very sustainable way all right deep breath And now let's go into what I consider to be a Recommended a good strategy, especially for authentic content, which I know Hopefully many of you all of you would want to create now. I want to also just want to Invite Maria if you want to interrupt me at any time at all If there are any questions that that that you feel are relevant, please interrupt me and I always like to have a conversation If whenever possible, so all right So I want to show you my screen again I'll show you this image here So basically This is what I recommend you nurture the right audience with messages related to your business Before you then sell occasionally your products or your services because the thing is Most of us are not so lucky to have a product or service that just random people Hear about it. They buy it. I mean yes sometimes that happens But most of us need a warm audience Before they they're going to buy our product or services. I mean, this is true for just about any business I mean the warmer the audience obviously the more likely they're going to buy Meaning and what is a warm audience a warm audience are the people who've already been engaging With your content with your images with your videos They've already been engaging so they already are familiar with your brand and that they have some good thoughts about your brand And so once they've been engaging a while they they recognize you they're familiar with it And then when you're selling your service or product, they're like, oh, yes I like that brand that person that company and sure I'm sure look they have a new product. How cool. Let me check it out Right people who don't know you they'll just oh, that's an ad. They're just going to keep scrolling That's most of the time. It's like that. So this is why When I run instagram ads, which I do all the time The vast majority of my instagram ad dollars Are not to sell my product or service the vast majority is actually To get new people finding me the right new people finding me or to nurture the existing audience And so like that's 80 of my ad budget the 20 percent where I then sell my product services The roi becomes 200 to 400 percent, which means that it more than pays for the um, you know It at least at least breaks even to to that product because then usually people will buy my thing End up buying other things over time So the the sort of lifetime value is much greater But at least breaks even for that month and then if not, you know, uh 50 to 100 percent, uh, roi so So so nurture with messages Okay in the occasionally sell so how can you how can you Have the right mindset To nurture your audience with messages I really encourage you starting today to look at The task of content creation Not as oh, I'm doing this so I can sell stuff Because your audience will sense that too Okay, but instead we're kind of like what nasdaq does here. I mean the content is just to Really it's really the intention is to serve as many people now not all of us are nonprofits, right? So but even the for-profit i'm a for-profit business, but I still look at content as a cause You might even say for those who are nor spiritually minded as a ministry my content as a ministry I just want to serve people with inspiring or helpful ideas that can better their life Okay, whether or not they ever buy from me Now because I come from that mindset in that heart space What happens of course is that the audience can sense it they can sense my care and So therefore of course trust will be earned. It's so funny. I don't believe trust can be built Because that sounds too calculating. You're like, oh, I'm going to build trust so I can sell no You earn trust by being authentic and consistent without authenticity and that generosity So I really encourage you to think of content as a service in itself It's like a free service for people who are your potential client potential customer type But you don't require any one person to buy from you You're serving the whole audience knowing that if you serve them well Your audience is going to grow and of course some of them are going to buy from you So of course the bigger your audience and the more you care and show them your care Your conversion rate is also going to go up. But that's just that's just a natural by-product of Of serving people well The other thing is that the other ways I think about content is it's also about exploring your perspectives Because as a brand as a person as a company You have perspectives about your industry. You have perspective about what is the right way to serve your customers What is the right kind of product that your customers need? What is The right way to use your product. I mean, whatever it is You have perspectives and you're using content to share those genuine perspective to say Hey, this is I hope this is helpful and hopefully it's not like buy our product first and then you can use this content But it's more like whether or not you have a product. Hopefully this is here's a tip Here's some a story that will inspire you or a tip that will help move you forward Also, yeah, so that's that's really content. You could see more in the document and you can ask questions in the document if you want to Okay, so The next part is to reframe selling. Okay. I know a lot of you Um, he wrote in the poll that you know marketing and sales keeps you up at night, right? So hopefully with this little reframe, you'll you'll you'll you'll sleep better and you'll you'll do selling more effectively selling to me is really a matter of Alignment rather than persuasion. So it's really about hey Now that I have your attention now that I have earned your trust with just showing up as my genuine generous self consistently I have this I have this thing That in my business a product or service that I'm really excited about that I think it's a good match for you because of how I've gotten to know you and I've created this thing or framed it This thing as being helpful to you. So is this helpful? Let me know. What do you think about this product or service? So I kind of use selling as a way to like humbly Experiment with whether I've got it right this framing of this product service. Did I get it right? Do you want to buy it? It's very humble. It's not like you better buy it by scarcity You know persuasion. No, no, just hey, will you buy it because what I've learned over 10 years of successful marketing and many many Times unsuccessful marketing. That's how we learn a lot is that If the product is the right fit for an audience that trusts you If the product is the right fit for an audience that trusts you All you have to do is whisper About the product and you'll get enough sales Now if the product that's not the right fit for the audience or the audience doesn't trust you You can shout and shout and have the most compelling graphics and videos and sales presentations and And you still will be surprised at how few sales you get So it's not about shouting persuasion tactics scarcity all that stuff that stuff can amplify the sales I don't think it amplifies it in a good way because it's not a long-term loyalty builder But if you're always just trying to find alignment if you're trying to find you find alignment You can whisper and people the right people will buy so anyway So that's how we do content on instagram and that's how we also sell on instagram So let's talk about the different formats of content and i'm going to go and share my screen again Okay, so again if you have any questions use the q&a Button and ask questions and maria you can interrupt me any time to just bring the question because otherwise I talk A mile a minute and i'm just going to keep talking until you interrupt me. Okay all right So the content formats the ways that you share your message or your your product. Okay My recommendation is to use message based images Okay, and let me actually just kind of go down here to this to this right here Okay, so message based images are What well, you know, guess what I can I can show you because I try to walk my talk and try to talk my walk So you can see how I do it here message based images, right? Just an example. Look at this. This is a carousel image post meaning it's a single post With the entire message as a series of images And guess what it does really really well Okay, so it's like the entire short article is chopped up into these images And it's a carousel post and that's what I consider a message based image And I really I really recommend that because it has a wider appeal meaning meaning that uh when you can run instagram ads on these things and the people who are the right fit So so here's the difference Running an instagram ad on a beautiful image You get lots of likes because even people who didn't even read the caption. It's a beautiful image Who can argue with this beautiful mountain or this inspiring looking person or whatever it may be These wonderful colors. Who can who can argue with that? No one can argue. So everyone clicks like But now you're building an audience. That's not the right audience because instagram ads it's about You know getting the right people to reach you. Sorry reaching the right people Getting them to engage and then that's the cool audience and then you have you run warm audience ads Which are basically The people who already engaged within the last you can define your warm audience as 30 days or 60 days or whatever I define in the 60 days the people who have engaged in the last two months of my stuff They're going to see my warm ads meaning they're going to see My nurturing messages again and again because i'm just trying to help them out trying to develop a relationship with them Right at mass at scale, which is really I think the the most authentic promise of marketing is You know kind of build build Benefit at scale right relationships at scale. So all right, let me go back to this So message based images has the widest appeal. It's easiest to reach people compared to videos like I said, most of us don't have the budget for Spending hundreds or thousands on a one minute video because your video ads on instagram can only be one minute long Okay, so yeah, anyway, so so most of our most of the time we make videos where we're talking or we We have our team or ourselves shoot the video. So it's not going to really be have a wide appeal So that's why I recommend message based images at the bottom of the pyramid to reach the most people cool audiences and then and then Uh, you know the the second level, you know, you're basically going from wider appeal to the top of the pyramid Which is true of fans. I like this imagery better climbing the mountain climbing the pyramid better than funnel Typical, I know all the marketers are trained in funnels Even facebook uses the term funnel marketing all that funnels a very conventional term in marketing and I hate it Because what what what is a funnel if you're in my funnel, what does that mean? I'm trying to squeeze you and really squeeze the dollars out of you, right? It's really it's really cynical way It's like you're squeezing people you filtering people out of the funnel leaks the funnel leaks are the people who are the wrong people It's always all talking about human beings as if they're just numbers and numbers to be manipulated Rather than hey, let's use a more inspiring Uh metaphor. How about people climbing a mountain together? How about that? How about people, you know Becoming stronger and more inspired as they climb a mountain together. How's that right to the peak? Having a peak experience as a result. So use western based images for for ads you use videos Okay, it's for cool ads. Okay reaching new people with message based images ideally using instagram ads Okay, and then you nurture that uh that warmer audience with one minute videos again message based if you look at my one minute videos They are message based and then at the very top are your truest fans They're the ones who are going to consume your stories and also to direct message you and just kind of start that one-on-one conversation All right Okay, so um, excuse me. I think my my alarm you're hearing some birds here. That's my alarm. Okay So let's keep going here strategy for stories and highlights And now this is something I wanted to share with you because a lot of people are confused by instagram stories They're like, what's the point george instagram stories are only 24 hours long. I spent time creating a story It goes away in 24 hours. What's the point? Is there a better way a more sustainable way? Yes, there is So this is how I recommend Uh using stories. So you first make an IGTV now IGTV is the long format. There are two and I sorry I scroll past this really quick videos have basically three formats. Um, and I really should okay one minute Shorts, okay. One just one minute videos one minute These are the three formats The instagram live is kind of like facebook live But you do it on instagram and you can do instagram live for I believe up to 60 minutes Uh, but I would just recommend that you whenever you do an instagram video just try to keep it under 10 minutes I think just that's the you know What do you call it the the attention span of of instagram viewers? Okay, so one Up to 10 minute live videos, which can then be Automatically or right after you make a live video. You have the option of posting it as an IGTV What is IGTV IGTV is instagram trying to compete with like You know twitter videos and youtube videos and tiktok Well now there's there's instagram reels, which is really competing with tiktok But IGTV is basically instagram's video platform IGTV videos can be up to 60 minutes long if you upload it from from the desktop Okay, using creator studio, but on the phone. I think you can upload up to 15 minutes Like I said, if you just keep your videos under 10 minutes your long form videos You're going to be good and then there's also a third type of video You can make which is only one minute long and that kind of video you can have the entire video Show up on your profile. Now you can you might see well, george You make a lot of one minute videos These most of my videos are actually IGTV or instagram live videos uploaded IGTV But these are only they only show you oh actually on the desktop You can watch the whole thing but on the mobile you can watch for 15 seconds I believe before they they have a button that says watch on IGTV and you can continue the video So most of my videos are IGTV, but I do record one minute videos sometimes Because I do want to run ads on those at some point. So okay So what I recommend is that you make IGTV videos And whatever IGTV videos of yours does the best meaning gets the most response gets the most likes and Let's just say the most likes, okay Then the best of those videos you make an an instagram story Okay, you make an IG story And then with instagram stories you can you can ask them to swipe up Okay, swipe up to go to an IGTV video So you can swipe up and though you'd instantly be watching that IGTV video that you link to Now with instagram Once you get to 10,000 followers or more You can actually ask them in a story to swipe up To go to your website to get me could go to any link on any website Typically it's some webpage on your on your site, but you need 10,000 followers for that kind of swipe up story What those of us all of us who have less than 10,000 We can ask them to swipe up to watch an IGTV video that you can you can link to it easily So so that's the strategy is is to create a story asking them to swipe up to a really good IGTV video And then you add it as a profile highlight What is a profile highlight? When you go to my instagram, you can see this profile highlight Look at this I have these bubbles at the top of an instagram profile are called highlights And if you go to any of my highlights, they're basically IG stories That people I asked them to swipe up By the way, um, I'm on a I'm on a desktop showing you this so I don't think I can I can show you how the swipe up action works most people look at instagram on the phone So this problem is not going to you know, most people don't serve instagram on a computer They do it on the phone. So if you go to my instagram profile, you can go to my stories and you can swipe up to watch Uh to watch my IG my IGTV and these are all different instagram stories And so even though instagram stories typically Expire in 24 hours. The great thing is once you add it to your profile highlight, it stays there forever So it's a truly sustainable Story strategy. So it's like you go through all the work of creating something you might as well have it up there That you're proud of. Okay, so let's keep going on our Document here and uh, also, um, yeah Sometimes you might want to make a story an instagram story about why they should click on the link in your bio Who should click on it and why and that you can also add it to a profile highlight? Anyway, okay, let's keep going here. So how does facebook and instagram relate to each other? Because I do use them both For for marketing and I think it's a good idea to market market So basically I used instagram to have new and targeted audiences discover me So so so I find that instagram ads is much easier to reach the right people Compared to facebook ads There are many reasons for this, but that's what I've discovered over over the past couple Especially this year. I've been really active with instagram ads. So this year. I'm like, oh my gosh Every time I run an instagram ad I reach the the best people Sooner compared to facebook ads really irrelevant people people who are irrelevant to my business So I I like this having people discover me and nurturing them via instagram And then when they surf facebook, right? They will also see my facebook ads Which are further nurturing and also I do most of my selling on facebook Why is that? Because I've noticed that I think I would my guess is this is true. You can tell me if you agree or not when people are on facebook They're more patient Than they are when they're on instagram or maybe I'll flip that around when people are on instagram They're less patient compared to facebook because facebook people know they read articles, right? They watch longer videos They're engaging you're often at the computer sometimes at the phone, but on instagram. They're there looking at pretty pictures Quick videos reels, you know things like that. So What happens is when people engage with your instagram posts They are automatically Included in what's called your facebook warm advertising audience meaning you can now run ads on facebook To people who engaged with your instagram posts So people will use instagram a lot of them use facebook. In fact, it's a facebook instagram's audience total audience is about 40 percent that of facebook's audience So still a lot of people but chances are a lot of the instagram users not all of them use facebook as well So have people discover you via instagram and then continue nurturing them on facebook And then you can sell your product and services on facebook While they have a little bit more patience to look at stuff, especially they're more likely to be at the computer so with that I want to I want to just Kind of finish up if you want to you know, take my step-by-step videos on how to do all this with a lot of nuances and details and You know documents I have a whole instagram course or if you get my facebook ads course it comes with the instagram course So you can kind of learn both at the same time But other than that that's all I've got for you and now I'm really open to your questions I didn't want it to I don't want to like go too much into just lecturing So let's do questions. I'm happy to answer as many questions as we have time for Oh, george, this has been fantastic. We have so many questions both from the preregistration and live questions Um, and I would ask so everyone first and foremost. I can say study what george does Find george study what george does because it will tell you and answer so many of your questions first and foremost second As we are answering questions Um isis as you have seen in the chat. She will share a survey link It will give george feedback about what else you'd like to hear from him What you'd like to hear from uh from nazi entrepreneurial center Please fill that out while you are listening to q&a. We have quite a few minutes almost 20 minutes for q&a We have so many questions. So let's get to it um george First and foremost Thank you so much for sharing all that content. Yeah, I hope that helps Outline anyway, absolutely and I see so many people active in the documents and in the chat so One of the biggest questions that I'm going to put together a few of the questions that I'm seeing here As an early stage founder who might have multiple products and or a personal and business account What would be a great strategy? Do we keep our accounts separate personal business or separate business accounts for different products? Should we combine these things? Yeah, it's a really great question So, you know, it's it's really hard to answer that without seeing the person situation and looking looking at the accounts Of course, I I like to keep things simple. So I just have one instagram account Um, I don't really post personal things there But if you so so here's here's like kind of there's there's two aspects to this question One is the consumption of instagram, right? Like if you're following friends and you have your own personal interests and you're following It's okay to be liking from from any profile. I mean as long as it's not, you know to Obscene or inappropriate People won't see well this company like this. That's kind of weird But as long as it's yeah, I'm mostly Mostly appropriate then it's okay to use your one single account to be liking different things because no one no one It's it's not like facebook where if you like something on facebook Your network your your your audience might see that you liked it They might see a facebook post seeing that you like something same thing on on linked in on instagram It doesn't work that way you can like as many things as you want and none of your followers know that you liked anything It's only the people who follow that post that follow that other person May see all the numbers of people who liked it and you're one of them. That that's it That's it So so I would encourage you to keep things simple if you're just consuming it for personal reasons You can use your business account. By the way, um, if you have a personal instagram account You can easily transition it With a few clicks to a business account and you kind of have to do that if you want to start running instagram ads If in the question of whether you want to post personal things Here's the thing Instagram stories is a really great feature to kind of reach your personal friends and family without You know without posting it publicly forever forever forever for everyone So you can still use that one account But when you want to share like oh something about your kids or something about your personal life Just create an instagram story a quick video or whatever and when you say send to There's a category called close friends So on instagram you can organize your close friend. You can organize a category called close friends Just your personal, you know people that you just want to see the most personal stories And you when you share stories share to just those close friends And only they will see that when they serve instagram at least in the 24 hour time period Um And then so that's like the simplest way But if you are very active personally and on business then of course you have to have two accounts and You know, then you have to complicate things a little bit there But in terms of whether or not a business should have multiple accounts for multiple product lines I guess if you're proctor and gamble Very different product lines sure, but I think most of us the product lines aren't that different I mean the audience is more or less the same So I would just try to like I said keep it as simple as possible. Um, but you know, there are cases where it makes sense Wonderful. Thank you, George. So in a similar vein How do we balance Or what percentages might we balance telling a story versus selling directly about our product on instagram? So let's say we have a video that we are recording and we are talking about ourselves as the founder or as an entrepreneur Um, what is the even or what is a good balance that we can achieve between selling and explaining? Right. Yeah, that's great. Um, I you know the 80 20 rule is really handy here I mean really if you just say about 80 percent of the time about four out of five posts Are you know serving the audience with some some some helpful or inspiring or entertaining content? So it could be get helpful and you know, basically helpful or entertaining. Okay Um 80 percent of of your posts and then 20 percent can be selling something. I think that's perfectly acceptable. Yeah Wonderful. Thank you. So we have a question from sam George said 20 percent of his ad budget is focused on driving sales and that he sees between 200 and 400 roi at times Is that roi calculated based on the 20 percent of ads focused on sales? Or is it the 100 percent including 80 percent not focused on sales? Oh, I love that question. Thank you. Yes math person here, um, it is based on the just the 20 percent. Well, actually, no, I I have to take it back um It depends on which month and how I calculate it But I just want to be conservative and say that let's just count it as the 20 percent focus on sales But but the bottom line is don't don't go away and go. Hey Marketing expert says you're going to get two to 400 percent now. I can promise that to people. No, don't don't do that because Who knows you might be getting 20 percent roi I don't know you have to test right so like whenever I run an instagram ad to sell something My rule of thumb is basically I use the budget for one sale first So at least I break even and if I'm breaking even Then I'm like, okay. Well, it's a broke even I'm going to up the budget and now it's going to be, you know If if if a product there's $50, let's say, okay, I'm going to do a $50, you know campaign Or maybe two $25 campaigns See if I sell one I usually sell at least one like oh great. Okay Now I'm going to spend a hundred dollars and with edge up that way instead of going. Hey, we're going to get two to 400 percent So let's spend all our money, you know So, yeah, so it's better because some products like I said are not the right fit for the audience or maybe the creative the the the image or the video is just not the right fit For the audience. That's why it's better to test things rather than kind of go there slowly But again good principle just what is the cost of one sale if we can break even then let's let's increase that Thank you. And then actually Similar to the testing comment that you just made george When do you think would be great times to post on instagram and how might I test this? Do you have any advice around this? Yeah, yeah instagram gives us stats actually Once you start posting You can look at your go to your profile click on the three bars on the top right click on insights And you can literally see if you scroll down far enough and look at the audience you can literally see When your audience is most active which days and which hours you're the most active on instagram having said that okay having said that The reality is that No matter when you post something If it goes viral it goes viral even days later So if you go to the explorer instagram explorer page, which is when you click on the When you're in the instagram app and you click on the little Magnifying glass the search icon on the bottom. That's the explorer page You'll notice that some of the posts if you keep clicking through some of these are days old Okay, so like how could it be days old? So does that mean there's no ideal time and place because that person could have posted that 3am Five days ago and it's still showing up on explore or it's showing up on your timeline as you're scrolling so Thankfully right thankfully There really is no yes, if you're if you're a big company and Every little bit makes a difference. Yes, of course notice when the days and times are and try to post at those times But for most of us who are small businesses or solo entrepreneurs We don't have the bandwidth to be planning those things and thank goodness We don't have to because instagram will surface The the posts that get that get great engagement no matter when you post it No matter when and what day what time 3am on on you know, christmas eve or whatever It doesn't matter. It will do well if it does well Thank you, george. We have a few questions around how are you designing some of the visuals For your I'm curious if you have any recommendations on platforms. Yeah So this is my this is where the 20% where I sell you my course right now Um, but really in my instagram course. I literally show you exactly step by step how I do it But I I just use canva. It's very simple canva c a n v a most of you probably know canva. It's a free tool I'm on a free plan of canva So it's very you know, it's free So yeah, I just use canva to design those images and once I've designed one that I could just copy the same image Next time I go in and and it's just you know editing a changing changing out the background color and you know changing out the words or whatever so Perfect We love canva too. I will say okay next up Has your has your instagram marketing strategy changed if at all since covet 19 and if so, how has it changed? Yeah, I think honestly the biggest change since covet 19. I've noticed not just on instagram, but on all platforms is that There is a lot more attention now Like my videos, uh, because I'm I do video as well. Um, and by the way, uh, while I'm speaking, I'd love for you to vote on this third poll Okay, the poll is Um, and I'm trying to remember the exact question the poll but something like there you go. Thank you. Thank you Thank you guys says how often do you speak or teach on video? How often do you speak or teach? using video Not yet number one or second is occasionally or third is consistently and I'm just curious what your what your practice is because um It's very useful, uh to to nurture one audience is using video. So Um, yeah, I video my videos have gotten something like 50. I looked at the stats It's basically it's somewhere between a third and 50 percent higher watch time So people are watching my videos longer and and very importantly the ad The ads is much cheaper than before covet Um happened so up to up to now up to up to, you know, february march of 2020 The facebook instagram ads, uh have been consistently increasing over the years and then suddenly Just like with the stock market Dramatic drop in in uh, so it's much cheaper for us now to run instagram and facebook ads You can reach a lot more people at cheaper than you could last year But unlike the stock market, it hasn't recovered. It's still it's well. It has recovered a little bit But it's still cheaper to run instagram or facebook ads today than it was in 2019 So I would say go for it. You should do it. Um, because otherwise it's one of the best uses of your advertising money And george to that point we have a lot of questions about consistency What you might consider to be consistent? Um, if you have recommendations around, you know, the number of times to post I know you've already answered when when a good time might be to post but consistency seems to be a topic that keeps coming up That's great. Thank you Um, so the simplest principle Thank goodness is up to once a day Post on instagram whether it's an image post or or a video And that's how you'll see me do it. I don't do it every single day. I don't do it seven days a week I you know, basically do it monday tuesdays Sometimes wednesdays but monday tuesdays thursday fridays. It's just my content rhythm It's not necessarily those are the best days because your audience might be surfing it more on sundays or saturdays So but like I said, it doesn't matter if if a piece of content is the right fit for the audience They're going to see it whenever they log in they're going to see your post even this is from five days ago so My suggestion is listen with consistency of content. It's really about Getting to a stable rhythm and then going farther from there So maybe you would be creating on one day drafting something on one day And then the next day you edit and post it and that's a really good rhythm So then maybe you post something every other day and that might be a good place to start If you are very very busy, maybe you only do one post a week and you just you know On a wednesday evening you draft something and on a saturday you post it whatever it may be But I think once a week is it's a it's a really a good bare minimum And then try to get up to once a day and if you've gotten once a day, you just relax and go do something else so Thank you, george. We have a question from aya How to make my content more discoverable I think you may have answered this and how how to think about creating hashtags on instagram Yeah, it's so great So we're right on because I was just thinking I haven't talked enough about hashtags yet So thank you for that question So yeah hashtags are the most common way to get things discovered the problem with hashtags is that Most people use popular ones than ones that are not really very well-nitched for them And so hashtag love hashtag happy hashtag, you know Go get it. I don't know whatever. I don't even know the most popular ones because I don't use them But but and then they get love george. I got hundreds of likes on this post use hashtags. How come you don't use hashtags george? Well, I said it at the beginning of this presentation Hashtags will get you the wrong followers and then now when you're doing instagram warm audience ads You have to spend more money reaching the wrong people And then your organic posts are not getting the ones that are related to your business Are not getting the right kind of engagement and you're like devastated How come only when I post myself in a beautiful style and using great hashtags and I get No, it's it's really silly the whole hashtag thing. So it's not silly In my instagram course, I actually teach you how to test hashtags one at a time so that you can do it more thoughtfully I teach that But I also teach the fact that I don't use hashtags because time management wise I think for those of us who have a budget For advertising and when I say budget, I don't mean $500 a month or $5,000 a month Start with $30 a month if you could spend 30 30, okay $30 a month on advertising for instagram That's you're going to be reaching 3,000 targeted people per month Or 1,000 people three times targeted people per month 30 30 dollars When you try to reach 3,000 targeted people using hashtags per month God, you're going to be doing a whole lot of work and you're going to be also reaching a lot of the wrong people So i'm just saying listen for time management. Why don't we just run instagram ads? Why are we working so so damn hard on hashtags and making it look spammy also because hashtags look spammy Right if you most people use a bunch of them and they don't put it in the first comment They put it right in their caption Which is another thing it's like if you're going to use hashtags put it in the first comment Not in the caption. It's not in the written caption itself but Long story short save time use ig ads rather than the hashtags so but but Hashtags, however, I think are good for connecting with colleagues with potential collaborators You can search the hashtag on instagram and see if you you kind of case any posts You feel like a good energy that that company that brand that person might be good to collaborate with Maybe then you can interview each other on instagram live ig instagram live You can interview you can invite people and have like a top and bottom person and you can interview people So hashtags could be a great community I think of hashtags as a community of people to interact with rather than trying to edge yourself Oh, look at me. Look at me. That's what everyone does hashtags for. Oh, look at me. Look at me But yeah, you could do that or you could just use ads but much more efficient So much strategy jurors. Oh my goodness. So fantastic And I just want to let you know so many people are saying thank you so much This has been brilliant. Some people did have to hop off a little bit early But I want you to know their gratitude. I think we have time for one more question Someone has a very specific question about reels And how to use and win on this my understanding is that with any platform in general It is algorithmed to highlight new features any suggestions on how to win with reels Yeah, it's a great question. So reels is fairly new on instagram. I mean, I think it's within a month or two So I um, I haven't honestly experimented with reels. I've seen some of my clients do it and essentially I think it's uh I think it's around 10 to 15 second video basically is what a reel is And so yeah, I've seen some clients do it well and they just basically give a 10 to 15 second message That's it or something Like I said, you can make reels came they're trying to borrow they're trying to you know compete with tiktok Right, so you use you like dance videos or like some really funny thing or cool thing or something like that So so for those of us who are more like message based when I get a message across you have 10 15 seconds to kind of inspirational message You should give it a try because yes Because it's new They are highlighting that in the instagram explore tab and they're trying to highlight that more on in the algorithm So yeah, you could do it for me. I'm just you know, I think what I'm doing right now is working really well So I'm not jumping on that bandwagon yet. I I I'm no longer an early adopter This is a funny thing I used to be an early adopter for lots of technologies and over time I just kind of got tired of testing things for people So I said no, I'm just going to use things that are going to be around for a long time I reels were probably going to be around given tiktok's popularity So yeah, if you enjoy it give it a try the cool thing about reel is that it's you know The short tiny video and you could add like elements after you record that segment You can add like words or elements to it to make it look cool. You can look at the instagram explore tab Go to go to instagram click on search to kind of see How some people do it and get some inspiration and have fun with it I mean ultimately and this is a good way to end If you can have fun using instagram, you're more likely going to keep using it so Yes, try to have fun doing this stuff and Enjoy it see how other people do it Support them and then do yours and you'll get supported back So George thank you so so much Everyone thank you so much for attending We would love again for you to fill out the survey Let george know what you thought of this webinar and let nasdaq entrepreneurial center know Who else we could bring to the table and what else george could cover on our platform? And again, george, thank you so much for taking the time to speak to our community to share your insights And to set such a great overview for all of us On behalf of nasdaq entrepreneurial center and everyone in attendance today. We sincerely thank you for joining us And finally, we have a few upcoming events Please we would love to see you and have you join us for this coming thursday september 10 public relations for early stage startups And next thursday september 17 innovative marketing tactics through the funding cycle Again george, thank you so much for for joining us and all of you still in attendance Please study and follow george. He is an incredible genuine human and has some great strategies to share And we look forward to seeing all of you again soon. Thank you so much