How can we better monetize our Instagram accounts and turn our audience into customers? Instagram is the best monetization tool in terms of social media platforms. It has the most features in one place. You can do the most with it. Facebook can do a lot of the same things with features that Facebook offers, the platform itself is not a hundred percent media focused like Instagram is, though. As you can tell from the apps, there is a different look and feel to them and as you probably imagined, Instagram was started as a photo sharing app and ultimately turned into photo and video. Posting to Instagram, your options can look like a Story, a Reel, a normal post, or IGTV. With Facebook, you've got similar options, but the way that it's delivered to you is different.
Instagram keeps it focused on the media. On top of that, you can also tag products and have your product catalog linked. You can not do that on Twitter, on YouTube, or LinkedIn. Instagram is an incredible option for businesses to focus on.
If I had to focus a business on one place that they're trying to monetize the digital social platform, Instagram is the safest bet.
Remember that for the most part, your posts and your stories are going to be for the people who already follow you, which means you need to make content for them in a certain way.
New customer acquisition is your top of the funnel. Posting a reel can get thousands of views. It's happening on my personal account, I only have 2,000 followers, but I’ve gotten up to 10,000 views on a video.
That just kind of shows in itself how the algorithm works and how it displays your profile and your reels to new people, whereas your posts and your stories are always going to be just predominantly for your actual followers, unless you create really sharable content.
If you want to optimize your story and your posting content to be as shareable as possible, then you want to create things that would be shareable between two of your perfect customers. Have you thought about who your perfect customer is?
You want to make content for your perfect customer, think of them and how they would as well while you're creating the content. While you're making it, you want to think of the same person that comes in your store every week, or the person that you engage with online on a regular basis, how would they react to the content that you're creating?
That also goes for Reels! You want to make sure that the content is catering to your perfect customer so that your Instagram following shows what you are trying to build and how you train your Instagram's algorithm. It ends up being beneficial for your business, because you're surrounded by people that are your actual customers, which is a good segue to a big buzz question.
For all of Instagram's lifespan, since the beginning, the question is “should I buy followers?” I get asked that often and I've seen it from friends who've bought followers. They've gotten tens of thousands of followers. I've also worked with real businesses even here in my city who have bought Facebook page likes and Instagram followers.
They basically fabricate the business's success by modifying the digital of the business, which begs the question for me before even asking if we should buy followers. Is it ethical for us to buy followers because of what it does for the business as appearance? Buying followers is essentially spending money to confuse your Instagram algorithm and to people who are not going to be potential customers. This could also get you some shade from those who find out that you're doing it because it's very obvious your posts are getting 1% engagement from your following. So that's something to be mindful of as well. Yes, you might have 80,000 Instagram followers, but if you're getting 1200 likes per post, it could be obvious.
Apart from buying followers, how do we make posts that convert to customers and how do I get my Instagram to sell my business products to the world? How can I turn my Instagram into a moneymaker?
The biggest blanket statement that I could make in order to answer that question is to make sure that the posts and the page itself are showing what it feels to have your products. Those are the two words to focus on. Show and feel. You have to show what it feels like. If it's clothes you're selling, you want to show your audience how good they feel when they get an item.
For example, my business. We run social media pages for our clients. You'll see that we try to show how it feels to have a hands-free experience and watch your social media pages grow.
That's the big thing I want to focus on. Being able to allow clients to sit back while their Instagram grows and makes them money. Your big goals are to show and feel.
Another tip related to that is the actual timing and placement for showing what it feels like. You want it to be sooner than later if possible. If you can get the point of the posts, the entire reason you make the post, If you can bring that to the front of the caption, and if you can convey that in the first few seconds of the video, that is the first attempt, and it's the first time that we have to catch somebody.
For our client pages, essentially we are trying to convey emotion to our perfect customer in a fast and easy way to digest mediums. The next time you go to make a post, I want you to ask yourself, what can I show that will make my perfect customer, and how does it feel to have?
