Instagram Secrets Revealed


Video Transcription

So we're gonna be talking about Instagram Secrets for my name is Jasmine Augustine and I own a social media agency called Media Jasmine and I absolutely love Instagram.So we're gonna be talking about the top 11 Instagram secrets revealed and I've updated, updated it for 2021 because Instagram is always changing things. So who am I um at media? Jasmine, we help small businesses and big brands turn followers into do based selling strategies.

We specialize in done for you, full service, social media management where we take over on behalf of the business. And I also do one on one coaching with entrepreneurs as well. This I'm not gonna read all of this, but this is just get to know me. If you want to take a picture of this, you can feel free to do that. Um I have a master's in social work and a minor in psychology. I'm originally from Miami Florida, currently live in H and I've worked with um mental health uh patients and then I transitioned into entrepreneurship, started to get experience in sales and marketing and really just fell in love with social media. So in 2018 I had my first child, I had a daughter and I decided that I wanted to stay home with her and build my social media agency um while raising her. So then here we are, these are just a few of the results that we've gotten from working with clients. Um We, as I mentioned, do full service social media management. So we work on Facebook and Instagram, linkedin. We do organic social media, we also do paid ads. Um So there's just so many things that go into it. This is my contact information. So a little bit early as I said, this session is 40 minutes long. So this is my contact information if you want to grab it.

Now, um if you scan that QR directly to my link tree that has all of the links to get in contact with me, there's some free downloads in there. You can book a call through that link and of course you can visit my follow on Instagram and Facebook, linkedin, all of those places. If you do follow, just send me a message and say, hey, say hi, let me know that you were um for this uh conference and I would love to support you back. So I would love to hear what comes to mind when you Instagram. And as I said before we got started, share your Instagram handle in the chat as well. OK? But what's the first thing that comes to mind when you hear the word Instagram things all the time. Um pictures, influencers, um visuals, right? Good photos. Um Now the big thing is stories and there's just so many things that go into Instagram, but it is my favorite platform to be on. So let's get started with the 11 secrets revealed. Now I will say sorry, let me go back. I will say because there's so many different um uh levels of experience and knowledge uh with Instagram, some of the things that I'm saying might be very basic or intermediate for some things might be very advanced.

Just know that I try to keep a little bit of everything in here to make sure that everyone gets some value from this presentation. So if you're lost, that's OK. I'm here to help you. And if you're like, oh, I already know this, that's great. Stay tuned because you might learn something else that's new. OK? All right. So number one reels have taken over um if you are in a region or you live in an area where you do not have reels, it will be coming to you soon. So Instagram rolls out these new features in different phases based on the regions, you know, where they, they launch everything. So if you do not have um it's OK, it'll be coming to you soon. If you do have reels, make sure you're, you're using them, start trying them. Uh reels have um essentially taken from tiktok, right? So Instagram said, hey tiktok is, is getting very popular. Let's bring some of that over here. So it's Instagram's version of and these short clips should be engaging, entertaining, educating um your your target audience, short bite size videos that are either 15 or 30 seconds long you get to choose. And a misconception is that they're just for kids that they're just for adults are using them too. OK? It's not just for kids and any industry can benefit from creating reels.

You do not have to be um you know, you don't have to dance, you don't have to sing. There's so many ways that you can get your message across through reels without feeling silly or you uncomfortable. Now, why do we want to use reels? Besides the fact that they're very popular Instagram algorithms the way the algorithm work into that? But Instagram is really pushing showing you reels, right? So if they're showing you reels, then they're showing your audience reels too. So there's an advantage when you create a reel and you post it, Instagram is going to show those reels to more people than they would if you post. OK. So the reach how far it can go is very, very large with reels. So there's an advantage to creating them. All right. Secret number two, I get this question all the time. Jasmine do I really need to be using? Hashtags? Are they necessary? The answer a study came out back in December of 2019. So it's been, you know, a year and a half and found that post with between 12 to 15 hashtags actually perform the best. So you can have up to 30 hashtags per post. But this study found that between 12 to 15 is the best. Whatever you do though, just don't use zero. Hashtags you want to put hashtags it's free marketing, it's also helpful for rhythm.

So Instagram looks at a lot of keywords that we use, whether those keywords are in our bio, in our captions, in our hashtag um the content that we're creating, the things that we're searching for. Instagram is using this information and then showing it to people who it would match up with. So use hashtags and do a little bit of research on them um ahead of time so that you know what hash use. So this is a screenshot of a client that I was working with and um you can take a picture of this if you'd like to read it. So I'll just give you a brief description of what she and I worked together and we created a hashtag strategy for her. She lives in an area called Pearland, Texas and she was approach realtor. She was approached by another realtor who lives in Seattle. And that realtor in Seattle had a client who was moving to Pearland, Texas and said, hey, I would love for you to help my client find his new home in Pearland because that's where he's moving and he's gonna be playing for the Houston Dynamo, which soccer team, football team, depending on where you live, what you call it.

Um So this realtor reached out to her and found her because of was using on Instagram. She was using hashtags around Pearland, Texas, Pearland realtor, Pearland real estate. And this other agent, this client who's moving to play professional sports in the area. So that's the power of um use and making sure that you're constantly using those keywords. So other people and your target audience can find you put hashtags this is a big question as well. Should I put them in the comments or should I put them in the caption? There's really no evidence that says that it should be in one place other, but I always suggest to research and to test. So you want to try it on um on your account to see if it works better in one place or over the other. All right. Secret number three, the algorithm is e once you understand how to train it to do what you want it to do. So I hear this a lot. Jasmine the algorithm hates me. Jasmine the algorithm. I just don't understand it very quick training on how to understand and train the algorithm what you want it to do. The more actions that you inside the Instagram app, the more you train the algorithm. So every single time you like you comment, you share someone else's post, you save someone else's post, you tag other people, you tag other accounts, you respond to someone else's comment, you create a reel, you go live, you have conversations in direct message.

Every single time you take these actions inside the Instagram app. You're the algorithm what you want to do. You're telling it who you like to have conversations with, you're telling it what kind of content you of. So um if we know this, that the actions we take, tell Instagram more information about us what we want. We want to have conversations with our target audience. We want to tag other accounts who we can partner up with or we can collaborate with. Sure that every single time someone comments on one of our posts, we are responding and we're liking that comment, we're we're responding back to them. Why do we want it again? Teaches the algorithm what we want it to do and who we want Instagram to show our content to. OK. So train it. What you want it to do. Don't ignore people um When they like and comment and share your posts, you always wanna be having conversations with people on Insta. Here's a quick tip, mute or unfollow accounts that don't bring you value that you're currently following. You can also follow accounts that are inactive so they haven't posted in three years or mute or unfollow accounts that aren't your target audience again, algorithm.

So when we're following accounts that are inactive, they haven't posted or logged into their account in three years, this hurts the RR for the algorithm. If you are following a lot of um accounts that are not your target audience, this negatively impacts your algorithm and showing your content to people that aren't in your target audience. So you want to be very, very strategic about all of these little details when it comes to the algorithm. Number four, what's the best day and time to post? My response to that is usually when is your target audience on Instagram? So about college students, university students um when are they usually awake? Not at six o'clock in the morning, they are asleep, they wake up 12 in the morning, right? Um They're probably staying up late at night. So if your audience is college students or universities, you know, posting early in the morning probably isn't the best time because they're not awake, they're not mentally there yet. Now, if your target audience is maybe professionals who run every morning before work, they're up at 456 AM getting ready for their first run, they're awake early in the morning. So be online earlier than those university students in general just in general for the the general public.

First morning, lunchtime and evenings are gonna be the best times to post. Um think about your own behaviors and your own your own habits. Um You know, maybe once you've settled into, you know, your social media and your emails and then maybe around lunchtime, you might do a quick check again and then evenings, maybe once the kids are asleep and, you know, you're winding it back on again at night. So these are just the typical times and Wednesdays happen to be the most active social media days overall. You can also use your insights on Instagram to gather more information. Uh You do have to have a professional or creator profile invites. Tip number five or secret number five, share your post to stories. Now, I know most people know people do not. So I would like to add this uh secret in here, this little uh paper airplane, you will notice this on your post as well on other people's posts. So if you tap on that paper airplane on the right hand side, you will see that uh screen pop up, it says add post to your story and that makes your post clickable in stories. All right. Secret number six, create content rich cap. So again, going back to the algorithm, remember every action we take is important. Instagram actually monitors how much time people spend reading your captions. Bit creepy and a little bit scary. Um But Instagram monitors how fast people are scrolling through.

Are people stopping to read your caption or they just double and going by really fast? That makes a difference, that makes a difference in the algorithm. So when Instagram sees, you know, somebody or or the majority are stopping to read your captions, that means Instagram thinks that that post is interesting. Other people want to read it. So they're going to show that post to more people. So uh here's some um some suggestions on how to create content rich captions. What we wanna do is uh we wanna get dot dot dot More. So if you've noticed this was a change Instagram made a couple of years ago, they no longer show the entire caption all at one time when someone is, they show you the first, you know, couple of lines, the first sentence and then you've got that dot dot dot More. What we want to happen is we want people to click dot dot dot More so that they can caption. So what do we have to do? We've got to have some sort of um uh attention grabbing statement or sentence, something that want to say? Oh, that's interesting. Let me, let me tap more. So if you notice on this example, this is one of the posts that I did some time ago and the caption starts with, here's one account isn't growing as fast as you like it.

Majority of people who are interested in growing their Instagram account are probably going to tap dot dot dot More. So when you're writing those captions, you really want to think about what can I grab people's attention with so that they'll want to continue to read. Um You can al micro blogging and having rich engaging captions. So I know this isn't for everybody, right? Not everyone has that creative ability. So you might consider even um working with someone who can help you to create those captions, help you to come up with some um questions or cliffhangers or things that are where people want to stop and, and read. So if this isn't your creative forte, find some help on that. Absolutely. All right, secret, most people don't know this, but you can actually turn your Instagram into a shopp feed. If you have a product or service, then products though, you can actually set up a shop feed. This all happens through Facebook shops and um it's very simple to set up. I'm gonna show you a screenshot it, but this is a fantastic uh number just to show why it's important to set this up if you can over 65% of Instagram users purchasing a product or service from another Instagram account who they don't know personally over 65%.

So that means people are coming on, maybe not with the intention of shopping, but they're not opposed to it. They're open to it. People know that over the last 10 years, Instagram and Instagram has made massive improvements to help you sell products and services on the app. So these are a few of the um features that Instagram has added in over the past couple of years. It's all very new browse shop editors, pics, shopp, post stickers where people can tap on your product in stories. Instagram check out they can check out directly through Instagram.

They don't even have to leave the app live shopping. So if you're on Instagram live, you can actually pin your products and people can shop directly through your Instagram live. And a that we think is coming soon is shopp reels. So when you're creating reels, you will soon be able to link those products, people can tap on it and check out and buy directly from your reel. Very, very cool stuff. So if you want to set this up and you haven't done, there's some instructions you have to go through. All you really have to do is Google just type into Google, set up in shops, set set up Instagram and you will find um it should be on instagram.com is where you will see the instructions. It's very, very simple to get it set up. All right. Number eight, this is brand new. This just came out a couple of weeks ago. You can now choose to likes. So about um let's think, I think it was about a year and a half ago, Instagram started testing countries where they were going to start hiding likes on posts.

So if that happened to you or if you've seen I'm talking about, but it took Instagram some time to figure out what they wanted to actually do from this testing, that they did this beta program that they testing. And so just a couple of weeks ago, Instagram said we're not going to hide likes completely for everybody, but we're going to give each the opportunity to choose if they want their likes hidden or not. OK. So you get to make the choice for yourself So you can choose to hide like or own posts to the posts that you put up or, and or it could be both or either or you can also hide likes from other who you're following. So while you're scrolling through your feed, you know, you're checking everybody out and you're scrolling through, you can hide the likes on those posts. So I'm gonna show you very quick actually set that up. So if you are creating your own post, if you look here on the screen, we're pretending we're creating a post. And if you look all the way at the bottom, there's this little advanced settings. I'm sorry, my, the picture got cut off. But if you go to advanced settings, it's a little bit hidden. You tap on that, this is gonna appear at the top, hide like and view count on this post.

So you can come in and you can set this, change the setting on every single post on your account, you can turn it on and off as many times as you want. So it's called, you can toggle, you can toggle back and forth. Ok. Now, here's how take a picture of this. If you want to come back to it, here's how to change your settings so that you do, it counts while you're scrolling and looking at other people's posts. So you'll go into your settings, you'll tap on private, then you'll tap on posts and then up at the top you'll see hide like and view counts and then you on and the same way you can toggle back and forth, you can turn that on and off as much as you like. So maybe one day you're feeling like I don't wanna see people's likes, you can turn that on, you don't wanna see them. And then the next day you're like, oh, I'm good. I'd like to see people's likes again. You can turn it off and now you'll see them again. All right. Secret number nine, make stories, conversational. So Instagram stories is one of my absolute favorite things about Instagram. I think that um I think it's my background in, in sales and psychology and social work because really gives you a place to build a relationship with your followers. It really allows people to get to know you if you in such a way.

So stories should be a story, right? Um Having a beginning, middle and an end to your story is important, right? Can use stories for behind the scenes, giving your followers a sneak peek, documenting your journey or your um and treating it really like an ongoing conversation.

So when I talk in stories and if you start to follow me, you'll notice um that I do this. And so um what I do is I, I talk into the camera as though I'm talking to one person as though I'm just talking to a friend. So I don't talk as though I'm thousands of people who are following me because if you're watching someone else's stories, it's just you, right? It it's not you plus people all watching together. So I talk like, I'm just talking to my friend and um that really helps the viewer on the other end, we're just having a conversation and that's the way that um stories were created to be. So it's also important to note that over 75% of Instagram users said that they spend more time watching other people then scrolling through the feed. OK? So this tells you that people are interested and why to have that quick um you know, conversation behind the scenes. There's also a few part of the term FOMO fear of missing out. There's a little bit of that because there's the stories are only available for 24 hours. So when you can provide some good value and some good conversations in your stories, people back for more. So I have a free Instagram stories guide that actually will tell you what to talk about in your story. So you might be like, OK, I don't even know what to talk about the first day.

For example that I give you is introducing yourself or introducing your brand to your followers. So I give you a whole guide on how to do it to talk about. Um So if you go to bit dot Lee slash stories that spark, you can um download that free guide and it's really fun. Tag me when you do it. I would love to see, you know what you put in your stories. Um because it's always fun to watch. That link is also in that QR code as well. QR code for the link in the beginning and I'll be sharing it at the end as well. You'll have access to that again. All right. Secret number 10. This is again another feature that Instagram just launched reels and IG live insights. OK. The oh, so now if you do have access to reels, you can actually get the insights from each individual reel so that you know what's performing well, what are people interested in? What are they saving? What are they sharing with their friends? So the metrics and those insights include the his accounts reached likes comments, saves and shares. So this just tells you more of what to make. So if you've got reels that performing well and you're like, wow, you know, 25 people saved that reel. That means that you're creating value that people want to come back to. They wanted to save that and they wanted to come back to that.

So this is how this is, there's a few ways on how to actually look at the insights, but this is just one example of one of mine. So if you are um bill, you would just click view insights here at the bottom and then this window will pop up and it's gonna show you exactly, you know those metrics that I just mentioned. Instagram live insights was also added, which you know, Instagram live has been around for many years. And so this is the first time in is providing such good information on our lives accounts reached peak concurrent viewers comments and shares. So again, it's gonna on um you know, I did this live on Tuesday at lunch time and I had more views than when I do it on Thursday breakfast time, right? So it's gonna give you more insight, it's gonna give you information so that you know exactly how to um uh be intentional on in OK. Our last secret, one of my favorites is how to get more engagement on Instagram. People ask me this all the time. Jasmine, I post things and no one's liking or commenting or doing any of those things.

So my question is always how much are you engaging with other people in with others the way you want to be engaged with and I promise you that this will help you to get more engagement. It works, it really, really works. So if you can set aside where you are liking and commenting on other people's content, specifically your target audience, right? And this is why going back to the beginning, we talked about making sure that you are unfollowing accounts that don't bring you value or who are not your target audience. Because every action you take Instagram giving the algorithm more information, right? So we want to engage with our target audience so that more of them see our content um engage with others, the more you will get it back, I promise it works. I've been doing this for four years and it works, it works, it works. So the question is, are you engaging with people the way you want to be engaged with? And if the answer is no, it's OK. There's nothing wrong about it. You're not a bad person, you're not bad at Instagram any of those things. It just takes some intentionality of going out and engaging with your target audience that then you can receive it. So my suggestion is if you can spend about 80% of your Instagram time engaging with others and about 20% of your Instagram time creating your own content, right?

So if you've said, all right, every day I'm going to spend, we'll make it a very simple number. 10 minutes every day. I'm gonna spend 10 minutes on Instagram and eight minutes should be spent engaging with others and two minutes should be spent you creating a story, for example, or writing out the post. Ok? So spend 80% of your time engaging with other people. This is just a quick uh screenshot of another client, Morgan. She and I did a, a strategy one on one of, of some coaching where I taught her exactly how to engage with people and she had a, a bit in her reach. She was having trouble reaching more of her target audience. So that's just an example of um that engagement work. All right, I'm sure I've missed a ton of questions so far. Um Because of the way that the screen is set up, I cannot see the chat right now. Um But go ahead and if you have any specific questions, I'm I have four minutes um to get through that. So jump over there and as I mentioned before, you can schedule a free call with me. Uh Please reach out to me on Instagram or on Facebook if you've missed. Um I'm happy to share that with you and I will go ahead and stop my screen share and come back in two. Our perfect. Ok, great.

Now let me go through the chat and just see what we've got over here. Um Is it recommended to have multiple Instagram accounts? It depends latanya on um on what those accounts are, right? So maybe you have a personal account and then a business account. Yes, I would probably have them separate. It depends on what type of business you have. If you have multiple businesses that are not related, I would definitely have uh separate accounts, but if you are the brand. So let's use me, for example. Um m my social media agency is Media Jasmine, it's obviously named after me. I have one Instagram account because I'm selling myself, right? I'm creating myself as the brand. So for me, I don't, I don't have two separate accounts. I don't really post, you know, like family pictures and things like that. So um I have one but it really just depends on why you would need more than one. So I would need a little bit more information on that. Um So Alicia's question, what's the benefit of hiding the likes and view counts on your post mental health? I suppose. Anything else? That's correct. So Instagram, the reason that they did that was for mental health purposes, a lot of people are very focused on the metric or the um yeah, like vanity metrics of likes and you know, just wanting a lot of likes and things like that.

So they came out with that to for you to make your own decision if, if you'd like to hide those likes on yours. I'm not really sure. Um Atia uh I'm not really sure if it's a good thing or, you know, not to hide the likes, I haven't really decided I, I haven't changed. Mine, my likes are still there. Um, I think that it's really meant for, um, for people if, if the like count really does affect you if you obsess about it and you say, oh, my goodness. You know, why isn't anyone liking my posts and, and it just becomes overwhelming or, or frustrating or the the emotion is, is um doesn't feel good. We don't want that to happen. So I think that if you know, you take a look inside and you say, yeah, maybe I just need to turn it off for a little bit or, you know, taking a little bit of a break. I think that's OK. It's all personal preference. Thank you for sharing my contact information um in the chat. I appreciate that. And um Olga's question when we engage, is it OK to just add emojis or is text better? I would always add emojis. Um I would always, I'm, I'm sorry, add text, sorry, I got distracted.

I would always add text. So you want to say something relevant, right? Say something that is relevant to their caption relevant to the post of what you know, they're talking about because you want them to see that you've made an effort to, you know, read what they've written.

Um And I think people pay more attention to that versus just the emojis. Awesome. So I just shared my link again. That's the link tree. Um that will take you to pretty much all of the links that I have. I just shared the uh Instagram stories guide and I will share the link that goes directly to scheduling a call as well. Do you have those? Uh Yeah, why doesn't Instagram allow us to post pictures from computers? I don't know if they will ever update that because they really want us to be on, on the app on the phone. I think they've made some great advances on the uh on the website from the computer. I know you can now do direct messaging um from the computer. Um You can also engage from your computer so you can, you know, comment and like on other people's stuff, but you cannot post. So we'll see if that comes out soon enough. One day, any other final questions we have like a minute left. Um I really appreciate everybody um for joining in. I hope that this was helpful. Um I, as I said in the beginning, I know that um things that I shared may have seem advanced for some and then basic for others. So um please just bear with all of it because Instagram really is a lot.

Um It's, it's a lot to, to take in. So yes, hopefully you will get the the recorded session. I'm not sure how they'll send all of that out. Perfect. Awesome. Please again, reach out to me if you have questions, um feel free to schedule a free call. I shared the link there um and connect with me on Instagram or on linkedin on Facebook and I am happy to chat more. Thank you all.