Ready to uplevel your Instagram? I’ve got 5 steps that will help you connect with your ideal audience!

Think of Insta as the personality to your personal brand! Here are 5 tips and tricks to set you up for success.

1. Building Your Profile Personality

Your Instagram profile albeit short is your chance to share your story and passion in just a few words! When people see your account we want them to see who you are, and WHY they want to follow you. They want to know how YOU can help THEM. It’s that simple.

The very first impression your audience will have for your business comes from your profile picture, so you need to be sure to have a clear photo that stands out!

Use a picture of yourself not your logo/brand (because you’re not a company, you’re well, you!) Avoid group photos or small print which may bring confusion as to who is behind the account. Remember that your profile picture will be small so close up photos work best!

2. Building a Bio

After your profile picture is all set your bio is the place to make your impression stick and hopefully gain a new follower!

Your bio needs to explain how you can help/serve/inspire them in only 150 characters! It can be a hefty task so it’s important to make sure it delivers your message and is to the point.

You may be thinking “How will I ever convey this in such a small space?!”, but by asking yourself these simple questions from the perspective of your viewers you can properly build the perfect bio.

Here’s what your viewer is wondering:

  -How can you help me?

  -What do you have to offer?

  -Why should I follow you?

Don’t feel like you have to answer every one of these questions, these are just a few questions that are going through the heads of your viewers. Pick and choose the ones that apply best for your business and don’t forget you can use emojis to add color, personality and to help sum you up with a single character saving you lots of space!

3. Creating content and building your feed

Now that you have built your business profile it’s time to create your first post! Your first post should introduce your business and illustrate what you are all about. Think of it as a homepage for a website, all that information that your audience sees at first glance needs to sum you up. 

You can post a video or picture of you, but like your profile picture, make sure it is clear and positively reflects your brand!

4. Conquering Captions

Captions can be intimidating. Everyone experiences painful writer’s block at some point, trying to come up with the perfect thing to say. To make your life 100x easier on yourself, I have 2 tips!

First, think, “WIIFM” (What’s in it for me), but from the perspective of your viewers. And second, this one comes from my business coach Leah Remillet, “Write to one person, your perfect client! When you’re writing to her, whether it be an email, blog post, or social media caption – it will help you come across authentic and personal!”

Asking yourself these simple questions will help you construct a caption that promotes audience interaction and comments.

Don’t stress, but you don’t want to ignore the importance of your captions. They are just as important as the picture you choose because it ultimately is your call to action (CTA) for your viewers.

Your caption is what inspires them to click to your profile, follow you, or go to a website or link. Ask engaging questions, treat it as a conversation, ask yourself “How would I respond to this?”

Remember, your goal is to make each caption become a CTA (Call to Action)!

5. Interact with your followers 

Follower interaction is key to building loyal customers and it’s super easy to do it! We all know how great it feels when someone responds to us! We also know how unimportant we feel, when we ask a question and….nothing.

Remember our tip about creating interactive captions? Well, this is when they come into play. Your followers will comment and react to your post with questions and comments and it’s your job to keep them engaged. Be sure to directly reply to an individual’s comment as it will make your customers feel loyal as well as:

 -Important

 -Recognized 

 -Motivated to continue engaging

These are the feelings we want our followers to have! Interaction = loyal followers and hopefully eventually, customers!

If you follow these steps you’ll be off to a great start, keep on going – let Instagram bring the personality into your personal brand!

Following these 5 simple steps will ensure your Instagram connects you with your ideal audience!

Remember, the dishes can wait, but your dreams don’t have to.

xo,