You're listening to gift biz unwrapped episode 221 every single business brand, product or service that I care about is on history, Attention, gifters, bakers, crafters and makers. Pursuing your dream can be fun whether you have an established business or looking to start one now you are in the right place. This is gift to biz unwrapped, helping you turn your skill into a flourishing business.
Join us for an episode packed full of invaluable guidance, resources and the support you need to grow your gift biz. Here is your host gift biz gal, Sue moon Heights. Hi there And I am thrilled that we are back together again today and if you're a first time listener, welcome. I am so excited to have you here too. I love hearing stories about how people have come to find the podcast and lots of times it's because you've shared the show with others.
Our audience is so generous here, so helpful, so supportive of each other and I'd say that's probably the very best thing about having this show. I'm bringing information to you. You're using the information for your business and you're also helping others grow their business. So for that, I thank you from the bottom of my heart. Before we move on to the show, I have a question for you. How'd your day go yesterday? Maybe a crazy question. I know and yes, you heard me right?
If you were to rate yesterday, how much did you get done? How far did you advance toward your goal? Or maybe in your mind you're saying what goal? Many of you have told me you aren't sure whether what you're doing is the right thing for your business. You're confused that you may be focusing on the wrong things and wasting time and money, and you compare yourself to others and feel like you're just not keeping up. Sound familiar?
Maybe you find that you're busy all day long, but when you finish up, you haven't accomplished much of anything at all. I've been there too until I started working with what I now call the power of purpose. I made a free video for you that explains how to boost your productivity and get results using the power of your purpose. Isn't it time to make all the effort that you put into your business and your life do for you what you've intended.
Now full disclosure, this video does lead into showing you my brand new inspired daily planner. But listen, you don't need the inspired planner to get all the advantages out of the power of purpose that I show you in this video. So if you're interested in discovering a new way to work through your days, so your time is intentional and your results are real, I encourage you to go over and watch this video and you can find it at gift biz, unwrapped.com forward slash planner.
That's gift biz on wrapped.com forward slash planner on deck. Today we have a repeat guest, the Instagram expert, Sue B Zimmerman, and of course we do because Instagram is changing before our very eyes. Make sure to grab your phone, have it available as Sue goes through, what's new, what's different and how do use Instagram to be most effective in growing your business. Today is Sue B Zimmerman in case you don't know her.
Sue is an insightful, energetic and in demand online marketing educator, influencer speaker, and a no BS business coach. Whether she's taking the stage at an industry conference like social media marketing world or working one on one with her clients.
Sue is driven to help business owners leverage the power of Instagram to meet and exceed their business goals as a lifetime entrepreneur, Sue has over 30 years of business experience and with her extensive knowledge and implementation of social media. It's her mission to teach, mentor, and empower others. Sue is one of the most popular creative live instructors and has been named by Huffington post as one of the top 50 must follow women entrepreneurs for small business.
Hey Sue, welcome back to the gift biz unwrapped podcast, Another Sue, my favorite Sue. Then the gift business. You know, this is the third time you're on the show and there's only one other person who's been on three times. Okay, so you have me back for a fourth time so I can beat that person. Well, I don't think that's going to be hard because Instagram keeps changing. There'll be new things to talk about on the regular for sure. Yeah,
always. So of course I'm thrilled to have you back, but I'm not letting you off the hook that easy. You have to go through my traditional question, which is the candle. So if you were to share a motivational candle for you at this time and no repeats, okay, promise no repeats, what would your motivational candle look like by color and quote? Okay, so Mike candle would absolutely be a rainbow candle, not one color, but all the colors of the rainbow.
So Rory G, Viv, girl, and the quote would be, you are under no obligation to be the same person that you were a year, a month, or even 15 minutes ago. You have the right to evolve. And do you know that my word for 2019 is evolve. So I love this quote. Ooh, love it. And you know what I like about that quote too is it opens up to all possibilities. Absolutely. Just have to be willing to be open to receive. Yeah. And look forward. You don't have to look backward forward.
What Do you want to be doing? Where do you want to go? Optimism. Absolutely. I swear it is so good that you're here because we know from social media marketing world, right, that Instagram is hot. Yeah. Michael Stelzner and his keynote kicked off, talked about all about Instagram and the importance of being on it for social.
And I knew that this was going to happen because if you think about all the different social platforms, Instagram is the one that you can control what you see and what you don't see. And so the energy that you feel when you open up the app and go to Instagram is all based on your favorites. You pick, you choose, you decide. And because of that, and then the ability of video and storytelling, it's just exploded.
Yeah. And you know it's interesting because even though Instagram's owned by Facebook, Facebook still the biggest one because I think it's the most known, it's the one everyone started with is dropping. But Instagram is just going crazy for the reasons that you said and keeps changing. I mean they keep evolving, they keep adding things. I can't keep up and I'm glad you can. Well one of my favorite reasons that I love Instagram is because it's so easy to get someone's attention and it's just
seamless. So you can go to someone's account, you can tap on the three dots on the top right hand side. You can copy that profile URL and share it. I mean there's just so many ways that you can share what you like with those that you love. And you know, I think that's really important right now too. I mean this whole issue of control because I think that's one of the issues not to bring up Facebook cause this is not going to be about Facebook. It's all going to be about Instagram.
But I think people are less comfortable because they're not sure that they're controlling. Who's seen what, whether anyone's seen anything. And you're saying Instagram's entirely different? Oh yeah. I mean you choose, you choose the energy that you want to feel every time you go to the app. I do not get magazines anymore. I don't read the newspaper. I'm not watching the news. Literally information that I want to see is all on Instagram.
Every single business, brand, product or service that I care about is on Instagram. If I go and travel, I know you love to travel, Sue, to a new town or new country. I open up Instagram and I go to places and I tap in what I want to see and the geo locations for all of that come up. It's a search engine. It's like the new Yelp. It's a mini website at its finest. Okay? So every time I talked to you I learned something new and there something right there. I never thought of that.
Let's talk to your audience here. If this is something you didn't know. So let me just break it down really quickly before we go into all the other good stuff. Okay? When you go to Instagram and you tap on the magnifying glass that looks like a search engine. Everyone sees different content and that's all based on Instagram showing you this based on your engagement, the posts that you're liking, commenting, double tapping, spending time.
Looking at Instagram knows that and right now you can see that I GTV one of my favorite neighborhoods that we'll talk about soon has the biggest real estate. There's a reason for that at the top, Instagram showing you an IgE TV tab. Now a shop tab, a style tab, art, comics, food, DIY, nature decor, gaming, travel,
beauty. There's a channel, essentially a TV channel for you to see what you want to see based on your engagement again, and then in the search at the very top, if you tap on search and then you scroll all the way to the end where it says places you can tap in. I'm going to just tap in pizza. I'm here in downtown Boston. Every single frigging pizza shop in and around me now comes up. Oh my gosh. Okay, so that's gold right there. Oh, this is gold for anybody with a store. So say I put yarn here.
Okay. Up pops, Newberry, yarn, Newbury yarns, another yarn, a good yarn. Darn good yarn. Like all these places that sell yarn. Like if I want yarn I just put it in Instagram. Search search baby search engine. Huge. Well so that just tells you where the future of this is all going. Oh yeah, it's all here. It's been here. It's just that Instagram is constantly changing the interface and the user experience to make it better and more intuitive.
A lot of people that I teach to are typically 45 and older who are either new to Instagram or not using Instagram yet for their business or not making any money yet using Instagram. So if I'm talking to you, you just might be interested in our beginner Instagram course. Ready, set gram. That's the place We just redid every single module and I know that you're in this group and you definitely want to go through the whole course again because it's changed.
I will definitely go through it again and yeah, so ready, set gram. For those of you who are not on Instagram yet. And I do know that that's true. I was just out at a conference speaking about social media last week and I was taking a survey of the room. And so these are all makers, right? So yeah, I was taking a survey of the room and I would say probably, I'd probably say, and you might be surprised at this, but you might not because I am also serving women 45 and up for the most part,
right? Yeah, I'd say that 80% of them use Facebook. Okay. And then I'd say probably half of them are on Instagram if that, if that. Well, you know why? So a couple of reasons. One, there's a learning curve and whenever we have to immerse ourselves into learning something new, we feel like we're either late to the party or it's just too much time, you don't have it.
And the one factor that I talked to my team about that women typically 45 and older lack is the confidence to put themselves out there. Now you and I are really good at this. You and I are extroverts, very comfortable on camera and on video. I know I've pushed you a little bit when we were together for our photo shoot and Ben together personally, Nantucket and the like, but I just know that women typically judge how they look like, Oh my God, I have so many wrinkles or my hair's turning gray.
No one's going to want to look at me and blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, I push people out of the fear of that. In fact, on my personal Instagram account, Sue B Zimmerman, I recently changed my bio to read that. I'm helping women make a mindset shift. That's my super power. I love it. I am seeing people though, getting past the uncomfortableness and getting on because they're seeing other people doing it. So then they're jumping on. So it's coming. It is coming, but it's slow.
There's no need to wait, I guess is the point there. But let's get into these neighborhoods. So you and I were chatting one day and you're like, Sue, I want to get on. I want to talk with your audience about neighborhoods. I know I'm going to learn a ton and I know you're going to talk about it as people, you know, knowing my audience and knowing that a lot of it, they're just starting. Sure. So, and we're all makers. You totally know my group.
Oh, I totally know your audience cause I was a crafter back in the day. I taught scratch thing and I'm an artist. I taught art lessons. I feel you guys, I know exactly what you need. So number one, trust me, you want to be on Instagram, you want to be on Instagram because people are searching on Instagram and you want them to find you for your craft and what you make. With that being said, Instagram is essentially a village.
Now when I say village, when I first started teaching Instagram, that was 140 million monthly active users and now there is over a billion climbing every single day. So every business and brand that you love is on Instagram. Every author, every philanthropy, you search it, you will find it. Trust me. If they're not there, they're coming very soon. It's the place where everyone is really seeing great results and building a community.
So if you are just wondering if Instagram is right for you, I can break all those myths while you might think it's not. If you want to send me any kind of message so you can hook up how you can get in touch with me. Okay. And why don't you just say yes, yes. Why don't you just say the answer is yes. The answer's always yes, you can do this. You can all do this. Trust me, trust me. Trust me. I've been teaching Instagram for seven years and I love teaching it, so let's get into it.
Okay. With Instagram being a village, I like to use this analogy. The village is, let's now look at a feed. So say we're looking at Sue's account. Okay. I have three accounts. Look at gift biz on wrapped. Yeah. Okay. So if we're looking at gift biz on rapt, and when I say Instagram's a village, it also, I want you to think of Instagram as a digital magazine where the bio is essentially the cover of that magazine and your feed is the content in the magazine.
So if you say that you help businesses start and grow and you are in the gift or Baker craft or Makerspace, then I want to make sure in your feed that I'm seeing that. And with Sue I see her as an authority at shows. I see the interviews that she's doing, I see quotes and it's all done in a branded way and I get a sense of who Sue is as the authority in this space. And so that's really important to have it look and feel like a magazine every aspect.
So the avatar profile photo show, Sue with her headphones on being an authority with her podcasts. She's using her yellow branding. I know yellow is her favorite color and you can see in her bio she lets you know that she's a maker business coach. I don't know if maker is the right word. I think crafter or something more generic cause maker, just like maker of what makers I tried crafter, but you know what comes up mostly for crafter, beer, beer crafting artist or something.
We got to work on that cause this is not the right keyword search for you. Okay. Yay. I'm getting some help here too. I didn't know that was going to happen or gift business coach. So Sue shows her branding quite nicely. Great quality photos. I know she invests in herself and in photo shoots, which is all really important. And like I said, she likes yellow so that Sue's look and feel. That's her magazine. That's her promise that she makes from the bio.
We're not just talking personal, we're talking business too. And so this should be, we really want to be talking here that this is for your business. Oh yeah, absolutely. No one should have more than one Instagram account. I mean if you can barely keep up with your business and your work, unless you want to have a personal one for your family, fine. But most people don't even do one Instagram account correctly, so don't have to. Okay. All right, well that's good to know.
So but let's say I did already have a personal account. I know there are some people in our listening audience right now who have a personal Instagram account. They've been there just for fun. Never business. Yeah. Well you can turn it into a business account. You can change at any time a personal into a business by the settings. I teach this all step by step. Okay, so they turn it into a business and then just proceed from there.
Yeah, because a business account has insights, a business account has features like the quick reply a business account gives you a contact button for people to get directions or call you or email you. So if you don't have your account set up as a business, you're missing out on all the features that matter for a business which is looking at data and making sound decisions.
Okay. One more question cause I know this is really basic and not necessarily what we want to be talking about with all the neighborhoods, but I know it's going to be a question for people is if they have been posting all personal things up to this point, can they just now start posting more business? Could they integrate them both together? What's your direction now on the content? Absolutely. So every post has three little dots on the top right hand side.
If you tap in, you can archive that post and just file it away or you can delete it. So depending on if you want to save it in your feed, if it doesn't match up, you can get rid of it or you can archive it. So should you post personal and mix it in with business or no? It all depends on what your business is. But I always say you have to humanize your business and your brand. If you want people to get to know, like, and trust you and in your specific niche and industry,
absolutely. I want to be connected to the craft or the Baker, the gift maker. I want to know who they are. So unless you're a big brand, people want to support local small business owners. It's very true. No, he goes, it's not the logo. Like I love the picture of you in your profile photo or you look intellectual, you look accomplished, you've got a smile. It's all good. So very important to do that.
So now that we've talked about Instagram being a village, now that we've talked about Instagram, the feed being a magazine, a digital magazine where the bio is the promise that you make in the feed. Instead of turning a page, you're scrolling and you're looking in the content that's there matches up to who you say you are and what you say you do and why you do it. So that's what you put in your bio. We're not going to get into the details of all this, but we're going to stay high level here.
So that's the feed. That's the first neighborhood. That's how Instagram started 10 years ago. Then Instagram stories were added. Instagram stories is another neighborhood where you can share either a photo of video quotes and have your own. It's essentially your own broadcasting channel and you want your stories to be entertaining and educational and become resources and the best stories that you have should and can be saved into your
highlight. As Sue has, he or she has travel and speaking and shout outs and podcast and steep peak and best life and community and quotes. You can create your own branded highlights. Yes, I have a YouTube video all about highlights that Sue can link if you're not even sure what that is or how to create them. I've got you covered.
In fact, Sue B zimmerman.com/youtube is where I have hundreds and hundreds of tutorials under five minutes, so subscribe and when you're over on YouTube, hit the bell and Sue. The reason I say hit the bell is because once you hit the bell, you get a notification every Monday when I drop a new video Monday in the morning. And to those of you that follow me on Instagram at the Instagram expert at 3:00 PM EST, I go live every Monday and talk about what I taught in that YouTube video.
And we're going to talk about the Instagram live neighborhood in a minute. But I just want you to know that I'm constantly teaching, educating, and then giving additional value using the neighborhoods to broadcast, to amplify, to promote my free content that builds that credibility and trust. Why? Because that's how I get discovered. That's how I get more hate speaking opportunities. That's how I get more paying clients and coaching clients.
So this is really important, and I know you might be, I'm talking kind of fast and from Boston, so what can I say? I'm teaching, but if you do what I say, you will get results. So watching my YouTube video. Also Sue, I'm going to give you Sue B zimmerman.com/guide.
If you're just getting started, the first thing you want to do is download my eight page free guide that will just break down these neighborhoods in a way that you can actually put notes on each part of this download to read, look, and then take action. Okay, so we talked about Instagram stories. You can create a story daily. They go away in 24 hours. I love Instagram stories. I've been using them since day one.
I have more engagement in my stories than I do in my feed because most people, there's 500 million daily Instagram stories. And most people, to be honest, are watching stories more than looking at the feed. So if your engagement has dropped, that is why it's a competing neighborhood.
Absolutely. And I've seen that a lot and you can tell me if my strategy is wrong or not, but I've reduced the amount of time I'm spending in my feed and I'm focusing more on energy in the stories cause I only have so much time. Right. And so I'm putting my energies there. Although I don't think I even have a story today and then here we are talking. That's totally fine.
And yes, I'm posting five times a week instead of six or seven for the same reason I do stories five days a week, I give the weekend total breather because the truth is on Fridays when I do my stories at the end of the day, they go through till Saturday anyway. So you want your stories to play out. You don't want to do too many, you don't want your dashes to turn to dots. People will not watch your stories. Right? Absolutely. And what about the DMS in the stories?
Oh, that's a whole nother conversation. Isn't that part of the neighborhood? When you go into a neighborhood, you have to chat with your neighbors. So The DM is in every single neighborhood. It's like a crossroad. It's not a part of, it's the communication hub for everything. Okay. We have to talk about it though. Let's talk about it at the end then. Okay. We can say that to the end. So let's move into Instagram IETV video.
So a lot of people who like videos are good on videos and want to create video content. Maybe you're someone thinking about doing a YouTube channel, but OMG, that is the hardest thing I do is create content for YouTube and there's so much work. They're great though. I'm sure they're serving you well, so, Oh yeah, no, I'm thrilled. Our YouTube channel is everything.
It's where we're getting most of our leads and I'm found on search because Google owns YouTube, but for those that don't have a team of 10 or resources, starting a channel is really hard work. So why not start out with a neighborhood IETV where you can create video content up to 10 minutes if you want. And yes, I do have a IDT video. How to get started on YouTube that Sue will share and then I'm releasing a new one soon with all the updates since the integration in the feed.
What do I mean by that? Well, now when you create an IETV video, you can have the first minute play in your feed. And I'll tell you something. My IETV videos now get between five and 8,000 views in a weekly period. Whereas the ones I did, the 24 that I did before, this integration got thousands over months. And so this new integration, if you open up the explore tab as I talked about earlier and you that real estate per ICTV Instagram is pushing that content out with the biggest like billboard.
So there's a tab at the top and the explore tab. There's that real estate and when you create an ID TV video, people discover you find you and it's a new follower. It's a new person, it's a new conversation. People can leave comments. People are, like I said, just discover you. So my account's been growing like crazy because we are sharing an IGT video at once a week and you can upload a cover photo. So it's on brand. You can have a description with up to 2200 characters.
So yes, you can write that many blog posts I like to call it and you can use hashtags and ad mentions and for those of you that don't have 10,000 followers, you can put a URL in the ICTV and it's clickable. Links in IETV are clickable. They're clickable for anybody, anybody. So ID TV plus you can even if you don't have the swipe up feature, you can share your IgE TVs to your stories, which is awesome. So would you do, I'm thinking about content for our audience.
If they were to do IgE TV, do you say instead of content that you might put in a blog, turn it into or both or both or both like or a video version of something you might've written. If you go watch my IETV and for those of you that are a little confused about it, I want to just point out, you can watch HGTV videos both on the desktop and on mobile. And if you go to the Instagram expert, which is my business account, and you look under my highlights, you will see the little IETV icon.
It looks like a old TV with a little squiggly line through it. And if you tap on that IETV icon, you will see all of my IGT videos, which essentially is like I said, another neighborhood, another channel where you can consume content. So if you scroll back, you'll see my older videos and then you'll see my branded
ones. There's five of them that have been integrated into the feed, and most of my videos, they're all under 10 minutes and they're just, I mean, 5,000 views in less than a week, 6.3 less than two weeks, 8,000 I mean, it's just crazy. It's crazy how many views they're getting and it's just, it's an untapped neighborhood and it's a place where, you know, when I do my video, I do it all in one take.
I just have bullets and I can riff on a subject, but I'm always, if you watch them, you'll hear me get engagement by having strong call to actions at the beginning, at the middle, at the end. I always let people know, make sure that you click the link for X, Y, and Z. You need to basically say and tell what you want people to do and not assume that they're going to know. No one knows what you want them to do. It's your job to tell them.
So I am very directive with what actions I want my listeners and viewers to take in an IGT and it's really served me well. The other thing you all need to know about IETV is that when you share them now in this new format, you only get to put a title in your feed. So you want to make sure that your title is very intriguing and that will want to watch more. So for example, I did a real talk video lessons I've learned over the past six years as a speaker.
I did a video about how I prep for my speaking gigs, six tips for speaking. I did one my IETV experience, why I am using IETV regularly. I think you guys would all like that one. And I did one all about hashtags in your bio when and why to use them. And the last one I did was get off Instagram and focus on the task you need to do in your business. Like real talk about like getting done as opposed to being on Instagram and scrolling and wasting time.
So these are all subject matters, titles, topics that my audience appreciates and likes and I think yours would as well. We'll continue our conversation with Sue right after a brief word from our side Sponsor. This podcast is made possible thanks to the support of the ribbon print company. Create custom ribbons right in your store or craft studio in seconds. Visit the ribbon, print company.com for more information.
One of the biggest things that I heard you just say about IETV is untapped neighborhood. Oh yeah. So it's the time to get in now because you get the visibility is greatest now. Oh, absolutely. Oh, it's like you're one of the new frontiers. So versus the feed where there's over a billion monthly active users and everyone's in the feed so you can stand out from your competition for sure. Got it.
Okay. So we're going to segue into IgE live, which a lot of people are afraid of, don't do, don't know how to do and yes, I have a YouTube video that Sewell link. If you're a beginner, everything you need to know pinning a title, how the equipment, you know what to prepare.
If you're here for business and you want to be professional, and like I mentioned, if you want to watch my Instagram live, I do it every Monday at 3:00 PM EST and if you follow me and you turn on notifications, you'll know when I'm live. With that being said, I have a certain energy around my live videos to increase engagement, get conversation and conversation is everything.
That's what leads people to intimate conversations in the DM, which we'll talk about in a little bit like suicide, but for an IgE live. For me, I'm essentially broadcasting, amplifying and promoting the free content that I spend so much time creating on YouTube. So I want as many eyeballs as possible to watch that YouTube video to comment to like it. Because on YouTube it's really the first 48 hours that matter to the most versus Instagram the first two hours.
So you want to get all that engagement as quickly as possible. So for me, it's getting people to watch my live broadcast where often I will bring in guests and when you bring in guests on your Instagram live, everyone who's following that guest will get a notification that they're joining the live broadcast, which is really cool. So this is how you can organically grow your account.
So say Sue did an Instagram live and she wanted me on as her guest and she announced it in her story that I was going to be a, it's just such a brilliant way to organically grow. So if you're not doing Instagram lives, it's another strategy, another neighborhood, another place for you to reach strangers on the internet and bring them into your business. Sue, do you have any questions on that? I do have some questions on all of this.
Awesome. Okay. So first I want to talk about, just so I have it clear in my head, your frequency, you're saying you post somewhere around five or six times on your feed, right? Yep. You do stories daily. I do stories to support the content that I'm sharing in my feed and infuse my personality and my signature style. Okay. And then you do IgE, T V how frequently? I GTV once a week. Now is our commitment we're trying to produce.
Yup. Okay. And then I G live is once a week that corresponds with your YouTube video. Exactly. And then what's your IgE TV content? I GTB content. We have a content calendar and I work with my content strategist Kendall, and she and I figure out topics that we know that our audience would appreciate. So we have three in the can. And the other thing that we do with our IDTP is we transcribe all of our videos so that anyone that's hearing impaired can read them.
Okay. And that content that is different from what you're putting in your feed and your stories. And it's also different from what you're doing with your life. So it's a separate source of content. Yeah, and sometimes there is crossover. Okay. I mean, if we, for example, everyone always loves hearing about hashtags. So I have a hashtag. I have several hashtag videos on YouTube. I have several posts in my feed about hashtag I do Instagram stories about hashtag.
If you go to my highlight called instant tips, Oh my gosh, it's 15 minutes of amazing Ninja tips in my highlight that I've shared in my story. And I've done an IGT video about hashtag. So sometimes people need to hear things several times in several places in different ways for it to sink in. We're all like that. Right? That's really true. And I've noticed that more and more over time because I'll often think, well, I've already got content out there about that.
But then when I do it again, I'm finding that there are new people who have never heard of it before. Oh my God. So I think that doesn't have as much to do with Instagram, but in a way it does in terms of content creation and putting content in these various neighborhoods. You can put content in different places because different people are watching in different areas. I very rarely go to a feed unless I'm checking out a business for the first time.
Usually I'm going into stories if they're, if they do stories well, in order to see their stories, you have to be following them, right? That's right, but so you go to the feed first, you see what they're doing, then I'll follow them, but then normally, I mean I'm not really ever going back rarely to someone's whole feed. I'm mostly going into the stories. Interesting. Okay. Yeah. I don't know if I'm different from other people.
I'm saying in the feed, in terms of going and looking at their account In the feed. Yes. I'm going into my feed. Yeah, yeah. Maybe my terminology's off. Yes. I'm looking at the Al score down a little bit on the feed, but in terms of going to somebody specific and going to their account and looking at all their, all that they've posted on their account, I don't, I go to their stories. Good. Okay. Am I a random person?
I mean you're basically doing what everyone enjoys doing, which is watching stories because you feel a little bit more connected to that account. Right? Right. Absolutely. Yeah. So what other questions do you have for me? Okay, I want to get into the DMS. Okay, well the DM is seriously like pro pro pro, like that's coming your way later. But direct messages. I have so many tactics that I use and I set them up with quick reply.
So there's a YouTube video all about quick reply, which is one of the features you get when you have a business account. And I nurture relationships in the DM. You can have one to one conversations. You can have Instagram direct message groups, which I have for my ready set gram members and my coaching clients. You can do a video call. I've closed thousands of dollars in sales and the Instagram direct message using video and talking to people, Instagram direct message.
Literally I could talk about for hours because there's so many nuances and features in the DM. So why don't you ask me what specifically you want to hear today? Okay, so direct messages, I'm thinking a lot of people know because I communicate a lot with direct messages, but they're mostly text,
right? So just back and forth and I think most people at this point, I might be making an assumption, but understand that that's a great way to link and start knowing people and start developing a relationship is with direct messages. Talk about quick reply, Well quickly applied. It's a way for you to do a text expander so you can just put like for me, yeah, every time I get a new follower on Instagram, I send them my link to a strategy guide. I let them know they can book a free 15 minute
call. Here's my guide and I do it in a way that's nurturing and not bossy or salesy or spammy. They thanked me for it, so I always send my new followers a strategy guide. A lot of people ask me questions and I'll just type in Y T, YouTube and it will auto populate the quick reply that I put there so that I don't have to type it every time. It saves me so much time. I get hundreds of DMS a day, So how could my audience use it? What do you think?
Oh, I mean, anybody that's asking about a price or a selection, you could link it to your website page or if they want to book a meeting or a consult with you, you can link it to your calendar. I mean, so many ways. Okay. I'm just trying to think of like even if someone's doing a story or something and they're at a craft show and they're showing their tables or something like that, but there are a lot of people who aren't at that
show. They could do a story and say, Hey, if you're interested in this DME and I'll give you a discount code or a link to where you can see more designs or something like that. I'm just trying to relate it back of how our people could use it. Yeah, totally. A discount code for someone that's interested is a great strategy, so you definitely can do that. Okay, perfect. And video, what are the video replies? You're just saying that your reply not texts. Oh yeah.
So in the Instagram this is advanced And you know you can send a text, you can send the link. I send video replies or audio replies, which you can do in the dam too. So much easier and faster. Oh, for me for sure. Yeah. I love the Instagram direct messages. There's so much here and it really is the best way, in my opinion, to nurture relationships from people that are interested in what you do that are strangers on the internet.
I mean everyone needs to understand that you don't immediately attract a follower who becomes a paying customer. They have to like you and trust you. And how does that happen? By creating content in these four neighborhoods, by showing up on video, by letting them get to know you and what makes you different from everyone else that does what you do. And so in order for this to happen, these are all the touch points of sales, like how many touch points does it take?
And you can make those touch points more special and more intimate. And I'm always trying to stand out from everyone else when I do this, like I want to be different. I want it to be memorable. I want people to feel good. Sometimes I'll use a Snapchat filter or a Bitmoji and just make them laugh or smile in some fun way. It's never like what everyone else is doing for me. It's always different and standing out from the status quo.
Okay, so I have been with you and watched you in action as you are creating stories on the fly. Yeah. I mean you don't like in your mind, think of a whole storyboard. Well, you're also have been created since forever. No, no, no, no. On my personal account, it is on the fly. It literally is the life of a successful business owner and everything that I do. For example, I went to Newbury street with Cody today and got my hair cut and colored.
So there was a little fun story there because the dogs literally sat next to me and it was just me and the dogs at this place. So that's interesting. That's different. So the question is do you bring your dog everywhere? So what's the conversation around that and what's in it for people looking and reading? It's like I get to know Sue. Oh my God, she gets to bring mr Cody to get her hair done. That's so cool. And yeah, by the way, Gerald has a dog right there in the salon.
That's really cool too. So where's the conversation and how can people relate to it? That's personal. That's getting to know, like, and trust too. On my business account, every single story is mapped out in our Trello boards. We've got storyboards for everything. For each story, every day. Each story, every day on experts has the strategy. Yes. Okay. And who's doing that for you? You're not doing that yourself? My content creator and I do that together. Once a week We prep everything.
Okay, perfect. You two sit down and you talk through what's the message going to be each day and then do you go through what each clip is going to be? But we have bullets, so we have our Trello, we pretty much do two weeks out. So we have bullets of the message that we're trying to get across and share and help our clients with. And each message is bullet. It's not literally the script. I can totally add personality and do it wherever I want, but the message is there, the story is there.
And then when we're done with that message, we're done with that story and you stop. The goal is to get people to literally tap through your whole story. If people are tapping out and you can look at your insights on your account and see if people have exited and tapped out and if you're not getting any engagement. Another great strategy is to use the engagement stickers, which I have a YouTube video all about how to use the engagement stickers in your story to get more engagement.
And when you get that engagement, it happens in the Instagram direct message. So that's another place when you use the stickers strategically, you absolutely get the engagement. We're all looking for more engagement. Why? Because the more engagement you get, the more Instagram works at algorithm in your favor. So the engagement should be happening in the feed, in your stories and IETV and in live.
And if you have the bandwidth to do all of these neighborhoods correctly, then you will get more exposure and more exposure leads to more opportunities which lead to more sales. Perfect. And I want to make the point that if somebody does DMU, then you should be damning them back. Even if they're just saying, Hey, that was a great story. You want to be engaging with them back. Unless they're full of, they're a marketer and they're just trying to get you to go to their account.
Well that's different. Yeah. Yeah. I mean not every single one, like I go to their account and see who they are and I'm like, I am so not falling for that. So, okay. This is a personal question because I'll get a lot of crappy people who just want to promote to me. Like is it that I'm, are my hashtags wrong? You do or you don't? I do. Oh yeah, you're probably using the wrong hashtags. Are you shaking things up? I am.
I switched them out, but I still get, well at first I was attracting the wrong people because they weren't the people that I'm trying to approach. I switched my hashtags up. Now I'm getting the right people, but I still get some of these spammy. All they're in it is to sell me their stuff. People. Is that just natural? You're going to have that from time to time. Yeah, I mean, but you can control it and block it and report it, which is what I recommend doing.
Alright, so as we're winding down here, Sue, you work with so many people and with your coaching and everything else, can you share with us a couple of your favorite success stories? Sure. So one of my favorite success stories really happened from a quote that I shared on my personal account, and I did this in a very organic way. I'm going to actually read this quote out loud because I love the message. So you always want to make sure that the messages aligned with who you are and your business.
So I said, surround yourself with people that push you to do better. No drama or negativity, just higher goals and higher motivation, good times and positive energy, no jealousy or hate simply bringing out the absolute best in each other. That was my quote and I wrote a post that basically said higher goals and higher motivation. My six month hive group coaching is starting soon and I have three spots left now. I have one spot left and I let people know when the date started.
And I said, if you are interested and you want to be by like-minded business ladies, lady bosses to level up your business, send me an Instagram direct message. And then I said, this is for people who want to break through the overwhelm, shut down shit that isn't serving them and focus on steps that will get you the business that you are craving. My team and I support you every step of the way. So I just said to DME, well, Rebecca DME, she's like, I want that last seat.
$5,000 later, boom in the damn. Nice. Just from a post, a quote. And did you know who Rebecca was before? Had you seen that she'd been following you for awhile or is from San Diego? She has been following me for awhile. Had she DMD you ever before? We may have had some conversation back and forth. So she was a warmer lead with a nurtured conversation. That's what you're asking. But she was ready to step up. She's like, I have been watching you.
She's like, I worked with Bernay Brown, I did X, Y, and Z for her content creation and I'm ready to step up my own game and not be behind the scenes anymore but to be front center. And I'm like, girl, I got you. And she signed up that day.
Beautiful. Yeah. So I think that's a good point though, Sue, too, is that you're doing a lot of work on this platform, but people are getting to know you and you don't even necessarily know who's out there, who's starting to feel more and more comfortable with you, who's aligning with your type of style in terms of how you speak and teach and all of that, and so then when the time is right, they'll just start coming out almost of the woodwork for you. Oh yeah.
We have a virtual business training that we're doing June 28th, 2019 and we're almost feel it's invite only. I don't have to do any campaign or ads or emails. It's all based on do you want to either reach out to the right people or they reach out to me, it's kind of nice. We're at a state where we get to pick who we work with at our high level coaching and I love that. That's beautiful.
You're not necessarily working to fill that now, but it's all the work that you've done up to this point that's allowed you to be here now. Oh my God. It's so true. I just told my hairdresser this, it's like, so you know, I just spent $165 to get a cut and a few highlights and he's on Newbury street, which is like, you know, does she? She plays here in Boston. I've been going to him for over 20 years and I said, you know, I just spoke at a hair Schwarzkopf, which is a hair silence Academy in LA.
They had me as her keynote and it's like you're charging what you're worth based on the years of doing your craft. And I've been teaching Instagram marketing for seven years, so if you want me to collapse time and get you the results that you want a lot faster than trying to figure it out yourself. Ready, set. Gram is the course for you because it's been created, it's eight hours of teaching and step by step process and methodologies that we've tested that work and that worked for our
clients. And so people that are like, I don't have $500 to invest in a course like that. It's like, then you know, if you want to learn Instagram, you can go Google and try to figure it out on your own, but it's like you to invest in yourself and your business with people that you know will get you the results.
Well not only that, $500 I think where the difference comes in is $500 is physical transfer of money that you're probably spending $2,000 of your time trying to find information, testing correct information. Then it not working, then going to look for more, not getting results, all of that. So really, even though you're not handing over that money, you're spending and wasting money on your time, which you can never get back. I'm all about collapsing time. I even have a business coach.
I mean I, whenever I invest in others that are having results beyond what I want, I always scale faster. It's just like I want to collapse that time. Absolutely could not agree with you more. I'm so glad you re talked about ready, set gram. Yeah, I'm going to have to go and when I listened to this at the final edit after editing it and all that, I'm going to try and capture all the links you gave me. If not, I'm going to reach out to you and say, what was that one?
What was that one gift biz listeners on the show notes page. You're going to have a slew all of these links that Sue's given us. Yeah, no worries. Okay. As we circle out here, so tell us why you love Instagram so much and why you've dedicated your whole life to Instagram. Well, I am that entrepreneur who's been an entrepreneur my whole
life. I've had 18 businesses and I've always used visuals to sell what a marketing, whether I was hand-making signs or using sandwich boards or putting it in ad in the newspaper and paying for that. Instagram's free and syringe. Visual. Instagram is where you can tell a story and attract those that you are meant to be serving based on your energy, your point of difference. The thing that makes you special and unique and every single person is unique.
You just have to find out what those visual buckets are. As I allude to them in the ready set gram course and I teach you the strategies, how to find those core values in those unique aspects of your business and your brand so that you can amplify them on Instagram. And I love that you can build a community of people that fall in love with your products and services.
And if you look at the hashtag RSG community, there's over 15,000 posts there from people in my community That you directed them to do though also that that was what you were talking about earlier. Right? But that's how you build community. Right? Exactly. Wonderful. So that's why I love Instagram. Wonderful. Well Sue, thank you so much for welcoming us and showing us all these neighborhoods because I know for a fact that a lot of us might be in one, but we're certainly not into three or four.
So it helped us understand what's available there and any direction for somebody who's just starting, let's just go with that and then we'll close on out. Yeah. Well just starting was the guide link that I gave you to be zimmerman.com/guide grab that guide you definitely want to have And that'll tell you exactly which neighborhood to enter into and how to get started. I teach the neighborhoods, The essence of them.
Everything you heard today, you'll have it in a written format with a worksheet that you can kind of go through. Wonderful. Thanks again, Sue. I so appreciated and now Instagram's guide to do some more changing so we can have you on a fourth time and then you'll be the leader. Take care. Have a good rest of your day. You too. It's been fun being here with you again. Wow. What an information packed episode that was. Sue talks fast. She packs it with a lot of content.
You might need to go back and listen again, possibly not only just with your phone in hand, but also pen and paper. You know that I'll be going back to this once or twice even though I've already now heard it at least twice through the interviewing and editing process. I love how Sue's broken this down into the various neighborhoods and I'm curious which neighborhoods your involved with. If you'd like to share. Okay, and now I want to share with you a little bit of insight into next week's show.
It's going to be an important one, you guys, I'm going to be talking about the truths about being a small business owner. Those of you who are just jumping in, give you a little bit of what you're going to be encountering as the months and years go on and those of you who are already in business, I think you'll get a lot of value out of this too because you're going to see that some of the challenges are things that you're definitely going to be able to relate
to. We are all in this wonderful yet challenging world of entrepreneurial ship together and we're going to talk about that next week on the gift biz on wrapped podcast. After you listened to the show, if you like what you're hearing, make sure to jump over and subscribe to the show on Apple podcasts. That way, you'll automatically get the newest episodes when they go live, and thank you to those of you who have already left a rating and review.
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