Instagram For Business

Are you using it for branding, marketing or both?

Today, you’ll want advanced business strategies not personal profile exploits.

Chris Daniel - Instagram for Business

Instagram-for-Business 101

Stop chasing customers. Instead, empower them to chase you!

I bought the top Instagram for Business training available. Then I paid the owners #1 student to mentor me. I dropped another 1K on some tools needed for the growth & engagement strategy we were going to use and then I built a powerful new IG page before I got burned out. Think Insta is still evolving… So am I, baby!

Here is just a hint at some of the Instagram tips, tricks and strategies I used to go from 0-180K+/less than a year.

Exclusive One-on-One with

Ben O’Berg

Do you use LinkTree?

You’ll love this 2m tease.

Ben & I put on an Instagram

workshop in 2019.

This interview has never been

revealed, until now.

Full hour long interview with your

FREE PDF today!

Watch the full clip & Download the PDF

Grab your Free PDF The Hashtag Ladder cheat-sheet & watch this exclusive interview today!

Here's What You'll Learn Today.

Instagram Business Profiles 101: No follow-for-follow (F4F)
Best Use of a BIO: Niche down and step out of the shadows as an industry leader.
Hashtags 101: You'll never go viral until you figure this out and no lazy kid on YT can tell you how either!
Instagram Business Profiles 101: No follow-for-follow (F4F)

What it takes to go viral on Instagram

2016: First to market rush
2017: It was all about the DM's
2018: It was all about the PowerLikes
2019: It was all about Engagement
2020: It was all about Influencers
2021: It was all about User Experience
2022: You'll want a small budget to get noticed likely using a combination of strategies & tactics but in a wise algorithm proof way.
2023: You better understand how we got here...

What you need to change on Instagram

Bio Clean-up: Stop using F4F
Message Congruency: Get on-point
Campaign Strategy: Go viral on Explore pg
Work/Effort: A lot at start-up + daily
Growth Hacks: Different tactics
Marketing: The costs to acquire a customer
Beyond Insta: Content repurposing
LTV: Life-time value of a customer
All of these should apply to your Instagram

Instagram Business Profiles 101

Step One is to stop using F4F. It’s like spam. It breaks the TOC of the platform and you’re likely to have your profile shutdown much like MassPlanner.com and services like it did.

There is nothing social about using follow-for-follow (F4F). These profiles get less than 0.05% engagement rate on avg. Just think about it. If someone has obligated followers, do they really have much influence over their audience? No.

Businesses don’t chase followers or followers of followers in hope of gaining a follow back. This is fundamentally a flawed strategy that should only be of short-term use. F4F is not used by businesses in general and IMHO, your business is no different. – Stop taking advice from teenagers on YouTube.

There are several ways to go viral or get exposure to the Instagram Explore page. DM’s can still be very effective, however, everyone uses them wrong. You can’t send links in DM’s anymore. The unnatural engagement created is a give-away for Instagram. You’ll likely get shadow-ban for sharing or engaging in DMs the wrong way. So teach everyone in the group to go to the profile before engaging on the most recent post, etc.

Hashtags are another one of the ways to get in front of your audience. However, sloppy tag handling has lead many people down a lukewarm path of mediocracy. I provide the “inside scoop” on how to build your hashtag ladders. I recommend it for everyone, but this is just one of several strategies and tactics for building business profiles on Instagram. So this is your chance to get some free training on Instagram for business. But this is serious. Don’t sleep on it. If you do, you’re likely the one who needs this the most.

Best Use of a BIO

Clean-up your profile by getting super focused on what your audience wants. Once you understand them, you’ll be better equipped to provide value to them. Then give them what they want on that link. It’s like offering some free PDF as a lead magnet. If they never click onto your Link in Bio, then your BIO has failed you. Landing pages, opt-ins, FB retargeting pixels might all be waiting on the next page, but if your Link in Bio doesn’t get the click, it’s all for nothing!

Stop using Linktree or rotators and stuff. Just offer one thing of value to your one audience. Stay focused, provide value, and let the customers come to you. Once you’re established, you can start using the FB Ads Manager to start placing Instagram ads, stories, etc.

Post Structure

Dude, what if you went viral? Could you handle it? Wait what? Probably not. Your top 3 lines are like gold. What are you doing with them? This is kind a like a thank you page (TYP) is for internet marketers. It’s very valuable digital real estate. The only job the top of your post has is to capture peoples attention in the first 2 lines! On the 3rd line you need to list your own handle (@profilename). That way viewers don’t have to click the “more” button to visit your profile.

In the post, you should try to provide value. This is where things can go in different directions, but don’t get confused. All posts send traffic to the Link in BIO. Link in BIO should go to the landing page of the lead magnet offered for this audience. It should be of value to them and will be the beginning of the funnel for you.

In the middle of the post, you’ll want to give credit to all contributors for this content. Shout out to yourself, @, & #.

At the end, this is where you will list your hashtags. There is no difference if you burry them in the 1st comment (that’s just more work for you).

Real Instagram Examples - 60K Likes on this clip

Real Instagram Examples - It was a win/win

I got more exposure on this clip than this pro surfer could get on it.

Post & Insights - Real Instagram Examples

Need More Proof?

Hashtags 101

Look, I don’t have time to mess-around on this. Either you are chasing followers and followers of followers in hopes of gaining a follow back, or you’re not. In which case you’re probably hoping to get some exposure to the Explore page. These are fundamentally different strategies and are counter-productive to each other. You need to pick a path.

You have to figure out the hashtags or you’ll never go viral. Most people just vomit up a bunch of cool tags for their niche and then reuse them all the time. Just about everything they do is wrong.

The amount of engagement your post gets in comparison to the avg. amount of engagement required for the top 9 positions of that hashtag will govern if your content will be shown on the top of that hashtag. Thus, it’s relative to that hashtag!

Did you catch that? This is why what causes you to go viral will not keep you going viral. I know you’re working hard on content but your content needs to climb the hashtags like a ladder. You need to get more and more engagement as you go. You will get more exposure as your post becomes visible on those tags. But your content will roll-off and disappear if your post fails to continue getting likes, comments & shares. This is how you will climb.

So those who just vomit up large tags will likely never have their content shown on them. Those who don’t rotate their tags will likely severely limit their audience in the long-term. On the short-term, each post will compete with you to get the same exposure. Learn how to structure your hashtag ladder, how many to use without appearing spammy, develop tag sets, and more. Get all this from my FREE PDF guide The Hashtag Ladder.

Disclaimer

My Hashtag Ladder is no fix for your crappy content, scattered interests and literally no marketing budget. No one can fix that shit but you! Hop to it cause none of these other strategies will won’t work unless you have a budget or endless time like some unsocial hermit.

Now that you think you’re an expert, let’s review. Your content is to die for. You go virial as often as you wake up.

Now what?

Are you driving cheap traffic or is it highly targeted? Is it niche or broad? Branded or buyer traffic? IDK what you’re doing, but you better have a plan and a strategy or tactic that fits your growth plan.

IMHO everyone should have a FB re-targeting pixel on the landing page or home page listed in your BIO’s link. If your Instagram Profile & Link in BIO do their job, then you should do well. Managing some IG ads via your FB Ads Manager would do well at this point.

I suggest ensuring your landing page is congruent with your offer, audience, and product funnel. You could just dump visitors off on the home page, but again, I hope you picked up the lead in the process. If you didn’t, rethink your lead magnet & funnel strategy so that you pick up the lead before sending them to your home page. However, I suspect the most profitable pages on the web are the TYP (thank you page) used as an upsell. Think, “Want fries with that?”

Watch the full clip & Download the PDF

Grab your Free PDF The Hashtag Ladder cheat-sheet & watch this exclusive interview today!

2022 UPDATE

At the end of 2021 Insta changed their recommended # of hashtags to 5. That means the concepts described above are even more important now! Each step on the ladder is a bigger step for you and more important if you miss a step. This will also increase the likelihood of people missing steps in their attempts to go viral. So this is going to bring us right back to the beginning. I went deep describing The Tag Ladder here, but you will likely want to have several tactics working together in your over-all growth strategy for this platform.

2022 UPDATE # 2

Also, the resistance has lost, kind of. I resisted Tik Tok early on because it was a Chinese company that would change their app every time, right after Apple would approve of it. They would swipe everyone’s personal info. They probably have yours already, right? Look, IDK or care if you believe me ok. Some of my buddies crossed over early on and have been teaching people how to grow massive followings on Tik. I’m just now telling you (in part because I didn’t like this trend) how this has changed Instagram and created a short-content frenzy among the big socials platforms.

Tik Tok has encourage Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts to basically rip each other off. Yes, for the past year+ you could have been swiping Tik’s w/o the logo and repurposing those on Instagram Reels or YouTube Shorts. You probably would have done well but IDK if you would have liked the results unless you were very strategic in the beginning.

See Tik was just for kids in the beginning. In fact, if what you have to say takes longer than a minute, it’s not the platform for you. Thus, its become kind of the platform for entertainment but not really for business. Unless, your business is entertainment or you can figure out how to bridge people over to where your long-form content resides.

That is actually, a viable option for using this platform. Capture their attention and then invite them to join you on IG, or YT or your FB Group (like a paid group but never build another marketers groups and then hope to siphon off a few followers, etc.). Give them a reason (like a Lead Magnet for joining you on that platform). Then give them so much value that they want to follow you.

2022 UPDATE # 3

IOS 14 kind of killed a few FB Ads, didn’t it? Who cares about FB? You should! FB owns IG and you need to use their ads manager for placing your ads. So now, the strategies and tactics for how you grow using these ads is in question as some have less reach than others. More like, they keep changing.

So instead of trying to lead visitors off of FB to visit your website, send your retargeting leads to your FB Page (keeping them on the platform). Do this by creating a new custom Meta audience list to segment visitors. So those who already spent $$ to build audiences only to have FB nerf their reach now need to recalibrate their funnels and break-even calculations. Are you even still profitable? Those who built their businesses around one platform, might not be.

Also, you might be starting to spin your wheels a bit here. You see, many of you IG wannabe guru’s are so “in love” with IG that you might have failed to notice some of the changes. A decent YT video could do a better job of growing your IG audience than some of the strategies you’ve been using over the last year. – Don’t be so focused that you lose focus on the over-all objectives.

The time-to-live of a social media post is still a law of marketing that should not be avoided. So when I say that the TTL of a Tweet is like 15 minutes or less, and the TTL of a Tik starts to decay instantly, what I’m really trying to say is that YT videos are the only social platform who’s reach continues to grow after 7 days or more. So you can work starter or harder but usually not both.

The Mere Exposure rule is a marketing term that illustrates that most audiences trust grows over time with repeat exposure to the same marketing message or basically, an ad. If you show the same ad to some 7+ times, you’re more likely to gain their trust and pick up a sale.

So you can work for weeks and create shitloads of Tik content, or just make one YT video and wait. Now I don’t want to have over-simplified things here as I could hear all the bitching and moaning before I even open my email… but really, the reach is so different that if your marketing team ignore this, they’re probably selling bubblegum internationally from Ali-Express. LOL

So I continue to recommend creating a plan that includes 2 or more social platforms that include, but are not limited to: IG & YT (and FB). – No, I didn’t forget to mention Tik. In fact, if you spend your money chasing customers on Tik, I’ll probably question your marketing strategy. If you got the time/money to chase views great, but if your using it to chase customers over other platforms, yeah… I’ll probably start asking a lot of questions. Who’s your audience, where do they live, what are you selling, how’s your ROI on TIK so far, or do you bridge them to another platform, etc.? – If I didn’t ask these questions, I wouldn’t be doing my due diligence, right?

Have a plan or plan to fail…

2023 UPDATE # 4

TIK TOK is still being shady. If you only knew, you wouldn’t being using it. (Test out your free speech on TIK by saying anything about China and watch your reach drop going forward). Don’t trust me, test it. “Be like a Berean” and test my advice to see if what I’m saying is correct.

Musk just bought TWTR. Within the first few weeks he’s doubled the character input to 280 and soon after said “I think speech should be free.” – If he adds a WeChat feature to it and for security, your government removes the competition… hhmmm…

If you guys like the algorithm, then you should be on Tumblr! In fact, Tumblr has started to grow again now that concerns over Tik keep rising. I know some of you will do anything to build an audience, however, I want you to engineer your audience so that it speaks to your ideal customer. – Did you catch that?

News flash: Your ideal customer does not hangout on every social platform! Are you desperate for a customer, cause some of you look like your chasing customers instead of having customers chase you. So if you’re not using small socials to send traffic to your main social, like using IG for your main branding, etc., then that social platform might be a distraction to you. IDK but if you’re spending a lot of time on an unprofitable platform, or building an audience overseas that doesn’t convert, or the community doesn’t have faith in making transaction on that platform, then you likely shouldn’t be spending much time on it.

Now if you’re serious, you should already have a business IG. So now, add some money or apply the education I give you to now start GEO targeting with your ads. If you’re not using ads, its hard to say that you’re as serious as you might think. If you don’t have money for ads but have time for Tik (which is a waste of time IMHO) then why not put some effort into your hashtags? Oh, yeah, you need to do hashtag research. /facepalm – Does any of this sound familiar? You need HQ tag research which will cost you hours and hours of work. This is the corner most people cut. Does you’re IG lack or is it your marketing strategy that lacks? IDK, don’t kill the messenger I just work here…

Have you started using ChatGPT with Canva to leverage AI to make social media posts yet? If not, why not? Are you only doing one post a day, ok ok… So then, now that you have AI, why are you posting once a day?