My Instagram account is dying. That is how I felt in the last year. And in today's video, I'm gonna share the steps I would take if I had to start my Instagram account totally from scratch, which are actually the same steps I'm taking right now to change up my account and bring it back to life.
And yes, it's kind of working. If you're new here, hi, my name is Elise, and since starting my personal Instagram account back in 2012, I've grown it to over 185,000 followers. But nowadays, the Instagram algorithm is different and it's always changing.
So if you are just starting out or starting a new account from scratch, stay tuned because in this video I'm gonna share a step-by-step, swipeable plan of what I would do if I were to grow my own Instagram account starting from zero today in 2024. And be sure to stay until the end where I'm gonna share the one thing that most business owners forget to do in their Instagram strategy that could be costing you tens of thousands of dollars. Now, I know your time is precious, but listen, one of my students named Abi had a $45,000 week after adding Instagram to her sales strategy.
And before that, she had never made any money on Instagram. So with that said, let's make Instagram work for you. Now, step one sounds simple, but it's kind of deceptively hard and a lot of people get stuck on this.
The first step is to decide if you're gonna be a personal brand or a business brand, a corporate brand. But before you decide, think about this. Elon Musk has way more followers than Tesla, and Tim Cook has way more followers than Apple, and Richard Branson has way more followers than Virgin.
You see where I'm going with this, right? Personal brands typically grow faster and are more compelling than company brands because people trust faces more than they do a faceless brand as much as they love their Apple and their Tesla products. So with that said, with your personal brand, the first thing you're gonna need to do is define your mission, your audience, and your unique offers or ways.
Now, all of your content creation stems from these foundations, so make sure you're laser focused on who you help and how you help 'em. That's what's really key, especially for starting an Instagram account. Now, once you have those things in place, you are gonna first write your Instagram bio that tells your target audience who you are, why they should care, and why they should follow you.
Because let's be honest, people are scrolling for themselves. They're not there to boost your ego, so you gotta appeal to what they care about, which is themselves. Now, an Instagram bio only has 150 characters, so you don't have a lot of time to waste.
You gotta be succinct. So that's why I recommend following this flow for the very first line of your Instagram bio. Who you help and how.
Literally. You're gonna say in the first line, "I am for XYZ, and I help them do ABC. " You wanna call out your target audience so that they can see right when they land on your profile, whether you're for them or not.
And yes, you're gonna repel some people, and that is A-okay. Now, the second line of your business bio on Instagram is the perfect place to build some authority and really make yourself stand out from your competition. So you wanna get tangible and specific here.
From a human psychology perspective, we really like to know specifics, and even better numbers. So try to get really, really specific down to the dollar if you can. You can say things like, "I'm the coach featured on Dancing With the Stars," or "I've worked with 312 clients and you're next!
" Something along those lines. Now, the third line of your bio on Instagram is really important because it will provide a specific reason as to why your follower should click the link in your bio. Let your followers know what's in it for them behind the link, because no one wants to leave the coziness of Instagram, so it's gotta be compelling.
Maybe there's a 10% off code, or maybe there's a brand new training with a specific title that jumps out at them. Is there a good case study that would be really good for them to know? Whatever link is in your profile, the last line of your bio, which sits right above the link, needs to describe what's in it for them.
With that foundation in place, it's time to move on to step two of creating an Instagram account from scratch, and now it's time to start creating content. I recommend jumping in with both feet here. Don't just dip a toe in, dive on in.
You wanna start posting as soon as your bio is done. Yes, even if you have no followers, because you gotta give your future followers a taste of what your content's gonna be like. So I actually recommend posting nine to 12 pieces of content right away to populate your feed a little bit.
Now, if you're not sure where to start with your Instagram content, treat your posts like you're making responses to commonly Googled questions that people in your niche ask. So remember, Instagram can be treated as a search engine, just like Google. Even Google's senior VP said that something like 40% of young people when they're looking for a place for lunch, don't go to Google Maps or Search, they go to TikTok or Instagram.
So creating search friendly reels like Top Vegan Lunch Spots in LA, or How to Curl Your Hair Without Damaging It will actually increase your chances of popping up on the explore page, and that's where you reach new people and non followers. And PS, this tip is so good, literally, you can go to Google right now and get free ideas on your next Reel topics. Just type in your niche in Google, scroll down to the "People Also Ask" section and keep clicking into the options to see more and more options populate.
These are all questions that people in your niche are asking and their topics that you can easily answer in your Reels. There is some serious gold there. You're welcome.
Now to make actual content for your feed, start with something easy. I'm thinking a B-roll Reel with text on top. So what's B-Roll?
Well, you're gonna film yourself doing anything except talking to camera. So think about your day, film yourself having coffee while you're journaling, taking your phone calls, getting your hair cut, writing coffee at your laptop, whatever it is that you do. Set your phone up on a tripod or prop it up against some books and film yourself doing your thing.
Remember anything but talking to camera. These are all B-roll clips. Then you're gonna save them in an album on your phone or put them in your Google Drve and call it your B-roll bank because you're gonna pull from this every time you need to make a new Reel.
Now I teach my students exactly how to do this quickly, easily, and what to put on screen in your Reels inside of my program called Message Magic. I'll pop the link right below this video so you can check it out. Now that you're starting to create content for your brand new account, let's move on to step three.
And this is more of a mindset thing, but I don't want you to stress about going viral, meaning you don't have to hop on trends that don't align with you personally or your business just to get views. I mean, what good is it to go viral and not attract anyone who's interested in your business or your offers? It might make you feel a little Insta-famous, but if it's not bringing dollars to your door, I don't want it.
I did an Instagram experiment over the summer where we posted 12 reels and three carousel posts over a period of five days. Normally in a week, I would post like three times. Now, while my Instagram accounts engagement did slightly go up from posting more often, my team actually found that we didn't actually boost our leads or sales significantly by posting way more.
So quality of your views matters a lot more than the quantity. You wanna go mini viral in front of your target followers in order to get leads and sales from your social media efforts. I know it sounds simple, but when you're in a scroll hole on Instagram, you are gonna be tempted to make videos or jump on trends that might not lead to views directly back to your business.
With all that said, resist the urge to delete videos that are so-called flops, especially as you're just starting to grow. Trust that they are being seen by the right people and they will continue to be seen by the right people because you never know. The algorithm can continue to pick up a video long after its posted.
Plus, when you do make content that doesn't perform like you'd want it to, just take it as data, analyze that piece of content and understand what potentially didn't work for it, and keep testing, keep tweaking and iterating on that type of content until you see something really take off in your niche. Now that you've got content posted to your Instagram account, the next step is to engage with your audience. This is so critical as you grow, and this is one of the big mistakes I made when I first started my Instagram account.
I was obsessed with getting followers, but I didn't engage with anyone outside of the comments and I didn't collect email addresses. Remember I mentioned my student who had a $45,000 week just after adding Instagram to her sales strategy? Well, she attributes a lot of her success to conversations that she had with her followers.
So prior to her launch, she offered Angel Readings to members of her audience who were willing to chat on the phone with her and answer a few questions. Now, if you don't have the bandwidth to talk to your audience on the phone, talk to them one-on-one on Instagram. Because I always say the money is made in the DMs.
Whatever you do with your brand new account, do not ignore the DMs. But these people who are messaging you in the DMs are interested. They are warm leads and they are your future customers.
So how do you generate DMs on a brand new account? Well start by encouraging your viewers to comment on your videos, and then you can follow up with them with the DMs so that you can continue the conversation further. You can even use their comment to create a new Reel that features them and their comment or question on screen, and people like that little shout out.
Creating content is like a snowball. Once it gets rolling, it gets easier and easier. Step number five, this is the thing I said that most business owners don't do in their Instagram strategy, and it could be costing you tens of thousands of dollars.
You have to remove yourself as the bottleneck as you grow your Instagram. One big difference between Instagram today and Instagram when I first started back in 2012 is that Instagram has partnered with ManyChat, which is a messaging automation software. So it's a verified partner of Instagram, but with ManyChat, you can create an automatic DM conversation that delivers your resource, which could be like a freebie, a workshop link, a download, a challenge, anything that you have to offer to your audience without you needing to manually actually send that message.
So remember those comments that you're asking people to leave in Step number four? Here's where they come in, because when you have ManyChat connected to your account, those comments are the triggers to kick off your DM automations that will send a follow up message to someone simply because they commented your keyword on your post. This exact strategy not only helped me grow my Instagram and get out of my engagement funk because now my posts get hundreds, sometimes thousands of comments on them, but my time was freed up to create even more content because my messaging software was taking care of tasks that normally I would do manually.
I took this software one step further, and when I was pregnant last year and preparing for my maternity leave, I set this software up so that my team could continue to post without me and just make sure that these keywords that people were commenting were triggering my DM automations and my business went on to generate 60 to $80,000 per month without me while I was off enjoying my newborn snuggles. Now, I've pulled out my favorite DM automation flows from my ManyChat experience because I've been using this tool for three years now, and I wanna give you my best performing DM automations all inside of Message Magic. So go ahead and check it out.
I'm gonna leave the link for it right below this video. Now, what I just shared are the exact steps I would take if I was starting Instagram from zero today. Does that feel doable to you?
What questions do you still have for me? Let me know in the comments. And if you'd like even more tips on how to make your Instagram account work for you, check out this video next where I share 50 Instagram tips within 15 minutes.
