- [Neil] Hey, everyone, it's Neil Patel,
and today is the second lesson in going from zero
to 100,000 Instagram followers,
and I'm going to be focusing today's lesson
on setting up the perfect Instagram profile.
As I mentioned, this is the second lesson and video
in this six-week video series
that teaches you how to get to 100,000 followers.
So let's dive right into your Instagram profile.
First, you got to look at the Bio Link.
You know, anytime you have a profile,
whether it's a personal or a corporation,
you can add a link to your website, to your blog,
whatever it may be that you really want to end up pushing.
You want to make sure you include a link.
There's so many people that don't include a link,
and I don't get why.
Because if used correctly,
your bio can help drive engagement, loyalty, sales.
It can help even drive traffic to a new blog post
that you just put out there.
So make sure that you use the link because if you're not,
it's just like not using the real estate
that Instagram gives you to drive traffic and sales.
One thing that I like doing within my profile is,
I like driving people to lead capture forms.
So I may have a specific URL
and drive them to a landing page,
like a whitepaper or a deal page.
I look at this link as the main profit center
for my Instagram profile.
It's something that's selling for you
without having to constantly create new content,
such as not having to create stories, or posts, or videos,
or anything like that.
So make sure you pick something
that really can drive revenue or collect leads or emails.
And if you don't have something right now,
just link them to your homepage,
and over time, you can change that and switch that out.
So just an overview on the bio layout.
You know, you can end up putting your name,
your company name,
from there, you end up breaking down who you are,
a little bit about you,
and, of course, the link as well.
So the way I like putting my own bio,
as you can see on the left side there,
I put a brief description of myself or my brand,
what I am, who I stand for,
some of my hobbies or my businesses,
and then, of course, I link to my website or my blog.
And it's an easy way to get people to engage
and constantly interact with you.
One thing to know on Instagram,
and this is my favorite source to drive conversions
other than the Bio Link, is stories.
A story is your own way of, let's say, reality TV.
It's quick moments in your life
that you're sharing with people.
And these stories could either be videos or pictures.
It's just whatever's happening in the moment.
It doesn't have to be staged. It doesn't have to be perfect.
It's just real.
You don't have to have some crazy cameras.
You can just bust out your phone,
take a picture, and use that.
It's a great way to get engagement,
visibility for your content.
And, of course, if you're selling anything,
you can tell people to swipe up in your story,
and that'll drive them to your website.
One of the favorite people
that I love following on Instagram,
sometimes I view more of their stories than others
depending on how much time I have in the day, is Will Smith.
He's one of my favorite actors, love him to death,
and sometimes he'll do stories just on funny stuff,
or he has this friend, I believe his name is Scotty,
where he's like scaring Scotty.
And he'll just go around his house,
find Scotty, and scare him.
And it's hilarious.
And that's why stories are used so much.
It's a feature that's used by roughly
over 500 million users daily because people want to see
what's happening in other people's life.
As I mentioned, it's a way to interact with other people
who are just showcasing their life.
Kind of like the Kardashians and reality TV,
but a smaller, easier version, and that's on Instagram.
One thing that you should recommend doing,
or I recommend that you do, is create Story Highlights.
Now, a great example of this is the Instagram handle
by a guy named Dhar Mann.
And when you look at Dhar Mann, he has Story Highlights,
and one of them is his proposal to his wife.
And there's a lot of different stories that make them up,
and you can categorize them,
so that way they're easier to follow and understand.
But he had this whole series of stories
on how he proposed to his wife,
and it was really cool to follow along.
So if you're going to create stories,
consider spending a little bit of time on planning
and strategizing of how you're going to use them.
Whether it's to drive sales to something
or getting people to swipe up,
or it's just for people to see something specific
that you think that they'll really like.
And, as I mentioned, you can categorize them.
You can pick any days, like day one, day two, day three,
or you can categorize them as Christmas,
or holidays, or anything specific
that you know people are going to really love.
And doing the spotlight
is what really drives a ton of engagement.
That way, people can continually see them,
and I highly recommend that you categorize them
because it drives extra traffic,
especially if you're getting people to swipe up.
So make sure that your highlights stand out
by adding cover art to them,
so that way they're just not boring or dull.
Another thing when you're using stories and posts,
hashtags are super important too.
You don't want to just use the popular ones
that everyone searches for
because a lot of people are competing for those hashtags.
You also want to use the ones that are very relevant
to your community, right?
So you can use tools like Ubersuggest
to go and find out what's popular out there for keywords
and just use them as hashtags on Instagram,
and you'll find that that'll help increase engagement,
followers, strengthen your brand, your reach.
It works extremely well.
Some overview stats for you and some data
when you're using these hashtags.
You can include up to 30 on a regular post
and up to 10 on a story.
If you try to use more than that,
what you'll find is your story or post won't post.
They won't let you because you've used too many.
There's other tips that you can do to try to include more,
such as put hashtags in the comment section
so you can end up leaving comments with them.
All these little things will help you maximize
how many hashtags you can potentially put out there
so you can get more coverage.
If you're getting all those views from using the hashtags,
creating amazing content,
you'll also want to use call to actions,
so then that way people can get in touch with you,
people can buy your products and services.
So have a call to action.
Directing people what they should do next
is super important.
If you don't direct them, don't expect anything.
My Mom always said when I was a kid,
"If you don't ask, you'll never receive."
That call to action is to help you receive,
so make sure you're doing that ask.
If you don't, you won't do well.
And even if you're not selling anything,
you can use call to actions anywhere.
Sometimes I'll do a post and in my post, I'll be like,
"Let me know what you think in the comment below."
Or if I ask a question like, "What's the answer to this?"
I'll say, "Leave a comment letting me know."
Or, "How many times have you done X, Y, and Z?"
Or, "Tag a friend who needs to hear this."
These little things will help you get more
and more engagement interaction,
which will help you go viral.
And if you want extra engagement,
consider creating content themes.
A lot of Instagrammers make the mistake
of having too many themes with their page.
You don't want to have too many themes.
You just want to have one theme.
Like, for example, my theme is all things marketing related.
If you have too many themes,
your page ends up looking like a mess,
and it's hard for people to follow around.
The one thing I would recommend is,
if you're a personal brand, every once in a while,
put in images that are personal.
Especially, if you have a theme
that doesn't involve your own life.
Because a lot of people are using Instagram
to connect with you, the individual,
so sharing that at least in stories will help out.
And when you're creating a theme,
you want to give some thought to composition, color palette,
fonts, filters, having a structure,
having things be aesthetically pleasing
will help you gain more followers as well.
Some best practices is if something doesn't blend in well
and you think it's a big sore on the eyes,
you probably want to avoid it.
And if it blends in, people like it, it's inspirational,
looks good, will pick them up throughout the day,
you're probably going to do much better over time.
And when you're posting on Instagram,
you want to be consistent,
and that's why I recommend, once you got your theme,
that you need to create a content calendar.
Content calendar is a great way
to have all your content organized,
so that way you know when you want to post what.
It's not last minute. It's more strategic.
So that way you can get the results that you're looking for.
If you're wondering what that looks like,
the image on the right side, this is from later,
this helps you create a content calendar
so you can plan everything out.
It's beautiful, and that way you can plan
on not just what you're going to post when,
but what's your end game?
What results are you looking for?
Are you just looking for engagement for the sake of it?
Are you looking for revenue? Are you looking for sales?
Are you looking for more leads?
And you can plan that all out.
The main benefits of doing this
is that it keeps you organized and on track,
keeps you consistent, keeps your audience engaged
because once you stop posting content,
it's hard to get them back and get them to engage again,
helps you keep track of your performance,
and, of course, it helps you identify
what content pieces are working and which ones aren't.
Because the last thing you want to do
is keep posting the stuff that's not working.
And some tools that'll help you out with everything
that I've discussed today is Link.bio,
multiple Instagram bio links, right?
You can also use Canva.
Storyart, which is for story editing and trendy filters.
Grum, which helps you with scheduling, and Trello.
I love Trello for my own content calendar.
It's one of the easiest and simplest things.
You can use other tools as well for that,
but I personally just use Trello.
Some other tools is Sked Social.
It's built-in content calendars.
Preview, another content calendar.
Later, Instagram scheduler.
Ripl, crafting and measuring social media content.
And Social Blade, of course,
which many of you already know is for tracking your stats
on if you're increasing followers, if you're not,
how many images you're posting.
It'll tell you what's causing your numbers to go up or down.
And last but not least,
I want you to go to neilpatel.com/training.
I have this whole Instagram profile guide
that I want you to download and follow it.
When you go to neilpatel.com/training,
click on the Instagram Unlocked
or click on Zero to 100,000 Followers on the Instagram.
Once you do that, what you'll find is you'll find
all the videos and downloads,
worksheets, cheat sheets under each video.
This one is module one, video two,
so week one, video two,
and you'll find this guide underneath there.
Thank you, again.
If you have any questions, leave a comment.
If you enjoyed the video, subscribe.
Tell your friends about it.
And if you need help
just growing your social media profiles,
you can also check out my ad agency, Neil Patel Digital.