What is up, everyone. Welcome back to my channel, the best place for new coaches, content, creators,
and entrepreneurs in today's video. I want to go over via top mistakes that you aren't
even aware that you're making that stunting your Instagram growth. Now this video, isn't
going to point out the obvious mistakes and the obvious mistakes is using bots, using
automation, using the wrong hashtags, caring too much about the feed, all of that stuff.
A lot of those things are actually covered in some of my older videos like this one and
like this one, and I really don't want to repeat myself. And instead in today's video,
I really want to focus on the non-obvious mistakes. These are mistakes that I have a
feeling. A lot of you guys are making that nobody talks about. And that's why this video
is going to be super fun and super special.
Because I know by the end of this video, you are definitely going to change something in
your Instagram strategy. No doubt. Now, before we dive in today's video, as always, we do
love to shout out our community. So let's dive into those first massive congratulations
to this week's YouTube channel and Instagram profile of the week. Thank you for supporting
this channel. Now, if you're interested in being featured too, all you have to do is
take a picture of this video and post it to your Instagram stories. Just don't forget
to tag me, or you can leave a comment in today's video. Anyways, guys, let's get right back
into the video. All right, welcome back now, the very first non-obvious mistake that I
see a lot of you guys making is not having a frictionless user experience within your
Lincoln bio. Now it sounds like a mouthful, but let me show you what I mean.
So if you're like me and you're an entrepreneur, you are likely using your link in bio in order
to drive traffic to other places that could be your YouTube channel, your YouTube videos,
or maybe even a Facebook group. But what you don't realize is the link that you're pasting
within your Lincoln bio is actually a standard link. And so what happens is, especially if
someone's on mobile and they're clicking, let's say on your YouTube video, if they want
to subscribe to your channel, if they want to comment on your video, they're going to
need to sign in first, the same thing with Facebook groups. If you put your Facebook
group link within your Lincoln bio, if someone clicks on that, they're going to need to log
into Facebook. So why is that an issue? The issue is, is that you're not creating a frictionless
user experience.
You are going to not have good retention rates. People are going to bounce out of that landing
page faster than you can imagine. I know for me, if I click on something and it's asking
me to log in, I'm probably not going to take the time to actually log in. And therefore
you would have lost a potential subscriber, a potential member for your Facebook group
or even a potential lead. And that's why that's an issue. Now, before I give you the solution,
I definitely want to give credit to my loyal follower, Himanshu, who actually sent me this
tip via DM. And I also want to give credit to the person who created this solution and
his handle is right here. Now what Bobby recommends and what I find is a genius solution is instead
of using a standard link, you need to use a deep link.
And how you do that is you can use a website called URL genius. Now, what you are LGS will
do is that it'll actually convert your standard links into deep links. And that way, when
someone clicks on your Facebook group, let's say they can bypass them needing to log in.
Or if you post your YouTube video, it can also bypass them needing to sign in in order
to subscribe or comment as well. So if you are someone who's using your LinkedIn bio
to promote your YouTube videos or your Facebook groups or whatnot, make sure you've converted
your deep link into standard links. And so you're not hurting that user experience. All
right. So moving on to the second non-obvious mistake that a lot of people are making on
Instagram, that's hurting their growth is the fact that they're not adding captions
to their Instagram story videos.
I don't know about you, but for me, what I'm going through the Instagram stories, if there
is a video that I've stumbled upon and there aren't captions like this, that clearly hook
me that clearly engage me or give me context as to what the video is about. I likely won't
stick around. And the reason why this happens is for a multiple reasons. Number one, what
you need to realize is on Instagram story, everything is automatically muted, right?
So you actually have to physically push the up button in order to hear the volume. Most
likely a lot of people are scrolling through stories without the volume. And that's why
if you have captions like this, even if their volume is turned off, at least they still
get the message of what you're saying. Not only this, because you've added the caption
here, that summarizes what you say.
Well, that gives them a preview of what you're talking about. And that might actually entice
them to then want to increase their volumes so that they can actually listen to what you
have to say. Another reason why it's smart to have captions like this is the fact that
people are just clicking through, right? And the most important thing that you want to
do in your Instagram stories is get your point across fast is get your message across. It
doesn't matter to me. If someone listens to me or not, what matters is that at least they've
got the message loud and clear. And so that's why for me, every time I do Instagram stories,
you guys will notice that I always, always, always have my captions and my captions are
usually just a summary of what I'm saying. And for those people who are interested in
turning up their volume and listening to the full thing, great.
And for those people who don't want to grate the, at least they've gotten the key takeaway
and they know what action I want them to take, or they know what message I want them to receive.
So that's why it's very important that you have captions like this. Now, I also know
that in the past I've recommended an app like clinical MADEC that helps you create captions
on the fly. Well, I actually don't really recommend this anymore because what I realize
is when you use something like clip nomadic, the person still needs to stay on the phone
to watch all the captions come through. And that's why personally for me, I actually find
it more effective if you just write the caption straight up,
Because at the end of the day, what's most, most,
Most important is the fact that your followers get the message, whether that's reading it
or listening to it. And so by giving them more options for them to either read it or
listen, it's going to help you a lot with your retention. It's going to help you a lot
in order to get your main message across. All right. Now, moving onto my third mistake
that you guys are making that are super not obvious is the fact that you are only doing
primary call to actions. And actually I talked about this in this video right here. Why go
way more in depth in Instagram captions, but because we get new subscribers coming in all
the time, I'm going to repeat the same thing here. And that is something that I've recently
noticed, even in my own strategy is, Hey, it doesn't really make sense that I'm putting
all this effort in my Instagram posts.
And all I'm asking people to do is double tap. If you agree or comment below and tell
me your opinion now, by doing that, it helps you get a boost in the algorithm because you
obviously want to increase the amount of, of activity that's happening in that post
so that it can rank higher. It can show up on more people's feeds and everything like
that. But what you have to realize is that Instagram values recency. So even though you're
adding call to actions, asking people to comment below or double tab or whatever, that's effective,
maybe for the first 48 hours, but after 40 hours, Instagram doesn't really care about
your post anymore. So regardless of people are commenting on it, it's no longer going
to show up on anyone's feeds. And so that's just a waste of effort. And so I sat down
and I thought to myself, what can I do differently?
How can I actually make this worth my effort? And so that's when I started to do secondary
call to actions or what I like to call secondary call to actions. And what this means is, as
you can see from this photo of an example of my post, not only do I have my primary
call to action, where I encourage that short term engagement, but I also have a P S right
underneath it that directs people to my LinkedIn bio or something. That's a little bit more
evergreen and something that will actually benefit my products and services. And so that
way, even if someone is creeping me and they're looking at my old posts, because I have that
secondary call to action, that's going to prompt them to go to my LinkedIn bio and my
LinkedIn bio we'll always have something that grows my email list.
I can contribute to my sales and whatnot. So that actually adds more of a longterm benefit
to my actual business because at the end of the day, okay, cool, likes and comments are
great, but if you're an entrepreneur like myself, you care about sales. You care about
having more leads into your business. And so having that secondary call to action is
a lot more strategic than just telling people to comment below and double tap. If they agree.
Now, if you're interested in learning more about primary call to actions, secondary call
to actions and all of my strategies, when it comes to Instagram caption writing, I also
have a lesson that I'm giving away for free. So this is a paid lesson within my paid program,
the boss Graham Academy, and I'm actually giving away one full 25 minute lesson for
free. So make sure you click the link in the description box and the link in the comment
section in order to snack that lesson, as you can see from this preview, it's very,
very juicy, super tutorial based.
And I have a feeling that you will walk away learning a lot, just like how so many of these
people have said when they access this free training. So make sure you click the link
in the description box or click the link in the comment section below to learn about primary
and secondary call to actions as well as other strategies that can up your Instagram caption
game. All right, now, moving onto the next mistake that people make that just blows my
mind is not leveraging their highlights. Now, a trend that I've been seeing a lot on Instagram
is a bunch of entrepreneurs and coaches and content creators, spending a lot of time doing
these free trainings on their Instagram story. And that's amazing. That is so good that you're
giving so much value away on your IgE story. But something that people don't realize is
your ID stories will literally disappear after 24 hours.
And so it doesn't really give you a huge ROI. It doesn't give you a good return on your
effort. And so that's why if you're going to go ahead and do these free trainings or
these mini trainings on your Instagram story, where you just give a full five minutes, a
10 minute value on your ID stories, make sure that you're saving it to your highlights on
your profile. So that way it can last forever. And even if you're not active on Instagram
stories for one day, at least your followers who are seeing your profile for the very first
time can access your highlights and see that training that you did. That's going to allow
you to stretch that training much farther, that it just existing for just 24 hours. So
again, if you're a content creator, a coach, an entrepreneur, and you're putting out a
lot of value on your ID stories, you need to make sure that you have a dedicated space
that you put in your highlights, so that you're actually going to get a return on your effort.
Otherwise, it's kind of a waste of time. So make sure you do that so that you can really
maximize all of the efforts that you're putting in your IgE stories. All right, now, moving
onto the next non-obvious mistake that a lot of people make on Instagram is not double
watermarking your content. So we all know what watermarking is. It's basically adding
that handle of yours right at the bottom of your posts. But nowadays Instagram be crazy.
There are so many copycats on Instagram. There's so many people that rip off your content.
And so one thing that I've done that has been effective in minimizing people just jacking
my content and reposting it as their own is double watermarking. First of all, when you
watermark your posts and your handle is right at the bottom, it's super easy for someone
to edit that out. It's super easy for someone to just crop that out and then claim your
content as their own.
And so for me, in order to combat this, what I've recently done or what I do often in my
business, especially because we pump out 100% original content all the time. And if we don't,
we always give credit. What we actually do is we actually create a very, very small watermark
and we hide it in the post so that even if one wanted to crop it or edit it out, it'd
be very, very hard for them to do, as you can see from this example. And so if you're
someone who creates a lot of original content, you're very proud of your work and you want
to prevent your work from being copied and pasted and completely stolen. Make sure that
you're double watermarking your post to prevent that from happening. Now, obviously there's
always going to be those people who just take your content anyways and repurpose it and
do all things.
I have a whole list of probably 50 people that do that yeah. In my business. But at
least having a daughter watermark allows the actual content piece not to be stolen. And
so that's why it's very important. Not only this watermarking in general and putting your
handle in your post is also very helpful in terms of growth. Because if someone decides
to share your post on their stories, at least your handle is right below it so that you
get brand recognition and people know where that content came from. And also they're more
likely to recognize your profile and visit your profile and potentially become a follower.
So it helps you with your traffic as well. So make sure if you're not double watermarking,
at least water market once so that you do get that brand recognition. But definitely
if you are someone who pumps out a lot of original content, something that's very important
to remember is just double watermarking your content.
I know it can hurt the aesthetics a bit, but if you want to protect your content from being
jacked, it can really, really be super helpful. All right, how are we doing so far? We've
got another mistake that is non-obvious. And that is when you are resharing, someone's
Postmates to actually tag them. So what I've noticed is I, a lot of people share and reshare
my post, right? And you just do it like this, you click the little airplane sign, and then
you post it to your stories. Well, if you want that person to reshare you or show you,
you out, what happens is if you simply, we just reshare it that way, that person actually
doesn't get a notification on their notification bar when someone mentions them. And so what
you actually have to do is you physically have to tag them, right. Their handle in order
for them to get that notification for them to shout you out.
And so this is something that I've noticed in my business, because a lot of you guys
reshare my work. And I know a lot of you guys like to be re posted sometimes my stories
or anyone who has a really big following their stories, because it's visibility for you.
Right? But what I've noticed is I actually don't get a notification. If you simply reshare
my posts, you have to physically tag me in order for me to see it and have that option
to even reshare you. And so if you're someone who has a smaller account and you want to
use the strategy where you reshare a bigger accounts post in hopes that that bigger account
is going to reshare it on their story. So you get visibility, make sure that you have
actually physically tag them so that they have option to mention you on their stories.
Otherwise, if you just reshare and you don't do anything else, they're not going to get
that notification. And they're not going to be able to reshare you, which could actually
hurt your visibility. Right? And so that's one mistake that I've seen a lot of people
making, especially when they're resharing my posts. I really hope that this helps. All
right, guys. So, so far you have learned some top non-obvious unique mistakes that I have
seen a lot of people making that they're likely not even aware of. So comment below and let
me know which mistake spoke the most to you, that you weren't even aware that you were
making. And like I said earlier on in this video, make sure you also download this every
lesson. So this is actually a paid lesson. That's in my paid program, Boston Academy
actually giving out for free. So if you ever want to learn the differences between my free
content, like, and my paid content, make sure you download this free lesson.
The link is going to be in the description box and in the comment section below, as you
can see, it's very, very, very juicy. So please don't miss out on it anyways, while you wait
for next week's video. I always post videos on social media, marketing, Instagram, coaching,
entrepreneurship, and all the likes of that. So make sure you check out these two videos
that I have right here, as well as always guys. I appreciate you. I hope you guys have
a great day, a great week and a great life, and I'll see you in the next video. Bye guys.