- Aside from YouTube, I believe that Instagram is
probably the most powerful platform
for you to build your personal brand on.
So today, I'm going to tell you
about something I call the Coffee Table Strategy.
This is a strategy that is designed
to help you get to 10,000 followers on Instagram this year.
It doesn't matter whether you are starting from zero,
or whether you already have a following.
This is going to be something that I think is going
to blow your mind, and is gonna help you
really change the direction of your brand on Instagram.
This Coffee Table Strategy, I'm calling it that
for a reason, let's get into it.
Hey, everybody, this is Roberto Blake
helping you create something awesome today.
Welcome back to the channel.
For those of you who are near here, first of all,
welcome, thanks for dropping in, my name's Roberto Blake.
I'm a creative entrepreneur, a public speaker
at events like Social Media Marketing World, VidCon,
and I run my own social media coaching business,
AwesomeCreatorAcademy.com.
Today I wanna talk about Instagram,
specifically, how you're gonna get
to 10,000 followers on Instagram,
this is my 2019 content strategy
that I call the Coffee Table Strategy,
or you can call it the Coffee Table Method.
Roberto, that's stupid weird,
why are you calling it the Coffee Table Strategy?
Well, this book here, Humans of New York,
basically teaches you everything you need to know
about how to grow on Instagram
without saying Instagram even once.
Now for those of you who don't know,
Humans of New York is a great collection of photo stories
by Brandon Stanton, it's phenomenal,
and I think that the value of it is just how human it is,
the fact that it's human storytelling.
You should definitely pick up this book.
It really is, I think, a great example
of how you capture people's attention.
Most of you are probably familiar
with what a coffee table book is.
It's a book that's usually a collection of gorgeous photos
with a single unified theme, you hear that?
Beautiful photos with a single unified theme.
Each of these photos tells its own story,
but is not really breaking with the theme
with the other photos that are
in the collection of the book.
And this is why you need to follow this strategy
specifically to grow on Instagram.
Humans of New York is a pretty thick book.
I would be shocked if there are less
than 1000 individual photos and captions in this book.
And that is the secret to 10,000 followers on Instagram,
especially if you're trying to do it in one year.
A collection of gorgeous interesting photos
that tell very powerful stories, and are captured
in a very unique way and style.
This is what it takes to be successful
on Instagram if you think about it.
You need to pick a unifying theme for your Instagram.
What is it about?
Is your Instagram about motivation,
or are you living an aspirational lifestyle?
Is this about world travel?
Is this about your journey as a photographer?
Is this about your journey as somebody
who's overcome depression and anxiety?
Is this about your entrepreneur journey and your hustle?
What is the story, what is the unifying theme
and can every single one of these pictures
that you're doing convey that message?
It also helps that the photos don't suck,
that's really important here.
The other thing that will help is a powerful message
that goes with that theme.
So, I could try to kind of take a position
of what story are you trying to tell,
and then how do you make that easily understood
to the average person?
The next thing is taking over 1000 photos
and posting in the course of a year.
And I think the easiest way to approach this is
the Create Something Awesome Today philosophy.
In this case, it's gonna be doing three or more posts
to Instagram every single day consistently for a year,
and this is why it's gonna work.
This comes down to simple math.
You have to post these powerful,
attractive images with a clear message.
You also, if you're starting from zero,
need to front-load your Instagram the first day
with more than three photos.
You need something that when people see a new image
and they see you posting, they have something to go back
and look at and say, oh, it's worth following this account.
So, you need to start by front-loading your account
a little bit early with some more photos.
Or if you're starting a new strategy
and you're changing your Instagram grid,
then you need to try and accelerate that a little bit more.
So, they all have to be great photos and great captions.
If you hit or miss, the good news is
by posting three times a day or more,
you have opportunities.
This is what's gonna get you up to 1000.
And why does that 1000 matter so much?
Well, if you're trying to get to 10,000 followers,
here's the simple math.
If every photo is good enough
to get 10 or more people
to commit to following you once they see it,
because they become interested in what else you're posting,
whether it's the photos alone or the captions or the story,
that's what's powerful.
And Instagram, the algorithm,
doesn't do chronological order anymore.
It's based on people's interest.
So, by picking a singular unifying theme,
finding the elements within that theme
and stories that you can tell,
you have this powerful opportunity
to get those 10 new followers with each and every post.
And when you're posting three times a day,
and you're getting 10 or more new followers
and your stuff is great and it's compelling enough
that people might share it, now you're onto something.
Now you have the opportunity
to grow and amass that following.
Now again, the Coffee Table Strategy
goes even further than that because
what do people do and what is the point
of coffee table books?
To start and to spark a conversation, to break the ice.
Now that you have all these posts,
you need to engage with the people commenting on this post.
And not just on your comments of your post,
but go back and look at these people,
you don't need to follow them back,
but engage on their post as well.
And if it's something that fits your theme
or your narrative, consider sharing it.
This is the other value of Instagram Stories is having
a conversation with the following that you're building,
with the audience that you're building.
By sharing a post that you made one of the three times
of the day in your Instagram story,
and then talking about it and asking for feedback
or asking for a conversation around that post,
now this gets really interesting and you have a way
to drive more engagement and to activate people,
because now they're part of the conversation.
Another way that you can kind of get people to do that is
you can say that, hey, I'm gonna do a video reply
to the comment that I like the most.
This incentivizes people 'cause you're offering access.
You're allowing them to be part of the conversation.
You're allowing them to, in a way,
sit down for coffee with you and talk
about this photo in your coffee table book.
So you see how powerful this analogy and this strategy is?
It's very human, again, coffee table books
bring people together, they break the ice.
They get us past awkwardness,
they give us something to talk about,
something to be fascinated in,
and it lets people break down their walls.
And Instagram is an emotional engagement platform
where you have the power to break through to people
on an emotional level around what you share
in terms of your interest and your values.
Your hashtags are not just a strategy that you're deploying.
They're a filter for the relationships that you want to have
and the conversations that you want to start.
And conversations are more powerful
when they're focused and when they're consistent.
So, having consistent hashtags that you utilize,
making a branded hashtag for yourself
so that people can identify and follow that as another way
of remaining part of a conversation is important.
Because people are then opting in,
and that is something that you have to really appreciate,
that somebody is saying yes to you.
Someone is saying yes to this conversation,
yes to this topic, yes to this community.
A lot of people focus on making their grid
as pretty as possible, my strategy is different.
I would say that a grid that looks very interesting,
but where things fit together is nice.
I would tell you to go look at a coffee table book,
copy a couple of random pages, print them out,
and then assemble them in an Instagram grid,
and realize, oh wow, these things aren't the same
but they do kind of fit together stylistically,
or by the nature of their theme.
And so, if you use a stylistic approach,
I don't think it's about having a perfect grid,
I think it's about having a beautiful, perfect shot
that works even if it's in a grid or if it's standalone
because most people just scroll through their Instagram.
So, only a few people bother to look at the grid
and it's usually a quick way to find other,
more interesting pictures to go into
and they pick and choose what they like
and what they're interested in seeing what that's about,
and looking at your back catalog.
So again, approach this from the perspective
of making a coffee table book
that has 1000 interesting pages,
and then that's year one.
If you do this 365 days, three to five uploads,
then what happens is you have this great collection
and you have this thing that draws people in.
And here's another tip for you,
this one is actually a little bit of a hack.
You need to set up a Twitter account.
You need to set up something called,
If This Then That, I-F triple T dot com,
you know, IFTTT.com, If This Then That.
There's an automation called Recipe
and it's going to be post from Instagram to Twitter.
And the reason you wanna do this is the automatic posting
from Instagram to Twitter just tweets out a link,
and who cares, right?
But what this will do is it will tweet out the actual photo
from Instagram along with a portion of your caption
and a link back to your original post on Instagram.
If you use this in combination
with hashtag strategy just right,
then you can bring an audience
into your Instagram account from Twitter
through shared interest in hashtags,
or from you having a following on Twitter.
And that's a way for you to siphon from Twitter
to build your audience on Instagram a little bit faster.
So now you know, now you know
how this coffee table book, Humans of New York,
has influenced my Instagram strategy,
grown me over 10,000 followers,
most of that I did in a single year.
I have almost 14,000 followers in Instagram right now.
And I think that if you take this strategy to heart
and you post more often to Instagram,
that you will be successful.
I didn't necessarily have to do,
I didn't quite do 1000 Instagram posts
as of the making of this video, it's pretty close.
But I'm convinced that if you do
1000 quality posts to Instagram,
whether it's quality graphics, quotes, memes, photos,
I think that if every single one of those posts
has the possibility of bringing in 10 to 30 people,
that the math is gonna scale.
And that by doing those 1000 posts,
you get to those 10,000 followers a lot sooner,
especially if you use a unified message,
a unified theme and visual style
and you build your brand that way.
And remember to continue and to engage the conversation.
Go to other people's Instagram,
go to their coffee table book, talk about it,
especially if it's similar to yours.
Have a culture of sharing other people's stuff in your post,
many of them will return the favor.
The conversation is how you're going
to grow and build community.
People go to a coffee shop
because they want to talk to other people.
They don't want to be isolated, they don't want to be alone.
They want to build relationships.
So, don't sit there and be selfish
and sit in the bubble of your own Instagram.
Go and reach out to people,
and be genuine, be authentic, be engaging,
and be somebody that's adding value to a conversation.
Question of the day, what is it you do
to break the ice with people
and to foster a relationship?
I want your best icebreaker tips
and how you make things less awkward in the comments section
because I think that's gonna be super helpful to people.
If you don't have one of those,
then give me your best Instagram tip
if you're somebody who's into that.
If you guys want more videos about Instagram,
also, just kinda let me know in the comments
'cause I actually really enjoy the platform.
It's the one that I feel very comfortable in
all the time and I love photography.
So, if you've got Instagram tips
or you wanna see more videos of mine, then definitely,
let me know in the comments section.
Like this video if you like it, don't forget to subscribe.
Check out the other awesome stuff on the channel.
As always, you guys, thanks so very much for watching
and don't forget, go out there
and create something awesome today, take care.
(soft hip hop beats)