Okay.
So I have this five minute rule that I've never shared, but it's been a big key in growing
my Instagram account over the last year to over a hundred thousand followers.
And also, more importantly, it's been a big key to helping me show up higher in the algorithm
and build real relationships.
So anytime I have downtime, like I do right now, I basically go into my phone and I do
this five minute roll, and I do this every day whenever I have five minutes, and this
is really the only thing I do actively on Instagram each day to make sure that I'm engaging,
building my engagement, building my authority in the algorithm, so that I'm constantly growing
my account.
But I don't really spend more than this five minutes a day on the platform unless I'm doing
a post.
So I'll show you what that is in just one second.
So, the five minute rule, if you're excited to hear this, give this video a like and make
sure that you hit that subscribe button.
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Subscribe and hit the bell to get notified every single time I post a new video on this
channel and I'm going to kind of go through each of the categories that I do this five
minute rule in so that you can fully understand the process.
So first thing is that it's broken into sections.
So the first section that I do, it's called existing audience.
So basically, anyone who follows me that day or anyone who engages with my content that
day, there's a couple of things that I do to further nurture the relationship.
If you haven't watched my video on owning the Instagram algorithm, make sure you check
it out because you'll see in that video the three key factors to owning the algorithm
and making sure that you show up in the newsfeed.
So, if you check that out, you'll see that one of the key factors is relationships.
So that's why this is so important to me.
And this is why I do this five minute roll every single day.
So the first thing is, people who comment on my content on my feed or people who messaged
me in my DMS or people who follow me, what I'll do is I'll send them a voice message.
So I send some people voice messages and just introduce myself and say, "Hello," because
sending rich content in DMs is really valuable to the algorithm to say, "Wow, you must actually
have a real relationship with this person if you're taking the time to send a voice
message."
So it's going to actually help you show up in that person's feed more.
The other thing that I do is I send video messages to say welcome or I ask questions,
and a big thing that I'll do is ask, "Why are you here and what did you want to see
from my account and what are you looking forward to learning from me?"
And that can help me find great content topics for my Instagram feed.
The next thing I do is polls.
I love asking questions on Instagram and using it for data and information on what my audience
wants, both for my free content and my paid content.
So I'll go on and I'll invite people to things or ask questions.
So one of the big things that I use polls for it is, if I have a new opt in or I have
a new webinar or masterclass, I'll go on and say, "Do you want to come to the masterclass
tomorrow?
Vote yes or no."
And whoever votes yes, I then go through that list and I send a direct message to every
person who voted yes with the link to sign up for the webinar.
And it's a great tool to get more butts in seats for your webinar and basically interacts
directly with people, which people kind of get surprised by.
The next thing I do is questions.
I love the questions feature on Instagram stories.
So I'll ask a question and I do this a lot when it comes to figuring out what kind of
content you want to see on YouTube.
I'll say, "What do you want to see on my YouTube channel?"
And people send me all these ideas, and a lot of the times those ideas then turn into
my YouTube videos like today's.
This actually was inspired from a comment and a question I got on Instagram.
The next thing is, after I post a new photo, and this is still under my existing audience
or the audience that's already there following me or just new to following me, whenever,
I post a new photo on my feed, I will go in to the previous photo that I posted on my
feed and I will like, so I will heart every single comment on that photo until Instagram
cuts me off, but I will like every single comment on that previous photo to kind of
ding and notify those followers on my account that I have a new piece of content that just
went up and it'll grab their attention to come back to my account and find that new
photo.
So that's just my existing audience category and that five minutes, that's one thing I
do.
You don't have to do all of it, but pick one of those things to do every day within that
five minutes and you'd be surprised how many of those things you can get done to nurture
those relationships.
So the second thing is finding like-minded accounts.
And this is so important because if you're trying to wait for everybody else to find
you on social media, you're never going to get found.
I often say, "Don't be the cool guy at the party.
Be the friendly guy at the party because no one wants to talk to the cool guy at the party
and they're intimidated by them."
So you want to be the person who goes out of your way to talk to everybody.
So what I will do is I will actually go onto my account and I will search keywords or tags
within my niche and I will find new people to interact with.
The other cool bonus factor of this is that if I do this, I'm also finding all of these
great pieces of content that I will then save and curate for my own feed or for my story
to share later.
So it's allowing me to gather content that I really love as well.
So I'm interacting, I'm gathering content, and on those pieces of content that I really
like, I will heart them and I will leave a valuable comment so that I can get on that
person's radar.
And I will also interact with people in the comments on that post to, again, expose myself
to a whole new audience to help me grow my account faster.
So the next thing is hashtags.
And I have a whole list in my phone of the hashtags that are relevant to who I want to
be attracting and the kind of audience that I know I want to be following me.
So I go through that hashtag list every day in this five minute rule, and I basically
go in and I search the hashtags on Instagram and I find people, like I said before, to
go and interact with and I find content that I can save to use on my account or to share
in my stories.
But, most importantly, I use those hashtags to find people that I haven't interacted with
yet or that haven't heard of me yet, and I go in and I direct message them or I'll comment
on their post or I'll respond to something that they put on their story just to get on
their radar to say, "Hey, I'm here.
We haven't met yet, but I'm super excited to introduce myself."
And when I'm talking about hashtags, I use a tool called Flick, which I explained thoroughly
in this video on how I post on Instagram.
So we can show you a bit of that right now, but make sure you go watch that full video
because that's how I find the right hashtags to be attracting with on Instagram and it's
an amazing, amazing tool.
So we'll link to that below.
Look at this hashtag tool here, you can see that you can type in anything.
It's called flick.tech.
It's about $10 a month, $11 a month U.S. and it's really, really good.
Now, just like anything, this is going to take you a minute to create these hashtag
groups, but it is so worth it because you'll see a huge increase in your engagement.
So say I want to look up YouTube videos.
And it'll even populate some of the things that come up.
So let's say, YouTube videos.
And the next thing is, once I build a relationship with people on Instagram and I introduce myself
or we start talking back and forth, I won't make time to then follow up with them, a week,
two weeks, a month later, and I will make sure that I'm consistently interacting.
So it's not this one time thing, but we actually open a dialogue and that's what happens when
you voice message or video message new followers.
They know it's a safe place for them to actually talk to you and you have no idea how many
of those conversations that I've started with people have turned into paying customers and
clients because they know that I'm a real person that they can actually interact with.
So make sure that you continue to nurture the relationship and continue to interact
with those people, especially if you have a new account.
Really value those new people who follow you because they are the people that are going
to be with you in the long run if you value them in the beginning.
Now, the next thing is making sure that you respond, like I said, to pretty much everything.
When I was first starting to grow my account, everybody got a response and still to this
day I have over a hundred thousand followers on Instagram and I still do my best to respond
to every single DM that I get.
Some of them end up in spam and I don't see them, but I try and respond to every single
DM that I get, every question that I get.
And I just block out time outside of this five minute rule, like once a week, to go
through and answer all my DMs.
So, like I said, I'm not on Instagram all day, every day.
I have this five minute rule and everything I just mentioned goes into that five minute
rule.
I interact with existing accounts that follow me, my existing audience that follows me.
I interact with like minded accounts to grow my following.
I search hashtags to grow my following and curate content.
I build the relationships with people ongoing in the DMs and I make sure that I'm responding
to everything in my Direct Messages.
And if you have a smallish audience, there's no excuse, you should be responding to everything
in your DMS because that's what's going to build relationships and help you show up higher
in the algorithm on Instagram.
Now, if you've enjoyed this, let me know what your biggest takeaway was from this video
and what you're going to start doing on Instagram.
If you haven't followed me on Instagram yet, you can find me @sunnylenarduzzi.
Head over there, follow me, shoot me over a DM, and you'll see, I'll respond.
If you like this video, I've got a whole playlist dedicated to Instagram growth and getting
real results on that platform.
Make sure you check that out here and make sure you check out my video on how to find
the right hashtags and how I post on Instagram right here.
If you like this, hit the like button below.
Be sure to subscribe and share this with your friends or anyone who needs to see it.
And I'll see you in the next video.
Bye.