By now it's no secret that I have used Instagram to grow my business since
2013, when I started growing accounts for other clients. However,
today Instagram is a different beast when it comes to using it strategically to
grow businesses. And I bet that you,
as a business owner are feeling a little over it.
Maybe you're feeling overwhelmed.
There is too many features to feed every single day.
Maybe Instagram is being glitchy AF for you.
And that is beyond frustrating speaking from experience as well.
Even though I've been using this platform for almost 10 years to grow
businesses, I'm with you if you're feeling frustrated. In fact,
there was a time in my business back in the summer of 2019,
where I was just over it.
I almost considered giving up on the Instagram marketing niche entirely because
I felt like I wasn't growing. I was stuck at the same number of followers,
and I felt a little embarrassed.
Like how can I teach this to other people if I'm not even growing on Instagram?
And it was the summer in Toronto, I was riding my bike around the city.
And I was just thinking about how nice summertime is and how it makes winters
worth it. And as I was thinking about seasons, I thought,
is there a season of business? Is that a thing?
And then I looked back on my entire history of running my business starting in
2013.
And I realized that I actually did go through phases and those phases could
be considered seasons.
And maybe my problem was I was trying to grow my Instagram account by doing all
the things, but maybe I didn't have to,
maybe I could stop doing all the things on Instagram and just focus on the
features that would serve what my business actually needed the most right now.
So if this is intriguing you whatsoever keep watching,
because I'm gonna dive into what I've since discovered since 2019 and what's
working today for me and thousands of other business owners like yourself.
So the biggest mistake I see business owners making when it comes to their
Instagram strategy is what I was doing in 2019.
And that is jumping up every time Instagram released a new feature and
feeling like, okay, I have to incorporate this into my strategy.
That worked fine until the day in 2019 when I thought, you know,
I'm spending like two to three hours every day on my Instagram and it's not
growing. Something is broken here.
That's when I reminded myself that I do not work for Instagram and neither do
you, Instagram should not become your part-time job.
You are a busy business owner.
You have things to do like payroll and accounting and marketing and looking at
your sales and you know, all that great stuff, packaging, fulfillment,
I could go on. Your job is not to feed a social media platform. 24/7.
You can feed it a little bit though. And just by doing a little,
you can get big results. That's why I tell business owners.
Here's how you can do less, but sell more on Instagram. It's not just a sexy,
cool catchphrase, although it's pretty sexy and cool,
but you can actually do less on Instagram and see greater sales back to your
business. So let me break this all down for you in this video.
Let's rewind a little bit and talk about what is the season's method,
because this is the core foundation to understand how to do less,
but sell more on Instagram. So when I really analyzed my business' growth,
especially in the early years,
I realized that it went through different seasons.
And the very first season was when I was growing on Instagram,
I needed followers. I needed visibility, right?
I needed people to know about my business, and to know I existed.
So that was the first season I was in for a long time when I was focusing on
Instagram growth, because I wanted more eyeballs on my business.
After that season of visibility,
once I had a couple thousand Instagram followers,
I then realized that I didn't know why they were following me.
So I decided to ask them,
I put out a survey and that's when I really engaged with my audience more than I
ever had before. I got feedback from the people who were following me.
And that's when I realized that they didn't want my agency's services because my
agency served e-commerce brands at the time.
They wanted to know how I was traveling so much and how I was growing on
Instagram.
So now I realized that I was in a season of engagement after
the visibility and growth of followers,
I then engaged with my audience to understand what they wanted from me.
After that, based on the feedback I received from my audience,
I had an offer idea. I wanted to put together a course.
And so this then moved me into the next season of business because I needed
to know from my audience who was really interested in this new offer idea.
So this put me into a season of lead generation.
So now I wanted to know from people who was super interested in this idea
enough to sign up on a wait list and give me their email address.
This is what I call lead generation.
Now you could consider your followers leads.
But what I consider a lead is someone who gives you their email address,
because that is a much more direct way for you to communicate with your audience
than through posting on Instagram.
So once I went through this season of collecting leads and collecting email
addresses, it was time to put my offer idea out there.
And I proceeded to launch my very first course. This was back in 2017.
I proceeded to sell the entire idea of the course before I even made it.
This was extremely scary. But looking back,
I realized that I went into a season of sales.
I put my idea out there and I allowed people to join as founding members
for the best rate ever. In fact,
some of my earliest students are still students today,
even though the course evolved from InstaGrowth Boss to Social Bank. But anyway,
that's a whole other thing. I entered the season of sales.
And by the end of my first launch ever, I had 50 founding members,
50 students who decided to join what was then called InstaGrowth Boss.
So going back to the summer of 2019,
when I realized that this is what had happened,
that I went through a season of visibility, then engagement, lead generation,
then sales.
I realized that my business kind of went through that cycle a few times before.
In fact, I was in a certain cycle. I was in a certain season at that time.
And I was operating my Instagram account in a totally different way.
I realized that's why I wasn't seeing results for my Instagram.
My business needed one thing and I was doing a whole other thing with my
Instagram account.
So then that put me on a journey of figuring out how I could intentionally use
Instagram in a way that doesn't mean I have to use all the features all the
time. Now, before we get into the nitty gritty of Instagram features,
let's first talk about the seasons of business so that you are clear on which
season you're in, okay. Let's break down each one. Visibility.
You are in a season of visibility if you're looking to grow your warm audience,
meaning the people who know about you. If you don't have a business, yet,
maybe you're in the research phase of your business and you want to grow an
audience based off of the niche or the industry that you're gonna launch your
business in. And you wanna grow it on Instagram.
You're also in a visibility season if you simply wanna be seen as an expert in
your field. So maybe you wanna book a ton of podcast interviews,
or you wanna get press, and you want that visibility to your business,
even if you're super established already. So as a hint, for the most part,
we're all in a season of visibility for most of the year,
I'd say it's the longest season. And if you're not sure which season you're in,
you're probably in a season of visibility. Engagement,
you're in a season of engagement if you need feedback from your audience,
maybe you have enough followers and you need to understand what it is that
they're really interested in or what their problems are or what keeps them up at
night. You're also in a season of engagement.
If you have a new idea and you wanna actually confirm with your audience first
that this is something that they would actually pay for.
This is something that I do all the time.
If ever I'm sending out a survey to my audience,
it's probably because I have a new idea and I want their feedback on it.
You're also in a season of engagement if again,
you're doing market research and you wanna chat one on one with potential
customers or clients to really understand where their head is at.
Lead generation.
You are in a season of lead generation if you are focused on building your email
list, so maybe you have an upcoming product launch or promotion,
and you wanna build a wait list for this promotion.
Then you're in a season of lead generation. You're also in this season,
if you're simply prepping for the sale or promotion that's coming up.
So lead generation season happens before your promotion actually launches.
And you're also in this season,
if you're focused on booking in one-on-one discovery calls with potential
clients. You might be hearing this and thinking,
can't I be in all of these seasons at the same time?
Especially if you're a client based business and you're taking in new clients
all the time. And I do think it's true.
You could be in a season of meeting new followers and engaging with them and
bringing in new leads to your business. But I would say for the most part,
they're all connected, right? The,
the visibility has to happen for the leads to happen.
So go back to that season of visibility, I would say that is your focus.
And then you can set up the other systems in the background so that you're still
engaging and collecting leads from those new followers of yours.
The last season is a season of sales.
Now these seasons are pretty short and snappy because people don't follow
accounts on Instagram to be sold to all the time.
So you're in a season of sales if you're ever live launching or promoting
something, maybe it's a flash sale,
or maybe you're launching a new offer or product.
Then you're in a season of sales. You're also in this season,
if you're welcoming in new clients or customers to whatever offer you are
launching or you're in this season,
if you're just answering any last minute questions someone might have about your
offer before the door closes. So again,
sales seasons are pretty short and snappy. Maybe one week,
maybe two weeks at a time, you're going to go hard in a sales season,
you are going to talk about your offer.
You're going to figure out all these different angles of how to talk about your
offer. It's features, its benefits. You're gonna feature client testimonials.
You are going to commit 110% to getting your offer in front of your warm
audience in a season of sales. And then when the sales season is done,
you are going back to regular business, which is probably visibility,
engagement, or lead generation. Now that you know which season you're in,
according to my seasons method, check out this video right here,
where I'm gonna break down,
which Instagram features specifically to use that match the season of
business that you're in, all so that you can do less, but sell more.
To ease and revenue, I'll see you over in this next video.