I am two days into watching the Instagram Success Summit and today is definitely full of practical information. My fave sessions so far are the ones about Hashtags and Instagram and growing an Instagram following.
This afternoon, Business Babes Founder Yolanda Keels-Walker shared tips on how she was able use Instagram marketing to pull in a million dollars in sales for her salon products business after less than two years on Instagram.
In sum, Keels-Walker suggests that to grow a following, Instagrammers should plan out their posting for the month (or a week at a time). She recommends creating a theme for each day. That way, you don’t have to worry about what to post each day. She admitted using auto-likes to grow engagement and uses Likestagram as her app of choice. Keels-Walker sends out 150 likes daily and nets between 75 to 100 follows from those efforts.
Keels-Walker started out working for the CIA after graduating from Hampton University and ended up being a Gram ninja.
Another session featured Alex Tooby, an Instagram Marketer, Influencer & Mentor at Alex Tooby. Tooby had so much success growing her following, she ended up creating -ecourses to teach others to do it too and netted $100,000 in sales in 18 months.
Tooby also had great advice. She suggested that users avoid popular hashtags and to avoid automation to remove the risk of getting banned by Instagram or coming across as inauthentic.
The theme for all speakers has been authenticity. Before you used to be able to delete your hashtags and re-post new ones to get fresh engagement later. IG stopped this from working but recently started allowing them again.
Lauren Bath, a Freelance Social Media Marketer at Lauren Bath Services with 454,000 followers did a session about user-generated content to promote your brand. She offered a guideline on how brick and mortar biz can use already posted images on your site to generate interest on your product or brand.
Of the most popular photos, Bath said people love food images, bright images, images of sunsets or sunrises, parks, roads, animals, solo person on the side of a mountain and more.
There are two days left and if you hop on now, you can still see the sessions from earlier today and yesterday. Grab your FREE ticket HERE!
Jay Jay Ghatt is also editor at Techyaya.com, founder of the JayJayGhatt.com and JayJayGhatt.com where she teaches online creators how to navigate digital entrepreneurship and offers Do-It-For-You Blogging Service. She manages her lifestyle sites BellyitchBlog, Jenebaspeaks and JJBraids.com and is the founder of BlackWomenTech.com 200 Black Women in Tech On Twitter. Her biz podcast 10 Minute Podcast is available on iTunes and Player.fm. Follow her on Twitter at @Jenebaspeaks. Buy her templates over at her legal and business templates on Etsy shop!
