4 Instagram List Building Tips

Are you marketing your brand on Instagram?

If not, you're missing out on a HUGE opportunity to build your list and establish your brand.

Here's why: out of all the social media platforms today, Instagram has the HIGHEST level of engagement. That's right, more than Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc., users are 6x MORE likely to engage with your content.

Meaning, if you get on Instagram and take the right steps, you'll get a level of engagement you won't get anywhere else.

The good news is that you don’t need to be a photographer or even an expert photoshop editor to build a huge following on Instagram…

All you need is a lead capture software, a graphic design tool, and the proper knowledge to apply them.

In today’s post, I’ll show you 4 easy steps you can follow right now to get your first 1,000 email leads on Instagram in the next 30 days, including:

• How to easily create engaging content with this free app
• Optimizing your bio for lead generation
• How to tap into the power of S4S to dramatically expand your brand reach
• And why you NEED to start marketing on Instagram today to sustain growth for the future

If you can follow the steps I lay out in this post, you’ll build an Instagram funnel that generates you new leads every day!

Why You Need To Pay Attention To Instagram

But first some background on Instagram and why it's so influential today and how it's going to be a huge success going forward...

In 2010, Instagram was founded by Kevin Systreom and Mike Krieger. Within two years Instagram had over 100 million users and now boasts a user base roughly the equivalent of the population of the United States of America at 300 million!

Instagram was an almost overnight success story and it cleverly capitalized on the fact that people weren’t going to Facebook to read people’s statuses or message with their friends, they were going there to look at and like pictures.

That “like” part is incredibly important when it comes to why Instagram is going to be so vital to building your email list and your business. You see while engagement rates have dropped since their high point of 2014 due mostly to an increase in advertising as the social media companies that have gone public like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, desperately try to appease their shareholders.

Despite the drop in overall engagement since 2014, Instagram is still the king of engagement with over 6X as much engagement as the nearest social media competitor.

The second major advantage that Instagram has is its level of penetration in the highly sought after millennial market. Currently marketers are spending over $500 million dollars a year to reach millennials and industry experts believe by 2020 Millennials will account for about 1/3rd of all buying power in the USA.

Only Snapchat has greater penetration among the youth market with Instagram having a whopping 42% market penetration with millennials. And as we’ll discuss later, millennials spend hours on Instagram each and every month creating a great little fishing hole for you to find new prospects and customers.

It would be one thing if people just jumped on Instagram once, liked a few pictures and then went about their days.

But research has shown that this is NOT the way Instagram users choose to use the app.

Instead what we’ve learned is:

• People spend A LOT of time on Instagram. The average millennial user spends about 439 minutes or almost 8 hours on Instagram a month! That’s almost 15 minutes spent on Instagram each and every day. And if the way my younger brother and sister use it is an indication this is a LOW estimate.
• Sales Orders on Instagram have increased 122% since 2010
• The AVERAGE Instagram order is $65.00 only Pinterest has a higher average order amount at 66.75 and it’s by less than 2 dollars!
• The average Instagram user visits their account 18 times a day.

User Generated Content

The last thing I want to talk about before I start to roll up my sleeves and get into the real dirty work of building your list on Instagram is the idea of user-generated content.

There is a dirty little secret that helps create those amazing pictures none of the big Instagram accounts want you to know about.

That secret is user generated content or UGC.

Over at the blog Buffer they experimented with User generated content and in 6 months were able to grow their Instagram account by over 300% going from 4,250 to 21,000 followers.

You want to treat user-generated content like you would any other sort of Content Curation Process and stick to only the best of the best photos and those that you know to be of particular interest to your audience.

I could probably write a whole post on UGC (and maybe I will) but for now it’s important to understand that while online, 30% of Millenials time is spent looking at UGC and that UGC is both 35% more memorable than other content and 50% more trusted.

I like to think about it like this, UGC is aspirational. If an Instagram viewer sees a UGC generated photo of a great lifestyle or use for a product, the viewer is going to intrinsically feel like they could do the same thing and achieve the same results, which is incredibly motivating.

So as you are building a killer Instagram account to grow your business be sure that you are asking for an implementing UGC as much as possible.

Alright, enough of the appetizers, let’s jump right into the real meat of this post and start looking at exactly HOW you can go from having no followers to building a 10-20,000 person mailing list using Instagram!

Before we do, let’s quickly make a list of what you’re going to need to be able to succeed at growing your list with Instagram.

What you’ll need:

• An Instagram account - don’t worry if you haven’t set it up the right way yet, we’ll get to that. 
• Landing Pages & Email Marketing services to capture leads and reach out to them - the good news is that Kajabi comes with BOTH!
• Graphic tool software (we highly recommend Canva - check out our guide here)
• And last but not least a Smart Phone

How To Create An Instagram Funnel and Get Your First 1,000 Email Leads in the Next 30 Days!

1. Create Content That Engages

The first thing you need to do is start creating content multiple times a day that is designed to ENGAGE your audience. Now while everyone’s business is different there are a few things that consistently lead to high engagement rates on Instagram. I’m going to list a few for you then talk to you about the easiest way to create content that will engage your information business audience.

First let’s talk about what I like to think of as Instagram “clickbait.”

• Animals. The second place finisher in the great engagement race is pictures of animals especially baby animals like puppies and kitties.
• Attractive "model style" photos of people
• Lifestyle pictures. Photos of exotic locales and fancy food tend to get high rates of engagement as well.

Now that you know a little bit about types of clickbait, let’s discuss the best type of clickbait for those of you who host courses on Kajabi.

I’m talking about inspirational quotes.

There are a variety of theories as to why inspirational quotes are so popular on Instagram but there is no doubt that they are among the most shared forms of content on Instagram and they are super easy to create.

The most important rule when creating an inspirational quote post for Instagram is that it has to look good and the colors need to match or complement the background and avi of your account.

The good news is, there's an app (or 10) for that and they're mostly free.

We HIGHLY recommend Canva - it's FREE - for all of your content creation. Read our step-by-step guide here on how to use it.

As with every type of content you’re going to need to pay attention to both the analytic numbers to see what’s popular and the eyeball test of what you see getting a lot of comments and attention from your audience.

2. Optimize Your Bio For Lead Generation

Ok so now you’re creating content that consistently gets engagement, and your audience is growing and moving through the AIDA cycle with your account. Now it’s time to optimize your bio, and free offer for maximum lead generation.

There are 3 MAJOR components of an optimized bio...

• A quick blurb about you. A blurb should describe your account in a few short words. Some successful blurbs I’ve seen used are “Stylish Nihilist since 1984,”  “The San Diego Expert on Selling Your House FAST!” and “Crossfit addict and speaker.” 
• Testimonial. Somewhere in your bio should be a short quote about what results you’ve created for your clients with their first name. This is incredibly important. Ideally you’d like to have a testimonial that talks about your free offer.
• A demonstration of value for your free offer. The next thing you need is a quick way to show the value of your free offer. Something like “Learn 3 secrets to get your local business ranked in Google local search this weekend with my free report.”
• Links. And obviously you need a link to your free offer landing page that you set up before getting started.

3. Tap into the power of S4S.

The real secret sauce of building your list from Instagram and getting those big flashy follower numbers is share 4 share or S4S.

With S4S you will agree to post something from another account in exchange for them posting something of yours.

While you can pay an agency to set up S4S for you, it’s not very difficult to set them up yourself if you’re willing to reach out to accounts that are similar size to yours or slightly larger.

But don’t be afraid to ask accounts with millions of followers to do a S4S because you never know when it will work and getting a post of yours shared to millions of followers will grow your email list and your number of followers exponentially. 

4. Use Instagram Ads

The last tactic to create an Instagram funnel is to use Instagram ads, which are sold under the Facebook Ad manager platform.

You’ll want to create an ad, which demonstrates the value of your free offer and leads them directly to your landing page. Depending on the type of ad you create and on what device you create it you may not be able to display solely to Instagram and may need to also display advertising on Facebook as well, but check with your account for details.

Wow, I know you just had a super sized amount of knowledge given to you, so rather than just end the post here and leave you figure it all out like other marketing bloggers would do, I’m going to quickly run down the most important points so that you don’t miss anything and get all the success you want and deserve.

We started off by looking at some statistics about Instagram and it’s users, the most important ones to remember are:

• Instagram has at least 6x the engagement of any other social media platform
• Instagram has 42% market penetration among millenials the most sought after demographic.
• The AVERAGE order originating on Instagram is $65.00
• Instagram users spend an average of 15 minutes a day on Instagram and visit the app up to 18 times daily!

After that, we looked at what you need to do to create your own Instagram funnel and get your first 1,000 subscribers.

The 4 steps were:

• Create Content That Engages
• Optimize Your Bio For Lead Generation.
• Tap into the power of S4S 
• Use IG ads

Imagine two people reading this article.

6 months from now, 1 of them is going to have grown their Instagram by thousands of followers, and built his or her email list into a proven moneymaker.

This person is going to have more money, more free time with their family and the feeling of knowing that they matter to their followers.

The other person is going to read this article, and say, “That sounds good. Once I have a little more time I will definitely work on creating an Instagram that builds my list.”

Then they’ll go back to their normal life and forget about ever reading this. 6 months from now they will be in the exact same place as they are now when they read another article about what they need to do to finally get their business in gear.

The choice is up to you as to which one of those people you want to be.

That’s pretty much all there is to know about building your email list using Instagram, all that’s left for you to do now, is get out there and make it happen. 

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