Using Instagram Effectively - The Second Annual Virtual Bloggers Conference

That's very cool.

Hey there, I'm Chef Dennis and we are here with the 2nd Annual Virtual Bloggers Conference. It's the last session, so excuse me a little if I'm mumbling. Session 11, we're going to wind up the day with one of my favorite new social medias, Instagram, and I'm as excited to learn more about this as everyone who's attending. So if you have questions, we can put them in the comment bar and we do have the comment tracker on and we will pull them up and we'll do our best to answer your questions. But let me just say hi to everybody that came. So to my left Oh, I have Sue Zimmerman. How you doing today?

I'm great. Thanks for having me, Chef.

Oh, it's a pleasure. And you're on the Cape, the real Cape, not the Cape Canaveral, but Cape Cod. Yeah. Enjoying the weather. How's the weather there?

It's a gorgeous day, spectacular.

Well, we were hovering at 96 today in Florida where I'm at, so it is a little warm. And then my friend Matthew Rapoport. How you doing, buddy?

I'm good. How are you doing, Chef? Congratulations on the 2nd annual Virtual BlogCon.

It's great. I'm gonna shorten that name last year because it's been a mouthful, and a couple of times I've run over it a few. So we may just call it Virtual BlogCon next year, I'm thinking.

That would be cool. Thanks for having me. It's a pleasure to be here.

My pleasure. And Julie, how you doing? I haven't seen you in a while. You know, we're in the same state and we still haven't seen each other.

I know, what's up with that? I'm so excited to be here. Thank you for asking me to be here.

Oh, it's a pleasure, and I'm happy to have you on again. We have to start doing more of these Hangouts together. We did a while, for a while there, and then this kind of Yeah. Well, today we're going to be talking about Instagram, and you guys, I brought you on because I see how much you post and I see the level of engagement you get when you post, and it's just phenomenal. And I know there's a lot I'm missing, and if I'm missing a lot, I know other people have questions too on how to use it. So what we're going to do is we're going to take some questions from our viewers and we're just going to kind of take turns, engage with each other, ask each other questions, I mean, about it, or help each other out on topics. But we're just going to start with the very basic. I'm new to Instagram, I don't know what to do, how should I start, what should I use? You can just start from there and we'll take the ball and run with it. So I'm going to kick it back to Sue and we'll let you start with a little explanation of Instagram if you don't mind.

I don't know if I can do a little explanation.

You've only got an hour.

I've been in the throes of using Instagram 24/7 for a good year and a half and discovered it through the success of my seaside store on Cape Cod. And I was attending conferences and realizing that so many people at these conferences had no idea how to use Instagram for business. They were posting pictures of the elevator, of what they were eating, and, you know, just selfies and what have you. And when I, um, realized that it could be used as a very strong visual tool for your business, the sales at my store on the Cape had increased over 40%, and I knew that I needed to teach other business owners how to experience the same success. So I, I just passionately started teaching anyone and everyone in business, and it turned into an opportunity for me to create an online course. And the reason Instagram has been so insanely successful for me and for other people that I'm teaching is because honestly, it's fun. It doesn't feel like I'm doing social media. It feels like you are connecting with your ideal client if you have a posting strategy, a hashtag strategy, and a geotag strategy, which we clearly can go into later. But what I find is that it has become my digital scrapbook and a way that I can stay connected to every single person that I meet wherever I go and check in on them on my terms and can easily @mention them and connect with them. And it's been just such a force of nature with business owners. And I love the one word that I hear everybody say about Instagram every time I ask them is that it is fun. And I say that, you know, if you're not having fun in your business, then you should reconsider what you're doing, because social media should be fun. It shouldn't feel like work.

That's a great philosophy. Thank you for that.

Sure.

Matthew, what do you see as a use? You use Instagram quite a bit, but for a little bit of a different reason.

Yeah, so I've been using Instagram. You know, I'm a social media person, whatever that means. I guess we're all social media people. In that sense. But Instagram has been for me just another outlet for my personality, for my brand. Everything that Sue, I think, mentioned that businesses shouldn't be doing, I'm probably most likely doing on my Instagram. And I understand for businesses for sure that they can be very niche and specific, but I think Instagram is a great place for people that aren't necessarily the best photographers, people that try to be photographers and take pictures that might not be amazing, Instagram gives you filters and options to make you a better photographer and to make your content shine more. And you don't have to spend a lot of time on it. In fact, a picture that someone might edit on their Google+ or someone might edit on Snapseed or somewhere else, that might take a long time. On Instagram, you know, it's pretty quick and you can actually get a picture that's really nice and people have no idea, for the most part, that you didn't spend a long time or what the case may be. It's a lot of fun, and I just see it as another social outlet for connecting. I use Vine as well, which is I think related to Instagram, and now Instagram has video, which is another big thing, although a lot of people try to claim that people aren't using video on Instagram, so we can get into that too. But I think Instagram is a great place to showcase what you do, whether you— if you're a chef, food is obviously food porn. It would be your, would be your home run. But I think it's good to give people an idea of your everyday life, and I think that you can actually use Instagram more than any other platform to check up and see what people are up to, because people usually, if they're on Instagram, they are going to update their Instagram more and pretty regularly compared to Facebook, Twitter, all the other places. And plus, there's an option to push it out to Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, I think Flickr they just got rid of, poor Flickr. But yeah, it's definitely something I think everyone should be using. It's quick and easy and fun, like Sue said.

I know I really got turned on to it I think last year when I saw David Leite had a section called A Day in His Life. That's when I started using it more, when I started thinking about it in those terms. I always try to have fun with it. It's been fun so far. I'm happy to be here and learn more. And Julie, as a food blogger, you use Instagram a little differently, I think, than a lot of other people. So why don't you tell us about how you use it and what you see it as?

I am in total enraptured and love with Instagram. Kind of like Sue, I find social media really fun. I think because I'm a very people person. I get like, if I'm not around a lot of people or stuck in my house all day for too long for too many days in a row, I kind of get stir crazy. I love Instagram because it's so quick. You can just show a snapshot of your life. I follow other food bloggers, I follow amazing photographers, I follow cats, I follow dogs. I mean, you can follow all sorts of— you don't have to— even if you're just a food blogger, I shouldn't say just, or a small business owner, you only follow your customers or you only follow other businesses. I would say follow other people that inspire you. I'm constantly looking to see who's following me and clicking over to see their pictures. And one thing that I would say is when you first sign up, put your name on there. I think people relate to your— they want to know who you are. They want to see your face. So show, you know, put up a bio picture, or if it's a business, then put up your logo. Because it makes you feel kind of like that account might be spammy if there's just that little person icon.. And I'm always looking over at pictures. I'm very likely to follow people that share a lot of pictures of their dogs and food. I follow— that's what I mostly share is food, my pets, and when I'm traveling a lot. So there's a lot of social networks out there, and for a long time I think Twitter and Instagram was tied for me on my favorites, and right now Instagram is leading the pack. I think it's so quick, and I love that there's not a lot of extraneous stuff like algorithms showing you different pictures. And, you know, the last picture, the top of the picture, the top of the heap is the last one that was posted of the person that you're following. Now I have like a bunch of wishlist things that I wish that Instagram would add, and I'm constantly trying to find someone that I could talk to like, I would love lists on Instagram, a bunch of other stuff too. There's a bunch of apps that I use that I actually will edit my photo before I upload it to Instagram. I used to use a lot of the filters. Nowadays I think I use them about 5 or 10% of the time.

I did notice that Instagram just added a new thing on the bottom to do more with your photo. I used to send it to Snapseed if it wasn't quite Right, but now they have all those little things on the bottom where you can make more adjustments to the picture than you used to.

Yeah, you can set the intensity of each filter now, which is kind of neat. Cool.

Okay, so let's talk. We do have a couple questions here, and let me pop them up real quick.

So am I the only one that ever posts any kind of selfie, or is your profile picture it?

I do selfies. I actually penned a term before we get to this. I penned a term called a vussy. You know what an ussy is, is when you take a picture of you and other people. Well, a vussy is a virtual picture of you and other people. On a screen like this, if we took a picture of this, this would be a vussy.

I already did it. I already took it.

Okay, well, that's a good one. Marcy Norton had asked a question, how do you send Instagram photos to Twitter to cross-promote your business. And you did mention how we can do that, but that's pretty simple. Somebody want to go over that?

I'll start with that. Hey, Marcy, so great to have you on the call. Marcy is someone that came to me through my CreativeLive course I recently taught. I think it's really important for people to understand that when you share over to Twitter from Instagram, that the link gets shared, the image does not get shared. So This is a strategy to use if you're trying to grow your Instagram followers from Twitter. And it's also important to note that if your Twitter handle is not matched up to your Instagram handle, that's somewhat problematic. Or if you're going to @mention somebody when you share from Instagram to Twitter, you need to make sure that their handle is the same because it's not always true. So if you're going to do that, I recommend you go to the person's business website to look for their Instagram button and click it to confirm that when you @mention them from Instagram and share over to Twitter that they will indeed get a notification. A lot of people ask me why share over to Twitter, and the number one reason simply is to really grow back that following. But occasionally on Twitter I will tweet an image so that it shows up as an image in the feed and not start an Instagram because my Instagram accounts are organically growing from the exposure that I have being on Instagram. And I just want to let all the listeners know I do have 6 accounts. We can talk about the future accounts if anyone wants to understand that a little bit more, but the ones that I'd like the listeners to at least write down and start following me on are my personal account, Sue B. Zimmerman, my expert account, The Instagram Expert, where I only teach tips, tools, and strategies on how to grow your business. There are no selfies there. Every post is with value. And then lastly, my most exciting account, which has the highest engagement per post and has organically grown the fastest, is called InstaGal Live because CreativeLive assigned that account to me so that we could have a community grow throughout the 3-day course. I'm happy to say there's over 1,200 people in that account now, but more importantly, if you search the hashtag #InstaGalLive, the community itself is now using that hashtag to get my eyeballs on everything that they're doing. So it's really exciting. And then the other 3 accounts are all more business-related and very niche-specific.. But those are the 3 that I just want to point people to because I think they can learn from the way that I'm posting.

Absolutely. And you can, if you want to, you can leave those links in the comments section later so people can click on them, find them easier.

Okay.

And like Sue was saying, the images don't appear as a preview on Twitter when you tweet out, when you click the tweet button, when you share your Instagram. And so I use something called— I'm looking at it right now. If Then Now. It's IFTTT. Every Instagram automatically gets tweeted out. I've had to play with it a little bit. Twitter only has 140 characters. There's a restaurant, one of my favorite restaurants in the Orlando area, that when I go there I'm always Instagramming the dishes that I'm ordering. They actually, their Instagram and their Twitter are not hooked up together and they're both different. Because of me wanting them to get the alert on Twitter also, I will use their Twitter handle first when I mention them to make sure that it actually will get tweeted out. Their Instagram handle is longer so that can be at the end of my Instagram which is really long or whatever, the description. If I want certain people to be @mentioned and if they have a different one for Twitter, hopefully someone doesn't have that same Instagram account. If someone has the same Instagram account that someone has on Twitter, it's a big mess because they try to interpolate the whatever username. Luckily for that, it doesn't happen that way. It automatically tweets out. When I first hooked it up and it's a little kind of kludgy, I actually hooked up Bitly, my Bitly account to it so that I can track how many clicks are getting back to the Instagram link.— it wasn't working correctly. I was clicking the Twitter button and then about an hour later it would tweet it out. I was actually doing it twice. Definitely when you're hooking something up, when you're auto-posting like that, which I don't totally recommend all the time, but just check your account so that you're not doing it and annoying people. I did it probably about 6 times before I realized I did that.

Good advice. Okay, here's a question from Richard Clarkson. Says his big question is, due to phone memory and Instagram, is Instagram able to be installed on a phone SD card instead of the phone's memory? When I had it before, it wouldn't let me do that. So I don't know if that's a technical question, if anyone can answer to that, or—

I have an iPhone, all my photos are on my phone. I have no idea.

I have an iPhone too, but I think that if he can run other apps off of his SD card, then he should be able to. If not, then maybe not, you know. I would say maybe put all of his images on his SD card and then make his apps on his phone, because it seems like it would run— your apps would run slow anyways if you run it off a memory card. So that's just my geeky answer or assumption.

That's good. All right, here's one from— another one from Marcy Norton. He goes, what topic seems to get the most views on Instagram? Is there a website like Google Analytics which shows what people view and other important statistics about your Instagram account.

I'll jump in. It really depends on what your business is. There is no right or wrong way to do anything on Instagram in terms of what your posting strategy is. Your posting strategy should really align with your core values of your branding. And in that Instagirl Live account that I have, I'm following only 63 accounts there, and they're all really great accounts to to look at that have clean feeds. And when I say clean feeds, I mean they are sharing— most of them are sharing very hyper-focused content that aligns with their company or their brand or their personal brand so that people want to go back every post to get the value that they're delivering. If you're not delivering value, you're going to lose followers. I have a lot of different posting strategies that range— from posting thought leaders, posting favorite books, doing videos on how-tos. If you're a chef or you're a foodie, show me exactly how to make that delicious recipe so that I don't have to go off Instagram and into your blog to access it. The more you give value in every post, the more you will gain followers. And I know this for a fact because daily when I open up my account, I'm getting new followers, up to 20 a day based on the content that people want me to share and deliver. I just keep, you know, giving the same. So it's a very hyper— it's an opportunity to be really nichey with what you do best and makes you stand out from all the competition in your space. And when you share who you are organically, like Matthew said, I think it's great to share occasional selfies. I was rollerblading on the Cape today and I had a video, a stop-and-go video showing people how glorious the day is here near the beach. And people like to know that you enjoy life outside of what you do for work, and it's a way that they feel connected to you virtually. And then when they meet you in person, they have a starting point for a conversation based on what you're sharing through what I say is your digital scrapbook.

Yeah, and just to jump on that, I think comedy is a great way— I mean, it depends on your brand, but videos are a great way to explore comedy. And I know Vine was starting this, but Instagram too. Just take a couple of seconds, even if it's just having your morning cup of coffee and just giving something inspirational or something funny with your coffee. Not every day, it depends on who you are, but I think people really relate to that, and everybody drinks coffee or tea in the morning. Things that people relate to, whether— that's why people People get upset about food, but I feel like Instagram is the place for food, you know? I feel like— and restaurants, I'm sure, do really well posting their food porn. But I think that really just being yourself and posting what you like. I feel like a lot of followers that I get come from Facebook and Twitter, and I find a lot of people, and I will actually add people on the desktop. I'll click on the link and open up their Instagram from Facebook or Twitter, and I don't really know what this— statistics are. I'm really not sure about the Google Analytics types Instagram. I think Marcy Norton was asking if there was a Google Analytics— what topics seem to get the most views on Instagram. Oh, she said that. We had that already. Yeah, so I mean, food. I think food, unless it's Miley Cyrus. Miley Cyrus, when she posts, I think she has like 5,000 likes in 30 seconds. I don't know. I know she's Miley Cyrus, but I'll look at the Miley Cyrus picture, and I'll be like, this thing says 37 seconds and has 5,000 likes. I didn't realize that many people I don't know how that's even possible. Do you guys ever wonder how that many likes happen in under a minute?

Yeah, people are following the hashtag or following the account. I have a different view on food. I really feel as though showing food every now and again is fine, but unless you're in the food space or you're a foodie or you're a chef, and it's not really aligning with your brand, I don't think that that's the right business strategy. If you're talking about your personal account, and I think that's what you're doing, Matthew, that's totally fine. You're letting people know what you like, what you're interested in. But I'm talking to the people on the call who are really trying to grow their business and make more money. And if you're trying to do that, you really need to have a clear posting strategy that aligns with who who you are, what you do, and your ideal client that you're trying to attract. And with that comes a hashtag strategy, a geotag strategy, and a posting strategy. And you mentioned restaurants, and I just want to jump in here for a second, and I think Chef could appreciate this. If you own a restaurant or if you own a brick-and-mortar, the best thing that can happen is that you get user-generated content. UgC. And when your customers are sharing on your behalf and tagging your store or your restaurant and then geotagging it, it's like an endorsement. They are marketing for you and they become part of your tribe on Instagram. And those photos are curated within the content of your establishment. And the reason I know this very well is because I do this at my store, and this is how I discovered the growth of using it for business. I have so many people that come in my store and I don't let them leave until they take an Instagram picture, either with me or with their friends. I mean, we have so much fun in the store, and if you look at my Soobeedoo.CapeCod account, you'll see some really cute photos from today. And tagging them and having them hashtag Soobeedoo is what brings more people in the door at my store every single day. And so I just want to really hit home with everyone on the call that's trying to understand how to use Instagram for business, that it's really important to understand the breadth of how powerful it is as an app. There's not just 55 buttons on the front, there's 50 buttons in the back. There's things that you can be doing that really help leverage and grow your business that do not take a lot of time. And that's really what I want to emphasize is, you know, Julie, she meant the fun and the time, and Matthew even touched on it too. In under a minute, I can create a post that gets a lot of engagement, and engagement for me is not likes. I could care less if I have 5,000 likes. I want comments. I want reposts. Comments mean people are actually liking and engaging in what I'm sharing. I think looking at the comments of someone's account is a really good indicator if what they're sharing is worth listening to.

Gotcha. Now you said reshare. How do you reshare someone's post?

There are free third-party apps called repost apps. You should never be taking a screenshot of anyone else's image ever on Instagram and using it as your own. You can watermark your Instagram pictures with iWatermark. It's a free app, but you can repost through the RepostWiz. There's many of them, and a repost is like giving a shout-out or retweet on Twitter, and that's the biggest compliment anyone could get when someone takes your post and literally says, I am reposting this to my feed because it's just so great, and I want to share it with everyone who's following me.

So you're in favor of reposts then?

Yes, absolutely. A repost is giving a shout out. It's saying, it's saying, I like what you're sharing and I want my followers and fans to see it.

Okay, I was just asking because I know people use Instagram and they just, they don't, most people don't know about reposts. So I think a lot of people might not realize that it's a repost.

Oh, it says it right on the post. It's watermarked with the repost app. It says repost by. Yeah, and it tells you who it was reposted by.

And I really like those apps because it actually will copy the caption too. I've only done like 2 or 3 reposts before, and then I did like a regram before I knew about that. I did a screenshot. But it will copy the whole caption, which is great because you can capture the whole thing. You can add your own caption at the top going, "This is so awesome. Look what this person did." And then it shows the entire thing, and then it does an @mention of them too. They'll get alerted, and then in the actual repost, where, you know how it says Chef Dennis Littley at the bottom of his little screen here, it'll say, you know, their Instagram username and everything, and it'll say that it's a repost. So it's kind of like it adds a little caption. And actually, the one I like, it will let you do it along the left or the right of the bar or along the top of the image too, so you can kind of change it up. And kind of what Sue was saying before about knowing your brand and knowing your strategy. It's kind of funny, I'm like complete opposite. I don't really have a strategy because my brand is a very personal brand for me, and I think a lot of food bloggers are like that too. And I'm very much— excuse me— of the, I want to share what's going on in my day, I want to share my travels, I want to share my pets. And honestly, if someone doesn't like me sharing pictures of my dogs and my puppies all the time, my cats, they can unfollow me. You know what I mean? Like, it's It's part of who I am and part of my personality, and sometimes I will share the step-by-steps or what's going on. Like sometimes you will see my hands while I'm making it because I ask my husband to take the photo. And I've done a couple of videos on Instagram of really step-by-step, but it's, you know, maybe I should come up with a strategy, but I don't know if it would come across as contrived for me because what I'm really trying to share is my personality and— and my, I don't know what they call it, my culinary point of view, kind of. I don't know.

What people know you for.

Yeah, and it's not like I schedule it out or I have a strategy. It's just more of, oh, that looked great. I'm going to share that really quick.

They know what to expect from Julie. They know that you're going to post dogs and food and your day.

I say that in my bio, and I think we kind of talked about that a little bit, of really kind of sharing in your little— I think, I don't know how many characters. Sue probably knows how many characters you can put in your bio.

150. 150.

I always pretty much make sure that I say my pets on there somehow, somewhere when I change it up, just so that people know that it's not just going to be food because I don't think I'm a one-dimensional person.

Yeah, both Matthew and Julie, it sounds like you both have personal accounts and that works for you. I have one personal account which has the most followers of all my accounts because that's the one I started first.. But then I realized that there are people who just want to learn how to use Instagram for their business. They don't want to see my husband, my kids, my dogs, where I go shopping, where I'm on vacation. They simply aren't really interested in that. They want to know how to use Instagram to grow their business and make more money. So I extracted out that content and created a featured account. And a featured account simply is another account. You just need another email. And you create that account. So who I'm attracting there are people, business owners, entrepreneurs who want to understand Instagram. And it sounds like all these questionings coming in are different, are those people. So I'm just going to click on— is it okay to click on this eyeball, Jeff? Okay. So I just think this is a great question because Helene is asking, please explain the difference between tagging and hashtagging and when to use each. So this, you know, Instagram can get a little confusing with the @mentions and the hashtags. So I just want to take a second to go over that because it's really important if you're going to be using this for business, you understand it. Whenever you @mention someone on Instagram, they will get a notification on their account, and that notification will simply be an orange number in your inbox or where you view if you've been tagged. Separately, you can tag every single photo that you upload, and when you tag your photos, you're actually letting people know how to access that account. So if you were to tap on a lot of my photos in my account, you will see me tagging other people that have to do with that photo in that account. So many people don't know about the tagging feature on Instagram and it is a huge way to grow your account above and beyond just posting. And so the @mention is simply like @mentioning them on Twitter and Plus. Is this the right way to say it, you guys? Like Plus on Google Plus? Yeah, Plus mention.

I feel like the tagging that you're talking about on where you can actually mouse over and see their image, it's kind of like Facebook tagging somebody.

It actually is, Julie, and one of the things that I teach all my clients and I teach in my course and I taught on CreativeLive is that when you tag an Instagram and then you share that Instagram post over to Facebook, and you can share it to either your personal account, but I always say share it to your business page because everyone's struggling to get engagement on Facebook on their business page, then you can actually tag once that photo is on Facebook and if anyone who you're tagging is relevant to be tagged, it will show up in their— on their wall so your reach is magnified so much more starting in Instagram, tagging there, sharing it to Facebook, specifically business page and then tagging them in Facebook. And so that's the tagging. Now the hashtagging is— I want everyone to know if you're creating any Instagrams, I want to have you hashtag Zimmerman, because I want to see that Instagram post. So everybody watching right now should be taking a screenshot of us and tagging us. I looked, Matt, I couldn't find you, and Julie, I think yours is similar.

@nyactor511.

What is yours, Matt?

@nyactor511.

Okay, so people should be taking a screenshot and then tagging us if they can, and I would love to see #subizimmerman because then I'll see what you're doing and I'll be able to start following you back and knowing that I can help you if you need help. If you want to ask me questions on Instagram, I always answer them there.

And Chef, do you have a virtual— you have a hashtag for Virtual BlogCon that we can use?

Yeah, it's S-A-V-C virtual— second annual virtual blog—

wait, there are 4 letters?

S-A-V-B-C. S-A-V-B-C.

2014. Interesting. No, I would just recommend maybe, because most people might not know what that is, I would just recommend a hashtag that has more of the name in it, maybe. That's just my opinion.

But I used it to start tracking all my posts, and that's what I started because I wanted to make something that was really unique, so I just kind of stayed with that. But next year is a whole different story. Okay, so let me pop up another question here.

But I was going to say, going on what Sue said, just real quick, is that the idea of hashtags, you know, finding a hashtag that works for you, you know, whether you're a business or a personal brand. You know, I use my last name Rapa, and I will hashtag something called RapaVision, which I've done across the social networks. And anytime I take certain images, certain pictures, you know, that I'll use it for specific cases when it's personal. And I think that creating certain hashtags that are personal, that really represent you, that you can use to build across— social, not just Instagram, but across all of social is very important because people can identify those hashtags and I think find a whole bunch of your content just at once. So I'm sure, I'm guessing something like that is, Sue and Julie, that you guys maybe do something like that?

I have started doing that actually.

Yeah, I have custom hashtags that, um, that I tell people to use for all my strategies. I'm so focused on strategies and following only people that give me value. So I'm really, you know, having a hashtag strategy is so important. I work with a lot of clients to come up with a custom hashtag for their business so they can curate content and tell other people to do the same because on Instagram you can have a call to action. And anyone that's following Sue B. Zimmerman, I I always have a call to action and then I point to a link to get you there. So whether it's— today on one of my accounts I told everybody to come on the Google Hangout and I put the link there. So I'm very current with my posting and my call to actions on Instagram.

See, I never thought of using Instagram for that type of a thing to put links and posts in there.

You can only— you only have one live link on Instagram but you can change it at any time. On my account, the InstaGal Live, where I have a very active community. And by the way, I see a lot of the people in the stream who are from that community that are on. I put the link in there because I know they're on Instagram. Some of them may be on Google+, but I know that they're on Instagram, so I put the link there so that they could jump in and be a part of this.

Great. I was happy for that. Okay, good question from Michael Alton. So as a blogger, what are some of the techniques you're using? Instagram? Is it just for brand recognition or can we realistically get referral traffic?

You absolutely can get referral traffic, Mike. Hey, Jen Herman is the blogger, she's a social media blogger, she is someone I met at Social Media Marketing World, she's a phenomenal writer and she has a great Instagram account and she always posts an image of her blog and you should always have a great image in your blog, one that's pinnable, one that's postable on Google+, one that you can use on Instagram. She literally says, "Click the link in my bio to see the blog post." She always has a relevant image to go with the content of what she's sharing. If you go to my Instagram Expert account, I do the same thing. I write blogs about how to use Instagram if you're a restaurant owner, how to use it if you're a life coach. I niche down every industry and write a blog post on how to use it. Then I create a cute visual image directing people back to that blog post. Does that make sense?

Sure.

I do the same thing when I have— a lot of times if I remember, I'll post an image from one of my recipes for that day and say, describe the recipe. I recently started using a hashtag, asking people to use that hashtag when they make the recipe too. I went back through and I was, I hope I didn't annoy anybody on my feed, in the following feed, but I went through all of my Instagrams that had anything to do with when I was doing prep or recipe testing of a recipe that is on the blog, or when I said, "Hey, I have a new recipe today," and I went and used that hashtag. And so going forward, I'm now going to use that hashtag so anyone can click on it and they can see over 200 posts in there, but at the same time I do mention the recipes on the blog. I do spell out my URL because some people want to type it up, or you could say a lot of people use the hashtag #linkinprofile. Then at the same time, never in any other social media platform have I ever experienced where I post it, like literally 3 hours later someone is Instagramming a photo of the recipe that they just made, and it just totally floors me. I just never thought that that could even be possible. How quick that could happen, and I feel like that's the power of Instagram.

Yeah, definitely.

Cool.

Alright, here's a question from Mary Church: How can I promote my online teaching store and blog through Instagram?

Um, so I have an online business— I'm thinking her online teaching store is a course online that she has, but anyone with a service-based business can share what they teach in little sound bites. Again, back to the Instagram Expert account, every post I teach something and it might be something in my course but it might be one thing. For example, just how to geotag or how to delete a comment or how to find some of these buttons in the backend and what to do if you want to block somebody that's spamming you. Constantly teaching one thing. Again, it goes back to value and finding a visual story that explains the value that you can deliver. And, you know, taking photos is something everyone can do very easily. Everyone's armed with their phone 24/7, and it doesn't literally have to be the photo that corresponds to the text that you're trying to teach. It could just simply be a sunset or the beach that's beautiful and gets a ton of engagement. Then on top of that, teaching something about your course or you as a blogger. Then I definitely have to let people know that quotes get so much engagement on Instagram. I brand my quotes through a graphics team, but you can also use Canva, canva.com. It's a free web-based graphic website that's amazing. I'm sure a lot of you know it because Mia just interviewed Guy Kawasaki and Peg Fitzpatrick, and they were on talking about it. It's an amazing tool where you can create graphics that align with your brand. And share on Instagram. You don't have to be a graphic artist to do any of that. There's great third-party apps where you can create quotes very easily. Everyone loves inspirational quotes or information on how to do something with text overlay. I can talk about apps all day.

I was going to say that's a strategy that works across all social, not just Instagram, I think. With quotes. Sorry to interrupt.

Oh no, you're absolutely right, Matthew. Quotes get engagement everywhere, and I think what's so important on Instagram is to have branded quotes so that when people see them, they know that you're yours. So one of my hashtags is #sbzquotes, and if you search that hashtag, you'll see 19 of my quotes. But the thing about my quotes is that they all look the same in that they're branded with my logo colors, they have my anchor, they have my name. I've even created an Instagram account called @thedailyig, the.daily.ig because @thedailyig was taken, where I celebrate other authors, speakers, entrepreneurs. I celebrate their quotes. It's all about them and me sharing their brilliance to my community. I tweet those quotes out and I share them to Facebook occasionally. I created that account because after I spoke at Social Media Marketing World, I just wanted to celebrate all these amazing people I was meeting, and the best way for me to do that was with the quotes that they were sharing. So quotes are just an amazing way to get engagement, as long as they align with your branding and make sense for you to be sharing them. Cool.

Alright, here's a question from Catherine Tatum, and it says, what is the best way to see if someone I'm following follows me back? Currently I use the app called Instafollowers, but I'm wondering if there is a way to know this directly from Instagram. Followers don't seem to be in any sort of order.

I don't use any apps to check who's following me or following me back. I don't really pay attention. I know I have a spreadsheet. Every day, every day we keep track of who's following for each account, and then we use direct message. There's a Direct Message, which a lot of people don't even know about. This is the most awesome tool, I think, on Instagram for me, where I send everyone a really nice note when they start following me. And you can send up to 15 people a direct message at a time. And I send people, um, one of my text responders so that I can give them the 10 things to do on Instagram if they give me their email. So it's an email capture for me. My list has grown by the thousands because of the direct message opportunity in Instagram. I do look and see who's following me and I keep it on a spreadsheet and I thank every new follower. I bring them into my community. I check out who they are. I go and see if I should follow them back and see if they're going to bring value so that I can learn something from them as well because I learn something new every day on Instagram.

Cool, very good. I didn't, you know, I've seen the direct messages but I really didn't know what to do with them or how to use them, so that's some good advice.

I don't think a lot of people know how to use them.

You know, I have used it as a way to like communicate with someone like really quick, like based on their Instagram. I just screenshot it and share it back to them, and that's the only way I could do a caption. And so I'm like, hey, Someone actually, a photographer, amazing photographer that I follow on Instagram, he Instagrammed about another amazing photographer on Instagram who is really sick and has been in ICU in the hospital for a few weeks. They were trying to raise money for him because I don't think he has any health insurance, and 3 weeks in the hospital and a couple of operations is getting to really stack up. He just wrote this moving caption, and so I was moved to— I didn't even have a clickable link or anything. I was moved to directly get on my computer. And I donated $25, and then I messaged him saying if there's anything else I can do. You know, I didn't even know him, and I donated, and please keep us posted on how he's doing and everything. So I've used it in that way, and I've actually, you know, contacted friends like, I didn't know you were in town or close to me, and then use it as a way, kind of like a Twitter DM, but you can't just send a text. You have to share a picture. At the bottom when you're actually getting ready to post a picture, there's a way to share to all your followers or do a direct message to just a certain number of people. You have that option at the bottom.

I just pulled this up. Yeah, I don't really know about Phonegram. Is that something, Sue, that you know, or Julie, that you guys use or know?

I don't use it.

Okay. Statigram, which is now— what's it called now?

Iconosquare. Iconosquare is where you go to get all your stats and see who's following you and unfollowing you. I look at that once or twice a week, but I don't let any of my posting strategy be dictated by how many followers I'm getting or who's unfollowing me. I think what's so great is that the people that are unfollowing you aren't meant to be in your space, and that's fine. I would much rather have 100 very engaged people in my community than 5,000 that aren't even commenting. I completely agree. Yeah, I mean, it's really about the engagement.

—And if you do want to find out if someone is following you, because it's really hard to go through the list sometimes, and so you can use one of those apps if you're just looking for a particular person to see if they're following you. But I agree, I mean sometimes I joke around with friends like, "I just posted a picture of my dog and 3 people unfollowed me. Do they not like my dog?" And then it's like, you know what, too bad, so sad. It's like, you know, a lot of mom bloggers— People are fickle, you know.

Julie, I just want to let you know, not to interrupt you, I'm sorry, but I have to tell you this because Leah, Leah Olson, who just took a screenshot, is a foodie on Instagram and she took a screenshot and started sharing it and tagging. I'm like, Julie should definitely connect with her because food is her passion and she does recipes. She's listening to us, you guys. She's taking screenshots.— and posting.

I have to tell you, Sue, I actually had just signed up for the CreativeLive email subscriptions because of Todd and Diane's photography course and then saw your CreativeLive that was coming up. I didn't get a chance to catch it, but one of my friends, her sister-in-law has just started a small business in Florida, and so I forwarded to her and she Instagrammed a photo of you while you were doing your CreativeLive course. So it's like I feel like I have a Couple of degrees of separation before I met you.

Yeah, that's so cool. Every day when I got on stage, I held my InstaGal Live hashtag sign and literally told everybody, if you use the hashtag InstaGal Live, I will see it and I will comment and I will engage. And so there's 1,400 posts there. That's great.

That's awesome. That's a good idea.

Yeah.

We have another question here from Mona, and she wants to know, Do you always use Instagram from an iPhone or Android, or can you use computers when you're at home?

I have— for 4 of my accounts, we use Schedulegram. It is the only tool that is— that Instagram— that's actually legal for Instagram. There's a couple others that I've heard you can get kicked off of Instagram if you use them because it is created when you share from Schedulegram, it's as if it's from a mobile device and not their IPA because Instagram protects it. I've just heard stories when people use Gramblr, I think it's called, or I used to use Postso and then they got shut down. I just want people to be careful when they're using a tool other than Instagram to schedule posts. Schedulegram is awesome. You can upload your photo, you can decide which time of day and when you're posting it. There's even filters and there's second you can put your hashtags in the secondary comments, which is absolutely what you want to do if you're trying to grow your account with a hashtag strategy. You do not want your hashtags in the first description.

Just out of curiosity, how many posts for businesses do you usually average per day?

I do one per day on 4 of my accounts and 2 on others. I was posting a lot more frequently because I love sharing photos, photos are my thing. And honestly, more than twice a day is too much for my followers. And I get serious engagement on every account. And my store that I just was at today, I think I might have posted 2 or 3 because there were so many great customer shots and people following me there really want to see the products and it works. But on my personal account, I try not to do more than 2 a day unless I'm at a conference and I'm meeting all kinds of great people and I want to share that.. But my max is 2, and I know the time of day, I know the best time to post, again from Iconosquare that was formerly Statigram, and I know what the best filter to use is, and this all comes with time. I want people to know that are on the call that we all start with zero. Everyone starts with zero followers. Do not think that because you have 5 followers that you're not doing well. I say set a goal that that works for you. Don't compare yourself to anyone else. And small successes. Again, if you follow the hashtag #InstaGalLive, you will see so many artists and creatives saying successful things that have happened from learning my teachings from CreativeLive. And it's just baby steps. This is, you know, this is— you're not going to master Instagram from listening to one Hangout or, you know, taking one course. You've got to actually be in the app physically doing it and understanding what's working for you and what makes you different than anyone else doing what you do. I hear so many people just struggling with, I want more followers, I want more followers, follow for follow, shout out for shout out. That is not Instagram for business. That is being popular and getting likes and followers, which is so not the mindset of a successful business owner. The successful business owner wants engagement, wants to know that you are a super fan, wants to know that you love what they do. And like Julie, I love that they post your recipe after you give it out. That is like a freaking repost on fire. Like, it's awesome. That's what you do. That's why you do what you do. That's success to me, is that the content that you're delivering is so valuable that someone else made what you shared and then took it upon themselves to share a photo of what you created.

Completely. And like going with what Sue said, you know, I have over 1,200 Instagrams. Sue has 3,000, I just looked, and Matt has— Yeah, I have a lot too. 640, and then I don't know how many Chef Dennis has.

I don't have that many, I just started.

But like, you know, you don't start at 0 to like 1,200 like that. I mean, and to build. And exactly what Sue said, you know, I was having a conversation with my friend the other day and she was talking about how she wanted— she does want more Instagram followers. I think everyone wants more Instagram followers, everyone wants more followers, period. But my mindset is the growth that I have, you know, been fortunate to have over the last few years has come with a lot of people that are really, really nice. I haven't really had nasty comments or really, really mean people or people attacking me. A lot of people that really grow really fast, yeah, a little bit of spam here and there. But the people that have grown really, really fast, really, really fast and furious have— They're buying followers. Yeah.

You can buy 1,000 followers. Yeah, you can buy them for $10. You can buy 1,000. I mean, who wants that?

But you know, I've seen those accounts where they have 20,000 followers and I get more likes on my photos than they do on theirs. They have 5 likes. It's about the connection.

So it's obvious that they're fake. Yes. I can tell any account if it's fake by the engagement on every post, Julie. You're absolutely right. There is no way the conversion rate is you have 20,000 followers and you've only posted 100 times and you get 1 like on a photo. And so I would never do business with anyone that I see is buying followers on Instagram. It's not necessary.

Do you guys think celebrities do it, though?

Probably not.

Probably not, because like you said, you got 5,000 likes. She got 5,000 in 47 seconds. Probably, yeah.

Maybe not her, but maybe—

I meant to ask earlier, you're following Miley Cyrus on Instagram? Does that mean you're following her on Instagram? Yes. I'm just kidding.

I'm listening to her right now in the other ear.

Oh, really? Yeah. No comment on that. I do like a couple of her songs. I was just kidding.

So it's more she's just interesting. I think she posts interesting things. That's all. And I wasn't following her, but I feel like every HuffPost story that was about her was showing Instagram photos. Like, oh, she seems like she's provocative. Let me just follow her.

You know who I love to follow as a celebrity is Mindy Kaling from The Mindy Show. I love her. A lot of her personality really feels like it's coming through her Instagrams. They're hilarious a lot of times. It's one of those kinds of things, like you said, it's up for 18 seconds and it's already got 600, 1,000 likes. Immediately too. And like, if I comment, I'm like, oh, maybe I commented first. No way. You go look at the image, I'm like, you know, number 27.

You'll never find that comment again.

Well guys, this has been great. There's some other questions up there, but we're running close to the hour, and I do want to ask one last question of everyone, and then we're gonna sign off for the day. But it's been a really, really informative talk about Instagram and opened my eyes to a lot of things, so I hope everyone else has gotten a lot out of this as well. But I just want to thank everyone for coming, and Sue, I can't believe you are a wealth of knowledge on this subject. I think we could probably talk for days and just scratch the surface.

Well, let me just tell you, Chef, I talked for 6 hours for 3 days, literally, about Instagram, and the course did so well that I'm doing another one in November. Another Instagram course. Is that on the computer or live? CreativeLive wants me back. I broke all kinds of records. The course is now the number 2 course on CreativeLive for business and life. There's 5 channels. I feel like the artisans and the creators out there need so much help on how to make money doing what they love. Of everything, of every business I've ever had, this is where I'm meant to be, to teach people how to make money. Instagram is definitely the place. As far as I'm concerned. So it's going to be a 2-day course and it's really going to be focusing on the sale, how to literally leverage the geotags, the hashtags, the @mentions and the partners. So I'm excited. So 18 hours straight, Chef, you can buy the course if you want. It's on CreativeLive.

Or you can cook for Sue instead.

Well, that's also possible. Or cook for Instagram. So, and if you want to leave the link to that, please feel free.

I've never done that before. You've never done that before? No.

You guys have seen the sketches, the Jimmy Fallon though, right? Talking in hashtags?

Yes, yes, and I guess I just saw it, but I've never done it myself.

I think we all need to do a hashtag pose and take a picture. Can we do that?

Chef's going to take a picture, right? Yep. Ready?

Wait a minute, let me get rid of this.

I think the shadow on my face. Hold on, one more.

I want a Julie, hang on.

Excellent, okay.

This is what happens when you're around me, you guys. You always have to take a picture to Instagram. It's just the way I roll. Instagram.

And Matthew, thanks so much for being on today. It's always a pleasure. We have to hang out more and have some fun on the Plus here. Julie, thank you for being on.

One day we're going to meet in person, Dennis, even though we live an hour away from each other.

We're in the same state. We're not that far from each other.

I know. It was so nice to meet both of you, Matt and Sue. It's great to meet you.

You too, Julie.

Yes. Bye. All right. Thank you so much for coming.

Congratulations, Chef, on the second annual— this is the last one, right? Yeah.

This is it. It's over. Yeah. Go get something to eat now and relax, and I'm gonna be offline for a little while, please. Thanks so much. Until tomorrow. So thanks for coming, and I'll see you all real soon. Thank you.