Navigating Social Media Instagram Tips for Women 40+

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It's made by a trusted family-owned company that we all can feel good about. Third-party tested for purity and potency. And if you're interested, you too can try a sample for just $6. But even better, you can get 30% off forever with discount code FLIPPING50. That's FLIPPING50. Just go to flipping50.com/blueskycbd. We'll put that link in the show notes and you'll find it everywhere on Flipping 50 at My Favorites. What are you waiting for? Good night. I've got Instagram tips for women. Don't go away. You didn't tune into the wrong podcast. I know, Instagram tips? You're thinking, no, no, no, I came for health tips, weight training tips, how to eat to fuel my muscle tips. I get it. Stay here though, because I'm gonna bet, I would bet 9 out of 10 times that you're also scrolling through Instagram or you have. Am I right? And in doing that, you are also looking for fitness tips, or you're seeing some very fit chick give advice on menopause, thinking you might want to listen to her because you might want to look like her. And that's kind of where this conversation goes. I know this is an off-the-wall angle to take, but I'm gonna risk it because first of all, I have tons of respect for my guest and just, I like her. It's a better way. It's the— what I wanted to say instead of respect. I do respect her. However, I really like her and I trust her and she is one of us. And so I'm bringing her in knowing she could be a Flipping 50 community member. She belongs here. She's one of us and she understands how you most likely are using it. Not because she coaches you, the consumer. She coaches those who are posting. She coaches the mes, the other health coaches, the other fitness professionals, the realtors, the other business people who want to have a presence on Instagram and get your attention. And because she's somebody who does that, I think she's somebody that probably has insight on what you need to take for face value and what you need to to look a little closer at and say, is this really a good choice and a way I should spend my time? What if we could make social media more midlife-friendly for you? What if it was more than a rabbit hole, something that made you feel bad, or you fill in the blank, not something enough? I mean, isn't that true that too much of social media makes you feel not thin enough, not beautiful enough, not sculpted cheeks enough, not long enough eyelashes. Something inevitably, when you step away, it's making you feel like you either should go buy something, you should be as good as somebody else. And look, none of us needs that. What if you were the boss of your social media? And this is such an off topic, but stay with me. Social media is here to stay. It can be midlife friendly if you know how to use it. Today we talk Instagram. With a woman also flipping 50 just like we are, with no doubt in my mind she has our backs. She's an expert expert, by the way, I mentioned earlier. That is, she trains entrepreneurs and business owners and influencers how to use Instagram better. Who better to ask the questions, who do we trust, of? And I think it's her. So I thought, Why can't she also train you? I asked her to share a few tips for using Instagram wisely as a consumer for information that you do want versus the time waste that you don't. Sue B. Zimmerman is one of us, and literally she is the GOAT. If you don't know what I mean, she is, she's the best of all time. I'm serious, for Instagram tips. So is going to continue to age for us. Instagram is going to get older right along with us. You know, I wouldn't think, well, it's going to go away, or you're too old. I mean, you're more likely to start using it and get something out of that for your brain than you are to not use it at all and waste your brain, right? You're learning something, and anytime you're learning something, even if it's a new tool like social media, it potentially— that is good for your brain. So more of us and more of our audience, more of our friends, our community, our people, and people trying to reach you who you actually may wanna hear from are there too. You know, it's pretty, it's quirky, it's entertaining, and it's becoming more and more like a search engine. Fitness or health entrepreneur, if that's you and you want business tips, more beyond this episode. We give you a few here just in case you're just a woman in business and you also want or already are on in terms of your business. You should also come over to the She Means Business Podcast— She Means Fitness Business Podcast. Why do I leave that word out? It's the most important word in the title. It's released one day after this, so if you're listening when these are released, wait till tomorrow and I've got you. So the first tip for everybody. Follow Sue B. I'm Debra Atkinson. You're listening to Flipping 50, where usually I share tips on what to eat, how to move, and how to change your mindset. And today, maybe a little bit more of that, so you can have the energy and the vitality that you want, need, and deserve. And today it's really all about this. So I'm not, I'm not intentionally pointing you to me today. I know you're on Instagram, even on Facebook and YouTube, and you're looking at all kinds of information. My advice to you on that, be careful. Find a voice you trust. If it's not me, if I'm fingernails on a chalkboard for you, find somebody that you do like and trust you can listen to. And then try not to go and listen to somebody else and somebody else and somebody else. Focus, trust, stay there, follow it through. Because when you jump around from one thing to the next, that is where you'll get confused. Dig in, challenge, ask for questions, ask for the research, do the research yourself. Because one thing I want to say today in 2023, if you're saying, show me the research on that, guess what, girl, you could go to PubMed just as easily as I can. All you need to do is bring it up and type into Google a question and finish that sentence with research, and only go to the NIH, to the.gov, or ideally to the PubMed studies that are pure review journals, you can do that. But here I want to give you a little bit more. So when you're going to pop culture sites like Instagram, you want to know how do you find the good stuff. And here it is. My guest today, Sue B. Zimmerman, is an insightful, energetic, and in-demand online marketing educator, influencer, speaker, and a no-BS coach. Sue B. is a popular CreativeLive instructor and has been named by Huffington Post as one of the top 50 must-follow women Entrepreneurs, as well as the Top 50 Social Media Marketing Influencers by TopRank Marketing and Top Female Business Influencers of 2019 by Fit Small Business. Sue's blog was ranked as one of the top 10 social media blogs in 2017 by Social Media Examiner. Whether she's taking a global stage or speaking at an industry conference like Social Media Marketing World or working one-on-one one-on-one with her clients, Sue B is driven to help business owners leverage the power of Instagram to meet and exceed their business goals. As a lifelong entrepreneur, Sue B has over 30 years of business experience, and with her extensive knowledge and implementation of social media, it's Sue B's mission to teach, mentor, and empower others. Can't wait to dive into this. I hope you stuck it out and realized this is for you. Because she will be talking to you and you'll hear us float a little bit back and forth between it sounding like this is advice for someone who is posting. But the reason is this: many of you listeners are— you're also in business, you're posting about a hobby, maybe you're posting for yourself. But if you're doing that and you want to garner some attention, follow her tips. Can't wait to dive in and I'd love to hear your comments on this topic. Sue B, thank you so much for being here.

Oh, you're so welcome. I love how you just like said B. I'm the busy bee that just buzzes around the world, just bringing joy and spreading honey so people can make money, you know, using the gram.

You so do, and you are one of us, and that is really why Everybody heard the intro. This is a little break from our norm. We're definitely not talking about smoothies or protein or muscles today, but I think this is so very important because there are a lot of women who are getting into the rabbit hole of Instagram, maybe number one, losing their time to work out by scrolling and getting lost in reel after reel after reel. And I know I'm guilty of it. And so I want to talk a little bit about that. But how can a woman actually use it to her advantage, potentially to find information, but more so how to filter out what's, what's an influencer who is a popularity contest queen versus an expert. I mean, what do you have for tips so we can protect ourselves?

Yeah, I'll use you as an example because I love watching you. I love learning from you. I save your videos. So, you know, Here's what I want to say. Instagram has evolved so much from when I first started teaching it 11 years ago, and it was just a photo, photo sharing app. And now it's just so much more. It's so robust. There's so much greatness about this app. And then to your point, there's rabbit holes that you can easily go down. And then time passes and you're like, what the heck? I missed my workout. No bueno. But, you know, I think that if you are really cognizant of who you're following and why you're following them as the user. Let's start with the user and then we can talk about content creator, because I am only following accounts that, that give me value. And when I say the word value, let me just break it down because everyone hears that it's, it's who is inspiring me, who is entertaining me, who is informing me with the latest health tips and wellness tips, because I'm here for all of that. Always. And when I do see something that really lands for me, I am saving it. So what do I mean by that? There's a little ribbon icon on the bottom right of every post on Instagram, and when you tap that, you can save it. But if you want to work smarter, as we say here in Boston, not harder, you can hold it and you can create a category. So for example, for Debra Atkinson, I would create categories for different body parts that I may be interested in working out that day. So whether it's hip openers or triceps or biceps or strength training or core strength, you know, you name it, she does it all, right? And so I have little playlists that I'm saving so that I can find them and find those recipes that I actually do cook because I have a system and a process. And so I think this is true for anything in life that you wanna improve on. And I'm all about intention. I literally live my day every day with the greatest intentions of being productive, not busy. And when I say that, it means prioritizing time for all the things that bring me joy in and out of my fabulous business and community. And so if you are bombarded with information that is just not— you're not feeling it, you know, at your core, at your soul, like unfollow or mute any of those accounts. You can mute them if you don't want to unfollow them. There's three dots, you can mute that account when it lands in your newsfeed. You can mute that account for their stories by just simply holding down on their avatar and muting them, and they don't even know you did it. Um, and so, um, because less noise means more focus, in my opinion. So let me just start with that. Debra, is there anything you heard that you didn't know or anything you want to elaborate on?

I— that was great. First of all, that was a geeky tip about saving. What about it, like somebody wants to search for something? You mentioned hip openers, triceps. I mean, God, if we could say there's one favorite, it must be triceps. Like, get rid of that extra stuff. Um, how would, how would somebody listening who's pretty new search for tricep exercises?

Yeah, great question. So at the bottom of Instagram, there's a search button. It looks like a magnifying glass. Whenever you see that magnifying glass, it really does mean search. So when you type in words, because Instagram has all this engine of SEO, of searching, you can find triceps for women over 50 or women who are 60, whatever age you can add to that. There are people that are using hashtags with like the hashtags, words combined together with no spaces or symbols. And there are people who have these keywords, as I call them, in their name field on Instagram. So let's just take a pause here for one hot second. When I say name field, there's two aspects of Instagram. There's your username, right? And then there's the name field. So Debra has her username as Flipping 50 TV, which is great, but she also has Debra Atkinson, oh my goodness, you're gonna love me because I just noticed something that you can change. Um, so you have the word Fit for Menopause all as one word, and that is not serving you. So what would serve you is if you put Women 50 and Older Menopause, like keywords. You get up to 60 to 63 in this name field, but if you change it— do not change it while you're listening to this, just hold tight because you would have to change it. You have to wait 2 weeks to change it again. So you want to make sure any keyword, whether it's fitness, women, menopause, your age, that should be in the name field. Now I love that Debra put her first and her last name, so if anyone searches for her, she will pop up because her account name is Flipping 50 TV, right?

Very cool. I got homework. Okay.

Yeah, you do. And if you look at our account, The Instagram Expert, you will see that my full name is there, Sue B. Zimmerman, and Morgan, my business partner CEO, is there because she's much more in the forefront of our business now than ever before. And we have IG marketing and we have business coach because in addition to teaching women midlife and older how to use Instagram, we also coach. Women business owners to build sustainable, successful businesses online using Instagram as a marketing tool. But, but it's like, so there's two different things. So this one client told me she found me from searching business coach. So you want to have those keywords with spaces. And that's a good example. If you go look at our account and just, just come say hi.

Definitely. Okay. So you here who are listening, who are not only women flipping 50 and you're in our community, probably searching for health and wellness and maybe some medical information. You know, fantastic. But we also know you have jobs and lives. And so whether for you yourself in growing your coaching or your entrepreneurship or your business, helping the business you work for, these tips could also apply to you. And you're hearing it from literally the GOAT. You heard me say that in the intro. I mean, literally 11 years she's been doing it. And she's got some life wisdom, right? I mean, she's not 22, and I think that's such an asset, you know, that we're getting this from you. What do you see that gives you, like, some reason to pause and say, you know, I hope my friends don't see that and take it and run with it? Is there anything that, that makes— that triggers you like that, knowing I mean, I know you're savvy and you're aware of health and wellness for yourself. What makes you worry?

What do you mean? Like, say that again. What makes you worry about what other people think of me?

No, no. Say your friends are looking at Instagram and they're, they're seeing or filtering through for themselves health and wellness or fitness information. How do they, how do they know or, or see What's good, what's not so good.

Great example. Okay, so when we teach Instagram marketing, it's all about building your authority as the educator, as the leader, as the expert, as the coach. And there needs to be proof that you are that person that you say you are. What does that look like? Well, if you've been doing something for X years of time, that's proof. 5, 10 years in the game of doing the thing that you love to do, that you want to help other people do, or share with someone else. And so that proof needs to be seen. It needs to be heard in the form of, I think, more than anything, a video that you can connect to see that, you know, Debra walks the talk every day. She shows up consistently teaching us ways to stay healthy, to maintain muscle mass, to really focus on the key things that are important as we age. All around the health and wellness of just living a more abundant life. Right. And so I think it's so important to see that the proof is there. I'll give it a— I'll give a bad example. There's so many marketers that show that they're a marketing agency and then in their feed they're just taking other people's content as their own and sharing it as user-generated content with no one from their team or business talking about anything relevant about the software that they sell. They're using other people's information so that they can get some organic reach from other people's audience with no proof that they are the go-to doing the thing that they say they do. So therefore, there's no trust being built and like no conversation on their post, meaning threaded conversations and curiosity from people looking. And so I think you can always tell by how long have they been doing the thing that they are doing and are they walking the talk? Like, those would be my two top. What do you think of that?

Yeah, I think that is great. And I'm wondering if just for, for listeners who are— maybe they're on it, their son or daughter in college got them on it for some reason and they're not really using it or don't really know their way around. Do you want to just talk a little through vocabulary of like the neighborhoods Yeah, thanks.

So we coined this phrase and I love it because I used to speak at a lot of real estate agencies conferences. They would hire me to come speak to their realtors and I— this light bulb went off like, oh my goodness, Instagram, like, can you really just like stop adding another area of Instagram to create content? So I had this brilliant idea of calling them neighborhoods. And then I said, you know, Instagram is this village. There are over 2 billion monthly active users, and, you know, from all over the world. The app never sleeps. And in this beautiful village, there are neighborhoods. You first have your, your evergreen content, which is your feed content, the posts that are in your feed that I mentioned earlier. These can be photos, these can be Reels, these can be carousels, which are simply posts that can have up to 10 photos and/or videos in one post. And that is your, that is your feed. That is the proof of concept. That is your portfolio, right? That is your website. I mean, come on, you guys, like, you don't have to have a website to start a business anymore. You can start with Instagram because there is SEO. Do you want one eventually? Of course. But just know that it is a powerful tool with great search in it, as we talked about earlier. So we have the feed, your post, then we have stories. Stories are very organic. Stories are, you know, mostly seen by your followers. They already know you. They're warmer to you. This is where you can share a little bit more intimately of behind the scenes of content that is in alignment with who you are and what you do, not random stuff. But when I say in alignment, it means it's part of your core value system and who you are. And so whenever there's a disconnect, like, look at my beautiful vacation. If you're not tying in, look at how I exercise on my beautiful location in the water with resistance of just the water or something that brings it back to the promise that you made in your bio. Then you're wasting someone's time and there's nothing in it for them other than seeing your beautiful vacation, right? Then we have Instagram Live. I go live almost every day spontaneously when I have white space to connect with my audience. There are always new people on that live. I do a poll every time and people type new, new, new, new, new. So for those of you who don't mind showing up on video and are comfortable being a little bit more loose in the way that you can share information. It's not scripted, you're not nervous. It's a beautiful tool for that. And then we also have Reels as a channel, but Reels are also part of the feed if you want them to be. You can keep them in the feed or they can be— exist in their own channel. So there are 4 places to create content, and that's a lot. So those are different neighborhoods. Now what you need to hear is that people react, create content differently in the different neighborhoods because people digest that content differently with a different commitment. Some people just like watching stories and some people just like jumping on lives. So you have to really understand your audience to know what they want from you as the content creator. I know that that was a long answer.

No, that was a lot. And so to our, our consumer audience here, they're, they're able to choose, like, I only like to look at Reels, or they could choose, you know, I, I just scroll right now through my feed. They may or may not follow somebody and then end up wanting to go look at their stories, right?

Exactly, exactly. So how do you get someone to look at the stories, right? Um, well, first of all, you have to create really good stories. You have to be, you have to be kind of entertaining, or there needs to be something that is like, oh, I'm so glad I watched to that story. Great example, I just shared the 5 books that I'm reading. Yeah, I'm that person that reads more than one book at a time because I am a little ADD, um, and I just like— things don't hold my attention completely all the time. But I love all the books that I'm reading, so I shared that book list because I'm always looking for books that people are reading as well. So with a sticker, with an engagement sticker, to get engagement, to have conversations with people and find out what they're reading. And you know what, Sometimes when someone says, oh my God, I'm reading that book too, don't you love it? It opens up a conversation that leads to an opportunity to be more curious about what's going on in their life. And then if they're like, oh Sue, I just don't get this Instagram thing. And I'm like, well, we do have this free training. We also have this program called Ready, Set, Grow. Like, let me know how I can help you. If you want my YouTube channel, I can give you a link to that. But it's not selling, it's serving, right?

Yeah, so good. Okay, and let's talk about DMs, just so that listeners realize what is that.

Yeah, so DMs are direct messages, and I've been down deep in the DMs since day one of the DMs. In fact, when I spoke on stage at Social Media Marketing World and I was talking about Instagram direct messages, hardly anyone in the room even knew what it was at the time. I was a little before my time there because people thought it was a very spammy place like Twitter DMs. And so it took a while for people to really understand the power of DMs. And I just sent you a DM with an example of someone who I think you'll love learning from. And that's exactly what I do. When I see something that reminds me of someone, I can reach out and touch them in some way. I can say, oh my God, this reminds me of you, or I think you'd be interested in this product. And it's just simply saying hi to a friend. It's connecting to someone you care about. It's creating conversation the right way, which is all about building authentic relationships. And so I'm doing that on the daily. I am literally— even though I have this amazing team, I am always connecting to people and looking at their questions and their messages in the DM. So direct messages are so powerful. We have so many lessons on how to use it, but you know, there's always new features being added. There's ways that you can segment and sort and flag and keep track and send receipt, send invoices, send GIFs, send messages, send voice messages, send links. I mean, it is its own ecosystem. And I actually really secretly am putting together like a little possibly a course on its own about Instagram direct messages because I, I like, I am so into the direct message and I think as much as I love teaching Instagram, I think that there's so much to learn here. So this is all like on my agenda with my team when we discuss growth opportunities.

So good. Yeah, yeah, I love, I actually, it's the one of the easiest ways to respond to people who have questions they will end up asking about something in a story, and I love doing a quick voice message to somebody. And honestly, many of you who were listening potentially may have done that, and I think you're often surprised, like, a real person, like, you really answered me. Yeah.

And I love that you said that, and I will just add to everyone listening that you know when someone is in the DM because there's a green light next to their camera, so you know that they're there. There's no other app or no other place online where you can see that. And so what I do, Debra, sometimes I actually do a DM video call and I get on video and they're like, oh my God, I cannot believe I'm talking to Sue B. And I'm looking at like, oh my God, did she really just call me on a video chat? And it's like, you can call anybody from all over the world. It's amazing.

That is so cool. Oh man, I love that. Okay, so for, for listeners who are here just for personal use, um, if you had a crystal ball, what do you think's gonna happen going forward? For anybody who's saying, I don't know, you know, I— they may be saying in this about, about anything, but I'm 60 and I'm not in yet. Is it— isn't it probably too late? I don't want to do that. What do you think is going to happen?

Yeah, well, I personally, I think 50, 60-year-olds, even 70-year-olds are the biggest growth opportunity market for, for Instagram. And here's why. Women who are wise have wisdom, they have knowledge, and they have experience. And the only way to teach the younger generation what we know and not hold on to it is to talk about it, is to share it. And I'm all about that. And I know you are as well. And so will you feel a little awkward? Probably, because you didn't grow up with a phone in your face. Will you get over your wrinkles, your gray hairs, your voice, and all the other things you say, ah? Yes, if you care more about the impact that you're going to make than anything and the legacy that you're going to leave. And we help and teach and coach people how to do that. So they do have the confidence. And I always say, you know, just, just use the tools if you're talking to your best friend or your perfect client and casually have that conversation. Don't make it performative or feel like you've got to do something fancy to get your message across, because I think the best posts are the real casual deliveries on content. That's what I'm experiencing. So magic ball, more organic, real energy. I'm going to use the word energy because I love that word, because you really do attract what you put out, in my opinion. And also, I think Instagram will start giving us more metrics, like when someone actually saves a post, who the heck is saving it? Because those are the people I want to reach out and touch, right? When someone's sharing a reel, who's sharing it? Like, I think We'll get more information because information is power and Instagram does have great insights, but they are lacking in a few key ones, in my opinion. So I just love that they are constantly evolving and growing like any other fabulous business that wants to show up and really be there for their community. And they have data. They have so many algorithms tracking everything that we are doing all the time. And they know that people prefer, prefer short-form video. I mean, hello, Reels, right? So I think it's important to just understand and also lean into what you're comfortable doing.

Very cool. Where is the best place for listeners to follow you?

Yeah, you guys come on over to the Gram. The Instagram Expert. Don't forget the— you'll see myself and Morgan in the avatar. There's two of us. And I would love for you to just write on the last post what your biggest takeaway is and just @mention, that means tag Debra Atkinson, Flipping 50 TV, so that she will see that you took action on this. I always like action takers. You know, I'm from Boston. I'm a little bossy telling you guys what to do. If that's not comfortable doing it publicly, just jump into my DM, send me a voice message, send me a message. I would love to meet you and come over and say hi.

So good, Sue. Thanks so much for being here. Okay, listeners, so whether this was your virgin introduction to Instagram and you've been thinking about it, you know, your friends are on it, maybe your kids are on it, and you're wondering— there's your— that's your sign to jump. You can leave questions and you can get the links to follow Sue and so much more at the show notes, and that'll be at flipping50 www.shemeansbusiness.com/instagramtipsforwomen. Those of you that are health coaches, fitness pros, you're gonna want to hear the She Means Business Fitness Business Podcast tomorrow. So sneak on over there and get the rest. And what are you waiting for? Let's start flipping 50 today.