195- Getting 100K Followers on Instagram with Grant Elliott of RehabFix

Welcome to the Evidence Based Chiropractor where each week we deliver the latest chiropractic research and marketing strategies all in the time it takes to get to your office. Now here's your host, Dr. Jeff Langmaid.

Hello and welcome to the Evidence Based Chiropractor. I AM your host, Dr. Jeff Langmaid. This week you are in for a treat. I had the opportunity to sit down and chat with Grant Elliott of RehabFix. Grant is a chiropractic student who has grown an Instagram channel from 0 to 100,000 plus and he hasn't graduated yet. We're gonna break down how he did it, some strategic action steps you can do to improve your own Instagram channel and more importantly, how he's able to do buying any followers or spending any money on ads. It's an awesome episode. If you are looking to get out there and market your practice, Instagram is a channel you need to have on your radar and this is a great primer to get started. Also, Rock Tape, Rock Stock is coming up next weekend. I am flying out Thursday to beautiful Huntington Beach. I hope to see you there. If you're headed out, shoot me an email. Jeff the evidencebasedchiropractor.com if you're not, stay tuned next weekend because I'm going to have a variety of Facebook live videos going on. Live from Huntington, live from Rock Stock. Additionally, if you check out YouTube.com the evidencebasedchiropractor, you can see some unboxing videos and some in depth reviews of Rockblade's Mohawk as well as Rock Pods which is their myofascial cupping tool. So definitely check out everything rocktape@YouTube.com the evidencebasedchiropractor I hope to see you out at Rockstock next weekend, but if not, you will surely be hearing about the education and about the good times we have as well. Without further ado, here is Grant Elliott of Rehabfix and how you can grow your chiropractic channel 0 to 100K.

Hey everybody, what's going on? Dr. Jeff Langmaid here, the Evidence based Chiropractor and I am fortunate to be hanging out with Grant Elliott of Rehabfix who has done a tremendous job building a following on Instagram. We're going to break down some of the tactics and strategies you've utilized to get there and and also a little bit about behind the scenes on what it's like to run a page with so many people. Grant, thanks for hanging out man.

Yes, I'm happy to be here Great hanging out as well.

So how many followers? Let's kick it right off. How many followers do you currently have on Instagram? And tell everybody a little bit about your channel.

So I have 106,000 followers, growing every single day. My channel is focused on movement, education, and empowering others to take their health into their own hands and understand their bodies and get their daily fix of rehab, movement and empowerment.

Love it. So how do you get interested, like, how do you pick Instagram? How do you get interested in building an Instagram channel?

Yeah. So as a student around a little over a year ago, I started learning through Instagram. I found these other rehab accounts or educational accounts, and I started learning from them. And I saw that they were getting not necessarily a lot of followers, but a lot of engagement. People were learning from them, and they were building themselves as a person, as a future professional, and building their name. And so I thought, you know what I'm starting to get? I'm starting to get some questions from people at home or from friends and family. So I'm going to start posting just a couple videos of the things that I think are most important to me right now. So I started posting a couple videos here and there, got some good feedback, and had some friends from back home saying, hey, thanks for posting that. Like, I started adding that to my routine or I started changing that at my work. And I was like, wow, that's really cool to be able to have a positive influence on people that aren't necessarily right in my community. So I kind of just kept on posting slowly but surely was posting maybe once a month and then went to once a week. And I just kind of made the decision, hey, you know what? This could be a great way to force myself to learn. To force myself to learn how to teach through video or other ways. And so I just made the leap and really wanted to focus on Instagram because that's where I was already building my presence. And I liked building short videos, wasn't necessarily into super long videos. So I just dove right in and started growing Instagram with a following.

I mean, a lot of times docs are starting something and it's like that first hundred is so difficult, I guess. What were some of your keys to that first hundred followers? Was it friends and family? Was it a content direction? How did you get those first hundred people to get hooked?

So I'm a little bit of a unique case because I actually converted my personal account to. To my business account. So I actually started with about 900.

Nice.

However, if I Were to do it over, it definitely would be friends and family. You know, you go out and you start your account and you follow all the initial people you want to learn from and engage with. Most likely they're going to follow you back and give you a little bit of a nice baseline. But from there you just implement some good strategies, some good Instagram tactics to then continue to build. And it takes some time, though.

Let's talk about some of those habits. I mean, do you find that. Do you use a lot of hashtags? Is it all about Dming people? Is it all about ads to get people? How have you. What have some of your habits for growth?

So if you are Google searching how to grow your Instagram as quickly as possible, you're going to find a lot of people that are saying they have the secret sauce or there's some secret recipe, or you have to take a $5,000 class in order to learn it. And, and from my experience so far, going from 1,000 followers to 100,000 followers in a year, the number one thing is consistency. To a certain extent, it's almost. It doesn't matter if the post that day you think is just absolute gold or not. You just need to post something to keep people engaged and to keep people's minds on your account. So definitely focus on consistency as much as possible. But then in regards to Dming or replying to comments, yes, you need to provide that personal touch. You need to be willing to spend time and engage with those people that follow you and they're going to become very, very loyal and they're going to start sharing your content with others. They're going to start tagging friends in your comment, in your comment section. That's a great way to begin building a very loyal and organic following. In regards to hashtags, I'll just jump into that as well. Hashtags can kind of be wishy washy, to be honest. Sometimes there will be great, sometimes it'll do nothing at all. So here's an example. I have a video that gets 50,000 views. Sometimes that video will get 20% of those views from the hashtags that I used. You're allowed to use 30 hashtags per Instagram post. It's kind of like lottery tickets. You might as well get as many tickets as you can. So use all the hashtags. Sometimes it nails it. Other times I'll get 20, 20 views, that's it, from hashtags. So what I will say is it's worth it to put in some effort into hashtags. Don't necessarily dive into an hour long hashtag research session to determine the absolute best ones, but do your due diligence, hashtag some things that are relevant to that post, use as many as you can, and go from there.

When did you start to see momentum? So as you started to get going, obviously you kind of transferred, as you said, you transferred your personal account to the business account. Helped give you a little bit of a launching point. When did you start to see some momentum carrying with the channel and what would you attribute it towards?

So we can relay the first hundred of other accounts to the first thousand of mine. So I started with around 1000, but it took me a very long time to get to 2000. It was a grind posting. Yeah. Almost every single day, replying to every message, replying to every comment. And also find the pages that you want to emulate that you really respect and. And you got to engage on all other forms too. You have to give and give and give for that first portion in order to grow fast and properly. So I would have my post notifications on another account. The second I got a notification that they posted something, I'd go and I'd comment something positive. Don't do the hey, I also make these good videos. Come follow me and look at my stuff. Don't do that because everyone's gonna hate you. What you want to do is just comment something positive. Hey, I really enjoyed this video. I like doing these sort of things as well. Or I also like doing xyz provide some value and encourage what they're doing and then they're going to support you and the people that see your comment are going to support you as well. And they're going to want to go check out your stuff.

That makes sense. And as you've been going and growing through this, what are maybe the single biggest challenge that you've encountered? I mean, 100,000 is more than a vast array of practicing docs out there and you're soon to be out on your own as a doc. What's, what's been the biggest challenge that you've seen as you've grown? Either challenge growing it or challenge with managing that many people.

So now that I'm above 100,000 followers, it's definitely become kind of a task managing it all by myself because I'm filming the videos, I'm editing the videos, I'm posting them, I'm doing Facebook, email, blog, website. I'm doing all that on my own. So definitely I can understand why some people Might be hesitant to kind of going down the social media route because it can be a lot to manage. But keep in mind, I have a large following at this point. If you're trying to grow, it's not too big of a commitment. Find something good to post every day and just start with that. One other thing I missed on your last question, actually, in regards to momentum, the first thousand was tough, but once I started reaching 7,8000, it started increasing. And then once I hit 10,000, then everything kind of blew off the rails, you could say. So that's when I really started gaining some good traction. So the point, the reason why I went back, I wanted to make the point of stick with it. It was kind of discouraging at first. It was very, very hard to grow that first thousand or even hundred. It was very, very hard. But keep with it. Don't give up. Social media is a marathon. It is not a sprint. Don't give up, just keep doing it. Keep being consistent, keep being ethical and transparent and people see that. And it will grow over time if you're doing those few things.

Yeah, that's good advice. How much time are you spending now per day on Instagram, would you say?

So recently I've tried to back off a little bit just because I've become faster. But for a while there, if you actually go to the Instagram settings, it will tell you the hours you spent on Instagram that day. And I was averaging three hours every single day for like seven months straight. So too many hours. And that doesn't include the filming, the editing, the coming up with, the coming up with videos, the writing. It doesn't include any of that. So I'm very much so glued to my phone. My wife's sick of it. She'll be talking to me, get off the phone, and she'll slap it out of my hands, rightfully so. But yeah, like I said, definitely take some time. I'm looking forward to the day when I can outsource it for sure. But just be consistent. You don't have to spend as much time as I do. Start with the basics and you'll be good.

So stories versus posts, I guess starting with those basics, you know, you can post a picture or, you know, stories, allow video, etc. And that kind of scrolls across the top. Whereas, you know, the feed itself or the post kind of scrolls north and south, so to speak. Where have you seen stories versus post? More engagement? Where do you spend more time, what some of your thoughts are on that?

So with posts, I think it's important to. That's where you're going to develop your brand. Right? So if you go to my page, every single post looks almost the exact same in regards to the formatting, the titling, everything. It's consistent. And people recognize that as branding. It's predictable and they like that it's familiar and they know it's always going to be there like that. If you have totally different stuff all the time, that the colors are completely different, the graphics are completely different, sometimes that can throw some people off. So with my posts, posts are obviously the primary purpose of your account. So like I said, you want to post every single day with stories. Stories are a great opportunity to show your personal life and the behind the scenes and to build personal rapport. That's really where that is built. So for me, the more I share about my personal life, the more I share about my struggles, even, hey, guys, like, you know, we're all struggling out there. I had a hard week. But you know what? I'm going to persevere. Try to be motivating and show that you can relate to everyone and that you're not just an Instagram account. Then through your story, you can share some personal stories, some people you've been working with, and then those individuals that are following along your story, they're very loyal to you, they're very organic, and they're gonna really relate to that content on the story. So they both kind of have their own separate purpose, at least that's how I use them. But they're both very effective in their own way.

I like that. I like the idea of using kind of the feed or the post as the brand and the story, kind of showcasing the personal and behind the scenes. I think that's a great, a great tip. And I guess for the, for the docs out there, maybe that haven't started or they're thinking about, or maybe they've had an Instagram account, but they haven't really done anything with it except kind of, you know, scour down some other people. If you were to start a new channel today, what would be some of your goals and or actions in the first 30 days?

In the first 30 days, this is a tough question. So figure out your brand and figure out your mission statement. Don't just start posting random stuff without a purpose. Start branding as soon as you can. Yes, it's important to be a person, to be, you know, like, your face and your personality is going to be very important to it as well. But you got to build a brand behind that so it can be recognized better in regards to initial actions. Like I said, turn on your post notifications. Find those accounts that you would like to emulate and don't copy what they're doing, but work to emulate them the best that you can in your own way, reflecting your own mission statement. So find what you're good at, find what you care about and connect that with all of your posts, all of your story and make sure that's what you're putting on every day so that it is real and as passionate as possible. And that's what's gonna get people to connect to you, comment on other posts, engage with other people as much as you can, respond to everything. And that's really, I wish I could give you a fancier recipe than that. That's really it. And if you just stick with that, which takes a little bit of dedication, you will grow and you will get a good response.

I think that that's great advice. Number one, stay consistent. Number two, make sure you're engaging with the people who are engaging with you. And number three, make it personal.

Showcase who you are, what you're about.

And what you hope other people get out of your page. If you do that with consistency, if you do it with consistent engagement, you're going to find success on the platform over time. And Grant, great job with the channel. If you have not checked him out, where can people see Rehabfix?

So on Instagram I'm ehabfix. And then also we just launched our website, therehabfix.com, where we have an online load back program as well as online consultations for those individuals that aren't local to the Tampa area.

There you go. Be sure to check out Rehab Fix on Instagram. And for Dr. Jeff Langmaid, this is Grant Elliott. We'll see you very soon. Bye bye.

Thank you for joining us on this episode of the Evidence Based Chiropractor. If you want to grow your practice, come back for next week's episode. If you want to grow faster, visit theevidencebasedchiropractor.com and join our MD Marketing membership today.