Sue B. Zimmerman - How To Create Engagement And Drive Traffic From Instagram

A lot of people get desperate and think that to win on Instagram, you have to have more followers. But to win on Instagram, you have to have the right followers who actually care about what it is that you do. I always say don't hire an outside team until you know your strategy and you can pass it off to the team in the way that you want and know it should be based on your knowledge of the app. And then don't ever, ever, ever buy followers because you're going to get bots and random people in random places. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

What's up, everybody? You're listening to the Hustler Float Shark podcast with your boys, Matt Wolf and Joe Fear. Wiki, wiki wiki.

Yo, Mr. Matt.

Hey, we back.

What are we talking about today?

Instagram.

Oh, I don't know much about Instagram.

Well, you will after this episode.

Are you sure about that?

We should just end the intro like that.

It would do the trick of that guy. I don't need to say much more other than we are hanging out with Sue B. Zimmerman today.

Yep.

On the mics. And she's going to break down everything. Instagram.

Absolutely. More than I even realized existed on Instagram.

Everything. Yeah, maybe not everything, but pretty close to it. Yeah. So what are we talking about, Matt?

You just said we're deep diving into.

Well, here's the thing. Yeah. We are playing like the dumb guys on Instagram, because we are.

We're not playing.

And you will hear in this interview, it starts out that way. And literally this is like a masterclass on what we should be doing, but what you likely should be doing as well. And in Sue B. Zimmerman, I mean, she is the Instagram expert. She's been hanging out on Clubhouse a lot lately. We've been in some rooms with her. Her course is her online Instagram course, which, if you are into this, you definitely want to get that Ready, set gram is what it's called. And check out her webinar, too.

She's got a webinar going right now over at sue b.zimmerman.com Three keys. That's the number three and then the word keys.

That's right. That's right. And we are taking the action guide notes of this episode for you. We want to make sure that we covered everything for you. So those are free within two weeks of this episode going live. Go head over to flowchartgroup.com and get those notes. It's a Facebook group, so plug in your email address on the little questions. You'll get the Notes and hang out with us in the group.

Yes, sir. And then I do want to make a quick reminder that at the end of every episode, Joe and I hang out past the interview and continue to chat and talk about our takeaways and aha moments and have a little fun. Goof off, share behind the scenes of what's going on in our business. They're like mini therapy sessions at the end of every episode. So make sure after the interview, you hang around for that as well.

And you're like, what? It's a mini therapy session. Oh, you haven't been here long enough. Huh? You gotta listen to more episodes. Yeah.

You'll get what the therapy session references once you get there.

All righty. Let's go hang out with Sue B. Sue B. Zimmerman. Welcome to the show. Thank you.

It's great to be here, guys. I like it when there's two people on an interview. It's kind of fun.

Doesn't happen a lot, huh?

Yeah, it doesn't.

Yeah. We gotta find.

You must do a good job at not talking over each other as I.

Was about to talk over you. Yes.

Yeah.

No, it's interesting. I think that's one of the few things that we. One of the few ways we can differentiate ourselves from the 475,000 other business marketing podcasts out there.

So that was.

Yeah, that and the mustache and the beard. So it's all good.

There you go. We're on the same page here. And I got to give a shout out to another Sue. Actually, our note taker is also sue lives around the Boston area. I think you're out there, right?

So, yeah, downtown Boston, baby.

There you go.

In all of its glory.

Oh, dang that. Oh, what, are you cold looking?

Maybe it's raining today, but I actually was living in La Jolla during the winter because I can for a couple months. So I'm back in Boston, right downtown.

I've never heard of La Jolla. No, we're in San Diego, so. Yeah, down the street from us.

I'm coming back. I'm coming back at the end of the end of April for a week to shoot some more YouTube videos. So hopefully we'll get together.

Let's do it. Let us know. I know. For the crew here listening, I mean, we talked about Instagram a little bit, but I think it's pretty obvious that we don't know what we're talking about when it comes to Instagram. And I'm confident in saying that. That we're not confident.

Well, we have visual evidence you can go look at our Instagram.

That's true. We probably done all the wrong things and just probably didn't know better. So that's why we figured, hey, you are the expert, and we've seen you speak at TNC and, I mean, your YouTube channel is absolutely amazing. I think that's.

Yeah. Thank you. We spent a lot of time curating that content, knowing that it helps all of our listeners and viewers. And one step at a time, I think there's over 400 videos there.

Wow. Yeah. The thing that got me is the welcome video, which most people don't even have on YouTube, but it's snappy. I mean, I learned like, 30 things about Instagram in, like, four minutes.

Yeah.

That was shot in my apartment, and it took us about half a day to get all the moves in the elevator, out of the elevator, shutting the door. It was fun.

Cool. Yeah. We'll try to link it up in the show, notes that people could check it out. But, I mean, you've been doing the Instagram thing for what, nearly 10 years? Ish. Or however long it's been.

Over eight years. Yeah, eight years. And really coming at it from a. Basically a case study with my own store. I had a retail store on Cape Cod in Massachusetts, and it was a seasonal boutique, and I sold clothing, jewelry, and accessories. And I was doing everything like many people do on social. And my twin daughters, we were on vacation in Belize, and they told me when I looked at them and they weren't really talking on the phone or tapping on the phone, they were scrolling on the phone. I didn't know what that was. I asked them, and Lila and Kira said, mom, we are on Instagram. Don't get on it because then you're going to start teaching.

They knew it would come out of it.

That was code for, I'm going to get on it.

You don't want me to make money. Come on, teach others. That's cool.

Teenagers start mobile trends and you want to pay attention to what they're doing.

100%.

That's right. I mean, we won't divert into the other trends that are happening now, but Instagram. Yeah. What's the trend now? Or who's the demographic mainly using IG these days?

Well, honestly, I think it's getting older and older, but I think the demographic is anyone that wants to make money online.

Okay, good answer.

Well, cool.

Maybe you can help us demystify that a little bit today, because Instagram is definitely one of those nuts. We haven't quite figured out how to crack ourselves. Um, in fact, we totally botched our Instagram. We've talked publicly about this and it's something that we sort of regret, but we hired somebody at one point to help us grow our Instagram account, and now we're kicking ourselves and having to undo all the work that we paid that person to do because the people they brought on weren't our demographic.

No bueno.

Yeah.

So now we're actually backtracking and undoing a lot of work and unfollowing and sort of bringing it back to ground zero and starting from scratch again. But we've just really, really struggled over the years to bring people from Instagram to somewhere else. Right.

So where is it that you are trying to take them?

Podcast episodes, YouTube channels, website, email list, growth landing page?

All the places. All the right places to grow your audience. Right?

Exactly, exactly. Yeah.

So I think there's some, Some, Some stuff that we could, we could dive in there too. And lesson number one, don't go hire other people to grow your Instagram account for you, because they're never going to be as good as the people that organically want to follow you in the first place.

Right.

Yeah. And often people that you hire get embarrassed that they can't grow it fast, so they secretly buy followers and it really, it really makes your account.

And I believe that's what happened.

Yeah.

And we started looking at the demographics in Instagram, which we didn't realize all these stats existed, and we' why is everybody in Sao Paulo, you know, Brazil? And I'm like, that's not really our target demographic. Okay.

And they were all like college students in Brazil or something.

It was just not even close. But we bring this up because I think this is a sort of.

Yeah, it's relevant to a lot of people. So, you know, just from. I love how transparent you all are. And a lot of people get desperate and think that to win on Instagram, you have to have more followers. But to win on Instagram, you have to have the right followers who actually care about what it is that you do. And so I always say don't hire and don't buy. You know, don't hire an outside team until you know your strategy and you can pass it off to the team in the way that you want and know it should be based on your knowledge of the app. And then don't ever, ever, ever buy followers because you're going to get bots and random people in random places.

Yeah.

Well, let's start here then. What, in your opinion, what do you think is the sort of best way to organically get followers? You know, how do you sort of prime that pump so that people start finding you?

Yeah, so it comes with a very high level. First you have to think about strategy, like, what is the goal of your business and what is. What is the thing that you're going to serve up consistently that your audience will appreciate and want to come back for? And so when I say that the riches are in the niches. So you are a podcaster, and you have a unique podcast. So who exactly are you talking to? And when you know who that audience is, you create content that will serve that audience well. And a lot of podcasters struggle with this. One of my students in my Ready Set Gram Pro program is a podcaster. Her name is Katie Brinkley, Next Step Social on Instagram, and she does a beautiful job at utilizing the features on Instagram. When I say that, I mean, there's so many features in all of the five I call Subi Neighborhoods, Feed Stories, IGTV Live, and Reels. And Katie creates content in all of these neighborhoods, but she also utilizes the carousel post in the feed, really strategically. Nobody cares that you're interviewing a guest like me. They care about you. They're following you. So putting a picture of you and the guest in your feed is not relevant to your followers. What's relevant is, are the sound bites of what they're hearing that's going to help them. So you're better off creating a carousel post with, again, what's in it for them? If they listen to this episode, what is one of the sound bites that they can hear that takes them to want to tap to the carousel and maybe get a quote from the guest, like, you know, the quote is a good thing, and maybe a few more nuggets that will entice them to want to go and listen to the whole episode and subscribe to the podcast and give it a review. Because ultimately, that's what you all want. But it's not about the people that you're interviewing. And typically, most podcasters do that.

Yeah, they do.

Well, I think our approach, when we interview people on the podcast, part of the approach of sharing images of maybe us with the guest and that sort of thing is the ability to tag that guest. And ideally, they'll then turn around and reshare it. And we can ideally capture a little sliver of their audience by doing so. So is that.

Yeah, so I. So I never share in my story like that because we have a content plan for the day for the week, we. We do share in my Facebook group, where I have 3,000 subscribers, and I know they need to learn more and listen. And there are podcasters. So we share on our agenda, not the podcasters agenda. Often they're like, here's a link and here's the graphics I did, and here's this and will there. And we just don't, because we give our list what our list wants, which is not necessarily the same agenda. However, occasionally we will round up several of the interviews that I did and create a story for people to listen to. But honestly, we want to take them to our YouTube channel and grow our subscriber list and not rent, you know, all these podcasters. And now they're going to subscribe to podcasters, and now they're going to go down rabbit holes, and now we've lost them. So we don't want to lose our audience. So I personally don't do that, but maybe it's because I'm at a different level. And I don't say this with any braggiotous attitude. It's just like our strategies are so set as a team. We do have wiggle room when the world changes and news pops up, but we just have our own content strategy agenda, and we stick to that because that's what we know our audience wants.

We get it because, I mean, we're marketers first before podcasters, and everything's email marketing for us. And we have a full plan, and then we get someone, it's like, hey, promote our stuff. It's like, cool. It's not that easy to just throw your stuff in the middle of this whole content plan that we have.

Yeah. And if I was talking obviously on Clubhouse to a group of podcasters about Instagram, I would reference your.

Podcast, you know, and I am such a connector. I mean, I live to connect. It is the essence of who I am. And Instagram allows you to do that very, very easily by mentioning and easily sharing links and sharing content. So, yeah, I'm very strategic with every move I make all over the Internet.

So you brought up the point that I find Instagram the most interesting, and I just haven't figured out the right streamlined process, but it's engaging with folks. And actually starting this conversation when I was doing some research about you, I know hashtags is a big piece there, and I believe you say something like, those are perfect conversation starters. And it's not like you have to really do the tagging. You can just hang out in the hashtag, whatever that area is. Called, would you suggest that kind of as like a starting point?

Well, I always suggest understanding where are the conversations that your audience is hanging out. And you can either one, do market research to look and find the ones making it to the top of hashtags that align with your audience and knowing what those audiences are. So, for example, I live in Boston, so Boston business women. If I wanted to do networking events locally, there is a conversation hub for every hashtag. And if the conversation does not align with your business or your values or your interests or your audience, you shouldn't be using that hashtag.

That's right. Yeah. So basically, because I know the common way of using hashtag, I gotta find the right hashtag and then tag my. So I show up in the feed, but it's like, no, you can actually just hop into it and almost in reverse, it sounds like, do your research that way, start hanging out and then that's how you figure out the proper hashtag.

And then when you see the ones that made it to the top, where content is curated that you like and that aligns with you, you can see what other hashtags that post at the top is using.

Got it. That's smart. Okay. I like that a lot.

Wicked smart.

Wicked smart. I should know that phrase. Geez. Come on. What are the.

I feel like we're talking to our other sue right now.

I know, right? She says that all the time. It's great. She'll love it.

Yeah. So when it comes to hashtags, in your opinion, what's the sort of best practice there? Is it a good practice to just go and throw like 30? I don't even remember what the maximum is, but it's something like 30 hashtags the maximum.

And throwing up 30 random ones is not the strategy. Really studying and looking and seeing and researching and it does take a long time. I have several videos on YouTube that will support this conversation. But basically, once you've established the right hashtags, use them for a month. And you might want to have different hashtag sets depending on the content you're creating. And you can use a feature if you have an iPhone in the settings. If you go to general type keyboard text expander, you can create groupings of hashtags that you just like. I type HT and I get all my hashtags auto populate when I put them in Instagram. And it saves time. And you don't spell hashtags wrong. And so you can create these four different groupings based on your content strategy. That makes sense. So it does require tedious work. There are tools that are good. We are currently working with a tool that I'll share called Flick, which is a great tool in the UK and we do have a free trial that I can share with you.

Awesome. That'd be great.

Yeah. That will help your audience understand. It really does help take away some of the headache. And we are talking about currently with another company that does something a little similar. There's a lot of them out there. But this is the one that we're currently using and that we're using for our coaching clients that really helps take away that hashtag headache.

Nice. So it does all the research and all that management of that stuff for you then.

So sue b.zimmerman.com flick7 and we'll go ahead and link that. That'll be linked in the show notes as well for this episode.

How about on the tool stack? This is one of our questions. I think you've mentioned Planoly is a go to tool of yours. Is that still accurate?

So we use planable, not planoly. I used to use Planoly. But we really have found that planable is kind of more.

User friendly when it comes to social organization and sharing. And.

It'S not just Instagram. You can link Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn and you can. You can plan and schedule and curate your content and organize it and move it. And it's another free trial, another partner. So we can link that too, if you want.

We'll link it. Yeah. Got the notes here. Perfect. I want to go back to the conversations in Instagram again though, because I feel like that is. That's what lights me up about Instagram is just another hub. It's like clubhouse, you know, it's crazy the kind of communications you can do there.

Yes.

How would you go about like someone who doesn't have a great Instagram following or account or processes like to start just engaging and start getting that momentum. We mentioned hashtags.

Yeah. There is another great tool I'm going to tell you. I have a YouTube video that you can search my name. Subi Zimmerman YouTube $80 and I'll also grab you a link for that.

Thank you.

One of the best strategies is to do outward engagement and not wait for it to come to you from your posts and your content and your hashtags. But literally you can go out and look at these relevant hashtags and you can have conversations with content that's being curated in the hashtags that you think are where your target audience is hanging out. And this system called $1.80 is brilliant. It's like.

You basically find 10 of the best hashtags and you look at the ones that are trending at the top and you comment on them in an organic way so that you, you know, you have these conversations with people and they come over to your account and if they. And if they like what you've done, they will engage and often follow you. And I'm finding that so many of our. So many of our audience really appreciates this and needs to learn about doing the engagement correctly and creating responses to content that really you like. And you can save this engagement and these engagement comments and use them again. So it really is a very clever tool that we've never used before. We started using it in October. Okay, so again, that YouTube video is there, and I will grab a link for. For your audience as well.

We have great sue, our note taker research as well, too. So save you a second here. That's awesome, though. I love that because it reminds me, like, bringing it to the podcast world. It's podcast guesting. It's going to someone else. And I mean, that's more like being on their stage. But the fact that you can engage with their audience and if they connect with you, like you were saying earlier, podcasters connect with the creator typically. I'm sure it's like that on IG as well. You're gonna get the right people to come back into your ecosystem, whatever you're doing on your side. I like that approach.

Yeah.

So I'm curious about the, you know, you've got the Instagram personal accounts. And now, and Instagram, you can also set your account as like a business account. And I think my. So we have our Hustle and Flowchart Instagram account. That's the one that we royally screwed up. And then we both have our personal accounts, which has been, you know, purely organic since day one. But with. With our Hustle and Flowchart account, we set that as a business account. Our personal accounts are just personal accounts. But I've always been a little concerned with, you know, Facebook being behind the scenes, seeing what Facebook did with business pages.

Right.

Originally, they kind of encouraged everybody to create a Facebook page. And then as soon as everybody created a Facebook page, then they started yanking engagement away from them and then started saying, well, if you want to get that engagement that you've built over time, now you've got to pay to get that same level engagement. And I think I've always sort of worried about that when Switching to an Instagram business. So I'm curious, what are your thoughts on, like, the Instagram business versus Instagram personal?

You definitely want to have a business because you don't get insights unless you do. And you can't run ads unless you do.

And I do have a YouTube video about how to turn a personal account into a business account and what and why you would want to. So if you are here for business, which I know you all are, then you absolutely want to have a business account.

And that would go for the personal pages as well then.

Yeah. I used to have seven Instagram accounts. Not going to lie. And I have a personal account, Subi Zimmerman. It's dormant and it's all on the Instagram expert. All because it's so hard to keep up with doing all of the things right all of the time. Meaning optimize every single post that therein.

Lies why I kind of moved away from Instagram for a while. I'm like, okay, I have enough channels to manage and all this stuff. So basically it just helps you manage and see the insights, the effectiveness of the platform then really with the business account.

Yeah.

Cool. Okay. Hopefully Facebook doesn't pull a fast one again, or Instagram. But I mean, well, you're running ads, I'm assuming, because you said, and I want to kind of go back and I know you're running ads, but I just wanted you to say it is, you know, paying for followers, obviously not the same as running Instagram ads and all that. So is that a part of your strategy for engagement growth for your Instagram.

Channels is doing what?

I'm sorry, Running paid ads?

Yes, we definitely. We definitely have a nice ads budget and an ads team, and it's part of the engine. Yeah.

Okay.

So when it comes to bringing people off of Instagram, you know, I think the reason we tried to sort of quote, unquote, game the system a little bit when we were trying to grow our Instagram account is we wanted to get to that 10,000 followers so that we can get the swipe up from our stories on that channel. That was originally the catalyst of why we tried to do it. Is that really the best way to drive people off of Instagram?

Not necessarily. And, you know, and having 10,000 followers isn't the end all, be all just isn't. It's. It's having the right followers, like we said earlier. And also you can strategically use features like igtv, where you can have live links in your IGTV description and that will take people to wherever you want to go. So outside of a reel, the IGTV is really being favored by Instagram because it is video. And in the description in the IGTV channel, that is a live link. So if you look at my channel, my ig, you know, my igtv, some of them live in my feed, but I also have a channel. And when you tap into the IGTV channel, you will be able to see in the channel the description. When you. When you pull down on the little white arrow at the top where the title is, all the links that are there are actually live links that you can tap and go where you want to send people. So for us, every Monday, we release a new YouTube video and we do a trailer in the feed and it links to the YouTube video. Because the link in our bio that is there just for Monday and Tuesday for that YouTube video, similar to what a podcast might be for you, gets changed on Wednesday to our free training. And so we want to make sure that the link lives on on that trailer so that people can still tap it and go to it. Does that make sense to you guys?

Yes, sort of. I think I followed along. So you're putting the videos on YouTube. Are you also taking those videos and putting them on Instagram? And those videos go to Instagram tv.

Just a trailer of that video and you can see them all in my IGTV channel. So we turn them into an igtv and it's a little over a minute, like quick little kind of preview of what that YouTube video is with a link to that YouTube video.

And it's sort of important that it's a little bit over a minute too. Because if it was under a minute, then it wouldn't generate the IGTV version.

Exactly. It's like a minute to a minute. Three.

Gotcha.

And you mentioned a trailer on your feed. Is that what you have as well?

Yeah. So that's what that there's a YouTube video and the YouTube video, they make maybe a minute, minute, three second trailer that goes on the Instagram feed, but because it goes over that one minute threshold, also goes onto igtv.

Follow it now. Got it. How about on the. Like on the. Because I know some of these other subi neighborhoods that you have here. Well, Instagram, but I love your terminology more. You have reels, stories and lives. How are you using those? Or are you connecting those as part of.

Yeah, no, great question. And yeah, I brand everything I do.

That's smart.

Sweatshirt on you got the things behind you.

It's all there. So, so back to YouTube. We put the trailer. Monday morning at 3pm EST. I go live on Instagram. We have promoted it, amplified it, and talked about it in my story to get people to join the live. Often I will have on guest and the guests, all their followers get a notification that we're live. So we get some new followers there. And on that live, we do save it to my feed, but I quickly bring it into the IGTV channel because I don't have a cover curated for the lives. I have covers for our IGTVs that are intentionally in the feed. So once you put an IGTV or a reel in your. In your feed and you want to move it into the channel, you can do that by simply tapping on the three dots on the top right. And moving it off the grid.

Okay. Yeah. I'll have to go back later and play around with ig.

It's hard because I don't have Instagram open in front of me.

But yeah, I'm impressed with all the different nuances.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, you guys, I've been living in this app for a long time.

I know.

So, yeah. So just, you know. Do you want me to do a little screen share? Are people watching this too?

They will. Some will. As long as you can audibly walk us through it too. Let's do it.

Yeah, let's just take a little. Let's take this. Take a little tour.

Thank you.

A little. A little. Yeah. I think that this will help all of you and I'm a visual learner and I'm sure that this is going to help you guys a little bit. So for those of you that are not looking at a screen, but I want you to know that I just opened up the Instagram expert on the desktop and underneath my highlights, the circles are. Are the actual channels. So we've got guides, which is the newest feature we can talk about in a little bit. We've got reels, which is a channel, and we have branded covers on every single reel. So it aligns with the branding for my business. The look and feel, the colors, everything looks like sue be and my graphic designer does all that. But you can do it in Canva, and we are partners with Canva as well. If any of your listeners don't use it yet, I have something I can give them as well. And then this is our IGTV channel. So whenever you see a solid cover, you will know that these are the trailers to the YouTube videos and anything that is not a solid cover.

But has my Sign to be live. That was the live that I did promoting the YouTube. And then anything that has a graphic cover is an intentional IGTV that my team and I created for content. So we've got the Subi Live, which is the live. We've got the colors, the orange, the purple, the pink, the teal and the blue. And it, it looks very cohesive and on brand. And that's the point. And I want everyone to know that your.

Your IGTV and your real has a.

Its own unique URL. And you know, so this, you know, I'm going to share my IGTV channel with you and I'm going to share my real channel with you. So you guys can check those out and watch these channels when you want. It's kind of like your, your own TV channel, you know, off of the Instagram grid. Every single piece of content, even your highlights, has its own unique URL. So, yeah, I always say to people, when you create your stories and you save them as highlights, you want to make sure that you're saving them as a resource so that people will want to go and check those out. So we've got a lot of great highlights in my. One of my favorites is my Subi says highlight. And just for the sake of demonstration for your audience, I will send a link that will allow you to watch and see all these quotes of Subi says and just learn a little bit more about Instagram.

Wow.

Yeah. So anything else you want me to show you, Matt?

What are you thinking?

No, that was super helpful. I never knew that you can actually direct link right to one of these highlight reels. That's really cool.

And you can put it in an email if you've got a great resource. You could send it as a text, you could send it as a dm. It really is.

A great way to have your resource live on. And you know, one of the other things that my team and I do is we have a lot of branded gifts. And so that Subi says, is a gif. And if you search my name, Subi Zimmerman in the GIF, in the GIFs, you'll see that I have a lot of branded gifts too.

Yeah.

This is something that I've been a little bit curious about and I never quite wrapped my head around it. I don't totally understand the difference between a story and a reel. They feel very similar to me.

Well, you can create a reel just. You can have a reel just be shared in a story, or you can have a reel go on your channel.

So what Would you say would be like the biggest? So the stories kind of feel like what Snapchat was, and then the reels kind of feel like what TikTok is. Yes, but they're both kind of similar. They're both kind of for shorter vertical video clips.

Stories disappear in 24 hours unless you save them in your highlights. And reels is what's being most favored with the algorithm. So everyone's doing these random ass reels that don't do anything except get you views, probably from the wrong people, if you don't have a strategy.

Right. Okay. So you would suggest not to touch reels before laying a strategy. Have all this stuff figured out?

Yeah.

And you're much better off doing an IGTV because you can put a link in it and you can't put a link in a reel.

Yeah, I got it. All right, so many questions.

Do you use any sort of link tools, like a link treat? What's the one we use?

Yeah. So we're looking at other options. What we'd like to do is create a landing page on our website. But we do occasionally use Link Tree and when we want to have multiple links, but from our experience, it really is sending them to a direct link that makes it just easier for people to really take the action that you want them to take.

Gotcha. Yeah. Well, one of my questions goes back to this engagement thing in DMs. Because you mentioned Clubhouse. And Clubhouse is, I'm sure, blowing up your Instagram even more so. And your DMs. I know it has for us. So there's that growth we've been looking for, man. Hang out on Clubhouse.

To be quite honest, we've sort of been reinvigorated on Instagram recently because of Clubhouse. It seems like the DMs on Instagram have kind of become the de facto back channel where you have discussions with people from Clubhouse. So our Instagram has really spiked as a result of Clubhouse. So it sort of reinvigorated us to sort of crack this code here.

Right. So what's.

Yeah, definitely.

What's the. What's your plan there? Because, you know, you.

Well, we are one of the fortunate 20 people in the world on Instagram that have this tool called Mobile Monkey from Larry Kim. And it's a game changer. My team just built out my bot. And depending on what people are saying, whenever someone says, I met you on Clubhouse, we have a certain message that's generated that takes them through a certain funnel. If someone says interview, that goes to Kendall, who creates all my interview. My interview. So we are so happy. Today is the day, March 18, that we put Mobile Monkey into play. And it's a game changer. Now, before that, there are ways that you can flag your DMs. With the flag feature in DMS, you can sort primary in general, and you can create save replies. There's 20. And I do have a YouTube video all about how to do that so that whatever, whatever questions that you get asked consistently, you can turn them into a quick reply. Very similar to the text expander I talked about. You can have it be an answer that you are constantly saying.

Perfect. Yeah. We had another guy, Gary Henderson, which you've probably seen on Clubhouse. I think he was talking about the same.

Oh, I know Gary really well. I met him five years ago, and I've been teaching him a lot about Instagram.

Wow. Yeah, I know. Now he probably is loving you and thanking you every day for it, because he was like, yeah, my DMs are blowing up. And now he has the bot. He's like, my life is good again.

Yeah, he got the bot too. Yes. There's only 20 of us that got it.

Well, hopefully it gets out further, but it sounds like a game changer, like a channel.

It's in beta right now, and Instagram wants to test it with 200 people first.

Nice. Very cool. Well, I want to go back to the guides thing, because this is legit. The first time I've ever even heard of the guides inside of Instagram. So what is the guide like, the new section you were showing us?

Yeah. So guides can be created by anybody at all, and it is literally a guide that you can curate content from your feed or from other people's feed. So if you do a podcast episode and you feature a guest like me, and you want to create a guide about everything that was taught, you can share one of your posts. I'm taking you there on mine right now, and you can literally. I will share the link.

Sure. Yeah.

You can literally take people to your guide, and it's a resource, just like the highlights, except it's a guide that can have up to 20 posts you can add to it at any time. You can take it away. And each piece of content in the guide takes people to that post in your feed.

And you can hear stuff from other people's feeds as well.

Yeah. So it doesn't just have to be your content. So it's a great way to collaborate with other people. And our guide currently was made for people on Clubhouse that want to Go from discovered to desired. And they don't understand about SEO. Their bio is not done. We created this because over and over and over again, I'm seeing the same mistakes. So I just say to people, do you want me to send you the guide? And that's not gated. We're not capturing emails from that. But it's a resource and it builds trust and it's a great piece of content that my team created because we kept getting asked about all this.

Well, I could. I like the collaborative nature of it. If you're tagging or curating from others, then you can make it shareable. I'm sure it's a growth hack, I guess, to get better.

Yeah, it is. And I haven't released it on our YouTube channel yet because it's new, but it's coming soon. So you definitely want to subscribe to my channel and hit the bell to get notified when I drop that guide?

Heck, yeah.

So it's kind of similar to like a YouTube playlist then, right? So, I mean, it seems like there's some kind of crossover there.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's a brochure. So think about it. If you travel somewhere and you want to know where the best restaurant is and the best place, you know, the best historical landmark and the best beach and other Instagram accounts have all that, you can collaborate with others, or if you want to put together a gift guide that has to do with the best jewelry, it's a really great way to collaborate and share the love for sure.

Love it. I want to. So strategy planning. I know that's step one to everything you do, and I think you said every single day what, you meet with your team to plan your stories. I think it is. And then what, every week?

Well, now once a week, we have weekly social meetings, but we have content planned out for the next three to three, three weeks. But we just batch produce, like 80 reels and IGTVs. I was in Monterey. I flew to Monterey from La Jolla, and I met with my CEO and my head of social media, and we just pumped out videos for three days.

That's the way to do it. You gotta. I mean, that's what we do with our podcast, too. Batch record everything, get it done. Yeah, smart. I wanna go back to, like. Like, as a strategy to start. I mean, we've been kind of bouncing around ig, but, like, if you were to just say, all right, you have an account like us, you have an account that's just, meh. Where should the focus be? Like, what should A very simple strategy.

It really should be on. Like, what is your point of difference? What makes you special? What is it about you guys that people constantly say, and that energy, those core values. Your point of difference is going to get people to be interested. And then obviously, what is your criteria for bringing on a guest? You must have a punch list of what a good guest is for your channel, or isn't it? So if you enjoy listening to people that blah, blah, blah, then this podcast is for you. And if not, no worries. There's other podcasts for you to listen to. And the same is true on Clubhouse. Like, I created a club called the Real Deal because I'm the Real Deal. And there's a lot of people saying a lot of things that are not true.

I bet. Not a Sue B. Real Deal club. Come on.

No, it's. It's called the Real Deal. But when you join it, you'll see my rules are snarky.

I'll have to join it because you are the Real Deal. It's true.

All right. That's Point of Difference, I think, is a huge piece, like what you were saying there, because it's the whole usp. What's your usp? But I like the Point of Difference because you quickly can, I guess, separate yourself from the pack.

Yeah. Because you're not meant to be doing business with everybody. And if you know exactly who you're talking to, you'll grow a thriving business. I mean, that's what we've done. We've grown a wildly successful business because we know exactly who our ideal customers. And I actually pick who I want to coach, and they feel special when I pick them. And having people join our Ready Set Grand Pro program is an application only. And we're just selective. That's my word for 2021. Selective.

The good word. And we all need it right now. Very selective. I'm curious maybe that we kind of wrap it up on this point, but on Clubhouse, what's your strategy there? It sounds like you're on there a lot.

I am on there a lot. I have A Daily Show 8 to 9, where I do Instagram audits and give Instagram tips and strategies. All of my mods are clients of mine in Ready Set Gram or Ready Set Gram Pro, which is great because they come at it to coach from learning, and I get a nice crowd every day, and I come back the next day. Five days a week, 8 to 9am, I hosted in the Real Deal Club. And.

Our warm leads are through the roof. Every time I get on Stage. No matter what stage I'm on, I was just on a travel stage. Everyone wants my free content. So we're getting more subscribers to YouTube. We're getting more people to join our free training. We're getting more people to download our strategy guide. And our email list is growing. We talked about this briefly. Our subscribers on YouTube are growing. And you know, I think we got a thousand new followers on Instagram this week. And you know, I'm almost at 15k in clubhouse, and.

I can talk about a lot of different things because I don't just teach Instagram. I've had 18 businesses.

Wow. Wow. All the way to brick and mortar retail.

Yeah, I had brick and mortar. I had my first million dollar business when I was 22 selling silkscreen boxer shorts. I've been on QVC twice. I've wholesaled, I've retailed. I've pretty much done it all in the consumer product space. And then I learned about online marketing eight years ago with my CEO Morgan, and we have built a wildly successful business with a team of 20.

What are your kids thinking about it now?

Well, at first they were rolling their eyes. Now they're like, oh, my God, mom, you're kind of famous.

So if the table's turned, are you teaching them Instagram strategies now?

I help them. I answer questions about the latest features. But they're so good with their edits. Oh, my God, their video edits and their photo edits. It's like they're so good because in college they learned all about video production and communication majors, and they all have a really good aesthetic eye for photography and they're adorable. So there's that.

It helped visual. Tell us about the three keys, because I know it dives. Yeah.

So our signature training, which is free, is about an hour long. I teach it with my CEO Morgan. It's a lot of fun. It is a recorded training. It is our evergreen training. And we have thousands and thousands of thousands and thousands of people that have watched it, that love it. And you will learn how to attract the right followers and the right buyers without complex content creation. Like, it's, it's really straightforward. And I tell you my top three visual secrets, and I really teach step by step along with Morgan. And it's a great training. And I always talk about it in clubhouse too. Like that's where I send people. Because either you want the next thing or you don't. And if you don't, that's fine. But if you want the next thing, after you watch it, you invest in Our program, Ready, set, Graham, and we kind of take you to the next place. And I'm all about taking people exactly where they need to go next. Not from A to Z, but from.

A to B. Yeah, we're always saying next step. Just next step. That's all you gotta do.

Yeah.

Subi, you rock. No, this has been fun. Is there anything else, Matt?

No, we jumped all over and covered a lot of ground. And I think.

You guys.

Well, I always like to end a podcast interviewing interview saying I love my action takers. So if you enjoyed this, if you liked what you heard, all I ask is to come over, tap my last post. Let me know in the comments what you learned on that post, and then what you look. Your favorite thing that you heard on this podcast interview, and then tag these two handsome dudes. What's your Instagram account?

Hustle and Flowchart.

Hustle and Flowchart. You gotta tag them so they get a notification that you took action after listening. And I just appreciate the opportunity.

Thank you, Sue. This has been super cool.

Absolutely.

Have a great one.

Wicked smile.

Bye.

Sue B. Zimmerman.

Sue.

Subi is fun to say, huh?

It is. Well, that's. There's probably a reason why she brands everything Subi Zimmerman. Love it. She was entertaining. Yeah.

I think that's probably the deepest dive we've done on Instagram so far. Right?

Was. You stole the words out of my mouth, my friend. Yeah, yeah.

I tried to.

Yeah. And you said she. We don't talk over each other all the time.

What are you talking about? We always talk over each other.

You steal my. Just rob my thoughts. That's how we do it. I know.

Now I'm just doing it on purpose. I thought it was hilarious, though, at the very beginning of the episode because she was asking us about talking over each other. And as she was starting to talk, I saw. Spoke at the same time, and I was like, I don't talk over Joe, but I'll talk over you all day long.

She noticed.

Yeah, man. That was a deep of all deep dives of ig and it was great. I mean, we. I don't even know if there was an order.

Yeah, we kind of jumped around a.

Little bit, but it was great.

But I mean, that was almost like stream of thought for us of, like, man, we're so dumb when it comes to Instagram. Like, like dumb and, like, ignorant. Like, we just don't know enough about it. And like, you know, most of that kind of stuff is even done by Jacob on our team. So even the Day to day Instagram stuff that is happening. That's everything you're seeing. That's Jacob. So, like, we're not. We're not super in the loop. So as she was talking, I was genuinely fascinating because I'm like, oh, there's a new section in Instagram. That thing could have been there for six months now and I would have never known.

Yeah, guides or whatever. Yeah, I mean, I didn't know that. And that was. I was even doing research for this thing. Yeah, a lot. Or at least looking at the platform. But, yeah, I mean, there's a lot here. And so what should we do? What should we focus on here?

Let me make a comment first, though. One thing I would suggest is if you're not paying attention to the YouTube channel over at HustleandFlowchart TV, she actually did some screen shares. And you'll hear during this, the audio here. When she's doing the screen shares, she's doing her best to kind of talk out what we're seeing on the screen. So it's not like that content's gonna be irrelevant. But if you do go watch the video over on YouTube, you will get the sort of visuals that she's sharing along with us.

Yeah, and she shared a lot and a lot of details, and she shared a lot of links, too. So on the show notes pages and in the action guides, we'll link those things in there. Yeah, action guides. They might be a little long length, so probably just get the digital versions. And that's a great call to action. To go to Hustle and Flowchart. Nope, don't go there. Jesus. Actually, if you want to go see the YouTube channel, hustleandflowchart tv y and then. Then you have flowchartgroup.com to grab the action guides of this episode, and you can also get all the links and all that fun stuff, but plug in your email address when you go over there and be quick. So, yeah, I think the big thing here is don't buy followers on Instagram.

That was the lesson that I taught from this one.

That's what you taught? Yeah. That's what you learned?

No, that's what I taught.

You did teach.

That's the one lesson that I taught. Everything else came from sue, but I taught that one lesson.

But, you know, she just nodded in like, yep. You know, she looked at us like, you fool. Oh, yeah.

You fool.

Oh, yeah.

What have you done?

We've ruined everything. No, it's actually all right. But we are bringing it back from the dead and that's okay because now we have a fresh eyes, fresh lens. Yeah. I like the fact in the way that I was really interested here is like engaging with people in different ways and not the norm ways. So you have hashtags, you know, doing that kind of thing. Just, just looking at. I like the fact that she has all these pre save stuff in the text expander thing and also in the quick replies in the dms, which I know Gary in the previous Clubhouse episode talked about as well. Yeah. Having some like, what, up to 20, I think it is pre saved messages for your DM. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So not.

Not a bot, but, you know.

Yeah, yeah. Because they're both. Those people are using the mobile monkey app, which is a new thing that apparently is very, very limited. Only a handful of people have it. But if you're not using that, you can have these sort of like canned response kind of things, which I never even. I mean, I know when Gary mentioned it, that was the first time I even heard that that existed. I think Jacob on our team brought up the fact that Instagram TV are actual live clickable links. But her flow is brilliant. Right. She's taking the YouTube videos and I don't know what the length are. Let's just call it a 10 minute YouTube video. Putting it on YouTube. And then she's having her team make like a teaser trailer for the YouTube videos that are only like a minute long. Like they have to be slightly over a minute because if they're under a minute, then they won't actually end up on Instagram tv also.

It just stays in the feed then.

Yeah, it'll just be a video feed. But then. So if the video is over a minute, then people will want to click on it to see the rest of the video. When they click on it to see the rest of the video, there's a page with a live link below it. So it's kind of like a cool way on. Like it seems like that's probably one of the more effective ways to drive people off of Instagram right now is to use videos with a link below the video. The video has to be long enough that it kicks it over to igtv. And then there's a link below the video.

Yeah, because it's on your. On your feed and you can take people to igtv, which is the longer form. And I think she was saying Instagram is favoring that quite a bit too.

She was saying Instagram was favoring the reels.

Oh, reels. Reels, yeah, that's the new one. That's right. That's why.

Yeah. Which is basically Instagram's answer to TikTok.

Yeah, yeah. The newer thing. But at least getting over to igtv, you have the ability to do that. So you're showing up on, Well, I guess YouTube as the first stop. Then you have on the feed.

But also people who are subscribed to you on YouTube will just find it on YouTube. People that are subscribed to you on Instagram will see it in the feed.

Describe that wrong. I basically said starts on. Or I meant starts on YouTube repurposed over here with a trailer format. Shows up in different features in Instagram, which is nice. And then it gives you that live link ability. It's almost like that might be even better than the stories. Or if there's a way to take. You can connect the feed to the story. I know that. Or igtv, even.

Igtv. Yeah. So, like, if you don't have the swipe up, if you don't have 10,000 followers and you can't do the swipe up, we don't. We did at one time when we tried to hack the system.

The golden days.

So we did at one time have the swipe up. Let me tell you, though, having a swipe up when your audience is 100% unengaged is not helpful.

You get like seven swipe ups and you're like, on a good day, really, this was worth it.

But you can. So if you put something on igtv, you can actually put like a piece of that into your Instagram story. And then there's a button or, you know, I think you can make it swipe up to watch the whole thing on igtv. So you can use swipe ups no matter how size your account is, no matter what size it is. But those swipe ups will only keep people internal on Instagram under 10,000 followers. Once you pass 10,000 followers, those swipe ups can be external links.

Got it. Yep, yep, yep. No, I like that. That's a great strategy because you're keeping everybody contained and using the same content.

Yeah.

Bam, Jacob. There you go. You're welcome. Also, another thing is carousels. And we didn't really go super deep on them, but I know we're familiar with them. We've chatted about them. Yeah. And I think this is where I'd like to go check out what she's doing with carousels. And she gave us Katie.

Katie, yeah. This was offline, but this is somebody else she recommended we have on the show, which we definitely will.

Yeah. We don't know much about her, so can't really say much.

We're not even saying her last name.

So it's super ambiguous because we don't know it yet. But, yeah, sounds like we'll have her on if she agrees. But carousels. I remember Costanzo, Brad Costanza, our buddy, was talking about them for a while. Bacon wrap, Brad. Rat Men. Bacon. He loves it.

But basically, I think you can have up to 10 images on one post.

I believe so. Something like that.

Right. And so when a podcast episode goes live, you can put some quotes from the episode on some of the images, and then if you have an image of you guys together, you can put that within the carousel. So basically what she's saying is, instead of when you're scrolling through your Instagram feed, people just seeing pictures of all your guests, they're more seeing pictures of you and the quotes and those types of things. But in the carousel, they'll scroll over and see the guests from the episodes for sure. That was my interpretation.

Yeah. No, no, I think you're fine. Yeah. I mean, it's basically like a little brochure for the podcast episode.

Yeah.

Where it's still putting them as, you know, the guest as the, you know, the figure, I guess. You know, making them look cool. But you really have more context to it all and relates us to the conversation, since people want us as well. And I was having an idea offline. We should talk about actually getting these designed with our designer. That'd be kind of interesting. Just to test these out, or at.

Least a handful of templates that we can use.

Well, that's where we could start. Yeah, yeah, yeah, let's talk about that and maybe test that out. Just because she. Yeah. Sue was actually looking at our Instagram after offline, and she was like, oh, I actually really. I really like what you're doing here. And it looks really good. And she was like, the only thing I would really add to the feed part are the carousels. So I'm like, okay, well. Well, she's saying that. Yeah. And I've always liked those things too, but they're kind of. You know, you can use Canva or, you know, we use Snappa. Very similar, but, you know, they kind of have templates for those. But it's nice to have some custom ones, too.

Yeah. I mean, you can use templates off of places like Canva, but at the end of the day, you do want that sort of unique branding to you. And.

Yeah.

Jacob when you're editing this and you're hearing this, sue likes what you're doing on Instagram. So we're on the right track.

Get it? Ah, man, we covered a lot. Let's just wrap her up, I think, huh?

All righty. Well, one of our sponsors is. And when I say one of our sponsors, I also mean our only current sponsor is EZ Webinar. And when you go check out.

Sue bzimmerman.com 3Keys, her webinar that she was talking about, that is sort of her flagship thing that she wants everybody to check out. She's using Easy Webinar to actually present that video. So I was. When I. We always go and check out the links that people share with us on the show, when I clicked over to her link, I was just chuffed.

Chuffed.

I was just chuffed to find out.

Interesting. My lexicon just increased a bit. Yeah, okay. Yeah, interesting.

I've also started using the word lexicon a lot more.

Yeah, I know. I noticed you said it earlier. That's why. Fresh on the mind.

Well, okay, so here's the context to that. We'll get back to the sponsorship in a second.

Oh, okay. You hold, please. Easy Webinar.

Okay, so we just launched a course called Podhacker.

So I was going to say we actually sponsor. We're sponsored by Pod Hacker. The show is.

Right, but we haven't finished the Easy Webinar sponsorship yet.

I know, but we have two sponsors.

So with Podhacker, we decided that, you know, we want to call people who go through the program Pod Hackers.

Right.

And so with that, we're starting to create our own sort of lexicon, which are the words that a specific group uses among each other in case you need the sort of dictionary definition. Sorry, that was totally mansplainy, wasn't it?

Yes, it was. Are you Mariam or are you Webster?

Yes, I'm both. I'm mw.

Ah, Jesus.

Oh, yeah. That was just lame. But anyway, the whole lexicon thing has come from trying to promote Pod Hacker and create our own sort of language among the people who are Pod hackers.

Uh huh. I like it. It's valuable, man. Even Ryan Lee, when he saw in the group when we were launching Pod Hacker, he was like, ha. You can now name your tribe, you Pod Hacker. I'm like, hell yeah. And he's like, it all starts from here.

We're finally born again.

So back to our original sponsorship. We do have a second sponsorship, Matt. Always remember that. Okay. Our own stuff. Yeah. Come on, Matt. Doesn't like to actually tell the world about things that we do just passively, like, oh, yeah, we launched this little thing.

Is that true? I'm just throwing you into conversations, throwing.

You under the bus. All to Easy Webinar, because this is their time.

This is their time, their moment. But Sue B. Zimmerman is using EZ Webinar when you go check that out. So if you actually want to see Easy Webinar in process and just see how, like, beautiful the process is when viewing a webinar, go check out Sue B. Zimmerman's webinar over at Su B. Zimmerman.com three keys. And then once you're thoroughly impressed with EZ webinar, go to easywebinar.com hustle because he's hooking up Hustle and Flowchart listeners.

Bam. He's hooking them up big time. The whole team's hooking them up. I don't think this is just Casey's doing, is it?

I don't know. Casey's the one that we talked to.

I guess we'll give Casey. Casey, you're going to get the credit, my friend. All right? So go to easywebinar.com hustle and you will get those fatty discounts, depending on what you choose. You also get a whole list of all these cool ways that you can use it that you might not pick up from just looking at Subie's page over there. So easywebinar.com hustle and finally, we mentioned Pod hacker passively. Very passively. And under.

You should go check out podhacker.com because.

The doors may be open right now.

They may be, but they may not. But that's okay. Either way, you have the opportunity to become a Pod hacker if you so desire. This is us opening the curtain to our business and our podcast and everything in between and outside and between.

I like opening the kimono better because it gives better visuals of.

I like opening the trench coat.

Opening the trench coat.

That can get dangerous, though.

Yeah, we're talking about metaphorically here, Joe, not your real life.

The trench coat. You know, I'm just thinking like a guy in, like, New York street, you know, he's like. Opens a trench coat. He's like, look at all these cool headphones, microphones, and. And cool growth hacks around your podcast.

And then you're like, yeah, but why aren't you wearing any pants or underwear?

Well, we don't look that way. We look at the coat. The inside of the coat has all the good. Gotcha. There are other goods too.

But this analogy went way off the rails.

You took it there. But yes, I am confident in these rails that we're on now. So go check out Pod Hacker. I mean, you've heard us talk about it, but we're freaking proud of this thing. And we're getting some damn good feedback from people just like you. Actually, many of you listening.

Well, not like you, but you. Well, just like you.

You the one that you don't think that you could be a pod hacker. Just go check it out. Podhacker.com, you'll get the goods over there. Get on the waiting list if it's not open right now. Thank you. Lastly, what did we talk about the action guides? Talked about a lot.

Maybe back in the intro.

Jeez, man, we covered a lot. Flowchart group.com. you definitely want to be a part of that group. Our group. This is the Hustle and Flowcharters. Does that sound as cool? Not nearly as cool. See, this is a problem. We never came up with a good name for halfers.

Halfers. Yeah, but that doesn't make. Because it's not H A L F. It's H A F. But it sounds like half and we don't do anything. Half ass.

Hell no. Why would we? We don't Beatbox.

Half Ass.

Come on.

What's up everybody?

That just got some people really excited. You know what? Matt and I have been playing around with playing some music as well. So we might surprise you one of these longer episode banter sessions with some music. Probably not this time, but in the future I've been playing around with some stuff so unless you can play my.

Right handed guitar, it's not going to happen today.

That's why I flip. My dad's right handed to a left handed so you can't play his cool guitars. Damn it sucks at you. But yeah. Get the notes. Flowchartgroup.com they are the action guides of this episode. As always, you only have two weeks to go. Get them. Be quick. Flowchartgroup.com Throw your email address in there because that's how we send them to you. But you also get access to the cool group over there.

You ain't lying.

I ain't lying. You're right. What else am I not lying about? Matt? What's left?

Share this we would love it if you shared it.

Share Rate Review subscribe however you wish. If you're not subscribed yet. What the heck? You've been here this long and you still haven't subscribed? Just hit that. Oh, wait.

Yeah.

Okay. You should be subscribed by now. Thank you very much. Appreciate you. You'll hear a lot more of our bantering. You're welcome. So that's it?

That's all.

Thank you. You rock. Until next time. Sayonara.

Thanks, everybody, for listening to this episode of the Hustle and Flowchart podcast for taking the time to listen. We want to give you something a little bit special. Every single episode that we do, we actually have somebody on our team take notes. We basically have a Cliff's Notes version of every episode where you can go and find all of the tips and tactics that they laid out, all of the resources that they laid out, all the good, good stuff from this episode. We actually have a nice, simple notes version that you can find on our website. So go to evergreenprofits.com find this episode that you just listened to, and give us your email address, and we'll send you the notes. Thanks for listening.

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