IG CONTENT THAT BLOCKS INQUIRES

Hey guys, welcome back to my channel. The perfect place for bridal hairstyles and makeup artists to fill their books with their dream clients using Instagram. Speaking of Instagram, for today's video be going over with you guys, five tips that actually could be blocking inquiries from your inbox. Some of these things you might not even be aware that you're making you find yourself posting, but still not seeing any inquiries in your inbox for bridal bookings. If you see one here and there and you really want to ramp it up so then you can start getting more bookings, then keep on watching. The first mistake you could be making that you might not be aware could be blocking bridal inquiries from your inbox is having your logo as your bio photo. Now here's why visually this type of photo gets lost, specifically when I'm talking about stories. As you can see over here on the side, when you're scrolling through the stories, words usually get lost because it's such a small font. Whereas when someone uses a photo, a colorful background that makes it pop, you're more likely to want to click on that as well. As you can see when you actually go over to someone's feed as well and you're looking at the bio photo are more likely to trust a face versus just a logo. Logo doesn't really let your audience build that relationship with you to want to trust you to hire you for service. Now don't get me wrong, if you are a huge idol, hair and makeup team and you have a lot of people and maybe you don't want to be the face of your Instagram, that's totally fine. Though if you do want to use a logo, here's what I would do instead. I would make it a really short logo. Let's just say for me, for Marissa Grace artistry, that's really long. If that was going to be my logo for my bio photo, I would shorten it to maybe MG and make the letters really big and keep it branded in my brand fonts and my brand colors and make it bright so that way it pops. But if you are a solo artist and you do want to be the face of your company such as myself, I highly recommend changing your photo. A more visually appealing photo of yourself. That way are more likely to trust you and build that relationship with you right off the bat. Now, now the second thing that might actually be blocking inquiries from your inbox is not utilizing the guides feature. Guides are such an amazing way to tell all of your potential clients who hop on your Instagram all about your services and how you can help them. If you're not sure what the guides feature is, let's go over to my page and as you can see bar on top of your photos you have feed posts, reels, IGTVs, guides and tagged posts. You go over to the guide, actually click create a guide and then you can go through all of your posts that you already have, actually categorize them into one guide. So I actually do this with a lot of my posts because a lot of my posts are very informative for my bride. So I have a guide that is just called Guide for Brides. So if you're giving really valuable captions, another great way to repurpose those captions is to repurpose them into a guide for your bride. So I have a little secret prediction that Instagram is using the guides kind of as a beta tester to the platform. More search friendly. I say search friendly, I mean such as like a Google or a Pinterest. You can easily go on there and search things. With Instagram you can really only search thing using hashtags. Whereas when you're using the guides and you go in and you have to create a headline and you have to create a little description for what the guide is about. So what it's actually doing is capturing all these different keywords which are great for SEO purposes and for search engines. So that's just my personal theory when they came out with these guides, because you can really utilize the keywords to give accurate descriptions about your services. So that way when someone's searching, just say bridal hairstylist or hair half up, half down styles from the front, maybe my guides possibly could show up in the future if they do move over to a more search friendly platform. Start utilizing guides as a way to just start talking more about your services as well as repurposing those super valuable and informative captions that you're already creating. Now the next mistake that you might be making, I actually see a lot of people doing would be really hurting your chances of seeing more inquiries within your inbox is in your bio putting no DMS email only. Now before you guys come at me and you're like, oh my God, I don't want to book any clients within the DM. Yes, 100%, you do not want to be booking your clients within your DMs, you always want to be utilizing an inquiry form that is on your website, otherwise you're going to lose all the information. However, if someone is DMing you, that is a Potential client really just wanting to get to know you unless they're just like, hey, how much are your services? So for me, I find since I have a little bit more of a smaller following, I only have around 5,000 followers. Yes, my DMs still do get crazy. I have about like 20 requests sitting in my DMs at all times and it is super hard to get through emails and dms all within the same day. If you guys are DMing me and I'm not responding right away, it's just really hard to get through all your DMs and I try to get back as quick as possible. But for someone like me with a smaller following and I don't have hundreds and thousands of requests, but I do see brides going in there and just messaging me like, hey, I love this hairstyle. I just want to know if you're available for my date. So the smart thing to do are already interested in your services is just to point them to your inquiry form. So what I do when someone messages me or DMs me and just says hey, are you available for my date? Love to have you. Part of my wedding day or whatever. If I am available, I'll respond back and just say something like hey, thanks so much for reaching out. I actually am available on your date. Would you do me a favor? Would you mind heading over to my page, visiting the link in bio and filling out my inquiry form. That way I can give you the Most accurate quote 9 times out of 10 that DM will go over, fill out my inquiry form and I'm able to send them a quote and I got them in my email. You're already building that relationship within your DM so they already feel a little bit more comfortable with you. And if I'm not available, what I'll just say is like hey, sorry, I'm not available for your date, but you can head over to my highlights on my page. And on my page I actually have a vendor recommendation highlight. They can find other vendors that are within my local area that maybe are available for their date. No DMS and email only is a huge mistake because in your bio you only have 150 characters. So let potential clients know who you are, where you travel to, what you do and who you help. If you're wasting those characters on putting no DMs email only a waste of really valuable real estate within your bio. So instead what I do, if you can see over here in my bio, I just say inquire now and I point down to the link. That is my link tree where it has all different types of things that go over to my inquiry form, my bridal rates, my website, all the different things. That way at least they know like, hey, this is how I inquire with Instagram is an engaging platform and people want to engage with you. Yes, it can get time consuming. However, if somebody wants to DM you, take the time and have that conversation with them. Spend 10 minutes a day just responding to your DMs or your DM requests and just forwarding them to where you would like them to inquire for your services. So use your DMs to your advantage to start building that relationship with potential clients, especially if you have a smaller following like me. The fourth tip I have for you that might be blocking bridal inquiries from your inbox is writing captions that are all about you. A common thing that I see a lot of bridal hairstylists and makeup artists doing is in their caption. First thing they'll write is I'm just so excited for wedding season to start. I just took a class with yada yada yada. I'm up leveling my skills. I love this kind of a hairstyle. It's all in that format of I, I, I instead of the perspective of who the content actually is for, which is your potential clients and your brides. Always talking about your own experiences and what you're going through instead of really focusing on things that your clients need to hear from you. Not really going to want to read through that post or really get anything out of it. It's not valuable for them. So if you look right here and I'm just going to read the captions right down here on my computer. These are some old captions that weren't working for me and that were in the had the most amazing brides this past weekend. Lauren's boho low bun was magical. Got to add in those pretty dainty florals, that extra boho vibe. Let's look at this next example. Happy May Monday. Soaking up this snow and reflecting on such an amazing weekend with brides and brides to be. I truly have the best clients. Thank you so much. This is a cute caption. However, again, it is in the I format. I'm not talking about my brides, I'm talking about me. And let's look at this last example. The caption that was blocking bridal inquiries from my inbox. My fave hair from yesterday's bridal party. I mean, and then heart emoji eyes that's talking about me. It's not giving any valuable information for potential clients that are looking at this photo. It's working against me. It's not getting any new clients into my inbox versus when I started doing captions, thinking about how I can help my potential clients and changing it from an I format to an audience format. So who's following me? Potential bride? Who do I want to attract? Potential brides. Now let's look at this example where I changed the formatting for my captions. And if you can see, this is a photo of different types of hairstyles. So within my caption I put elegant, romantic, or textured. And then I went down and gave a breakdown of each. So that way brides who are looking at different photos know keywords to use for style when they come into their trial or when they're looking at reference photos. So I broke down the elegant and what kind of a dress style that would work great with. And let's look at this next example. I posted a bunch of photos with all different types of hair accessories, who are looking for different hair accessories and what kind of style it might look good for, what kind of hair accessory they might want to get, whether they want to wear one or not. So then within my caption, I broke it all down and put, is your dress very detailed with lots of lace or sparkles? If yes, if no, are you wearing a veil? If yes or if no, I broke down some advice to give them valuable information about hair accessories on if they want to wear one or if not. And I also let them know that, hey, at my idol preview appointments, you're able to try on all these hair accessories with your look. Those captions are way more valuable than had some great brides over the weekend. So excited. And you see the difference there. When I was posting captions and content that was in the format of me and always talking about myself, clients weren't really relating with that and I was not seeing inquiries to the amount that I am today. Once I switched that perspective and I changed it and I started thinking about what my clients need, saw that shift almost immediately. And also something I see a lot people within their captions will talk in the third person or even on your website, you talk in the third person. So what do I mean by that? Like, if I was to say like my Instagram, you know, that it's just me, you know, that I don't have like a crazy big, big team. If I were to say something in my caption, like, Marissa is Furthering her education with blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Kind of sounds like a robot. You want to sound human, you want to be relatable, and you want to build that relationship with your potential client. But just don't talk in the third person. The fifth thing that might be costing you wedding bookings and you're posting on Instagram is not talking about your services or giving a call to action to let people know how to inquire with. People need to be led to how to inquire with you. You can't assume that they're going to know to go over on your page, visit your link in bio. You need to actually point them to it within this video. I've actually already given you two ways that you can do call to action. Start getting inquiries in your inbox when you're on Instagram. That first one was was within your bio. Don't want to have an inquiry form link or whatever your form link is and say something like book now and put an arrow so that way they know, okay, this is how I book with her. Then the second one was within your caption. I usually will always give updates like if I'm now booking for the upcoming year, then I put that in my caption and I'll say visit my link in bio to inquire. That way they know when they're reading my caption. If they want to inquire with me, they can head over to my link in bio and submit the inquiry form. And also, if you're just posting all different kinds of services and you're not really posting bridal makeup photos or bridal hair styling photos and you're just talking about all different kinds of services. It's kind of like service overload for your potential clients and they don't really know what you specialize in. I talked more about this in a video right here. Talked about you want to have a specialty and you really want to niche down or to book services for, let's just say wedding. If you're watching this video, I'm already assuming that you guys want to book more weddings for yourself and get more inquiries when using Instagram. You haven't already definitely check out this video. Okay guys, let's just do a real quick recap that of having your logo as your bio photo on Instagram, change it to yourself. Or if you are a big team and you want to have your logo, make it visually pop on the screen. That way nobody swipes past you. Second thing, start utilizing guides. Great way to repurpose all your valuable captions that you post give great information about your services for your client. Third, remove the no DM's email only from bio. You only have 150 characters. Remember that is valuable real estate. Instead, give them that call to action and say inquire now. Book now. You do want them to DM you so you could say DM me and then forward them to where you want them to go. So your inquiry form which are captions from writing in the I format to the you format you as in your audience and start giving more call to action and talking more about the services that you want to book. So your wedding services let them know how to inquire with you and let them know how to inquire with you multiple times. Just a one and done. People need to see things multiple times in order to want to take action on that specific thing. If you love this video, be sure to hit the like button. Make sure you're subscribed for next week's video because I'm going to be going over my favorite Instagram story hack that you might not know about and how to use your stories to let clients know all about your services. So make sure you're subscribed for next week's video and don't forget, it's a great day to create something beautiful. Bye guys.