IG & SLAY Day 2 Sell On Instagram | Get More Clients | Make More Money | Val Nichols Business | ADHD

Val Nichols here coming at you live for day number 2 of the Slay Your Instagram Masterclass. Super pumped about today. Today we're gonna be talking about feed and reels and stories. Oh my, everyone with me say, oh my goodness. Today we're gonna be talking about reels and feeds and stories. Oh my, it is going to be an amazing time. So don't forget, you guys, hop on into the group, or I'm sorry, take a screenshot of this training and post it onto your Instagram stories for a chance to win. We are gonna be giving away an amazing prize at the end of this training, as well as today, or I'm sorry, tomorrow after day 3. So let me bring this up so I can see where you guys are. Oh my. Oh, thank you so much for the hearts, you guys. I love you so much. So today we're going to be doing, um, we're going to be talking about Reels, feed, and stories. And why this is so important is because I'm going to be teaching you guys the top ways to really create impact and to find your next clients on Instagram. So these are going to be the ways we're going to do that. Um, super pumped because this is going to help you, you know, really get your reach going. To increase your following and to find your next clients on Instagram, as promised. Hello, Cherie. Hello, my love. Hello, Teresa. Hey, hey, girl. I've missed you all my life here. I've missed you, missed you. Hello, Paige. Oh my goodness. Hi. Thank you guys so much. I'm super pumped today. So today we're going to talk about number one is feed, right? So your feed. On your Instagram channel. If you did not watch day number 1, we set a foundation, we created some basics as far as, you know, finding out what your message is, who your ideal client is, and then how you're going to really like speak to them. So go back and watch day 1 if you haven't already. So what we're going to talk about is, you know, our feed. So your feed on your Instagram is when you go to like your profile or You know, you're scrolling through your Instagram and that is your feed. So your feed is gonna be this very beautiful, maybe it's curated, it looks really pretty when people land on it, right? So you can have like the nice branding, the colors, the feel, the fonts, whatever that is. Your feed is kind of like your website in a way. A client and I were just talking about this. I prided myself on not having a website for the first 2 years of my business. And today, really, you can get away with not having an official website. I mean, that's up to you if you want to do that, but if you don't have one yet, definitely look at your Instagram page as if that is your website, right? Like, that is your website. Hello, Catherine. Hello, Tiffany. Hi, beautiful. So, you know, you guys want to look at your Instagram feed as if that is like your website, right? So I would love for you guys to go back over, you know, look at your bio. Another really great bonus tip I want to give you guys is to add your industry into your name on Instagram, right? If you go look at my name, it's Val Nichols, and then it says Business ADHD, because those are the 2 industries that I'm in. And so it makes it searchable, right? It makes both business and ADHD searchable. So go to your Instagram page and make sure that you can, you know, find that or that somebody can search you and find what you do. You can also put that in your bio. So make sure that your bio is optimized so that if somebody searches you, they will be able to find you on the Instagram platform because it is like a new Google search, right? Like, people are looking for hashtags, they're looking for information, they're looking for everything that you have to offer them. What's up, Ari? Hard to find. I know, I hate that when I do a Facebook Live, it doesn't let me like put like a link to it previous. If anyone knows, maybe there's a way to do that. I don't think that there— not that I found, but Prove me wrong, I don't know. So when you go to your Instagram feed, you kind of want it to be like a webpage, right? At the very top, you wanna be capturing your people's attention. You want to be, you know, really focusing on that. We're gonna go more into that tomorrow. But, you know, on your feed, you wanna make sure that it shows what you're about, who you serve, and how you're going to help them. So you want to show that, and you also want to be able to really enforce the 80/20 rule. And what I mean by that is you want to not be that person that— I don't know if you guys ever have experienced this, but you go on their page and it's like you're reading a catalog, right? Nobody wants to read a catalog of your services. Nobody wants to just feel like they're landing on your Instagram page and it's just Marketing, marketing, marketing, marketing, marketing. Because again, everyone wants to buy, just nobody wants to be sold to, right? So the best rule of thumb is to incorporate the 80/20 rule, which means that 80% of your content is going to be more of like the lifestyle, the passion, maybe it's business related, right? Like a ton of my content on my page is business and like specifically Instagram right now, is related to that. It's lifestyle, but it's not all advertising, right? So 80% is like business, lifestyle, your kids, what you're into, business-related, workout-related, you know, related to your industry, but it's not like advertisement, right? And then 20%, so think about that, for every 10 posts you have, if you have 10 posts in a feed, you want 8 of those to be non-advertisements and then 2 of those, just 2 of those, to be advertisements. So that way, you know, if people are doing the 2-scroll, I always call it the 2-scroll, like if you think about, you know, you're looking at your Instagram feed and you do like the 1, 2 scroll, you want them to see 2 advertisements and as they scroll through so they know what you do, they know what you have to offer, but you don't wanna plug your whole feed with in-your-face marketing, advertising, all of that. So the 80/20 rule is key. It's definitely what you wanna follow and make sure that you are utilizing that information to educate, to entertain, to inspire, and to motivate your potential clients into action. Ari's saying schedule as an event, but I don't know. I have done that, but then it— I guess it goes live in the event. I don't really enjoy that for some reason. I'm not sure. I guess I could try that. Oh, it's showing me comments today. Yay, this is amazing. Um, another great thing to put in your feed that is really going to boost your algorithm, it's going to Get people excited about who you are and following you is celebration posts, right? We all love to celebrate. There are two types of content that go that get a lot of feedback: celebration posts and drama. Let's be honest, but I don't think anybody out there is following those posts, so we won't talk about those. But you know those drama posts where everybody puts in their two cents, and next thing you know, it's just like this whole like ugh. I personally don't see that in my feed because I'm very selective of who's in my feed. So honestly, on every social media platform I have, I see incredible people, which I'm so happy about. But celebration posts— what are you celebrating? What are you celebrating in your business? Show some of those behind-the-scenes things because, you know, what you want to do as a business owner, as a personal brand, as a brand in general, is you wanna be like documenting your journey, right? I look at my feed, my memories, and it's often like I'm reading an old diary. Like, dear diary, today I got my first paid client. Dear diary, today I filled up my Woman of Wealth and Worth program. Dear diary, you know, it's like looking at this journey that I've been on over the past 3 and a half years online in the business space, But I get to go back and look at that. So you want to be documenting your journey, you want to be sharing the celebrations first and foremost, and you want to be sharing testimonials. So whenever you get those amazing testimonials, feedback from what you can provide, feedback for the services you've done, you know, feedback for the products and the experience that you create, you want to be sharing those. And we'll talk more about that tomorrow when we get into like the highlights. I'm going to teach you guys how to group things together so that people can go to your page and sell themselves on your services because it's happened to me many times on Instagram and that's how we've been able to grow and scale our Instagram. Our, I say our, I always say ours because it's my team, but I've been able to grow and scale my Instagram to consistent $10,000 to $15,000 months as of now, and that's just on the Instagram platform. So that's— I'll show you guys how to do that tomorrow as well. You want to be sharing your testimonials. Another great thing to share on your feed— so again, we're talking about the feed post, you know, the little like when you go to your profile, you see the beautiful curated content— is something called UGC. That's called UGC. That is user-generated content. This is going to be your biggest leverage on the social media feed, is user-generated content. What I mean by that is I have been teaching a ton of real estate agents here in Central Oregon how to really optimize their Instagram feeds and And so for them, that would be, you know how when you go and you buy a new house and maybe you have that big sold sign and you're standing in front of the house and it says like sold by Val Nichols and then there's like, they take a picture of that and then they share it on their feed and then you can reshare it. You know, that's user-generated content. User-generated content is anything where somebody's giving you a shout out. Maybe they're praising you on their social media, or maybe you're even getting like a media shout out, right? Like some, if you're featured in the like business magazine in your local area, you know, then that's user-generated content. Anything that's out there that is like social proof that you are doing an amazing job, or that you've helped create transformation, or that you have been an amazing piece of someone's story, User-generated content is going to be your currency. This is going to be a huge currency in our modern world where we are today in 2021, 2022 actually. I can't believe I almost forgot that. But in 2022, the social proof, your social proof is your currency because you can tell someone all day long that you're great. You can tell someone all day long that you're passionate about people, you love working with people, but when someone else tells them, it'll give you a lot more leverage. It'll give you a lot more leverage. Think about that in your own experience. When is the last time you purchased something because either an influencer had it on their page Or a friend of yours was so excited about it that they were like, you have to get this. You have to get it. You can be honest. I mean, I definitely would take a recommendation from a friend or from someone in my industry than I would over an advertisement any day of the week. So think about your own experience in shopping. I often do that when I'm like, well, how do I like to shop? Because my ideal client is probably going to purchase things in the same way that I do, right? My ideal client is going to see that investing in themselves or investing in their business is an asset, not a liability, because the mindset is such, right? So I always approach it, my own business, with that way that, you know, like, of course this is going to be a no-brainer. This will be a no-brainer and the person will buy because they know that moving their business forward is going to help them move forward, make them more money. It's an asset, not a liability. Love celebration posts. Yes, girl, me too. That's why you're my people, because we love that celebration energy. Getting into all of that is amazing. And lastly, for your feed, you want to show, don't tell. You want to show, don't tell. Because, you know, like we talked about yesterday when I was working, I was partnering with a gentleman that was in the journalist industry, and he would always tell me this. Let me turn off my notifications. He would always say, show dog, see dog, or see dog, show dog. So you want people to see it, and then you want to show them Right? Like, you can tell people that you're an amazing coach, an amazing consultant, an amazing whatever that is. You can show people, or you can tell people you have a great product, but you really want to show them. So you want to make sure in your feed that you are showing people what you do, what you're about, what you stand for. Because if they can see that in a story, it's like this beautiful You know, curated like the movie poster when you're walking in. That's what your Instagram page is. It's like this movie poster of people are seeing, wow, do I want to invest in this person? Do I want to actually follow them and find out more about their life, what they're doing, all the things? Do I want to go purchase that movie? Or do they go, oh, that doesn't— I don't know, that doesn't really like— it doesn't land for me. So think about your, your feed like the movie poster where people are going to, in a split second, about 3 seconds, they are going to decide whether if they're going to hit that follow button or if they're just going to keep on scrolling. So know this about your feed. Let me know if you guys have any questions in the comments as well so I can answer those. Next, we're going to talk about reels. Reels. This is a really big topic. Really big topic. Like what I did there? These are 15 to 30 seconds, right? Those reels, we know what those are. It's Instagram decided to shift because during 2020 when everyone was at home, TikTok, which used to be Musical.ly, all of a sudden blew up out of nowhere. It was no longer just 15-year-olds dancing around on these little teeny clips. It was now Generations, every generation was on TikTok. So Instagram was like, we've got to pivot, we need to innovate. And I'll be honest with you guys, I thought Reels were a joke. I was like, there's no way this is gonna stick. There's no way that Instagram users are going to pivot and shift and pick up this type of content. I did not think it was gonna last. But lo and behold, call me, you know, like I was totally wrong because Reels are the hottest thing on Instagram right now. This is the biggest way if you are growing your audience and you are looking for an industry-specific audience, right? So for me, I want to draw in heart-centered, purpose-driven entrepreneurs. So as long as I'm using succinct hashtags, which we're not gonna get into hashtag strategy today, We'll get into that tomorrow. But if I'm using like specific hashtag strategies, then I'm training the algorithm of what I talk about. And the reason why that's important is that when you train the algorithm of what you are about, it will start pushing your content into other people's feeds. Does that make sense? So like once you start teaching the algorithm— so a lot of my hashtags are ADHD entrepreneur, entrepreneur, business owner, female leaders, CEO mindset. So I'm teaching the algorithm what my content's about, and it takes about 12 posts of you using very succinct— my video is getting interrupted, dang it. Let me try turning off my, um, I thought it was looking a little sketchy. So if you guys use very succinct hashtags that are industry-specific, then what's going to happen is you are now going to have your— that is going to teach the algorithm what you're about. So if you are, um, let's say you are doing like vegan food or something like that, like vegan food, then you want to put like hashtag vegan, hashtag vegan life, all of those things, and it takes about 12 posts until it learns what you teach about. So just know that if you're not seeing a reach on your content yet, if you're not seeing that uptick in the reach, then what's going to happen— keep on posting consistently about once a day if you can, at least 3 times a week with consistent hashtags, like very specific hashtags. That it's going to push your content out. You'll start to see an incline. Trust me, you guys, if you stay consistent and you keep teaching the algorithm, you will see that incline happen, and it's going to be like boom. All of a sudden you're going to take off. So just know that Instagram is going to push your content out. If you guys have ever seen like when you pop open your reels and it just gives you random stuff, it's because it is giving you what you usually look at, it's pushing that content out. Does that make sense? So it's going to push that content out. And, you know, of course with reels you can also be looking at things like what's trending, what trending topics are happening in your industry, what trending topics are happening, you know, in the pop culture world. You can also look at trending music and see what's happening with your music. And, you know, really looking at all of those things. So next we're going to talk about stories. Let me grab my plug real quick. I didn't realize my laptop was dying. Gotta love those live videos, right? Okay, so next we're going to talk about— still happening. What a bummer. I don't even know what's going on. I could plug it into my, um, my jack. Let me know if it's still happening and I will plug it in. Okay, uno momento, por favor. All right. Don't you love live streaming? It's so amazing. So I just plugged my my Wi-Fi or plugged it into the Ethernet, whatever that means. So hopefully that improved it. I don't know. Let me guys let me know if that's what's going on. Otherwise, we have really bad internet in Oregon period. Which just drives me crazy. So when we talk about, um, your reels, that's 15 to 30 seconds. What you want to be doing is really short content. The things that are performing really well are like how-to videos. So like 3 tips on this, how to do this, and you want to create like 3 to 5 steps. We talked about that yesterday as well. You wanna make sure that your reels are very succinct, they have a really good hook, so you're hooking them in, right? You're asking them right away, hey, do you wanna know how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich? Or 3 ways to get your best abs by summer, and then you're gonna give them those 3 steps. You wanna be hooking them in right away because again, you have about 3 seconds to capture their attention and then to give them the rest of the information within 7 seconds, about 7 to, you know, you have 10 to 30 seconds depending, 10 to 30 seconds to, 15 to 30 seconds to get your reel done succinct. So make sure that you're really doing a hook that's drawing them in, and then you can, you know, really get them, capture them with either how-tos, quick tips, top tips or, you know, things like that that are really going to help bring them in. Elaine says, what's the difference between Reel and a video post? So a Reel is— that's such a good question. So a video post is going to be either something you're uploading, which the, um, in the feed right now on Instagram, it can be up to 1 minute. You can do a 1-minute video that you can upload The difference between that is like a reel is a 10 to 30 second video short where you can put like captions on there. So if you've ever seen it, it's kind of like the TikTok thing where there's like captions that come up. People have music with it a lot of times. It's pretty much like a copycat version of TikTok and Instagram has chosen to pivot And to innovate to get their followers back. The people, everyone who left Instagram and went over to TikTok because there's a very addicting psychology behind it because every 30 seconds you're getting a new thing. It's like a surprise. You're getting that dopamine hit. You're getting that excitement of a new video. So the difference between a reel and a video is a video is something like this where I'm live. we're live streaming, I'm talking, but then on a reel it's a little bit more curated. And then people will put like video, they'll put music in the background, and then they will also do captions. Maybe they're doing, you know, different transitions where they're looking this way and then all of a sudden they're looking this way, and you kind of like master the art of that. But it's, it's quite a bit different in the fact that it's more curated And it is more—you're putting more graphics, more effects, more more like words on it. If that makes sense, it's still happening. Ah! How do I contact you? Um, good question. Yeah, you can email me val@valnickels.com. That'll be the best way. I've been drowning in messages for the past week, so just know that if I haven't gotten back to you, that's why. I barely had a moment to. Like even check messages at this right now. But yeah, definitely email me. And next we will talk about stories. Stories are one of my favorite things in the world. Whenever I get super busy, I fall off of stories, which is very sad to me because it's my favorite tool out there. The reason why I like stories is those are the things, you know, up at the top of your Instagram you'll see people's stories up at the top, and that's one of the reasons why I love stories, because I have people that tell me, Val, every single day I go to your stories to see what's going on. Every time I open my Facebook, every time I open my Instagram, you're right there. You're right there giving me some motivation. You're right there cheering me on. You're right there like doing the thing, and I want to see what you're doing each and every single day. And I love that because every time someone opens their Instagram, you know, they're seeing me right there on top. How many of you would love for your ideal clients or your potential clients to open up your— their Instagram and see you right away? I mean, amazing, right? So stories are awesome because of the fact that They're about 15 seconds, so you can go through and it'll record you for about 15 seconds. You can also do sequences, you can do sequences where you have, you know, you're going through your story, maybe you're telling a story, you're telling clips, you want to think about like, this is such a bad analogy, but it's true, you want to think about like a reality TV show. Right? If you think about the reality TV show, they're not just showing constant beautiful curated filmed stuff. You have what? You have like the confession booth where maybe that person's looking at the camera, it's just you and them, and they are talking about something more in depth that happened. They're showing clips of the city, you know, if it's the Kardashians, they have clips of LA, they're showing people shopping on Rodeo Drive, you know, whatever that is. So think of your stories almost like your own little reality TV show, right? So you're showing little clips, it's real, it's raw, you're showing pieces of you, and this is where your ideal clients and your followers get to know who you really are, right? Because it's one thing to see like a cute little reel or, you know, to see someone's beautiful picture from Hawaii or whatever, but when you see stories, You get to know the person behind the brand. You get to see like the real life version of that person. And that's why I love stories, because I love authenticity. I love to be real. I love to like drop the waterline and just show up the way, whatever happens, right? If the internet's glitchy, we show up. If whatever, you know, like whatever happens. And so it is, You know, it's a great way to show the real you. Catherine says, oh, hello Missy, hi. Catherine says, I love stories, could you repeat that, it interrupted again. Dang it, I'm not sure what I said. All the Misfits too, yeah, it's definitely showing me there's interruptions in my internet, so I don't know what is happening. I don't know if we have like a storm coming in or what, but with your stories you want to show, so what I was saying was that you want to show the behind the scenes look. And you want to think of it almost like a reality TV show. So you're doing little clips, you're showing B-roll, and by B-roll I mean, you know, maybe it's the story of the mountain or, you know, looking at the sky. Your B-roll is just kind of like what's happening around you. You want to show about 10% of that. You want to show 20% of, you know, like real stuff, like curated, and then the rest of it you want it to be kind of raw. Real, like scenes of what you're doing right now. You can get used to just like taking your phone out and turning your camera around and documenting what you're doing, right? Like documenting what you have going on. And if you're like nobody wants to see it, believe me they do. Believe it or not, I have people all the time ask me. They go, Val, what do you do all day? Like what do you actually like? Do? Like, what does your day look like? What do you like do? And I'm, you know, it's different every day. And honestly, it's— I thought it was pretty boring, but people are always asking me that. They always want to know the behind the scenes. So this is a great way, you know, show some of your process, show what you're doing. I could even take out my phone and be like, I'm doing a training right now, an Instagram training on stories. And here we are on stories, check it out you guys. And I could like show everybody, but just think about like showing people behind the scenes of what you do, because even if you think what you do is boring, or even if you think what you do nobody's gonna be into it, guess what? They are. Believe it or not, we have become such a voyeuristic people. We're very voyeuristic. We like to kind of like look and see what people are doing and see the behind the scenes and like have a peek at people's lives, right? Might sound kind of creepy, but I do believe it's because of the pandemic and everything that's happened there. I think that we've kind of become more curious about people in their real life because now it's acceptable to be on a glitchy Zoom or to just like have Jimmy Fallon interviewing someone on Zoom, whereas that would have never flown 2 years ago. Right? Now it's like just common for people to be in their homes and sharing their lives with us. So we have become a little bit voyeuristic. Let's see. All the Misfits 2. Yes. Even a picture of your ring light. Yes. Yeah, my ring light is— gosh, that thing, this one has lasted me a long time. And it was from Amazon for like $30, I think. It wasn't very much money, but it's— yeah, it has been a good one and it's adjustable too, so it's amazing. No, Val, it's still creepy. Yeah, it is a little creepy. I mean, it's a little creepy, but we're voyeuristic. We like to see the behind-the-scenes stuff. So I hope that that served you guys. This is just a piece of some of the, you know, things, the tactics the strategies to use on Instagram. Tomorrow I'm going to dive a lot deeper into more. We're going to talk about IGTV, we're going to talk about live videos, and we're going to talk about, um, oh, you guys won't want to miss this, highlights, because this is going to teach you— I'm going to teach you how to set up your Instagram so that your clients can go on there and see exactly what you do. They can, um, and they'll sell themselves. On your products. So don't miss tomorrow. I will be back tomorrow at 2 PM Pacific time. We had to bump it today. Thank you guys so much for still showing up. We had to bump it today because I had a client that needed, that needed me, and so we got to bump it back. But tomorrow we'll be back at 2 PM Pacific, 5 PM Eastern, right here in this group. Don't miss it. It's going to be amazing. And don't forget to take a screenshot of this training or, you know, go do a reel, go do some reels, go do a story and tag me in it. And if you tag me in it, we will put your name in the drawing and we will be giving away Instagram audits. And I know we have a winner for today. So let me find out who that is real quick. Let me pull up my Messenger. All right, all right. We have Mr. Polly. Congratulations! I'll reach out to you so we can schedule a 30-minute call. Oh, Ari put his Instagram in there. Thank you so much, Ari. Yeah, drop your Instagrams in there so that we can— I can go check them out. I love you guys. Hopefully, you know, go practice this information because we want you to take action. Right, we want you to take action on this. So go practice the information, start creating some, you know, if you wanna create like a hashtag sequence that's very succinct to your industry, you wanna start pushing out that content so that you're teaching Instagram what you are about. Go check out your Instagram bios, look and see, you know, if somebody lands on your page, do they know what you're about? Do they know that you can help them? Are you serving them? And also, you know, take a look at your feed, play around with some things, look and see if like, are— what's your content base? Are you using the 80/20 rule, or can you map out some content that's very specific to your lifestyle, what you do behind the scenes, testimonials, celebration posts, all of those things? I love you guys so much. Thank you for spending another beautiful day with me. We will be back tomorrow at— 10:00 AM. 2 PM Pacific, 5 PM Eastern. I love you. I will see you soon. I have Val envy. Aww, thank you. You're the best. I love you guys.