Are you a small business owner trying to market your business on Instagram or social media in general? Are you struggling to increase your engagement rate, grow your instagram, or gain followers? Read this blog post and learn how I grew my Instagram from 0 – 1200 followers in just a few months as a new small business owner!

Tip #1: Use ALT text

You might be wondering….what the heck is ALT text?? Well, it’s alternative text for screen readers. So, if someone is blind and they are using a screen reader & you have included ALT text in your post, the screen reader will read the description you have written out loud. This feature makes Instagram more accessible AND it gives you an AMAZING opportunity to use keywords! In order to add ALT text to your posts on Instagram, create a new post, scroll down to the bottom of the page on which you write comments, tag other accounts, and tag your location, click on advanced settings, and then scroll down and click “write ALT text.”

Tip #2: Tag your location

This tip may seem a bit obvious, but tagging your location on Instagram can increase your reach the same way that hashtags can! When you tag your location, your post will show up on that location’s explore page and therefore, will show your content to an entire audience that may have been missing out on it. You do still have to rank to show up at the top of the page; however, the same rule applies to hashtags.

Tip #3: Use all 30 of your hashtags

If instagram didn’t want us to use all 30 hashtags, they wouldn’t have given us the option to! A great way to grow your instagram account is by using hashtags & using them correctly! You HAVE to do hashtag research if you’re going to use hashtags. Make sure you’re using hashtags specific to your business & your post. Use as many as you can because the more you use, the more of a possibility your content has of being seen by someone that wouldn’t have seen it otherwise!

Tip #4: Use reels

I know you probably hate Instagram reels, but you HAVE to start using them. People that post reels regularly grow exponentially compared to people that continue only posting static graphics. Instagram always pushes their new features & rewards users that give them a shot. So, get inspired and start recording!

Tip #5: Do engagement before and after you post

DUH! If you want people to engage with your content, you have to engage with theirs! If you engage for 15 minutes before and after you post by replying to instagram stories & liking/commenting on people’s posts, your post will show up in more active user’s feeds and will be engaged with more than it would have been had you posted and ghosted!

Want more instagram tips & tricks? I post them daily on stories & my grid, so follow me on Instagram to keep learning! Don’t have time to manage your own socials? Fill out a client app and let me do it for you!

The topic of the century! Do I need to have a blog for my small business? Do I need to have a blog to market myself on Pinterest? Short answer, it will definitely help. In this blog I will cover all of the benefits of having a blog & why YOU should be blogging in your small business.

Blogging gives you an additional opportunity to optimize your website with SEO

Having a dedicated blog makes it that much easier for you to incorporate more keywords onto your website. This is an amazing benefit of blogging because it increases your chances of ranking higher on google & other search platforms. The main goal of having a website is ranking on google, being searchable, and giving people a place to come back to and learn more about your business. So, why not increase the likelihood of being found by writing a keyword optimized blog post every once in a while?

Blogging makes your Pinterest marketing more successful

If you’re marketing your business on Pinterest, you probably already know that Pinterest values fresh content more than anything else. This means that if you’re linking all of your pins to the same home page or about page on your website over and over again, eventually, you’re going to begin ranking lower and lower on Pinterest search results. In order to be successful on Pinterest, you need to be creating fresh graphics, key word rich 500 character descriptions, and links each week.

It makes creating Instagram posts a piece of cake

Blogging makes creating Instagram posts a piece of cake & vice versa. I encourage all clients to re-purpose either blog content for Instagram or Instagram content for blogging—whichever comes first. If you are already doing one thing, it is THAT much easier to begin doing their other because you can LITERALLY just repurpose the content for the new platform. In fact, if you want to see an example of this, you can cross reference this blog post with my Instagram, where it initially lived.

Want daily Instagram tips & tricks or daily Pinterest tips & tricks? Follow me on my instagram! Want someone to manage your blog, Pinterest or Instagram for you? Fill out a client application & let’s work together!

The TOP 3 IG engagement killers–believe me, I know from experience!

I SO remember what it’s like to be a new social media manager that has NO idea what engagement is or how to boost my page’s rate. It’s so stressful to have to try to figure out how everything works. Where do you start? What do you do? What do you NOT do? That’s why I created this list of 3 major DONT’S when it comes to Instagram engagement.

1. Posting and ghosting

Engaging before and after a post is so important. It puts you at the front of your audience’d mind and boosts your post to the top of the feed of people you have recently engaged with.

2. Stories without captions

If you post a series of stories that you’re speaking in but don’t post any captions, people are more than likely going to skip right through! Most people don’t watch stories with their sound on!

3. Not removing ghost followers

I must admit, I can be bad about this one myself! Sometimes you get caught up in the numbers and forget what’s really important. But, if you remove your ghost followers, your engagement rate will grow. This is because IG pushes your content out to a select few of your followers when you initially post. If they don’t interact, IG pushes it down people’s feed bc they see that it isn’t performing well, SO if you have a ton of ghost followers that won’t see or interact with your new content, they’re simply a waste of space!

I hope those helped! If you want more Instagram or Pinterest tips, check out my IG! I post weekly on my grid and daily on my stories!

So you’ve seen a million and one people tell you that you HAVE to be on Pinterest to market your small business. But do they ever tell you how long it will take you to see realistic results? If you’re sitting behind your computer absolutely clueless as to how long it may take you to actually grow your Pinterest account, then you aren’t going to be able to properly manage your expectations!

Pinterest is a Long Term Marketing Strategy

If you’re looking for something quick and easy, then forget about it! While it is possible to go viral super fast on Pinterest, it is highly unlikely! For example, I have 5 Pinterest clients right now and have been working with them all for about 3 months. They have all had relatively similar growth rates with story pin impressions ranging from 1k-8k impressions on average. Out of my 5 clients, only ONE of them has gone viral and it was after 2 solid moths of posting fresh pins every day and story pins once a week. SO, don’t expect to go get rich quick if you DO decide to market your business on Pinterest.

The Reality of Pinterest

The reality of marketing your business on Pinterest is that it will take 3-6 months of posting every day and writing keyword rich descriptions for every post that you send out in order to see REAL, sustainable results. That’s why so many people choose to hire a Pinterest manager to run their accounts for them—it takes about 5-10 hours per week to manage a Pinterest account, so if you don’t have that kind of time, I highly suggest you hire an expert (like me) to do it for you!

Want more Pinterest tips & tricks? Check out my IG! Want to outsource your pinterest? Join my waitlist by filling out a client app!