Y’all. Carla is amaze-balls. She’s an online biz coach at CarlaBiesinger and she specializes in INSTAGRAM!!!

I know lots of us have alllll the questions about how Instagram works, so Carla’s gonna be here to teach us how to monetize our Instagram traffic to turn followers into paying clients. And answer any other Instagram Q’s y’all have. So make sure you’re live for this one, y’all!

Resources mentioned in this episode:

Carla’s website: https://www.carlabiesinger.com

Plann Instagram planner: https://www.plannthat.com

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Here’s a transcript of the episode

Brooke Logan:

We are going to be talking about Instagram. I’m so not an Instagram person at all. So I have to say I was looking at your feed and I what you’ve been doing. I’m trying to make it more personal stuff and yeah. So I’m trying, but yeah, we are here to talk about all things Instagram with you because you are the fro and I just am scared to ever even talk about it cause I don’t know what I’m doing on there. I felt I know. So first everybody, this is Carla. I was just have you introduce yourself first and talk about your business a little bit and why you started it and all that good stuff.

Carla Biesinger:

Okay, sure. Well my name is color mixing it. It’s my last name. Nobody can ever pronounce it. I need to get an American last name. I work with women in the food health and fitness industry who is starting their own online business as well as aspiring influencers who want to grow their account and work with brands and get all the sponsored campaigns some back. And I basically started my business two years ago after going through a breakup and completely leaving my previous life. So I had, I used to own a restaurant together with my ex boyfriend in one of his areas, Argentina. And we started the business because we had this idea to create this ultimate lifestyle and have this freedom and the ability to travel and you know, to just have this amazing exciting life. And what happened was we were just working out ass off in Buenos Aires didn’t really make any money because we hadn’t, didn’t have any idea how to run a business or a restaurant. And I was miserable. In the end. Five years later he decided to stay into the business. I decided to leave. And so I was hmm, I don’t know if I could go back to the corporate world though. And so I wanted to build a business that allowed me to do what I initially wanted, which was to travel and to work from anywhere and to not have any employees.

Brooke Logan:

Yeah. So I’ve, I’ve read a little bit about that whole story on your Instagram, but I didn’t realize it was five years that you did the restaurant.

Carla Biesinger:

Yeah, it’s crazy. And it’s I, I don’t really to talk about it too much anymore, but it’s the number one restaurant in Buenos Aires now. It’s a Oh wow. I haven’t figure business. So it really is an amazing project that we built. It just didn’t really have a happy ending for me. So yeah,

Brooke Logan:

I got you to where you are now. Okay. Cool. So the next thing I to ask everybody is just what is your definition of branding? what does it mean for you and your business and how has it affected you?

Carla Biesinger:

Well, I think branding is so much more than just your logo and your colors, right? I think your voice, your message, everything that when someone comes in touch with your brand, it’s how you make them. how would they feel? I think so. I think my Instagram or any Instagram account is an extension of your brand as well. So if someone comes to your feed, they see your brand just in those first six to nine images. And so that’s why it’s really important to have a curated feed as well because it is an extension of your brand.

Brooke Logan:

Yeah, definitely. Okay. So that’s my branding part. I always have to ask everybody branding question. Okay. So Instagram then so you’ve already touched on it. So our title of our thing here is how to convert followers into paying clients. If it’s okay with you though, I to jump back ahead of that a little bit and talk about how to get followers in the first how to get real followers and not just robots or the eye. It’s driving me nuts lately. I get the follow up, well get 50 new followers and then the next day they’re all gone.

Carla Biesinger:

I know we can totally talk about that. But I do want to say, and it’s the number of followers, it’s such a difficult topic because yes, okay. You want to track more followers because their potential clients, if they’re your ideal followers. But we tend to get so hung up on the number of followers we have or the number of followers we grow by each day.

And I actually recently did a, a graph because I wanted to show how the growth of my Instagram accounts. So when I first started year or even a year ago I was growing by 15 100 followers a month. Wow. And now it’s dropped down to maybe 500 but my income has five x. Wow. Okay. So it goes to show just yes, growing your account is important, but really just spending your time also on making sure you’re turning those followers into clients, not just boring about gaining followers and Greg engagement is also important.

Brooke Logan:

Yes. Okay. So that’s why I did it. Okay, cool.

Carla Biesinger:

I think generally there’s three, three parts to your Instagram strategy. There’s your visual strategy as your caption strategy. And then as your growth strategy, that’s hot. I to explain it anyways. So Instagram is a visual platform, so you have to create beautiful content that attracts your ideal followers, right? You have to create a consistent feed and this theme that is your look, right? People call it your own online magazine, whatever you want to call it, but you want to make sure that when people see your posts in their feed, they recognize them as videos. But then the next thing is you need to say something meaningful and a value in your country, right? Sometimes I, I think that’s one of the biggest mistakes when people just post a photo and then put 20 hashtags, doesn’t mean anything to me. It doesn’t connect with me in any way. And it depends on, on what, what your message is and how you want to use your Instagram account. But I really found that once I started to really use my posts as a way to open up to my audience to show an ability to really connect with them on a deeper level. The quality of the comments I’m getting and the connection I’m building with my followers is a completely different level.

Brooke Logan:

Awesome. So telling your personal story is I said at the beginning, I’ve read about your Argentina experience and so do you have any tips? Then I’m like,

Carla Biesinger:

What types of stories or and how much should it be about your business and how much about you? I mean that’s a very personal decision I think. I feel you have to, on Instagram you have to connect with your audience over something else than just your business, right? So if you know you only give branding tips, then that’s great. But it’s not really letting me connect with Brooke and it’s not really telling me who’s broke, what’s different about her? And you’re not you’re, yeah, you’re showing that you’re an expert, but really they’re growing the know and trust factor I think happens when you’re just telling stories and sharing something about you. And I kind of, something I to do is I just see every post as a mini story and not every post has to be there’s amazing inspiring novel or anything.

Sometimes I have to, today I said uh, productive Sunday for me is when you get up and you make the decision between pancakes and waffles. So I do to put, that’s my brand. I to keep things light and I to keep it fun. But then when I do want to write something more inspiring or something that connects small, I do think about, okay, what’s happening in my life right now? Or what happened this past week? What did I learn from it and how can I relate it back to my audience? Yeah. Awesome. Yup.

And so the growth part really only happens once. You have those two things in place. So you can go out and yeah, I can tell you go and follow a thousand people and maybe 500 we’ll follow back. that is a strategy. But unless you have a feed is attractive and attracting your ideal followers visually and unless you have something to say in your caption that connects with your audience, you can follow a thousand people. And if that doesn’t really speak to them, they’re not gonna follow you back. And even if they do, then maybe they do it because of the follow back. They’re not really connecting really to care ideal client material. Okay. So your Instagram is a gorgeous, cause you have all of your pretty pictures and then you have some food stuff too. And you used to do all food pictures and now you have more of you and it’s awesome.

Brooke Logan:

So how do you how do you find good pictures that aren’t, have you obviously you take the pin out, you get pictures of you, but, and that’s a great question.

Carla Biesinger:

And I think a lot of people I know struggle with creating the content and it really doesn’t have to be difficult. I started out just featuring other people’s content, reposting other content that I saw on Instagram. So I have my different categories. It’s easy for me now because there’s only two, there’s me and then there’s food and I know after two years and that my audience is really crazy about pink smoothie bowls, waffles and pancakes. That’s the content I saw us. And then I have the pictures off myself. So if you can, divide your content into different and you can make it so much easier to say, okay, I’m doing rows of three, so you have one about you, one may be a quote and then one, something else does that connects with your audience.

And so when you’re planning your content okay, I’m going to have to do 10 quotes, 10 photos of myself and then 10 that I have to find. And so you can go through different hashtags and you can find content to feature. The only important things to know is when you feature someone else’s content. Generally I to ask for permission. I just think it’s polite. Yeah. And then you want to tag them in the post and then mention them in the caption just to give them credit. Yeah, we don’t want to steal people’s stuff for sure. And then the one app I’m couldn’t live without his plan. So it’s p l a double n, which is a visual planners. They can upload all your posts, you can drag and drop them until you’re happy with the way the feed looks, schedule them. It doesn’t post automatically. So there are other apps that do, but this is kind of, I’ve been using this app since it came out that, oh no, who founded it? This is awesome girl from Sydney. So I’d just spreading the word.

Brooke Logan:

Yeah, that one’s really cool. You actually told me about that one a long time ago and I’ve been using that one too. And then I tried, we’ll see how the plan Ali, that was automatically post. I felt I didn’t it automatically posting because I would forget about it and then I’d be what’s happening and just do it anyway. I going in and doing it myself. But that one does. It works well. But I him. I am also, I’m going to type it in for anyone watching and anyone that just joints cause I saw a few people just joined. Make sure and type in your questions are and say hi and let us know that you’re here. And the website, it’s it’s planned that right? Yep. Plan that.com. Okay. So I just type that in for everyone to have, but okay. Cool. So I interrupted you there. You’re talking about the growth strategy and then I jumped back to pictures. Yes, no, no, that’s fine. And that’s the

Carla Biesinger:

I think once you know who your ideal follower you, ideal client is, you can figure it out. Okay. What hashtags are they using? What other accounts are they following? What big names in your industry, any competitors or just influences and then that’s how you find them and that’s how you connect with them. So I think when you’re finding new accounts to follow, to engage with, it’s one of my favorite strategies is going to a competitors account and just having a look at the comments that they’re getting on their posts. Okay. And then going and checking out the comments, clicking over to those people’s profile because they’re already showing that they’re active and engaged and then engaging with other people, engaging with content that’s similar or a business that’s similar to mine. So it’s you’re seeping out or filtering out the passive people and you’re going directly for the one and say okay, they’re actually,

Brooke Logan:

cause I, I’ve done it the opposite way and just go to competitors or whoever else and just look at their followers and click through there, which takes freaking forever. But you, right. I have no idea which ones are engaged. Duh. Just look at the comment. So much sense.

Carla Biesinger:

Just leave a comment on someone else’s comment and then you can already start building a relationship that way. And then the next logical step is just okay, follow them and they follow you back.

Brooke Logan:

I love it. That’s so I felt I make Instagram so much harder in my head. Everything needs to be over analyze it, but that’s super helpful. I love that one. But how did I not think of that?

Carla Biesinger:

What’s working well as well? Uh, if you’ve really just wanting to grow your following giveaways work really well. Okay. If you partner up with brands, obviously you want to do something partner up with a brand that’s relevant to your audience, right? But I have a client who grew her following to 80,000 just by doing these big giveaways. So it depends on what your end goal is, right? If you’re an influencer and you want to work with brands, then yes, you need to have a larger following to make more money. If you’re a business owner and you really want to connect with clients, unless you know you’re looking for that social proof, you can say, okay, I have 50,000 followers. I actually think having a smaller, the smaller accounts with the smaller following us, so much more engaged than the bigger ones. And you’re able to really connect with more of your followers because there aren’t as many.

Brooke Logan:

Yeah, that’s so true. That’s so true. I’ve noticed that too. And sometimes I’ll look at accounts, I’m oh my gosh, they have so many followers. But then they get they’ll have 30,000 followers and they can get 15 likes on their pictures. Oh, well I don’t really want that. No, that makes perfect sense. I had a question and then I forgot what it was, so maybe I’ll think of it, but, okay. That’s really cool though. So that’s definitely important. Getting engaged when, so, oh, I know what it was. I was going to ask about stories. So, and I know I’ve asked you this question before, but just for everyone else, how important do you feel stories are so important? Yeah, the answer already.

Carla Biesinger:

And I think you have your feed that’s so perfectly curated and styled and it’s nothing your real life. And then you have your stories where you can show you face, where you can do the little videos and the behind the scenes and where your audience is really getting to know you. And so I’ve been talking to a few coaches actually who have been asking me I don’t really want to do Instagram. I want to outsource it. And I think there’s certain parts that you can outsource the posting or the engaging and finding new followers.

But your stories, you just have to show you that. They don’t want to have to be I actually think you shouldn’t do too many. you see the bars on top and when they’re this small, I’m already out of there because it’s that much less. So you want to make sure whatever you’re posting in your stories is still interesting. It’s interesting to your audience and not just to you. And yeah, you just, I feel put yourself in your, you’ll follow us shoes. How much do you really want to see of someone else’s stories and life? So I think if you can do three to eight a day, that’s not a lot. I’m oh my God, I just started playing it. The stories that last week. So what do I say on here?

Carla Biesinger:

So I think you can show your dogs your coffee, whatever you’re having for breakfast, this would be a much more informal and it doesn’t have to get back as much because then they disappear too. Unless you just say so. But then the other thing, which is so cool, you have so many awesome features in the stories. It’s you can ask questions and we can have your audience just type in. Well either you can state something and they can ask you questions or you can ask a question, they can send you answers, you can do this story poles, which is really cool. So I’m working on a new free Instagram course and they came up with two titles and I was oh my God, which one I choose? I have no idea. So I just asked my audience which one you preferred? It was 80% one of the one. The other one. Yeah. It’s simply easy to get feedback that way. You can do the slider pole, it’s just you’re training your audience to engage with you.

Brooke Logan:

Yeah. You can make it super easy for them. they don’t have to go write a comment or anything. It’s much more easy to get them to just click a button and then the more that they engage with you, the more they see your posts on stories. Yeah. Is that true?

Carla Biesinger:

Yeah. Yeah. It’s all part of the algorithm. So definitely I think making use of those features is super important, especially when it comes to turning your followers into clients. Yeah, no. Yeah. It’s just an easy in to see, okay, who’s, who’s actually watching what I’m doing because the people who are leaving comments on your posts aren’t necessarily always the people that are super interested in your, in your office. True. I’ve had people book discovery calls with me who’ve told me they watch all my stuff and they, and I’ve never seen a common from them so they weren’t even on my radar at all. So by I feel a part of that is, and this is just my opinion, so people might agree, but I was saying before it stories are much more informal.

Brooke Logan:

I do the same thing. There’s these coaches that I would want to work with. I’ve never commented on any of their stuff, but I watched sorry that they have, I know everything about them. I’m actually commented so they probably have no idea who I am. So that makes perfect sense. I feel the more opportunities you can give people to follow you and see going on, the better. Yeah. I’m still scared of stories, but I’m getting, I’m getting better. you look at that,

Carla Biesinger:

They’re I’m making it more difficult than it needs to be. you just, you get used to it. And I think it definitely gets easier, the more often that you do it.

Yeah. Just thought with maybe, and they becomes fun to see, okay, what a well, how to turn normal, boring moments of your life into little Instagram worthy stories. And so you can just start doing that without really a huge strategy behind it. But then once you have people watching your stories regularly, then you can go into pit in the most strategic way and say, okay, I’m gonna ask a question, I’m going to get people to reply to a story. So it opens up a direct message and then that’s really the way you do that inviting and Yup. Yeah. Asking, you know, yeah. If you want to help them whenever starting at personal conversation.

Brooke Logan:

Yeah, I love it. That’s awesome. So I feel I had this, I wrote out actually this whole list of questions that I had and I can’t find it anyway, just trying to remember them and you Sam, for the people who have joined in to put in your questions please take advantage of Carla because you’re awesome and your Instagram is so pretty. You need to follow her on Instagram too. We do have a couple of comments. Let me just real quick. I think they’re just Hey, I’m excited to be here. So let me definitely today. Yeah, I’m excited to see him learn how to use Instagram correctly. So, one of the other questions that I always struggle with is should hashtags, how do you find good hashtags and if you can just even go a little bit basic just in case anybody doesn’t know. what is the purpose of a Hashtag, how they work in general and then how to find good ones,

Carla Biesinger:

So hashtags are basically your way to get discovered on Instagram. So yeah. Yeah, it’s really that simple. Yeah. What makes you get found? You can include up to 30 hashtags per post. You can post them either in your caption or in your comments. So Instagram, there’s always the, all these debates with Instagram actually states it on their website that you can post it in the caption or in the comments. I to put mine in the comments because I just feel it cleans up my captions. Yeah. It makes it look prettier. Yeah. And so start doing that too. Yeah. So hashtags are time sensitive. So basically when you upload a post with the Hashtag branding for example, then your posts will up here on top of that hashtags feed. Now every time someone else post suppose and uses the Hashtag branding, their posts will appear in front of yours.

And so you just moves down the feed until it disappears. Yeah. And so the biggest mistake is people think the bigger the Hashtag the better. Right? Okay. Yeah. But actually it’s the complete opposite. So if you’re using huge hashtags where people are uploading hundreds of photos every second, then when you post, by the time you refresh, your post has already disappeared. So your chances of getting found, uh, pretty much nonexistent. Yeah. Tiny, tiny. Okay. So I generally recommend using a mix of different hashtag sizes. Okay. So anywhere you don’t want to use hashtags that have really tiny because no one’s looking at them, I recommend, basically doing different hashtags sets, right? So you don’t have to come up with hashtags every single time you post. And so you may be, depending on what your categories are, you might have, I have one on breakfasts, I have one on intentional entrepreneur stuff. They have one on Vegan food bloggers. So if you can categorize your content in a way and then you can create hashtags sets around those categories and you can save those in plants so you don’t have to and just automatic then or I save them in my notes section when I post. I didn’t go and quickly copy my hashtags and then paste them in a comment. Cool. So size wise I generally recommend going anywhere between 10,000 would be the smallest one. I would use five 600

Brooke Logan:

okay. Okay. Yeah. So I have, I do have branding as one of mine. Okay. So I probably using that one out, that’s not helping me. It’s not hurting anything but it’s taken up one of my 30 spots.

Carla Biesinger:

Yeah. And it’s cool. I have a client who booked her first $800 client whose client found her by a searching for personal smell trainer Railey the Hashtag. Yeah. So it goes to show if he can be really specific and you’re not, obviously if your business is in a certain location and you’re looking for clients in your area, then definitely using this video, the name of your city and the Hashtag I was in Paris, I was looking for a photographer and so I just searched hashtag Paris photographer and I found a whole bunch that I was able to contact.

Brooke Logan:

That’s so good. And it’s aside from Instagram strategy, it’s better than Google too cause I think you can. Yup. Okay, cool. I know I’ve had a bunch of people ask me questions about hashtags and how they work. I think we have, we definitely have a lot of people in this group that are just brand new to Instagram. So I think that’s super helpful. So what else? What else? What else? I sorry guys. I see it. I promise I have a whole page of notes and I have no idea where it went. It’s pretty awesome. So let’s recap too just for a second. For the people that have joined late. And you said the first, the number one was visual strategy, right? Yep. And I’ll just type them in.

Carla Biesinger:

Yup. So how did she, you I’m not a photographer, I don’t have an [inaudible] boyfriend or anything that. And I love that term. I wish I did, but you know, I don’t have, I’m not a professional photographers so that if you suck at photography then I would rather you you stuck photography or feature other people’s content and or learn how to edit your photos. If someone is taking photos of you, you can get light room presets just very easily upgrade. yeah, thank you. Photos basically. Yeah. But pimp your photos, you can use it. There’s an APP. I just did a tutorial on code airbrush my can get rid of all your wrinkles and all that stuff. So definitely use those tools and make sure that what you putting out there as visually appealing. So do you have certain stock photography websites that you like? Yeah. I actually it’s called, I don’t know how to pronounce it in English. It’s called, it’s spelled h. A. U. T. E. Okay. Which is I think $100 for three months. And I use, I don’t use too many of her photos for my Instagram, but it’s very for female entrepreneurs it’s lots of cute branded, flat fees and stuff that. Yeah. But I use her photos mainly for landing pages and stuff that that I design. You have all of your pretty professional pictures of you for your Instagram, so you don’t really need stock ones anymore, it seems other than food, I mean, yeah, I’ve, so I feature the food ones and I’m getting better at taking better photos when I go out for coffee. So I’m making an effort and then really I just have people take photos of me. So they’re not taking by professional photographers. Just on your phone while you’re on my phone.

Yeah. So it, I really have noticed. Okay. You have to direct people and tell them, okay, just stand here and take this photo this and you just sit down. And they just pressed yet not at all. And then I started using light room, actually the APP on the phone and I have a free preset, I can buy a blogger and that just uses that to edit my photos. I can share her Instagram name in the comments later because I can’t pronounce it either. Cool. Awesome. I felt a lot of the stock photography websites are super boring and if you just look up, especially free stock photography websites, I’m sure there’s a lot of good paid ones, but a free one that I found that I really liked was Unsplash. Have you ever heard of that? Well actually I used to use them.

Yeah, I think that that’s the best free one that I found. I haven’t really looked. I need to look into a page, a good page stop cause I pixels. Stock calmness. Well that one’s for, yeah. Or this one? Kaboom picks. Okay. I haven’t heard of that one. I’ll have to look that one. Yup. Then it’s free as well. But I think honesty rather than paying for stock photos, I would just teach at other people’s content because it’s free. You growing a community around your brand, you’re supporting other Instagram is by featuring the content. It’s you know when you featuring content, make sure you taking content that’s already doing well on instinct, right. Pick the top performing posts or pick something that you find on your explore page. Cause then if that’s viral content, you might as well reuse viral content and not something that’s not doing that well.

Brooke Logan:

Okay. So other people probably know this but I blew my mind. I said, I don’t really know that much about Instagram. So actually told me that you can make collections is what they’re called and so that’s what I did after you told me about that. anytime I’m scrolling through Instagram and I see something that I Ooh, I can repost that, I just save it to soon called reposts. Yup. I’ll put my headphones up and then, yeah, just go back and get it later. And that was super helpful. I’m saying, yeah, people keep up with this stuff. And I know I used to take all the photos on my just screenshots and so my camera road is just pull off Instagram screech. Yeah. And that’s what I was doing. I was this is not a fiction. So yeah, make it collection. And I have, I have different categories too, just after talking to you, I have a picture of me and then a quote and then something about being an introvert because introvert stuff. So I get really good engagement with that. But also about my business too. And actually having a collection is a great way to have potential clients in one place. So if you I definitely, there’s this saying likes,s elites.

Carla Biesinger:

So if you measure the engagement on your posts and you seeing, okay, this person is constantly liking my stuff. She’s always replying to polls, always voted voting when I’m asking question. So you can have a collection with these potential clients or just people who, uh, on your radar because they’re always engaging with your stuff and then you can make sure to reach out to them or just engage with them to say thank you and to just give back and then reach out to them. So that’s definitely another way to just have everything in one place place for sure.

Brooke Logan:

I will definitely going to do that cause I have there’s certain people who just everything and responding to everything. And I love that one. I’m Jillian says she likes Pixabay and Pexels. Pixabay yeah, there’s one that I found and I can’t remember what it’s called. I’ll have to put it in there later, but it has they had all the silly pictures that was I think they call them whimsical little pigs with party hats and just fun stuff that. Cause I know a lot of the stock photography doesn’t have anything. that’s not fun. That’s fun. So I’ll have to look that one up because I hope and I’m putting it then, but it, it didn’t have a ton of pictures, but they were really funny, so. Okay, cool. So that was visual strategy again. Is there anything else we need to add from video strategy? How do you feel how do you feel about the people who split up one picture until nine different pictures?

Carla Biesinger:

I think it’s cool. I mean it looks really cool on your feed. You have to keep in mind how it looks how the individual posts look. Yeah. Because if he’s half of your hair. Yeah. So that’s tricky and it’s obviously involves a lot more planning, so I’m not into that, but I do think they look really cool and they look really different. So if you’re good at creating this stuff, you can create it in Photoshop probably. And just, and just break it up, break it up into squares. Yeah. As long as each post would look good on its own and would still attract potential followers. I think it’s a great strategy. I’m just not creative and talented enough to do that.

Brooke Logan:

And that’s what I’ve noticed is a lot of people that try to do it just don’t do it. Right. You’re your nose. I don’t want to see then my Instagram feed. But there’s one girl in particular as another brand girl, Lexi de Angelo, and that’s not her Instagram name though. It’s I forget what her Instagram is, but she does a really good job each post individually is, and then when you go look, every time I see her in my feed I go and click over to her because hers isn’t just for pictures and then another stack. It’s a whole thing. It build on top of each other. It’s really cool community over competition. Right. But no, it’s really cool. Okay, cool. Okay, so then what was number two? So number two was your caption strategy. Strategy. Okay. So we talked about all the hashtags and sharing personal stories and I think it comes down to,

Carla Biesinger:

well first of all defining again having the different categories and you can have visual categories and then you can have the caption content categories and that really depends on your brand on your voice in how you want to connect with your audience. So I know for me it’s one of my topics is self doubt and worrying and stuff. So I know that’s just you take every post you put out there as data and analyze how it does analyze the comments you’re getting and how your audience responds to them. So I started seeing once I really put myself out there and started posting more personal and be more vulnerable, I was getting comments paragraphs. Wow. Just where you see, okay this stuff clearly resonates with them so I’m going to do more of it.

Brooke Logan:

Yeah. Yeah, that’s definitely important. keeping track of having just the strategy behind just, okay, think of a cool caption, but analyzing the data, data, data, how you say that in Germany. Data data.

Carla Biesinger:

So I always thought in a, in American you say data, so I say data,

Brooke Logan:

I always say data. Okay. That’s what I say. Okay. So Jillian says, do you have any advice on what to post for people who have businesses and a more esoteric realm and not product, food or weight loss. So it’s purely service and not an actual thing. Is that why I think that’s what she means. I, and that was a question I had earlier too, the one that I forgot. Oh, okay, cool. When you’re talking about the giveaways and, and you know, we’ll enter Jillian’s question too, but if you don’t have an actual thing or pretty food and stuff, there’s only so many pictures. I know this is a struggle of mine too. There’s only so many pictures of my face that I want to post something on Instagram over and over again. So quotes is one that I found, but do you have any other advice on what do you mean?

Carla Biesinger:

And I think this is the reason why my Instagram account grew very quickly is because I have this shared passion for food and I share with my audience. Yeah. So we connected over this on a completely different level and so I can put in those pictures and it makes sense for my brand because I’m with people in food, health and fitness. So if some people actually there’s a girl I want it, I can share with you who I think is doing a really good job. So while you’re looking that up, one of the things that I, I was talking about a second ago that I do is I talk about being an introvert because that’s a huge part of my business that I, something I talk about a lot. And so I think just something that’s part of who you are that affects how you run your business but isn’t necessarily about your business.

Carla Biesinger:

It could be literally anything. if you have dogs and if your dogs, they’re a huge part of your life, then why not have some cute puppy picks this yet? New York, I don’t know if it’s literally p. Dot. S O p s. Dot. And why she’s amazing. you need to follow her and it’s just had to categories or her dog and then a food slash plants. So yeah. And that was when objectively outside those things don’t really go together, but you can make anything go together if that’s, if you live on the beach and you going to the beach every day, then share photos of the beach. If you travel a lot, share photos of the places you going. I think that will, doing that will also attract your ideal, follow your idea client because they also connect with those things and they have, they don’t just want to see for me as well, I could just do Instagram quotes every single day.

Carla Biesinger:

I get they don’t really get to know you. I feel you have your, your website and you’re for me it’s my Facebook group where I do trainings about business things, but I feel social media, especially Instagram is more pulling back branding of course, because that’s my thing. people want to do business with other people. Not just personal connections I feel is super important. And then tie it back to your business sometimes. Yeah. Yeah. And you can have a different visual, your visual strategy doesn’t have to be completely, I post a picture of a smoothie bowl for example, and then I can still talk about how I had a, I don’t know, something that happened in my life that wasn’t related to a smoothie bowl. You could capture an image that doesn’t, yeah. Okay. So I don’t know if that was helpful for Julian of she wants, yeah. Julian let us know. Hopefully that answered your question. If not, let us know. Cool. Okay. I think that’s really good point. Cause I, I don’t know what that a lot. So I’m okay,

Brooke Logan:

well what I want to say has nothing to do with this picture of this dog. But it doesn’t, it doesn’t always have to again, that’s me over analyzing.

Carla Biesinger:

It’s difficult because okay, you want to have your, your theme and so you have to stay consistent with your, with your visual strategy. But then yeah, just because they’re posting a picture of your dog, maybe you post you caption isn’t going to be about dog. But

Brooke Logan:

yeah. Well, and I think that’s really important on Instagram because I to remember first and foremost, it’s a visual platform. if, for me, when I’m looking at other people’s Instagram feeds and all, I’ll click over to their feed. You can’t see any of the captions. So it has to be a really good there to get me to click on it and then look at it. at first when I was doing this, I was okay, well here’s what I want to say and I need to find a picture of it. And if it’s a crappy picture, that’s not going to help me at all. No one’s going to ever see that caption later. So yeah, pretty [inaudible]

Carla Biesinger:

I do think and it took me almost two years to really consistently post pictures of myself, just because I don’t being in front of the camera, but I, I do think if you’re selling a service [inaudible] uh, you know a product as well yeah, sure. Knowing yourself in your feed and really letting your just letting your audience get to know you and also have them recognize your face and who you are is super important. So I definitely, I know it’s a lot easier, but I definitely encourage all of my clients to just at least show up once in their first nine images.

Brooke Logan:

Yeah. Okay. Why isn’t the first time okay? I tried to do every four is a picture of Yup. I fit in there. Yep. Okay. And Gillian says, I was following an Instagram teacher who, who had said to be very specific about your Biz and nothing else, but I really liked those ideas. Yeah. I mean, I felt it’s, Instagram is just more about that connection. You know, humans want to learn about other humans and if they want to know more about your Biz, we haven’t talked about that either too. how important is your bio and what, what you should link to. So it, at least for me, when I’m looking at other people’s stuff, I don’t really want to see all the crap about their business on their Instagram page. I want to see who they are and then if I them because they don’t go check out their business stuff. Yeah, exactly. Make It really easy to find your business stuff in your bio. But,

Carla Biesinger:

and yeah, you can still sprinkle in bits of your business and you can still position yourself as an expert and you can use your Instagram stories to invite people to your freebies or you I do a lot of Instagram lives. But I very rarely sell on my Instagram. Yeah. It’s just people don’t go to Instagram to be sold to. Right.

Brooke Logan:

that’s, and I think you said, I think that you can sometimes if it’s something you know important. Yeah. And the story is I felt the stories are much easier to say, hey, I’m doing this. Come over here. Yeah. Disappears. And it’s not on your feed forever. Yeah.

Carla Biesinger:

So I do maybe one promotional posts a week maximum, but then a lot of the time it’s something free that’s going on. Yeah. I am relaunching my Instagram cause in September, so I am going to be promoted doing more promotional stuff. But that is mainly going to be happening in the stories. Yeah. But there’s going to be a couple of posts about it, but I always notice even the other day I just asked for help with the survey and I don’t know if it’s the algorithm, but even that post, and it wasn’t promoting anything, it was just, I was doing a survey and my Instagram stories and that pole, that post only reached about a thousand people. So Instagram wasn’t even showing it to my followers. And every time I do a sales posts it no.

Brooke Logan:

Yeah, it doesn’t do well. Yeah. Cause that’s not what it’s for. So that makes sense. And I thought of another question too. It doesn’t really go with captions, but you mentioned, how often you are posting in your story. So how often do you post in your feed? I’ve heard a lot of people say at least once a day. Is that what you felt?

Carla Biesinger:

Yeah, I do about once a day. I generally have realized that even if I don’t post for a couple of days it’s okay and Instagram is still there when I come back. So I’m take the pressure off and I take you never post on Saturdays now. So that’s just my, I do think, yeah, you want to show up consistently every, every time you post and you using hashtags, you are being exposed and you’re growing. So, yeah, you do want to show up regularly, but if you’re struggling with that if you can commit to posting every other day and then on the days that you’re not posting, maybe go and spend extra time just engaging with new accounts and doing the growth strategies, then that can work too.

Brooke Logan:

So when you use, when you use plan, you were talking about how you, you do it to set up your, your visual feed when how far in advance do you plan it out? Do you do or a full month or,

Carla Biesinger:

oh I do I took my next four posts visually. I, yeah, I don’t even plan out my captions at all.

Brooke Logan:

Okay. So that’s what makes me feel better cause that’s when I first started using those, I was I’m going to play it out a whole month with the captions. I was okay, this took forever. And then I found too, by the time I actually got to that one where I was going to post it, I was I don’t want to talk about this right now. I said that’s what I started doing too. I plan out the photos and then just whatever I want to stay with it.

Carla Biesinger:

Yeah, I keep an an section on my, I just keep a note section on my phone where I, whenever I have an idea about a caption I want to write, I just put it in there. And then when I I have one of those days where I’m oh, I don’t know what to post about. I could go back and then get inspired again.

Brooke Logan:

That’s a good idea. Cool. Okay. Okay, so, and then you just mentioned the number three was the growth strategy. So you’re going in and engaging with other people’s content, not just being Instagram selfish, low. Yes, and that’s something that I like. I’ve had to change recently too. I’m super stingy with Instagram likes you and just liking stuff. It has to be amazing for me to it and I need to, I need to not be that. I need to quit, be instantly.

Carla Biesinger:

And don’t forget about your current followers if I don’t know about you. But usually I tend to follow people back when they follow me and I can see that they’re my idea. Clients I generally tend to follow back and so I spend about 15 minutes a day just going through my home feed and just leaving likes and comments because there who are already following me, they’re already interested in what I’m doing. So I feel a lot of the time we forget about our existing followers because we just want new ones.

Brooke Logan:

Yeah.

Carla Biesinger:

Yeah. I found that doing that has made a huge difference in my engagement. I’m getting many more comments than I was before just from existing followers that

Brooke Logan:

I had abandoned. Abandoned. Yeah, I definitely needed that too cause I don’t need to be much better about that. I don’t always just follow everyone back because I get, I said lately, I’ve been getting a lot of the follow unfollow stuff. I’m I don’t know if they really me or if they’re just following me in, they’re going to unfollow me tomorrow. Yeah, it’s annoying. So I think what you said though, go into their feed and see if they’re an ideal client or just somebody that you would want to follow in general. I need to do a better job of that for sure. Cool. So that was the growth strategy. So that was you, you three. Thanks. So, oh Dang. It’s already almost eight or nine years and nine. Wow. We talked about a lot before we hop off and you want to talk about your, you had a Freebie, I think that you gave us the code in here and then your Instagram course as launching too. I think your, your Freebie was your free course and then you’re,

Carla Biesinger:

yeah, I have a free course, which is five essential strategies you need to have in place. If you want to succeed on Instagram and grow your following, grow your engagement. I’m going to be doing a live five day course in September, which is caught from popular to profitable. I love that about, it was actually the winning name. Yeah.

Brooke Logan:

In this whole, I love it.

Carla Biesinger:

[inaudible] happy. So that’s actually going to be five days with super actionable tips and strategies to really how to turn your followers into Dallas, whether it’s brands you want to work with or clients who want to work with. Okay. So not so much focusing on just the following, not really on the bottom line. Yeah. So that’s in happening in September. And then your Instagram or in your group or it’s going to be, I’m gonna be sending out an email every day. Okay. I haven’t actually announced it yet officially. Probably the first one I’m telling you. I’m talking to. It’s going to be in my group and I’m going to go live on Instagram life as well. Okay. So I’m, I don’t share it when it’s ready and then I’m, I’ll be relaunching my course after that and it’s going to be more of a live element because I feel so often, you know with the Instagram causes as well, you’d get all these strategies and then you left alone. So I really want to do more of a live element and have give people the chance to re implement and be able to ask questions and bring in different guests experts, which you’re actually going to be one of them. And we’re gonna do a bio make-over a live session with,

Brooke Logan:

yeah. So I’m really excited for your, for your new course too. And it’s a relaunch of one that you already have. So it’s new and improved type. Yeah. Thank you.

Carla Biesinger:

Cause that Instagram is always changing and so I’ve been just creating a whole bunch of new content, a whole new model on Instagram stories, Igt, GTV, Instagram life, all of that, all that stuff. Yeah. And that stuff we didn’t even talk about on here. 

Brooke Logan:

And thank you so much for coming in Carla. I know Instagram was terrifying for a lot of people, myself included. So it just, it makes it have to be, and it’s really amazing if you just go into it with the idea of okay, I’m going to build relationships and I’m going to make connections and it’s crazy what can come from a comment a follow. It’s absolutely I’ve, this is how I make friends these days since maybe sad, but you see can connect with someone and you can build a relationship out of nothing. And I think that’s really cool. It is really cool. And that’s the point of social media, right? just building those relationships. And Yeah, you can sell stuff too, but it’s about that connection and that’s awesome. Well, thank you so much, Carla. Thank you. As soon as you have that link, we’ll put it in here for your, for your silence. Thank you. Enjoy your Sunday evening. And we will hop off of here and talk soon. Bye.

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