Episode 5: 20 Rapid-Fire Instagram Tips (Part 1)

Hello and welcome back to the podcast I'm coming at you live from my couch wearing my bathrobe. My daughter doesn't start school until 910 In the morning, which is amazing because I'm not a morning person. So I thought I'd go ahead and get this recorded before I take her to school. So I'm going to bring you today 20 rapidfire Instagram tips, but it's actually going to be broken into a part one and part two.

So today I'm covering tips one through 10. And then on the next episode, I'm going to be covering tips 11 through 20. So here we go. Let's get into it. Welcome to holistic marketing simplified a podcast for health and wellness professionals looking to simplify their marketing. I'm your host, Molly Cahill and this podcast is brought to you by holistic marketing hub, our hybrid program that supports you with personalized coaching, captioned templates, and virtual classrooms. In this program, we teach health and wellness professionals how to fish but we also bait their hook, head to holistic marketing hub.com. To learn more and use code podcast for $100 off, you can find full show notes, resources and more. At Molly cahill.com/podcast. I'm not going to spend a whole ton of time on each tip. These are just the tips that I feel like I'm always giving. And if you need clarification on any of the tips, then please send me a DM on Instagram because that way I'll know what type of things I need to go into more detail on for future episodes.

Because truly I want this podcast to be shaped by you. So here we get to 20 of my favorite rapid fire Instagram tips. Number one, your profile photo, your profile photo on Instagram should almost always be an up close face on smiling photo of you. I mean, unless you're somebody who doesn't smile, like maybe you're like a really serious person, I don't know. I prefer this over your logo, almost always for a couple of reasons. One is just the like technicality of it that Instagram profile photos are not like Facebook profile photos where on Facebook, you can click on a profile photo and it gets bigger. Well on Instagram, you can click on it like you can click on it, but you're just going to be watching their stories if you have stories.

And so it doesn't actually make it bigger. So if you have a logo, especially a logo that has text on it of any sort, you do not want to be using a logo with text on it as your profile photo. Sometimes now if you know, I don't serve brands like this, typically, I could totally understand if you're like a product based brand or something like that. But that's not my market, right? If you have a logo designer who professional logo designers know how to create versions of your logo that are meant specifically they call them brand marks there like are many brandmark that are specifically for like to be used in smaller version, my college degree is actually in PR and I had to take a lot of advertising ever advertising classes. And a good logo should always have a version, you know that can be used really small and it still looks good.

But typically, since I serve health and wellness professionals, you should have a photo of you now if you're in a let's say you're like a multi dock practice, then like I know Dr. Christie with river shores, we actually have three of them, like through all three docks, their photo their face on the profile photo. So just know that you could totally use your logo, if you just like really need to just make sure you take off any small elements, but I really recommend to face also, when someone's searching on Instagram, I said I wasn't gonna spend a whole lot of time on these. But here I am gonna go to the search bar on Instagram and just type in something like massage, for example. And you'll see what I'm talking about, like look at the ones that have text versus the ones that are an up close face. And you'll see the difference other ones for the face really pop rapidfire Tip number two, always, always, always use at least five local or regional hashtags. If not more, you're gonna be able to find more if you're in a larger city. But if you're in a small town, you probably won't be able to find as many i If you listened to my roadmap, the private podcast episodes that I did, you won't find those just by searching in the podcast player, you have to have a special link. It was free. So if you got in before I started charging for it, you'll still have those downloads, it's free. But now you have to pay $27 for it because that kind of did is like a little promo. So we'll put the link to that in the show notes.

It's just Molly cahill.com/private training. And I go in really in depth on hashtags in that private training. But I also have a free blog post that goes into how to choose hashtags. But I almost always recommend even if you're are virtual online business who only sees or who can see people anywhere. I still like I live in Westchester, Ohio now and I always use the West Chester Ohio hashtag when I lived in Pensacola, always use the Pensacola hashtag. And just just two weeks ago, shout out Dr. Jessica, I got a sale of holistic marketing hub. She's like, Oh, I love that you're in Cincinnati, I'm in Cincinnati. So even if you're an online business, who can serve anybody, definitely start use some local hashtags. And if you are brick and mortar, definitely be using as many local hashtags as possible. One caveat is that of that is like hashtag Cincinnati, for example, I'm sure is way too big. You want to use hashtags with less than 500,000 really less than 250,000 uses. The reason of that is you don't want to like think of the most popular hashtags, that's actually the opposite of what you want to do. Because it would be like you trying like someone typing in the word health to Google and you ranking on the first page hashtags are the same way.

So you don't want to use hashtags like hashtag health, because your that's not gonna work, you need to be way more specific. So for me, hashtag Cincinnati, OH, H, er, Cincinnati, Ohio, all spelled out, are much smaller. And then just make up like, if you're a brick and mortar, do a little brain dump list of all of the little pockets of town where you pull patients from, and look up those hashtags. If you're in a really big city, sometimes the word moms or the word local or local business, adding those little qualifiers to the end. So for example, hashtag rally mom, hashtag rally moms with an S hashtag, rally local. Since hashtag rally is way too saturated. Those can kind of help pull the popularity the hashtag down to make it more useful for you. But if you're in a really small town, then adding those qualifiers like for example, when I lived in Gulf Breeze, Florida, Gulf Breeze, mom's was to teeny teeny, teeny, teeny, but just hashtag Gulf Breeze was fine.

Again, I'll link the hashtag free blog post below where I go into much more detail. And you can actually see examples of me doing this. Number three, when someone comments on your posts, you can reply to that comment. And you can also like it like there's a little heart next to their comment. A fun little hack I learned years ago, and I can't remember who I learned it from is to, instead of liking Harding the comment and replying to the comment at the same time, do it in two separate, like on two separate days. So if you were to go comment on my post, I will probably go reply to that comment first. Then the next day or the next time I post, I'll go heart that comment separately. The reason this is a cool hack is because when I reply to your comment, or when I heart your comment, I'm going to show up in your notifications, again is a fresh notification. So it's gonna say Molly Cahill replied to your comment. And then again, don't be like Molly Kay, who liked your comment. So this is cool, because anybody who is commenting on your post is typically going to be the person who's going to comment again. So this is my favorite thing to do.

After I post, I always go back to all the comments that I haven't replied to or hearted, and do that right after I post because it just brings the people who already naturally want to comment on your stuff back to your profile. Tip number four, change if you if you want like the fun music, for reals on your profile. If for some reason you don't have fun music, you can change that category to entrepreneur and it will unlock the full music library for you, if that's important to you. And you can also then hide that category if you want to like there's a little button to say where it says I don't remember what it says off the top of my head, but you'll see it it's like don't show on profile or something like that. And it's not gonna affect the search or anything like that. The category really like that I've seen does not matter. So that's one fun little tip, let me know if it works for you. Tip number five is your link in bio. So the only get you know with Instagram, you only get one hyperlink that works not like Facebook, where you can put a hyperlink in every post. If you want Instagram, you just get the one link in your bio. And if you're a brick and mortar office who just the only link you need is for somebody to book an appointment with you, then that's fine. Like this tip doesn't apply to you. That's super easy.

But let's say you're an online business or your brick and mortar business who also has an online component or has an event you're having or a free guide or something like that. You don't want to have too many links in that like if you're using like a link tree or something like that. I should probably take a little step back for the people who don't know what I'm talking about. There's multiple services that you can have up Link tree is just a really popular one. But there's a whole bunch of other ones, where you can actually have one link in your bio, but when someone clicks on it, it opens up a whole bunch of different links for people to click on. So if you're using something like Link tree, I've seen people who have like 1015, whatever links, the problem, when you have that many links is people don't know what to click on, like they get overloaded. So let's say you're a health coach, and you have a whole bunch of different coupon codes or something like that. You don't want to have every single coupon code listed all out, like you would ideally want to have just a page on your website that's like all of your code and just have one link.

Another tip with the various links in your bio, like if we're using link tree is to make them really compelling to click on. So instead of saying something like blog for the link, you could say like free menopause tips or something like that, because people are much more likely to click on Free menopause tips, then the word blog, so and also, like you have online booking for your website, instead of just saying website, you can have book appointment here or something like that. Rapid fire to number six. This is a fun little scrappy tip that I call designating patient or client ambassadors. So what I mean by this is, and I think I will do a whole episode on this, just because I think it's something that's really important. I've seen so many people who are just getting started, it's really hard to get momentum on their Instagram account. But if you just ask, like, I know, with my personal chiropractor, or my my friend, my health coach, like if you just ask, I will 100%, go share your stuff, or go comment on your stuff, or whatever. So designate, you know, five to 10, however big your practice is, you know, you have those patients or clients who are your biggest fans, who've either been like been with you for a while, or you've just gotten extra close with, and just ask them just ask, just say, Hey, I'm trying to grow my Instagram account. Can you please check? You know, have I post every Monday, Wednesday, Friday? Or?

Can I send you a text every time I post? And would you mind going to comment on that and maybe share it to your stories and whatever, and I'm telling you people will do it people will people naturally want to help you out, you just have to ask a lot of times, they're not going to do it without you asking not because they don't want to but because people are busy. And your posts might not even be showing up in their feed. So this does a couple things like the reason you would ideally want to do this versus like having a random friend who lives across the country, who's not your ideal client is if you're doing this with your current patients or clients, then that teaches the algorithm kind of, you know that like those are the people you need to be showing the posts to. I've got way more tips on engaging and kind of reviving a dead Instagram. Like if you're not getting hardly any reach on your posts, I'll definitely have to do a full episode on that. But for now, I do cover that in depth on that free private training. So again, it's just Mike cahill.com/private training, just $27 I also have a free engagement checklist that we can link below.

On the same note of having patient or client ambassadors, email, your current patient database or your client database and ask them to follow you on Instagram. Most the time they probably don't even know you have an Instagram unless you've told them. I also this is a little bonus tip also like we have these signs we've been buying on Etsy for our clients who ever sign up like our our Instagram management clients, like we have these cool signs that we got on Etsy. They're really cute. They're like acrylic and wood with a QR code to put on the front desk to follow you. But yeah, email your client or patient database and ask them to follow you on Instagram. And you can't just do it one time. I don't know I don't I'm very patient with most things. But one thing I have a very big pet peeve on is when someone says they tried something one time and it didn't work didn't work. I don't know why that drives me nuts. It'd be like someone coming in and be like I got adjusted one time and it didn't work or I took a took my supplement one day and it didn't didn't work. So anyway, you have to do things like this multiple times. Okay, so yeah, email and I have a have a free email script if you want that will link the script to email your patients below or clients to ask them to follow you on Instagram. Next tip is to always closed caption your videos. So the last data I saw is that up to 80% of people watch video on Instagram with no sound.

So if you don't have any type of closed captioning or you know any type of captions at all to give context of what your videos about People are just going to tap right through and not watch it. There is closed caption feature built right in to Instagram stories. And to reels. All you have to do is from the Instagram rules interface, there's this little square smiley face slick. And man, it's the same place in stories. And there's just a little CC Closed Caption button, you can't find it, let me know. And just turn that on. We've also for clients, we've used the captions app before it's purple. And it literally just says captions. And the the little app icon is just a little white. See, I want to say it was like, I don't remember how much it cost. But you can only caption videos up to three minutes with that. We've used that app for clients before.

So if you're somebody who wants to plan, like do things ahead of time, and you want your captions to be a little more branded, or if you're using a lot of medical terminology, and you really want to like go through and make sure that everything spelled correctly, you can do that within Instagram, I just Instagram closed captions don't always work perfectly like they glitch a lot of times. And there, there have been times when I've gone and corrected the spelling of a word and it didn't save or whatever. But if you do it in the captions app, it'll work. But you don't need a separate app. Like I said, you can totally do it right in Instagram, if you want. That's just like I said, we use that captions that for our clients a lot of times because we pre, like pre edit their reels for them. And so it's just easier for us to go ahead and have it done ahead of time. Okay, tip number 10 is to always have actually, tip number 10 and 11 are both about having a hook.

So if you don't know what a hook is, if you've ever watched somebody scrolling through Instagram, you have, I mean, I don't remember the exact amount of seconds, but it is not long to catch someone's attention. Okay. And if the first frame they see is of you just sitting there in front of the camera and your mouth isn't moving yet. That is literally enough for people to just scroll on past. So I learned this tip from Virginia Kirsch he's one of my favorite video people to follow. But always insists as you'll notice what I always do, if there's dead air and the beginning of your video, edit that out to where your video and I use the InShot app for all my editing, it's 499 a month and I can't live without it. Usually, I'm kind of like you don't need outside stuff. But I really do love the InShot app, edit it to where the video starts as your mouth is opening, because that is going to be more captivating for somebody. And then you want to put even if you're closed captioning it closed captioning is not enough to still catch somebody's attention. Because if you're doing rolling closed captions, sometimes it takes you know, a second or two to actually get out those first few words that you're saying. So I always add an extra text box on the on the front of what the video is about. So you can catch somebody's attention. Don't start the video by introducing yourself. Don't start the video by saying good morning or Happy Tuesday, people are just going to scroll right on past, you want to start the video with a compelling hook. And the same thing applies to regular captions as well. And I'll talk about that next. Like regular like photo posts, not saying you can't introduce yourself or whatever. But so many times when we're editing video for clients, we always take if they're introducing themselves at the beginning, we always take that chunk and we put it later on in the video. And we always pull a compelling one to two, like seconds video and put it at the front. So a compelling hook is something that sometimes like has a number in it.

So like, for example, this I would start the video with here 20 Rapid Fire tips to make your Instagram better or I don't know something like that. I wouldn't start the video with Hey, everybody, I thought I'd come on here today to give you 20 Rapid Fire tips. That's no I've already lost you. So again, get right to the point. And one tip with hooks is you can write them last or record them last I have had a lot of people say they have trouble with hooks and they don't know. They're like, Oh, I don't know what to do with the hook. Record the video first or write out the Caption First if it's just like a normal post, then pull out your hook. So a fun tip with hooks, when it comes to just regular non video posts is you only get around 125 characters on Instagram when someone's scrolling through the feed that like people can see. So on Facebook when you're scrolling through your feed, you can see almost like the the whole chunk of the caption right? When you're scrolling on Instagram, you only see the first 125 ish characters. So you want to make sure that it's not happy tuesday or pay everyone or something like that. It needs to be compelling hook. So I hope that these two 10 tips were helpful.

I can't wait to hear which ones you're going to implement right away. And make sure to tune in next week for tips 11 through 20 of these 20 Rapid Fire Instagram tips. Thank you for listening to holistic marketing simplified, brought to you by holistic marketing hub, our hybrid program that supports you with personalized coaching, captioned templates, and virtual classrooms. In this program, we teach health and wellness professionals how to fish but we also baked their hook, head to holistic marketing hub.com to learn more and use code podcast for $100 off and hey, you know, every podcaster at the very end of their episode asks you to rate and review their podcast. Well, that's because it's super important. These podcasts take a lot of time and heart and effort to produce to bring you free information. So in order for me to be able to continue doing that we need more people to find out about the show. So if you could please just take like two minutes out of your very busy day to leave me a rating and share this on your Instagram stories and tag at Molly a K Hill. That's c h i ll I would greatly greatly appreciate your support. I truly appreciate you so much. I know your time is valuable and I can't wait to see you in the next episode.