Episode 24: 5 Simple Tips to Help Increase Your Instagram Engagement Today

It's just me today, today is my first solo episode I've had in I don't know since like what like Episode Four maybe I've been meaning to record this for a while and I finally found a little slice of time to get it done. Today's episode is going to be all about hooks. So capturing your ideal person's attention quickly, and we're going to talk about that when it comes to caption writing and just copywriting in general, we're going to talk about creating an effective hook on any type of video, whether that be your wheels, or your stories or your Instagram lives. And finally, we're going to talk about compelling graphics and ways to hook your scrollers attention in with graphics. So here we go. 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 break 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 here with a highly requested episode by highly requested I think like four of you DM to me, but still, I know that this is going to be a helpful episode for you today. Because when I am just scrolling through Instagram or when I'm auditing other people's accounts, or when I see new students join the holistic marketing hub or whatever. This is typically the number one thing I see that could use improvement. And that is a catchy hook or headline, attention grabber. Whatever it is you want to call it. My background in journalism, we would say don't bury the lead. And that just means you don't want to put the most important juiciest that at the very bottom of the article. So think about a newspaper headline. And that's exactly what we're going to be talking about today how to incorporate, you know, the old school ways of journalism in to our even shorter attention span.

Now when it comes to social media. So I want to start off with talking about where do we want to go first, let's do video first, because that's really where I feel like people could use the most improvement. So let's start with video. One of the easiest things that you can do is you can cut any like just that slightest millisecond, even if it's like point four seconds of dead air at the beginning of your videos, you can do this if you have I'm sure Android you can do it. But on iPhone, you can do it right on the iPhone, you can do it right in the reals interface, my team and I prefer to use in shot just because the reels interface itself can glitch sometimes, and it doesn't always save your work. And then I want to throw my phone across the room. You could also even do it in Canva. So that's essentially the reason you want to cut off that just like just fraction of dead air at the beginning, you want to start the video when your mouth is opening and you're starting to talk. And that might sound inconsequential. But it really does make a big difference. And that's because if you've ever watched somebody watch reels. It is. I don't know what the word is. I think it's kind of sad. Because just like my husband, for example, I'm like you're giving me like vertigo how fast he scrolls through reels. He's like, didn't catch my attention didn't catch my attention. So if you have some type of of intro, or you have where you're just like have dead air at the beginning, when you're like standing there looking at the camera, people are going to swipe right on past.

So that's one super simple thing you can do is cut that you know dead air and edit the video to where it starts right as your mouth is opening with the first word. The next thing you want to do when you're thinking about starting a real or even Instagram story, is you want to ditch the intro. So this is really counterintuitive, because it's not how you would talk to a real human in real life. You don't need to introduce yourself. I'm going to ask you to go watch Dr. Nick Belden. He was actually a guest on the show. He was one of my or is one of my holistic marketing hub students. He's still active. He does a really good job of this on his videos of giving you a really good hook first, and then introducing himself. So if I'm scrolling through Instagram, and I have no idea who you are, and the first thing I hear is Hi, I'm Dr. Jane. Awesome. I'm like cool, Jane, awesome. I don't know who you are. You've already lost my attention. I can't guys like I know this is sad, but like, I'm not. I can't change that I can't change our attention. So And what I can do is help get you more views on your reels so you can get more ideal clients into your coaching practice or patients in your door. So start with the interesting juicy hook and no worry, I'm going to tell you like the formula for making this in a little while.

So yes, it don't start with introducing yourself. snooze fest also, don't start with Happy Tuesday. Good morning. Happy Memorial Day like, again, nobody cares. If you're going to even go into a case study, then you want to again, you want to get straight to the interesting piece of the case study. So that is the part the notes I had about oh, video. Okay, I had one another note about video. One thing to note about video is, it is extremely different than types of video you might see on YouTube, or if you're Googling something, the reason for that is when you are looking for something on YouTube, you are consciously searching out that information. So you are literally typing in, how do I heal my acid reflux naturally. So if you go to YouTube, and you find a video that matches meets that search criteria, and that person starts off like the video has, like a cool graphic intro and then they introduced their credentials and who they are. That's a lot different than the way most users use Instagram. Instagram is really hard to search and seek out specific information that you want. It's not impossible.

And I won't get into that today how you can actually like how people are searching things on Instagram. For today's, you know, purposes, we're really just going to talk about Instagram on how the majority of people use it, which is it's kind of like I just had an awesome guest, Cynthia on the podcast at the time this airs I'm not sure if her episode will come out or not. But she's an SEO specialist. But it's kind of like you're like driving down the street. And like which front yards and houses and yards and curb appeal catches your attention. Like you're not, you weren't out taking a drive specifically looking for landscaping ideas, but like maybe as you were driving something caught your eye and you're like, Ooh, I want to have that type of like flower in my front yard. Like you weren't seeking it out. But like as you were scrolling, which is the same as driving by you saw it and it caught your attention. That's why the way you approach reels and any posts on Instagram has to be different than the way you would approach say, a podcast episode a blog post or a YouTube video.

Because typically people are searching out that information. So they're going to have a longer attention span, because they that matches their search intent. They were searching how do I heal acid reflux naturally. So they're okay with sitting through five seconds of, you know, flashy introductions and your credentials. Whereas if I'm just like scrolling through reels because I'm bored, I need to hear immediately the second my thumb scrolls up to that, that next reel, if you're tired of taking Prosek, this reel is for you. Hey, I thought of that on the front fly. I was pretty good. I think, Oh, one other thing, too, is I've had a client before who has said, Well, Mark Hyman doesn't do it that way, or well, so and so doesn't do it that way, like talking about bigger names and their specific industry.

And the thing is, when you already have really well established trust and authority, and people already consume every bit of your content, and you've got that loyal fan base, then it doesn't really matter what they do. Because like you've already gotten past that for most of us, we're still in the phase where Yeah, we do have some loyal fan base who are going to you know, listen to whatever we say no matter if it's got dead air or boring intro, but for the most part, these people don't know who we are, right. So like we're still trying to catch their attention. So that's why you can't really reverse engineer what the quote big names are doing in their videos always. The other thing with video or with reels that I see as a mistake really often is closed captions are a must, you absolutely need to have closed captions. But if you use reels automatic closed caption feature, you potentially are still missing out on people with that hook who are watching the video with no sound on. Let me paint this picture for you. You are standing in line I was gonna say at the bank and I was like who stands in line in the bank?

I mean, I don't know who goes to the bank. You're standing in line and for lunch or for Starbucks, whatever. And you're scrolling through your phone watching reels. You have the sound off and somebody has the closed captions on. But the way those closed captions roll, it still isn't enough to catch my attention, sir If you'll see in my a lot of my rules that I do this, I will still use like the actual text feature to put a text box up. So we'll stay with the acid reflux example, you would want to have an actual text box static, not a not a scrolling, automatic closed caption feature, but an actual textbox on the screen that says, three ways to heal acid reflux naturally, or three ways to quit pro SEC or whatever. You could still have the closed captions, like rolling as you say that, but again, it just like helps catch attention, even if people are watching with sound. If you don't know what I'm talking about, I will link to an example of a real like this in the show notes. And if you aren't particularly real savvy, and all of these things I'm telling you are overwhelming to you, then don't fret just reach out to me, and I'm happy to steer you in the right direction of some of my trainings, I cover all of this in depth inside holistic marketing hub. And again, you can just kind of like watch some of my reels. And you'll see what I'm talking about. Not that I'd follow my own best practices every single time I've tried to adopt the attitude that I'd rather get it out, then have every single best practice box checked every time. And that's really hard for me. But I'm trying.

So let's transition to talking about hooks when it comes to Instagram posts. So if I'm just scrolling my feed for a static post, then there's a couple things we like to do to optimize the chance that we catch someone's attention. If it's a photo only, we typically add what we call a photo label, which is literally just like a text box or a text overlay over the photo. You don't have to do this, again, if you're like strapped for time, and the only thing you can do is get the photo up. That's great. I'll give you another way you can optimize too. But the reason we like to add these little text overlays in Canva is it makes your feed a little more bingeable. And again, with these super short attention spans, just helps the person who's scrolling know what that post is going to be about and whether or not it's worth their time. So let me give you a real life example of one we did for a client. So Rachel and Rebecca are my incredible team leads for the Instagram management agency, they do the majority of the heavy lifting, I would say like 98% of the work for our Instagram management clients, they worked with me for gosh, like two and a half years now. And they're incredible. But anyway, I always do final checks on the client work. And one of the posts we had for a pediatric chiropractor said your baby in hip just like it was a picture of a cute baby. And then we had the little label over there said your baby and hip dysplasia. And it said something like, point 4% of all babies are born with hip dysplasia.

Well, I had her change that because I'm like, if I'm scrolling through like point 4% is so low that that absolutely does not catch my attention. What does catch my attention was the actual context and meat of the caption, which was how to properly swaddle and properly babywear that's really more what the post was about. Yeah, it did talk about hip dysplasia, but it was more like, like, this is how to open I just said, so I had her change that to say how to properly swaddle and babywear instead of just a picture of a cute baby, that's a stock photo and you're scrolling through and you're like, great. And then like I said, the next step was it said your baby in hip dysplasia Did you know point 4% of babies are born with this and I'm still like, that's still kind of boring to me. Like, point. 4% is such a low number, like if I'm scrolling through, and I see that I'm just gonna think oh, that doesn't apply to me and keep scrolling. But a lot of people swaddle their babies, and a lot of people wear their babies. So that's how we just tweaked that a little bit to capture that attention.

Another example of a way we've used a quote, label over a photo photo is like a picture of a cute baby. And again, just because I'm looking at the same clients work, so instead of it just being this cute picture of the baby, which you know, could be about anything, it has a little label over it that says crawling is a critical point in development. So again, that way that person knows that that that post is going to be about crawling. So the other thing to consider about putting a label over your photo is it does make your feed a little more bingeable. A perfect example of this is again, I'll keep going back to the acid reflux example if someone sees your gut health coach, they come to your feed, and they don't struggle with constipation, but they do struggle with acid reflux. That's just a really quick way for them to just thumb through your page and find your posts that mentioned acid reflux. And another way to do this So I'll stay on this text graphic train is on your graphics. So if you're not using a photo at all, and you are just doing a straight graphic, then you want to make sure that the text and the font is really large, you want to make sure that there's not too much text on the screen. So if you're doing a testimonial, for example, you don't want to use the entire Google review testimonial. If it's really long, you want to pull out like one little juicy bit from the testimonial, and highlight that on the graphic. And then you can put the full testimonial in the caption.

Another thing to consider is contrast. So I know a lot of you have these like really pretty like neutral, like serene colors. But if you've got like a light blue, and then you put like a white over it like that doesn't pop. And that is not enough contrast. So really think about text size and contrast. And another really big issue I see a lot is using too much of a script font, love me a script font, not hating on script fonts, but they're really hard to read a lot of times, so if you are going to use script, just use it as like a like a highlight and use it sparingly. So an easy way to visualize this is to go to your Instagram explorer page, and just see what pops out at you what what graphic Are you like, oh, I can read that I can see that. Then click on your own profile from your phone, your own Instagram profile. And again be like, Oh, that text is like, teeny tiny. If someone is scrolling through, and they're bombarded with a bunch of texts, they are 1,000% not going to read it. And they're going to scroll on past. If you want to have a graphic that is text heavy.

That's okay, just make it a carousel and don't make it that first graphic you see, you want that first graphic you see, to be again, big text bold, easy to read. And then you can say like swipe for stats or swipe for tips or whatever it is. The last thing I want to talk about when it comes to hooks and headlines is the actual copywriting and the caption itself. So when you're scrolling your home feed and Instagram and it's just a static regular post, you only see it's really different than Facebook, because on Facebook, you'll see like all the caption pretty much. Not all of it. But like what is it like the first two paragraphs or something where as on your Instagram feed, you only see around 125 characters of your caption before you have to they have to tap to see more. So just to kind of do a little exercise, I will literally open up character counter online dot I think it's like character counter online.org or something, there's just Google free character counter, there's a million of them. And I will literally type copy and paste in my caption like the the first line or the hook to see if it fits in that 125 characters. Again, I don't do this every single time, right? I don't want you to ever take any of these best practices that give you and use it as an excuse to say I'm too overwhelmed.

I'm not doing any of this. And I know that sounds kind of harsh, but I feel like a lot of times people use the overwhelm perfectionism as a really, really nifty and easy excuse to get out of doing this at all. Again, if you go look at my feed, it is far from perfect, I do not implement all of my best practices every single time. These are just that they are best practices. Like if you can check all these boxes, great. If you can't, and you need to just get your content out there content that is not perfect, and doesn't check all these boxes is better than nothing. So with that little disclaimer, again, I like to have just just keep in mind that they're only going to see that first little line as they're scrolling. So if it says Happy Tuesday, I'm gonna keep scrolling I don't like that gives me nada. Whereas if I have, you know, three ways to help your baby crawl, I was just looking into crawling baby. That's not a great example. But you see what I'm saying? Then I'm gonna like stop and actually read that post. I also don't like stop your scroll. Like you know, sometimes you'll see like we do it every once in a while but I feel like I don't know if you're telling me to stop my scroll. I'm not gonna do it. I just feel like

like I want to be the opposite of what you say. So with posts regular posts, you get around 125 characters as I said before the person has to tap see more. With reels, it's even less you get even fewer characters that you can see if you're like just simply watching the reels portion of Instagram and flipping just through reels. You'll notice you only see like this teeny little bit of text on the first line. So again, you better make it juicy. So To wrap this up, the last thing we're going to talk about is how to actually write this hook or headline. And one tip I find makes it so much easier is stop trying to think of it first, stop trying to write it first, or stop trying to film it first, I will literally sometimes film an entire reel and then go back and film the hook. Same with captions. Sometimes I'll write the entire caption and be like, this sentence is way more compelling. I'm going to pull this little piece up to the top. So try that see if it works for you. It to me, I find it not always but a lot of times I find it easier to like get it all out first and then go okay, which part of this is the juiciest? And then bring it back to the top. I can't tell you how many four minute long videos we've gotten from clients that I love Edward Scissorhands. taken, taken like, apart like it minute 42 I'm like, Ooh, this is a really juicy sentence. And I've literally like, like chopped up that little part and like, made it the intro of the video. So you can definitely get creative. Like I said, it's not always natural. It's like, right, it's like in our natural flow and conversation to be like, did you know that 45.7 People do this every day, when you walk up with somebody they like think you're crazy. So it's definitely not natural. So don't beat yourself up for being like, Oh, I can't think of a good hook or like, because it's just like not the normal way we talk to people. So try writing it all out or filming it and then coming back to do the catchy part. And then one easy formula to follow. Verb, your noun, so like, grow your Instagram for me or something like that.

So like, I just wanted to like five ways to increase engagement. So verb, your noun that always helps it's like a really good base. And then you can build off of that. Numbers work really well. So like a specific three specific thing. So three ways to use lemon oil, or something like that. For remedies for allergies, like something like that, that usually does well, the word this is another good thing to think about to incorporate. Don't use another drop of lemon oil until you watch this. I mean, I don't know what would happen wrong with lemon oil. But that just sounded good to me. Another thing you can do is a mistake or a myth, like don't make this mistake if you're lifting heavy weights. Or you could say like, use the word myth taught myth about lifting heavy weights or something like that.

So just to kind of recap, numbers do really well the word this does really well. You can incorporate mistake or myth you can. Another good little formula is verb, your noun, grow your Instagram like for me, the verb, your noun, little formula also works really well because there have actually been studies that show the words you and your early like within the first like couple seconds of a video can increase the watch time. So that's another good little trick. Okay, I hope that you found this helpful. And as always, please send me a DM when you're listening to this. I'd love it. Love it, love it. If you would screenshot this, put this on your stories and tag me. And I hope you have a fantastic day. Let me know if you have any trouble writing your hooks. See you later.

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 the 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.

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