A Bare Minimum Instagram Marketing Strategy for Busy Seasons of Life [Episode 110]

Hi, and welcome back. I think you're going to really like this week's episode. It's going to be super short. And it was inspired by a presentation I did to a group of chiropractic women last week. This is not chiropractic specific. So I just want to make that part clear. This actually applies to anybody, even if you're an online only business.

I know I talk a lot about just about brick and mortar, but this actually applies to anybody. And it's what to do. It is your permission slip for your Instagram strategy for when you have like zero time. Like you are in that phase of life where either just everything, everybody's. Sick or you're, you know, you've got some, like maybe some staffing issues or maybe you're just starting out and like you're just trying to get your business off the ground and you don't even have patients or clients yet and you're trying to build a website and do all these other things.

So, you know, those specific seasons of life where It just feels like curve ball after curve ball keeps coming. Or even if it's not something that was unexpected, it's just a season of life that is extra extra busy. So if you're in this season, then I'm going to give you the most pared down, bare bones Instagram marketing strategy that can still be super effective without feeling like you, like this is, this is not a done is better than perfect per se.

I mean, I guess you could kind of categorize it that way. But this way you actually feel like instead of just like completely not having any Instagram presence at all, I promise you this is something that you can very, very easily implement and keep up with. All right. So here we go.

Hey, welcome to holistic marketing simplified. This podcast boils down to the fact that we wholeheartedly believe that more humans need to know about holistic health solutions. And you didn't go to school to learn how to be a full time content creator and show up on Instagram and do all of this marketing stuff all day, every day.

So let's come hang out while we chat all things easy in your marketing. And my goal is that you shift your mindset around your marketing from a quote should to a, I get to more dream patients and clients. Yes, please. My name is Dr. Nick Belden and I'm a functional medicine practitioner and chiropractor living in a beautiful sunny.

Phoenix, Arizona, and I listen to the Holistic Marketing Simplified Podcast, and you should do. Okay, so here it is, the most pared down, bare bones, what I would do if I had zero time. You know, like I said, I gave you a bunch of different examples of why that might be. But like I said, I was presenting to this group of women chiropractors and after the presentation they were like, Oh my gosh, I'm so overwhelmed.

Like one of them was like, I'm just now starting. I don't even have patients yet. Like I don't have a website yet. I don't have blah, blah, blah, blah. I'm like, take a breath. There's no way on God's green, beautiful earth that you can do all of this at one time. Right? So here's what I would do. Like I said, even if that's not your situation and you're in one of the other situations you might find yourself, I talked about in the intro.

Um, here's what I would do. First thing I would do is make sure that your Instagram bio is super dialed in. So that when people land on your profile, it is updated and within literally split seconds of them landing on your profile, they have crystal clear view of what it is that you do, who you serve, where you're located, your name, all of these really basic things.

I have done, I cannot tell you how many episodes and reels and blog posts about Instagram bios. So I'm not going to cover that in this episode. Uh, we will make sure to link for some resources where I cover that in the show notes. Okay. Part of having that bio dialed in is making sure that you are searchable, and I also cover that in some other episodes, so we'll make sure we link that.

Um, the other part of having your bio dialed in is, that's really hard to say, bio dialed in, bio dialed in. Is to make sure that your profile photo, if it's just you, or maybe two, at the max three providers. up close photo of your face. So not like a full body photo because that's not close enough to your face.

If you go to search something on Instagram, you'll see that if your face is really far away, you can't see it because the profile photo is so tiny. If there are like more than two to three people, then your logo. And if you have your logo, Just make sure that they're, uh, it's a version of your logo that does not have text.

Okay, because you'll again, just do some playing around searching. And I cover this in those other bio episodes. You can't see small text on a logo on an Instagram profile photo. The next thing is to make sure in your bio that your link in your bio is up to date. And that in your bio, there's a very clear direction of the next steps of how to book an appointment with you.

So make sure that is crystal clear. Then here's the next thing after moving on from your bio. So I'm kind of would have talked about story highlights. If you don't know what a story highlights, they're those little bubbles that go under your, your profile. And if you're like, what the heck are you talking about?

It's the circles on your profile and it's where you can save stories. Instagram keeps saying they're going to take story highlights away. They still haven't. And I just honestly don't think that anybody really clicks on them. So we're going to skip story highlights, but here's what we're going to do. And this is not a new, new feature of Instagram, but like, you know, maybe in the last 18 months, maybe, I don't remember exactly when they came out with these, but it's to dial in.

So this is like, if you've tuned out, here's what you need to make sure you have done your pinned posts. If you don't know what a pinned post is, it is quite literally. A post that you can Pin, quote, I'm putting pin in quotes, to the top of your profile that lives there forever, okay? So you can choose to pin up to three posts.

So when someone lands on your profile, those three posts at the top are always there. And it actually reminds me, I'm like, Ooh, I need to go right on my to do list that I've got to update one of my pin posts. Yeah, that's my to do list right now. And the cool thing about having these three pinned posts to the top of your profile is they need to serve almost like if someone did not click on your website, these three pinned posts are like your website.

So again, when someone lands on your Instagram profile, their eyeballs need to immediately see a photo of you somewhere in the pinned post, maybe a photo of if you're brick and mortar of your office, the sign, something like that. I love doing like shots of the outside of your office if you're kind of in more like suburban area because people can be like, Oh my gosh, I've been driving by there and make that connection.

If you can't do that or you don't want to do that, just like a photo of you in the office or something like that. Like I said, within the first few seconds of them landing, they like, oh, they get like the full picture of what it is that you do and who you are. Even better bonus points if you can.

Incorporate some photos in those pinned posts of a specific client or patient populations that you like to work with. Again, we can put the, we're going to, I'm going to talk about what to put like on the words part, but as we know, a picture is worth a thousand words. So like I said, it's just something for, for someone to immediately be like, wait, what does this office do?

Like they're not confused. Like they land on it and they're like, Oh, I see exactly what this person does. Okay. So in those three posts, like I said, you get up to three pinned posts. We typically, we actually just got done updating almost all of our clients pinned posts. You can have a carousel for each one if you want.

If you don't know what a carousel is, all that means is instead of a single image, you can swipe through up to, now Instagram allows you to have up to 20 images in a carousel. And to make things even easier for you of what to go in this pinned post, I have created a free resource It's a template for the pinned posts and it will just open up right in your Canva.

So even if you are, like, not strapped for time and you do have, like, a normal Instagram marketing strategy, then definitely grab these. You want to make sure your pinned posts are always updated. So grab this pinned post freebie. You can get that at mollycahill. com slash pinned. Again, mollycahill. com c a h i l l backslash forward slash whatever slash whatever one you would naturally type in.

Pinned. P I N N E D. I will also link that in the show notes. And you don't have to follow it exactly, like you can kind of plug and play and mess around with it some. But at the very least, it gives you like a, a good little like outline for what to post. So, some of the things that we like to include, and you could, in theory, include all of these things in one pinned post, but I feel like it's more effective to have it across the three at the top.

Because not everyone is going to click on the one and scroll through every single slide of a carousel. I mean, they'll scroll through some slides of a carousel, but I like to have ideally, like, the very first one, very first post on your feed. Like, if you're looking at your Instagram, the top left corner, it's kind of like a start here, what to expect, like that type of thing, or like working with us, how to work with us, or maybe like your first visit, or Who we serve, like I said, I, I kind of like a start here cause it's kind of like all encompassing.

And that's where you can kind of walk people through like who you are, like what your office does. Like I said, if you want to do like what to expect on their first visit, maybe something like that. Always, always include social proof. I like to include social proof on all three. Of these pin posts that are going to be going up because if you think about it at one point in time, they're all going to be a standalone piece of content, right?

Like it's going to be posted as a normal post on your feed. And so I like to include like a test some testimonials on like almost every single post. I didn't get into the nuts and bolts of how to actually pin them. It's not hard. Literally after you pin the post. After you post it as like a normal post, there's going to be three dots and you can also pin reels as well.

So we've done this where we do like a little tour of the office, like what to expect and pin that as well. So we've also done really cool reels that have a bunch of testimonials on them and have pinned that as a post. We've even done. Reels that have gone viral, those are cool to pin because that gives you some social proof right away, be like, Oh, wow, like this person's, you know, videos are interesting.

And we've also done reels where our client has talked about, you know, here are the patients we saw in our practice this week. And it like pops up like five different kind of like patient avatars that they saw. Like we saw a kid with ear infections. We saw a breech baby. We saw, you know, whatever. We've posted, we've pinned.

Oh my gosh. pinned reels like that before as well. So like I said, it doesn't have to follow this template from my free download exactly, but just to kind of give you an idea. So like I said, once you've posted the post or the reel, you'll just tap the three dots on the post and then hit pinned profile. Um, you might have to play around with the order some, so whichever one you pin first is going to go, like, it'll post in the top left corner spot.

Then if you pin a second one, it's going to move that one you've already pinned over to the middle top spot. And then if you pin a third post, it's going to move the very first one you did to the top right corner. So you kind of have to do it in reverse order, like whichever one you want to show on the top left corner of your feed, that's the one you're going to pin third.

Does that make sense? If you mess it up, it's not stuck there forever. You literally just tap it again and hit unpin. My students and clients who are the most successful are the ones who are not afraid to just push buttons. So if you hear this and you're like, I don't understand. I'm not good at technology.

Just push buttons. You're not gonna break anything. Nothing's gonna blow up in your hand. Okay, it's not stuck there forever. Tap the three little buttons and there's a little pin thing and then unpin it if you have to just play around with it It's not hard. I promise you can do it. I Believe in you so like I said going back to some of the content we like to have on these carousels of pin posts if you're not gonna Do like I said, I gave you some real ideas as well is kind of like I said, like what to expect Testimonials and social proof lately.

We've also been doing this big list for our clients that says like conditions we support and it literally gives like A huge list, everything from like, shoulder pain, torticollis, like whatever, like it's like this, I mean, very big all encompassing list. You can see an example of that on the template. If you're doing, like, more, like, health coaching type thing, obviously you could do the same thing, just be like, hot flashes, afternoon energy slump, headaches, um, sugar cravings, weight loss, like, whatever, like, just try to, this is the place that it's okay to, like, brain dump, like, a whole bunch of different stuff.

So that when people land on your profile, they can see themselves reflected and be like, Oh, okay. Yes. This is the right person for me. They can help me. Another idea is like, I meet the team. So if it's just you, it's just to meet you. Okay. If, but if you've got, like I said, uh, staff or multiple providers, like I meet the team is good.

And then the scheduling process. I already talked about that. Like, that's another good one. One, if you've got like funky parking or funky, like, maybe you're in like an office building and people have trouble finding your location. Uh, that's another idea of kind of like the parking situation or like how to like get into the actual office.

Another idea, and this is like pretty self explanatory, is like all the different services that you might offer. If let's say you're a brick and mortar and you've got massage, you've got acupuncture, you've got chiropractic, you've got laser, you've got decompression, put all of that, like maybe you sell supplements or even if you don't sell them in your office, maybe you have a full script, put all of that in one of your pin posts.

If you're, like I said, an online health coach, whatever, like, and you offer different labs. So if you're like, we offer Dutch testing and GI map and HTMA and just like, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, like list all of that out. If you do like any type of x rays or maybe you have like the scanner, any of that type of stuff.

That's all great to have. Like I said, to think about it as kind of like you're all in one. It's almost, like I said, it's truly almost like a website. That is the no time, I have no time to do anything else strategy. Dial in your bio, get your three pin posts out in, and then maybe if you have time, maybe post once a week just so that when someone lands on your profile.

They can see like, oh, they're still actively posting, which can kind of give them like a little bit more confidence. Like, oh, they're still open. Like, they're still like doing business. And even if that one post a week is just like showing appointment availability you have or reusing an older post, then that's totally fine.

So a little tip for how we reuse or recycle posts Is there's two different ways you can do it. You can use, there's an app called Repost. You literally just go to like your app store, Google Play Store or whatever and download the Repost app. Or you can use a website called Snapinst. And you would think it would be Insta, but it's just Inst.

It's S N A P I N S T Snapinst. com Forewarning though, the Snap Inst is great because you can use it on desktop, like it's just a website. You don't need the app. It's just full of pop ups and ads. So it can be really hard to actually download the video because you're like, where's the actual video download button?

Because there's a lot of tricky ad pop ups that'll say like download, but that's like not your video. If you want to use it, that's fine. Just like proceed with caution and don't like, there's a lot of like spammy stuff you can click on. So yeah, so like I said, if you're in that strap for time, dial in your bio, get your three pin post dialed in, maybe post once a week.

It doesn't have to be fresh content. It can be something reused. And then also just still make sure you're monitoring for comments and direct messages because you just don't want those to go, you know, left unanswered. So maybe you set a time like two or three times a week just to check in. Chances are, if you're only posting that infrequently, like you're not going to have a lot of comments or DMs to respond to.

But just making sure that you're at least like checking that they are there. Okay, I hope this bare bones minimum strategy episode was helpful to you. I just would be remiss if I didn't end this episode by saying, I see so many of you lovely humans trying to do it all. And wondering why you can't get it all done.

And I will preach this till the cows come home. Outsource where you can. I understand. I do not know everyone's financial situation. There are people who are literally just starting out and are using their resources towards other places. And that's fine. Again, that's where the spare bone strategy is totally great.

But if you have a more established business, there is no reason that you should be doing all of your social media all yourself. I have recorded several episodes on how to outsource. So many of my recent holistic marketing hub students have been bigger, more established practices who are putting a front desk staff, they're like, you know, 20 year old son.

We literally have like a 20 year old son of the doctor coming there who's learning CAs. We have people hiring patients or clients to go through the hub and learn how to upskill. I just had actually someone join over the weekend who is, it's just like really cool because she actually is like my exact same story.

She's doing her chiropractor's social media. She's a patient. That's how I got my start six years ago. And she just bought my course to learn how to do a better job for her doc. So yeah, like I said, or the doc bought it on her behalf, but I'm just saying you don't have to do this all yourself. I'm literally like handing you the keys to your social media strategy.

You don't have to train this person, right? Like, I mean, yeah, there's some stuff you'll have to train them in, like, just, like, your own unique business stuff. But when it comes to the Instagram part, I've taken care of all of that. There's even a editable, like, Word doc inside, uh, not Word. What is this? What is this, Molly 2006?

Editable Google doc that's got, like, sample daily, weekly, and monthly deliverables of this person. Estimated hours you can expect them to work, like they can check off as they watch Classrooms of the Hub. It's very, very thorough. So come join us in the Hub. Just go to MollyCahill. com and you'll see Holistic Marketing Hub at the top.

If you use the code PODCAST, it gets you 100 off. You have any questions? My DMs are always open. Very happy to help you. All right. Let me know if this bare bones strategy was helpful. I hope you have a fantastic rest of your, whatever this is. And thank you for letting me be in your ear today. Thank you for listening to Holistic Marketing Simplified.

And Hey, you know how 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 Cahill. C A H I L L. I would greatly, greatly appreciate your support. I know your time is valuable and I can't wait to see you in the next episode.