Episode 30: How to Save Time on Instagram: Hacks for Consistent Content That Converts

Hi. I'm trying this again. It's been an absolute shitshow around here it was last week. I just now when I went to hit record on this podcast, my daughter spilled her orange juice all over my white bed because I was recording from bed. Because she's been home with a fever. Well, she's home anyway, because it's summer, but she's going home with a fever. And I needed to get this podcast recording done. And so I was like, Oh, just record from bed while I'm having my coffee. And like, you know, she was watching her iPad, and then she spilled orange juice. And then when I got up to go clean up the orange juice, I spilled my entire cup of water. So, but we're here, we made it. And we're here and I am excited to teach you today, it's gonna be a little bit like, I'm gonna say this is like a beautiful blend of half and half tactics and tips. And then the other half is gonna be like mindset and it's all about that exasperation and overwhelm and frustration we can feel like putting things out there and feeling like, quote, it isn't working or, like, no one's responding to us. And we're gonna talk about how many times we actually need to be talking about things or posting things. For people to take action, we're going to talk about some time saving hacks so that you can kind of keep up with that cadence. We're going to talk about why it's important because of the brand awareness aspect and the psychology that goes with that. And we're going to talk about everyone's favorite buzz acronym, because a buzzword acronym, ROI, or return on investment. And then the last thing we're going to talk about is kind of that I don't want to feel salesy thing that we like to say to ourselves, so it's getting get better people. If you're having a week like me, tune in, grab a good coffee, let's learn some shit. 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 buy 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 bake 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. Okay, let's start this episode by saying that this is not me preaching because I am guilty of this too. You repost something once or twice or three times and you're like, ah, nobody bought or like nobody's commenting, or nobody saw it or whatever. And it can be really frustrating, right. And there used to be this cool thing called the marketing rule of seven, which means people had to come into contact with something seven times in order to take action. Well, new research in Forbes is now showing that in 2023, just because I did read in a different article, not to say one that we consume more content before breakfast, than our grandparents did in an entire month, like holy crap, like wrap your mind around that stat. But that it now takes 21 times for someone to be exposed to something or see something, hear something or whatever, for them to take action, or retain, you know, whatever, like, dude, do something with seeing your brand new, you're offering your information. And then that can kind of feel like what, like, I don't want to do that. But don't worry, I'm going to give you some time saving tips. And then we're going to talk about, like, some mindset work that we can do around that. So I just first want to talk about the beauty of follow up. And this is something I'm trying to get better. I mean, I'm actually usually pretty good at follow up when I keep track of it. But I know personally, I love it when people follow up with me because it's just kind of like me setting a reminder of Siri to tell me to do something. So if you've ever had like an unread text, and you're like, Okay, it's like takes up brain space to be like are not unread text, like a text you read and you're like, I need to go back and reply to that. And take that brain space because you're like, Oh, I got a good reply to that. I gotta go reply to that. I forgot to follow up with them. But it's so much easier when they just follow up with you, right? Or you might just forget it altogether. And then you're like, Oh, I'm so glad you followed up. I totally forgot. So let's go ahead and reframe that follow up mindset to not be something that's annoying, but it's something that's a it's a favor, you're doing somebody. So once we've kind of thought of follow up that way, then let's talk about some time saving hacks that I can give you that I have seen work over the years that can kind of help you create more content and I hate saying that because anytime I say create more people are like no, we want to do less As more and I get that this is gonna be like a way to marry the two like less is more, but also like more frequent, if that makes sense. So the good news is, this is 2023 and beyond like the the time of imperfect content, I'm not on Tik Tok. But if you look at all the like Gen Z folks on Tik Tok, they don't like their stuff isn't pretty, like, it's just not. And I mean, even a lot of the Instagram accounts, I follow that post really frequently, their content is not pretty. So I know I've talked about this in prior episodes, but like my friend, Emily, and I were especially talking about it during the Instagram Stories episode, but like, I'll give you best practices all day long. But I don't want those best practices to become something that kind of paralyzes you, and makes you think, well, I couldn't tick every single box of every single best practice. So I'm just not going to do anything. Best practices are just that practices, it's not something that has to be done every time. What's the other words are not best must haves? Good word, best, non negotiables. They're just best practices. So if you can tick boxes of best practices, great. If that's stopping you from pushing post, then just get it out there.

I will make sure it's linked in the show notes. But I listen to this podcast episode from Susie Moore. And if you don't follow her, I really like her because she's she has these awesome podcast episodes that are like five to seven minutes long. And she has a book, The podcast is called Let it be easy. And I think her book is called that too. I have her book. And it's just like all these things about like, it doesn't have to be as hard as we make it most of the time, just let it be easy. And she had a podcast recently. And the title was this was like back in January, it was like more is more. And I was like more it's more like I'm intrigued. Because aren't you like the let it be easy, less is more girl. And after listening to it, it completely reframed my mindset. It's only a five minute and like 22nd episode. So I'll link it below, I would highly recommend that you listen to that. After this, I will try to keep this short so that you have time to listen to that. But it really just talks about how if you really if you spend hours creating one piece of content and like, you've got a lot riding on that one thing, right? You're just like, Oh, I hope it does well. And then if it doesn't, you're super upset, and then you're frustrated. Whereas if you spent an hour creating 10 pieces of content that maybe like weren't as great, then you're you're just hedging your bets. It's kind of like, if you had unlimited money to play roulette, the casino, the more you play, you're eventually going to win. So definitely go listen to that episode. She also has like a saying where she says everything is hard before it's easy. And I thought that was something that was prudent to talk about today because I'm in the middle of re recording my holistic marketing hub classrooms live. And one of the health coaches was like how you just make it look so easy how you easily come up with all these post ideas. And I will say yes, like content creation, marketing, creative does, like that's definitely my zone of genius and strength. However, when I first started doing this four years ago, I literally had three, I think it was three Instagram management accounts. And that was like so hard for me to manage just three because I it just took me so long, like now just practice makes, we don't say practice makes perfect. In our house, we say practice makes improvement. So everything is hard before it's easy. I love that quote from Suzy more. So, back to the time saving bandwagon. One is, like I said, the trend of like imperfect content. Another one is repurposing and reusing. I recently had a virtual assistant who gave me an awesome price for a like a package of graphics. And if you want her name, I don't know if she has extra availability, but let me know send me a DM and I just went to a bunch of my Instagram posts in reels as well not just posts, and I gave her like 20 of them and I was like hey, remake these into just something same thing, but just like slightly different design. And with the reels, I had her take the reels and like what I was saying on the reel and I had her make it into a carousel. I mean, of course I had like some really minor tweaks here and there that I did just for my own personal preference, but it saved me so much time. So I'm gonna talk about outsourcing more in just a minute. But you don't even have to do that. You could literally just, I'm not kidding. Scroll down your feed, screenshot the dang image. Then you'll have to tap the three little dots on the top right hand corner of the post, and you'll have to tap Edit, and then you can literally just copy the caption. And then you've got the screenshotted graphic. You got the caption copied to your clipboard and just post the same x exact thing. Again, don't overthink it. Don't argue with me, just do it, trust me, it is not a big deal. Or if you don't want to do like the Edit thing from the phone, if you go to instagram.com on desktop, you can actually select your caption without having to like hit the edit button. So if you want to do like transfer it to like a Notes app or Google Doc or something like that, you could do that. Another way to kind of put out more reels is I have a couple of tips just for real specifically, I have a few accounts that I like to follow. One is Meg and Ko. And she does she makes like custom T shirts. Another is the belly whisperer. And the third one, she just changed her handle, and I can't remember it. But she does like minimalist home stuff. I'll try to find it after I stopped recording so I can get the name of it. It's like I can't remember some home account. But anyway, what I noticed with these three accounts is that they post reels pretty much every day. But it's almost always the same types of video clips, repurposed or reused. Or it's like the same concept or same exact caption literally, I've seen just like the same exact caption with just a different video. And they have exploded on Instagram. So I'm kind of trying to like take my cues from them recently. I mean, if you look like I said, this whole this past week has been banana pants around our house. So I haven't really done much of anything, because I'm trying to what free time I have had to work. I've been re recording all of these holistic marketing hub classes, like I said, and having to like redo the slide decks myself and do all the editing. Normally, I'm like the outsource queen. But that's just something that has to be done by me because I know what I want to teach on and I know what parts of the video recordings I want to, to edit out. So anyway, I haven't been posting on my feed much. But yeah, I just think it's so cool. Oh, there's one other account too. It's a furniture flipper account. And so I'll find that one too, and make sure it gets linked in the show notes. But all four of those accounts, it's so cool to see like the furniture flipper account, for example, she'll take like maybe she flips like a dresser that she finds at a thrift store and like re does it or whatever. And you'll see that she has like one really long video of like the full project. And then she'll have like a separate video where she just shows how she strips the furniture, and then another one of just how she repairs it and another one of just how she does the hardware and it's all the same video, it's just reused a couple different times. So I think watching these accounts that are really consistent and how it's just not something like now barring like the big influencer type people who have, you know, staff to help them make create, you know, new content. I'm not talking about those types of accounts, because that's just not realistic for most of us. But following these accounts, and that do post a lot and just reuse the same stuff over and over again.

Yeah, it's really inspiring to see and you're like, Oh, that's easy. I can I could do that. And double whammy that accomplishes my tip of not following your colleagues because we all know that's one of my favorite tips for not having a toxic relationship with an Instagram. For example, I don't follow other social media people mean every once in a while I'll go look at stuff just to make sure I'm you know, keeping up with the with the Joneses. But because we run an agency, I mean, I pretty much know what's going on in real time with accounts just like yours, because we are doing it all day every day for accounts just like yours. In that same vein, I'm just looking at my notes in that same vein, you can I was just talking about taking one longer concept or video and turning it into a series. So if you have something you want to talk about that's got like multiple bullet bullet points or like multiple steps, or multiple tips, like if it's like five tips for something, then instead of doing just one reel with all five tips, you can create five reels that are shorter with each thing. You really just can make a series instead of it being a longer thing. Re mixing reels is another way to make things go more quickly. I have a tutorial on my Instagram page of how to remix it's super easy to just like literally push like two buttons on. So what a remix is on Tik Tok. It's called a stitch I believe or I can't remember what the other name is for it on Instagram right at the moment because I don't think that coffee is fully kicked in because I didn't fall asleep until 130 in the morning with my daughter's fever. I was like, you know doing the whole mom worrying thing. So when you read makes a real essentially you like you're either reacting to someone else's real or you're adding your own thoughts to that other person's real. So I've seen people use this to just be like nasty mean humans and like make fun of people and also say like what they're saying is wrong. I mean, that's not how I would envision using it. I mostly use it when it's something I I agree with if you like, find somebody who's got a really cool inspirational quote or, or like a really good health tip or hack or whatever that you resonate with, instead of creating your own reel, you just tap a few buttons and hit remix. And then you're basically just like giving them a thumbs up in the background. And saying, like, Hey, I agree with this. The next tip for time saving is to use the same templates. What I mean by that is like in Canva, if you have like 234 design templates that you use for carousels, or graphics, I am like the queen. This is what I need to hear more than anything, I always want something different and novel and I want it to all look different. It's just like, I've had to just get over it and be like, if you just use the same dang templates every time it makes it so much easier and save so much time. And Canva already has so many templates that I mean, it just makes it so easy. The next tip is going back to the real time savings is having some B roll on your phone, like on your camera, like create a B roll album. If you don't know what b roll is, it's essentially just like video clips that might seem inconsequential, like you're like why would anybody want to see this. But you can add like tips or quotes over it like your feet walking or like you drinking your coffee or a time lapse of you working at your laptop or you opening the front door of your office. I've got some posts on my Instagram pretty recently about B roll. So go check those out. And it's just a journalism term. If you don't think you know what it is, you do know what it is. It's just like if you're watching a news story, like the other day was like sharks spotted in Navarre Beach, and then you know, it's like the reporter starts off talking face to camera on the boardwalk or whatever. And then as the reporter is still talking and you hear just her voice, then the cameras like panning on the beach, that's B roll. So that's a great thing to have, because you can shoot it literally anytime. Like if I'm just like walking into the grocery store or like fill my feet are like, fill my coffee cheersing or like dumping out my supplements or putting out my makeup or whatever. Like I said, I know it sounds so dumb and so silly. But it performs really well and so easy. And you could just like I said, Put a tip a quote, hack whatever on top of it and pair it with a trending audio and Bob's your uncle actually do have an uncle named Bob. So I like saying that any of you want 101 Real prompts for health and wellness professionals, a lot of them even have examples. It's actually more than 101 Now, but that's a catchy number with a little mini tutorial, then just check out Molly cahill.com/reels. And you can get that the next time saving tip is something I've been doing recently, which is using chat GPT if you have not yet toyed with chat GPT because you think that what you do is way too novel and that it's not going to understand. Let me tell you, you might be pleasantly surprised because of the subject matter that we cover. I'm like there's no way chat GPT can can get this. So we have a new client and the agency who does regenerative medicine and they do stem cells from like lipo aspirate bone marrow aspirate, they do PRP, they do interosseous injections, all this stuff. And I'm like, Okay, this is like new subject matter for us. So how the heck am I going to write this? I'm not a doctor. And obviously, the client reviews everything, right? It's not like we just like pretend to make it up, put it out there. But we do write the caption. So I was shocked. Oh my gosh, it was so good. The stuff that it came up with. I mean, it does take some getting used to when I first started using chat TPT I was like I had to make tons of tweaks. But now I've learned how to give it prompts that make it more like you can literally go in there and give it context which is cool. You can say like so when I was recording the stories or about to record the stories classroom, I was like, let me just see what it would do. And I was like I so I typed in. I am an acupuncturist who specializes in fertility. And my patients typically want a more holistic resource for getting pregnant and they I can't remember what all I typed in something like that. Was like can you give me 10 Instagram story prompts, and it did and they were good. I was like, Oh my gosh. Now I will say the prompts were more. I mean, they were pretty meaty for stories. So I would say they really probably were better like reels or grid posts problems but still, then I just prompted it again. I was like these are great. Can you also give me prompts that are more personal that don't have to do with fertility or acupuncture. And then I also asked it for geographical, like local geographical problems to like around the clinic. And they gave me so many good ones. I'm so excited. I'm teaching that. That class today actually in an hour and a half to my holistic marketing camp students. So you should come join us in the fall when we reopen, and you get to learn it all. Okay, my last time saving tip and then we're just gonna move into the rest is gonna go pretty quickly is using a content library of some sort or outsourcing. And the content library is what's included in the holistic marketing hub. Again, we're close for enrollment at the time this is coming out, but we're going to be opening at the end of September, you can totally get on the waitlist, just go to Molly cahill.com/h M, H, I have a Ba, ba gigantic. Like I was trying to say, like big, ginormous, gigantic Hollywood's content library that you can just copy paste. That's a huge time saver.

And I recently toyed around with using Upwork to help me edit some of my reels. Not that I am not capable of editing my own reels. But I have that cobblers child syndrome thing where I always only am working on my client stuff and never on my own. So I was like, well, this might be the only way I get this done. And like, like I said, my team. I mean, my team could edit my reels for me too. But it's like, we're just, you know, we're really busy right now. So I if you just look up reels editor on Upwork, I found somebody for like $15 a video, and that was actually on the higher end. And the reason he was $15 a video is because he was taking my really long hour long podcast recordings and breaking those down. But don't pay that much. Definitely look for somebody way cheaper, if you're already going to be giving them like a short clip, and they don't have to do a ton of editing. So that is another little tip. And everything on Upwork is guaranteed. So like you're not gonna get scammed or anything like that. So let's move into, we've talked about the time saving piece of this, you know, people need to see things 21 times kind of how we're in the era of I mean, two years ago, look, I was teaching like less is more, you don't have to post that much. But if you really want Instagram to work for you now, you really do need to be doing a little bit more. So we've talked about the time saving his tips. But now let's talk about like the brand. Like why why is this so important? So brand recognition equals trust, whether you realize it or not, I can't remember what I was shopping for the other day. So now the story is not going to make as much sense. But I was just like, I don't know any of these brands. So I'm not going to like I just I was like, Oh, I don't know, I don't know any of these brands, I'm not gonna buy it. So it's like you just naturally are gonna gravitate towards the brand that you already recognized. It's why some people like to piggyback off of the brand to kind of like almost like steel, the like the brand trust or net or whatever. So there's that carwash here in town that doesn't say tide on it, but it literally looks like a box of tide, like the logo almost looks identical to a tide laundry detergent bottle. And it's a carwash and it's like, Oh, I see what you're doing. It's like, oh, you know, America. I mean, I don't use tide, but it's like Americans recognize that orange and blue tide logo. So they're gonna see that and think, oh, like whether you realize it or not, you subconsciously have this trust piece when it's consistent branding. And that's why I think it's really important that you have consistent branding on Instagram that matches your website. So you don't want it to be like some random graphic every time and more people don't realize that it's coming from you, right? Like it needs to be cohesive and concise, consistent. It's not just for aesthetic purposes, just because you want it to look nice, it's because it literally instills trust. So if you want to know how to create a brand or mood board on Canva I have a free blog post on my website on how to do that. That's also why it's important for you to have like if you're a brick and mortar office to have a picture on you know, like maybe he's like one of your top three grid posts or something of the exterior of your office because you never know how many times somebody might have driven past your office and been like oh, that's this place like kind of connects it like puts it all together. You know saying like, especially if you're in some like obscure place in a strip mall, like hidden back somewhere. And then on the subject of ROI or return on investment. It can be really hard to measure in all marketing, but Instagram specifically can be tough because, yes, there are certain things you can do to track certain KPIs. Key Performance Indicators. You know, if you listen to my episode with Dr. Elise, they have unique links for each of their social platforms. So they know when someone clicks, where they're coming from. If you use a service like Link tree or something like that, in your Lincoln bio, you can track how many people have clicked on that link. And then, you know, you have like, the more traditional routes of capturing where people came from, right? If like on the intake form, they're like, Oh, I heard about you from Instagram. But like, that's the most beautiful direct path doesn't always happen that way. It could be something like, oh, you know, my best friend is having migraines. And I'm like, Hey, you should go see my chiropractor. And she's like, Oh, send me their Insta. And I'm like, okay, so I do. And then she's like, Yeah, this looks good. And then she, like goes to Google AI, goes to your website, and book shoe. And then instead of how did you hear about me, she's like, gonna tell my name, right? Even though your Instagram might have been the thing that clinched it for her, especially if she was, you know, nervous about visiting a chiropractor for the first time for like, oh, okay, like, I got a feel for these people and what it was. So it's not always this really direct ROI, I would love for it to be that, but just know that brand awareness is kind of like the marketers. It's like, every, every marketer wants their clients to have it. But then at the same time, it's really hard to measure your return on investment. When it comes to brand awareness. It's kind of like, you know, if you're driving down the highway, and you see billboards, you're not always just gonna immediately pick up the phone and be like, Oh, I'm going to call this number I saw on this billboard. So it's about that kind of that repetition. And then also, like, Right place, right time, right? Like, if somebody doesn't need it right, then, then it's, you know, seeing yourself, may or may not do anything, but when they do need you, they're gonna be like, Oh, you want them to be like, the first part, won't you? I mean, to be the first person they recall when they need something, like, for example, if you're not pregnant, and you keep seeing this pregnancy and baby acupuncture person you're like, I mean, this doesn't pertain to me, you're just gonna keep scrolling right on by. But if you do get pregnant, and then you're gonna be like, Oh, I remember seeing that person on Instagram. So I just wanted to give you that note about ROI, just because it's not always as direct as we would like it to be. And you can measure your website clicks on Instagram under your insights, but correct me if I'm wrong, if anybody knows differently than me. Right now, you can't see website clicks from reels, I think you can only see it from your regular grid posts. So so the last part is, if all of this is kind of still got you left, feeling overwhelmed, and if you're one of those people who has ever said, I don't want to feel salesy, then I just want you to go back to this Simon Sinek, who had that really popular TED talk back? I think it was like 10 years ago. It's people don't buy what you do they buy why you do it. So I find that I am constantly having to return to my center return to my Wi Fi, which I know sounds airy fairy, Let's all hold hands and skip through a field. But it's so true. You heard me tell the story about my sister in law who literally learned to breastfeed from watching reels. So like, what you're doing is so much more important than just putting out a silly video or graphic on Instagram. You're literally helping people. Okay, so think about it if you need to think about my sister in law who learned to breastfeed by watching reels like that's incredible what a world we live in. So, I want you to always remember maybe put your hand on your heart and just know that you can simultaneously want to have an intention of serving and and you know, having a giving heart and wanting to help people and you could want to make money doing that thing at the same time. It is not an either or ever. They can both exist simultaneously. So just repeat that again. You can simultaneously lead from a place of service and giving and want to make money doing that thing. Because if you don't have any money and you go out of business, then you help zero people. So I wish somebody would have seen my waddling painful back pregnant but in public and been like Hey, hello, I can help you. Because I was in so much pain, back pain in my third trimester of my pregnancy. Crazy enough. I actually didn't know that baby pregnancy chiropractors existed seven years ago, I wish I had and yeah, I really wish someone who had been like hey,

I can help you. So kind of always go back to your y the Y is not I need to get out more content that is not your Y. The Y is not I need to get more patients that is not your Y. The Y is you to serve more people and help them to live happier, healthier lives, because when people feel better, and when they're functioning at their best, then they're nicer to their cashier at the grocery store. They're better parents and partners and employers, employees, colleagues, members of society. So if you are helping more people feel their best, you are not being salesy. So just get it out of your head. And I will say, if you don't believe in what you're doing, then why would someone else. So if you don't believe in what you're doing, then I don't have a podcast where that you need to take a long, hard internal look at why it is that you inherently don't believe that the service you are offering is useful, because that's a problem. And maybe we need to pivot. And that's not a job for me. But I have some really great coaches if you do find yourself in that situation. So I hope today's episode was helpful. And as always, please send me a DM let me know that you're listening it means the world to me, it's really hard to sit here and record to nobody. And I will see you on the next episode. 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 beat 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.

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