Introduction

Hello Reptile Entrepreneurs. In this episode I will go over an overview of the social media world, especially as to how it relates to Instagram, and then I will lay out a foundational social media strategy that can be applied to any social media platform. I will start using Instagram as a working example, but will be presenting these concepts in a way that you take them with you to TikTok, YouTube, and whatever platform comes up in the future.

My name is Bill Strand and it is my job to help you become successful in creating a niche business.

Where are we at Q1 2022?

Welcome to the end of the first quarter of 2022. And, let’s establish some context. 2022 is the year where I am leading you through a step by step process where you start with nothing and by the end of the year you will have a functional ecommerce business. I have broken this up into quarters. The first quarter is where we establish a social media home base. I have chosen my teaching example to be Instagram. In the second quarter we will get you a logo and set up a print on demand storefront. The third quarter will be the start of your YouTube and/or Podcast outreach, and the fourth quarter will be a full website.

We have done a great deal of taking about different aspects of Instagram. But now that we are in the last month of the quarter I am doubling down and the next episodes are going to be tutorial episodes where you will take away a solid understanding of social media strategy. Successful social media is much more than just posting whatever you want. Social media is just the latest outlet for the classic marketing skills that have been with us since the beginning of humans on Earth. When the dust settles here, you will have a working grasp of these skills and principles and how they apply to social media in general and Instagram in particular.

State of Social Media

Let’s start with an understanding of where we are circa Q1 2022. At this time The top social media platforms are Facebook, Youtube, and we don’t know if third place is Instagram or TikTok. TikTok has the momentum, but Instagram is throwing everything behind keeping their third place. Which platform is bigger is actually not a concern of yours right now. Any of these platforms is big enough to support your starting business. Your concern is where the greatest concentration of your target customer is and which platforms gives you the tools you need to run your outreach. But since there will be inevitable comparisons between Instagram and TikTok I am going to give a brief overview of what’s going on right now.

Instagram started as a photo sharing app. It has a deep artistic history. Instagram is a mature platform and has sat comfortably at the #3 social media platform for a while now.

But, enter TikTok. TikTok is a relatively new platform that took everyone by surprise by the addictive nature of 15 second video. It took everybody by surprise because TikTok is not the first social media to try short form video. Regardless, TikTok has shot up to the most download app and has grabbed the attention of the established players.

So, here is the part that is relevant to you. Instagram is a robust and mature platform that gives you a rich tool set including still images, short form video, and long form video. You can still grow organically, meaning without paying for ads or reach, and it gives you many tools to get attention and develop your digital follower relationships. It has been the great copier and features from Snapchat, Youtube, and now TikTok have showed up there. Although people like to call Instagram a copy cat, they copy pretty darn well and the result is that Instagram is the most robust platform right now, in my opinion. Instagram is trying to keep up with TikTok by pushing short form video. I, personally, am frustrated by how much they are pushing short form video and I feel like trying to grab the short form video market in this way encourages people to not try hard. Quantity is a much better pay-off than quality right now. And that is not a good thing. Though, short form video is an art form in itself and if it is the new medium then so be it. We will have to change with the times. I can confirm that a Reel, which is Instagram’s short form video, has a much quicker and greater reach than a still image post. So we are in this bizarre stage of Instagram’s development where you are being forced to play the algorithm. I’d love to say just concentrate on the quality of your account. And that is what I will say, but Instagram is forcing us into having to pay attention to what they are doing with their algorithm because it seems almost certain that they are trying to tweak the values to get a certain response. Of course, there will be much more on that later.

TikTok is scrambling to be a respectable platform and they know they have to grow out of pithy short form video to go the long haul. You make money in the social media space by selling advertising. And there is a reason why YouTube has the most loyal content creator base. That is because Youtube can sell ads and attribute it to a certain creator. You can more easily do this with long form video. And that is why TikTok is now rolling out the option for 10 minute video posts. Will the TikTok community embrace long form video? Well, that isn’t a sure thing. You may or may not know that Instagram supports long form video. In fact, it had a complete spin off app called IGTV. But that app has been closed down for lack of use. So, when you try to incorporate something other than what people came to you for you run a bit of a risk. So it is not certain that TikTok will pull this off. We shall see. But the reason this is important to you is that TikTok is actively working on becoming more than what it is. So, I will be having special TikTok specific episodes coming up as it is a valuable platform to be familiar with and it would be wise to start an account. Instagram is still the best place to be for you right now, but we are always looking ahead.

Social Media Strategy: Outreach, Conversion, and Retention

So let’s get to the meat of this episode – Social Media strategy. All of social media can be defined as OutReach, Conversion, and Retention. You put together posts that are sent out into the digital universe as your outreach. They are designed to get people interested in your account enough that they go to your profile to check it out. This is the purpose of OutReach – bringing people to your follow button for the Conversion phase.

Conversion is dressing up your profile in a way that gets the visitor to tap the follow button and give you the right to be on their personal feed. But your job is not over at that point. In fact, you will be spending the rest of your social media life in the Retention phase constantly giving your followers a reason to stay your followers.

So, a successful Outreach of posts brings non-followers to your profile.

A successful Conversion convinces non-followers to decide to tap the Follow button.

A successful Retention is making them happy to see your content so they enjoy their feed if you are part of it.

You can take this basic understanding and apply it to any social media platform. All social media platforms have some sort of search method for people to find new accounts to follow. And there is an algorithm to determine the worthiness of posts and accounts. Your job is to use the tools provided in the platform to produce content that is desirable. The algorithm will then get it out in front of people so they can decide whether you are interesting. If they are then there is always a way they can follow or subscribe your account. Finally, you had best provide what is expected of your account or else your followers will unsubscribe.

Promise & Purpose

To do this successfully,  Outreach, Conversion, and Retention must be co-ordinated. And this is why we are going to start on the other end of what we generally consider the progression. So much attention is on the outreach part that we tend to forget it all rests on the foundation of what you do on the retention side.

Think of it just like a movie. Movie trailers are meant to generate excitement for the movie. That is the outreach. Your trailer is sent out and if the trailer is good people will come to the movie theater to buy that ticket. There is the conversion part. But if the movie doesn’t deliver what is promised in the trailer the word of mouth will kill your movie. So, make a good movie. And, by this, I mean have a. vision for what you want to do with your account.

Now, I am going to take a short break here and say you may not know what your purpose or promise is or just have a hazy idea of what it may be. That is okay. We will work it out. It is normal for this to take time. You keep trying different things until something clicks and then it is like a sudden rocket to orbit. So, give yourself that time to explore. But the fact is that the real growth and success will come once you find that purpose and you have a solid promise you can make to your potential followers.  

Promise and purpose are words full of meaning and can be intimidating. But your promise and purpose don’t have to be mystical and ineffable. Simple is great. I am going to provide you with a cute iguana picture every day to start your morning off right. And then you fulfill your promise by posting an iguana image or video every morning at 6AM sharp. Boom. You have a promise that you are fulfilling. And now everything can be aligned. Your account can be called the daily iguana, Your outreach can talk about “today’s daily iguana picture comes from David in Singapore”. Your profile can say “the account that iguana lovers start their day with”. And so everyone who hits that follow button knows exactly what you are promising and has a clear expectation as to what they are getting. Everything is beautifully clear and aligned. So, you see how having a specific promise puts your whole strategy in alignment?

I have a promise for my chameleon account. “Learn how to care for your chameleon”. Just by the nature of that promise you know that my target demographic is people who have just started keeping chameleons or want to keep chameleons. And so my material is going to be more about how to set up a chameleon cage than it is the evolutionary steps of the hyoid bone in the chameleon tongue. And my use of the scientific names will be sprinkled in amongst the common name in such a way to get my audience familiar with them. The more I tailor my outreach to speak to this person and the more clear I am with my profile who my material is for the more people will be happy with my account once they hit the follow button.

The more focused and clear we are with our promise the more we need to stick with that promise.

So, let me voice the question bouncing around the room right now. How do we select a promise to make? And the answer will come to us when we come to terms as to why we are doing this in the first place. I don’t mean the marketing reason as to how you are making the world a better place. I mean, what is it doing for you? What are you getting out of this? And here is where it is time to be completely selfish. I know that when you do anything society pressures you to have some selfless reason. And so, yes, we have to play that game. But within the walls of this podcast let’s get down to the base level. What are you getting out of this that will lead to your mortgage being paid? It is okay if you are doing this completely for enjoyment. But be clear to yourself on that. Being clear on what you want out of it helps you decide what content to post. Do you like likes? Do you want follows? Knowing what you want will dictate what you promise. But most people following an entrepreneurial podcast are using their Instagram to support, directly or indirectly, a business venture.

The Importance of Defined Purpose

Say you are a breeder of crested geckos. What do you want out of your Instagram outreach? What is worth all the effort to start and maintain an account. Well, you want to sell your geckos. That is your promise to yourself. All of this time that could be spent at a coffee shop with your partner, soaking in a bath, hanging out with friends, or sleeping in, but is instead being spent figuring out the best way to get organic reach on Instagram will pay off in the form of exposure for your breeding efforts so you can sell geckos, have a successful home business, and someday grow it to a size where you can quit your job. Okay, now there is someone who really understands their purpose and promise to themselves! And I encourage this level of self-introspection. Place a value on your time and be deliberate on how you spend your time. Any minute spent on social media is a minute you are taking away from exercising, playing with your kids, or resting. Make sure you are getting a return on that investment that will justify less time with your kids or self-care. Think about it in that way. I am serious about you taking care of yourself. Building a business that will enrich your life is a good investment. So that is a good choice.

Once you decide what you are getting out of this account you know who you need to attract to the account – people who love whatever it is you are selling. In this case, crested geckos. So what does that kind of person want to see come across their feed? Well, how about a daily crested gecko post to start their day? It can really be as simple as that! Be consistent and an account people can rely on and you will slowly gather followers who love crested geckos enough that seeing one every morning makes them happy. Sounds like the perfect follower for a crested gecko breeder account to me.

Your Steps Going Forward

So Let’s review. The first step is to figure out what you want from this account. What is your completely selfish payback for your efforts? This first step has to be completely selfish. You can’t go forward effectively until you are honest with yourself. Since our society hammers it into our head that anything selfish is bad we are often trapped into just thinking about what we can do for our community and when the day is done we are completely spent and we are a lifeless husk. You cannot help others out of weakness. You must be strong and that requires you to take good care of yourself. And it is the same with a business. If you are going to have a successful business you absolutely need to take care of that business first. And then the business will be in a position to donate to conservation and community projects. Once again, serve from a position of strength. If you are weak then you need to take better care of yourself. No one is going to do it for you.

The second step is to figure out who, in the couple of billion active accounts out there, is your customer. And here is where you can start to think selflessly. What can you do to serve this community? How can you, from a position of strength, make the community a better place? You figure out what speaks to you. Make your promise simple enough that it is easy to communicate. And, yes, take the time to figure out how to focus that promise. It is absolutely critical to your success that you are able to quickly and succinctly encapsulate your promise. You get precious little time or space to communicate in today’s social media. Brevity is now a critical skill.

Here are some examples of a good promise.

My chameleon account promises “Learn how to care for your chameleon”

The Reptile Entrepreneur, this show, promises “Learn how to build a business you love in the reptile world”.

I won’t tell you who these accounts are. See if you feel like you know what they are about from the first line of their profile.

“I help you grow and launch your brand on Instagram”

“I help entrepreneurs & creators w/ organic Instagram growth”

“Ultimate dog videos”

“Sharing easy tips and tricks to help grow your Instagram”

“Exploring the ethics of captive exotic animals”

“Inspiring wonder of the ocean by educating the world about octopuses!”

So, by looking at those first lines, do you have an idea of what to expect if you follow those accounts? Pretty clear. Don’t worry about the exact words used. Those aren’t magic. It is the feeling. Do you have a clear idea of what you will be getting involved in when you read that first line? Do you have an idea what benefit you will get by following? If you have that figured out yourself then you can communicate it here and make sure that whoever taps that follow button is happy with what they are adding to their feed.

It was a real challenge finding reptile themed accounts that had a good promise in the bio. This is, in no way a prerequisite for success. But it is an opportunity to communicate clearly and streamline your Outreach/Conversion/Retention process.

I know figuring out a promise is difficult. It is much easier to say who you are rather than what you are offering. The bio of most reptile accounts says who they are and what they do. But it doesn’t say what they plan on doing for you as someone thinking about following them. We can make assumptions, but then you have set up this system where people can be disappointed.  I don’t want to say that is wrong. It certainly works for many people. And I know if you are making an account for a store or a product it is hard to get out of the mindset of showcasing what is in the store or the product features. But maybe you can find a deeper promise if you think about what the product can do for your customers. Why do they want to use your product?

Does everything in your store help people create beautiful enclosures for their reptile? Well, maybe your store account can be about how to build beautiful enclosures for reptiles and it just happens to use the products from your store? If your breeding project is dedicated to a certain species it is a simple thing to make your account about that species. Maybe it would help for you to sit back and ask yourself what the perfect account you would follow would look like.   If you love Emerald Tree Boas, what kind of account would you love and look forward to seeing every day. Perhaps that would be what your account should be. Once again, you decide what you are most comfortable with. None of what I am saying is mandatory to have success. It is all just optimization and a strategy that will help you have more success.

An Example of Focused Social Media

So, how about this. Let’s do an example.

Let’s take the crested gecko breeder

Self Promise: Bring in customers to buy crested geckos so I can grow my business to the point where I can support myself and quit my job. Remember, it doesn’t have to be this detailed or elaborate. But make sure it is meaningful enough to you to really motivate you to push through the frustrations that are definitely ahead. So, it doesn’t have to be as significant as changing your life style, but this is the Reptile Entrepreneur Podcast and that is what many of us are here for so, by the same token, do not limit your vision for your future. I can guarantee you that if your vision for your future was as clear as this Instagram account being a critical outreach for your breeding business that will give you freedom in your life, you will be going at this with a laser focus and your odds of success have just skyrocketed!

Account approach: You will post one image or video each day at 6AM and give a humorous or inspiring quote for crested gecko fand to start their day.

So, your Outreach is

• The name of your account is “Crested_Gecko_Daily”.
• You post every day at 6AM a crested gecko image or video and a quote. At the bottom of every post caption you say “Follow Crested Gecko Daily for your daily inspiration. Posts every day at 6AM PST”. And you do your post every day whether people are following you or not. You have a promise to keep!

For your Conversion you are ready with your profile where the first line of your bio says “A daily crested gecko post to start your morning off right!”

We will do a deep dive on the conversion process in a later episode, but for now, it is enough that your visitor to your profile has been told over and over the benefit they are receiving from your account. They saw your account name. They saw your message in your post. They saw the first line of your bio. And looking at your grid they see all those posts and know that you definitely have been following through with this promise of yours. If they have any interest in crested geckos and like seeing crested gecko posts, they should know, at this point, that they have hit the jackpot and will slam that follow button.

For the retention phase you only need to continue doing what you promised you would. You pot a crested gecko every morning at 6AM. And you don’t suddenly post pictures of your bearded dragon or miss a week of posting.

Now, how do you bring this around to fulfill your benefit? If you are not using this account to constantly market your geckos, how do you advertise and get people to buy your geckos? Luckily, you can always integrate great pictures of your geckos in with the daily pictures. You’ll ruin the ambiance if you directly try to sell, but I think you will find that your daily post will generate many DM inquiries and you can use the stories feature to do more direct notification to check the website. Remember that any animal sales on Instagram is risky and could result in your account being taken down so get them to your DMs and website as soon as possible if they are a serious customer.

Now, this is just one of an infinite number of approaches that can work. If you can’t post everyday maybe your promise is just crested gecko posts to brighten your day with no mention of a time of post. Though, honestly, being part of someone’s daily habits is a powerful relationship. I would do everything possible to be consistent if you can! Maybe you aren’t the best photographer, but you have been doing this for decades. How about that promise being  “hints and tips for keeping crested geckos”. It is direct and simple to know exactly what they can expect from you.

Can you see how having that promise just hands you a laser focus direction and execution? Don’t worry about whether you know how to execute that. Over the next episodes I will be doing a deep dive into the specific strategies of Outreach, Conversion, and Retention. So don’t worry about how it all fits together right now. For this week I’d like you to meditate on your purpose. That means what you need, and how you will serve the community in exchange for them providing what you need. It is a symbiotic relationship. That means both parties benefit. It is the fruit approach. The plant wraps its seed in edible fruit. The birds eat the fruit and take the seed to be pooped somewhere else. The tree offers the birds sustenance in exchange for a delivery service. Likewise, you are offering a social media experience in exchange for what you need to continue on. As long as you produce quality content and a method for your community to sustain you, you can continue making your content. So, what do you need so you can continue to serve the community?

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Your Strength Creates Community Strength

And here is where I’d like you to entertain for a moment how you can make the community a better place. How can you serve the community? I have thrown at you some action items and made you explore what you need to take away from this effort of yours. I do that because we are so bad at taking care of ourselves. So I have to pound it in that it is not only necessary, but okay. All of us are counting on you to take care of yourself because we don’t know how to do it as well as you do. But once you have gone through that and have put into place a structure that will sustain you, that is when it is time to reach out, from that position of strength, and help others. Be kind in your outreach.

In conclusion, I want to reiterate that the strategy methods we are going over here are for any social media platform. From Facebook to Pinterest to TikTok to Instagram. Having a purpose and promise guiding your outreach, conversion, and retention is the winning formula. So, once you have this down you can simply adjust when the next big social media platform comes to challenge TikTok or Instagram changes its algorithm to favor another post type. Whether you are creating text posts, image posts, infographics, long or short form video, it does not change your strategy.

So, I am going to close it off here. I think we have a full week ahead of us just figuring out purpose and promise. I hope you see that going through this exercise now can greatly increase your success. It may be a challenge thinking like this, but it is one of the ways we need to rewire our brain to step above the crowd and to make things work better for ourselves.

Thank you for joining me here. This is Bill Strand signing off. Take care of yourself…And I hope you are seeing why that is important. It is because by being strong you can help take care of our reptile community. So let’s go forward with the goal of building something that is good for both us personally and the community.