What is Conversion?

Conversion is the part of social media strategy where you convince people who are curious about your account that they should commit to following your account. Likewise, it is the point where you filter out the people who would not be a good fit for your purpose. Conversion fits between Outreach and Retention. Outreach is you bringing people to your account, Conversion is convincing people to follow your account, and Retention is serving them in a way that they stay as followers. Now, some enterprising entrepreneur is asking, where is the sales funnel where we drive home the sale and make some money? Good point! Because we always have to be thinking of how we will support our efforts to a bank that will not accept goodwill for the mortgage payment! The Outreach, Conversion, Retention model is our first basic step to setting up our social media footprint. Next quarter we will be adding a product line to our 2022 ecommerce set-up and I will start to introduce sales aspects. But that is for a little later. Right now, let’s create a firm foundation for a basic social media account.

My name is Bill Strand. By the end of this episode, if I have done my job right, you should have an awareness of the different elements that are important to turn visitors into followers particularly for an account on Instagram.

The Importance of Followers

So, Conversion, at the top level, is getting visitors to convert to followers. Followers are the lifeblood of social media accounts so we are constantly working on growing. There definitely is a limit to how many people are in your niche so you could conceivably have a limit to how many followers you could get, but the active accounts on Instagram, or any social media, are dynamic. This means that a certain number of your followers will be letting their accounts go inactive and there will always be new people coming to the platform. So we never get them all. We are constantly losing followers and constantly presented with new followers. And, by losing followers, I am not just talking about people deciding to unfollow your account. I also mean that group of people who just don’t log onto Instagram anymore. They are still counted as your follower, but they will not be engaging and won’t be a customer of whatever you end up selling. So, even though your follower count may still show them, you are still needing to replace them with accounts that will be active.

We are definitely judged by our follower count. Regardless of how useful or engaging our followers are, how many we have is our standing in the community. But, I am going to impress upon you another value in the conversion phase. And that is converting the right followers. This, of course, is a huge topic and one we are faced with, especially, with Instagram pushing Reels (which are TikTok-like short form videos) and an “entertainment” focus for the platform. We are being rewarded by more reach and more followers if we play the game and make entertaining reels. But is the person amused by your entertaining reel really a good customer for what your purpose is? This is where we have to be careful not to fall into the trap of just collecting followers. Because you can absolutely do that. And Instagram will feed that addiction. But you are putting an enormous amount of effort into maintaining this account. Presumably, the purpose of this account is not just an ego boost. You are looking for people that will be customers of your product. I know it is difficult being measured by a metric that isn’t in line with your purpose. But you’ll have to put effort into making sure that you do not fill your follower roster by too many people that are not aligned with your purpose. Because there comes a point where you end up creating an account for those people and you end up short changing yourself because a big Instagram account really only pays off in the end if the people following your account are also your customer base. So be mindful of the bait you put out there to bring people in, but also be mindful that your conversion stage only encourages the type of follower you want.

Converting the Right Followers

So, you keep hearing me say to convert the right followers. How do we do that? Well, in the Outreach stage I kept saying to create content that reflected what your account was about. Remember, your account purpose is the core reason why you are doing this. If you are selling geckos you are wanting to attract people who either want to buy a gecko or else could be interested at a future date in buying a gecko. The people following your account because they are amused by lizards licking their eye balls are nice to have around to fluff up the stats, but you don’t want to cater to them. To be clear. They don’t hurt you by being there. And they aren’t taking up your time in the DMs so they are not the danger in themselves. What is the slippery slope is if you get addicted to the follower number constantly jumping up and you allow yourself to make cuter and cuter videos to maintain that follower increase velocity then you could well be increasing your follower count by leaps and bounds of the entertained followers so you aren’t noticing that the serious followers are dropping off quietly because they just aren’t being fed. You are serving more and more cotton candy when they were there for the steak and potatoes. I am saying to keep in mind that the bank doesn’t care how many followers you have. Keep your focus on the steak and potatoes follower. 1 of those is worth 100 of the cotton candy followers.

The way you do this in the conversion phase is simply by being crystal clear as to what your account offers. For my chameleon husbandry account I make it very clear I am teaching people how to take care of chameleons in captivity. If you want cute chameleon videos, well I have a couple here and there, but my profile makes it clear that is not what the account is about. If you think we shouldn’t be keeping pets at all then I want to make sure you know this is not the account for you. Not that I will keep them from following. They are welcome to follow. I only have to kick people off if they are interfering with the ambiance on my account. But they are of no use to my purpose so they will likely unfollow. So, I am nipping that in the bud. What I want is to communicate exactly what I provide my followers with on their feed. Chameleon pictures and husbandry tips and hints. But don’t look at this as a way to warn people off. Look at conversion as a way to get the people looking for what you have to offer extra excited that they have found something they will enjoy.

Now, talking at this high philosophical level is all well and good, but there isn’t much actionable here. So it is time that we dive into executable steps. We are taking our present social media platform of choice, Instagram, and we are going to construct a conversion strategy using those tools.

Where Conversion Occurs

First, we identify where conversion happens. This is anywhere that there is a Follow button. While it is true that the decision to become a follower can happen anywhere, we will focus on the locations where it is possible to follow through with that decision.

Presently, on the Instagram platform you have only a handful of places where a follow button appears. And if you are taking mental notes as to where you need to show up then you are right

• Suggested Posts in a person’s Feed. You will notice that in your feed you scroll through a bunch of posts from accounts you follow and sponsored posts. But, once you have scrolled long enough, Instagram starts showing you suggested posts. These posts come from the algorithm believing that you will enjoy the content of this account based on your behaviors with other accounts. If you are voraciously following and engaging with other chameleon accounts, then you might be shown the latest post or one of the more successful posts from my chameleon_academy account. Instagram does this to keep you interested and promoting more community. Suggested posts will have a follow button. This is the only time you get a follow button on your feed. Not even sponsored posts get a follow button. So this is pretty special. You are curate and selected because the Instagram algorithm thinks that you and the viewer are a good match. And so this is a good reason to be consistent with your content subject matter and know that each of your posts may be the one exposure someone has to your account. And the more people follow right there or check out your account because of this post the more people the algorithm will show your content to. The Instagram algorithm is as addicted to successful connections as we are to our follower count. And we both get excited and try to make it happen again. Now, I don’t want to go too far out on a tangent here, but suggested posts are a powerful way to promote community and for you to get discovered by potential followers. Instagram just rolled out new feed options where you can see posts that are not curated by the algorithm. The Following and Favorites feed just show posts chronologically from the accounts you follow. No curation and no showing you more of what your behavior says you want to see.  Since these new feed options remove the algorithm, there are no suggested posts. So, anyone using these new feed options creates an island of themselves where they see new accounts only if they think to go to the explore page. Any feed option that removes the algorithm greatly reduces the opportunity for anyone in the community to grow. This is why these new feed options are a huge deal for any of us who want organic growth. Although I am not seeing sponsored posts on the following feed just yet I can guarantee you that if people embrace the Following feed option then sponsored post will start showing up there because Instagram is not about to lose money on this.  What will be killed is organic reach. So you will have to pay to get in front of new accounts. That is not a fun situation. Anyway, you can be sure I am watching the situation carefully. But, the point is that any one of your posts can inspire an immediate Follow.
• Explore posts. Non-followers will also find your content if they type in search terms. Your posts will come up in an image grid and if your image or video is selected for a closer look then the person, if not following you already, will be presented with a Follow button. Once again your Outreach post can become a conversion opportunity. And here is where the big debate over hashtags is. Instagram seems to want to downplay the importance of hashtags, but that is the way that your post shows up under the right search. Yes, I have seen some posts show up under search terms without hashtags, but it is very hard to consistently control that. But if I put down #chameleons, I can go straight to #chameleons as a search term and there my post will be. So, I am a big encourager of hashtags until we find the Instagram keyword SEO software is working so well that I can make a post show up under a relevant search term. As of March 2022 we aren’t there yet.
• Notifications When you Follow Someone Else. Yes, when you follow someone else they get a notification of it and the opportunity to follow you back. I do not consider this a strategy for growth. In fact, the whole follow/unfollow trend sprung from this. What people would do is follow a hundred accounts and then unfollow those accounts a day or so later. There are apps that do this for you. The idea was that at least some of those people would reciprocate and follow you back. And they would not know that you unfollowed them. This was call follow/unfollow and people who do this are generally not thought well of. In fact, if Instagram catches you doing this they may penalize you. This is a ridiculous strategy. I bring this up only to impress upon you to never do the follow/unfollow game. But the notifications section is a place where a follow button will appear. So, I am just making my list comprehensive.
• Your profile. And finally, there is a Follow button on your profile. And this is the place which is the most powerful conversion site on Instagram. If you have interested someone enough that they are checking out your profile then you have a hot lead. A follow from someone who has checked out your profile is a strong follow. If you have done your job right, a glance at your profile has given them an understanding of what you are about and they are making an educated decision. There is a rich tool set on your profile page that you can use to communicate what you are all about. This is where you want to focus serious effort to optimize. The second half of this episode is going to be highlighting each and every part of the profile and how to effectively use it. So, let’s get to optimizing your profile.

Optimizing Your Profile For Conversion

We have talked about optimizing your profile for discoverability. And that is where you use keywords in your bio so that the algorithm knows what you are about and who to show your account to. This is choosing your name strategically and carefully selecting the words you use. That is part of the Outreach strategy.

But now, let’s talk about the conversion aspect of your profile. What does it take to 1) make your profile look inviting and 2) communicate what you are about.

The first impression you will give is the overall look of your Instagram profile. There is a lot packed onto that little profile screen, but when you break it down you may be surprised with how little there really is. For first impressions you have your profile picture, the shape of the text in your bio, your story highlights, and the last three posts in your feed.

That first impression is not any one of these elements, but them all taken in together. To understand this, Just browse various accounts on Instagram from hobbyists to professional and take note of the feeling you get when you first see someone’s profile. Different approaches give different feelings. Go to an interior design businesses account and you are likely to get a feeling of every element complementing the other in both color scheme and composition. Go to the standard hobbyist reptile keeper and you may get the feeling of all these randomly placed items. Do not waste time judging these feelings. The polished profile and the thrown-together profile produce different feelings. What serves your purpose best? How professional do you want to appear? Remember there is value in presenting yourself as you are. The more professional you appear the more intimidating you can be to the casual person. The less professional you appear the less serious you will be taken. Where is the balance that you are searching for? Somewhere in the middle is the combination that says organized, small business which gives the feeling of trust and integrity, but maintains the open door welcome. Now, there is no formula as to how to achieve any of these levels because each business is unique. Your job is to get familiar with as many other businesses on the same level as you want to be seen as and scroll through them until you hit on that initial feeling that matches who you are as a business and then spend sometime analyzing why that profile gave you the right feeling so you can replicate it. Here are the elements of your profile to consider. I will go over them as they appear from top to bottom on your profile screen

• Profile picture. The most challenging and strategic item on this profile is the profile picture. This little round image is attached to every stage of your account activity so carries the most weight. But it is so small that you can’t put just any image up. Once again, just scroll through your feed and get a feel for the profile pictures that make an impact. Many are small and complicated so you aren’t sure what is in them. Here is where your profile picture needs to be simple but impactful. Some hints that you may consider are using a very simple headshot of you with the background cut out so it is just you against a solid color. The contrast makes you visible even when you are shrunk down into a tiny circle on a smartphone screen. This can also be done with a picture of a reptile or object which represents your account. A business logo that has good contrast will work as well. You can try out different things and see how they look. As small as the profile picture is, it will be part of the first impression of your account so it is worth making it impactful.
• Your Instagram Username is the name of your account. This is what is presented with your profile picture at the top of every post of yours that shows up on someone else’s feed or when your account comes up in a search. So it is worth putting some thought into making the Username one that reflects what your account is about. Chameleon_academy. Reptile Entrepreneur. If this was the first time hearing about these accounts you would get a pretty good sense for what these accounts are about. I am not the only chameleon academy on Instagram, though, there are accounts that do IT instruction, hair styling, basketball training, manners training, tech training all under the name Chameleon Academy. When someone searches for chameleon, what do you think they are looking for? And if you are looking for training in hair styling what do you think will be typed into the search bar? Probably not Chameleon.  Remember, you also have a Name field that shows up in the search that allows you to expound on who you are. So consider carefully what you want to do with these Username and Name fields that are scanned by Instagram for keywords.
• Okay, here is where the terminology starts to get confusing. We have Username and Name. So, the Username is the account name and there are limitations. No one can have the same account name. This is why you see variations on words with underscores and periods. You have a little more freedom with the Name field as that shows up on your profile and in the Search function so you can use this to better explain your account. I know it is intuitive to use your company name for your Username and then your company name for your Name. But I suggest you take advantage of the fact that your Name will never be seen without your Username. So, there is no reason to repeat what you have as your Username. For example, if I have my chameleon_academy Username and then Chameleon Academy as my Name, then, in the search function I always show up as chameleon_academy, Chameleon Academy. That adds no value. But if I change my Name field to “Learn about Chameleon care!” then when my account shows up in any search I am communicating the user benefit of my account. So, ask yourself, what do you want to communicate with this very valuable piece of digital real estate. While you are thinking about that, keep in mind that you are limited to two Name changes in 14 days so use some pencil and paper until you are happy with the result. You have 30 characters to play with. And spaces count. Then do the change. Here are some options.
  1. Who you are. If your Username already states your company name then you can put your name in the Name field – if that is important. If it is not important, give more information about your service. For example, if your business name is Acme Geckos, then that is your Username and your name can be your name, if you are well known in the industry, or there is a reason for tying your name into it. Example, for the Reptile Entrepreneur Instagram account my Username is reptileentrepreneur and my Name field is “Bill Strand – Start-up Support”. I still want to massage that, but since I have a consulting business, it is important that my name is attached for connection to this account. So, you can use your name or else the next option…
  2. What benefit you offer. I have said to use the first line of your bio to express the value you are giving to your potential followers. This way they know exactly, upfront what they will get if they tap that follow button. Always get to what is in it for them as soon as possible. Well, if your username is already communicating who you are then let’s not repeat that information and make the Name field the first line of your Bio to communicate the user benefit of following your account. This is much more powerful because it will now be traveling with your Username that shows up in any searches. In a sea of accounts that merely repeat their Username, your’s will stand out simply because it is communicating a user benefit! My chameleon_academy account has the benefit “Learn about Chameleon Care!”. I could put my name in the bio or just be active on my stories and live sessions so whomever follows me gets to know me.
• If a potential follower has gotten to your bio then your profile picture and Name line have done pretty good so far. Your bio needs to close the deal. An effective strategy that I like to advise is to use your first line to communicate what benefit they will receive by following, why you are the one qualified to provide that benefit, and then how you propose to provide that benefit. Close up by giving them an action item such as “Follow this account for the latest in chameleon husbandry.” Your one goal with your bio is to accurately, in the most simple terms possible, describe what you offer with your account. I recognize this can be tricky to figure out. If you are just posting pictures of all the dart frogs you raise up and have for sale then you may not see any deeper promise you can make about your account. The good news is that you don’t have to have a deep promise. It can literally be as simple as “enjoying dart frogs and their life” or something like that. Your goal is not to drum up some elaborate marketing description of your account and world changing mission. It is to accurately describe what you will provide with your account. You are not trying to con people into following your account. At this point you have their attention. You want to be as accurate as possible so when they do hit follow they will be happy with what they get in the coming weeks. By coming to your profile in the first place they are already thinking about following you. Your goal with your bio is to make sure that if they do follow you they won’t simply unfollow you when your next post hits their feed. Now, in actual execution, remember to use spaces and line breaks to break up the wall of text. Do not make your audience commit to making an effort to read your writing until you convince them you are worth following. Sounds like a lot of work for just 150 characters, doesn’t it? Well, in today’s social media world it is amazing how intimidating 150 characters can be. Just check out a random selection of bios and you can see how some arrangements are inviting and easy to read, while others are just a paragraph and nobody has time for that in this scroll, scroll, scroll world. Remember, the visitor to your account knows that there is a cute dog video waiting for them. As soon as anything on your account looks less appealing than a shiba inu running around in circles you will be left behind.
• External Link. Below your bio you have the ability to put in an external link. Instagram is very firm that they do not like external links. The only places you can have links are one link on your bio, in DMs, or with a special sticker on Stories. And that special sticker is new. Up until last year, you weren’t able to use a link in Stories unless you have at least 10,000 followers! Restricting external links to one in the Bio actually led to the creation of a new class of products called the bio-links, or “link aggregators” like LinkTree which you use your one link and it goes to a webpage hosted by your link aggregator and it shows your collection of links. This is great for people with many social media outreaches, but no website. And this is a good way to show that your Instagram is actually only one aspect of your reach. You can send someone to your YouTube channel, website, or any other place on the web. This is a great way to show the visitor what all you have to offer. But I hesitate to make the link sound too attractive in your bio because it takes your visitor away from the follow button. Say I have a link to my huge website on chameleon husbandry on my chameleon academy Instagram account, which I do. If a visitor to my profile taps that link, they will be taken into a world full of chameleon knowledge, hints, tips, and multi-media tutorials. There is so much there I wonder how many of those visitors come back to the Instagram account to tap the follow button. It is like coming to the end of your sales presentation and right before everyone signs the contract you call for a pool party. Yes, it is very good to communicate that your outreach is wider than just this account. But I suggest doing so in a way that lets them know that there are other resources available if they like what they see on your account. It is a delicate balance to try and let them know what great resources you have for them, but also not sending them off right away. I attempt this tight rope walk by having a link to my website under the words “Link goes to website”. And then I hype up the website in the features link stories and DMs to the people who have already hit the follow button. I am concerned if I presented it as “Tap here for the most amazing chameleon experience ever!” that my potential followers would check it out and forget to come back! I don’t have any studies or numbers to support or assuage my concern so I present this for what it is worth. The positive part about this, if you share my concern, is that people hesitate to leave their platform. If they want to spend time on Instagram scrolling away and finding new accounts, they are not in the mind to click away to some website. Believe me, the number of times people ask me for advice on Instagram and hesitate to go to my website, which has enormous amounts of instruction, is surprising. I have taken to creating on-Instagram resources because of this dynamic! So, it isn’t like the link in your bio will be sucking visitors off into space just by being there. Anyway, we will go more deeply into how to use the link in your bio in the next episode for the Retention phase as that is how I see it being the most useful.
• Story Highlights. This is a visual world and you have another powerful visual tool for your profile. Stories is a feature which allows you to post things which will disappear in 24 hours. This is used for casual posting and sharing with your audience things which wouldn’t be worth a full post. It is a way to connect on a more day to day basis and is a powerful tool in the retention phase that we will go over in the next episode. But, Instagram allows you to group together select stories posts into a Stories Highlights which does not expire after 24 hours and can be stored on your profile with a cover image. While Stories Highlights can include a collection of all the things you had for lunch in the month of May 2019 they can be used much more effectively in the conversion phase by making a stories highlight that talks about what your account offers or further sells your account’s value. Take a look at the chameleon_academy account where I made a story highlight entitled Start Here and it gives tour of the benefits of my account. The “Start Here” was made specifically to convert non-follower to followers. If they are on the edge enough to take a look at the story highlights after reading the bio, they are truly interested and a strategically constructed Story Highlight may be the final push they need. So, you, have fun with the highlights feature, but consider using the first spot or three for talking about the benefits of your account.
• Feed Grid. The final tool in your Conversion phase is your visitor seeing the first few rows of your lastest posts. And this is something that you fill every day with whatever you generally post so your potential follower will see an example of what they will get. Since your grid refreshes with every post you do it is a very dynamic part of your profile. It is very nice that this is arranged this way because your visitor sees exactly what they are going to get. And, just a sidenote, this is why you can’t necessarily attribute your follower count to the post it is counted on. In the analytics for each post it tells you how many people followed your account after seeing that post. All well and good and the majority of that number will have followed you because of that post, but you do not know how many of those follows took the long route and went through your profile and checked out your grid. That post may be simply the last post they tapped after the bio and story highlights did their job. But there is nothing we can do about that right now. The action item for your grid, as far as conversion goes, is to be consistent with the topic of your posting.
• You may or may not have thought about DMs as a conversion tool. These are Direct Messages and are the private conversations behind the scenes. DMs are grouped under three buckets, Primary, General, and Requested. The Requested bucket is where messages from people you don’t follow get put. The requests there are broken up into Top Requests and All Requests. Do not focus so much about how Instagram decides which of these two buckets to classify an incoming message. You need to check both as replying to a DM is the fastest way to convince someone on the fence that they should follow you.

The bottom line is that Conversion is directly related to the value you provide. This can be in the form of the value of your content to how you personally connect through DMs. Social media is, after all, all about relationships.

So, where does this leave us? Hopefully, this shines a light on the next step after Outreach. Outreach tends to get all the attention. But it is, obviously, important to have a plan for what to do with the people who are intrigued by your outreach. You want them to sign the guest book and stay for the party! So, this week, give some thought as to what visitors will find when they check out your account. Does it give a good first visual impression? Does a first glance at the profile make the benefit you provide obvious? Does the Stories highlights offer the opportunity for your visitor to dive deeper if they want to learn more about you? The better you communicate and the more you can offer in your profile, the more confident you make non-followers in their decision to tap the follow button.

The next phase of our social media strategy is retention. The Retention phase is the most simple. It is delivering on the promise we made in the Outreach and Conversion phases. That will be simple if our promise was based on exactly what it is we provide day to day. But there are tools made specifically for creating a great experience within Instagram so we are going to spend an episode focusing on those tools.

This has been a lot to chew on. And it may seem like we are making Instagram very complex. I mean, does it have to be more than posting your favorite lizard in a different pose every day? And the answer is that it can be that simple. But it is also aimless. And I don’t mean that in a derogatory way. I mean that it is guided by your whim of the day and it goes where ever your feelings go. We all know that isn’t the way to build a business. For a business you need direction and vision for where you are going. And you need to understand all the tools available so you can carry out a strategy that will ensure you get the results you need to better your life. So, if you want significant results from Instagram, or any tool, you have to go deeper into its use. The more you invest in your planning and strategy the better the results you will get. And, if you are listening to tutorials on Instagram I think we can agree that you are interested in results. So, give your profile a tune up where needed and let’s keep your social media presence running at peak performance.

Thank you very much for joining me here. And, please join me on the @reptileentrepreneur Instagram account where I have regular posts and stories on things going on in the Instagram world. I would love to hear of your experiences on Instagram so please do not feel shy about DMing me and sharing what you are seeing. Please take care of yourself, take care of our reptile community, and let’s see what we can build.