Are you looking to up your Instagram strategy to increase podcast downloads? Maybe even automate the whole process? Then today's guest takeover episode, or mini training, if you will, is for you. (And if you've stepped away from the platform, this episode may convince you to come back!)
Brittany Verlenich is here to help you leverage every Instagram post to get more downloads and grow your podcast listenership. She shares how to automate this process with ManyChat, what a squeeze page is, and other really helpful tips for using Instagram and email marketing.
Some links mentioned are affiliate links. This helps to support this podcast at no additional cost to you.
Topics in this episode: tips for podcasters, educational strategies, marketing tips for TPT sellers, online educator tips
Transcripts
Sara Whittaker 0:00
Hello, hello, welcome back to another episode of podcasting for educators. At the time that this episode airs, I am out on my maternity leave. And during this leave, I am sprinkling in a few guest takeover episodes on the podcast. If you haven't heard me talk about these yet, guest takeover episodes are when I have a previous guest, come on to the podcast, take over the show for the week, and share about something that we thought would benefit you. You can think of these guest takeover episodes almost like little free mini trainings. And today our guest takeover is coming from Brittany ver linage. Brittany has been on the podcast twice before in Episode 42. She came on to talk about building a podcast community in Facebook groups. And in Episode 109. She talked about using Instagram as an introvert. So definitely check out those episodes after listening today. But today Britney's here to talk about something a little bit different. She is going to be chatting about how to leverage every post on Instagram to get more downloads and grow your podcast listenership. And she's going to tell us how to automate this process using many chat. She also goes through what a squeeze pages and a few other really helpful tips. Britney is a social media strategist, content creator and host of the social media magic podcast. She loves showing sellers how they can grow their email list with social media. Brittany believes that social media can be a powerful tool for personal and business growth when it's used the right way. And with that, I'm gonna pass it off to Brittany.
Your Podcast is a powerful tool that serves your audience and your business. But how do you manage it all bring in new listeners and convert those listeners into customers. That's what this show is all about. Welcome to podcasting for educators. I'm Sara Whitaker, classroom teacher turn podcast manager, and I'm here to help you get the most out of your show, all while making an impact on other educators.
Brittany Verlenich 2:03
ally free for up to the first:
Build. And lead generation just means getting a list of people who you'd want to sell to in the future. And in this case, for most of us, that's building an email list. If you're a service provider, and you don't have an email list, you can still use this to generate your own list of leads. And you can even do something like mark each lead in your DMS as a lead using a flag, or using different options for medication in the DMS. And it's kind of hard to talk about that without showing you what it looks like. But I also have a YouTube channel. So if you want to see more in depth tutorials, using these platforms and apps, you can definitely find me on YouTube by searching, Britney relented, which is also my same name and handle on Instagram. So that's many chat. And basically, what you're going to do using the comment to customer strategy, you're going to have a post that's very compelling content, you're going to have a hook that makes them want to stop the scroll, both on the actual piece of content itself, whether it's a single photo post carousel posts are real. And then you also want the first line of the caption, just like in a TPT product, that's the snippet that you see before you click on it to learn more, right, like you can't see the whole Caption of A post. When you see a post, you only see that first line. So I collect the hook. But I also sometimes call it a snippet, just because I know that TPT sellers are familiar with that idea. When we're talking about product descriptions, those first couple of lines are what you see. And they're really important, because if they're engaging and interesting, then someone will click on it and then read the rest of the caption, which is often what you want when someone is engaging in a PC your content. And just for context, I'm talking about Instagram, primarily here, but these same principles apply, no matter which platform you're using tick tock, or even just email, right, like you need to have a good subject line if you want for your email to get open. So the same principles apply across any kind of content creation. So you have a compelling hook on the video or piece of content itself, you have a one to two line hook that can get seen without seeing the whole caption. And then at the end of your caption, you have a clear call to action where they put a certain word, a certain keyword, when they enter that keyword in the comments. In the chat, you're going to set up an automation to send them something via DM, usually people will send them an opt in freebie, or they'll send a low ticket offer especially if you're selling on TPT or Etsy, it's usually pretty easy to send something for 357 $8 and have it be bought right away on Instagram, even if they're not following you, which is great. It used to be that you wanted to create content on Instagram to get more followers and then sell to those followers. But the platform has changed a lot. So you can actually have someone who has never heard of you before, sees a piece of your content or watches your reel and then decides to buy right there and then or opt in right to your email list. I think that is the opportunity that so many sellers are missing is because they're thinking about Instagram as it was 10 years ago. But all of social media has changed dramatically. Anyway, you'll have a post where you have the clear call to action, they put the keyword in the comments, the person receives a DM from you via the many chat automation with the link inside. And then they also get a comment that says something like hey, thanks so much for asking about XYZ freebie or product, I just sent a message to your DMS. And I also recommend in the automations, putting something in the trigger comment about reminding them to check their message requests. Many people who use Instagram for fun, they don't use it like we do, right, they don't know that you have all these different tabs in your DMS, they probably only know about in use their primary tab. So we just have to let them know that hey, this might be in your message request, especially if they're not following you already. From there in that actual message they receive from you via the mini chat automation, you're going to have a button that leads to a link. And the link that you include is going to lead to a squeeze page. Essentially, a squeeze page is just an opt in page. Except for it's typically shorter and simpler. You do not want to have all kinds of links, all kinds of options and ideas on here all kinds of texts and content, you want it to be very simple and clean, where they enter their name and their email address. The reason for that is many times when something leads off of a platform like Instagram, if people get kind of confused or frustrated, they're just going to close out of it, they're not going to make the effort to go back. So the reason that we're collecting their email address is one so they get added to your email list, which is great. We definitely want to increase our social media following our podcast downloads and our email list at the same time. But it's also because if they click through or click off or something doesn't work or something isn't optimized for mobile, they're also going to get that email with whatever it is that you were going to send them. So that is just a good tip. In general, I would say always have a squeeze page. And then once you start setting these up for all of your different parts of content, whether it's blog posts or whatever. You can also consider adding a tripwire off the back of that so you could even possibly make some sales. But I digress. For this one. We want to make it really simple for podcast episodes. The great part about this is you could get really granular here. You can even set up your automations if you want to get fancy that you ask them a series of questions in an automated way and depending on what
ey choose option ABCD, option:
Sara Whittaker:
Thanks so much to Brittany for taking over the podcast this week. I hope that you are walking away with some really great tips to try on Instagram. Britney also mentioned trip wires in this episode. If you aren't super familiar with trip wires, I did an episode about them with Melanie, badass Steli and episode 135. So I'll link all of the episodes that we mentioned and all of the resources in the show notes for today's episode. As always, thank you so much for being here today. And I'll catch you here next week. Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. To keep this conversation going connect with me on Instagram at podcasting for educators. I'm always looking for an excuse to talk about podcasting. If you're looking for support and launching, managing or growing your podcast, check out my online course the podcasting for educators prep school at podcasting for educators.com/prep school. I'll see you here next time.
