Instagram Content Strategy: Attracting Quality Leads and Sales
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Welcome to the Social Media Marketing Podcast, helping you navigate the social media jungle. And now, here is your host, Michael Stelzner. Hello, hello, hello. Thank you so much for joining me for the Social Media Marketing Podcast, brought to you by Social Media Examiner. I'm your host, Michael Stelzner, and this is the podcast for marketers and business owners who want more exposure, more leads, and more sales. And I'm here to tell you that

And today we're going to talk about Instagram. We're going to talk about how to use Instagram to attract more qualified leads and sales. And you're going to love today's episode. We're going to be joined by Elizabeth Marbury. By the way, if you're new to today's show, be sure to follow us on whatever app you're listening to so you don't miss any of the great content we've got lined up that's coming your way. Let's transition over to this week's interview with Elizabeth Marbury.

helping you to simplify your social safari. Here is this week's expert guide.

Today, I'm very excited to be joined by Elizabeth Marbury. If you don't know who Elizabeth is, she's an Instagram marketing strategist who helps small businesses drive more organic leads and sales. Her podcast is Strutted, Bold Visibility Through Instagram Marketing, and her membership is Hot Reels, the 12-month Instagram content lab. Elizabeth, welcome to the show. How are you doing today? Hi, Mike. I am awesome and super pumped to be here with you today. Yeah.

I am super stoked you're here as well. Today, Elizabeth and I will explore how to attract quality leads and sell with Instagram. Now, before we get into that, I would love to hear your story. How in the world did you get into Instagram marketing? Start wherever you want to start, please. Oh, yes. Thank you so much. I'm so honored to be here and share my story with you. So I did not take a traditional path to marketing.

I actually started my career as a dancer. I went to college in New York City where I studied dance and had the privilege of performing internationally in Paris, India, Japan, even the Caribbean.

And my passion for performance and teaching and choreography led me to open up my first business, which is my brick and mortar and dance studio here in Denver, Colorado, that I launched three years ago.

15 years ago after i got married and this business is called wedding dance coach we do private dance lessons for couples and trying to avoid their awkward sway and really rock their first dance with confidence for the record i went to such a place when i got married to in you know in san diego so right everyone's like oh i wish i wish you existed when i got married

So yeah, there was a need in the market. I saw it. There wasn't any exclusive studios that only focused in on that. Keep in mind, this was 15 years ago. So I started that business with a Craigslist post. I had no website.

just grit, just grit and a dream. And I'm going after it. I'm going to learn as I go. So for my first decade of growing that business, we grew year over year. And during those first 10 years, I didn't do anything with social media marketing. Okay. I really focused on SEO, getting first page, Google placement, all organic word of mouth referrals. That is really important in the wedding industry, of course. And, um,

Our business kept growing, but I knew that I was just scratching the surface of what is possible for my company. And that's when I decided to go all in on our Instagram marketing strategy.

and i studied it i researched i tested i tweaked i did all the things and within 12 months i had grown my company's combined social following to over 120 000 followers which resulted in an 84 increase in revenue i got over 5 000 hot prospects on our email list and

And I launched a virtual studio practically overnight due to our expansive growth and visibility. I was able to add an additional revenue stream to my business. And truly, this is when I completely fell in love with social media marketing and I just became obsessive over it. When was this, by the way? What year was this? How many years ago are we talking?

So when I when I really went all in on it, it was at the end of 2020, 2021. And then our explosive growth in revenue was 2022. Cool. Keep going. Yeah. So during this time, you know, I was really blown away by what the visibility of Instagram gave me as a brand. In fact, I got a phone call one day from

a morning show in the UK. It's called This Morning. It's the biggest morning show in the UK. And they wanted to interview me about my company. And I said, hey, where did you find me? And they said, Instagram. And I thought, wait a second. So I've spent zero dollars on paid ads all through my organic content. I'm making more money. I have more leads. And now I'm landing PR opportunities like this is insane. I love this platform.

When that was happening, all of a sudden I had other businesses reaching out to me saying, okay, Elizabeth, I see you're growing your dance studio business. I see you're growing your personal brand at that time too. How are you doing this?

And that is why I launched my second business, which is my Instagram marketing strategy and coaching business, which is really my primary focus at this time because my dance studio really just runs on its own. I have an incredible team. I get to be in the CEO visionary seat for that business, which is awesome. And I can focus all of my brilliance on social media and Instagram marketing and really supporting other entrepreneurs

entrepreneurs, marketers and businesses to understand how to leverage this tool to actually drive more leads and sales. So what year did you actually pivot into starting your membership and really deciding you're going to go in on this Instagram thing for your consulting business? That's a good point. So it was around 2023.

Okay. And it kind of started informally where people were like, can I hire you for 90 minutes? Can I hire you here? And I found myself answering a lot of the same questions. And I really uncovered that so many businesses felt like they had missed the mark. Like they kind of missed the social media boat and they were totally unclear on how to even play the game that is Instagram.

And it came so intuitively to me as a dancer and a performer, like reels are my stage. And I have a lot of confidence on camera. So a lot of people will come to me and say, hey, I want to show my face on camera, but I'm terrified. Like, how are you doing this? And then it kind of evolved from there. Love it. Okay. So to the marketers that are

listening right now that are not using Instagram to generate leads and sales, because that's really what we're talking about today. Why should they focus on using Instagram, not just for exposure, but actually for generating leads and sales? And said another way, if this is done well, what could be possible? Yeah.

Yeah, I love this question because I agree with you. I think a lot of the hype around Instagram is grow your following, grow your following, boost your visibility. And when you're focused primarily on that, you're leaving a lot of money on the table. So here's why marketers need to focus on this.

We know with marketing, Marketing 101, your business or brand needs to be present where your ideal clients or customers spend their time, consume and hang out. And that is Instagram. We have over 2 billion users on the platform of all demographics. It's not just Gen Z, all demographics.

And what I love about Instagram for marketers is it's such a beautiful platform to bring your brand to life through video, through carousels, through stories, bringing your customers behind the scenes, kind of showing them the mess, really getting them invested

nurturing them building those relationships and then the way instagram is set up it is so positioned to support businesses and what i mean by that is dms right the sales happen in the dms if you're strategic about it and we're gonna of course talk about that today but it is so well positioned to bring your brand to life they have so many different surfaces like instagram live

And so no matter how you want to use it, there's different opportunities to really showcase your brand's values, personality. And if you're strategic, really attract your ideal target audience and take them on that path to becoming an actual lead in sales. So when done correctly, not only will you grow your following or boost your brand visibility, but you will absolutely see an increase in leads and prospects.

Love it. Okay. So where do we start? Where do we actually begin? Like, let's go on this journey together throughout the rest of this interview and let's explore how we ought to be thinking about this. So where do we begin? So your first step is I want you to optimize your Instagram profile. Now we are going to go through this step by step right now in

And I want you to know that at the end of this episode, I have a free gift for your listeners where they can, where I literally walk them through exactly how to do this for their specific business or company. So,

Just listen, enjoy and know that that resource is waiting for you at the end of the episode. Okay, so first of all, why is it important to optimize your bio? Why do we even do that? Here's why. On Instagram, when I come to your page, I'm going to decide within five seconds or less, that window keeps getting smaller,

if I'm going to follow you or not, right? So it is imperative that your profile is positioned to act like a magnet to speak to and activate your ideal client or customer. So how do you do that?

Let's get into it. Okay. Are you ready, Mike? Are you excited? Let's do it. Let's do it. I can't wait. Okay. Okay. Awesome. So step one, let's talk about your profile photo. So that is a very small piece of real estate and a mistake I see a lot of businesses make is they use their logo, which

That's not a mistake. You can totally use a logo, but it's not sized correctly. So in other words, it's impossible to read because that little bubble is so small. So what I like to tell companies is, okay, if you have an established brand like Social Media Examiner, for example, very established brand, I know your logo.

I would see your logo. I know it's your brand. Okay. Target. I see Target's logo. I know Target. I know what they do. I see the picture right away. For most companies, what I would recommend is to pick a profile photo that has people in it.

Okay. So for example, if you're a wedding florist, it's tempting to put a photo of flowers, but what would be more compelling is a close up headshot of a bride holding a bouquet. Okay. Why is that? The reason is that people buy people, not products or services. I like that.

Social media is social, right? They don't want to come to your page and feel like they're looking at your magazine. That's not fun. They want to feel that intimate connection with your brand. So for my dance studio, for example, I have a picture of a couple dancing, right? And again, it's zoomed in so we can see their faces.

I typically recommend that you use a bright background. So if you look at my profile photo, if you're building a personal brand, you can do a headshot with a really bright background. But you want to think about how your profile photo is going to stand out amongst the sea of other accounts, right? So if I'm looking through stories, you know, those little circles at the top of your screen on Instagram, you're kind of swiping through.

notice what profile photos stand out to you. And that'll give you a good next step to kind of know what you're drawn to and what you may want to create for your business. So that's step one.

Love it. Cool. Step two is I want you to look at your username and your name field on Instagram and know that these fields are now search engine optimized. So what you want to do is you want to incorporate some key words that your ideal market is going to be searching for. Right. So this is not the time to get fancy. Okay. So if you let's say you're a wealth management coach,

This is not the time to put in your name field. I am a wealth portal opener. OK, no one is searching for a wealth portal opener, my love. They are searching for a wealth management coach or consultant. Right. So don't get creative. Just use those search terms that your people are looking for. OK, does that make sense? Yes. But how do you do that?

When you have your brand name in there too, right? Like your personal name or your brand name, is there like a colon and some words after it or what do you do exactly? Great question. So your brand name can totally be your handle, right? So at social media examiner or whatever your brand name is. And then your name could say something like,

social media examiner and then a little line next to it, like a vertical line. And then you could say we could say your guide to the social media jungle or whatever, the marketing. Yes, exactly. So you can add Instagram used to really limit the characters that you could put in your name. And now they're much more generous. OK, so you can actually put quite a bit up there and it is search engine optimized. So I definitely recommend taking advantage of that. OK, so let me summarize the first two things that I heard you say. Number one is your profile photo.

consider putting in there a picture of people because people buy from people. It doesn't have to be you. It could be your ideal customer or prospect. In addition, the username and the field name, which comes next to it, ideally should be search engine optimized so that when people search, you know, like when they search Instagram, you might increase the likelihood that they will find you. But also for when they go there, it also is a descriptive cue as to who you're for and what you do. Is that right?

That's exactly it. Awesome. You got it. Okay, keep going. Okay. Next, I want you to look at your actual bio. So your first line of your bio should clearly state who your account is for and what kind of content you're going to create.

This is where a lot of business owners and just businesses in general fall short is they think of their bio as being all about them and their accolades. And it needs to be the opposite. That top line of your bio needs to tell me as a potential follower that comes to your account, why should I follow you?

What's in it for me? What kind of content can I expect from this page? So for example, with my dance studio business called Wedding Dance Coach, our top line of bio says helping nervous non-dancers and madly in love couples rock their first dance with confidence. So now when you come to my page, you're going to expect that when you look at my content, that's what I'm going to be teaching you on my page.

Do you see how it's about them and not about me? Love it. So question, I don't know.

When you say a line, how many characters you get per line? Do you have a sense of how big that is? Or because that sounded like a lot of words for one line. I don't know if that does that wrap on the mobile or how does that work exactly? I do work my messaging to try to try to because I'm going to go through right now three lines of your bio. That was line number one. If you can try to keep it all on one line. I see. OK, so almost like it's

Sentence one, sentence two, sentence three. That's right. But ideally, they're short enough. And that's where maybe ChatGPT can help you shorten or something like that, right? Oh, totally. So that it fits into the field on the mobile, right? Yes. And pro tip, if you put an emoji, like don't go crazy with emojis. But remember, emojis are a way to just make your text more readable. And it kind of breaks up the lines.

So I love putting a strategic emoji in my bio right at the beginning, or you can place it at the end. But it helps. Remember, people are just skimming, right? They have three seconds. It's just quick, right? So it will help them to just have a quick snapshot of what you do. Perfect. So what's the second line? So the second line is an optional line of credibility.

So an example of this is one of my clients is a seven figure Etsy shop owner.

And her second line, we said 15 K five star reviews on Etsy. I like that. That's social proof. Absolutely. So or as seen in Vogue, right? Or any kind of credibility that your company has that you would like to establish yourself as an expert, feel free to put that in there. You don't have to. You could also take that second line to talk more about what's in it for them.

But that's where that second line goes. So the first line is like, what's in it for the follower? Why should they follow you? And what kind of content should they expect from your page? The second line is,

you can add that expertise and credibility piece if you'd like. Cool, what's next? So third line and final line is your call to action, okay? So this is where you get to be strategic and we're gonna dive into this deeper later in our conversation about customer journey. But I want you to think about where do you want people to go? What is their next step? So for example, in my business, I have a freebie or a lead magnet, right? You have a lead magnet, information,

in exchange for a valuable guide. They give you their name, their email. Now they're on your email list. They're in a sphere that you own because

Because of course we don't own Instagram, right? So we need to be thinking about how we're getting our biggest fans and followers off of Instagram into a world that we own. So your CTA needs to tell me like, where's my next step? So for my bio, it says free monetize your IG guide. And then I have a little emoji pointing down at the link. So it's very clear. This is how you get it, right?

Or maybe it's listen to the podcast or maybe it's grab your ticket now. Right. And there's a link to buy a ticket. So you need to think about what is your goal and have a really clear call to action. So when I look at your bio, I know what to do next. Love it. Amazing. OK, so after that, I want you to look at your highlights.

Highlights are those little circles that are underneath your bio. Now, I want to say this because I'm not sure what Instagram is doing behind the scenes. I have heard a rumor that Instagram is considering moving where these highlights are located. They may not forever be located where they are now. So I'm really just speaking to the current state of Instagram. You know how they like to change things on us. Of course.

So these highlight covers, I want you to update your highlight covers to have your brand color. And I want them to be clearly labeled with as few words as possible. And here's why I love highlights.

Full disclosure, most people are never going to look at your highlights, but it's all part of the visual aesthetic of your feed. So when you come to my page, for example, my highlights give you a really quick snapshot of the buckets of my company, right? So mine say coaching, podcast, speaking, about me, free guide. It's that simple. So within a few seconds, you know, oh, Elizabeth does this, this and this, right?

So you want to think about with your business, what are just those kind of general buckets that you could put on your highlight covers? And then, of course, think of the aesthetic of your brand colors and all of that. Love it. Amazing. Okay. Our last step. Are you guys still are you with me? Everybody's following your every word. I love it. Okay. Fabulous. Is your top three pinned post?

So on Instagram and some people might be listening to like, wait, you can pin a post. I just want to make sure they know how to do this. So let's say you posted a real if you click on those three little dots in the corner, you'll see a menu pop up and you can click pin to profile. So that's what I'm talking about. I'm talking about you can pin up to three posts on your profile.

Now, of course, there's many different ways to do this, but I have a way that has worked really effectively for me and all of the brands that I work with. And that is one of your pinned posts,

is either the founders story or the brand story or it's here's how it works. Right. But you can kind of hear a theme, right? Like, what is it? Why did we create this? Why are we so passionate about it? This is where you get to tell your story and get people invested in your company and what you do. Right.

The second post is a call to action post. Okay. So the second post is a post that is going to lead people to either a freebie or a paid offer. Typically are the two main paths that people do. Right.

And how that would work is, by the way, these can be reels or carousels. Okay. I always lean toward reels. I love reels. I'm such a fan of reels. But some people are really incredible at carousel posts. So feel free to do that as well. But essentially how that would work is you would create a piece of content that adds value and then naturally leads into that call to action of your freebie or your paid offer.

And that will be pinned at the top. Quick question on the CTA stuff. How do you get someone in a pinned post? And maybe I'm revealing my ignorance because I'm not super savvy on Instagram. How do you get a post that has a link in it? Because your typical post doesn't have a link in it, right? So is it designed to get them to click on your profile to get the CTA and it's a carousel or something like that? Is that kind of where we're going with something like this? No.

No, my darling. No. Okay. I'm so glad you asked this question. So it used to work and I'm talking, okay, what year are we in? We're in 2025. In 2021, 2022, it used to be click the link, like my call to action on my reel or in the caption would say, click the link in my bio for X, Y, and Z. That used to actually work.

Mike, that doesn't work anymore. That doesn't work anymore. So here's what you do. The call to action is comment this keyword. I will DM you directly the link to X, Y, and Z. And we're going to talk about that a little bit later. So we'll put a metaphorical pin in that. You see what I said? Okay. See what I did there?

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Are you ready to thrive with AI? Join me inside the AI Business Society by visiting socialmediaexaminer.com slash AI. So, okay. So, so far we know that there's two types that you talked about. You talked about the founder story or about the products and services, the CTA post. And did we already talk about the third type? The third one, one more. So we were at number three is this is the most fun and easy one.

is something fun like a tip that you shared a strategy you shared one of my videos i pinned it just kind of shows my personality my sense of humor but just something that is going to communicate with your potential follower like this account i like this account it kind of gives them that quick hit of value whether that's it's funny it's teaching me something new it connects with me

And it's kind of a taste of the value that you're going to offer on your account. So you can have a lot of fun with that one. Okay, perfect.

All right. We've spent a lot of time up to this point talking about how to update your profile photo. We talked about your handle, your name, your, I mean, your profile itself, your photo, your bio, your highlights, and your pin posts and all those other things. Now, what I want to do is let's assume that people followed your directions and they got the resource that we're going to share at the end. What do we do now? How do we now update?

up our game beyond just the post itself, you know, the bio. Yes. Okay. So now that you have your bio position to act like a magnet for your ideal client, your next step is to audit your feed. And I'm going to break this down in the most simple way possible.

is I want you to ask yourself now that you're really clear on what is my account about? Like, what is the promise of my bio? I want you to look at anywhere from your last nine posts to your last three months of posts, depending on how active you've been on Instagram, right? Look at those posts and ask yourself, does this content deliver on the promise of my bio?

And I cannot tell you how often when people come to me, they're like, my account's not working.

It's like they're telling me that they're going to do something in their bio. Like, I'm going to give you a really basic example. Like, let's say my bio is I'm going to teach you how to bake gluten free in under 10 minutes a day. Okay. Something like that. And then I go look at your profile and there's like a picture of you and your partner on date night and your kids. And then, oh, here's a recipe. And, oh, I was at the grocery store. And it's just like, wait, what?

Like, why would I follow you? Like, this is not interesting, right? You're not doing what you said you were going to do. So that's step one is you want to make sure there's congruency between what you're saying you do as a company and your content is your content actually delivering on the promise. Okay. Question on this, because I know some people are thinking this. Is it possible that I can hide a post

that I've made on my feed. I don't know if you can do that because I know on Facebook you can, but I don't know if you can on Instagram or do you just have to produce more content so that that nine grid kind of fills up? You know what I'm saying? I

I love this question because you're just like, oh, shoot, I need to go hide a post. No, it's so good. It's so good. Okay, so you can't fully hide a post like you would on Facebook. But here's what you can do. And what I do is so on Instagram, there's different pages of your page. So there's your made feed. And then there's your reels tab. Okay.

And then there's another one that I never look at. - I think that other one is the people that tagged you or something like that. - Okay, thank you. I just don't go there. So what you would do is on your main grid, like let's say you posted something on your main grid, what you can do with a reel, so you can't do this with a carousel or a photo, unfortunately you can't do this, but with a reel, you can click on those three dots in the corner of the post, and then there's an option that you can select hide from,

profile grid. Okay. So I do that actually quite a bit, like, cause I have no fear of posting and having stuff flop. So sometimes I'll post something. It totally flops. I don't want to delete it because any engagement is, is really good, but I don't want it living on my main grid. So I will just remove it from my main grid. It'll still show up on my reels page, but it doesn't live on the grid. I love that.

That's really cool. But what I'm hearing you say is all those pictures of you kind of documenting your lifestyle probably are not hittable without deleting them. So you might need to rethink how you use Instagram if you are using Instagram for personal and for business. So when we're auditing the last nine recent posts,

Beyond looking at the does it align with what the promise of my bio is, is there any other things we need to be looking at to make sure we're on brand with those last nine posts? Yes. Well, there's two other things I would suggest. One is asking yourself, does my content align with the goals of the last three months of my company?

So if you told me, Elizabeth, hey, we're trying to grow our email list and I look at your content from the last nine posts or the last three months and never once did you have a call to action to lead me to grab your freebie.

then I'm going to say, okay, this is data for us. Now we know so we can do better moving forward. Right. So getting curious about like if you did have a goal because you might be listening to this and be like, wait, I don't even have a goal. Like, what do you mean? And that's no shame. It's okay. But let's say you did have a goal of I want

I want to grow my followers. Okay, well, did you have a clear call to action? Follow Mike for more X, Y and Z, right? Like we need to tell people what to do with our content. It doesn't always your CTA, just to be clear, does not always need to be promotional. It could be, you know, heart. If you can relate, tag a business bestie in the comments who needs this message, right? Like I'm not saying it's always a promotional post, but we're talking about leads and sales.

And if you want more leads and sales, you need to invite people with very clear and strategic calls to action. So that would be a question is what was the goal for this content and how did you measure up? Right. Like because you need to look at that data and then you will be informed and empowered in moving forward and future content creation. OK, so so far we've talked about optimizing our bio and we've talked about auditing our existing content.

content, strategy, or lack thereof. And we're going to get to how to improve that strategy in just a minute. So once you find things that are opportunities for improvement, we'll put a pin in that and we'll come back to that. So what comes after the audit? Yes. So after the audit, we are going to check in and clarify our customer journey.

So many people are just in this content creation hamster wheel because they're like, Elizabeth told me I need to post more on Instagram, so I'm going to do that. But they're kind of chasing that follower growth and then they get the followers sometimes or not. And then there's no clear next step.

So you need to be really clear on your customer journey for your ideal client or customer on Instagram. And I like to say, start with the end in mind, right? So if I'm trying to sell out tickets to my conference, I have a very clear end goal of I want to sell 100 tickets

by June 1st. Right. That is my goal. If that is my goal, I'm going to work backwards and that's going to really dictate my content strategy. Now, I want to break down how customer journey actually works on Instagram, because this is, I think, where a lot of people get lost. They're like, I don't get this app. You know, I'm just getting like funny videos and I'm sending it to my husband. But like, how is this congruent with like brands and businesses and making money? So let me break this down. So you're

You're sitting on the couch. You just put your kids to bed. You're pulling up Instagram. You're doing your scroll. So you find a reel that speaks to you because you are the ideal client or customer, right? So you're watching this reel. You love it. You tap on the handle of the person who posted that reel. Now, remember, you're a cold audience, right? You don't know the person who posted that reel, but that reel acted like kind of a hook to like capture you, right?

And so I click on your handle and I go over to your profile and I will decide within seconds if I want to follow you or not. That's why we did all of that pre-work. Okay. Now let's say you've done all your homework. They followed you. Now, best case scenario, they start binging your content. Like, oh my gosh, Mike's content is so good. I love it. Yes. I need more of this. It's so good. Mike's rocking his calls to action. He's telling them a very clear step, which is

I definitely recommend using DM automation and I can go into more depth about that if you'd like. But essentially clear call to action, comment to keyword. They immediately get a direct message with the exact link that they're looking for in that exact moment.

And then they opt in or they book on your sales calendar or whatever your sales funnel is for your company. And then voila, they've moved from Instagram into a sphere that you own as a business. Love it.

Tell me about this jewelry store owner that I think is a client of yours and just to help demonstrate this. Yeah. So one of my private clients owns a luxury jewelry store in Denver. They're the leader in engagement ring sales. And what I love about this business is they're family owned and they're on the fifth floor of this bank building. So they have no retail storefront. No, you know, people aren't walking by. It's appointment only.

So let's start at the end. They want to increase their engagement ring sales. So they decide I want to show up on Instagram because that's where Gen Z is hanging out, right? That's their ideal client. Their end goal is that they want to send people a link to book a consult with them in their shop because it's appointment only.

So what do we do? We optimize their profile. We got their content really dialed in. And I'm going to talk more about like, what does that even mean in a minute? But we got their content really dialed in. So it would stop the scroll, attract their ideal clients. And then we had a clear call to action of a comment connect.

and we will DM you a link to our calendar where you can book a consult with our staff, right? And we can't wait to create a really custom piece of jewelry for you and your partner.

And what was so exciting is they messaged me just the other day and they said, oh my gosh, Elizabeth, this works. Someone went through the funnel with one reel. He booked an appointment. And of course I followed up with them and he came in and he bought an engagement ring.

So that one piece of organic content closed an actual sale in a brick and mortar location, right? Because a lot of times I hear, well, this doesn't work for brick and mortar. It just works for online. And that's why I love this is I have both brands. I have online and brick and mortar. So I can tell you it absolutely works for both business models. And they were so thrilled. They were so thrilled to close this deal. And Mike, I have to tell you, before they hired me, they were spending about $2,000 a month on paid ads on Instagram.

had zero conversions.

Now, through organic content, they closed an engagement ring sale, which obviously is a high ticket sale. Love it. What was the call to action like, like a freebie or was it actually an appointment? I'm just curious. We're actually working on building out their lead magnet right now. So, no, it was not a freebie. It was a direct sale. Wow, that's really cool. It was a link to their calendar. So you could come in and have a because remember, it's appointment only. So it's very exclusive. It's

So yeah, we sent that link directly to the customer. They actually booked. They actually came into the store and the rest is history. Love it. Okay. So...

You got to just give us a quick tip on the DM automation side, any little tips for people. We've covered it in other shows before, but if you have any little things you want to add on that before we get into the content strategy, which you've been hinting about, just feel free to throw a tip or two out there. Yeah. Well, I just want to say that I am all about creating a sustainable workflow and

And for whether it's for my team, whether it's for myself and as a company, DM automation is a dream because you can unplug and get off of Instagram and go work in your zone of genius.

and then have your content driving those leads and sales for you while you're off of your phone. So I just kind of want to highlight that because it's like work-life balance is really important to me. It's a huge value of mine. And I actually am much more likely to show up and start creating content consistently if I know it's going to drive conversions while I'm off the app, if that makes sense. But I think like tip wise, I just want to say, be really careful of your keywords that you pick.

I have totally made the mistake where I picked like too general of a keyword and then like my automation was being triggered all the time. And of course, it's not the end of the world. You know, I would go into my DMs and be like, hey, sorry, you got my DM message, you know, but you also don't want to you don't want people to feel like they're getting spammed by your DM bot.

So when you're picking a keyword, it's good to like potentially add a number. Like let's say I was like episode 66, like all one word or something like that, that

That is really smart and it'll help you to not have your bot spamming people. Love it. And for those that are looking for tools, ManyChat is like the original. I've had the CEO at Social Media Marketing World in the past. There's also Mobile Monkey by Larry Kim, who's a friend of mine. And then, of course, a lot of the software apps now include DM automation and even some of the social scheduling apps have automation built in. So there's a lot of options out there. OK, let's move to the content strategy.

So, you know, obviously we've set this great foundation and you've hinted at some of the content strategy stuff. Go ahead and share with us your thoughts on how to create content really that hopefully attracts that prospect. Yeah. So this is where I feel like your marketers in the audience are going to be like, yes, thank you. I get this.

So forget the trends. What has worked in marketing will always work. It's just packaged a little bit differently on Instagram. And that is that you have to your number one job as a marketer is that you need to know your ideal client like the back of your hand. You need to know their pain points, their struggles, and most importantly, how they describe themselves.

their problem, how they describe their problem. Because most of us are experts at what we do, right? So it's easy to kind of get away from the actual words that our ideal clients are using. So you want to really be clear on your target market research. What are they struggling with? What do they desire? Why do they desire that? And of course, how does your product or service solve their problem?

And essentially in your content on Instagram, there's so many different ways to do this, Mike. So I just want to break it down. Here's one way of doing it in a really simple formula. Hook value CTA. So hook value.

The most important, if you don't hook people within those first few seconds, they're not going to watch your video. They're not going to swipe through your carousel and they're going to leave and your content is going to die a very quick death. Okay. So you absolutely have to hook them. Now, how do you do that? There's a couple ways. One is of course, text on the screen and text on the screen, meaning like you're calling out a pain point and you're going to be offering us like a

a solution, right? Like five quick tips to do X, Y, and Z for, you know, blah, blah, blah. That wasn't a great example, but. Well, maybe another example would be like, you're about to make the biggest investment in your soon to be spouse.

five mistakes to avoid, right? Something along those lines, if we're going with the jeweler thing, right? Yeah, totally. Yeah. Actually for wedding dance coach, I did a reel that totally went viral and the hook was five first dance music fails. Ah, okay. There you go. And it made people so mad. Like the people who were not our ideal clients were so mad. They're like, who are

you to tell us what to do it's our wedding but i'm telling you that kind of content it really works and it positions you as an expert because hello we've choreographed thousands of first dances we do know things like how long should your first dance be to ensure that your guests are entertained and it's not overwhelming for you as the couple learning the dance right like that's what it was about so yes i appreciate you bringing up that example

So Dark Side of the Moon or something like that is not an ideal first dance because I think it's like a seven minute song or something like that. Oh my gosh. I could go off on stories. Yes. So, okay. Question. Trial Reels.

You said we got to talk about trial reels here under the content strategy. Let's talk about that real quick because this is something we were talking about when we were prepping. Yep, absolutely. I am obsessed with trial reels. So Instagram recently launched a new feature called trial reels. And what that means is that you can post reels and they will only be shown to people who don't already follow you. So a totally cold option.

audience. Now, this is a dream for us as marketers because we get to A-B test our content. And this is what I want to teach you. It is like the most fun, so simple and a really fantastic way to see what's going to resonate with your audience, see what the messaging is going to land. It is so epic. So here's exactly how you do it. There's, of course, multiple ways, but I'm going to give you one example. As we know, when we're A-B testing, we...

Only want to change one thing, right? If you change too many different factors of your video or your caption or your, you won't really know what is effective and why, right? So you're going to change one thing. I'm going to give you an example for my client. Her video was just a nature video of a beautiful tree swaying in the wind. She had a quote over the video that would really resonate with her ideal customers, okay?

And then we posted that exact same video, same captions, same hashtags, but we did it in three different ways. The first way, it was just the quote and the video. The second, hey, sis, dot, dot, dot, quote. The third video, to women everywhere, dot, dot, dot. Oh, my gosh.

Video one, 200 views. Video two, maybe a thousand. Video three to women everywhere, over 10,000 views. Probably because it got shared, right? Shares, likes, it spoke to her people. So just so we're clear on this trial reels thing, because I've never addressed this before and I want to spend a few seconds here.

Does it literally allow you to put these head to head and show you the data? Is that kind of how it works? It's like it's almost like a split test, essentially. And can you pick the winner and then the others kind of disappear? Or how does that work exactly? Yeah. So the data will become available online.

like as it becomes available. It's not immediate, right? Like it needs to be a cycle through the algorithm. But usually within 24 hours, you'll have a very clear set of data and you can see exactly without it being shown to your followers, just non-followers, cold audience. How many views did it get? How many likes did it get? You can look at those analytics

And Instagram actually, remember, they make money from people being on their platform and consuming their content, right? So it's in their best interest to only push out the best kind of content. So if one of your videos you post as a trial reel, they deem is performing really, really well, they will automatically push it out.

But after you do that, so you have the data, what you can do is you can share. There's a little button that says share to everyone. And that's when you can decide which one you want to share to everyone. And that one will show up on your profile grid or your reels page. And then the ones that you don't want to use, I honestly, there's,

no clear way of doing this. You could either leave them in trial reels, just let them be there because those videos still got engagement. So I've always told my clients, like, no matter how much you think a video flop, don't don't delete it. Like all engagement is good. So you could just leave them in your trial reels folder or you can delete them. Got it. But they're going to show up in your reels tab regardless. Is that right? Or no. You know what I mean? The trial reels? Yeah.

No, they do not show up. All the trials are kind of hidden until you choose to make it visible. They're all hidden. They're all hidden. And then, yeah, no. So, so especially for those people, like I have clients who overthink everything, like, like analysis paralysis, right? Somebody just said, Hey, now. Yeah, exactly. They're like, that's,

- Hey, it's okay, it's okay, we know you. - So nice to meet you. Don't worry, we've all been there. Yeah, it's kind of a dream because it's not public. None of it's public, right? It's totally hidden. And then you get to decide if you wanna share it to everyone and only when you select that, it will go onto your grid. Or like I said, if you have it set up where Instagram has permission to share it, if it's blowing up, then Instagram will just automatically share it. But if it's blowing up, you probably wanna share it anyways, right?

Perfect. Okay. Thanks for going down that trial real rabbit trail with me. Is there anything else you intended to talk about on the content strategy that we have not yet addressed? I just want to highlight that, of course, you know, consistency is a really important part of a content strategy. A lot of times people ask me, you know, how many times should I be posting per week? Or is there a magic time to post or all these concerns? And what I want to say is it does not matter when you post.

If it's good content, it's going to perform well. I really want people to stop stressing about the posting time and just get it out there.

The most important part to me in building a content strategy for a business, a company is, is it sustainable for you and your team? Because if it's not, you're not going to keep doing it. I can't tell you how many people make that mistake of, oh my gosh, I just heard Elizabeth and I'm super pumped and I'm going to go all in on Instagram for a month and I'm going to do this. And then they ghost their audience for three months. I don't want you to do that. You know what? I would much rather you post less higher quality content

and commit to showing up consistently in whatever cadence is sustainable for you and your team. So I just wanted to kind of have that nugget in here because I know so much time and energy and there's so much confusion out there too. Like every Instagram coach has a different opinion about it and that's exhausting too. So I just really want to tell you like,

find the workflow that works for you and stick with it. And then of course, once you dial that in, you can always add more, but can we just please set ourselves up for a sustainable growth path?

Okay. You mentioned earlier that you've got a special link that you wanted to share and also tell everybody where they can find you on Instagram, Elizabeth. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you. So I put together a super valuable free resource just for your listeners. So inside, you're going to get my step-by-step Instagram bio refresh guide that I really walked you through.

all seven of those things and i threw in there since we did touch on dm automation a little walkthrough of how you can get that set up for your company so if you want to grab that free resource you can go to elizabethmarbury.com sme that's elizabethmarbury m-a-r-b-e-r-r-y dot com slash s-m-e to grab that resource

Or you can follow me on Instagram at Elizabeth Marbury and DM me the keyword SME. And my gorgeous robot assistant will send it over to you and you will get to see how DM automation works. Well, and for those that are not watching the video, Elizabeth has a Z in it. So there's different Elizabeth's right. E-L-I-Z-A-B-E-T-H.

M-A-R-B-E-R-R-Y. I figured I may as well spell the whole thing out. Thank you. Elizabeth Marbury, thank you so much for sharing all your insights with us today. Thank you so much for having me. It's been a pleasure and an honor. Hey, if you missed anything, we took all the notes for you over at socialmediaexaminer.com slash 670-

If you're new to the show, be sure to follow us. If you've been a listener for a little while, would you do me a favor? Consider giving us a review and let your friends know about this show. And also do check out our other shows, the AI Explorer podcast and the Social Media Marketing Talk Show. This brings us to the end of the Social Media Marketing Podcast. I'm your host, Michael Stelzner. I'll be back with you next week. I hope you make the best out of your day and may your marketing keep evolving.

The Social Media Marketing Podcast is a production of Social Media Examiner. Just a quick reminder before you go, if you're ready to become indispensable in the age of AI, the AI Business Society is your solution. Join now and secure your discounted membership by visiting socialmediaexaminer.com slash AI. I can't wait to see you inside the AI Business Society.