Episode 3: How to Grow your IG Audience with the Right People: What Do Do and What To Avoid
Spinning your wheels trying to grow your audience and find people who will actually buy from you? Learn how in today’s episode of The Ashly Locklin Show.
Here’s a preview of what you’ll learn in this episode:
Why you need to serve your current audience and the perspective shift you need to make about your current follower number.
How many followers you really need to create a 6-figure business.
How to get your current followers to actually see you as an expert and BUY.
The types of follow/engagement/giveaway loops you should AVOID.
The one type of loop I recommend to find QUALITY leads.
How to tap into parallel audiences.
The research you should do on similar accounts in order to create irresistible content for your ideal audience.
The most effective growth strategy for finding ideal clients who will BUY!
The truth about hashtags.
Why polarizing content and losing followers is good (even when you’re trying to grow your following).
Check out The Social Sales Content Bundle here: https://www.ashlylocklin.com/the-social-sales-content-bundle
Show Transcription:
Hey hey! Welcome to episode 3! Today we’re talking IG growth. We’re looking at what works, what to focus on, and what to avoid.
Let’s start by talking about the first thing you should do - nurture and serve your current audience.
The reality is more followers doesn’t equal more money - especially if they’re the wrong followers.
You could do various tactics to grow to 100K followers quickly, but the reality is that you only need 1,000 true fans (or less depending on your offers) to build a six-figure business.
Now that’s not 1,000 randoms you bought on Fiver or 1,000 people in your follow-loop, it’s 1,000 people who legitimately care about you and what you are putting out there.
What I often see is entrepreneurs focusing so much on growth, so much on their follower number, that they miss the mark on serving the people at their table.
Think of it this way: say you host a dinner party and invite ALL your followers. Imagine fitting all those people in your house (whether it’s 100, 300, or 1,000 people). Are you still saying “But I ONLY have x number of followers?” Remember, these are real people and they’re following you for a reason, so don’t discredit them and just look at them as a stepping stone to get to the number you want to see.
Now back to your party, you have hundreds of people there (maybe thousands), but that’s not good enough for you. So imagine you decide you want more people there, so instead of entertaining or serving your guests, you’re out in the street banging pots and pans to get more people to come to your party.
It’s crazy, right? Well that’s what it’s like to be more focused on growth than on service.
You have an audience already, so nurture them.
Now you might have the wrong audience, this does happen. You might realize that the people at your party aren’t really the ones you want to serve. But you can’t neglect them, you have to serve them. So do some research, ask them what their struggles are in relation to your services, then create content that serves them WHILE you go out and find your ideal clients.
When people tell me, “I have 350 followers and NO ONE will buy from me.” My first response is: well do you actually know those 350 people and what their needs are? Are you creating compelling content that speaks to their pain points and makes them realize how your solution solves their problems?
If you haven’t listened to episode 2, go back and listen to how it’s important to know your audience and sell them the solution, not the product.
Additionally, always ask yourself: is my page more “Look at me!” Or “Learn from me!”?
“Look at me” is very self-serving but “Learn from me” is very audience serving, which is what you want to be.
It’s key that you establish yourself as the expert by providing value so your 350 followers see you as an authority not just someone trying to get likes and attention.
So first & foremost, serve your audience as you grow it.
Now before we dive into how to actually find your ideal clients and get them to follow you, let’s do a quick chat about what NOT to do:
Buy followers (again, that follower number might boost your ego, but it’s not going to boost your bank account when you have thousands of fake followers or real people who have zero interest in what you offer - they are never going to buy from you. So do not buy followers)
Join follow loops and spend all your time engaging with those same people.
Now there are different types of follow loops - some good, some bad. Let’s talk about them.
The one I don’t feel is beneficial is when you join a loop with other entrepreneurs only to engage with one another, only to trick the algorithm, or boost your own engagement. I’ve seen this with many of my own clients, they join a follow/engagement loop and then they spend all their social media time engaging with the other women in the loop, which leaves them no time to find or engage with their ideal clients. The women in that follow/engagement loop probably aren’t going to buy from you or join your team. Plus, this tells Instagram that you want to engage with more people like these women, you want to see more of their posts, so that’s what Instagram shows you…when in reality, you want Instagram to show you posts from ideal clients. From the outside, it looks like you’re getting a ton of engagement, but the reality is that engagement is coming from other business owners who are just supporting you, not buying from you.
So I’m not a fan of these types of follow loops because sure, you might get those women to follow you and engage with you, but if they aren’t going to buy from you or join you, what is the point? Sure, I’m all for supporting other female entrepreneurs, but if you’re spending all your time engaging with the same people who won’t buy from you, that’s not going to help your business.
Another type of loop giveaways are where you pay a buy-in and that money goes towards a prize. In order to win the prize, your followers have to follow everyone participating in the loop, everyone who paid to join the loop giveaway. And then a winner is selected. This is a good way to get fast followers, but the downside is they might not be your ideal followers or clients, so again, it can be a great ego boost, but not beneficial in the long-run.
However, there are some giveaway loops that are run by a specific IG account and that account recruits one specific celebrity or one really big influencer to make the actual post saying “follow everyone this account is following in order to be entered into the contest to win $5,000” - and because that celebrity or influencer has a big fan base, there’s a huge reach and lots of people who will follow everyone in the loop. Some of the accounts that run these giveaways, do research and provide analytics before you pay the buy-in, they’ll provide you with the celebrity or influencer’s demographics, the age range of their followers, the gender, location, etc. so you can decide if tapping into that audience could be worth it. For example, if it’s a beauty influencer and her demographics are females between the ages of 18-34 and you’re in a beauty MLM, that audience might work for you. But if you own a tutoring service that targets high school students in New York, that audience would not work for you.
Another type of loop giveaway that I find beneficial, is one with a few other female entrepreneurs who are in different industries but have similar followings. So if you wanted to coordinate this, you would find 4 other women who run businesses, and most importantly, who have audiences that you’d like to tap into. Then you’d reach out to each of the four women and ask if they’d want to be a part of a story shout-out & giveaway loop.
Once they all say yes, you start a message thread together and in there you each share your bio, what offerings you have, and a picture of yourself. Then you assign each woman to one day that week.
On Monday, everyone shares the picture of the first business owner (whoever was assigned to that day, let’s say Sally) and everyone talks about who she is, what she does, what she offers, and encourages their followers to follow her. On Tuesday, everyone does the same thing but for the 2nd biz owner (whoever was assigned to that day, let’s say Linda). So each woman gets her own day of shout-outs.
But not only that, each day you are all encouraging your audiences to follow all 5 of you. So you want to create 2 Instagram story templates:
A story template that has all 5 of your headshots on it
A story template that tells your audience how to indicate they’ve entered
Share those templates with the other 4 women and each day you will all share the first template, tag each person, and tell your audience to follow each gal in order to be entered into a giveaway (for a gift card, or PayPal cash, or a service one of you provides, or a bundled package that offers something from each of your businesses - whatever you collectively decide and pitch in for).
Then the next story slide will be the 2nd template and you can tell them to slide the slider after they’ve done that or you can have a Poll they respond to.
Then after the 5 days, you pick a winner (one winner for the entire loop giveaway)!
The benefit of this is: more genuine follower growth. You have hand selected other entrepreneurs who are literally selling you to their audiences and telling them why you’re amazing. Instead of just following 100 random accounts in a list and having absolutely no knowledge of who they’re following (which is what happens with the celebrity and influencer giveaway loops), these people are coming to you with prior knowledge of who you are, what you do, and they were introduced to you by someone they already trust- and that makes a huge difference.
So that is a loop/giveaway I do recommend.
Here are 5 things TO do to grow your following with the right people:
Tap into similar/parallel audiences. - Find accounts that have your ideal audience and go engage with that account and their audience. Comment on their posts, respond to other comments (because those comments are from your ideal clients), be social.
Examine the top performing posts of the accounts that have your ideal audience. - Which posts really resonated with their audience? Why? What was the topic? Was it an entertaining, educational, or inspirational post? What was the picture like? Take screenshots and notes - NOT TO COPY! Let me repeat that - NOT TO COPY! (In episode 1 I talked about how you never ever want to copy someone else) But you want to figure out which posts that audience, your ideal audience responds to best, so that you can then create that kind of content with your own authenticity and vibe.
Engage with the people you want to attract and work with. - Give what you’d like to receive. I learned the 5-3-1 method many years ago and this is still a top method (I believe it’s Chalene’s method) find your ideal client, like 5 photos, comment on 3 with genuine comments, send 1 DM (again, a genuine message complimenting something you saw on their page, asking a question about something you saw on their page, introducing yourself and sharing something you loved on their page, or responding to one of their stories), then follow them. If you can do 25 of these a day, 5 days a week, that’s 125 new connections with ideal clients a week. That’s 500 new connections a month. Not with random people, but with your ideal customers.
Use hashtags wisely but don’t make them your primary focus. - Hashtags. A blessing and a curse! I love hashtags because they’re the vehicle for completing steps 1, 2, and 3- that I just mentioned. If you’re wondering how to find people, hashtags are a great place to start. Find a hashtag that is specific to your niche. Look at who is using that hashtag - this is where you can find those accounts that have your ideal audience. Hashtags also allow you to find your ideal clients- if you are searching hashtags that they are actually using. So always get into the mindset of, Who am I trying to reach and what would she be searching for or using in her own posts? Those are the hashtags you want to explore and use. Now be careful with the hashtags you are searching. For example, if you search #beautycounterconsultant, chances are everyone using that hashtag is already a Beauty Counter consultant. So instead you want to search #clearskintips and that’s where you can find accounts with your ideal audience and look through the comments and followers of those accounts.
So hashtags help you find people and also help people find you. They put you in front of the people you want to reach - and that is the beauty and power of social media marketing.
However, I see business owners get WAY too caught up in their hashtags. Like they obsess over hashtags. Your post- the picture and caption are the fire. Hashtags just add fuel to the fire. If your fire is dead because your caption doesn’t resonate with your audience, hashtags ain’t gonna help it!
You can use 30 hashtags per post, I usually use 20-25ish hashtags that are super relevant to my post and to the woman I’m trying to reach. And you don’t want to use huge hashtags with millions of uses because you have very little chance of being seen among the millions of posts with that hashtag. So choose smaller, very specific, niched-down hashtags to gain exposure and followers. With that being said, let’s move onto our final tip for growing your audience.
Post quality content. - I probably sound like a broken record saying this, but your content is everything, it’s so important. The more value you can provide, the more inclined people are going to be to follow you. However, if you are trying to make sales, it’s not about gaining a bunch of random people, it’s about finding the RIGHT people. This means you have to be polarizing. There are going to be some people who unfollow you or come to your profile and choose not follow you- and that’s a good thing because those people wouldn’t have bought from you anyway. This is why it’s so important to really know your ideal client avatar and create content for her- so that you attract the right people and keep them there. When you provide content that speaks to your ICA, it’s so much easier to then convert her to a customer. When you provide general content that speaks to everyone and really has no purpose, it’s hard to get those followers to throw their credit cards at you because they don’t see you as an expert in your industry, they’re following you for other reasons. Focus on speaking to and serving that ONE person. Instead of trying to appeal to the masses, show up each day with the intention of touching and impacting one life. Because that one life will turn into 5 then 100, then 5,000, and so on.
If you need help with creating content that actually impacts and converts, I gotcha, girl! This episode is sponsored by my course The Social Sales Content Bundle, which provides you with 100s of headlines to stop scrolls, CTA (or calls to action) to increase engagement and build relationships with your followers, plus specific trainings on nailing your niche, creating ideal client avatar, defining your content pillars, and then the 9 caption formulas you should be using to be magnetic, grow your following, and convert followers into customers. You can find the deets in the show notes.
To recap:
Don’t:
buy followers
waste time in engagement loops
pay for random followers in giveaway loops without first seeing the analytics of the followers you’ll gain
DO:
serve your current audience - serve the people at your party instead of going out in the street and begging for more
coordinate story shout-out and giveaway loops with other entrepreneurs who have audiences you want to reach
tap into similar audiences and engage with their followers
examine the accounts that have your ideal audience and see what’s working for them
engage with ideal followers and customers through the 5-3-1 method
use hashtags wisely to find other accounts and ideal clients
post quality content that is polarizing
And that’s it for episode 3! Thank you so much for tuning in. As always I’d love for you to leave a review or take a screenshot, tag me @ashly_locklin, tell me what you thought of the episode, hit me up with any requests!
See ya next time!
Show Notes:
Today’s episode is sponsored by The Social Sales Content Bundle
The social sales content bundle
Everything you need to create content that converts followers into paying clients and randos into lifers! Proven caption formulas to grow your following and make sales, 125 Headlines, 105 CTAs, interactive content calendar, 6 exclusive video trainings to help you nail your niche & make more sales, and so much more! A must-have for all female entrepreneurs!
