Tyler J. McCall, Instagram Marketing Strategist and founder of the Follower to Fan Society, shares about current Instagram trends, common mistakes, how to effectively use Instagram stories, and how to find your next client using Instagram.
More about Tyler:
Tyler J. McCall is an Instagram and social media marketer, strategist, and coach for creatives. He teaches his students how to use Instagram with intention to grow their community online, grow their list, and grow their business. Tyler focuses on using Instagram and social media to tell stories, build relationships, and convert followers to fans, drawing from his 10 years of experience in non-profit marketing and management and community organizing. Tyler is based in Chicago, where he lives with his partner Eric and their dog Douglass.
Tyler: Website | Instagram | Follower to Fan Society
You have to check out Tyler’s free 2018 Instagram Trends Report.
The transcript…
A note about the transcript: The interviews are transcribed by an online app, and there may be errors in the transcription. While we do our best to correct errors—especially those that may change the meaning of what a speaker was trying to say—we do not catch every error. Thus we ask that people refer back to the audio/video for quotes. Also, please refer back to the audio/video if something is not clear in transcript; however, if you are hearing impaired, feel free to email us for clarifications.
Tyler: 00:09 You can’t come out of the gates asking your followers, “what is the worst thing that ever happened to you as a kid”. You can’t come out of the gate saying, “what is your favorite childhood memory”. You can’t come out of the gate saying, “tell me what thing you’re struggling with in your business right now” because you haven’t built that relationship and haven’t established habits in your audience. And social media is all about habits, and recognizing the way in which people engage with content and the way in which people use the platform.
Davey: 00:42 Welcome to the brands, that book show where we help creative businesses find more clients and build their brands. I’m your host, Davey Jones. Today’s guest is Tyler Mccall. Tyler is an instagram and social media marketer, strategist and coach for creatives. He teaches his students how to use instagram with intention to grow their community online, grow their list and grow their business. Today, He’s chatting with us about recent trends on instagram. How do you use the platform effectively and how to use instagram to find your next client.
Davey: 01:19 Well, Tyler, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast today. You’re a guy that I’ve been wanting to talk to you for a while, mostly because, uh, I’ve sort of a love hate relationship with instagram. So I’ve been looking forward to this, uh, to this episode because I’m sure you’re going to shed light on all sorts of things and what we should be focusing on there. I just feel like I’ve never been, I’ve never been great at instagram– If that’s a thing, if you can be great at instagram. I actually really like video. Right? So instagram stories is something that I, that I’ve been enjoying. I like watching though I don’t like so much being the guy on video. I just feel awkward. It’s kind of like a Webinar, right? You’re, you’re talking to no one, but you’re talking to someone. So I’m looking forward to chatting with you about all of these things and how we can use instagram to build our businesses.
Tyler: 02:13 I’m excited to be here. Thanks for having me.
Davey: 02:15 Yeah, of course. Well, we start off pretty much every interview by just getting a sense of how you started your own business and I’m really interested in not only in how you started your own business, but uh, what it was about instagram in particular that drew you to that platform.
Tyler: 02:31 Yeah, so I have been a full time entrepreneur for over two years now, which is incredible. I’m so grateful every single day that this is what I get to do. Right. I love that. And I, before I do, before I did what I do now, does that make sense? I was in the non-profit world, so for over six years I worked with YMCA one of the largest nonprofits in the world at the local national and international level, which was an incredible opportunity and I also did a lot of work around community and political organizing and I pull a lot of that experience into what I do on instagram now and what I talk about with my students and my clients and really how we build community on social media. That’s why I love instagram. I think it is probably the best platform for finding a community and then building a relationship with those people and that’s why I spend pretty much all of my time there. I love it. I love it. I think it works really well for that and I started as, as most folks do. I started doing the side hustle thing all throughout my corporate job at the YMCA. I had multiple side hustles. I had a grocery delivery business that I did on the side
Davey: 03:49 Wait, I need to here more about the grocery delivery business. Was this through instacart’s or instacart or similar?
Tyler: 03:51 No, no, this was pre all of that. None of those things existed back in 2012 and 2013 when I had my own local grocery delivery business and my own website. I had my press releases. That’s how I got my clients. I had flyers and I would drive around to like neighborhoods and put my fliers up next to their mailboxes. I did everything. That was back in the day. That was back before really did anything with instagram or marketing or any of that stuff. I had a handmade business for awhile and then toward the end of my corporate Gig I started doing social media work for people. I was doing social media in my day job and I figured there were a lot of local businesses that could use my help, so just starting on the side doing that and in my first year in business I ran a small agency with a friend and we did social media management for our clients and we would do facebook or we would help them with twitter. We would talk about blogging and all that fun stuff, but we always came back to instagram as the platform where first of all it was the most fun to be on. It was the most fun to create content for. My business partner was a professional photographer and I love writing so we can marry those two skills really well.
Davey: 05:02 Great skills to have.
Tyler: 05:06 Yeah. Right? So we were doing that. We were building this business and over time I realized that instagram was where I wanted to be because of that community aspect and that’s just. It’s kind of been the thing I’ve gone all in on and, and it’s also one of those business lessons that, right when we get specific, uh, we see more results and we can see more success when we get really clear about the one thing we’re going to focus on and I’ve seen that in my business.
Davey: 05:41 Yeah for sure. So for YMCA you were managing their social media.
Tyler: 05:43 So here’s the thing about the non-profit world. You wear a lot of hats. So in my role at the YMCA, at the height of my career, I was a district member engagement director, so that meant I had three facilities. I oversaw the membership operations for those locations and full time staff that I supervised. We had about 40 part time membership associates that I hired and trained and supervised. I also did association wide customer service and member engagement training. So I wrote those trainings and Co taught those trainings to all of our frontline staff. Um, I oversaw a budget of about $12,000,000 a year for three facilities. I did corporate membership sales and I did social media marketing strategy.
Davey: 06:27 wow. It sounds like, uh, it sounds like the “Y” is probably missing you. But how did, how did you, so I mean you’re, you’re managing social media and doing all the things that you just mentioned for the “Y”, um, and you see this need among small businesses. Like how did you make that transition– How’d you kind of pick up your first client?
Tyler: 06:47 Yeah, so there was a gift shop and a downtown Asheville, North Carolina where my partner and I lived before Chicago where we live now and I was a regular customer. I love their products and I was on instagram myself at that time. I had as a handmade business, I was making fragrances at my kitchen table, selling them at trunk shows and craft fairs. And I went in there one day and said, hey, I have this product, do you want to put it in the store? They were like, sure, we’ll order like 10 bottles. And then a few months later I went back in and I said, hey, have you ever thought about working with someone to run your instagram? You have a really cool opportunity here, you’re selling incredible products, but their instagram was so ugly, it was so bad. And they were like, yeah, sure, but yeah, we, we’d be up for that. And I was like, OK cool, I’ll do it for $200 a month. And they were like, all right, cool. So I did that for like three months and then signed them again and charged more and signed them again for six months and then another six months and then a year and they were my longest going client I had them the entirety of social media management, but it was literally just going in there and saying like, Hey, here’s the opportunity, here’s where you’re not, you’re not doing what you could be doing and here’s the solution that I can provide and let’s see how it goes. And it works. It works.
Davey: 08:05 Yeah. That’s um, I mean this is incredible hearing about all the different hats that you wore as an entrepreneur, all the different things that you gave a shot to as an entrepreneur. So from that one, um, store, how did you pick up the rest of your clients? Was it, this is the same thing basically going in and saying, hey listen, you know, uh, I see that you have an instagram or you don’t have an instagram and it doesn’t look great. Have you thought about having someone else manage it?
Tyler: 08:30 Yeah. So it was a mix of, it was kind of a mix of that and just referrals. I think it’s– one of the things I say to my students and clients so much is that we’re in this world now with social media where we think that social media is the be all and end all for marketing and sales. But we, we keep forgetting that so much of our business comes from referral and word of mouth. It’s, it’s literally the number one way that find people us. And if we don’t nurture those relationships, if we’re not working, you’re not going to events. If we’re not connecting with other entrepreneurs then, uh, if we’re not connecting with this other people than we are missing out on opportunities to get more business that don’t require us to post on social media or, or pay for ads or any of that stuff. So it was just those personal relationships. Really, going into the coffee shop, knowing the coffee shop owner, having conversations with people that you’re sitting next to you, going to create a meet-up events, Planning workshops. My partner and I did a lot of local workshops. It was like 30 bucks to come to this like afternoon and I’m learning about instagram and get my name out there and start connecting with more people and just doing the hustle! right? Just to have that name out there. And that’s what made it work.
Davey: 09:44 Yeah. And I think, I think, uh, I love what you’re saying there because I think there’s no shortcut for that hustle. There’s no shortcut for–I mean you just have to put in the work at the end of the day. So with these businesses that you’re managing their instagram for, what were you trying to show them? At the end of the day like, “Hey, this is, this is the result that I’m getting for you.” So like what was that result that you would primarily focus on? I imagine on one hand it’s just aesthetics, you know, that this photo used to be so blurry that nobody could even see it and now they can. And not there’s a consistent aesthetic. But were there any other metrics that you focused on for them?
Tyler: 10:30 Yeah. The main thing that we focused on, and this is what I still focused on with instagram to this day is engagement and the conversations that we’re having. So social media means nothing for you and your business if people aren’t actively engaging with your content, if they’re not responding to what you say and if you don’t have an opportunity to open up a conversation with people. So that’s what we were looking at. And then, you know, we had clients who they were all about the followers, they wanted more followers and there was always a lot of pushback from my business partner and I, and that is not the accurate metric to measure success on social media and for everyone listening and watching that is, I still stand by that. It’s not the accurate way to measure that what you’re doing is effective. So that engagement was really important and how it translated for the business. And here’s the other thing about social media. It doesn’t always translate to a direct sale and I think a lot of people have trouble with that. I think there are a number of conversions we can measure with social media that are different than a sale and that in a lot of ways are more important than a sale because having–what was the, what was the biggest success for us, especially working with local businesses and we were in Asheville, which is a tourist destination, right? What we really aimed for was creating a presence online for our clients with content that got people excited about their shop. So when that person had a friend or a colleague or a family member going to Asheville, they were telling them, you have to go check out this place that I follow on instagram and they had never even been themselves. That was like the metric of success for me of creating this desire to go there for people who lived half a world away and then told other people about this place when they weren’t even a customer themselves. And that’s why what I do nowadays is talk about creating fans because the fans are more important than anything else in your business. Fans sell for you and what you’re doing really becomes just kind of like creating a place for them to hang out with each other.
Davey: 12:37 Uh, I love so much of what you’re, what you’re talking about, one that, you know, it wasn’t that you were just sitting on your couch somewhere getting, you know, getting really good at instagram. You were actually out there hustling and getting people to pay for this service. So I love all of that. And then I really want to dig in more to these, uh, these metrics and this concept of building fans. But first I do want to chat with you about, um, how far instagram has come. When we first got in Instagram, it was a very different platform than what it is now. And I was sitting down with Krista just on Monday and she was telling me she was like, you know, I don’t even spend all that much time scrolling anymore through instagram. I spend almost all of my time, uh, watching stories. And even myself, I mean, I probably spend, I still spend a good amount of time scrolling, but again, I think I’m more drawn to stories than I am the regular feed posts. So what are some trends that you’ve noticed a lately? You know, for somebody getting on instagram in 2018, what should they be doing?
Tyler: 13:45 Yeah. So here’s the great news. If you are just now getting on instagram or just kind of dipping your toes into instagram as a platform, you were in a much better place than people who have been on the platform for the past three to five years because you don’t have any bad habits that need to be broken.
Davey: 14:06 All these bad habits you’re about to talk about are probably going to be, so if I’m looking down, it’s just because I’m taking notes.
Tyler: 14:13 Ha ha, so a lot of what I see people doing now is trying to use the same strategies on instagram that they used 18 to 24 months ago before the algorithm was in place before instagram stories existed, when it literally all you had to do was post a pretty picture with the right hashtags and you would get a ton of engagement and you would get more followers. But here’s what’s happened on instagram. The first thing is hashtags aren’t nearly as important now as they were before. Still use them, but your content isn’t getting discovered with hashtags as much as it used to do. The other thing is that the party has moved to instagram stories. It has like the party’s gone from the feed, so you keep people keep showing up to the feed and they’re like standing there with a birthday cake and they’re a little balloon, but the room is empty, but no one’s there for the party. They’re all over on instagram stories now.
Davey: 15:04 So we’re hashtags still worth using at all? If it’s not hashtags, uh, how are people primarily finding you or discovering you on instagram now?
Tyler: 15:13 So here’s the thing, instagram building a following on instagram is not as much about just creating the content and saying like, here’s my content if you’re interested. It’s about being completely proactive and owning the marketing and promotions of your business. So you can’t just post on instagram and log off. You have to stick around and have a conversation. So what we teach our students in our community and what I work with my clients on, and literally like what I say on instagram all the freaking time is stop drive by posting, stop posting and running off of instagram because that’s not how you’re going to build a following. And it’s not how you’re going to build a community. And here’s the really cool thing about the instagram algorithm. It’s actually your best friend as a content creator. So it’s time to shift your mindset for a business owner on instagram. You were not an instagram user. You’re a content creator and the algorithm is your best friend because your content lasts longer than ever before. So gone are the days of having to post two or three times a day on your feed. Gone are the days of even having to post once a day in your instagram feed because your content will last days when it used to last minutes or hours. So that means all that time that you were putting into taking more photos, writing more captions, design more graphics is all time that can go into having real conversations with real people to introduce yourself and your content to them.
Davey: 16:44 Yeah. OK. So I feel like there’s so much we have to unpack here. I was having a conversation with one of my friends, uh, Tyler Harrington and we were talking about the algorithm and I’m with you, um, that I don’t think people actually hate the algorithm. I don’t think the algorithm is the problem a necessarily and I’m so glad to hear you say that as well. So going back to posting and having this algorithm that makes content last longer than it used to in a chronological feed where things would get buried almost instantly. Right? Um, so now how often should somebody post?
Tyler: 17:23 I have a client right now who posts twice a week and engages every other day and she has more followers than ever before. She’s averaging over a thousand profile views a week in her engagement is over 40 percent. She’s posting two times a week.
Davey: 17:41 So do things like time timing even matter anymore. Like does it matter if I posted at two in the morning or?
Tyler: 17:46 Yeah, that, that’s an interesting question especially at the time of us recording this podcast, because instagram just made some changes last week. So they’re fiddling with the algorithm to, to try and make people happier with timing. I think timing is still important because instagram is much like facebook in that that initial engagement is what determines the vitality of your content. So you do want to post at a time when people are on because that initial burst of likes and comments is what’s telling the system that this is worthwhile content. So it shows it to more people
Davey: 18:30 and so for that I know that like instagram pods at one point were a popular thing. Does that kind of thing still help for anybody listening who doesn’t know what an instagram pod is and you correct me if I’m explaining this wrong, but basically a group of people who get together and kind of devote themselves to liking and commenting on each other’s posts, you know, almost immediately after they post.
Tyler: 18:56 Yeah. And so strategies like that are still are still helpful and I think a lot of people have gotten away from them because they were using them in the wrong way. So it’s not about just getting a bunch of likes and comments. It’s about getting really targeted engagement. So what I encourage my students to think about is if you are this service provider, you provide this service as a wedding planner or graphic design or whatever it may be, what rounds out the experience for your clients, what are the other things that they need to plan their wedding or execute a launch for their business? OK, then you as the person in that role need to make sure that you are aligning yourself with other people who serve the same person in the same way. That way you are building up– It’s just like in person, right? It’s just like local business. If I were a local attorney that it would be really valuable for me to be connected with local restaurant tours with local accountants, with local business owners, for me to go to things like rotary or go to networking events. Same thing on instagram. How can you align yourself with other professionals who serve the same type of client with the same needs and desires? That’s how you create a really successful instagram pod. That’s how you create really great engagement and growth strategies is by staying in your circle and staying in your niche instead of just trying to get likes and comments from wherever because it ain’t going to help you in the long run. It’s not valuable. It’s not valuable.
Davey: 20:25 Yeah, that makes sense. So what are some other. What are some other strategies that people can use to get engagement on their photos and I think it’s probably pretty discouraging for people, especially if they’re just getting started where you know, you create your account, you have just a handful of people following you and you post and it feels like nobody’s engaging or commenting or liking your post. So especially if you were just starting from scratch, like what would be, what would be, what would you tell people?
Tyler: 20:53 So I think one of the biggest mistakes people make is– well there’s a lot of mistakes, haha but one of the biggest ones
Davey: 20:53 Haha! yeah for sure.
Tyler: 21:02 In the few minutes, and I’ll say one of the biggest mistakes again, haha no but I think in getting engagement on your content there’s two mistakes that people make. The first thing is they look at people who have been doing it for awhile and they try to just rip off what they’re doing, so they’ll come to my account, right, and they’ll say, oh, well, he’s doing that, he’s asking these questions. I’m just going to ask the same questions or same types of questions, and then it’s crickets for them and that’s happening for two main reasons. The first thing is your audiences isn’t my audience, we have a vastly different audiences and also your audience doesn’t know you like my audience knows me. So what we’re looking to do is build these communities of people who are really passionate about what you do and why you do it. So that’s the first mistake– is coming along and saying, oh, well, you know, so and so gets so many comments when they asked this question, I’m going to do the same and it won’t work. The other thing, and this is a really, really important thing, is you have to build habits in your audience so you can’t come out of the gates asking your followers, What is the worst thing that ever happened to you as a kid out of the gates saying, what is your favorite childhood memory? You can’t come out of the gate saying, tell me one thing you’re struggling with in your business right now because you haven’t built that relationship and you have an established habits in your audience. Social media is all about habits and recognizing the way in which people engage with content in the way in which people use the platform, so to get someone to talk to you, to respond to your question before they even do that, they need to like what you shared. Before they even do that they need to maybe watch and engage with an instagram story through something like a poll and once you build these habits, you layer these engagements on top of one another. That’s how you get your followers to a place where they are willing to not only answer your question about your favorite childhood memory, but to give you their email address through a direct message or to book you for your service or to buy your product through a direct message without ever even seeing it, this is how you get people who send you DM’s saying, I don’t know how much it costs to work with you, but I have to work with you. I want to give you my money. You have to layer those habits. You have to build those habits in your audience and build that relationship. And all that takes time. It takes time. It’s not, it’s not an overnight thing. It’s not going to happen immediately, but it just takes you showing up consistently and connecting with real people day in and day out. That’s how you, that’s how you build those relationships.
Davey: 23:48 What you’re saying about where you are in a relationship is such great advice. We talk about something similar even on your website or whatever channel it is, right? And I think that’s a great insight to see that we do have a tendency to look to others in the industry, look at where they’re at with their audience and think that we can get there right away. So I think that should be just encouraging to people that these kinds of things take time, but it’s so worth it when you do these things correctly and you take the time to, uh, to build an audience that engages with you like that. So for somebody just starting out do you tell them, is there any focus on followers at all? Um, maybe as a byproduct of engagement you would just say followers will come, but are you focused on likes or comments or both? Um, what would you tell them to focus on? Just that engagement in general?
Tyler: 24:46 So when you’re starting out building your account, the very first thing, you have to be completely clear on who you are trying to attract. So this is for your business, right? So getting crystal clear on who the person is that you need to get attention from that you need to get in front of. So getting really clear on who that person is. Then deciding what is the objective you have for your instagram account and starting small. So for a lot of our students starting out, when we talk about measuring objectives or determining a conversion for you on Instagram, the conversion that they’re measuring is getting their followers to like their content. That’s it. We just want to convert a follower to a liker. Yeah, and then we want to convert a liker to a commenter or then a commenter or just someone who sends direct messages. We want to do everything natively and organically on the APP before we even try and sell them anything or get them to go to our blog or anything like that. So those are the things that we’re looking at initially. Then we get really clear on the content we’re going to create because we’re speaking to one person and one person alone, no one else matters. The opinion of no one else matters. It’s all about creating content for that one person. Then we can start doing the work of growing our following. So a lot of people come on instagram, guns blazing, ready to grow a following, but they don’t know who they’re talking to you. They haven’t decided how they’re going to show up and their content isn’t where it needs to be and if we’re gonna grow our instagram by engaging outside of our account, by going out, finding people and connecting with people, then we better have some good content to bring them back to. So when they come back to our account and they’re like, oh yeah, I’m interested in this. Oh yeah, I like what they said, oh yeah, this really resonates with me. That’s when they’re more willing to follow and to engage with your content.
Davey: 26:31 Yeah. I like how you created sort of a value ladder there with an instagram, where you take somebody from not following you to following you, from following you just following along to liking and then moving them to comment. Um, and again, I think it goes back to that relationship. That’s kind of how you’re measuring your relationship with them on a or via instagram. So moving, moving back a little bit back to trends that you’re seeing on Instagram, I just assume that instastories is going to become more prominent. Do you think that’s the case?
Tyler: 27:03 I think it’s already there. Yeah, it’s already the thing. And, and um, I think a lot of what folks are seeing now is they are, haha, they’re trying to still do the old instagram thing on insta stories and it’s still not working for them. So they’re trying to do a curated instagram story and it ain’t going to work. They’re trying to design the perfect graphics and this just happened with the highlights. Highlights came out. How cool is this? And everyone’s trying to design these really perfect, cute graphics and curate their instagram stories and it’s not gonna work. It’s not gonna work because what the platform is telling us through engagement is that people want raw and real. They don’t want the curation. They are done with feeling like they are less than or that they are not enough because your life looks so perfect.
Davey: 28:01 I feel like Instagram has really led us on because it was all about curation. We learned that it was all about curation for, for years and now they’re telling us they want raw and real, you know, just when I got comfortable with curated, now I have to show up and I have to be raw and real on instagram. And that’s interesting what you said about highlights too, and I am interested in hearing your thoughts about highlights in general. We do not a very good job of putting together our highlights, but we occasionally add things to our highlights and um, I don’t know if I’ve ever gone into anybody’s highlights and gone through them like it and I don’t know if there’s a way to measure. I don’t even know if you can see how many people have gone through your highlights. Um, but what do, I mean? What are you seeing with that aspect of instagram?
Tyler: 28:44 Yeah. So, so I think instagram’s story highlights are really valuable for that initial contact with a new or potential follower. So think about the questions that you have when someone say someone goes through and likes five or 10 of your post and leaves a few comments, you’re probably going to go check out who they are, right? You may like, go see who is this person, are they a robot haha. And then what are the questions you’re asking yourself initially? Who is this person? What do they do? Um, how are they connected to me? Or why are they interested in me and what I do? You can answer all of those questions and instagram story highlights. So doing an introduction story, doing a process story where if you create or make something or you deliver a service– detailing your process for people so they understand what it is that you do. And then I don’t know, let’s get crazy and add some frickin personality to it. So they know you’re a real person. So example, we do mid day dance breaks around here. That’s an instagram story highlight for me of us dancing around the house and lip singing to various pop-up divas of our era. That’s a part of what we do. That adds personality. I have an entire instagram story highlight about target tips, how to save money at target because I love target and I want people– you should not be paying full price at target. I haven’t paid full price there in a decade and you shouldn’t either. So those are the kinds of things that I’m sharing on my instagram story in addition to instagram tips and an introduction story and things like that. So when someone comes to my profile, they see, oh, he talks about instagram my little line, you know, talks about how I love Nachos and my partner and target, um, and a little bit more about me and highlights and you can see oh, this is him. This is something fun about him. Here’s an instagram tip I can take away. Here’s some free stuff he’s created for me that I can get from his profile. All of that before they even decide to follow me. And the idea here is that if they are getting that much value and that much personality, and that much connection, just from a few videos on my instagram stories, think about how much they’re going to get if they actually follow me and stick around for what I’m doing.
Davey: 30:52 So I’m going to have to revisit instagram highlights now. I’ve got my list now. So going back to insta stories for somebody who’s new, what should people be doing that, I mean raw and real and personality. Um, but is there, do you have a formula for people that, hey, you need to do this many business posts and kind of mix in your personality here etc? Or do you tell people to avoid graphics altogether? What are some of the tips you’re giving people for instastories?
Tyler: 31:21 Yeah. So my biggest is now, here’s the thing about all of social media is nothing is prescriptive and if anyone is, is telling you that you have to do it this exact way for it to work. They’re lying to you because there’s no exact right way to do this. Um, I just had a call with a client this morning and I said, I can teach you strategies and tactics all day long. I can teach you the best practices, but something about what I’m going to teach you is not going to be right for your industry or your product or your audience. There’s going to be, there’s going to be something that you have to do differently and at the end of the day you are that missing piece that has to put it all together. So for instagram stories, really the simplest thing that is the, the thing that guarantees you get some kind of success from instagram stories is having a plan for what you’re going to do in the story. And I take this back to elementary school in learning the basic arc of a story or stories have beginnings, middles and ends. So if you’re gonna do an instagram story and you’re going to do it well with an intention and a purpose behind it, you better introduce that story. You’d better take me through an experience and you better wrap that thing up at the end. So I have a conclusion because our brains can’t handle a cliffhanger. If your followers are consistently seeing you start a story but never finishing it, they’re going to stop watching. If you’re followers are consistently experiencing you doing an instagram story that’s halfway through a process with no context for what happened before this, they’re not going to watch because it’s frustrating to be a part of that experience, but if you continually show up on your stories, you let me know what’s going to happen and you give me an out from the beginning. We should always give people an out from the very beginning of our relationship with them or connection with them online. You give me an out from the beginning stuff I’m not into. I can swipe away, but then you take me through an entire process, an entire experience. You tell me an entire story and then you wrap it up at the end and maybe you give me a call to action or you point me to some more content. I’m going to stick around because that’s pretty damn valuable and I really value what you’ve done for me in that timeframe and that’s how you create really meaningful instagram stories, little snips of your day here and there aren’t going to do it. If you want to show me your whole day, take me through your whole day. You don’t just show me bits and pieces, but it’s the idea of having that comprehensive story with a purpose and an intention behind it. That’s what makes stories work really well.
Davey: 33:54 Adding a insta highlights and instastories to my list of things to revisit. No, but I mean all of that makes it makes a lot of sense. With instastories, how important is it to always have a story up and I guess also as a follow up question to what you were just talking about and stories. Is it OK to have a story that lasts all day, you know, so if, if you’re teaching something about instagram or should you kind of wrap that tip up shortly after you start it? Does that make sense?
Tyler: 34:21 It does. Yeah, so I think that’s definitely a personal preference and kind of what you want to create for your audience, kind of that, that expectation. For me I do a lot of stories in chunks, so I will get on, I will talk about a topic and then I will wrap it up. And it will be finished.
Davey: 34:36 And do you, do you feel like you should always have a story kind of available for people to watch?
Tyler: 34:43 I don’t think you have to, but if you can, if you can, if you are sitting right, if you’re sitting here right now with instagram and maybe you’ve been doing the instagram thing and you’re kind of juggling and trying to figure out what you should do. If you can do instastories every everyday, do instagram stories every single day. I mean that’s what’s going to, that’s what’s to keep you top of mind. That’s what’s going to keep people engaging with you. And what you’ll see next time you’re on instagram. I want you to check this out. If you watch someone’s instagram story and maybe engage with a poll that they’ve shared or even direct message them, you will almost instantaneously see that person’s content show up in your feed or if you watch someone’s instagram live, you almost instantly see the next few posts and your feed are going to be from them because instagram is valuing that content so much. So staying top of mind, staying on instagram stories, using polls, getting engagement is going to make sure your other content shows up for your followers.
Davey: 35:40 That’s great. So it’s not just polls, right? I mean there’s other ways that people can click through, you know, whether it’s maybe a swipe up or for those of you who– Krista has this, I don’t, I’m not instafamous enough–But um, any action they take on your instastory even at dm, would that also cause you to show up?
Tyler: 35:40 yeah.
Davey: 36:04 OK. So that’s, that’s really good to know.
Tyler: 36:05 Yeah. So instagram, the metrics of their measuring are likes, comments saves– A lot of people aren’t thinking about creating content that is saveable. So what can you say in your post that is either inspirational or challenging for your audience that’s going to get them to save it for later? I do a ton of inspirational storytelling nowadays and get hundreds of saves on my content because people want to refer to it later.
Davey: 36:32 I didn’t even know there was a save. How do you find these metrics? I mean likes and comments you can see, of course so saves you can see as well?
Tyler: 36:39 Yeah. So this is, um, individual posts, in insights when you are using a business account.
Davey: 36:49 OK. Individuals posts, then social insights. So for stories there’s also a couple of metrics like forward taps, and back taps. Is there, you know, looking at that, is there a place that you should sit when it comes to those metrics.
Tyler: 36:57 So the main measure of success, for insta stories for me and for our students is retention. So how many did you start with? This is when you’re doing intentional storytelling. Don’t try and measure intention or retention when you’re just like posted a snap here in snap there because it’s not going to work. But how many people watched the first part of your story and how many of them stuck around to the end, what percentage of those people did you retain? And I think this is definitely one of those places where you can work on beating yourself to get more retention and try to create content that retains your audience. For example, on average, I’ll retain about 80 to 90 percent of my instagram story, viewers
Davey: 36:57 I gotta imagine that’s extremely high?
Tyler: 37:40 Yeah because it’s from creating really intentional content. A lot of people are going to be, if you were to look at it right now, you’re probably going to sit at the 40 to 50 percent area. So then this is, this is homework for you, right? Like, OK, let’s get better. Let’s create more intentional stories. So people stick around through the whole experience and they look forward to my stories, instead of being like, oh, here they are with another instagram story.
Davey: 38:05 So, the last question, I’ll ask about stories here, well I am not making that promise, but uh, at least the last question I have for now is about the amount of stories that you do per day and I got to admit even the people that I really enjoy following, if I click into their instagram story and it’s like a bajillion, yeah, I almost get, I feel like I’m more likely to swipe away or go on to the next and I’m not sure why it’s not like– well I guess the overwhelming amount of stories that I would have to sit through. Um, is there a magic number there per day?
Tyler: 38:37 We joke and the follower to fans society that on instagram stories, you should never let your dashas turn into dots on instagram stories. So get when across the top, it’s a bunch of dots. You’ve gone too far, you’ve done too much. Hahaha, I think around 12 to 15 and a 24 hour period is, that’s enough. I mean, you’re looking at a good four minutes at that point of content. If you’re doing videos, full videos, that’s a lot to ask of your audience to sit there. I mean, that’s like a youtube video and I will tell you one thing that’s going to really help your retention is if you add captions or descriptions to your instagram story
Davey: 39:23 And you’ve just recently started doing this I really, I really liked that, especially being more verbal person anyways. Even on facebook, I’m more likely to watch a video if I can just read the captions instead of turning on the sound there. You’re just like sitting in bed in the morning and I don’t want to wake up Krista, like I’ll stop and just read the captions, you know. So I really liked that you’re doing that. We provide captions for each of the podcast episodes as well because I also think it’s important just for the people out there who might have some sort of hearing impairment, you know, that they have access to that kind of stuff. So I really like the fact that you do that– are those kind of the reasons why you do that?
Tyler: 40:06 Yeah. So it started out definitely as an accessibility concern because, um, we had people in our community who are sharing like the either um, you know, they are hard of hearing or they are deaf or they have friends or colleagues who are or who may have some kind of, some issues with like processing language, dyslexia, things like that and um, or hearing things. So we, we, I just decided, hey, I want to be a lot more accessible in my content and make it more accessible for my followers. Then I’ve played around in the past with um, with adding some captions are adding, just adding phrases to my instance stories just to see what I did with retention and I always saw better results when there was something on the screen. Um, and lately I’ve just been doing it completely, like whatever I say in my, in my video gets summarized in a block of text on my feed and my retention is just staying up there. It’s crazy how much more people are sticking around. Yeah.
Davey: 41:03 There was a, uh, there was an app that you use to, to create the transcript for you, right?
Tyler: 41:08 That’s, so there’s an APP called clips. It’s a free app for iphone and it actually does live captioning so you can speak into it, you can do a video on it, does the live captions, which was really cool. So I played around with that and playing around with some different ways to see how it works. And an important thing to know, which I love that you mentioned facebook, is facebook says that over 80 percent of facebook viewers watch video without the sound on. So it’s so important there, Instagram says only about 30 percent of instagram users watch video with the sound turned off. But I feel like that stats not, I feel like it’s not true.
Davey: 41:45 A lot of times– I mean that’s certainly true for me. It doesn’t mean it’s true for others, but I would, uh, I would agree and I can definitely see that on facebook for sure. So transitioning, um, and this is sort of a sort of a random question to ask at this point in the conversation, but because I got to imagine there’s somebody out there that’s probably wondering to themselves a business versus personal instagrams, you know, like if you’re a business, you definitely go business Instagram? I do feel like there probably some tools, um, maybe even some access to metrics that you don’t get on the personal side that might make it worth it. But what do you think?
Tyler: 42:32 So if you are using social media as a part of your business, you cannot– and this is my belief of course– you cannot in good conscience use social media without the metrics and the insights to measure what you’re doing because you are, first of all, you’re flying blind. You can’t measure what’s working and what’s not working. You can’t tell what you need to change or what you need to do differently. And the other thing that’s really important here is you cannot prove any of the return on your investment. You can’t say whether or not this is really working because all you’re seeing is just a like or a comment or maybe a new follower and the most important metric that you do not have access to you if you are a personal account is understanding your reach on instagram. And this is a big one because this is where the entire issue of shadow banning and reduced engagement and the algorithm all came from and that is the fact that people were seeing less engagement and they immediately blame the platform, but what happened is time and time again, I dug into people’s analytics and saw that their reach had stayed the same the entire time. They were reaching the same amount of people. Instagram wasn’t showing their content to less people, less people were choosing to engage with their content. So what we come to now is the fact that it’s not an algorithm issue. It’s the fact that first of all what you used to do ain’t going to work anymore. Instagram’s different. Stop trying to do the same thing. And the other thing is people want stories. They want that instagram story content. That’s where you’re really going to get engagement and if you’re not using a business account, you have no idea how many people you’re reaching. You can’t tell whether or not your hashtags are getting you in front of more people. You can’t tell how people are finding you and how many people are saving your content for later. So it’s one of those things that you, I mean, I think you have to have it. You have to have it. And I get the fear of decreasing engagement. I get the concern that Facebook, what facebook did, the pages they’re going to instagram. It may happen, it may happen. Um, and here’s the thing. There’s literally nothing we can do about it. Why are we worrying about that? Now we should just focus on building our audiences, building our community. And spoiler alert, the best way to use instagram to sell is to get people off of instagram.
Davey: 44:53 I do think that facebook pages versus a facebook regular accounts is a qualitatively different thing than what instagram business accounts are versus, um, you know, regular user accounts. I just think the blend of content is presented so different than it ever was in facebook and so you’re of course, right. Like it totally could go that direction on, on instagram. I would be kind of surprised though if it went in that direction to the same extent it has on facebook.
Tyler: 45:29 And I don’t think it will because the big thing that differentiates facebook from the other platforms is– and this is why hashtags never worked well on facebook. Why business growth strategies are tougher on facebook– it is because facebook is an inherently private place. So we have our personal profiles and to not to even see my content, you have to request to be my friend and see my content. Whereas on instagram it starts out and it’s public. Same on twitter. It starts out and it’s public for everyone to see. That’s why as a content creator, as a marketer, it’s really great for us because we can go out and find their ideal person on instagram. Um, and I don’t think, I don’t think we’ll ever see that happen on something like Instagram, like what we did on facebook because like you said, it’s just a completely different platform.
Davey: 46:18 So talking about metrics. Somebody who runs a creative service based business, what are sort of, what are the things that they should be focusing on in their business. Is it mostly a top of funnel tool where you know, you’re just kind of generating awareness and maybe trying to drive a couple of leads basically driving people to your website or can it be more than that? But what should be, what should people be focusing on in actually acquiring more customers via instagram?
Tyler: 46:47 Definitely the awareness piece is important and, and it’s not just, um, it’s not just you awareness, it’s not just solution awareness, but how can you, as the service provider in your industry create product awareness? Excuse me, problem awareness on instagram. How can you showcase the problem in a really unique and different way? How can you position you and your business as the authority on that? How can you lead thought on that topic on instagram? You can do all these things on instagram through instagram stories, through instagram lives, through educational posts, um, you can have all these conversations to really set yourself apart and you and your business and then how can we build awareness and then how can you build a community? That’s what I really want people to take away from this conversation and think about how they can use instagram in a way to not just connect with people, but to get those people wildly passionate about them and what they do and that’s instagram, it does it. You see it on a daily basis of people who are building successful businesses, brands and presence online using instagram is really their sole platform because people care about them and what they do and that’s how you get. That’s how you build your list through direct message. That’s how you sell through direct message. Listen, I’m sitting at this point in my career and my business and I and I don’t shoot me. I know that you’re going to hate us. I don’t have a website.
Davey: 48:20 haha yeah I noticed that. I noticed that you didn’t have a website and I was like, you are all in on instagram! And that makes sense totally for you, you know on your, on your platform for sure. I mean just what you’re all about,
Tyler: 48:32 but at the same time I’m still building my list. I’m adding hundreds of people to my mailing list every single week. I am still growing an online membership community. I’m hosting webinars. I’m getting picked up for podcasts and other promotional opportunities. I’m sharing content with other people. I’m doing that without a website, without a blog, without a podcast, without a youtube channel, any of those things because I built a community on instagram and my folks on instagram trust me, so when I say, Hey, I’d love to share this thing with you send me direct message or your email address via direct message. They do it. Or when I say, Hey, I have this new product or this new service, if you want to learn more, send me a direct message. I can have a conversation with people and I can close the deal through a direct message on instagram because I built those relationships.
Davey: 49:19 How many years have you been on Instagram, at least in this capacity as the Tyler McCall that we know today.
Tyler: 49:26 So I’ve been doing this work since the beginning of 2017.
Davey: 49:35 So yeah, I mean, so it’s these…
Tyler: 49:37 No i’m sorry since 2016, 2016 is when I started full time entrepreneur. I really, I started doing instagram more strategically by the middle of 2016. I’ve been my own personal brand since the beginning of 2017. So it’s really been a, it’s a, it’s only been about 18 months,
Davey: 49:56 which is, that’s a significant amount of time. Especially, I mean, especially in social media world where, you know, you were talking about the algorithm being introduced what, 18 to 24 months ago. And to me it feels like forever, it feels like five years. I think what I think what it is, is encouraging because it’s not like it’s taken you a lifetime to get to where you are. Right. But it has taken dedicated you intense hustle as well. You know, like you didn’t, you didn’t do this unintentionally, right? So I think that there is encouragement in that for people. It was like, Hey, you know, you can do this in 18 months, but realized that this happens in. It takes some time to do this and to get to that spot with your or to build a community on instagram and to get to a spot where people are engaging with them the same way that they engage, where a similar way that they engage with you.
Tyler: 50:56 I’m going to say the number one thing that I’ve had to learn and it is a painful lesson in this process. You and Krista know this, that the magic of building a business, the success happens when your head is down and your blinders are on. You literally cannot worry about anyone else. You can’t look at what she’s doing or the success that he’s having. Because all it does is hold you back. And success in business happens between your ears. That’s where it happens and if all you’re doing, and this is where people get messed up on instagram because it becomes a place where you can just compare all day long, but you have to ignore everyone and just focus on your people. Focus on your people and what you’re saying to them and just keep doing that. And here’s the thing. If you do that for 18 months, you’re going to reach a point of success in which people are going to say, oh my gosh, “he was came out of nowhere. I see you everywhere now” you just have this overnight success and you’re going to sit there and be like, are you freaking kidding me? I’ve been doing this. I’ve had my head down. I’ve been in my pajamas and my office for a year and a half trying to make this work. And it worked. But you can’t pay attention to other people when you’re trying to do it.
Davey: 52:10 So I feel like we’ve probably, even in 50 minutes here, and this is the funny thing about podcasting is I’m trying to get it into like the 40 to 45 minute range, but you know, I have great guests like you that come on and you just share so much wisdom and I feel like we haven’t even scratched the surface today, right? Like we, I feel like there’s so much more that we could unpack based on everything that you said. So where can people learn more if this is music to their ears and I’m sure it is. It’s got me jazzed up about revisiting instagram and I’m maybe a little bit more motivated and encouraged even to revisit all the things that we talked about from our feed to the highlights, the insta stories. Where can they go to learn more?
Tyler: 52:55 Well, and maybe a surprise to you, but you can find me on instagram at Tyler, J Mccall. That’s where you’ll find, um, talks, inspiration about business, about entrepreneurship, about life, about running a business and dealing with mental health issues and family issues and about how to use instagram to market yourself and what you’re doing. So you can find me there at Tyler J McCall and online at TylerjMcCall dot com. That’s where you’ll find some free sources and if you want to learn more about the follower to the fan society, that’s our online membership community with education and resources, all about marketing your creative business you can go to follow to fan society dot com.
Davey: 53:37 if you’re sitting at home and you’re thinking like, hey, I need, I need somebody to really walk me through this. This is something that you should definitely look into. And just as somebody who’s followed Tyler for awhile, anytime instagram rolls out, something new you have some information about it right away and that has been. I know that’s been helpful for me, so I encourage you to go check out Tyler at instagram, not at his website because he doesn’t have one.
Tyler: 53:37 Haha I have a landing page now!
Davey: 54:09 Haha, well the magic, the magic is all a instagram, so be sure to go check out that. Tyler, thank you so much for joining us today. I know this is all super helpful for me. I’m sure it is going to be really helpful for others.
Tyler: 54:22 Yeah, thanks for having me.
Davey: 54:24 All right. Thanks for listening to the brands that book podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider subscribing to the podcast on itunes and leaving a review so the others are more likely to find it for show notes and other resources.
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