Instagram 101: 5 Ways to Set Yourself Up For Success

PODCAST TRANSCRIPT

Tara Kay Otey: Hey guys. Welcome back to the Untamed Social Podcast. My name is Tara Kay.

Ella Gunnell: And I'm Ella Gunnell.

Tara Kay Otey: And today we are gonna be talking about an Instagram 101, the five ways to set yourself up for success. So Instagram, um, it can be kind of tough navigating the app. As y'all know, if you watched the podcast with Laney and me, I'm totally an Instagram girly. Um, as much as I love it though, it still can get really complicated and overwhelming.

Um, and just trying to figure out like what all you need to do, 'cause there are so many, so many features, so many things that you can do. So before, like before trying to create a strategy. Um, we just wanna go over kind of like what the, like five basics are to, to make sure that you have set in place if you're either starting a new Instagram account or if you just wanna elevate your strategy.

So we're gonna get to that. So, Ella, do you wanna start off with our first one?

Ella Gunnell: Yeah, so like TK said, um, we're just gonna go over some basics today. Some things that you can do to kind of get yourself off the ground and running, like make sure you have these things set in place. And the first thing that I feel like doesn't get talked about enough, but I wanna talk about is your username.

And you might not think that your username is important, but it actually is. When someone goes to search for your account or something within your niche or your area of expertise, you want to give yourself the best possible chance of coming up, and so that actually starts with your username. So first things first with username, you want it to be recognizable, like you want it to easily be tied to who you are, either your name or your brand name. You want it to not be too long because that's just too much and people won't remember it. And then last but not least, you want it to contain keywords. And this is something we're gonna talk about in a couple of these other sections, but Instagram and social media these days is all about SEO.

And so you are going to try to optimize it as much as you can so that way you can come up when people are searching for things related to who you are, your brand, your business, anything like that. So what do I mean by that? An example that I like to talk about is one of our clients came to us, they are a cabinetry, um, like home renovation company.

I'm not gonna say their name, but they came to us with the username, um, the initials of their business, "CC," and then more initials of the state that they were located in. So basically their username was just a bunch of letters, um, and they thought, oh, you know, that's good. That's, you know, the initials of our business and then the state where we're located.

That's, that's great. And while it might seem like it's great, we actually took their username and optimized it to be better. So we had their name and then at the end we put at the, at the end of their, um, username is custom cabinetry. So now when people go in to search for custom cabinetry, their name is more likely to pop up.

Or when people go to look for them directly, their name is gonna pop up.

Tara Kay Otey: Mm-hmm.

Ella Gunnell: So again, it needs to be recognizable not too long. And then some kind of key word relating to your realm of business, especially if you're a smaller business. Um, obviously if you're like a big company like Microsoft or like anything else and you have that brand recognition, you don't need a keyword.

But I'd say especially if you're starting off like wedding photography or um, event planning, something along those lines is gonna help you tremendously.

Tara Kay Otey: Yeah, a hundred percent. And I remember like even Rachel, when she started her business, at first she had something like Central Pa Webster or whatever. And then shortly after she realized that she needed to make it branded so it was more obvious what like, Strella Social Media is. So, yeah. Um, that's a great point.

Uh, second thing that's super, super important on Instagram is optimizing your biography. Um, and that's kind of like an extension of what your username really is and what it stands for. That's where you can put what your industry is, uh, the name of your company, a link to your website or to your Linktree and your description.

And again, like that's all also like SEO purposes, like that will. Like, you want people to, to find you. If, if people don't know who you are, they're not gonna know to search your name. But if they are searching something like custom cabinetry and that's in your bio, then that's way more likely to come up.

Um, so you're basically just giving, you're giving, um, customers an idea or potential customers and viewers a potential, an idea of who you are, but you're also telling the app who you are like—

Ella Gunnell: Yeah. The algorithm.

Tara Kay Otey: The algorithm, right? You want, you want Instagram to know who you are and where to put you and what kind of audience that they, they should serve you in front of.

So that one, yeah, it's definitely like one of the top two things that you should do to optimize your account.

Ella Gunnell: Yeah, and I think I wanna stress too, like the reason why it's so important, and this is just my opinion as a social media manager, what I have come to find is that the Instagram algorithm is not very good at recognizing things like, for example, the TikTok algorithm. Not to pit the two against each other, but--

Tara Kay Otey: It's okay we already did that on a podcast.

Ella Gunnell: Even if you just like talk about something, like somehow the, the algorithm is able to like pick up the audio and even categorize it that way. Like I've searched for certain like product reviews and the video will be, you know, someone talking about like several products and it picks it up because of the one product that it talks about at one point in the video.

And it's not like they were tagged or anything, or they use any hashtags. Like the algorithm is just way better at using all of the, the clues of your video, your caption, your hashtag, what you're talking about and categorizing it and showing it to what people are searching for and for people who want to see it.

Instagram is really bad at that, and so it's important to give it like all the information you can in any way that you can, so that way your content is more likely to be found.

Tara Kay Otey: Yes, yes. Taking every opportunity to tell Instagram who you are. Yeah. I like that.

Ella Gunnell: It's unfortunate, but it is how it is.

Tara Kay Otey: Right.

Ella Gunnell: The next thing that we wanna talk about is features. So where to even begin, because Instagram has so many features, they're always coming out with new features, and it is just so hard to even know, like, should I be doing all of these? It, it can be overwhelming. Um, like, which ones are most important?

Does my audience even care? Like, how do I navigate all of these things that I could be doing, and if I were to do it all, is that even correct?

Tara Kay Otey: Right.

Ella Gunnell: So we could dive into all of that in a lot of--

Tara Kay Otey: I know could like do an entire podcast just on Instagram features.

Ella Gunnell: Could be a whole episode.

Tara Kay Otey: Yeah. Right, right. But we can, let's, let's, yeah, we can just pick out a couple here, I guess.

Ella Gunnell: Yeah. So let's just, TK, I guess the question is. Which ones do you feel like actually matter? Like if we could boil it down to like there's a hundred features, which like four, three or four should our audience focus on that is like sure to give them output, meaning like they're going to use it and it's going to work for them.

Tara Kay Otey: Yeah. Um, I think one of those is doing audios and trending sounds like non embedded audio using the, um, like the trending sounds that it will offer you when you're putting out a reel or even when you're putting out like just a carousel. Um, the, the reason they offer that is because they want you to use it.

And so Instagram will push your content out more, but also, when you're using that trending audio, like if it's already trending, it's like people are already searching for it and it's going to show up on your, on other people's feed a lot more. Like it, it, it will be pushed out a lot more quickly, um, by using those sounds.

Um, and then also this is one that people don't always remember is still really useful, but um, using carousels. Um, I think, like I've had, I've had a few clients who they'll wanna just do straight reels, like all the time, because reels always do better. People like watching videos.

Ella Gunnell: Reels perform.

Tara Kay Otey: Reels perform. Yeah.

And it's really tempting to wanna just put out the content that, you know, is gonna do the best. But, um, but something we, we talk about having, like maintaining your overall health of your account and that means being a balanced account. And so if you're only putting out reels, like if you're not taking advantage of this feature that Instagram offers, like that's one of the main ones putting out still images, feed posts, um, and carousels.

And, um, and so when you're putting that out there, first off, Instagram's gonna reward you for it. And second, um, you, you wanna cater to your followers, like your loyal followers who are always there. They're gonna love your videos, but they're also gonna love your carousels. And, um, you always wanna make sure to cater to them and to take care of your, your followers while still acquiring new ones.

But once you've acquired them, like you've gotta still be there for your followers. So I think that another one.

Ella Gunnell: So true. It's so funny because me and TK were just talking about this today, about how if you look at your analytics on your specific posts, Reels are like 9 times out of 10. Your non followers are going to see it more than your followers, but carousels are usually the opposite. Your followers are going to have seen it more than non followers and that doesn't necessarily mean that it's performing badly. I wish that people would understand that it's not gonna get, you know, a million views. It's a carousel.

Tara Kay Otey: Yeah.

Ella Gunnell: But there's a reason that Instagram has, you know, not too long ago they made the option to expand the carousel from like 10 to, isn't it like 20 now?

You can do 20 photos. Um, you can add text to your carousel, you can add music to your carousel. The fact that Instagram keeps adding features to carousels means that they want you to use it.

Tara Kay Otey: Mm-hmm.

Ella Gunnell: So go ahead and use it.

Tara Kay Otey: Yes, do it.

Ella Gunnell: Along those same lines. Um, this is kind of going back to videos. If you are not using onscreen text, that is a, a missed opportunity in my opinion.

Um, and I don't just mean going onto Adobe and slapping some text on your video, that can help. But I'm talking more like using the Instagram app. As you're posting the video, just slap on some text on the screen, even if you slide it off of the screen and don't want people to see it. Just having that there, the algorithm will pick up on that.

Um, number one and number two, people, it helps people to get a sense of what your video's gonna be about. So. You can't often hook them in the first, second or two with what the video starts off with. As much as we try that text is just gonna be another indicator to people of what is this video about? And am I gonna stick around for it?

And people decide that in seconds, like, you need to catch their attention fast. So definitely have some onscreen text to help you out with that. Um, pretty much all of our videos that we put out with-- for clients now, we add some kind of text hook we call it. So.

Tara Kay Otey: Mm-hmm.

Ella Gunnell: Would definitely recommend doing that.

Tara Kay Otey: Yeah. Anything to give your audience information about something to make them want to keep watching is always going to help. So I

love that you said that.

Ella Gunnell: Even if they don't realize it. Right? Because they, they're seriously making decisions in the matter of seconds, and they're not usually reading your caption like right away. Or less, right? Sometimes I see a video and I scroll instantly. So if you can give them a reason to stay or let them help them decide if they want to stay, then that's great.

And then along those same lines is captions. Instagram auto generates captions for you. Go ahead and use those. Number one, the algorithm, again, I will sound like a broken record, but SEO, SEO, SEO, any information you can give is helpful and then, a lot of people still will watch social media on mute.

Like that's just, that's just the world we live in. People aren't gonna be on social media whether they can hear it or not. And so if you can give people captions so that way they can watch your video, even if they can't hear it, then that is also a great tool. So I think we mentioned captions on videos using the text feature, trending audio, and carousels.

You feel like that's like a good place to start?

Tara Kay Otey: Definitely. Yeah. I think just as like a general, these are the features you should be using. Um, but even kind of going on from there, um, like our, just like our fourth point of like of the top five things that you need to be doing, um, is using stories. Which I know is another feature, but like, this is one that, um, I mean, they're all features, like, um, but this is one that like, basically if if you're not taking advantage of stories, then you're, it's again, just another missed opportunity.

Ella Gunnell: Stories is like their own category, like they're kind of on-- in their own league.

Tara Kay Otey: Right, right. Um, it's like, it's bigger than just like, audio and trending sounds like it's like stories. This is a place where you need to live on Instagram. Um, yeah, 'cause at this point, um, so many people just go straight to stories and that's where they get their updates. They don't necessarily scroll through on their feed, but, um, stories is just where everyone puts like the most relevant, most up to date information and you wanna be there.

Ella Gunnell: Sorry to cut you off, but sometimes people are scrolling through their feed still and your content still isn't gonna come up because Instagram tends to favors like ads and they'll suggest new content. Um, they don't post it in chronological order anymore. It's been years since they've done that.

So even if you're posting things, that's not a guarantee that your audience is gonna see it, which is so unfortunate.

Tara Kay Otey: Right, right. Um, that's, yeah, that's, yeah, a very good point. Um, and it's like a way for, for you to really build a connection with your audience, particularly if that's gonna be your only touch point, which is super likely. Um, just because the algorithm is changing so much and they're testing so many things, it's really hard to guarantee that your posts will be seen.

So, um, I mean, ideally... I mean, I think it kind of depends, but I think doing like around five stories a week, maybe five to seven stories is really great way to boost your, um, to boost the engagement on your account. But even just anything more than one story a week I think is gonna be great. Um, and just help boost that interaction and engagement and relevance.

Um, and as we say, here are more features, but like using the features that are available on stories, like using those stickers, using, um, the polls or the sliders or questions or links, all of that is going to help boost, um, boost your visibility because Instagram, they want you to be using what they're giving you.

Ella Gunnell: Yeah, totally. We always tell our clients because clients will always say, how, how many stories, you know, how many should I do? It's like, as many as you're comfortable with, and it, it, it is hard because you kind of feel like you have, you know, your content plan and now you need another plan for your stories.

It's like two sets of content, kind of, but within one app.

Tara Kay Otey: Yeah.

Ella Gunnell: It's, it's totally hard, it's totally overwhelming. I get it. Um, but like TK said, sometimes it's the only touchpoint that you have with your audience in a day.

Tara Kay Otey: Mm-hmm.

Ella Gunnell: And so you gotta show up there. You just have to, and a story, the good thing about stories is you don't have to be super, you know, edited or like, you can kind of just post stuff on the fly.

And that's what stories are for. They're to be like more raw and real and show people, kind of an inside scoop almost to your business or you know, your industry. Um, so I would say please do it and don't overthink it.

Tara Kay Otey: Yeah. Yeah, definitely, great advice. Don't overthink it. So much of this is, it's easy to overthink, so yeah.

Ella Gunnell: So the last kind of touch point getting started, bare bones, what should you know about your Instagram account? We're gonna start with captions because everything that you post needs a caption and your captions are actually pretty important. Um, I'm just kind of laughing, remembering the days when we'd be like, #ThrowbackThursday to my hashtag, you know, #summervacation in #Malibu. Like, do you remember those days when we would-- used to do captions like that?

Tara Kay Otey: Like hashtags were just like a part of our conversation, but not even in a relevant way. Yeah.

Ella Gunnell: Well, they're a lot different than that now.

Tara Kay Otey: Mm-hmm.

Ella Gunnell: I would, I would not recommend using hashtags like that. So when, when we're talking about captions in general, but this includes hashtags. What I want you to know about captions is, again, SEO is king. So what you want to put in your caption are key words to help the algorithm know what your video is about. And it's funny because I've actually seen creators like, you know how people will put like a chunk of hashtags underneath their like main text in their caption. I've actually seen creators just do like chunks of words, like key words without the hashtag symbol in front because they, I think they read somewhere, oh, you know, keywords. Keywords. I don't know if I would necessarily recommend doing that, but, I would recommend doing like a, a thoughtful caption, doesn't have to be super long.

Tara Kay Otey: Mm-hmm.

Ella Gunnell: But just kind of helping, giving some context and again, saying a few things that your video is about, so that way the algorithm is further given information to help categorize what the video is and then it can give it to the right people.

Tara Kay Otey: Yeah.

Ella Gunnell: So I know that that is so much. Um, but I feel like the key takeaway out of all of that is given for, give Instagram as much information as you can, because it's all about SEO, it's all about search optimization and people searching things. And so no matter if it's, you know, in the features or in the captions or you know, all of that, just remember to give it as much information as possible.

Tara Kay Otey: Yeah.

Ella Gunnell: What do you think, TK?

Tara Kay Otey: 100%. I feel like it's basically just, you're just. You just wanna give Instagram clues to who you are, so then they know what to do with your content. And--

Ella Gunnell: Hopefully.

Tara Kay Otey: Really all, I know, hopefully. Um, but that's like really all it comes down to is just every opportunity that you have to make it clear who you are, make it clear who you are with using, especially using search engine optimization.

So yeah, I think that's a great point. Um. Do you have, okay. Do you have an account that you think is like a really good example of doing all of these things?

Ella Gunnell: Yeah, so the account that I love that I feel like if you're like, man, what does like a good Instagram account look like? I love the Crumbl account and I'm not really even like a Crumbl Cookie, huge fan. Um, I kind of think they're overrated a little bit, but they do-- You agree?

Tara Kay Otey: I agree. I mean, I used to, I used to like manage over there. I know. I agree. I ate too many of them, but yeah.

Ella Gunnell: But they do a great job with their social media. And why I say this is they make cookies exciting and they, number one, they do all the things that we've talked about, right? They, they do a great job utilizing all the features, optimizing stuff, you know, keywords, things like that. But what I really like about them is that they, they give you a reason to follow the account.

And why I say that is because. A lot of brands think that they're putting out good content, and maybe they are, but you have to really think like, is someone that is, you know, gonna be my customer or something like that. Do they have a reason to actually want to follow my account? Like what reason am I giving them?

And for Crumbl, they totally are giving you a reason because they are, every week launching new cookies and you have to follow the Instagram account to like stay up to date on what those are. So they've done a really good job of tying their social media into their marketing strategy rather than just having their social media be like another entity, if that makes sense.

Tara Kay Otey: Yeah, yeah. 100%. Like they like, there is nowhere else to go to find that information. That is where it drops and it makes-- they do a really good job of staying relevant because of that.

Ella Gunnell: Yes they do.

Tara Kay Otey: Yeah. Um, another one I thought of, which is maybe like a little bit more niche 'cause it's well it's like literally a regional thing, but it's called Your DC Bestie.

I don't know if you've heard of it. If you haven't, you should go follow them, but, or follow her. But, um, this girl started this account just a, just like a few years ago. It might've even been during Covid, and it's like boomed into like over 200,000 followers that, um, she basically, I mean her bio is super clear.

Um, and, um, on every one of her posts, she basically just puts out a list of like, things to do in DC this date, to this date. And every week she posts something new.

Ella Gunnell: Oh, sorry. I'm just looking her up and yeah, I've seen her before.

Tara Kay Otey: But every week she posts a video that's like things to do in DC from April 13th to April 19th. And she'll just like go through all these different things day by day. And every week she posts new content so you know, you know what to expect. It's a very, it's a very regular thing. And then during the week, like she'll still post other information relevant to, um, people in the area. And like, I think it's, I, I think it's, it's kind of similar to the Crumbl thing, where every week you know exactly what you're gonna get.

Ella Gunnell: There are, there are a lot of great Instagram accounts out there that you know, are doing a lot of things right and we understand Instagram can be so overwhelming. It can be really hard to know what to do. We feel that sometimes as social media managers, but if you can just go back to the basics and kind of get these things down first, that's gonna put you leaps and bounds ahead as if you were to just kind of start from zero.

So hope that was helpful. If you guys ever want us to go more in depth on more Instagram stuff, we are happy to do so because like we said, there's just endless amounts of information that we could give you.

Tara Kay Otey: But yeah, hopefully, hopefully that was helpful. Nice little five basics, so yeah.

Ella Gunnell: Thanks everyone, and we'll see you next time on the Untamed Social Media podcast.

Tara Kay Otey: All right. We'll see ya.

Ella Gunnell: Bye bye.