A258 - Is Instagram a better vehicle for visibility? Sales?
03/06/19 • 9 min
Inside of the Sustainable Freelancer someone asked a question that I've never answered directly in the previous 257 episodes of the show.
This is a great question for a lot of people thinking about how to use social media for their business.
Simply put, I don't like saying this, but it applies. The answer is, it depends.
I'm going to put aside the paid ads on the platform because that's a different game altogether and really just stick to answering the question in the context of organic engagement.
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👉 For full show notes to this episode & more resources for you.
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Organic Engagement
You have to remember that it's a social network, the key word here is "social".
So that lends itself to the awareness stage, or visibility as this person puts it.
That doesn't mean you can't use it for sales, but from my experience, sales needs to be at a deeper level on the platform, say in DMs, Lives, IGTV and that sort of thing.
I say "it depends" also because I think the product/service you are selling has to make sense to where the person is on Instagram.
If you are trying to sell full web builds, or branding, I think that's going to be tough to sell on any social platform, even Instagram.
Not saying that it can't be done, because I've done it. Which I'll explain in just a minute.
What I am saying is that the buyer who's scrolling through their feed or viewing stories of people they follow aren't in the buying mode. They could be standing in line waiting to buy milk, or in the back of an Uber.
They are in consumption mode and most likely in some sort of passive state of mind.
Now if you are selling a product, such as t-shirts, jewelry, that certainly works because of the visual elements there.
If you have a lower tier service or product, say that or a similar price as a t-shirt, then that too may work for you too.
Since you are most likely selling services, this could be something like a mini-course or an ebook.
"Selling on social media"
Back to how I sold a higher priced item on social media.
As you know, my social platform of choice is Twitter. I've built up a following over there, from what Twitter tells me, for the past 12 years.
Twitter in my opinion is even harder to sell on than Instagram. Especially higher priced items. Simply because it's a text-based platform. Sure there are images you can attached, but it's text-first and the percentages of selling something for a few hundred dollars or higher with a one or two sentences is pretty low.
My following is not huge but it's an engaged, which means that I've built up trust.
Of those that follow me, many of which I've had conversations with. I personally greet anyone new that follows me. I'm highly engaged there.
Over the 12 years on Twitter, I never once pitched through a tweet "hey everyone, I have this thing to sell, it costs $750, DM me to get it" - just never happened.
Until January 2019, where one of the more popular vendors I work with on a consistent basis changed their pricing, who they were marketing to, and to be honest, changed the direction of the company overall from a good portion of people who had been their customers in the past.
Honestly, it's the free will of any business to do something like that. However, the way in which you do it is a delicate balance with your existing customers. Obviously this pricing change made lots of people upset.
When people get upset, they complain. When people complain, they take it to the social networks.
Twitter was all ablaze with people frustrated, upset, confused, and angry.
In fact, I just wanted to help and so I tweeted this first. Then 4 hours later, I tweeted the pitch (with a typo in there too).
Seeing as I had a service that could help people move from this platform to another, I threw that into a tweet and pushed send.
Because of the trust that I built on the platform, the relationships I have formed, I had many conversations, 10 turned into sales opportunities and 4 actually took me up on the offer.
It can be done, but obviously due to the opportunity that presented itself with the market, on top of the engaged following that I have, the sales were able to happen.
Whether Instagram is your platform of choice or something else, put yourself into the mindset of the buyer and what they could be thinking about when on these platforms.
Are they on line buying milk? Or are they actively in buying mode because of a market change?
Inside of the Sustainable Freelancer someone asked a question that I've never answered directly in the previous 257 episodes of the show.
This is a great question for a lot of people thinking about how to use social media for their business.
Simply put, I don't like saying this, but it applies. The answer is, it depends.
I'm going to put aside the paid ads on the platform because that's a different game altogether and really just stick to answering the question in the context of organic engagement.
-------------------
👉 For full show notes to this episode & more resources for you.
-------------------
Organic Engagement
You have to remember that it's a social network, the key word here is "social".
So that lends itself to the awareness stage, or visibility as this person puts it.
That doesn't mean you can't use it for sales, but from my experience, sales needs to be at a deeper level on the platform, say in DMs, Lives, IGTV and that sort of thing.
I say "it depends" also because I think the product/service you are selling has to make sense to where the person is on Instagram.
If you are trying to sell full web builds, or branding, I think that's going to be tough to sell on any social platform, even Instagram.
Not saying that it can't be done, because I've done it. Which I'll explain in just a minute.
What I am saying is that the buyer who's scrolling through their feed or viewing stories of people they follow aren't in the buying mode. They could be standing in line waiting to buy milk, or in the back of an Uber.
They are in consumption mode and most likely in some sort of passive state of mind.
Now if you are selling a product, such as t-shirts, jewelry, that certainly works because of the visual elements there.
If you have a lower tier service or product, say that or a similar price as a t-shirt, then that too may work for you too.
Since you are most likely selling services, this could be something like a mini-course or an ebook.
"Selling on social media"
Back to how I sold a higher priced item on social media.
As you know, my social platform of choice is Twitter. I've built up a following over there, from what Twitter tells me, for the past 12 years.
Twitter in my opinion is even harder to sell on than Instagram. Especially higher priced items. Simply because it's a text-based platform. Sure there are images you can attached, but it's text-first and the percentages of selling something for a few hundred dollars or higher with a one or two sentences is pretty low.
My following is not huge but it's an engaged, which means that I've built up trust.
Of those that follow me, many of which I've had conversations with. I personally greet anyone new that follows me. I'm highly engaged there.
Over the 12 years on Twitter, I never once pitched through a tweet "hey everyone, I have this thing to sell, it costs $750, DM me to get it" - just never happened.
Until January 2019, where one of the more popular vendors I work with on a consistent basis changed their pricing, who they were marketing to, and to be honest, changed the direction of the company overall from a good portion of people who had been their customers in the past.
Honestly, it's the free will of any business to do something like that. However, the way in which you do it is a delicate balance with your existing customers. Obviously this pricing change made lots of people upset.
When people get upset, they complain. When people complain, they take it to the social networks.
Twitter was all ablaze with people frustrated, upset, confused, and angry.
In fact, I just wanted to help and so I tweeted this first. Then 4 hours later, I tweeted the pitch (with a typo in there too).
Seeing as I had a service that could help people move from this platform to another, I threw that into a tweet and pushed send.
Because of the trust that I built on the platform, the relationships I have formed, I had many conversations, 10 turned into sales opportunities and 4 actually took me up on the offer.
It can be done, but obviously due to the opportunity that presented itself with the market, on top of the engaged following that I have, the sales were able to happen.
Whether Instagram is your platform of choice or something else, put yourself into the mindset of the buyer and what they could be thinking about when on these platforms.
Are they on line buying milk? Or are they actively in buying mode because of a market change?
Previous Episode
A257 - What kind of content should I promote to potential clients?
In A256 - Where do you find freelance clients? we talked about the watering holes, those places where your clients come together to talk business.
Today's episode goes a little deeper into that topic to talk about the context and intent of your client at these watering holes.
-------------------
👉 For full show notes to this episode & more resources for you.
-------------------
The human behavior part of this equation is what I'm fascinated most with.
I'm not the first, nor the last person who will talk about context when it comes to marketing.
In fact, it's the very first personalization that was done in advertising and marketing.
It's why restaurants put their side dishes next to entrees on their menus. You are going to order a potato and veggies with that steak and they know that. So they aren't going to put sides on the last page, they'll put it directly after that filet mignon that you plan on ordering.
Ad platforms these days put context on steroids. We have more information at our disposal about someone than ever before.
We can target a specific employee at a global company in a certain town that has a hobby of white water kayaking.
But what do you do with that information? Often you will jump all over that by pushing an ad out to come to sign up for your service or book a consult or something of that nature.
While that's all fine to do, they may be looking at the photos of their niece's dance recital.
That's not the most opportune time to pitch your abilities to build them a new website.
To make this even more concrete, in the case yesterday where we spoke about the medical industry, you wouldn't walk up to 10 doctors sitting around a table ordering a steak and pitch them even though that's where they all are at the moment, right?
If the content is king, then context is queen.
As in the last episode, getting into the head of your client and then understanding the context and the intent of them in a specific setting can increase the likelihood of success of your strategy.
In the context of my former employer, they bought booths at events that specifically spoke to marketing, technology, and business growth in the industry.
At events that were smaller or not specific to the mindset where the doctors and organizations would be thinking about their website or marketing, my former employer would be there anyway, but in a different way. The sales team would be there to build relationships, set meetings up with clients and leads and of course network, but there wasn't a big push for sales.
Ariel, The Urbanist, on a podcast, shared some insights in his strategy on this. His objective was to land gigs with big travel brands and online publications. Instead of creating ads pitching what he did. Instead, he created content as he normally would, then targeted those key individuals of the companies he wanted to work with so that he was sure that his content would be seen by them.
Then when those individuals were looking for content that he does, he would be front of mind.
He admitted that he couldn't directly connect a job to a specific ad this way, but he did admit that he got work from some of the brands and companies he targeted.
In your case, if you are looking to inject some personality into your brand, how about creating a piece of content that's centered around you and your family, or your mission as a business to help a charity, or why you are in business for yourself, and then put that piece of content as an ad in front of your ideal clients while they are looking at those recital photos.
It may not get that click, but if you do it consistently, when that person who is extremely family oriented, is looking to redo their website, best be sure that they'll remember that they saw "something about some designer who was playing with their kids talking about websites" and go look for you. Not Wix or GoDaddy.
Next Episode
A259 - What 3 things do you grab in the zombie apocalypse?
Janelle Allen of zencourses.co is an Instructional Designer who specialized in custom online course that improve student results invited me to her podcast.
I thought that I'd share an answer to a question that she asked me on the show.
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👉 For full show notes to this episode & more resources for you.
-------------------
She asks all her guests this question.
"The zombie apocalypse has hit. You have 6 minutes to grab 3 essential items and your family is fine. What do you grab?As someone who's watched many zombie movies from a very young age all the way to today with The Walking Dead, this was a welcomed and fun question.
Since I've actually thought about this over the years I had my answer at the ready.
My winter coat, a broom, and my skis.
A broom because you can carve the handle into a point and use it to defend yourself with some level of distance.
That's the obvious item in this list.
Like Janelle, you may be scratching your head a bit at the winter coat and skis.
It's simple, first of all, there's never been a movie, tv show, or anything zombie related where it's taking place in the snow.
So I'm going north when the zombie apocalypse hits.
If you are thinking, "Jason, but you are basing your logic off of movies." Of course, I am, this whole scenario is predicated on a hypothetical movie scenario.
But I'm open to the conversation, so let's look at it this way.
Zombies aren't exactly fleet of foot. They often get caught up on branches, stuck in mud, and even caught up on fences.
It stands to reason that in waist deep snow, they wouldn't fare too well either.
Additionally, snowy regions tend to be less populated which reduces the number of potential zombies.
If I can find a mountainous area, then there could be a natural way in which to protect myself and family as well.
I pose this question to you. If your family is good, and you have 6 minutes to grab 3 items in the zombie apocalypse, what would you grab? Shoot me a tweet and let me know.
If you are wondering how all this relates to your business, it doesn't. I just though that I would have some fun today in answering an oddball question so that you can maybe get a glimpse into other parts of my head.
If you absolutely need it to relate to business, the one thing I can say is to put yourself in a position where the odds swing in your favor.
If you like this episode you’ll love
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