Social Selling Series: Instagram

So I’ve heard this over and over the past year, “You can’t convert sales on Instagram, that’s just not how it works!’. Well I say that BS because over 15% of my users have come from instagram. I’m not paying for ads, I’m not paying for likes or followers. I am taking steps to drive engagement and giving away knowledge for free.

I started watching Gary Vee, Amy Landino, Sue B (the instagram expert) and a few key others that I was learning from for free. I soaked up everything they were teaching for free, put it into action and after many months I paid for courses with Amy and Sue. I didn’t know that Sue’s course would more than quadruple my followers in just 9 months or that Amy’s course would literally be the crash course of “video everything” that I needed to know to build out my own video courses. What I did know is these two women were doing what I wanted to be doing with my life and they had already taught me so much for free. How could I do this for myself? By following their example, duplicating what they were doing!

Here’s exactly what I did:

1.) Realize You Know Absolutely Nothing! If you want to do what someone else is doing incredibly well you have to realize they know a million times more than you do. I did everything they told me to do. Yes, everything, without any doubt or question. I told myself they were my coaches, they were the experts. I put away my CEO and top sales person ego and listened.

2.) Put Their Knowledge into Action! I rebranded my personal and business instagram accounts to better reflect my mission. Personally this was to support other women and show girls and young women that you really can have it all. Professionally this was to help sales professionals be more successful and have more balanced lives in general.

3,) Start Sharing Your Knowledge! Start making posts and stories with tips on your expertise. I follow Gary Vee’s thought on this, it’s better to share everything you know and add value to your product than to hold back “secrets”. I share everything down to my call frequency and talk tracks. I want sales people to be successful, I want them to be engaged with my content and to visit my website.

4.) Engage with Your Followers! Become Friends! I can’t tell you how many actual friends I’ve made on Instagram. Genuinely gaining the trust of your followers on social media is much easier than it may seem. I approach this by letting people see who I really am and being interested in their lives. Send DM’s, like posts, comment on posts, watch stories and be an active watcher. I talk to my followers about their days, kids, break ups, almost nothing is off limits. It can be a little scary to show “the world” who you really are but most people will respond in a very positive way.

5.) Make Free Offers Perfrm has a free platform, this makes giving away content for free easy. I also make offers for free annual Elite memberships. Free offers are easy to set up, I make a post and remind people on stories. Normally I team up with a friend’s company. Entering will include following accounts on social media and signing up for our free membership plans.

6.) Ask for Their Business. Once you’ve done all of these things you can ask for followers business. I’ll DM people who regularly DM me and ask them how they’re liking my content. I’ll ask them to sign up for the free membership. I’ll ask them to sign up their entire team for the paid platform. People also start converting themselves to customers when you do all of the things listed here.

We want to help all of you feel more comfortable with Social Selling, that is the whole point of this series. Please let us know if you have any tips to share in the comments below. Also let us know if you have any questions about something we haven’t covered here. We have a free membership with tons of great content and an elite membership that includes courses; check both out here!