Your Iconic Image : Marketing Yourself on Instagram
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Theresa Depasquale
Capture Social Group
CEO and founder of Capture Social Group, Theresa Depasquale helps busy entrepreneurs grow their brands on social media.\\xa0
With over 10 years of experience, she\\u2019s mastered the art of online branding and social media strategy and has become the go-to for many high-level clients and companies providing one-on-one consulting and management programs to help them successfully grow their reach, credibility and sales on social media.
http://capturesocialgroup.com/
\\xa0Instagram Strategy Course -- https://socialbutterflycourse.com/course47729334
www.marlanasemenza.com
Audio : Ariza Music Productions
Transcription : Vision In Word
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Marlana\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0
CEO and founder of Capture Social Group, Theresa Depasquale has mastered the art of online branding and social media strategy and has become the go to for many high-level clients to help them successfully grow their reach credibility and sales on social media. Welcome, Theresa.\\xa0
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Theresa\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0
Thanks. Thanks for having me.\\xa0
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Marlana\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0
So first, tell everybody a little bit about your background and how you got to this point.\\xa0
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Theresa\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0
Yeah, that\'s a great question. So, I started my entrepreneurial journey, owning gyms, I had a couple of health clubs here in the Tampa Bay area. And at that time, I was also a very new mom with two little nuggets and kind of a new wife and a lot going on. And I just decided that that whole brick and mortar membership-based business is not my favorite thing, and not gonna work for me. I ended up getting really sick just from stress. Because as you know, when you\'re a new mom, you don\'t sleep a lot. I have a lot on my plate, I ended up closing one gym and selling another recipe for nothing, we ended up actually bankrupting. And in that time, I kind of took off when I was not feeling well. And I was like, You know what, I\'m just gonna take a year off and kind of forget what I want to do. And Instagram had just come out. And I was like, just kind of fiddling around on there. And like, I remember not even knowing how to put a post-up, I was kind of like, how do you even use this app? It\'s so weird. I have no idea what I\'m doing. But long story short, at that time, I had owned the gyms, but I had never done anything with like competitive fitness. And I had this year that I was like, not really working. So, I was kind of like, you know what, I\'m gonna do a fitness show because it scares the *** out of me. And if I\'m scared of something that means I have to do it. So, it was like, You know what, let me just lean in, I\'m gonna commit to one. And so, at that time, I started using Instagram and I was like posting my journey of doing this kind of fitness show. And I was just started growing followers and back then it was like, so easy to grow so different than it is now you know? And so, I was kind of like when the OG fitness people on Instagram. It was like me and Natalie. Becca surname, Natalie Skye. And or no knowledge will fit and Emily sky. There was a couple of us that really started back then. And so, I kind of just started really kind of like, oh, well, maybe there\'s something here with this whole Instagram thing. And I wrote an e book. It was called The Kinney Mom\\u2019s Secrets. And I remember I sold $5,000 In one day to my Instagram audience. And I was like, Whoa, I was like, Okay, there\'s a business here, like this is something is happening.\\xa0\\xa0
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I got very serious about it actually started building other marketing pages on Instagram. I like what 100% And I was doing, like, I had these huge brand pages that I would sell ads on or leverage them to build my page. I did all this stuff on Instagram. And so, I did that for a while until I actually started a whole online fitness business based off of my Instagram. So, I ended up building it was a pretty large it was a high six figure online fitness business. I wrote a book, I wrote a really good best-selling book, I developed an app, I did all the personal brand things. And so, it\\u2019s kind of was at a point in the towards the end of my fitness career, I ended up joining a mastermind to learn online marketing. And in that mastermind, I started doing a lot of consulting for building your brand on social media. And so, my mentor who\'s one of my very good friends now JJ virgin, she just kind of, she was the one that put on the mastermind. She\'s like, you know, you\'re so good at this, like, why don\'t you just do this? And I was kind of like, okay, because I was honest with you. I mean, after 15 years in the fitness industry, I was kind of done anyways, I was really tired of doing the whole bikini pictures and all that kind of stuff. I was like, you know, I\'m in my mid-30s. I think I\'m done with all this. So, I was ready to transition. So yeah, I sold my fitness business. And I started this business a little over three years ago. I\'ve never looked back since and I\'m obsessed. I love it.\\xa0
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Marlana\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0
So, talk to us, then how do we use Instagram to do what you did?\\xa0
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Theresa\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0
There\'s a lot to it. So, what I do, and it\'s like kind of the same people that you work with, which is why we\'re chatting is I really work my wheelhouse is working with personal brands to help them understand how to build their brand on social media and be able to leverage it for their business. There\'s different models of monetization, obviously, you can be an influencer, I don\'t teach people how to do that. That\'s actually different model. I work with people who are like entrepreneur experts at something like entrepreneurs, or expert doctors, or motivational speakers, or health coach, or whatever something of that nature, that they want to build a brand and be able to leverage it for social, for their business. So that\'s what I teach and everything that I teach is based around engagement.\\xa0
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Marlana\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0
So actually, what you do because I know a friend of mine had once said to you want to be an influencer or a person of influence. So, you work with people of influence, as opposed to the influencer?\\xa0
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Theresa\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0
I\'m going to write that down as still as a quote. Okay, I\'m gonna steal that. So basically, really like to get you to your point. If you\'re gonna be person of influence, then you have to have an engaged audience. And so, when I started figuring out and you know, I built this huge personal brand Instagram and I don\'t know if you remember years ago, I don\'t know how many years ago maybe four or five the whole algorithm came out, don\'t get because it changed the whole platform. And so, it was kind of at that point, I had to really dig in and be like, Okay, How does this whole like I\'m, I\'m really kind of a unicorn because I\'m very creative, but I\'m also obsessed and like analytical and like data driven. So, I\'m like this weird unicorn, which is why I\'m good at social media. But yeah, I had to really figure it out. And what I figured out is, it\'s like you everyone overlooks the basic stuff, which is like you\'ve got to build, you have to have an engaged audience. So, what we teach is all of the strategies for that. And it\'s really about like, you know, one foot in front of the other, there\'s no hacks, you don\'t buy fake followers, you don\'t buy fake stuff, no vanity metrics. Because if you\'re trying to leverage it for your business, that\'s not going to do any good. They\'re not going to buy anything, right. It\'s always say, having a big social media following that is engaged, just like having a big email list that doesn\'t open your emails, right? There\'s no, there\'s no point, right? What\'s the point? So, everything we do is really based around. I mean, you can make a lot of, you know, you can drive traffic and build a really significant business, even with a couple 1000 followers, you don\'t need hundreds of 1000s of followers on Instagram. So that\'s kind of like the skills, the tactics, and strategies that we teach. It works at 500 followers, and it works at 500,000 followers, it\'s the same strategy.\\xa0
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Marlana\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0
So, what are some of the key points that we would have to keep in mind without giving away all this secret sauce?\\xa0\\xa0
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Theresa\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0
I\\u2019m happy to talk about it. There\'s so many so much. Okay, we\'re gonna start, I would say, you know, the biggest thing is, people want to follow people on social media, I think that a lot of experts and entrepreneurs I work with, that want to leverage their social media for their business, whether it\'s Instagram or any other one, they start off, and they start branding themselves as their business. And that\'s a really a, it\'s not advantageous for multiple reasons. One is, people are on social media be social, right? So, they really don\'t want to follow businesses, they want to follow people. So, you\'re gonna get exponentially more growth and engagement with a personal brand page versus a business page. So, and that\'s an open-ended question, because everyone\'s like, so should I have a business page? Yeah, you can have one. But I wouldn\'t focus all of your efforts on that, I would focus on your personal brand page, because that\'s gonna build so much more brand equity, you\'re gonna get so much more reach and growth, that it\'s gonna be able to funnel all that over to your business way more than if you just tried to build a brand page. So, you\'re gonna\\u2026\\xa0
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Marlana\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0
let me just ask you this real quick. So, let\'s say we are a public figure or an entrepreneur solopreneur, any of that kind of thing. And we have our page, even though we are conducting it as a personal brand, should it be a quote unquote, business page? Or should it Shun?\\xa0
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Theresa\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0
Yes, exactly. So, most people get confused on that. So, you, when I say personal page, it means like the content you\'re putting up, but the settings, we typically recommend creator or business account, Instagram, because you\'re gonna get the analytics and you\'ve got to have, if you get anything, you can\'t manage what you don\'t have any numbers for, right? So, you\'ve got to have data. You\'ve got to have analytics, you have to have a greater business account. So that\'s a great question. But what I\'m talking about is like the front facing content, like if you visit a paintable conference page, yeah, so good question. But yeah, I would say that\'s number one.\\xa0\\xa0
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The second part of that is also you know, we\'re entrepreneurs, and we\'re not gonna be doing the same things forever. Look at me. And so, learn by my example. I branded myself as my business, my Instagram was called Bikini Boss Teresa for seven years, because that was my business name, my brand name, my everything. I kind of equate it to like, it\'s like typecasting yourself as like Seinfeld, like Jerry\'s, he\'s just gonna be Seinfeld forever, because that\'s what you don\'t have as, right. And so, people are so like Bikini Boss, and like, oh, gosh, okay, like, yeah, don\'t make the mistake that I made. So, because you might want to change them, or you might pigeonhole yourself, right? So, you don\'t want all this time and money building this following for just this one thing. I always say, like, build your personal brand. And your business is just one thing that you do. So that down the road, if you change, you still are your personal brand, and you\'re just changing the thing that you do, right?\\xa0\\xa0
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I teach strategies in my course, I have an Instagram strategy course. And part of it is, this is another thing, I\'ll give you, it\'s a three to one posting strategy. So, a good rule of thumb, and this is just generalization. Okay? This is you don\'t have to stick with it for everything. But let\'s say you want to do out of every six posts, three of them can be more business related, at least two of them should be more personal. And then one can be some kind of a sales call-to-action promotion, something. Because you also don\'t want to spam your audience to death. Right? I know you want to leverage it for business, but people don\'t want to feel like they\'re gonna use car salesmen. Right? Oh, but so the three to one is like one of my posting strategies when you\'re planning your content. So again, three, business post two should be more personal and one CTA for every six posts, so it\'s a good strategy for you.\\xa0
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Marlana\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0
What about hashtags and things like that? How do we find the hashtags that will work for us? Because there are zillion out there?\\xa0
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Theresa\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0
That\'s a really open-ended question. So, I\'ll try to give some tips. Okay. I think people don\'t understand what hashtags foreign hashtags are very simple. If you think about what they\'re for. It makes it really easy for you to understand how to use them. Hashtags are basically your way of communicating to the algorithm what you\'re posting About so that they until the algorithm understands where it needs to categorize it. Okay, who it needs to show it to you, right? What users because users have different interests? So, your hashtags are what is going to communicate that. So, if you put a bajillion different hashtags that don\'t make any sense, in one post, guess what\'s going to happen, it\'s not going to understand what your post is about, and you\'re probably not gonna hit anything. So, one of the biggest things with hashtags is specificity. Getting very specific, if you\'re putting up a post about branding, then you need to have 15, hashtags about branding, right? Not branding, entrepreneurship, #hustle, #bosslife, because even though that could go with branding, you\'re just confusing the algorithm. So you\'ve got to get super specific with what you\'re doing, that\'s the biggest hash tag to buy, I can tell you, make sure you\'re using different sizes, I think a lot of people go and they put the biggest hash tag they can find that also is not great, because what\'s happening is like, basically, you\'re now competing with, like, say that there\'s a hashtag for 1.5 million hashtags, you\'re now competing with 1.5 million other posts to be seen at the top of that hashtag thread. So, I\'m not saying to never use the big ones, I\'m saying that you also want to use the smaller ones, because you\'re gonna have a much more likelihood of actually ranking at the top of that, that thread, and hashtags on Instagram, specifically, our SEO for Instagram, because people that\'s one of the biggest ways they\'re searching for content and accounts is through hashtags. So, they\'re going to those pages and looking at the posts on those pages. So, if you can rank at the top of that page, it\'s one of the best ways to attract your ideal followers.\\xa0
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Marlana\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0
How about the number of hashtags, and you can put up to 30?\\xa0
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Theresa\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0
But we always recommend like 15 to 20 optimize Hotshots. Optimize means like you\'re researching the specificity, the different sizes. You don\'t want to use anything that\'s banned or censored. There\'s a lot of hashtags that they basically, if you could, if you go to the hashtag, and you see like a thing that says like, content has been hidden on this hashtag due to community violations, don\'t use that hashtag, because that\'s a sense hashtag, because people have been obviously abusing, and you\'d be shocked, there\'s like, way more than you probably think. And if you use that, you will hit any hashtags. Okay, so taking the time to research and looking at the you know, I\'m saying what each hash tag is, before you just put them on there is a really big deal.\\xa0
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Marlana\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0
And what\'s the best way to research them?\\xa0\\xa0
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Theresa\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0
Just do it on our and manually? Okay. Yeah, I\'m not a fan of any of the software\'s that do like the hashtag generation, because like I said, they\'re just not specific enough. Like they\'re just there. It\'s kind of like a random dump of like, a million hashtags. I mean, I guess if it\'s better than nothing, you\'re gonna do nothing, that it\'s better, but it\'s not the most effective. There\'s a lot of people that like, they\'ll say, hashtags don\'t work. It\'s because they don\'t understand how to use them. Right? They absolutely one of our biggest ways that we grow pages,\\xa0
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Marlana\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0
is there a way to find the other hashtags that are relevant to? Let\'s say, it\'s personal branding?\\xa0\\xa0
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Theresa\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0
Yes. Well, other hashtags come up that are totally nuts. Yep. when you go in, and Instagram made it really easy, like, say, you type in personal branding, and that\'s whatever 500,000 I\'m making it up. If you see underneath, it\'s going to show you all relevant hashtags that are smaller and different sizes underneath and you can just go grab, you know, I\'m saying that you can grab the ideas and then put them in your, so it makes it very easy.\\xa0
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Marlana\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0
And what are geotags? Explain what those aren\'t people, your tags,\\xa0
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Theresa\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0
your location tags. So, I mean, they\'re very beneficial. We use them to get engagement in the post, because people don\'t realize there\'s actually nine different types of engagement on Instagram, I talk a lot about Instagram, because when you\'re talking about, you know, people like us, that are experts and entrepreneurs, I personally believe Instagram is the best platform for us. I love it, it\'s got so many different features, you can grow organically, still, you can attract your ideal person, they have so many analytics and data. So, for me, it\'s my favorite. We do other platforms, and a lot of these rules apply. But I really talk a lot about Instagram. You\'re gonna hear me really focusing on Instagram. Yeah. So, for Instagram, there\'s nine types of engagement. There is the ones most people think about, which is likes, comments, shares, and saves. Right? That\'s active engagement, because people are doing something. There\'s passive engagement, which is impressions and reach, which means reach is how many people are seeing your content impressions is how many people are seeing your content, but even kind of repeatedly, right? So, it could be the same people seeing it multiple times. And then there\'s time on page if somebody visits your page, and they\'re just kind of looking around, but they\'re not doing anything. So that counts as engagement. And then there\'s interested engagement, which we like as entrepreneurs, which is DMs, website clicks. So, there\'s nine types of engagement.\\xa0\\xa0
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If we want to boost engagement, one of the ways and this is a tactic that we teach, if you use...
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