Lessons

Lesson Info

How To Create Real Time, Behind-the-Scenes Marketing

What we're gonna get into right about now is a little bit about Instagram Stories. But before I start talking, let's show you guys a quick video. So one thing I notice about these two Amazon businesses is that they don't talk about their amazingness enough online. I've always come to believe that if you don't talk about your business, nobody else will. So this their challenge here on day one. They actually have to post two to three Instagram Stories. Just letting people where they are. I'm not giving them any kind of coaching because then tomorrow, we'll be able to talk about an effective strategy to use for Instagram Stories. But here, we're just seeing exactly where they are. I've got my Kombucha in hand, I'm here in Seattle, working with Jasmine Star. We're doing some business mentoring, and today is the first day. It's been pretty fun and exciting so far. Can't wait to see how this affects are business and what's next. The rest of this week will be filled with lots more homework.

A lot less photoshoot. We'll be working on how just to revamp everything with captions to everything social media and it's been amazing working with the guru, Jasmine Star and I can't wait to share more. We are finishing up our first day in Seattle with Creative live and Jasmine Star and wow, what a day it has been. A little exhausting but a lot of fun. And... We have we have two, how many kids did we shoot in total? I don't. Like six, six kids. A dog. A dog so, we have lots of content created. And we have a few more days left to spend with this awesome team. Okay so that's our lead in to our Instagram Stories. And the reason why I had asked specifically asked the business owners to send us those clips is because I wanna show where we were and then I wanna show how to get where we wanna go. Because what we want only people to see is like look at how good we are in our social stories. We don't always start there but the only way you get better is when you know, oh this goes back to criticism versus critique. If I just told you, this is not very good. It could get better. That does you nothing. How do we get better is where we're gonna start right about now. So I think it's important to talk about behind the scenes marketing. I have come to know and believe and I will say again and again that the Instagram Stories, Facebook Stories and now, stories on LinkedIn are commercials for your business. And we should treat them as such. Now I know that there is this temptation. Like listen, if you're on a photoshoot, it just seems really natural, like it seems easier. It seems like life is passing you a softball to be like oh this is so interesting. I really just wanna do social stories when I'm doing something interesting. Hm, that's not as effective as consistency with stories when you have a strategy. So what happens on the days when you're not on a photoshoot. Well I can tell you that people will tell me all the reasons why they will not be doing stories. They're life isn't interesting. They don't know what to say. And really who cares what I'm doing, Jasmine? I'm just eating lunch with my dog. But I believe that the stories have the ability to humanize what we do as entrepreneurs. And I speak by and large to small and medium size business owners. I'm not speaking to corporations. I'm not speaking to people who have massive teams. I'm speaking to people who largely deal on a one-to-one basis with their consumer. If then that becomes the case, then all we have to do is humanize our business commercials. Now to bring everybody up to speed, real quick. I know y'all know that I know that everybody in this room knows what Instagram Stories is. There are a lot of people online that don't have the full gamut. I'm gonna spend 30 seconds. Briefest update. Instagram Stories, and Facebook Stories, and LinkedIn Stories disappear after 24 hours. You can save your stories within that 24 hours. The content on your stories doesn't appear on your grid. So you're not like feeling like you have to look at it for the rest in all perpetuity. Stories appear at the top of your feed. Right when you open Instagram, at the very top, you're gonna see circles. Those are your stories. And you will tap left to go back in a story. You'll tap on the right side of your screen to go forward in the story. You can swipe to skip an entire story. And you could upload videos from your camera roll into your stories. And stories are an extension of your brand awareness. Now what is a brand? We're gonna get to that in a second, but a brand is what somebody thinks or feels about your business. A brand is what people say behind your back. And stories offer real time business updates. That is all you need to know about Instagram Stories. So then the question then becomes, how can I use Instagram Stories for my business? So this has been really fascinating. So I started using SnapChat when SnapChat first came out, I loved it because it was so off the cuff and it was so raw. It was so gritty. And I didn't think anything was going to usurp SnapChat. It was fastest growing platform until Instagram said oh we're gonna put SnapChat on the inside of Instagram and call it Instagram Stories. Quickly you saw people flitter away from SnapChat. SnapChat is still a hugely viable platform for a younger demographic. If you're selling to a consumer much younger, SnapChat is where you should be. Okay, by and large, people are still using Instagram Stories and how do you actually use this in sales? I've seen a lot of really interesting ways. So, when people engage with your story, this is a higher indication that they actually are gonna be willing to buy from you so, on the inside of Social Curator, I've asked people how are you guys using Instagram Stories to sell. We've had people put a poll, like a yes or no poll on Instagram Stories and say, have you ever considered working with a life coach? And anybody who clicks yes, they go to their stats and they see everybody who says yes and then they send them a direct message and say, I'd love to chat more, I can offer a free 15 minute session. And they're closing deals. Anybody who engages and asks about so a couple days ago, I even hate admitting this. I don't even know why this is coming from. It's not even on my notes. I took a video of my husband and I making our dog his food. I know. That is so weird. I never thought I would make my dog food. I don't even prep meal for us, okay. But when it comes to my dog, he's so old and I just want him to live his best life. And he has a sensitive stomach. No judgment. So I take this, I take a Instagram Stories and I don't think anything about it. And I probably got somewhere around 50 DMs and can you show the recipe. I was like, oh. Yeah. People care about certain things that I do in my life that's not selling my business that builds trust. I responded to all of those people with a recipe for our dog food. Do I am I selling dog food? Am I a pet authority? Am I any of those things? No. Am I building trust? One person by one person by one person. Yes. And it's the trust that is digital currency on the web. When somebody's ready to buy, they may or may not remember that one time I responded about a dog food recipe. So when we get into this, when people interact with your stories, your gonna get indexed higher in the algorithm. So many of this, statistically, this is very normal. You will have the highest number of views on your first story and then it progressively drops. The strongest story tellers on Instagram Stories will have a level off and kinda stay here. If what you're seeing is you start up here and then let's just say for math's sake, a hundred views and then by the end of your six stories, you have 10, that's a not okay indication that the stories that you're doing aren't really resonating. What we wanna do is produce stories that keep people story after story after story. And we know, we're not gonna keep a hundred percent of the people that are watching. Studies have shown that people who stay after the third story, 60% of the people who stay after the third story will stay for all of the stories. And people who stay for all of your stories are going to be the hottest audience who will buy. So I pay special attention to watching where the drop off is so then I don't repeat that. So when somebody comes to my story, and they swipe away, they made an action on behalf of the algorithm that they didn't want to see what I posted anymore. That goes against my account. When somebody responds to via DM, if they send me a reaction, like either the 100, like the heart eyes, anything. That's an action on behalf. When I put out a poll, when I do a slider, and somebody takes an action on behalf, oh. When they vote, they're taking an action on behalf. And it's indicating to the algorithm, they wanna see more. Now if you've ever wondered why, when you open Instagram Stories there's an order in which those stories appear. You and I want to be up in the front because there's a higher likelihood of our stories being seen. But we don't control the order in which we are shown. The algorithm controls the order, and the algorithm determines the order based on your behaviors. So if you happen to watch my stories, and you swipe away, which you shouldn't. My stories will end up towards the end. And you're probably not gonna see them very much. If you watch my stories and you watch all of them and you DM me, or and you tag me in a photo on Instagram. And or you interact with one of my photos on Instagram, it's all an indication to the algorithm that hey, you might wanna see my stories earlier in your feed. So how do you use stories to build a business? You stay top of mind. Stories offer a humanizing, personal look on your very professional business. So our objective is to use our stories with a strategy. So when people interact with your stories, there's a higher likelihood of them seeing your posts. When people interact with your posts, there's a higher likelihood of them seeing your stories. When people do not swipe away, all good things. So now that we have the framework, what we wanna do is understand how to get our followers to engage with those stories. So, in order to get people to engage, we have to show them things that they wanna see according to why they are following our account. Earlier today, I asked you what are you selling? Who are you selling to? And what's the gap in the market. So if you're a fitness coach, posting behind the scenes of your at home workouts would probably be interesting to your followers. If you're a wedding photographer, showing behind the scenes on a wedding day how your styling a bouquet or how you're setting up the shoes. That would be interesting because brides would probably wanna see a behind the scenes of what you're gonna do on their day. Now if you're a pastry chef, what are you gonna wanna show? Stories of you in the bakery, you talking to customers. It's all in alignment to what it is that you want to sell. Now the key to stories, I have discovered would be to keep it educational, entertaining, humorous. The stories that traditionally, statistically don't work well are the stories where somebody's just holding up a phone and has six stories of and then, and um (laughs) okay hold on. And so, it's a six story of a talking head. Those statistically don't do well. Because it's just talking for a long time frame. And when you go to a cocktail party, who's the last person you wanna get stuck to, stuck next to at the bar. The person who doesn't stop talking. And yet we do that in stories being like, I'm so interesting like right? Like I can just talk for like nine hours and you'll find me interesting. No, we won't. Why is somebody following you and what is the purpose? No offense. I mean I'm just, here I am, I'm like well I came back after lunch and somebody just shot me up with some negative energy. No. Okay so, what performs best for me statistically, is when I give a short three to five story tutorial on something, on anything. People will stay. And then I've learned that when you use text, there's a higher likelihood of keeping people because they could just read and say, is this for me? When I add emojis, when I add drawings, remember all of a sudden we're our own marketers and now we're our own art directors. So if you are gonna do a talking head video, you gotta shift it. You gotta twist it. You gotta add GIFs, GIFs. Y'all I can't even think about it. I always get so caught up. I think it's GIFs. The designer who created it said it GIF. And then some cool hipster was like no it's Jif, like the peanut butter which makes no sense. (audience laughing) so I don't know, I'm just gonna say whatever comes out, okay. You have those little tiny dancing things. So, now I know that that works well for my audience because the vast majority of the audience is there for that now. It would not be so interesting if you saw me pour a cup of coffee. But it's not that interesting to see me pour a cup of coffee because that's not necessarily you're there in my account for. If I was a barista, if I was a coffee aficionado, if I was a coffee blogger, that story would be amazing. Why? Because that's what you're there and following me for. There's no such thing as a right story or wrong story. It's just using a story that ultimately points back to your business. So this brings us to understanding why are your followers following you? We're getting super heady about stories 'cause what people want are just like just Jasmine, tell me what to do? No, no, no. You already know what to do, and you're doing it and it's not working. Okay so, if we can get to that point, we now have to reverse engineer. What is not working about it? So why are people following you? If I was a jewelry designer, people might follow me for how to style jewelry from day to night. How to get layered necklaces. How to incorporate vintage necklaces with my new designs. How to clean jewelry. Right, your following for a specific reason. If I was a pet groomer, what would work really well? Our before and after photos of pets. That kills. Tutorials kill. I actually, this was not even in my notes but, Kaitlyn, we saw where Kaitlyn started and I would be so interested if you guys went to Indigo Tag Market, on Instagram and saw her highlights now. She didn't have highlights before. She has highlights now where she saved stories that performed well for her, and what were the best performing stories? It didn't have anything to do with Amazon. She was just teaching people how to share a post into your Instagram profile and she was creating it in regards from her Instagram account to her stories, teaching other people how they can do the same. If people are following her and their Amazon sellers, she gave them a tutorial. It worked really well for her. What are we doing as an extension of our brand that will educate, empower or entertain? Now I get a lot of pushback from entrepreneurs. I get a lot of people to pushback on people who watch online because they're like, Jasmine that's so systematic. You're taking the joy out of it. Okay. Okay. I am not on Instagram for joy. If I want joy, I would walk on the beach with my husband and my dog. If I want joy, I'd put on salsa music and dance with my parents in the living room. That's joy. Joy is not me showing how cool I am on the internet. So if that's not my joy, then I need to be strategic. So if you would like to be strategic, I invite you to start here, using three options for your Instagram Stories. I believe that if you're getting started, the best place to actually deploy a strategy, educational Instagram Stories, promotional Instagram Stories, and behind the scene stories. So, I'm gonna break this down into an easy to understand methodology. Again, I know the methodology annoys a lot of people 'cause they're like, you're putting me in a box. Again, you're doing it and it's not working. Can you just try for the next 30 days to adhere to the system. So now what I'm gonna do is I'm going to give you examples of all three types of these stories, and I'm not gonna be a photographer. And I'm not gonna be a business strategist. I'm gonna give you an example as a baker. And then we can hot seat some of these. Like say what would I do in this situation? So, Instagram Stories, I am a baker. This is my educational, Instagram Stories template. If I'm like, I don't know what to do. I'm gonna share something to be educational in my stories. I'm gonna follow this template. An intro to the explanation. What am I about to share? Tips one through three. Why it's important, and then a closing. This right here, is six stories. I, when you're first starting out and really trying to hone it, I really believe in the dashes and not the dots. If you have a lot of stories that you turn into dots and you see that you ain't keeping people to the end, turn those dots into dashes. Can I get an amen? So how many times do we like, we look at some of these dots and I was like dang. Like this is like a motion (audience laughing) feature film over here. I can't even do it. So so, but here's the thing. For people who kill that game, they get it, they do it well. Like no tea, no shade. I'm not one of those people. I'm learning how to get there, and if you're not one of those people, and you're numbers show, this is not a criticism. It's a critique. Yes so, let's give an example of how this is gonna work. I'm a baker. So every time I snack, (finger snap) news story. (finger snap) Hey guys, I'm at the bakery and I'm gonna teach you how to frost a cake in less than three minutes. (finger snap) What you wanna do is you wanna ensure that the cake is cold and it's resting on a sheet of foil. (finger snap) And I'm putting text over this, tip number two. Using room temperature frosting, put four tablespoons of frosting on each corner of the cake and move it towards the middle. (finger snap) Tip number three. Using the sheet of foil, using the sheet of foil, you're gonna be twisting the foil as you're making a circular formation. (finger snap) The quicker you frost the cake, you're gonna get a continuous application to get that nice beautiful appeal that we all know and love. (finger snap) I hope you enjoyed this tutorial. If you don't have time to frost your cake, come in to the bakery and I'll make it happen for you. Woo, that is elegant. That's a template, that's a template. And so here's the thing (audience laughing) I make templates because I'm not very good. But the templates allow me to find my voice. That was educational. And here's the thing that we have to know. That you are the best at what you do. And 98% of the people who are watching your stories will not be able to frost the cake. So what does it do? Positions you even greater to be a professional, and for the 2% that do try to frost their own cake, 1% of them are gonna try and be like, well this sucked. (audience laughing) I mean I should've bought the cake anyway. Educational. Now let's dig into, a promotional Instagram Story. Promotional Instagram Stories are stories that you want your viewers to take an action. An action could be anything. To book your services, buy your product, sign up for your newsletter, announcing a new product. That's all promotion. So, this is the template that I use for my stories. Now a template is just a suggestion. Step number one, announcement. And when it comes to something that's promotional, get straight to the point. When people feel like you're selling to them, they get really annoyed. So you have one slide to make that happen. Two, what's the benefit for them. Then you get into the what, when and where. It's a little flexibility. And lastly, a call to action. So now, we're gonna do another Instagram Story. Jasmine the baker doing stories to promote a particular thing. (finger snap) Join me at the county fair where I oh dang it I messed up. Okay here's my, I'm just gonna read my notes. Why am I trying to act cool? Okay so story one (finger snap) join me at the county fair where I will be having a pop up shop displaying my newest cakes. (finger snap) What's the benefit for them? You'll have a chance to taste my new seasonal cake flavors and you're gonna have samples to enjoy, and when you buy at the pop up shop, it'll be 10% off. (finger snap) You'll find my popup shop at the country fair in booth 123 and we're gonna be there from 9:00 a.m to 9:00 p.m. (finger snap) Call to action. I'll se you at my boot, come and say hi and get that 10% off. You gave people the benefit to why they should buy. Anytime you're selling something, you have to position it in a benefit to them, and not directly as a benefit to you. So now, we are gonna get into a behind the scenes Instagram Stories. These are the most fun for most business owners and this is what most business owners are using. So my invitation to you would be can we be a little more strategic about our Instagram Stories that are behind the scenes. Because yes, we care about your dog, and yes that we like that your kids watch cartoons. But we have to remember everything we put out is intended to ultimately attract who we want to get in. So, these stories showcase what makes your business special. Now there isn't a specific template like to behind the scenes. So what I did is I said okay, I'm gonna be a baker, what are some behind the scene ideas? And so I broke some behind the scenes ideas with examples. So, four ideas that you can apply to your business. I'm going to give examples as if I was a baker. So behind the scenes, a new aspect of your business. (finger snap) You guys I wanna show you the new cake toppers that we got. We have cake toppers for weddings and for bridal parties. I'm gonna show you guys a picture right about now. Take a picture, take a picture. You guys, we just got our pink cake stands in time for Easter. You could put cupcakes or cakes on them. I'm gonna show you a brief behind the scenes of what that looks like. I'm talking about my product, or a new aspect of my business. Favorite part of your business day. It could be just me taking a picture of Johnny eating a cupcake. Being my favorite part of my day is when the kids come in after school and they get to have their favorite treat. My favorite part of the day is walking into the bakery at 4:00 a.m. when nobody's here and I get to make my grandmother's German chocolate cake recipe. What I am doing is creating an emotional affinity, when you don't know me but you might like my grandma because I carry her recipe. You might like the fact that I care about when the kids come into the bakery. Third idea, customer insights. Stories are great for testimonials. If somebody sends you a DM, screenshot the DM and then post it in your stories, with their permission. If somebody comes in and writes you a thank you note. If somebody just says something randomly in response to online in an Instagram comment, and said I just loved how you did that you absolutely made my day. You can get that exact copy and put it in your stories and said, Chelsea said, I just made her day. Here's why. And then you go into a video of like your German chocolate cake. Personal aspects of your business. Behind the scenes, you planning out what your spring recipes are going to be. And then put a poll. Would you like to see red velvet cupcakes, or would you like to see orange crush cupcakes? Your audience wants to vote on those things. So all of these are things that point back to your business but it still offers personal insights into what you do. So if you have a question, raise your hand. You what? Never mind. That's okay, that's okay. Ask, ask, like please. Y'all are just, you guys are tripping. Because at lunch, everyone's bombarding me with questions. (audience laughing) And then we come here and everyone's like no we got it together. (audience laughing) Like dude, like somebody asked me like Jasmine how can we show up for you. I'm like, ask questions. Like show up for me by asking questions so Kayla, let's start this off. Okay so you said about the dashes and the dots. So it happens to be that Instagram Stories is like my, I'm very comfortable with it. I story everything. My family lives very, on the other side of the world so they all follow me and like that's how they know me. I do get a lot of engagement when I post like my kids and stuff like that but I I feel like that doesn't pertain to what I do and if I should be keeping it that I'm like that's just the whole dashes and dots things just confused me 'cause I have like a hundred dots on my stories, like I am that person. Well and here's the thing. If you're dream customer will watch all of them. They don't. Then they like skip through like so much. The first half so much, the second half... Then if you know that, and I think, I think you already know the answer. And the answer is you probably have to break out your account so that your personal account, like you keep a personal account for your friends and family on the other side of the world, to watch your kids grow up. And there's a good chance that Jody and I will be doing that too at some point in the future. But I have to understand that like we lose trust and credibility. Like I want people to come back to the stories and know that they're gonna get a little tidbit or a little something and that only So like sprinkle it? Absolutely and what I wanted to say was it is totally okay if your comfortable sharing things about your kids. But I would encourage you to talk about how the kids function in their workspace, in their play space, how you designed it. So you could be you're like okay, so I know everything is messy but I wanted to show you, here are the four bins that I got from here. And when you download the template, this goes into it in step two. Like you could still showcase your life but add it as value because nobody cares about your kids as much as you and your family. And we have to find that fine line. That's awesome. Okay cool, thank you. Thank you. Ah, Raylene, I just had a revelation on how to do stories, holy cow. Great! Well, Raylene, like hook a sister up. Tell me, like I mean like, (laughing) I wanna know what the revelation was, and speaking over lunch we had conversations and people were saying like how they had shifts in their business and it wasn't for the thing that they thought they came in for. And I thought that was very cool. That was very cool. We come in thinking it's about social media, and let me tell you. Let me get to the end of the chase. Let me give you the day three. This is not about social media. It's about this. All of this. I could sit here and tell you everything. It's not gonna matter 'cause if this isn't right, this isn't right and this isn't right. So when people are saying, I'm having shifts about stories. It's not about the story, it's about your belief in what you think you can do on stories. That is what it is about. Questions. Yes, we'll pass the mic back. And if there's another question, we'll get that mic to the next person. How do you feel about using apps to break up into the stories? Do you ever use that? Like, give me an example. If I had my phone, I could pull that up okay. And tell you what. There is one app where you can just film for a period of time. Yes. And it'll automatically break it up into Yeah CutStory. CutStory. Yes. Well, Instagram, here's the thing. Mark Zuckerberg, he's just smart and he's a little shasty 'cause he's like why is another app gonna do something when my app can do it. So that's why you can now record up to 60 seconds without using CutStory. So you can hold your thumb, and it won't stop at 15 seconds anymore. It will take you through 60 seconds. So you're saying, then on a story, what you're saying, click. When you're snapping, are you saying stop and then re-record. Stop and then re-record. You could but if you're so good at what you do, you can hold on for a minute and keep on talking. That's you. I'm not very good. And I also know that I have the attention span of a gnat. And so I like to, I like you watch what I do. Here's the thing. I literally tell people, this is exactly what I do so that you can see it. I will be talk, if I'm doing a talking head, next story I go to a different location, walking. I actually taught people how, like one of my friends were like, how do you talk and walk with your phone. I was like what do you mean? They're like (audience laughing) well, how do you do that. So I was like I create a cradle. My pinky, my thumb here, create the cradle and you walk and talk, and it's the tight rope. People are wanna like oh what's gonna happen? How, it's so weird the psychology of instead of just sitting down, and you're walking and talking like things happening in the background, people enjoy that. So am I a fan of using outside apps? Yes, I also have known that a lot of people have told me that they're at work when they watch your stories. And so if I'm doing a talking one, they ask me to add subtitles, and I was like subtitles? I mean y'all be fancy. But then there is an app called Clipomatic. And that just records, it's like diction and it shows up in your stories and then you could import them. If it's really important to show what you're talking about. There's also other pretty apps that will make your stories super pretty. I think those are fantastic if you have the time. I just don't have the time to overly curate my stories. But they love them and I think they're super effective and its their on brand. Heck yes, use them. Big fan of them. I just keep all my stories like in the app. Thank you. Question, mic. Okay four hours into it, well paid for the course already. But I'm gonna jump to day three, like you just did. Yes. Obviously, huge strategy shifts in my stories and my posting. Do I go and delete and remove things so that my new face is doing what we're learning here today or do we just show our progression and move forward from there. I love this question because this is the question I get asked the most is after somebody's enlightened, they're like oh I gotta go scrub the internet. (laughing) I'm like, if anybody's ever bored enough, you guys can scroll back to Instagram 2013, 2014, and you will see the hot mess that my account was. Like, by 2014, I was already an internationally recognized photographer. Literally at the top of my game, and you looked at my Instagram, and all you could say was bless your heart. Like I had no idea what I was doing. Nobody looked at my Instagram and said, she must be a professional photographer. She must be legit. It was like pictures of my dog and brunch and so basic it hurts my eyes. I leave it there as a marker to never forget where you've come from. You forget your history. You can't even create your future. So I leave everything as a testament to show what's possible. Because if I had gone back and deleted all that and I stood in front of you and I was like, yeah, just gotta get your stories right. People would look and think, well easy for her to say. There's beauty in the story. And there's beauty in the evolution and the revolution. I say start today. Start fresh, start new. That today, on this particular day, you could tell your future self and your future friends and say, go back and see where I was on that day, on that year, and that was the day I decided to change, 100.