Transcript:
[00:00:08] Welcome everyone. I’m here with Candace. Candace welcome. Thank you. I’m excited to be here. Indeed. And we’re catching you right before your session which is terribly exciting.
[00:00:17] About 20 or 30 minutes away you’re going to be talking on Instagram Hinson hacks to connect with influencers. Tell us a little bit about what you’re going to be talking about as you prep in your mind what you’re going to be speaking on.
[00:00:29] Awesome. So on Instagram it’s really important to engage with your audience and be extremely authentic. And a lot of brands think that maybe they don’t need to be as personable with their audience. So really what I’m teaching about is how to better engage with your audience to have a better reach as well as making sure that you’re putting the right types of content in front of your audience.
[00:00:55] So tell us how you think Instagram is going to evolve. Of course you see our conference is all about evolving this year and we’re honored to have you. Thank you very much for making it to CMC this year. But what’s going to change how do we evolve with Instagram particularly.
[00:01:07] I think Instagram as a platform is going to evolve with culture. So as we have seen Instagram adapt like live video when we say stop Periscope come out and then it adapted to even including video back. You know when they released videos after like Vine was really popular. So I think Instagram is going to continue to evolve with culture particularly because so many millennials and GENZER years use Instagram and I think it is they’re going to involve a lot more of the influencers in the process of developing their technology and I think that’s why they’re kind of at the forefront of what they’re doing.
[00:01:48] Terrific. Now you’re an influencer yourself of course. Tell us a little bit about some maybe some tips and advice for people trying to get started. What are the some of the secrets for success that you’ve had for being the celebrity that you now are. I am so not a celebrity but one of the things that.
[00:02:03] I think for me was realizing that just kind of being yourself online is like what people want to see. And I think in this day and age where we see so much perfection that you know people want to see authentic stories and they want to hear the behind the scenes. So even if you do have a brand that for example I hope women turn their ideas into businesses. It’s very brand focused. But I share a lot of behind the scenes about you know my nieces and nephews or just like more content around who I am as a person. So doing that consistently online will help you build regardless of the amount of following that you have. It’s really about monetizing and building trust and you know you don’t need a ridiculous amount of followers in order to monetize your brand.
[00:02:52] You just build trust and then people the people that are following you will actually be willing to spend their money with you to help me understand a day in the life of Candace in terms of Instagram how much time and energy and effort are you putting into it. How are you keeping track of your fans and your followers and sharing the love with them and the excitement for what you’re doing.
[00:03:14] Absolutely. So a day in the life of Instagram I’d typically set aside like one day a week where I’ll plan out my content on Planet Lee which is an app that basically hopes you schedule your content and it’ll save like hashtags. And I plan that out like one day a week but a part of that too is whenever I’m out and about and I actually look nice and I’m not just T-shirts and jeans I’m basically taking as many pictures as possible from all the different angles so that I have content to use throughout the week. And then I would say from an engagement perspective on a day to day I’m making sure that if anything if I’m doing anything in my Instagram Stories I’m making sure I’m capturing it and kind of sharing the behind the scenes. So as I go throughout my day I’ll tell my audience like this is what I’ve got planned for the day or the week. And I’ll kind of keep them a part of my life so that they can expect to like follow the journey.
[00:04:18] I say for the amateur photographers of the world which maybe you were one day in your life with tips and advice would you have specifically for Instagram and capturing that moment and sharing it with people and where did you learn these secrets in these steps.
[00:04:34] That’s interesting. I think. honestly when it comes to photography I’m not like a an amazing photographer. I take literally all of my photos on my iPhone but I made sure that I got like iPhone 7 plus which is like the. I think that’s the first version that they allowed you to have. Portrait mode. So just making sure that you have a quality camera and honestly lighting is everything. And so I have learned just from I guess. A ton of pictures and figuring out what works and what does it. Just making sure that you’re positioning yourself in front of lights and oftentimes like natural lighting is the best lighting. So you just kind of have to try it out. But some of the tips are literally just people like to see like faces. They like to see you know let’s say if I go to Starbucks and you know if I just took a picture of my Starbucks cup and said Oh I love Starbucks it may get some likes but if I put that Starbucks next to my face and take a selfie then it’s gonna get a lot more engagement because people see a human face.
[00:05:36] So right. I know you need to leave pretty soon. Yeah I could ask you questions all day to see you now. How about your your biggest Instagram failure. Like where did you do something that you wish you could reverse time and take back or not do something you wish you had.
[00:05:51] Right. I’m trying to think of anything I would say.
[00:05:55] That’s why you’re here. Now make no mistakes.
[00:05:58] I think honestly when I first started. And this is just a branding thing overall when you’re starting a personal brand and you’re building something. And I would literally post content about the things that I loved. For example like women’s empowerment or you know events that I was hosting and it wouldn’t get much engagement. And I realized it was because I had not built a following that wanted to see the content that I was putting out. So basically I would get offended like OK I just told you about this amazing thing that I just launched. But it’s like my family and friends that I’m like marketing to. So it’s like no you have to build the audience of people that actually want to follow you. And that way you’ll actually get them to engage and you won’t be offended if they don’t respond right. Yeah.
[00:06:46] Did you when you were first starting Were you ever frustrated or concerned that you were publishing great content in your mind but no one was following and how did you adjust your strategy of learning what your fans wanted and how did that morph and change what you actually end up publishing.
[00:07:00] Awesome. So one of the things that I did early on was I’m just like a bear at all. I’m very open and very transparent and I think doing that consistently helped my audience to kind of like come along the journey. And I think what was this I feel like.
[00:07:19] How did you take my your Morpheus strategy once you learned what feedback you were you were getting.
[00:07:24] Yeah. So I end up doing more of what I know works. And so it’s kind of just like with email you do A B testing right. So I put this out they like it or I put this out and they don’t like it. So I post more of what people like and post less of what people don’t. And then another really great thing is that Instagram Stories there’s the feature where they have a sticker where you can ask a poll and you can say this or that or get people’s feedback in your stories. So a lot of times I’ll do that and sometimes I’ll also have Instagram has the feature where you can in the stories hat ask a question. But I use that as a way to get their feedback like I’ll say what do you want to see more of or you know when I quit my job in corporate I was like What questions do you have about quitting your job. And then people would ask and then I knew I could create more content around what they actually wanted to see.
[00:08:18] Let me ask you one more question. I need you to run. The polls are fascinating when you’re crafting a poll. Are you thinking about what your users would want to see the proportional final answers to or are you thinking yourself like I really want to learn what these answers are so I can reshape and re fabric my content. Yes.
[00:08:36] So it’s twofold. So I sometimes create polls that will get their feedback on you know types of content that I should be posting. So it’s more so figuring out how can I better serve them. But then I also put some polls out that are like I make the responses like the generic response is yes and no. But sometimes I’ll make it where one answer is like heck yeah. And then the other one is like please. Yes give me more information now. So both of the answers are yes but. I’m changing it into a call to action where I can send them a link to sign up for something or for example for my newsletter or something like that.
[00:09:18] We’re honored to have you here. Thank you. I think you keep your your fans weeping in your session. But thank you so much for joining us. Awesome I appreciate it. Right on. Look forward to next year perhaps as well. Yes. Thank you. Great thanks.
