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Thanks for downloading our E-book! My name is David Kranker, and I am the director of social media marketing for Tipping Point, a full service marketing/advertising agency based out of Rochester, Michigan. I help brands succeed in the digital world in the most cost effective way possible. Nothing makes me happier than seeing my clients succeed and nothing would make me happier than to have you succeed as well. The following pages are the culmination of my hard-work, research, and experience with Instagram as a social media marketer.

With or without Tipping Point, everyone can grow their brand and produce real sales through Instagram. We have done it over and over again for many of our clients and we want you to know exactly how you can do the same. This E-book will break down the entire process of growing your brand through Instagram and will allow you to harness Instagram as a super sales channel for little to no cost. We have had great success with our strategy and we are very passionate about spreading it for everyone to use.

This E-book will teach you how to:

 Craft creative and engaging content for your target market  Growth hack your brand drastically through the use of Instagram  Generate leads and produce sales with simple user engagement tricks

Table Of Contents

Chapter 1: Why Instagram?………………………………………………………3 Chapter 2: Content Creation..……………………………………………………4 Chapter 3: How Often Should You Post?...... 13 Chapter 4: Growth Hacking Your Following……………………………….14 Chapter 5: Capturing Leads and Making Sales…………………………..16

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Chapter 1: Why Instagram?

With over 300 million active users, any marketer would be completely foolish to pass over the photo focused social media platform. Instagram’s popularity can be attributed directly to its focus on the simplicity of images. Moreover, Instagram strapped on and rode the wave of the mobile platforms by only allowing users to upload images from their smartphone. This differentiates Instagram from nearly every other major social networking platform as it truly focuses on mobile. As a marketer, this should tell you one thing: there is a new, mobile friendly audience to reach with Instagram.

While Instagram may be a platform heavily focused on photos, it is not a platform solely dedicated to the photography community. This was made clear when it blocked #photography and other similar hashtags from its users. Instagram is a platform for the every-day smartphone photographer, but it has evolved into so much more.

Marketers are just now really seeing the potential of the platform as a strong means of connecting with a target audience.

Here are some eye-opening statistics (from January 2015) regarding Instagram and its user base:

1. Number of users: 300+ million

This is important because Instagram is no longer just a social network for sharing personal pictures of sunsets, selfies, and the meal you just ate. It is slowly becoming a highly effective marketing tool for any and every brand.

2. Percentage year over year growth: 66%

Instagram is clearly a huge resource for marketers with over 300 million active users and counting. If you aren’t already on board, it’s time to hop on and beat your competitors to the punch.

3. Daily users: 75 million

25% of all Instagram users log on every single day. They choose Instagram over other platforms, because they dislike overfilled platforms like Twitter and Facebook. This means many of the users who follow you will see every single post you publish which is key to establishing your brand as a staple in the every-day life of your target market. We will cover this topic in further detail in Chapter 3.

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4. Percentage of users between the ages of 16-24: 41%

You have to know your audience to be able to effectively communicate with them. Instagram is mainly populated by a younger demographic. If you are marketing a product or service with a younger target demographic than you will have a much easier time finding success on Instagram. For marketers who’s products or services don’t fall into this category, do not be discouraged. 41% of the Instagram community may be younger, but there is still 59% of the community (many of them over 25) that you can work to capture. Yet another important thing to keep in mind is that Instagram is constantly growing every day with a yearly growth rate of 66%. A majority of your target demographic may not yet be on Instagram, but they will be soon and when they create an account you’ll want to be an already well-established Instfamous account. Moreover, the generation that is young now will soon be within your target age range and if you grow your Instagram presence now, you’ll be heavily rewarded in the future. Again, do not let this number discourage you at all. We have several clients that market products/services to users 30 and up and yet we generate a significant portion of their sales through Instagram. We pull this off through a simple mix of engagement, consistency, and value-adding content.

Chapter 2: Content Creation

In this chapter we will explore the content that works best for Instagram. There are of course better “fits” for the Instagram platform. Simply put, the more visual your product, the better. For instance, if you are in the food service or travel industries, then Instagram is a natural fit, as you can simply post visuals of your #foodporn or #wanderlustpic from your blog as a new source of traffic. Additionally, let’s say you sell jewelry. Yet again Instagram is a great fit because you can showcase your #bling in visually creative ways.

However, even if your product is a direct fit for Instagram it doesn’t mean you can get away with posting pictures without putting in any creative effort at all. Most users do not want products shoved down their throats day in and day out. Even if they don’t immediately unfollow you, many of them will be subconsciously annoyed by the lack of variety, effort, and creativity within your posts. Unless you have serious brand recognition I would highly advise you to refrain from posting content solely devoted to what you’re selling. Instead, find a way to add value to your follower’s streams. Valuable posts could be entertaining, or educational. Post a brand relevant funny meme, or tie a current event into your brand message. There are so many different ways to entertain and educate users and put your personal brand stamp on it.

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For Example: Threadless is a clothing company based out of Chicago, IL. You would think with a product as visual as clothing you could get away with solely posting pictures of clothing. However, as Threadless came to find out this was very from the case. The account was growing, but at an extremely slow rate. Threadless switched up its Instagram strategy to include more valuable content and in doing so the company connected with their target market. Threadless now posts pictures of doodles, warehouse foolery, and behind the scenes stop-motion animations that pull in anywhere from 500 to 3,000 likes per day.

Rather than just posting appealing pictures of the product, Threadless posts pictures that appeal to the culture surrounding the product and guess what? Not only did they gain a loyal Instagram following, but their followers were also more inclined to visit and shop on their website. The new post strategy allowed users to relate and engage with the brand on a much deeper level. Do you now understand the difference between regular content and value adding content?

Up until this point, we’ve talked about companies and industries who fall within the “perfect fit” category for Instagram, but what about the companies selling products/services that aren’t a perfect fit? Well, these companies have to flex their creative muscles even more. I have said this several times already and I will say it again: find a way to add value to your followers’ streams. Adding value is the ultimate key to carving out your niche on Instagram, especially when your product or service is not a natural fit.

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One simple way to add value to your followers’ streams is to give something away for free: knowledge. Whatever niche you are in, position yourself as the most knowledgeable source for information in that niche. This strategy of content creation will not only provide value for people looking to learn about your niche, but it will also establish your company as an expert in the field. From our own experiences we know that this strategy will actually result in users seeking you out and coming to you.

Seeing as Instagram is a visual platform you might be wondering how exactly you could go about informing your followers. One way would be to include helpful tips in the images themselves. Two great examples of companies that do this are Socinova and IBoom Media.

As pictured from the Instagram screenshots above, IBoom posted an incredibly informational social media infographic and Socinova added social media marketing insight to their post.

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Yet another great option to pack information into your posts is through the post caption section. Are you familiar at all with Instablogging?

What Is Instablogging?

Instablogging is a relatively new, but growing content trend amongst many creative writers/photographers who are pushing the platform to become more than just a place for pretty pictures. Instagram allows up to 2,200 characters in a caption and a handful of Instagram users are taking full advantage of that. National Geographic is one such account. The nature-centric television network posts not only breathtaking images, but the stories behind them as well.

As a marketing agency with a lot of knowledge to share, we at Tipping Point also utilize Instablogging to inform our followers about the latest marketing/advertising tips, tricks, and news. Each of our images contain the post titles and the caption contains the actual blog post itself.

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Instablogging is an incredibly effective way to capture attention, gain followers, and generate leads, because it is a completely new, engaging form of content. One of the benefits of blogging on Instagram is that your post becomes a bit obtrusive. Your entire post appears on the newsfeed which means that users must scroll through lines of text to get to the next post in their feed. This in turn increases the chances that your followers are actually seeing and engaging with your posts. Additionally the community of instabloggers is currently small, but it is steadily growing. Your brand has the opportunity to be one of the pioneering instabloggers. Act fast and develop an Instagram blogging strategy to obtain new followers and grow your Instagram presence before the novelty of this new trend wears off.

Content Creation Tools

Now that you know what type of content to create, let’s talk further about the actual content itself. There are many tools at your disposal that you can use to streamline your content creation process.

Below is a list of apps and services that we use to create content and how we use them.

1. Camera+ (iPhone) & Vignette (Android): These apps are two of the most popular mobile image editing apps. They will allow you to bring out the best in your images with editing tools and a bunch of cool filters. 2. SquareReady (iPhone) & Squaready (Android): This is an absolute must have for Instagram. Until recently, Instagram only allowed you to post images that fit its square dimensions of 640px X 640px. SquareReady allows you to create the perfect borders for your images that aren’t already squares. Instagram now allows you to post your images without cropping it to fit the 640px square, but you may still want to add borders to your images for the sake of creativity. 3. Layout: Layout is an app that allows you to seamlessly piece together multiple photos into one Instagram post. 4. Over: Over is an incredibly useful app that allows you to add text over the top of an image. You can use Over to create eye-catching images with valuable knowledge, like we had previously talked about. Over has a collection of fun fonts and allows you to tint your image as much as you need to make the text stand out. 5. Pexels & Unsplash: If you’re not much of a photographer both Pexels and Unsplash are websites loaded with beautiful royalty free HD photos. Browse their selections and download the photos you like to use in your posts.

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Here’s a basic timeline of how to use these apps together to create an engaging piece of Instagram content.

Step 1: Visit Pexels or Unsplash and find a royalty free photo that appeals to you.

Step 2: Email, Dropbox, text…etc it to yourself and save it to your phone.

Step 3: Open the Over app and upload the image. Write some extremely valuable text about your niche over the image. Play around with the size and tint of the text and image to make sure your text can be easily read.

Step 4: Save the image and open it up in SquareReady. Hit the middle button in the bottom navigation bar to perfectly center the image with a border around it.

Step 5: Save your image, upload it to Instagram, and sit back as the likes begin to roll in.

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Hashtags, Geotags, & Timing

Crafting the perfect Instagram post goes beyond posting an awesome image with a killer caption. Hashtags, geotags, and timing are equally important, if not more so for post visibility.

Hashtags: Your natural intuition will be to add 2-5 hashtags to avoid coming off as desperate or spammy. However, studies show that posts with eleven or more hashtags receive the most interactions.

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The reason for this is due to the fact that your post will pop up in feeds for each hashtag you add. The more hashtags you add the more places your post shows up. Of course, you’ll want to make sure that your hashtags are relevant to your post. Conduct a Google search or study your competitors to figure out which hashtags are the most commonly used for your industry. I like to use Hashtagify.me to conduct hashtag research.

Simply search your desired hashtag in the search query bar and hashtagify will return results for the all-time top 10 related hashtags, as well as, the most recent posts that have used that hashtag. Remember, the best hashtags are the most focused ones. If you post a photo with #love chances are no one will ever see it because there are far too many images with the same tag. Look for specific hashtags within the range of 3,000 – 50,000 search results.

Geotags: Instagram allows you to add a geotag to any image, meaning you can tag a location to your image. Users can then hit the geotag in a post and view all of the images tagged in the same location. Geotags work best if you are located near a somewhat popular location. You can even create custom geotag locations that don’t necessarily have to be locations. For instance, you can geotag your website. Some users use geotags as an additional space to incorporate a smaller message like, “link in bio.”

Timing: Timing is everything, especially when it comes to executing social posts. Social media platforms have algorithms that decide what content ends up on a user’s News Feed. For obvious reasons, time is a factor that plays into the algorithm. The older the post, the less likely it is to be seen. This is why you’ll want to post during the peak visiting hours. In the case of Instagram, peak hours are during off-work hours anywhere from 5PM – 9PM. Keep in mind that the best times for your posts may vary based on your following. However, for the most part your ideal time will probably fall between that range.

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Chapter 3: How Often Should You Post?

There really isn’t a one size fits all answer to this question, but what you need to remember is that consistency is key. As I touched on briefly in Chapter 1, 37.5% of Instagram users login on a daily basis. Furthermore, unlike overfilled platforms such as Twitter or Facebook, the users who follow you will most likely see every single post you make.

Therefore, I recommend that you post content at least 3X per week, but I truly believe that one post per day is the most effective method. In consistently posting great content you will establish a connection with your audience. You will force your followers to view your name in your feed on a daily basis and you will subconsciously become a staple in their everyday life.

Think of some of the bigger accounts on Instagram that have exploded over the past couple of years. One that comes to mind is Humans of New York. You’re probably already familiar with this account, but for those who haven’t, Humans of New York interviews citizens of New York City and poses random questions to them. They then post a photo of the interviewee along with their responses in the caption.

The point of the account is to humanize the fast paced world of New York by showing that every individual has their own equally intriguing life story. The intrigue of the account lies in the fact that the followers get to learn about the life of a stranger in a way that they never would’ve been able to before. At first, this concept for me (and many others) felt strange and somewhat invasive, but the consistency of the account is responsible for its massive blowup.

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By posting a new story every single day, @HumansOfNY became a daily staple for its followers as they eagerly await to hear the next story from an interesting individual straight out of New York. The value of the concept has been evident since day one, but it is the consistency that made the account the recognizable name it is today. It’s the consistency that led many users to share the account with friends and submit stories/photos for use.

The good news is your account doesn’t have to blow up to have millions of followers like @HumansOfNY in order to successfully build your brand and land sales. The concept of adding value to your followers’ days consistently works for all accounts. Over time this will eventually lead them to become more responsive to the posts you do make about your product or service.

Think about it, by populating your user’s streams with valuable posts every single day, you are actually providing them with a better quality of life. Psychologically, someone will be much more inclined to trust you after you have provided them with a better quality of life day in and day out. This in turn will allow you to directly market your product or service to them at a much more effective rate.

Chapter 4: Growth Hacking Your Following

I encounter so many users with a great knack for posting creative content, but they suffer from a stagnant following, or worse, they don’t have an audience at all to view their posts. It’s possible that you post amazing content day after day, but never really see any growth. This is incredibly frustrating, especially considering the fact that there are over 300 million active users on Instagram. How do you attract more of these active users to your account? The best way to grow your following is through ongoing commitment to constant engagement.

It seems like common sense, but you’d be surprised at the number of users who fail to engage. Now, when I say “constant engagement”, I’m not talking about liking and commenting on every post in your news feed. I’m talking about finding NEW users with interests that align with your business. Seek out these users and follow, like, and comment on their content.

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Here are simple ways to grow your Instagram following with users who matter to your brand:

1. Target the right hashtags: Remember when we talked about searching for relevant hashtags and adding them to your posts in Chapter 3? Occasionally click on that hashtag and interact with the images in that stream that catch your eye. Furthermore, check out the users’ profiles and follow them if you like what you see. Many of these users will be so thrilled with your interaction that they will check out your profile. If they like what they see (which they will because you read Chapters 1- 3) they will likely return the favor and give you a follow back. 2. Follow the followers of your competitors: Find your competitors’ profiles and start following some of their followers. It’s best to find competitors who don’t have a huge following. For instance, if you own a local sub shop, don’t start following all of Subway’s followers. A large number of those followers won’t even be within your store’s customer radius in the first place. Instead, hunt down another small, somewhat more established sub shop in your area and start following their followers. The logic behind this is simple: if a user is inclined to follow a relatively small account of a certain brand, they must feel that it adds value to their feed. By following a user who follows more of a niche account in your specialty area, he or she will be way more inclined to not only follow you back, but also be interested in your products or services.

One of the most common questions I receive is, “If I follow a ton of accounts won’t this make my follower to following ratio look really bad?” This is by far the biggest falsely pre-conceived notion about Instagram. When you are an up and coming brand, not only is it pointless to care about your ratio, but it’s actually damaging to your growth. Don’t worry about your ratio when you’re trying to grow your brand. People really don’t care about ratios as much as you may think. What matters most is that your content is great. 3. Unfollowing users who don’t follow you back: Instagram only allows you to follow a few hundred users per day, and 7,500 users total. This is where unfollowing comes in handy. You can follow a large number of users and then unfollow the ones that don’t follow you back; rinse and repeat. There are plenty of free apps such as Followers+ that allow you to view all of the followers who don’t follow you back. 4. Account Safety: All of these tips are worthwhile as long as you are using them slowly throughout the day. It looks incredibly spammy when you follow 300 users and comment on 450 photos within a small span of time. Space your account activity out.

Shameless plug: After reading about what it take to create awesome content and growth hack your following you may be wondering how you could possibly find the time of day to do everything and do it right. It’s not easy and achieving Instagram success can be very time consuming. That’s where Tipping Point comes in. Tipping Point’s team of dedicated social media professionals (myself included) will work with your brand to craft a winning content strategy that drives interaction, grows your audience, and earns you leads.

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We can run your accounts for you, or if you’d prefer to run your own we do offer consulting and auditing services. Get in touch with us to learn more about what we can do for you and social media accounts.

Chapter 5: Capturing Leads and Making Sales

I’ve saved the most important chapter for last. At the end of the day, having a hug following means nothing if you aren’t capturing leads and making sales. Before I teach you how to earn a return on investment with Instagram, lets quickly recap everything we’ve talked about thus far:

1. Create valuable content for your specialty niche. 2. Post content consistently. 3. Grow you following. 4. Capture leads and make sales.

The formula for achieving Instagram success is almost so simple it’s funny. It’s also extremely effective. The trick is to personally reach out to new followers and ask to email them. Simple as that. Let’s walk through an example of how this all plays out. Suppose you own a marketing agency and you just earned a new follower. You look into that follower and they appear to be a possible lead. You then leave a comment or send a direct message along the lines of, “Nice profile! I’d love to help you organically grow your brand. Can I shoot you an email?” Most of the time, users will then respond with an email address which you can then use to send your enticing sales pitch.

How To Craft The Perfect Email

A. Keep it short and sweet. Do not write a huge paragraph about your entire business and how it all works. Stick to about 1-4 lines of text. It’s actually better that you leave some information out because it will force them to ask follow-up questions which will start a dialogue. B. Remember to always offer them something intriguing, rather than just telling them about your product or service. Offering a free trial or a promo code is a great way to entice your leads. C. Include links to your website, social media accounts, and any good press you may have. Give yourself as much authority as possible. D. Follow up with them a few days after you send your email. Even if they don’t respond, ask if you can give them a call to chat for a few minutes. E. Close the sale.

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This technique is not something you’ll master overnight. Rather it will probably take you a few tries to get all of your messaging right. This sales technique is a highly effective way to generate tons of leads and capture real sales for your business through a platform that is severely under-utilized. Take advantage of this valuable information and start growing your brand through Instagram before your competitors do.

Thank you so much for taking the time to read this ebook. If you have any questions regarding the contents of this book, Instagram, or social media marketing in general, feel free to contact me anytime at [email protected] and will get back to you as soon as possible.

Also, as a thank you for reading this book I would like to extend you a special offer. Email me ([email protected]) with the subject line, “Free Instagram Help” to receive one free month of social media management or consulting/auditing from Tipping Point.

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