If you want sustainability in this business, you need a brand. A brand isn’t just about colors, fonts, and fancy logos. It’s about building trust and rapport with your audience of ideal clients. It allows them to begin to LIKE us a person, to feel like they KNOW us in real life, and TRUST us as an expert in our field.
In our fast-paced, digital world, this means having a strong social media presence. Where you decide to pitch your tent and show up online may vary based on your target market and niche. If you’re not sure where that is, can I suggest Instagram?
Why Instagram?
When it comes to social media, there are few platforms that do it better than Instagram. The beauty of this platform is that it gives you the ability to connect with your ideal client in multiple ways. All the ways to use Instagram could be an entire course and a half – but today we are going to just hone in on how you can build a brand with Instagram stories.
Instagram stories is the BEST way to build that like, know and trust factor that I talked about earlier. It’s where prospective clients go from viewing you as a random person who owns a business to someone they feel safe and confident entrusting elements of their business to.
The sky is really the limit when it comes to how to use stories. They are extremely versatile and effective. In fact, most IG users visit stories (scrolling over horizontally) before they visit posts (scrolling down vertically). This means that if you are only posting on IG and not using stories, you are missing a MASSIVE opportunity to get visible to your audience.
Here are three of the best ways to use Instagram stories to build relationships (aka your brand) with your audience of ideal clients:
Personal Content
Look, while we don’t need to see a picture of every plate of food you consume, personal content is SUPER important to building a brand. We want to see YOU. Your life, your home, your office, your dog and your favorite morning drink. These little things are a critical piece of allowing people to feel like they LIKE, KNOW and ultimately TRUST you. And yes, it’s absolutely possible to still share select personal videos and photos from “behind the scenes” of your life and still maintain the level of privacy you feel comfortable with.
Tips and ideas for posting personal content:
- Post with a purpose. Is it entertaining? Is it funny? Does it build like, know and trust? Not everything has be earth-shatteringly amazing, but thinking before you post will prevent you from overdoing it on the personal posts.
- Make sure your “keeping it real” posts don’t actually take away from your hard-won trust factor. Avoid phrases like “barely hanging on” and “so overwhelmed”, because it sends the message that you aren’t able to take on more clients without having a breakdown. Nothing wrong with confessing to a bad day, but continually sharing negative content won’t do you any favors.
- Think about the quirky or unusual things that make you, you. Maybe you are obsessed with flamingos, or have a tendency to spill your coffee on yourself on the regular. Embrace those things and incorporate them into your IG stories!
Story Sticker Tools
This is where Instagram gets 5 gold stars. No other platform gives you so many tools to invite your audience to engage with you. Almost all of these tools are exclusively available by using stories. Here are my favorite sticker tools for engaging and building relationships on stories:
Polls
This is the sticker that allows you to poll your audience with two options. It allows you to see which way everyone voted so that you can do personal reach outs (when appropriate) to take the conversation deeper. These polls can be as simple as “Coffee or tea?”, or get deeper into how people feel about controversial industry standards, “Agree or disagree?”. My favorite way to use polls is at the end of a mini training (we’re getting ready to cover that below!) in a way that directly relates to my services. Another great way to use polls is to pose questions that connect with my clients pain points so I can spur deep connective conversations in the DMs.
Questions
These boxes allow you to ask a longer question and receive a longer answer. Avoid asking questions that can be answered by “yes” and “no” (that would be better as a poll!) and really focus on inviting your audience to dig into a topic with you. Question boxes can be a great follow-up to a poll sticker. “If you voted “no”, why do you feel that way?”
Quiz
The quiz stickers are a super fun way to inject some fun into your stories. These can be personal, “Guess how old I am”, or focus on some type of business trivia, “Do you know how many active users are on IG?”. Most people can’t resist taking a quick quiz! It also allows your audience to get to know you better – both personally and as a knowledgeable business owner.
Educational Content (content marketing)
Content marketing is all about providing free, valuable information to your target audience. It proves that you are the real deal, you know your stuff, and you can deliver on the services you offer. Typically, you’d see this type of content in posts, but educational content also belongs in your stories! Instead of just creating walls of text slides to share, try getting your feet wet on video. This is a great way to start getting comfortable in front of the camera because story videos can be very casual. No studio and perfect makeup required.
Tips and ideas for posting educational content:
- Pick a topic that your audience cares about and use 5-10 story slides to create a mini-training or informational segment. Keep it simple, this is not the place to go super in-depth.
- You can pre-record your video on your phone, so if you mess up, no worries – just try again.
- Use text on your video slides to grab the attention of those who don’t use audio while they watch stories. Just summarize your main point from each slide and type it into a text box.
- You don’t have to use video – you can also use infographics, photos, re-posts, or a mixture of both. As long as it demonstrates a point or creates a sequence with useful information.
Striking the right balance
How do we know if we’re overdoing it with the personal content? Or if we are overloading our audience with information? Here are some things to consider about how much of each type of content we share in our stories:
If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. If you’re getting a lot of engagement, and your audience seems to be enjoying what you are putting out, don’t overthink the ratio of personal vs. business stories.
You may not have a lot of engagement yet to be able to gauge what’s normal, and in that case, start out with a ratio of 80% business/industry specific stories and 20% personal stories.
Word to the wise: A lot of people get hung-up on stuff like ratios and what people think of their content…and in the process, don’t really post that much. They might spend 3 days creating amazing story graphics in Canva and not post at all those days. Don’t fall into the trap of PERFECTION or NOTHING. Don’t overthink it, just do it.
Why should I even bother?
This sounds like a lot of work, doesn’t it? So, where’s the benefit? That’s a great question, and one you should definitely be asking yourself anytime you decide to invest your valuable time into a marketing strategy.
Let me answer that question with an example:
Sarah and Jane are both Virtual Assistants serving the same niche and the same target market. They are both excellent choices: they have the skills, knowledge and dedication to be a valuable asset for any business.
Sarah doesn’t prioritize social media. She has found all her clients using job boards and FB job opp posts. She does have an IG account, but usually only posts every week or so, and never uses stories. Her face and personality is completely missing from her account.
Jane prioritizes social media and uses it to build relationships with her ideal clients. She’s not worried about searching for job opportunities, because when someone needs a service she offers, they already know where to find her. They already like her because she’s always on their feed and they know they’ll be a good personality fit. They trust her to do a great job because she’s demonstrated her knowledge and ability by giving valuable advice and tips on Instagram.
Sarah doesn’t have a sustainable business model. She will ALWAYS have to search and compete for jobs in the same way she always has. Jane’s strategy takes more time and energy initially, but ultimately results in a sustainable business model with more clients than she can manage (hello, time to scale!).
I’ve seen this exact scenario play out time and time again. The more visible you are, the more likely you are to have dream clients find you.
Can I offer a solution?
If the thought of figuring out how to do this is stressing you out, you probably wish someone would give you a step-by-step plan to create a personal brand and find clients. Can I suggest my How To Find Clients Marketing Program?
It only opens for enrollment 4 times a year and the cart is open RIGHT NOW. Want to find out more, or see if this could be a good fit for you?
Are you following me on Instagram? I’d love to connect with you there!
