You can make a living with 100 followers

Sep 26

What would you rather, 10K followers on Instagram or 100 followers who are just waiting for you to drop something new so they can buy?

One of the biggest misconceptions about selling on Instagram (or any social media platform) is that you need to focus on getting as many followers as possible to start selling. The logic here is, if you have a lot of people listening when you sell something, enough of them will hit the add to cart button to make it worth it. The higher the follower number --> the more people buy --> the more money you make.

This is called a conversion rate, and it’s calculated like this:

Total people who took a desired action / Total audience x 100 = Conversion Percentage

So yes, the higher your followers, the more chances for people to take the desired action, like spending money on your website. The thing is, there are two ways to manipulate your conversion rate: (1) the size of your audience; and (2) the number of people who take your desired action.

Now that I’ve bored you with math, here’s the good stuff… The head of Instagram, Adam Mosseri, recently told his audience that engagement on your account matters more to the algorithm than the number of followers you have. This means you have control over creating an audience READY to buy from you. The key to building this audience is engagement. Genuine engagement leads to an authentic audience and a very successful business on Instagram.

The best kept secret in building an authentic audience on Instagram is to be yourself. Reach out to strangers as if you are new in town and trying to meet new people at a party. Support others in your industry that you genuinely want to succeed.

Specifically, schedule your engagement, focus on your audience, and be true to yourself. Growing your business on Instagram can feel overwhelming, especially in the beginning, and burnout happens because we receive so many messages about what we should be doing, with no real explanation of why these tactics work.

Before you do any sort of engagement on Instagram ask yourself these three questions:

Would I say this to someone face to face?
What is my motivation for engaging with this person? (hint: if it’s selling, STOP)
Do I genuinely care about this person’s business success?

If the answer to 1 and 3 is ‘No’ (and 2 is anything other than ‘I just want to get to know this person and support their success’), then I can almost guarantee you are not building an authentic audience.

Now get out there and start your engagement game. After all, your success is out there just waiting for you.

Let me help you up your engagement game, without the questions.

Starting on October 6th, I am kicking off a fall Instagram Engagement Challenge. Once you join, you will receive an email every day for 30 days with simple instructions of what to do on Instagram that day to increase your engagement. If you’ve been experiencing Instagram burnout, this is for you.