4 Instagram Hacks Every Business Owner Should Be Implementing

In this in-between episode we talk to EVERY business owner and 4 Instagram hacks they should implement:

• Managing your Instagram filters and staying consistent with them.
• We talk about "Continual" an app to chop up longer videos into 15 second clips so that you can use them in Instagram Stories. 
• Turn on post notifications of competition or partners so you can keep an eye out on competition. 
• Get yourself a scheduling software. We use Grum. 
• BONUS: Tag location or use hashtags in your Instagram Stories!

Aaron: [00:00:15] Hey,guys. Welcome to another episode of The Marketing Natives. Can't wait to jumpinto this episode. Christian's doing some crazy sign language across the deskfor me. I wish you guys could see it, but this is cool. This is their very firstin-between-asode, and we're not going to talk about a local business. But we'regoing to talk about marketing as a broad spectrum. So like a 30,000 foot kindof view, and today we're talking about four Instagram hacks that every businessowner should be implementing. This is really cool especially since Instagram isthe fastest growing social network, and most people are getting on there. So alot of business owners are there, and most consumers are following a businesspage. So Instagram is a really good platform. It's very visual, and a lot ofbusinesses can benefit from them. A few things we're going to talk about aremanaging your Instagram filters. Apps. We're not going to tell you right now,but there is a very cool app called Continual. And we'll get deeper into that.We're going to talk about post notifications, and we are going to talk aboutsome scheduling software.

Christian: [00:01:23] Ilike how you told them that you're not going to tell them but then you tellthem the app. All right. So starting off the very first thing we're going totalk about is Instagram filters. There are - I don't know - what? 10, 15filters.

Aaron: [00:01:37] Yes.

Christian: [00:01:37] Somethinglike that. So it can be kind of overwhelming whenever you're trying to picksomething for your pictures when you're posting, but little did you know thatyou can scroll and manage your filters. So you can move them around, and theones that you always use you can position them in the, you know, your top threeor four and have them right there. Now the importance of having these filtersin the front is because you want to try to use the same filters on yourpictures to create this brand identity with your Instagram. So you don't wantto be doing, you know, black and white pictures and then changing to color andthen changing to like sepia because it's just not cohesive. It doesn't lookcohesive for the brand.

Aaron: [00:02:25] Absolutely.And so we don't do this for our business page, but I actually test those kindof things on my personal page for those reasons because I want to figure outokay, what gets more engagement? High bright colors. Is it something likeValencia? Are the, you know, the really dark colors, is that going to work? Andthen trying to put like a string of them together to figure out what makespeople engage with it more? Obviously, the quality of the picture is huge, butalso the filters that can be on there. So moving them around and keeping yourbrand consistent is absolutely huge when you scroll through there because Ihear from a lot of people that you just go to the feed, and if you're not asfamiliar with Instagram, there is a feed where you would go to like a home pageand you see a ton of different businesses all in one, you know, a period where youcould be scrolling through. But when you click over to a business, say youclicked on BitBranding, you would go to their profile, and the easier and moreaesthetically pleasing it is, the more you're going to scroll. And the longerthat they look at pictures and engage with you, the more that they're going totake action and do something. So if you have aesthetically appealing picturesthen that's really going to help them kind of connect with you a little bitmore. So that's why those filters are so important.

Christian: [00:03:45] Yep.

Aaron: [00:03:45] Allright. And this next app is something very cool. I found out about it a coupleof weeks ago. It's called Continual, and if you follow us on Instagram stories,I've used it a few times for our show Tip for Tip. Shout out to that show. Itis where business owners ask us marketing questions, and we have them on a showand it's video. So it's on Facebook and YouTube, but we put that show onInstagram stories with Continual. So we'll download that video, and inContinual you can cut it in 15 minutes se- Or 15 minute. 15 second segments,and you can play that video throughout the story. So we'll do like maybe 30seconds or like 45 seconds to a minute of the show, and then at the end of it,we'll have a call to action to go check out the link in our bio to watch thefull episode. But it just allows you to stream it together. Previously youcould do that, but you had to have some editing software. And it was just veryclunky, and it was very time consuming. But with Continual it's eight dollarsin the App Store. So I know you guys are freaking out because it's eightdollars, and apps you're used to paying for are free or 99 cents. But when yougo to Starbucks, you're going to spend seven dollars. So think about it thisway. It's eight dollars, and it will probably save you- I mean, I can't evenremember how many hours it would have saved if I would have went in there tovideo editing and each one of them cut them down. So I mean, just in the twoepisodes we did it would have saved me probably an hour and a half, two hours.So tons of hours saved, and that's just for on way to use it. So any contentjust kind of curating it, but it's a really cool app. So download it.

Christian: [00:05:19] Nice.And when you open the app, I mean, what do you do? Is the video right there andall you have to do is say cut it up for me?

Aaron: [00:05:26] Yes.So you have two options. You can record natively inside of the Continual appand pull it from- Do it that way, or you can download the video. And you can-There's like a little toggle up at the top, and you can slide the video. So sayyou download the full four-minute video that you have for Tip for Tip, you canslide it over to like 30 seconds and play it so that you know what piecesyou're cutting up. And then it automatically saves it to your camera roll, andthen you can click a button, open it up in Instagram, and then just startposting them.

Christian: [00:05:57] Ohokay. Gotcha. All right. So the next post or the next hack is going to be toturn on notification post on your competitors or maybe your partners?

Aaron: [00:06:15] Yes,so I said- So I wrote that note, but I said partners. So like synergy partnersor people that you are- Like we talked about Instagram pods before or likepeople that you follow or want to get- Like say, for example, we follow Gary V.He's not really a competitor, but he is somebody who we want to follow and wewant to get notifications for. So that's what I meant by that.

Christian: [00:06:37] Okay.So yeah. Definitely the wrong word to put it in there. But yes, so the ideabehind this is to, like Aaron said, to just you know see their post. To turnnotifications so you can see their post first and see what they're doing.Keeping eye on them and see what people are engaging with, see where they'recommenting, and get a better feel for, you know, your competition out there.

Aaron: [00:07:00] Yes.And do you- I don't know if you- Have you ever done that before, Christian?

Christian: [00:07:05] Notreally, no.

Aaron: [00:07:06] Okay.So the easiest way for you to do this is to go to the person's profile. So youclick over to their profile. So do this BitBranding. Absolutely want to followevery post, but go to their profile and in the top right there's an option.Three dots and you click that, and there'll be a list of options for you. Allof them are kind of irrelevant except for sending us a direct message andturning on post notifications. So very simple for you to do, and what you'llget is you will literally get like a push notification on your phone when wepost on Instagram which is every day. All right.

Christian: [00:07:46] What?

Aaron: [00:07:46] Allright. So that is the best time of the episode because I get a cool- I get topush this button that this really cool app says it's a rap air horns. So we'repretty much mix artists when that goes on. Christian was throwing up handsigns, and-

Christian: [00:08:01] DJ.Go DJ. Go DJ.

Aaron: [00:08:03] Dang.I forgot all about that song. Yes. So maybe we can mix that a little bit here,but no, this is our section where we kind of do a little plug for ourselves.And we are really hitting hard with reputation management. So what that is isyour ability to get more reviews and more frequent reviews and sentimentonline. So make people believe and know that your business is good, but I'mtelling other people. So just a quick stat. This is just a hard stat put out bya lot of reputation companies. 70 percent of people look at reviews before theymake a decision. So what we're offering for you guys right now is to just shootus a message either on Facebook or go to our website, bibranding.co, send us amessage, and we will give you a free report of where you stand right now. Soyou can find out hey, I'm good online. I have, you know, I have a high score. Ihave a lot of reviews. They're frequent. Then there's no problem. There'snothing there, but if you do have some problems, we can absolutely point you inthe right direction on how to get more frequent reviews and good reviews. Doesthat pretty much cover it?

Christian: [00:09:14] Yeah.You covered it. You got it.

Aaron: [00:09:14] Allright. Cool. I want to push the rap air horn again, but I'm not going to.

Christian: [00:09:19] Onemore time. One more time.

Aaron: [00:09:20] Okkay,since he let me. Here we go.

Christian: [00:09:24] Allright. That's the end of our ad right there. So the last hack, the lastInstagram hack that we have here, is something that we use almost everyday.It's called Grum, and the website I believe- Yeah, it's grum.co, and Grumallows you- It's one of the- I mean, I don't think there's any other tool thatreally compares to Grum, but it lets you publish and schedule posts onInstagram from your computer. Instagram has always been very against doingthis, but with Grum- I don't remember if they actually do it themselves. Likethey don't use robots or anything or AI to schedule and publish these posts,but the way they do it is very safe for your account. We've been doing this foralmost two years now almost, and we have had no problems with our Instagram. SoI would highly recommend Grum for you to schedule and publish your postautomatically. Now if you don't want to use Grum, there's other alternatives. Ithink later.com which it used to be known as Later Gram. Also Buffer I thinkoffers something similar. Now they don't allow you to actually post onInstagram. They just allow you to upload the image, upload your caption, maybeyour hashtags, and it gives you reminders so that you can publish those posts.But it doesn't allow you to automatically publish them.

Aaron: [00:10:57] Right.And I think that Hootsuite rolled out their version of something like thatwhere it's scheduling too, but for us we've found that, you know, testing thetimes of day is really important. And if you're say, for example, we're at likea gala or a gala or whatever way you're supposed to say, it's 10:30 at night,and you get a notification to post on Instagram and you miss it. That's whereGrum comes in. This is effortless. A lot of times Christian and I now willschedule it way in advance and just not have to forget or- Have to forget. Haveto remember that we need to do that. It's just scheduled. It's there, and thething that we need to do is engage with people. That's it.

Christian: [00:11:34] Yeah.I have a little bonus one I think. Yes. So I think every- I mean, I was readingour title "Four Instagram Hacks That Every Business Owner Should beImplementing," and if you're not doing this, you should be doing this.It's tagging locations or using the hashtags especially on Instagram stories.So for sure be doing Instagram stories, and every time you do Instagram storieseither use a hashtag relevant to your business or use a location whereveryou're at. This will give you a bigger reach than you already have with yourcurrent followers because it will automatically add you to location stories orhashtag stories. So it's very important to either add a location or add a hashtag to your stories.

Aaron: [00:12:21] Yes.I think we've talked about this before, but people can actually follow hashtagsnow. So that's even more exposure for you, and just we do that, just kind ofgoing back with Continual. With every time we upload it, we'll tag thelocation. So like Allen, Texas or wherever that episode was shot, but I willsay that on an average day our stories, you know, we get maybe 50 or 60 peoplewho watch. But when we tag the locations, I think last week when I did the Tipfor Tip one, it was like 260, 270.

Christian: [00:12:53] Yeah.

Aaron: [00:12:53] Soit was insane, and all we did was click a button and tag a location. It is, Imean, that is probably the truest hack we have on here is to really grow andreach a new audience. All right. So thank you guys again. Whether you're on thetreadmill, out for a run, if you are driving in your car, this is a placable,but only when you stop, make sure you go and subscribe. Please leave us areview. We have- I think we have like three reviews now. Haven't checked for aweek or so, but we.

Christian: [00:13:25] Holla.

Aaron: [00:13:25] Holla.Yeah, holla at those people, but we need some more reviews. Want to just knowif you guys like the podcast. We try to keep these to about 15 minutes or lessso that you can kind of listen to them on your commute. We know you're going tobe listen to other stuff. Jamming out to like Justin Bieber and whatever. So wejust want to give you 15 minutes of value, and all we ask is that if you foundsome value in this, you subscribe and you share this with a friend. It's veryeasy from the iTunes podcast app, and you just need to click those threebuttons in the right hand corner. You're holding your phone from your faceright now I can tell. Click share that episode with a friend, send it to themas a message, and if you share it on your social media, make sure you tag usand let us know and we will send you a gift. And just as one last reminder, ifyou have less than 20 reviews on your business right now, please reach out tous on our website or Facebook page. Shoot us a message so we can give you thatreport so you can figure out what to do to get more exposure for your business.

Christian: [00:14:25] Yes.

Aaron: [00:14:27] Allright. We'll talk to you guys next week.