Life Interrupted
I ran across this story and I just had to share it with you. Especially since we’ve been talking about dreams and goals.
Suleika Jaouad was born in New York City and attended The Juilliard School’s pre-college program for the double bass. She then earned her BA with the highest honors from Princeton University and MFA in writing and literature from Bennington College…okay, okay, she was super brilliant, accomplished, and had an amazing future and career ahead… and not only that, she also worked on various human rights campaigns for the Center for Constitutional Rights, and studied abroad in Morocco, Tunisia, and Egypt where she researched and wrote about women’s issues. Basically, she was awesome!
But her future career aspirations were cut short when at age 22, she was diagnosed with leukemia. Doctors estimated she had a 35% chance of long-term survival. She would spend the next four years in the hospital. While receiving treatment, she began writing a column for The New York Times, which eventually became the Emmy award-winning video series called “Life, Interrupted.”
This is where her story truly begins. When the column was published, she started getting many emails and letters from people who were deeply touched by her story, and wanted to share stories of their own. This correspondence with the people she didn’t even know became so meaningful to her that she started keeping these letters in a little wooden box.
She talked about a woman she met briefly at a non-profit called First Descents, an outdoor adventure camp for kids with cancer. Her nickname was Salsa, and she was the camp mom who was in charge of nurturing and loving these kids. When she found out that Suleika was in the hospital, she wrote her a letter asking her to come to visit her and her family to go horseback riding at their beautiful ranch in Montana when she got well. This letter was added to the little wooden box. She said she kept it because it just seemed so far away and almost impossible. But she would just daydream about it hoping that one day, it would become a reality.
Not only did she finally take that trip to Montana, but the letters she kept in her little box eventually became the itinerary for her 100-day-15,000-mile road trip to meet and encounter the people behind the stories who helped her move forward and realize what a real hero’s journey looks like.
Life is unpredictable. As Suleika says in her TED talk: “Every single one of us will have our life interrupted. Whether it’s by the ripcord of a diagnosis, or some other kind of heartbreak or trauma that brings us to our knees. We need to find ways to live in between…”
To truly “live well” or “be well” or “to live the dream” is to be ALIVE in the messiest, richest, most painful, and even most joyful of circumstances.
I hope this interruption in your day helps you be present to focus on what matters.
It All Starts with a Dream
When I was in year two of my business, I realized that I needed some wisdom on how to strategize my growth and figure out how to get there. So, I decided to hire a business consultant/coach to help me. After our first meeting of going over our expectations and goals for the next few months, he gave me my first assignment.
Write out my dream.
He told me not to write it out as a list of things to check off (like a new year resolution format), but to write it out as a paragraph. And in this paragraph, imagine this: In the near future, you are getting ready for bed. Right before your head hits the pillow, you think to yourself “Today was a perfect day, I am truly living my dream.” Now, write down why you think you are living your dream. Write down, where are you living? what did you do all day? what emotions are you feeling? What are you going to do tomorrow? What did you eat for dinner? Who are you with? What is your relationship like? How much money are you making? Who are you impacting?
This was a fun but important exercise to set the foundation in place to dream. But dreams are just dreams. It’s something amazing you can create in your imagination…something you wish to do, something you wish to be or something you wish to achieve someday. And dreams can get you excited and make you feel alive and even motivated to work hard. But the big question is, how do we reach that dream? There really is a way to make your dream come true in a tangible way. How? By setting goals.
We spent the next few months coming up with practical steps and goals to reach. This is where the hard work, endurance and patience comes in. But, this is also where your entire journey begins. I can tell you that after almost eight years of grit and hard work, I am nowhere near my “perfect” day and life that I had written out during that first assignment. But I can tell you that without that dream in mind, I would have never lasted this long and had such a blast along the way. In a strange way, I am finding life in the process and finding purpose along this journey.
Jordan Spieth is a professional golfer known to be the 2nd youngest (behind Tiger Woods of course) to win the Masters at age 21. Ever since he could walk and talk, his dream was to play golf professionally and one day win the Masters. There’s a video of him at 14 talking about it. Not only that, he went on to earn 15 professional wins and three major championships. During a recent interview, he was asked when he knew that he had finally “made it”. He said the success happened so gradually that he didn’t really know the gravity of it. Even after he won the Masters, he really didn’t know how his life would be any different….until…he walked into a restaurant for a casual dinner the next day. He said as he walked in, the entire restaurant stood up on their feet and gave him a standing ovation. He couldn’t believe it. It hit him then that his dream had become a reality.
Three things that I hope for you:
1. Dream. Because, it all starts from there.
2. Set goals to reach that dream. Work hard and enjoy the journey.
3. Walk into a random restaurant and see if anyone recognizes you. LOL. If not, keep working and keep enjoying the journey.
I would love to hear about your dream. Reply to this email and send me your dream paragraph. I will send you mine.
Let’s dream together.
My Job When I Was 16…
When I was 14, my very first job was bagging groceries at a local grocery store. I was responsible to greet the customer, move their groceries from the cart to the conveyor at the register, bag everything up and even take it all out to their car if needed (sometimes getting a small tip for loading the bags into their trunk). We offered a full service and we took pride in the fact that we were the only grocery store in the city that did that. I learned at an early age what excellence in service looked like and how a customer loved being catered to.
When I was 16, all that customer service experience landed me a new job: bus boy at a 5-star restaurant in the city’s largest hotel casino called MGM. The restaurant served gourmet Cantonese and Szechuan cuisine and it was called China Seas. Many celebrities that performed at the casino showed up with their entourage to dine, as well as local and international businessmen and women who came to enjoy dinner after gambling or watching a show. It was an awesome experience. The level of service was at such a high standard, so even bus boys like me were very involved in actively conversing with the customers as well as making sure their needs were met at all times.
These experiences taught me some life lessons about business and the importance of customer service. If done correctly, it can be a powerful tool that sets your company apart from the rest. Trust me – as someone who became used to offering such a high level of service, I often get disappointed as a customer seeking to be taken care of (I think that’s why my wife still calls me a princess when we go out to eat. lol)
I thought it would be fun to list some of what I learned to help re-define what customer service can be for us as business owners who continue to serve our customers on a daily basis.
1. Acknowledge their presence. Have you ever walked into a restaurant and no one was there to greet you right away? You stand around for awhile with no one noticing you; they just seem too busy and you start to wonder if you are even welcome there. At China Seas, their number one priority was to create the best first impression and for this very reason, we had two maître d’s. One was always there to greet and acknowledge the customer as soon as they walked through the door, and the second was a backup if the other maître d’ was busy doing the rounds or sitting someone. Our main maître d’s name was George – the friendliest and classiest guy ever (complete with a bow tie), and he never forgot a name. He treated everyone like they owned the building and he always made sure any guest they brought knew it. This simple value alone turned many visitors into repeat customers to eventually regulars.
2. Meet their basic needs first, then go beyond. As a bus boy, we had two main jobs: water and hot tea. I was assigned nine tables per night, and my job was to walk around and make sure their water did not fall below 1/2 full. If the boss saw the water glass empty, we got in trouble…if anyone asked for water because we forgot to fill it, we were dead…and if it occurred often, we would eventually be fired. The hot tea on the table was always filled up to the rim – even if they took 2 or 3 sips, we’d fill it back up to make sure it stayed hot. At the end of the night, they’d inevitably tell us to STOP filling up the cup – that’s when we knew we’d gone beyond their expectation.
3. Make eye contact. This doesn’t seem like much but it makes all the difference in the world. When we were walking around the tables to fill up the water, we looked at each customer to make eye contact. This avoids the frustration of the customer trying to get our attention. If the customer needed something, all they had to do is to make eye contact back at me. I’d be running over to see what I could do. I didn’t realize how important this was until I became a customer and needed my beer asap. The waiter walked by me three times without looking at me; I almost cried.
4. Execute quickly. When something is asked of you, act quickly to ensure they know you haven’t forgotten about them. It shows their immediate needs and wants matter to you.
Of course not all of us are in the food service industry, so this list may look a bit different for you. But I think there is some fundamental truth in each one that can be implemented in every context.
I would love to hear what you do in your business that goes beyond the norm to offer true excellence in customer service. I hope you fill the cup of every customer you meet today!
Out of the Woods [Podcast]
Welcome to episode 14 of the Make it Matter Podcast – today’s podcast gets “in tents” as we talk about the business principles that can be derived from a little time in the wild.
What could roughing in nature possibly teach you about business? You might be surprised – Hanju’s been on the road lately, and what he’s learned could make a huge difference in your company.
“All I need to know about business I learned from camping.” What tools for your work can you actually find outside of the office?
1. Be prepared
Preparation is harder than you think. The time to trick out the van, the sink, the packing, the food, the cleanup. I thought it would be peaceful but we were actually busy non-stop. The lesson: expect it to be tough. (Worst thought you can have: “this is going to be easy.” Totally counterproductive thinking.) You’re not doing something wrong just because it’s hard.
2. Be pioneering
Always ready for the adventure. Makes work fun and new, and helps you solve problems with a fresh perspective. (Divergent Thinking). The lesson? “Life finds a way.”
3. Be present
Never miss a sunset.
We really do think that getting out there, away from the daily norm, definitely gives you a new perspective. And I really like how Bru broke it down. Be Prepared, Be Pioneering and Be present. The 3P’s. What a great lesson for all of us. And even those of us that just do not camp…and don’t have any desire to. That’s okay. No need to as long as you find your own way to step out and learn to see things a bit differently. It will bring more clarity, creativity, and even courage to shift from the grind. Those are my 3 C’s. I was inspired to come up with my own 3 C’s.
Well, thanks for listening, everyone, and you know what? We would love to hear from you, so, just leave us a comment on the iTunes review or contact us directly by going to https://bosmediagroup.com/sayhello We added a record button on there so you can send us by voice, a question, a comment, or a shoutout, whatever you want. We might even play it on this podcast.
So, in the meantime, thank you so much for listening, and remember to always MAKE IT MATTER. Bye for now.
What Keeps You Up At Night?
Think about the last time that your heart was so heavily burdened and your mind was going 100 miles per hour, you just couldn’t sleep. What were you thinking about?
If you know me, I am a great sleeper. I take 30 minutes picking out the right movie to watch, get all cozy, and after a couple of minutes of the opening scene…I am out! Most nights, I fall asleep before my head hits the pillow. Except for when I have something heavy on my mind.
Last week, we found out our dog Sugar (sweet Maltese of 15 years) became terminally ill. She stopped eating and her kidney was failing. They say 15 years is a good long life for most dogs, but I just couldn’t sleep thinking about missing her and also trying to figure out what next steps to take.
As a business, we always have to ask ourselves, “What problem are you solving?” But when we ask our customers the same question, they often fumble around not knowing exactly what their needs are…until, we ask them this: “What keeps you up at night? What is it about your current situation that causes such a heavy burden that you are not able to peacefully sleep?”
During our painful research of “what next steps to take” with our beloved Sugar, we ran across a lot of websites that offered the same solution for our heaviness, but they did it in totally different ways. I would like to share with you why we chose who we chose and how they met our expectations and delivered exactly what we hoped for. A peaceful transition for Sugar into her next adventure.
Why we chose this company:
1. Welcome Section: Right away, they acknowledged what we are going through and offered comfort. But what I really loved about what they said was that the focus wasn’t on the pet owners (us), it was on the pet…what they were going through and what we all could do to help. In this story, they made the pet the hero, not the pet owners. This captured my attention right away.
2. Information Section: They started educating us. They showed us why the services they offered were right for us. It answered the most pressing questions we have and it included a link to more in-depth discussions, research, and videos helping us understand and create a clear picture of the process and expectations.
3. Testimonial Section: They offered insight to the people who have used their service. Their testimonials were not templated or generic; they were real, heart-felt testimonials in letter form explaining in detail how much they appreciated the service and why.
4. About Us Section: Even though they were all well-qualified doctors, they focused very little on their own accomplishments but more on their own story of childhood and how they became animal lovers, and why they currently love what they do and how it affects people’s lives.
Why we didn’t choose the other companies offering the same services:
1. Welcome Section: They didn’t take the time to acknowledge the visitors’ heaviness that brought us to their site in the first place. They mainly focused on all the different services they offer right away. Felt very salesy and untrustworthy.
2. Information Section: It was vague and didn’t offer additional resources or videos to educate or address the difficult questions or even controversial issues or philosophies about their services.
3. Testimonial Section: Mostly short, non-descriptive and templated testimonials. They didn’t offer any personal stories or even detailed examples of what was helpful.
4. About Us Section: Heavy emphasis was on the credentials of the doctors. Their education and previous experiences. Felt cold…like reading a resume.
This is why copywriting matters. It’s the latest word in our definitions series, and it really does have the power to shape people’s first impression of you. Although I’ve never met or spoken to anyone from the first company, just from reading the copy on their website, I knew in my heart, it was the right company. And it was.
We all know how hard it is to find solutions to meet our most important needs. Here’s to being that company that answers people’s questions with the empathy they are looking for so that on sleepless nights when people go searching, they find you.
Turning Your Pennies into Dollars
I am always reading the latest research about marketing, and during my content consumption phase, I hear this a lot, and I know you do too:
“In order to successfully engage and win the trust of your current and future customers, you have to continue to give VALUE. And the more value you give, the more trust you’ll earn.”
Okay, awesome!! But…what does it really mean? How do I know what’s valuable to my audience?
In his newest book Superfans, Pat Flynn paints a great picture of what VALUE is and how to provide it for your clients. He describes a conference where a speaker asked the audience if they saw a penny on the street, would they pick it up? Most people will keep walking…not worth their time. Then he asked, what about a quarter? About 50% of people raised their hands to say yes, they would stop. Finally, he asked, how many of you would pick up a dollar bill? At that point, most of the crowd raised their hands. In this example, all three levels of currency offered value, but the value of a dollar bill passed the threshold from “not worth my time” to “ok, I’ll stop.”
So, the next question is: how do I offer something that my audience will see as worth their time? How do we create the dollar bill level content that someone will stop for?
Here are 3 ideas to help you become a more valuable and trustworthy authority in your field.
1. Know your audience. I know, I know, you’ve heard this before….but really, KNOW WHO THEY ARE. What do they love? What do they hate? What are they good at? What are they bad at? Know their problems, know their frustrations, know their pain. And you know what you get to do? Help them out of their problems, help them out of their frustrations and help them out of their pain. How? Offer unique insights, tips, data, solutions and even inspiration.
I’ve been playing golf for a long time. I played competitively as a Junior and still keep a pretty low handicap (meaning, I am a pretty decent player…lol). However, I play with a lot of weekend golfers who are always frustrated at the game because they don’t improve. Why don’t they improve? Because they are weekend golfers – they never practice, but they all think they just need a magic cure. Knowing this inside information, I decided to start a podcast specifically for these weekend golfers and offer insights, tips, data, and solutions on improving their game by….inspiring them to practice. If you ever want to check it out, the podcast is called Better Golf Academy. I still get random fan emails saying how much I have helped their game.
2. Know your expertise. What does that mean? It means that whatever industry you are in, you are an expert whether you like it or not. You have unique insight that no one else has. You might not know it because it’s just part of your everyday life and you’ve been doing it forever so you take it for granted…but what you know and what you do is unique to a lot of people and they are dying to know what you know. Dive deep into the knowledge that seems so obvious to you, then share your journey and your findings.
Ever since I started camping, I’ve been researching a lot of camping gear. One of the essential needs when you are off the grid for 3-4 days is a reliable refrigerator, and in order to keep your refrigerator running 24/7, you need a good source of power. Well, how about a power unit that runs off of solar? Not knowing anything about this, I started my research and ran across a guy named Will Prowse. He’s a guru in his niche of off-grid solar power and I’ve learned so much from him. I trusted his expertise and ended up purchasing his recommended power unit. It’s exactly what we needed and for me and his other 472k followers, we find him and his content more than valuable.
3. Know your platform. In the golf example above, I chose a podcast as the way to get my information out to an audience. Why a podcast? It’s something I enjoy doing. Also, it’s less time consuming than a YouTube channel – video editing can be very tedious and tiring and I didn’t have a lot of energy for it. Editing audio for a podcast is more simple and something I feel like I could do consistently for a long time. Some of us think now that we have something to share, we need to use all platforms and channels to broadcast our content, but this can be overwhelming. Find one channel that fits who you are and that also provides an opportunity to reach the like-minded people that consume content on the same channel. Give it all you got and watch your audience grow.
I hope this helps get your creative juices flowing for how to strategize, create and broadcast your content. Don’t underestimate what you know – you really do have dollars in you that will stop customers in their tracks.
Marketing Redefined: SEO
What’s the last thing you googled today? Wanna know mine? I asked Google why a washing machine smells like it’s burning. This was after my son texted us, “Hello, parental beings, my washing machine smells like it’s burning, what should I do?”
Well, Google immediately displayed a page full of resources and possible answers. Each resource led me to a webpage, which provided an article or a video. I spent about ten minutes searching, reading and looking through some of the pages, then came to a conclusion: call for service. I don’t want to attempt taking it apart to change out the belt (which I could do by just following the steps on the YouTube video it pointed me to). But, like I said, I don’t want to.
This story demonstrates one moment in the life of SEO – the next term to be highlighted in our Definitions series.
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, and it’s the very process that happens every time we do a search. The engine scours billions of pieces of content on the internet and evaluates thousands of factors to spit out the most relevant and the most likely answer to my question, almost like magic.
So, how is this done? More importantly, how can my website be so loved and adored by Google that it will spit my link out to whoever is searching for the answers I can help them with? And how can my business get that distinguished rank of being displayed on the first page of the Google search outcome?
These are amazing questions. And if I knew the exact answers, I would tell you and we would all benefit from hundreds of people coming to our website everyday to read about our company and be convinced to do business with us. The truth is, given that Google handles over 2 trillion searches per year (40,000 searches every second), they have incredibly brilliant people outlining over 200 ranking factors (called algorithms) that help determine the best answers to the first pages of search.
The goal for every website owner that wants more traffic is to figure out what those 200 ranking factors are and try to implement them to your own website.
When Google is scouring (indexing or crawling) the content on your website, you want to be noticed and for Google to find your website credible – that’s when they start ranking you higher. Fortunately, Google is somewhat transparent about how they rank the sites, but also, there are some secret aspects of the algorithm that can penalize your ranking as well.
As we educate ourselves and continuously work to bring relevance to our own sites, there are 3 things to keep in mind when it comes to SEO:
1. SEO is not magic. It’s not something that you swirl your wand once and all the work is done. It’s a constant process that involves research, strategy, dedicated time and hard work. It takes patience, but it’s worth it to understand the full picture.
2. SEO is changing and updating with time. There are constant updates to the algorithm – they are always trying to improve and keep from people cheating the system. You’ll obviously need a successful strategy for your SEO efforts, but it’s also important to know that old and obsolete SEO tactics that used to be effective before might not be effective now. In fact, if you continue to use a dated strategy, you may hurt your SEO more than help it. You need to be constantly learning and evolving.
3. SEO loves valuable content. Content is king. Even after all these years, one thing still remains at the top of the priority list for SEO. Fresh content is still believed to bring more value to your site than anything else. Take your thoughts and ideas and put them into action with regular content creation. Not just content for content’s sake, but real, authentic and valuable content that will help others. Like answering why a washer smells like it’s burning.
I hope this gives you a good foundation of what SEO is and how important it is for our business. Because I’m literally about to call for appliance repair to whichever company has the best SEO strategy.
Marketing Redefined: Leads
Starting this week, we’re introducing a new Definitions series, explaining more in-depth certain aspects of marketing. We know that business growth depends on some form of marketing, yet not all business owners ever stop to get educated about what goes into that. We hope this review of the fundamentals will help you develop a marketing strategy that works.
It all starts with Leads.
Most people define a lead as a “potential client or organization that has an interest in what you are offering.” Whether they encountered you through a Google ad, a mailer, a cold call or just through word of mouth, these possible customers have somehow reached out or responded back to you.
Once that contact has been made via call, email, DM, or letter, it’s now up to you to follow up on that “lead” and turn it into a sale. So, what’s the issue?
Well, a lead is not always a lead. I like to compare the entire sales process to the phases leading up to marriage. Basically, you don’t walk up to the person of your dreams that you just met for the very first time and ask for his/her hand in marriage. Why? Because it’s weird, and most likely, whether it’s business or personal, you’re going to get rejected.
Here’s how we clearly define each stage in the process with a lead to help you more effectively prepare for that wedding:
- The Subscriber Stage: This is the very beginning of the lead stage. This is when you get introduced through different channels (social media, ads) and you actually exchange contact information. Congratulations, but don’t jump to any conclusions yet.
- The Nurturing Stage: Let’s get real, once the contact information has been exchanged and the communication starts, it’s pretty common that they will ignore whatever you send, mostly because they don’t really know you. Eventually, you want to improve the interaction. How? Continue to offer valuable content, pursuing their interests and giving them more opportunities to visit your website, download resources, listen to your podcasts, register for a webinar, etc. You are nurturing your relationship during this important stage.
- The Marketing Qualified Lead Stage (MQL): As you continue to nurture, eventually they will show a genuine interest. Here’s where they finally say yes to your offers or even reach out to you for a meeting or a call. If they meet the criteria of your target market, this has now become a qualified lead.
- The Sales Qualified Lead Stage (SQL): They are now qualified and ready to buy. For most companies, this is where the hand-off happens. Marketing has generated a qualified lead; now it gets handed off to the sales department for the closure. In the dating metaphor, this is when you go ring shopping – it’s almost time to pop the question.
- The Opportunity Stage: You’ve worked hard to get here and to earn trust. Now it’s time to let them know that you are the right fit for them, where effort turns into opportunity. An opportunity to journey together for as long as you both shall live…and guess what? It sounds like this could be the happily ever after.
I hope breaking down the stages of leads helps you strategize a long-term master plan for your company, and allows even more growth to be generated as each stage is defined and nurtured.
Here’s to you and your business finding true love!
Top 3 Website Design Tips
First impressions are crazy. I read about a Princeton research project where people watched a video of political candidates for a microsecond, and then they were asked to predict who would win the election. Turns out the subjects correctly guessed the winner 70% of the time.
We make millions of snap judgments throughout the day, and once that impression is formed, it’s very hard to change it.
I know what you’re thinking: “Hanju, why are you talking about first impressions? I don’t need your help with my online dating!” But here’s the thing: this same thinking actually applies to our professional lives as well.
The big question is, what do you think is the first impression of your business? Nowadays, (much like dating), people are probably making their first impression before they even meet you based on what they see online. So… what would be their first impression of your website?
I wrote a guide to help businesses consider the 3 aspects of your website design that are absolutely essential in creating that perfect first impression. Here’s a link to the guide – but if you don’t want to download it and read through 11 pages, here’s a quick summary.
It all starts with the HERO IMAGE.
- The hero image is the first image or message (or both) that people will look at when they arrive at your website. If it doesn’t make an impact in the first nanosecond, you may have already lost the customer. How do you make sure it connects?
Glad you asked – here are my top 3 tips:
- Evoke Emotion: The image or the message should make you “feel” something. There’s a much greater chance that they will be intrigued and moved to continue reading.
- Be very clear: Your message, and how it introduces who you are/the services you offer should be obvious. Don’t make them try to figure it out or be too clever – it will just frustrate them. Tell people exactly what you do and how it benefits them.
- Tell them what to do now: This is called the “Call To Action” or CTA. Every website should have a CTA to help direct people toward eventually becoming your customer.
In the guide, I also include some great examples and visuals so you can see what others have done successfully if you want to learn more. Here’s that link again.
I hope this helps you think through how you can make a positive first impression on all the potential customers that come to your site. And if you’re single… I hope they also swipe right.
Top 3 Tips To Boost Your Instagram Engagement
I used to travel a lot for my business. And, as a total extrovert, I so much enjoy conversations with complete strangers on the plane. My own personal captive audience stuck next to me for 3-4 hours, might as well get to know each other, right? Well, not always. People love to avoid talking to me. They have their headphones on, they close their eyes, they pretend to be reading something, they don’t make eye contact, etc. I make it a game to see what opening line I can present to either make them laugh or put them at ease so we can get the ball rolling.
Over the years, I’ve heard enough stories to write a book. Something about meeting a stranger who seems very interested in you, that you feel safe with and that you’ll never see again – it allows them to share their deepest and most private information with me. I remember crying with a young woman who had just lost her husband, advising a young and brilliant woman who was in a middle of an abusive relationship that she’s worth more, even a 14-year-old kid flying to his dad’s house for the summer sharing about how to make ton of money picking up golf balls from the course next to the house. I even helped him make a list of brand names and showed him how to categorize them and what to charge people.
What does all of this have to do with Instagram engagement?
Too often the mentality behind social media posts is that as a business, we will post something educational, informative, entertaining, or even just brilliant and we wait for everyone to flood in, make comments, share my information, click on the like button…etc. But, in reality…crickets. What are you doing wrong?
You might be acting like the passengers on a plane. Not actively trying to make eye contact. Not actively figuring out the opening line to start the conversation. Not interested in others (just yourself). Not allowing other people to feel safe. It’s funny, when I tell people of all the amazing folks I’ve met and talked to over the years on the plane, they’ll tell me that they’ve been traveling for business for years and never once had a conversation with anyone. And they wonder why they might be having trouble engaging online!
So, how do you organically grow your Instagram following and engagement? Here are some practical steps to add to your daily social media processes:
1. Engage with other similar accounts everyday. Help promote them, encourage them and develop an online relationship with them. When you engage their posts, it helps them become more visible. Also, other visitors will see you active on the accounts they follow, and they might end up following you as well.
2. Write great captions. This is your opening line to start a conversation. Ask intriguing questions, state interesting facts, be funny, be real, be authentic, be human, share your pain, share your solutions…you’ll be amazed at how many people want to engage with you as well. Oh, and if someone does make a comment, reply as soon as possible. Tag their account as you are replying – this pushes the posts to the top of their followers’ feeds.
3. Post more photos of people including yourself. Sharing information about yourself builds trust and makes it safe for people to get to know you and for them to open up with you as well.
Don’t get discouraged when you are not getting a lot of likes on Instagram – it doesn’t mean people aren’t seeing and engaging. Instagram has found a new algorithm that’s redefining what “engagement” really means. For example, here are some insights for each post that help paint a bigger picture: comments, shares, link clicks, bookmarks/saves, reach, impressions, and followers. Bottom line, if you keep engaging with others, you will eventually reap the benefits from the effort you invested in the relationship.
Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help. Give me a call, or even better – let’s sit next to each other on a flight sometime soon!
