109 – How to Use Instagram Stories to Grow Your Business with Sue B Zimmerman

Hi there.

You're listening to gift biz unwrapped episode number one Oh nine.

I used to teach scrapbooking you guys.

So I'm like Instagram stories has all the things I love.

Hi, this is John Lee,

Dumas of entrepreneur on fire,

and you're listening to gift to biz unwrap.

And now it's time to light it up.

Welcome to gift bears on wrapped your source for industry specific

insights and advice to develop and grow your business.

And now here's your host,

Sue Mona height.

Before we get into the show,

I have a question for you.

Do you know that you should be out networking,

but you just can't get yourself to do it because it's

scary. Are you afraid that you might walk into the room

and not know anybody or that you're going to freeze?

When you get up to do that infamous elevator speech,

where you talk about yourself and your business?

Well, I'm here to tell you that it doesn't need to

be scary.

If you know what to do to help you with this,

I would like to offer you a coffee chat for the

price of buying me a cup of coffee.

We can sit down through an online video and I'll tell

you everything that I know about networking and how I have

personally built two multi-six figure businesses,

primarily through networking.

You'll walk away with a solid understanding about how networking can

truly grow your business.

And you're going to have new found confidence because I'm going

to give you 10 fill in the blank templates that you

can use for your introduction message.

To learn more about this opportunity.

Just go over to Bitly forward slash network Ninja.

That's B I T dot L Y forward slash network Ninja.

And now let's move on to the show.

Hi there.

This is Sue and welcome to the gift is unwrapped podcast.

This is the show for gifters bakers,

crafters and makers,

whether you own a brick and mortar shops sell online or

are just getting started,

you'll discover new insight to gain traction and to grow your

business. And today I would like to present to you once

again, Sue B Zimmerman.

Sylvia is known worldwide as the Instagram expert.

She is an insightful social media educator,

energetic speaker,

and in demand business coach blog is ranked as one of

examiner. She's also one of the most popular paid applied instructors.

It's been named by Huffington post as one of the top

How lucky are we to have her with us today?

Suby welcome to the show.

Hey, it's great to be back Sue.

I'm happy to be here.

I know,

you know,

I was looking back to see when I had you on

for the first time.

And it was so long ago you were episode 32.

And what are we on now?

I'll let me think.

I believe you're going to be episode 109.

Wow. Well,

congratulations to you for all of that.

Oh, cause I know this podcast life is not easy.

It takes a lot of time,

but it's worth it.

And it's super rewarding.

Yes. I want to talk totally about stories today because we

spoke so long ago about Instagram.

So give biz listeners anything you don't know,

or if you are new and even starting to just think

about Instagram as a platform,

go back to that specific episode.

Number 32,

I'll link it up in the show notes,

but so much has changed.

Or I don't know if I should say so much changed,

but has been included in added to Instagram.

One of the biggest things is stories,

and I know you are such a proponent right now of

stories be,

could you share what stories are all about?

Let's just start there and ground everybody Instagram introduced stories back

in August,

2016. And as soon as they did,

I was all over it because I used to be kind

of obsessed with Snapchat and love documenting a lot of my

real raw content behind the scenes,

through Snapchat in a very creative way.

And so Instagram stories allowed me to basically do the same.

And with that came my audience that I had already established

on Instagram,

basically Instagram stories are like a slideshow clip where you can

integrate photos that lasts for seconds.

You can not change the amount of time that someone views

a photo like you can on Snapchat.

Also, you can have a clip that is a video with

up to 15 seconds.

So that's the max of each video clip.

The idea is that you string together a story,

a beginning,

a middle and an end that gives value in some way

that your followers would be interested in coming back for more,

because two,

they disappear in 24 hours.

I'm just kind of thinking of people who are already on

Instagram with their accounts and you are a big proponent of

making sure that the account is super clear.

If you're there for business it's business,

if you're there for personal it's personal.

How do you integrate that then in yes.

So I have two accounts on Instagram.

I want the listeners to know,

I do have a personal account at Sue B Zimmerman and

on that account,

when I'm doing stories,

it's really three placement of what I did with Snapchat,

but with a lot more intention.

And when I say intention,

you see the same core values that I share in my

feed, in my stories.

And so there's not a disconnect.

It's basically the life of a successful business owner and all

the things that are valuable to me and that I want

to share in a fun,

entertaining and somewhat exclusive way.

And when I say exclusive,

I mean,

I believe that Instagram stories should be where you're sharing exclusive

content, that you are not sharing anywhere else.

So this whole real and raw and authentic aspect that stories

can add to your awareness as a business or a brand

is exciting for Instagram.

And let's just ground the listeners one more way too.

So we have our Instagram feed,

which I like to call your digital is like a digital

magazine. So basically if you have set your account up for

success and you have a dynamic bio that someone can quickly

read in three to six seconds and know exactly who you

are and what you do for your business and the content

that you show in your feed matches up to that you're

in good shape.

And then as another layer,

you have your Instagram stories that can absolutely get someone's attention.

Now I know people that just like to watch Instagram stories

now and don't necessarily go into the feed.

So my goal is always to drive traffic back to the

Instagram feed where that content lives on forever.

So I just explained my personal strategy on my business account,

the Instagram expert,

I share Instagram tips in a way that is basically bite-size

actionable tips that someone can watch.

And yes,

I'm funny in a very entertaining way over there,

but someone can watch and say,

Oh my gosh,

that was brilliant.

I get it.

I'm doing that.

So cool.

Awesome. And the way I know this is because I get

replies from all of my stories that I share there,

clip on my Instagram business page.

I never got that kind of reach on Snapchat.

I got close to 500 views and on my personal Instagram

stories, I get between five and 700 views per clip.

So let's talk about this for one quick second.

So, so obviously people on Instagram are on there with intention,

with focused intention where they basically want to consume content that

they are interested in.

And yes,

my life is interesting.

It's fun,

but you know what time is money and people don't always

have the time to be watching what Suby Zimmerman's doing,

but on my business account,

learning how I teach those tips,

I'm getting a lot of eyeballs.

And with those eyeballs comes more engagement on my Instagram feed,

which ultimately takes people to the link in my bio,

which is typically an opt-in to grow my email list.

Sometimes our blog posts,

as you saw yesterday,

Sue, and then frequently a webinar,

if we're partnering with someone or doing our own,

I know that was a long-winded answer,

but I thought it would be a good way to break

it down.

Yeah, no,

that's really good.

And I think the thing I want to underline and just

make sure to point out to our listeners is how intentional

you are with the two different sites.

Because I,

for one,

didn't understand how to do that really well.

At first,

your personal still has somewhat of a business presence to it

because you are a business person that's who you're facing the

world with,

but it's more personal behind the scenes.

Here's what your life is like.

And you can splatter in personal too.

And it's in alignment with your Instagram account.

Then when you go over onto the business side,

your account is all tips.

And so the stories aligned to it in a light,

playful, fun way,

but they're coming out with a business action or a learning

or something that is more business oriented than just learning more

about you to be the personality.

Exactly. And the key thing that you said,

Sue is fun.

And I always say entertaining if you're boring and your stories,

nobody is going to click through and watch.

So there's ways that we can set people up for success.

You want me to go through some of those now?

Absolutely. Okay.

If you're going to embrace Instagram stories and I hope that

you do,

and Sue,

we do have a blog post that you can link in

your show notes that will help people a lot.

We also have a Instagram stories class that some of your

listeners might be interested in and it's under $20.

I could send you that link later,

but basically these are the tips I want to go over

here. You want to understand how to look at your camera

on your phone as if you're talking to one person.

So that's the first thing.

Look at the camera.

Look at the camera.

As if you're looking at someone in the eye,

also having different angles.

When you're doing your clips,

specifically, your video clips.

So high to low bird's eye view,

low to high walking in and out of the frame,

using the very creative writing tools that we can go over,

understanding the stickers and how they can add value to your

account, which we can go over and using some of the

filters. So one of my strategies who is whenever I want

someone to listen to what I'm saying,

because when you first go into Instagram stories,

you have to turn up the volume on your phone to

listen to the video.

So you want to key people to do that.

So I always say,

listen up.

I do it in one of my three colors that I

use in the writing tools and the purple and I have

the filter be black and white.

So people know whenever they see a black and white video

of me talking,

they need to turn up the volume and listen.

So I'm conditioning my followers to listen up on the black

and white.

And I consistently do this when I do my stories.

The key word here is to be consistent with your story

and the way that you're storyboarding it and sharing it down

to what color tools that you're using,

writing tools and even the highlighter,

if you choose to use that.

So would you also say consistency in terms of when you

show up how many clips a story equals everything?

No, not to that degree.

So my tip is basically a tip that I teach in

however long it takes me to teach it.

And sometimes I will say,

you need to listen to the end of the day to

get the whole tip.

And then that way people come back for more of my

story. Oh,

but that's a good tip in terms of advising people that

it's not going to be over for it until the whole

day. So you've got to keep coming back.

Yeah. So I do that a lot and I've done a

lot of Instagram stories,

takeovers, which we definitely should talk about at the end,

dear, my clips.

I say,

if you're starting out to keep it under a minute,

cause people don't have time to tap through.

And if people aren't tapping through your whole story,

it's important to look and see where they're falling off.

So you can look at analytics on Arabic clip by simply

just tapping on the number of eyeballs on your posts that

will take you to the back end of your clips or

tapping on the avatar on the top left.

When you're looking at your stories,

looking at your eyeballs on your clips and your stories is

important, but most importantly,

so it's looking at who has watched to the end,

who is watching and consuming your content to the very end.

And often what I did at the beginning is I would

send an Instagram direct message back,

usually a video message because I'm comfortable on video.

And I would say,

thank you so much for watching my whole story.

What was it that you learned the most?

What tip did you like the best?

Tell me why you like watching my stories.

And so I got feedback from the people that watched my

whole stories.

Now, if you don't have time to do it,

you absolutely should at least put those account names in a

Google doc and know that these are people that you should

be engaging with on Instagram.

These are people consuming your content.

They might not be actively engaging on your posts,

but now they're actively engaging on your stories.

So they know you because they watched you,

they saw your tip.

Hopefully you integrated some of your own voice and video into

it front facing,

and you now have a touch point.

It's kind of like,

they now give you permission to reach out and touch them

again. Totally agree.

And even if you can only do a couple like that

personal contact that you do is so great and so impressive

that let's say you make a goal for yourself that you

can only direct message back two people a day.

Well, if you have people watching you regularly over the week,

over the month,

it gets to be more and more.

It's better than not Exactly.

So you can watch who viewed your story to the end.

And then also to the point of engagement and then growing

your Instagram account and ultimately your business paying attention to who

has replied in your story,

in your clip.

That Instagram direct message blows up for me daily as well.

So I get a lot of people saying,

Oh my God,

I love Mr.

Cody. He's so cute.

So there's that.

And then I get,

Oh my God,

that was the best tip I ever heard.

You're brilliant.

Thank you so much.

So I will go back and say,

are you going to apply this tag me when you do

again, keeping that relationship building,

Right? Let me stop you here before we move on.

I want to make sure we get back to making value

in your stories and give biz listeners.

All you need to do is watch what she's doing,

because I've told you this before Sue,

you are the most creative person in terms of the colors

and the way you're doing it in the way you're swiping

in your head,

coming in from the camera.

Everything that she's saying here she does.

But I have a really important question for you that jumps

in a little bit before what we've even been talking about.

You have 7,000

million followers.

What are you at now?

50,000 Thousand on my business and 48 plus on my,

Okay. So like I said,

trillions of people.

So it kind of would seem natural then that when you

start doing stories,

they are going to be people who will follow you because

they're following you anywhere you are.

So all you have to do is say,

go look at my stories and people are going to be

there. How does someone who isn't as well known yet get

people to come over to their stories?

Because what you've been talking about is once they're already there,

but how do we get them there for the first time

Now, it's that you're doing a story on social channels that

you like to be on.

Often on Twitter,

you'll see me.

I have assigned to,

it says hashtag Suby stories.

And so often on Twitter,

if I shared a really good tip,

I will say,

check out my Instagram story tip today and I'll copy and

paste the link to my Instagram account.

So people can click on the link on Twitter and go

right over to the Instagram expert and watch that story.

So I'll share it on Twitter.

I might even share it in one of my Facebook groups.

Like last night when I went live on Instagram,

I shared that I was going live and I got over

500 people on my live broadcast,

which is a whole nother podcast interview,

but announcing it on your social channels and what I did

for you today.

I don't know if you watched my story on experts.

I'm all about collaborating and introducing people to my followers who

are in my life in some creative way.

So for you today,

I basically did that angle.

I had the camera on Cody.

Everyone loves seeing Cody.

Like I can't even tell you how many times a day

people told me to have an account for him.

So Cody's my prop.

I said,

you know,

Hey Mr.

Cody, I'm having lunch.

And soon I'm going to be on a podcast with Sue

Monheit. Do you know her?

She has this amazing podcast.

So I showed them your Instagram accounts on my computer.

And I tagged you when you collaborate with other businesses and

you give shout outs in stories.

And a shout out in a story is just an ad

mentioned with their Instagram username.

They get a notification that they were mentioned in a story.

And so now my followers are going to be curious,

like, wait,

who's doing an interview and I'm in the gift industry.

Like I'm a creator.

I need to know who this Sumo and height is.

And so hopefully Sue's going to get more followers and maybe

even someone new to interview on your podcast,

because you know,

at the end of the day,

Sue, and you know this about me,

I know that the more you shine the light on other

people, the more the light shines back on you.

And I'm all about helping other people have more exposure and

more success in their business.

I mean,

that's what I wake up and do every day,

a hundred percent.

Yeah. So I walked the talk whenever I can.

And that was effortless for me.

That took me 15 seconds to Duke.

So are you going throughout your whole day then and figuring

out what activities am I doing and how can I then

build them into the stories?

Yeah, that's a great question.

So I know I'm not normal and I know this comes

really easily to me.

So I am that visual brain that sees opportunities just by

looking at life,

aesthetically colors,

lighting in a creative way.

And I do it kind of in the moment of the

day. So I'll wake up often in the shower,

I'll think,

okay. Do I have an idea for an Instagram stories?

But even before that too,

I spent my morning,

usually a good 45 minutes on Instagram in the morning,

answering questions,

engaging, and then I will see something like,

Oh my God,

that's brilliant.

I need to talk about it.

Or that's a great idea for a story.

So I will often get my creative juices flowing from other

people's energy.

And that's what I really want your listeners to know.

It's not necessarily what you're coming up with,

but someone else might have showed you something in a story.

It just sparks an idea for you.

And that often happens to me.

In addition,

yes, I look at my content calendar.

For example,

we have a launch coming up for ReadySet gram,

and this is a Instagram course for beginners who have under

a thousand followers who are new to Instagram,

who aren't necessarily making money on Instagram.

So I want to tease that launch.

And so I have been showing behind the scenes of me

updating the videos that are in the course and talking about

the videos and occasionally showing exclusive content that's in the videos,

it gives you a sneak peek and you're like,

wait, she has a course.

I didn't know.

She had a course.

What's the course name,

Oh, that's the module.

I want that module.

Where can I buy it?

But it's done in a very indirect way.

So it's very subtle and very playful and yeah,

and I've sold two courses through just showing the behind the

scenes. Nice.

So I want people to know that I am a passionate

entrepreneur, running a small business,

like many of your listeners.

I do have a team.

I have two full-time employees and four contractors and you know,

a team in the Philippines,

but I call it a small business because at the end

of the day,

that's what we are.

But at the same time,

I know because I have so much influence and I have

experiences. And most importantly,

I have stories as do all of you that you can

share in a way that will teach a lesson.

So let me give some examples to your audience,

because I know that you attract a lot of creators.

So for example,

if remind me of the woman up the street with the

yarn shop,

Olivia yeah.

Olivia. So she is the shop owner that teaches people,

not only how to knit and she does workshops and she

sells gorgeous yarn,

just simply doing a fun boomerang of her threading.

A needle is interesting on Instagram stories,

which by the way,

boomerangs like my favorite clips,

they're so fun,

but she could literally show us what life looks like.

The second she gets some shipment in the store and how

she merchandises it,

or maybe what she makes and how that yarn turns into

a product,

or maybe one of the behind the scenes of her workshop

and all the things that she has ready for people that

do the workshop.

Maybe she puts out bottled water.

She buys certain candy that she can tag from a store

up the street.

Like if you have a physical location,

tagging other businesses in and around your area is a great

way to grow your sphere of influence too.

And that's collaborative and that's building community as well.

So Olivia now has per shipment at pitcher six people in

a workshop,

Olivia so generous and nice.

I'm sure she bought water or maybe coffee.

And she had candy up the street,

she got candy and she maybe even gave everybody a notebook

to write notes.

So tagging those and showing that behind the scenes and geo-tagging

it. So here's the magic Sue on Instagram stories in the

sticker icon.

And if no,

one's seeing the sticker next to the writing tool,

you need to update your Instagram app.

But the stickers is where you can stamp the time of

day where you're located in the weather.

And you might say like,

who the hell cares about the weather or the time of

day? Well,

it makes for an interesting story.

If you're up at five 30 in the morning,

hustling hard,

doing your workout,

like chase Jarvis,

who I love.

He's like my favorite Instagram stories account to follow.

He takes you with him throughout the day.

You see what time he wakes up and you see when

he's done,

like hustling hard.

I liked that.

Yeah. I want to say something here before we get off

of Olivia and Jace,

because some of that stuff might look just routine.

And I think first off it has to be a mindset

that you're always looking for those opportunities of what you can

pull into a story.

And I would guess over time,

these ideas and these things come easier.

However, and this was one of my questions for you is,

you know,

you see people who are showing you a picture of what

they had for lunch,

or they might be getting close to something good.

And I'll call myself guilty.

I am no pro at this yet,

but it might be a picture of a book that they're

reading. That could be a really good story,

but it's all just blah.

Yeah. That's like Snapchat.

Like I don't want to see any of that.

It's boring.

If you show a book,

you have a book,

talk about why you love it or what you learn.

Don't just show the book.

Like, I don't care that you're reading a book and I

don't care that you're having a taco And this could be

where the boomerang comes in or like you've just been talking

stickers and I want to get back onto all those creative

things that you can do,

because I think the content is one thing.

It's how you visibly then show it is on hold and

other thing.

Yeah. So let's just stay on this for a second.

Cause there's a reason I'm going down this path here.

So with the stickers,

which is one of the creative elements in Instagram stories,

there are stickers that often when you tap it,

it turns into another sticker.

Sometimes three different stickers,

same thing.

Like now they have every day of the week.

So I love this.

So now I'm,

timestamping my story.

You know,

when a Tuesday story ends and when a Wednesday story begins.

So everyday I'm day stamping,

sometimes I'm timestamping but day stamping for sure.

Cause I want people to know,

Oh, that was yesterday or that's today,

especially when you're sharing content,

that might be time sensitive.

Like you're going live on Instagram live and it's today.

You should let people know what day it is.

But the location too is key because here I live in

downtown Boston in this building called millennium tower and I stamp

and tag the tower or I tag downtown Boston.

And I also use that as a geo tag on my

Instagram posts,

which by the way,

listeners, you get 79% more engagement when you geotag on Instagram.

So you don't want to geotag your house obviously,

but you can do a tag,

the city,

the town,

the state,

the country.

So I put a sticker and this restaurant across the street,

merchant restaurant,

like 12 steps across the street,

sorry, in the geotag hub,

which happens when you do that on Instagram.

And when they clicked into my geo tag,

they saw me,

they discovered me.

And they're like,

who is this influencer that teaches Instagram marketing.

We want her in our restaurant to do on Instagram stories.

So they sent me an Instagram direct message and invited me

for dinner and you know,

to competent.

And I'm like,

can I bring my husband?

They're like,

sure, drinks,

dinner, dessert,

$150 later.

Totally comped.

My husband looks at me and he's like,

can you do more Of this kind of stuff?

And That was the power of an Instagram story tags.

So tagging your location.

And I did it this morning when I got coffee,

I didn't tag downtown Boston.

I geo tagged the coffee shop.

So what's going to happen.

They're going to get a notification.

And they might say,

gosh, she lives really close to us.

Maybe we'll give her a free coffee for the week and

she can do something for us.

It's a way to start a partnership collaboration.

So that's the sticker.

Sue, let's talk about the writing tools because I know that

your audience is creative.

So I used to teach scrapbooking.

You guys.

So I'm like Instagram stories has all the things I love

except the glitter.

I don't have any glitter,

but it has the highlighter.

Just you wait.

Some of those stickers will someday explode to gutters.

Exactly. So the writing tools,

you have three writing tools.

You have the medium-sized Sharpie on the left.

You have the one with the edge in the middle and

on the right.

You have the highlighter.

And when you tap on each of those,

it turns white.

And that way,

you know what tool you're working in.

So you can also change the thickness and the fineness of

the writing tool.

Now I only use three colors.

I use purple magenta and blue.

Why? Because their colors in the Instagram logo,

I always want to stay top of mind as someone who

teaches Instagram marketing for business.

And by choosing these colors,

it's on point with the way my feed looks,

my personality,

my bright colors.

And it makes it really easy to know exactly what color

I'm going to be using.

So less is better here.

There's 27 colors,

but here's what your listeners need to know.

So when you tap on a color,

any color,

the whole color spectrum.

So you can have your own branded.

If you have a hex color.

Yeah, Exactly.

Now I believe that Instagram will eventually let you save that

hex color,

but it's not there yet as a feature.

That's what I'm hoping for.

Okay. So now we've talked about the stickers,

the writing tools.

Let's talk about the highlighters.

So same rules apply for me with intention,

with the highlighter.

I only use the magenta highlighter.

I don't use any other colors to highlight makes it really

easy. So when you use a highlighter,

it can add like a light effect to your clip.

Like as if there's lights turned on,

you can get super creative with the writing tools.

Let's just say that.

And I know that you've been following me,

Sue, so you see how creative I can get So creative.

I want you also,

I'm not sure where you're going,

but I want to make sure we also cover video and

hands-free video.

Yeah, let's do that.

And what I suggest that you do,

Sue, do you put visuals in your show notes or just

linked? I put links,

but I can put pictures.

You tell me what you want to do and I'll try

and make it.

It work well.

I will download my clip of me about you so that

people can have that link so that you can share that.

So video clips,

like we said are 15 seconds.

So often for those of you that are like,

gosh, I don't have the time to do this.

Any of the clips that you create,

an Instagram stories you can download and save to your camera

roll. And one of the features that I love and Instagram

stories that does not happen on the phone is you can

switch from front facing out and within the story,

you can't do that when you're on video on your iPhone.

So I'll do a 15 second clip and often I'll flip

the camera out.

So I'm talking,

but then I want to show you something that I'm looking

at. So that is awesome.

And you can do that whole clip.

Sue mentioned hands-free.

So when you scroll all the way to the end,

another recent update,

you can be hands-free now my buddies over at our con

Mount two,

if you can link up our con Mount and you can

find the links,

there's two items there,

handheld amount that I always talk about.

I don't know the item number,

but you know which one I'm talking about.

Cause you always see me with it and their new diva

ring. It's under $15.

And if you use the code to B S U E

B E you'll get 20% off anything.

And those are my two go-to items.

Whenever I travel,

I always have a steady place to put my phone.

So if I want to go hands-free I can just tap

on that for all you bakers and makers out there,

you can do something and use your hands and step away

and teach something in a really creative way.

When you're hands free,

you see the rainbow ring filling up and you know how

much time you have left till it's 15 seconds.

So you just need to keep your eye on the rainbow

ring as it fills up.

And it lets you know,

when it's ended.

Perfect. I have one point of clarification because I did not

understand this.

Maybe all you listeners did,

but I did not.

When you're talking about switching the camera,

you're saying you can't do it from your phone.

You can't do it in my regular phone.

Like when I'm on video in my camera setting on my

iPhone and I'm talking,

there's no opportunity for me to flip it When you're just

doing regular old video,

nothing to do with Instagram,

Nothing to do with Instagram.

Right? And so that's one of the reasons I love Instagram

stories, videos,

because I can create it and I can flip it.

And so often SU I use Instagram stories to create something

like that,

save it to my camera roll.

And I just might tweet it.

That's a super Ninja trick.

So anything more in terms of the tools and the creative

things that are specifically in the Instagram stories app,

anything else we should.

I just think your listeners should pay attention to holidays because

that's when stickers are released.

And I know a lot of your listeners are gift business

related, obviously.

So for Easter,

what's the next holiday coming up.

We've got mother's day coming up mother's day.

So I'm sure there's going to be mother's day stamps.

I love my mom.

Cheers to mom.

You're going to see roses.

Some other stuff.

Part of the fun is to see what other things they're

going to come up with.

Oh, I know no kidding.

It's like getting a new pack of stickers when you were

a kid at the store.

That's the whole story too.

Look what we have.

Exactly. I think that's good.

We talked about filters.

The filters in Instagram are not Instagram stories are not that

great. I talked about the black and white.

One of the things I want your listeners to know as

an into tip is that you can create something in any

other app and download it.

So Animoto diptych anything from Snapchat,

download it and you can upload it to your Instagram stories.

So I like everyone else loved some of the filters in

Snapchat. And so you can do that.

You can add a Snapchat filter in your Instagram story And

you can only access uploads from your camera roll for 24

hours too.

Is that correct?

But there are a few workarounds with that.

You can text yourself the photo or the video.

Just Duplicate the picture.

I've done that before.

Yeah, you can do that,

but you can,

if it's a video you can use airdrop or you can

text it to yourself.

Gotcha. So you can't access everything in your camera roll,

but if you reengage it into your camera roll,

then you have access.

Is it still you just swipe from the top and then

you can see what's in your camera roll.

Is it still that way?

So Do you have to tap on the screen and lift

up and now it's on the bottom.

Okay. Okay.

Gotcha. I'm getting re-energized to do stories better.

I'll tell you that.

Yeah. All right.

Let's talk about what takeovers are.

Okay. So I've had the pleasure of doing many.

I've done.

I'm going to name these brands because these are really good

brands for your audience to follow on Instagram.

So later media is one of them.

Social bakers with an S is another Adobe social media examiner.

Who else did I do recently?

I've done so many casual Fridays.

One of my favorite podcasters,

you know,

Tyler Anderson,

right. And buffer.

I've done buffer.

So these are all big brands.

So the reason I want to mention this is because it's

important to line up with other brands that can give you

new exposure.

So I love doing stories.

They loved having me do the stories because they have someone

entertaining their audience.

Oh my gosh.

So when I did laters takeover,

I got like 5,000

views. Oh my gosh.

It was crazy.

So what we do with everyone,

I listed,

I had to basically either sign a contract or just,

I had to get a password to log in as them

social bakers did something really smart.

They didn't want to give me a password there in London.

Totally understand.

We created a Dropbox folder and I sent them each of

my clips in order.

But not only did I send them each of my clips

in order,

I sent them a duplicate of the clip,

showing them exactly how I wanted them to use the stickers

or the geo stickers.

So they could do it on their end and they would

be hyperlinked.

So if I had sent them the clip with the geo

tag or the ad mentioned,

it wouldn't hyperlink.

If they uploaded it.

So they needed to do it on their end.

Does that make sense?

Got it.

Did you give them access to,

you Know,

I did it for them.

No, one's taken over my account yet.

I haven't done it for anybody yet.

No, one's taken over my Instagram account.

Oh, I thought it was always a swap.

No, they all wanted me.

They're like Sue,

we love you.

You're so funny.

So give biz listeners in case you don't know what we're

talking about a is when someone other than the account owner

gets on for usually it's a day.

So what Suby was doing is going over and actually hosting

her information on these other platforms.

So it's exciting.

It's a way to switch up,

introduce, share other people,

collaborate with others.

You know what else?

Yeah. That is interesting how they're giving you access.

Cause that makes sense.

Totally. For other brands.

Oh yeah.

They all created a special password for me.

And take note never,

ever logged back on with the same password.

That's setting yourself up for losing your password.

Okay. So the big question,

because all of this is fun.

We can hear it in your voice,

how much you like doing it.

What are you seen in terms of a business result with

this overall summary?

Oh my goodness.

So my sphere of influence has grown to new audiences because

when you do Instagram stories,

you can get discovered in the explore tabs and people can

watch your stories without necessarily following you.

They can stumble upon you.

Okay? So here's what everyone needs to know based on your

engagement on Instagram.

So if you're engaging in content,

that is just your friends and family,

they're going to show you more of that kind of content.

So coffee nails,

or making vacations,

yoga, all that.

If you're engaging on accounts,

meaning double tapping,

commenting, saving post you on accounts where your ideal customer or

client is hanging out,

Instagram will show you more of that.

So I often am found in the explore tab as a

story to follow.

If you're interested in Instagram marketing or small business or being

a creator or a solopreneur mompreneur I get suggested you're not

going to get suggested if you don't do stories.

Okay? So we've sparked the interest of some people check out

stories and maybe start doing them.

What are a couple of first steps that they should do?

Let's just make the assumption that they're already on Instagram.

What tomorrow could they start doing?

So they could start doing this story and you can always

delete what you're doing.

If you don't like it.

I say,

go buy some post-it notes and storyboard your story so that

you write it out.

Each clip is a post-it note.

And I actually did that when I took,

did an Instagram takeover,

I did a storyboard for social bakers because they wanted me

to teach six tips of how to do Instagram stories.

And I needed to tell them how many clips I was

going to do it in.

So I had a storyboard.

Okay. So number one is storyboard.

And so you have an overall message that you're sending,

then you storyboard.

How many sections,

what would you recommend in terms of,

for someone starting the very first,

Under a minute?

For sure.

Remember that each clip is 15 seconds.

So four to five.

Yeah. I mean,

you can do a story in two clips.

My daughter Laila at freshmen and fearless,

she did a two clip story.

It was brilliant.

She showed us a bird's eye view of her holding an

arc-on Mount with her feet walking.

And she said YouTube day and on the next,

in the next clip,

she had her headphones on with the mountain,

her hand and she gave a peace sign.

So what did that do?

She let you know she's on YouTube.

So now you go and check out our YouTube channel and

she's showing you that she's like creating videos.

So you're curious,

you want to know like what videos is she creating?

There's an intrigue.

You don't have to finish the whole story.

You just need to give value or just interest.

Perfect example.

Okay. So storyboard then actually create the stories,

right? Yeah.

Test around,

play with the stickers in the wording on at least one

of those clips.

Sometimes people just upload a picture to me that's a little

bit boring,

but if you're just getting started,

you know,

anything just to take the action and get started,

we can always get better over time.

I'm speaking to myself here as well.

And then I think what the third one would be maybe

Sue, correct me.

If I'm wrong is see,

who's watched and direct message back to one or two people

to start getting a flow,

going Direct message back.

If it makes sense,

like if you asked a question and you want to know

what their takeaway was not.

Thanks for watching my story.

If you just did a story,

it has to have context for sure.

Okay. Well what about when they're just starting?

If, if one of their friends watches direct message,

just to get the feel for how to say,

what did you think of that?

Did, did it give value?

Did you like it?

Do you want to see more of that?

Does that make sense?

Yeah. I mean,

obviously the message is different.

If it's a friend versus a business,

you're not going to do that necessarily.

It depends where it's appropriate.

I guess I'd say yeah.

Real quick direction on direct messaging.

How do you do that?

Oh my gosh.

So direct messaging is everything I always say go down in

the DM.

That's where all the action is,

baby. You and Gary V the same thing,

right? Oh my God.

I didn't know that.

He said that.

He says the same thing.

Yeah. I have not.

I've been listening to him lately because I think he gives

way too many call to actions in his stories now.

So yeah,

because the DMS is where the real gold is because it's

a one-to-one conversation now,

instead of one to millions,

when someone replies to a story,

they basically gave you permission to respond back.

And so now it's your move.

How are you going to respond back?

Don't start selling them some it's finding out more about them.

Okay. And then on the phone,

where is the icon to get to the direct messages,

to be able to send a message?

Oh, it's the same Notifications light up on your phone and

it's at the top,

right? Same notification place.

All right.

Give biz listeners,

just pull out your phone,

get into Instagram.

All the stories are up on the top.

Look at some stories,

follow Sue,

because you've got to see her level of creativity.

And I say overall entertainment.

I mean,

they are just fun to watch,

but it's a great learning environment.

At the same time,

you're going to learn more about Instagram.

I'm going to learn how to do Instagram stories and what

all the different tools can be.

And just follow by example with her and then play around

with the buttons because there is a lot available.

But once you start knowing this little place does this,

if I touch here,

it does this.

It's not really that bad.

It's not hard to figure out just experiment.

You're not going to really do anything wrong.

Right? Okay.

Before we wind up,

Sue, tell us what you have coming up.

Do a little self promo here.

Before I go into that.

Let me just direct your listeners to a couple places where

they can get free content.

Obviously on my blog,

we've got a great blog.

Sue B zimmerman.com

and articles about all and everything you need to know about

Instagram. We also have a YouTube channel.

So go ahead and subscribe because when you do,

you'll get a notification.

Every time I post,

which is typically weekly.

And then I want to invite you to my free.

And Sue knows about this.

Cause she's in it.

Facebook group called Instagram Results for business,

where I have over 6,100

awesome entrepreneurs in that group.

So those are all the free places to go.

We have downloads for hashtags.

If you have a hashtag headache,

I'm Sue B zimmerman.com/h

H more important and specific to this is our Instagram story.

So Sue B zimmerman.com/stories

with an S class.

That's what I mentioned earlier,

Sue, which I think your listeners will really appreciate.

Cause it's under $20 that really gets them going.

And then,

so I'm going to send you a link for all your

listeners to get our free 20 page guide that I want

to create a custom link for you,

which I haven't done that yet.

Oh, thank you very much gifts here for us,

everybody fabulous.

We all know now why do the Instagram expert to be,

if there are people here who are just listening for the

first time and didn't know you,

it is very clear.

You've given us such great information.

I really hope that we've convinced you.

I know,

like I said before,

I need to get better at doing this and I'm going

to integrate it into my days,

but there's a good reason to do Instagram stories.

It's not as populated a platform yet.

And the ability to get visibility in a creative way.

That's not salesy because I know we're all sensitive to that.

Exactly. One more thing.

I want you to do Sue for your listeners.

That's fun.

But after you finish what you're saying,

I was just going to say,

this makes so much sense.

So really don't just get off of this podcast and put

it aside and say,

yeah, that was fun information.

Pick up your phone,

pull up the Instagram account,

follow Sue.

And I'm not saying that to continue to get everyone over

to you,

Sue. I don't want it to sound that way.

Do you guys,

but I want you to do it just by way of

example, because it's the best way to see how to do

it. Well.

And so what else were you going to say before we

close? You know,

me? I like for people to take action.

So for those of you listening to this podcast and you

love it,

obviously if you're working out,

get off the treadmill or wait till after your workout,

if you're driving,

don't pull over Sue and I want to see a selfie

or a Deskie or something from you,

knowing that you listened to this.

And the way that I like to give people this challenge

too, is to have them at mention you gift biz gal,

that is your business Instagram account.

And add mentioned me,

the Instagram expert.

When you post on Instagram,

like a takeaway,

something visual that you can share with the takeaway and use

the hashtag Sue B made me do it because that hashtag

Sue has over a thousand people that took the hashtag Sue

B made me do a challenge.

And here's the thing that everyone needs to know when you

use that hashtag on Instagram and do this,

you'll be able to click into it and see everyone else

who took the challenge.

And there just might be your ideal customer or client,

right in that hashtag hub waiting For you.

That hashtag hub is so fun.

I remember the photo that I've put in.

I might've put a couple of things in there.

I'm not sure,

but the first one you,

I mean,

because you challenge people to do such fun thing.

So just even looking through that is a riot.

It puts a smile on my face.

I think when people listen to podcasts,

if you want people to take action,

you got to tell them,

I mean,

otherwise they're just going to consume the content and go on

their Merry day.

I want to see you guys,

everyone listening.

I want to see you.

I want to connect with you.

That's how we all grow our businesses.

Yes, Absolutely.

Thank you so much.

When you talk about shining the light on others and the

light shines on you,

that is absolutely what you stand for each and every day.

I really appreciate your coming on wealth of knowledge,

no surprise.

And you deliver.

Thank you.

And I know I'm going to be seeing you,

but I have to say it on behalf of all of

us. Thank you for your time,

sharing everything.

And may your candle always burn bright.

Okay, sounds good.

Where are you in your business building journey?

Whether you're just starting out or already running a business and

you want to know your setup for success,

find out why taking the gift biz quiz,

access the quiz from your computer at fit dot L Y

slash gift biz quiz or from your phone by texting gift

biz quiz to four four two,

two, two.

Thanks for listening and be sure to join us for the

next episode.

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