Ask me anything about Instagram with Later

February 11, 2021

Join Lexie Carbone and Nikki Canning from Later for a live discussion on everything Instagram. Creators of the Shopify Compass course How to make money on Instagram, the Later team will join us to answer all of your burning questions on how to be successful in building your brand, understanding new features and setting up your digital storefront for this social channel. Submit your questions in advance (here!) to ensure you crush your Instagram game in 2021.

Hello, hello, everyone, and welcome to Shopify compass. This is a learning platform built for you to take the guesswork out of entrepreneurship. I'm Samantha Renee, your host today. And I am joined by our guest, Nikki Canning Canning and Lexi Carone, four from later for today's session on ask me anything about Instagram as a subject matter, experts on the platform and creators of the Shopify course, how to make money on Instagram.

Nikki and Lexi are here to answer all of your burning questions about how to build a successful brand on Instagram and understanding the new features to setting up your digital storefront on Instagram. We have lots to cover today, so let's just get through a few friendly reminders before we get started. So you can sign into the chat to the right of your screen to participate in today's discussion.

And ask all of your questions as they come up. And we'll address the live submissions in the second half of today's hour. We also have two lovely support advisors in the chat today, Andrew and Sally. So if there's any Shopify specific questions, our team can support you with answers and links to unblock anything that's in your way. And don't fret, we'll cover a lot of valuable information today that you can revisit.

The other recording that will be sent out by email to those who registered after the meeting. And if, for any reason you missed a registration. We'll also share the valuable. Next steps of today's recording in our Shopify campus community forum. So a link will be coming your way via the live chat. With all of that out of the way, I am excited to introduce today's experts. Lexi is the marketing campaigns, lead at later and has been working with brands to build their digital and social presence for nearly a decade.

She loves staying, staying up to date on the latest tech trends and internet culture. Nikki is leaders editorial manager. She's worked in digital media in Dublin, London and Sydney and loves nothing more than hitting publish on a new post. When she's not writing blogs with her later team, you'll find her outdoors with her dog ahly and planning her next adventure.

Thank you both. So much for joining us. And welcome to Shopify compass. I mean, you're saying Thanks so much, Samantha, thanks, shopify, for having us. No problem. Thank you for not knocking. Thank you. Or happy to have you here. And can't wait to dig into a lot of our burning questions that we have for you guys today. I know for me especially, I am just eager to hear what you both have to say about Instagram.

A platform is always changing. So it's great to hear from two experts that have knowledge on the new ways to stay informed on what's right. And what's not on Instagram. So let me just. All right, so I'm just going to dive right into our questions here, so that way we can just get the ball rolling. So all right.

So first, I have from Olympia asking the best practices for setting up an Instagram shop integration. So there seems to be a difference between shop on Instagram and check out on Instagram and which stores make it into the Browse shops tab. So if this is a case, do you need to have a checkout enabled to appear on the Browse shop's tab?

And yeah, just general tips around the best practices of using the shop integration. I can jump in and pick up this one. Yeah, great to hear that everyone is keeping up to date with all of the new releases that Instagram has been sharing with us. I think it's been a crazy 12 months or so feel like Instagram has been holding some things up their sleeve.

And then because of COVID. And various different other things that we've been living through, they've just released everything. And keeping up to date with stuff is hard and knowing what the best next thing to jump on, especially if you're a small business. So Instagram shop is a great new tool that everyone should really start taking advantage of if they are merchants. What we're really used to seeing is like scrolling our Instagram feed and having brands tag their products with that little shopping icon.

And then you got to the top and you'd figure at the price and then you get to see more about the product. So Instagram shop takes at another level. So when you set up your Instagram shop, you are able to curate kind of a feed that then lives on your profile. So you get the very special. You shot button on your profile. So when you hit that, you then get to see all of the products that brand has that are fully Shapefile through Instagram.

And then from the Instagram checkout side of things, that's another huge thing that happened. I think it was about March. Not last year, the year before, and there was a test kind of segment where they offered it to mega brands. And I feel like it was like the Zara's of the world and revolve. And they all got access to check out, which is this super streamlined 2-step process that lets you kind of the product, click Buy.

And then it arrives to take your credit card details. Super easy shopping. So now that's been released to more brands and creators and that enables you to do that. 2-step click through your Instagram page and all of the products that you have on your Instagram shop. He's very dangerous. My favorite Instagram feature, though, I can imagine. So I guess just a question that it makes me think of in terms of like when you tag a product like so say you have your feed and you tag a product with like while having this shop tab, does it take you over there to continue with that same 2-step process?

Or is it only in the shop tab that it has the 2-step process in terms of checking out? So you mean that the new Explorer page that is coming up? Yeah so I know that you can tag products like on a regular post, but then you're saying that there's a separate actual shop tab for your page. Now So if I tag a product like I normally would in a post, is that still going to give me that same 2-step checkout process across the board, like whether they're shopping on the actual feed or whether they're shopping in the little shop part time?

OK, awesome. I guess I answer my own. That's great. Awesome So I'll move on to the next question that we have here. So Katherine asks, I'd love to know if it's in the planning that we will be able to tag our product impulse we schedule in later. And if so, when? When? what's your best suggestion for continuing to streamline post planning if we want to tag our posts in them?

Yes so I can answer this one. Unfortunately, Instagram has not released the future to its partners, yet. We really want it. All of our users want it. I promise. It's like top on our wish list. And when it comes, we will be all over it. But for the meantime, we do have some Hock's. So one of them is. So if we have two different types of publishing. So you can do push notifications or auto publish, if you do go the push notifications route, you can go in and use all of our features, like optimizing your captions and hashtags, get everything in there, have it all set, scheduled, ready to go.

When it's ready to publish a post notification will come up on your phone. And then you can go in and manually tag your products. That's one way to do it. Another way. If you do want to fully automate everything. We also have a tool Lincoln. So that's just the happy little Lincoln in your section. And we are we actually have an integration with Shopify. So all of your Shopify products can live in there.

You can take all of your products. I think it's up to five products per post. So that's another really easy way. Once you tag those products and publish your post, it'll automatically go into your Lincoln feed, and it creates a really nice tropical feed, really similar to what you see on that shop tag. Tap, tap, tap, tap there. So when you say that this sounds similar, but kind of our workarounds for now, that is great to know.

OK, great. So I will move on to the next question. !invisible!, let's see here. Is OK. I believe this is our next question. I've been told that using keywords in your profile name can help to boost the Instagram algorithm. Any tips on how to boost the algorithm to get more followers?

Lexi and I were just chatting about this earlier, but Instagram's kind of hint towards eskow future is coming to their search bar. So they have said that for certain things that they're going to start looking at keywords when you use the Search button. So if you are looking for shoes and you type in shoes, you'll probably see a lot of posts about shoes. But what they haven't told us about is where it's going to take that information from.

So if it's just hash tags or just your Instagram or just your caption, so it's worth kind of thinking about those keywords and making sure that you have those in mind with what your business is about and how you want to present your kind of key phrase or the one word or two words that sell what your business is all about to your audience. And then you'll probably find that those words naturally just start turning up on your hashtags and in your caption and probably in your.

So I wouldn't kind of jump in with a whole strategic approach to it. And it should feel really natural to just appear as part of your kind of content strategy and what you're writing about and what type of post you're sharing. So, yeah, don't worry about providing them into your. They're probably there already. And Instagram is doing all the hard work behind the scenes. Yeah, absolutely, I can kind of expand on to that one thing that Instagram has been really clear about is just how the algorithm works.

There's tons of posts floating around Instagram right now that kind of are alluding to like this helps the algorithm. And this helps the algorithm. And people are now, it's kind of just like this crazy topic right now, but they having really a clear. There are six factors that do affect the algorithm. If you are looking for ways to reach more followers or just throw your reach, it's really going back to that foundation of six different elements.

We have a really great blog post that outlines them and has a bunch of best practices you can implement to kind of not like to work with the algorithm. It's kind of will happen naturally from there. And just great content tend to make. And I think you find value in your audience is finding value and resonating with your content that you're doing everything right for the algorithm and they'll just pick up on it.

Yeah, so I guess that also just kind of doubles down on like maybe don't pay as much attention to the algorithm and really just pay attention to the quality content that you're delivering. So that people will just find you and want to engage with you. Yeah, it's a lot like classic OCIO I know. Like as I'm sure there's a lot of marketers on here, small business owners that have to know all of those things too.

One of the number one roles for CO is no keyword stuffing. It's like walk out. So the algorithm knows it's going to probably be the same kind of thing on Instagram. It's the same thing with when you're trying to kind of trick the algorithm. It's it really, I think at the end of the day, it does boil down to authenticity. Just doing what you want to do. Like you said, things will naturally be in your if that's what you do.

And in your captions. And the algorithm will catch on to that. All right, and you said that, you do have a blog post already that outlines this, right, so people can go and check out that blog post. That's great. OK, so can you update us on the latest features available to merchants on instagram? Yes, that might have some doubt.

Yeah, absolutely. I can jump in and cover the first one. So Instagram shop obviously is the big one on everyone's minds. So this is really just like that curated list of shockable products. It's accessible by that tab on your feet. So when you go to any sort of businesses profile that has shop enabled, you can shop it right there on their profile page, all of their products that they have tagged and their posts will be listed there.

So it's a really, really great way to just get eyes on your content. If you do have checkout enabled, that will automatically be within those posts. If not, there will be a button that says View on website, which is still a great way to drive traffic back to your website where you can make a sale as well. It is also linked into a couple of extra juicy features that Instagram has released kind of the last six months or so.

So one of them is Instagram. Instagram, live shopping. So it can be something like this, like you're on Instagram and you're here to promote your latest product. And I kind of think of it as like the tablet shopping or like the QVC of Instagram, where you're really able to just show off your brand new product and get to know your audience and show them how it works and demos. And then very handy at the very bottom.

It's this lovely little box that all of your followers who have tuned in can click to buy. And it's checkout Instagram checkout. So that's a really fast process. And that live could be just like 15, 20 minutes, a very quick demo, but it's made discovering a post. So simple. But you do need to have check it enabled for that. And then the other thing that checkout is linked to is shopping from creators.

So this is if you're a brand and you want to work with influencers, but you want them to promote your products with a shockable tag on their post, on their site. So if they're a creator that you work with, you can like approve them through your sassing. Instagram knows that you're in a working relationship. They can tag your products in their posts. So you're reaching a whole new audience group through that influencer.

But again, you do need to have check out for that one check that is only available in the US. And then one thing that I like to tell, like small merchants or like small businesses that are starting up, is that with Instagram checa, that can be a transaction fee of like 5% or I think it's like a certain amount per cost. I think it's like $0.40 to an $8 purchase price. And then also that Instagram would kind of handle all of the communication.

So you might miss out on some of that valuable data like emails that you might want to be collecting as you're growing your audience and growing your customer in that way. So those are kind of just two of the things to keep in mind with checkout. But it does open a whole kind of set of doors to promoting your products as well. Yeah so I guess what it makes me think of is even like accountability for the influencers.

So this is a way that you can directly see what led to sales through an influencer is what it makes me think of. Right, so so as they're purchasing, it just kind of records that it comes through them. And it still comes to your shop, just like it normally would. Yeah So it's kind of like direct feedback. So, yeah, it kind of it kind of goes and solves two problems. So, you know, making sales obviously being the first, but then obviously like what these partnerships just being able to track the success there.

That's also another question that it's selfishly leads me to is that I know that I've heard many things about even just what you guys were talking about in terms of, you know, the different things that you need to do to play nice with Instagram in terms of like frequency types of post those kinds of things. Do you have any advice on that?

Because I've heard recently, some people saying you need to post on your feet 5 times a week. And then you need to post on live at least once a week, and then you need to do three stories a day and that. And is there like a guideline for that in terms of frequency and where you're posting on these many different types of formats on instagram? Yeah, but I know that's a really good question.

You know, I the frequency is obviously one of them. It is part of that list of 6. That's in the algorithm time. I know is a big one. Obviously time just kind of like knowing when your audience is going to be online. This is my very, very sort of later plug, but later does have a really amazing feature that lets you see your best time to post.

So it's really helpful. Like it just basically takes all the data from everything that you posted and puts on these time slots into your calendar when your audience is most active. That's a really great way to just add that kind of goes back to just like looking at your analytics, seeing what's working, seeing what's not working, like there's definitely these six rules, but it's going to be a little different for everyone. It's going to be dependent on your audience.

It's going to be dependent on how they're reacting to your content. I always say, just like analytics, to just keep trying new things, see what works, see what sticks like, keep doing more of that, what's not working, swap it out. Obviously, there's so many new platforms and features on the app that sky's the limit. You can try. So many of your things. I know that's a little vague, but, you know, I have like, yeah, it's hard to give advice.

Every small business, it's going to be pretty different. I think that's the biggest key takeaway. Like at the end of the day, there is no prescription for this is what you do for your business. You have to figure out what your audience needs, what your audience likes, and like you said, it's going to be a lot of testing and seeing what works and what doesn't. So I think that's great advice to not if someone says this is the way to do it, is probably not the way to do it.

Like you need to figure out what works for you. Yeah, it is hard. You know, there's a lot of those posts going around, like I said, right now, where it's like I'm seeing them, too. And it's like Instagram said six DVDS a week or like no one. That's crazy. Nice that you have three or four times greater. But yeah, I just like to set the record clear. Instagram has not put out any of those specific numbers if you are seeing them on their feet.

So that is great clarity and pressure. No, no, no. One six to be a week if they can. If that old thing of like quality over quantity, like you can do one. Fantastic carousel post that could amount to like all of the engagement that you would have gotten across the week if you had something like 10 different single posts on your feet that didn't give much value or educate or inspire or so.

Yeah, quality definitely trumps. Yes all right. So the next question that I have here is I just started an Instagram account for my business. Where should I put my focus on questions? I think the big one for me is original video content. And I know a lot of you to Instagram that video, feel like really scary.

I watch my film. Do I think myself, do I turn up on a story? All of that kind of video questions can just feel very overwhelming. But real's is a real real's is a real potential, though no pun intended. But there is a lot of growth factors that are going behind the scenes and really especially for brand discovery a couple of days ago, Instagram, or at least like a carousel post on their creators page, which is a very good Instagram handle to follow.

If you're looking for like tips and tricks and Instagram strategy is that they said that they were going to be essentially demoting any kind of content that had a visible watermark from another social media platform. So if you are used to creating TikToks and then saving that and putting it on your real, maybe be prepared for a little bit less engagement, because Instagram has said that they're going to value original content that's created within the app, more so than anything else.

So really have the heart. Think about how you can do that for your brand or your business, maybe can be like the real time lapse or video demo and real jerone like 15 seconds long as well. So if you're used to Instagram stories, you'll naturally get in that group and plus then you can start repurposing it for stories or making a video post for your feed as well. So one video just doesn't serve one piece when real can be used into multiple different other content pieces.

So that would be a good place to start. It'll take a little bit of muscle, but you'll nail it was awesome. Yeah, I think another really good one is your Instagram. We also have a ton of really great resources, literally, just like on the Instagram bio, because it is searchable. You can put keywords in their Instagram search, will look at the name field and pull from there.

You can also include different handles or hash tags. And there. It's really meant to act like your business card, your portfolio, a lot of people. So your Instagram profiles the new homepage kind of going along those lines. There's, you know, you have a couple of seconds to grab a potential new followers attention. It's really important to do it right here. I think it's a great way to convert those potential followers into customers and just let them know what they can expect by giving you a follow.

I agree. Then they can buy such a valuable or your Lincoln specifically is very, very valuable, but then also in general, it really is that first impressions count. And it can often be the thing that people come back to when they're setting up their Instagram for the first time because bios are hard to write. So putting a little bit of extra grip behind it does pay off. Yeah, absolutely.

And now with the shot button being right there under there, it's like easy. You can drive right to your products. Like you said, the Lincoln bio, if you decide to use that of the shot feed or along with it, you want to double down, there's it really is just like a one stop shop and very little space, and it makes it pretty easy. Another thing, obviously, for all the merchants on here, you want to be including details like the contact info.

So your phone number, your address, things like that, making sure that there's easy ways that your customers can potentially contact you. The easier. You make it, the more likely they will be green. And then one more tip that I would not be in editorial if I didn't mention this is paying attention to your Instagram captions. So it can feel really tempting to just do like product post after product posts and tagging your products.

But the story that you tell about your business and who you are or the growth, the journey that you've been on as a small business, sales just as well as the product posts and people will get to know you and your brand and your stuff. And it's that kind of connection that people are going to get through Instagram that will make them just like long term loyal followers, loyal customers. And I think there's a really good study that I think it's like 70% of Gen 0 is try to purchase from a brand that has like an ethical mission behind it and are quite vocal about that mission on how they support it and how that shows up on Instagram.

So you could be missing out on a really big target audience. If you're not sharing what your personal business mission is or those causes that you work really passionately towards. So, yeah, don't be afraid to write a really long caption. Don't be afraid to turn up on Instagram stories or share that kind of side to your business. Yeah, I think it goes towards building those longer term loyal customer groups to. I love that.

I think it's a question that people ask all the time in terms of like, what do I post, what do I always want to impose? And I think what you said, there is so key in the sense of thinking about your story and not just thinking about it as one post, but thinking about how you tell that story over time. And the like, all the different places that you tell that story, you might be telling the story of about on your actual website, but then you take a piece of that to create a piece of content for Instagram.

And that about story can be a story that you use over and over again. And I just think it's so important for people to, like, take a step back and think about what is the story that you're telling and how many different ways can you tell that story. So I love that you said that. Awesome So I'm going to jump into the next question here. This is like kind of a little group of questions, more on tips for content creation.

So well, I guess we kind of did touch on this just a second ago, a little bit. But how do I keep my content fresh and interesting? Yeah, you know, I think you have to I think it's Christina gobodo who uses the content bucket analogy, and I like I really love it. She kind of has this, you know, these eight content buckets that she's always choosing from.

And that's kind of like a good way to start. And make sure they're always, always posting fresh content. So what I mean here is just going through things that identifying different areas that you want to touch on with your brands. This could be mission. One of those buckets could be products. One of those could be UGC, lifestyle quotes, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And as long as you're looking at your feet.

And you can visibly see those content buckets. Oh, this one I haven't posted in a while. Let's do one of those. It's really, really easy way to just keep things fresh and make sure you're switching it up. And their are Lifesavers while you are stuck in a rut and you're like, oh, it feels a bit samey Orav talked about the same thing for three pugs straight, like, how can I make this up if you have those content buckets somewhere in, like, a notebook or if you're organizing it, like in your media library a few years later, and you've just got product, bucket, lifestyle, bucket, quote, bucket, and then you're able to just lift and shift.

And exactly what you can post from there. So yeah, great. Actually having those guidelines that are such a good way to keep fresh ideas coming. So sorry. What was the name of the person that you said that talks about these buckets? I believe it's Christina gobodo, the influence that yes, she is the concept that everyone kind of touches on it, but I'm pretty sure she's much she has the megaphone with it. That's great.

All right. Awesome the next question within this was kind of like, where do you find inspiration for what to post? Yeah, I love Pinterest. I mean, it's like number one, you know, for a while. I felt like Pinterest content was getting a little stale. It was like something I've talked about with a team. And recently, I think genze is like all about Pinterest lately.

Like the content is so cool. It's like very similar to what I'm saying on TikTok. It's like making me review my entire wardrobe and just change everything I thought was cool for her notes. Yes, it's very, very cool. And then obviously, like just the functionality of Pinterest makes it super easy to, like, organize all of that info into different areas of that same kind of similar functionality with Instagram bookmarks tool.

That's like my personal favorite. I'm constantly bookmarking everything. My page is very organized. I have everything labeled by like travel recipes and so fashion, whatever. So that's also another great way to just kind of keep everything clean and organized and just be always collecting. And so as you go as you scroll organization pro just to have these bookmarks.

Yeah, Pinterest is a great line, especially because it takes you away from Instagram. So you don't get those kind of like tunnel vision of like this is what happens on Instagram. I and you can get some fresh ideas from a different platform. One of the things as well is that if you're creating original content, that maybe you want to like a standout post or you want to do a text on the carousel or something like that, take a look at apps like that.

And over the course, most of the templates that they create are these ready made, beautifully designed plug and play templates that you can just pop in your content. And it's ready to go. And then fully customizable with your brand colors, your style. But they are also on the pulse of what's happening in the graphic design trend. Sex scenes like graduated neon colors, like that old school photo kind of style, things that were coming back that that old tech like the little windows box that was there.

And you can just slip in, make it your own, put it on your Instagram page, and it's easier to kind of get inspiration when you're seeing with the finished product. Looks like before having to get to know Photoshop or in design. And I'm not that savvy and I totally rely on those kind of kambah over for that kind of thing. Yeah, we're all graphic designers. That work is so empowering you.

And I guess one other little Nugget in here in the same bucket of tips for creation, how do you think people can go about asking their audience for feedback on what they should post? Yeah, I can cover this one lately, I feel like the biggest trend is just like question. People are just like dropping the question sticker and they're kind of around that, like, ask me anything but brands like me to jump on this, too.

It's very popular with influencers. But like I think most famously, abdelhalim kind of started this with their transparency Tuesday. They had the series running. I don't know if they still do it, but I absolutely loved it. Every Tuesday, I think before every Tuesday, they'd stick the questions sticker on there. People could submit their questions. And then on transparency Tuesday, someone from the company would get on face to face, very personal and answer the questions like as they were like walking around the warehouse, showing off different things.

Sometimes other employees would hop on and it just like it made you feel like you were like in the office with them, like they cared about your questions. There's that like, wow, they took the time to actually answer this. It took them 5 seconds. I think that's an awesome way. Same thing with polls. Like I've seen a lot of businesses maybe like testing out two different fabrics or like what color do you guys like? The nail Polish brand.

I love always does that. And you can just click through select. It's kind of fun, really engaging. And that's just a super easy way to get feedback on the spot, like two birds with one stone content and you get your feedback. So you can just go build what they built. Right, exactly. That's I love that. All right.

Next question. Any tips for hashtag game? What's the ultimate number? Which ones do you include? What do you say? I have to say, is there, like how to use hashtags on Instagram, or make a hashtag strategy? Always performs really well, and we write about this on the blog, so much.

So that we felt like Ultimate Guides and strategy guides and how to send top tips. And we just can't write enough about it because we want to know the hash with good reason, because they are so useful for discovery. So I think when people ask, like, what hashtag should I use, it's one of those answers. It's like you've got to look to your individual brands and it can often be really hard because you're like, just give me 30 hashtags so that I can look and play into.

But the value of researching your hashtags first and figuring it the hashtags that are going to work for your brand, and then maybe even if you want to dig in even deeper and having a certain set of hashtags for your content bucket. So if your content buckets are like. Shoes, travel, inspiration and your dog, then you're going to have very different hashtags for each of those posts that you put on your feed to get in terms of numbers.

You've got 30 to play with in your caption and they can go in your caption or what we've noticed a lot of people like to do is put it in your first comment. So that your caption can stay nice and clean and easy to read. And you can really focus on the narrative or the storytelling or the format of your caption. And then you can put your hashtags in your first comment and you can schedule that with later as well. If you want to just get it out of the way, do your caption and your hashtags and your first comment.

There's plenty to play around with. You can split them between Caption First comment, but we recommend using some. You don't have to use all of them as long as they're valuable to your friends and the audience that you want to reach out to, just make sure you're including them. So is there any that you would say to, like, stay away from, like. I don't know, maybe the ones you like.

And this is just me saying this, but like follow for follow those behind me, so much of like Myspace say it's like that. I don't know if you did that, but like for like. Yeah, I was I will probably stay away from those. That was the first one that came to my mind. So definitely. And that's not like. Kind of related to growth, but it's not related to your brand and anyone what you do, don't them.

And then also just be really careful that you're not using a hashtag that's super general like sun or car. I love that one when I see a lot of TikTokers doing, too, but I'm now starting to see it on Instagram as they well use the hashtag of something like trending that is like nothing related to their content.

And they're just trying to like, hop on the trend, hop on whatever people are searching for. Something will accidentally end up on the page, I guess. I think this, too, is like very bad practice. Usually when I see a brand during a kind of like I don't know, like, you know, it's like the bad kind of growth hacking. I would say stay away from this, too, because likely if someone does find your photo that way, that's not what they're looking for.

So they're not going to be super interested. If you do manage to get a couple of followers from this, that might not be the best, but it's that quality over quantity thing. So it's going to mess up your analytics over time anyways. You're just going to get a bunch of followers that don't engage with you, don't buy, don't do anything. So it's just pointing out that for all the wrong reasons and some, is there any way to kind of, I guess, look at analytics, like to see, you know, who engages with hashtags and how often they're engaged with that kind of thing?

Yeah, so I think inside of your Instagram, inside that inbuilt analytics that you have to your account, you can often see like which hashtags are getting the most reach on your posts. So it wouldn't have been all of them. Like if you put 30 hash tags in, it won't tell you like the breakdown for each. But say if you use something that looks like you in soaps and then you got a ton of traffic from that. And it was it'll tell you how your reach performed based on that hashtag.

This is kind of a little hey, just if I this is going really well for you. So you can keep that on board. Yeah, that's probably a good one to keep an eye on. Keeping an eye on how many posts have been submitted under that hashtag. While that isn't like a personal like Instagram analytics dedicated to you, if you're seeing that there's like zero posts on that hashtag, probably not worth your time.

If you're seeing that there's a million plus also your content is going to get drowned out. So you can kind of gauge a little bit more on how you're going to perform based on the number of posts that have already exist under that hashtag race makes a lot of sense. OK, the next question that we have is as a smaller and growing merchant, when should I add an Instagram account?

Now? yeah, I think Yeah. As soon as you're ready to start setting up your catalog on shopify, if you don't want to set up Instagram shop, you can kind of go maybe a bit less well to say, if you don't want to dive into the Instagram side of it, you can totally use a tool like Lincoln bio, like we talked about that is still integrated with that Shopify catalog that you can pull right from.

But yeah, just as soon as you're ready to go. Yeah go Nab your handle. And if you're on the fence and handle. So where you can get it. Yes Yeah. So basically start yesterday gotanda. I think you get the idea. Go for it. Awesome all right. So on the report front, what kind of information or data should I be looking at to understand how my Instagram content is performing?

Good question. A great question about that, and I feel like once you get in here like, wow, you unlocked. So much knowledge that you didn't have before. And I think it can be a little bit overwhelming as well, that you've got likes and comments and reach and engagement and impressions and you've got to try and figure out which one is relevant to you.

So if you're established already on Instagram and you're now dipping your toes into reporting and just kind of tracking that performance week over week, month over month, maybe then you're going to do it every quarter or whatever. Feels like a good cadence for you. I'd say try and look at what your overall business goals are for Instagram. So if it's to do with just reaching new followers. And it's like a brand awareness activity, then you might want to just look at your reach, because then that's showing you how big your audience is going, especially with followers as well.

can keep an eye on your color account, really. But that if it's OK to do with sales, you want to start tracking your sales that you've made through your Instagram shop. But your engagement on your post is a really good indicator, too, because then that tells you what product posts are resonating best with your audience, which ones they're loving more, which ones people are jumping on and commenting and sharing with their friends and, you know, tagging their mom because their birthday's coming up like those when they're really important to keep an eye on.

And then the ones that don't really miss the mark are kind of low benchmark that will give you an indicator of what content doesn't really work either. So, yeah, try to align what data you're going to check with your business school. So you don't get too overwhelmed with everything that Instagram is telling you. That Nikki is our reporting queen. She I to thought of the numbers, and I'm like that, too.

I'm trying not to nerd out. I'm just like, oh, you've got this, girl. Just think about the numbers. No, it's huge. I feel like a lot of people just don't. Don't invest the time to realize, like, what data can do for you as a business owner, because at the end of the day, you have a story being told right there. So look there before you start just making decisions in your business, just look at what's actually happening.

So you can make informed decisions. So, you know, you can get really fixated on just one metric. Like if people are just chasing, like some measures, like eating more legs, then that isn't necessarily an indicator that the content has done its job. Like slaves are a really good metric to check on, because if you're a business, you're probably going to go through that stage of your product cycle where or like your marketing cycle where it's all about awareness and people are going to save that post for later.

So they might not purchase right there. And then, like, I'll come back to that on payday. So that's a really good one to check to. And that's completely different to your likes and people who get just like an instant double tap as they're scrolling, whereas save shows a really strong intent that they engage with the content and they love what they're showing. So you're showing them. So definitely try and not get too attached to just one metric in general and try and think about your goals.

Think about which ones tell you the best story. And then feel free to, like, mix it up and just be like that one didn't tell me enough. going to start looking at engagement or I'm going to start looking at impressions and you'll build a story from there. All right, well, that was a great. We're going to move into some of the questions from the live chat, so let me get in here. So I'm going to go with a question from Sarah.

So do you think it's a good way to do both teg products manually and add Lincoln bio, or should it or would it be kind of repetitive to have both of those? That's a good question. Question? Yeah. I mean, you know, you go first, and then I'll do my take. And you think about it more so.

So I think he could do both. So the thing about Lincoln is that it's kind of like a catalog of everything that you've ever posted, and it's there for anyone to see. So my dog is just running a tonight's webinar, but with Lincoln bio, you're able to kind of have that scrollable landing page, which relates to your whole feed, like all of the products that you've ever had.

It's a really good way for people to get a bird's eye approach of everything that you're about on your Instagram page. Plus Lincoln. It doesn't always have to go to a product page. It can, which is fantastic. But if you want to talk about, like your brand mission, you're about us. Maybe you're hiring and you want to send people to your careers page. And that's so much more of a story that you can tell through cambio.

And the clicks are the links that you're going to be serving people through that kind of clickable landing page. And it's all hidden secret and safe in that one little r in your. So I would definitely say go about. In Timbuktu. So I was going to say a lot of publishers love our lincolnville future. It's really cool. So if you are doing a blog post or like you said, you're about me, if you're running contest and you're like a contest page, let's post it on your site.

You can have all of the stuff in your Lincoln. It's not going to be just your products. But if someone is like looking at your post about your contest on your website and wants to learn more, but then goes to Lincoln bio, they will see all of those products there. If you are already using later, it makes it. So easy. It's literally just like a couple of clicks, your Shopify catalogs. And there is kind of like a might as well. I definitely don't think that could hurt that.

Yeah, that is great. That actually leads into a question from Gail on how does lincolnville work? And I guess I had a question about that, too, just in terms of it being, is it just based on, like your feed and what you've tagged and then it just creates that feed based on the tags or generally how does it work? Yeah, you've kind of summed it up really by accident.

Yeah, I think for anyone who doesn't need or hasn't started using the cambio, it's one of the tools that we offer as part of my scheduling. So that you can always make sure that everything that you post a feed post has a link to another destination. So that can be your product pages. If you have that integration with shopify, that is that capital out there, which is perfect.

And then if it's not. And you want to be, your publisher and you want to link it to a different website, that's also the option. So the way that it kind of builds it, it's like a mirror image of your Instagram feed. But every image is clickable and it will link to the link that you have chosen while you were scheduling. And you can also schedule, I'm pretty sure. So if you posted with later.

And you forgot to add in your link, you can go back and edit it and repopulate on your video feed. And then through later, you get a very special URL that gets slotted into your Instagram bio, that one precious link that you get to use in your. And then if someone clicks on there, they basically see a clickable landing page that looks and feels the same as your Instagram page, but opens up a world of opportunity to go on to different destinations.

Beautiful if you're traveling for someone who is a copywriter, obviously, this wrapped it up in a nice little bow there for us. Thank you. So so I'm going to move to a question from Diane. She is asking she says, I am trying to grow engaged followers for my online fashion jewelry business.

Is there a specific area where I can find businesses and people that I should follow that would be in my knees? Would you just follow fashion jewelry related accounts or would you move into fashion accounts as well? Yeah, yeah, that's a good one. Well, I would say, like, first, the Explorer page has gotten so much smarter over the last couple of years.

I think it was just pacifically at this last year. We've made a lot of updates to it. It's a really great way just to find people that are kind of talking about the same things you're talking about. One of my favorite ways to find, like, similar related brands within an industry is when you go to someone's page. So if there's like a jewelry brand that you really love, you can go to their page.

And when you think it's right, when you hit follow Nike. Correct me if I'm wrong, there will be a little drop down button and accountants will fall below. Like if you've ever followed anyone on Instagram, you've seen this, but related accounts will fall below. And typically people talking about those same things kind of posting really like Instagram has so dialed in, they will have the same aesthetics. They will have some very good at like figuring out like, OK, if this person likes this account, they're probably going to really like these accounts, too.

I don't know how they're doing it, but it's amazing. That's usually how I find accounts. But I want to follow just based off, like, OK, I really like this one. So I'm going to see what's related to this one here. And that is a really great way to discover new businesses that are kind of aligned to your core business. To one way, I think Diane asked if she should be focusing on like fashion brands as well as jewelry brands is maybe if she has already or maybe she hasn't, is looking at influencers and maybe their potential influences, dream influencers that you would love to work with one day, or maybe you're already working with influencers and have a look at who the.

They are following. And if there's like a nice, even mix of, like fashion and jewelry, then that's probably a really good indicator of your influences. And probably the audiences that follow your influences have that connection to both fashion. And what types of fashion brands and the jewelry brands as well. So that could be a really good way just to scroll through their follow lists as well. That that makes a lot of sense, the more creeping you do, the better you can dig through people's comments, you can dig through.

There's like there's like and like it. But it's a really good way to do a little manual search. OK, so let me move on to the next question. Here are Karen says, I've heard that now it's better to go with video posts and reels instead of picture posts.

What do you think? Who is a good question? I think I got a great question, I think with that new release that Instagram just shared about it, valuing original video content and putting a lot of effort behind, realize it's worth a shot.

It's worth trying. I realize seeing how your audience engage with it. And just kind of breaking free from what you would do on your grid because it doesn't need to turn up on your grid. So if you want to text to totally different types of content that you've never done before, do it on video, see how it works out. And potentially there could be a longer shelf life with that as well. That really will just keep turning up in the Explore page.

And if Instagram is putting a little bit of effort behind displaying that to newer audiences or giving them a little bit of priority across other different types of content to experiment. Yeah, I would, too, I would say there's not like I don't think they're weighing like photo versus video totally. But I, I do know that part of the algorithm is time spent on a post.

Videos are also a really great way to catch your audience's attention. So if you've caught someone's attention, made them stop scrolling, make them sit there and look at this video. Now, you've got that is totally playing into how the algorithm works. Video content is just really great in that way. Photos do have the ability to stop people in their tracks as well. But like Mickey said, there's lots of ways you can experiment with video now.

So it's kind of just like a no go for it sort of thing. Yeah, this kind of leads into another question that was asked from Maryland. Is there anything special one should be doing in reals? It says, I've been posting them 3, 2 four times a week, but I'm not getting very many views. Yes, I think it's at a time.

It is really difficult to nail down a formula of what works, and I do think it does come down to a lot of experimentation. But the good news is, if you're posting 3, 2 four times a week, you are racking up that content that is filling up your real speed when people visit your profile. So already you kind of look like you're established in the real feeling. My gut feeling is that we'll start to see real pickup in the kind of like viral views, the same way that TikTok did so.

And TikTok first came out. It was like, you can post a TikTok. And it would get five years. And then all of a sudden, it was like, whoa, thousands, millions of years, it went viral. And I think in reality, it's going to do the same thing. It's just there encouraging people to start getting on a real start creating experiment, do something different, be original with it. And then we could see that that shelf life of that reales might get a little spurt in a couple of months time.

It could get discovered by somebody else. It could get shared. And I think that's the kind of long term nature that is going to happen with Riedel's, that it's not just a one time post with like an instant, like, instant gratification. It's like there for the long run to serve your brand in discovery. So, yeah, don't get disheartened if it doesn't get a ton of likes all at the beginning or within the first hour, the first week, like it could still happen if there's time.

Yeah, I totally agree. And I just wanted to add to make sure to go check out that post that Mickey mentioned earlier. It's on the creators account on Instagram. They did share some kind of best practice tips for reals, one of them being removing that watermark from TikTok. If you are repurposing content, they kind of talked about like text on it, make sure, you know, everything will be clear. You need to see authentic.

They have a couple of little tips over there, so check that out to them. All right, next up, question from Ben, do if we can change the brightness, contrast or sharpness of a picture in the later app? I would like to be able to see how the picture will look like when using the leader app. I think we have in our photo editing box, so when you upload your media.

And then you can go to that start to schedule, they should be a little photo editing section where you can play around with filters. So, yes. And that should be able to show you what that's going to look like on your feet as well. All right, question from Jessica that touched on what we were actually talking about before in terms of like comments and saves.

Do you have any thoughts on the new rumors of change in the algorithm on Instagram that prioritizes saves and shares and lowers the priority of comments and likes, but clearly were not the only ones who both. Maybe I'll let you take it away, but I've been harping on this one. I know the algorithm rumors can be really difficult to like if you feel like you're being pulled in different directions.

And anything that you do is not what the algorithm wants. So you try not to listen to them. Like Instagram has been really honest with what they say impacts how posts are ranked. And yes, like saves and comments are really good metric to show engagement, but we've not heard anything official from Instagram. So until that day comes, I would just say continue doing what you're doing experiments.

Be authentic with your content. Don't try to hack it too much. And get those key factors. There is like frequency, timeliness, usage, the relationship that you have with your brand or your followers or people that follow you. So those six key factors will really just be like a checklist of being like you. I'm OK. And don't worry about too much about trying to crowbar your followers into performing an action because you think that the algorithm is going to reward you for it.

Just continue doing what you think works best for your individual little audience, and that will probably work as the best formula for you. So, all right, we have a few minutes left, I'm going to try to get in another couple questions. Here I am. All right, let's see.

Question from Craig, what is the best way to create content buckets within later? Excellent to hear that people are liking the contents bucket theory, and, yeah, I know that you go ahead. Right now, you got. I was thinking totally like our notes.

Future is really great. So as you're creating posts and later. But we do have a little noticed feature. So you kind of use this to label your posts. So if you want to say like, OK, lifestyle here and product here, I think that's a good way to look at it. Another idea. Yeah, definitely start thinking about it. Like when you look to your college or using that notes to be able to get a bird's eye approach on how many content buckets you're taking on board and frequency.

And then for your media as well on how I got two top tips that you can add a tag to your image. So if we use the content bucket as like she is. Paris dog, you can tag your pictures with that key phrase, so all of your then you can search.

And then all of your images that would have been tagged by that content book name will appear under it. And then you just click and drag it to your calendar. And then the other way of doing it is with stage captions. So if you know what your content buckets are and you're just filling in a writing mood and you're like, today I'm going to map out 10 different blog posts that are all about.

My dog, you can then save write out your captions, save them to your save little captions folder, and then when you're ready or you have the perfect image that aligns with your caption, you can just match the two. So your media is all saved. And tagged. You've got your notes on your calendar and then you've got your saved captions for when you're in like a writing mode and you just want to put everything in it and save it for later.

So yeah, I think those three will definitely help with organizing content. Focus on some. OK, we literally have two minutes left. I'm going to give you one more question just to close this out here. What this is from Christian. What have you seen is the most shareable type of post quotes or like what is it. That's like people share a lot?

Do you have a favorite to start with? Actually them? Yeah you know, I was going to say this is very unofficial. This is not going to come. This is just like what I see a lot of, I think that, like behind the scenes works really, really well, whether it's like, you know, packaging things or like I was kind of talking about the evaline series that they did where the founders or the employees were getting on screen any sort of like founder spotlit.

Like people love to know the story behind the brand. I really saw this blowing up during, like, peak pandemic. Like as things were shutting down, there were some brands that really took to Instagram to just like share what was going on. Like they weren't going to pretend everything's fine. And business is running as usual. But they, like, took pictures in their house with their messy desk and their kids running around. And people love that.

Like it's relatable. It's real. You're not behind this, like, very polished Instagram filter that it's kind of like the past. Yeah, I think those kinds of posts are great, and they should absolutely continue on post penderecki as well. Yeah, definitely. I think those are such relatable posts and people really get to see the human side to it. My favorite type of content that I think gets a lot of states and a lot of shares is anything that's educational based.

So carrousel post that kind of educate you on any kind of topic. It can be like your. Like product journey, like from concept to shelves, or it can be where you source your products from. And that on a carousel post or anything else that you feel like you would like to share more information with your audience with just gets a ton of engagement.

And I think that's a really good kind of thing to try and see if your audience likes it. So I think that. To finish this off, I totally agree, because I there's so many of those carrousel posts that I have saved, like I need to learn this more later. So that's awesome. So I just want to say thank you so much to both of you for being here with us today. And for those who are watching live, you'll receive an email with a link to a recording and a summary of the links that were shared in our live chat.

Please take a moment to complete the survey in the emails. We'd love to hear from you on what you're enjoying or what you'd like us to do more or less of. So we'll continue today's conversation over in shoplifts community forum with a link that will follow in our chat. For our specific thread, please bring any remaining questions that you have there.

And I also encourage you to share your thoughts and stories with your fellow Shopify merchant community and leverage one another's learned experiences to help you develop and grow your business. Thank you so much for joining us. And we'll see you back next week.