Instagram can seem like an impenetrable vortex. But it doesn’t need to be. With the right advice, you can optimise it, building strong communities for your ag business and ultimately, sales.
But, how do you do that without spending an advertising cent?
Wright Social Founder, Heidi Wright, spoke with Zach Benson, Founder and CEO of Assistagram – an organic Instagram marketing agency, and the man behind famous Instagram account @zachvacay
Generous with his knowledge, he shared his best advice on how to grow on Instagram (without spending a cent), taking his experience from working with global brands! Let’s dive in. There’s plenty of take aways for applying to your ag growth strategy on Instagram.
Heidi Wright Zach, so good to have you with us.
Zach Benson Thank you for having me, I’m excited to be here. Absolutely.
Heidi Wright Now we’ve got a bit of a treat here, because Zach has actually prepared a presentation, which is how to grow and monetise your Instagram to 50,000 followers in three months. Whoa! I’d never think that was possible, Zach! which opens the conversation of how celebrities get to 100,000 followers plus. We think maybe they know something we don’t, or maybe they’ve just got this following because they’re a celebrity and everybody knows them. Is it possible for the everyday ag business or individual who wants to grow their profile to actually get to that sort of following?
Zach Benson Yes, it’s all possible, and it’s really about your network that you create with other influencers. So, when you find other leaders and influencers in your niche, in your industry, and you’re able to offer them something, whether that’s money, or whether that’s a win-win exchange, you’re going to be able to grow your account. So nowadays, 2020, it’s a lot harder to grow. You can’t simply just post and grow your page, you have to have a network of people promoting your page on their timelines, and that’s what drives growth.
Heidi Wright Gotcha. Wright Social is doing a test at the moment where once we’ve posted a post to our client’s feed, we’re going and networking for a straight hour after that, and creating activity engagement on that post, which then feeds the algorithm to say, “Hey, this post is popular, show it to more of the right people”. So, it’ll be interesting to see if that little activity actually helps with the coverage there, because many years ago, Instagram, there was a lot of hacks. People would do follow for follow, there was automation tools. All of that stuff, now we can’t do it because Instagram picks up on that and it’s crazy about protecting its user experience.
So, let’s jump into some of those things that we can do that lean into the Instagram algorithm, that work with Instagram as opposed to getting caught out with a shutdown account or being seen to be using bots, and Instagram picking that up and penalising us. Let’s jump into some of that stuff.
Zach Benson I’m going to go through this quick presentation, just so you have the materials and a foundation to start with Instagram and learn how to grow the right way. So, I’m going to be covering everything from growth, engagement, groups, hashtags, a little bit about content, and then how you can create a network of people to grow your page. And then you can email me your Instagram account handle, and then one of my team members will audit it for you, and this goes for everybody, even people who are listening to the recording or reading the blog post, you can just simply send an email, you can get all these slides, and you can get our growth hacking guide. So, everything that we’re covering today plus a lot more, that’s free for you guys, and we’ll be able to help you out. So, I think that’s probably going to be the best and most valuable
Heidi Wright Zach, I knew you’d bring a tonne of value here, so thank you.
Zach Benson I just want to start off and tell you a little bit about my story. So I was born in South Korea, and then adopted by my parents in Iowa. So, it was hard for me, because one, I looked different. Here’s this Asian kid growing up in the middle of the Iowa cornfields. And two, life was hard for me because I had a speech impediment. And so, I couldn’t say the letter R until I was in my 20s. So, I went throughout school never talking to people and I never participated in class, and I got really bad grades, and so life wasn’t looking too good for me until I found dance. Dance just became my passion, my fire, something that I was really good at, and I took dance all over the world. I was on TV shows like So You Think You Can Dance and was winning competitions and taught in over 50 countries.
So, life before marketing and this Instagram stuff was dance, and all was good until I hurt my back, which ended my career. I had to have a couple of surgeries, and the doctor came in and was like “Zach, I don’t think you’ll ever be able to dance again. You’re hurt very bad and you’re going to have to find something else”. And so that was that moment in life where I was like, “okay, what do I do?” I was at rock bottom, no Plan B. And so, the same friend who got me into dancing called me up and was like “Zach, I know you’re depressed, but you need to check out Instagram, there’s a big opportunity here, like me and my brother are making a tonne of money”.
And so, I invested some money, $10,000, and bought an Instagram account, and then we used that account to grow other people’s accounts and did shout outs. And fast forward to today, I have a 230 million network on Instagram. We’re working with some of the biggest brands in the world like Ritz Carlton, Robert Kiyosaki, the Rich Dad Poor Dad guy, Russell Branson, the founder of Click Funnels $100 million company and a lot more people.
So, I’m excited to teach you guys today and just have some time with you, and I want to teach you how to growth hack Instagram.
So, let’s go ahead and kind of dive right in. One of our accounts is going viral, it’s got over 14 million views, 20 million impressions. So, we really know what we’re doing, and I want to share all of the same secrets that we’re using for our accounts and then also our clients’ accounts.
So today, I’m going to be teaching you three things. So first, I’m going to be teaching you about Instagram SEO, how to rank for different keywords that people are searching for, and how to use engagement groups to explode your content and get seen by a lot of people. So, there’s a massive, massive opportunity here and I feel like the attention’s shifted from Facebook and Twitter and some of the other platforms to Instagram. So, if you guys aren’t really taking it seriously, now’s the time to do it so you can be ahead of the game and not be left behind.
So really quick, just organic reach impressions wise, Facebook versus Instagram. Instagram has a lot more reach than Facebook, so there’s still a lot of organic opportunity there with this strategy, so I’m going to teach you that today. There’s now about 2 billion active users on Instagram. 700,000 people use Instagram Stories every single day. A lot of businesses, a lot of people are monetising their services, and also their products, all through Instagram. So, I’m going to be teaching you guys how to create a funnel, and get people opting into your email list and subscribing to your newsletters, because the other opportunity here is email marketing.
Alright, so let’s go ahead and go on to secret number one. Now, on one of our beauty pages, right? We have a 220 million network. So, we have accounts that are 3 million followers, this one’s 300,000 followers. And this is what’s called a repost account. Okay, so a repost account means essentially all we’re doing is simply reposting other people’s content onto the account, giving them credit, and making it go viral through engagement groups. Okay, so the trick here is my username is glamourideal. Now, the name of the account, instead of putting the name twice, glamour ideal twice, I’m putting in glamour, makeup, beauty, three key words that I want to rank for. We’re ranking on the first page, you know, out of almost 2 billion users. So, when people are searching for those things, we’re hitting the first page. So, think of this as kind of like Google, right? how everybody’s wanting to do Google SEO, and get all these backlinks and do all these blog posts. What we’re doing here is helping you optimise your account to get seen and make it searchable.
Heidi Wright This is great, and we did a little bit of training on this with the keywords as well. If we want to rank for female glamour, would we therefore need to have the keyword be female glamour without the spacebar?
Zach Benson You can use spacebars as well, spacing’s fine.
Heidi Wright And you’d still be able to rank for female glamour, it wouldn’t rank for female, glamour, like you’d be trying to compete on female as well as an individual keyword?
Zach Benson Yeah, well, so that’s a good question. You’d be competing for both.
Heidi Wright Okay, because I find sometimes when we try and put a few keywords in our profile that can sometimes look a bit off, it doesn’t look as nice and within our brand when we try and put too many keywords together. So that’s good to know. It’s a bit of a balancing act, then.
Zach Benson Yeah. So, here’s another example, if you guys are at your computer right now, go on to the Instagram app and pull up my Instagram account, @zachvaycay. And @zachvacay is a repost travel account, right? So, I’m reposting other people’s crazy travel content onto the page, giving them credit, and that’s how we grew it to the to 76,000 followers now. But it’s for free, I did not spend one single dollar growing the page.
So, the thing that I want you to see is, I can put travel in nature on to my profile, so you edit the profile, in the name section, instead of putting your name twice, put three keywords that you want to rank for that’s related to the type of content you post in your industry. Okay, and the guides that you’re going to get explains all of this stuff even more, so don’t worry about if you’re not getting it, or you don’t know how to edit your profile and do this stuff. I have step by step instructions that will teach you guys how to do this and get started with Instagram SEO.
The next thing that I want to teach you guys is how to build a simple funnel. So, if you guys are at your computer, and you’re on my page, @zachvacay or you’re on your phone, and you pull up my name @zachvacay, you’re going to see I have one link. So, it says “learn how we travel the world for free”. Now, when people click on that, it brings them to my Forbes article. And so, my Forbes article is all about how millennials use Instagram to travel the world for free. And then inside the article, it’s all value, you know, like Instagram growth tips and advice. And if you scroll down to the bottom, you’re going to see it says “free guides”, where if you want to learn more, you can click.
So, if you clicked on the link, “learn how we travel the world for free down arrow”, that’s step one. It brings them to my Forbes article, this is touchpoint number two. Touchpoint number three is when they click on the free guide at the bottom of the Forbes article. And what happens is, when they click on that, it brings them to my chatbot, my Facebook chatbot. So, everything is automated, I’m not doing this by myself, I’m not having someone on my team do all of this stuff.
And so, when they get to my chatbot, it’s like, “Hey, I’m Zach. I see that you want my free guide. Where do I send this to?” and then they type in their email, and boom, it’s on its way. And I say “but by the way, if you want to join my free Facebook travel group, click join now, because I’m going to be sharing more advice and more wisdom and drop more knowledge on you there. And so, I say, do you want to, yes or no?”
And just by this simple funnel, these simple sequences, I’m getting like maybe 30 or 40 people to opt in every single day, just from my personal Instagram accounts. Okay, so that’s huge. That’s huge. And so not only am I building up my chat bot subscribers, 90% open rates on chatbots, but then I’m also building up my email list. And that’s where the opportunity is on chatbot and building your email list, because then you can build more rapport. And you know, people don’t usually opt in and buy things and sign up for your services until they trust you and they feel like that you can actually deliver what you say.
So, we can talk a little bit more on how to get free local press, and how to get on radio stations and how to get on TV because I have a training on that, too. But I think it’s really important for you guys to build a solid brand, because that’s how you differentiate yourself. When you’re known for this, then it’s like, you’re going to be the go to person. Everyone’s going to use you.
Heidi Wright Yeah, exactly, branding is so important, particularly when we look at business to business, because we’ve got 200 odd million users visiting a business account every day, and there’s a huge marketing opportunity there. So, I feel like these strategies that you talk about, these aren’t just for B2C, these can be applied to B2B, we just got to think about how we tailor the content to speak to our customer. And often it can be a longer funnel. So, as you pointed out, the messenger bots, and the email lists, they can all be injected into a B2B campaign. It’s just the content that’s different.
Zach Benson Yeah, it’s really about your content. And with really good content comes growth, and then also, really great content gets more opt ins, leads and sales. So, I mean, content is everything. And once you get that content strategy dialled in, then you can set up this marketing funnel stuff and you can drive traffic.
Heidi Wright In fact, before we jump into the hashtag stuff, tell me, where are your sources for getting viral content? And do you have tools that you use for that?
Zach Benson So actually, my company is Assistagram, think of it as your own virtual assistant just on your account grinding on it every single day. So, we have straight up human power. So, we don’t use any apps. We don’t use any tools. But how I find this content is I’ve trained my team to basically go on to the Explore feed. So as soon as you open your phone, and you click on Instagram app, Instagram shows you what they think you’re interested in based off of people you like, people you follow, things you comment on, it shows you that type of content. And so, the whole goal is to land on that page, the Explorer feed, the homepage, because when you’ve done that, you’ve pretty much gone viral.
But what I’ve taught them is to basically find these videos and these pictures that kind of have viral potential. I get them to find it before it’s actually gone viral and then repost it onto my repost pages, and then we make it go viral through engagement groups. But really how I find that content is through hashtags and Explore feed. And hashtags is what we’re going to be talking about next.
Heidi Wright Awesome. That’s awesome. All right, I’ll let you keep going.
Zach Benson You want to use hashtags because it makes your content searchable, right? So, if you don’t use hashtags, your content won’t really be seen. Okay, so think of hashtags just as like Google, YouTube search engines, right? You search for something, and then content pops up. Now, I see a lot of people using hashtags the wrong way, because a lot of people are using these hashtags that are super generic, like that have hundreds of millions of posts on them. So, if you type in real estate or travel or agriculture, they have millions of posts on them, especially travel or real estate. So, the chances of you actually being seen are like zero, because too many people are using that hashtag.
So, what I suggest is start with really basic generic hashtags related to your business. So, for example, agriculture, or in my case, I’ve big travel brands, so it’d be travel. And then Instagram is going to show you all the related hashtags to that mega hashtag. So, when you open up your Instagram on your phone and scroll to the right, you’re going to see all the related hashtags, and you can scroll left, and can go up and down. And you can find hashtags that have a smaller number of posts on them. And so, what you want to do is you want to make maybe four or five different hashtag sets with 20 to 30, hashtags in each hashtag set, and you want hashtags that have maybe 10, to 25,000, posts, you know, 25 to 50,000, 50 to 100,000, 100 to 200,000 posts on them. And what you’re going to do is you’re going to mix them up, so you’re going to have, maybe four or five hashtags per group. And then that’s going to equal one set, when you have 20 to 30 hashtags.
And then you’re going to create a new hashtag, set with a different group of keywords. And what you’re going to do is when you post, you want to put maybe a couple of hashtags in the description, like the caption, and after you post that piece of content, you want to put the rest in the first comment. So, you copy and paste the hashtag set for that post and put it into the first comment, and that makes that piece of content searchable.
Yeah, and so that’s really, really important, because then you can have a chance to hit the top post for that keyword. So, if you find a hashtag that has maybe 100,000 posts or 120,000 posts, and you hit the top nine posts for that keyword, that’s a lot of traffic to your page. And so that’s going to help you guys get more potentially more followers and business, just by using the right hashtags. And, of course, you have to play with it, you have to rotate them and see which ones perform the best, see which ones give you more engagement and maybe give you more followers. And you’re going to find like a winning set of hashtags.
So hashtags still do work. It’s just you have to find the right ones and find and work on growing your account and increasing your engagement on your account xo that every single day you can rank for all of these different hashtags and keywords that people are using and people are searching for. And if you do that, you’re going to start seeing some results. It’s not going to be like super insane results. Like it’s not going to grow your page thousands of followers just from one post. I mean, that can happen if you have a really viral post and get maybe like, let’s say 80,000 likes on a picture, right? I mean you could gain 5000 followers from that. But think of this as more of like a slow and steady approach. And as you start using more hashtags, you’re going to start to see more followers trickle in.
Alright, so now that we’ve talked a little bit about SEO, and hashtags, the last thing I want to talk about talk about is the engagement groups. Okay?
Heidi Wright Before you get going on this, this is what I really loved about your presentation in Bangkok, where you talked about the engagement groups, and it’s something that I would love to harness in this particular group, if anyone’s interested in the Get Customers for your Ag Business group, is to actually start our own Instagram for ag instapod. Because I think that could be really powerful and it can act as an experiment for everyone in the group to see if what you are going to present to us right now can be put into action and get results. I just wanted to put that in there.
Zach Benson This is where all of your energy and time should also be focused on. I mean, maybe not yours, but an assistant or someone to do this and grind on it and work it every single day, up to a couple of hours a day, because it really does make a difference. I mean, this engagement pod, I mean, it works across all platforms, not only Instagram, on Facebook. Like, think about a post, Facebook shows you posts that you’ve posted maybe two years ago, or five years ago, and you get these Facebook memories. And you can click on that memory and it’s going to bring up other people’s comments and bring up that post. And if you simply comment and like maybe a friend’s comment that you missed and forgot to like and comment on, it’s going to hit the algorithm so that that piece of content is going to be on your feed again, and people will be seeing it again.
And that’s one of my tricks. Because it’s hard to create some really good content all the time. You guys know that. I mean, it’s very time consuming. But maybe you have a few posts like that you really just rocked, and that you really loved and did really well. I would go back to some of those posts and reply to comments, because that’s going to get you more views and likes again, which will then bring you top of mind for people. It’s all about being Top of Mind, right? It’s even if on a post that’s a few years old, people see that. And so not only Facebook, LinkedIn too.
So engagement groups, you have a lot of different engagement groups, but the one that I’m going to be talking about is the direct message group, DM group. So basically, this is all in the direct messages, your direct message inbox. What happens inside these groups is you find it’s you and like 14 other people. And so you get 14 other people to all like and comment, you’re all liking and commenting on each other’s posts throughout the day. So anytime somebody posts, you drop a link to that post into the group, and you stay “posted”. And what happens is, everybody likes and comments on that post.
So I would call this not really organic growth hacks, but more like semi organic stuff that you have to do now, if you want to be seen. And what happens is when you get enough likes and comments coming in in a short window of time and over a long period of time throughout the day, that’s what hits the Instagram algorithms, and boosts you on to the homepage and boosts you on to the top posts for these keywords that people are searching for. And that’s what’s going to get you guys engagement and exposure and discoverability for your content and for your business.
And so how do you find these groups? Or how do you get into these groups? Or can you create your own? Yes, there’s a lot of a lot of different ways to get into engagement groups. You can hustle your way in, you can be the initiator, you can create your own groups, or you can actually pay to be inside these groups. So, what I did when I first didn’t have a lot of followers is I reached out to these accounts that had bigger followings than me in each niche. So, travel pages, I had fitness, I had fashion, I had beauty, I had food, a bunch of different pages. And so, I reached out to the big guys, to the big pages, big players. And for each page, and what I said is “I love your page, I love your content. I see that you’re growing really fast. I’d love to be inside some engagement groups, because it looks like you’re in a lot, and people have told me that engagement groups at, where it’s at. It’s what everybody’s using to grow these days, because it’s super hard. I’d be willing to pay you like $5 or $10, for each engagement group you can get me into”.
They have people that come and go, and these engagement groups have rules. So, if you don’t follow the rules, you don’t like everybody’s content, and you miss some posts, they’re going to kick you out. So that’s happening all the time. So, I knew that and then what I realised was that a lot of these accounts that had millions of followers on them, were run by high schoolers and college age kids. And so, to them making a quick buck was cool. And that’s how I created my network and got into all these groups. So yes, you can, you can pay your way in. You can pay other key players or key companies to get inside their groups, you can start a group with them, you can pay them for shoutouts, to promote your page maybe on their timeline or on their Instagram story, there’s a lot of ways that you can do this if you’re willing to invest a little bit of money.
The second way is to just take initiative and create your own groups. So, basically reaching out to your friends, people that are in the industry, people that you’ve maybe follow, and create your own Instagram engagement groups. And so, I think that’s a good place to start. And it’s really effective. And even if you get let’s say somebody who has 100,000 followers, and you have 100 followers or 1000 followers, getting a comment from them, is huge, right? The algorithms go crazy, because they’re like, “wow, you must have created some really great content”. And when you get that, it’ll boost your content to the top. So, I definitely recommend that you guys start using engagement groups.
Heidi Wright So inspirational Zach! Tell me the top three things people get wrong when they’re first starting out on Instagram. For me, it’s not having a content strategy, not being clear about their target audience. So, have you got those top three things that you see common all the time where you go “Oh, if only they knew better?” What would those three things be?
Zach Benson Yeah. There’s a lot of dos and things that people do and don’t do every single day that either helps her Instagram account or doesn’t. I really say the biggest thing is just not posting consistently. Because a lot of people are afraid to post, they’re afraid of rejection. They’re afraid of what people will say. What will people think? Will they think I’m stupid? Will they think I’m dumb? Am I annoying this person with this content by posting more? The answer is no. People are consumers. People love to watch, people love to click and people like to like, and so you need to start. I challenge everyone to start being more of a creator and not a consumer. Instead of just scrolling, be the person who’s actually putting content out there and getting seen.
I see a lot of people just not being consistent and I also feel like a lot of people feel like Instagram has to be like this, like the picture of the Maldives and all these beautiful things. No, this is one part of my brand. But what I tell people is talk about stuff that really hurts, talk about when you overcame a sickness or overcame an addiction, or you lost your job, or you had to fire an employee, or you quit your nine to five to go for your entrepreneurial dreams. Be open, be vulnerable, and be authentic. And if you’re able to put your content out there, and go on podcasts, and get press, and get on local TV and so on. That’s really how you’re going to pique people’s interest. Find people that will resonate with your story, your mission, your service, and gain new customers. Content is everything.
Heidi Wright I couldn’t agree more with being authentic and being vulnerable, possibly with your story too, because people don’t want to hear from those that have a specific script. They want to hear you from the heart and where your authentic story is coming from. And there’s no better person to tell that, than you, and people interested in what you have to say. So, I totally agree, it’s pushing some people out of their comfort zone. But if we can get over ourselves, we’ll find that our businesses grow and we can connect with more people in an authentic way. his has been great.
One last question. Kirsty White has joined us. Stories versus the feed? Where should we be placing our most effort?
Zach Benson You’ve got to do both, because two is always better than one. So, I say bare minimum, post at least three times a week on your main feed. And stories, don’t think of any of this as just stuff that you have to do. Just as you’re simply living life, capture the moment, talk about it, when you have a thought that enters into your mind, write it down, post about it, go on live. So there’s not a clear answer to that. But I mean, obviously when you guys are using more of the Instagram features, and you’re being consistent on the stories and the feed posts and IGTV, and going live, Instagram is going to reward you with bonus points and growth points.
And so what you need to do is do the little things that seem to make no difference at all in the act of doing them, but when you do them, and you do them every day, they compound to bigger results. So, you may not see it now, but if you do it for a month, or you do it for 90 days, you’re going to start to see some changes. So that’s what I recommend.
If you guys are interested, go to our website, ask us questions, text us. I’ll like all of your accounts, we can audit for free, you get the growth hacking guide. I’m happy to answer any questions that you guys might have about this Instagram stuff. I know it can be tricky and confusing, and you don’t know where to start. But just like anything, you’ve got to start somewhere. And I feel like there’s a lot of opportunity left here and I think you guys can really see some amazing results for your business.
Heidi Wright Yeah, that’s brilliant. You’ve added so much value, more than you know. I can’t thank you enough. So, thanks again, Zach. It’s been awesome all along.
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