Listen to the full episode HERE!
[Transcript starts at 1:00]
What is up y’all? Welcome to another episode of FitBizU. I’m your host, Jill Coleman, and today I wanna talk about Instagram because things are a changin’, so I wanna talk about Instagram in 2023 and sort of what I would recommend from a personal brand perspective to keep in mind as this platform is consistently changing.
Now, you know, I think about this from the perspective of. You know, demographic perspective. So for example, if you are maybe a little bit of an older demographic, maybe you’re like forties, fifties, sixties, chances are you’re probably hanging out on Facebook. And you know, we still have our presence on Facebook.
JillFit is on Facebook. Um, and we started there. Of course. If you’re in that like 30 to 40 range, chances are Instagram was like your hub, it was your home, it was your favorite thing. That was definitely me. Instagram. I got an Instagram I think in late 2012, maybe early 2013. Um, and you know, I consider like 2017, 2018, 2019, sort of like the golden age of Instagram.
It was like really easy to get a lot. There was like, at one point I was getting like consistently eight, 900 likes on each post. Not that a like is, you know, at the end of the day it’s not like a, it’s not an end all be all, but it was easy. It was like, throw up an image, write a copy, write a caption. Super easy.
Right now the barrier to entry is getting a little bit higher. Of course, you can still do that. There’s still room for that. I still see people having success with just putting an image up and having a caption. It also depends on like what. You know what your people like and where they like to hang out, but chances are, if you’re my demographic, I’m 41 years old, that a lot of your people are on Instagram.
Now, if you’re in that, maybe your twenties and teens, you’re definitely more on TikTok and YouTube and stuff like that. We can talk about that here in a second, but I think it’s really important to realize number one, Why the app is changing. The app is changing because it really is recognizing, number one, that people have a lot more, uh, attention grabbing information coming at them at all times, right?
There’s more apps, there’s more platforms, there’s more, uh, emails in their inbox. There’s text messages are getting right. There’s the inputs that they are receiving on average is so much more. So, I don’t wanna say the attention span is going down, but it it, but it’s just more competitive for attention.
Does that make sense? So really, I don’t think the attention span is down. The, the grab for attention is so much more than it’s ever been, so there’s just so many more. Is there more people on Instagram than ever before? There’s more people on TikTok never before. More people on Facebook and then ever before.
And it’s changing to capture people’s attention faster, and it’s realizing that it can keep people on the app for longer. When it’s just a constant stream of entertainment. So it’s entertainment, maybe it’s a little bit education, maybe it’s what we call edu-tainment, where it’s a little bit of entertainment, plus you learn a little something.
But the number one reason why most people are on these platforms, including something like TikTok, is to just check out, right? For escapism to be able to, uh, relax and, and it’s really weird to think about that, but like scrolling, it can be relaxing, right? For a lot of people, it’s like a way to check out maybe at the end of the day to sort of decompress things like that.
They’re not looking to work too hard, you know? So at the end of the day, Instagram is recognizing that TikTok is having a lot of success with this shorter form video, this punchier video, and that’s capturing people’s attention faster and keeping them on the platform for hours, and that at the end of the day, any, any social media platform, that’s always their goal, right?
That’s always their goal is to keep people on the platform for longer. So everything they show to you, the entire algorithm is based around keeping people on the platform longer. So think about it from that perspective, right? The dopamine hit that you get from watching a, I don’t know, a funny dog video or, or watching a little standup comedy clip or, you know, learning something new, right?
This little dopamine hit that you get is just like sprinkling the dopamine in. And so it’s changing because it’s recognizing that TikTok is having a lot of success and, and some of the things that they are doing is to be like TikTok, which means for you that. If you wanna continue growing on Instagram, that chances are the barrier to entry is gonna feel a little bit higher.
I was just talking about this actually last week with Danny J, uh, who’s my podcast partner on the Best Life Podcast. And she was just like, yeah man, it’s taking forever to post now. And I was like, yeah, it really is. And I think for some people who maybe jumped on reels quickly, like earlier, and they were just kind of like doing the trends, they just got good at like anything else, right?
Any skill. They just got good at just doing the trends, right? Writing the trend, audios. Making a little clip, making a little, and Shante, uh, the Movement Maestro actually has a really great, I think it’s an evergreen webinar on reels, and I think it’s called Reels U, I would definitely recommend going to her site, themovementmaestro.com, and checking out that if you’re really interested in reels, because she does a lot with that in terms of like, What should go in the actual video versus what should go in the caption and things like that, and in the utility of reels.
But it definitely is a higher barrier to entry, right? You can’t just throw anything up. And I remember like 2013, just, I dunno, a picture of like a coffee mug, right? Or the book I was reading or something didn’t have my face in it. And so realize why the app is changing. And then second piece of that is realize that you only have two choices.
You can either complain, or you can keep showing up right? At the end of the day, those are really the only choices if you want to continue to grow and continue to reach your potential audience using this platform. Now, we’ll talk in a second about how you can get on other platforms, but if you wanna keep using this platform, you have to play the game.
You have to keep showing up, and that means that you gotta figure this out. Now again, I just told you barrier to entry is high. I actually really like that even though personally I don’t like reels. Like I’m not, I’m, I hate, I’m that person who, when like watch one of the friends like watch this video. I’m like, how long is it?
Like, I just hate And all my friends know that they like never send me videos cause I barely, if it’s like longer than seven seconds, I can’t watch it. I’ve just never, never been like that. I’ve never been a YouTube person. I’ve never liked to watch, you know, just not my vibe. But some people absolutely love videos and.
For me personally, because I’m not a consumer of ton of video, it has felt a little bit challenging for me personally, but at the same time, I also like it because it’s going to be a little hard because it’s gonna be tough, because it’s gonna challenge me, not only me, but everyone in new ways, which tells me there’s an opportunity there.
A lot of people are not going to rise to the occasion, and a lot of people are not going to figure out how to make this work for themselves. A lot of people are going to tap out because the barrier to entry is higher. I was joking with like, you know, the Maestro. I was like, you just basically have to be a videographer now.
It’s not that you have to be, but you have to figure out how to do it yourself. Like how to do something that feels good for you. Like I know myself and I’m, I’m probably not, I love dancing, but y’all, I only like dancing at like a wedding. Or like after I have a few cocktails, I’m probably not going to be lip syncing and you know, pointing at things and dancing.
And for some people that’s fine if it’s their personality. For me it does not. And so for me, I’m gonna have to figure out ways to make it work for me. I am probably out of all the different medium. Like written content, video content, audio content. I’m probably the best at written content. And so for me, my captions are where I sell a lot of the stuff.
And a lot of people aren’t even reading captions, like maybe 10% of your audience or people who see that post read, even read the caption. But I have to figure out, can I do carousel posts that have a lot of words in them? So just taking the caption, breaking it up, and putting it into 10 slides as a carousel post.
Can I, uh, do maybe a video super easy, like gym video, maybe me working out, doesn’t have to be highly produced, and then put some words over the top of it, right? Maybe I have a tweet. I love Twitter because it helps me like get my messaging a little bit more succinct and so I can take a little tweet.
Throw that up on top of a video. Now I’ve created a reel, but I’m still playing to my own strengths. So you really have to look at it like, what’s authentic for me? Ask your friends and family, like, you know, if you were thought about me like doing reels, what could you picture? And they might be like, oh, you definitely will do the dancing reels.
Or, oh, you’ll definitely, you know, do the lip syncing or you’ll definitely like, it needs to fit your personality. That’s the key is figure out a way to do. That resonates for you and because for me, I like tweets. I like written content, I like little motivational clips, little, you know, truth bombing type stuff.
I need to figure out a way to make that work for me. The second thing is figuring out if you do need to invest in more video equipment or even someone to help you with video. So for example, on our team we have Courtney. Shout out Courtney. She’s gonna be producing this podcast episode. And she sometimes, if I’m in a launch or something, I’ll be like, Hey, could I send you like a longer talking head video and you can cut it up and just put the captions over the top of it.
And she’s been, she’s done that for me and she does a great job with that stuff. So do you need to find someone who can maybe help you with some of these things? If you wanna do talking head videos at this point, it’s non-negotiable. You need to have captions, right? You need to have captions on those videos, and then who’s gonna do those for you?
They could, you could do ’em yourself, obviously. Uh, I think you could use something like InShot to do it. I think I forget the one that we used, but you could definitely use something like InShot. Uh, and you could also just use the app itself. Uh, a lot of people are doing that where, like on the Instagram app, they’re maybe talking into their story now.
You can make stories that are 60 seconds and then they’re using the caption. To caption those videos, saving them, and then uploading them as a reel. Make this easy on yourself. All of that to say do your best. If you wanna stay on the platform and you wanna continue to grow organically and reach your audience and build trust with your audience, then stay on the platform and make it work for you.
Now second piece of this is maybe you need to get off the platform in somewhere else or stay on the platform or go somewhere else as well. Now this is why thinking about diversifying your platforms, and I gave this challenge to my FBA students, uh, a couple weeks ago, or maybe it’s a couple months ago, with things changing.
I was challenging them for, okay, for 2023, what’s gonna be your. I don’t know what’s gonna be your vulnerability pr. We call this a vulnerability PR something where you’re like pushing your vulnerability a little bit. You’re pushing your fears a little bit. You’re trying, you’re like leaning into your edges a little bit more.
What is it gonna be? Is it gonna be a podcast? Is it going to be YouTube? Is it gonna be TikTok? Is it gonna be, shit? I don’t know, Pinterest? Are it gonna get back on blogging? I thought about maybe going back to blogging. It doesn’t have to be all of them all at once. But think to yourself, where are my people hanging out?
Right? Maybe it’s fucking LinkedIn. Maybe this is the year you master LinkedIn. Where are your people hanging out? Where’s your audience hanging out and how can you connect with them and do the best on that platform? So maybe this is a challenge for you. Maybe I’ll just give you this challenge right now.
I would challenge you to pick one other platform besides Instagram that you’re willing to double down on this year. Now, again, you don’t have to be perfect with this, especially if you are learning this platform like TikTok or YouTube or something like that, right? The learning curve is gonna be higher, but I challenge you to pick at least one other platform, social media platform that you double down on this year.
What’s that gonna be? It can be a podcast, which is technically not social media, but it’s good for lead gen. The second piece of this is you have to continue doubling down on your email list and or your SMS list. So SMS does like text messaging. You guys are probably seen this, maybe you even have some, you get some text messages, maybe even from me or someone else.
Now we’ll talk, we’ve done whole separate episodes on SMS. You can actually just go to Google FitBizU SMS or text messaging and you’ll find the episode. You can listen all about that. At Jill Fit? We do both. Uh, we have at Evergreen Ads happening all the time to bring in new email leads. We give them great value.
We nurture them for a number of months. We do things like wait lists, we do lead magnets. We do all sorts of stuff to continue building our email list and nurturing them by the way. And we also have an SMS list, and it’s really important that, especially if you’ve got had fast success with Instagram, I know a lot of people came on Instagram and they got a lot of one-on-one clients from Instagram.
You have to start getting your audience off of Instagram. And get them somewhere else. I know that this is hard. I know that maybe you’re thinking to yourself, ah, I don’t wanna learn that tech. It’s, you know, why do I need that? I’ve gotten clients online. I can just DM with people because the space is changing and I don’t want your visibility to get so low.
That those people aren’t even seeing your stuff anymore. Get them off Instagram, get them into your email list or SMS list so that you have number one. You own that, right? You own your email list. At any point, I can go to my email autoresponder or use something called Active Campaign. Go to Active campaign, and I could download in a CSV Excel spreadsheet.
Every single email we have in there. And I have those emails. I can do anything I want with them. I can, people opted in, by the way, that’s, that’s why I say I can do anything I want with them. People had to actually opt in, so I have their permission to email them. I can take it to a different autoresponder. I can, you know, I can send out emails to individuals from my own personal email.
Like there’s a lot of things you can do with that if you need to. The second piece of that is, number one, you own it, and number two, you have their attention. So while the inbox. Is also , probably more saturated than it’s ever been. People are a little bit more protective of their inbox, so oftentimes they will maybe unsubscribe to things they don’t wanna see or like junk or whatever.
But if your shit is so good, your emails that you’re sending your value, The stories that you tell, the, the way the content that you’re giving away in your emails, people are gonna stay on that list and you have their attention. We can literally see on our end, you know, I sent out a hundred emails. We know 40 of those people.
40 of those a hundred people open this email. Like we have that intel. We know exactly how many people are seeing our emails, how many of them are opening it. And so if our open rates are lower than we want them to be, we have to do something we can troubleshoot that. We’re like, okay, how do we get people opening and reading these emails even more?
How can we give more value? How can we nurture these relationships? There’s a lot of things you can do when you get people off of social media and get them into a platform that you own that’s super, super, uh, important and last. I will say this because the space is changing, because things are different.
You have to iterate or die, like at the end of the day, if you wanna be on social media and use that as a part of your brand, you have to play the game. But here’s the deal, you have to also detach from the outcome. So for example, when I said, Hey, get on, you know, a different platform. Maybe it’s YouTube, maybe it’s TikTok, y’all, your YouTube and TikTok videos are not gonna be good at first.
Like any new skill, like when you got on Instagram and it wasn’t good for a while, right? Same exact thing. You have to detach from outcomes. You also have to detach from outcomes on Instagram. You know, things are changing. A lot of my clients would be like, my views have been down. I’m like, it’s happening across the board.
Right. It’s happening across the board in general, there’s less visibility. You know, you might have someone you’re following who’s like a hundred thousand followers and their post has like 400 likes. Like, that’s normal now, right? That’s normal. Now. That wasn’t normal a couple years ago. So detached from the outcome, it’s not just you, it’s not because you’re doing something specific to make that happen.
Now, of course, you always have, you know, ways that you can increase the value of your content. You can make your stories more engaging. There’s other ways to get uh, engagement. Um, but you have to detach from the outcome. If you’re seeing your numbers, your views, your likes, all that stuff go down, realize it’s not because you suck.
And I think it’s so easy to just buy into that and be like, oh, this is so bad. And you just start complaining and you start blaming the algorithm and you feel helpless. And that’s what’s really hard about something like this. And I will say there’s a part of this situation that you are helpless in. You don’t own this platform, right?
It’s not the, the Instagram platform. You don’t own that. They can do whatever they want. It’s a free platform. So if you feel helpless, That’s valid. But there are a lot of things you can do that are still in your control, like trying to figure out how to improve your content, how to get your engagement up, even if it’s just a little bit.
And then of course, you always have control over your mindset. You always have control over being able to detach from that outcome and just say, you know what? It is what it is. I’m gonna do my best. I’m not gonna read into it. I’m just gonna get that shit up. And to me, my mantra is post and move. I’m just post and move.
Like I’m at the point now where I don’t even look at my. I just don’t like, to me, it’s just another rep. I’m like the I, I hope that a couple of the right people who need to see this post, see it at the end of the day. That’s it. Which is why try to look at this from a long game perspective. You know, I know sometimes the likes and the comments and the engagement, the saves and like all the metrics can feel so immediate and so important and so urgent.
Like, I only got seven likes, I only got 17 likes! Like it just feels so big in your head. Remember, as your, uh, body of work grows, right, as the more reps you have, the more posts you have, it’s like a tiny little, it’s one of thousands of posts you’re gonna have in your career. It’s not that big. It feels really big right now.
But as you build your body of work and get more posts up there, like, I don’t even remember some of the posts from like last year. I was like, oh, remember I wrote that? So remember, try to have some perspective and if you’re gonna stay on the platform, number one, figure out how you can play the game that’s authentic to you.
Number two, detached from the outcomes. I think that’s really big. And then of course, let’s try and get people off social media. Let’s get them into other platforms and little vulnerability PR for you. What are you going to master this year? What one platform are you gonna master this year to start diversifying?
Good. All right, y’all. That’s it. Hope that this resonated, and if you are not on the wait list yet for FBA Fitness Business Accelerator, please go ahead and add yourself. We’re gonna be launching that very soon, and we only launch it twice a year, and it is my six month beginner to business course. It is our signature, signature offer.
It’s where all of the best stuff goes. You can go to jillfitfree.com/fba-waitlist. That’s jillfitfree.com/fba-waitlist. Everyone on the wait list gets early information. There’s obviously no obligation to be on the wait list, but you will get early details as well as an exclusive discount and some bonuses, so keep eye and eye out for that.
Go ahead, add yourself, and we are coming up on that very soon. A y’all, that is it for me. Thank you for your time and attention, and we will see you on the next episode.
