The Social Focus

Hey friends! Thanks for tuning in to another episode of Instagram for Business with The Social Focus! Today is a solo episode and Ang is sharing four ways to create Instagram Reels with ease.

We've heard it in our community and we have heard it in our dm's... how can I create better Reels? How did you do the with Reels? I don't know where to start with Reels! I hate Reels! WOAH! OK, let's take a deep breath and start with some basics.

1. One of the first things you can do to get started with Reels is a little research... how do you do this? Well, you need to take some time and see what others are sharing. This is a great way to to gather inspiration, find great (and trending) audio that you feel you could make work for you and your audience. Save the audio and from there, start hashing out a plan.

2. Don't just record and post. One of the easiest ways Ang finds to create Reels is to take clips or snippets. Record in Reels or even through Instagram Stories and save the clips to your camera roll. That way you can come back to it later and or back those clips for later. These are great for transitions, storytelling and for before and after videos.

3. Take some time to piece your clips together. Ang loves to use and editing app like VideoJoiner and or InShot to piece the clips together. That way you can edit and trim the clips, speed them up, slow them down and or add different fonts and or music from your phone. This really helps create a seamless video with more intention.

4. We've said it before and we're going to say it again... batch your content! A perfect time to batch your reels video could be when you're feeling really creativity, have some time do dedicate to it; or like Ang, when you're having a really good hair day! Ways that you can make this easier is record some in one room and then move to a different room. Get outside, switch your wardrobe, put on a hat, etc.

Of course, the best advice we can give when creating reels is to have a plan, make sure it is still resonating with your audience but also, just get started! Trust us, it gets easier over time!

Check us out on Instagram @thesocial.focus 

@angela.s.doyon and @natcaronphoto 

JOIN INSTAGRAM FOR BUSINESS NOW! 

(the online course and community where you learn to scroll less and sell more!)

We love and use Buzzsprout to host Instagram for Business Podcast and they have made it easy and seamless (plus their customer service is by far one of the best!)

This site contains affiliate links to products. We may receive a commission for purchases made through these links.

Today we're taking you inside our private membership course and community, Instagram for Business! It's a sneak peak as to how we run our Q&A sessions and in this episode we're chatting all about the benefits of creating carousel posts in Instagram.

Do you have a question you'd like us to answer in an upcoming episode? Submit yours to [email protected] and include your Name, Instagram Handle and your Question!

Check us out on Instagram @thesocial.focus 

@angela.s.doyon and @natcaronphoto 

JOIN INSTAGRAM FOR BUSINESS NOW! 

(the online course and community where you learn to scroll less and sell more!)

We love and use Buzzsprout to host Instagram for Business Podcast and they have made it easy and seamless (plus their customer service is by far one of the best!)

This site contains affiliate links to products. We may receive a commission for purchases made through these links.

This is a treat! We presented for the ladies at Hello Monday (all about branding, styling and photography) and of course, all things Instagram fro Business. And in this episode, we’re sharing the Q&A portion because of course, caring is sharing!!

From presents and professional photos - “should I or could I be using a filter or preset over my professional photos?” That’s a great question and can depend on your photographer but it’s always a great conversation to have (especially ahead of time if you have a specific look you’re going for!)

What about if you have a large product and you’re having trouble snapping photos? We’ve got you covered!

How do you story tell for your products? This is a goodie! Because of course storytelling helps inform your audience and ideal customer how your products can fit into their lifestyle!

We hope you love this Q&A style episode! And if you have an idea for an upcoming episode, please email us at [email protected]

And be sure to check out @HelloMondayCa on Instagram!

Check us out on Instagram @thesocial.focus 

@angela.s.doyon and @natcaronphoto 

JOIN INSTAGRAM FOR BUSINESS NOW! 

(the online course and community where you learn to scroll less and sell more!)

We love and use Buzzsprout to host Instagram for Business Podcast and they have made it easy and seamless (plus their customer service is by far one of the best!)

This site contains affiliate links to products. We may receive a commission for purchases made through these links.

Can you believe it? 100 episodes of Instagram for Business! We cannot thank you, our listeners, enough for all of your support and feedback on our show! When we began creating these episodes we couldn't imagine that we'd be celebrating 100 episodes so soon, as well as hitting over 50,000 downloads so quickly and even being ranked #33 on the Apple Podcast chart for Entrepreneurship in Canada: All-Time.

We've been charting on business and entrepreneurship categories in Great Britain, the United States, Guatemala, Portugal, Australia, Norway, Denmark, Peru, Poland and Jamaica to name a few!

What's the moral of our story? If you have a vision - just get started! We couldn't imagine where we'd be if we had hesitated or waited to get this started!!

We would LOVE to hear what you think of the podcast. Reach out any time on Instagram or leave us your rating and review on Apple Podcasts!

Check us out on Instagram @thesocial.focus 

@angela.s.doyon and @natcaronphoto 

JOIN INSTAGRAM FOR BUSINESS NOW! 

(the online course and community where you learn to scroll less and sell more!)

We love and use Buzzsprout to host Instagram for Business Podcast and they have made it easy and seamless (plus their customer service is by far one of the best!)

This site contains affiliate links to products. We may receive a commission for purchases made through these links.

If you’re tuning in that means you’re probably a business owner or an entrepreneur looking to organically grow your following and to reach more of your ideal customers and clients using Instagram.

We’re going to talk about the importance of creating shareable content. So what is shareable content? To start it’s creating content that truly resonates with your ideal audience so much so that they want to share it with their audience.

So we’re going start with three types of shareable content and then we’re going to get into the how to’s… how to implement a strategy so you get more shares of your content on Instagram.

So the types of shareable content are; education pieces. Education, Empowerment and Entertaining pieces of content.

To wrap up this episode we shared a few pieces of advice that you can include to hopefully maximize your efforts for creating shareable contact.

The first would be to include a call to action. So when you’re sharing a post - at the bottom of your caption - you could encourage your audience to share. 

For example, “share to your stories if you feel this will resonate with your audience.” Or, “know someone who needs to hear this right now? make sure to share with them.” 

It may sound arbitrary, but it is really important to help guide our audience so there’s really nothing wrong with having some type of call to action you’ll see that a lot with saved posts which will talk about an upcoming episode, but encouraging your audience to take action sometimes we just literally have to come out and ask.

Another thing to consider would be what’s trending right now? What pieces of content or what news is happening in the world right now that is relevant to your business to your brand that you could also craft some thing that is on point and trending. It’s the same concept for reel‘s…the reels that tend to get maximized exposure and reach are the ones that are using trending music or talking about trending topics so having a look around what’s trending in your industry can be really helpful in creating shareable content.

And then of course lastly (you know we have to talk about the sexiness of … using your insights. 

Go back and look at your insights and see what content your audience has already shared in the past. This is a good indicator of what your audience resonates with.  So go ahead look back at those insights and start creating more content similar to that. 

Thanks everyone for tuning into Instagram for business with a social focus if you haven’t left us a reading a review on Apple podcast yet please do so we love hearing what you think of the show. And follow along on Instagram @thesocial.focus and be sure to click the link in our bio where you can usually find a freebie waiting for you or access to our online course and community Instagram for business you can check that out via the link in our bio. 

Check us out on Instagram @thesocial.focus 

@angela.s.doyon and @natcaronphoto

JOIN INSTAGRAM FOR BUSINESS NOW! 

(the online course and community where you learn to scroll less and sell more!)

We love and use Buzzsprout to host Instagram for Business Podcast and they have made it easy and seamless (plus their customer service is by far one of the best!)

This site contains affiliate links to products. We may receive a commission for purchases made through these links.

We get it, we're all about Instagram. But (probably) like you, we also have a Facebook profile, page and or group. In today's fast Friday episode,  we're sharing a few quick tips to the question, "how can I share my content on both Instagram and Facebook?"  This episode is only FIVE minutes with some quick an easy takeaways... OK OK and Ang sings a little bit... sorry!

Do you have a question you'd like us to answer in an upcoming episode? Submit yours to [email protected] and include your Name, Instagram Handle and your Question!

Check us out on Instagram @thesocial.focus 

@angela.s.doyon and @natcaronphoto 

JOIN INSTAGRAM FOR BUSINESS NOW! 

(the online course and community where you learn to scroll less and sell more!)

We love and use Buzzsprout to host Instagram for Business Podcast and they have made it easy and seamless (plus their customer service is by far one of the best!)

This site contains affiliate links to products. We may receive a commission for purchases made through these links.

Don't be shy! We get it! Going LIVE on Instagram can be a bit intimidating! But we have you covered. Here are five tips to going LIVE on IG!

1. Have a plan. Whether it is 3-5 things you want to share with your audience or if you’re going to host it as an interview with another account - it is always best to have a plan. You could refer to questions you get asked about a lot or go through a sequence (this is great for live classes and teachings). 

2. Now that you have a plan; we highly suggest letting your audience know when you plan to go live. Here are a few ways to do that and a few things to keep in mind.

• share in stories (in fact, you could share this over the course of a few days) and in stories, we encourage you to use the countdown feature and ask your audience to turn it on to get notified.  Another tool in stories is the question box. You can ask your audience what questions they would like answered. And when you get a response, send them a dm to thank them and remind them when to tune in!
• share as a static post with the promise you have for the live (what pinpoint will you be solving? What value will you be bringing? Is this a Q&A session?)
• Add to your email list 
• Invite your audience through dm’s

3. Once you are ready to go live, we suggest to have a title to your live ready! That way when you start and you add a title, your audience will be able to see the context of what you’ll be talking about. Without it, they may feel hesitant to join. 

Here’s how you add a title so as it shows while you are live:

• when you start your live, take a second and add your title to the comment box (We like to have my title in notes so as I can just paste it into the comment - it saves a few seconds). Once you have added it to the comment you can tap on it and it will bring up a little “pin” icon. Simply click the pin and boom! That is it! You have now given your live context.

4. Introduce your live and the topic and say hello to your audience when getting started. We feel that it is important to give an idea as to how long you will be live for. For example, if you plan to be live for 30 minutes, let them know. And after about 10-15 minuets (especially of you see more and more people join) it’s a great idea to reiterate what it is you are talking about… whether you are taking questions… and what time you will be wrapping up. 

5. Repurpose to IGTV. This is a great way to build content without having to go back to the drawing board. Now, we’re going to go back a few steps… if you already know that you would like to repurpose to IGTV, you may want to consider creating a cover photo in a program like canva. You can add the title and an image that you feel may suit it best. (You don’t have to do this but if you want a flow and to keep on brand and aesthetic this is a great way to do so). 

Check us out on Instagram @thesocial.focus 

@angela.s.doyon and @natcaronphoto 

JOIN INSTAGRAM FOR BUSINESS NOW! 

(the online course and community where you learn to scroll less and sell more!)

We love and use Buzzsprout to host Instagram for Business Podcast and they have made it easy and seamless (plus their customer service is by far one of the best!)

This site contains affiliate links to products. We may receive a commission for purchases made through these links.

It's another round of Fast Friday and today's question is, “should I use Instagram Highlights?”

We loved this question! Instagram highlights are a unique feature that extends the shellfire of your Instagram Stories. So why would you want to use the highlights? A few ways would be to share reviews, testimonials, user-generated content, behind the scenes or more about you. The category options are endless! But highlights may not be for everyone - in fact, we recently removed highlights from our profile. We noticed that we didn’t keep them up to date so it was just best to remove and focus on crafting really good content through posts, stories and reels. 

Do you have a question you'd like us to answer in an upcoming episode? Submit yours to [email protected] and include your Name, Instagram Handle and your Question!

Check us out on Instagram @thesocial.focus 

@angela.s.doyon and @natcaronphoto 

JOIN INSTAGRAM FOR BUSINESS NOW! 

(the online course and community where you learn to scroll less and sell more!)

We love and use Buzzsprout to host Instagram for Business Podcast and they have made it easy and seamless (plus their customer service is by far one of the best!)

This site contains affiliate links to products. We may receive a commission for purchases made through these links.

Where has your motivation been this year? 

Are you sitting in a place of fear? Of perfectionism?

Are you deciding that post isn’t good enough. So you delete it? 

The one thing that will shift your business immediately is consistency. And the reason that people don’t want to hear this is because it’s not sexy it’s not exciting it’s kind of vague but ultimately the more consistent that you are in your business the more opportunity you’ll have to reach the right people and the more trust they will build around you.

Why consistency is important

1. It develops discipline and self-control
2. It builds a higher level of trust
3. Fast track improvement or development in any area
4. Accountability 
5. It will help you stand out or be noticed.

There will be days that you do not want to post on social media there will be days that you don’t want to create that piece in Canva there will be days that you don’t want to make that real there will be days that you don’t want to engage but what you need to realize is that in order to keep that momentum going and actually get the growth and get that customer you need to be consistent.

The only way to grow is to step into the yes. Meaning, just do the things. Post the stuff. Bad or good. Just post it. If it’s not what your audience likes, then you can see this and move on from it. Either pivot and do something different. Or post the same stuff and aim to change your clientele/avatar/audience. But no matter what, post it. If you don’t, and another week goes by, you’ll never have any answers. 

Plus keep in mind, at the beginning, what you’re creating won’t be your best. In fact, it might be crappy. But you will never grow and learn, and more importantly, get better if you don’t take the first steps. 

Remember that being consistent can be a hard habit at first, but eventually it becomes second nature. 

If you want to learn more about how we stay consistent on Instagram, we would love to hear from you. Send us a DM or email [email protected]

Check us out on Instagram @thesocial.focus 

@angela.s.doyon and @natcaronphoto 

JOIN INSTAGRAM FOR BUSINESS NOW! 

(the online course and community where you learn to scroll less and sell more!)

We love and use Buzzsprout to host Instagram for Business Podcast and they have made it easy and seamless (plus their customer service is by far one of the best!)

This site contains affiliate links to products. We may receive a commission for purchases made through these links.

It's another round of Fast Friday and today's question is, “what does the say feature mean on Instagram and why should I use it?”

We’re going to come out and say it… don’t worry about likes and  comments! Sure, likes and comments are great but what’s better? Content that your audience wants to save! Now more than ever, creating saveable content is important. It is a great way to educate and entertain your audience and the algorithm(s) love seeing that your audience is interested in your content. Let us know what you think of this episode! Take a screenshot and share in your stories and tag us, @thesocial.focus

Do you have a question you'd like us to answer in an upcoming episode? Submit yours to [email protected] and include your Name, Instagram Handle and your Question!

Check us out on Instagram @thesocial.focus 

@angela.s.doyon and @natcaronphoto 

JOIN INSTAGRAM FOR BUSINESS NOW! 

(the online course and community where you learn to scroll less and sell more!)

We love and use Buzzsprout to host Instagram for Business Podcast and they have made it easy and seamless (plus their customer service is by far one of the best!)

This site contains affiliate links to products. We may receive a commission for purchases made through these links.