|Reading time – 4 minutes |

I’m by no means a social media guru but when I look at some people’s Instagram profiles I know there are some REALLY simple changes that they could make in less than five minutes that would dramatically improve their engagement.

My own profile is by no means perfect and I make tweaks and improve it all the time but the basics are definitely there.

“Georgina – tell us – what ARE these simple changes? I’m raring to go!”

OK – since you asked so nicely, here is the anatomy of my Instagram profile laid out for you… (feel free to follow me if you don’t already  )

1. Profile photo

If you’re a service-based business and you’re not using a photo of yourself, you’re doing yourself a disservice. People buy from people. They don’t buy from logos. If you’re a product-based business this might be different for you – consider using a great photo of your product (or your logo if you must  )

2. Handle and tagline

You’ll see you’ve got your Instagram handle (@georginabowdencoaching) and then you’ve got your tagline in bold – mine is Success & Mindset Coach. Since both of these are searchable, you’re taking up valuable Insta real estate if they both say the same thing. You might want to have the handle as your business name, and then your actual name in the tagline, and/or your job title but please – make sure they are different!

3. Bio

I know it’s so hard to concentrate all the amazing stuff you do into that small character allowance you’re given, so you have to make it as concise as possible. Focus on a really simple statement which helps your people know you understand what they want and what you can bring them. This is where you tap into all that work you’ve been doing on your target market.

4. Weblink

If you’re leaving this blank you’re wasting valuable promotional space. Plus, unless you’ve got over 10k followers (in which case you won’t be reading this) this space is the ONLY clickable space on your Instagram profile FULL-STOP.

Either provide a link to your website or I recommend using https://linktr.ee/ which is an amazing free service. You can link it to your Insta, customise the address (see mine for an example) and then you can use this little program to add three or four extra links e.g. one to your website, one to book a call/massage/class with you and one for your free download. I would definitely cap it at four links and keep the titles short.

5. Photos

Instagram is primarily a visual tool so it goes without saying that your photos should be beautiful OR be an image that stops people in their tracks, otherwise they’ll scroll right past. I know you might cringe (I know I do) but photos of yourself will get a LOT more engagement and comments than stock photos (ask me how I know…)

A great idea to encourage engagement is to post about a personal milestone like your birthday or anniversary, the other option is to record a short video. You can post a video of up to a minute in length, or a Boomerang video (which is VERY easy to make) and is just something different to catch people’s eye.

6. Captions

Those first two lines under your photo need to totally grab peoples attention if you want to get them to read the rest of your message that you’ve spent time crafting! Think of them like a headline.

As for the rest of the message, it doesn’t always have to be too wordy, as long as you get your message across. Make sure some of your posts are about you, some about your product or service i.e. informational or value posts, and some need to be promotional (obviously).

And so you mustn’t forget a call to action! As any links in your captions won’t be clickable, now is a good time to refer them to the link in your bio.

Lastly, tag others in the photo or @ them in the text so they know they’ve been included. They’ll probably hop over and give you a like and a comment, thus increasing your engagement.

7. Hashtags

You’ve got 30. You might as well use ’em all. You’re only ever shown to about 30% of your followers so hashtags help you to be discovered by others interested in what you’re talking about. Do some research into the hashtags that your peer group are using, especially those with more engagement than you.

A decent proportion of my engagement comes via the hashtags I use. I have a couple which are just for me to build my brand (#georginabowdencoaching #entrepreneurialhearts) and the rest are industry and post specific.

However, I mostly choose those that have between 50,000 and 1,000,000 public posts – any less and it indicates very few people will search for them, any more and your post will get lost too quickly. You can also use trending hashtags e.g. #mothersday2019 (think of the #metoo phenomenon). People tend to put their hashtags in the first comment or like this

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#toseparatethetagfromthetext (It just makes it easier to read).

PHEW! I hope that wasn’t too much to download for you! Have you got any other great tips to share? Email me and I’ll make a future post (and credit you in it!)

Let me know if you try these and if it starts to make a difference for you. Better still, send me a before and after screenshot of your Instagram profile!