Sunny Lenarduzzi: So I have doubled my growth on Instagram and I have learned so many ninja
tricks along the way.
And I've been waiting to make this video for you guys because as you can tell, I'm geeking
out and I'm so excited to share these because I know they actually have been proven and
tested on my account to make a big difference.
Let's talk about Instagram and I know I talk a lot about youtube on this channel obviously,
and that's pretty much where you guys know me for.
But I'm really active on Instagram and I am a huge marketing nerd and I love studying
all the platforms.
You know, I have the podcast as well and that's been really fun to figure out and to really
start growing, which has been great.
But Instagram itself in the last six months, I started to take it really seriously, kind
of as a test to figure out what works, what doesn't, what's BS advice out there and what
is actually really, really good advice and work.
About six months ago, I was growing between like 25 to 50 new followers a day.
I've been on it for a while, I was using it pretty consistently, but now I'm growing at
about a hundred new followers a day, which is pretty cool to see.
So at the end of this video, you're going to know all these ninja little secrets and
tricks to start applying to your account.
And what's really cool is you can actually start playing around with them pretty much
immediately.
If you haven't subscribed to this channel, if you are new here and you're just checking
this out, make sure you hit that subscribe button.
If you're not following me on Instagram and you're not seeing the little tricks and things
that I'm doing over there, make sure you follow over @sunnylenarduzzi will put the handle
somewhere on the video for you guys to checkout and I'll put my link below as well.
When I'm talking about Instagram and all the little things I've started implementing, yes,
over the years I've learned a lot, but particularly like I said in the last six months, there's
been a couple things that I've done that have made a huge difference to my engagement, to
my growth, to the momentum.
And another part of why I wanted to make this video is because Instagram is a huge traffic
source for my YouTube videos.
I share every new video that I put out on YouTube, on Instagram, on my stories and on
my feed and it drives a ton of traffic and targeted traffic to my new videos.
So it's a really great tool for you to be using it as well.
And to be totally, totally honest and let me know if you agree or disagree in the comments
below, I really think in 2019 that YouTube and Instagram are the most amazing platforms
to be using to really start to grow your brand and your business so that's why I wanted to
do this.
Let's dive into the first step.
The first ninja trick or little secret that I've started using is all about timing.
And I use this app, it's like my little secret weapon.
It's called the WhenToPost app and it basically takes all of your information, all of your
data on Instagram and it tells you the three times of day, for everyday of the week that
are your most highly engaged times.
I've been following this down to the minute to figure out when to post my content and
I'm telling you, I've tested it posting right at the time that it says and posting like
a couple minutes later or a half an hour later, and the difference is huge.
First things first, get this App, I'll put a link to it below so you can check it out,
it's called WhenToPost.
And again, it's super simple to use and I use it as a guideline of when to post all
my content.
Timing on Instagram matters.
It matters when your audience is active, it matters when your audience is going to be
actually seeing your content and when there'll be engaged with your feed, so this app takes
out all the guesswork for you and tells you exactly when to post for the most engagement.
The more engagement you get, the faster your account will grow.
The second thing that I started doing, which has made also a really big difference for
me is basically going on my story every time I do a new post.
It pretty much just drives a ton of traffic.
You guys have probably heard me talk about my method on YouTube, which is a really four
part method.
That methodology, which we call, "The Sunny System."
Works on every single platform, Instagram included.
On Instagram you do the research for figuring out what your audience wants to see, what
time you should be posting, that's really phase one.
The second part of it is how you structure your posts, what kind of caption you're going
to put there, what kind of picture you're going to post, and then you do your uploading
with your hashtags and your optimization and all that stuff that you would do on YouTube
as well.
But the biggest key that a lot of people forget, which has made the biggest difference for
me with YouTube growth and with Instagram growth is this, distribution.
And that's why stories are so important.
When I post a new photo on Instagram or a text graphic or whatever it might be, the
first thing I do is I share it directly to my story.
And say new post and get people to go click on it from my story because reality is, I
get a lot of eyeballs on my story and those people are then being driven to go and like
the post.
So that's a little secret of how you can get more eyeballs and more engagement on that
post.
Which brings me to my next point, which is all about the comments.
Utilizing the comments is a huge secret to building more momentum on Instagram because
the algorithm has changed so much and how I've figured out how to beat the algorithm
is really by commenting for conversation.
And this is something that my friend Amanda Bucci, who has I think close to 600,000 followers
on Instagram talks about a lot.
And it's all about responding with questions and comments and thoughtful comments because
did you know that the first hour that your posts goes live on Instagram is the most important?
On YouTube, it's the first 24 hours, on Instagram ... God, sometimes I hear myself talking and
I'm like, "You're such a nerd."
Anyways, I know way too much about this stuff, but on Instagram it makes me very happy.
On Instagram, the first hour that you post goes live is the most important when it comes
to engagement.
The more engagement you get in that first hour, the first 60 minutes, the more your
post will get pushed in the algorithm and be seen by more and more people, which is
why that first hour, it's so important to distribute it on your story.
Like I said, to push more eyeballs there and to comment back.
As soon as people start commenting on your photo or whatever you're posting, you want
to be responding with thoughtful comments because another little secret there is that
you need to have a four word response.
It's a rich response.
Just writing an emoji or one word back to what people say on your posts isn't really
good enough if you're really trying to gain traction.
Of course acknowledging people with something is better than nothing, but if you really
want to be triggering the algorithm to say, "Wow, there's good, deep, meaningful conversation
happening on this post, that's not just spam."
Because Instagram's gotten smarter and understands that people will just write crappy comments
just to get comments.
You want to have rich comments, so what you can do is lead the charge on that and ask
full questions to people, respond with a four word minimum response and make sure that you're
really activating that conversation to get even more comments.
Now the next thing is again, just really paying attention to what is working and something
that works really well is to go back to your analytics, which I talk about on YouTube,
but paying attention to your analytics and I'm not talking, you have to go like super
deep dive into this.
It's strictly just seeing what content is getting the most comments and the most likes,
that's your metric of success on Instagram.
When you see that one post has gotten a lot more engagement than another one, that's a
good clue for you to be like, "Okay well, that kind of content work best."
And it could be as simple as selfies seem to get a lot of engagement okay, I'm going
to post more of those.For my account, I noticed that when I posted these text graphics, they
got skyrocketed engagement, so of course I'm going to double down on what works and that
brings me to the next step, which is consistency.
I was posting about three times a week, I think about six months ago now I'm posting
at least five days a week and upping the amount that I'm posting has really helped my account
grow.
The more active you are, the more that the algorithm is going to favor you.
I'm posting five days a week using the WhenToPost app to figure out what time of day I should
be posting at.
And that's helping the account grow naturally by a hundred plus new followers on a daily
basis, which has been crazy, crazy growth compared to where I was just six months ago
by implementing this.
So, consistency is really, really key on every platform and how I stay so consistent on Instagram
is a tool called Planoly.
I love Planoly, it's an easy way to see what your grid and your feed is going to look like.
You can plan out your posts ahead of time and actually put in placeholders even if you're
not sure what you're going to post that day, but you know the caption you want to do.
I sit down about once a week and I'll plan out my feed and I'll plan out some captions
so I know I have content set to go.
And I also just have a bank of content sitting there in case I have a day where I'm not really
feeling it, I don't have inspiration but I still want to remain active because as you
guys know, and I have a whole video about content hacks and content planning tricks
that you can do, which we'll link in this video, but one of them is to plan ahead.
Even if you think you'll be doing your posts on the fly some days you're just not going
to have an idea for it and having things in the bank to post sitting in your Planoly,
is really helpful way for you to stay consistent.
Next step is being active in your niche.
I will look at a ton of accounts on a daily basis that have a very similar audience to
the audience I'm trying to attract, and I'll start engaging with those comments on those
pages by again, answering questions, adding value, making sure that I'm not spamming just
to spam.
But to actually add some sort of value to the comment section and build the sense of
community on pages with a larger following than me, but if following that's totally relevant
to who I'm trying to attract.
And another really, really simple way of doing this and something that I started doing which
works really well is hearting comments.
If I go to an entrepreneur account and there's a ton of comments in the most recent post,
what I will do, is I will go and I will heart all of the comments on that post that I feel
are actually good comments and are from people who would be great for my community.
Because that sort of pings them and notifies them to be like, "Oh, Sunny liked my comment,
who is this girl?"
They go to my account and they're more likely to follow.
Now, the final tip is really fun for me to do and this is like the not cute stuff that
you do to grow accounts on Instagram.
The stuff that's behind the scenes that some of the bigger people have been doing for years
and is the grunt work that you might not think about, which is all about the dms.
One of my favorite features on Instagram, is the voice memo.
I love that you can send voice notes to people so what I've started doing is every single
day I'll pick at least five people who have recently followed me.
I'll go check out their account and I will send them a voice note.
I could be walking down the street, I could be coming home from the gym, I could be going
to a meeting, it takes two seconds.
And I'll just send them a voice note and say, "Hey, I'm so grateful that you followed me,
I loved your picture of X" or "I love that you also live in Vancouver."
or "That you live in some far off place that I've never been to but when I go, let me know
what you want to see on my page or on my account and what kind of content you're interested
in."
And the conversations you start are so amazing and the fact that you do this and blows people's
minds, they're like, "Are you actually voiced noting me?
And I am.
And the other technical side of this is that the more active you are in your dms with people,
the more likely you are to show up in their feed and to beat the algorithm to show up
more prominently.
So twofold, I love having conversations and building real relationships with people that's
awesome.
And then the other thing is it puts me in their feed.
It puts me in the top of the algorithm when I do that so I also try to respond to comments
and questions on Instagram as much as I can with a voice note or with the video because
that's rich text and that are rich content that is also more weighted in the algorithm
versus just responding with a quick text back.
Sometimes I will obviously if I'm tight on time, but I do try and respond as personally
as possible so people know it's really me behind this account.
Now my last bonus tip has to do with a comments section as well.
When you post a new piece of content, like I said, you want to do everything possible
to get eyeballs on that new piece of content.
One little trick that I started doing that made a big difference in the amount of engagement
I was getting on my brand new posts is that on my last post before, like my most recent
post before that new post that I just put out, I'll go back into the comment section
and I will go in like every comment on that post.
Because it notifies the people who commented on that post that I'm active and it's like
more likely they're going to go check my account to see this new post that I just put up.
So it's a little trick to get their attention to sort of ping them and say, "Thanks for
commenting on my post yesterday I happened to also have a new post today as well."
I hope this is as fun for you as it was for this little nerd right here.
I love talking about this, I love doing tutorials for you, we're doing all different styles
of videos on my channel now, but if you want tutorials and you have ideas for them, I love
doing them.
Put them in the comments below and I'll check them right after we finish this video and
make sure that I see some of your ideas and hopefully start making videos around those
as well.
And if you liked this video, make sure you hit the like button below, share it because
the more people see this channel and the content on here, the more we can grow this amazing
community of entrepreneurs and amazing humans that we have in this subscriber base, and
this comment section, and it's just so much fun to see it grow and grow and grow so please
be sure to share it and be sure to subscribe for new videos every single week.
Plus, if you don't know, we also have a podcast, The Sunny Show.
It's doing so well and I'm having the most amazing guests on, and one of my guests, Rachel
Bell is truly an Instagram wizard and she shared some amazing bonus tips on top of everything
that we just talked about here today about your profile, and how to set it up in the
best way.
She actually did an entire revamp of my Instagram profile, and it's part of the reason that
my Instagram account has started growing really rapidly.
So check out that episode, she's got so many good tips outside of everything I just shared,
will link to it below in the description.