The Definitive Guide To Instagram Marketing

John Jantsch (00:01): This episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast is brought to you by Outbound Squad, formerly Blissful Prospecting, hosted by Jason Bay. It’s brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Jason Bay is a leading sales expert, and he talks with other leading sales experts to get you the information you need. I’ve recent episode, he talked about how much time you need to spend prospecting. Really, really eye-opening. Check it out. Uh, listen to the outbound squad, wherever you get your podcasts. Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch, and my guest today is Jenn Herman. She is a social media consultant, speaker, and globally recognized Instagram expert. She’s a sought after and international speaker providing tips, resources, and training for organizations of all sizes that need to structure their social media strategy. She’s the co-author of a number of books, including one we’re gonna talk about today, Instagram for Dummies 2.0, the 2022 edition. So Jen, welcome to the show.

Jenn Herman (01:18): Thank you so much for having me. I’m excited.

John Jantsch (01:21): So, so a lot of times when authors come back on, I just had Anne Hanley on for her last, uh, you know, everybo, everyone writes like, you know, new Edition. And so it’s a very legitimate question to say, okay, what’s new in the book? Or why did you feel like you needed a new edition? I imagine on these social media books, it’s like, before the ink is dry, you need a new edition, isn’t it ?

Jenn Herman (01:40): Absolutely. Like literally we will submit everything and then when the technical editor gets to it, they’re like, this screenshot’s out of day. And we’re like, oh my gosh, we just submitted that a month ago. So yeah, there’s always a reason to update it. The evergreen strategies don’t change, but obviously screenshots and the nuanced, how-tos can evolve so quickly.

John Jantsch (01:59): Yeah, and the interface, I mean, they change and ni move stuff around, and so No, no question. I, I know it’s, it can be maddening sometimes I feel like every time, I don’t really go to Facebook ad very often, but I feel like every time I go there I’m like, wait a minute, where’s that now? . It just, it’s tough to keep up. Good for authors though, I guess. Right? You know, addition three is probably in the works, right?

Jenn Herman (02:19): We’re trying to pump the brakes a little bit, but yeah, probably in a couple months we’ll start working on three of the business version. Yeah.

John Jantsch (02:26): Yeah. So, so The Dummies brand is owned by Wiley. I’ve been around for quite a while, hundreds and hundreds of titles. I know you’ve done a number of titles for them. How, what’s your experience like with that? I mean, do I know a lot of people, it’s tongue in cheek, right? I’m such a dummy at this, but do you ever, you know, do you ever get any pushback from people saying, well, that doesn’t feel very professional.

Jenn Herman (02:47): I don’t so much get pushback. I think just because the brand is so recognized for, you know, right. The fact that it is a very diligent how to most people, the question is, well, I’m not a a beginner. Is the book relevant for me? A lot of people feel like it’s not something they need because they’re not a dummy, they’re not at that beginner level. Yeah. But these books go through so much detail that even the most advanced users will get tips out of it that they wouldn’t necessarily be familiar with.

John Jantsch (03:14): Yeah. Yeah. So this is a hard question, so I’ll just see where you go with it. Where does Instagram sit these days, like in the, you know, pantheon of social media, like hierarchy, ,

Jenn Herman (03:26): I mean, it’s at the top, it’s near there. Uh, you know, when you look at the top performing, you know, top used apps, you’ve got Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, TikTok is up there now, obviously YouTube, but Meta owns, you know, those top platforms between Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. So it’s definitely still popular. It’s still popular with the younger demographic, even though they are shifting towards more TikTok, but it’s popular with that older demographic. So they’ve got the breadths that, you know, I always tell people, you know, your audience is there, it, how many of them are there is up for question, but your audience is on Instagram. It’s one of the most used platforms.

John Jantsch (04:04): So, so how, you know, when somebody comes to you and says, should I be on Instagram or TikTok? You mentioned TikTok already. It’s kind of the, seems to be the hot child of the moment for Yeah. You know, even for advertisers, but certainly for organic as well. So, so how would you help somebody compare or and contrast those two platforms?

Jenn Herman (04:24): I mean, in general, Instagram still has other means of communicating. You can still do photos, carousels, you’ve got the dms and the Instagram stories. So you’ve got more variety of content. TikTok is very much vertical, short form, you know, 50 to 15 to kind of 62nd videos. If you don’t wanna do short form video, you don’t wanna be on TikTok. There is that limitation with TikTok that it is only one form of communication, but if your target audience is under the age of 30, you probably wanna be on TikTok. So those are kind of probably the two biggest differentiators. Other than that, it’s just preference.

John Jantsch (05:04): So, so you, you started to allude to this that, you know, people look at the Dummies title and they think, oh, it’s just for beginners, but you really go the whole, you know, breath. But I mean those dummies books do start it like, how do I create an Instagram account? So if you’re talking to somebody that maybe is past that, you know, how do you advise them to use them?

Jenn Herman (05:22): Well, this new version is very heavy on Instagram reels, which is that short form video format. Yeah. So if someone is advanced with Instagram Loves, Instagram has, you know, been using it for a long time, but they haven’t embraced reels, this is the book to get, cuz it’s gonna walk you through all aspects of the how-tos, the strategy, when to use them, how often to use them. So for this book, it’s definitely that focus on Instagram reels and if someone has that learning curve, this is that solution for them.

John Jantsch (05:53): So I was, that was really my next question was let’s do a format overview of Instagram. You know, start it out. You could post a picture. Now there are many formats, you know, for media. So talk a little bit about, maybe well maybe just describe them, but then maybe a quick hit on like, you ought to be using this one here or this one there, or this is best for X.

Jenn Herman (06:15): Yeah, so I mean there’s still that traditional photo, right? A good old fashioned square photo is still the kind of standard, what we think of Instagram. Of course now you can do either portrait or landscape photos as well. Carousels are a big shift. That was one of my big tips for 2022 and it still is for 2023 and a carousel is where you can have anywhere from one to 10 photos and or videos and you scroll through in that kind of horizontal sequence. And that is definitely an opportunity for additional exposure. It’s an opportunity to put more content in one post. You’re not overwhelming your audience with 10 photos in 10 separate posts. You can put it all in one. Those are very powerful and tend to get some of the best performance for reach. Mm-hmm. Scroll back to top