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This is the number one thing that I see new influencers doing wrong! And it has to do with your captions!

Guys when you’re in the growth phase, your captions are so important!

I think a lot of people see their favorite influencers writing a super short cutesy caption, and think they should do the same…

The difference is that these big influencers have already built a large loyal following, you are still in the building phase. You need to put a lot more effort into your captions. You need to engage people, and encourage engagement to build.

Honestly, I do not suggest anyone do this. But the larger influencers can get away with it.

So, how can you make them more engaging with one simple sentence?

ASK a question! This is the number 1 way to get more engagement on your posts!

What do people do when you ask a question? THEY ANSWER! It is human nature to answer a question when you’re asked!

Even better ask a polarizing question or a this or that question. Let me give you an example:

• Are you a Pineapple on your pizza person or a NEVER pineapple on your pizza kind of person?
• Im traveling to NYC soon, what suggestions do you guys have for me?
• Are you team biker shorts or not?
• What was your go to product as a new mom?

BONUS TIP: When someone answers and comments, ALWAYS RESPOND! And if you can, ask a follow up question and start a conversation.

• Comment: You have to check out the restaurant Gizzmo
  • Follow Up Question: Thank you for that suggestion! Do you have a favorite dish from Gizzmo?
• Comment: I love biker shorts!
  • Follow Up Question: Do you have a favorite way to style them? I need tips!
• Comment: My go to product was the Doc A Tot
  • Follow Up Question: I’ve heard good things about this. What made it your go to? I am debating.

Now I want to go over 4 reasons why this is so important.

1. The most important metric to the algorithm is engagement
2. Brands want to see high and good engagement
3. Responding to comments helps encourage more comments in the future, which means MORE ENGAGEMENT!
4. Responding to comments helps to establish relationships

So let’s dive into these further…

1: The most important metric to the algorithm is engagement

Instagram is a business, and they want to keep users on their platform as long as possible. In order to do that, they have to provide the best user experience.

The most important thing to remember is that the algorithm wants to show the BEST posts to the MOST people. In order to hit the explore page and potentially go viral, we need to show the algorithm that our posts are the BEST.

As you know, the algorithm can’t see your posts, it can only judge your posts based on users interactions with it. The sooner we can show the algorithm that your post is the best, the faster we start that snowball effect.

So, we know that the algorithm looks at engagement but which engagement carries the most weight? COMMENTS!

Instagram knows people are buying likes and they don’t really even look at that as much anymore.

Comments however carry a lot of weight because it is an action that takes the user a lot more effort. For someone to stop the scroll and write out a comment, shows a lot to the algorithm! That is why we are focusing on creating captions that get us more comments!

2: Brands want to see high and good engagement

Smart brands know that engagement is the most important thing to the algorithm, and that people who have higher engagement have a greater reach. Meaning more people will see that influencers content.

Meaning if you collaborate with that influencer, more people in their audience will see their post and it is more likely to hit the explore page.

Let me give you an example:

Let’s say we have 2 influencers who both have 10k followers, but one has a 1% engagement rate and the other has a 5% engagement rate. Which one would you prefer to work with?

THe one with 5% engagement! They are more likely to have a much larger reach and percentage of that 10k audience that sees their posts over the person with 1% engagement. Among other reasons well discuss in the next 2 points.

3: Responding to comments helps encourage more comments in the future, which means MORE ENGAGEMENT!

I see many of us leaving comments unanswered, and we honestly could all be better about this. Myself included.

Obviously, if you’re getting hundreds of comments on your posts you cant answer ALL of them. But do your best to be active and answer some!

If you’re getting less than 50 you should be trying to answer EVERY SINGLE ONE.

Comments are important to the algorithm, brands, and your audience.

The Algorithm

Instagram is a social platform and they will reward users who are active and SOCIAL with their audience. As I will explain in a second, answering comments will also encourage more comments, which will increase your engagement. Instagram engagement is GOLD to the algorithm.

Brands:

Brands want to see influencers engaging with their audience for numerous reasons.

They want to know that you will answer any potential comments and questions on any collaboration posts that they might do with you in the future. Imagine if someone asked a question before they were going to buy, and it went unanswered? That’s a lost sale.

When an influencer answers comments it means they are highly engaged with their audience. Highly engaged audiences will buy, which is the key to sales.

Brands also understand that engagement increases reach within the algorithm.

Your Audience:

People appreciate a comment back. No one wants to be ignored. If you ignore them a few times, they will just stop commenting, because what’s the point. This means, lower engagement.

Answering comments is also a great way to grow relationships with your audience and turn them into super loyal “fans”

Remember, we want more comments and the best way to do that is to remain as social as possible.

4: Responding to comments helps to establish relationships

Creating relationships with your following is really important. The more your followers feel like they are your friend, the better!

When your following feels like they have a relationship with you it makes them loyal to you, trust you, more likely to take your recommendations, and they will support and share you to their friends!

So, for the next week I want you to test this out! Ask a question in all of your captions and make them good questions! And I want you to see how much more comments you get! Don’t forget to comment back with follow up questions!

A few tips before I hop off:

• Ask relevant questions to your picture or the body of your caption
• Add the question in at the very end if it is relevant to the rest of your caption.
• Ask the question right away, to capture everyone including those who don’t read long captions
• Use an emoji before the question to make the question stand out

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LINKS MENTIONED:

Land The Brand$ Masterclass: https://www.landthebrands.com/masterclass

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COMPLETE EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Hey there,

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welcome to The Daily influencers podcast. My name

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is Erica Marie Daily,

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former marketer and brand manager, turned your influencer

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marketing coach. On this podcast

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we help both influencers and brands, maximize their collaboration, grow on social media make more money and waste less time. Speaking of which, let’s jump right into today’s episode.

All right in today’s episode we’re gonna be talking about the number one way to increase your engagement. Now this is probably one of the most asked questions that I get. And this is also the number one thing that I see new influencers doing wrong and it has to do with your captions. And guys, when you’re in the growth phase especially your captions are so important. So I think a lot of people see their face Favorite influencers writing out these super short and cutesy captions, and it’s cute and all, but they think that they should do the same. But the difference is that these big influencers have already built this large, loyal following, and you’re still in the building phase. So you really need to put a lot more effort into your captions, you need to engage people and encourage engagement in order to build. And honestly I don’t suggest that anyone write these short cutesy captions, but the larger influencers can definitely get away with it. So how can you make your captions more engaging with one simple sentence? Ask a question. This is the number one way to get more engagement on your posts. So let me explain. What do people do when you ask them a question? The answer is literally human nature to answer a question when you’re asked and even better is to ask a polarizing question or a this or that question. So let me give you an example. Here’s Some questions that I could maybe ask on one of my posts. This question could be, are you a pineapple on your pizza person or a never pineapple on your pizza kind of person? Now, this question is so funny because people are so passionate about it, and they want to tell you like, I am pineapple, I am not pineapple, and they will tell you exactly why. And I guarantee you if you guys ask this question, you will get so many comments. But this question probably doesn’t apply to something that you’re posting about unless you’re posting a picture of you eating some pizza. So let me give you guys some examples that have to do a lot more with your guys’s niches and something that you might actually post. So let’s say I’m going to travel to New York City soon and I want to talk about that experience. This would be a question I would ask. I’m traveling to NYC soon. what suggestions do you guys have for me while I’m there? Now

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anyone that’s gone to NYC or anyone even that hasn’t that maybe knows about it is going to want to give you suggestions. People are passionate about that. They’re going to give you a restaurant suggestions, places to go things to see things to do. And they’re going to give you a lot of them. This is one that I tried out and I got a ton of engagement on. Another one that I actually posted was a picture of me wearing biker shorts. And to me, I still don’t think I look super cute in biker shorts, but I see them on other people. And I think it is so cute. And again, this is a really polarizing question, because I feel like people either love or they hate biker shorts. So on this post, I asked the question, are you team biker shorts or not? I got so many responses to that question. And people were really passionate about letting you know like I’m teen biker shorts. I’m absolutely not teen biker shorts. Let me give you guys another example. If you are a mommy blogger on one of your posts, you could ask what was your go to product as a new mom. Now anyone that was a mom ever before is going to let you know their go to products because Number one, it probably saved their butt and they were so thankful for that product. And number two, they want to give you a great suggestion as a new mom. Okay, bonus tip, when somebody answers and comments, always respond. And if you can ask a follow up question and start a conversation. Now in a second here, I’m going to talk about why this is so important. But first, I want to give you guys some examples of follow up questions. So to the question where I asked, I’m traveling to NYC soon, what suggestions do you guys have for me? let’s say somebody responds and says, Oh, my gosh, you have to check out the restaurant Gizmo. Well, my follow up question to them could then be thank you so much for that suggestion. Do you have a favorite dish that you order from Gizmo? And then they’re probably going to want to answer and tell you their favorite dish. And the other example I asked the question, are you team biker shorts or not? And let’s say the person responded and said, I love biker shorts. Will I would ask the follow up question, do you have a favorite way to style them? I need tips. And this is so true because I still don’t feel like I know how to style biker shorts. So this is also actually beneficial to me. And the next question we asked was, what was your go to product as a new mom? Now maybe they said my go to product was the dockatot. I have no idea. I’m not a mom. But I see a lot of people talking about this, you guys. So the follow up question I would ask to that would be I’ve heard good things about this product, what made it your go to I’m debating if I need it or not, and they’re gonna feel passionate enough to probably give you an answer and it’s also going to be really helpful to you. Okay, now, I want to go over the four reasons why this is all so important. Number one, the most important metric to the algorithm is engagement. Number two, brands want to see high engagement and good engagement. Number three, responding to comments helps encourage more comments in the future, which means Even more engagement, which goes with number one and number two. And then last but not least, number four is responding to comments actually helps establish relationships. So let’s dive into these for a little bit deeper. So again, number one was the most important metric to the algorithm is engagement. So let me explain this you guys a little bit, something. And what you guys understand is Instagram is obviously a business and they want to keep their users on their platform as long as possible. And in order to do that, they have to provide the best user experience. So the most important thing to remember is that the algorithm wants to show the best posts to the most people. So in order to hit that explore page and potentially go viral, we need to show the algorithm that our posts are the best, because then they’re going to show that post to even more people. So as you guys know, the algorithm is literally a computer. It’s a equation and it can’t actually see your post. So it can’t Look at your posts and be like, wow, Erica looks great. Today I’m going to show this to more people. The only way that it can judge your post is based on user’s interactions with it. So the sooner that we can show the algorithm that your post is the best, the faster that we can start that snowball effect. So we know that the algorithm looks at engagement, but which engagement actually carries the most weight? Well, it’s comments. Now, let’s think about it this way, Instagram knows that people are buying likes, and they don’t really even look at that as much anymore for that reason. Now, when you think about comments, they however, carry a lot of weight. Because it’s an action that takes the user a lot more effort. Think about it, when you like a post, you just have to double tap and you can keep on scrolling. But for somebody to stop the scroll and actually write out a comment. Well, that shows a lot to the algorithm. And so that’s why we’re really focusing on creating captions that are going to get us more comments,

7:56
because again, the algorithm favors engagement. And even more so than that it favors comments. So the more comments we can get, the more people the algorithm is going to show our posts to, which is what we want, right? Number two brands want to see Hi, and good engagement. So smart brands know that engagement is the most important thing to the algorithm, as we just talked about. And they know that people will have higher engagement also have a higher reach, meaning more people are gonna see that influencers content, meaning if you collaborate with an influencer, that has a higher engagement, more people in their audience will actually see their posts, and it’s more likely to hit the Explore page, it’s more likely that people will see your business it’s more brand awareness, the list goes on. So let me give you guys an example of this one. Let’s say that we have two influencers who both have 10,000 followers. Now one influencer has 1% engagement rate and the other has a 5% engagement rate. Which one would you prefer to work with? Well, they both have the same amount of followers, but one has five times more engagement. So obviously, we want to work with the one that has 5% engagement, because they’re more likely to have a much larger reach, and a percentage of that 10,000 follower audience that’s actually going to see their posts compared to the person with a 1% engagement. Are you loving the podcast, it would mean so much to me if you could take three seconds and leave us a rating or review. Alright, back to the episode. Number three is responding to comments helps encourage more comments in the future, which means more engagement. Okay, so this is something that we could all be better at. And I see so many of us leaving comments on answered. Now, obviously, if you’re getting hundreds of comments on your posts, you can’t answer all of them that would literally take you forever, but I want you guys to do your best and be active and answer some of them. But if you’re getting less than 50 comments on your posts, you should be trying to answer Every single one, because again, comments are important to the algorithm brands and your audience. So let’s break that down. So when it comes to the algorithm, Instagram is a social platform, and they are going to reward users who are active and social with their audience. So as I’ll explain in a second, answering comments will also encourage more comments, which will increase your engagement. And as we know, Instagram engagement is gold to the algorithm.

10:30
Now when it comes to brands,

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brands want to see influencers engaging with their audience, for numerous reasons. Brands want to know that you will answer any potential comments or questions on any collaboration posts that they might do with you in the future. And I want you guys to remember your Instagram profile is literally your resume and before a brand thinks to even hire you, they’re going to be looking at your profile and they’re going to be looking at this stuff. So if they see that you’re not answering any comments on other people, Collaboration posts, then they’re not going to want to work with you, because they’re going to think you’re going to do the same exact thing when it comes time to work with you on their collaboration. And so that’s why it’s so important to always act as if and do exactly what you know brands are going to want to see because they are going to be looking for it. Now imagine if somebody asked a question before they were going to buy, and it went completely unanswered. Well, that’s actually a lost sale for that brand. So that’s one reason why it’s so important. But also, when an influencer answers comments, it means that they’re highly engaged with their audience, and highly engaged audience will buy, which is also key to sales. Plus, brands also understand that engagement increases reach within the algorithm. And last but not least, is your audience. Now people obviously appreciate a comment back. No one wants to be ignored. And if you ignore them a few times, they’re just going to stop commenting, because what’s the point? I mean, I know if I comment on someone’s posts a few times and they just never respond, I’m less likely to comment on their posts in the future. And what that means is a lower engagement. And remember, we want more comments. And the best way to do that is to remain as social as possible, which means answering all of your comments. Now another thing, which leads me into number four, is that responding to comments helps establish relationships. So creating relationships with your following is really, really important. The more your followers feel like they’re your friend, the better when you’re following actually feels like they have a relationship with you. It makes them more loyal to you. It makes them trust you. It makes them more likely to take your recommendations, and they will support and share you to their friends. I mean, just think about the influencers that you know, that you’ve had a conversation with or that engage with you, and the ones that you really feel like are your friends. It’s just a whole different experience than the people that you’ve never talked to. You don’t really have a relationship with and that you follow, but you don’t really feel like you know them or that you could be their friend in real life. That’s the difference maker.

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So,

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to wrap this up for the next week, I want you to test this out. I want you to ask a question in all of your captions and make them good questions. And I want you to see how much more comments you get. Now, don’t forget to comment back with that follow up question. Okay, a few tips before I hop off. Number one, ask relevant questions to your picture or the body of your caption. I don’t want you guys asking some random question that makes no sense to your picture or your caption. That’s just going to be really weird. Number two, add the question in at the very end if it’s relevant to the rest of your caption, meaning if the question has to do what your whole entire body caption is, then maybe just add that into the very end is like the very closing of what you’re talking about. Another option is to ask the question right away, because the thing about that is that you can Capture everyone, including those people who don’t read long captions. And then the last tip I have for you guys is to use an emoji before the question. That way that question really stands out because our eyes are really drawn to something that breaks up, you know, anything. And when you throw in an emoji, our eyes are just drawn to that. So even if they don’t read your whole caption, they’re more likely to go down to where they see that emoji and look at what that says right after it. So it’s going to get more people to answer that question. Thank you so much for listening. If you liked what you heard, it goes a long way if you could take 30 seconds and leave me a five star review and share this podcast with your friends. Alrighty, guys, I’ll see you on the next episode.