Right About Now with Ryan Alford - The tips and tricks you need to know to increase your engagement on Instagram

Episode Date: December 1, 2020

Happy Tuesday! Welcome to another episode on The Radcast.In this episode, host Ryan Alford and co-host Reiley Clark, share Instagram data that you can use to your advantage. And when we say can, we really mean *should*.To see the charts we talk about in this episode, watch the full video on our YouTube channel.If you enjoyed this episode, share it on Instagram and tag us @the.rad.cast | Do you want to hear more from our host? - Give him a follow @ryanalford on Instagram. | The Radcast is a product of @radical_results | #theradcast  If you enjoyed this episode and want to learn more, join Ryan’s newsletter https://ryanalford.com/newsletter/ to get Ferrari level advice daily for FREE.  Learn how to build a 7 figure business from your personal brand by signing up for a FREE introduction to personal branding https://ryanalford.com/personalbranding.  Learn more by visiting our website at www.ryanisright.comSubscribe to our YouTube channel  www.youtube.com/@RightAboutNowwithRyanAlford. 

It has to start somewhere. It has to start sometime. What better place than here? What better time than now? You're listening to The Radcast. If it's radical, we cover it. Here's your host, Ryan Alford. Here's your host, Ryan Alford. how attention is currency both now and especially in 2021. I'm joined by the lovely Riley Clark. Riley, great to have you on. Thank you. Thank you. Glad to be here. Yeah. So this is going to be, I'm going to call it a microcast. I'm developing brand names as we move along, Riley. Don't kill me. No, no, no. It's good. It's good. We'll just keep picking it up, right?

We do not need a logo for this one. No worries. But in all seriousness, there's a lot going on and there's a few things that have kind of been getting to me lately with the lack of taking advantage of social channels that's happening combined with this notion of how scattered attention is right now. You know, I'm going to start this. We talked a little bit pre-episode. Right now, do you have, you're in your early 20s. Yes. We'll call you gen-zillennial.

Gen-zillennial. Gen-zillennial. That's totally fine. Do you have linear TV? Do you have cable TV in your home? No, I do not. Other than a live sporting event that you probably watch with a friend or something. Right.

When's the last time you watched like TV, linear TV? If I'm being completely honest, I actually think it might have been the Thanksgiving Day Parade like last year. Last year. Like I'm thinking about it as a year ago. And yeah, I would have said, you know, Thanksgiving Day Parade last year. Exactly. So, again, my point is this. There are very – there's cable cutters everywhere.

Right. And there's very little linear TV going on between Netflix, all the social media channels, YouTube, all of those things. going on between Netflix, all the social media channels, YouTube, all of those things. Budgets still remain heavily in the TV format for most advertisers. Right. And then you have a situation with all of these channels where attention, you know, 15 years ago when I was in marketing, you had print radio out of home. Facebook was just, I don't think it's 15 quite,'s 15 years old but i mean it was so it was not in the main adoption stage so i'm not even gonna count it uh out of home tv radio

newspaper uh and so in 15 years the number of channels with which there is marketing and content has exploded. You had the internet 15 years ago, so you had blogs and those kind of things. Right, right. But it was TV, rent a movie. Right. Blockbuster. Blockbuster video.

I was so sad when that went out of business. Video on demand was just kind of getting underway, sort of. It sucked the experience with choosing what you want. It may or may not work on tv so my point in all this i'm getting on my soapbox a bit is because attention is so fragmented now right and the the reality is for businesses and brands particularly small to medium businesses and i'll even say medium business more i'll'll even classify it as medium. The large brands with big budgets, they are definitely more, they're running content calendars. They're content on TikTok, and they've got their A game for the most part, the bigger brands going on.

I'm sure there's some that are still, especially in finance and stuff, which we work with, which are part of why we call it radical. It's like we're helping companies kind of get past that hump. Exactly. But for the most part, medium brands, I think are the worst offenders because they kind of have the budget and they think they're checking the box by doing a Facebook post. Right. They are not being thoughtful for what garners attention in 2021 or 2020 for that matter. Right. TikTok videos, reels, Instagram. And I'm going to talk momentarily about the opportunity with Instagram that still thinks lost. But there's three key trends that I want to talk about today. Okay. First one is this notion of short format video. Okay. How often do you get on TikTok? A week?

A week? I mean, daily. So it's daily. Yeah. It's daily. Multiple times a day. Right. What gets your attention on TikTok?

It needs to start out kind of catchy. Like, there needs to be... We need a jingle or a music beat? Yeah. I'm a music person, so if there's a good music beat or whatever, I mean, that's obviously encouraging to have something kind of animated to start out with. Or if it's something that if someone starts off immediately laughing in the beginning of their video, you know something's coming and you kind of want to watch it to see what's going to be so funny.

But apart from that, there's animations or whatever you can throw into any kind of reel or TikTok is obviously going to— Is it safe to say that every Zillennial is—Zillennial, I just made that up. You just made this up. Every Zillennial is—and look, I say this a lot. I catch myself saying it, and I get a little—I'm ADD as anyone, naturally. saying and I get a little I'm ADD as anyone naturally um but zillineals I I think there's they're at least 20% ADD just by the nature of how fragmented attention is right not not I'm not diagnosing anyone with conditions here I'm just more using it as a broad scrape here right because of how many popping around Instagram to Snapchat, TikTok and all that.

It has to get your attention, right? Drama, music, interest, something of note or borrowed interest from something else that you've seen. You're like, oh, I know what they're playing off of. Exactly.

Even then, I think some of the TikToks that I immediately go to are I like the couple like the comedy couple tech talks, like because you look at the hashtags, too, because you know how the hashtags on tech talk are like right there. So you kind of already know the themes because basically they're using hashtags as like the theme of what's in the video, you know. Yeah. So it's like couple comedy. And so you're like, oh, is this going to be a prank or is this going to be like, you know, something kind of funny? comedy and so you're like oh is this gonna be a prank or is this gonna be like you know something kind of funny but it like it encourages i don't know it just encourages engagement that way which i think is a pretty authentic way to get people you know to watch what you're about to you know produce to people have you bought anything from seeing something on tiktok yet not yet okay instagram yes okay going just by second you know where that's going i do

know that's good so again not diminishing tiktok by the way it's a behemoth it's grown so quickly it's only growing tiktok the only thing tiktok has going against it is it's it's new and it's gonna it has ad tools we use them right for certain brands that it makes sense for. But the reality is the bigger point here is the type of content that brands are creating that will garner attention. And not just for zillennials, but for 43-year-olds like me or anyone else. The reality is our attention spans are so spread out, you have to get attention. Your content has to be made for now. Right.

And not for, and you need to think through the lens of your consumers and not through the lens of the brand itself. Correct. And so what are your thoughts? Well, I was only going to say, I mean, I know this kind of tees up into what we're talking about, but it's obviously important to know your platform specific stats, right? talking about, but it's obviously important to know your platform specific stats, right? And so without that, like you're not going to be able to fully understand what needs to be on a certain platform. And that's kind of what you're talking about right now, as far as having, you know, TikTok is obviously going to be a certain kind of content. Instagram is going to be a certain kind of content and so on, which is obviously what you're talking about to your

point about medium-sized businesses. You don't just want to check your box of, oh, okay, I have my post up for today. It's like, okay, to your point, what is it doing? What's it here for? Exactly. And for anyone listening, they're going, okay, a lot of talk about TikTok, but I have limited marketing dollars, so I really belong on TikTok. Good point. That's where I'm going to lean into Instagram and some real key stats

specific on Instagram, which I know we have. Let's talk about a few of those first. Okay. So some key traits for Instagram and what garners attention and engagement there. Let's talk about the first few ones. Okay. Can we bring those up? Yep. Number one, we were just talking about this. Video gets two times the engagement. Yep. And it needs to be the right video. So I'm going to really counsel anyone listening to go, okay, we just need to do a video.

It needs to be the right video. And how do you know what the right video is? Hey, go use the search button and see what your competitors or even bigger brands than yourself are doing. What are they doing and what's getting the most attention? There's a lot of tools for seeing the types of content that gets engagement. Right. The second thing, which is really actually pretty interesting, tagging other accounts. Did this surprise you? I was really shocked with this. Like I, when I saw this, part of me was thinking to myself, there is no way that's correct. Tagging other accounts lowers your engagement.

But people tell you all the time, tag, tag. Oh, make sure you tag me here. Make sure you tag this business, whatever. But I actually think it kind of creates an unauthentic post because some people are like, oh, they're only tagging so that way they have more people liking this or more people are able to share or whatever it is. I think it can kind of defeat the purpose of the whole point of the post. I think Instagram is figuring out the algorithm for what people do to kind of spike it, and or they assume potentially,

and sometimes it's not right, I would just say it, because tagging someone else is borrowing interest, which means the content you're posting might not be strong enough on its own. I think that's where it's headed and that's what it's suggesting. And so do I say never tag anyone in your content post? No, I'm not saying that, but you need to be judicious about it and have a very specific reason. If you're doing a partnership, a paid partnership with someone, if you're working with an influencer, obviously some of this goes out the door. Correct.

And the tools within Instagram will allow you to kind of impact that, and I think they take that into account. Versus an organic post, non-paid, non-promotion, non-influencer, where you are just doing something organic. That's when you need to be real judicious if you need to really tag something else. Let the content be good enough to stand on its own. Right, right. Third, engagement is highest on Wednesdays. You know, I think this is hump Wednesday everybody's looking for.

I'm chalking this up to just what natural human behavior. And I'm speaking mainly from the U.S. consumer point of view on most of this. I know we have some international people that listen. And I can't speak to this. A lot of this data was from U.S. followers and from data that we gathered. So, you know, middle of the week, you're building towards the weekend. Maybe everybody's a little overworked for, you know, at that point and maybe more engagement. I don't have a lot to chalk this up to other than it just being the reality of the data. Right. Does, right. Does it mean anything to you from a user of social, from both a business standpoint working at the agency,

much less as a consumer? Right. Does it make sense to you? It makes sense. The only other thing I think I would throw in with this is I feel like Wednesdays, and it's also interesting, Wednesdays are the highest for other platforms too. I mean, I know we're a podcast. It's the highest for podcast listeners as well.

And if anything, I don't know if it's just the middle of the week, kind of, you know, I just need to recharge. Like everything's kind of just coming in the middle because I say this to say that this is from a global perspective. But if you look at this, the highest is obviously on Wednesday here, but it's between 11 and three. So it's like the middle of the middle. Do you know what I mean? It's like the middle of the middle of the middle is when things are going to be the highest. And I think it's just because psychologically everyone's kind of like either some sort of

mental break, wanting to check the feed, some sort of, you know, whatever it is, need a sense of entertainment, middle of the week. There it is. It is ironic that it is dead in the middle of the work week in, and the hours are dead in the middle. That's what I'm saying. It's like, how much more of the middle can we get here? No, it is. But if you see, bring that chart up one more time, I think that's really interesting. If you see though, generally speaking from 11 to five, does that say every day, is your best time period for posting. For sure. Everyone's doing it at work.

What does that tell you? You've got to go check your employees? I'm going to get a monitor on everyone's time. I'm kidding. We're an agency. I want people both consuming and working, so I'm okay with it. But, yes, interestingly enough. And then lastly, public figures have the biggest engagement.

Not surprising. The more known you are, the more attention you have. And it's back to my point, actually, overall for the podcast, which is if you want consumer attention, you need to be using the content, using the influencers, using the medium in the right way. And I dare say we are so past the point of checking the box of doing it. The social opportunity in 2021 is so great for a few reasons, but we're so past the point of, We're so past the point of, we posted today with no thought, or we posted our brand video today on social media. I love it. It got 60 likes by our 200 followers, if even that.

And so, again, it doesn't have to be gimmicky, but here's the tip of the day. I said this the other day, and sometimes I say things that are smart, not all the time. But I actually was like, this does not make sense. Think about you and not I. Think about the customer and not the business. If you'll think through the lens of what's interesting to them, what problem am I solving? What is making this at least entertaining or wanting me to engage with it is going to make better content. Sharing your speeds, feeds, products, services in a just standard bullet-formed video or content piece or your employees and how happy they are at work today isn't getting any engagement. You might as well not be doing it. It's not just good enough.

It's like you're actually hurting the brand. And I think that's what, if you want to get anything across today, is attention is currency. And I would argue that bad attention is killing you. And it's killing your brand. Well, I'll also say this too. I'm going to bring this up here. Um, I've, I found this chart too, and it's why consumers want brands to take a stand on social media anyway. And I think all these charts, I think have, you know, there's credibility here, but, uh, brands need, I guess, to realize that it's not just having the social media presence.

It's also how you're engaging with your consumers, with your customers, with your audience on social media. And it's also how you're interacting with your competitors on social media, how you're making yourself stand alone on social media, you know, those kinds of things that, uh, I think brands, you know, as far as their social media presence, specifically on Instagram, because this is kind of what we're talking about right now, need to start putting this kind of stuff into practice. It's a great point because back to what I said, I'd rather you not do it at all if you're going to do it generically. I would say this. If you at least take a stand and share your – if you do nothing but use social media as your purpose-driven medium. Right. That would be a winning approach versus standard pictures, standard generic brand content, standard anything.

It's at least just use it for how you give back, how your social responsibility is, what your stand is within the geopolitical nature that we are, within reason. I'm not asking. I think everyone has to say who they're voting for. Right. At least where you stand on core things, whether it's climate, whether it's, you know, free trade, whatever it is, depending on your business. I think it's really important.

Lastly, I think on Instagram, and the reason that I think it's so underserved for businesses is the engagement rate on Instagram is still, other than there's some dimensions with TikTok that certainly overcome this. But let me just say within the mainstream social media channels, and certainly TikTok is in there. Somebody's going, oh, what are you talking about? TikTok's the fastest growing one. I know it is. I know it is. I know it is. I'm talking about for business and for very specific reasons. Instagram is still underserved.

Everyone, a lot of businesses still on Facebook. They're reposting the same thing to Instagram. They're not leveraging the opportunity to sell with an Instagram. And I'm talking about B2B and B2C. And the biggest thing I'm going to see for 2021, my number one trend is the increase in social commerce. What's happening here is you have, and I've talked about this on previous podcasts, but I think I just want to like drill it in with a fine point. You're meeting this really great place where there's been demand to

buy socially for a while. There's been the ability, and someone, again, is listening, going, well, I've been selling with video ads on Instagram for five years. What is he talking about, this new place? Here's the difference. You can actually link your products. and more capable within the platforms themselves, both Facebook and Instagram, for e-commerce specifically to buy and shop and engage within the content. You're meeting a real intersection of demand from consumers with capability with the platforms, with the products and services that all align in that.

And so there's such an opportunity, and I don't care if it's B2B or B2C, there's an opportunity to sell socially more than there ever has been. And we are at like the pinnacle peak opportunity where capability, demand meet. And you have to realize this. This is why I'm heavy on Instagram compared to TikTok. TikTok's getting there, don't get me wrong. They have a great integration with Shopify now, but Instagram's just further along in the evolution of their platform within Reels you can shop, within all of your content you can shop, you can load all

of your products. You don't even have to have practically an e-commerce site anymore, which I'm not suggesting that anyone not necessarily have their own site for a lot of other reasons. You want to get data, you want to build your customer list. Obviously. But you can literally sell through these platforms greater than you ever have. And you're going to see, I think, double digit increases in social commerce in 2021. My number one trend for 2021. We're going to do a big trend episode in December. But I can tell you right now that's going to be my highest one because I think it's, people are talking about it, but I don't think they're putting really all the eggs

in the basket that could be for that. No, I agree. I mean, how many things have you bought on Instagram in the last 30 days? Last 30 days? Actually, nothing. Okay. But month before that, yes. But I say that to say, I say that-

A few things a month. Yes. If you average it that to say, I say that a few things a month. Yes. A few things a month for sure. But I think the other thing is, is like 90% of accounts are following a business. Yes. At least one. And I mean, I follow at least, you know, gosh, like six or seven, you know, probably even 20 brands. I think I bet you it's more than that. I was going to say, I think it's probably more than that. Probably, probably. But it's like, I love, and the thing is, I think a lot of people got upset with Instagram at first when they changed the layout of their platform or whatever, but it further proved the point how much, how strong they're trying to get on the e-commerce side of things. Because when you look at the

Instagram app now, if you've updated your phone, you know, you would look at this, but on the Instagram app, you know, where the, where your notifications used to be is now the shopping platform. And it's now where your companies that you interact with have their products right there for you. And it's dangerous. It is because I'm over there like, oh gosh, okay. Then I'm saving everything. You know, I'm going through it that way. But it's smart, and it further proves your point that things are going more in an e-commerce way. Instagram is becoming more of a shopping platform, which is totally fine. I think it's great because where else are brands going to be able to connect their message with their audience, with content, with their products?

Yep. And then you have this rain cloud overhead that's driving all of it called COVID, which I don't want to, I was almost wanted to not mention in this whole episode. I was going to say, we've done so well, actually, so far. But the reality is, it is, look, with cases growing and things going on, e-commerce is just going to grow even more. Correct. You know, whether, no matter where you fall on it, people are not going to be in-store shopping

as much as they were. So that's another variable that's driving all of this. The last thing that I want to mention with this, and it's back to where attention is, is messaging and communicating with customers within social platforms. Yes. Yes, it's been around.

No, it's not new. But what's happening is a couple things, both within the platforms. Yes. Yes, it's been around. No, it's not new. But what's happening is a couple of things, both within the platforms and text messaging, SMS slash text. SMS is the technical term. But text messaging, automation and things like that is going to boom at 21. It's already growing now. But also Facebook messaging, Instagram, you have a Facebook has now integrated all of their messaging, whether it's Instagram, Facebook, you can do it all within their business messenger platform. And so what you're seeing, and this is for B2B and B2C, there's an acceptance level here for communication through those channels. And we're doing a ton of ads that drive straight into messaging for certain projects. Because you get the biggest thing you can do for a consumer, whether you're B2B or B2C,

yes, we would love for them to add something to your cart and recall a sales rep and buy something today. That is the ideal approach. But in that purchase funnel, in that cycle, whatever you want to call it, there's usually questions that the people have and the fastest they can get to you or you can get to them for that direct communication is key. And so again, you have this demand and expectation from customers meets opportunity within these social channels, be it SMS, text, or through the social channel platforms. And so I dare say you to take advantage of those no matter what size business you are because that is wide open. There's a ton of white space there. And yes, I'm sure there's brands that are listening. We've been doing that

for years. But again, I can tell you because we see the data and we know the number of clients that walk in our door that are million and billion dollar companies that do not do this. And so it needs to be taken advantage of in the right way. And there's strategies for that. We're not going to get to every one of them, but these are things you need to be paying attention to and testing. There's so many opportunities. That's the thing is get off the blocks and test some of these things. Right. Any other key thoughts that we had in any of the charts or anything like that? No. Um, I, the only other thing I was going to say is, and, um, you know, this is not to like, you know, freak anyone out or whatever, make anyone upset. But I, I think there's a lot of businesses that are probably even listening to what we're talking about right now and going,

well, it's okay. I'm already doing everything they're already talking about. And respectfully, you're still not like respectfully there's, there's a different approach you can have to drive a higher engagement level to then drive a higher, you know, create a relationship with your audience. Because you've talked about this before with Josh, when we've had Josh on the podcast, having that audience loyalty, your brand loyalty, you create that when your brand has a persona, a social media presence, it's your social media profile. It's like who you are on a digital platform, make a human, you know, and it's a, there's so many more opportunities than just to your point, recap, just your one post a day. It's

not cutting it, you know, reach out to your customers, reach out to people, you know, check out their stories, interact with them. It's significant. It makes an impact. Yep. I don't, and I don't think that again, we've even wrapped our heads around the, the complete opportunity here. And I think that's the point of this overall. And, again, we've even wrapped our heads around the complete opportunity here. And I think that's the point of this overall. And, yeah, so we appreciate everyone listening to this episode of the podcast. As you may, if you're watching it on video or Instagram Live, we do produce these now. We have a very dynamic production suite, thanks to our lovely Riley Clark.

So you check it out on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram. We will post a video that's got dynamic, interactive content that goes along with everything that we're talking about. And you can always learn more at theradcast.com. Thanks, Riley. All right, sounds good. See you guys next time. See you. Yo, guys.

What's up? Ryan Offord here. Thanks so much for listening. Really appreciate it. But do us a favor. If you've been enjoying the Radcast, you need to share the word with a friend or anyone else. We'd really appreciate it. And go leave us a review at Apple or Spotify.

Do us a solid. Tell more people. Leave us some reviews. And, hey, here's the best news of all. If you want to work with me directly, if you want to get your business kicking ass, and you want Radical or myself involved, you can text me directly at 864-729-3680. Don't wait another minute. Let's get your business going. 864-729-3680.

We'll see you next time.