SPEAKER_00
Ready to break free from algorithms, vanity PR, and money sucking ads? My name is Larissa Worstiek and I've learned in seven years of jewelry marketing that content is the crown jewel. My agency Joy Joya take the holistic approach leading with laser focused storytelling, impactful content creation, and strategic content distribution. This method has worked for the solopreneur as well as the multi-million dollar company and now I'm sharing the same systems and tactics with you.

Here's to standing out in the sea of sparkle. Welcome to episode 284. In today's episode I'm diving into the current best practices for Instagram content.

So what formats are hitting the mark? What kind of results can you realistically expect from your social media efforts? I recently completed over a dozen social media audits in the past few weeks and I've been pouring over the data from various brands. So feel free to ask me anything in the YouTube comments or by DMing me on Instagram at Joy Joya marketing. My deep dive has revealed one crucial insight.

You're not going to like it. There's no one size fits all strategy that guarantees success for every brand. Each one has its unique aspects and understanding your analytics is key to making informed decisions.

But is posting on Instagram all there is to it? Stay tuned to discover more. But before we get into the solid gold, I'd like to take a moment to remind you that this podcast has both audio and video so you can either listen on your favorite podcast platform or watch on YouTube by searching Joy Joya. You can support the podcast for free by taking the time not only to subscribe but also to leave a rating and review on Apple podcasts.

Okay, let's get into today's episode. My sparklers. This one's all about Instagram's surfaces, which when I talk about that in this episode, surfaces is the various content types like carousels, reels, stories, live, etc.

What I've seen work best for my clients that I've audited over the past few weeks, what you can hope to expect when it comes to results and how to get the most bang for your buck when it comes to Instagram and other social media platforms. Instagram is forever a hot topic among you, my listeners, my sparklers. And so I'm excited to dive right into it.

And again, if you have questions, leave a comment right on this YouTube video or feel free to DM me on Instagram at Joy Joya Marketing. So first let's talk about those surfaces. We have the single photo post, which is the OG IG surface.

That's just one single picture. We have the carousel, which allows you to put kind of like a slideshow of up to 10 photos and videos. We have the reel, which is all video, or it could be pictures, but they're strung together like a video that where audio is also involved.

We have the story, which is the 24 hour content that could either be a photo or a video. It's not on your main feed unless you choose to feature it as a story highlight. And we have Instagram live.

So I want to talk about reels because they're the newest surface. They were introduced in 2020, and they often received the most attention and excitement primarily because they represent, as I said, one of Instagram's newest features, and they offer direct competition to TikTok. But many jewelry business owners, probably even you, find reels challenging and less intuitive to create compared to the other surfaces on the platform.

There's this pressure to be creative, including the possibility of appearing on camera, which only adds to the frustration and other factors like selecting the right audio timing video clips accurately and trying to keep up with trending reels can make creating reels seem like a daunting task. Also, when reels were first launched, many Instagram experts heavily promoted their use suggesting that they could significantly boost overall engagement if you used a lot of reels. But that is not necessarily the be all end all advice.

And I will tell you more about why in just a moment, I do also want to talk about Instagram live. And why aren't more jewelry brands using it? I see so few capitalizing on this surface. It's such an amazing way to show an authentic side of your brand, do more in depth storytelling, and have a consistent time of the week of the day when you are showing up for your audience.

Instagram live really elevates your content because it shows it at the top of your followers story, like notifications. And additionally, followers actually get alerts and they tell the alerts tell the followers whenever you start a live broadcast. So it's just another way if you're so frustrated by the Instagram algorithm, this is literally a way to give someone a notification that you are doing something on Instagram.

This live only really needs to be like 15 minutes, once a week, but you're showing a product, a collection that you're really excited about. You can even show behind the scenes. It doesn't have to be salesy.

It doesn't have to feel like the home shopping network. It's just a chance to connect. And then you can reuse that content on your profile as well.

So in auditing over a dozen jewelry brands in just the past two or three weeks, including doing a deep dive breakdown of all their post data, what have I seen? Well, as I said, reels are not the end all be all, but nearly every brand should be posting more until we can get to the point in the data that it can prove us otherwise. So what do I mean by that? And what's working on Instagram in 2024? Here's the key point about analyzing data. If you're not making fair comparisons, then the conclusions that you have about your Instagram data may not be reliable.

So what does that mean? Let's consider a brand that primarily shares single photo posts and carousels. And maybe let's look at just the past 90 days. Most of their content is single photo posts and carousels, and they happen to post like one reel over the course of 90 days.

And then we look at their data and we say, okay, it seems like they're doing pretty good. The performance looks decent. But since we don't really have enough data about reels, given that one was posted and everything else is carousels and single photos, how can we really tell them if they're missing out on a potential opportunity? It's like trying to run a science experiment without enough like study participants involved or enough diversity in those study participants.

If you don't have enough information on reels, then it's going to be really challenging to determine whether or not embracing them could make your results even better on Instagram. So imagine two brands that have evenly distributed their content across carousels, single photo posts and reels in the last 90 days. So let's pretend they did 60 posts in total and 20 of each type.

When you have a scenario like this, then you're kind of setting up a nice science experiment that allows for direct comparison. So you can then examine the average reach, the total engagement for each type of content. And of course, there are other variables involved here, but we have a much better chance of identifying which format is going to offer you the best return on your time and energy.

And what we find when I do look at brands that have a more even breakdown, the success doesn't always come from the reels. Just today, I audited a brand that saw double the engagement and even gained new followers, mostly from their carousel posts. And meanwhile, another brand I reviewed a week ago experienced significantly higher engagement from their reels.

So my advice to each brand is to lean into what's working while also not completely neglecting other types of content. Because what we do know about the algorithm is that Instagram encourages the use of its full range of features and services. I would say if your time for creating content is limited, then prioritize and put the most energy into the services that yield the best results.

And that will reduce your stress and just be more beneficial over a long period of time. From there, once you can see the big picture, you can even look at individual posts, carousels and reels that have that higher than average performance and try to figure out what worked about that content. Maybe there's no pattern at all, but sometimes you can attempt to pull out features of it that seem to be resonating with your audience and try to replicate that more in the future.

If you want to gain deeper insights into your social media performance, it's really important to analyze your habits and activities over an extended period, such as 90 days of consistent posting. Short-term observations, like looking at things day to day, can really be misleading and wrongly encourage you to focus on more superficial indicators of performance. My favorite way of getting this data, if you're going to audit yourself and try to get a better picture, is through Metabusiness Suite.

So to do this, you're going to log into your Metabusiness Suite account. That's at business.facebook.

com. You're going to click on Insights in the left-hand menu and then find Content. And clicking on this will present an option to Export Data at the top.

And that way, you can select your desired timeline and export data for your posts and stories in a CSV format. And with that CSV that you can open in Google Sheets or Excel, then you can sort and filter your data. And that helps you identify patterns and see trends more easily.

The thing is, really, there's no one type of content that works. Like, for example, I can't say that a shot of your jewelry on a model is the way to go. Honestly, I'm often super surprised by what performs well for clients because it never follows any cookie cutter template.

It's more about what's working well for you and your audience, so you have to know what that is in order to be able to replicate and do more of it. And when it comes to stories, I really like to look at metrics like replies because we want to open that portal to your DMs. So if someone replies to your story, that's an amazing opportunity to start a conversation, learn more, build a relationship with that person.

If you can get someone to reply to your story, then you are doing one-to-one marketing. And I think stories is an amazing opportunity to begin that journey. Reach is also a great metric for stories because it helps you see how far you're getting in reaching your audience as well as others.

So realistically, if you're not giving followers and other users a real reason to engage with your content, then they're not automatically going to think to do so or feel motivated to do so. So give them a real reason to like, to comment, to save, to share. The other thing that many jewelry business owners don't think of is the way that Instagram integrates with your other digital marketing efforts and other metrics outside of Instagram that could be considered, like website traffic.

So is Instagram actually driving traffic to your website? Are you effectively using Instagram as a springboard to get new email subscribers? And how well have you been able to grow your email list from Instagram? These are things to keep in mind as well off the platform. All right, so how exactly do you get the most bang for your buck when it comes to Instagram and even other social media platforms? I know you only have so many hours in a day to post on Instagram and make the most of it as well as other social media platforms. So how can you best spend that time? Make sure you're utilizing all of Instagram's services equally if you're not already.

And then once you have enough data to make conclusions about what's working for you in the long run, then lean into that more without fully abandoning everything else. Give people a reason to like and comment. Align your social media content with all your other marketing, like what you're promoting on your website and on email.

Use Instagram as a springboard to get people to sign up for email. Show up regularly in stories and use the heck out of the link sticker feature to drive traffic to your website. Don't neglect other social media profiles, especially if you have semi decent engagement on Facebook.

Spend a little extra time to post separately to that platform, including links to your website. And if you haven't or don't maintain your Pinterest profile, this is non-negotiable. Do you hear this? It is non-negotiable, in my opinion, for jewelry businesses to have an Instagram profile that you are updating regularly.

I used to recommend it on a case-by-case basis, but now in my opinion, it's a must-have. I have seen it with my own eyes the way it can drive loads of traffic to your website. And the effort you put in Pinterest now pays off over time, since it's a visual search engine, where your content always remains relevant.

And if you feel lazy about Pinterest or you just don't have time to deal with it, at the very least, repurpose the content that you're using for Instagram and modify it slightly so that it works as a pin. It's the biggest missed opportunity I see in social media. Period. That's it. That's the whole thing, okay? Anyway, the last thing I want to say is show up and go live every once in a while.

Even if it's just once per week for 15 minutes, make sure you're connecting authentically with your audience. So what questions do you have about Instagram for your jewelry brand? Ask me anything. Let me know in a comment on YouTube or DM me on Instagram.

I would love to chat about it. Okay, let's get into the gold mine. This is a segment of the podcast where I get personal and share insights on entrepreneurship, mindset, success, growth, all things business.

And in this week's gold mine, I want to talk about the common misconception that there's one answer to everything in jewelry and having a jewelry business. I think a lot of people come to starting a jewelry business with the hope, the hope. I mean, why not? Why wouldn't you have the hope that there's one specific formula to follow or like one secret sauce that will make your Instagram work or make your email marketing work? And unfortunately, there are a lot of unscrupulous quote unquote consultants out there who sell budding business owners on this dream, like sign up for this course and I'll tell you the one thing that will make you successful or only I know the secret and you just have to pay X amount of money to figure that out.

I mean, I get the appeal. Having a business is hard. If you really stick with it for many years, you'll probably find it's one of the hardest things that you willingly put yourself through that you choose to do in your life.

There are so many ups and downs. There's so much uncertainty. So of course, believing that there's just one answer to make it all easy is a literal dream, but it just doesn't exist.

And almost every day I have to take care and how I communicate that because so many questions come up from my clients. And many times there's no easy answer that I can give them or sometimes I have to play a devil's advocate or I have to give a more nuanced or partial answer because we still need work to do in order to discover the real answer. Or sometimes the truth is, there is no answer and who the heck knows.

And even I find myself even getting down on me because I hope I don't come across as negative or I'm not delivering the advice in the way the client would ideally want to hear. But then really so much of life is like that even in like medicine, for example, which has so much research and science behind it, even doctors often have to tell their patients things they don't want to hear or give them an I don't know or I'm not sure or this is going to require more testing or have an inconclusive answer that needs more doctors visits or specialist and pretty much no doctors visit ends with a magic pill. That's like, oh, just take me and all your complaints and problems go away immediately and forever.

I wish, right? The same is true for business and we can either accept that sooner or spend a lot of time, money and frustration accepting that later, accepting sooner that there's no one magical answer means you can get down into it and do the work it takes to uncover the journey that will eventually lead you to clarity. But thinking there's one magical answer or that someone outside of yourself knows more than you do about your business is unfortunately going to lead you to maybe spend a lot of money on a person or a course or an entity promising you the world or just wasting time and energy on feeling upset and confused when you could be on the path forward all along. So there's just no one size fits all magical answer.

It doesn't exist. You can take that knowledge and feel sad, feel mad, feel disappointed about that or you can take that knowledge and feel super excited about it. And personally, I choose to feel excited about that, not just for myself, but also for my clients because we're all on an adventure together and we're in it to let the business evolve into something amazing that even we could not have planned but that we can only discover by moving forward every day with dedication, with clarity, with openness, with commitment, with acceptance and a positive realistic mindset.

What do you think about that? Let me know. I want to know your thoughts. Do I sound negative? Because sometimes I feel like I do, but I don't want people to be disappointed by a lie or an illusion.

And so I feel it's important to share that with you. Did you have questions about today's episode? You can always email me Larissa. That's L-A-R-Y-S-S-A at joyjoya.

com. If you love this podcast, please share it with a friend who'd appreciate it. And don't forget to subscribe as well as leave a review on Apple podcasts.

If you're completely new to digital marketing, then you'll want to purchase and read a copy of my book Jewelry Marketing Joy. Visit joyjoya.com slash book for more information.