Marketing Yourself on Instagram
Theresa Depasquale
Capture Social Group
CEO and founder of Capture Social Group, Theresa Depasquale helps busy entrepreneurs grow their brands on social media.
With over 10 years of experience, she’s mastered the art of online branding and social media strategy and has become the go-to for many high-level clients and companies providing one-on-one consulting and management programs to help them successfully grow their reach, credibility and sales on social media.
http://capturesocialgroup.com/
Instagram Strategy Course -- https://socialbutterflycourse.com/course47729334
www.marlanasemenza.com
Audio : Ariza Music Productions
Transcription: Vision In Word
Marlana
CEO and founder of Capture Social Group, Theresa Depasquale has mastered the art of online branding and social media strategy and has become the go to for many high-level clients to help them successfully grow their reach credibility and sales on social media. Welcome, Theresa.
Theresa
Thanks. Thanks for having me.
Marlana
So first, tell everybody a little bit about your background and how you got to this point.
Theresa
Yeah, that's a great question. So, I started my entrepreneurial journey, owning gyms, I had a couple of health clubs here in the Tampa Bay area. And at that time, I was also a very new mom with two little nuggets and kind of a new wife and a lot going on. And I just decided that that whole brick and mortar membership-based business is not my favorite thing, and not gonna work for me. I ended up getting really sick just from stress. Because as you know, when you're a new mom, you don't sleep a lot. I have a lot on my plate, I ended up closing one gym and selling another recipe for nothing, we ended up actually bankrupting. And in that time, I kind of took off when I was not feeling well. And I was like, You know what, I'm just gonna take a year off and kind of forget what I want to do. And Instagram had just come out. And I was like, just kind of fiddling around on there. And like, I remember not even knowing how to put a post-up, I was kind of like, how do you even use this app? It's so weird. I have no idea what I'm doing. But long story short, at that time, I had owned the gyms, but I had never done anything with like competitive fitness. And I had this year that I was like, not really working. So, I was kind of like, you know what, I'm gonna do a fitness show because it scares the *** out of me. And if I'm scared of something that means I have to do it. So, it was like, You know what, let me just lean in, I'm gonna commit to one. And so, at that time, I started using Instagram and I was like posting my journey of doing this kind of fitness show. And I was just started growing followers and back then it was like, so easy to grow so different than it is now you know? And so, I was kind of like when the OG fitness people on Instagram. It was like me and Natalie. Becca surname, Natalie Skye. And or no knowledge will fit and Emily sky. There was a couple of us that really started back then. And so, I kind of just started really kind of like, oh, well, maybe there's something here with this whole Instagram thing. And I wrote an e book. It was called The Kinney Mom’s Secrets. And I remember I sold $5,000 In one day to my Instagram audience. And I was like, Whoa, I was like, Okay, there's a business here, like this is something is happening.
I got very serious about it actually started building other marketing pages on Instagram. I like what 100% And I was doing, like, I had these huge brand pages that I would sell ads on or leverage them to build my page. I did all this stuff on Instagram. And so, I did that for a while until I actually started a whole online fitness business based off of my Instagram. So, I ended up building it was a pretty large it was a high six figure online fitness business. I wrote a book, I wrote a really good best-selling book, I developed an app, I did all the personal brand things. And so, it’s kind of was at a point in the towards the end of my fitness career, I ended up joining a mastermind to learn online marketing. And in that mastermind, I started doing a lot of consulting for building your brand on social media. And so, my mentor who's one of my very good friends now JJ virgin, she just kind of, she was the one that put on the mastermind. She's like, you know, you're so good at this, like, why don't you just do this? And I was kind of like, okay, because I was honest with you. I mean, after 15 years in the fitness industry, I was kind of done anyways, I was really tired of doing the whole bikini pictures and all that kind of stuff. I was like, you know, I'm in my mid-30s. I think I'm done with all this. So, I was ready to transition. So yeah, I sold my fitness business. And I started this business a little over three years ago. I've never looked back since and I'm obsessed. I love it.
Marlana
So, talk to us, then how do we use Instagram to do what you did?
Theresa
There's a lot to it. So, what I do, and it's like kind of the same people that you work with, which is why we're chatting is I really work my wheelhouse is working with personal brands to help them understand how to build their brand on social media and be able to leverage it for their business. There's different models of monetization, obviously, you can be an influencer, I don't teach people how to do that. That's actually different model. I work with people who are like entrepreneur experts at something like entrepreneurs, or expert doctors, or motivational speakers, or health coach, or whatever something of that nature, that they want to build a brand and be able to leverage it for social, for their business. So that's what I teach and everything that I teach is based around engagement.
Marlana
So actually, what you do because I know a friend of mine had once said to you want to be an influencer or a person of influence. So, you work with people of influence, as opposed to the influencer?
Theresa
I'm going to write that down as still as a quote. Okay, I'm gonna steal that. So basically, really like to get you to your point. If you're gonna be person of influence, then you have to have an engaged audience. And so, when I started figuring out and you know, I built this huge personal brand Instagram and I don't know if you remember years ago, I don't know how many years ago maybe four or five the whole algorithm came out, don't get because it changed the whole platform. And so, it was kind of at that point, I had to really dig in and be like, Okay, How does this whole like I'm, I'm really kind of a unicorn because I'm very creative, but I'm also obsessed and like analytical and like data driven. So, I'm like this weird unicorn, which is why I'm good at social media. But yeah, I had to really figure it out. And what I figured out is, it's like you everyone overlooks the basic stuff, which is like you've got to build, you have to have an engaged audience. So, what we teach is all of the strategies for that. And it's really about like, you know, one foot in front of the other, there's no hacks, you don't buy fake followers, you don't buy fake stuff, no vanity metrics. Because if you're trying to leverage it for your business, that's not going to do any good. They're not going to buy anything, right. It's always say, having a big social media following that is engaged, just like having a big email list that doesn't open your emails, right? There's no, there's no point, right? What's the point? So, everything we do is really based around. I mean, you can make a lot of, you know, you can drive traffic and build a really significant business, even with a couple 1000 followers, you don't need hundreds of 1000s of followers on Instagram. So that's kind of like the skills, the tactics, and strategies that we teach. It works at 500 followers, and it works at 500,000 followers, it's the same strategy.
Marlana
So, what are some of the key points that we would have to keep in mind without giving away all this secret sauce?
Theresa
I’m happy to talk about it. There's so many so much. Okay, we're gonna start, I would say, you know, the biggest thing is, people want to follow people on social media, I think that a lot of experts and entrepreneurs I work with, that want to leverage their social media for their business, whether it's Instagram or any other one, they start off, and they start branding themselves as their business. And that's a really a, it's not advantageous for multiple reasons. One is, people are on social media be social, right? So, they really don't want to follow businesses, they want to follow people. So, you're gonna get exponentially more growth and engagement with a personal brand page versus a business page. So, and that's an open-ended question, because everyone's like, so should I have a business page? Yeah, you can have one. But I wouldn't focus all of your efforts on that, I would focus on your personal brand page, because that's gonna build so much more brand equity, you're gonna get so much more reach and growth, that it's gonna be able to funnel all that over to your business way more than if you just tried to build a brand page. So, you're gonna…
Marlana
let me just ask you this real quick. So, let's say we are a public figure or an entrepreneur solopreneur, any of that kind of thing. And we have our page, even though we are conducting it as a personal brand, should it be a quote unquote, business page? Or should it Shun?
Theresa
Yes, exactly. So, most people get confused on that. So, you, when I say personal page, it means like the content you're putting up, but the settings, we typically recommend creator or business account, Instagram, because you're gonna get the analytics and you've got to have, if you get anything, you can't manage what you don't have any numbers for, right? So, you've got to have data. You've got to have analytics, you have to have a greater business account. So that's a great question. But what I'm talking about is like the front facing content, like if you visit a paintable conference page, yeah, so good question. But yeah, I would say that's number one.
The second part of that is also you know, we're entrepreneurs, and we're not gonna be doing the same things forever. Look at me. And so, learn by my example. I branded myself as my business, my Instagram was called Bikini Boss Teresa for seven years, because that was my business name, my brand name, my everything. I kind of equate it to like, it's like typecasting yourself as like Seinfeld, like Jerry's, he's just gonna be Seinfeld forever, because that's what you don't have as, right. And so, people are so like Bikini Boss, and like, oh, gosh, okay, like, yeah, don't make the mistake that I made. So, because you might want to change them, or you might pigeonhole yourself, right? So, you don't want all this time and money building this following for just this one thing. I always say, like, build your personal brand. And your business is just one thing that you do. So that down the road, if you change, you still are your personal brand, and you're just changing the thing that you do, right?
I teach strategies in my course, I have an Instagram strategy course. And part of it is, this is another thing, I'll give you, it's a three to one posting strategy. So, a good rule of thumb, and this is just generalization. Okay? This is you don't have to stick with it for everything. But let's say you want to do out of every six posts, three of them can be more business related, at least two of them should be more personal. And then one can be some kind of a sales call-to-action promotion, something. Because you also don't want to spam your audience to death. Right? I know you want to leverage it for business, but people don't want to feel like they're gonna use car salesmen. Right? Oh, but so the three to one is like one of my posting strategies when you're planning your content. So again, three, business post two should be more personal and one CTA for every six posts, so it's a good strategy for you.
Marlana
What about hashtags and things like that? How do we find the hashtags that will work for us? Because there are zillion out there?
Theresa
That's a really open-ended question. So, I'll try to give some tips. Okay. I think people don't understand what hashtags foreign hashtags are very simple. If you think about what they're for. It makes it really easy for you to understand how to use them. Hashtags are basically your way of communicating to the algorithm what you're posting About so that they until the algorithm understands where it needs to categorize it. Okay, who it needs to show it to you, right? What users because users have different interests? So, your hashtags are what is going to communicate that. So, if you put a bajillion different hashtags that don't make any sense, in one post, guess what's going to happen, it's not going to understand what your post is about, and you're probably not gonna hit anything. So, one of the biggest things with hashtags is specificity. Getting very specific, if you're putting up a post about branding, then you need to have 15, hashtags about branding, right? Not branding, entrepreneurship, #hustle, #bosslife, because even though that could go with branding, you're just confusing the algorithm. So you've got to get super specific with what you're doing, that's the biggest hash tag to buy, I can tell you, make sure you're using different sizes, I think a lot of people go and they put the biggest hash tag they can find that also is not great, because what's happening is like, basically, you're now competing with, like, say that there's a hashtag for 1.5 million hashtags, you're now competing with 1.5 million other posts to be seen at the top of that hashtag thread. So, I'm not saying to never use the big ones, I'm saying that you also want to use the smaller ones, because you're gonna have a much more likelihood of actually ranking at the top of that, that thread, and hashtags on Instagram, specifically, our SEO for Instagram, because people that's one of the biggest ways they're searching for content and accounts is through hashtags. So, they're going to those pages and looking at the posts on those pages. So, if you can rank at the top of that page, it's one of the best ways to attract your ideal followers.
Marlana
How about the number of hashtags, and you can put up to 30?
Theresa
But we always recommend like 15 to 20 optimize Hotshots. Optimize means like you're researching the specificity, the different sizes. You don't want to use anything that's banned or censored. There's a lot of hashtags that they basically, if you could, if you go to the hashtag, and you see like a thing that says like, content has been hidden on this hashtag due to community violations, don't use that hashtag, because that's a sense hashtag, because people have been obviously abusing, and you'd be shocked, there's like, way more than you probably think. And if you use that, you will hit any hashtags. Okay, so taking the time to research and looking at the you know, I'm saying what each hash tag is, before you just put them on there is a really big deal.
Marlana
And what's the best way to research them?
Theresa
Just do it on our and manually? Okay. Yeah, I'm not a fan of any of the software's that do like the hashtag generation, because like I said, they're just not specific enough. Like they're just there. It's kind of like a random dump of like, a million hashtags. I mean, I guess if it's better than nothing, you're gonna do nothing, that it's better, but it's not the most effective. There's a lot of people that like, they'll say, hashtags don't work. It's because they don't understand how to use them. Right? They absolutely one of our biggest ways that we grow pages,
Marlana
is there a way to find the other hashtags that are relevant to? Let's say, it's personal branding?
Theresa
Yes. Well, other hashtags come up that are totally nuts. Yep. when you go in, and Instagram made it really easy, like, say, you type in personal branding, and that's whatever 500,000 I'm making it up. If you see underneath, it's going to show you all relevant hashtags that are smaller and different sizes underneath and you can just go grab, you know, I'm saying that you can grab the ideas and then put them in your, so it makes it very easy.
Marlana
And what are geotags? Explain what those aren't people, your tags,
Theresa
your location tags. So, I mean, they're very beneficial. We use them to get engagement in the post, because people don't realize there's actually nine different types of engagement on Instagram, I talk a lot about Instagram, because when you're talking about, you know, people like us, that are experts and entrepreneurs, I personally believe Instagram is the best platform for us. I love it, it's got so many different features, you can grow organically, still, you can attract your ideal person, they have so many analytics and data. So, for me, it's my favorite. We do other platforms, and a lot of these rules apply. But I really talk a lot about Instagram. You're gonna hear me really focusing on Instagram. Yeah. So, for Instagram, there's nine types of engagement. There is the ones most people think about, which is likes, comments, shares, and saves. Right? That's active engagement, because people are doing something. There's passive engagement, which is impressions and reach, which means reach is how many people are seeing your content impressions is how many people are seeing your content, but even kind of repeatedly, right? So, it could be the same people seeing it multiple times. And then there's time on page if somebody visits your page, and they're just kind of looking around, but they're not doing anything. So that counts as engagement. And then there's interested engagement, which we like as entrepreneurs, which is DMs, website clicks. So, there's nine types of engagement.
If we want to boost engagement, one of the ways and this is a tactic that we teach, if you use the Location tab, if you find locations that you can rank on now, I'm not saying to put like a Starbucks or something silly, but you could put like the town that you live in, there's different areas of the town that are like smaller, you can actually get reach and impressions from that location, which will then count as engagement of your posts, which will also then help you possibly hit hashtag, or hit the Explore page. You see, I'm saying so like all these little tools in the toolbox that we do kind of help to get the posts more engagement that helped get more reach for the post. So, it's not just one thing. It's like all these things that we do for the post
Marlana
and what are the other kinds of engagement?
Theresa
I mean, that's a big one, obviously, the first, the biggest thing I was talking about is you have to have good content. And I could teach you all the tactics and hacks in the world. But if you don't have good content, it's not going to work. So content is king. Instagram started us. And it's still a visual platform. I talked about this a lot, because people do not. The biggest difference, I see between someone who's crushing on Instagram and someone who's not. It's the visuals, graphics, pictures, videos, what do they look like? And it's not even just are you having a professional makeup? I find that like, a lot of these designers don't even understand what works on social media. So, they're making stuff that might work on a website, but like, it's not going to be working on social media. So, it's really understanding the nuances of the type of content that people on Instagram like to consume. And this is what we're very good at my agency. We take our clients info, and we turn it into content that people love to consume on Instagram, right?
That's a really big deal, is like, what does that graphic look like? How are their pictures? How are their videos edited? Or what are the videos look like? And so, this is numero uno important because of one reason. Attention is everything, right? If you can't get someone's attention, you're never going to grow. And so, the visual is what gets people's attention, right? So, the first step two, any kind of engagement is the visual. So that's why I stress a lot about that. And I feel like, out of all the factors, that's the biggest area of improvement for most people that they can area of opportunity that they could really work on.
Marlana
And as a photographer, still photos are obviously near and dear to my heart. But I know that video is a big thing now for Instagram. So, what is you're seeing?
Theresa
Yeah, photos are still huge. So, the CEO of Instagram actually came out. And he said, we're basically gonna be making a big push for video because they want to compete with Tik Tok and YouTube, and all that. But also, that doesn't mean that static images are dead. They're not. And we have a lot. So, it's definitely a mix, I think you should absolutely be using video. If you're not, you're going to be behind. But I think that it should be a mix of content. So, like images, graphics, like there should be if you have a good content strategy, you should be a mix of content in there.
Marlana
What about up in, like stories and things like that. But how does that play into everything?
Theresa
Yeah, I mean, that's just another feature. So, I always explained this way is, you know, when you log into Instagram, do you go to your feed? First you go to stories?
Marlana
It depends for me.
Theresa
I typically go to my feed, but my ex-husband, he would always log in and write to his stories. So, what you have to understand that people like to consume content differently on Instagram. And so, if you're not using all those different features, you're not gonna be getting as much reach as you can with a different, you know, like people. And it's not that they won't cross pollinate or go back and forth. But it's really important to be utilizing all the different the lives, the reels, the wall posts, the stories, so it's just different features and ways to put out content, Instagram, which you should be using all of them.
Marlana
I'm going to ask a basic question, can we use that same, let's say posts that we used in the feed, can we use that repeat it in the stories and the reels and all that type of thing?
Theresa
you can absolutely do that. And you should do that. However, if you don't have stuff in between, no one's gonna look at your stories, because stories are more of, I always explained it, you know, the walls like your billboard, that's your brand billboard. Okay, so you want to be very particular about what you put in the wall, it's when people visit your wall, if it looks good enough, maybe they'll click it and watch something and then maybe follow you. But if it doesn't, they're gonna bounce. After that story you could be on your couch in your PJs, you could be in bed, you know, it doesn't matter where you're at. It's kind of like the behind the scenes, right? And so, it's like the real life of everybody. So, if you're not doing that real life content, or if you're not giving them some value content in there, you're probably not gonna have a lot of story followers. So yes, you can share, and you should share your wall posts. But also, you have to put other content, your stories, other software to
Marlana
define good content for us.
Theresa
That's a really hard question to answer, I would say, you know, we teach a concept called infotainment, which is good content is you educating people? Are you motivating or inspiring them? Or are you entertaining them? So good content is the best if you have all three of those things in your contents.
Marlana
Got it! How about behind the scenes? How much of that should come into?
Theresa
there's no set rule for it? I do think, you know, like, what we try to do, like I said, in stories, for example is to have the clients go do their own behind the scenes stuff, but then we go in and also put like a focus story, which is like, still giving them something extra that it wouldn't get on the wall or you know, I mean, there's so they have a reason to come back to the stories like maybe you put if you have a health person you put like extra recipes or extra workouts. Or if you're a business coach, maybe you show them like webinars set up that you're using are these little things that are like Ooh, they're like, this is cool. I love watching your sources always learn something, or you know what I mean, even in addition to the real-life stuff, so it's like kind of having that mix of content. You don't want to have just a one you want to mix in like some kind of infotainment but also like real life behind the scenes. You
Marlana
Got it! Is there a way to optimize our bio that most people aren't aware of? Or what should be in that?
Theresa
There's a lot with that. Yeah. So, I would say the biggest tips with that is, again, Instagram, like SEO for Google finding discover your account. Keywords are huge. So, thinking about how you can put your page, your brand's keywords in your bio. So, in your name field if you're not utilizing that that's huge. In actual bio itself, that's huge. You know, making sure it's really easy for people to understand if they visit your page, what is your page about? What are they going to get if they follow your page, and then your content needs to match that? So, there's definitely ways to optimize your bio.
Marlana
What about things like Link tree and all that where you can have? Do you recommend that? Or do you not recommend that,
Theresa
You can, we let our clients use that. But it's not great for social media marketing, you know, like, if you're trying to get people to click things, because what we found is, a lot of times you give people too many options, they don't flick anything, or they don't go where you want. So, if you're trying to do like direct promotions, I always recommend putting one link. But if it's something where like, you just want it you know, like a personal brand, someone's going to just be curious about you, and you can put your legs up, I think it's great. It's fine.
Marlana
Got it. So, if people are just starting off to grow their brand on Instagram, what would you say? If you do nothing else do this?
Theresa
invest in good visuals. By the way, she didn't pay me to say that. I swear, it's just so important. You'll never get anywhere. If you don't do that. I would say the second thing would be consistency. But like the visuals are just everything.
Marlana
And you know, now that you mentioned consistency, in what regard? Should we be posting X amount of times? Is it just?
Theresa
No, there's no right thing for everybody. And every expert will tell you for things I can tell you, it works for us. We don't do the whole every day, multiple times a day. Because, again, if you think about engagement, you know, it doesn't matter how much you love someone, if you see their posts five times in your feed a day, you're gonna be like, Oh, my God, like this is yeah, you're not engaging. This is annoying now, right? Oh, it's like the person that keeps texting you. Yeah, it's like, okay, like, I love you. But stop, right. So, we do not do that, you know, I would say an average cadence for someone to start if you have time to make content would be like an every other day. But don't feel obligated to do that. Because it's really quality over quantity. So, if you can only do two times a week or three times a week great. Like, you know, it's really about like, a really impactful, awesome post versus just posting watered down content. And this is why I see people like on Facebook selling premium content, calendars, it's just the absolute worst. It's like National Donut Day, like you know what to post every day. And I'm like, That is the worst, worst for any page, it kills the page, because people know you're posting just to post and there's like, no thought behind it. And so, it's like, where they stop engaging, and then your page goes to ***. So, I would absolutely never do anything like that. That's why I've never made one of those. I actually in my course I teach like the strategy to make your own content. It's optimized for engagement. So, whether that's like I said, two days a week, three days a week or every other day, or whatever that looks like even if you can post great content every day. Great. But I would definitely not do multiple times a day.
Marlana
Absolutely! And now that you brought it up. Talk to us about your Instagram strategy course.
Theresa
I talk about a lot because it’s our main flagship product that we have. I own a social media full-service agency. And so, what we did was we basically took all the strategies that we use to grow these accounts organically and put it into kind of like the seven-module course, which is like a DIY blueprint for you to learn and execute yourself. So, it's a really great course that teaches all these foundational stuffs that I'm talking about. And then you just plug and play your content into it. And then you get up front, you hit the ground running.
Marlana
love it. And I will make sure that the link to that is in the show notes.
Theresa
Oh, awesome. Thanks.
Marlana
And so, with that Theresa, I just have four final questions for you.
Theresa
Okay! Let's do it.
Marlana
Okay, first one, what's the best piece of advice you're ever given?
Theresa
All right, that's a really hard one. I would have to go with my mom. My mom always taught me to have a mop bucket attitude. It's my mom got her MBA in business. She never had a college degree. Her MBA was her luck. And as soon she went from being a manager of Burger King to a president of multiple different fast-food chains. She's currently she was president of steak and shake. So, like, I mean, she worked her way up with zero. She has her What is it the GED? That's it. So, she always taught me like she did that. Her mop bucket I'd say that's her MBA in business because it's really just doing all the *** that you don't want to do. Yeah, so be successful. Do all the *** that you don't want to do. Yeah, and too many people I think put that off and put that off. Oh, he's there's a lot of entitlement now too, as well with the younger generation they think they deserve without putting in the groundwork. Doesn't work like that. Yeah.
Marlana
So, share with us one thing on your bucket list.
Theresa
I've been touring so I have a huge bucket lists. So, if I had to pick one, the first thing that comes to my head is, I don't know if you've ever heard of the stairway to heaven in Hawaii. Yeah, it's like the Haiku Stairs. I figured I was on but it's this crazy huge hike up it's like these little like rickety stairs that you hike up. I don't even know unless me at ranking. And yeah, it's insane though. It's gorgeous. Called like Stairway to Heaven. Yeah, so I want to do that.
Marlana
And hopefully it's because people that you know you're going to such a high altitude not for other reasons because the stairs are rickety.
Theresa
I like the element of danger. It makes it fun. Just Kids with me.
Marlana
When the toy companies finally get around to making an action figure of you, what two accessories will that come with?
Theresa
Okay, this is a hard one. I would have to say coffee and my iPhone because if you give me coffee, my iPhone, I can do anything. I'll make money and businesses I can find my way around. I can shop I can think to people,
Marlana
so, it's true. And the last one how do people find you? How do they find your business?
Theresa
Oh, yeah. So my main platforms Instagram, obviously I love that. My Instagram is my name. Teresa Depasquale. Then you can read more about my business. Like I said, we have a couple of different parts of our business. We have Social Butterfly Academy, and then we have like our agency where you can read more about it at capturesocialgroup.com.
Marlana
Love it. Thank you so much. Thanks for being here.
Theresa
absolutely. Thanks for having me.