Chloe is an influencer and affiliate manager at Tailwind – which is an Instagram and Pinterest Scheduling and Analytics tool. As well as helping lots of businesses make the most of their Instagram profiles, she’s also a fashion influencer and blogger in her own right.
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Getting Into Social Media
When Chloe and her husband relocated to a new home for hie to attend grad school, Chloe began experimenting with Instagram as a platform for selling second hand clothing.
She quickly found that the more personal her stories became, the more her success grew and pretty quickly she realized that her Instagram profile was more of an asset than even her eCommerce business.
From that point she discovered the social media company Trailwind, applied and now enjoys sharing her self earned knowledge with businesses.
Being Genuine
Chloe says that people are increasingly gravitating towards more realness in their social media interactions.
She recommends that people get comfortable by posting curated posts and as they begin to get comfortable with the tool, begin sharing more real and behind the scenes posts.
Creating Content Plan around 9 Topics
Chloe suggests thinking about topics in terms of the nine grid. If you consider what you see when you visit instagram, filling up the top nine squares is an easy way to proactively plan your social media.
Your topics can be broad and thematic like “education” “promotion” and “inspiring” If you build your plan this way, you’ll be able to easily customize to the season.
Even if you are sharing similar types of content, you can tailor and tweak to suit the season.
Nine is especially useful as it keeps the feed fresh and unpredictable — whether you post five days a week or seven, nine won’t fit evenly so the perception of content will stay fresh.
Chloe recommends not directly duplicating posts, but consider how you can repurpose, re-edit and redisplay content.
What is great content?
Great content is not the same for everyone. A meme account is going to need different content and elements than a product brand.
Chloe recommends exploring as much as possible and seeing what works. She says that follower count is not the most important thing.
In fact, finding the most effective ways to move people to your website is the most important thing to do if you’re an eCommerce brand!
Smart Linking in Instagram
Using a dynamic tool in the Instagram bio link is so critical in eCommerce. Instagram is becoming more of your homepage than your actual website and Chloe says because of this, it’s important to use the smart tools in the bio link as a table of contents.
She points out that if a friend shares a favorite item, you are more likely to click through to your website via the bio link than visiting your actual website.
Using Stories
Stories are a critical place for you to engage with your audience. The more engagement you have in your stories, the more coverage you will see on Instagram overall.
Chloe says to try and make it fun, reshare the content on your feed and try and think of ways to get your audience interested and engaged.
She recommends sharing polls, behind the scenes glimpses, and upcoming events to look forward to.
Hashtags
On Instagram — if you know which hashtags to use and you have a plan, the more the merrier. Instagram looks at the hashtags on accounts you look at the most.
So if you love looking at home decor, Instagram will prioritize posts with home decor hashtags that align with what you look at the most.
Tailwind offers an awesome hashtag finder that automatically generates hashtags based on what you write in the content section.
You’ll also be able to understand different segments of hashtags that will let you be more competitive and strategic.
Where to Focus for Growth
If you’re going to study anything on your feed, looking at hashtag success should be top of mind if you want to grow.
Not far behind are which posts get saved and shared, which is surprisingly a much more important metric than likes.
The joy of Scheduling
Everyone is so different and has a unique set of skills and it’s so important to not force yourself into a system that doesn’t work for you. That’s why a scheduling tool like Tailwind can make social media work for everyone.
Chloe says that identifying what you do and don’t like about social media development will help you create your most successful plan. If you hate producing photos but love planning topics, she recommends batching that piece you don’t love and then rewarding yourself.
She suggests trying to schedule a week at a time, which works for a lot of people and if you segment photo/caption/hashtags as separate tasks, you’ll often find that giving the right focus to each distinctive task is much easier.
Insider Tips
If we’ve inspired someone to take their first step with email Marketing –what do they need to know to give themselves the best chance of success?
It takes a long time to figure out what you enjoy about organic social and what’s going to work for you.
Don’t give up. Keep going, giving yourself time and you’ll begin reaching your goals.
Once you’ve started of course you’ve got to ‘keep optimising’! So what’s your favourite way to improve email marketing performance?
Chloe’s favorite way to improve performance is the simple steady growth using the tips she shared, including hashtag optimization and doubling down on themes that get shared and saved.
She also recommends using the tools that Instagram releases. Reels, video content and new widgets that get released in the stories feature.
Don’t try to do everything at once, but consider trying to add them on weekly.
It’s impossible to improve our marketing unless we’re monitoring the performance – but the list of stuff we could monitor can be overwhelming. So what, for you is the number one email marketing KPI?
For eCommerce, Chloe recommends monitoring the links that are going to your shop page.
Over time you may see follower growth, but make sure it’s leading to more people clicking through to your site.
Crystal ball time – what’s coming up in the next 6-12 months that we should be getting ready for in email marketing?
Get comfortable with creating and using short form videos.
They are really easy to create and will allow you to share on Instagram and TikTok in their new formats which are on the horizon as the next most popular feature.
Interview Links
- Fancy giving Tailwind a try? Start for free here AND get $30 credit for when you upgrade to a paid plan
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