72: How to Use Instagram (Mindfully) to Grow Your Biz in Less Time with Chris Emmer
Lauren Tilden
Welcome back to Making Good, the podcast for small businesses who want to make a big impact. I'm your host Lauren Tilden and this is episode 72. Just like last week, if my audio quality isn't quite up to what you're used to hearing, I apologize. I've had a couple of unexpected family things come up, which led to quite a bit of travel and I'm heading straight into a family trip away and wasn't able to get my planned episodes out. But today I have a treat for you. This episode is all about Instagram. It is actually a replay of the second interview I did with the amazing Chris Emmer, founder of mindful social. But before we get into the episode, I have a couple of important things to say.
First, let's talk about content. One thing I hear over and over again, is I can't figure out what to say in my marketing. If that sounds like you, I have an awesome workbook that will walk you through a process for generating a lot of great content ideas, your audience will love to download it for free head to makinggoodpodcast.com/content.
Second, I invite you to join other values driven small business owners for great content, countability, and lots of business and marketing inspiration. It all takes place in the free Facebook community for this podcast, the Good Business community. The link will be in the show notes or you can go to makinggoodpodcast.com/community to be redirected.
Finally, if you enjoy this podcast, there are a few ways that you can help to spread the love. First, I would still love for you to leave a review on Apple podcasts or Stitcher to help others find the podcast. And second, take a screenshot while you're listening and tag me on Instagram at Lauren Tilden. That's @laurentilden I would still love to connect with you and cheer you on.
Okay, so let's talk about my conversation with Chris. In this episode, we talked about how we can set healthy boundaries with social media get super strategic, and see more results in less time. Chris is the founder of Mindful Social CO and the Mindful Social Club, a group program that helps business owners connect with the right audience on Instagram without being online 24/7. I love Chris's approach to social media. It is about providing value, being strategic and getting more results with less mindless scrolling, hopefully something that we are all about.
In this episode, we talk about the magic question how we can increase our results and spend less time on social media. We talked about how social media can be harmful, how Chris's life has changed since she set some boundaries with social media, how to actually change your behavior on social media. She has a five step process. Why content buckets or content pillars are important. Where to find your ideal customer on Instagram. And Chris walks us through a quick exercise to set up a posting schedule and themed days for Instagram stories. There's so much more here. I think you're gonna really enjoy this episode. Chris is an amazing human. Here's our conversation. Chris, welcome back to the podcast.
Chris Emmer
Thanks for having me back. Lauren.
Lauren Tilden
So excited. Your first episode is one of the most downloaded episodes of the entire podcast of all what are we at now? 30 Something episodes. So I feel like the people have spoken, they want to hear more of what you have to say. We're gonna have a slightly different angle to our conversation last time. But before we do get into kind of the bulk of the episode for anyone who hasn't listened to the first episode or may not be familiar with you. Can you give a quick intro to yourself? And while you're at it well, you mention the name change of your business what it was before what it is now? Why?
Chris Emmer
Oh my god. Yes, absolutely. I was just wondering if the last time I was on here, my business had a different name. So come for me. Yes, yes, it did. For anyone who I haven't met, my name is Chris and I run a business called Mindful Social Co where I work with business owners to help them figure out how to show up on Instagram to connect with their perfect audience to have organic engagement, effortless connections that lead to conversions without having to show up every single day or without having to sell their soul to the algorithm or feel like crap the whole time that they're doing it.
So I love finding kind of the middle path between the people who are of the hustle show up everyday mentality and the people who live in a world with no social media. So I love to find the balance where we find a way to make Instagram work for you not just for your business but holistically in your life, which leads me directly to the reason for the name change. My previous business name was Sweaty Wisdom. And Sweaty Wisdom really became my business name on accident. Because this was the name of a blog that I started almost a decade ago, when I was making the decision to leave my corporate ad agency job and start my entrepreneurial career.
At the time, I was scared out of my mind, and I had almost nobody who supported my decision. But there was something in me, this voice deep down, that knew I had to make a change that I couldn't keep going down the path that I was on. And I just felt this calling the deepest and I got the clarity and the confidence to make this not so popular decision when I was sweating my butt off in hot yoga class. So the blog name was Sweaty Wisdom. And it was a blog that I started without telling anybody in my life I was doing it. I just wanted a creative outlet. And it sort of grew organically into a business and the name stuck. And years later, honestly, almost a decade later, I still had this name, Sweaty Wisdom. And a great business name is something that's clear, it tells people what you do and what you're all about. So it was dumb, was cute, but it wasn't clear. So it was time for the change. Even though that too was scary, Mindful Social, sums up what I do a little bit better. So I'm super proud of myself this year for having made that switch.
Lauren Tilden
I love your name change, I feel like it's so just I've known you both before and after the name change. I actually love the original business name, but I feel like it's so aligned with kind of your philosophy and the work that you do. Let's dig into this a little bit. I feel like you're a bit of a kind of conundrum an oxymoron in that you are an Instagram marketing coach and yet you are focusing on kind of helping people set boundaries and using social media less even. Can you explain how this works? Like how can we both increase our results in marketing, and also spend less time on social media?
Chris Emmer
This is the golden question. I, deep in my soul have a belief that if you are adhering to a strategy that doesn't feel good for you, either one, you are not going to stick to it, and you won't stay with it for the long game to see results. Or two, you're going to burn out and feel like crap in the process. And if you feel like crap on the way to your goal, when you hit the goal, you're not, that's not going to be the magic pill that cures it.
So what I have seen and found from working very closely with entrepreneurs for the past, you know, five to 10 years is that no one is talking about what's happening on the inside when we're showing up on social media every single day. And there is some really hard hitting data, there are tons of studies that show the negative impact that social media has on us.
Luckily, within the past year, a lot of awareness has been shown on this through documentaries like the social dilemma. And it's just becoming a larger part of our dialogue, which I think is so important and was shocked that no one was talking about it until now. But I truly believe that for your business, to have longevity, for your marketing strategies to have longevity, you have to feel good about them, they have to work for you or else it's going to fizzle out. I had a long period of my life before I had a kid when I was a yoga teacher at night. And during the day, I worked on marketing and social media and advertising strategy. And I really felt like I led this double life where everyone in the ad and marketing world was fast paced, go go go. Here's another red bullet stay up all night. And then I would go into the yoga studio, fly through the door hot off the heels of a super long day at work. And I would tell everyone to breathe deeply and to connect with themselves and chant ohm. And it was such a disconnect. And it felt so strange to be in those two worlds at once that I found myself really craving that center point.
And now I can look back and see that what I was craving is the viewpoint that I'm able to express now which was the middle path where you can kind of have the best of both worlds. You can have all the good things, all the great opportunities that can come from social media, but you can really minimize the negative impacts that it can have on your life.
Lauren Tilden
So personally, like since you talked about kind of your before picture, which is the hustle and bustle of the marketing world and even into your business. I feel like what I've heard you say before is you didn't always have the best social media habits. How has your life changed since you started implementing some boundaries and kind of a more mindful and thoughtful approach to social media?
Chris Emmer
Hmm. In the beginning of my business, I had no balance and zero boundaries, it was just full hustle all the time. It looks good on the outside, but on the inside, I was frying. Now, I still didn't think that there was another way I just thought, you know, quote, unquote, this is how it has to be.
Then I became a mother and the world flipped upside down. So this decision, I always felt the need for it. I don't know if I would have implemented these boundaries without being forced to by having a small child that was totally dependent on me. When I became a mom, I was forced to slow down, I was forced to sit with myself, to not tie my productivity or my amount of hustle with my worth. It was really hard. And it was the best lesson of my life, a lesson that I'm still learning every single day. During this time, I had to get really serious about the way that I was using social media for both my business and at the time, I had over a handful of social media management clients.
So I wasn't just online growing my own business, but like six or seven clients, businesses as well. So I came to a point where I had been showing up just simply wasn't gonna fly anymore. Honestly, it felt like a fork in the road where my choices were to find a different way to show up or find a different career path. And luckily, I've decided to find a different way that I could show up for my business for my clients business, that was a more doable middle path and didn't feel so depleting. They got results in the honored rest and wellness and time offline, and all the things that make life so great. So now, I love to help people find this way as well. I really think life's too short to spend it all online. And I think that more and more of us are becoming aware of this and realizing that we want to be efficient. We want to show up online. But we don't want it to suck our brains out of our heads every time we scroll our phones. Hmm.
Lauren Tilden
Yeah. What are some of the like, the negatives of sort of, let's say people imagine someone who doesn't have any of these like important boundaries, they just kind of, like find themselves stuck in the scroll. Or if you're, you know, waking up every day and like, what am I going to post today? And it just takes away too much of their life? And then, you know, what are some of these, like real negative impacts that people listening might relate to?
Chris Emmer
Oh, okay. Let me pull up a few studies here. Okay, here are some of my favorite ones. The first one is a study from the Royal Society of public health showed that social media is more addictive than both cigarettes and alcohol. I don't know about you, but part of I don't know a lot of people who consider smoking cigarettes to be part of their job. I know. Probably like 90% of the people I'm friends with have social media as part of their job. So I think that's a really slippery slope. And something to be super aware of. I also think there's like this lag going on, where we have a cultural awareness of the negative effects of cigarettes or alcohol. But we don't have those same negative connotations yet of social media, I think they're starting to develop and they'll get stronger.
But there's this cultural lag, where if you're sitting down at the Thanksgiving dinner table, and you whip out your phone and check Instagram, no one's gonna think that's very weird. Your mom might look at you like, Where are your manners, but it's not gonna cause a huge to do like pulling out a Marlboro and lighting up a cigarette at the table. And so I think there's an interesting thing happening there.
Another stat, I mean, there are just studies upon studies upon studies showing the declines in mental health. Occasional users of social media, so people, this middle path that we're talking about are almost three times less likely to be pressed to be depressed than heavy users. A recent study showed that people who limited their social media use to a half hour a day had significantly lower depressive and anxiety symptoms compared to a control group which is really interesting.
Other negative effects not just on our physical not just on our mental health, but also on our physical health is poor sleep in both quality and quantity is really strongly associated with nighttime specific social media use. So we know sleep is super important. We know we feel like crap without it. But sleep gives the brain and the body a chance for rest and renewal. So disturbed sleep has been consistently associated with poor mental health. Moreover, heavy social media usage can contribute to headaches, migraines and vision problems. So it's not just our mental health, but also our physical health.
Lauren Tilden
I feel like there are two conversations I want to kind of focus on as we kind of take this conversation forward.
One is, how do we do it such that we see more results from our social media strategy and planning and execution with less time and less of the negative impacts? That's Part A, and then Part B is maybe, how do you actually start spending less time? You know, like, I think, as you mentioned, there's like this very addictive component to social media where you might know that maybe you shouldn't be up at like 11:45pm scrolling while you're laying in bed, instead of trying to go to sleep or read or something else. But it doesn't mean you're necessarily going to make that change. So why don't we start with that second part of the conversation? Like if you're kind of sold on this idea that social media is not, maybe something you should be spending as much time as you currently are? Every day? how do we go about making a change?
Chris Emmer
Hmm, good question. So if you are feeling like, oh, I don't have the best habits, but I also don't know how to actively stop my habits, or transform them. There are five steps you can take.
The first step is awareness, just figure out what the heck it is that you're actually doing, how much time you're actually spending, iPhones have a screen time features. So you could if you have an iPhone, just go to set. Actually, if you're listening to this right now, and you're not driving and you have your phone in your hand, go to settings and then screen time. In there, you're going to find a lot of really juicy nuggets, like your daily phone time, and a lot of other scary stats.
Once you're there, you can hit see all activity there, you can go more in depth and see specifics for individual apps. So you can head down to Instagram from that list, and see details on your Instagram usage specifically. So check out your statistics for today. And also check out your weekly average for Instagram usage. When you see these numbers, chances are they're going to be higher than what you expected. Those little check ins really add up in a way that we don't realize. So it can be kind of eye opening and shocking to see this number. So just be prepared that is probably going to be higher than you expect. But fine, having that light of awareness on it and thinking like oh my gosh, am I really dropping three hours a day into this app can be the motivation that gets you to make a change.
The next thing to do is to set some intention to it, how much time do you actually want to be spending? So if you are in a dream world, how much time per day? Would you want to be on the app? And then it's time to test it? Is it realistic? Or is it not realistic. So if you are currently at, say three hours a day on Instagram, and you wish you spent just a half hour per day on there, it's probably not a great idea to switch your goal from three hours to 30 minutes overnight, you're really kind of setting yourself up for failure in that circumstance. If you want to build confidence and forward motivation, it's small steps.
So you can begin by maybe 15 minutes each week, decreasing your app usage. And really celebrating those wins as you begin to go knowing that it's a process that certain times you're going to slip up, but being patient with yourself as you start to retrain your brain, but making those smaller, more incremental steps rather than I wanted to go cold turkey and I couldn't do it. I'm a failure, I give up, you can slowly build confidence that way.
Another thing you can do, the third step would be strategy, what's taken up all the time? What the heck are you doing while you're on there, so you can start to break it down. Maybe 50% of the time you're, you're scrolling and calling your research, maybe 25% of the time you are commenting and engaging. And then the other part of the time you're just cruising through hashtags, trying to think of content ideas, try to break down the amount of time that you're actually in the app and then think, Is this necessary? Where can I trim the fat? Where can I plan ahead and sort of reduce the time that I'm actually in here.
Once you got those steps in place, the fourth step is to get efficient through batching content creation, having a system to get it done to drop into your zone of genius single task and just write your posts all at once. Lauren, you know that I love this more than anything. And then the fifth step is boundaries, setting up app limits and the days that you are on or off so you can in your iPhone. Again, if you're an iPhone user, you can set this up right inside your phone by going to you can set up downtime. So that's the time in the evening that you log off and in the morning that you log on.
So I recommend being off your phone at least an hour if you can two hours before bed, and then giving yourself at least like a half 30 minutes to an hour in the morning to just sit with your genius brain and your beautiful thoughts before you let social media come bouncing in your brain. Weekends off can be really tough. But I think it's good to start with small steps with us. So maybe you just choose one day per week to delete the phone off your app. If you're uncomfortable deleting Instagram off your phone, you can start a folder that just says no. Drop your social media apps in it. And then I would drag that folder all the way to the farthest right screen. So you really have to work for it.
Lauren Tilden
Love. And there are things like this for non iPhone users too.
Chris Emmer
Yes, there's an app called Break Free. That's really good for non iPhone users.
Lauren Tilden
Yeah. So good. I think something interesting that you said there that kind of gave me a little bit of an aha moment is, I think sometimes we do consider like the time that we're scrolling as engagement. But you have a really different approach to engagement that I really like that doesn't involve just like opening up the app, scrolling through your main feed and like occasionally liking or commenting on something can you share about engagement spreads and how this might be like a more conscious probably also will definitely more effective way to engage?
Chris Emmer
Yeah, definitely. So the problem with scrolling your feed and just double tapping a post here and there is that you are only seeing the posts of people who are, who you're already connected to in some way. Which is great. It's awesome and important to live up on the people in your existing audience and in your existing community. But if what you're looking for is to grow your audience, and you're not seeing that number go up, that might be the disconnect. So in order to grow, you have to interact with people who you don't usually interact with.
So for an engagement sprint, I recommend, and again, I love a good timer, because you know, not because I am a weird timer lady. But because Instagram is specifically designed to get you sucked into it, right? There's notifications, there's red dots, there's all these new features. And so I find that, at least for me, if I don't set up a timer, 25 minutes can go by and I think it's been five minutes.
So for an engagement sprint what I do is set a stopwatch, a timer on my phone, or if you have like little kitchen timer, you can do that for five minutes and do three five minutes segments. So for each of the five minute segments, you are going to search for one hashtag in your target demo. The people who you want to be reaching with your content, the people who are perfect for your offer spent five minutes in one hashtag, you would be going through the most recent posts right now most reason is disabled, but hopefully it will be back by the time this podcast comes out. From the election. Yeah, it's still disabled. Oh, wow. Okay. Oh. So you had searched for your first hashtag, go into the most recent posts. And then for your designated five minutes, start commenting. Begin at the top with the most recent posts, you want to read the entire caption and comment in a genuine way, by replying to either something directly from the caption, if they have a call to action question, you can reply to that. Or if there's not a specific question, replying to something specifically from the caption or something specific from the photo, something that shows that you are a real human, and that you paid attention to it. If you think about how good it feels when someone answers your CTA, remember that feeling. So that's exactly what you're putting out there.
The idea with your five minutes is not quantity of comments and engagement is quality. So if it takes you, you know, double the time to leave a high quality comment, that's worth it. When your timer goes off, after five minutes, you're going to switch to another hashtag shift gears do the same for the next one. And then you're going to repeat that once more. So this takes 15 minutes overall, which is not a ton of time, chances are you're probably spending more than 15 minutes right now per week, quote unquote, engagement. And so you know, once a week is great, twice a week fine, too, I would say start small. See how it feels, and see how your account starts to change how your relationship with your audience starts to change doing this.
Lauren Tilden
So good. And I just can attest to these. Like it's a little bit for me at least counterintuitive that spending more time and talking to less people would actually be a way you can grow your like platform and your network on social media, but it actually does work. And if you kind of think about being on the other end of it like if I'm scrolling around on social media and I'm reading the comments on someone's post, If someone just says like five emojis, I'm like, not that interested. But if they say something really thoughtful and interesting, I'm like, oh, like, that's, that's interesting. Let me go see what that is, you know. So I feel like a lot of this stuff with social media, If you just try to put yourself in the shoes of like, What would someone else want? You know, what would I want someone to comment on my posts or respond to my story? And you kind of act that way? It's, it makes things a lot easier, like, how do I actually do this?
Chris Emmer
Exactly. And it's really easy to feel overwhelmed every time a new update comes out, or there's a new trend or you know, whatever new shiny object is out in the app that week. But just like you said, Lauren, if you just put yourself in the shoes of a being someone on Instagram, what would you like, on your account? How would that engagement feel to you? And then use that as your compass?
Lauren Tilden
So good. Okay, so let's get on to the juicy part where we talk about getting more results in less time, which I think you use the word efficiency before, which is exactly what that is. So how do we get more efficient with the time we do spend on social media?
Chris Emmer
Mm hmm. I feel like Lauren, you're kind of the queen of this. You've gotten so efficient, and you have so many accounts, it's amazing.
Lauren Tilden
I wouldn't recommend it. By the way, if anyone's thinking about having four accounts, like not a fan, it's it just kind of had to be that way for me but.
Chris Emmer
Forced you to get hyper efficient.
Lauren Tilden
Well, I learned from you and so I'm asking you this question.
Chris Emmer
All efficiencies starts with the non glamorous, non sexy stuff, which is strategy. It's doing the foundational work. So you've got to figure out and get crystal clear on who you're trying to talk to, and what you're talking to them about. And what are the topics that you repeat yourself on and your brand personality, how it is that you communicate all of the like base layer stuff that everyone wants to skip over.
That's the stuff that actually speeds up your process later on. So trying to like skip over the initial strategy, I think is a mistake that will keep users at a slower pace and make it more painstaking to create new content than it needs to be. So I would just emphasize the importance of strategy of knowing your what, your why, your how all that stuff that seems so beginner and even if you think you know that, like the back of your hand for your account, but you haven't revisited in a while, it might be a good time to just do a check in and think okay, what am I talking about here and use that as your LaunchPad from there.
Once you're clear on who you're talking to, what you're talking to them about, how you're saying all those fun things, it can be really helpful and a huge time saver to set some sort of loose schedule for yourself. How buttoned up your schedule is, is going to depend on your personality type 100%, some people love to get all their posts done two months ahead of time, like Anna, who's in the membership community. In our last co working session, she finished all her posts for 2020. She was like I'm done. I'm good until January. So for her that feels liberating. For me, I kind of like to be a little bit more loosey goosey and like open to inspiration and a little bit more fluid. So for me, that would make me feel crazy. But a loose structure can be set up so that you have the benefits of planning. And you also have the benefits of allowing a little bit of creativity.
So for a loose structure for Instagram, I would recommend figuring out first of all, how frequently you want to post on your feed, decide it, keep those days the same each week, unless it's a weird week where you've got a launch in the middle of the week or Christmas is on Thursday, something like that. You can basically use this as a template to know what's going on every single week. So let's say every week I want to post on Tuesdays and Thursdays I'd like to post two times per week. And I know that on in the beginning of the week, my audience reacts really well to inspirational posts, or more emotionally driven, inspiring content. And then on Thursdays, I find that carousel posts or educational posts perform really well with my audience. Then I can say okay, I can look at a calendar, Mark Tuesday and Thursday. These are the days that I'm posting to my feed. More importantly, I can look at the calendar and say, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, I don't have to worry about posting I can close out that tab.
Furthermore, you can start to think about Stories. So stories, I think are something that a lot of us waste so much mental energy on. And they're tons of fun and a great place to connect, but they don't need to kill us in the process. So if we're looking at how often we're showing up on the feed, let's use this example again. So we're showing up on the feed Tuesday and Thursday. That means that we're probably going to be in the Instagram app on Tuesday and Thursday. For this example, let's say we want to show up on stories four times a week, which is totally fine. By the way, you don't need to be on stories every single day. So if we're already going to be on the app on Tuesdays and Thursdays, those are natural fits for story days. And let's say that Wednesday is the day of the week that I book, all my live sessions where I do live teaching where I meet one to one with clients. That day is my busy work day. So from there, I can say, Monday will be a story day, and Friday will be a story day. So now I know, Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday, I do not have to think for one single second about posting to Instagram stories.
And again, I find that freedom comes from knowing more so the days that you aren't on, than the days that you are on. Because if you never designate these are the days that I'm offline, it's no wonder that you feel like you're on the content treadmill, and like you can never catch up. So from there, we've got our days planned out for stories, you can give it even more of a loose structure. So Lauren, we kind of did this the last time we talked.
Lauren Tilden
Yeah, let's definitely walk people through this. This was a very illuminating exercise that I feel like really like this. We did it last time we talked, which was last week. And then this week, I started doing it. And I was like, okay, Monday, I know what I'm doing, took me like, literally 15 minutes, and then I was like check. And then I just like didn't have to feel, you know, the pressure of trying to create something until the next day when I already knew what I was doing. So I would love if you could walk us through that process of kind of setting themes for your stories per day.
Chris Emmer
Yes. So I find that most people are feeling busy and overwhelmed on Mondays. At least I do. On Monday, I don't have a lot of energy to dump into Instagram stories, I want to kind of get my week figured out, get my bearings. And I'm not ready to show up in a super valuable way for my audience. So rather than stressing out trying to force something, that's not going to be great content anyways, I like to designate Monday as a, quote unquote, community day. So on this day, from here on out, you can think of Monday as the day that you don't have to worry about creating new content whatsoever. Instead, you can take this day, and it doesn't have to be Monday, whatever day you feel stressed, make it that day.
From here on out, you can use that day as a day to leverage other people's voices. So what you can do is to go into your saved posts on that day and select maybe three to five posts that match either in their theme, what sort of content they're about, or visually, and then you can share each one of these in your stories back to back. When you share them, you want to be sure to tag out the creators handle so that they can see them so that they get tagged in it. And you could even add some text describing what you love about the post or the account. But that's not necessary.
So on Monday, you're just going to go in, head to your saved posts and share three of other people's posts, tag them in it. When you're doing this, you, A, don't have to create anything new, it's so fast and easy to do. And B, you are again sending out some good karma, you're helping other people get more eyeballs on their accounts, and you are able to leverage other people's voices. Another thing that can happen that's a great side effect is that if you tagged them in the story, they can then share it to their stories, which would give your account potentially more eyeballs. So this can be an awesome way to take some work off your plate and also build community, which is such a win win.
Lauren Tilden
So good.
Chris Emmer
For Tuesday, so we just planned out on Monday, that's our community day. So for Tuesday, we are already posting to our feed that day. So we can plan on Tuesday sharing our feed posts to stories, since we're already going to be on there anyways. And then Tuesday can be a great day for doing something a little more dense, maybe an educational story sequence like a mini training or some sort of series that is helpful to your audience or teaches them something.
So that day could be a really value packed day where you are focused on giving to your audience. For this you could go back into old posts, look at any educational posts you've created in the past year and just repurpose that content into stories. You totally do not have to reinvent the wheel here for Thursday, A, you could do something interactive. Again, I'm just spitballing it off the top of my head, yours can be whatever you want them to be.
So for Thursday, that could be a day where you're focused on connecting with your audience to listening and having a two way dialogue. So you could do on Thursday may be an Ask Me Anything more in the morning, you put up a question sticker and say, what's your number one frustration about Instagram marketing right now, or asked me anything about building a business online setting some sort of parameters around the Ask me anything. And then in the evening, you could go back in, go through and respond to each of the question stickers. This is again, great for building rapport with your audience, and letting them know that you aren't just there to broadcast a message. You're also listening, which is so important. This will also get your audience in the habit of being heard and having a two way dialogue with you so that the next time you post and you have a question or a CTA in there, people won't feel so awkward about replying to it because they've already started a conversation with you.
Then what else do we have? We got one more day for stories. Friday can just be a fun day. On Friday, you could post lifestyle contents, let's say you're throwing your ball with your dog in the park, you want to post a cute dog boomerang go for it. This is just kind of like the fun relaxed day. Other ideas for a Friday could be sharing your clients wins for the week. So just something sort of positive. That also is social proof for your business. Or I always love to incorporate at least one day of the week to share your agenda or your to do list. The reason for this is two things. Number one is that you already know what it is. You don't have to write anything new. And you're talking about what it is that you do for work without being promotional. So it reminds your audience Oh, she does one to one strategy sessions. I want to learn more about that without having to say link in bio, swipe up every single time.
The other thing that is sharing your to do list or your agenda does is it kind of holds you accountable as well. So to recap, Monday, you could do a community share of other people's posts Tuesday, you could do a valuable share, which is like some sort of educational story sequence repurposing old content. Thursday's is connecting with your audience, whether that's doing a live q&a or posting a question sticker and responding to it. And then Friday, letting that be a lifestyle day having some fun with it.
Lauren Tilden
It's so funny that we're just talking about this right now. Because earlier today, we posted on our Station Seven account like a gift box that we had wrapped up and it had a bunch of different products from different makers in it. And we tagged them and it just like was this pretty image of like a box that was going to be shipped as a gift to someone. And as we've been on this conversation, I've gotten like three or four of those makers, like repost it and be like, Oh, so pretty. Someone asked me about where we got our like eco friendly wrapping. I think it's so easy actually, to engage with people, if you're just thoughtful about it.
What we did is we, you know, we're promoting that we carry other people's products, when they go to our story, when someone looks at our story, they can go tag, go visit the makers that we've tagged, but then by tagging those makers, they can also choose to like, for them, it's like, Oh, I get to show off that my products are carried in the store. So it's, and then they're promoting us. So it's such a win win. And obviously we didn't do that consciously, really, we just wanted to post that photo. But making sure that you're engaging with people is just, it's surprisingly effective. If you're thoughtful about it.
Chris Emmer
Yeah, and it doesn't have to take your whole life up. Like it doesn't have to be hours and hours, you can be mindful about it and still be able to build community show up and engage, make people feel loved up and get the job done without having to dump all your time into it.
Lauren Tilden
So part of using our time wisely is making sure that we're talking to the right people. How do we find these ideal customers? It feels like something a lot of people struggle with.
Chris Emmer
Yeah, this is like the number one hot ticket question. So really, there are three places that you can find people on Instagram. I mean, if we're just being super zoomed out about it, you can find people through hashtags.
The hashtags that they're using are a way that they are putting their content into folders and cataloging themselves. So hashtags are a great way to find people. Another way that you can find people is through geo tags. So people are checking in somewhere, whether that's an event or at a physical location. That's the way to find them that may or may not apply to your business. That doesn't apply to a lot of us right now because most of us aren't leaving the couch And then the third way to find people is through other people's accounts.
So to see where your audience is hanging out, what sort of other pages do they like? who's commenting? What sort of content are they commenting on, you can start to look at parallel accounts, accounts that have the same target audience, but a slightly different offering, and start to use that as a way to look for your ideal audience. And from there really, once you've found a few people who fit the profile of the person that you are trying to connect with, you can sort of put your detective hat on and look at their behavior, what sort of hashtags are they using? What are they posting about? And you can start to go a little bit deeper from there.
Lauren Tilden
Okay, I'm gonna pick your brain on one more sort of Instagram strategy question before we transition into kind of the wrap up questions.
This question is about knowing what to post. So earlier, you mentioned, finally, coming up with this, like when you're strategizing, coming up with a different kind of topics of posts that you're going to do. And I know, at least when I think of the way that you teach this, I think of it in two ways. One, you have the different kinds of posts, so like humanize, educate, inspire. And then the other is like what specific content categories do you share? So for me, like let's say for Station Seven, we share about the makers that we carry, we share about, like what we believe when it comes to small business. So the different kind of topic, angles, can you share your approach to that for anyone who's kind of thinking, okay, like, I'm really bought into this, the boundaries, I'm really bought into sort of batching my content and working on things in advance, but I just don't know what to write.
Chris Emmer
So the two ways that you can think about it, and I'm a very visual person. So in my head, I kind of visualized a chart where one axis is your content buckets. And the other axis is your different post types. So different post types would be those that you just listed, educate, entertain, inspire, and humanize. So we've got those. And then on the other axis, we've got your Buckets. Buckets are just a way of saying topics. So what are the three to four topics that you talk about consistently on your account, when you're all over the place, people don't remember you for anything, right? It can be hard to refer someone who talks about a different thing every single day, that accounts that are memorable are the ones that repeat themselves, they're not actually the ones that have the most creative brand new way of saying something over and over. They're the people who touch on the same topics repeatedly. So that you know, this is where I go to learn more about breath work and soothing the nervous system. This is the page that I go to, to learn about Gluten Free Recipes, and low FODMAP foods, things like this.
So think about the three to four topics that you find yourself talking about over and over, you can know them off the top of your head, most people do. And if you're not sure what they are, you can just brain dump a list of your highest performing posts, and start to see where they group together that can sort of serve as your guide as well. So I know what you're talking about. Those are your buckets. And you know how you're saying it, which is your entertain, inspire, educate, whatever the purpose is, then when you have those two components together, all you got to do is flush out the middle part, which can be so much easier to do with a little bit of structure surrounding it.
Lauren Tilden
For me, one thing that's been kind of a game changer with social media is just making sure that I have some kind of prompt when I sit down to write, and then I can actually get something out. But if it's like write a post, that's really vague, and I just I need to, I know that the way I work, and I think a lot of other people work this way is giving direction is gonna make you a lot more efficient. So I feel like this matrix you just described as saying, Okay, this is going to be a post about breath work, and it's going to be an inspiring post. And like, that gives me something to go on a lot more than just an Instagram post for this account.
Chris Emmer
Yeah, it's totally the blank page is like pouring water on the fire of creativity. I think that when you just have a little bit of structure, it can help your ideas run wild. It's like, yeah, yeah, it can just help your ideas come to life so much easier, where you don't have to sit down and feel like oh, my god, what am I going to do today? And just sort of push pixels around for an hour before you even type anything out.
Lauren Tilden
Yeah. And I feel like a lot of what I've learned from you is just like you said, the strategy stuff isn't always like the sexiest part of the process where you have to sit down and like, actually really use your brain and think and brainstorm and, you know, make some decisions about the direction you're gonna go in But that stuff is so important. And once you've sort of laid that foundation down it just like for me now social media now that I have a bit of an approach to it, and I know kind of the things that I talk about on each account and the different types of posts, not that it's easy, I feel like social media is not easy. But I know what I'm doing when I sit down to work on it. And that is, like, that's just a gift. When I think about the years that I've spent just every day sitting down and being like, I should really post something, I have no idea what I would say, just getting really thoughtful about it, whatever that looks like for you will totally change your relationship with social media.
Chris Emmer
Yeah, I completely agree.
Lauren Tilden
Let's start to transition a little bit. Since I've already had you on the podcast, we've gotten one recommendation for a book and one business you admire already, but I'm going to make you do it again. So let's start with the business you admire. What is one more business that you admire?
Chris Emmer
I wonder to what I said last time.
Lauren Tilden
You said Breathwork
Chris Emmer
Oh my gosh, damn, I'm too predictable. I was gonna say another breathwork one. Okay. Well, here we are. Let me think of another business that I admire. Okay. I know, a business that I admire is the Leverage Practice, which is a business run by my really good friend, Stephanie Claremont. And what she does is she helps health practitioners put together online programs, which I feel right now more than ever is so helpful. And she does it in such a crystal clear way that it's just so cool to see the way that she transforms lives. And I'm so I'm so friend proud of her. She also has been like just such a good business friend for me that I have kind of instituted a rule where anything that Steph says I just do it the first time, because they've given me so much advice in the past that, you know, six months to a year later, I said, Oh, I should have listened to Stephanie. Now I just know when she gives you advice. Just take it the first time.
Lauren Tilden
Love I will definitely definitely link her in the show notes. What is a book that you would recommend?
Chris Emmer
My book that I'm reading right now and that I'll probably be reading for a while because it is a doozy it's a big one is Women Who Run With Wolves. Have you ever read that, Lauren?
Lauren Tilden
No. It's actually been on like my radar for a while but I have not. I have not taken the plunge yet. Tell us about it.
Chris Emmer
Oh, so good. I also I bought this book probably at least 10 years ago, and it's just been on my bookshelf. Like I've been low key avoiding eye contact with it. Everyone says how much their lives but I just like couldn't get myself to crack the cover because it seemed like such a big commitment. And big buck. Oh, it's a big one. Yeah, it's kind of textbook style. Okay. It's by a woman called Clarissa Pinkola Estes. She's a PhD. And it is myths and stories of the wild woman archetype. So what she does is each chapter is a myth or story from a different culture about the wild woman archetype. So the actual story or myth is like, two, three pages long, very short. And then there's probably 30 pages of her analyzing it, which for me, I truly was living my best life and like seventh grade lit class. So I'm really, miss talking to people about books. This is just like, it's everything. It's so good. And you don't have to read it all at once. I do just a little tiny bit each morning with my daughter sitting on my lap. And it's just been so fun to read. So for anyone avoiding eye contact with this book, because it looks too long. Go ahead and dive in.
Lauren Tilden
Okay, yeah, I actually I didn't really even know. I thought it was about sort of like connecting to your like, inner. Wild, I guess. I don't think I really knew what it was about. So that sounds even better than I thought. And I'm definitely gonna hit it up. Thank you for that recommendation. Now, can you just share like what's new with you? Where can people find you? Where can they learn from you? What kind of what do you have to offer people who might be interested in learning more about your work and maybe going a step further?
Chris Emmer
Yeah, I am not surprisingly, easiest to contact on Instagram. So if you're listening to this right now, I guess I don't have to say if you're listening because you do shoot me a DM. My handle is @mindfulsocialco and I do have a free workshop coming up. That's going to be super action packed and awesome. So it If you're listening to this and you would like to attend that workshop, just shoot me a DM and tell me that you came from Making Good say, Lauren is awesome and all caps. We gonna get you hooked up to join. And other than that I'm just getting ready to take this membership into the next year and so excited about all that 2021 will hold.
Lauren Tilden
I know, it's time for a new year.
Chris Emmer
Let's turn that page.
Lauren Tilden
Yeah, Chris, thank you so much for coming back on and for giving the people what they want. I think this is such a great sort of addition to our catalogue of episodes that we're building together. And I really hope people take your advice and kind of start to form a better relationship with social media.
Chris Emmer
Me too. We all deserve it.
Lauren Tilden
Okay, I love this woman. I know Chris and I both love to hear from you. You can find Chris at @mindfulsocialco, tell her you came from Making Good and me at @LaurenTilden. If you're interested in learning more about mindful social clubs, something that I am a part of probably feel free to DM me and I can send you more info. A couple other things before I wrap up.
First, I have an awesome guide to creating great marketing content and coming up with new ideas. You can download it free at makinggoodpodcast.com/content. Second, there's a Facebook community of other amazing small business owners and great content just for the group. I would love for you to join at makinggoodpodcast.com/community And finally, if you found this podcast was that helpful or valuable, I'd love to hear from you. Take a screenshot of the episode in your podcast player and tag me on Instagram at @LaurenTilden. You can find the full details from this episode over at the show notes page at makinggoodpodcast.com/72
If this is your first time tuning in and you're interested in hearing more about my businesses, check out how I can help you with a small business marketing at Laurentilden.co . My plant inspired greeting cards vinyl stickers and art prints goods at Good Sheila at goodsheila.com . My Seattle retail shop Station Seven at station7seattle.com And of course the podcast website makinggoodpodcast.com Thank you for being here and for focusing on making a difference with your small business. Talk to you next time