THE INSPIRATION PLACE PODCAST
Tyler J McCall:
Hi there. I’m Instagram Marketing Strategist and lover of all things Nachos and Target, Tyler J. McCall, and you’re listening to the Inspiration Place Podcast with Miriam Schulman.
It’s the Inspiration Place podcast with artist, Miriam Schulman. Welcome to the Inspiration Place podcast, an art world insider podcast for artists by an artist, where each week we go behind the scenes to uncover the perspiration and inspiration behind the art. And now your host, Miriam Schulman.
Miriam Schulman:
This is Miriam Schulman, I’m the host of the Inspiration Place podcast. I’m thrilled that you have decided to join me today for episode number seven, and it’s all about Instagram. In this episode you’ll discover how often you need to post on Instagram. This number is going to shock you as it did me, as it is a lot less than you probably think. You’ll also learn how to use hashtags properly to build your following, as well as why using Linktree is lazy marketing and what you should do instead. Now, since this episode is all about Instagram, I have a question for you, are you following me over there? If not, my handle is @schulmanart, and I would love to hear from you. If you send me a direct message over on Instagram, I promise I’ll write you back. And if you’re not sure what to say, just let me know that you listened to this podcast, and let me know also what your number one takeaway was. I can’t wait to hear from you.
Miriam Schulman:
We have a real treat today because today we have Tyler J. McCall, who teaches entrepreneurs how to use Instagram with intention, and the keys to marketing online with values and purpose. His specialty is using Instagram to convert your followers into customers, and he stresses the importance of a well crafted Instagram strategy. Tyler caught my eyes last year on Instagram, and since then has been featured on some of my favorite podcasts all about using Instagram with intention, which is why I am so excited to have him here today so we can get real on how artists can use Instagram to successfully sell their art and market themselves. So welcome Tyler, I’m so happy to have you here today.
Tyler J McCall:
Yeah, thanks for having me. I’m excited to be here. I’m ready.
Miriam Schulman:
I know you’re like a professional drama queen. I meant like the kid who waited till the night before to write their book report, I’m downloading all the podcasts you’re on today like, “Wait a minute, I don’t have time to listen to these. This is not good.”
Tyler J McCall:
I’m that kid too though, I wait until the last minute to do most things in my life, and they all turn out well, so I’m just reinforced for that terrible behavior.
Miriam Schulman:
Yes. It’s probably where your Kolbe is. Have you your Kolbe yet?
Tyler J McCall:
No, I just actually heard about this recently, I need to do it.
Miriam Schulman:
Yes, do it. It’s worth it. Cheaper than therapy for whatever it is, $40, and mine actually says that you do best, you do your best work when you’re improvising. So it’s spot on.
Tyler J McCall:
I love that.
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah, spot on. Right.
Tyler J McCall:
That’s so good.
Miriam Schulman:
I told you this is a brand new podcast, that you’re going to be, I’ve recorded 10 episodes but I’m putting you on 7 I think.
Tyler J McCall:
Fun. Awesome.
Miriam Schulman:
Yes.
Tyler J McCall:
Thank you.
Miriam Schulman:
Because I see how hot you’re getting all of a sudden. I thought, “Oh, I’m giving this guy who nobody knows a chance.” Meanwhile, everybody has you on.
Tyler J McCall:
I’m on the social media-
Miriam Schulman:
That’s really what I thought.
Tyler J McCall:
… examiner podcast next week.
Miriam Schulman:
No, I know. I saw that. I was, “Damn, I thought I wanted to get you first.” Okay, and then you were Amy Porterfield’s, I was, “Dammit.” All right, so I’ve been following you, Tyler, for a while, but I know that I probably know you better than you know me. So I am going to just let you know a little bit about myself, what I do, and why I invited you here today, which I’m pretty impressed that you said, “Yes,” to a stranger you met on the internet, by the way.
Tyler J McCall:
I was taught as a kid and not to interact with strangers on the internet, but that’s literally all I do all day now.
Miriam Schulman:
Exactly, right. Don’t take candy and don’t take podcast interviews from people you don’t know.
Tyler J McCall:
I will always take candy and podcast interviews.
Miriam Schulman:
Exactly, especially chocolate. All right, so I’m an artist. I’ve been a professional artist for over 15 years, I’m in New York, and my bread and butter is mostly at this point, teaching people how to paint with my online art classes. So that’s a lot of what I do, I still take commissions, and I do watercolor portraits, and I do sell that art. My audience is mostly artists, and artists actually do pretty well on Instagram, but we can do a lot better, which is why I wanted your help. One of the reasons I wanted to introduce my audience to you, is because a lot of those Instagram experts that are out there are hot 20-something-year-olds who show up in their underwear or, I mean, or maybe they’re a little curvier. And so it’s, “Well that’s why they have 100,000 followers.” Tell me really what the deal is, how do I get people to notice my art and engage with me? So that’s why I invited you.
Tyler J McCall:
I would post a photo of myself in my underwear on Instagram, but I don’t even, I don’t know if anyone would like to see that.
Miriam Schulman:
Well you could do it when you’re dancing.
Tyler J McCall:
I should try it. I’ll try it. I’ll give it a try, why not? Yeah, I’ll do it in my dance break on Insta stories and see what happens.
Miriam Schulman:
That’s right. Tyler is a lot of fun, so I’ve been following him for a little while now, probably, it’s not quite a year. I think I started stalking you nine months ago, and Tyler has a very joyous feed with his dance breaks and you really feel like you get to know you on line. And what I hear from my friends who are artists who are trying to market their art, first of all, a lot of them are caught up in the number of followers, but the real issue that a lot of us are struggling with is really building that engagement. I’ve seen that engagement drop, not just because I think of the algorithms, but I think people are spending more time now in their stories.
Tyler J McCall:
Mm-hmm.
Miriam Schulman:
So that whole strategy that I felt I figured out for my Instagram feed is not working anymore.
Tyler J McCall:
I know. I know that’s really frustrating, and I’m hearing that across the board. And that’s really why the strategies that I’m using, I’m teaching my students, and what we’re doing right now, are we’re still working on creating great content for the feed, but there’s this realization happening that the obsession with perfection in the feed is not really going to necessarily get you any further on Instagram anymore. And the algorithm is interesting, I actually love the algorithm and I try and help my students understand why the algorithm is your best friend. And it comes down to the fact that the algorithm makes our content in the feed last longer than ever before. So that means-
Miriam Schulman:
That’s interesting.
Tyler J McCall:
Yeah, right? So as marketers, as content creators, that means that we don’t have to create as much content for the feed, instead we can create that high quality content, which doesn’t always have to be a perfect, pure, pretty curated photo, which I always joke about. I feel like the Instagram formula for a photo is laptop, latte, succulent, that’s it. You got to have those three things and then it’s an Instagram post.
Miriam Schulman:
Right. See now for artist, it’s our art, and sometimes I feel like unless it’s an elephant or a giraffe, nobody’s paying attention, right?
Tyler J McCall:
Totally. Totally.
Miriam Schulman:
So when I post an elephant I get 500 likes, and then it’s, if it’s a picture of me, 50, and I feel like that song, that selfie song, “Oh, I posted this 4 hours ago, I’ve only gotten 20 likes, should I delete it? Nobody likes me, what do I do?”
Tyler J McCall:
Yeah.
Miriam Schulman:
So, yeah,
Tyler J McCall:
Yeah, and well, and really what we’re seeing now with the feed, with the shifting algorithm, is we can actually post a lot less often in our feed-
Miriam Schulman:
Okay.
Tyler J McCall:
… than ever before.
Miriam Schulman:
What do you recommend? Every day? Twice a day?
Tyler J McCall:
So it really depends on kind of your audience and your main objective with your Instagram account. But I’m at a place now where I’m telling most of my students that posting every day is too often the post on Instagram.
Miriam Schulman:
Really?
Tyler J McCall:
Mm-hmm.
Miriam Schulman:
Oh, that’s such good news.
Tyler J McCall:
Posting every day in the feed.
Miriam Schulman:
Okay.
Tyler J McCall:
Because what you’ll see when you track engagement now, is that where it used to when the feed was purely chronological, we would see that engagement spike and then typically die off. And-
Miriam Schulman:
Okay.
Tyler J McCall:
… one of the reasons that I had loved Instagram before, and why I would typically talk about and teach Instagram, is when we looked at all of the social media platforms, Instagram had the longest half-life for content when every platform was purely chronological. So that meant a Facebook post would last four minutes and then it was lost in the shuffle. A tweet back in the day would literally last 20 seconds and then it was lost in the shuffle. Whereas a Facebook post, or an Instagram post, an Instagram post would last 15, 20, 45 minutes. Well, the cool thing now with the algorithm is our Instagram posts are getting likes for the first hour, and then for the first day, and then for the first week that we’ve posted them, they last so much longer. So, what I like to think about is creating content in the feed that’s great, that’s compelling, it can be beautiful if you want it to be beautiful, it needs to have something interesting, valuable or inspiring about it. But more importantly, where I put most of my time and energy on Instagram now, is in Instagram stories and then engaging on Instagram. You see, a lot of folks are trying to grow their following by just posting content with hashtags and not doing anything else.
Miriam Schulman:
See now I’ve kind of given up on hashtags, some of the questions I’ve gotten from my audience was, “Well what are the right hashtags to use to get art collectors,” and I’m curious to what you’re going to say, but I’ve kind of stopped using a lot of hashtags. I’ll just throw maybe two or three hashtags on because I don’t know that it really even made much difference anymore. It’s a different, what do you think of that Tyler?
Tyler J McCall:
Totally. Totally.
Miriam Schulman:
Okay, great.
Tyler J McCall:
So I think hashtag are still important because there are still people looking in hashtags, and people could find you through hashtags. The most important function of the hashtag for you as the artist and as this content creator, is for you utilizing hashtags to go out and find your followers and attract them back to your content.
Miriam Schulman:
So dig deeper into that, let’s unpack that.
Tyler J McCall:
Yeah. So instead of just posting a photo with a bunch of hashtags and then putting your phone down and logging off of Instagram.
Miriam Schulman:
Which that’s what we do.
Tyler J McCall:
Exactly. Because, you do that because Instagram is either an afterthought or an obligation or you open up Instagram and go, “Oh my God, I haven’t posted in a week. Let me take a photo of my studio and post something,” right?
Miriam Schulman:
Absolutely, let me walk that back, that’s not what happens. What happens is I post something with a bunch of hashtags, and now I’m following The Real Housewives, and how I’m following you, and I’m getting jealous at some other artist because she has more engagement than me, and now I’m going back and looking at my post and wondering why there’s only 10 likes on it, so that’s more of the flow of what happens.
Tyler J McCall:
Got it. Okay.
Miriam Schulman:
All right.
Tyler J McCall:
So what would be a better use of your time is posting on Instagram, you can post, I say for most of my students, the goal is three days a week for the feed. Three days a week and-
Miriam Schulman:
You are my new best friend.
Tyler J McCall:
I will go 7 to 10 days without posting in my feed, I’ll still gain followers, I’ll still getting that.
Miriam Schulman:
Okay, but wait, you’re also going on Big Influencer podcast, so let’s be clear about that.
Tyler J McCall:
Totally.
Miriam Schulman:
When you posted on so-and-so’s my favorite podcast, that day you gained 2,000 followers-
Tyler J McCall:
Uh-huh.
Miriam Schulman:
… because I was checking.
Tyler J McCall:
So yeah, I’m definitely getting followers that way, but I’m also gaining followers every other day because I’m spending most of my time on Instagram, when I’m not creating stories, outside of my account engaging in hashtags, locations, liking other people’s posts, watching other people’s stories, responding to their stories.
Miriam Schulman:
Okay.
Tyler J McCall:
That’s how you can actually grow your following. So Instagram has totally shifted from just create content, put hashtags, to create the content and then go out into hashtags and find people and attract them back to your account.
Miriam Schulman:
Okay. So, and by the way, I do want to walk that back also, because like I said, I discovered you nine months ago before you were going on and you were doing perfectly fine.
Tyler J McCall:
Thank you. Thank you.
Miriam Schulman:
Yes. Yes. No, no, no, we love you. So in other words, instead of worrying about the perfect hashtag for my picture, what I should do is search those hashtags, but here, let me ask you something, because the people using that hashtag are other artists.
Tyler J McCall:
Mm-hmm.
Miriam Schulman:
So how am I going to find an art collector? If I wanted to find someone who likes this giraffe-
Tyler J McCall:
Mm-hmm.
Miriam Schulman:
… it’s not necessarily going to help me that much if I’m searching on #mixed media, that’s just going to find me other artists who are posting with #mixedmedia.
Tyler J McCall:
Exactly. So then your time and your effort is not going to be put into those art related hashtags.
Miriam Schulman:
Okay.
Tyler J McCall:
Instead you’re going to spend time engaging with hashtags that are where your potential customer or client or buyer actually is on Instagram.
Miriam Schulman:
Okay.
Tyler J McCall:
Or you can also engage with locations on Instagram. That’s a misplace that a lot of people aren’t engaging, so in Instagram you can go and find content shared to specific locations. Or you could engage with people who are engaging with people who do something similar to you, or who have a product or service that compliments you. So a lot of times when I’m talking with artists, especially in our community, the Follower to Fan Society, is we talk about who’s typically buying your art? Where are they in life? Where do they shop, where do they go, what content are they consuming? And then who in their life, including themselves, are making those decisions about purchasing art? So it may be, maybe you want to engage with content shared around interior design, and that in turn would lead to people who are buying art. Or maybe you want to engage with people who are new home buyers and that could lead to a purchase of a piece for their new home.
Tyler J McCall:
So, instead of engaging and just thinking, and I just had a student this morning who was, “Why is my stuff not showing up in #WIP, work in progress?” And I was, “Your stuff’s never going to show up in #WIP. And it’s way too big of a hashtag.”
Miriam Schulman:
Right.
Tyler J McCall:
“And you shouldn’t even use it or spend time in it because all it’s going to do is make you jealous and frustrated.”
Miriam Schulman:
That’s like #art.
Tyler J McCall:
Exactly
Miriam Schulman:
Right?
Tyler J McCall:
It’s too much, it’s too much.
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah.
Tyler J McCall:
So, the thing with hashtags now is use them, but more importantly, spend your time on… and that’s why I’m a big fan of having a strategy in place, knowing who you’re talking to, what you’re doing, and kind of when you’re doing it. Because then the posting becomes really simple and your time can go into the real work of building your community, which is through liking, commenting, responding to comments, responding to direct messages, that’s where the real work of Instagram happens nowadays. And that’s what’s going to get you a lot further than just posting something with a string of hashtags.
Miriam Schulman:
Okay, so now if I’m only posting three times a week, is it going to matter a lot more now when I post, or do, it does? I’m worried about that.
Tyler J McCall:
So the posting time isn’t-
Miriam Schulman:
What if I pick the wrong times? I’m only-
Tyler J McCall:
Totally.
Miriam Schulman:
… getting three chances now, it’s like lottery tickets.
Tyler J McCall:
The posting time isn’t necessarily the most important factor, I mean definitely look at your insights and your analytics. That’s why I’m a big fan of having an Instagram for business account because you actually get that information.
Miriam Schulman:
Okay.
Tyler J McCall:
What I like to do when I think about posting time is if you look at your posting times, kind of like a wave, don’t post at the crest of the wave, don’t post at the very top, post just before so you actually get that engagement then. But posting time doesn’t matter as much if you are engaging around your posting time. So if you post and then you say, “Okay, I’m going to post and then I’m going to take 30 minutes to go like and comment, that’s going to draw people back to that new content. And the way the algorithm works is they showcase that content to a subset of your followers, based on how those people engage, they determine whether or not they can show it or they should show it to more people. So that early engagement, the first 15, 20, 30 minutes is the most important engagement for your content because that’s what’s going to help it last even longer for you.
Miriam Schulman:
Okay. So if I’m using any kind of scheduling tool, I should make sure, even if my content is scheduled, that it’s scheduled during a time when I’m going to be, when I have the time to be on Instagram following and commenting on the accounts that I like.
Tyler J McCall:
Definitely. If that’s going to, if you want to do that work of drawing people back to your account, yes.
Miriam Schulman:
Okay, that’s really great advice. All right, so now here’s the other thing that has my panties in a bunch. This is kind of how I felt about Periscope. All right, IGTV.
Tyler J McCall:
Yeah.
Miriam Schulman:
I got really upset when they came out with this new thing. Sometimes they, they, who’s they, the social media world comes out with a new thing, there are certain times I just reject. I’m so happy I rejected Periscope, by the way, I was, “I’m not learning that.” And now it’s already gone, but Instagram stories seems to be here to stay, and now they added IGTV. So we’re recording this in July 2018 and IGTV just came out. Tyler, could you explain what that is and what the difference is between that and stories?
Tyler J McCall:
Yeah, definitely. So IGTV is really Instagram’s answer to YouTube. So they have created a platform that is a mobile first platform, which means the content is vertical, vertical video. No other social media platform has ever fully embraced vertical video like Instagram has. Instagram stories coming out in August of 2016, was kind of that first thing where it was, “okay, vertical is a thing.” Then Instagram Live, verticals more important, and now with IGTV they’re saying, “Hey.” People are now, and the numbers back it up, people are watching less television than ever before. People are watching more digital online content than ever before. We’re spending most of our time when we’re consuming content on our phones, on a mobile device, and Facebook and Instagram stats show that stories have driven up engagement and time on these platforms in astronomical ways. It depends on the age group, but on average stories have added 8 to 18, I think it’s 8 to 20 something minutes of time per day that someone spends on Instagram now.
Miriam Schulman:
Horrible. I’m wasting so much time.
Tyler J McCall:
So Instagram was, “Oh cool. People are loving stories.” The chief product officer for Facebook, which owns Instagram, if you didn’t know that, has said that they predict by the beginning of 2019 stories will be the preferred method of content consumption among social media users. So Instagram was, “Hey, people are really loving stories, let’s introduce IGTV.” So it’s a platform within Instagram, but it’s also a separate app. You can upload content mobile-y that’s up to 10 minutes long, and it has to be at least 60 seconds I think, up to 10 minutes. In all I can actually be up to 60 minutes long, you can upload that content from 10 to 16 minutes from desktop, and whenever you create content for IGTV, it’s going to notify your followers that there’s new content on IGTV. A really cool benefit for folks is that you can actually have people swipe up from your story to your IGTV videos without having to have 10,000 followers.
Miriam Schulman:
Really?
Tyler J McCall:
And then, mm-hmm.
Miriam Schulman:
Because you’re staying within the Instagram platform?
Tyler J McCall:
That’s right. Yeah.
Miriam Schulman:
Ah.
Tyler J McCall:
But here’s where you can get around it, is you can actually put clickable links in your IGTV video descriptions. So they’ve added… so now the only places you can have clickable, there’s three places you can do clickable links on Instagram without the swipe up, that’s the link in your bio, in a direct message, and then on an IGTV video. That’s one of the cool benefits of that.
Miriam Schulman:
So I know that it’s maybe kind of a guessing game at this point since it’s so new, but how are you advising your clients, and particular you said you have artists clients, how are you advising them to use IGTV?
Tyler J McCall:
Totally. So the first thing I’m telling them not to do is just repurpose a YouTube video-
Miriam Schulman:
Okay.
Tyler J McCall:
… or even repurpose an Instagram Live, because the content, I think the way that people are going to consume that content is a little bit different. So the first thing when you’re creating content for IGTV is make it vertical.
Miriam Schulman:
Okay.
Tyler J McCall:
And you could do that with your phone.
Miriam Schulman:
But what if I… okay, so you said don’t repurpose your… let’s say I have a painting speed video that was on Instagram, or Facebook or whatever.
Tyler J McCall:
Mm-hmm.
Miriam Schulman:
Can I edit that to be vertical and then repurpose it, is that okay?
Tyler J McCall:
Totally. Yeah, yeah.
Miriam Schulman:
All right. But you’re saying just don’t slap the horizontal thing up on the vertical because that’s a waste of time.
Tyler J McCall:
Yeah. Yeah. And I think you’re just going to, you’re going to lose your follower’s attention when you do that.
Miriam Schulman:
Okay. All right.
Tyler J McCall:
But totally pull it from somewhere else. The way that I’ve been thinking of IGTV, is how can I deepen the conversation with my followers? So I have my Insta stories, I do Insta stories pretty much every day. I do them different ways, I do, day in the life, kind of, I do educational, that type of stuff. I do post in my feed that nowadays are more educational, inspirational, that type of content. So what am I missing right now on my content strategy? Well, for me personally, I’m missing a place to go really deep on specific topics. So IGTV fits that mold for me, where I can literally set my phone up and talk for three or four minutes about a particular topic. I think what we’re going to see with IGTV is that super long content may not perform as well, just because people’s attention span on Instagram for now is still pretty short.
Miriam Schulman:
But my attention span is like a gerbil, but it’s always been that way, it has nothing to do with internet.
Tyler J McCall:
So I think IG- and IGTV is still, it’s literally just a place to test content right now-
Miriam Schulman:
Okay.
Tyler J McCall:
… and figure out what your audience wants from you.
Miriam Schulman:
All right, so it’s still a guessing game for all of us.
Tyler J McCall:
Mm-hmm.
Miriam Schulman:
All right, now I have something controversial. I heard an artist recently post on, I forget where she posted this, Facebook, Instagram, one of those places I follow her, she says that she thinks that Linktree is lazy marketing, what do you think?
Tyler J McCall:
I like that woman.
Miriam Schulman:
Really? What do you have in your bio? One link?
Tyler J McCall:
I have the place where I actually want them to end up, yeah.
Miriam Schulman:
Okay.
Tyler J McCall:
The problem with… so I think Linktree is fine if you want to use it, but if you want to use it, you shouldn’t have more than three options on your landing page. The reason that I don’t love Linktree is because a lot of times we’re not thinking in terms of how someone is kind of going from a social media platform to a piece of content, so getting someone off of Instagram is a feat in and of itself.
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah.
Tyler J McCall:
We know that getting someone to leave Instagram. That’s why, sidebar, I’m actually a big fan of bringing all your content to Instagram. Stop sending me off of Instagram to read a blog post, bring me the blog post on Instagram. Stop sending me off of Instagram to watch the video. You literally have no excuse now, you can keep me on Instagram to watch the video.
Miriam Schulman:
Okay.
Tyler J McCall:
Stop sending me off of Instagram to your landing page to download your whatever, when you can literally just have a conversation with me in a DM and get my email address and send it to me.
Miriam Schulman:
Okay, but then how do we sell art if we’re ke- because there’s no, buy now, button.
Tyler J McCall:
You can do that through a direct message. It can all happen through a direct message.
Miriam Schulman:
Okay.
Tyler J McCall:
So the thing with Linktree is, getting someone off of Instagram is a big deal, right? It takes a lot of effort. And then we’re going to send them to a page where they have to make a decision about where they want to end up, right?
Miriam Schulman:
Right.
Tyler J McCall:
We want to send them specifically to the place. And the other thing is thinking about how people are using websites in that you want someone to… if someone comes to your website and then bounces off of your website immediately and leaves the page, that’s telling Google, that’s telling me SEO God’s, “Oh this website’s not that valuable.” What if you created, which a lot of people are doing now, create your own Instagram landing page on your own website. So when they come to your website and click through, you’re telling to go- you’re saying Google, “Oh Hey, this person came to my website and then they clicked to something else and they stuck around longer.”
Miriam Schulman:
So you’re saying kind of create what those apps are doing, where you have your Instagram feed there and they can click on the… so you send them to your website and make a custom landing page that has the things that they want to click on? Isn’t that the same thing where you’re giving them too many decisions though? Because it’s going to have all the stuff or no?
Tyler J McCall:
So, yeah, so you would want to do a page that’s stripped down, that just has a few options for where you want to lead them.
Miriam Schulman:
Okay.
Tyler J McCall:
So you can do this super easily on Squarespace, I know a lot of artists are on Squarespace. Very easily you just create a cover page using Squarespace and you use the buttons feature and just use a button to get them to those particular places on your website. But I would encourage you to think really strategically about where you actually want them to end up, and send them there to a specific location instead sending them to somewhere where they have to decide. I had a student recently, we were going through her profile during a call, and she had 19 options on her Linktree. And I was, “This isn’t… no one’s clicking any of these. This is not helping you at all.”
Miriam Schulman:
Now I’m, how many do I have on mine? Where’s my phone? I’ve got to look at that right now.
Tyler J McCall:
So two or three is the most you need.
Miriam Schulman:
Okay, all right cool. All right, I like you. All right, two or three. Now I’m down to posting three times a week, and limiting my Linktree. So I think those were my really big question. No, here’s a big question, do you follow artists on Instagram?
Tyler J McCall:
Do I personally follow artists? I follow Elysian Market she’s a really incredible abstract artist. I’m a really big fan, and I don’t want to encourage all of your listeners to… literally only follow what inspires you. Don’t follow anyone out of obligation, don’t follow anyone because they followed you, only follow what inspires you. You only need to consume the content that inspires you. So for me, what I find most inspiring is interior designers, so that’s typically what I follow, interior designers, home builders that type of content. I just find it inspiring, how they put things together, how they source products, how they, I just love it so much. I love interiors.
Miriam Schulman:
Nice. All right, so after we’re done, I’m going to stalk you some more and see who you’re following on Instagram.
Tyler J McCall:
Yeah, please.
Miriam Schulman:
Okay, if you’re not following a lot of, necessarily a lot of artists, but I know you have a lot of artists who are clients, what would you say is one of the biggest mistakes you see artists making on Instagram?
Tyler J McCall:
Such a good question. I think it’s just continually posting their work and only their work with no context to go along with the work.
Miriam Schulman:
Now by context do you mean not giving a story behind it?
Tyler J McCall:
Mm-hmm.
Miriam Schulman:
Okay.
Tyler J McCall:
So posting your work with the title, dimensions and medium of the work as the caption.
Miriam Schulman:
Oh yeah, I don’t like that either.
Tyler J McCall:
That’s not doing anything for your audience, it’s not valuable. And what I encourage my students, I want your listeners to do is think about, how can I get out of the habit of push marketing, where I’m always trying to push my product out there and instead get into a place of pull marketing where my content is pulling my audience closer to me and my business.
Miriam Schulman:
Okay.
Tyler J McCall:
So content that’s just your piece with the name and dimensions, it’s literally just pushing, and that type of content is just contributing to the noise.
Miriam Schulman:
All right, so let’s just pretend I’m posting one of my giraffes or my elephant, and I want to make my posts though not about me, I want to make it about them too, because I think I heard you say that, to make what you’re doing about them. Can you give us a tip on how to do that or give me specifically some advice on that?
Tyler J McCall:
Yeah. So-
Miriam Schulman:
All right. Okay.
Tyler J McCall:
… if you’re going to post-
Miriam Schulman:
I’m getting free coaching.
Tyler J McCall:
… if you’re going to share a painting of a giraffe I want to know why that painting means something to you. Why is it a giraffe and not something else?
Miriam Schulman:
Okay.
Tyler J McCall:
Or do you remember the first time you saw a giraffe?
Miriam Schulman:
But isn’t that still about me? It’s still my story and it’s about me.
Tyler J McCall:
But, it’s about you but in a way it’s inviting your followers. Because here’s the thing, content that is about you, that is doing it from a place of story, and is providing an opportunity for your followers to get closer to you. So in the end, it really is about them, because it’s giving them a space to see themselves in that relationship with you.
Miriam Schulman:
Oh, got it.
Tyler J McCall:
Does that make sense?
Miriam Schulman:
It does. It does.
Tyler J McCall:
So how powerful would it be if you were, “I remember the first time I saw a giraffe, it was then, it was this place. This is what I,” that type of content. Or if you’ve ever seen a giraffe in real life, what that looks like, those types of things.
Miriam Schulman:
Or my grandmother took me to the zoo and this is because-
Tyler J McCall:
Mm-hmm, exactly. Yeah.
Miriam Schulman:
Got it.
Tyler J McCall:
Because then someone goes, “Oh my God, my grandmother took me to the zoo too.” It opens up that opportunity.
Miriam Schulman:
Awesome. Okay, so now we’re going to move to a different segment. I have some audience questions. I am going to skip over some of the ones that I feel you’ve already answered though, okay. Okay here’s one, I think this is more like a, well interpret it how you want. Lauren wants to know what counts more comments, likes or impressions, and how do they increase your reach?
Tyler J McCall:
Great question. We’ve really said for a long time, I think it’s probably still pretty true, that look, we don’t know exactly how the algorithm works. However, comments tend to do a couple of things. The more comments you have, the more comments you typically attract, right? Because-
Miriam Schulman:
Right.
Tyler J McCall:
It makes it easier for people to comment. And typically content with higher comments will be discoverable more easily. So it shows up higher in hashtags, locations, things like that. What I really look at and what I’m teaching my students to look at in terms of analytics, as you want to see, you want to look at the impressions and the reach. Impressions and reach are telling you how many people are actually seeing the content. And then you want to look at the total engagement, which is likes, comments and saves. Don’t forget about saves, that’s an important measure of engagement. You want to look at the total engagement in comparison to your impressions or your reach, and also in comparison to your following.
Miriam Schulman:
So what percentage am I looking for?
Tyler J McCall:
Okay, so you’re really looking at the, typically you’re looking at engagement rate based on number of followers. So what is my total pieces of engagement on this content as a percentage of my followers, so on average on Instagram, it’s going to be around 2%. If you have a smaller account, and I know you’re, “Oh my God, 2%, that’s the best of all platforms.” So on average it’s 2%. If you have a smaller account, your engagement is typically higher. So I have students right now with 1,000, 4,000, 5,000 followers who are getting 15% to 20% engagement on average. As your following grows, your engagement decreases. It’s natural, it happens to everyone, because you have a lot more people to get in front of. When your engagement starts to get into that 1.5% or less mark, something is wrong. And it’s either because your followers aren’t connecting with your content, or you have the wrong kind of followers, or your content isn’t getting out there in the right way. So that’s where we really have to dive into the reach and the impressions. So a lot of times I have students who say, “Oh my gosh, this post bombed because I didn’t get as much engagement.” And then they’re, “Oh, it’s the algorithm. It’s the posting time. It’s the hashtags.” But when we dig into their insights and their analytics, they had the same number of reach and impressions as they typically have. So at that point it’s a content issue, not an algorithm issue. But also there’s something to the fact that if people are still seeing the content, can you be okay with them not necessarily engaging with the content as long as they’re still seeing it? For me personally, I’m still pretty okay with that.
Miriam Schulman:
And do you think that people are in general engaging less? Because I know for myself, I’m just doing the scroll, scroll, scroll. I’m not stopping to like stuff as much as I used to.
Tyler J McCall:
I think what we’re really seeing, I’m glad you asked that question because I think also a lot of what people aren’t taking into account is that user habits on Instagram have changed, and people are watching Instagram stories and they’re participating in polls on Instagram stories, they are responding to Instagram stories with DMs, and because the way that people use Instagram has changed, that means that they are not spending as much time liking and commenting and doing those types of activities anymore. So that’s why Instagram stories are so incredibly important, that’s why talk about them all the fricking time because they’re so important.
Miriam Schulman:
Okay. And then, okay, so I have two questions related there, these are my questions. One number that I find myself obsessing over is, I forgot what it’s called, but it’s the number of profiles, is that’s-
Tyler J McCall:
Okay. Yeah. So that’s, that figure that’s right at the top. But when you go to your home, when you go to your profile, you see number of profile visits, yeah.
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah. It’s kind of my self worth of the day, am I right? I was, “Oh no, nobody cares what I do anymore.”
Tyler J McCall:
So, I think the first thing to do is, I had this conversation with a student earlier today, is you always need to be asking yourself, “What do these numbers mean to me? What am I making these numbers mean?” And typically we’ll find we’re making them mean things that aren’t true. So then the other thing is the profile visits number is going to pretty much be directly correlated to the amount of engagement you have going on outside of your account, to draw people back to your account. And that’s why when I’m teaching my students and the system I lay out, is we have to get clear on who we want to attract, what our objective is, what our content is, then we can grow our following. Because there are people who are listening to this who may go away and they’re, “Oh, I just need to engage more, I’ll get more followers.” Well, you’re going to go out and engage, and until you have clarity around the content and the audience, you’re not going to see that follower growth because you’re going to attract people back to your account and they’re not really going to be interested in what you’re doing because the content isn’t quality enough or they’re not the right people, right? So, that profile visit number is going to be really related to how you’re engaging outside of your account. And then I think there is kind of a helpful way to think about that number, and okay, if I’m getting this many profile visits, how many of those people are converting to followers? Is my content resonating with them? And knowing that it’s totally okay for not everyone to convert. You actually want people to not like you. You want people to not like your content because, and you don’t want those people to follow you. You want people to be turned off by what you do because you-
Miriam Schulman:
You want polarizing.
Tyler J McCall:
Yeah, you only want-
Miriam Schulman:
Okay, no money in the middle type of-
Tyler J McCall:
Exactly.
Miriam Schulman:
Right.
Tyler J McCall:
You only want people around who are, “Oh yeah, I really like what they do or what they say or how they say it.”
Miriam Schulman:
Perfect. All right, thanks so much for that. So it’s a mindset, I got to go meditate some more. I don’t know if this is a relevant question anymore, but this question came from Pat. It’s not that it’s a bad question, I know what she’s talking about. She wants to know how to stop ghost followers, does she mean people who are following her and then just don’t engage, or she talking about fake followers? I’m not quite sure, maybe you know what she means.
Tyler J McCall:
Yeah. So typically when we’re saying a ghost follower, it’s someone who follows and doesn’t engage.
Miriam Schulman:
Okay.
Tyler J McCall:
I think a lot of times having crappy followers comes from hashtags and then how you’re engaging outside of your account. So that’s why huge broad hashtags like hashtag are not a place for you, are not a hashtag for you to use because you’re typically just going to attract low quality followers. Hashtags that are more niche and specific are going to get you a lot further than other types of hashtags.
Miriam Schulman:
Okay. So a hashtag like, cat art, might help somebody, but-
Tyler J McCall:
Mm-hmm.
Miriam Schulman:
… hashtag watercolor isn’t really going to do much.
Tyler J McCall:
Yeah, but what about, so I love doing all my hashtag research on Instagram, so hashtag watercolor may not be that great, but what if you looked at #watercolorartists, and put the S on it, right? Because if you do #watercolor, it’s probably huge. #watercolorartist is probably huge.
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah.
Tyler J McCall:
#Watercolorartists may be smaller, so think about how you can make a hashtag plural, how you can abbreviate it, how you can add locations, all those types of things and that could help get you more and more niche down.
Miriam Schulman:
Tyler, I am so happy I invited you today. You just delivered and beyond, so thank you so much. Do you have any last bits of words of wisdom for our listeners?
Tyler J McCall:
I always have little bits of words of wisdom.
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah, I know. I’d love if you could just keep talking to me after this is over, we’ll discuss the Housewives and all that. Okay, all right so go ahead.
Tyler J McCall:
Yeah, so I think one of the biggest places that I see people getting hung up on Instagram is all related to their belief about Instagram. And that is the fact that if you believe Instagram will not work for you, if you believe it’s hard, if you believe no one buys from Instagram, then you will continue to take actions that reinforce that belief.
Tyler J McCall:
But if you just adjust your belief about Instagram to a place of saying, “There is unlimited untapped potential on this platform, there are over a billion people that I could possibly reach and my ideal person is on Instagram, I just have to do the work of getting clear on who they are, creating content for them and going out and finding them.” Then you will in turn take actions and make decisions that create that reality for you. So, your success on Instagram is related to what you think about Instagram. So, if it’s not working for you right now and you find yourself continuing to say, “Instagram won’t work,” why don’t you try for a week or a month saying, “You know what? I’m going to make Instagram work for me,” and I guarantee that something different will happen for you.
Miriam Schulman:
I love that, it’s so law of attraction. Perfect, I love that. All right, so where should we go and find you besides @tylerjmccall on Instagram?
Tyler J McCall:
Yeah, so you can find me at my website, tylerjmccall.com, we have a free Instagram roadmap there that you can check out, we have some blog contents and videos you can check out. And if you want to learn more about my membership community, the Follower to Fan Society, head on over to followertofansociety.com and learn more about that.
Miriam Schulman:
Perfect. So thank you for spending all this time with me, I’ve really enjoyed it. I’m sure that this is going to be a very popular episode and I really appreciate the time you spent with me today.
Tyler J McCall:
Of course. Thanks for having me.
Miriam Schulman:
Now, don’t forget, I wanted to hear your number one takeaway from the show. Just send me a DM over on Instagram, my handle is @schulmanart. And if you liked this podcast, please subscribe so you don’t miss any future episodes, because next week I’ll be talking to an artist who uses Facebook to sell everything she makes. That’s right, every last painting. Okay, so see you next week, same time, same place. Until then, have an inspirational week.
Thank you for listening to the Inspiration Place podcast. Connect with us on Facebook at facebook.com/schulmanart, on Instagram @schulmanart, and of course on schulmanart.com.
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