Increase Podcast Downloads with Instagram and ManyChat: Strategies from Brittany Verlenich [Ep. 156]

 
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Here’s what to expect from this episode:

Are you looking to up your Instagram strategy to increase podcast downloads? Maybe even automate the whole process? Then today's guest takeover episode, or mini training, if you will, is for you. (And if you've stepped away from the platform, this episode may convince you to come back!)

At the time that this episode airs, I am out on maternity leave. And during this leave, I am sprinkling in a few guest takeover episodes on the podcast. These episodes are when I have a previous guest come on to the podcast, take over the show for the week, and share about something that we thought would benefit you.

In this episode, our guest takeover is from Brittany Verlenich. Brittany is here to help you leverage every Instagram post to get more downloads and grow your podcast listenership. She shares how to automate this process with ManyChat, what a squeeze page is, and other helpful tips for using Instagram and email marketing.

I hope that you walk away from this episode with some really great tips to try on Instagram! Let us know on Instagram, @podcastingforeducators and @brittanyverlenich.

Topics Covered:

  • What ManyChat is and how to utilize it to increase podcast downloads

  • Using the comment to customer strategy

  • A simple squeeze page vs. a complicated landing page

  • Instagram tips (and why you should be using it)

Resources Mentioned:

increase-podcast-downloads

MEET Brittany:

Brittany Verlenich is a social media strategist, content creator, and host of the Social Media Magic podcast. She loves showing sellers how they can grow their email lists with social media. Brittany believes that social media can be a powerful tool for personal and business growth when it's used the right way.

Connect with Brittany:

favorite podcasting resources:

Connect with Sara:

Related episodes:

  • Sara Whittaker 0:00

    Hello, hello, welcome back to another episode of podcasting for educators. At the time that this episode airs, I am out on my maternity leave. And during this leave, I am sprinkling in a few guest takeover episodes on the podcast. If you haven't heard me talk about these yet, guest takeover episodes are when I have a previous guest, come on to the podcast, take over the show for the week, and share about something that we thought would benefit you. You can think of these guest takeover episodes almost like little free mini trainings. And today our guest takeover is coming from Brittany ver linage. Brittany has been on the podcast twice before in Episode 42. She came on to talk about building a podcast community in Facebook groups. And in Episode 109. She talked about using Instagram as an introvert. So definitely check out those episodes after listening today. But today Britney's here to talk about something a little bit different. She is going to be chatting about how to leverage every post on Instagram to get more downloads and grow your podcast listenership. And she's going to tell us how to automate this process using many chat. She also goes through what a squeeze pages and a few other really helpful tips. Britney is a social media strategist, content creator and host of the social media magic podcast. She loves showing sellers how they can grow their email list with social media. Brittany believes that social media can be a powerful tool for personal and business growth when it's used the right way. And with that, I'm gonna pass it off to Brittany.

    Your Podcast is a powerful tool that serves your audience and your business. But how do you manage it all bring in new listeners and convert those listeners into customers. That's what this show is all about. Welcome to podcasting for educators. I'm Sara Whitaker, classroom teacher turn podcast manager, and I'm here to help you get the most out of your show, all while making an impact on other educators.

    Brittany Verlenich 2:03

    Welcome to podcasting for educators. I'm so glad you're here. As you might have already noticed, it's not Sarah's voice. My name is Brittany Rutledge and I am doing a podcast takeover for Sara. I am actually the host of the social media magic podcast. I am a social media strategist and a total nerd when it comes to all things marketing, and content creation. So in my episode, I'm going to be talking about how you can increase your podcast followers, downloads, all that jazz, using Instagram, many chat and a squeeze page, I'm going to really dive deep into this strategy or at least as much as possible in under 20 minutes. But I also want to say if you want to learn more about making sure every single post converts, I'm going to be talking about the comment to customer strategy. And I go really deep into that in episode 48 of my podcast, which again, is social media magic. And that is a great one. By the way, if you are a TPT, seller, Etsy seller, author on Amazon KDP. Or if you sell digital products and an online shop on your website or on a marketplace, you'll definitely want to add that to your list if you haven't already, but let's get into it. How can we increase our podcast downloads using Instagram and mini chat? First, let's talk about what mini chat is, you might have heard other sellers talking about it already. Or maybe you've never heard of it before. Either way, it's this awesome app that works in tandem with Instagram. And you could do it with Facebook pages as well, to set up automations. And usually this is automations by means of messages or DMS, direct messages or comments. And there are so many different things you can do. I mean, you can use Mani chat to set up automations for when someone shares one of your posts to their own stories, you can set up automations for things to comment when certain triggers happen. You can set up automations to send messages. And this is really great for anyone who really wants to have more of a passive business, which I'm guessing if you are a seller on Etsy or TPT, that's probably why you started your business, right is that you were wanting something that was more passive, something where you felt like you didn't have to be on all the time, especially if you're looking at this as a way to supplement your income in the classroom, or eventually, maybe even leave teaching and do this full time if you haven't yet. And if you're doing this full time, then I'm sure you're definitely looking for more ways to work less, earn more and just not be as on all the time. I know for me especially even though I don't feel overwhelmed by content creation itself. It can just be a lot for me to remember to follow up with things to be honest. That's one thing that I'm working on this year. And if that's you, you just like see a text message and then you don't respond to it right away and then you forget about it and then you feel bad for not remembering the same thing can happen on Instagram and so many chat just allows that to go away. It's actually free for up to the first 1000 contacts. So it's something you can always just install and see how you like it, and then go from there. But I think that once you try it out you're really going to become addicted because you see just how great it is at turning a social media post into an opportunity for lead generation and for sale.

    Build. And lead generation just means getting a list of people who you'd want to sell to in the future. And in this case, for most of us, that's building an email list. If you're a service provider, and you don't have an email list, you can still use this to generate your own list of leads. And you can even do something like mark each lead in your DMS as a lead using a flag, or using different options for medication in the DMS. And it's kind of hard to talk about that without showing you what it looks like. But I also have a YouTube channel. So if you want to see more in depth tutorials, using these platforms and apps, you can definitely find me on YouTube by searching, Britney relented, which is also my same name and handle on Instagram. So that's many chat. And basically, what you're going to do using the comment to customer strategy, you're going to have a post that's very compelling content, you're going to have a hook that makes them want to stop the scroll, both on the actual piece of content itself, whether it's a single photo post carousel posts are real. And then you also want the first line of the caption, just like in a TPT product, that's the snippet that you see before you click on it to learn more, right, like you can't see the whole Caption of A post. When you see a post, you only see that first line. So I collect the hook. But I also sometimes call it a snippet, just because I know that TPT sellers are familiar with that idea. When we're talking about product descriptions, those first couple of lines are what you see. And they're really important, because if they're engaging and interesting, then someone will click on it and then read the rest of the caption, which is often what you want when someone is engaging in a PC your content. And just for context, I'm talking about Instagram, primarily here, but these same principles apply, no matter which platform you're using tick tock, or even just email, right, like you need to have a good subject line if you want for your email to get open. So the same principles apply across any kind of content creation. So you have a compelling hook on the video or piece of content itself, you have a one to two line hook that can get seen without seeing the whole caption. And then at the end of your caption, you have a clear call to action where they put a certain word, a certain keyword, when they enter that keyword in the comments. In the chat, you're going to set up an automation to send them something via DM, usually people will send them an opt in freebie, or they'll send a low ticket offer especially if you're selling on TPT or Etsy, it's usually pretty easy to send something for 357 $8 and have it be bought right away on Instagram, even if they're not following you, which is great. It used to be that you wanted to create content on Instagram to get more followers and then sell to those followers. But the platform has changed a lot. So you can actually have someone who has never heard of you before, sees a piece of your content or watches your reel and then decides to buy right there and then or opt in right to your email list. I think that is the opportunity that so many sellers are missing is because they're thinking about Instagram as it was 10 years ago. But all of social media has changed dramatically. Anyway, you'll have a post where you have the clear call to action, they put the keyword in the comments, the person receives a DM from you via the many chat automation with the link inside. And then they also get a comment that says something like hey, thanks so much for asking about XYZ freebie or product, I just sent a message to your DMS. And I also recommend in the automations, putting something in the trigger comment about reminding them to check their message requests. Many people who use Instagram for fun, they don't use it like we do, right, they don't know that you have all these different tabs in your DMS, they probably only know about in use their primary tab. So we just have to let them know that hey, this might be in your message request, especially if they're not following you already. From there in that actual message they receive from you via the mini chat automation, you're going to have a button that leads to a link. And the link that you include is going to lead to a squeeze page. Essentially, a squeeze page is just an opt in page. Except for it's typically shorter and simpler. You do not want to have all kinds of links, all kinds of options and ideas on here all kinds of texts and content, you want it to be very simple and clean, where they enter their name and their email address. The reason for that is many times when something leads off of a platform like Instagram, if people get kind of confused or frustrated, they're just going to close out of it, they're not going to make the effort to go back. So the reason that we're collecting their email address is one so they get added to your email list, which is great. We definitely want to increase our social media following our podcast downloads and our email list at the same time. But it's also because if they click through or click off or something doesn't work or something isn't optimized for mobile, they're also going to get that email with whatever it is that you were going to send them. So that is just a good tip. In general, I would say always have a squeeze page. And then once you start setting these up for all of your different parts of content, whether it's blog posts or whatever. You can also consider adding a tripwire off the back of that so you could even possibly make some sales. But I digress. For this one. We want to make it really simple for podcast episodes. The great part about this is you could get really granular here. You can even set up your automations if you want to get fancy that you ask them a series of questions in an automated way and depending on what

    They choose option ABCD, option 1234, they get a completely different episode or playlist, depending on where they are in the customer journey. So there is a lot that you can do here with many chat, I am a huge fan of it. So they enter their name and email, and then they're going to get an email from you. Or maybe they'll even get a whole welcome sequence that really introduces them to you, your brand and your offers. And if you have paid attention to what Sarah has done in her marketing, she's been so brilliant with this, she actually just recently sent an email where she asked people to self indicate and identify where they are on their podcasting journey. So you could do the exact same thing for whatever your niche and specialty is, once they identify that then they get the podcast episode or the playlist that makes sense according to where they are in the journey. Another tip here is that when you do send them a link to your podcast in the email, you can use something like pod link pod dot link, find your podcast there, and send them that link. That way, even if they listen on Spotify and Apple, or wherever they listen to, they can then choose the app all on one page. Because I have also found in working with clients and for myself, that if for example, I send a Spotify link, but they actually prefer listening on Apple podcasts, they're not going to click on the link, and then I'm kind of just wasting my time. And we definitely don't want to be wasting time. That is a precious non renewable resource. So I recommend you send them the squeeze page. And then in that welcome email, you send them the pod link. Or you can go the extra mile, and just link all the different platforms you're on separately. But I do think that takes a long time. And I'm a huge fan of making things simpler and easier for myself whenever possible, especially if there's a way to automate some kind of follow up. So I already talked a bit about what mini chat is. And I talked about why a squeeze page, not a more complicated landing page. Let's also talk about Instagram, because if you're a podcaster, you might have moved to podcasting to get away from visuals. And or you just might not be convinced that Instagram is right for you. After all, there are so many people who will tell you so many different and conflicting things when it comes to marketing and messaging. And one of them is probably that Instagram doesn't do anything for you when it comes to sales for your email list. Well, like I mentioned before, this is probably because they're in that old way of thinking of Instagram just wants you to stay on the platform. And while that is true, many chat is a way that you can really get around that. And it has directly related to some awesome results for my clients and for my students. But also, Instagram is a great platform because your people are there. teachers spend lots of time on Instagram. And while I've heard the argument that people aren't there to shop, they're there to relax, I will tell you both from ads and from organic posts, I have bought something directly from the platform. And I know many others have to if you utilize something like Instagram shop, you can even insert your products directly into your posts. And you can set up your Instagram in such a way that you have multiple links so that you have one that goes to maybe a low ticket product, or to a sales page that has a tripwire off the back of that you could have one link leading to your OPT in freebie, you can have one leading to the squeeze page for your podcast. When you start setting things up in a certain way, you can really start to see where your sales, your social media growth and your email list all really play off of each other. Instagram is also just great because it's easy to use. And I really don't think we can undervalue that when people are used to using something they're going to interact, they're more likely, I have done so much with sales on Facebook Messenger and with Instagram, DMS. And I think it's just because it's simple. So many times we think we have to be more polished or professional than we really have to be. And we have to have this course platform to be official, and people won't take it seriously. But I'll tell you, if you have to be scrappy, that's okay. And it's probably going to work better anyway, because people are sick of artificial everything looking over curated, they want someone to answer their questions and solve their problems. And if you're doing that directly in the DMS, where they are, they're probably going to really appreciate that. So just to go over the comment to customer strategy. Like I said, you can listen to episode 48 and the social media magic podcast to get a more in depth version. But here is that whole process again, you're going to create a compelling piece of content with a clear call to action at the end, a clear hook to get them to read it in the call to action, you're going to ask them to say a key word. Once they say a key word, your many chat automation is going to trigger, you're going to respond to the comment or at least many chat will on your behalf saying hey, I just sent you the thing you asked for. And I would say also in that comment, remind them what they asked for. We see so much content all the time. By that time that person has probably forgotten that they even left a comment. So you want to remind them who you are, what they were asking for and let them know it's going to their DMS and I would also say remind them it's going to their message requests because they might not know to check there automatically. From there. The mini chat automation is also going to send them a DM with a button that has a link to your squeeze page when they go to your squeeze page, they're going to enter their name and email. And from there, by the way, I recommend lead pages for this, I will also include affiliate links for both lead pages in mini chat in the episode description. But many chat is actually free up to the first 1000 contacts with it. So it's something you can try without paying anything. And I highly recommend it. LeadPages is also great. I've built basically whole websites and memberships off of it. Because it's just such a great tool and it has everything you really need to build sales pages. And there's just so much easier to use and so many other pieces of software. So you're going to send them the squeeze page, they'll enter their name and email address, you're going to send them an automated sequence. And you're going to make sure that first email you send because it has the highest possible open rate is the one that sends them to your podcast. Ideally, you're going to send them to specific episodes, or specific podcast episode playlists that really correlate to where they are in the customer journey. And you can set up some quizzes and different kinds of things in many chat to be able to discern where they are in that process. You can use something like pod link to make sure that they're going to the actual app and platform where they listen to most without having to type it all out. Or you can type it all out. And then it's just done once. Another thing you can do is in that series of emails, you can also ask them to follow you on your social platforms, or wherever else you're showing up. So now that person who may or may not be following you on Instagram, but they're on your email list, you have one email, ask them to follow on Instagram, you have one email, asking them to subscribe to you on YouTube. And now you have all these different opportunities and touchpoints to be able to market to them and connect with them and give them exposure to your brand without you having to go and maybe pay for that ad or lead. This also leads to you having other monetization opportunities in the future. And while I know that if you're listening to this podcast, you might not consider yourself an influencer or a content creator, you're using content for your marketing, you might as well look into ways to monetize in the future. So this could lead to subscriptions or memberships or courses, or even making money from ads or doing sponsored posts. Maybe you could even partner with brands there are so many different opportunities. But by building your following in these multiple places, you'll have multiple opportunities for them to connect with you and buy your offers. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of podcasting for educators. Again, my name is Brittany for lunch. I would love to hear from you over on Instagram. You can find me on there at Brittany real image same as on my YouTube channel. And or you can come listen to the social media magic podcast Talk soon.

    Sara Whittaker 17:30

    Thanks so much to Brittany for taking over the podcast this week. I hope that you are walking away with some really great tips to try on Instagram. Britney also mentioned trip wires in this episode. If you aren't super familiar with trip wires, I did an episode about them with Melanie, badass Steli and episode 135. So I'll link all of the episodes that we mentioned and all of the resources in the show notes for today's episode. As always, thank you so much for being here today. And I'll catch you here next week. Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. To keep this conversation going connect with me on Instagram at podcasting for educators. I'm always looking for an excuse to talk about podcasting. If you're looking for support and launching, managing or growing your podcast, check out my online course the podcasting for educators prep school at podcasting for educators.com/prep school. I'll see you here next time.

More about Podcasting for Educators:

Podcasting for Educators is the podcast for TpT authors and other online educators. It's a show that will help you get your podcast in front of those who need it most - teachers, counselors, literacy specialists, SLPs, parents, and more! Each week, Sara Whittaker and her guests will share top tips and actionable strategies that you will need in order to launch, manage, and grow your podcast. You’ll learn how to leverage your show to build long-lasting relationships with your audience and promote your TpT resources, courses, and memberships, all while providing valuable and accessible content!

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Sara Whittaker