Community Commentary is where we provide opportunity for voices from our community to share thoughts, feelings & insight on everything startups, scaleup, enterprise & entrepreneurship from across the Midlands and the world beyond.
This edition is written by Elroy D’souza, an MSc Entrepreneurship student at Aston University and social media growth hacker sharing his thoughts on Instagram algorithms and social media strategy.
Firstly, you do not need to overvalue the algorithm or the number of followers you have on your Instagram. If that is the question, you have about the online growth you have already lost the game…
There is no such thing like a hack & there is no specific time to post about your content. Rather than focusing on all these intangible things that you could not, cannot & will not ever control try to focus on the value-added content that educates your audience. Most of these social media influencers who talk about ” I wanna take things to the next level” usually means that they want more “likes, comments & shares.” To be honest, if your just gonna focus on that, how in god’s name are you ever gonna provide any valuable content for your audience. This basically goes to show that your entire Instagram or any other social media platform is intended to be selfish about your strategy and is just focusing on the product sales that you are trying to make and not the end consumer.
On the other hand, I am not saying that you shouldn’t try to have that in your strategy, but there is a specific way of doing it, which in many cases has helped me a lot. Not only in my professional Instagram life but also personal growth. That is “Jab, Jab, Jab & right hook: Gary Vaynerchuk.” Every business or influencer on this planet based on my experience needs to “give, give, give & then ask.” Most of this business run their social media just like its some newsletter where they are always asking for a sale but not making any effort to try to solve a problem.
Any online or physical business aims to focus on the real problem that I want to solve not how many likes, comments and shares they can get because that is just a horrible mindset to be in. Great marketing is all about providing value & telling your story in such a way that it compels people to buy what you are selling. To be very honest, the business world is separated into two camps: the conversion based salespeople and the branding and marketing people. The former are short-term players, and the latter is long term. People must understand the concept of story-telling & branding because the significant life-changing upside resides in long-term thinking and not figuring out how to make a quick buck.
To keep it simple, straight forward & honest, if your business is failing in spite of the advantage of having social media, you suck….. PERIOD.
“There is no sale without the story; no knockout without the setup.”
Written By Elroy D’souza who is an MSc in Entrepreneurship student from Aston University, with experience in assisting Founders to achieve business growth. He has successfully contributed towards 25% growth across 3 companies through growth hacking social media.
Want to contribute to ‘Community Commentary’? Send an email to hello@birminghamenterprisecommunity.co.uk
