Building a personal brand takes time. There are many ways to grow a brand and rarely one single thing does the trick. Rather, it’s usually a collection of things coming together like:
- Creating good content
- Properly sharing content
- Frequency or consistency of sharing good content
- Guest podcasting, blogging, etc.
- Have one piece of content go viral or one IG celebrity call you out
- Community interaction which drives word of mouth
- Paid advertising or PR
If we had to recommend one single action that is the most effective in building your personal brand it’s the “Community Re-post Strategy”. Community Reposting is the #1 viral growth strategy you can adopt outside of creating a piece of content that goes viral (which most of the time, is out of your control anyways).
In the rest of this article, we’re going to show you how to create a Community Re-post Strategy on Instagram. We chose Instagram specifically but in theory, you could also do this with a blog or FB group. Instagram is just your best platform for interacting with your audience.
What are the benefits?
The #1 fitness business in the world is Sweat App by a single influencer, Kayla Itsines. You can read more about her strategy in this article here.
Quick introduction to Kayla Itsines
In addition to the article mentioned above, this article is a great read. The main thing to understand before becoming overwhelmed by Kayla's success is that it doesn't matter if your brand is like Kayla’s or not. The market for health and wellness influencers is enormous and there are many people who follow similar strategies and are very successful.
Community building = get people to tag you & repost them
Kayla's secret to success is simple. She figured out a systematic way to get tens of thousands of girls all over the world to tag her in pictures. She started doing this with her personal clients and a PDF program and now does it on a global scale, with her app and Instagram account.
Why does it drive viral growth?
If you look up the hashtag #BBG on Instagram it has more than 6,300,000 posts. That means 6.3 million people have shared a picture tagging Kayla’s BBG to their friends! Of those 6.3 million people, some of those people have 100,000 followers or 1,000 or 100 followers. So that 6.3 million tags is really hundreds of millions of impressions. Are you starting to get why getting your followers to tag you is so important? They people your free marketers!
This is what the "get people to tag you in stuff" strategy looks like in action. Kayla shows that she cares about engaging with her customers so her customers do her marketing for her:
Several extremely important sales and marketing tactics are happening at once
We mentioned these items in our training blog “How to sell…”
Social Proof # 1 - This shows that your product works. If your someone with a workout program, show your follower's your client's success stories. That's what Kayla did. Now every new person who checks out her page thinks, "Holy cow! Look at how many people have had success! If they can do it, I can do it too!”
- Social Proof #2 - When the fan posts a picture on their Instagram feed they are essentially marketing Kayla to their audience. This person is telling all their followers “I tired Kayla’s product and it worked. Go check it out!” There is no stronger sales tactic than having someone you know recommend a product.
- Builds Ambassadors - When Kayla reposts' other people's pictures, it makes them feel special. When you make someone feel special in front of an audience (i.e. Kayla's 8 million followers) they become loyal to you! Followers want to feel special too so they'll keep tagging you in their pictures, with the hopes that you'll one day repost them. This is how you build dedicated followers, or brand ambassadors.
Creating and implementing your unique hashtag
Step 1: Come up with a unique hashtag
Pick your hashtag. Kayla started with #bbg - “bikini body guide”
- Pick a hashtag that is unique to you and your brand
- Many have been taken so feel free to use your name
Step 2: Use your tag every day
EVERY SINGLE TIME you post content you need to include your hashtag somewhere.
Key takeaways:
- Use your tag every single day in all of your content
- Your Instagram posts can have your tag live at the bottom of each: “Tag me at #YourOwnHashtag”
- You can do a daily Instagram Stories: “Hope everyone is great today! Make sure you share your sweaty selfies/ healthy selfies / nutritional pictures / workouts with your baby picture with me and hashtag #YourOwnHashtag
- You get the idea, show your audience that you care about the tag over and over and over again!
Step 3: Reinforce the behavior
- Get someone to tag you on their Stories
- You then have to repost every day to show people you are returning the favor
- You can repost on your main feed or you can repost in Stories!
How To Repost?
- A: Use the Repost App
- B: Ask them to send you the content directly
Step 4: Repeat, repeat, and repeat
It takes time to get consumers to form a new behavior, like following you religiously - you need to stay focused and execute the tips we've given you day after day. If you are consistent (and patient!) it will eventually have a snowballing effort on your digital following. Pretty soon you’ll be asking “I have too many people tagging me now - what do I do?!”
What if no one is tagging you? Don't worry, there is an easy solution:
- Screenshot your DM's
- Screenshot your comments
- Direct message or email a follower or client and ask them
Screenshotting your direct messages and comments are an effective way to engagement
The community section in the Partner App
People can leave comments, questions and requests in the consumer app. When they do, we ask them to provide their Instagram handle. You need to make sure everyone of these ends up into your Stories (until you get to a much larger scale, then you'll be able to pick and choose!)
When you have the image button the app automatically downloads a template and copies the user’s Instagram handle. You upload it to your Stories and make sure to paste the handle!
The Community Repost Strategy can be applied perfectly to the Habit Loop:
The "habit loop" has three parts: cue, routine and reward. This is how you build a habit:
- Cue - You ask people every day to tag you
- Routine - Somebody posts a picture/stories and tags you
- Reward - You repost them
Where Should This Go?
Every morning, as Kayla checks her phone, her direct messages icon flashes 99+. She reads them in order to offer her audience the very thing they’re seeking. When I asked her how she got so popular, she explained that she just recently figured it all out. “Have your passion, but also listen to your audience and what they say, because there’s nothing worse than producing something that you think is cool but is not what consumers want. You have to listen… For example, my clients, they’ll find little things that I don’t see, like, ‘Oh, you should do this, or you should do this,’ and it’s like, ‘That’s a really good idea.’ If you just listen to them, you build a product that your customer wants.”
This the #1 driver of digital success on your Channel is your Instagram and app engagement statistics
- The number of people tagging you on social media
- The number of people you are reposting and interacting with
You want to be getting bombarded with engagement. Then and only then, will your digital brand start working and growing in your favor. At this point, you can start thinking about bringing on an assistant or intern to help manage your community.
If you can take away one thing from this article, it'd be this.
Key to digital success: engage with people on Instagram * engaging drives viral growth and word of mouth!