Hey there, my fabulous listener, welcome to episode 257 of the Small Business Made Simple Podcast.

Thanks for lending me your ears today – I know you have lots of choices, so I sincerely appreciate me being one of them!

If you’re enjoying this podcast – I’d love you to take a screen shot and share it on your socials and tag me in it.  How cool would that be!

Don’t forget you can get the show notes for this podcast at www.socialmediaandmarketing.com.au/257

Did you have a listen into last week’s episode? My amazing guest, Amy Bett, spoke about finances and the Profit First Model – it’s business changing (as opposed to life changing – but I guess it can be both!).  Head back there if you didn’t get a chance to listen in already- click here to listen to ep 256 – www.socialmediaandmarketing.com.au/256

But before I get started, I wanted to give a shout out to this week’s podcast sponsor SellerDash.  Sellerdash develops high quality ecommerce apps and modules to boost profit, increase conversion and save you time.  They have an app for Shopify Sellers, so if you have a Shopify Store come back to me here – this is for you – which takes away your pain when it comes to printing Australia Post labels.  It will literally save you 90% of the time you spend creating manual labels.  So, Sellerdash really give you the gift of time! It’s called the MyPost app.  Check them out at www.sellerdash.io

And just finally before I get chatting to you about Facebook and all it’s goodness – I just wanted to tell you about my 4 week email marketing masterclass that’s happening in September. If email marketing is something that’s been on your list to learn and develop in your business – then this 4 week program could be just right for you! Take a look here: https://bit.ly/EmailMasterclasswithJenn

This episode – are you over Instagram – do this first – is inspired by a conversation I had the other day with a past client who is, frankly, over Instagram.  Over the lack of engagement, lack of lead generation ease, over the constant need for content.  And although, I am kinda in the same place and that’s a discussion for perhaps a podcast later this year, I am not saying “get off Instagram”, but I am saying let’s look at what you can do if you are over it or perhaps you are so over it, you never really got into it and you have a business Instagram account over there looking very alone and lonely!

So the conversation that sparked this episode was a past client who said “hey Jenn, I came across your Small Business Made Simple Podcast Instagram profile the other day, what’s the sorcery magic you’ve done with your grid and why have you done that?”.  Now, I have to admit I wasn’t even sure what she meant – so we dialled it up and had a look.

Here’s the thing, my account – my Instagram account for Jenn Donovan used to be called Small Business Made Simple but about 2 years ago I renamed it into my own name rather than the podcast name BUT I wanted that handle still – I didn’t want anyone else to have the handle smallbusinessmadesimple – so I claimed it.  Originally I was posting to it and my account which got old really really quickly.  So I decided to make my smallbusinessmadesimple Instagram account a stagnant account which meant I no longer posted to it and it’s only purpose was to hold the handle so no one could have it.  But I was also very aware that people might find it (not many as it only has 271 followers – which proves really that if you want to grow you need to be consistent and you need to show up – but not my point here, I digress!).  And if people did find it, it had to represent my brand and drive traffic to my podcast, website and/or me.  And so, if you go there, you will see that I have a grid set up that all works in together to provide what I think is like a landing page of what I am about, what the podcast is about and so forth.  Almost a stagnant website if you will.

The bio points to me – my Jenn Donovan Instagram account, and the link takes people to all the goodness that my proper Jenn Donovan account has. 

Of course, if I was to redo this “landing page” affect, I would probably do it slightly differently these days with the ability to “pin” posts to the top and so forth – perhaps changing out “pinned” posts 2 or 3 times a year but it does just fine for me right now.  I might up my game at some other time, which is the whole point of owning the handle, but for now “it’ll do pig” (a line from Babe and said by Farmer Hoggett!).

So, what’s my point in all this.  Well, I know a few of my community are over Instagram and are concentrating on other platforms, but have Instagram accounts.  And, remember that “everything you say and do is saying something about your business or you, regardless of whether you want it to or not” – so you neglected Instagram handle might need some love, if not just 2 or 3 hours of love now and never be touched again.  Sound like you? Has it been a while since you posted? Have you given up on Instagram to concentrate on LinkedIn or TikTok? Have you opened an Instagram account in your name or your business name and never posted anything?  What’s that telling your audience if and when they find it?

If any of the above is true, I would highly recommend you take that neglected Instagram account and make it more into a landing page/webpage feel highlighting you and your services and updating the bio to point them in the direction to go deeper into your world.

When I did this, many years ago, for my smallbusinessmadesimple Instagram account, I archived (NOT deleted) all the posts that we against the account to create a blank canvas and purchased an Instagram grid template from creative market – although you might find some templates on canva these days for free. www.creativemarket.com or www.canva.com or you might be genius enough to create your own!

This is just a super short episode, but one I think will help you think outside the square when it comes to your neglected Instagram accounts.  That’s all I hope for you when listening and remember, everything you say and do says something about you regardless of whether or not you want it too – and that includes your sad and lonely Instagram account!

Oh and this is a great idea if you just want to claim some handles for your business but aren’t ready to create content or if you have a business idea in the future coming and need to secure some handles!

Think outside the Instagram square my sweet sweet listener!

Hope that helped if you are thinking bigger Instagram …..

If you’d like to continue the chat, join me and join in the fun in my Facebook group Like Minded Business Owners https://www.facebook.com/groups/LikeMindedBusinessOwners – love to hear from you over there.

So, that’s it for episode 257. If you loved this episode and found it valuable, please take 30 seconds out of your day to leave me a rating and review if you want where you are listening.  One more goal of mine is to reach more people with this podcast, and you can help me achieve that, by leaving me a review!  Thanks in advance.

See you next week on the podcast for episode 258!

Thanks again to Sellerdash for sponsoring today’s episode.  Don’t forget to look up their amazing, time saving Shopify, time saving app. If you are in e-commerce or have a Shopify Store, go check out sellerdash.io, it could be the best thing you do today for your business!

Don’t forget to check out the deet on my email marketing masterclass https://bit.ly/EmailMasterclasswithJenn

But in the meantime, let’s hang out on social and get social on social – you’ll find me on Instagram, Facebook and my fav LinkedIn.

But whatever you do,

……..remember small business peep, as my opening song says, there’s no point in dreaming small!