52. The First 5 Instagram Posts to Create When You’re Starting (or Starting Over)

[MUSIC PLAYING] Welcome to Social Content Made Easy, the podcast that helps you simplify content creation, grow your audience, and make sales on Instagram without spending hours glued to your phone. I'm your host, Nicole Iologio. And each week, I'll bring you bite-sized actionable strategies to help you confidently create scroll-stopping content that actually grows your business. So if you're sick of wasting hours creating content that no one sees and just want a simple proven way to show up while having some fun, you're in the right place. Let's go. Hey, episode 52-- I think I just blew past 50 and didn't even mention it. But I'm just very grateful that I have been able to continue this for almost a year now. And just in a couple of weeks, I'll have this podcast will have been out for a whole year. And that's kind of crazy. I feel like it's been a fast year, but I also feel like I've been doing this for many years, simply because I thought about creating this podcast for the past four years. And finally, this past year, I was like, you know what? Just do it. And I had some encouragement from some business best friends. And they were able to tell me to just do it. And the amount of growth that you all are seeing just from this podcast makes me so happy. It literally makes my day when I get a DM that's like, oh my gosh, I did one of the things that you said. And my following grew, or I was able to sell my course or have my biggest launch ever, all of these things fuel me to continue to go. So I just wanted to say thank you for listening. Thank you for being here. And we are going to get right into it today. I really wanted to kind of come back to the basics with this because I had some people reach out about starting a new account, or they feel like they haven't posted in a while, and they want to come back. And it is really important to get this right and to be able to set up your Instagram for success. If you're starting up a brand new Instagram account, or maybe you're like reopening the doors after just being MIA from Instagram, this episode is going to help you kind of structure your first few posts. I also want to let you know that it is totally okay to restart. Now why should you restart? Maybe you're talking about a brand new thing. Maybe you have a new niche. Maybe you have a brand new offer that's like nothing you've ever offered before. Maybe you took a long break and you're just trying to come back and these are the posts to restart it. Maybe you had some burnout. Maybe you also had an account that you were kind of wishy washy with for a long time that never got any real traction. And you're like, I just need to start fresh. You need to know that you do not need 30 posts right off the bat to get started. You do not need any reels to go viral. And you don't need everything to be perfect before you start. You just need to trust that what you're offering is really good. Or you need to trust that the content you're putting out is actually helping people. So the first five posts that you're going to do, they need to answer the exact questions that people are going to be asking in their heads before they figure out if they're gonna be following you or not. Who is this? Is this for me? Can I trust this person? Can this person help me? And what do I do next? If all five can be answered very quickly, you are going to get a follow. These five posts we're gonna be talking about are not random. Each one is going to remove friction or answer the question in order to build trust way faster with you. The first one is gonna be about you or like why I'm here post. This can be a carousel or real. You could do a talking headroom, you could do a b-roll, you could do a carousel. The possibilities are literally endless with this. You can pick the way that you wanna do it. The purpose of this post is to humanize your brand. It's going to show people that you are an actual person and you're here and you talk about why you got started and why you're so passionate about what you are talking about. It's gonna give your account your big anchor. People are gonna come there and they're gonna be able to check it out really quick and determine exactly who you are. It's also gonna give a little bit more context to your potential followers for why you post what you post. The purpose of this post is to kind of share your story through relevance in what you're talking about now. So how does your story relate to what you're doing? And how are you here to help people? Why are you here to help people? This is not your entire life story. We are not trauma dumping on this post and this is definitely not a resume where you're just listing off accolades. What you do want to include in this post is the exact people that you help. Why do you care about this problem that these people have? Why do you talk about these topics very specifically? And then maybe like a moment or something that happened in your life that made you say, this is why this matters to me. Why does what you're talking about matter so much to you? Some different hook ideas you could use for talking head or the first side of it, Carousel could be, I started posting about blank because I couldn't stop thinking about this. And that can be your transition until who you are, why you talk about it, what you do. Another really good one that will definitely get people interested is I never plan to talk about blank on Instagram but here we are. If you want one that's like a little less me-centric talking about yourself, you can also do, if you've ever struggled with blank, this is why I show up here. And that's good also because it's going to get people involved and show them that you're the expert and what you're talking about. For the call to action with this post, it's going to be a call to follow you. It's gonna be follow if this feels like the space you've been looking for. It's gonna be you're in the right place if blank or if this feels helpful for you, welcome. I'm so happy you're here. Something like that to get people to be like, yes, this is the spot for me and give them the call to action to press the follow button. Right, post number two is going to be your paid offer without being super salesy. This is gonna be a Carousel. I would love, love, love. Everybody to have this pinned on their profile but like nobody does. The purpose of this is to normalize that your account is gonna be used for selling. So people realize that yes, you give away amazing free information and that they can definitely get help from you for free but that you are going to be selling what you're offering on this page as well. And honestly, you are going to get some sales just from the people coming to your page right away. Once you get the hang of it, people are going to come to your page immediately. Trust you. Buy from you because this is what they've been looking for. I never shocked when people are like with me and my clients like I just found you and I just decided to buy. That's never shocking to me because of the way that we set up the Instagram and your first few posts. With this post, you're going to show the transformation that you or client went through, not like the transaction. So I want you to talk about where this person was before or where you were before, how this offer or what you're teaching fixed it and then the transformation where they're at right now. And it also lets people know that you're not just here to post tips all of the time. You are here to give a deeper transformation through your paid offers. I need you to remember that people really don't mind being sold to at all. What they mind is being confused. If they come on and they're like, I have no idea what this person's offering. I have no idea what they're selling. They're going to be confused. They're going to leave. For instance, if a big brand has a new product, like if Nike has a new hoodie that I really want, I'm always grateful when I see an advertisement where I see somebody wearing it. So if you can kind of think of it like that, like your offer is actually helping people talking about it is going to help you with your income and the people that you're here to help. How you can kind of structure this carousel is going to be, slide one is going to talk about the problem that your offer solves. So simply the problem. Then slides two and three, you're going to talk about what life looks like with the solution. Slide four, you can kind of talk about the people that this is for. And then you can kind of go into slides five and six is like what will actually change once you get this product service, whatever it is. And then slide six is going to be how to learn more next steps, what it looks like to work with you. Some different hook ideas you can do for this one is if blank feels way harder than it should, this is for you. Or this is for the person who wants blank without blank. And personally for this, I kind of like more than any center hooks like I was able to blank without blank. Here's how. One that I use on my page is I got my client blank from blank. Here's how. So you can totally do this in a bunch of different ways. And my actual one, let me actually pull it up. So you can, I can tell you the exact words that I used on mine. So mine is my client got 20,000 followers from one reel. And then it kind of goes through the proof of showing that it actually happened. And then like how somebody else can get use out of it. And then on the last slide, it goes into selling. Feel free to go to my Instagram @nacoleiligio and check it out. And you can definitely steal the structure for sure. Calls to action on this one is going to be like, this is how I help details are in my bio, DM me the word info, comment the word blank below. This is a sales post. So you really want the call to action to be to purchase or learn more information. Post three is going to be some type of free offer. It's very important to build your email list. I love Instagram obviously. But it's important to know that we don't own Instagram and also hackers are getting really, really good at stealing people's accounts. So it's very important that we get people onto an email list. And the best way to do that is through a very valuable free offer. So if you don't have a free offer that you're getting email addresses, I do recommend that you get started with that. I actually have a deal for flow desk. I can put that in the description below. If you don't even have like an email hosting software, I love flow desk. It's very cheap. I can I'll put the link below if you're interested in that. But why do we want to have a free offer as one of the first things that we're posting on our Instagram? So it's a very low risk trust builder. So people are going to be like, oh my gosh, she's offering all this for free. That's amazing. And it's going to be like a present for your new followers. It also, like I said before, just moves people off of Instagram to something that you actually own. And it does show generosity. And it shows more depth to you. And you're able to kind of talk more and give more information in a free offer than you are in a single Instagram post. Okay. So what makes a good freebie? If you've never made a freebie before, make sure that it solves one very specific problem and that it leads very naturally to your paid offer. We want the freebie to also be a conversion event. So people read the freebie. They're like, this is amazing. I need more click to buy. But be sure in this freebie that you are giving a quick win. Like something that people can actually take and actually implement and see results from. And then if they're wanting more of that, then they can go to your hate offer. Some different ways that I like to structure these are like, I made this because I kept getting this question. I love using that one and it always works well. And it's always true. If I get questions about a certain thing, I'll usually make a free offer about it. Or like, if you're overwhelmed with blank, do this first. And like your free offer could be like the start here point, like the main thing that people need to know first before they can do anything else. Some different hook ideas you could do is like, if you only do one thing this week, make it this. And then it kind of leads into why this is going to help them. Another one is like before you overthink blank, start with this. That's another great way to offer your freebie calls to action for this is going to be comment a code word. If you have many chat and I'll send it over. Or you can say, grab it free. It's in my bio. It's in the link in my bio. I really love many chat for these. But I understand that some people can't afford it yet. I think it's like $15 a month. But I understand that that's just like one more expense. And especially if you're not getting a ton of comments, you can still do comment code word below. And I'll send it to you. And then all you would do is manually respond to these people and send them the link. That way it's giving your post engagement. And they're getting on your email list too. All right. Hopping into post four. This is going to be a very high value talking head real. Yes, I want you to be on camera and showing your face. Why? Because it shows expertise, it proves that you're the expert. And it builds trust really fast. The purpose of this is to prove that you know what you're talking about. I want people to hear you explain something because that is what's building trust. You actually talking to the camera. It builds confidence in yourself. It builds authority. Your audience builds confidence in you. And it proves to them that you are the expert about what you're talking about. Things that you can teach about. I like teaching about like a mistake that people make and a shift that they can do instead. Or a belief that you have. And why it's so important. You can also do like a list of a bunch of different tips on like three, three ways that I was able to blank after blank. Different hook ideas for this is most people are doing blank wrong. And it's not their fault. If you've tried blank and it didn't work, this is why. Or here's what actually matters when it comes to blank. Those are great ways to start off your talking. For the call to action for this one is going to be save like save this or come back to it later or send it to a friend. Pick one and use that for this called action. Post number five is another high value, but this one is in the form of a carousel. And want it to be savable and shareable and just be able to pop up on all of the search engines. The purpose of this is to show that you have depth. It's going to spark shares and saves and give proof that you are really good at what you're talking about. Some different ways that you can do this is like a step by step tutorial. You could do myths versus truths. You could do mistakes that you should avoid and do this instead. Hook ideas for this is stop doing blank if you want blank or five things that matter more than blank or I wish I knew this before I did this. Things like that are going to grab attention and make people want to continue swiping. Just make sure that you are giving them the answer to your hook as you continue on in your slides. The worst thing you can do is say five things that matter more than blank and you like don't give them all five things. You need to do that. You need to close out the gap with this post. People need to be able to trust you and understand that they're going to get what you say they're going to get after something. Calls to action for this is like save this, share it, again pick one and just go with one for this. These five posts build trust super fast because they cover your identity, your value, your credibility and they give people a direction. They remove any confusion that people have once they get to your page and they make your account feel super intentional like this is what I am. This is what I offer. This is how I can help you and they also let people binge instead of like guessing where to go or what to do. They have kind of a guide of how to do things on your account. Now what to do with these five posts? Once you've made these five posts go ahead and post them then I want you to pin three of them. I really want you to pin the about you post. Then I want you to pin either the paid offer or the free offer depending on what your current goal is. If your current goal is to make sales, pin the paid offer. If your current goal is to build your email list, pin your free offer and then the third one is going to be a very high value, very helpful post. So either the talking head or the carousel, you can weigh a little bit and see which one ends up performing better and pick that one to put on your pinned posts. The pinning really matters because new visitors, the people that come to your page from like a real or they're just checking you out, they need to see these. They need to understand who you are, the help that you can give and how to work with you further. It kind of acts like a mini funnel and it just answers all of the questions that they have right away. All right. These episodes always end with a quick recap and an action challenge for you. So the recap is remember you do not need 30 posts before you get started. You just need a little bit of direction. These are the five posts that are going to do all the heavy lifting for you. I want you to pin three of them and then just keep building from there. So your action challenge for this week is just to create one of these five posts. I don't want it to be perfect. I just want you to get it done and post it because honestly the first one or two times you post stuff like this, it might not do that well. And that's okay because we need to perfect our messaging, right? We need to make sure that our messaging is hitting so we might need to try these two or three times before they start getting traction. But you can do it. Just start with one this week. If you're loving these episodes, it would mean the world to me if you could take a minute and review it on Apple podcast or just give a five star review on Spotify. It really does help this podcast go out to more people that really need it. And I just love helping you all so much. I hope you have a fantastic rest of your week. Thanks for hanging out with me today. I hope you're walking away with at least one actionable takeaway to make creating content easier. If you love today's episode, it would mean the world if you could take 10 seconds, leave a review or screenshot this episode and tag me on Instagram @insta.amplified. I'd love to connect and see your new content. Always cheering for you. See you next time.