Instagram Success: How a Marketer Grew a Loyal Following With Instagram

Do you want to grow your business using Instagram?

Are you wondering how to build a loyal following?

I interview Chalene Johnson for this episode of the Social Media Marketing podcast and explore how she amassed a following of 365,000 on Instagram.
More About This Show

The Social Media Marketing podcast is a show from Social Media Examiner.

It's designed to help busy marketers and business owners discover what works with social media marketing.

The show format is on-demand talk radio (also known as podcasting).

In this episode, I interview Chalene Johnson. Chalene is author of the fitness book Push, a motivational speaker and her infomercials on fitness have sold millions of DVDs. She's found great success with Instagram and now teaches other small businesses how to do the same with her Instagram Impact course, and has a new podcast called Build Your Tribe.

Chalene shares how she creatively used Instagram to grow her business.

You'll discover how to take your Instagram marketing to the next level.

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Here are some of the things you'll discover in this show:
Instagram Success
How and why Chalene started on social media

Chalene says she started with YouTube in 2006 and Twitter in 2007 or 2008.

In 2009, she got the idea for writing Push. When she told her agent she wanted to pitch a book about goal-setting and focus instead of a fitness book, he told her she didn't have the social media following or the credibility to write that type of book.

She got to work and spent a year using social media to build a platform with the intention of writing the book she wanted to pitch to publishers in New York.

Listen to the show to hear how Chalene used social media when she first started.

What Chalene built to support her book pitch

Chalene shares that she had a ton of followers on YouTube and had just started a Facebook page when she decided to write Push. Even though she had millions of DVD customers, her agent had to remind her that publishers don't care who you know; publishers want to know if you have the ability to reach those people.

To build her email list, Chalene created a 30-Day Challenge for her Facebook audience.

She started with three quick videos to show how she uses her phone to organize her daily to-do list and included a simple email opt-in. Every day she delivered a 2-minute video to her email subscribers.

The list grew to 100,000 in 9 months.

Listen to the show to find out how Chalene collected emails from her subscribers.

How Chalene got started with Instagram

After successfully using Facebook to build her email list, Chalene says she was able to land the publishing deal she wanted and the book was released in December 2011. Then she noticed she wasn't getting any love on Facebook.

She didn't want to learn about Facebook ads and shares that she kind of picked up her toys and stomped off the playground. That's when she began to realize her kids were all over Instagram but businesses weren't.

In winter 2012, Chalene decided to become an early settler on Instagram. She started with life-casting, sharing personal images to show where she was and what she was doing during the day.

Listen to the show to find out how following a favorite fashion icon drastically changed Chalene's Instagram strategy.

How Instagram has changed Chalene's business

Chalene shares that as a business owner and someone with a family, Instagram saves her time. She says instead of spending hours creating content, she can now spend literally 15 seconds and produce content to drive traffic to an opt-in for current or future offers.

Unlike Facebook, Instagram allows her to put a call to action (CTA) in every post without affecting her engagement.

Listen to the show to discover what Chalene track...