Hey everyone, welcome back to the birth worker podcast. Today's episode is all about the fastest ways to grow your Instagram following as a birth doula. But before we jump into the episode, I just wanted to say thank you guys so much for reviewing the podcast. So if you have reviewed the the podcast in the last few weeks, I just wanted you to know that I appreciate appreciate you so so much. We are up to like 120 reviews just on Apple podcasts, which is insane. I even wanted to share with you that I got to celebrate my very first one star review, which is actually pretty exciting. Because to be honest, I don't trust someone, I don't trust a business if they have 100 reviews, and they're all five star reviews if they don't have like any bad reviews at all. I'm like, No, that's fake. There's no way. So thank you shout out to the person who left me a one star review. I think that is pretty exciting. I like to celebrate things in business that other people see as downfalls. I absolutely see it as a win. Now, after a few weeks of really birth focused interviews, we've done interviews we had haensi Go are on the show, we had my friend Claire on the show talking about hypnobirthing I actually wanted to jump right back into business, essentially. So today, and actually next week, because this is a two part podcast, we're gonna be going down the rabbit hole of Instagram, and social media honestly, in general. Now, the reason that we're gonna be talking about social media is because I believe because I know because it happened to me that social media has the power to change your entire life, you can literally make a full time income, become a fully booked doula in person, and sell all of your online offers solely through social media solely through Instagram. And I like I said, I know because I did it. And I'm here to tell you that it is really, really powerful. But here's the thing. If you want to see the benefit of a platform like Instagram, you have to see it as part of your core business model. You have to give it the attention it deserves. And you need to also just understand overall digital marketing strategy. It seems like a lot, yes. But we're just going to take it one step at a time. So we're gonna do it step by step together. And we're gonna be starting today by chatting about ways to grow your Instagram following. And then like I said, this is a two part episode. So next week, we're gonna go to part two, which is actually may start we're gonna start the conversation about maybe you actually don't even need like 10,000 followers on social media to start making money to start making $10,000 a month through your social media. So today is episode one of the two part series, I am going to cue the music and we're gonna start chatting about social media. Hey there birth nerd, you're listening to the birth worker podcast. My name is Kylie banks, and I am totally obsessed with birth, and equally obsessed with business. And this is the show where I help women turn their passion for birth into a sustainable, profitable and most importantly, impactful career. Alright, let's get into it.

All right, so I wanted to start by saying that I grew my Instagram account very fast. I know that it took a lot of effort. But I, I have to say some of it is probably luck, too. And we're gonna get into some of the things that I would consider lucky, which would be for instance, a another very large account, sharing your your post to their account, I would say that is a little bit of luck, a little bit of strategy, and all of that we're talking about today. So I grew my Instagram account really fast. I have 30,000 followers just about and I started my Instagram account exactly two years ago. And I always get so many questions about how I did it. People want to know what I would recommend for them to do to grow their Instagram account like mine grew. I actually have quite a few really good friends now, that started following me when I had, you know, 100 followers or 700 followers. So it's been really, really cool. And I get the questions the most from them, because they actually saw it happen. I have a lot of doula friends actually, who started Instagram accounts right around when I did too. So these aren't just like random people who followed me, you know, friends from high school. No, I

started my Instagram account almost exactly two years ago, I think to though to the week essentially, of when I'm recording this podcast, and I started from zero I started a brand new account from zero we're gonna get we're gonna talk about that too. And if that's something that I would recommend for you to do, so So essentially what I wanted to do today we are getting down into business, if you are driving or something, know that you can come back and check out the blog posts, because the blog post is going to have a lot of these, these bullet points essentially for you to just go and see. Or if you're walking your dog know, again, you can always come back and check out the blog post. So don't feel like you need to take notes. But if you are for home and on your computer, maybe you're listening to this while you're working, definitely pause every now and then take some notes and really get your strategy together. So today, I wanted to share essentially four ways that you can grow your Instagram account, two of those ways have to do with the type of content that you're sharing. And then the other two ways have to do with how you are showing up in your business. So we're gonna be talking about those four ways to grow your Instagram account, I might throw on a fifth bonus surprise if we get there. And if I come up with another thing, but it actually is pretty hard to make a podcast episode about this because I could honestly chat about this for probably days on end. So after we go over those four, maybe five ways to grow your Instagram account, I'm actually going to tell you some things to not do. So some things that you can avoid doing, maybe take some of these things off your plate, and they are going to actually help you in the end. And then like I said in the intro, we're gonna be doing a two part podcast. So this is just part one. And then next week, we're gonna start talking about hey, like, do you even need 10,000 followers to start making $10,000 a month as a birth doula or an online childbirth educator, that is where we're going. So that is what you can expect to get out of this episode, and then the episode that'll come out next week. Okay, so these first two ideas are things that have to do with your content, remember, so the very first thing that you can do is start creating shareable content. Always ask yourself, would somebody else share this post to their stories? Would somebody else share this real to their stories? And stories are really important, because stories are how we're going to get our content in front of other people's audiences. And that's something that we're going to chat a little bit more about later in this episode. But just constantly ask yourself, would somebody share this to their stories? Would I share this to my stories? Right? And so something that we need to think about here is that when you share, we're talking about Instagram today. So when you share an Instagram grid posts to your stories, you're not sharing the caption most of the time, you were just sharing that original picture, right? So when we ask ourselves, is our content shareable? We're not asking ourselves, ourselves, did I write a good caption? No, you need to ask yourself, Is this picture that I am uploading into Instagram? Is that shareable? Or are these first 15 seconds of this real shareable, because that's what's gonna go in other people's stories when they share your content. So that is idea number one, I want you to put that on a freaking sticky notes. And anytime you're batching content, or if you create content just every single day, just have it out, like have that sticky note on your desk or on your computer or wherever you create content and write on that sticky note. Is this content shareable? Now, idea number two also has to do with the kind of content you're creating. And I want you to be creating content that constantly makes people see something in a new way, makes people see something in a different way. So thought provoking content, content that like shakes things up, content that maybe is a little bit divisive, even, and not divisive content for the sake of being divisive. I had, he wasn't a mentor, but he's someone who's whose podcast I listened to quite frequently. And his name is Brandon Lucero. And he made a joke about this is he says you should make divisive content. But don't just make content that's whiny and bitchy. Because if you make content that's whiny and bitchy, all of the people who consume it are going to be whiny, and they're going to be bitches. So that's not the kind of audience you want. Those are not the kinds of students you want to work with, or births you want to attend, right? So definitely, don't be whiny, don't be bitchy, don't be divisive, just to like, you know, clickbait like don't do clickbait. But definitely, you know, add some spice to your content. And something you can ask yourself when you're posting this kind of content is, would somebody really disagree with this? And would somebody else really, really, really love me for having the courage to say this? And if the answer is yes, I can tell you that that that content is going to be awesome, and that content is probably going to be shareable. So those are two content ideas that can help you create content that's going to grow your Instagram account. Again, you always want to create shareable content to get your content in front of other people's audiences. And then you also want to create content that's thought provoking. And so that's not necessarily like how to content that's not necessarily Content teaching? No, maybe you're just sharing an opinion that is a little bit spicy. Now, this next idea and the one following have more to do with how you're actually showing up in your business. And so the first thing that I want to say about this and in terms of how you show up and your business, is I want you to spend more time on Instagram. If your goal is to grow your Instagram, you got to be spending more time on Instagram, right? So can you start posting more? Can you batch your content, so you don't have to be constantly on that content creation hamster wheel. But if you batch your content, you know, it's going out every single day, no matter what. Awesome, maybe that'll help you not burn out on social media. Maybe if you're batching your content. So you know, every single day rain or shine a post is going to go out. Awesome. Now you can actually spend that 15 minutes 30 minutes, which I mean, all of us spend way more than that on our phones every single day, I'm sure of it. But if you know that you don't even have to create a post today, you already batched it, you scheduled it the post is happening. Now you just need to show up authentically on Instagram and start engaging with people. So that's something that I really love doing. And I teach my students inside birth worker Academy. And of course, I'll teach them inside my upcoming membership, the birth worker membership all about business. But the thing that's really important here is just batching your content to help you avoid that burnout and overwhelm. Now also, when we talk about spending more time on Instagram, I want you to be spending more time in your Instagram stories. So post authentic stuff, like post your face and post your voice every single day in your stories. And also start creating conversations with your followers. Right, interact with people interact with other accounts in your same niche. So start interacting with other doulas other childbirth educators, other nurses, whatever your niche is, because people are going to start finding you on Instagram if you're spending time on Instagram. And that's this entire idea idea number three is spend more time on Instagram. So if you are posting in the comments under another doulas posts, maybe another doula with a lot more followers, you go and you comment under her posts. Now her followers are going to see that. And if your comment was fun, or spicy or stood out in some way, people are actually going to click to your account. And so that comes with just spending more time on Instagram. Now, if you're really starting from scratch, and I'm talking, you're seriously starting from zero people, what I would do is I definitely would start batching content just to make sure content is coming out on a on a regular daily basis. But I want you to do something a little bit different, because you're not going to have a lot of people interacting with you. So if you really are starting from scratch, you need to be a little bit more proactive. So what I would do is, if I'm starting from scratch, any single person that likes any of my posts, I'm going to go to their page, and I'm going to interact with them. I'm going to follow them, I'm going to interact on their posts, I'm going to comment I'm going to respond to their stories. And just give people that love and engagement. Give people the love and engagement that you want on your page. Because it doesn't really make sense to just expect everyone to interact with you if you're not interacting with anyone else. Right. So again, respond to stories, people stories, have conversations in the DMS, it could be with other doulas it could be with pregnant moms, it can be with anyone essentially, who is interested in the type of content you're creating. Now that's spending spending more time on Instagram is, is something that doesn't sound fun to a lot of us, but it's really important. But it's not the only thing that's important. So idea number four that I have here is that I want you to start paying more attention to your analytics. So every single day, especially if you're starting out, even if you have you know, less than 1000 followers, every single day, I want you to be tracking and just looking how many followers did you gain? How many followers did you lose?

Don't pay too much attention to the unfollows though I do think it's important, but it's more important to see just you know, what's your daily average? What kind of posts are you creating that? Maybe more people unfollowed you from? Or maybe you got a ton of followers from one post. Those are the kinds of things that you want to look at. You could also see you know, how active was I in Instagram Stories this weekend compared to how many followers I got this weekend. If I didn't make a post this weekend, and I wasn't active in stories, I could go into my analytics and it would be very clear why I didn't you know, gain followers over the weekend. So just paying more attention and trying to understand the data that we have access to is really important. And within your analytics in Instagram, you can actually see Like what kind of posts got the most engagement. And so when we're talking about engagement for social media purposes, we're talking about likes, shares, saves, comments follows, visit tapped your website button, all of those things count as engagement. And you can look up all of those things right there in your Instagram analytics. And so what I want you to do is every now and then go in there, take a look at the posts that got the most likes, shares, saves comments follows, website, taps, whatever it is, and then start making more posts like those. It seems really, really basic, but it's something that will absolutely change your life, especially if you are feeling like you're on that content hamster wheel. And you don't really see a purpose to any of this, definitely take a look at your analytics, see what posts do well, and copy those posts make more posts like those. And something else I want you to do when it comes to analytics is setting goals for yourself, setting goals for essentially your Instagram growth. So maybe you have a goal that you want a certain a certain percentage increase, I like using percentages, maybe a certain percentage increase of followers week after week, or month after month. When I started when I had like less than 50 followers on Instagram, my goal was always to increase by 10% Every month, or I'm sorry, 10% every seven days, because when you first go in there, when you open up your Instagram analytics, it's showing you for seven days. So I've always wanted that to say 10%. Now, if that's for my account now now that I have 30,000 followers, if that says 1%, that is insanely high. So 1% is like a super stretch goal for me now, week after week. But here's the thing, now that I have 30,000 followers on Instagram, and just my online part of my business and my part in line part of my business or sorry, in person, part of my business, not in line, my online part of my business and my in person business are rolling, so they're doing well. And my Instagram is almost a machine that works for me at this point, I don't have to work that hard at it, it works for me. So I actually pay less attention to the week by week analytics. But I am still going in month after month on the first of every month going in and taking note and just keeping track on the back end, how much is my community growing, I track my email list my my Facebook group and my social media following. So checking your analytics day after day every single day is not something you'll have to do forever. But I do definitely want you to set goals and just try and hit those goals. You can't, you're not going to have growth if you're not actually like measuring what you're doing. Or you will have growth but you won't know why you won't know how and you won't be able to recreate it. And so it's really important to just track what we're doing. Now, the last bonus idea that is going to help you grow your Instagram is optimizing your profile. And this is something that we do at the very beginning of birth worker Academy when we start talking about creating an online business and a sustainable business is creating your social media profiles and optimizing them. So just make sure you're doing the simple things like is your Instagram name optimized because our Instagram names are searchable? So do you have the word doula in there? Do you have the word birth worker or whatever you

do lactation consultant, l&d Nurse, whatever it is, do you have that in your Instagram? Name? It does your Instagram bio, make a statement? Like why are you different? What can you do to help people when someone lands on your page, they see your Instagram bio. Instagram bio is more important. It's less important for people that already know us. So our warm audience is not necessarily looking at our Instagram bio all the time. But someone who is hits our page for the first time, we need to optimize our Instagram bio for them, right? So make a statement, why are you different? Why should they follow you? Why should they care? What are they going to get if they stick around, right, so have a nice call to action there. And once you do that, optimize your profile, anyone who lands on your page from an awesome post that you share, they're going to be a lot more likely to actually follow you. So those are your five ideas I have for you let me run through those ideas, because we still have to jump into things that you should not do, which is essentially like the same level of importance, honestly. So those five ideas number one is create shareable content to create content that makes people see something in a different way. Idea number three, spend more time on Instagram, give the energy that you want to receive back essentially, number four is pay more attention to your analytics. And then the bonus idea number five was just optimize your profile, optimize it so people are going to start wanting to follow you. Now let's jump into things that you need to not do. And I have a list of four things. And some of these might be obvious and some might be a little bit more surprising or a little bit more high level strategy. See. So the very first one is do not do a follow for follow or follow trains with anyone ever, do not ever go to a doula Instagram group and post your Instagram and say if you follow me all follow you don't do that because we want you to, we want you to gain your audience authentically, we want people who are actually interested in your content, not people who you asked to be interested in your content. So no follow for follow no follow trains, no buying followers, none of that stuff. Now, number two of things to not do is do not turn your personal account into your birth account, especially if you are just starting out. And you have been thinking, and I think I'm just gonna start posting birth stuff on my personal account. No, do not do that. And the reason is that because it's because engagement really matters. And if people aren't not interested in the exact post you're posting, the engagement is going to be low. And Instagram is not going to push out your content to more people, if your current followers aren't even engaging in your posts, right. So if you have people from high school, or your family or your 40 cousins, who are our men, and they already have kids, or maybe like your parents, friends, whoever it is, they're not interested in your birth stuff. So we don't even want them on your account at all. So start a new account, I'm telling you, it's a little bit daunting, but I grew mine from zero to 30,000 in two years, and you can too.

Now the next thing that you should not do is focus only on building connections with pregnant moms or with your ideal clients. Now this one is a little bit a little bit weird. And it's a little bit meta, but I want to explain it because I think it really, really matters. Now, we we want all of our audience, all of our Instagram followers to enjoy our content, we that's really important. We want all of our followers to our indoor content, we do not need all of our followers to be our perfect client. Okay, I'm gonna say that again. We do not need all of our followers to be our perfect client. We do not necessarily need them to be a pregnant mom, that's going to hire us. But we do need all of our followers to enjoy our content. And something that the reason that I say this is something that I hear a lot is people saying, Hey, don't make content for other doulas only make content for pregnant moms. And it makes sense. And what they mean is that as a doula we shouldn't really care if other doulas follow us, right, because other doulas are not going to hire us. Moms are going to hire us. So it shouldn't matter that doulas are following us, we shouldn't care, because we only want the moms in our area, or wherever it is to consume our content. But here's the thing. This is where I disagree. Because for me, other doulas on social media have been the biggest gift. Right? I make shareable content, I share it to my Instagram, other doulas on Instagram share my content to their pages. And so their followers see me in their stories, and I get new followers. Now, the biggest jump I've ever had in followers ever was 600 followers over a weekend. And the reason is, is because another account a much bigger account in the motherhood niche, shared my post to their stories. And the thing is, is it wasn't even a post directly right related to birth, it had a lot more to do with autonomy. So yes, like it's still very clearly my niche. Because I'm a little bit spicy, I talk about autonomy, I, I don't really have any shame. So it's still very much my niche that I serve on my Instagram account, which is the autonomy, mommy, it's my primary Instagram account. But anyway, the reason that I'm bringing this up is because if I were to only make content specifically for pregnant moms, and no one else would be interested. There's no way my account would be 30,000 people right now, there's no way because I need to create content that is interesting to a wider variety of people. And so when you look at your account, and you think to yourself, oh, there's only doulas following me, there's no moms following me. I want you to not see that as a bad thing. And I want you to use that to your advantage and really start creating some seriously good content that's shareable and really leaning lean into the fact that your followers who are doulas are going to be sharing your posts to their audiences, and you're going to grow your audience that way. So be grateful for that. Be grateful for the doula followers to now, the very last thing that you should not do if you want to grow your Instagram account is boost posts. Pay money to boost posts. Now here's the thing. Ads are phenomenal. I love ads, I run ads every single day. I think I've probably spent, I don't know, over 10 grand in ADS this year alone when I'm recording this. But here's the thing. Ads are a phenomenal idea. Yes, but not without strategy. So if you are interested in ads, you can hang around for a second, because I'm going to tell you some things you need to ask yourself first. But if you are interested in ADS know that it's an amazing strategy. It's a great way to reach more people, but not without actually knowing that strategy. So if you have been toying with the idea of boosting posts or using ADS, I want you to ask yourself these things.

The first one is do you have a website with all of your ads tracking setup? Do you have a landing page with a freebie? And is that landing page converting at over 40%? Do you have your funnel setup? Meaning do you have that freebie linked to an email welcome sequence. And then here's the most important part, does your email welcome sequence convert those people into paid clients at a rate that would translate into a good return on your ad spend. And if any of that or all of that is way over your head, or Honestly, even if you think you're ready to take that next step and to start running ads like correctly with correct strategy, hang around because in this community this coming fall, we are planning on coming up with some programs or maybe even a membership to help you advanced your advanced your digital marketing skills. So you can start making some of that recurring income, that recurring revenue. And I know creating some sort of recurring revenue is a huge goal probably for most people listening to this podcast. And that's why next week, we are continuing this conversation and diving into part two on this same subject, because we are going to talk about, honestly why you might not even need 10,000 Instagram followers before you make $10,000 from your Instagram audience from your Instagram account. And of course, we're going to chat about some of the ways that you can actually serve your audience on Instagram in a way that leads to money in your pocket. So next week, I will actually be talking about how it's possible, if it's possible, and what you should do to start making money from your Instagram account. All right, and just to recap, I'm gonna say those four things that I want you to not do. Number one, do not do follow for follows do not do follow trains. Do not invite a bunch of people who don't care about your offers to follow you just for the sake of follower accounts. No, never do not do that. Number two, do not turn your personal account into a berth account. If you have more questions on that one, shoot me a DM and I would love to help you understand if you need to start creating a new account from scratch. Number three things to not do. Don't only focus on building connections with pregnant moms, build connections with a lot more people beyond that. And number three, do not boost your posts. If you are interested in ADS hang around in this community, because that is something we're going to be talking a lot more about later this fall as we start opening up the birth worker membership for doulas and pelvic floor therapists and ibclcs. And whoever else is serving moms through birth, essentially, we're going to be creating a community that is a business focused community for birth workers. So hang around the community if you want to learn more about ads, or even if you're like, oh my god, Kylie, this was over my freaking head. I don't even know what you're talking about. Awesome. This membership that we're creating is going to be for you too, because it's going to help take you from zero, absolutely zero all the way to making consistent 2000 months using your Online offers and getting that recurring revenue. So thank you very much for being here. You know the drill. I will see you right back here next week. And we are going to wrap it up with episode number two from this two part series.

Now, before you go, I just wanted to let you know that my mentor who I learned so much from her name is Amy Porterfield. She has a new freebie that I wanted to share with you. So Amy is the mentor that took me from never making money online as a birth doula and birth educator to making my first $50,000 From my online birth courses and online resources in the first six months, zero to 50,000 in the first six months after creating the online portion of my birth doula business, and so you can actually go to birth worker.com/amy A M y, or I'm actually going to put a link in the show notes. So seriously, go check out Amy, go check out her News. freebee, she might change your life just like we just like she changed my life. Now, if you have any questions about anything we talked about today, or about Amy Porterfield or her programs, or about how I built my online birth course business, you know what to do? Send me a DM on Instagram over at birth worker podcast because I would love to chat with you about it. Just a few years ago, I would have never known it was possible to live the life I do today. And if I can even help just one other birth nerd, take her passion and turn it into a kick ass online offer. Or if I can even help just one doula start impacting lives worldwide, and make and watch her make a lot of money at the same time. That's the reason I'm here. That's the reason I'm here to help you do that. Okay, I will see you over on Instagram. And then next week we are continuing this conversation to get you one step closer to your dream career and a dream lifestyle.