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In this episode of GradBlogger, we interview Dr. Melanie Bruce about using Instagram for your academic business. We discuss how to write appealing captions that engage your audience. We also discuss hashtags and other tools that will boost your profile and your business.
Disclosure: Some of the links in the podcast show notes and transcripts are affiliate links (indicated with [Affiliate] in front). If you choose to make a purchase through these links, GradBlogger will earn a commission from that purchase at no extra cost to you.
Introduction
Chris Cloney: 00:08
Welcome to Episode #16 of GradBlogger, where we’re helping academics build online businesses and change the world through blogging, podcasting, and video. I’m your host, Dr. Chris Cloney. Today we have a very special guest, Dr. Melanie Bruce, to talk about using Instagram for your academic business. Melanie, welcome to GradBlogger.
Melanie Bruce: 00:28
Thanks, Chris. I’m excited to be here.
Chris Cloney: 00:30
I’m really excited to have you. I know you’ve been following a bit of the GradBlogger storyline, if you will. You were actually quite involved and won some awards and prizes during our podcast launch. So, thank you.
Melanie Bruce: 00:42
I did. I’m actually using one of those prizes right now to record this.
Chris Cloney: 00:46
That’s awesome. Melanie won the grand prize, which was the podcast setup that we’re both using now to record this. We shipped it down to Tennessee, where she’s located. Yeah, I hope the audio sounds awesome.
In this episode, we’re talking about using Instagram for your academic business. Melanie has a Ph.D. in consumer behaviour from Southern Cross University in Australia. She’s a speaker, she’s a small business marketing consultant. I know her from her website, theprofessorisout.com, which is about international travel for professors, administrators, and staff.
Chris Cloney: 01:21
She also just rebranded and is preparing a new website, which is theleveragedPh.D.com. You can also find her at melaniebruce.com.au. Today, we’re talking about Instagram. So, Melanie, would you share with the audience the reasons why you started your blog, theprofessorisout.com?
What made you start your TheProfessorsIsOut.com blog?
Melanie Bruce: 02:08
Absolutely. I actually started my blog so that I could have real data to use in the social media and digital marketing classes that I was teaching. I was teaching in a small town and there weren’t a lot of businesses here that I could connect with. I wanted to be able to run experiments and show my students how small optimizations and small change could have a huge impact on conversions and on a business’s success.
My teaching style is very hands-on, so I wanted to have that real live data rather than using hypothetical data or old case studies. I decided on the topic because it was something I was passionate about: travelling, leading travel studies, and helping other academics to do that. That’s really where it came from and, as I’m sure we’ll talk about shortly in the next episode that I do with you, there’s a lot of change. It’s evolved a lot over time.
Chris Cloney: 03:05
Yeah, certainly, and we’ll go through that whole journey during the next two recordings that we’re doing. Just to confirm or the audience: Melanie was/is an acting professor at …
Melanie Bruce: 03:17
I’m currently at the University of Tennessee at Martin. I’ve just finished up here, and I’m heading down to Southern Mississippi University for the next academic year. So I am a full-time academic, and I’m doing all this on the side, just for the fun of it really.
Chris Cloney: 03:35
I love it. The course that she mentioned is actually a course that she’s teaching, or was teaching, as part of her engagement at the university. Just in case people are wondering what that’s all about.
So, that’s where you got started with The Professor Is Out, and again, I would encourage you to also check out theleveragedPh.D.com, and her own personal brand website, which we will be covering in episode 18.
Regarding that whole journey from starting a website and starting a blog as part of a course you’re running for your students: what were some of the big takeaways from your Ph.D. research in consumer behaviour and just that whole online marketing and what you learned in that class with your students?
What have you taken away from your Ph.D. and role in Marketing Education that applies to online business?
Melanie Bruce: 04:13
With my Ph.D. being in marketing, there was a lot that I had learned through my education that I applied to starting my online business and my blog and doing social media marketing, search engine optimization, email marketing. All of that was skills that I had through my education.
But there are also so many skills that I developed during my Ph.D., such as time management, batch and content, time blocking, needing to work autonomously and being on your own terms. Writing, researching, all of these things are so important for online businesses and creating any type of content online.
Melanie Bruce: 05:04
When you first start to blog and do all this stuff online, you can be quite overwhelmed. Just like when you start your Ph.D. or when you start your graduate studies, or you start the research project if you are graduating for your Ph.D. and you’re academic now, it can be a little overwhelming, but you have those skills, you’ve done it before and you can do it again. It’s a transferable skill that we have.
Chris Cloney: 05:34
Oh, I love it. I’ve never interviewed somebody whose academic research was in consumer behaviour. Were there any surprises? Like a picture or something that you see in a textbook, they are like, “Oh, that’s just not working in real life and you need to switch it up.” Is there anything like that?
Melanie Bruce: 05:56
Well, we often say in marketing that not everything is going to work for every customer, for every target market. We do talk a lot about trying, testing and seeing what works, so I’m not surprised that some things didn’t work. I will put a quote up on Instagram and that will get a thousand likes and then I’ll post something else that I think is really engaging and really on point with my brand and it’ll get 100 likes. That sort of stuff. It’s definitely interesting because I think I know all this stuff about marketing and then I’m definitely learning along the way as well.
Chris Cloney: 06:32
I was going to say it’s good to hear that a Ph.D. in marketing is still human and has the same challenges.
Melanie Bruce: 06:37
Oh, absolutely.
Chris Cloney: 06:40
Very cool. That’s some really neat background. Regarding The Professor Is Out, which is or was about international travel for professors, administrators, and staff: at some point did you begin to monetize that blog or when did it start becoming more of a business instead of something you did on the side?
What ways have you monetized your blog and business?
Melanie Bruce: 07:03
Well, I was blogging for about two years and I had my ups and downs. I got really into it when I was teaching a class and wanted to have that content, with the stats and the data, and then I would wane out of it a little bit. Every time I’d come back I’d see that there were certain posts and certain elements that were still getting a lot of attraction even without me publicizing them. That’s the power of search engine optimization.
I did start to do things like affiliate marketing and paid advertising on that site. As time went on, I started to go away from that and have more control over how I made money. So I’ve developed an online course, a personal branding course for Ph.D.s.
Melanie Bruce: 07:55
I’m definitely about diversifying my income and having lots of different streams of income. On my other side hustle, which is consulting, I help eco-businesses start, launch and develop. With that, I do one-on-one consulting, so it’s much more time consuming, but it’s a big chunk of cash that comes in.
I’ve also been invited to do paid speaking engagements as an influencer. I was invited to go to a conference in New York City and while technically I didn’t get paid for that, they paid for my accommodations and all my food while I was there, and I got some pretty cool swag out of that as well.
Chris Cloney: 08:38
Oh, I love it. The main topic for this episode -it’s actually a little bit greedy- is Instagram. I say it’s greedy because I went through a social media purge where I deleted all social media apps from my phone. I’m now at the point where I’m like, “Okay, I can allow Instagram back into my life and I want to start doing good things there. Who can I get to teach me?” I know Dr. Bruce is in that space.
Chris Cloney: 09:11
That’s where the Instagram portion of this episode comes from. I know that a lot of people are hearing your journey and going, “This is something that I might be interested in doing: building up content online and then maybe monetizing it in the future through consulting, speaking, coaching, passive income streams, like affiliate marketing or whatnot.” Do you have any recommendations on where they should start or what they should think about doing?
Melanie Bruce: 09:37
You really need to focus on developing relationships with people and developing quality content rather than getting out there and trying to sell straight away. I have had my blog for about two years and I definitely took it slow. It does not take that long, but you definitely want to build up that relationship and your authority as somebody who is an expert in this field. It doesn’t take two years but it takes a few months before you can start to do that. Once you do build up your authority, people come to you.
With some of the paid speaking gigs that I’ve been invited to in the last couple of months, I didn’t reach out to them. They came to me and said, “We’d like you to come and do this particular talk.” It’s called inbound marketing, which is about creating quality content that draws customers to you rather than being sales-y and selling and being that fake person. It’s saying, “I’m here, this is what I have. It’s great. Here is what I can do for you.”
Chris Cloney: 10:44
Yeah, I’d agree. Being genuine is a big part of that, and then here’s the trick: it’s not for everyone. If you have to make money today because you need to make ends meet, then you may have to do some things. You may need a beta launch or come up with some way to make money quick. But the real trick is not to worry about money right away.
Chris Cloney: 11:10
If you grow for six months and start building authority and making friends in the space, the monetary opportunities start to come to you. It can be through advertising, like my blog does, with direct companies. I’ve done speaking engagements where they’ve paid for me to go.
I made my first dollar eight months after I started. A year later, I finished my Ph.D. and didn’t take a full-time position, so this has been my job ever since. By then, I was making enough money for it to be my full-time thing. It definitely it takes time, but if you focus on building authority from the start, just like you’re saying, you’re good. That’s inbound marketing, and there’s a whole science behind it.
Melanie Bruce: 12:19
Absolutely, and there are so many resources out there that you can shortcut that learning curve. I wasn’t in it to make money. I used it as a tool for my classes, which is why it took me a little longer. I know a lot of the stuff that you’ve done, Chris, is so innovative. You’re blazing a path and now all these people get to use your experience to shortcut that learning curve and potentially start making that money a lot earlier.
Chris Cloney: 12:47
Well, I appreciate it and that’s my goal, right? That’s why I have GradBlogger and that’s why we’re doing this: to increase the power of academics to change the world. This hasn’t been publicized, but my personal goal with GradBlogger is to help a thousand academics, help a thousand people get rich. So, if I can get a thousand academics and train them to build their own businesses and significantly change the lives of a thousand people, then GradBlogger will influence a million people. So that’s my goal.
Melanie Bruce: 13:24
That’s impressive.
Chris Cloney: 13:25
If you do the math, it’s not a goal that I have to help a hundred people reach a thousand people over a 10-year period to be able to do that. But how do you? That’s not immediately apparent today, but that’s what we’re looking to do with my other business: the goal is to see one year of zero fatalities worldwide in industries handling specific materials. We couldn’t even measure it, but we built a research team that has the tools to measure that trend over the whole world now. We’re tracking it at the moment and over the next couple of years, we’ll look at how we reduce it. So, I think big is the way.
Chris Cloney: 14:02
I really appreciate it. I appreciate the work that you’re doing in the space now as well. I appreciate you coming on to teach me about this area. Like I said, I got on Instagram and loved it. But when I felt like social media taking over my life phase, I said, “No, I got to delete all the apps for my phone.”
I did that probably five months ago. My son had just been born too and I wanted to see him grow up. But I’m back. We’re on Twitter doing quite a bit there and we’re going to move to Instagram. So what does an academic looking to build an online business need to know about Instagram?
What do academics looking at online business need to know about Instagram?
Melanie Bruce: 14:38
Well, Instagram is my favourite platform. It’s really hot right now, everybody’s loving it. It’s the golden child of social media. The reason is that it’s a visual platform. You share videos and photos, but it’s very simplified. It’s not like Facebook where there are all kinds of politics.
Instagram doesn’t give you a lot of flexibility. You only get one link and you have all these restrictions. That is what makes it great because it is a much more inspiring platform and you’re able to follow the people that you want to follow and get the content that you want to get.
It’s a great platform to get yourself in front of your audience. It has the highest engagement of any social media platform, and that’s great. If you want to build brand awareness, if you want to build connections with your audience, then Instagram is a great platform.
Chris Cloney: 15:41
Yeah, with GradBlogger I’m willing to go the extra mile to show people the inside and not the nice fancy story from the outside. In the GradBlogger Connect Facebook group, I’m showing my office and my son and how we build this business from the ground up. That’s how we’re building GradBlogger. We’re a little bit low or a little bit slow on the income reports, but they’re coming. Then you bring in Instagram. It’s the platform that gives your audience the ability to see who you actually are. It’s a perfect fit for that type of brand.
Melanie Bruce: 16:16
Yeah, with Instagram, you’ve got your feed, which is a little bit more structured. The content that’s on your feed is usually scheduled and you are creating that consistency here.
On Mondays, I’m going to be posting this information, and then you’ve got the behind the scenes content like the stories and that’s really the power of Instagram. That is where you’re going to get huge engagement and allow people into your life and into who you are.
The great thing about the Instagram stories that it doesn’t have to be perfect. You don’t have to be really made up and dress really nicely. I send a story and say “It’s the end of the day, I’ve put my son to bed and cleaned up the kitchen and the day is done, I’m exhausted.”
Melanie Bruce: 17:01
You’ll see me like with my wrinkles under my eyes and I’m tired. But I’ll just check in and tell people about what I’ve achieved that day or things I’m struggling with or whatever’s going on, and I get so much great insight from my followers. I’ll write back to them and say something like, “Thank you so much for sharing this. I really engage with that, I understand that.” That’s why I love that platform. I said it’s my favourite and it’s true. I love Instagram.
Chris Cloney: 17:26
There you go. So, I want to highlight the anatomy of Instagram. You mentioned the profile and that in the profile, you get one link to a website. You should probably make it your website.
Melanie Bruce: 17:42
It’s true, and you can also use something like a link tree. That’s what I use. So if you do want to check that out, you can go to my Instagram, @theleveragedphd. When you click on that link, it’ll open a page with multiple links. That’s a way to get around that one link option. You’ll also notice that in the feed, people will say ‘link’ in bio because they’re directing you back to that link and using something like LinkTree. There are multiple options. That’s the one that I use. It’s free to utilize. So it’s a great one to start out with.
Chris Cloney: 18:17
Okay. We’re into tips. You blew my mind with the first one.
Melanie Bruce: 18:22
I’m jumping ahead? Okay.
Chris Cloney: 18:24
I already was like, “Yeah, you should go back to a link tree.” That makes a lot of sense. Okay, we have a profile, we have our one link, we have a feed which is all of your posts. It’s in chronological order or reverse chronological order and you have your story. If you look at the anatomy, are there any other pieces that somebody needs to know about before we dive into what to do with each of those?
Melanie Bruce: 18:48
Those are the main parts. Usually, hashtags are a big part of Instagram as well, and you put those on your profile, on your feed, and in your stories.
Chris Cloney: 18:58
Okay. I’m going to give them their own part of the anatomy because I’ve heard they’re really important.
Melanie Bruce: 19:02
Yeah, yes.
Chris Cloney: 19:05
Okay, perfect. So we have the profile, we have the feed, we have the stories and we have the hashtag. We were going through some tips, and I really liked the link tree idea. Maybe we’ll just go through those tips. So what does someone need to know for setting up their profile and even their one link correctly?
What tips do you have for those of us just getting started on Instagram?
Melanie Bruce: 19:21
Okay. So start by setting up a profile. You’re going to choose a handle just like you do on all of the other social networks. This name should be consistent because people will talk about that on a different profile. So on Twitter, somebody might say, go and follow at The Leveraged Ph.D. on Instagram. You want that to link to your own Twitter because it’s not going to jump to Instagram.
You want to have consistency: you don’t want to have to tell somebody, “You can find me on Instagram at @theleveragedphd and on Twitter you can find me at Dr. Melanie Bruce.” Just say, “Find me on all social media platforms with the handle, @theleveragedphd.”
Melanie Bruce: 20:02
Include your name, a photo, and a short bio and your bio, which is what people are going to check out. If you like someone’s photo, they’re going to go to your profile and look at your name, your photo, and your bio. They’re going to decide whether or not they want to follow you and connect with you further. So in that short bio, you want to talk about what you do. You can use emojis, bullet points, and dot points depending on what country you’re from and what type of English you speak.
Melanie Bruce: 20:35
Make sure you set your profile to public. If you have a private Instagram, nobody is going to follow you because people are going to assume that you want it to be private. So set it as public so that people can see your feed and see what you’ve got going on.
Chris Cloney: 20:56
The link you mentioned is good: link back to your website or blog. Another good idea is to link back to a special page that says here’s what I am and depending on what you’re looking for, you can find the specific part of the website or a specific offering that I have or specific information I create.
Melanie Bruce: 21:16
That’s right. To start with, you can just use your website. If you don’t have a website, you can use your LinkedIn account or your Twitter account if you want to go that route. Obviously, most people listening to GradBlogger have a blog or they’re about to start one. So you can put in your blog and direct it to a specific page.
You can change that link as often as you want but it’s easier if you get a program such as LinkTree, put in the links that you want and then direct people. That way, if somebody sees your posts from two days ago, they’re not going to go to your bio and not find a link to these posts because you can keep those links and just keep updating them and adding more.
Chris Cloney: 22:07
I love it. You mentioned that the name is really important and so is being consistent. If you have a presence already, go get the link, even if you don’t want to start Instagram today. I went and got GradBlogger probably a year and a half or two years ago because I knew that was going to be my domain name across all social media apps. I just sat on it and we used it for a little bit and now we’re using it again. So go get it today.
Melanie Bruce: 22:33
Absolutely. That’s a great tip. They should do that with all platforms even if you think you’re not going to use them. Set it up. You can leave it as private until you decide that you do want to get into it. You don’t want to wait until someone takes it and tries to make you pay a whole lot of money to get it back, which is illegal.
Chris Cloney: 22:50
Okay. Let’s move on to the feed. This is where you’re doing your posting. This is where you’re using your hashtag. So we’ll tie into that. If I’m just getting started, what should I be posting on Instagram?
Melanie Bruce: 23:03
Okay. So first of all, don’t compare yourself to other people and don’t get overwhelmed because on Instagram you’re going to come across some really beautiful feeds. Those people who’ve been on Instagram for two or three years have been trying what works and they’ve been testing it. So when you first get started, don’t be too worried about that. Just get in and start posting some content and see what works. You’ve got analytics in the program and you can see what people are connecting with and what’s getting people to your site to engage with you.
Melanie Bruce: 23:38
Posting images that are going to work better on the platform. It is a visual platform, so you do want to have content that is highly appealing visually. Videos are becoming more and more popular. I don’t use a lot of videos on my feed but it is something that I want to be doing more in the future.
Chris Cloney: 24:06
What should we be writing in these posts? It’s a fine line because I don’t want to tell people you got to go and do these six things for each post and be very strategic about it. If you act like a robot, that defeats the purpose of the platform.
Melanie Bruce: 24:27
Yeah, you want to be strategic about what you’re doing. That is one other thing with the feed: you do want to be consistent, which means posting at around the same time every day that you do post. You don’t want to post three times a day for a week and then not post for a couple of weeks.
If you’re really creative and you’re thinking about all these things you want to post, don’t post them all in one day. Schedule them out. You can write your captions in the notes section on your phone and then post them over a number of days.
Melanie Bruce: 24:58
So what do you need in the caption of your post? You want information that’s descriptive. Storytelling works really well on Instagram. Even though it is visual, people will read long captions on there. Try some different caption lengths and see what works for your particular audience.
In the caption, you want to have a call to action, a CTA we call it in marketing, that asks your followers to do something. Whether that is to double tap if they agree or ask them to go and look at your latest blog post or comment on that topic. Invite people to engage. It’s going to increase the number of people that are engaging with your posts and the more that people engage, the more likely your post is going to be seen by a bigger audience. It’s also going to build your relationship with your followers
Melanie Bruce: 26:01
The last thing that you want to have in your caption is your hashtags. Hashtags are what you use to be found. It is going to open you up to new followers, to new audiences. You want to use hashtags that are within your reach.
There are some academic-themed hashtags that I see a lot of people use on Instagram such as #PhD. I can’t remember off the top of my head, but #PhD definitely has over 300,000 posts. You’re going to get lost really quickly, especially if you’ve just started out and you’ve got one follower who happens to be your mom, although your mom’s probably not on Instagram. Instagram is for young people.
Chris Cloney: 26:45
Hey, did you see my account?
Melanie Bruce: 26:46
Is your mom on Instagram?
Chris Cloney: 26:48
Yes.
Melanie Bruce: 26:48
She’s cool if she is. Oh, wow. My mom is not. Instagram definitely has a much younger demographic: Gen Y and younger. You want to use hashtags that are within your reach. So finding smaller niche hashtags is going to get you found.
Chris Cloney: 27:10
Okay. There are a couple of pieces to a post in your feed, then you really want a caption with something useful, something consistent with your brand. You want to invite engagement and a call to action. You want to invite likes, you want to invite people to come back to your website or to follow you or some next step engagement. You want to use hashtags.
How often are you generally posting? There are two quantitative questions if we will. How often are you posting on Instagram? Then how many hashtags are you actually using?
Melanie Bruce: 27:48
You should be posting at least once a day, up to twice a day. However, that is not something that we can keep up with unless you have companies with a whole social media marketing team. So you definitely want to be posting at least three times a week on Instagram. I try and post five times a week- every weekday. I just had an Instagram challenge that I’d love to talk to you about a little bit later. With that, I was posting every single day and it was a really fun challenge. I saw my engagement and my followers skyrocket as a result of that.
The main thing is to be consistent. Go for at least three times a week, and that way you’re not going to be seen as inactive. You want to be seen as being active on the platform. So three times a week is a great goal to get started. Don’t try and post multiple times a day, or you’ll burn yourself out. Definitely, keep it low key to start with and build over time if you find that you enjoy the platform and if you find that you are getting the engagement from your followers.
Chris Cloney: 28:57
Love it. I’ve seen a lot of hashtags used sometimes, other times I see only one or two. Is there a sweet spot for, maybe not annoying people, but getting engagement?
Melanie Bruce: 29:09
Again, official research has been done about how many hashtags are recommended, and they do say seven to eight. I think that’s more to do with those people choosing more specific and targeted hashtags rather than people who put in 30. 30 is the maximum that you can have, and if you’re using up to 30 you’re probably not choosing ones that are quite as in line with your brand and with your reach. So rather than thinking using the maximum of 30, think about how you can choose the right hashtags.
Melanie Bruce: 29:45
You definitely want to include a couple in your post. Aim for about seven or eight to get started, and then as you learn which hashtags work really well for you, you can increase that over time. Another little side tip: what I do is keep my hashtags in the notes section of my phone. That way I can cut and paste them into the specific posts that I’m doing.
You will see some people post the hashtags in the first comment and some people put it in the actual caption. There is no difference where you put them and even if you reply to comments later, those hashtags are going to be attached to your post. It’s just your personal preference as to whether you think that they look spammy when they’re in your caption or whether you like them as the first comment.
Chris Cloney: 30:30
Okay, so you mentioned the Instagram challenge. I would encourage people to stick around because we’re going to get into what that is and how it went. But the last part of the anatomy that we haven’t covered is your story: not your story, Melanie Bruce, but your story on Instagram. What is that and what Ph.D.stuff should we be looking to put in there to promote our work?
Melanie Bruce: 30:51
With stories, you put photos and video into the live feed. They only stick around for 24 hours, so people have a 24-hour window to view them. You can then add them to your highlights reel if you’ve created something that you really want to keep around. Your stories are a chance for you to be much more relaxed and open and invite people into your personal brand. It’s the place to be really genuine. There are stickers that you can use, you can ask questions, you can poll people. It’s a great way to engage with people.
Melanie Bruce: 31:40
All right, so what could you actually post? You can share yourself working or writing your latest blog post. You could share a struggle that you’re going through at the moment or you can share tips. It depends a lot on what your brand is You might put up tips. I share Instagram tips on my stories. I share tips on how to use some of the other platforms as well. I share little insights and sneak peeks in and teases up as to what’s coming next, what posts I’m going to be writing next month or next week.
Chris Cloney: 32:25
I love it. When you’re sharing these behaviours, do you need to take a video of them? You don’t want to reenact what you did in a day, in 10 minutes- or maybe you could, but that’d be a funny strategy. So you need to collect these. Is there a way to set aside 20 minutes a day to build out your story? Is there any strategy there?
Melanie Bruce: 32:56
No, I’m definitely about not letting social media overtake your life. I have a lot of different things going on. I have my family and I have my full-time job and I am not Instagramming all the time. I batch my content. It’s very easy to do that for the feed: I’ll just snap a few pictures wherever I am, whatever I’m doing. If I’m giving a talk or if I’m relaxing in the park with my family, I will take a few pictures and then later that evening or later that day, I will create my content and batch it out.
Melanie Bruce: 33:36
With stories, you do want it to be a little bit more live, but at the same time, it’s every 24 hours. So if you post every morning or every night, you have it as a ritual: before I wind down for bed, I’m going to do a video. That’s perfect because then you’re posting at the same time every day. You’re always going to have a story that’s alive. So you can be strategic and say these are the things that I’m going to talk about this week and then record them either live or record them and put them up as you go along.
Chris Cloney: 34:09
Oh, I love it. So to summarize, we talked about the four components for Instagram: your profile and your link, your feed, your stories, and then how hashtags fit in with your feed. We talked about how your profile should be consistent with your other branding. You also want to have a good description and a good link back to your website. Then there are some tools like link tree strategies. I’m sure there are other strategies to get more people back to your website. Maybe if you’re hosting an event, you can put the link to your event landing page in there.
Chris Cloney: 34:44
For your feed, you want to make sure that each post has a caption that’s relevant, that connects, engage with your audience. You want to give them a call to action to invite them to engage with you and you want to make sure you include hashtags. Your recommendation was three to five posts a week or what works for you. For hashtags, focus on relevant ones.
Chris Cloney: 35:13
Stories. That’s where I saw the most value for Instagram. While I’m getting set up for this podcast interview, I’m taking a little video and sending that through. Just showing the audience the inside scoop of what it’s like building your own independent research company and building GradBlogger.
You mentioned this Instagram challenge earlier. I was like, “We need to get Melanie to teach us how to do that.” So if we just truncate this episode right now, everyone would have enough to go and start their Instagram profile, which is great. But can we talk a bit about this challenge?
You just ran an Instagram challenge. What is that and how did it go?
Melanie Bruce: 35:57
Yeah, let’s talk about that. An Instagram challenge is a really fun way to develop your presence. It’s a way of getting over that hump of “I don’t know what to post and I don’t have any connections.”
If someone’s just starting out, I definitely recommend that they take part in a challenge. You commit to posting every day for a specific period of time, and you receive a daily prompt that can inspire you on what to post. So it takes away that question of “What do I post on my feed or what do I post on my stories?”
Melanie Bruce: 36:28
An Instagram challenge has a couple of benefits. It is going to take the effort out of thinking and it’s going to allow you to connect with like-minded people and build engagement.
The challenge that I did was in May of 2019. It was the first challenge that I have hosted, and it was amazing. We had people connecting all around the world. One of my followers from Australia connected with a follower in the United States and they’re going to be talking about crowdfunding for research. We’ve got people from the Netherlands connecting to people who are in India.
It was a worldwide challenge where people connected with those in their field who are passionate about their research. We learned so much about what other people are doing and how different countries are innovating and doing such exciting stuff.
Chris Cloney: 37:27
I love it. The whole idea sounds great. Show us what this looks like. You mentioned there’s a prompt. Are you sending out the prompt or is it automated?
Melanie Bruce: 37:38
So I put together this challenge with 31 prompts because they were 31 days in May. Each day, you received a hashtag and you used that hashtag: for example, the very first day we used the hashtag #thisisme, and it was a chance for people to introduce themselves to their audience. If you’re new, this is great. Even if you’re established, you probably haven’t introduced yourself to the hundreds or the thousands of followers that you’ve gotten since you opened your account.
Melanie Bruce: 38:10
It’s a really great way to open up. I posted a picture of myself and explained everything that I do: all my little side hustles, my consulting business. I talked about what The Leveraged Ph.D. is. All of the people in the challenge were doing this as well. We also used a second hashtag every single day so you can find people who are doing the challenge. You search for the hashtag and you find them and learn about who they are, what they’re doing.
So, each day was a different challenge. All of them were related to science, academia, and Ph.D., graduates, but they were vague enough that anyone can post on them.
Chris Cloney: 38:57
I love it. The monolithic hashtag. That’s a terrible word to use in a podcast, but the single hashtag, was that for your challenge? Because people want to check it.
Melanie Bruce: 39:09
The challenge was in my name, #theleveragedphd, so if you do an Instagram search for that hashtag, you’ll see what people were posting and you can see the engagement. They were connecting with each other and writing on those posts about that.
If I can do a little shout out, I am going to do another Instagram challenge in September of 2019. If you are listening to this episode before then, just drop me a line, find me on Instagram, or find me online and I’ll get you connected so that you can be a part of the next challenge. It’s going to be bigger and better than the first one. I got so much great feedback from people and requests to do another one, so we’ve got another one coming up in a few months.
Chris Cloney: 39:56
So if I want to join, I tag you on social media at #theleveragedphd and say, “Put me in for September?”
Melanie Bruce: 40:02
You can do that. Absolutely.
Chris Cloney: 40:04
Awesome.
Melanie Bruce: 40:04
I will send you a signup link and all of the prompts that you get. There are lots of resources that come with it as well. You’ll get an email with all the prompts so that you can start to plan them out. You don’t get the prompt each today- you get them all up front, so you can think about what you want to present. You can plan it out a little bit.
You’ll also get updates and I’ll inspire you and connect with you on how to make the most out of it. I send out tips and encourage people. I’ll follow along with the challenge and find your content. If I see you doing something that may not be optimized, I’ll send you a little private message and say, “Hey Chris, maybe switch out these hashtags or try this” and help you along the way.
Chris Cloney: 40:52
Please do. That sounds awesome. I’d encourage anyone that’s listening to this to follow The Leveraged Ph.D., both on Twitter and Instagram. follow @GradBlogger as well. We have a little bit of a profile there, and we’re growing organically. But this is something that I’ll be doing a lot more of in the upcoming months and years for sure.
What is the big takeaway?
Chris Cloney: 41:16
For me, the big takeaway from this episode is understanding the parts of Instagram, understanding engagement and seeing it as a really nice platform. As I mentioned, if you are a personal brand and trying to build authority, this is really the type of platform that can help do that. So it’s something to really get engaged with.
Chris Cloney: 41:45
I want to thank Melanie for coming on and sharing her wealth of knowledge in this area. We’re going to do another recording talking about personal branding and rebranding your website in GradBlogger episode 18. Thank you for coming on for this episode.
Melanie Bruce: 42:08
Thank you, Chris. I am so excited. I really enjoyed sharing Instagram with you and the listeners and I look forward to watching @GradBlogger on Instagram grow and implement some of the tips that I’ve shared with you today.
Chris Cloney: 42:21
Yes, and we will be involved with the challenge, so I’m looking forward to it as well. So you’ve been listening to Dr. Melanie Bruce and myself, Dr. Chris Cloney, talking about using Instagram as part of your academic business. If you like this episode, tag us on Twitter or on Instagram and let us know what you took away from this lesson or whether you have any questions. As always, you can get the transcripts for this episode at gradblogger.com/16. We’re going to put together a cheat sheet with the top seven or eight tips that you need to know if you’re getting started on Instagram.
Chris Cloney: 42:56
As always, thank you for listening to GradBlogger podcast. It’s amazing to see everyone’s business develop and grow, and I’m really excited about the impact that we’re going to have in the world by moving together. So thanks again, and we’ll be talking again next week with another guest for GradBlogger.
