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Digi Tech

6Cs to Success on Instagram: Are you game?

Written by Anjuli Gopalakrishna on Digilah (Tech Thought Leadership)

Instagram started as a photo sharing app in 2010 and has made its way in the past 12 years into an app that offers multiple content formats: Instagram Stories, Lives, long form videos, Reels, Interaction features and much more. The people who use Instagram daily have grown to around 2 billion in numbers. And 500+ million people use Instagram Stories daily. More than 200+ million businesses are on Instagram. A diversified user base makes it an ideal platform for your brand or business to reach out to your target audience and influence them.

So how exactly can you build your tribe on Instagram and get them to know, like and trust you and eventually to buy from you?

I poured over many successful Instagram accounts, went through 100s of YouTube videos from the internet gurus, tried all the black hat hacks touted out there on the Instagram to grow your following. I studied the exact system the ace Instagrammers followed to try and understand what really works on this platform.

After months of deep dive, I cracked the code and came up with my own 6 C framework to success on this amazing platform. This is a step-by-step framework that will enable you to attract your dream audience, grow your genuine following and influence on Instagram and convert them into paying customers without the overwhelm and anxiety or the need to be glued to mobile phone 24/7. Read on if you want o learn more.

The first C: Clarity

This is the fundamental step. You need to know you ‘why’ to be on Instagram before ‘what’ and ‘how’ to be successful. Why do you need to be on Instagram? Who do you want to serve? What problem can you solve for them? What reasons can you give them to follow you? What’s your niche? Who is your ideal customer avatar?  What keeps them up at night? These deep and fundamental questions are essential to answer to build the strategic foundation for your Instagram success.

From optimizing your Instagram bio / profile to planning your feed content and story highlights, this clarity will pave the way for building blocks of your content messaging and formats.

The 2nd C: Content

Out of the clarity of purpose flows the best content that resonates with your target audience.  There are possibly only three reasons that people consume content on any platform. It educates, it entertains, or it inspires.  Your job is to figure out what might be of use to your target audience. Remember everybody wants to listen to the ‘WIIFM” radio (What’s in it for me). Place your focus on what they need and serve them with that content that fulfills that need. And given the digital world we live in today, it is easy to figure out what your target audience needs, if you care to listen. A simple Google Suggest can be used to glean into the minds of your people. Keyword planner tool, Answer the Public or many such tools are available for you to do your content research and create your content plan.

The 3rd C: Consistency

To build the ‘KLT” factor or the ‘know, like and trust’ factor with your tribe, you need to show up for them consistently. There is no other way to build a community around your brand or business. Mere exposure effect will ensure that you stay top of the mind of your tribe. I see many businesses lose heart when they don’t see instant results from their content lose their motivation to post and share useful content consistently. The steam dies off. But here’s the point you are missing. It is those who may not have interacted with your content, but the silent lurkers who simply watch and consume your content without giving out any signals that end up becoming your customers when their time of need arrives. So don’t be disheartened and be guided by vanity metrics of ‘likes’ and ‘follows’, instead focus on consistently providing value to your tribe and sure enough they will convert.

A strategy of content pillars and category-based system works best to make the job of consistent content pipeline flowing. Think of 10-12 categories that you can place your content in, catering to different needs at different stages of your target audience in their buying journey. There are many content-scheduling tools available out there that can help you to stay consistent with your content. My favorite is Social Bee.io which enables you to manage and automate your content posting for all your profiles in one place and is super value for money for the paid version.

The 4th C: Community

When you start showing up consistently with value adding content, you are bound to start attracting your tribe to your Instagram profile and slowly building a community.  One thing to remember when building your community is that social media platforms are meant for being ‘social’. It is not a place where you just sell or talk about yourself all the time. That would be such a big put off. Instead engage with others, leave genuine comments on other’s content, join the conversations, leave meaningful value adding bits to the conversations and the community will reward you with engagement. Instagram has so many features for you to build a high engagement with your tribe through stickers like polls, ask me a question, emoji slider bars in the Stories. Make use of them all to truly engage and learn from your tribe.

The 5th C: Connection

Once you have active engaged community on your Instagram profile, it is time for you to build deeper connections with your people. Take the effort to connect with them through conversations in the DMs. Instagram Stories allows you to directly start conversations with your story engagers in the DMs. Again, remember to keep the conversation flow natural. Be interested in them and try to understand their needs first before rushing to pitch your product or service or making a sales offer. Just talk to them. Warm them up, nurture them by offering a freebie or something of value so that you can take the conversation to the next level through other channels such as email or even DMs.

It is a slow process. Like dating. You don’t ask the person to marry you on the first date. It takes time and effort to get to know each other, build trust, before you can go for the big ask, the proposal to marry. Take it slow and easy and keep the conversation flow natural.

There are many innovative features available in Instagram DMs to take advantage of. Voice notes, video messages, video calls, saved replies, gifs and even automation for you to engage with your tribe in Instagram DMs. Sky is the limit if you can make use of all the features with your imagination and creativity.

The 6th C: Conversion

Converting your prospects into paying customers is the final and the most rewarding steps in the framework literally speaking. Afterall, you want all your efforts to finally end up making some money for you. This is the step you need to be well prepared for with a well set up sales conversion funnel that makes it easy and friction free for your warm leads to convert and make the purchase. Your landing pages for your products and services must be able to act as your salesperson to answer all their questions or objections. Be ready with your offers and bonuses to get them to open their wallets and credit cards for you.

Now there you have it! The 6 Cs to Success Step by Step framework for you to follow on Instagram. I would like to invite you to join my free online course Instagram Influence Foundations at this link. Once you are happy with my style of teaching and are ready to take your Instagram strategy to the next level, you can take a deep dive with the deep dive online course Instagram Influence Mastery 2022 and beyond with 60+ video lessons. You can take this course anytime anywhere at your own pace. Once you buy it, you get a lifetime access, and all the updated content comes to you for free.

That’s true, we need to keep adding content as the Instagram platform keeps changing and evolving. 

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Digi Tech

Who Wants To Be a (Digital) Millionaire?

Written by Wendy Scott on Digilah (Tech Thought Leadership)

I do.

If you recognize the reference to the Frank Sinatra/Celeste Holm song from the 1956 film, High Society, you are probably a Boomer like me. So what business does a fifty-nine-year-old have wanting to be a digital anything, let alone a digital millionaire?

I didn’t grow up with tech. We didn’t even have a landline at home. I took my ‘O’ Levels in 1978, which was the first year in the UK we were allowed to take calculators into exams. I struggle with tech, and I say ‘interweb’ to annoy the kids.

But what I do have is at least forty years of leadership and learning & development knowledge that I can share online. And technology has made it possible for me to make money doing that.

What the heck is a digital millionaire?

Otherwise known as a digital entrepreneur or content creator, it’s someone who sells digital products online such as templates, books, or courses. It’s also possible to sell membership newsletters, coaching, and exclusive coaching groups called masterminds.

How it all works

I’ve spent the last eighteen months reading, doing courses, and attending webinars to find out how to be a content creator, and as far as I can tell, this is what digital millionaires do:

Step One – Create online content – whether you create a blog, an Instagram post, a podcast, or articles, put free content online.

I write articles on Medium, a writing platform anyone can post on. When people read an article, the author gets a small amount of the reader’s membership fee.

Medium writers share articles on FB, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, Quora, and Pinterest.

Step Two – Collect email addresses – Followers on Instagram or other social media are useful, but you’d have to start again if the platform disappears. The trick is to collect the email addresses of people that like your work. The list can’t disappear overnight, and you use the list to send newsletters and sell your products.

I’ve just started an email newsletter that goes out weekly and contains free links to my training, leadership and dating articles.

It’s said that successful online creators make one dollar a month income from each email subscriber.

I’m using convertkit for my list; They provide helpful resources, such as an online creator community, online tutorials, and live zoom tutorials.

Step Three – Give free content to your email list – Email your list once a week and give them valuable content for free. Content could be an article in the body of the email, sources you have found helpful, book recommendations, templates, short email courses, short video courses, or access to an exclusive podcast episode.

Step Four – Sell your content via your email list – You can sell templates, ebooks, and courses. I’ve seen online courses from $29 US to $3000 US, and some big earners sell masterminds for $10,000 US per year.

Currently, I’m writing an ebook and a course which will be my first digital products.

I use Atticus for my book, Teachable to create my course, and Canva to create the slides and workbooks.

Next tech on the list

A subscription to Later to automatically schedule my posts on social media.

I also use a writing assistant called Jasper.ai and a note-taking tool called RoamResearch.

How I’m finding all the tech

I believe in a growth mindset, so after the screaming, tears, and tech-induced lie-downs with a nice cup of tea, I persevere. Google is my friend. I’m learning very slowly, but each gain I make is a small step forward.

The upside is that I’m enjoying myself while learning about a whole new world. The downside is that none of my friends can understand what I’m talking about and think I’m getting mixed up in an online pyramid scheme scam.

Am I a Digital Millionaire yet?

No. I’ve made a loss with the subscriptions to tech and courses I’ve taken. But I’m having fun, learning heaps, and keeping current with new tech.

And you never know, this time next year I could be a millionaire…

Digital Millionaires I follow: Denise Duffield-Thomas, Jeff Walker, Amy Porterfield, Marie Forleo, and Dr. Benjamin Hardy.

Movers and Shakers on Medium: Tim Denning, Zulie Rane, Ayodeji Awosika, Tom Kueglar, Sean Kearnan, Nicolas Cole, Sinem Gunel.

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Digi Tech

I’m Linda

Written by Linda Wells on Digilah (Tech Thought Leadership)

I am not a tech geek. I am not an academic professor at your local university. I’m just me! and all I want to do is show people what they are eating/drink/consuming and the harm it does and nudge them to pivot to healthy food and drinks, plus increasing their physical activity.

Before the global pandemic happened, I had a small business that did just that – face to face workshops and speaking gigs at conferences, workshops and meetings – all within a few kilometres of where I lived (well, maybe up to 500kms).

Now … My clients are global, some of them 16,500kms away. Why? Because of technology and the digital revolution, we are currently in.

Whilst I ran live workshops on my topic of healthy food, drinks and exercise and I always dreamed of creating online content, making some online courses on a digital platform. The truth is, I didn’t think I was smart enough to do that!!

I am smart in my thought leadership sector (for example I know what artificial numbers 950 and 951 mean and what harm they do to our body … check the closest drink you have on your desk while reading this and see if it includes those), but tech guru: NO. I know how to achieve the goal of 10,000 steps a day, but how to understand the digital world: NO.

When the pandemic hit, I had just moved to another State with no friends, no business contacts, not a member of any business forums or groups and had no work opportunities at all. So, guess what I did?

I decided to put my content online. I searched digital platforms, chose a few to test and ended up subscribing to Thinkific and put my courses online. I made video content. I learnt how to edit the content, how to add to YouTube, how to create the captions etc. I created resources and pdfs for students to download as well.

I used to use all the MS(Microsoft) things, MS Word, MS PowerPoint, MS Excel and had used these for many, many years (I’m not telling you how many as I don’t want to disclosure how old I actually am – haha).

Now I use Google Drive, Google Docs, I use Zoom (doesn’t everyone), I use MS Teams, I create content in Canva, I’ve do email video messages via Loom, I use Mailchimp for my newsletters – I have learnt so much from my digital and technology journey since 2020 – all the while teaching people how to understand what is in discretionary, ultra-processed food and drinks.

I’m Linda from e-RAW.

e-RAW is a digital learning company that helps people transform their lives from consuming ultra-processed food/drinks and risks to their health to the best version of themselves they have ever been. Bonus: they get to pass it on to their family and friends – at home and in the workplace.

In fact, the word ‘discretionary’ wasn’t in my narrative, until I asked a group of smarter people than me on an online Retail Food Environment course from Monash University with me, what word I should use instead of ‘crap food’ to be a little bit kinder. This was on a digital Zoom weekly course roundup and guest speaker gig. So, I learned from my fellow students the word ‘discretionary’ on a tech video helping us with our online course we were studying from our home offices or workplace offices. See how important tech has been, even when it is just in the background!

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Digi Tech Fin Tech Med/Health Tech

HOW INDIA IS GETTING DIGITALLY LITERATE

Written by Rishikesh Patankar, Ph.D. on Digilah (Tech Thought Leadership)

The need for digital literacy in a country as populous and diverse as India is critical. The gap between limited availability of resources as against vast requirement could be addressed by use of technology. Technology can provide effective ways to scale up solutions and bridge the gaps. The technology and connectivity together can make a huge difference to the socio-economic levels of a community, and ultimately, the country, true progress comes from inclusive growth.

The Government of India has launched ‘Digital India’ – A programme to transform India into digitally empowered society and a knowledge economy. The Digital India programme envisages to ensure that Government services are available to citizens electronically. Under the ‘e-Kranti – Electronic Delivery of Services’, one of the initiatives includes ‘Technology for Education – e-Education’ under which ‘Universal Digital Literacy’ at the National level is envisaged.

I would like to share the experience gained in implementation of a successful Digital Literacy programme across India, led by CSC.

THE NEED FOR DIGITAL LITEREACY IN INDIA

The technology and connectivity could be utilized effectively for delivery of education, healthcare, citizen services, financial services etc. The true potential for these aspects can only be realized if all the citizens are made digitally literate.

The key is to have sustained efforts by harnessing collective energies, strengthening partnerships and leveraging them to pull down the divisive digital wall.

Digital literacy is therefore a key component of the Government’s vision of building an empowered society as envisaged under “Digital India initiative”. Spinoff effects of digital literacy especially in the context of rural India would address a number of socio-economic issues.

  • Rural population can gain immensely from the ‘Digital Literacy’.
  • ‘Digital Literacy’ would bring the benefits of ICT to daily lives of rural population in the major thrust areas of Healthcare, Livelihood generation and Education.
DIGITAL LITERACY GAP

As per Census of India 2011, 68.84 % (883 Mn) of population resides in rural India. The number of rural households is 168 million. 5.2% of these rural households possess a computer.

Computer Literacy (who can operate a computer) by age group in rural India:

14-29 years – 18%

30-45 years – 4%

46-60 years – 1%

In addition, a significant number of these households don’t have computer access and are likely to be digitally illiterate.

IMPLEMENTATION OF DIGITAL LITERACY

The implementation of the PMGDISHA Scheme is being carried out by the CSC e-Governance Services India Ltd. (CSC-SPV) which acts as the Programme Management Unit (PMU). More than 250,000 Training Centres have been empaneled under PMGDISHA to provide enrollment/training to the candidates. The Training Centres are spread across the country and are participating in achieving the goal of making India digitally literate.

In the years 2014 to 2016, two Schemes entitled “National Digital Literacy Mission” (NDLM) and “Digital Saksharta Abhiyan” (DISHA) were implemented with certification of 5.4 million candidates, out of which around 42% candidates were from rural India.

In February, 2017, the Government approved a scheme titled “Pradhan Mantri Gramin Digital Saksharta Abhiyan” (PMGDISHA) for ushering in digital literacy in rural India by covering 60 Million households.

Under this Scheme, as on 08/01/2022:

– 54.5 Mn candidates have been enrolled

– 46.2 Mn candidates have completed the training

– 34.30 Mn have been certified

TRAINING ESSENTIALS

  • Online Portal, Real-time Online Monitoring Tool for Analytics & Reports (www.pmgdisha.in )
  • Handbook & Multimedia content (in 22 Scheduled languages of India and English)
  • Mon-Sun, between (8 AM to 8 PM) we conduct online Remotely Proctored Examination System
  • Digital Signed Certificates are generated for all passed candidates. Digital Locker has been integrated with the system
WE COULDN’T HAVE DONE THIS ALONE

We had the support and capability of the below companies in carrying out this humongous task through their CSR initiatives.

IMPACT ASSESSMENT

3 impact assessment studies of the Scheme were carried out by:

  1. The Council for Social Development (CSD) in 2017-18.
  2. Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) – Delhi in the year 2019.
  3. Indian Institute of Public Administration (IIPA) in FY 2020-21.

The aim of the study was to analyze the ground level situation of the scheme with a larger aspect of continuation of the scheme.

The brief highlights of the impact assessment reports are:

  • PMGDISHA training has had a formidable impact on the use of ICT and other forms of digital media
  • 59% of the respondents stated that after attending the IT literacy training, their digital ability & confidence levels using digital has increased
  • Women participation is very large and their inclusion at the rural level will open the path for the learning of the whole family.
  • However, less participation of very poor and very illiterate was observed

We are very proud the Digital literacy drive continues in the country, aided with the integration, and help of NGOs and others under the leadership of CSCs.

Facilitated by PMGDISHA (Universal Digital Literacy for Rural India through Prime Minister Rural Digital Literacy Mission)

Subscribe to the below link for Digital lessons in many Indian languages: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbFPVWaOPS4tZ8EnXgXWwUg

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Digi Tech

OWN YOUR BRAND ON SOCIAL MEDIA TO SUCCEED

Written by Lourd Vijay – Digilah (Thought Leadership)

Founder of LVDS (Lourd Vijay’s Dance Studio)

Hear here if you are not upto reading!

https://open.spotify.com/embed/show/6ukAttNgIccm87g1oHMcWe?utm_source=generator

Social media has very drastically altered the world of business. Every entrepreneur or company has to constantly reinvent themselves to stay afloat; making it a challenge to comprehend the present trends, the ever-changing algorithms, the indecipherable analytics and the sudden upspring of agencies and social media marketers.

For small enterprises like ours that offer niche services like teaching dance, choreographies and performances, and predominantly catering to the hobby-classes market, social media has worked to be both a boon and a bane.

When it comes to delivering great content, dance as an activity and an art form fits perfectly to drive the kind of content that grabs enough attention, likes and follows, but then the big question is “does it bring a brand like ours a measured, tangible outcome?”

We, in the past have had an array of professionals, agencies, freelancers and interns with a social media background who have helped us with our presence but unfortunately the returns and benefits have been dismal. The ad spends have had no valuable outcome as the leads were largely irrelevant and were from a geographical region that wasn’t where we operated within. However, the influx of user-friendly and life-saving tools such as Canva for great creatives, IMovies or Inshot for video edits & Wix for intelligent websites, has lowered our dependence on social media professionals while also empowering us with a better sense of aesthetic. Functional tools such as these are the need of the hour.

My experience has made it very evident that organic growth is the only way forward in an industry like ours. Which means we need to churn out great content every single day. Our quest, hence, is to answer this sole question – “What is great content?”

Over time we have built a better hit-ratio for the kind of content we post. The turnaround time to interact with our followers has also improved drastically and our costs have reduced leading to faster and better ROI(Return on Investment).  This has obviously come at the cost of some preliminary investment in terms of time and resources. The effort seems to have paid off for now, which we hope continues until Metaverse decides to throw us off with new algorithm alterations.

Therefore, my learning’s from building my business through social media has been:

  • Look beyond vanity metrics, clearly stating your KPIs
  • Use reports and analytics to see what is working and what is not on a regular basis
  • Most important own your brand, personality and tone

Being optimistic, we hope to overcome the setbacks Covid has caused and evolve into a national brand and an enterprise that operates across varied geographies. The graduation to being a national brand would enable us to hire the brightest minds from the social media industry who can drive up value from the word ‘go’.

Until then, Canva is the tool for survival.

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Digi Tech

Leveraging Instagram for Small Business

Written By Shoni Duesling – Digilah (Thought Leadership)

Life Coach at https://www.instagram.com/twelveinchesaway/

With 1.3 billion users, Instagram is the second most popular social media platform behind Facebook, making it one of the most effective tools to help small businesses grow their brand. While its high number of users means that small businesses can reach more people, Instagram’s visual nature offers a great potential for building strong brand identity and brand loyalty.

How to leverage Instagram

So, how can you leverage Instagram for your small business?

Capitalise on the Visual

Potential clients will form an opinion on your business after just one look at your Instagram feed. That is why it is vital to communicate your brand identity as clearly as possible. To do this, you first need to get clear on your branding. Choosing a look and feel you want to communicate is the first step, after which you can choose a cohesive design consisting of your colour scheme, fonts, icons and/or images that align with your look and feel. Once you have done this, start posting! You can post tips, quotes, diagrams, photos, videos, basically any content that communicates clear and important messages to your community. A great way to build brand loyalty is by letting people know who is behind the brand; so, post photos or videos of you and your team. You can also use Instagram Stories (posts that disappear after 24 hours) to share announcements, tips, or behind-the-scenes snippets of what is happening in your business. Regardless of your strategy, create a cohesive look for your brand and capitalise on the visual.

Engage With Your Community

The more you engage with your community, the better. Engagement increases brand loyalty and it allows you to open up a two-way conversation so that you can better understand and serve your community. One means of engagement is to include a call to action in your feed posts. A call to action could be asking people to click the link in your bio, asking a question they can answer in the comments, or asking them to like, share or save the post. Another way to engage is to greet new followers. Take a moment to message each new follower. You are building a business, but you are also building a community with other human beings – take advantage of the opportunity to connect with them. Yet another way to engage is through the built-in engagement tools in Instagram stories. You can create polls, quizzes, or ask questions. Once you have posted a story, save it as a highlight so that it will permanently show on your feed for old and new visitors alike. Engaging with your community is one of the most enjoyable and beneficial things you can do for your small business.

Collaborate!

Reach more people with your business by collaborating with Instagram’s IG Live feature. This feature allows you to live stream for up to 4 hours either on your own or with other businesses, past clients, or whoever would be relevant to your community. One benefit of IG Live collaborations is that you get to engage with your community in real-time as they type in questions or answers to your questions. A second benefit is that you and the person you are collaborating with can share your expertise on your products and/or services in depth. Third, your sharing can build brand loyalty, as your community gets to know you and the person you are collaborating with through a longer video. Lastly, both you and the person you are collaborating with will likely gain new followers from each other’s communities.

At the end of the IG Live, you can share it in your stories and tag the person you collaborated with and (if you are the one who hosted the video) you can save it to your page for future viewers. So, think of one person you could collaborate with and reach out to them.

Over to You

So now it is over to you. Instagram is one of the best platforms to use for your small business. Through capitalising on the visual, engaging with your community, and collaborating with others, you will be on your way to establishing a clear brand and creating a community who will support your growing business for years to come.