Early to Rise || July 10, 2018

3 Steps to Outsell Everyone Using Instagram

By Craig Ballantyne

Time for a trick question.

Imagine you’re a fitness expert. You’re trying to sell your personal training services for $100 per hour (not unreasonable in a big city like Miami, New York, Toronto, London, or Los Angeles).

But there are dozens of other trainers at your gym, and thousands in the city.

Now imagine you’re Jillian Michaels, the famous personal trainer from "The Biggest Loser."

All else being equal, who is going to have an easier time selling the $100-per-hour sessions?

Jillian?

No, it’s you.

Now I know what you’re thinking. Jillian is the TV star. She’s the celebrity.

Celebrity gives you the freedom to charge more for what you offer—and prospects will buy because they automatically know and trust you, even if they haven’t met you.

But here’s the twist.

You can become a bigger celebrity than Jillian Michaels.

These days, the tools are available to all of us.

Instagram (aka IG), the fastest growing social media network, offers proof.

While Jillian Michaels has 1.2 million followers on IG, a young fitness expert from New York named Jen Selter has over 12 million followers. That’s right, a woman who has never had her own TV show now has built up 10X the celebrity of Jillian Michaels, a fitness expert who was on prime time for a decade. More people follow Jen daily than watched the weekly episodes of "The Biggest Loser."

In today’s world, you don’t have to be on television to become a celebrity and generate massive influence over your audience. You can manufacture celebrity from the comfort of your home while wearing your underwear and using an iPhone.

I’ve done it (although I wore shorts). And when I did, I became famous. (One of my homemade YouTube videos recently reached 3 million views.)

Through the creation of value-driven content, my manufactured celebrity earned me the trust and respect of my viewers, and made it easier for me to sell my exercise programs.

“Sure, Craig,” you’re probably saying. “I’ll just go out there and become a celebrity overnight. How hard can it be?”

Actually, not that hard. Like so many things, there’s a formula for it. And if you stick with it, you’ll see a dramatic change in your bottom line—because you’ll become a well-known, trusted resource in your community.

While there are many ways to build celebrity (such as YouTube), today I want to focus on Instagram. This platform has helped me reach thousands of people I never would have had the privilege of helping 10 years ago—all because I committed to building my “digital celebrity.”

Here’s how I did it, and how you can, too:

1. Show up and add value

As Woody Allen put it, decades before the Internet was a thing: “80% of success is showing up.”

That was true in the past and true today. If you want to build celebrity and make your sales process easier, you need to start by showing up.

My following has grown fast since I began consistently posting stories and photos, and hosting IG “lives” (live videos on IG).

If you create a rhythm, people will come to expect your presence and you will become an industry go-to.

Even people who have never interacted with you will see your comments, friends’ shares of your posts, and ads. When you show up, people can share your content. But if you don’t show up, you’ll get no shares, no celebrity, and no sales. Got it? Good.

You also need to make every post purposeful. There should be value in both the image (or video) and the caption underneath it. You should ask questions to encourage comments, and tell your followers to tag others (getting more viewers to your content).

Over time, consistently publishing valuable content will separate you from 99% of other IG users. Your competitors are likely not posting consistently, and even if they do, they are not posting valuable content. That’s why they will miss out—and why you will become an IG favorite.