330: Jasmine Star On How To Build A Powerful Brand With Social Media

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You’re listening to the My Wife, Quit Her Job podcast, the place where I bring on successful bootstrap business owners and dig deep into what strategies they use to grow their businesses. Today, I have Jasmine Starr on the show and Jasmine is the founder of socialcurator.com, which is a service that makes your social media marketing life so much easier. She is a master of social media and today we are going to learn how to build a following and leverage Instagram to create a personal or e-commerce brand. But before we begin, I want to thank Klaviyo for sponsoring this episode.

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Klaviyo is the ecommerce marketing platform for growth during the holidays and long after. So get a free trial over at klaviyo.com slash my wife. That’s K-L-A-V-I-Y-O dot com slash my wife. And I also want to thank Postscript for sponsoring this episode. Now if you run an ecommerce business of any kind, you know how important it is to own your own customer contact list. And this is why I’m focusing a significant amount of my efforts on SMS marketing. SMS or text message marketing is already a top five revenue source for my ecommerce store.

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and I couldn’t have done it without Postscript.io, which is my text message provider. Now, why did I choose Postscript? It’s because they specialize in e-commerce stores and e-commerce is their primary focus. Not only is it easy to use, but you can quickly segment your audience based on your exact sales data and implement automated flows like an abandoned cart at the push of a button. Not only that, but it’s price well too, and with the holiday season rolling around, SMS is the perfect way to engage with your customers. So head on over to Postscript.io slash Steve and try it for free.

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That’s P O S T S C R I P T dot IO slash Steve. Now on to the show.

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Welcome to the My Wife Could Her Job podcast. Today I’m really happy to have Jasmine Starr on the show. Now Jasmine is someone who I met briefly at Social Media Marketing World, a conference where we both have spoken for the past several years. But the problem with this woman is that she’s always mobbed, so we’ve actually never had a real conversation until today. So if you don’t know who Jasmine is, she walked away from a scholarship to UCLA law school in order to pursue her passion, which incidentally is something that an Asian would never think about doing.

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And since then she’s been voted as one of the top 10 wedding photographers in the world and has also become a world renowned speaker and business strategist. And in fact, I recently saw her take the big stage at social media marketing world, which was instantly probably the last time I traveled for the year. And she was fantastic and inspiring. Anyway, the reason I brought her on the podcast today is to talk about Instagram. You’ll learn how to build a following and leverage IG to create a powerful personal brand. And with that, welcome to show. How are you doing, Jasmine?

03:15
I’m so happy to be here, thank you. So Jasmine, for those people in my audience who don’t know who you are, please tell them how you got started, what led you to a speaker, business strategist, and Instagram expert.

03:31
Well, I think that the nutshell version is I believe that you could speak things into existence and not in like a really woo woo way, but in a tangible way, because when you begin to use words for your future, your actions map your aspirations. So when people ask me, how did you become a professional speaker? I was like, I don’t think you’re talking to me because I am not a professional speaker. I just happen to be a person who stands on a stage and shares everything I know. And that has opened doors for me.

03:58
And I think that that maps back to every origin story. I first started my professional careers as a photographer. And I kept on saying I was a photographer before I was a photographer. I actually made the declaration that I had a dream of becoming a photographer when I didn’t even own a camera. And I think to a lot of people that sounds really crazy and almost foolish, but in a way by opening my eyes and my ears and being receptive to…

04:24
what I needed to do to get the things I want, it really changed things. So different iterations of my career started off as a photographer, started sharing everything I knew, becoming a photographer and started teaching other people how to become a photographer. And when my business really took off in the creative world, I started getting awards and notoriety for what I was doing. There were other creatives outside of the photography world who said, well, can you show us how you’ve been able to build a brand and a business in our respective industry? And then I just started using

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whatever platform I could to share everything I knew. Around 2007, that’s when blogging came around and I just started a blog and created a pretty significant following. And then as my career iterated, I started connecting with other creative people and then they started asking me like, hey, can you come speak to our group? The very first professional speaking event I had, there was three people in Get out of town, I would have died.

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You know, but you know, didn’t know any better. was like, wait, there’s three people who want to hear what I have to say. Okay. And I kind of kicked it on that like three to five person speaking circuit. If that’s even the thing, like I just made that up, like as if it’s a circuit, it’s actually just a bunch of people with nothing better to do than to come and hear me talk about something. And then lo and behold, the groups got bigger. They started getting to 10 people and then 15 and then a hundred and then a thousand and then tens of thousands. And that really is like what I believe is

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the framework for anybody wanting to become a professional and be skilled at what it is that they do is understanding the humility that it takes to sharpen your teeth, hone your message and hone your skill and get better every single time you have the ability and the honor to stand in front of another person who wants to listen to you. Back when you first got started, what were you blogging about exactly?

06:10
Okay, so you know, blogging was very new. And I think what I didn’t know then, which is what I can look back to is I know how to map human interaction. And I looked at blogging and quickly understood that it was going to transform the way that people were communicating online. So I was sharing me getting my first camera. was sharing the first lenses I got. I was sharing where I went on vacation. I was sharing how I celebrated my wedding anniversary with my new husband. And at the time, people in the creative world, specifically photographers,

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who are coming from very nice cars and studios and portfolios were looking at what I was doing and then being like, that’s really unprofessional. Nobody cares about where you went on a date. Nobody cares about your dog. And people did. And I knew that people were going to care if you gave them a reason to care. And over a really short amount of time, considering that other people had spent 30, 40 years of their life building up their careers,

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I was able to create a following and a demand and move into a luxury market and very competitive market space in about two or three years on the back of creating content and sharing things that people thought were silly, but actually people really cared about. this, this was like early, early, early online presence, which would later shape how I was able to translate that and move that into social media. became very good at understanding how to care about people.

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how to create content and how to create a brand, which is basically people just paying more, waiting longer, driving farther to get the thing that you’re selling them. And that has really changed being able to leverage social media in regards to building a brand online. I believe everybody can do the same. completely agree. And it is counterintuitive, actually. If you think about it, we tend to buy from people that we like and get to know, right? And I’m sure you get this a lot more than I do, but

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People, when they come up to you, they already know so much about you, much more than you know about them. So it ends up being a little bit awkward, but creating your personal brand and being very active and telling your story really amplifies all of that stuff. You know, it’s, I don’t, actually I’m certain I wouldn’t use the word awkward. I believe, okay, so during my junior year of college, my mom was diagnosed with brain cancer.

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And it really had a profound effect on my life and the decisions, but specifically the way that I saw the world. And when you’re looking at somebody who’s looking at a finite amount of time in their life, you able, you’re able to look at a minute and measure it differently than a person who isn’t cognizant of the fragility of life. my mom battled brain cancer for about eight and a or nine years and eight and a half years. And I started to realize that the most valuable thing that any of us own

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is not a private jet and it’s not the Maserati and it’s not the 90210 zip code. It is truly time. And so when I have the opportunity to meet people, say at an event and somebody comes up to me and they know a lot more about me than I know about them, I don’t look at it as awkward. I look at it as great. We just saved each other time. We don’t have to talk about me. How can I serve you? What do you need to tell me about you so that we can dive right in?

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real quick instead of like, how did you get started? What do you do? Like, let’s avoid the small talk because time is the most valuable thing we own. Let’s get into how can I do something for you? That is a very interesting perspective. And maybe it’s perhaps because you are a better people person than I am, perhaps. You know, I would probably disagree with you there. I’m a Defcon code red level 12 out of 10 introvert. Get out of town. Are you serious? Oh, a hundred.

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The reason I became a business owner was because I was just like, thrive in silence and on my own. Oh my goodness. very, very, very small group of friends, very large conferences exhaust me. I never ever, ever saw myself standing on a stage speaking. I am not the kind of person who will stand in a group of people and be like, I want to be the first to notice or I want to be the one to talk the most. It’s like completely the opposite of that.

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But I also think that my skill set, and I do believe it’s a skill set, my skill set as an introvert has really empowered me to watch people from a distance, understand pressure points and speak directly to that. Because I believe that my purpose is to empower people to believe that impossibilities are possibilities. And if people come in and they say, oh, she could do that because she’s this. And I have to sit here and say, I actually have trained myself to do the thing that I need to do to stand in my purpose and get my ego out of the way and say, how can I serve people the best?

10:48
That is very interesting. I did not know that. how did this photography business, so you started out as a photographer, how did that kind of transition over? So you started documenting your journey and that sort of thing. Did that just naturally attract people who were interested in trying to do the same thing or? 100%, 100%. So what I didn’t know back in like 2009 and 2010 was like people were following me and there’s two types of followers that I was attracting.

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to my blog and then around that time at like early like Facebook Twitter kind of years I was attracting both the photographer who’s trying to understand how did this girl who had never had a camera be able to build a really successful business and how is she able to travel the world and get these really good commissions and work with really great clients and then I also was attracting really great clients and so when I was putting out content teaching people what I know and what I did not know it really

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This is predating the keyword of 2018 and 2019, is vulnerability. I didn’t know at the time that I was making myself vulnerable by calling out my inadequacies, by admitting that I was still going into photography shoots or shooting for clients and still feeling a level of nerves because I knew that I could be and should be better. But by doing that, it really opened the conversation to having real conversations with the photographers, but then also tempered the desire and expectation for my clients.

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It was this really, really, really crazy experience, but it really benefited the business. So are you still taking on clients today for photography or? That has really changed dramatically. So pursued photography wholeheartedly. My husband came on into the business. He’s been my business partner. I was shooting exclusively for 12 years and he was with me exclusively for 10 of the 12 years. And when we started Social Curator,

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I was able to still take my photography skills and shoot lifestyle photos for business owners. And then the business got big that we were able to bring in a photography team for social care. So I’m still shooting, but not in the capacity of one to one. I’m not working with art directors or editors anymore. I’m able to shoot in a way that says, how can I create content that business owners need? And it’s just been such a crazy, exciting, ride. Perfect. So I’m just kind of curious. outside of like the photography side of things, how do you generate revenue with your online business?

13:11
Through social curator. Social curator, okay. And through speaking events and occasionally I will be able to take on consulting and then also creating licensed content for larger organizations to resell the education that I present. Okay. And what are your primary acquisition channels? I know we’re going to talk about Instagram in this interview, but I’m just kind of curious where the bulk of your traffic comes from. I do a ton of organic content creation and I have really

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focused in on the discipline of creating the content and then finding content pillars and being able to repurpose them on different platforms that are custom and speak to that end user. So if you were to go to LinkedIn, you would see a profile. If you go to Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Pinterest, these are all, I’m still blogging three to four times a week. I’m still growing my newsletter list. I think the bulk of our traffic is really coming from the platforms that

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our dream customers are existing on and it’s in this particular order. It’s in Facebook, it’s LinkedIn, excuse me, in this particular order, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, blogging, Pinterest. So let’s talk about this content strategy because I follow you and you put out a ton of content. Like I don’t know how you do it. You must have like some really good system and that’s kind of what I want to kind of dive into today. So first off, how are you able to put out endless content I want to say?

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On Instagram, Facebook, you have a podcast, have blog posts. How do you manage all of this? Well, first and foremost, let’s have a slow cap for caffeine because that’s to be the show sponsor. So what really I believe that my content creation boot camp was blogging. Blogging is like a long form way to create content. And I was blogging seven days a week.

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And crazy. Okay, no, I know. But what happened as a result of that is like we were getting somewhere around 20 to 25,000 unique views a day. I was just writing everything. I was writing things from a personal perspective, from a professional perspective, and then from an educational perspective. And that laid the framework for how I started showing up on social media. However, I should note that when I started social media, this was like Twitter and Facebook were my first foray. And I very much did the very typical like

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I’m out for brunch, nom nom nom type content, right? And nobody was really like caring that I eat French toast or whatever the case may be. And so I slowly started learning that the content on the blog would be very good content in micro forms on Facebook. And so what we started doing unknowingly was creating these content pillars. Like, so now my three content pillars for 2020 would be branding, social media marketing,

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and personal belief in self. And so you will see the vast majority of the content that I am putting out fall into one of those three pillars. So for instance, at the time of this recording during this past week, I will have put out two to three YouTube videos. Two will be educational. One will be like more of like a free form Q and A type video. Yesterday I put out an Instagram post that was a microcosm, micro piece of content from one of the longer form videos that I had created. So what we’re doing is we’re thinking about

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What is the big long form piece of content? It could be a blog post that turns into a video, or it could be a video that turns into a blog post. Those are two anchors. Like that’s the longest piece of content. And then from there, we will break it down into smaller bite sized pieces, perhaps into a one to three part series on Instagram and or Facebook. Now those one to three part series on Instagram or Facebook, we will be posting them on our primary platform. At this time of this recording, my primary platform for acquisition would be Instagram.

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I will be putting out that content say at 8 a.m. on a Monday. And then a week and four hours later, I will be putting it on our secondary platform, which would be Facebook. And then a longer form of the posts that I’m putting out on Instagram or Facebook is going to be what’s posted on LinkedIn. You’re going to see a lot of similarities in content and flow. But what we do is we stagger the content. We don’t want to put out the same piece of content on all of our social platforms at once because studies have shown that people platform hop.

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So somebody’s on Instagram for like maybe 20, 30 minutes, they could pop over to LinkedIn or to Facebook. And we don’t want people to see the same content because there’s a less likelihood of them engaging on two platforms from the same piece of content. We want to make sure that we’re showing them different content at different times for a higher likelihood of engagement. Interesting. So do you stagger it out a week or what’s the time duration?

17:47
a week and four hours for the weekend for hours and then a and eight hours for the tertiary platform. what is your you mentioned you start out with like a primary piece of content like what is your medium? Is it blogging or is it video that you start out with? It’s intermixed but I can walk you through like I can walk you through a content creation piece that we’re working on right now. And so I had a conversation with my podcast manager and we’re brainstorming like different topics and so we’ve come up with this topic and the thing that people ask me the most

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specifically on the inside of social care, is how do you find people to collaborate with, specifically in a downturn economy or things like where are a little unpredictable with all things coronavirus and COVID. So we started brainstorming what it would look like, what the conversation could look like. We started outlining what my podcast episode would be about. And she and I got really excited. were like, wow, we can make this an opt-in. Like we can create a checklist and we can create resources and we can create the 10 questions that you need to ask the other person for a collaboration.

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In this particular piece, we normally will start off with a video or start off with a blog post, but it started off with a podcast. So what we’re going to do with the podcast is we’re going to framework with the outline and script could be. And then we’re going to do is we’re going to add on another PDF, which is long form. And then we’re going to take that PDF and we’re going to break it into about a third and make that into a blog post. And then we’re going to use that same third and we’re going to make it into a script for a video. Both of them are going to be pointing to the opt-in and then I’ll probably likely go on.

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Instagram live and talk about the opt-in and from an Instagram live we’re going to turn that into an ing tv and that will set their own perpetuity as a driver for the opt-in and then from there we’re going to make a blog post still using that same third of like catchy great crunchy content and then make a pinterest graphic for the blog pin that onto our boards on pinterest so we’re going to all things pointing to a new opt-in and we try to come up with two to three options a month that sounded very overwhelming jasmine i want to be honest with you

19:41
So when it comes to this content creation, are you reusing the content or, because you mentioned you start out with a podcast, but then you have videos that need to go out. So that implies that you have to film those videos, right, from scratch. So how much of it is reused versus like, because it seems overwhelming, like to create a podcast and then have to write a blog post and then have to film videos, you know, all the time for all of your pieces of content. So I love this conversation. I thank you for being so candid about it.

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But I also want to take a step back and say like everything that we first start feels overwhelming and feels very hard. Everything. So when you first started using words, that was hard. When you first got on a bike, that was hard. When you first decided to learn a second language, perhaps in high school, that was hard. But the more you did it, the more acquainted you became. I believe that running a business very similar to creating your marketing content, it’s a discipline.

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And so obviously I’m coming out and it’s like drinking from a fire of hose, like in a hot New York City day, right? Like I totally get it, but the content in and of itself is wildly similar. Your anchor piece of content. When I had said we use about a third of that, the third of it is the same that we use for the blog post is the same that we would use for a video script. Now, albeit there are slight tweaks, like obviously in a blog post, you’re like, you could write click here.

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to download. Well, that would have to be changed for a video script that’s saying, like, swipe up to get your opt-in. But the vast majority of the content is the same. Now, the reason why we’re keeping it singular is because we’ve honed in the message. And we also understand that our dream customer for Social Curator exists on different platforms. So we need to speak to them where they are and not expect them to find us where we want to be. That makes sense. The reason why I was asking that question is because for me, I start

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My core is always a blog post and then I turn that into a video as well as a podcast, but it is largely the same content. And that’s kind of what I wanted to just clarify here. It sounds like you take it a little bit a step further and your team probably breaks up the content, right? For smaller chunks for like IG and other platforms. I do the writing for the captions. As far as video editing, yes, we work with the videographer. As far as like producing the podcast, yes, I have a podcast manager. Yes. Okay. Okay.

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What, okay, so let’s talk about Instagram here, because I follow you and it’s just mesmerizing. I think you have a talent for just grabbing me and just feeling like you’re talking to me directly. What is your Instagram strategy specifically? How often do you post? The type of content? What’s important about it? What are some tips that you can give the audience? Well, let’s start off with tip number one. I totally take the compliment to heart when you say that I know how to grab you, but that’s not happenstance.

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It’s after a series of me not being able to get the views that I would want. I started looking at other IGTV and YouTube content creators and really dissecting how are they able to keep people past like that very coveted three second mark and then on Instagram that coveted 58 second mark. Now you can put a long form video up to 10 minutes on IGTV, but in order for somebody to click away from their feed as they watch it, that happens around the

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59 second mark. So I was listening to an interview from content creators on YouTube and Instagram. And what we need to do in the first three seconds is hook that has to immediately capture why somebody would want to stay on and watch. And it could be slapstick comedy. It could be shocking, jarring. It could be just a very strong title, what the benefit is to watch it. And then you’re to want to quickly come in with two to three, like what I call it crunchy, like sexy, tactable.

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things that somebody can do immediately. And then you have the cliffhanger and that usually happens around second 58 or 59. Because you want somebody to do is to click on the view more you want them to click away from their feed and go into IGTV and watch your video because that metric really is beneficial for getting organic reach on Instagram. So you structure your video to put a cliffhanger at second 58 or 59. We try our dang best. Yeah, amazing. Okay. Yeah. So that’s why I end up

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clicking over. Yes, I just never even realized. So as far as like the posting strategy, that’s where we had said, but I just, I also, I always just always want to back it up and being like, Hey, look, I am not a special snowflake. I don’t understand things differently than anybody else, but I definitely take the time to understand what is the gaps and how can I get to where I want to go? And I love sharing this stuff with other people. Like whatever I learn, I’m going to pass on because I hope that whatever other people learn, they pass on as well. As far as structuring go, I post six to seven times.

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a week on Instagram that’s basically every day. There was a time where I was testing to see if more content led to more engaged followers. And I have seen other people on Instagram post three times a day and their audience responds equally as well on all of their posts. That’s a very strong indication that that’s a great cadence for somebody to keep up and that is maximizing their growth. When I tried posting

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three times a day on Instagram, what I was noticing was that my engagement kind of just totally dipped. And that was my audience telling me that that was just too much content from me. And so if they engaged in the morning and they saw another post and then that evening, they’re just like, it’s just too much of it. And so my audience was telling me to reassess. And what we’ve kind of definitely fallen into is a really great cadence of once a day for myself and then mixing it up. So you have short form video, that’s anything less.

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than 59 seconds and that exists on your feed and somebody can watch that entire video right there in the feed. You have IGTV that is anything over 59 seconds and that could sit on your feed, but then also sit on a separate IGTV TV channel. I also go live once or twice a week and I turn those live conversations into an IGTV. I’m also now testing reels. I’m trying to put out, I mean it is pretty lofty, but I’m trying to put out three reels a week.

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on Instagram in addition to static photo posts that are a little bit long form and educational.

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26:28
Now, first and foremost, protecting your IP starts with a solid trademark and Emerge Council provides attorney-advised strategic trademark prosecution, both in the United States and abroad for a very low price. And furthermore, the students in my course have used Steve for copyrighting their designs, policing against counterfeits and knockoffs, agreements with co-founders and employees, website and social media policies, privacy policies, vendor agreements, brand registry, you name it. So if you need IP protection services, go to EmergeCouncil.com and get a free consult.

26:57
And if you tell Steve that I sent you, you’ll get a hundred dollar discount. That’s E-M-E-R-G-E-C-O-U-N-S-E-L dot com. Now back to the show. I mean, I see you on stories like all the like multiple stories sometimes per day. Is your story strategy different? Like, do you try to put out X number of stories per day? I try to put out at least two stories a day. There are sometimes in my life and business that things are a lot more exciting and creative and I get post out more. But for me, the cadence is

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everything on Instagram is interrelated. The algorithm is watching everybody’s behavior. And so I need to make sure that even within Instagram, there are some people like studies have shown that only 25 % of people are actually watching stories. And so I do know that there is an interconnected relationship that when somebody is watching stories and engaging with them, like not swiping past them and using it, when I use like engagement driving tools, like

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the poll or like the slider or like the quiz. When people are actually taking actions on those stories, it’s indicating to the algorithm that that person is highly engaged in my account and there’s a higher likelihood for them to see my other content that is existing in the feed itself. They are like kissing cousins. I want to make sure that I’m giving people the maximum opportunity to engage. So there’s a higher likelihood of them seeing my stories earlier in the, in the layout and or seeing my stuff in the feed. How do you decide what to post as part of your feed versus like a story, for example?

28:23
So stories disappear in 24 hours, unless tethered to the idea that the story needs to be perfect or beautiful or curated. I believe that stories are such a great real time, like sneak peek into your daily behaviors or things that you happen to find funny or repurposing content. love, like I am a big fan of memes. My husband does not get memes. He doesn’t think they’re funny, but I like repurposing them in stories because number one, it’s sharing another really great content creator.

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Two, it doesn’t have to sit on my feed. I didn’t create the meme. I don’t necessarily think that the meme is reflective of the thing that I do, but also just drives conversation so that people can find similarities. I am only trying to do one of two things when it comes with content on any social platform. I am trying to attract or I am trying to repel. I don’t want people who are lukewarm and they’re like, kind of will sort of watch what this person’s doing and not engage. I have no desires to put out a viral video. I have no desire to get a million followers for the sake of getting a million followers.

29:19
I really want to attract people who are going to engage and want to go deep with my account. And I believe that the quickest way we do this is by attracting people who are like-minded or see the world that way that you do, or repel people, people who can’t stand my voice, the memes that I choose or the content I create. Great. Thank you so much. You know where the digital door is. Hmm. All right. So Jasmine, let’s say I’m brand new. I’ve got an Instagram account with zero followers. Do you have a lot of people get discouraged in the beginning. So do you have any tips for people just starting out on how to just

29:48
maybe get their first thousand followers? Yeah, and the first tip would be like, give yourself grace. This is a platform and we don’t, we’re not entitled to anything and we don’t deserve anything. Like sure, you could waste time and be bummed out that like you don’t have followers or you could use that exact same time and energy to go out and just create content. I believe that a blank slate is nothing.

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but a passport to get you to where you want to go. You have no rules. You have no expectations. Nobody even knows who you are. So all I’m going to encourage people to do is to create as much content however they can, when they can with as much frequency as possible. Now, some people can say, I can put out a post every day. And some people say like, I can post twice a week. Whatever your number is, the key is going to be that you have to be consistent. 100 % you have to, especially when you’re just joining the platform.

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People have to know what you are, who you are and why you do it. Now, the minute you find into your cadence and you’ve made the declaration, I’m going to be posting four times a week on Instagram. I’m going to be posting six days a week on stories. This is what I’m going to do. I have my plan and my action. Great. But just because you create the content doesn’t mean people will number one care or number two, find it. next job on Instagram is to make people care and then make people find it. And the way that you do that is if you want people to care about you, you must first care about them.

31:11
And how do you show that you care about them? You go and you’re giving the type of engagement that you want to get on your account. So no, just because you have an Instagram account, nobody knows it exists. So your objective is to create roads and pathways to your tiny little compound that exists in the middle of nowhere. And the way that you create those pathways are going and leaving comments and DMing people and responding on polls. You’re out there caring for people, leaving thoughtful comments so they were like,

31:40
Hey, who is this person? And then they find a pathway back to your account. But if your account is stagnant and you’re posting once every two weeks, there’s not giving people a way to contextualize the value and benefits that your account is for them because people are only following other Instagram accounts for what it means for them. You might have an incredible business product or service and it’s amazing.

32:06
And if people just knew how amazing it was, they would buy. But that’s not the way it works in social media land. Social media land is all me, me, me, me, me. What does your business do for me? And if you aren’t showing what your business does for them on Instagram, you’re gonna have a very hard time getting them to follow you and a much harder time getting them to invest in the thing that you’re selling. That’s interesting that you say that. So you actually go out on a daily basis and post comments and DM with the people who follow you on Instagram?

32:34
to the best of my ability. And I practice what I preach. I do as much as I can when I can. I follow specific hashtags that I believe my dream customers are on. And when you follow a hashtag on Instagram, somebody adds a post using that hashtag, Instagram will filter it your way. So it makes it so easy to give engagement to people who are like-minded. Sometimes I’ll just randomly open up the app, and if I see notifications and I see like, I got a few new followers.

33:02
why not just reach out to them and sometimes I’ll just send them a video message or sometimes I’ll send them a DM or if people are like voting on a poll. Like oftentimes I will put out a poll that’s like pretty polarizing, right? It’s like, or choose between who’s right in the situation. And then I’ll put a poll like Jasmine or JD and JD is my husband and business partner and anybody who dares to vote for JD, I might just hop in for like two minutes and talk trash to the people who voted for my husband. You know, it’s just like, cause it’s just creating a personal relationship. try.

33:30
practice what I preach and I really try to get personal with as many people as possible. But realistically though, this isn’t scalable, right? So how many can you get through in a day really? It’s 100 % not scalable. But I would rather do this, I do zero automation, I do zero bots, I do not believe in that. I think it’s total trash and it’s going to ruin your account in the long run. By me reaching out to a person one on one and doing something unscalable, I have not

34:00
turned that that person isn’t a follower anymore. That person is, I wouldn’t say a friend, but they want to go deep with you. Right. You show up for somebody, they show up for you tenfold. And that to me is that’s the scalable part is reaching out to one person isn’t scalable. But when I reach out to one person, there’s a high likelihood that that person will tell five or six people that I DM them. Or a lot of times, oh, this is a crazy thing is if I send a video response to somebody or a voice message or maybe just take a picture and then write something on it.

34:30
they’ll post it to their stories. And the average person on Instagram has three to 400 followers. That message was scalable in a way that I didn’t anticipate. That makes sense. So you’re essentially creating super fans and they’ll talk about you and it might start off slow, but it kind of snowballs over time is what you’re saying. 100%. And you’re looking at somebody who has been using social media, know, goodness gracious, like eight, 10 years. So what people now see are the after effects of the snowball. They’re like, I want the snowball. I was like, okay.

35:00
spend five minutes and start where you are right now. And in terms of getting traffic from Instagram, it’s just that link in the bio that you rely on. Yes. Amazing. All right. So what about hashtags? Is that a part of your strategy as well? Or is there anything like that’s a little bit more scalable and how to get followers? The most scalable thing, truly the most scalable thing is leaving comments on other people’s accounts. Really? Okay. Yeah. It’s so effective because

35:30
Not only is the person who is the account owner gets to see the comment, other people get to see that you left a comment. And if you leave a thoughtful, engaging, funny, educational, helpful comment, other people are like, oh wow, what happened here? Like there was, goodness gracious, back in like 2011, there was a photographer who started with zero. And in less than a year, had over 10, 12,000 followers and everyone was like, how did you do it? And he just said,

35:59
I just spent a couple hours every day leaving comments. that’s what his whole strategy was just be thoughtful to others. And it’s just like, is like the perfect example. Like it truly, truly works because I think that hashtags are sexy. They’re so amazing to talk about. And everyone thinks it’s like the silver bullet or like the thing, right? Like people often say, Jasmine, I can’t find the right hashtags. I’m like, the right hashtag doesn’t exist. It just doesn’t.

36:28
The key defining factor in making a hashtag quote unquote work is how good your content is. The algorithm is democratic. People look at content and they judge it immediately just because you have a hashtag. Like let’s just say that you and I are having conversations around NFL football and you use the hashtag NFL football. And what you post is just like a three year analytics of, you know, van viewership and the impact that it’s having because of COVID.

36:56
and I happen to be wearing a jersey with Seattle Seahawks and then I use the hashtag NFL football. Your content for a specific person will be so much more robust and valuable that you could say, wow, the hashtag NFL football hashtag really works. And I would be like, this hashtag sucks. No, it doesn’t. It’s the content that rules all. The hashtag is just like you and I getting onto a crowded bus.

37:24
and you are wearing a big neon sign that says, hashtag NFL football. People will look at that hashtag and if they too like NFL football, they might like nod at you, which is proverbial like a photo or something. Then they might want to strike up a conversation and the conversation in this analogy is reading the caption. And if my caption says, go Seahawks, hashtag NFL football, hashtag Seattle, hashtag football lover, hashtag football mom. Okay, all those things. Someone’s probably just being…

37:54
I don’t want to engage. And somebody looking at this and then reads your comment gets to know you, they might give you the engagement that you want, but hashtags work for discoverability. They do not guarantee engagement. What gets engagement? A compelling photo, a compelling caption, and taking the time to create content. Hey, Jasmine, I just want to thank you for being a little bit patient. As you can tell, social is actually not one of the channels that I focus on for my business.

38:21
Oh my gosh, hold on, hold Listen, listen, listen, listen. If it sounds like I have an attitude, I just was born this way. I came out of the womb telling my mom, I’m like, let me tell you, can go through labor a little bit better. I think that I come across as having an attitude. Like, thanks for being patient. And I’m like, oh my God, I love this stuff. If I sound like I’m impatient, it’s totally not the case. This is just how I talk. I love this stuff. Oh no, I wasn’t implying any of that stuff. It’s just like, this is all.

38:49
Because you know what’s funny is our backgrounds are completely different. Like I’m an electrical engineer. I come from like this machine. like I focus on SEO. I’m guessing that you probably don’t spend a huge amount of time on SEO and keyword research and that sort of thing, right? Just a guess. a ton. know that back in my blogging days, I was very, very focused on SEO. Like that was how I was getting discovered. think that like it became highly saturated and then people started paying to play and they started going deeper with that. I still think that content is queen.

39:19
I really do, which is why I still blog three to four times a week. think that the Google juice that I have from like a decade has been built up. I don’t focus on SEO as much as I did, but I do definitely know it’s valuable. Yeah, it’s I mean, this I know for my business, I know going social would probably help blow things up even more. It’s just that for me, and maybe you can maybe this is like a mental block you can help me work through is that I feel like if I don’t want to have to post

39:48
like on a regular basis, I’d rather just do one thing and then milk the fruits of the labor, right? And I, because I’m an engineer, I actually prefer to be huddled behind my computer screen and actually not be as social, you know what saying? So what advice would you have for me in that respect? Is to own it. It’s to completely, like you just need to say like, I’m okay not growing as fast as I would like and I’m okay.

40:18
not using free resources and I’m okay passing this unique time in human history to grow my brand and business. Say that, like say that like completely own that you’re making a cognizant decision to bypass an opportunity that’s on the table because then it keeps you not in a place of victimhood, but a place of ownership of just saying I choose to stay here and I choose to focus on SEO and doing that one piece of content. Great. I clapped that up.

40:46
I come, I’m the daughter of an immigrant, of immigrants. am the first generation Latina. I’m the first generation in my family to go to college. I’m the first generation in my family to go to law school. And I think that what law school really empowered me to do is see like a specific set of rules, AKA an industry and the way that things are done. And the most clever and savviest of lawyers are able to find gray areas and move in and develop and change the law.

41:10
What I am being able to do now as an entrepreneur is to say, there’s a very distinct canon of the way that you are to build a business and what they teach you as you get an MBA. And then all of a sudden there’s these free tools on the internet and I am a girl from the hood. You take a try and make a dollar out of 15 cents. And when somebody says, Hey, here is a free way to market your business and it don’t cost you a dime. just takes time. Well, I have more time than I had money. And then I realized how valuable it was. And during my first year,

41:39
with no photography education, no network. I didn’t at the time in my life know a single person who had ever started a business. And then all of a sudden I was able to create this free thing called a blog. And within the first 12 months of my business create a six figure revenue stream. Like for a girl from the hood, I just said, Oh my God, there’s this thing called money. And there’s this thing called internet money. And ever since then, I just kept on finding the ways to iterate in creating more and more for the internet money. And I just,

42:08
in here creating content because I know that works and it doesn’t cost me a dime. does YouTube fall into your strategy? You mentioned posting on IGTV. Do you post the same content on YouTube? Yes, but it’s formatted. So it’s formatted 16 by 9 vertical for IGTV because people are watching on mobile devices and then 9 by 16, which is horizontal for YouTube. And I have to say, like, man, if there are things like just something in my business, can go back and just kick myself is

42:36
I started a YouTube channel, goodness gracious, maybe like in 2009. So very, very early YouTube and it was terrible, Steve. Oh, it was, it wasn’t terrible. was like horrific. I just turned on a camera. I had no lights. I stood in front of a, like a magazine collaged wall that I had made from like Home Depot. And I just would talk for like 12 minutes on photography. It was boring and it was awful, but I was sharing what I was, what I was doing and goodness gracious. In a matter of like two years, I think there was like,

43:06
50,000 subscribers on YouTube. And then it just stopped because I just felt like it wasn’t going anywhere. And what I didn’t realize was that YouTube at the time was becoming the second biggest search engine in the world. So it’s creating content, getting a couple hundred views on a video. like, ah. And then I kind of just, I let it go off to the wayside. And then two years later, when all of a sudden, like the whole YouTube culture comes out and content creators are existing on YouTube,

43:35
I am looking at videos that I had posted like two years before and they had like 30 or 40,000 views on these really wonky me talking about photography and posing videos. And I was like, a massive opportunity lost. So now started creating for YouTube again about two years ago. And I get a lot, I get a lot of heat, like people will leave like negative comments or people would say like, why are you even wasting your time? Like your videos are only getting like a, you know, like 500 or a thousand views. And I was like, watch.

44:05
just you wait and watch. So the content strategy is yes, we’re still creating video, but we’re making sure that when we’re capturing the video, the camera is pulled back far enough so that we can edit it in vertical and then later edit it in horizontal. That’s great advice, actually. So actually, I’ve been working on my YouTube channel for like the past seven months. That’s going to be another one of my channels. I wanted to just I think we have a little bit different points of view here like

44:32
For me, like a blog post, I want to rank it for SEO because once I get a post to rank, the traffic comes on forever. The same is for YouTube, right? You mentioned it was the second largest search engine. How do you feel about YouTube and SEO, which is something you have to do once and you focus and you do a really good job and the traffic just comes, versus social where you have to kind of like post on a regular basis in order to kind of maintain that fan base? Well, Steve, I believe in them both.

45:00
There is a difference in my marketing approach. It’s searchable marketing and stumble upon marketing. Searchable marketing is when somebody is going to YouTube and they want to know how to use Instagram to grow their business. That content we’re creating on the regular. When somebody goes to Google and they’re looking like how to use Pinterest to grow their business, like we’re creating that content on the regular and we are using keywords that are searchable within the blog posts themselves, but we’re not doing any of like the backend tweaking optimization and

45:29
figuring out like, how are we going to get this particular blog post ranked at the top? I believe again, I said it before, Continent is Queen. So we don’t have one Pinterest blog post that we put out. We have multiple Pinterest blog posts that we put out and then we have multiple pins pointing back to the blog post that did the best. Now that is for searchable. That is intent based marketing. When somebody knows exactly what they’re looking for. A lot of times, specifically on social, people don’t know what they’re looking for until they see it. And that’s where it’s unparalleled.

45:58
And that’s where again, volume wins the game. So we’re super excited and hopeful for how much we can grow our search space marketing, but our stumble upon marketing that’s unparalleled. like I put out a reel, it was 15 second reel and it was, it was silly. It’s the juxtaposition between what people think online business owners do. And then the reality of what business owners do is 15 seconds has over 200,000 views in less than a week.

46:25
And we saw a massive uptick in our opt-in as a result. But people didn’t know that they needed to see that funny video until they saw the funny video. And that is where I believe a two-prong approach for stumble upon and searchable really have to be intersected in the 21st century. obviously it works because you’re huge. I mean, can’t argue with that. I was just kind of getting your point of view. I’m just kind of curious now, how does the podcast kind of fit into the overall strategy?

46:51
Well, we just, hey, we just celebrated the one year anniversary of the podcast. Congratulations. Thank you. Thank you. I, you know, I have been thinking about this a lot. Episode, episode one of the podcast really broke down this idea of like fear and doubt when you start something new. And I said that and I, like anybody else have fear and doubt. That’s something that like as entrepreneurs, like we always struggle and grapple with.

47:16
But when it came to the podcast, I said that and I believed it. like, but there’s something else that’s missing. There’s something else in this equation. And I didn’t know. And it isn’t until now a year later, I realized that my trepidation for starting the podcast wasn’t just fear that whatever I would do it wrong, whatever wrong is or doubt, because like, of course people are going to say something about you if you do something or if you don’t. And some people are like, and then some people are not like, I am pleasantly understood that.

47:44
But one of the things that I didn’t equate as part of the reason that I felt so much resistance to the podcast was because when I commit to something, Steve, I’m committed. I am committed. And the level of consistency that I knew I needed to execute on the vision for the podcast was a hell of a lot of work. And I, the minute I said, okay, I’m cutting other things out of my life and business to work.

48:14
and do the podcast. The minute I said that, then all of a sudden it was like the floodgates burst open. And the goal for the podcast was to, again, meet people where they are. And I started looking at my behaviors and I consume the most content by way of podcast. And I wasn’t giving that as an option for a lot of my followers and as a way to get discovered. Now, the goal of the podcast is to take the content we are already creating

48:42
and putting it in audio form and finding a different avenue to repurpose content that I’ve created. Like we always are like, how many ways can we use this singular piece of content? The podcast works flawlessly into that and has been such a great driver in our opt-ins and conversions. Yeah, I mean, personally, I found that the podcast tends to create like lifelong fans. YouTube and SEO is a good discovery engine, but you really firm up those relationships or my version of relationships, I guess, on the podcast, because they’re listening to you for such a long period of time.

49:12
And you’re a natural on the podcast, I must say. So I imagine it’s going very well for you. Thank you. It’s been really, really, really, it’s my most favorite thing. I’m a blogger at heart. And I think that I have become disciplined when it comes to social media. But I often say, I’ll be very honest, if I did not have a business, I wouldn’t be on social media. Like, it’s not a skill set that comes natural to me. It’s not like, oh, this is so much fun. Like, I get life doing it. It’s is a means to an end. Like, I have big

49:42
visions and aspirations and this is a tool to help me get there. But if all things went away and I could choose one thing that I wanted to do, it would be the podcast. It truly would be the podcast. It’s just been such a gift of creativity for me. So last question for you, Jasmine. Actually, a lot of the listeners out there are women with children and I was just kind of curious, how has a child impacted your life and your business? Oh Lord have mercy. It has been. The spectrum of emotions that you feel

50:09
but I’m going to keep it super practical and just focus on how it has changed me as a business owner. And the biggest effect it has had on me is there were things that I used to care about or things that would affect me in a certain way. And very similar situations pop up now having a daughter who’s eight and a half months old. And if I pick her up, it’s as if everything that really I thought mattered pales in comparison.

50:35
She’s become such a tethering, anchoring force to the things that truly matter energetically. She’s infused a different drive and passion. And every time we’re faced with a very difficult decision or a very difficult moment in business, or even if I’m writing my stationary bike and the instructor is like, choose your vision, choose who you’re doing this for. It’s right in the forefront. I’m doing it for my daughter. I’m doing it so that my ceiling becomes her floor.

51:02
I’m doing it so that she can stand on my shoulders and believe that the history that her mother experienced and her grandmother experienced are no longer her story. And that like she could do the most, she could do the least with what I considered the most. And so having a child has really transformed the way I want to show up. And I want to leave every stone unturned so that she could say, I now know the path that I need to pursue. So having a daughter has just transformed the way that I show up in the world. That’s exactly what happened to me.

51:30
The reason why we have our businesses together, my wife and I, is because of our kids so we could actually be more present and hang out with them. That’s what sparked everything. I feel you, Steve. I feel you. So with that, Jasmine, where can people find you online? At jasminestar on all social platforms and jasminestar.com. Well, Jasmine, thanks a lot for coming on the show. I really appreciate your time. I appreciate you. You’re brilliant and you’re so well spoken. You missed a podcaster. I love it.

51:58
Well, we introverts have to stick together. We do, we do. Alright, take care.

52:06
Hope you enjoyed that episode. Now what I really like about Jasmine is that she exudes energy and passion into everything that she does. And she calls herself an introvert, but I still don’t believe it. But don’t take it from me, follow her on Instagram and see the magic for yourself. For more information about this episode, go to mywifequitterjob.com slash episode 330. And once again, I want to thank Postscript.io, which is my SMS marketing platform of choice for e-commerce. With a few clicks of a button, you can easily segment and send targeted text messages to your client base.

52:34
SMS is the next big own marketing platform and you can sign up for free over at postcook.io slash Steve. That’s P-O-S-T-S-E-R-I-P-T dot I-O slash Steve. I also want to thank Klaviyo, which is my email marketing platform of choice for e-commerce merchants. You can easily put together automated flows like an abandoned cart sequence, a post purchase flow, a win back campaign, basically all these sequences that will make you money on autopilot. So head on over to mywifequitterjob.com slash K-L-A-V-I-Y-O.

53:00
Once again, that’s mywifequitterjob.com slash K-L-A-V-I-Y-O. Now I talk about how I use these tools on my blog, and if you are interested in starting your own eCommerce store, head on over to mywifequitterjob.com and sign up for my free six day mini course. Just type in your email and I’ll send you the course right away. Thanks for listening.

53:21
where we’re giving the courage people need to start their own online business. more information, visit Steve’s blog at www.mywifequitterjob.com.