0 (2s):
Boom, shake the room, Fire Nation. JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs On Fire brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network with great shows like Being Boss. Today, we're pulling a timeless EOFire classic episode from the archives, and we'll be breaking down how Zach Benson helped me. JLD dominate Instagram. Zach is a TEDx speaker, social media trainer for international brands like the Ritz and pass participant on. So you think you can dance. He doesn't just manage his own Instagram network of millions. He's also the founder of a Assistagram where he's guiding other influencers in fortune 500 companies into social media success. And today foundation, we'll be talking about the right hashtags to get involved and engage in a much higher level.

0 (46s):
We'll also talk how to do your own content videos and post consistently and so much more. When we get back from thanking our sponsors. Still think you can create an online course the same way you did five years ago? Think again! Thinkific has looked at the top 20% of course, creators to see what they're doing now to be so darn successful. Find out for yourself at thinkific.com/firetrends. Business made simple hosted by Donald Miller, takes the mystery out of growing your business. Recent episodes, like how to attract and retain top talent and how to make more money with your current products are straight fire. Listen to business made simple wherever you get your podcasts.

0 (1m 29s):
Zack say what's up to Fire Nation brother and share something interesting about yourself that most people don't know,

1 (1m 36s):
Hey, what's up everyone super excited to be here. So most people don't know that I was actually adopted. So I was born in South Korea and then adopted by my parents in Iowa. So pretty much grew up in Iowa, lived there my whole life.

0 (1m 51s):
Very interesting stuff. My man. And now you're over in Korea as we speak, which is cool. That again, it sounds like you're in the next room via Skype. So just lovely stuff, even though it's 4:00 AM your time and 4:00 PM my time. So we are exactly 12 hours apart and Fire Nation. I'm going to share a little more info about Zach, because we were actually just reminiscing about the old Puerto Rico, a mastermind days back when we used to have a bunch of awesome people come and attend a great event. And we had Zach as a speaker one year and he came and crushed it. And then we hit the casino afterwards and Zach continued to crush it on the roulette wheel. I was playing a little, a black Jack.

0 (2m 32s):
I looked up to some screaming over by the roulette table and you just hit your number right on top. My man, that was pretty impressive.

1 (2m 41s):
Yeah, the good old days. Good times. It was weird. Cause I arrived at the airport and at that time they had the roulette real as like the baggage, like great. And so I basically said, oh, like, okay, I'm going to call my favorite number. And it landed on my favorite number, which is number five. And then I put like all of my money, I guess, or whatever on number five. Cause it was like two, 2:00 AM and it's closing and yeah, we all went wild. It was crazy

0 (3m 11s):
Red five for the when. And I'll tell you what Fire Nation, when you can call numbers on a roulette wheel at 37 to one, odds are, you're making $37 for every dollar you put on. That's what you call a money-making machine. But guess what? Zack also knows how to turn your Instagram into a money-making machine. So first and foremost, listen, it's a new world that we live in. So how realistic is it Zack to make income from Instagram?

1 (3m 41s):
A lot of new exciting features have been rolling out on Instagram. So man, it's, it's really cool. Like before this, I was actually just last week, actually last month I've been in MALDEF's for an entire month and some of the hotels that I've been seeing that costs over 30, $40,000 a night. So not only do I get to travel the world for free and say all these hotels and meet these celebrities and say hotels that like will Smith stays at, but these hotels pay me to come and promote their hotels. And it's it's cool.

1 (4m 23s):
So yeah, I'm, I'm doing it. But then also a lot of brands and companies are pouring a lot of money into influencer marketing. So influencer marketing is now a $15 billion industry and more and more brands are pouring a lot of money on Instagram and paying these Instagram influencers to promote their products on their Instagram feed and walls because it drives traffic and it drives customers.

0 (4m 51s):
So let's get specific right here on the realisticness of actually making income. So, you know, you're getting to say at places for free influencers is this $15 billion industry now. And of course growing for sure what are some ways that you've really seen that these influencers, people that actually have followings are making actual money in their pocket,

1 (5m 16s):
Travel free travel. So it saves some time and money. And then a lot of these countries like Dubai or the maladies, they pay influencers to come over and create content and share about it. So that's one way they get paid. The other way is that these influencers partner with these brands. So like, let's say a, maybe a Akido, like a keto health shaker, some type of fitness supplement. These companies pay these influencers to create content with their product, do product placement in their videos, and then they pay them to post on their timeline.

1 (5m 56s):
So influencers are getting paid, you know, multiple, multiple streams of income just by creating continent sharing on under your walls. So a lot of brands are paying these influencers and by influencers, I mean there's a lot of different levels, right? There's micro influencers, people that have maybe between like 5,000 to 25,000 followers, or there's more kind of like macro level, like a hundred thousand followers to maybe 500,000 followers. And then, you know, kind of more celebrity influencers, people that have over maybe a million followers. So there's different tiers. And you know, depending on how many followers you have, you get paid for,

0 (6m 39s):
Let's talk about 20, 21. I mean, this is going to be a new year. You know, it's going to be a year, that's going to have some similarities to 2020. It's going to have, it's going to be a year that hasn't differences to 2020 when it comes to Instagram, what's the best way to get our Instagram up and rocking in this new year.

1 (6m 60s):
There's a lot of cool ways to get your Instagram up and going. I think the fastest way is to still buy an Instagram account because there's a marketplace for these niche pages. So like let's say that you're interested in like fashion or fitness or, you know, motivation. There's actually places on Instagram that you can buy Instagram accounts that are in your niche. And so I always recommend people to first acquire an account like in, in the niche that they, they want to go in because it's, it saves you time and it it's kind of growth hacking it.

1 (7m 41s):
And you get to see like what types of content these people are posting and you can use this account to then drive traffic to your main account. So, you know, two is better one than one. So like if I'm trying to get a bunch of motivational followers, then it'd be best for me. And to, to acquire like a motivational account, that's like put reposting all of these motivational quotes and motivational videos from people like Tony Robbins or like Gary V and use that account to drive traffic to like, let's say my, my personal account, which is all about motivation, but it's more like my motivational stories and my own experiences.

1 (8m 22s):
If that makes sense,

0 (8m 23s):
It makes a lot of sense. But I think a lot of people are gonna wonder, Hey, is there's just too much noise out there. Like there's just too many people trying to do the same thing. Just like posting quotes on Instagram or quick little inspirational messages or just reposting things that other things are posting. I mean, is there too much noise for a beginner to stand out in today's world

1 (8m 42s):
It's 2021. So it's, it's become a lot harder to grow. So that's why I recommend that you acquire like a big pager. You get into these bigger like networks with other pages that have, you know, massive amounts of followings, because it's really about your network. Because with the big network, you can then get your content seen, known and heard all over the place by getting engagement from these bigger accounts. So step one is to really like either buy an account that's like in your niche, use that account to network with other bigger accounts, get into what's called engagement groups so that you can get your content seen and liked by accounts that have maybe 50,000 followers or a hundred thousand followers.

1 (9m 36s):
And when you do it still hits the algorithms so that when, so that your content is seen, seen on their feeds and their timelines, which then drives traffic to your page and hopes your content, get more engagement in your page, get more followers. So in 2021, it's all about like your network because the bigger your friends are and your friends on Instagram are, and the bigger the network groups that you're in, the more that you will grow, because the only way to really grow now and here in 2020 and 2021 is through a shout-out network. So it's basically like a shout out for shadows.

1 (10m 18s):
So you, you are promoting so other people are promoting you on their walls saying, Hey, like, go, go follow Zach. Or Hey, go follow John, you know, for more motivation or more travel. And so you have to get a bunch of these shout outs and tour into to actually grow your account.

0 (10m 37s):
So Fire Nation, we're going to be talking about how you can know if you're on the right track, where does the money actually come from? And we'll talk about automating some of these things cause listen, I know not everybody that's listening has all the time in the world to grow these things from the ground up. When we get back from thanking our sponsors. There's so much power in the technology we use today, but figuring out which software is best for your business and how it all works together can be overwhelming and time consuming. If you're ready to streamline your workflow. So things like customer support, employee onboarding, and even your marketing strategy can start working for you, then you need Zapier. Zapier, it makes it easy to connect all your apps, automate routine tasks and streamline your processes.

0 (11m 18s):
One big way. Zapier has helped us is in streamlining our communication and follow-up with our online course members. And it's super easy to use. You can connect over 4,000 of the most popular apps you're probably using everyday already like Google sheets, QuickBooks, and even your task management software. No wonder over 1.8 million people in businesses use Zapier to streamline their work and find more time for what matters most see for yourself. Why teams at air table, Dropbox, HubSpot, Zendesk, and thousands of other companies that use Zapier everyday to automate their businesses. Try Zapier for free today at zapier.com/fire. That's Z A P I E R.com/fire. As an entrepreneur, just starting out or looking to scale up, it can be tricky to know which advice to follow.

0 (12m 2s):
And if you've been thinking about making an online course, part of your business, the Thinkific Trends Report is one of the most important things you'll read this year. The team at Thinkific analyzed the top 20% of creators to discover what they're doing differently to make them so darn successful in this report. You'll uncover why top creators are two times more likely to use communities three times more likely to sell courses in bundles plus learn why it's time to say goodbye to the hard sell. I can say after reading it that this report is chock full of insights. You can immediately put into action today because if you're still creating courses the same way you were five years ago, you might be missing out on some big opportunities to discover which trends are powering the most successful creators in 2022, what their secrets are to growing their business, how they focus their time in much more visit thinkific.com/firetrends.

0 (12m 52s):
That's T H I N K I F I C.com/firetrends. Customer expectations are at an all-time high and making things easy is how you'll win. If you can accomplish easy, you'll turn one-time customers into lifetime customers. So how can you make things easy for your customers? It starts with knowledge like having a 360 degree view of how your customers have interacted with your business in the past, what their buying preferences are and how likely they are to become a repeat customer. But how do you gain these insights with a HubSpot CRM platform? That's exactly what you'll get easy to use tools that give you and your teams, the full picture of your customers. Just one example of how powerful having that full picture can be.

0 (13m 35s):
Well HubSpot's intuitive payment tools allow you to help your customers have a seamless purchase experience with full access to payment data, your teams get the full customer story, meaning they can provide the best possible service. And with directly embedded payment links, your customers can quickly and easily purchase and pay from emails, live chats, and more, learn more about how HubSpot can help your business grow better at hubspot.com. So Zach we're back and, you know, before the break, we talked about how realistic it is to make money from Assistagram, the best ways to do it. Is there too much noise out there? How can we actually stand out as a beginner? How do we know if we are that beginner? If we're on the right track, what are some of those signs,

1 (14m 15s):
Very basic things that you can still do and still, and things that still work today are using the right hashtags and optimizing your profile on Instagram. And by doing like two, these two simple tricks by using hashtags that have smaller number of posts on them, you can get your content seen. And eventually as your content is seen more, you're going to start to hit the top nine posts, 12 posts for that, that hashtag, which is going to get you more followers. So the best thing that you can do, like when you're first starting out is to start with a really big hashtag this down narrow down, like starting with the hashtag, like, like if you're in the real estate industry, for example, it started with the hashtag real estate, which probably has, you know, millions and millions of posts on it because it's really big one and everybody uses it.

1 (15m 9s):
And, and when you type in the hashtag real estate, people are going to, you're going to find other hashtags that have, that are related to re real estate that have a lower number of posts. And do you want to use those hashtags when you're first starting out on your posts and you want to create, you know, write down 25, 30 different hashtags, which equal hashtag set. You want to create multiple sets of these hashtags that have, you know, 50 to a hundred thousand posts on them, a hundred to 250,000 posts and so on, like lower than a million. And you're going to start to see some trash. And I mean, you'll be able to tell by your internal Elidel analytics on Instagram, that, you know, these certain hashtags give you more followers or more impressions, more reach, more engagement.

1 (15m 57s):
And so you always want to be checking like on like, you know, in your internal app, like on Instagram and seeing the analytics every day, every week to see which types of posts give you more engagement, more follows, what time of day your followers are engaging with you. And to use that data, to create content posts when they're most active,

0 (16m 27s):
Where exactly Zack does the money come from, like really uncover this box of seemingly secrecy and confusion that a Fire Nation may have about where exactly this money in this world of Instagram and this world of influencers actually comes from.

1 (16m 45s):
So once you're using the right hashtags, doing these engagement groups, or you're networking with all of these bigger accounts, and you're getting your content seen and heard and all over the place, you're going to start to grow. And the first benchmark that you want to hit is 10,000 followers. Because when you have over 10,000 followers, you unlock a really cool feature called the story, swipe up. So you can actually put website links into your Instagram stories. Now there's over 600,000 people using Instagram stories every single day. So when you have over 10,000 followers, you can do a call to action, say, Hey, swipe up to learn more.

1 (17m 27s):
And a lot of companies, a lot of influencers, a lot of people are monetizing Instagram stories really well because, you know, step one, you pique somebody's interest by having an optimized profile, right? You can put one website link, one link in your Instagram profile bio. So they see or see your bio. They see your page, they see your content. You know, they click peaks their interest on Instagram. You have to really peak their interest in a matter of seconds, like a couple of seconds to get them to click, to keep watching, to comment, to hit follow. And then, you know, it's, it's multiple exposures.

1 (18m 8s):
So when you have over 10,000 followers and you can put links in your Instagram stories, that's another exposure, massive exposure, and another opportunity for monetization, because you can put another link in there and then with a call to action. So that's like the first step is getting over 10,000 followers. And the second step is just, you know, to work with other, like a lot of brands and people. So the first step is 10,000 followers. Once you have 10,000 followers, you want to partner with other micro influencers, other influencers, macro influencers, get an army of them, you know, creating content posting about you, sharing your product.

1 (18m 56s):
And through that, once you get a whole army of that, like, you know, 20, 30, 40, 50 influencers promoting you, you have user generated content that you can use on your page and also, you know, have all of these influencers promoting your product. And that's, that's what really creates the sales.

0 (19m 15s):
So furnish and really hope. You're understanding this process in how it works and where it works through. And, you know, there's a reason why people like myself and Russell have been using a Assistagram to increase our followers and to increase our overall Instagram influence and do all these really cool things with it. So Zach, why don't you kind of break it down for us, how Fire Nation could potentially get involved with you at Assistagram? You know, it's just at least learning more from you about this process. So give us a final value bomb slash takeaway from this episode, give us a way that we can learn more about you at Assistagram and work with you at Assistagram.

0 (19m 55s):
And then we'll say goodbye.

1 (19m 56s):
When you go to our website, Assistagram.com. Another awesome day bomb is, is that we have like awesome growth hacking guide that you can grab. And it teaches you a little bit about like, like stuff that we talked about, but a lot more how to optimize your profile to hashtags engagement groups, everything is on there on the free guide. So you can grab it a Assistagram.com and think of Assistagram as your own like personal virtual assistant or your own Instagram graphic designer, growth team member. That's doing everything for you, creating your content, polishing up your content repurpose and your content doing posting for you, doing the hashtag student engagement groups, hundreds of thousands of manual actions that you have to do every single day, but don't want to do because you don't have time and you want to focus on other things.

1 (20m 48s):
We do it all for you, and we grow your account. Thousands of followers, real followers, targeted followers every single month. So that's what we do. We'd love to help. We'd love to set up a call with you guys. And yeah, you can find out more at Assistagram.

0 (21m 5s):
Fire Nation, Assistagram learn more from Zach and you don't have some of the benefits that some of the people that, like I said, myself, Russell Brunson and Les brown and others have had from his services. So Fire Nation, you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with in hello. You've been hanging out with ZB and JLD today. So keep up that heat and you can head over to EOFire.com type Zack in the search bar and his show notes page will pop up. He's actually been on the show a few times, so you can listen to past episodes for more awesome Instagram tips. And these are the best channels in the biz. So check them out and Assistagram.com. You can check out more about Zach and his business there.

0 (21m 45s):
And Zach, I want to say thank you brother, for sharing your knowledge, your value, your truth with Fire Nation today, for that we salute you and we will catch you on the flip side.

1 (21m 55s):
Thanks a lot.

0 (21m 56s):
Hey, Fire Nation today's value bond content was brought to you by Zach and listen, successful entrepreneurs. They accomplish big goals, huge goals. That's why I created the freedom journal to guide you in accomplishing your number one goal in 100 days. And we're talking to step-by-step. So visit the freedomjournal.com and use promo code podcast, Fire Nation, which will get you a $15 discount. And thank you for listening to my podcasts and I'll catch you there, or I'll catch you on the flip side. Still think you can create an online course the same way you did five years ago. Think again, think Kevin has looked at the top 20%, of course, creators to see what they're doing now to be so darn successful.

0 (22m 36s):
Find out for yourself at thinkific.com/firetrends. Business made simple hosted by Donald Miller, takes the mystery out of growing your business. Recent episodes, like how to attract and retain top talent and how to make more money with your current products are straight fire. Listen to business made simple wherever you get your podcasts.