Aug 5, 2014
In this episode (lucky #13), I’m in
The Lab with Chris Grabe, co-founder of Resource
Phoenix and Localati. He’s a realtor here in Phoenix, but he’s
working to integrate the “new school” into the profession. He
focused on building relationships and forming a hub around his
business, which has had an ancillary benefit of keeping the
business pipeline full. In this episode we talk about how he built
this community and some challenges he had to overcome.
Highlights from the
interview:
- Chris and his business partner created Localati because they
wanted an alternative to the traditional networking meet ups.
- They started on meetup.com, but wanted to create their own tool
(localati.com) so they could have more control.
- They focused on keeping it fun and social, not introducing
business into the mix, unless the conversation happens
naturally.
- Creating these social events had an ancillary benefit…they got
to know their target customer really well.
- Chris suggests when building community - focus on something
that you are going to do anyways and build a community of
like-minded people. People you want to be around.
- Don’t rush trying to build a community. It takes time, but
stick with it.
Weekly Biz Hack: On average Instagram has
200 million monthly active users who share an average of 60 million
photos per day. What’s more, the photos being shared are generating
approximately 1.6 billion likes per day, so there is potential for
high engagement if you post the right content. A lot of businesses
are picking up on this and shifting some of their focus away from
networks like Facebook, where engagement has been dwindling, and
more to Instagram. If you haven’t started using Instagram for your
business, it’s worth taking some time to strategize how to
incorporate it into your marketing mix.
Luckily there are some amazing tools
being developed specifically for Instagram that enable making
managing and tracking the social network much easier. Below are a
few I’ve found useful.
- ScheduGram
- created by a consulting company based in
Australia, it allows you to schedule posts, as the name implies.
They do charge for the service - $13 per month for a single
Instagram account, which isn’t bad, but it jumps to $40 per month
for up to 5 Instagram accounts. Slightly pricey in my opinion, but
it is an excellent tool if you manage more than one account.
- Latergramme
- another web and app-based tool that allows you
to schedule posts, but this one is free. You can quickly upload
photos, write your caption then drop it into a calendar layout.
There are a couple of limitations though. It doesn’t actually post
to Instagram for you, instead it send an alert to your phone
reminding you there is a scheduled post. Once you open it, it
brings you to Instagram to complete the post. It is still easy and
convenient, but does require that extra step. It also doesn’t allow
you to manage multiple accounts from a single dashboard, so again
if you manage multiple, you’ll have to log in and out.
- Iconosquare
(formerly Statigram) - this is another free
web-based tool that allows you to see and respond to new comments,
check your feed and post history, and the most interesting
feature…check the stats of your posts. You can get a detailed look
at your most popular posts, follower growth rate, engagement among
followers and non-followers, times of day and days of the week that
got the most traction, and the list goes on.
- Instaport
and Instagram Downloader - tools that allow you to
download images from other users. Great for sharing photos posted
by your community on other platforms (giving them credit of
course).
- IFTTT - If This Then That is also great for setting up an automatic
download of these images to a Dropbox file. You can drill down to
only download photos taken with a certain hashtag, or in a specific
region, or that referenced a specific name or
user.
- Repost
- a mobile app that allows you to repost content
from your Instagram community. It gives them gives full attribution
so you don’t have to worry about poaching content. Sharing content
from your community is a great way to deepen
engagement.
Of course these are just a handful.
There are more and more Instagram apps and tools popping up
frequently, but these are a few of my favorites at the
moment.
Weekly Action
Item: This week’s action item is fairly simple…check
in on your action items from
episode 5 and 9. Did
you outline what your what thing is? If not, take some time this
week to do that. And provided you have your one thing, are you
scheduling time daily or at least weekly to work on your one thing?
If missed this one, check out episode 9 on dedicating time to your one thing.
For those of you that, let me know how it’s going for you. Are you
staying on track? Has it gotten easier or now habitual? I’d love to
hear from you. Please leave a comment below.
Quote of the week:
Ok, love him or hate him, this is a decent quote: “As long as
you’re going to be thinking anyway, think big.” ~ Donald
Trump
Next week we’re in the lab with Paul
Blais, a fellow podcaster at Doubt the
Doubts and The Potter's Cast.
He has an awesome story...he's serial entrepreneur who made a shift
a few years ago to pursue a passion. In the midst of all of that he
was diagnosed with cancer, but this inspired him to create his blog
and podcast, Doubt the Doubts, as a way to encourage people that
anything is possible once you get past your inhibitions. So don’t
miss that one! Until then, have prosperous week!