[Applause] there are over 1.3 billion active Instagram accounts around the world but just hoping that you're going to get found amongst the billion people on there right now with the right client at the right time is not good enough to make a real difference in your freelance design business and just posting your designs in your own style and using the hashtag graphic design or similar variations of the hashtag will only get you other designers following you which doesn't help you get in front of your clients so in this video I'm going to show you how you can use Instagram the right way to actually get you the design clients that you want for your business I'm going to give you actionable steps to really follow and this strategy Works regardless of how many followers you have and at the end of the video I'm going to tell you what is harming your Instagram account and what to stop doing but first I want to thank this video sponsor invoice ninja they have a dedicated invoicing software for graphic designers to create customized invoices for clients it is the most extensive invoicing software I've ever seen and where whereas other invoicing softwares are hard to check on mobile if there is some client that hasn't paid you and you need to send a nudge on the go you can do it from their very easy to use mobile app so you can get 50 off of their paid plans by going to the link in the description but you can also just try it out for free so be sure to check out invoice ninja to make your invoicing simplified when it comes to using Instagram for your business growth there's three key strategies that can help you attract the right clients the first one is posting your own content and using the right hashtags so we're going to first talk about the type of content and then I have some awesome insights on how to use the right hashtags these ways help you to build better relationships with your followers and get in front of new followers which can eventually turn into clients when they need your Design Services so before you put anything up on Instagram you have to think with one question will my ideal clients benefit from this or not what you post is not about you you can have your personal account for that but every post on your design business Instagram needs to be for who you want to attract and your profile needs to be set up to tell those you want to follow you how you can help them don't just say I'm a great graphic designer instead say something like I help coffee shop owners attract the right customers through strategic branding so you should use the link to go to your website or even better if you have some free guide that aligns with your services and helps them achieve a specific goal by getting that downloadable link to that offer so you can further nurture your audience through emails that then lead to you offering a free design review and then eventually them hiring you then there are three types of content posts that you can use one is your own designs that showcase your skills and show how you solve the client's problem if you use a real client project sharing the testimonial is great treating the post like a case study helps other potential clients see that you're a design thinker and you care about solving a problem for your client if you're posting personal projects you should still walk through the thought process behind why you made the decisions and treat it like a practice case study the next type is creating educational type content that shares your knowledge about the type of client you service so for example if you were to work with food and beverage Brands sharing statistics about how packaging improved brand sales you could also take a Big Brand like McDonald's and show how after they did a Rebrand their income went up you don't want to just talk about design educational things like what typography to use and how a design packaging is this is not going to be relevant to your ideal clients this is your chance to relate the importance of design to achieving real marketing goals for their business so to get ideas on what to post in this type of content you can search on blogs for your industry and see what people are talking about look on askthepublic.com which gives you great topics related to a specific keyword or industry you can also search on Google and see what the drop down menu has for that specific industry and what topics there are related to it and the third way under through the first strategy consists of showing behind the scenes reels or posts with your design process people naturally admire creativity and skills and like to see a personal and more vulnerable side behind those they follow I'm not always the best at this myself but it is a really great way to use the power of reels and getting in front of your ideal clients so now we're going to talk about what hashtags to use on each of these posts when it comes to uncovering relevant hashtags for maximum discoverability you have a wealth of hashtag software options that are available but let's explore some of these leading ones the first one is all hashtag so if you type in coffee let's see what it generates so you have a great amount of different types of coffee hashtags to use but what I found was going to chatgpt got you the best results when you're looking for real specific ones that are going to get you found even better so I'm going to show you some prompts to help you with this so when it comes to hashtag research there's three types of hashtag categories that are great to divide it into so the first is industry related ones the second is solution based ones and the third is inspiration type so I'm going to give you examples of all of these so you are tracking with how to use them so the first prompt is going to say ignore any prior prompts this is in case you were you're already using chat gbt as an Instagram marketing specialist your objective is to provide me with useful hashtags I am a coffee shop owner seeking industry related hashtags that resonate with other coffee shop owners please present me with 10 popular hashtags now here's the thing you have to get in the shoes of your ideal clients so in this case we're getting in the shoes of the coffee shop owners what hashtags are they following so that your content appears in front of them you're not just putting graphic design you want to do something that they're going to be searching for so let's see what our friend Chachi PT says great so here's some cool ones coffee lovers coffee addict Coffee Culture morning cup coffee shop Vibes coffee time caffeine fix Barista life coffee obsessed roaster life so now you could take one of these or a few of these and search them on Instagram and see the volume that is there this is going to give you some great variety to choose from in your different content so now we're going to go to the next category which is about solution based I'm going to have these prompts in the description for you by the way all right so here this is about solution based so this is the coffee shop owners what are they searching for on Instagram or what hashtags are they following to help them solve their problems in their business so this would be coffee lovers unite caffeine addict morning rituals coffee Community drink good coffee so now I'm going to be a little bit more specific because I feel that these aren't exactly gonna be getting the results that we want so let's say so I'm asking for more marketing specific hashtags so let's see what it says Coffee Shop marketing coffee shop success coffee business tips coffee shop growth coffee shop strategy Coffee Cafe marketing ideas these are great so then you can verify on Instagram that these have a good volume and you can pick and choose a few of these to put on your posts so now we're going to give it the third category so this is all about inspiration what kind of hashtags are your ideal clients searching for to get inspiration for their own coffee shops now this could be about the visuals this could be about just inspiration in general so that's what we're going to be searching so I'm telling Chachi BT who I am that I'm a designer for coffee shop owners and I want to know what hashtags should I use to get in front of these coffee shop owners that's going to inspire them to upgrade their branding or upgrade their menu design or their signage because that's going to be something that some of them are going to be searching for or want to do so these are some of the ones coffee shop design Cafe brand identity menu design coffee shop shop signage Cafe marketing materials so these are some great ideas so now the awesome thing is you can take these and you want to use a variety of them in your different posts so copy them paste them in some notes on your phone so you can always go back and choose a few of them when you're posting it's important to use eight to ten hashtags in your post using too many can appear spammy and dilute your message so you want to experiment with different combinations using hashtags that your potential clients are already using as well as ones that relate to your specific offerings by harnessing the power of well-curated hashtags you're going to increase your chances of being discovered and connecting with your target audience the second strategy to use Instagram for client acquisition is using the power of stories to get your followers to write to you so if you post a story with either a poll or a question related to your Niche that gives you the ability to then answer them through DM so let's say you pull asking coffee shop owners if they're happy with their marketing and social media assets and maybe some of them then Mark no you can see who said no and then send a direct message asking what they don't like about their marketing and social media first off they're already following you they're interested in your content and so you aren't writing a stranger and then it opens the door for them to tell you about their business problem you can then reply with an audio message in order to make it more personalized and so that they can hear your voice try and get them to tell you more about the problem or what they have tried to resolve it once they answer that reply back with an invitation to get on a phone call with you to see how you could help them further and then the third strategy and last one is about building relationships with those that don't know about you yet so this starts with following the hashtags of those in your Niche if you were to choose small businesses as a hashtag it's not going to lead anywhere productive so I really suggest first knowing who you want to work with then you search for hashtags in this Niche and follow these hashtags following that same exact strategy that I showed you before regarding how to find the right hashtags to use this is going to make them appear in your feed and then you can engage with those posts comment on them like them and reply to their Instagram stories this is not about commenting hire me right now or I sent you a DM no that's going to get you on The Blacklist so at this stage you want them to start to notice you and and if your profile is optimized that's going to help them understand who you are when you reply to their stories mention something you like about their brand or their story now separately you can go through their website and understand more about the service or product they're offering you can then write to them in a direct message communicating something authentic that you really like about their posts then you should also follow big leaders in your Niche so these would be people that have your ideal clients as their followers when these leaders post something comment something helpful you can turn on notifications for their posts so that you are one of the first people to comment you can also like other people's comments on these posts and reply to those go look at those people's profiles follow them like their posts and reply to their stories then you should also reach out to these leaders and offer a guest post that offers some value to their followers this could get you hundreds of new followers very quickly and get new people into your world to further build relationships with a percentage of them will turn into paying clients down the road so now let's talk about what not to do when you post on Instagram Instagram's algorithm shares your post with a small percentage of your followers if they don't engage or aren't interested in your post Instagram won't show it to many more of your followers so with that in mind your goal on Instagram should never be about the amount of followers if you start asking other designers to follow you and doing follow for follow you will be training Instagram that it should push your account to others like those designers meaning that you're just going to be attracting more graphic designers instead you should be willing to have a few followers at the beginning and know that it will grow organically over time with the right followers also don't just join those follow for follow Facebook groups or other online communities those people aren't going to be interested in your content and when Instagram shows your post to them and they don't like or engage with it it's gonna hurt your own reach also keep in mind that you can't just post all the time about having your followers DM you for hiring them it takes time to build your trust I would recommend just doing that call to action about your Design Services in your post caption like once every month otherwise it gets to just to be too much sometimes people need a few months of relationship building to be ready to hire you but they will feel repelled if you're constantly telling them to DM you so let me know if you will be using this to find design clients for your freelance design business and thank you so much for being here be sure to check out invoice ninja to help you make your invoicing simplified and as always keep creating [Music] thank you [Music]