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Building my Portfolio Career with IG

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Quick Spin:

• Getting over the "ick"
• 8 Things I've learned
• How I use Manychat to grow my portfolio career

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♟️ MY TURN:

For those of you following my portfolio career learnings and testing, you know I’ve made the leap to Instagram.

I’ve grown to 150,000 followers on LinkedIn and Twitter and understand those platforms….I can generate a million impressions a month without really having to think about it.....

but Instagram is a different platform.

It’s a visual platform.

You can’t just have interesting thoughts…..

you have to have interesting videos.

So if you are like me…..and have a personal ick when it comes to marketing yourself in video form, I wanted to share 8 things I’ve learned in the first 2 months of getting serious about Instagram.

(from someone who doesn’t have a natural knack for filming or editing)

PS if you want to watch me build a funnel in Manychat to grow my email list from Instagram - click here and I’ll show you how easy it is.

LEARNING TO LOVE INSTAGRAM

But first, the numbers.

I started 2025 with 11.3k followers. I’ve grown to 12K followers.

But at the start of the year…my dashboard and reach looked like this:

But after 2 months of continuous posting, it looks like this.

That's over 300,000 new eyeballs a month!

So how am I learning and growing? Keep reading 👇

#1 Build the muscle.

Doing anything really......but starting to post on a new platform is first about confidence and working through the “ick”.

I made a goal to post every day for the first month without caring about the numbers.

This also would give me a starting point of insights to build from.

In the beginning I didn't care what or how, I just showed up.

Build the muscle of showing up first.

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#2 Pick your audience - know their painpoints

You can’t be everything to everyone.

So it’s important (on any channel) to know exactly who you are talking to.

Because my book is geared towards women who want to balance success + sanity ….I’m honing in on them.

Now, I need to create content that answers their questions and solves their pain points.

Need help? Use this ChatGPT prompt to get you started.

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#3 Pick your Pillars.

You can’t just throw spaghetti at the wall every day and expect to have lasagna (that sounded smarter in my head).

It’s important to go through all the questions from #2 and categorize them into 3-4 content pillars.

Here are my pillars:

• Systems to juggle work and life
• Systems to be efficient at work
• Systems to be more efficient at life
• Ways to enjoy what you have while you push for more
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#4 Build the expertise.

Month 2 was all about testing and nailing the 3 hooks of IG:

• visual hook - what are you doing
• audio hook - what are you saying
• and text hooks - what is the text

and making sure I could get comfortable grabbing someone’s attention.
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#5 Test, test and test some more

You won’t know what’s working until you’ve tried different formats.

Here are the 4 formats I choose to test in my first 3 months:

• Carousels
• Reels - broll
• Reels - talking to camera
• Greenscreen

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#6 Build a system.

Trying to post every morning was not working as a mom of 3 kids with clients, a community of 150 people and a book coming out…..plus the other things I want to do to grow my portfolio career.

So I created a system of filming 1 day a week.

It included the following:

• 5 “talking to the camera” videos
• 5 b-roll videos
• 3 green screen videos
• 3 carousels

This gave me a check-the-box activity every Friday for the following week.

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​#7 Copy with Taste

Most people scroll with a consumer lens, not a creator.

Find 3 creators who are similar to your niche and expertise and study them and only them.

• What hooks are working?
• What are their 5 most viral videos and what do they have in common?
• What are the ways you can bring that knowledge to your content?

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#8 Make money from Day 1

Most people wait until things are “perfect” and “polished” before they figure out monetization.

But If you are building a portfolio career, it’s important to think about $$ from day 1.

Social media is the appetizer.

Now ask yourself...

if someone is still hungry.... What will I feed them? Where will I send them for more?

That’s the start of your first funnel.

I use Manychat to build out 4 immediate funnels:

• If someone says NEWSLETTER → I send them a link to my newsletter
• If someone says OVERWHELM → I send them a link to my free time-saving workshop
• If someone says 35HARD → I send them a link to check out my 35Hard Challenges

PS if you want to watch me build a funnel in Manychat - click here and I’ll show you how easy it is.
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There you go - 8 things I’m doing to grow on Instagram. Thanks to Manychat for partnering with me on this content and making it easier to grow my portfolio career revenue!

If you want to follow along and watch me implement these, click here. I’d greatly appreciate the follow!

113 Cherry St #92768, Seattle, WA 98104-2205
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