What I've discovered recently isn't about WHAT I'm marketing (or selling), it's WHO I've been trying to market and sell to...

EVERYONE! 

And if you're like me, it feels:
frustrating
humiliating
like a waste of time
like you’re not legitimate because you don't have 10,000 followers

Because…

You’re not making as many sales as you think you should.

So, the burning question is, how do you change it?

Have you ever heard of “niche marketing?”

I have a confession. I'm addicted to "Likes."

​When I first joined Instagram back in...oh hell I can’t even remember when, but I know it was before 2012. I joined because I am a photographer and sharing is fun!  Why is sharing fun? Because when people “ooh” and “ahh” (aka “like”) what I make (aka post), it made me feel good. 

But there’s also too much of a good thing. Instagram has evolved over the years and getting followers and likes can become an obsession. Mostly this is harmless, but sometimes it isn’t. 

It could be that  you feel a twinge of failure when a post isn’t acknowledged the way you think it should be. So you try different things, and you (ahem...me) will spend hours reading blogs about how to get more attention on instagram. 

However…

The question that you (ahem...me) should REALLY be asking is WHY? 

​Happy Thanksgiving to my American peeps! To my Canadian friends, I am thankful for your friendship & support!

Growing up, Thanksgiving was always one of my favorite holidays. It wasn’t because of the food, but because of family. I’m the youngest of 4 children, and the other three are all 10 years older than me. 

As a kid, I was essentially an only child. The holidays were special for me because that’s when my brother’s and sister would come home to visit all at the same time. And because they were so much older, they were married and had families to bring along too!

Mom would get up at 3am to prep and start cooking the 20lb turkey that would feed over 20 people. She would bake pies and the house was warm and smelled wonderful. 

In the afternoon when everyone arrived, I would be so excited! We’d hang around in the living room watching college football. After the huge dinner, we would gather around the table and play a game; trivial pursuit, clue, zilch, uno, whatever was popular that year. These are the memories I hold deep in my heart. 

In 2019, my husband and I don’t live near any family out here in Colorado. My son and his family are in Nevada, my sister is in Washington, my brothers in California as well as my husbands family. 

And as we all know, Thanksgiving can be a hectic and busy day with travel, cooking, watching football...it’s easy to forget to send out that email to wish everyone a happy turkey day. 

​Not all of these factors have equal weight, but the “weight” of these factors (often referred to as “algorithms”) used by Instagram and Facebook are TOP SECRET. However, there are a lot of companies out there that spend a lot of time investigating how posts perform. They then publish the findings for the rest of us average peeps to learn from. 

For 2019, the best way to get the most organic reach is to post regularly, at least daily and in most cases more than that. Use video and stories and of course, the best hashtags. 

I haven’t been doing much video lately, and I have been playing around with stories a bit. 

But the one thing I discovered that worked the best for organic reach by 60% was this: