The #1 Mistake Soulful and Mission Driven Business Owners Make on Instagram

I’ve seen it too many times...

Hard working, dedicated, and talented soulful entrepreneurs who are consistent on Instagram but see very little results. 

They think that getting leads from Instagram = COMPLICATED. 

Hey, I’m guilty of it too! 

In this post we will cover:

• #1 mistake soulful and mission-drive entrepreneurs make on Instagram

• The three strategies to avoid that mistake

It is funny to think that over the last decade I worked on simplifying my strategy to focus on the tasks that brings in more leads to our business. Focus on what makes the difference and ditch the rest. 

I still get stuck in the cycle of overthinking on content creation and assuming that it needs to be hard when in truth, there are simple strategies that gives the most results. 

I have the feeling you too want to cut the noise out of "how to" Instagram strategy to focus on what gives results for your business, am I right?

I am guessing that you are on Instagram to help people, share your message, and attract clients to your business. 

There is a lot of distraction on Instagram and one of them is content creation. Yes, content creation. 

You are probably thinking: But Nina, I need to create content, so people can know what my business is all about. 

That's so true, but the #1 mistake soulful business make on Instagram is to focus on content over engagement. 

 Creating content is so important to share about your business, but engagement with your exciting audience leads to sales. 

Here is what I know:

• If you have the ability to post every day, post every other day and focus on off days on engagement with your community. 

• Your content builds your Know-Like-Trust factor

• Your engagement amplifies your Know-Like-Trust factor, and people buy from you because they trust AND like you.

This is so important for soulful business with small Instagram audience; your post let people know what you do and how you can help them. 

The way you engage with them helps them determine if you are a match. 

Instagram algorithm heavily focus on engagement; it is a social platform. Engagement will always win on Instagram. 

Here is the Instagram algorithm engagement loop -

The more people read and engage with your content (a.k.a posts, stories, reels...), the more Instagram shows them your content. But for people to engage with your content, you need build a connection with them by engaging on their content first. 

Hey Beautiful, I know this is not sexy, but I promise it works!

So if you use to post five times on Instagram, post three times and focus two days on engagement. 

Here is a quick three step strategy you can use to increase your engagement.

1 - Be strategic about the time you spend on Instagram

One confusing thing about Instagram is that as a social platform, it is set up so that we'll spend more of our time scrolling on content. 

Remember that as a soulful business owners, you are on the platform to share your message with the right audience and make an impact with your business. 

It is critical to sperate Instagram business time vs Instagram personal time. 

Here are few questions to ask yourself before opening the app.

• How many people will you engage with?
• What type of energy are you bringing to the platform? Uplifting, comforting, clarity.

Here how to monitor and set a a timer for your business activity time on Instagram 

1. In the app, in your profile, click the menu on the top right corner 
2. Tap the Your Activity in the drop down menu bottom
3. Then press time setting at the top right
4. Select you Daily Reminder to set the amount of time you want to spend on the app 

2 - Preschedule your posts 

Pre-scheduling your posts is a huge time saver. If you are not using one yet, it is time to do it. 

Social media posts scheduler helped me to get out of the content creation loop to focus on engagement and gave me back a big chunk of my time to do what matters which is creating valuable connections on Instagram that translate in more leads for my business. 

I use Later.com. I found it easy to use. And guess what, they have a free plan for you to use. 

Planoly  and Tailwind have a good reputation too. 

I cannot say enough of the benefit of using a app to schedule your posts in advance, especially if you have a busy schedule. 

I use later.com come to schedule my content; you can schedule months of content at once - 

To make it easier for you, you can start by scheduling 1 week of content first and then incrementally increase the number of posts you pre-schedule. 

I used this exact system to now post 90 day of IG content at the time. 

3 - Spend 70% of your time engaging with your current followers 

 Many of us miss out on this step; we are so focus on growing our following or getting engagement that we forget that take care of what we already have. 

One of the #1 law of abundance is to be grateful of what we already have, so more can manifest. 

This is a simple strategy that you can start using now. If you spend 30 minutes on Instagram, spend the first 20 minutes engaging with your peeps first. Then, reach out to new people. 

Remember, you can do this especially if you pre-scheduled your content. 

Implementing this 3-step process will change your experience with Instagram. I promise it works!