Build Real Followers of Real People on Instagram with Michelle Berman

Underdog Empowerment

In today’s episode we’re talking about building genuine relationships with people online. Guest, Michelle Berman, shares her personal and professional journey to success. Michelle grew up in Southern California and went to college on a swimming scholarship at Rutgers University. After graduation, she was told to get a job, but she hated it. She then uprooted for a boy, which didn't work out, but taught her a lot. During a difficult transition that included totaling a car and losing all her money, she made her way back to Southern California while her dad was going through chemo, and decided to stay there. After working in a public relations firm and hating that, Michelle started her own company in 2014, thinking there had to be a better way to do things. She hired a business coach in the UK, flew across the world, and sat in a coffee shop for 8 days with him. She then came back, fired all her clients, and started over. Today, she has done just over a million dollars in core sales and has been on 100 podcasts.

Michelle believes that the core value perspective of building genuine relationships with people online is no different from building them offline. She relates to Zach on how Instagram follower growth can be slow and painful. She shares that, even after starting in 2015, she still doesn't even have 10k followers because her goal is genuine followers. Michelle emphasized the importance of the three Cs: creating connection, conversation, and conversion. These are the links in the chain, and if one is taken out, it doesn't work. She suggested actively going out and commenting, DMing, and engaging in conversations with people on Instagram. Virtual assistants can be hired to do outreach, but it's not genuine. Michelle says you should be waking up to 20 conversations every day otherwise you’re doing it wrong. Using a tracker in a Google sheet, she suggested using specific hashtags, geotags, and interacting with 45 comments and 20 story replies a day.

Michelle emphasized the importance of getting personal and using lifestyle photos, rather than branded photoshoot photos as marketing content. She believes storytelling is crucial and being able to sell what you can do for others. However, she also acknowledged the importance of grit and being relatable in marketing content. People don't want to see the perfect picture; they want relatable grit. Michelle now has nine employees, and her goal for next year is to have an eight-hour workweek. She believes family is essential, and will never apologize for spending too much time with her family. She believes it comes down to systems and processes and execution.

Lead generation and monetization are different, and Michelle suggests bringing qualified leads into the funnel. She emphasized the need to have conversations and engage on Instagram, posting in stories and feeds every day. Michelle's strategy is designed to stay top of mind and help people feel connected to her. She engages in 45 comments and 20 story replies every day, and when people message her, she replies. Michelle also re-engages with warm conversations when she has an event coming up, going from a cold to a warm lead. Genuine conversations are better than any ad, and she suggested having at least two back-and-forth conversations before inviting someone to check something out. She emphasized the importance of talking about them, talking about you, and then talking about them again.

In the end, Michelle believes that if she had to start over from scratch with no resources, her advice to herself would be not to give herself an out. She would delete her resume, get off LinkedIn, commit to being an entrepreneur, and go all in without an escape plan. Michelle believes in the power of certainty and confidence and suggests that it's the key to success.

What You’ll Learn:

• What the 3 C’s to success are.

• What it means to have grit and why you need it.

• The difference between lead generation and monetization.

• What the them-you-them method is and why it works.

Favorite Quote:

“I don’t know what it looks like to not succeed, so I have to figure this out.” -Michelle Berman

Connect with Michelle:

Instagram

Facebook

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