Young and Profiting with Hala Taha - Jasmine Star: Stand Out On Social | E130

Episode Date: September 6, 2021

Step up your social media game! In this episode, we are talking with Jasmine Star, photographer, social media guru, and podcast host. Jasmine is a photographer and business strategist who empowers entrepreneurs to build a brand, market it on social media, and create a life they love.   Jasmine had the courage to drop out of law school to chase her dream of becoming a professional photographer with absolutely no experience in the field. While building a wildly successful wedding photography business, Jasmine honed impeccable social media skills and now runs multiple 7-figure businesses called Social Curator teaching entrepreneurs and creatives how to use Social Media to grow their brands. In today’s episode, we discuss Jasmine’s upbringing, her beginnings in photography, and how she began her social media journey. We’ll also talk about Jasmine’s top social media strategies, how to create a niche market, and her best hashtag and copywriting tips. If you’re a social media manager or business owner looking to level up your social strategy, this is an episode you won’t want to miss! Sponsored by -    This episode was live-streamed on LinkedIn through Restream. Join Restream and get 20% off lifetime discount https://try.restream.io/yap/   Gusto. Get three months free when you run your first payroll at gusto.com/YAP Social Media:  Follow YAP on IG: www.instagram.com/youngandprofiting Reach out to Hala directly at [e-mail] Follow Hala on Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/htaha/ Follow Hala on Instagram: www.instagram.com/yapwithhala Follow Hala on Clubhouse: @halataha Check out our website to meet the team, view show notes and transcripts: www.youngandprofiting.com     Timestamps:   01:10 - How Jasmine’s Upbringing Shaped Her 03:19 - How Being a Twin Has Affected Jasmine 05:11 - Jasmine’s Journey with Law School 09:52 - Why Jasmine Shifted to Photography 15:43 - How Jasmine’s Began Her Social Media Journey 19:58 - The Logic of Creating a Niche Market 24:29 - All About Hashtags 28:17 - Top Tips for Social Media Copywriting  32:07 - Jasmine’s Approach to Social Media and Photography 35:45 - The Most Important Thing a Social Media Manager Should Do 37:17 - Where to Find Content When You’re Light on Material 38:24 - Top Tips For Batching Content 40:20 - Jasmine’s Opinion On Paid Instagram Growth Strategies 43:33 - How to Turbo Charge Your Account 49:36 - Jasmine’s Secret to Profiting in Life     Mentioned In The Episode:   Jasmine’s Website: https://jasminestar.com/ Jasmine’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jasminestar Social Curator: https://www.socialcurator.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode of YAP is sponsored in part by Shopify. Shopify simplifies selling online and in-person so you can focus on successfully growing your business. Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at Shopify.com slash profiting. You're listening to YAP, Young and Profiting Podcast, a place where you can listen, learn, and profit. Welcome to the show. I'm your host, Halla Taha, and on Young and Profiting

podcast, we investigate a new topic each week and interview some of the brightest minds in the world. My goal is to turn their wisdom into actionable advice that you can use in your everyday life, no matter your age, profession, or industry. There's no fluff on this podcast, and that's on purpose. I'm here to uncover value from my guests by doing the proper research and asking the right questions.

If you're new to the show, we've chatted with the likes of XFBI agents, real estate moguls, self-made billionaires, CEOs, and bestselling authors. Our subject matter ranges from enhancing productivity, had to gain influence, the art of entrepreneurship, and more. If you're smart and like to continually improve yourself, hit the subscribe button because you'll love it here at Young and Profiting Podcast. This began YAP, we're chatting with Jasmine Star, photographer, social media guru, business strategist, and podcast host.

Jasmine empowers entrepreneurs to build a brand, market it on social media, and create a life they love. Jasmine had the courage to drop out of law school to chase her dream of becoming a professional photographer with absolutely no experience in the field. While building a wildly successful wedding photography business, Jasmine honed impeccable social media skills. And now she runs a multi-seven-figure business called Social Curator, which teaches entrepreneurs and creatives how to use social media to grow their brands.

In today's episode, we discussed Jasmine's upbringing, her beginnings in photography, and how she started her social media journey. We'll also discover how to create a niche market and discuss her best hashtag and copywriting tips. If you're looking to step up your social strategy, this is an episode you should pay attention to. Hey everybody, welcome to a live episode of Young and Profiting Podcast. I am here with Jasmine Star.

Jasmine Star is a world famous podcaster. She's a social media guru. She's a blogger. She's a photographer. She is a woman of many different talents. And I can't wait to dig into all of this. Jasmine, I adore you and welcome to the show. Thank you so much.

I'm happy to be here. So Jasmine, the way that I love to start off these interviews is to find out more about your background because I feel like you're upbringing had to have impacted the way that you are today. You were so outspoken, so outgoing, so hard working, so knowledgeable. And I have a feeling that your immigrant background may have had a lot to do with it. So talk to us about being from an immigrant family growing up, what it was like for you growing up, and how you think that shaped you today. There's a few key factors that come into play

that I think bubble to the top of my mind. My father is an immigrant from Mexico, and my mom is from Puerto Rico. They met in East Los Angeles, and I'm the eldest of five children. I have a twin sister and all five of my mother's children were homeschooled and we were homeschooled simultaneously. So I think that that really shaped

the way that we showed up in the world. It fostered creativity. It gave us a lot of freedom. And at the same time, even though I was consistently testing behind the curve. So I didn't learn to read until I was 11 and a half years old. And for all intents and purposes, I think a lot of parents would be worried, but my mom was so free-flowing. testing behind the curve. So I didn't learn to read until I was 11 and a half years old. And for all intents and purposes, I think a lot of parents would be worried, but my mom

was so free-flowing and she's firmly believed that when it would hit me and when it would click, I would just be off the racist. And she was right. I am now an avid reader, I'm an avid writer, I am still pursuing creativity and finding ways to, number one, build businesses around creativity. I am the founder of social curator It is a social media subscription and so how did we go from we my husband and I our business partners How did I go from a girl from immigrant parents who was to consistently behind the curve to getting a full ride Academic scholarship to college and then a scholarship to law school So that was like a net shell version

of like what the upbringing looked like, but I think it adds color and context to why I'm so, I'm a huge advocate for people who have seemingly impossible situations to be faced with the possibilities. Regardless of what your background is, now the internet has been democratized. There are people like you who are creating

amazing content, teaching and helping other people, and now everything is at our fingertips. And this conversation really fosters the idea of what can we take with the little we have and then maximize it. Yeah, that's so interesting. I knew that you had a twin, but I kind of forgot about that. That's, I wonder how that kind of shaped who you are because you are so outgoing. And I wonder if it was because as a twin, you always had to kind of stand

out so that you wouldn't be kind of bucketed with your sister. Is that correct at all? Or how do you feel like being a twin has shaped your personality? So in two distinct ways, I most people would never guess it, but I am a, you know, on a scale of one to ten, I'm level 12 introvert. So people will, you know, take the outgoing side of me and say, oh, you must be extroverted. And I'm like, no, no, no, it's actually quite the opposite. I'm an outgoing introvert.

And I think that being a twin, it has given me the luxury who insert in circumstances where my sister is a lot more extroverted and she's more outspoken. And she's always been the center of the party. I was always the person to stand against the wall on the outside looking in. And I think that as a business owner that's really the party, I was always the person to stand against the wall on the outside looking in. And I think that as a business owner, that's really empowered me.

I actually, if nothing else, people would say, oh, well, Jasmine has all these awards for photography and entrepreneurship, and she has her own business, and whatever the case may be. But I'm thinking that my superpower isn't being a strong entrepreneur. My supervisor is watching people. I see patterns and I see trends, and I could see repeats and where the gaps will be and to start creating content and resources for those gaps. I think if anything else, nobody would actually say, oh, her superpower is pattern matching. And I would come out and say,

like, that 100% is a case. And I think it was shaped early on by being a twin. But also, what I realized that even though my sister was more outgoing, she knew more people. She was a center of the room. I don't think that my sister spoke up for herself enough. And she was so kind to so many people that I found myself in a way like not pushing people out of the way, but pushing doubts out of the way and pushing fear out of the way, and telling my sister, no, you're going to go and do this, and this is what you're going to speak to, go off and do that thing. And now I realize that I do the same now with business owners. Like I push like fear and doubt people like, no, no, no, you're enough, get out there

and go out and do it. And so I think that those two things have really shaped the way I show up. I love that. So previously you alluded to the fact that you got a full-ride scholarship to you as CLA for law school, which for somebody like yourself, I know you were really into academics. You probably worked really, really hard for that. So talk to us about what your law school journey was like because you ended up

dropping out. Talk to us about that pivotal moment school journey was like because you ended up dropping out, talk to us about that pivotal moment in your life and why you had to make that tough decision. Well, I think it's important. I did end up getting a law school scholarship to UCLA and I was also given scholarships to UC Berkeley and other top 10 law schools and it comes on the back of having graduated with straighties from college. But when people hear that, I want to be very clear and let people know that I was never at all in any way she performed the smartest person in the room. I was simply the person who continued to work hard. I would go to math labs when I didn't understand math and I would be writing my final term paper

two weeks before it was due so that I can give it to the professor or a professor's assistant to read over the paper and give me feedback. And so I think I've taken those principles and used them at first in law school. And I thought, I'm a first generation, let the first generation to go to college and first generation to go to postgraduate school. And so the entire family and where I lived, which is like the body, like this is like brown folks

where people are trash collectors and chefs, and they are janitors. And so to see one of the kids go and do something and academia, I felt almost responsible in a way to really make people proud and not quit. And in my mind, when I knew that law school wasn't a right fit for me, I'm like, well, this is what I have to do, this is where I'm at,

but it was in my first year of law school, when my mom had a relapse the brain cancer, and it really. This is where I'm at. But it was in my first year of law school. My mom had a relapse, the brain cancer. And it really shifted the way that I saw things. My mom was 50 years old and I was 25. And I realized that I didn't want to live the next half of my life, beholden to a career I wasn't passionate about. Now I was simply doing because I thought

it was the right thing to do. And so I think that her life, and I'm really happy to say that she is healthy and she's here with us But at the time her battle was eating half years and the doctors had said her time has come and I think that you know Anytime you realize that her life is short you all of a sudden become very introspective and you do like a checklist Like am I doing the thing that I want to do anything that had again a big pivotal shift in my life and how I approach business Wow, I didn't realize that we we had that in common I didn't realize that we had that in common.

I didn't realize that it was your mother's potential of her losing her life that kind of motivated you to embark on your own entrepreneurship journey. I had something very similar. My dad got COVID last March. He ended up passing away in May, and it was really tough, but it gave me the courage to start my own marketing agency. And in one year, we went from 10 volunteers to 63 employees and my marketing agency is blowing up. And it's

always incredible. Incredible. Thank you. When he was in the hospital, I was like, you know, what? I don't want to work at Disney anymore. I don't want to be a corporate slave. I want to do my own thing. And so I'm with you that sometimes the most difficult moments inspire you to do the most beautiful things in your life. So I love that. I want you to get a second though. Yeah. Okay. Like I just want to like I want to honor your dad. Like I think that oftentimes, Bernabreown says that we should be talking about things from a wound and not a cut. And I think that you know, sometimes has passed since your father's passing and it feels very powerful for you to speak about the transformative effect of his legacy

and not dwell just in the actual loss of your dad. So I just want to honor them and say, thank you for continuing to show up and still moving forward and creating content for other people. So thank you. Of course, Jasmine, thank you. You're such a sweetheart.

Okay, so let's talk about how you ended up becoming a photographer because you are a world famous photographer. You are highly regarded in this space. I believe you got your start in wedding photography, but when you first had the idea for your business, you didn't know to camera. You just had a dream. And I think that a lot of people get scared to try something new. And a lot of people believe that they're too old to try something new. And then they also feel like the gap between the skills that they need are too far.

And they give up way too early. They don't realize that you can actually learn a skill quite quickly if you focus on it. So talk to us about you initially wanting to be a photographer and then how you got the courage to bridge that skill gap. So like you mentioned, I made this big declaration. I told my husband asked me, if you can do one thing for the rest of your life and be happy, what would it be?

And I said, I want to become a photographer. And we both realized I didn't have a camera. And he had this whole mantra, like going out and doing something new, if he said, I rather see you fail at something you love and succeed at something you hate because he knew I hated being a mosque. So he's like, let's take one year and let's just try it. Like you can go back and get your scholarships,

but why not live your life having said I tried it and I failed. And so we said, okay, one year. And that Christmas, Christmas 2005, I opened a camera. Now this is the type of camera I'm not gonna get geeking out on gear, but this is like the kind of camera that you can get from like Best Buy. It's what they call a pro-sumer camera.

It was even like a professional camera, but to me it was like the world. It was like a passport. And so I went to Google and I just started reading about what photographers did and how they learned. And I started teaching myself how to become a photographer. And I would take my camera every single day. My camera was glued to my hand. And when I first started, I was terrible.

In my mind, I was like, oh yeah, I could take great photos. And then all of a sudden, no practicality came, I was slapped up side the face, being like, you're not very good. And I think that a lot of times whenever we start anything new, we all face that. Like when you started your digital marketing agency, you had to kind of realize, oh, I have to re-actor,

re-strategize because I'm not, I have to change my systems to get the different results. And I think that along the way, people would stop. People who are with starting to say, I wouldn't be a photographer too, and it's great, let's get together and let's learn. And then over the years, people started falling away, and I started realizing that along our journey to getting where we want, there are going to be people who join and decide. Nothing happens to anybody. People decide this is where I quit. And this has become like a big shift

because it wasn't just me starting photography business. I then started doing business consulting. And from business consulting on the back of being a creative and teaching other creatives, I started consulting with medium-sized businesses on how to use social media. And then I realized it wasn't scalable. And I wanted to work with the people

who felt and looked like me. People who had the odd-sect against them and for all intents and purposes should not succeed. I said, I want to be of the people. I want to speak to small and medium-sized business owners to say, here are the tools, no go and succeed. And so here we go, starting a tech business. Social Curator is an entirely own tech stack.

I am now a official tech founder and I will be the first to say, I have no idea what I'm doing. And just like how it was 13 years ago, 14 years ago when I picked up a camera and I was like, wow, I'm terrible. I want now to be public and be open about the idea that I am the worst tech CEO that I will ever be in my career. But this time next year, I'm going to get better. And this time in two years, I'm going to be even better because I refuse to quit, not because I'm smart, brilliant, kind, funny, witty, popular, not at all. I just decide I'm not going to quit. And that's what I want people to hold on to.

Oh my gosh, that is super, super powerful. I love the fact that you said that you guys decided you were going to try it for a year because I feel like that gave you enough pressure to make it happen in a year where you're getting enough progress where you wouldn't have to quit, but it also gave you flexibility to realize this isn't the end of the road and to not get overwhelmed. So I feel like that's a great tip. And also along the way is like oftentimes we put this pressure, Elizabeth Gilbert talks about monetizing your passion is like just because I was passionate about photography,

I didn't want to put so much pressure to immediately monetize, because when you say, I'm gonna become a baker or a videographer or a graphic designer, and then you say, I need money. Now, all of a sudden, the way that you make decisions becomes money driven instead of education, pursuing curiosity, passion. And so the way that I decided to approach it was,

I still had a job as I was trying to become a photographer. So I didn't feel like I had to immediately monetize and it was when I built up the craft. And it was when I understand how a business worked that I was then able to save enough money, the same amount of money that I would have front made from the remainder of the year that I worked at a job. I said, I've already saved that from my photography gigs. Now, I wasn't making very much. It's making $200, $300 at a time, but I would put it away and put it away. Saved enough for me to then be able to pursue my creative

endeavors without the pressure of finding national considerations because I had done the saving me the strategic decision to then go and pursue it professionally. Oh, gosh. We have so much in common. I didn't realize how much we have in common. I started young and profiting as a side hustle.

I worked at Hewlett-Packard in Marketing and then Disney. And I even started my agency as a side hustle. I waited six months, grew it to 35 employees, and then quit my job. I waited until I could pay myself the same amount of money that Disney could pay me before I quit. Because to your point, it's way too risky, I think, to just start from nothing and give yourself all that pressure. When you have time to build your craft and build your following and really get your idea

down, that's when I think you'll become really, really successful, not just jumping in with no plan or I feel like I love the conversation that we're having right now because so few people are actually celebrating the side hustle. Oftentimes it's like, oh, I'm like a weekend warrior. This is my side hustle. It's just a thing. Why not just be so dang proud? That you are doing something that very few people

have the courage to do. So instead of acting as if it's like, oh, wait, we act as it's a kite. It's going to carry us to where we want to go next. So three chairs, who are in the chat right now? Who here has a side hustle? Like let's be on the other side. And we proud of it. We want to shout out the side hustles. So let us know what it is you do.

Yeah, 100%. If you guys have a side hustle, let us know. Put it in the chat. If you have a question for me in Jasmine, put it in the chat, but I have a million questions for you, Jasmine, anyway, because you pivoted into social media. Or you might have done it at the same time. I'd love to understand like how you ended up building your expertise in social media because it seems like you're very good at learning things on your own. You learned how to become a photographer

and I'm guessing that nobody coached you to be good at social media and you figured it out. So I wanna hear about that. So I think this goes to be said for anyone. The goal of every time I have an opportunity to host a live chat or be on a podcast, I want people to hear my story and say, if that hot mess can do it, then I can.

I want to stand in front of people and just say, I'm an extraordinarily average person with an extraordinary desire to do something great. And I think that I simply take the tools that I have. I am not particularly smart, I am not particularly technical. So if I know that, I know that specifically, as we harness that conversation, previous conversation around being homeschooled, is like that level of creativity,

I learn by doing. And so I picked up a camera and I was terrible. And then I continued to pick up the camera until I became less and less Terrible and that was the exact same thing with social media people say oh Jasmine's a social media guru and I'm like actually I'm not I'm just a girl who does social media and I'm just a girl who does social media Consistently that's it my big claim to fame is like well if that girl's nothing else, but consistent right I don't have to have viral Reels again and again and again for people to take me seriously. So how then does one learn social media by doing?

Because so often I feel like I'm going to call people out right now, but so often we consume about the how of social media. And without ever doing it, you will never know its power and how to harness it. So how did I begin my journey with social media? I feel like social media came to me. So when I started my business, maybe people feel the same way. I had no money.

I had no education for the thing I wanted to do. I had no connections. I was underfunded, underconnected, undereducated, all the unders. So if I then knew that, my objective would be to take what I had, that was for free. And at the time, as I was building my business, this crazy thing called Twitter and Facebook came around.

And so I was like, nobody cares about the pizza I'm eating for lunch. Nobody cares about my dog. And then lo and behold, when I started testing it, I realized people care about the pizza, people care about the dog. And I started realizing that when you can weave your personal story into your brand narrative, people become connected to the origin of the business and they become advocates for it. And so all I began doing was creating social media content. And then all of a sudden, I hit an inflection point because around 2010, 2011, Instagram hit the scene.

And I started realizing that specifically with this brand new platform that was coming out, that my content should be less about me and more about what my business does for my followers. And it was around 2015 that I started seeing a complete shift in the followers I was attracting because there were followers who were turning into customers and then they started sharing my work. They started realizing that they were sharing my work because they themselves derived value from it. So anybody who hears this and say, okay, but what's my takeaway?

The takeaway was that you can learn anything you want to learn if you so choose. And then once you decide to embrace the sock, do it again and again and again, you will be able to pivot and innovate from there. So I started off on Twitter, moved to Facebook, which I'm still active on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, at the time when Snapchat came around, and not so active on it. But every time a platform came around, TikTok, Pinterest, all of these platforms linked in to starting a podcast,

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This is Possibility powered by Shopify. I 100% agree. I feel like experimentation and throwing stuff out, seeing what your audience like or doesn't like, leaning into what's working more and more, paying attention to your analytics. I think all of that is key. And I think it's important to learn from other people, but do it yourself.

That's the best way to actually learn and gain something from it and become an expert yourself on some of these platforms. So I do want to talk about niching your audience and creating a niche market because you're really known for doing that. So talk just about the importance of having a niche market because you're really known for doing that. So talk just about the importance of having a niche market because when I got my MBA and one of the things that some of my MBA teachers taught and then also on Shark Tank and things like that, they always talk about you want to make sure that you're able to sell to a broad market because you want as many people as possible to know about your product. So help us understand the logic of creating a niche market and how you do that and what the advantages

are compared to having more of a broad market. The sharks on Shark Tank are right. You do want mass market appeal, but I have come to believe and know, this is where I'm going to put a stake in the ground. It's very difficult to get mass market appeal without first and foremost carving and defining your niche. Because then what you can do is you want to think about your niche being the center point of a target. And the minute you fill in that center point, and the minute you speak to that audience so clearly,

you can then add concentric circles around that main point. So let's first of all, almost get tactical for somebody like Katherine. Well, what do I do if I have a small audience? Number one, I would love for you more than anything to give, give, give, give, and give. Take the pressure off you creating the most profound content because at the end of the day, very few people know that your account exists. Not because you're not amazing, not because your product or service isn't unrivaled,

and not because you aren't anything but awesome. It is simply because they don't know you're there. In order to get people to your account, you should, number one, be giving comments more than four words. You should be liking photos of people who you think would be dream customers, and you must be responding to direct messages every single day. If you say judgment responding to direct messages every single day.

If you say, Jasmine, I'm not getting direct messages. Great, go to accounts where you can follow stories. And if you have, if you can vote on something, vote on something. And if you can respond to a story, respond to a story. We want to create a little tiny kingdom that is your business. And your kingdom is up on a hill.

And then there's the villagers down below. How do people know that your kingdom is on the hill? You have to go down into the village, tell everybody, hey, there's a kingdom up there. And how you do that is by giving comments, liking photos, sending DMs so people become aware. So when we go back to niching down, this makes creating content so much easier. If you feel frustrated, if you feel overwhelmed, if you feel like creating content is taking so much time, let's feel frustrated, if you feel overwhelmed, if you feel like creating tough content, it's taking so much time. Let's narrow it down to not just a niche. I'm actually gonna upload this.

I'm gonna say create content for one person. Who is your dream customer? What do they want? What do they need? What solutions are they looking for? And when you just think about that one person and you create content and you speak to that one person, I know it's natural for you to think,

well, if I create content for one person, well, then nobody else is gonna buy. It's actually quite the opposite. Studies have shown and business owners will tell you that when you speak to the 34-year-old farmer who wears flannel and likes hard hats and listens to country music and drinks bud wiser. Like, you create content for that person.

It's very different than creating content for the 56-year-old Manhattan woman with four children who vacations in the Hamptons. When you create content for those two separate people, it will resonate differently. So the big question is, do you know who your dream customer is? Because when you build that out, your content becomes entirely different,

and then you get to, we'll be back to Catherine's question, give engagement to who you think your dream customers are. That is how you scale. I couldn't agree more. I feel like these are such great strategies. It seems like common sense, but people don't do it enough. I think the other key to this community engagement piece that you're talking about is that it signals

to the algorithm that this is your community, that people should see your content. I know that for a fact on LinkedIn, for example, when you DM and comment on other people stuff, they start to see your stuff more in their feed. So that's really important. You can't just post content up and then not engage with people

who may want to see your content. That's a really, really smart tip there. And so I love that. Let's talk about hashtags, because I know you have a strong perspective about the right way and the wrong way to use them. Talk to us about that. Well, you know, hashtags, it's like people believe that hashtags is like a silver bullet.

People believe that hashtags is like that diet pill that's going to give you a six bag before you go on summer break. No, hashtags are for discoverability, not engagement. When people say, well, what are the ones that work? And I'm like, no, no, no, no. The question becomes, which ones do you want to work for? They don't work for you. Your content must be serving the hashtag perfectly.

Which is why when people use the same 30 hashtags, it becomes less and less effective, not because your content isn't great. It's because the content isn't pertinent to the hashtags that you're using. So I like to describe hashtags as a neon sign that will attract particular people to look at your neon sign.

So if you and I were to walk into a crowded subway in New York City and you were wearing a neon sign that said hashtag NFL football and I wore a neon sign that said, hashtag NFL football, an eye wore a neon sign that said hashtag NFL football. And then you set next to a person and you started talking about the Super Bowl and all of the stats and I set next to a person and started talking about nail polish.

The neon sign in my conversation, and the conversation here in this analogy, is your caption, doesn't match. Now, if you, and if your conversation, aka caption is talking about the Super Bowl and statistics and then your visuals, maybe you're wearing like a New York jet jersey. That visual is conveying, now this neon sign matches the visual, matches the conversation. I have a higher likelihood to engage, but first you were discovered, everything checked off. Now that discoverability could lead to engagement. But if I go in and I'm wearing a neon sign that says hashtag NFL football and I'm talking about nail polish and I'm wearing

a bright red dress and a fedora, people are like, that doesn't make, or actually how about this? How about I wear the NFL neon hashtag sign and I am talking about nail polish and I'm wearing a bikini. God knows I will not wear a bikini But if I was what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna track attention But I wouldn't if I was on the hashtag looking for any football I wouldn't get the engagement that I so desired Which is why it's so important to be thoughtful about the hashtags you're using but to break it down in specific categories using hashtags for less than 500,000, I think is gonna be better for you.

You don't need to use a hashtag with 5 million posts, it's gonna be so much harder to get discovered. We like recommending using geographic hashtags, location-based hashtags, photo-related hashtags, topic hashtags, and perhaps industry hashtags. So having that appropriate mix for what is actually in the photo, I think is going to become a game changer. Yeah, and I think even like technically it makes sense because if you create a post and

you have hashtags that are unrelated to your post, you're attracting all these people who may see your post, but they're not going to engage. Then your engagement rate is going to tank and nobody's going to see your content because you're putting out a whole big net and Then nobody likes your content and so Instagram or whatever platform is going to say I don't want to show that content because nobody's engaging on it So that is a way that people definitely shoot themselves in the foot So let's talk about captions You just brought up captions copywriting is for me as a marketing agency owner one of the most

is for me as a marketing agency owner, one of the most expensive things to hire for, and the hardest thing to train for. Copywriting is an art that I feel like is so undervalued, and I think is one of the keys to be successful in any aspect of your life. So talk to us about your top tips for copywriting for social media. I love this question because I can geek out about this.

So I firmly believe that your visuals will get you popular and your captions will get you profitable. And I have always defined myself as, I fully applaud influencers. I love what they do. I think it's amazing and beautiful. I don't aspire to be an influencer. And the people that I speak to really want

to have a small group of people have a profound effect on their business It goes back to what Dale Carnegie said your business will go farther being genuinely interested in two other people Then trying to get 200 people interested in you So I have firmly believed that when you are writing captions number one for that one dream customer When you can write clearly to his or her desires one dream customer. When you can write clearly to his or her desires, his or her pressure points, and speak clearly to the solution that your business provides as a value to them, game over. Will that post go viral? Will it be your purpose? On good reads? Will it be your purpose? On like hopping to post maybe? Maybe not, but that's not your concern. So how then do we become strategic

when it comes to writing captions? Inside of social curator, we created the HIC formula. This is a full proofway to drive engagements. HIC is an acronym for H hook, I Insights, and C called the action. Now what we often see, people pour out their hearts and write this powerful caption, and then nobody responds and people say, why are people responding? And when I read the caption, I'm like, oh, you didn't ask for them to respond. You didn't tell them what you wanted to do. So we want to do specifically when it comes to Instagram,

they've truncated your caption, just so you can see to the first two lines. It's about 120 characters. So we want to make sure that our hook at the beginning of the caption is going to stop somebody's scroll and have them click on the read more. So every time somebody clicks on the read more, it is an indication to the elder than that they're interested in your content, even if they do not like and they do not comment.

My objective is to inch you closer to pointing to the elder than that my content is something you want to read. So how then do you hook somebody? Well, since we're creating this for LinkedIn, and I was creating a post on LinkedIn, I would say calling all, and then I'm going to create an industry specific title, calling all photographers, if I was a brand photographer or educator, calling all social media managers. What I'm going to do is, I'm going to segment my audience so that their intent has come up because that particular post is tailored towards them. Or I could say,

can I share a juicy secret? Oh, okay, that's a hook. You wanna click on the read more. What we're gonna do is we're gonna hook and then reel them in. And then what we do with the I for insights, we're gonna share two to three insights that build the no like and trust factor. Now, these insights aren't just I like Reese's pieces and I like going to the movies. They're going to be about what your business does

for your followers, but it's going to personalize your approach. So you would absolutely talk about your digital marketing agency and your two to three insights is how you have an onboarding call. You wanna make sure it's going to personalize your approach. So you would absolutely talk about your digital marketing agency and your two to three insights is how you have an onboarding call. You want to make sure it's tailored for them and you want to remove the stress. Those are three insights. Then you get to the C which is called action. What do you want those people to do?

Respond with a quiz, respond with the affirmative, ask a question, ask for suggestions. Have them go over and sign it for a newsletter, sign up for your website, whatever it is, you want your call to action to be very clear. What do you think so that then you can give people an easy way to engage? Oftentimes people aren't engaging because they don't know how. You ask a question, they will respond. Yes, I totally agree. So that's HIC hook in site call to action. Did I get that right?

That's right. I love it now. Look at this. Sorry, sorry, I love it. Okay, one last question on this social media topic before we get to our little break. And that's about photography because you have a photography background and I noticed that some of your services in your social curator business is really differentiated from others

like photography and stylist services. And I thought that was really unique. So I wanted to understand what is your approach with photography and social media? Because I think a lot of people miss that. So we know that social media specifically if we're talking about visually driven platforms like Instagram is that in order to get

some of these attention, the visual piece actually matters. But what I really want to like dissuade from, and this is different from what I said back in 2016 and 2015. I used to tell people that your Instagram feed should feel like you were walking through a museum. Somebody understood your point of view. It should feel like they were flipping through a magazine because you were the editor.

And at the time I stand by, that's what Instagram used to be. But it has since been the complete counter opposite to that. Nobody's gonna go to your feed now and expect it to be a museum or a magazine. Oftentimes, you become so paralyzed, oh, that the feed isn't pretty anymore. And I'm like, it doesn't matter. In fact, there's been a boomerang effect.

People want raw authenticity, vulnerability, and professionalism, but not professional. In such a curated way that all of a sudden, people don't understand. So on the inside of Social Curator every month it's a subscription. We give social media tools and resources. So I do group coaching. We have an action plan. So this one's action plan is going to be how to show up on reels and stories and batch them consistently. And then we have a

challenge around that to keep us accountable. But how then do we actually do this? Well, we provide scripts. We provide photos. If you want like a cover photo, you can go into a gallery of 4,000 images and search, we provide photos, if you want like a cover photo, you can go into a gallery of 4,000 images and search for an image that will move you forward. So we're on LinkedIn. I believe everybody should have a visually stunning header on LinkedIn. If you do not, you are just losing an opportunity to really showcase what it is you are, who you are and what it is that you do. So along those lines, it's about connecting the visuals, but actually having a strategy, so you don't feel like you're spending your wills waste your time. This episode of Yap is sponsored by Restream. Are you somebody who is wanting to start a podcast but you don't know where to start?

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Gusto really cares about small business owners. They have a support team that's super attentive and helpful, and since money can be tight right now, you can even get 3 months free once you run your first payroll. Just go to gusto.com slash app and start setting up your business today. You'll see what I mean when I say it's really easy. Again, that's three months of free payroll at gusto.com slash YAP. Awesome. We are back. Okay, let's see what questions we have going on here. We've got a lot of people saying positive things. I'm going to scroll through here

to get some questions. Okay, from Elizabeth. What is the most important thing a social media manager should be doing? Oh, Elizabeth, I'm not sure you're gonna like my answer, but I'm gonna say it anyway. The most important thing a social media manager could and should be doing is creating content for themselves. It's very often commonly held that a cobbler's children don't have shoes.

So back in the day, cobblers are people who made shoes and their children, it was said because they were so busy with their customers that their children went barefoot. How often is a social media manager? Are you so busy creating content for other people that you neglected for yourself and you in the long term are doing yourself a disservice? Because I've always maintained and I firmly believe that people don't know what they want until they see it. And so as a social media manager, if you want your clients to be creating reels, you must be creating reels. You must be able to have pertinent, oh, I just used the word pertinent because somebody said the word pertinent.

I was like, I'm fancy now. You must have pertinent analytical advice and feedback as to you being a practitioner, seeing what works and then serve up to your clients a short path to getting the success that they want. So first thing, the most important thing, create your own content. Mm, I love that.

I think that is so true. You've got to build your personal brand because if you ever want to go it on your own, you'll at least stuck at ground zero. If you build that up while you're working for somebody else when you're ready to do your own thing, you've got your built-in audience ready to buy from you right there.

So I think that is excellent advice. I'm just trying to find some other great questions. Whoa, this is interesting. Where do you find content when you're light on material? Oh, I mean, well, like shameless plug. I would go to social curator. Like we built social curator for that business owner who feels like I just need to be told what it is to do and then streamline it on my own. So you have captions that you fill in the blanks for. You have daily action plans where you can mark off and keep track of what you're doing. And now people who are just like,

no, I don't wanna be so too, no problem. If you are feeling light on content, you can go to the Discover tab on Instagram or go to TikTok and just start looking at content and ask yourself, how can I make this for my industry? Click on what's trending. Use a trending song, see what other people are doing, and say, oh, well, this person did it as an athlete,

and this person did it as a chef, and this person did it as a photographer, and I, myself, a dog walker, how can they make this trend for dog walkers? And all of a sudden, game over, you can start contextualizing. It's about contextualizing, and recolonizing for your industry,

that your creative juices start going. And we have one more question from Katherine who's just rocking with the amazing questions here. I was gonna ask you this anyway. So what are your top tips for batching content? So I am producing three to four reels a week, and I'm posting also on TikTok in the scene frequency, and what I try to do is batch all of the content two days out of the month. And so I'll set aside five hours every other Friday, and what is so important

is to have a plan going in. I know the reels that I want to create. I also write down the copy for the real. So it's like instead of is wasting time, like, oh, what are my three tips for this real? So everything's laid out including, am I going to do an alpha change? Because if I need to do an alpha change, I need to have a total count for the outfits that I need for that specific time. And so I go in and I have a document that, real I want to create, how long I think it's going to take me to create it What props that I need and the copy for that real sit down create them in real time Save them as drafts or just save to the video and then upload when I'm ready. Yeah, I have a question Are you doing this by yourself? Are you having somebody film you?

Are you just have like a stand and you just do it all by yourself? It's a mix. It depends on what I'm doing for. Now, I often think that when I go into a big promotional period, and I know I'm going to be creating two to three times the amount of content that I'm normally doing, it's much better and much easier to work with a team, but there are times where I create a real entirely on my own. I love that. So, let's talk about Instagram growth strategies,

because there's lots of debate about this topic. Paid celebrity shoutouts, buying meme pages and then converting them for your business, Instagram engagement pods, there's lots of ways to kind of hack and grow your following really quickly. So how do you feel about these strategies as somebody who definitely I think

strives for organic growth? How do you feel about these other strategies that people do to quickly grow their Instagram? I mean, I'm all out to burn half this audience. Like I'm gonna say, I like to rub into this point, but anymore, I despise them. I hate them. You know, I mean, I think that I hate them the same way

a personal fitness trainer hates diet pills. I hate them the way that a doctor would hate steroids. It's like when you're taking steroids, you look really great, but that means you have to be on steroids for the rest of your life and then your body becomes immune to them. I do not believe that a paid shout out is worth it because you don't even know how much of that target audience is going to be your dream customer and how many of them are going to follow and what actually does that endorsement look like? And how is it a shout out on the story?

Great, you have 24 hours about 2% to 3% of that person's following who may or may not click on your profile after. So it's on average 2% to 3% of your followers are going to see a story within a 24-hour time period. If then that became the case, how many of the 2% to 3% would actually click on the shout out to get over to your page? How many of them who go to your page will actually like and follow? And then how many of the people who like and follow will actually become a customer?

There's so many fiery hoops to jump through that I could think of a far better investment of you spending your money for that shout out. As far as converting accounts from like a meme account or an inspirational account into your own, it takes a lot of work and it's a gamble. And so I just think to myself, if I'm gonna take a gamble on growth of a meme page or growth from my own, I'd rather gamble on my own page because yes, both of them are a gamble.

As far as engagement pods, I just think it's a little bit, I think it's a little bit unknowing. I think it's a little optimistic for a group of people to always comment on each other's accounts and then think that the algorithm is not going to measure that it's the same four or five people commenting on the same accounts again and again and again. And I think that people are wise enough to know that it's the same four people that you always see. And I often see that there's a dismantling of engagement pods over time because not everybody is posting with the same consistency. And not everybody is as dedicated and a comment that happens within the first,

let's say six hours is very different than a comment that happens two days later. If somebody from the engagement pod was like, I went offline, now I went back. It's not, it doesn't have as much credence. So you have some people carrying the weight of the engaging because other people are doing most of the comments, most of the content creation and all of a sudden there's a equity that exists and there's resentment and the engagement pod doesn't work. And I'm like, y'all, I just waste some time and energy. Just create content for your dream customer and that customer will comment over time.

Period the end. And I know that people say, well, that works for you. No, no, no, I was the person who heard crickets forever. I was the person who consistently went live every single week on Instagram to an audience of one ish because somebody would not stay the entire time. I am the person who did the thing that I want people to do and I improve that it works without being the best brightest the smartest for richest.

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Yeah, I think people get scared because they feel like oh, Instagram doesn't have any more organic reach. I post something on it, it goes straight to the bottom of the feed as soon as I post it up. How about somebody who has a page, they've been doing it for a while, and they just feel like it's stagnant. It's not working.

What's your top tip to turbo charge and get them out of Instagram jail in terms of their engagement? Well, first and foremost, it's to accept the reality of the truth that the algorithm is not a boogie man and the algorithm is not out to get anybody. If you want to look at it this way, the algorithm is the best friend who says your white shorts are too tight and you have spinach and your teeth. That's what the algorithm is. The algorithm will tell you, hey, your content sucked. And it's nobody's fault except for you to understand what do your followers want to see.

And if you're like Jasmine, I don't know. Then what I want you to do is I want you to look at your last 30 posts. I want you to geek out with me. If you are really dedicated to getting out of a rut, look at your last 30 post and write down how many comments and how many likes you got and if any chance you could see how many people saved it. Now of the 30 posts, whatever three posts rise to the top, do this post all over again. Not the exact same caption, but if it was a photo of you jumping into a lake, get on a bathing suit, go jump on the lake,

and that caption was about freedom in your business, write another caption about freedom in your business. If another one was you and your dog and talk about your workout routine, find another way to shoot you and your dog your workout routine and talk about how working out empowers you to become a better business owner. If it's you eating a scoop of chocolate ice cream,

talk about finding another way to get a scoop of chocolate ice cream, share your favorite recipe and talk about how chocolate ice cream reminds you of your grandfather, who is the, who is the beginning of your business street. Find a way to hack what you've already done without sitting in the perpetual state of unknowing. Try those, see what happens if you got similar results, do it again. That's it. That's it. I think that's great advice. In your experience, would you say that it's easier to kind of resurrect a dead or poor engagement account than start from scratch? Like if you had a page, let's say you have 2,000 followers, you're not really active, it's kind of a dead account. Are you better off starting from scratch or trying to resurrect that account? I love this question we're going to totally get out. My answer is different in two situations. If that account, like let's just say you sell hair pieces and you had an account that

kind of went stagnant and you haven't used it for a while and you want to revive that account to continuously sell hair pieces, you're better off with that account than starting from scratch. If you had an account for selling hair pieces that went stagnant and now you want to sell down food, do not revive that account because the audiences aren't there. Now, if we're talking to that mean audience of people who are selling hair scrunchies, or whatever case may be, I would just get down and dirty. I would spend as much time every single day sending a direct message to as many of those followers as I could. And I am not selling, I am not pitching, I'm just saying,

hey, I'm reviving this account, I just want to say thanks for sticking around with me. What kind of content do you want to see? Anything that's going to engage them back in DMs because anytime somebody sends you a DM, anytime somebody votes or uses a slider on a story, it's indicating to the algorithm that they're interested. It is by no way, shape or reason why when you DM somebody, their stories show up earlier in your feet, that their recent posts are showing back in your feet. Why? It's indicating to the algorithm that that person is interested and you guys have a connection that's a hundred percent what I would do to just get real down and dirty and revive a page. I love that advice. Okay, so I am the podcast princess and you in my opinion you are the Instagram princess. So I'm going to be a little selfish because I don't have reels. I don't have access to reels. So I'd love to hear your, like, I don't know if I'm shadow band is shadow banding actually

a thing I've heard. It's fake. It's not fake. I'd love your perspective on somebody who doesn't have a key feature. I mean, everybody talks about reels are the way to grow on Instagram and I don't have it. So any advice there? Have you heard of this before?

I've definitely heard of certain accounts not getting reels. I don't have a reason or even know why. Now I do know that certain areas of the world don't have reels for governmental considerations. So there's that. Now, have you tried switching over to like a creator account? Yeah, I've tried switching over to creator.

I've tried shutting every, like kicking all my team out and closing it out and everybody deleting their apps for 48 hours. I've tried shutting every, like kicking all my team out and closing it out and everybody deleting their apps for 48 hours. I've tried all these different things, but I seem to never. Divas business, diva business account. I don't know. I think my producer is saying yes. Oh, so you, so you have a business account? Yes.

So what I've seen a lot of with business account is that you can do a real, but you're very limited on the music that you can use. But if you have a business account, it shouldn't matter that so many people are getting into your account because it's denoted as a business account. It's very similar to a Facebook page. There's multiple people,

but I have a personal account on Instagram and I don't want anybody going to that because I do think it would be flagged. Again, this is pure speculation. This is me wearing a tinfoil hat. Nobody's ever told me this. So you're the only person who goes onto Instagram. You're the only person.

I was, yes, I am responding to DMs. I write my own content. I upload my own Reels like the whole night because I know it's a personal account. And I believe, Lizard, Instagram ain't messing around. Instagram is all knowing and all watching. I do not mess with that trash. So there is that as far as what was the main question though?

Just how do you know how I can get reels? I'm like dying for you. No, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. One thing that I wanted to say about Shadow Banny, I know that it was really, really, really prevalent and there was a time where Instagram

did not make a statement about it. But Instagram has since come out and said, that does not exist. So I can choose to believe Instagram at their own word, and they stand to lose a lot if for some reason somebody was able to prove them wrong, or I can continuously live in like, it's me, they did something to me. I'm just choosing to believe that it's not really a thing, and I'm just going to continue to move on and continue to create content how I can. I love that, Jasmine.

I know we're up on time here. I do wanna thank you so much for your amazing time. The last question I ask all my guests is what is your secret to profiting in life? Giving more than you get. Oh, love that. And where can our listeners go to learn more about you and everything that you do?

I'm on all forms of social media at JazminStar and you can find us at socialcurator.com. Amazing, I'm gonna stick all your links in the show notes. Jazmin, it was such a pleasure. Thank you so much for your time. And I hope we collaborate again and I hope you have a wonderful day. I can't wait, thank you.

You're a frickin' brilliant. Seriously, I love this job. Thank you. Thanks for listening to Young and Profiting Podcast. If you haven't yet, make sure you subscribe to this podcast so you always know when we drop our latest episode. It was so much fun doing this live with Jasmine Star. She is somebody that I've looked up to for a long time

in the podcast and social media space, and so it was an honor to have her on the show. To close out this episode, I want to recap a key learning and that's how to write scroll stopping captions. This is something that is so underrated, I think copywriting is one of the best skills that you can have in life. Not just for social media, but for life in general. I think it's an amazing skill.

I personally grew my LinkedIn following at first. Just by text posts. I only wrote text posts. I never posted images or videos for about a year and I built over like 50,000 followers on LinkedIn just writing captions. And now I have over 112,000 followers and I do plenty of photos and videos and all different things. But at first I just wrote captive and in captions and I know it is so important in terms of connecting with your audience and building an engaged audience. So that's why I want to focus on this for the outro of this podcast. So Jasmine talked about her HIC method.

I personally love this because it's super easy to remember and I think it's an excellent formula for beginners. HIC stands for hook insights and call to action. Hook is using the right words at the beginning of a caption to entice your audience to read more. It's always great when this is emotional, when this is getting people curious about what you're going to say, when there's pain involved, that's what you want to get across in your hooks. So some examples are, can I share a secret with you? Can I ask you a juicy question? Calling all fill in the blank. So calling all makeup lovers, calling all home buyers, or guess what I just learned? Or you'll never believe what I'm about to confess. All of these hooks get you enticed, they get you

wanting to learn more, and they get you to continue reading. That is the purpose of the hook. Next is insights. This is the eye and the HIC method. This is where you serve your audience with what they need to hear. This is where you can put a helpful tutorial or the why behind what you do or motivation to tackle the day. Insights is the educational portion of your post. Every single post that you put on social media should have meaning. People should learn something new when they read your post. It should be value-driven. Content that does poorly on social media usually has no major takeaway. You want people to feel like they learned something new after they read your post. So that's what the insight portion is about. And lastly, call to action. This is when you

ask an engaging question. You invite your audience to comment, to send a direct message to like the post. So some examples include double tap if you agree. Have questions? Fire away. Or DM me to learn more. Or drop an emoji below in the comments if you agree.

Or tag a friend who inspires you. There's so many ways that you can end your post in a way that get people wanting to engage. And you have to ask, don't be afraid to ask. That is going to increase your engagement rate so much if you just ask people to do what you want them to do at the end of the post. So remember, having a great photo isn't enough to get meaningful engagement. It might entice somebody to hit the like button, but if you want them to take time to leave a comment, you've got to put a little bit more effort into the post. If you enjoyed this episode and you want to learn more about branding and marketing, go check out number 88, build a community with LinkedIn influencers, Shanei Morei. Here's a clip

from that episode. When it comes to your LinkedIn, like you talk a lot about like HR stories and things like that. Are those like your stories or are those stories that you like find? How do you decide what to post? Well, so like the ones that I say are mine or mine. I just can't like some people are not

going to tell me allow me to share their names. Other people like I get probably hundreds of messages a week with people being like, hey, can you please share this story on my behalf? Obviously, they don't want to be tagged because they're gonna get fired or whatever.

You know what I mean? But yeah, I could have a whole blog with people being like, hey, Shanee, this happens to me at work today. Can you please share this story? Or like, hey, I was shut down for the fourth time for my dream job and they'll like, they'll get into really what happened.

It's interesting. And so what, what, what I, I guess the, the moral of the story that I want to tell here is that you actually don't need to have your own interesting stories like if you want to be a content creator, especially on social media and things like that. You can find other people's stories and people will relate to them. And you can put your own perspective on that story or your call to action or whatever like points that you want to point out. But it's that story that gets people talking and connecting and sharing like people love

to hear a good story. And as always, I want to end this show with a shout out to a recent Apple Podcast reviewer and young and profiting listener, and this week's shout out goes to A Federico. He says, a must-add to your weekly personal growth plan. I'm a new listener to the show and I've recently started my own business opening up a restaurant in Tampa, Florida. It's a small franchise and it doesn't matter how much experience you have, you need to find ways to keep learning and educating yourself. Thank you, Hala, for bringing

on such fantastic guests and a great job with the show Layout and Flow. I've taken advantage of this and I've connected with several of your guests and it supported me tremendously over the past few months. I am super happy to hear that you've been enjoying the show and that you've been able to connect with some of my amazing guests. And if you guys are out there listening to Young & Profiting podcasts, if you found value in today's show, make sure that you take the time to drop us a five-star review on Apple Podcasts and maybe you'll hear me shouting you out on the next Young & Profiting episode.

Giving us a review is a free and effective way to support the show. It is the number one way to thank me for all our hard work on Young & Profiting podcast. As always, you guys can find me on social media. I'm on LinkedIn. You can search for my name at Halataha or Instagram at YappwithHala.

I love to hear that you're listening. So don't be afraid to DM me, shoot me a DM, give me feedback, tell me what you like, tell me what you don't like. Talk about your favorite episode, talk about your least favorite episode. I love to hear from my listeners. And better yet, show me that you listened

all the way to the end of this show. Take a screenshot of your app right now, and then upload it to your Instagram story, tag me at YappwithHala on Instagram, and I will reshare it to my story and then DM me afterwards. Let's have a conversation. You can find me on LinkedIn, search for my name, it's Halah Taha. Big thanks to my Yapp team as always.

This is Halah signing off. Are you looking for ways to be happier, healthier, more productive and more creative? I'm Gretchen Rubin, the number one best-selling author of the Happiness Project. And every week, we share ideas and practical solutions on the Happier with Gretchen Ruben podcast. My co-host and Happiness Guinea Pig is my sister Elizabeth Kraft. That's me, Elizabeth Kraft, a TV writer and producer in Hollywood. Join us as we explore fresh insights from cutting-edge science,

ancient wisdom, pop culture, and our own experiences about cultivating happiness and good habits. Every week we offer a tried this at home tip you can use to boost your happiness without spending a lot of time energy or money. Suggestions such as follow the one-minute rule. Choose a one-word theme for the year,

or design your summer. We also feature segments like know yourselfself better where we discuss questions like, are you an over buyer or an under buyer? Morning person or night person, abundance lever or simplicity lever? And every episode includes a happiness hack, a quick, easy shortcut to more happiness. Listen and follow the podcast happier with Gretchen Rubin. the podcast happier with Gretchen Rubin.