#50 – The 4-STEP PATH to SUCCEED in social media

Summary

Do you want to use social media to scale your personal brand or your business? Have you maybe already tried, and failed? Or do you feel that you don’t know in what social media to start? Do you struggle to keep the motivation up?

Today we will define what different social media is good for different purposes.We are going over how he started out in 2010 and what social media meant for the success of his previous company Catena Media.How he then put social media on hold for several years just to come back and failed.

We will learn from Erik’s mistakes and see what he changed to reach success in 2019.

Transcript

[00:00:01] Erik Bergman has grown from almost nothing to seventy five thousand followers on Instagram in three months. And in this episode, we will teach you how to do the same.

[00:00:19] Not really.

[00:00:22] And the reason is that we see that there’s a lot of fairy tales out there about how to grow quickly on social media. And I think those fairy tales are missing the point that it’s actually quite challenging. And it takes a lot of preparation. And a lot of failures and mistakes and false. So the purpose of this episode is to learn from someone that has tried hard at this since 2010, failed multiple times. Erik Bergman. So this is an episode for you who want to learn how to grow on social media and do it the right way. We’re going to share it. That’s right. Boom. And we got to share Eric’s four step path to success, not only in social media, but in life. And I think that I love these steps myself. And I think if they’re implemented in the right order, that’s really going to maximize your chances to stick in there and get the social media presence that you desire. Erik, how are you today, buddy?

[00:01:29] Huh? Well, this is one of these days where it feels like everything is going wrong. And still I find myself smiling. It’s cool. It’s just reached a point like it. We’ll see what other son. I’m in a good mood where I could have been. If there’s a would have been a bad day, it would have been a really, really bad day when everything is feels shit. And now it’s still like I’m sitting here smiling, even though everything seems to be messing with me today or with us today. So I’m I’m in a good mood and I’m here with e-mail.

[00:02:02] My good friend, who’s the host of this podcast, was the first one joining me into Great and who is also embarking on a social media adventure lately. And I’m excited to do this podcast.

[00:02:19] Well, thank you, brother. I am definitely in the same kind of mindset today. Totally in the labor mode. I didn’t want to do my routines this morning. And when start technical stuff started messing with us. I just I couldn’t be prouder. Just keep moving forwards. Hopefully that would be the theme of 2020. And together with Erik. I’m doing the. We are doing the. Becoming great podcast. And the purpose of this podcast is to help everyone out there who wants to make the world a better place through entrepreneurship and personal development. So let’s get into it. Just this these four steps to success. Can anyone use them?

[00:03:05] Yeah, definitely. I think that this is a process that I’ve kind of crystallized for me over the last year. And a lot of it comes from looking back at what have I failed at? And what if I succeed that during my my life? And what’s been the common denominators for them and. Lately, I’ve been using it in social media and applying it there, but it could be applied anywhere basically. So you can do this the same force. That process will be applied if you want to get back in shape or if you want to build a business or if you want to do anything else. But social media has just been a great example for me lately.

[00:03:46] Yeah, I think these four steps, essentially a life philosophy of how to accomplish pretty much anything and social media becomes an example here. But why do you want to focus on social media?

[00:04:03] So let’s let’s back up the tape of that, too, like two thousand and ten, I think at this time I started get into social media and what was big at that time was blogs, forums and Twitter and as used as a lot on the very early days of what became Catina. I use this to build a brand name around what we were doing. It helped us recruiting. It helped us find collaboration. It’s helped in so many ways to build somewhat of an authority around it.

[00:04:37] Could you just briefly touch upon what Katrina is and what you accomplished before with Katrina?

[00:04:42] Yeah, sure is Katrina media as my previous company, which is an online marketing company that grew from zero to a $200 million valuation in three and a half years. Something like that. And I was really active on social media in the years leading up to Katrina and. Thanks to that, we built a lot of the foundation. And since Katrina started, more or less, I haven’t really touched social media at all. I kind of drifted away from it. I’ve had Facebook, but that’s pretty much it. I’ve never used it for a commercial perspective. And I’ve just been seeing how much social media has exploded over the last five, six, seven, even ten years and realize that there is so much potential here that I’m not in any way utilizing since I’m not using it. And to answer your original question, why do I want to focus on social media? It’s because that’s where I’m just gonna guess now. But the majority of the Western population spend the majority of their time one way or another. And to not utilize data to not be a part of that is.

[00:06:01] You want to say stupid, but I don’t like the word stupid. So it’s just it’s an extreme way of standing outside of a system that can be used.

[00:06:14] Yes. Could you please briefly define for the one listening? What do you mean by social media?

[00:06:21] Which platforms do you include in that definition, which is the social media to me is it’s a lot of different platforms and we can think of this as going into a bar. So if you’re in a bar, you can say hi to anyone at any time and it’s not it’s socially accepted, you’re only asking for someone’s attention for like two seconds. Hey, how you doing? And you can say that to anyone. You wouldn’t do that in the street in the same way as you would in a bar. This is like Snapchat, Instagram. Tick tock. The fastest social media is that people interact with for just a few seconds. So that’s one part of the social media. Then another part of social media is, yeah, let’s say we’re still in this bar. But you want to go outside and have a smoke or just some fresh air with someone and just talk a little bit. That’s like YouTube and blogging. You need to get a little bit more of someone’s attention to do that soon. It’s a little bit harder to get those interactions to happen.

[00:07:24] 5, 20 minutes.

[00:07:25] Yeah. 5, 20 minutes. So you need to actually give some. Someone needs to give you five minutes to be able to save. Your YouTube channel is good enough, but they only need to give you two seconds to watch a picture on Instagram. So it’s harder to get people there, but once you get them there, you can build a deeper and more meaningful connection with someone. So that’s. A deeper form of social media, but still social media, I would say. And then we have the third level of social media, which is podcasts. And it’s not really the shouty Facebook kind of social media, but it’s still in the same realm like you digested in the same perspective.

[00:08:06] And to me, that’s like going on a long, slow walk with someone from the bar. You can really get to know each other. You can talk a lot, but you’re not gonna be able to do that with more than one person a night or something because it takes a big commitment from the other person to be able to give you that much of their attention. It’s it’s like picking up a book. You’re not gonna read that many books and it’s the same with podcasts. But if you get people to read your book, if you get people to listen to your podcast, you can really build a deep and meaningful connection with someone from just talking.

[00:08:38] So when I say this is the first kind of social media. Well, that’s the first kind. Yeah. Like our dip, our books. The first kind. Yeah. I would say that you could say that to cave paintings.

[00:08:50] Yeah. CAVE.

[00:08:52] I think books, cave paintings, basically media that people talk about could be argued as social media one way or another. It’s it’s a form and shape of it. And I think most of time when we say social media, everyone puts everything together. But I like looking at it at these different kinds of elements. It’s very hard to start with building a podcast. For example, imagine that you want to start relationships or start anything with just going up to random strangers and saying, do you want to take a long walk on the beach with me? It’s gonna be quite hard. But if you go up and just say, hey, in a bar, that’s an easy way to start a social media. So if you want to start social media and you haven’t done this before. It’s easier to get traction on a platform like Instagram and get some followers because you’re not asking for that much.

[00:09:44] So you’re saying if someone wants to start growing their personal brand or grow their business, it’s advantageous to start with the quicker social media’s.

[00:09:57] It’s easier. I mean, it depends a bit about your personality, what you enjoy and these kind of things as well. If if you want to grow something and that’s one of the key elements in it, it’s a lot easier to do it on Instagram because you’re not asking that much of a follower. You’re just asking for two seconds of their attention every day. A follower of the podcast you’re asking for maybe half an hour a week.

[00:10:21] That’s it. It’s a lot bigger ask. So it’s gonna be a lot harder to get it out there. And if you combine the two, let’s say you start with Instagram, you can build that first relationship that you can then move over to a podcast, for example, and say, yeah, I’ve been following this guy on Instagram for like two months. I really like what he’s doing. I’m gonna check out his podcast because you already done a lot of those interactions. And if we’re going back to the bar metaphor, if you’ve been talking to someone in a bar for a long time, it wouldn’t be that weird to ask him for a long walk. But if you start with that, it’s gonna be harder. Not necessarily zero chance of doing it, but it’s trickier.

[00:10:59] I think that makes a lot of sense. So even if you create a super good podcast, geographic struggle to get people to even listen to it, if you don’t have that presence somewhere else or if you’re not famous.

[00:11:09] Yeah, because if you’re not famous that people already trust you. I mean, it’s the same thing if you’re a super socially skilled and super good at talking and listening, but you start every conversation with do you want to take a long walk?

[00:11:22] You’re still struggling. Yeah, I think that metaphore made it quite clear where to start, especially if you’re starting from scratch. So these four steps, yet the four step path to success. Want to start with step three. Now, of course, we start with step one.

[00:11:46] It’s a clever query condom combo. OK.

[00:11:51] So the fourth step process is to this step one is to find a way to enjoy whatever it is that you’re doing. And let’s say we are focusing on social media right now. Find a way where it’s just really fun to create content for Instagram or for YouTube or whatever platform it is that you decide on using. Let’s focus on enjoying that process, because if you’re enjoying that process and it’s fun in itself, you’ve already ticked the most important box you’re doing something you enjoy doing. And worst case scenario, you’re never succeeding with reaching your following. Worst case scenario, you’re not getting anywhere else. Hey, you just wasted some fun. I mean, it’s it’s still a good, good deal.

[00:12:38] And second step in this is can I just ask some questions on having fun? Because it sounds. Easy. And of course, I should have fun. But what if you want to create that for get the ball rolling on Instagram, for example, and maybe you like taking the pictures, but you don’t enjoy writing the captions or you don’t enjoy fixing the pictures in Lightroom or whatever you think is needed? What what can someone do then if there’s parts of the process that they really don’t enjoy?

[00:13:10] I would look for ways to enjoy it. What? How can the caption be fun? How could Lightroom be fun? Or what can you do that doesn’t require Lightroom them and try to get the boring things out of the picture? Because if you find a way to really enjoy what you’re doing and you’re focusing on that as your first step, how can I find ways to enjoy? Your first goal is to I want to love this and test your ways through this. But basically what I did when I started social media again like a year ago was that I started trying out all these different kinds of social media. I set up a Facebook group and it grew really quickly. But I had to be very active and I didn’t really enjoy it. So I gave up on that. And then I started posting daily videos on LinkedIn and I got quite good response from it. I didn’t really enjoy it, so put it away. And I ended up doing Instagram and started finding ways that I really enjoy writing the captions, but I didn’t enjoy creating the pictures.

[00:14:17] So that was my error then. And then I started looking, okay, how can I do this quicker? And instead of creating my own pictures, I started just borrowing, stealing, landing pictures from other channels that I really liked their pictures and I wrote my own captions. So I kind of got away from the part of Instagram I didn’t enjoy by finding other people’s materials and then putting my own captions on them.

[00:14:41] And I think what you did there as well, me knowing you personally, is that you utilized what you’re naturally good at. So Erik is a person that is very good at writing texts that is one of your strongest the strongest sites in your personality. And not surprisingly, you liked writing the text more than you’d like to find in the pictures. So then you focused your attention there and then you started to enjoy the process. So for you out there, could you think of what part of social media could you enjoy the most and could you spend most of your time there in the beginning at least to have as much fun as possible?

[00:15:16] Yeah, exactly. And look away from because I really didn’t enjoy trying to create the graphics, make it look good. I just ended up with a picture that didn’t look very good and a caption I was very proud of, which just made me stare at the picture and feel that hey, this sucks.

[00:15:32] But then I just took other people’s pictures and it got so much better.

[00:15:39] Got it. So find a way to enjoy the process. And worst case, you found a hobby. Yeah.

[00:15:45] Yeah. I mean, if you’re having fun, then you’re you’re already golden.

[00:15:48] That not enough. Is that in itself is enough reason. Yeah. So step two. Step two. And this is learning. So how can you do this that you enjoy. And you still learn things that you want to learn. And basically, that’s just a more valuable way of having fun.

[00:16:06] That if you’re just having let’s say you’re reading Donald Duck magazines and you would like to read. You’re probably not gonna learn that much. Actually, Donald Duck, you learn a lot of history, but that the equivalent here would be start reading a lot of technical books. Maybe you still enjoy reading and now you start learning and reading. You make it you make that hobby even more valuable because it makes you smarter and doing something you enjoy.

[00:16:28] Mm hmm. But not on the detriment of stuff. Right. Exactly. So that’s. It’s almost like a pyramid of success. Yeah. Counter-move the bottom layer.

[00:16:38] Yeah. Because if you end up let’s say you start focusing too much on learning, you start reading really boring books. It’s quite likely that you start putting putting the book away because you don’t enjoy it anymore.

[00:16:49] So you need to keep that first layer. You need to keep that first step. And whenever you feel that. Okay. Now I’m focusing too much on learning. I’m not actually having fun. Then it’s much more important to step back and look to enjoy it rather than to increase the learning.

[00:17:04] And would you say the main purpose to have fun, except for the fun itself, of course, is to. Avoid getting into a situation where you get fed up and you quit.

[00:17:15] Yeah, exactly. Because as long as you’re having fun. Motivation and inspiration is easy when you’re not having fun. Motivation is really hard.

[00:17:24] Yeah. Even the word motivation, it seems like I have to force myself to do something I don’t really like. But if I’m inspired, there’s no need. It just happens naturally. Exactly.

[00:17:34] So there’s this entire system builds. Always make sure to have fun. And if you’re giving up on something, you’d never want to give up on the fun part, because life is also very long, that as long as you always have fun and always keep doing it, you will find ways to progress.

[00:17:50] Yeah, and I find it super useful to use these four steps in every area of my life. Find a way to make working out fun. Find a way to cook food fun. Find a way to work. That is fun. Yeah. Yeah, as much as possible.

[00:18:05] Exactly. So step two is learning. So focus on having fun. Then focus on learning. Step 3 here is find ways where this adds value to others, which on social media is quite easy because everything you do, you show to other people. And if the case is cooking, maybe you start cooking for other people. I don’t know. Cooking is not the perfect example here, but find a way where what you’re doing actually adds value to other people. So if you’re already doing these three things, you’re having a lot of fun. You’re learning a lot yourself and you’re giving value to other people. You’re still doing something really meaningful with your life that’s really enjoyable and will develop yourself a lot.

[00:18:47] And then we get to step 4, which is and I lost sight of when I see this in my in my mind right now, I really see that the more you reach level 2 3 in this pyramid path to success, the more areas you manage to do that in your life. I think the more happy and fulfilled you will be.

[00:19:08] Yeah, definitely.

[00:19:10] I mean, at the end of the day, if you’re having fun, you’re learning and you’re giving value to others. It’s gonna be sweet.

[00:19:17] I mean, if you can do that in many areas of your life, then your life is gonna feel really wonderful. I think if you manage to do it in honor of your life, then every day you live is going to be made up out of very enjoyable moments. That feels meaningful. Sure. Sure. And so forth.

[00:19:36] The fourth step of the path is how the big one that everyone keeps looking for is money and how to scale something and reach really good results. The thing is, this is easy to do. If you’re having fun, you’re learning, you’re giving value. Money is gonna come more or less in itself because you’re gonna get really good at what you do. And if you’re giving value to other people, they’re gonna want to be a part of it. And gonna be willing to pay for it one way or another. So this is the fourth step where you start seeing followers increasing, where you can sell products or classes or whatever it is that you’re doing. But it’s the fourth step. And this is simply the process.

[00:20:18] But if you’re gonna cave on something, first cave on money, then cave about any value, then cave of learning. Always make sure to have fun because you’re going to stay inspired. You’re never gonna go out of the game.

[00:20:30] Yeah. And that’s the reason I made that kind of joke ish intro that okay, we’re gonna teach you how to go from zero to seventy five thousand followers. Is that all those fairytales are only marketing? Step 4. Hey, go to step 4. That’s gonna be the fun one. But it doesn’t show all the previous steps that is required to actually utilize that step. Yeah.

[00:20:54] No one talks about this. I just realized from looking at Masika, I looked at all the projects and all the goals I’ve set up for myself and I said I looked okay, what worked and what didn’t work. Like, hey, every place that I had fun, I just kept on going. Every place I didn’t have fun, I gave up.

[00:21:14] And that’s the danger with setting a goal. Like I’m gonna go to the gym five times per week and that’s your own goal. It’s so easy that you quit that go because it’s a step. It’s a step forgo for sure.

[00:21:28] Mm hmm.

[00:21:29] So where have you failed with this in the past? Is this something you realized recently or.

[00:21:36] Yes. A lot of the time. I’ve been thinking about step 4. I’ve started with step 4. And that’s basically like if you want to start with them for that’s like starting to run. Ride a bike before you learn how to stand up.

[00:21:49] Can I just go in with something? Because it’s feels like we’re almost switching direction a little bit here.

[00:21:54] So before we move on to your failures, you listening, could you maybe think of a time in your life where you did something only for the outcome and then you totally got bored of it and didn’t try even again? Is there something?

[00:22:13] I love silence. Wherever you find nice. Like. Clear break. Thank you. Thank you. You’re aware of it. Yes.

[00:22:22] Basically, for a lot of projects in my life, I’ve been focusing on step 4. I’ve said I’m gonna reach this many followers by this time or I’m gonna make this much money or I’m gonna have this six pack on my butt.

[00:22:35] But my stuff and I haven’t looked at the other steps.

[00:22:41] I haven’t thought about them. So just whenever I haven’t gotten the results quickly. When I didn’t get the followers, when I didn’t get the money, I gave up and I started with. So it started with social media getting 2017 and I started with YouTube. Then I wanted to become a YouTuber. And I did one video that the first video I did was just me putting up the computer and just talking to the about just beginning. And this video got a really good response. Lots of people answering during that. I’m like getting super excited straight away because I got a lot of the Step 4 from the first trial. And what I didn’t realize was that it was luck, it wasn’t skill that got me there. So then for another seven videos, I tried to do it better and better and better. And I just got worse and worse results, which meant that I had less and less motivation and inspiration to keep going. And I tried to do it better by making it with more angles, fancier equipment, a lot of things that I actually didn’t enjoy doing.

[00:23:45] I just focus on the things that I thought that other people wanted to see because obviously that’s how I could get the numbers up and I just failed.

[00:23:55] So you used step two of learning to really get step for after assaults and you have the foundation of step one, which means that you just totally undermined your passion for this.

[00:24:06] Exactly. And two months into this project, eight videos that I’m actually proud of. I just felt I have no joy in this whatsoever. I’ll give up.

[00:24:18] And that was the end of the social media adventure that time. And it would take me a year, a year and a half to even reconsider this again and see, okay, what can I do now? Because I got burned. I didn’t enjoy it at all. And then.

[00:24:39] I came to this conclusion that, okay, I want to try this again, but this time I want to have fun. If I’m not having fun, I’m gonna quit. And that’s when I started doing these things that we touched upon before that this is now early 2019. I started a Facebook group and I didn’t enjoy it. So I quit. I started LinkedIn. I didn’t enjoy it. I quit. I started all kinds of things. And I didn’t enjoy them. So I quit. And then I found Instagram and I started to realize I really enjoyed writing the captions. And then I really enjoyed the quick interactions and. So when we said in the beginning that it took three months to go from almost nothing to seventy five thousand followers, it took six months to really start the process. Before that, we didn’t get any followers at all where I’d just focus on having fun and enjoying this this process. But that’s usually what with no one sees. Everyone just sees the quick progress in the end. But the quick progress in the end came from me for six months playing around with. How can I enjoy this? And when I figured that out, how can I learn from this? And then how can this add values? And what you don’t see is step 1, 2 and 3 was the first six months. Step four has been the last three months.

[00:25:58] So that’s your chance for that was the time needed to figure out this path?

[00:26:04] Yeah, definitely.

[00:26:06] So for the last year, I’ve been working with this process, but I didn’t understand this process for the first 10 years.

[00:26:15] It’s so easy to get drawn in two step for him because it’s step for you can measure.

[00:26:21] You can measure number of followers. You can measure money coming in. You cannot measure amount of joy.

[00:26:29] You cannot if you’re putting a goal, you’re gonna.

[00:26:33] Almost everyone who sets a goal and almost all the goals I’ve set is based on a number.

[00:26:38] Because numbers are easy. Joy is really hard. Yeah. You don’t get an external validation from it.

[00:26:46] No, no, it’s. This is better. That’s a good point. You’re basically building this on internal validation. And if you’re having enough fun, you don’t need external validation.

[00:26:57] Man, I started a YouTube channel three months ago, and when I began, I read some videos of what to think of when you start YouTube as a beginner. And they said, make sure you have a regular posting schedule. Sucker. All right. I would post one video per week and then I got into the mindset of I’m gonna produce X a month of videos instead of focusing on how can I enjoy each video as much as possible. How can I learn as much as possible for each video if I’m gonna do it to learn and have fun and maybe I can spend two weeks just learning functions in a video editing software. If I enjoyed that, but that I can’t do. If I’m gonna force myself to post each week, then I’m missing the first two steps and I’m gonna quit at some points because I’m not having fun and I’m not learning the things that my that I am truly passionate about.

[00:27:48] And you’re forcing yourself to put things out there that you might not be proud of, which makes it even scarier to put it out there.

[00:27:55] Yeah. Yeah. Creating way more barriers.

[00:27:57] Yeah. Basically, you want to the more you focus on making it fun, the the more you just enjoying the process, but also the less barriers you put out there. Because if you say I’m gonna reach a thousand followers in one month, for example, you’re giving yourself a way of saying, if I don’t do that, this is a failure. So you’re giving yourself the terms for a failure. But if you set out, I’m just gonna have fun. We’ll see where it takes. There is nowhere in that scenario where you can fail because it’s a hobby.

[00:28:27] It’s a fun project. You’ll see what happens. Yeah.

[00:28:33] And then you will just laugh at mishaps. If you are coming from that place. Didn’t figure out how to make this thing that I wanted. Whatever. I try something new. It’s almost like a child’s mentality. They don’t have goals. They fail all the time. But they don’t have goals and put themselves down. What you learn is that you learn in school.

[00:28:53] Yeah. Yeah. You never heard a child say my goal is to learn how to walk. Yeah. They never have that goal. Just this feels natural. I’m going to stand up. No, their work. I’m gonna try again. No, they don’t work.

[00:29:07] Yeah. I’m not gonna reach my deadline. Okay. So I think we made this point clear why this pyramid is important. And so we’re gonna switch gears a little bit here as well and talk to the one listening who are curious about what you have actually done, done to make your Instagram account successful. What strategies you have been using and. Yeah. So please give me some details of how you are growing your Instagram accounts right now.

[00:29:43] So first up, once again, worth repeating. I’m having a lot of fun. That’s just I think everyone got that. But from a technical perspective, what I’m doing is I’ve started with something that I learned about called a unicorn strategy. And I learned this from a guy named Nathan who runs an Instagram account called Founder. And we’ll link to that in the description. And basically, what they’re doing is that they’re looking at other similar accounts and they’re looking for the posts that have gotten the most likes supposed to have spiked and gotten a lot more likes than other posts posted that month, for example. And these posts are then already proven that people like them. If there is a quote and a lot of people have liked that quote, it’s proven that this is a good quote because more people like that than all the other things. So what I’ve done then is that I’ve taken that same quote and I’ve either just changed the design very little on it or I’ve just taken the same post. And Brith written my own caption and my own understanding from that quote. So this takes half the effort away of creating the design and all these things. And I already know that this is a post and people will appreciate because, well, it’s proven in a similar account. So then I do the same thing and this saves me probably 90 percent of the time it would take to come up with something really good to do. And I can focus on the caption and the parts I really enjoy.

[00:31:12] So this is Australia applied to two thirds of the content that I’m producing, more or less. I’m just looking for other things that I really enjoy and I do the very similar version of it. It’s basically like, let’s say I was a deejay.

[00:31:28] I could either try to come up with my very own songs from scratch, but I wouldn’t be able to produce that much music then. Or I could take existing songs and I could make my own remakes of them.

[00:31:42] It’s still mine, but it’s not just mine, but I’m still adding some value with it.

[00:31:48] You’re definitely adding value. So my music. Yawner. Difficult word that I like the most is techno and various forms of electronic music. And I only listen to deejays that take 10 different songs and put them together into one hour mix. So they are adding a lot of value to me because that’s the only thing I’m listening to.

[00:32:08] Yeah. And that’s so much easier than than doing 10 songs herself. Yeah. And you can take a lot of people can do it.

[00:32:15] I have a friend, Denise. She started deejaying one year ago and she’s doing those mix ups and they sound pretty good.

[00:32:22] Basically, you’re doing the same thing that you’re looking for the ten favorite things that you enjoy and you put them together in your way. Yeah. Is that where you can actually create 10 of the best songs in the world? Could someone else have done the best songs in the world? Yeah. But you would not be able to do that yourself. And that’s pretty much what I’m doing here. I’m focusing on the unicorn strategy.

[00:32:41] And second part of this is that I’m making it very simple. It’s pretty much one day and I’m taking that content. I’m just writing a description and then I’m posting it. I’m not trying to overdo this. I’m not creating something extreme. I’m not spending hours and hours and hours with designing something. I would if I really enjoyed that process. But I don’t. And this by lowering my own bar, focusing and having fun with it, I can put out a lot of content. I’m putting out six things per day or something like that on an Instagram, which is a big part of the growth strategy, because if you put it one thing per week, you’re barely gonna be visible compared to someone putting out six things per day, which is forty two things per week since that’s been a big part of the success is creating a lot of material and then finding a process I enjoy. It’s still at values that I still learn from and that gets all of this happening.

[00:33:38] And it’s just something that everyone can do. Would you say?

[00:33:42] Yeah, definitely. I’m just looking at accounts that I enjoy and looking for their best posts and posted represent me like, OK, because if there’s gonna be a post that says a lot of things, even it’s got a lot of likes, but I don’t resonate with what it says. For example, there is a lot of content on Instagram saying you should wake up at 5:00. Sleep is for losers. Go hard work. That’s how you succeed. And I think that’s really, really crappy advice. So even when I see a post like that has got a spike in likes.

[00:34:13] I’m not gonna use it because it’s not something I stand for. But if whenever I find things that I resonate with and I believe in and it’s gotten this kinds of likes, oh, I’ll use it one way or another.

[00:34:27] So. I get the UNICOR strategy. So what about hashtags and stuff? How much strategy around it? Disembowelled.

[00:34:37] Yeah. So I’m using a lot of hashtags. I’m not sure how much of a difference it makes, but I think it’s it’s a way to simply get hashtags out there. So if you don’t know hashtags as a way to sort things on social media. So anyone looking for hashtag Spain can find a lot of pictures taken in Spain, for example. And I’m doing the same thing for a lot of entrepreneurship and business stuff. And basically, I’ve been searching a lot of different hashtags. I’ve been looking at the similar accounts, what hashtags they are using. And I’ve just created a big Excel sheet with hundreds of different hashtags in these niche about entrepreneurship, about business. And I’m taking 20 hashtags or something in each post. I just take a copy from the list and I put him in the post. I don’t spend that much time doing the research because I did the research in one day a couple of months ago, and I’m just reusing that very simply and shifting it up between each post. I take another 20 and other 20, but it’s just a copy and paste move that takes five seconds for each post. So I’m not redoing this research all the time. I’m not trying this to make it perfect. Because once again. I can’t do that if I’m producing forty two things a week, but I can do this if it’s only five seconds for each of them.

[00:35:55] I see how important it is to speed up the processes. Whatever you’re doing, yeah, it’s to get a lot of content out there. So I think tanks aren’t fun either. I need to get up. I want to speed up because boring. So I’ve seen you do collaborations with other accounts and you also do Instagram lives and stuff like that. What is the thought process behind that?

[00:36:19] So. What’s what I didn’t understand at all when I started was that it’s really, really hard to grow an Instagram account on your own. I thought that if it’s just good enough content, people will see it. And I’m pretty sure this goes for YouTube and for any other channel as well. If I just build something good enough, people will see it, but it’s simply not true. And it’s like, imagine you have the best product in the world you’re gonna sell. You invented the iPhone and this is in the 1980s. No one has ever seen it. You you was the first one, but you don’t tell anyone about it. You just have a store that no one goes into. People will still not buy your phone. And this is what happens if you start out. And social media accounts, even if you’re producing the best kind of content, people will not immediately see it. You need to put it in front of other people. And a great way of doing that is making collaborations with other big accounts. Other YouTubers, other Instagrams. And a common ways to do this is called Shout Out for shout-outs, basically, meaning I put out a post about you and you put out a post about me. So I show your I show your content to my followers and you show my content to your followers. And that way we kind of switch followers with each other. This you can either pay for and just buy a shout out, which is something you kind of have to do.

[00:37:38] And if your account is really small, but it doesn’t cost that much, you can buy shoutouts for $10 and off to infinity obviously as because that way you you can get in front of more people, but you don’t really have anything to trade with. So if I have five followers or a hundred followers, it’s not really worth for you to put your content on my page. So then it’s better to pay with money. And that’s how I’ve done this. I’ve started growing it with buying those kinds of apps out there. So I’m getting my I’m creating good content and a lot of it, but I’m paying to get people to see it or I’m collaborating to get people to see it. And you have to I would say, because you’re not gonna get even if you’ve got the best constantly Instagram. People are not going to see it unless you at least in the beginning, get the ball rolling.

[00:38:30] And what can you do if you are really passionate about this? But maybe you’re a young entrepreneur and you don’t have money to spend on shoutouts.

[00:38:38] Then I would look for ways to add value to people with these accounts, maybe offering to say to someone, okay, I’m going to be super active in your comments and comment on each post that you’re posting for a month. If you do one shout out for me, I’m going to share all your materials. If you do one shout out for me, I’m going to create designs for you if you do on for me. So that way you’re really giving value and focusing on what can I do for them? And hopefully they will return the favor. And that’s how you get to saw them. You need to get collaborations into your way of working. If you want to get it to scale, you’re never going to be able to build it without that because the algorithms doesn’t favor small accounts.

[00:39:25] Is there something else someone needs to know about the Instagram strategy?

[00:39:30] This covers most of it. I would say start with having fun folks and having fun and then find collaborations and those two alone will get you places.

[00:39:40] Got it. All right. I feel like it starts to become time to wrap this up. There’s something more you want to add on this.

[00:39:47] Now let’s wrap it up. Let’s see. Let’s hear your summary. What what wise things have I said?

[00:39:53] You have said we have realized.

[00:39:56] I realize that the what I take with Netlist is that this path looks more than a pyramid than a path to me, because you need the bottom foundations for the whole structure to be stable.

[00:40:10] And I imagined my life now as a big desert with lots of pyramids in it.

[00:40:14] And the more areas of the desert to this my life, that becomes a pyramid, maybe step two or three, maybe even four if I’m lucky. I think the more I’m going to enjoy my life and feel that it is meaningful. So I’m going to think of this metaphor in relationships. Day to day activities. Work, health. Love the pyramid. Thanks a lot. Social media. Yeah. Yeah. Pyramid of joy. Pyramid of life.

[00:40:45] Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

[00:40:48] Awesome. All right. So maybe someone’s really enjoyed this episode, Erik. Maybe. David, listen this far. What can they do if they want to support our passion to rich entrepreneurs out there? Who wants to question him?

[00:41:03] It gets me the opportunity to talk about what you can do to help us out. Yeah, we are very passionate about this podcast. We focus on having fun and we hope that we actually learn a lot from it and we hope that it brings a lot of value. And now we’re looking to scale this. I’d say that we are on trying to make the fourth part of the pyramid work.

[00:41:24] And if you want to help us out, then the best thing you can do is to go to your podcast app and click, click subscribe on this podcast. Because, well, then you’ll get all our episodes in your app. It’s really nice, hopefully. And what’s more interesting is that all the top lists are at least a lot of the top list that are about podcasts are not necessarily about who the most people listen to, but who are the most percentage subscribing to. So you greatly increase our chances of getting into different topless. If you are one of our subscribers. So please do that.

[00:42:03] And that’s the final social media hack we’ve got for you today. Erik had fun and learned a lot. I think this gave value. Let’s scale to infinity. That’s gives infinity. Thank you, my friend. Ciao. Ciao.

[00:42:21] We usually stop the recording here, right? Yeah. We’re not gonna do feedback and stuff anyway.