SL065: How To Grow Your Speaker Brand On Instagram - with Darius Tan

Jun 4, 2020

How To Grow Your Speaker Brand On Instagram

In today's episode Darius Tan talks about How To Grow Your Speaker Brand On Instagram.

Darius Tan is an author, speaker and expert in social media community growth and conversion. His team, LegacyIgnite, now helps elite speakers to become the go-to influencer on their topic while 10x'ing their impact in the world. Darius says he is passionate about three things; social media, peak performance, and travelling around Southeast Asia to coach and inspire others to achieve an extraordinary life.

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Read full transcript at https://speakersu.com/sl065-how-to-grow-your-speaker-brand-on-instagram-with-darius-tan/

James Taylor
Hey there, it's James Taylor and I'm delighted today to have on the show, Darius tan. Darius Tan is an author, speaker and expert in social media community growth and conversion. His team legacy ignite now helps elite speakers to become the go to influencer on their topic while connecting their impact in the world. Darren says he is passionate about three things social media, peak performance, and traveling around Southeast Asia to coach and inspire others to achieve an extraordinary life. It is my great pleasure to have Darius with us today. So welcome Darius.

Darius Tan
Thank you for having me on this podcast zooms.

James Taylor
Now it tells what's happening in your world at the moment.

Darius Tan
So while there's quite a lot of things because of the COVID, and right now, a lot of things I want to do I want to do live training and things like that, but clearly, everything's put on a hole. So currently, I've been working on a book. The title hasn't been confirmed, but basically it's gonna be all about how you can grow your Instagram brand to over 100,200 thousand followers, so how many followers you want on your personal brand, especially for speakers, and anyone that does speaking and training. So that's one of the projects I'm working on, which is a book. Second has been really on content creation. That's a second thing. I realized that right now, there are a lot of different variations of content on Instagram. So right now my team and I are learning more and more every day is a new learning experience. That is learning something new, right? Because we talked about COVID, where I was on lockdown, so why not learn something new? So I've been exploring onto LinkedIn, all the more just to help speakers to get within more corporate deals. So what we're focusing on is basically b2b deals occurring on LinkedIn. So that's something that we've been looking to conquer. And that's pretty much about it, these three things.

James Taylor
Fantastic. And you came to me, you came to my attention through an interesting way, and I love what you did, and I've actually mentioned it to a couple of other people. As well, I also have this idea of delivering value in advance. And what you did is the way and I know you can have reached out to me was you felt a little quick video. And you said you hate me, James. Me check out your work, love what you do, here's how I think you can make even better. And then you kind of went through some very kind of tactical things and real awesome stuff. And obviously, you could you were displaying you really knew your topic, your was what was helping you also going to showing, hey, this is where you can get to in a period of time as well. And and you were providing that value in advance and obviously then you had a call to action as well. So, so tell us about that that process because I just I think that that that one thing about just providing value in advance and then if you'd like to know more, here's what we can do next. I think that's such a simple and powerful type of funnel for speakers.

Darius Tan
That funnel is kind of used for my agency, but to Within the context of speakers, this is where I will go to. So in agencies, what worked really well is audits, right? I just work very well because people understand why there are blind spots, right? For most, for most speakers, for example, they don't really know what the blind spots on their Instagram on the Twitter basically as social media profiles. So what we do is we add value to them by pointing out these blind spots that they themselves don't know. Right? And you can you know that in the video, I went through our technical stuff. So this is where we come in with expertise and point out things that the other person can see. So in the context of speaking, I think was really good, right? If I've seen speakers that have done this really very well is when speakers end with a call to action, right? In Jessica, maybe a short one hour would be 190 minutes to 60 minutes to 90 minutes, right? The end of a call to action like Hey guys, I spoke about this topic. Let's say the topic is social media. If you want to learn more, right, so this is more towards targeting B to C corpse. What they do is Hey guys, if Want to learn more about social media go to this link and basically give you a 10 day challenge, right? You can do like a like a 10 day challenge on growing your Instagram account. Or maybe it's like a whole checklist on what I've just said and how you can implement whatever I just said, I put into action step list, but it was very important for speakers to know in terms of adding value. Maybe in terms of what I did, I did was an audit, right? So it's better for agencies, but for speakers, I think what works really well are things like blueprints, frameworks, checklists, right audience are pretty good opt in pages that people should be using. Not only just on your social media profiles, I believe that you just need to create this one really, really, really great opt in. And once that opt in converts very well, you can use it anywhere, but you can use it on your Instagram page, your Twitter page, your Facebook page, you can use it when after your hot website towards the end of the training. So that's how I really thought of value value is really understanding What your client needs? And once? I think a lot of times people don't people understand the meaning of value, right? They always say, oh, and value means basically to help out your target audience. But I think the best way to help our audience is by understanding what are the problems? That's the first thing, and then understanding why their pins, okay? Because some of them have problems, right things like, maybe they aren't able to grow their Instagram account. But here's the thing. They might have that problem, but do they feel the pain? Right? Some people, they're like, Oh, I can't grow my Instagram account. That's a problem. But it's not a very info thing to me. Like, it doesn't make me go like, oh, man, I need to, I need to do something about this now, right? So you're always you're I'm sure that you're talking about when it comes to sales. It's always been a problem a bit. So same. Same thing goes when you're adding value. You always want to add value to the people who are basically in pain in the most painful way, right? I mean, it sounds like Well, I'm exploiting them by by exploiting them, what I'm doing is simply just helping them. Right. If people are in pain, that's the best position for you to be helping them rather than going in a position that, hey, let me just add more value to you by giving you something else that you desire. I think the ones that really add the most value is when the person goes like, wow, this is exactly what I wanted and what I need, but the key word is really what I need, right? So when you are able to know exactly what are the pain points of your target audience, and when you deliver that value that aligns with that pain point, then you deliver the greatest value compared to something that they want, the value won't be as high as solving a problem and pain for them. So that's how I oppose giving value so to speak,

James Taylor
but I think that's great. I know when I when I coach speakers as well, when they're a little bit unsure who their audience is going to be around their topic and what their chapter you mentioned that you know, the problems and the pain points. And I said one of the easiest ways to find that out is go onto Amazon, and just look at the The reviews I get, let's say if someone's a speaker, let's say on, I don't know, let's just topic on leadership, just find the top 50 books on leadership. This was a Ryan Levesque classic and Ryan Levesque type of Yeah, he does go through, find out all those things where they say things like, I bought this book because, and then that's kind of, that's the problems. And the thing I always then look for is after, you know, after reading this book, this was what I was able to do. And they kind of talked about what success looks like for them as well and you, the more you can get him. That's the one way of obviously in the kind of finding your topic as well. But what you're talking about is then translating that into the types of maybe free offers or kind of value that you can give people in to kind of bring them into your world so you can have that kind of conversation with them.

Darius Tan
Yes, exactly. I totally agree with you on the whole Amazon thing because that's what I honestly do. You always want to search like the five star reviews and then those are the ones that you want. went really well less than a one star saw them this they do they hit for like no reason sometimes but that's that. I mean Amazon is one of it I think trustpilot is another great place to go to Quora is a good place to go to as well because you really understand what the questions that they asked the most like, there was this whole week where I literally want to call went on to Reddit onto Amazon onto YouTube as well and you go to YouTube is also another way you go through the comment section so you start realizing that there are some questions that people keep on asking over and over and over and over again so we just have to do is to answer those questions right if everyone's asking it now bomb to ask us well, so yeah,

James Taylor
yeah. So you're Where did you kind of develop this this love this passion for social media and I know you're a big Instagram, Twitter to big platforms you spend a lot of time thinking about but where did this all kind of come from for you?

Darius Tan
Okay, this is pretty funny because when it comes to Social media where shutout form was really Twitter, right? And I struck Saturday when back when I was doing my national service for Singapore right but to do compulsory army enlistment so back then I was just thinking like, you know what I want to I want to be a speaker, I want to be a trainer, right? And I want to motivate people, but currently I'm stuck in army 10. So what can I do right? Then I started going on to Twitter and just posting quotes, right, those pseudo quotes that you see everywhere, which doesn't exactly help people that much, but maybe give them a bit of inspiration. I think the value in terms of Twitter if you just give quotes, there is a very viable strategy. But what I did was simply just I just read quotes, and I just read quotes and I just did like three to four hashtags. And then because I just I was just I think on Twitter, I did not know that you know, I was gonna go big on social media. If you told me like, years ago like you know, you're going to grow a following to over 200 K and because strategy, our followers I would believe it because Cuz I was just on Twitter for fun. It was really just for fun. And I think that happens to everyone as well. It's when we explore when we start to explore new skills, that's when you realize, hey, we are actually really good at this. So, crypto was kind of like a lucky moment for me, in a sense, because I went to it, but the reason why I say lucky, probably is the reason why I stopped on social media, you know, I wouldn't have been able to reach here. So Twitter, I was just within like, why Gary Vee said, honestly, I think Gary Vee was one of the inspirations as well, like, just want to put onto onto social media, I just execute. So I thought, Okay, you know what I'm going to execute. So I was like, basically, usually the training is until like, basically a week at 6pm in the army, and you go until like, night, and so I was like, you know, from 10 to 11 to 10 to 11. around that, that one hour, right? I'm just waiting like, Man, I'm just literally going to every single Twitter profile and then just answering them. So that was back in the army then on the weekends what I'll usually do is all the way from like, I did something similar to Gary, I think Jay is a bit more hardcore, but he does it from 10pm to 3am. I did it for I think 8pm to 12am I think roughly around the same hours my dad did mala so what I did was I simply just started within people literally and I wasn't like a social media expert so that doesn't like I did not go to others and say hey, this is how you go your your Twitter account this I got the cup? No simply because I was very into like, motivational inspiration and what was peak performance things like Tony Robbins, Brendon Burchard. So literally, like I just go to different weights. And then like I see the problems that people have, and he's just participating. And if you want to know how you can find all this, it's literally just type in onto the search profile, whatever keywords that people usually search for, right so let's say if I'm looking to inspire people looking to motivate people, by usually people win The hashtag of inspiration, motivation, hashtag, maybe they'll they'll say hashtag problem by hashtag feeling down, right. So if you know where, where the problems are, where their pain points are, where they hang out, I think that's something that really developed, which is understanding where they really hang out at, and you know where they hang out, then that's where you should be. Right? That's where you should be. And back then, the funny thing about starting this whole thing, I did not know how to monetize it or so. So literally, I was I wasn't earning anything like I did not see something that hey, I'm gonna monetize. For me, it was just the passion of really helping people at the same time was realizing that he I mean, I'm doing pretty well on Twitter, right? So I might as well continue to grow. And I think in the third or fourth month that I didn't, I didn't have my thing fourth or fifth month, then that is when I started growing organically about three K to four k flows per month, which almost hour I'd even track the analytics right. I just started writing here. getting quite some traction or to this. So I went on to Twitter, right? So that's without Twitter. I kind of conquered it in a sense, right? Because I was like, wow, okay, I look pretty bad with thought. I went to Instagram. And the funny thing about Instagram is I totally flopped on it. So here's one lesson what

James Taylor
why did why did you go to Instagram next as opposed to maybe going to Facebook or tik tok? Or maybe other platforms?

Darius Tan
Okay, that's actually a very interesting question. Okay, back then. I think Tick Tock still was on obviously Tick Tock was the app was already there. But no one was put no one was using it and no one was pushing it out. So that was in 2019. The start of 2019. Yeah, start 2019 around there. So that is when I went on to Instagram, or actually no, sorry, not 2019 And towards the end of 2018, because I flopped really badly on Instagram. But the reason why I went to Instagram is because it was because Gary Vee again Oh, man. So, Gary Vee said He has this rule called the Sunday night when he won I think that was around the time a publisher first came out with this rule saying that when you when you say focus on the platforms, there are two wing the best and creates the most out of it for you. I mean back then to me, I didn't know what what in the world I was okay, maybe I knew I was but I think we need to monetize on so any difference for me, but I just knew that you know what, since he said that Instagram and Facebook is going to be the Saturday night. I'm going to go onto Instagram first then go onto Facebook because obviously, you want to nail down on that one thing. Instead of diversify your seven spread ourselves too thin. So I decided to nail down Instagram next then moving on to Facebook, and Facebook which which is a pretty funny story. I'll get that. I'll get back to that later on. Instagram, so I went to Instagram because yes, so one of the he honestly 91 is probably the second biggest social media platform, and literally the b2c market that is freakin freakin freakin huge. For every speaker out there, especially if you are promoting books, right? Most of your customers are going to come from Instagram, or if not with that, I think it doesn't spy on book sales. But Instagram does brilliantly well with webinars because it's just proven to work on Instagram that you can get a lot more of your target audience on there rather than Twitter. So back then I didn't know much about marketing so I just went on to Instagram because highest ROI and I flopped really badly in it. I've looked really value in it because I went in and I thought you know what, it's so good to be a senior speaker. So this is a second lesson that people should learn is that oh, wait yes in first lesson yet. Okay. But basically a lesson is always understand that content is king, but context is everything. The context is really everything. So why, why I tried to do was I think the Twitter quotes and now just opposing the course author, Instagram, they tell you my idea was just opposing quotes, quotes, quotes. Coronavirus I realized that you know what, there's some Instagram pages that does quotes as well. Like, why can I do quotes as well? Right so I just decided quotes and quotes and quotes and quotes right now realize that now was when I finally realized that you know, of course I don't really add much value to people I was posting here's the thing you know, they always say content is king, right? So I literally follow the advice that I was putting, I was posting three to four times of content but they are spending about three to four hours or more than that every single day just on Instagram. And in I think the first month I was really happy because he find your followers are like, Whoa, the first one I'm like, wow, I'm like, Okay, back then was a numbers game. But if you really think about it, numbers, the number of followers don't really correlate to how much you earn if you do even offline your social media profile, then you don't earn anything so back then I wasn't earning anything but there was this trade off just like you know, I got a I got a goal. I mean, I don't really know the monetize yet, but let's just go and enjoy You got along the way. So I went in onto it. I think I spent five hours and then one of the first models green tea as second and third and fourth. That's when you went to absolute like, bubbles. Bubbles. Yeah, really, because I started posting for Singapore, Singapore, Singapore, right, the only thing that was happening was a decrease in followers and engagement. Literally, no one wanted to engage with my post. And then I was losing followers or city weight, but the content is king. Right? So I thought, Is it because of like my hashtags or whatever it is, by other strategy? That's a ton and ton of strategies about Instagram as well. So I was thinking like, well, where did I go wrong? And that was when I realized that I wasn't adding value to the people on Instagram. That's why I say context is everything because on Twitter, yeah, maybe you can do quotes. You can share those kinds of big small pictures and inspirational motivation. He does well on Twitter, on Instagram. It doesn't do well because why people Do you want to see this thing called a quiet? Not just a quiet you Everyone calls it edutainment. Like people want to see a demo on Sunday that educates them entertain them at the same time. So things that work really well Instagram I mean, for the speakers are listening, these are some things that you can definitely work on first is always have a variation in terms of your content. So I realized that quotes and just only the one Instagram right after that three months is over. Okay, that's not any quotes. There's a lot more there are infographics did there are videos like videos, which can be filmed by you, or you can also do like, basically purchase motivational, inspirational videos on Fiverr things I really added on Fiverr and proven to go viral. You can just take it and use it as well. So those are those are low cost options, but what really did well for me, and what became the turning point was really infographics. I think infographics was something that back then he was he had a lot more hype than now we must now more and more people doing infographics but you still had a cup still has a good engagement. on it. So if we've got infographics is really agitating at the data then why because infographic is simply just a few pictures, and then just a few words by let's say five or maybe six ways you can get $10,000 per month right first way affiliate marketing second way this right so it says this thing now this few things by educates audience so I was aiming for the entrepreneur entrepreneurship niche. So another thing you have to understand is that you need to know what who exactly is your audience, you definitely don't want to be. Let's say if I'm teaching people social media, you don't really want to talk about things like oh, health, muscular development, I mean, it's good that people see that hey, I into personal development, things like that. But you don't want to do infographics on persona development, because you really want to be targeted to that one target audience yourself. Because once you start posting many different topics, maybe things like personal development, pick performance less when your audience starts to get confused. Because you'll be thinking with some going on to this profile, what exactly do I learn by back then I was doing quotes and then say infographics, then quotes, and then videos. And I was posting everything, everything everywhere. So I didn't really know, a format to pause. I didn't know how to vary my posts. And basically, I just made my whole follower base super confused. And because people are very sick of me posting the same thing, imagine every day you wake up, and then you go onto your phone, and then you're scrolling like, oh, wow, this guy's posting course again, every day. And as someone you I post, like four quotes a day, imagine your whole Instagram pages flutter course. So right now if there are any speakers or speakers listening to this, and they're posting quotes every day, please change it. It's like always use this analogy that it's like literally asking someone to eat a cheeseburger for every single meal. He made him for breakfast with a cheeseburger for lunch to eat a cheeseburger you didn't hear cheeseburger for me eat cheese a cheeseburger. Yeah. So if you're posting With videos every single day, right, just using that same content, people are gonna get very sick of it. Yeah.

James Taylor
When we've been experimenting with the team, I remember kind of going back. This is probably two years ago, and we would do quite a lot of quote, cards, but we would do them on Facebook, and they seem to work pretty, pretty well on Facebook, we didn't really do much stuff on Twitter and Instagram was really, really just kind of starting at that point. And then I remember getting really frustrated because we were trying to create lots of different content. And I would spend hours on creating nice, like really big blog posts with lots of likes, like real like long, two and a half thousand words, blog post, and the little infographic that we created, which took us 10 minutes, would get more shares more likes on on different things as well. And so is that kind of thing I would just constantly kind of see, as you said, choosing the choosing the platforms and then working, figuring out what works for that platform. And I know that When we've been doing all tests recently, and I know you and I have spoken about this, where previously on Instagram, we were basically just doing the kind of same thing that we were doing on Twitter, for example. And then we start experimenting what to do like more than a short video, one minute style videos, and those started kind of working, but they just had like wrong hashtags and wrong call to action and all that stuff as well. And then more recently, kind of starting to move into the igtv. So it feels like what you said there, you kind of just have to kind of go really deep on each of these platforms because they work so differently. Yes. Just just from a workflow. One thing we've always kind of we've kind of gone through different variations of this. I remember years ago, we used to do like things like Hootsuite, we used to use Hootsuite that was all kind of tool time. And then we kind of moved and we were creating so much content, we actually moved and we were using a tool called Meet Edgar which was doing more kind of ever Green style content. And then we actually moved the game to just doing everything natively in each of the tools. So we would just if we were just doing stuff on Instagram, we'd just be using Instagram tool, or, or Facebook or Twitter or whatever, they just do it natively. And more recently, we've kind of gone back and starting to look at tools again. So when you're managing all this for yourself and your client, what are your workflow look like each morning when you're thinking, Okay, I've got to create, I'm creating these different types of content. I'm thinking about infographics, I think about video, I'm thinking about cars, I'm thinking about photos. I'm thinking about long form content. And then how did you the syndication piece, what does your workflow look like? Okay, that's that's a really great question.

Darius Tan
So I think the question is really more towards how I kind of basically systemize my content so that I'm able to create content that is unique for each platform and don't overwhelm myself. This also goes back to how I do every single cause content distribution system. So essentially what we do is we understand that there are things right there walks around with and Instagram and Facebook that works well on Archie platforms that actually treat types of content. We figured out why these courts cause a delay really do well on all three platforms actually on Instagram and salvia. So Deus Val is just how you design it. Okay, so, second one, I'll dive more into it for each of its segments, infographics, infographics work well on Instagram and Facebook, on Twitter is a lot harder because people don't exactly press on to the picture. So that's a second. That is really videos, videos, and I'm looking at videos not about one minute. I'm always looking at videos one minute or below because why people are disagreement with the attention span. So once it's quote your video and see like why it's over one minute usually they won't watch it a bit as well because nobody will watch over a one minute video, Facebook. You will have times where To form in this video work better, but why many video associate works on Facebook. So these three are things that can be used for all three different platforms. So what I did was I realized that you know what, what I can do is literally just pick up the posts on Twitter by since I've been posting quotes on Twitter over and over and over again, again, because this posts and then I just design it into an Instagram post here. So that's the repurposing of hot generated can a second thing is I can take my post on Instagram, or one week later, what I'll do is I'll post it on Facebook. So there's a time delay. I'm not posting the same content on the same platform at the same time, right. So you want to have a time delay. Usually I'll say what we like basically our Instagram, I'll post that then one week later, I'll post on Facebook, and people usually don't really realize the differences as well. So for infographics, you can use your Instagram and then you can use it on Facebook SRL both works really well for infographics. That is videos videos can be used on a cheap laptop So you realize that when I hit one content, technically I'm hitting all cheery. So I'm hitting Archie platform, it's just that when it comes to when it comes to the captions, that is when it's different. So what we, what we use, I honestly think it doesn't really have to do much with like tools and automation. I think a lot of people always think like, Oh, I'm gonna have the best tool is all about the best automation and things like that. But I feel that if you don't get your fundamentals right, of knowing what content works, right, and knowing basically knowing how to design a content, I think that's really the main struggle, but uh, you know, that okay, infographics work, but why does my infographic not work? Right? There are a lot of elements within that, that within that content itself. So I think what people really need to do is to understand the fundamentals of content, which is really no going back to the same fundamentals of knowing what your audience wants to know more about or are in pain. All right, so let's say for mine, what I can be doing right in order to help speakers is I can see how to go you're Instagram account from zero to hundred, sorry, zero to zero to 10 k in one month by now I can do an infographic. I can do an infographic on the steps, right and then you'll be a carousel post. Basically, you can swipe, swipe, swipe, swipe there, you'll see 123 step one, step two, step three, step four. So it really goes back down to the fundamentals of knowing exactly what your customer wants, also your audience wants and then serving it to them. So we will ask your question of how do we really churn out so many content and churning out I think about the content a day, I think about 30 content a day. So what we do is actually we have a content calendar, we do have a content calendar, okay, we're gonna post this on this day or this day on this. So every single day, for three months straight, we do three to six or even one year as well, but three to six months, we already have a content that we know we're gonna post every single day. And basically this should be just be done on Excel sheet because this is literally what we do. We pull an Excel sheet okay. On this first date, we post this, this, this this this and then once you put everything on the Excel sheet and then the next thing you got to do is just pop out like maybe two to three days so let's say right now I'm doing content creation right usually I take two days and I'll take four posts and basically at the end everything in that two days out I'll just set myself to this in the hole man right in order to prepare for three months worth of debt and that's why we do

James Taylor
and that's me batching your content creation process

Darius Tan
really better off and then creation process if I don't want pink June does it in another level, pink June use to pink June news to do like three days used to better cheat days and it's one whole year worth of videos. Yeah, so batching really works very well because you don't want to keep coming back and Oh man.

James Taylor
I remember I remember early on doing that where like every I think it was coming every Monday and I would do it the video for that week like a lot. It would be longer. 10 minutes and Just checking. I did it for like how many months during that? I thought this is, you know, sent you have to kind of set up. And I don't know what you feel like there's a big switching cost going from that creation mode or even actually creation mode to filming mode, which is I can look them as different different stages in same thing, and then going taking a distribution syndication. They're kind of those switching costs when you haven't going to go back and forth. So I love the idea of batching.

Darius Tan
Yeah, it really affects productivity. That's why I think I realized because once we start going into something, then our mood is so pretty like down because I Oh, man, it's Monday, I gotta do this again. Right. So if you just bet for three months or six months, I mean, yeah, we'd like to do six months, six months, but we bet six months, then the next six months a year then pretty much you wouldn't have much to worry. Right?

James Taylor
I think I think I was I was watching something. Yeah. Then it was Tim Ferriss was talking about this where he does. He does a week, every three months, where he batches a lot of his content from His team to us and he just kind of gets that week and it just could be course content or wherever the thing is. The thing is as well. One thing I was gonna ask is, and I'm sure a lot of speakers as they're listening, they're just going, Okay, Daria, this is great like Instagram and very b2c focus. But my audience is senior executives and I don't know how much time I guess they're spending on Instagram. Are they not really spending more time on podcasts or LinkedIn or YouTube or somewhere else? What because you you as an agency part, you also work with clients whose audience is primarily b2b. So what what do you tend to advise for them?

Darius Tan
Okay, so actually, that's a very good question period before before, like just only recently about few months ago, that's where we started catering more towards b2b because we are specialized in b2c, right things like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and if you are doing b2b speaking your corporate speakers are looking for deals with HR business partners. I know what you're looking for talent development managers, HR business as partners and these, where you want to really be, where you really want to be, is be at places where they're hanging out. I always use the same word, right? Which mr. speaker that comes up to me or push me. Okay, where do I get more clients? Where do I get more customers? You just you answer this one question for me, where are you all just hanging out? If you don't know where all this is hanging out at on internet on the internet itself, then you really need to understand your audience a lot more. So let's say for my audience, I know that my audience Hangouts on podcast, right, I know that my audience don't just hang out in facebook, facebook community, they hang up to Comic Con and clickfunnels because a lot of them are speaker so you realize that in terms of my contacts, my audience is hanging out and those kind of like normal social media platforms like oh, with on LinkedIn antics, so it's very important to understand where your audience is, for b2b speakers. By way your audience probably is on LinkedIn. That's, that's really the highest ROI where you want to be spending. It. So if you are b2b and you're going on to it onto Instagram, it's not really a worldwide thing unless you're a b2c, because Instagram really kills like they would be to see usually one, if you really ask yourself, do you think that HR business partners, C level executives are hanging out at Instagram? They weren't, they won't be spending another Instagram, right. So most of them will be on LinkedIn, because what you saw is a professional network. These are where people talk to each other about business. So we really want to be on is on LinkedIn for basically b2b speakers. And that's where you want to get to,

James Taylor
to find as interesting you know, that the LinkedIn Instagram thing, I tend to for most of my C suite clients, they tend to if they're going to be on anything that's going to be on LinkedIn. They actually prefer longer form content podcasts, for example, longer books, you know, things like that the the lake longer form. However, if I'm another kind of audience, and most speakers, b2b speakers do it. Well, which are the event planners, the meeting planners? Now for many of them, I actually find their big Instagram uses a lot of the event profs spaces on Instagram a little bit on on LinkedIn groups as well, but a lot on Instagram so so I think you can't you can, I guess what I'm saying is don't completely discount Instagram, if you're speaking to a b2b audience because sections of your community will be hanging up under the roof and they're looking for a different thing.

Darius Tan
I think what's really important is for people who, especially people who are starting out, so I'm not sure if the people who are listening are starting out, it'll be good if you focus on LinkedIn. Rather than I realized that if you really start to dive in to do more than one platform at one time, you could have a lot higher ROI by focusing on one platform we lost. That was a mistake I made. The reason why I flop really well your Instagram is valid because I was using a lot of time on Twitter as well. So I didn't really have that balance between these two so I think what would be good is if you're starting out then yeah go out Jeff go LinkedIn then after a while you you want to go on Instagram going to Instagram. If you have the resources obviously this you've got the resources you should be going everywhere going on. You should be going on the fall of forming social media platforms, right Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn and Facebook and I really love LinkedIn as well because LinkedIn is also very easy for me v purpose content because LinkedIn whatever content I'm creating right now my lady contact can be used as my Instagram long caption in my LinkedIn also can be used as my Facebook post. I mean, right now I'm banned on on Facebook for like 10 times already but if I have Facebook I will be using our be reposted repurposing that on Facebook as well.

James Taylor
So when it comes to LinkedIn, I know we've been experimenting a lot with video but not one minute video slightly longer. videos will be fine. I know that they're doing like LinkedIn live video. I'm seeing some of my friends doing a lot of that what what are you finding is working particularly well for your, your b2b kind of speakers when it comes to LinkedIn.

Darius Tan
Okay, when it comes to LinkedIn, I think what's very important is not really just the connections, I know a lot of people are going into, like, Oh, I'm gonna connect everyone Connect, connect, connect, connect, connect, right? I've seen, I've seen people know, I've seen people who use the hashtag social networking. And then basically, the whole hashtag was flooded with people like, Oh, hey, guys, I got a create connections, please connect more with me. And that's honestly, I think the last thing that you ever want to do unless you're like a network marketer or something like that. Why? Because once you start connecting with people outside of your target audience, the whole algorithm is gonna screw up for you, yourself, whoever they are targeting LinkedIn one understand where you're going to be targetable. So it's not really about number of connections is the same thing for Instagram. And same thing about it's not about the number of followers. Obviously, these two things is always about the target. followers, and it's all about whether they're engaged. Why? Because you have unlimited followers, but they don't engage your content, no one's gonna push you to get to speak for the organization. Right? You also can have really engaged followers, but none of them are ever gonna buy from you. Because they're not I get that, too. So I've seen those people who, like, have a lot of connections. And while they have a lot of comments, right, I wish when I see to the comments, I'm like, wow, these people are definitely not in your, you know, the Bible. They're not in your niche at all. So there's at any point, I feel like too many people are chasing the numbers game of, Oh, I want to get more connections. I want to get more followers. So one thing is to stop at that level, once you start thinking that oh, I need more connections. I need more followers. Yes, you need more of that. You need more data. You need more engaged followers, not a massive amount. So when it comes to LinkedIn, I think what really, really works well enough on LinkedIn is trading basically. I think I will classify it, okay, I'm not sure how many numbers I'm gonna come up with. So first one, I think what really works well in LinkedIn content are those long form. Here's the thing. You don't need to be long form and chunky. Well, one thing that was very well learned this form, comment before it I think Justin if I'm not wrong, I know from Justin. He what he did was he does this one liner. Yes, this one line one line, one line one line. So you want to have like a long form capture by sucker be one line, you'd want to have,

James Taylor
like great writing, you just want the correct the whole point in the sentence is to get you to read on to the next sentence.

Darius Tan
Correct. So I always say always hope. Second is a story. And then if you have a call to action, this what I tell my team every single day in terms of Instagram is on Facebook. In terms of LinkedIn, I mean, they can't do it because it's too short. But you always want a hook. Yeah, realize one thing is people always think big like old man bias like clickbait right. What a clickbait No, I feel. Honestly, if you think that what you do just value to your audience, or the more you need them to read your content. I feel like too many people like go like oh man Want to clickbait clickbait but know why you're doing this if what you are doing is adding value or the more you should get people to read your content and by getting them to read the content, you need them to get hooked on to what you're doing first. So you always want a new start with a hook, right? Are people acquire clickbait clickbait title? Like, Oh, how I generated 200 k followers in less than two years that people are okay, I want to know, or my five step checklist to creating content in just five minutes, or my five step checklist to create 50 content ideas in 10 minutes. That's it? Why do so. There are many times where you always want to find hope and go with a story of a story with your struggles. I found my mom who wrote the book about the seven levels of intimacy, he realized that those families that works the best Okay, so in terms of this long form captions of stories or what's the best and the ones where you are sharing your vulnerability and mistakes and it's because so often shared vulnerabilities and mistakes. So where you where you want to be doing is also doing that on your social media, social media. platforms as well. Because when you start saying your vulnerabilities and sharing your mistakes, there's a look there's the plus level that you can connect with someone immediately. Yeah, so first one is really that long form the long form caption but you got to do in that one line and then you gotta space it and enter that one bar and then live in one line, one line, one line chunkier. or second one that does very well, videos, video, such variable, but one thing you have to understand my videos make sure that you have captions or subtitles that people can hear. People can see sorry, because most of times I see people that don't have subtitles, that's one thing. One of the mistakes really, second is people that have subtitles, but they can't really be read, then what's the point of having the subtitles there. So the subtitles are like really small, they can't really see. But something else is very, very, very, very, very important in when it comes to LinkedIn when it comes to Instagram, Facebook, why we lost the following on Instagram, I think I can't remember what's the percentage by no avail high percentage of people watch his videos without turning on the audio. And actually I find myself doing that as well. So yeah, whenever I screw on the video, I don't use our mouse I start seeing the subtitles. I don't really on the video, I'm not sure why I stop I just see the subtitles and see. So on LinkedIn, you want to keep your content not too long as well, simply because why if he wants to professional, they don't want to spend 10 minutes on your content. They don't have time to go to like the whole 10 minutes of I gonna do is on YouTube. Okay, so I'll link anyway or do short videos, I think one minute two minutes. That's really great. And then we can do is to take that content and repurpose your other platforms as well.

James Taylor
Yeah, that's it because if you do the one minute and if it's if it's if it works, you there's the possibility you obviously use it for Instagram and other things, but we actually found that the on Instagram the sweet spot for us was like two to three minutes so not quite a minute but you know, it's a little bit longer, as well as can what we found had the highest levels of engagement and interesting we just did one the other day. I did 10 One minute videos for a client which they are using on Instagram on on LinkedIn just now and I'm actually watching their stats going up and this is quite a well known large company and so there's my video which is one minute and there's actually another video for another speaker who was a former president of our country so like super famous person and and I'm getting more numbers stats than this this person more views and things and actually more comments and and i and i assuming it's like not the content now what we're actually saying but in terms of just the kind of length I'm interested in to see how that can affect it as well because we're kind of covering some of the same areas but with the big changes we're just doing slightly different lengths and his content is very long for video.

Darius Tan
Yeah, I think that's pretty that's very good. Whatever they are doing I think to my will be always be good on social media is always variable. content you don't want to come to a point where the audience know why they're gonna post next when the audience know what you're gonna post next then that's when that trail off social media dies. I mean, the reason why people are so hooked on those social media why because they go onto the platform they see different things every time so if every single day are doing that one same thing, like the whole cheeseburger they did right. So make sure that if you're doing two to three minute video sometimes rated with one minute video as well then you'll do a lot better because it was people start saying that to me, it's always gonna be two minutes again again again, or when you start to pop up something different it becomes a pattern interrupt as well because we were like, wait a minute, I think usually post two minutes right now is doing is doing one minute so that the current content that does very well as well on LinkedIn is basically a post that has a picture and usually this picture has to do with something with you. Okay, well, what always added a few pictures Okay, I realized one is posting a picture specs here but you don't want the steps to be to complete that you want it to be a very simple graphs that people can understand immediately when looking at it. So another one that works very well is basically posting something personal like a personal photo you don't want it to be. You don't want to be a photo of like, or actually, you know what, I feel that any personal photo as long as it's personal to you, and you have a story behind it. Other millenia story, I want to post a photo of your family and go like, oh, talk about social media don't

James Taylor
really relate to your topic. Yes,

Darius Tan
I think because there was this one post I did was I literally just posted a photo of check mark. And then I just asked, Do you agree with this? And that was like my highest view of everything. Like what? I spent so much time talking about five step checklist on how to create content and everything then, but

James Taylor
again, you're always experimenting, and I think that's interesting. I was having a conversation with a speaker the other day, who basically she's based in Singapore, and he he did this very long, really well thought article, which is great, really great, long form article And he got okay okay views, but then he actually was at airport This was before lockdown he was an airport, someone he took a photo of something at this airport, because it and any related obviously to his topic, how it relate to this topic and that one and it was it was a low grade you know it was it was it was a high quality photo was taken on an iPhone, it looked a bit squint, you know, there was not it wasn't well composed as a photo. But it spoke to people. And it was that little pattern interrupt that you were kind of talking about earlier. What was more people were expecting and it got ridiculous, you know, hundreds and thousands of views as well.

Darius Tan
That's why it's always good to vary your content, your content, instead of sticking to Okay, you know what to do, I'm going to do long form and then know what to do. I'm going to post video today I'm going to post infographic and once you start creating, you'll start to realize that Well, there's this huge spike, right because people will start to follow you because they're like, Oh wait, what are you going to post next? But if I didn't know that every single day you're gonna post the same day now what support me follow you, but I thought I follow him because I want that something new and you see gonna come up. But sometimes he says only certain if you share, like, Oh, how I hit 1,000,001 million impressions just by one post, right? So you always want to vary your content when it comes to all three different platforms.

James Taylor
Yeah. And finally, just to finish off with a little discussion about the LinkedIn site, when it comes to call to action. Now, you know, you and I spoke before in terms of how you do kind of call to action within let's say, Instagram, where you have the kind of but with the usual section with the bio would be because you can put links inside. But when it comes to LinkedIn, I heard a while back, someone was saying don't put the link in the post, put it in the comments, and then someone told me No, that's not true. doesn't work like that anymore. You get better if you put so what do you find work is works well, in terms of that call to action? And can is that is the LinkedIn algorithm smart enough to know if you're sending people to an opt in

Darius Tan
Gee, okay, so 10 through that question, yes, LinkedIn algorithm is smart enough to understand because why they are one thing that everyone So understand is where it comes from social media platform. And I do read read up the actual like, concerns. And basically like, I know Instagram always goes about, say, like, Oh, you know, this is a new algorithm for this year. So I was just reading about one last week about Instagram, or LinkedIn. And for any social media platform, except for maybe I think physical physical is not that it's quite open to that. But when it comes to LinkedIn, they don't want you to have their platform. So once you put a link that gets you off their platform, they don't like you, especially if you're putting every content that you write it, because why LinkedIn wants you to, once their audience to spend more time on LinkedIn. If your post is always having a link and getting people to get on LinkedIn. Why will my will LinkedIn like your post? Yeah, I mean, so it's a lot harder. It's a lot harder for you to reach out to more people because in a way, LinkedIn algorithm doesn't really allow you to push out their price because they're constantly using links. So what I found out works really well. I mean, it works is the same thing as Instagram as well. When you can do it. basically have a call to action and say, the link is inside my, my bio. Right, the link is in my on my profile page, the link is now the link is on my profile page. That's all we see. So you want it to have one link and that one link is always at the same place. Because why when you are always repeating the same thing in every post, people would naturally click on your profile, and then they'll click on the link. And in fact, it's even better if people click on your profile. Why because they discover more about you by instead of every single post to spoon feed them like hey, click on this link and then the algorithm doesn't really help you in that because they don't want you to spend more time on LinkedIn. So we always want to do is to just be a call to action and say you know what, click on click onto my bio as I click on my profile, and then in my about my about me section that you can click on that link. Right So you always want to put your link in your bio because that will help you a lot more in terms of getting the result and I think that's not at all because what I did was quite funny thing experimented with this two things, I posted the exact same content, but in one month of bad, so I don't think people actually remember it. So I posted a content one month apart. I mean, obviously, they thought I deleted it because I said people feel like what was it? So I did it one month apart one head, I think treating site one, do they have this insight? And back then I wasn't really active on LinkedIn. So I think the followers maybe like, two, three more, and so they're much less Oh, to two more followers, the one that did not have the link that I think about 1.3 1.5 times better than the one that didn't have the apple side and same exact same time on the exact same D. Yeah. So

James Taylor
you can run these little mini experiments as well. But

Darius Tan
yeah, I mean, sometimes it's a bit taxing for people. So what I do is, I always like to experiment to myself. That's why I got banned on Facebook 10 times. That's why I got banned on Instagram a few times as well before I started before I started growing a lot. So I think I mean, obviously you don't want to go Both hardcore like me to exploring and testing the boundaries but it's always good to explore some areas to understand what does better rather than just listening to people actually when implemented, I realize sometimes people always feed us information that might not actually be true. So even while I'm saying now don't take the word for what right you should well actually implement the trust and then trust Yes, right when actually implement it. That was how I really learned a lot because when I was going on to Instagram I paid like a crip toddler I think five finger some learning from different Instagram experts and have them all sit on the sit quietly quite similar things, but I've never I have very different opinions. So what did I do? I went to test the law and that's why because I got banned this question, you know, this, they're like the experts out there. They're telling you things, but they can actually get you banned. Right. So be careful. Yeah. So you really got to be careful. I mean, it's all about experimenting, exploring. Obviously, the reason why I got that is because not really I would say it's not Follow the Instagram explains because I decided to put about three Yeah, so when when you push the boundary I obviously gonna get you know obviously gonna get punished by the algorithm. So that's it I think it's very important for you to implement end of the day. I think when it comes like let's say infographic calls video there's so many other kind of things that goes into Instagram and Twitter and LinkedIn and how like his sex work and everything else. But what really what you really need to understand is to really implement I think, honestly people who implement rather than when learn all this knowledge, right and they learn it, learn it, absorb it like a sponge, what are they compared to people execute the one execute usually that's better because when you start executing, you start to realize that even making this mistake is tricky. And then you go on and you go on and you go, it's like the same thing, right? You always want to meet that minimum viable product and then you go on and go on and go on. So it's just absorbing things like a sponge like when and hearing or two different YouTubers like or what to avoid. So of course, that's why I did I literally went through every YouTube channel that I can find on YouTube on Instagram back then. Learn everything about retail, go Instagram, go LinkedIn book, buy courses and everything like that. But what I really learned the most from and I do credit the fact that yes, because I have this huge information powder I bought from these people, but the one strike caught the most pick, choose one or the one that best buy you some testing, and you start varying things. That's when you realize, Hey, this is my ally. And it works. It works differently for different speakers.

James Taylor
So tell us as we start to finish up here, some quick quickfire questions, what would be one book you'd recommend to our listeners, and it doesn't have to be a book on social media and Instagram. It could be a book that you've just found more powerful than any other book or you've gifted more than any other book.

Darius Tan
Okay, I think, Wow. I when I was preparing for this interview, I mean, I saw that question. I was thinking, Well, what is one book there's so many books that I like to talk about, but I didn't one book that really changed my life is expert secrets by Russell Brand. So there is something that really made a shift We didn't meet and say like, you know what, actually, there is a way to put the message out in the market. And Russell Brunson is a genius at it. I mean, that's the reason why Click Funnels grew, I feel like how much was there? $400 million in five years. Right. So that book was something that really changed my mind off. Hey, you know what, there's a message that you can bring up to the crowd, but it matters. But the message that you bring out the court matters. But if you come up with just a message, like, Oh, I want to impact more people, or I want to change the life of others, then that would differentiate you from people. So I think expert sequence does that very well. And

James Taylor
I love the little diagrams that he does as well. Yes. quite nice. It's quite nice way of taking quite what could be quite a complex subject and simplifying it. What about if you were to recommend one online resource or tool or mobile app that you find particularly useful? What would that be? That'd be Canva.

Darius Tan
I would like to I'd like to thank the creators of Canva. That does the job. So say I'm in business because it's on social media, right? So one tool that I really, really love is Canva. Canva does everything for me. It's not just social media posts. It's actually logos. I do logos on Canva. I do. Oh, I do my lead magnets on Canva as well. Right. So a lot of things go from Kevin Canvas, like really lordship subscription programs. I know my

James Taylor
mind is amazing, is an amazing tool. And finally, let's imagine that you wake up tomorrow morning. You're there in Singapore, you wake up, but you have to start from scratch. So you've got all the knowledge, all the skills that you've acquired over the years, but no one knows you. You have no social media profiles, nothing no one knows. But you as a speaker, as an author, as a social media expert. What would you do? How would you restart things?

Darius Tan
Okay, so for seven days, I didn't What? What would be good is because I would probably lose all my social media following and like I say, I don't have anything I can remember what I would probably did, because I asked Microsoft that question. I think I yield back as well was because I think someone asked me the similar question was on day one, my first thing I'll do is, I'll start building my social media following it. I'll do it over again, what I'll do is I'll start on Instagram and Facebook immediately, I wouldn't really care that much about Twitter. I'll care about Instagram and Facebook immediately. So firstly, I will be creating content for Instagram or Facebook. Second, first day or so while Bobby do is to start creating lead magnet, I think that's the first thing I'll get off the trade out of the market. Second thing what I'll do is okay, basically the seven days I'm gonna be doing affiliate marketing, because that's the easiest, honestly, I think that's the easiest when it comes to. You have no knowledge and the only thing you have is to build an email list and that's it. Right and then just push out affiliate offers. So what I'll do is day one, I'll start creating content. Start up, pushing up, creating my lead magnet that's the most important thing. Second thing is start using influencer marketing. Stop buying, stop buying influencers posts from different different social media platforms to grow their following to grow my email email list as well. But the data is when our start creating my affiliate speech, right and things like that. So start creating emails and things like that they for the industry, I stopped pushing out the offer to people, right? I mean, okay, you don't want to push that offer. So soon? Well, what we do is do value based emails. Now we send value value value. So I only have articles that basically they can reach out more on a blueprints or frameworks and things like that. And then they find a value again, the six add value again, this is where I stopped pushing out that the whole email, the whole email, email campaign, and then probably what I'll be known for is probably being an affiliate marketer. So but as I said, if I start off with you,

James Taylor
so Darius, thank you so much for coming up to the where's the best place, you've given so much knowledge and so much information on this presentation and I'm sure a lot of people want to kind of Maybe reach out to you get more training where we what were your agency as well learn more about you? where's the best place for people to go

Darius Tan
to the best place for people go to legacyignite.com that's our etc. there are tons of articles right there, right? Even creating more on basically four speakers I knew on how to grow Instagram. That's why we're calorie creeping on us. Okay, get a free audit on your Instagram profile on that page. If you'd like to correct me on my socials, on Instagram, I'll be working a lot on Instagram and your polyjet some social media tips as well, if you follow me on Instagram or on LinkedIn, I mean, Colin on Facebook, so there'll be various th w that's my initial ch W. So you can find me at David Hughes w en Autry or any platform, you'll probably find me there.

James Taylor
That's great. We'll put all those links Doris, thank you so much for coming on today and taking some time out of your calendar just now. I wish you all the best and posts in your social media business and your your kind of what you're doing there but also as a speaker, and hopefully we'll be be sharing a stage somewhere maybe in Singapore or somewhere in the world at some point in the future. Thanks so much.

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