185. How to have your voice heard on INSTAGRAM
Want your voice to be heard on INSTAGRAM?!
In this episode I chat to the Instagram Queen - Brooke Vulinovich - about -
📱How she became an Instagram expert.
📱 The BEST place to share your voice-to-camera content on instagram (and this surprised me!)
📱Instagram's 90% rule you need to know for your account to blow up.
📱 How Brooke overcame not liking her voice... to speaking on global stages.
Transcript
Hello. Welcome back. Social media is a massive megaphone for our message. And if you wanna be heard on social media, you gotta use your voice, which I often talk about, but you also need to know the platform. It's kind of like driving. If you wanna go anywhere, you first need the voice and speaking skills to drive the car, join Soul Speakers, and then the better you know the vehicle, like the fuel it runs on the gears, cruise control features, et cetera. The smoother you'll travel, the faster you'll get to your destination, and you'll also enjoy the ride along the way a lot more. And when it comes to the vehicle, the platform of Instagram, there is no one better place to help us than the queen of the Social Club community, Brooke Vulinovich. In this episode, Brooke shares so many great tips about how to blow up your Instagram. She cuts to the chase and some of her strategies surprise me, like it's not what you always hear. Brooke generously shared her time with us, all the way from beautiful Croatia. And if you want to grow an Instagram account, get ready to learn how.
Sally:
Brooke Vulinovich, it is so wonderful to have you on That Voice podcast. Welcome!
Brooke:
Oh, thank you so much. I'm excited to be here and dive into some Instatips for your audience.
Sally:
Oh, your tips are so good. Tell us the story of how the Social Club came about. How did you get into this?
Brooke:
Oh my gosh. Firstly, can I just say by complete accident, it was never the plan. It was never the life plan. I never had a strategy to do this, so it, I definitely fell into it by accident. It was about 10 years ago and I had quit my job and I'd gone to Europe to find myself as you do, and came to where I'm actually living now. And I'd never traveled and I'd never done anything because I'd always just worked. And it wasn't until we were on the airplane home that my now husband then boyfriend, literally for a couple of months said to me, Why don't you start your own business? Because if you go to work for somebody else, you'll get stuck in this clog again and you'll never wanna take breaks. And to be honest, I'd never thought of starting my own business ever.
Brooke:
It never entered my mind. It just, yeah, it just never did. And he said, look, I'll give you 12 months. I've seen how hard that you work, and if you could do that for yourself, I could only imagine what you could grow and build. So I'll give you 12 months. I'll cover the bills for 12 months and let's see what you build. And so in my previous job I was doing event planning and management, so I thought, Well, I'll just start an events business, right? Like, I'll just do that. I was also I'm much younger then, so I was probably a bit more fearless than I am now.And so I got on Instagram because obviously I didn't have any budget for traditional marketing, but I thought, here's this opportunity to use an app to build a business.
Brooke:
So I'll share pictures of my cats and I'll share pictures on night out with my friends, and I'm sure my business will just take off and blow up. Now, as you can imagine, it didn't. That didn't work. And I didn't know really what was going on or why the business wasn't growing. So I started researching exactly what brands were doing on Instagram and what they were posting and when they were posting and, and how often they were posting. And I became obsessed with studying brands on Instagram. There's gotta be a way for this to work for my business. And I think that's a combo of me being a Taurus and being very stubborn and refusing to give up. And so, yeah, I just became obsessed with studying what brands were doing on Instagram and how they were growing their accounts and like what hashtags were, I had no idea what that was, what the algorithm was actually back then, there was no algorithm.
Brooke:
But that obviously came in time and I put together a sort of a little test, a test strategy I guess you could say, to grow a service business. And I started implementing it and it worked and my followers were growing. And the best part was I was actually getting inquiries and, and I was making bookings and I was actually booking booking event work and I couldn't believe it. And then I had a friend come to me with an opportunity to do the same thing with a product. And because I'd grown a service business, I just wasn't sure if it would work for a product as well or if it was specific to services. So I started studying product businesses on Instagram. Again, what they were posting, when they were posting, how much they were posting, what hashtags they were using, what they had in their bio, all those kinds of things.
Brooke:
And I put together a strategy for growing and selling a product on Instagram and applied it to the product business. And that just went like gungho. So the followers just exploded when I did it with the product business. And when we actually launched the product, we sold out in five days. And that was just from Instagram from a brand new account. Nobody knew our name, nobody knew nothing. So that's when I thought, wow, this is cool. I think I'm onto something here. But I also thought, I'm so behind the times because this just must be what every other business is actually doing. And I just went about my life as you do. And then I attended a networking event, my first ever networking event, and we had to go around the room and share our biggest struggle in business. And everyone in the room said, Instagram.
Brooke:
And I literally could not believe what I was hearing. I guess it's that imposter syndrome, right? I just thought I was late to the party because what I was doing was working so well. I thought everyone must be doing this. But to hear all these women say they just couldn't figure it out. Their accounts aren't growing, they don't know why they can't sell. It blew my mind. And they said to me, Well, who's doing yours? 'cause yours is really good. And this was also at a time when people weren't really managing their own. They were only outsourcing it. So if you had a good Instagram, it's 'cause you were paying thousands of dollars a month to a marketing agency. And I said, I'm just doing it myself. Like, I can show you what I'm doing, I promise you'll be able to do it. And yeah, that sort of where it all began, I started teaching little Instagram workshops from my one-bedroom apartment.
Brooke:
This is seven years ago now. It was working, what I was teaching was working and the businesses that were coming were getting really good results. So as social media works, the words started to spread. And I was getting requests from interstate and international, How can we work with you? We're seeing the results that you're getting, but how can we access your training without coming to Perth? And that's when I knew I had to create an online version of what I was doing and what I was teaching. And that is where the Social Club was born. So the Social Club allowed me to reach businesses globally and give them access to training that was going to grow their Instagram, improve their Instagram, grow their followers, you know, give them clarity and actually show them how to make sales from Instagram. And I'm very proud to say that the Social Cub turned six at the start of December. And I know, I can't believe it. We have had almost 4,000 members from 36 different countries. And it's growing and it's stronger than ever. And I still just cannot believe that I get to do like, wake up every day and do something that I love so much that actually helps people.
Sally:
Oh yes, I'm in the same boat there. It's a nice feeling, isn't it?
Brooke:
Yeah. So that, that's, that's where it came from.
Sally:
Brooke, such a great story. So how can people get their voice heard on Instagram? What would be your number one tip?
Brooke:
Oh, number one tip. Well, if it's your voice you specifically want heard then I would start with Reels. So whether you are a business or whether you're a personal brand, you have a story to share and you have an audience that you are trying to reach with that story. So looking at reels and what educational content and what of your story, you can get in front of a camera and record and share. That's where people are going to see you. They're going to hear you and basically over time, if they're invested in your story, they're going to decide if they want to work with you or not. So that's the best place to start. And reels gives you that opportunity to speak face to camera. You can add music overlays over the top, you can add captions, you can add hooks so that if a follower is scrolling, they can find out exactly what the reel is about and decide to, to listen to more or not something that you do want to keep in mind as well, which is one of the new rules of Instagram is this 90% rule.
Brooke:
So in order for the, I guess in order for the algorithm to do the hard work for you and push your content out to people beyond who follow you that it thinks might be interested in your content based on looking like the people who already follow you, it's really important that you can get your audience to watch or consume 90% of your video content. So whether that goes for reels and videos posted to your feed or whether that goes for stories that you are sharing, you need to be aiming for that 90% of watch time. That's when your account will take off and that's when your account will explode. So if you are not getting that 90% watch time, that's when you need to have a look at what it is that you're sharing. Is it valuable content? Is it educational? Is it content that solves problems? Is it interesting content? And if it does tick all those boxes, well maybe the clips are too long, make the clips shorter and then people don't have to watch as much.
Sally:
Yeah. And I'm really interested to hear your take on this. I get asked this question all the time and I'm sure you do as well, but Brooke, I don't like how I look and I don't like how I sound and I'm worried about what people think.
Brooke:
I hear ya. Don't worry. My biggest ick for myself is my voice. And I am a global speaker. And if I let that personal ick get to me, I wouldn't be here doing something that I love every day. So instead of making it all about you and how you look and how you feel, think about it in terms of the information that you share could actually help change someone's life. And then it takes the pressure off you and makes it more about them. And then ultimately do a professional shoot. Like if you've got the budget for it, do a professional shoot, get your hair and makeup done, go do it in a proper studio because that's when you are going to look and feel your best. We all build up to that though. I, oh my gosh, on the sixth anniversary of Social Club, my team shared the very first Social Club video I ever did. And it's on the Social Club account, Sally, it's mortifying, it's mortifying for me to watch that.
Sally:
It's not me. This is not mortifying. I watched it today.
Brooke:
Oh my God. I was like, Oh hi. There's five of you. My laptop's like shaking all over my lap. I really don't even know what I'm saying I am a thousand times, but I had to start somewhere. Right? And it's been six years of doing one video a week that has, over time, it didn't happen overnight, but over time improved my voice, improved my confidence improved the way I showed up on camera. And I guess it's true what they say that practice makes perfect, right?
Sally:
Yeah. And you can't be good until you are being bad.
Brooke:
You start. Yeah.
Sally:
Like even as a professional voice coach, my very first podcast episode is pretty how you going. You know, like I'm looking back to it and I think, my goodness. So it's so important just to start. And that's why Instagram stories is a good one because it does disappear after 24 hours. So it's a great practice ground, wouldn't you say?
Brooke:
It's a great practice ground, but Instagram has changed a lot and what used to work on Stories isn't working as well anymore. The trends are changing. So I personally find that written Stories versus video Stories perform a lot bettering in terms of enhancing and maximizing your views. Yes. So it's almost like the old way of doing Instagram where you would have a photo and the caption on your Feed that has transferred to Stories and then videos have transferred to Feed by the use of Reels. So this is something that I'll be teaching next year and I've just done a masterclass covering the 10 new rules of Instagram. And this was one of the points from the masterclass that has actually been getting wild results for the people who are implementing this. Telling stories through text on your Stories versus face-to-camera, shoots up your views and then save your face-to-camera content for your Feed because that's gonna attract new followers in. And then your tech Stories gonna convert them into inquiries and then ultimately bookings. So give that a go and see the difference that it makes.
Sally:
That's so interesting because that is new advice. It's not what we often hear. I'm also finding that whenever I let my Stories run and then I put a new one up, the the views are incredibly high. Yes. So I've always kept like so many Stories, but if I've got something I really want people to see, I let it run and then it's, it's huge. It's like triple to quadruple what I normally get.
Brooke:
Same, exactly the same with me. Yeah, less is more is the rule for Stories going forward. It used to be more is more. But I think because there are so many people sharing Stories now and with the rise of TikTok and short form content, people want Shorts. They want content that they consume. I also think, again, with the rise of TikTok, the way consumers use Instagram versus the way consumers use TikTok are different we actually had the communications manager from TikTok come and do a masterclass inside Social Club. And this was something that she covered and I haven't forgotten it and I think it's got a lot to do with it. People or consumers open TikTok to watch with sound like they would watch Netflix. Whereas on Instagram, you want silence. So if you can watch someone's story in silence and that's by reading something instead, there's more chance of higher views. And as well on TikTok you don't really watch Stories. You watch one thing from an account that you follow and then you swipe to the next one. And users are putting that kind of same mentality. This is what I believe users are putting that same mentality into Instagram Stories, watching one swiping to the next one, watching one swiping to the next one, rather than watching lots from the same person. Does that make sense?
Sally:
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Working across the two platforms. I get that. And as a consumer, I'd say you're right. Often I'll, you know, wait till I've got my headphones in to get the TikTok out. Yeah. If I have it, I'm, yeah, I'm on the Instagram.
Brooke:
Mm. Yeah. It's interesting. Yeah, and I mean that's why I like social media because it's the only marketing platform that's actually controlled by the consumer and that's why it does change so much. It's not controlled by the marketer. It lives and thrives off trends. And as we know, trends change. So you really have to have your finger on the pulse of it and be always consuming it like I am and genuinely obsessed with it to see these patterns emerging and these trends. And then as soon as you start jumping on them, you know, if your content has flatlined or your engagement has flatlined or your sales inquiries, et cetera, they've flatlined, it's probably just 'cause you're following old trends. And as we know, trends, trends work for a certain amount of time and then they die off. So you've gotta keep continuing to adapt and evolve what you're doing if you wanna keep growing.
Sally:
Yeah, absolutely. When I went viral on TikTok in 2020, that was a big contributor to it. It was that I was an avid consumer, I was an early adopter of the platform. I loved watching it. I used to get so much enjoyment from things and I was like, oh yeah, I can do that. And I would film it like that afternoon and have it on and that that really was a big contributor to why I blew up so much at the time. So it's a good reminder.
Brooke:
And it's also a good reminder. Yeah. For anyone that feels like it's too late for me or I've missed the boat or I can't start now, I can't grow. Yes you can because if you start now and do what's working now, you will grow a million times faster than the account that's been around for 5, 6, 7 years that's still following the old things that used to work 5, 6, 7 years ago.
Sally:
Yeah, absolutely. So my TikTok has totally plateaued and is declining and I know it's because the content that I'm putting out is, you know, dare I say, a little bit more lazy than what it was when I was really focusing on it.
Brooke:
Yeah, yeah. And good for you for owning that, 'cause There's a lot of people that don't <laugh> and just say, the algorithm hates me. No, the algorithm doesn't hate you.
Sally:
Oh, we have to take that authority, don't we? Because our energy flows where intention goes. And so if, you know, we've gotta have attention divided between a lot of different things and wondering why our little Instagram on the side is not blowing up then. Yeah, I hear you. Brooke. I'd love to go back to when you mentioned that you didn't like the sound of your voice and now you're a global speaker. So it was the practice and the doing, but was there any other strategies that you used to be able to get up there on stage?
Brooke:
I still don't like the sound of my voice, so let's just, let's just park that. It takes me a while to listen back to podcasts and listen to my own recordings. And most of the time I'm like, yeah, you sound like an idiot. But I grew up modeling, so I did a lot of, I started modeling when I was eight and I kind of wrapped it up when I was about 24. And it was actually because I was a really, really shy kid. Like super, super shy, really anxious. I cried over everything and my mom put me into grooming and deportment classes. I don't even know if they do that anymore. But anyway, it worked. And she said that when you started these grooming and deportment classes, like your confidence started to build and you really came out of your shell. And then I guess throughout modeling and being on stage and in front of a camera, it just became second nature to me.
Brooke:
So the being in front of a camera, being on stage, I love that. I live for that. If I could be on stage keynote speaking every day of my life, my body would struggle. But that is the peak of what I do. That's when I feel the most alive in, I guess, my career. Because I know if I can get in front of as many people as possible and teach them what has worked for me, I know it will work for them. Again, it's less about me and how I feel about my voice and more about knowing the difference and the impact it will make in their lives that's bigger for me than the fact that the sound of my voice annoys me. And do you wanna know the funniest thing? My very first troll that I ever got went in on my voice and literally said, You have the most annoying voice on the internet and started hounding me about my voice. It really stung because that was my own personal ick or personal the trigger I guess for myself trigger. And then getting trolled for the first time about that made me instantly feel like, maybe I can't do this. Maybe this isn't the job for me, but I think it's gone pretty good.
Sally:
Oh, pretty good. So, so how'd you keep going? How did you get past that moment?
Brooke:
Just had a bit of a pity party to myself and my mom always says, you can, you can have a pity party, but doesn't mean anyone will come.
Sally:
Oh gosh, I love that.
Brooke:
My mom's so tough. My mom's like eight generation Aussie and she is tough as nails. So yeah, I had my pity party for one and then I picked myself back up and soldiered it on.
Sally:
Can we just say that again? Brooke's mom, big shoutout. I love that! You can have a pity party, doesn't mean anyone's gonna come.
Brooke:
Bless her.
Sally:
That is, that is so good. And you know, I I'm a voice coach, I'm a former broadcaster and I have got comments to say that I have the most annoying voice on the internet.
Brooke:
You have the best voice. I would trade my voice for your voice any day of the week. Like you have such a beautiful voice to listen to. It's just so perfect. It's so perfect.
Sally:
Thank you. I received that. However, I will also say that for my own content, the times when I stumbled and bumbled and said something not quite right and sounded a bit bogan have been the times when I've connected best with my audience. You know, so this feeling that you need to have this beautiful, perfect voice can actually distance yourself from people and you're better off leaning into what it is that makes you, you. And you know, in my case, bring out the Inner Wollongong bogan, which is my roots.
Brooke:
I love that. Bring, bring her out.
Sally:
Yeah. They're like, Sal, you're so posh. I'm like, no, no, nah mate. If you, I can take this voice from the bolo to the boardroom. And that's, that's the advantage of versatility, right?
Brooke:
It's, and that's what's relatable too, because if you've managed to make that transformation, that's what tells your audience that they can do it too. Right?
Sally:
Absolutely. And that's what I'm all about saying that you know your voice, it's so much part of you and your story and you can learn to, you can learn to love it, Brooke. Absolutely. And you can learn to use it in different ways to express different parts of yourself. Totally.
Brooke:
Yeah. And I definitely have, I have a teaching voice versus my lag, fun podcasting voice in that I get real serious and people aren't used to seeing, like if they've not worked with me sort of closely before, I think sometimes they're not used to seeing that side of me. I guess I run a very tight ship and I have a very high standard, like very high standard for myself of getting results and ensuring that what I am teaching, I'm explaining it clearly and the message is coming through. And I think when I'm focusing on that, sometimes people are like, well this is serious Brooke.
Sally:
Yeah. We have very similar speaker archetypes. We're in that we're in that teacher area where we are all fun and everything, but it's like No. Right. Some things are A, B, C, you got to do.I know you're not seeing the video, but like both of us are doing that. You know, karate chop
Brooke:
Karate chop with a hand. Yeah, yeah!
Sally:
Oh, Brooke. Amazing. Was there anything else that you wanted to add?
Brooke:
This is what I think could be really good for your industry, is if there's someone in their industry that they aspire to be or be like, or like the jobs they're getting booked for, listen to their interviews and listen to their podcasts and take note of the questions that they are being asked and then answer those questions in your own content.
Sally:
Oh, what a fire tip.
Brooke:
Mm. It's a good one, right? Because if the leaders in your industry are being asked it, it is what people want to know. So give your perspective of it, give your story that answers those questions and use that as a launch pad for creating your content so that it attracts the people that you're trying to attract.
Sally:
Oh, what a great tip. And Brooke, where can people find you? I'm in the Social Club, so how can people join us?
Brooke:
Right. So the Social Club is my baby. I love my Social Club and I love my community. And the Social Club is mainly for it. I mean, it is for female entrepreneurs. We do have some brave men that join us. But it is my platform to teach you how to grow and share your message and obviously convert that into revenue, however that looks for your brand. So on Instagram, it's @socialclubcommunity. And then if you'd like to follow my personal journey, my Instagram is @brookevulinovich
Sally:
And those links will be in the show notes as well. Brooke, thank you so much for coming on that voice podcast. It's been an absolute delight. Enjoy your beautiful sunny day in Croatia and a storm has just blown over in Brisbane.
Brooke:
Oh no! I'll send you some sun. I've got sun, but I don't have warmth. So I can send you sun with a sprinkle of five degrees on the side. Would you like that?
Sally:
And I can, I can send you 99% humidity and 38 degree. No, not 38 degrees. 30 degrees.
Brooke:
I'll take it. I will take it. Apparently it was 41 in Perth yesterday, which is where I'm from and everyone was melting and I am over here thinking just send some to me, please.