TRAINING TUESDAY PODCAST 058 (INSTAGRAM AND SOCIAL MEDIA MASTER, SFC SWARTZ FROM NYARNG)

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THIS WEEK: INSTAGRAM AND SOCIAL MEDIA MASTER, SFC SWARTZ FROM NYARNG

Providing ongoing, mobile sustainment training to stimulate success and promote professionalism.

Welcome to Tuesday Training Podcast…a conversation and collaboration between Army National Guard Recruiters. This week, because of your efforts, lives will be changed, legacies will be started and generations will be impacted as you serve our citizens, by bringing the best and brightest into our organizations. What you do matters…..you make a difference..

SUCCESS CIRCLE:

SFC Swartz Instagram is: www.Instagram.com/SFCSwartz

SFC Swartz YouTube is: www.YouTube.com/c/SFCSwartz

SFC Swartz Facebook is: www.Facebook.com/SFCSwartz

KEY POINTS FROM SFC SWARTZ INTERVIEW AND TRAINING ON INSTAGRAM:

The Instagram Impact Academy cost me $99 and it was the best investment for me so far in my social media. I hope you check it out and apply some of her tips and teachings. Instagram is my baby and my focal point. I use what I create there and cut and paste on all my other social media platforms. Instagram is worldwide and the user reach is infinite. No restrictions.

Here are some more tips:

SwartzSocialMediaClass

1- APPS from iTunes that I use are PicPlayPost, Over, iMovie or FilMiC Pro. All my posts, videos, picture are all done and edited on my iPhone.

2- HANDLE or Screen name should be short and personal. (Example: SFCSwartz, SFC.Swartz, SFC_Swartz and I recommend not using NYNationalGuardRecruiterSFCSwartz like I did in the beginning. It’s entirely too long and you should let them wonder who you are and get them curious to look at your page. By overlooking your page they will figure it out who you are and what you do.

3- BIO: Suggest stating what you do like, Motivator, Inspirational, Informative, Mentor, etc… and add your phone number. Include your name and rank in the appropriate location and add your Facebook or other social media website link for the website section. *Cross Pollinate* like I mentioned during my briefing.

4- CREATE 10 HIGH QUALITY, informative, useful, good content posts with video preferably. If it’s a picture, make sure it’s crystal clear and exciting. Think about what you scroll past that doesn’t look appealing or interesting. I wouldn’t recommend posting a picture of your table display from a distance. It’s boring and they will keep on scrolling. You truly have just over a second or so to capture their interest and attention. Try to think outside of the box and become creative. Research other sites for ideas. I tend to find things that others have posted that I was like, wow that’s really good idea. How can I use this idea and make it even better? You don’t have to recreate the wheel. Most products these days or the next best thing out there is simply an improvement from an existing idea or product. Get creative.

5- POSTS: Must be informative, useful and beneficial to the visitor. If you tend to post selfies or anything personal, you will lose some followers. Followers who don’t know you personally who see things like this will Unfollow you because now they aren’t getting useful information. Simply they don’t care about your cat or dog, etc… Keep your personal things on your personal page. Basically, they have to get something out of it or they will lose interest.

6- OVERKILL: Don’t post your posts back to back. How many times do one of your followers do this, you find it annoying and as a result, you Unfollow them.

Don’t be that person! Best time to post is in general with the most interaction and hits, 0800-1000 and 1800-2000 for Instagram. Post once or twice daily Mon-Fri in the beginning be ready to answer any questions or concerns or be ready to interact with people for about an hour or so. Monitor often and get responses to them ASAP. Even if it’s received and I will respond later today.

7- INFORMATION below the post: Each post within the body below the Picture or Video should have a Title, a call to action like DBL Tap and TAG your Battle-Buddies. You should be offering a Tip or Advice on something. Something beneficial to them. What’s in it for them? What can they take away from it. If you fail at this… You will lose them.

8- VIDEO: You have only 15 seconds per video. Be short, to the point and focus on the main message. No one wants to listen to a boring speaker. Be motivating, upbeat and sound alert. Most importantly this is where you can separate yourself from the heard. Don’t be afraid to show your personality. ***BE YOURSELF*** The more serious you are, the more boring you will sound and you will not come off as an exciting and motivated person. You will lose far more people with a boring video than an overly motivated one. Be creative and think outside the box.

9- APPEARANCE: Make sure you are within the guidelines of AR 670-1. Look like a soldier. Use an iron on your uniform and have clean boots.

10- LIGHTING: Make sure you have good lighting. This is important. If you have dark videos the video will not look as crisp, inviting, and not as easy on the eyes and the quality of the pics/videos will be blurry or grainy.

11- EQUIPMENT: Invest in a mic you can hide beneath your uniform you want. They are pretty inexpensive and I would highly suggest a cheap tripod that stands up for about 4ft or so if you are going to stand up like me or a smaller one if you plan to sit. If you plan to sit be sure to sit up straight. You can purchase a shutter Bluetooth button too if you want to go all out as well. I find it more helpful because now I don’t have to step forward and manually hit the button on my phone. These are not necessary but it makes it more convenient. I didn’t have any of these for my current posts.

12- NOTIFICATIONS: At first you will want notifitions “ON” to gauge how well you’re doing. When you start to gain popularity or higher success, these notifications can and will be annoying because your phone will constantly be blowing up.

13- HASHTAGS: or the pound sign as we all grew up know it as is a way for people to research certain words or phrases with no spaces. (example: #TeamSwartz) If they were to research this hashtag the will see all the posts that were tagged using that hashtag. I use that one for all my posts. Come up with up to 20 hashtags and post them after you’ve already posted your video or post in the comments section. You can go back a few days later and delete that comment with your hashtags and recommend them. What that does is it refreshes those hashtags pushing your post back to the top of the search engine. I hope that makes sense. Play around with your school names and things to see which ones have the highest amount of users using that hashtag. You want the biggest audience possible. Here are my hashtags and remember to have one to three personal hashtags specifically for you…. #FutureSoldier #TeamSwartz #NationalGuard #Brooklyn #Army #NewYork #CitizenSoldier #ArmyStrong #GuardStrong #ArmyLife #College #BasicTraining #NYC #CollegeLife #Hooahlujah #SoldierUp #Kingsborough #RecruitingIsntEasy #SFCSwartz #iSayHooah #GoGuard #Enlisted #USMC #AirForce #Marine #CoastGuard #Navy @SFCSwartz ***Don’t forget to add your handle—- @SFCSwartz

14- LIKES: In the beginning it’s all about the likes and to get traffic to your page. One way of doing that is to like other people’s content. WARNING: Pay attention to what you’re liking because some things you probably shouldn’t be liking because it can be perceived as inappropriate. We are adults here and you should know what I mean. Just try to make an effort to avoid liking those things. Look up key words that people use as hashtags. Often times those looking to join will use hashtags relating to the service. For example look up #GoGuard. All posts that used that hashtag will appear and you can start to scroll down double tapping or liking all those posts. What ends up happening is you now create curiosity. Who is this liking my post and that prompts people to checkout your page because they want to know who you are. If you have good content they will like back and or follow. ***Warning: Liking a ton of posts TOO FAST can get you banned from this feature for a specified time from Instagram. It’s a way of Instagram to protect their community from people abusing these types of features. This actually happened a few times to me in the beginning. If you get caught abusing features too often or if you get reported for harassment, you take the risk of having your account TERMINATED by Instagram. Then you will have to start from scratch.

15- FOLLOWERS: Some ways to gain followers is to go to other accounts and like up to 5-8 tasteful posts and make a “Genuine” comment on one of their posts. DO NOT cookie cutter a generic comment because after the third comment Instagram will stop you from using that comment and tell you that you are coming off as someone abusing that feature. Keep doing it and they ban you for a specified time as well. Another way to gain followers is during your table displays when giving away your RPI’s, ask for them to follow you and then give them the free RPI. If they don’t then still give them the RPI of course but have fun with prospecting and always be sharing your page. My biggest tip to gaining followers is for you to go to all the military branches official accounts and follow their followers. After a few days you will go back and Unfollow them. By doing this you will gain about 45-50% of those accounts as followers and if you have good content. They will stay.

16- INTERACTION: TREAT ALL SOCIAL MEDIA people or accounts as if they are APPLICANTS if you are using your account specifically for recruiting purposes. Do interact with your followers or guests. Sometimes they may like a few posts and make a comment or ask a question. After you actually respond often times they will Follow you. Be professional and courteous at all times. Never trash talk other branches of services and NEVER, NEVER, NEVER get into a verbal confrontation on social media. Not even in a private message. They have this neat and cool feature called a screenshot and they can do that and post that on their page. Don’t be stupid. Address the situation with tact and professionalism and if that doesn’t work, BLOCK them. It’s not worth the embarrassment.

17- ROTATE CONTENT: Save all your notes or messages on your notebook on your phone. Save all your posts of videos and pictures on your phone. Once you run out of ideas or posts you can delete a post and REPOST it as if it’s new. That’s one way to keep posting on a regular basis. Consistency and frequency is key. Like I said you will want to post more often in the beginning. Much larger and popular accounts post once a week or once per month even. I recommend after you’ve established yourself once or twice a week is suffice.

18- SHOUTOUTS: Once you’ve cultivated a strong account with loyal followers and built professional relationships with them as for a free Shoutout. I usually ask for them on a Saturday using a post I’ve created and anytime someone who thanks me for my tips or tell me after BCT that my tips or page had a huge impact on their success in training I will ask them to share my page and give me a Shoutout. If someone tags you in a Shoutout be sure to say Thank you and like their post!

19- BRANDING: If you go to my page you will see that I have a brand or a look or a feel to it. All or most of my posts look similar. I recommend that you do the same.

20- PROFILE PICS: Use the same profile pick on all your social media platforms because if they decide to follow you anywhere else they will recognize that that page is in fact yours without any question. Also choose a profile pic that clearly shows your face and avoid a profile pic that shows your entire body. Have a solid color background is ideal and I can’t stress enough to have a crystal clear pic. Feel free to use a logo like I did as well.

20.5- SOCIAL MEDIA ACCOUNT NAMES: To make it easier for people interested in following you and following you across all your social media platforms. Try to keep the same Name for each account with the same profile picture I stated earlier.

I’m really excited to see what some of you will do with your pages and I am willing to help in any way possible. Checkout my Instagram for examples of what you can do for your page.

LEWIS D. SWARTZ

SFC, NYARNG

Station Commander

Recruiting & Retention NCO

[email protected]

CELL: (917) 576-3529

OFFICE: (347) 569-8037