Transcript
Sigrun:
You're listening to the Sigrun show, episode number 411. In this episode, I talk to Zach Benson about Instagram growth hacks.
Welcome to the Sigrun show. I'm your host Sigrun creator of SOMBA, the MBA program for online entrepreneurs. With each episode, I'll share with you inspiring case studies and interviews to help you achieve your dreams, and turn your passion into profits. Thank you for spending time with me today.
Building an online business takes time, I share with you proven strategies to help you get there faster. You'll also learn how to master your mindset, up level your marketing and succeed with masterminds…. Today I speak to Zach Benson. He's an expert when it comes to Instagram marketing and has founded Assistagram to help hundreds of influencers and several fortune 500 companies to cut through the noise, and connect with their target audience organically. In this episode, we talk about Instagram growth hacks. Before we dive in, I want to talk about a gift I have prepared for you.
I love this time around Christmas and I love giving gifts. And that's why I'm deciding to give you a gift, but not just one gift, actually 12 gifts for 12 days of Christmas. This is the sixth year in a row that I am offering 12 days of masterclasses. I have selected 12 of my best masterclasses from the year 2020, and for a limited time, just over 12 days, you get free access to training that otherwise is exclusive to my paying clients. I highly encourage you to sign up. I continuously receive feedback from people all year long about how amazing these masterclasses are. They are pitch free, full of content and 60 minutes of something that you need to know about online business.
So go to theshownotes@sigrun.com/411 where you can sign up for 12 days of masterclasses for free. There, you will also find all the links to Zach Benson. (silence)
I am so excited to be here with Zach Benson, which I got to know a year ago and it's taken us this long to do a podcast episode. Welcome on the show, Zach.
Zach Benson:
Hey, thanks for having me. Long time no see, excited to be here today.
Sigrun:
Yeah, it's about a year ago that we met at a dinner in New York, arranged by my dear friend Selena, so our common friend. And I had no idea who you were, and then we were not sitting at the same table. So sometimes when you don't sit at the same table for a whole evening, you don't really get to know anyone else outside your table. But I think about the time I was supposed to leave, or I was planning to leave, I think I had my coat on. I was ready to leave, and I don't know. Somehow we got into a conversation, and suddenly I hear your whole life story. And I'm like, “Zach, you got to come on my podcast and tell everyone about your story, and of course what you help people with,” which is to grow Instagram.
So before we dive into all the amazing things we can do to grow Instagram, your story is fascinating. You were brought up in the US, you were adopted. Let's start there.
Zach Benson:
Yeah. So taking it way back, I was actually born in Busan, South Korea where I am today. And so I was just a baby, right? Five months old when I was chosen out of a magazine, my parents were like, “This guy is cute. I want him, I want him to come live with us.” And I moved to Iowa. And, Sigrun, growing up for me was hard because here I was this little Korean boy in the middle of Iowa, right, countryside Iowa, where everybody else is just white, American people.
So growing up for me was hard because I looked different and too, I also spoke different. I had this speech impediment, so I never talked to anybody growing up because I couldn't say the letter R, and I couldn't say the letter R until I was in my twenties. And so I never participated in class, I was always getting bad grades, getting in trouble. And so my parents thought I was going to be a juvenile delinquent, right? They're like, I think Zach's just… I don't know, probably going to end up in jail or something, you know?
So life wasn't really looking good for me back then until I found dancing, and dancing just became my passion, my fire, something I was really good at. And I just kept on working at it and working. And eventually I started traveling with it, winning competitions. Eventually I made it on a TV show, So you think you can dance. And that kind of kick-started my career to teach dance all over the world. So 50 countries, towards the end of it all, I was making about a thousand dollars an hour, just teaching dance workshops to kids.
So life was good, I was traveling, I was loving life, I was doing something I loved. And then I hurt my back, and this was in India about five years ago. I fell during a warmup, during a rehearsal and injured myself. And then the guy was like, “Still, you've got to somehow make it happen. People are here for you, they came to watch you, you're the main attraction.” So the whole performance thing lasted about 30 seconds, I fell again. I hurt my back really bad that time. And I was rushed to the hospital, and that was the end of my dance career.
So a lot of… I'm telling you a lot of crazy stuff, just some challenges I overcame, but it was like… I was on high and then boom, overnight rock bottom. No money, depressed, didn't know what I was going to do. And so the same guy who got me into dancing called me and was like, “Zach, you've got to get in on this Instagram stuff. Me and my brother, we're making a ton of money growing people's Instagram accounts.” And I was like, “Oh, okay, well, all right, I'm in,” right?
So I sent $10,000, a $10,000 check to Miami, it was the last $10,000 I had in my bank account because of all of those expensive surgeries. And I bought 10% of a 400,000 follower Instagram account. And we just did advertising on it, right. We promoted other people's accounts on our big accounts, we shouted them out. We promoted their products and we just rinsed and repeated the process. And Sigrun, yeah, now we have over a 220 million network on Instagram. We're working with some big brands like the Ritz Carlton, a lot of these marketer guys like Russell Brunson, the founder of Click Funnels [inaudible 00:07:14] Les Brown. They hire my company now to help them grow and monetize their Instagram accounts.
So life has really changed a lot, you know, and I'm excited to be here, excited to keep learning and growing.
Sigrun:
The story that got me crying though, was that you decided to look for your birth parents. When did that come about in that story?
Zach Benson:
So this was right after college. So I did this leadership study with my college president and he's like, “You've got to make a five-year plan. Where do you want to go? Who do you want to be? What kind of person do you want to become?” And so I made a five-year plan. So my first year I actually moved to Atlanta, I lived on $2 a day for food for a whole year by choice, because I wanted to learn how to live on less so that others could have more. I wanted to learn how to love people and see everyone as an important human being. And I did some volunteer work at a refugee resettlement agency, and helped refugees find jobs and homes for a year. And it was life changing.
And after that, I decided, you know, I think it's time. So I met a North Korean refugee that year that inspired me, and she shared her whole story of how she escaped North Korea through underground tunnels in China, and somehow survived. Some of her friends and family members that she tried to escape with got caught, and all that happened to them. And so she actually inspired me to go to South Korea, to search for my birth mother.
And so this was in 2010. I contacted my adoption agency and I was like, “I want to find my mom. So what do I do?” I filled out a bunch of papers, documents. The whole process from start to finish took about a year, and a year into it I was not really sure I was going to find her. I decided to move to Busan to just learn about my roots and explore my motherland, and eat the food. Because I grew up in Iowa, right? I never had Korean food until I went to Korea. I was just like pork chops and steaks and sweetcorn.
So it was all interesting and new to me. And so I was an English teacher for a year. And during that year, they were searching for my mom and no word. Nine months in, still no word, 10 months in, 11 months in. I was about to go back to US and my contract was about to end, and then I got an email and they're like, Zach, exciting news. We found your mom, when can you come to Seoul? When can you come meet her? And I'm like, I'm coming tomorrow.
And so I hopped on a bullet train from Busan to Korea, got there in less than two hours, got to the spot. I was like, “Wait aren't you guys going to prepare me? What am I supposed to say to my mom? They're just like, “Just go in, just go in.” And she just… I opened the door, she ran up to me, gave me a hug. Was like, “I love you son, I love you. I've been praying and wishing, hoping that you'd come back some day.” And it was amazing just to hold her in my arms, to see what she looked like, just to feel her love, right. And even though we couldn't communicate with each other, we had translators that translated everything, from English to Korean and vice versa. But I was able to feel her love through her actions, right.
Because after that, she would come over to my flat and brought in my half brother, my sister. She'd cook this delicious Korean food, she'd tidy things up, clean things in my flat. And it was through her actions that I felt the love. And now we're very, very close.
Sigrun:
And have you learnt Korean now?
Zach Benson:
Yeah. My Korean is a lot better. I took some classes and studied. I'm still learning it. It's not as good as my Spanish, because I studied that in college, I lived in Spain and Mexico and so my Spanish is much more fluent, but I can get by.
Sigrun:
Yeah. And how often do you meet your mom now?
Zach Benson:
Oh, so actually as soon as I… So I came to Korea about three weeks ago and so, they have the whole 14 day quarantine process. So I actually was lucky enough to quarantine in my mom's house. And so we spent the past two, three weeks together. And then my brother came to visit, my sister came to visit. We had Korean Thanksgiving and dinner, the whole works. So yeah, it was great. It's really great to see her again. And I'm hoping to spend some more time, like maybe a couple more months here in Korea, and just continue to build and grow the relationship.
Because my case manager said, “You know, Zach, your case was actually easier than most. Because your mom actually wanted to be found. Some people just disappear. They become like ghosts. They change everything about them. Their identification numbers, everything. They don't want to be found.” So the easy part was finding her, but I feel like the hard part in everything is growing that genuine relationship with someone, and with her, right. For me, it was like learning the language, spending time with her, sacrificing other things to be here, right. Because long distance just… it doesn't really work that well.
Sigrun:
And how do your parents in Iowa feel about all of this?
Zach Benson:
Yeah, I think my mom at first, she felt a little bit weird. She was like, “Man, I don't know. I'm your mom,” right? And so I think she felt a little bit uneasy about it at first, like uncomfortable. But after they exchanged some letters, some heart to hearts, and they just basically had a heart to heart talk. Then now they're feeling a bunch more… A lot more closer, and really good friends. And so I'm looking forward to the day that they can just meet each other and spend time with each other, and we can all hang out.
Sigrun:
That would be wonderful. I'm so excited for you.
Zach Benson:
Yeah. I'm excited too. So yeah, I mean, that's my mom, but we'll see if maybe someday I can find my birth father. I don't really know where he is, but at least I'm really grateful just to have my mom and have her in my life.
Sigrun:
And that was the part of the story where I was crying, after a dinner in New York, after meeting Zack and knowing you for five minutes, you got me crying because your story is so beautiful, and you're a good person. That's what I felt right away.
And then you have this Instagram thing where you are influencing the whole world and helping people grow their Instagram. So let's move on over to that. You said before, you bought a 10% stake in a 400,000 follower account, that's a very interesting entry into the market. You didn't grow from zero at the point, but since then, of course, you have both done it yourself and helped others grow from zero. So my audience probably has accounts that is, many of them, less than 10,000. Some of them have more than 10,000. I doubt we have many listeners with hundred thousand followers, or 400,000 in that case.
So what does one do that does not have so many followers yet, and cannot leverage the methods that you obviously can. Because I know can have accounts follow other accounts, you have explained a little bit that to me as well at the dinner. But let's start with, what does that average user, what can they do to grow Instagram?
Zach Benson:
Yeah. So growing in 2020, it's a lot harder to do it now than it was back then. Back then we were growing accounts, thousands of followers per day, just through shout outs and organic growth, and organic opportunity was a lot bigger then. There's still some organic opportunities to grow on Instagram. So if I was to break it down for someone who's just starting out, or someone who doesn't really know a lot about Instagram, there's really three things that you have to think about. Number one, do you want to growth hack it? Because if you want to growth hack it, you can actually… There's marketplaces where you can actually buy Instagram accounts.
So let's say that you have a new supplement or it's a keto shake or something that helps people lose weight and burn fat. You could buy a fitness account that's posting all of these fitness workout videos, these before and after pictures, transformations, daily workout videos. And you could actually change that over into your own company account. Because it's already full with a bunch of people interested in fitness and bettering their life. There's ways to do that, to transition a page from, let's say, a repost page where you're reposting other people's content onto that page, giving them credit. And then either driving traffic to your own business page, or your own personal page, with that page. That's one growth method, if that makes sense, right.
Basically acquiring an account, leveraging the audience and using that account to drive traffic to the account that you want to grow. Because really, the only way to grow nowadays is through shadows, right? You have to do placements and advertisements on pages that are bigger than yours, and run giveaways, and basically get these people to share your content, or invite you on a live stream.
Sigrun:
Okay. Let's talk first about the shout outs because let's assume people don't know what it is. So let's give a few examples. I know, for instance, one of my clients used to have a weekly shout out where she would tag someone she admired. For instance, once she would shout out to me, post a picture of me, and of course I would get some followers because her Instagram account was bigger than mine. So is that what you mean with shout out, basically doing that yourself, or making sure someone else is doing that to you?
Zach Benson:
Yeah. It's all about creating win-win relationships and synergies with other influencers, and bigger pages than your page. And so by a shout out, I mean… Yeah, someone else that's in the same niche and industry as you, taking one of your creatives, like your picture or your video, reposting it on their wall or through their Instagram stories and saying, “Go follow Sigrun because of X,” right, or these reasons. And you want to create these shout-out trains where… Like what we do is we do hundreds of shout outs until people get all of their followers. That's all my company does is we pair you up with other influencers or people in your niche, we ask you who is your end user? Who's your target market? And then we do hundreds of shout outs until you get your followers, right?
But there's a couple of different types of shout outs, right? One could be someone's screen-shotting your profile, and basically on an Instagram story say, “Go follow Zach,” right? And it's just your profile. And then there's other contests and giveaways that you can do, that are shout outs, promotions, that can grow your page. You can do caption shout outs. So let's say that maybe the person's content really doesn't fit your feed, but they want to buy a shout out from you. You can do what's called a caption shout out, where basically they post up their normal pictures that they normally post on their own Instagrams, but in the caption, the description of the piece of the content, they say, “Hey, go follow so-and-so, for these reasons.” Or, “For more amazing travel content, follow Zach Vacay, or luxury hotels.”
Sigrun:
Yeah. So on one hand you can post the whole picture, you can screenshot and do an Insta story. You can do it in the captions, in the description below the picture. So it doesn't have to be one thing, but typically a shout out is that you basically tag another account, and tell your followers, “Go and follow that account.”
Zach Benson:
Yes, yes. You want to peak their interest, so you want to get them to click on that person's profile or that company's profile, the one that you're promoting. And so it's really important that you choose the best piece of content, because with really great content comes more growth from the shout out. And then if you're not putting your eggs all in one basket, but you're spreading it out with micro influencers that have maybe 10 to 50,000 followers, and then more macro level, like a hundred thousand to a million followers. And then maybe you get some celebrities, like a million followers plus to promote you. That's where you really see some growth in sales for your products.
Sigrun:
So let's say someone is following and they have 5,000 followers on Instagram, and they're thinking like, how on earth am I going to get someone who has more followers than me to give me a shout out? Is it all paid or can it also be organic?
Zach Benson:
It can be both, right. So right now, one of my friends and clients, Devon Rodriguez Art, he's this 24 year old kid from New York. And basically his videos are going viral everywhere, like Ticktock, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and all he does, and all the idea, the concept was is that he basically draws random strangers on the subway, and in less than five minutes, he has this amazing sketch of that person. He hands it to that person and they're blown away, right. And it's getting millions and millions of views.
And so it's really hard to create viral content like that, because it's a hit or miss, it's a numbers game. But what I'm saying, if somebody just has 5,000 followers and they're like, “Oh, I have to pay for this,” or, “I don't have that much money to invest right now. What do you do?” Well, you have to think about the things that you're already good at, and do an exchange and trade of services, right? So maybe even if you don't have a lot of money to invest, there's ways to just simply… If your product is good and it works and it delivers amazing results, there's ways to basically give your product, put it in influencers hands, and in an exchange for a free product, get free shout outs, free user generated content, free exposure on these people's pages, just by a simple trade. Now you might have to pay for the shipping, but it's very little money out of pocket.
The other things that I do is I tap into my other strengths and knowledge, and stuff that I know that could maybe help these influencers monetize, or help them with maybe SEO, or list building, or helping them with their funnel, or maybe getting them on some top rated podcast shows or getting them some press articles. The list goes on and on. There's a lot of things that maybe I have, or my friends have in my network, that we could offer in exchange for a free shout out.
So let's say for you, for example, you have an amazing podcast show, right? With millions of listeners, and I mean, it's amazing what you're doing. What you could do if you wanted to grow your Instagram, is you could reach out to other influencers that have millions of followers, that are like your ideal follower and say, “If you want to do a slot…” right, because I'm sure you've probably maybe have done podcast show swaps with some people. But you could do, “Hey, in exchange for an interview on my show, I'd love to do a live stream with you. And if you can promote me on live stream to your audience, then yeah, let's do a trade. So you always want to think of some different, creative ways that can get your foot in the door and get exposure for everyone.
Sigrun:
Yeah. Just because not all my listeners are native English speakers, we're going to explain swap a bit. Podcast swap is quite common. You want to get on somebody's podcast and they are… Let's say, you assume that their podcast show is similar to yours in some ways. And then you say, “Hey, let's do a podcast swap.” And then you appear on each other podcast. And this is why sometimes you see someone being interviewed, and then being the interviewee at a similar time, because a podcast swap is happening. When I do this, I don't do this too often. But if I do this, I try to position it's not coming out at the same time, because it's then somehow too obvious that we're doing it. But it's quite common.
Even with big podcasts, there was a podcast I really wanted to get on. And then I approached the person at a conference and say, “Hey, I would love to have you on my show.” And she said right away, “Let's do a podcast swap.” And I'm like, “Really?” You would sometimes think that people that seemingly have more followers, or more listeners are somehow not interested, but that's not true. A lot of people are interested in a swap if you're an interesting person.
Zach Benson:
Yeah. And it's also who that person knows and who you know. Because maybe you could just simply be the connector and help that person that you want to do a swap with, with something that they're really struggling with, or that they really want. And just by simply being the connector and bringing people together, and making something happen for that person that can give you value. And that person will then probably return the favor. But if you don't have a big platform, and you can't do the swap, there's two other strategies that I just want to share really quickly that still work.
So first, hashtags. As far as doing the hashtags, why people use hashtags is basically to make their content searchable and discoverable so that people can find what you post. So that's why you use hashtags, so people can discover your content. Now what a lot of people do wrong is that they use hashtags that are way too generic, right? Just mega hashtags. So if you type in… Let's say that you're an author and you're writing this new book, and you're wanting to launch, but then you type in motivational speaking, or motivation, or entrepreneurship, or entrepreneurship quotes. Some of these hashtags have millions and millions of posts on them. So if you're very small and you only have 500 followers or 5,000 followers, and maybe a hundred to 200 likes per post, you'll never actually hit the top nine posts for those mega hashtags with millions of posts. Because so many other hundreds of thousands of other people are using those same hashtags every day, that are bigger than you. So your content will never be seen.
So when it comes to hashtags, start with the big hashtags that have millions of posts, and then Instagram is going to show you related hashtags that have a smaller number of posts. So you start big and then you find ones that have maybe 50,000 to a hundred thousand posts on them. A hundred to 200,000 posts, right? And you want to try to find hashtags that have under a million posts on them, and use them when you're first starting out. Because that's going to help you get more exposure and traffic, and followers to your page.
Now, the other strategy that I want to break down is engagement groups. So what's an engagement group? Well, DM groups, direct message groups. So in your Instagram inbox, the DMS, the direct messages, you can actually create these engagement groups. So what you do is you reach out to other… let's say 14 other people that are in the same niche and industry as you, and you say, “Hey, let's all like and comment on each other's posts. So when I post, everyone reciprocates until everybody's all liked and commented on.” And what happens is when you get enough likes and comments from other accounts in a short window of time, and also throughout the day, it hits the algorithms, right? So it's boosting you onto that homepage that everyone's scrolling and consuming content on. And that's where you have a chance to go viral.
So what my team and what we do, what we're spending all of our time on, on all of our client's accounts and even my personal accounts and all my pages… Because remember we have a very large network. It's like… they're just doing hundreds to thousands of manual actions, like reaching out to pages, let's say in the travel space, saying, “Hey, do you want to do a like for like, or a comment for comment?” And then running all of these engagement groups. We're in 20, 30, 40, 50 engagement groups per page. And that's all they're doing. Because when you get likes and comments from other people's accounts, your content is seen on their accounts and to their audience. And that can increase chances for more followers, and exposure on your page.
Sigrun:
I heard something about the engagement groups. I did this actually with one of my group coaching program. We had this month of Instagram growing, and I set up the group for the whole group. I was being tagged all the time, but it was fun. And eventually it kind of runs out, people are like, “Ugh, I'm getting tired of this.” Doesn't it also the algorithm see through this at some point, and say, “Okay, how long do they last?” Let's say.
Zach Benson:
So in order for it to work and to see results, you got to be in a lot of them. Now, let me tell you this, that, yes, the algorithms are a lot smarter these days. They're a lot sharper. And, I mean, 2020 Instagram has been… It's been around for awhile so they can detect if you're using any automation, any robots, or softwares. So if you are using that stuff, I highly recommend stop using that because you could get your account compromised, and banned, and deleted.
So what we're doing, and the work around, is you got to be in at least 20 of these groups in order to see a little bit of results. Some of them were in up to 50 of these groups with 15 people each, and then we do one off. And so it works when it's paired with a, I would say, good piece of video content because when you get more likes and views, I mean that equates to more potential followers. And so this strategy is still working well with us. A lot of my, I guess, repost pages were growing with this method. So the repost method is a free content strategy where you're just reposting other content that inspires you, right?
So let's say that you're maybe reposting Tony Robbins or Russell Brunson, or some of these guys that inspire you, and you basically give them credit on your page. You say what it means to you, you make it your own, tie it back into your life and your business, and then you give them credit. And then with these engagement groups and the right hashtags, maybe you can make one of their videos go more viral on your page again, and that's what can help grow your page.
So I recommend also, if you're just starting out, to experiment with some of reposting people's content, using other people's content, because it's good. And it's also a little bit easier because it's really hard to create epic content, really good content every single day, multiple times a day. So it helps if you can repost other influencers, and people that are just crushing it and killing it, onto your page. And it'll help boost your page.
Sigrun:
Yeah. I think also if someone repost one of my quotes, it's going to be obvious that I would comment, so it kind of makes sense that this helps. Of course, if you're reposting Tony Robbins, he's not going to comment on it. But I think if you repost a smaller influencer, they're going to be honored and want to say something to the post.
Zach Benson:
Yeah. So it is a lot of hustle, a lot of work, a lot of grind, but I mean, if you're consistent and never give up and you work really hard at this… I mean, these are the exact strategies that we're still using for some of our accounts to grow maybe a couple thousand followers a month.
Sigrun:
So you do this for a living. So what if someone would like to work with you and just have you help them do it? How would they find you?
Zach Benson:
My company is called Instagram, and think of it as your own personal virtual assistant, that's just creating content for you every single day, posting for you seven days a week, doing the hashtags, optimized hashtags for account engagement groups, the whole works. Whole hands-off experience. So you pretty much don't have to do a lot of this, and you can focus on other things. And so if you guys are interested, go to the website, assistagram.com, check it out. You can download the free Instagram growth hacking guide, where I share more tips and tricks there, and you can grab that for free. And then if you'd like, you can set up a free strategy session with someone on my team. We'd love to chat. We'd love to help you guys crush Instagram.
So yeah, please reach out. And then you can connect with me on my personal Instagram, is Zach Vacay. Because normally I'm in another country, another culture, always traveling, always exploring the world. But right now I'm in Korea now for a month. And then I go to the Maldives for a month. And then I think I'll maybe head back to Korea, or somewhere in Europe. We'll see.
Sigrun:
Yeah. Maybe one day Switzerland or Iceland.
Zach Benson:
You know, Switzerland is one of my favorite places because it's just so beautiful. I love being in nature and I love the mountains. And so I went to Switzerland last year. Oh, I went skydiving in Switzerland. That was fun. I'd love to go to Iceland some day.
Sigrun:
Yeah, maybe you will. Zach, it's been a pleasure. It's been a pleasure to hear your story again and learn about all these Instagram growth hacks. Thank you. Thank you for coming on the show.
Zach Benson:
Yeah, thanks for having me. It was fun.
Sigrun:
I'm giving you a gift and not just one gift, it's actually 12 gifts for 12 days of Christmas. I call it 12 days of masterclasses because there are 12 master classes, 60 minutes long each one of them, pitch free, full off content on all different kinds of topics around online business. And for a limited time, you can watch these all for free. Go to theshownotes@sigrun.com/411 where you can sign up for 12 days of masterclasses, and there you will also find all the links to Zach Benson.
Thank you for listening to the Sigrun show, did you enjoy this episode? Let me know that you listened. Let me know that you've also signed up for 12 days of master classes, as I'm so excited to share them all with you. You can tag me, Sigrun [inaudible 00:35:36] and use the hashtag Sigrun show. See you in the next episode, and at the 12 days of master classes.