How to Actually Show Up on Instagram When You're a One-Person Brand

Welcome back to another episode of the eCommerce Maven podcast. I'm your host Christy Sumer and on today's episode we're talking how to actually show up on Instagram when you're a solopreneur aka a one-person brand. Now I know this topic is going to be triggering to a lot of you because a lot of my clients and a lot of my audience do not like showing up on Instagram so I'm here to talk you through it and give you six approaches to developing content for Instagram when you don't have anybody to help you, at least starting right now.

And so the number one question I get from clients is what do I post on Instagram? And then once I help them answer that question, the next question is how do I actually create that content? Now, if we're thinking about unlimited budgets and unlimited time and unlimited money. There's so much you can do.

But when you're a small brand, you really have to be quite scrappy when you're just starting out. So when I started out my brand Encircled, which is a sustainable fashion brand in the travel space, not surprisingly, I was in most of the content. And I will tell you that when I started Encircled, I didn't even like having my photograph taken. I had, I was still working like full-time in consulting when I started in circled.

I actually think, yeah, I was working full-time in consulting and I remember having my photo done for PWC, who was, which was my employer at the time and just feeling incredibly uncomfortable with the like photos they do for their website and whatnot. and then a little while into the business probably not even that much further into the business maybe about three or four months later I realized I needed some photos for the business I also needed photos better photos for PwC because my photos did not turn out very well and then I wanted some photos for my coaching business which I was just starting so I met with a photographer who's really lovely, Anna with love.

You can find her on Instagram. And she agreed to do my headshots. So she brought over her makeup artist and hairstylist who was incredible. And oh my God, the makeup they did was so amazing.

And she really talked me through that process of posing for photographs. And actually those photos I really loved. They came out super well. And although they felt uncomfortable to shoot, I realized that I can be in photos and it's totally fine.

I had a lot of fear of showing up on camera. So that basically helped break my fear and cure me of it in a lot of ways. And then just changing my mindset about showing up on camera was a big thing as well. I think a lot of us who have smaller brands that are just starting out worry about judgment from our friends and family.

We're not necessarily worried about our customers is judging us, but definitely those friends and family who are watching those posts very closely and sometimes can't help themselves to say little comments that can be triggering for us or maybe taken the wrong way. And I'm certain that oftentimes they mean very well, but it just doesn't come across that way. And when you're already putting yourself out there, whether you're in the content or not, it can feel a little bit of a jab when people say something to you that isn't that nice.

So one thing I like to think about is that those people are not my customer. So they may be my friends, my family, they may be acquaintances in my circle. Maybe I haven't even seen them since high school, but they're not buying my products. So their opinions, while everybody's entitled to their own opinion, it's not going to let me it's not going to drive my business and my decisions in my business.

So with that in mind, let's get into the six approaches to showing up on Instagram when you're a one person brand. So the first one should come as no surprise because in the interim, I talked about it a little bit, but you showing up on camera, this is a really authentic way to come across your brand. It builds trust with your audience. And of course it is free, which is amazing.

so this approach is incredible for reels tiktok if you want to like cross post or vice versa but instagram right now really favors reels i was just looking at some insights in our account and the challenging thing is if you use a scheduling platform like later or something like that it doesn't really show you the new versus existing following stats you have to go one by one into each post to see that. At least I haven't figured out a better way to do this. There might be a way, I guess an aggregate you can see for the week, but you can't see, I want to see like post by post, which one's actually driving new followers versus repeat followers.

And when I went through that, I found it very fascinating information. And again, this differs for every brand So I totally encourage you to go into your Instagram analytics If you don have a business or a professional account I highly recommend switching over to that because without analytics you basically throwing spaghetti at the wall and just hoping that something's going to stick. You really need to understand the analytics behind your posts and what they're actually doing.

So when I went into that, I realized that a lot of our posts that looked like they were doing well because they had a lot of views actually were only reaching existing followers. Now, some other reels that maybe didn't look like they were doing as well, they were actually the ones that were reaching new followers, but perhaps they weren't reaching enough new followers and they weren't like the right content to get that extended reach or engagement. So I wrote them off immediately, but this is why looking at the data and analytics helps inform your strategy for whatever you're doing, whether it's Instagram or email or whatnot, You have to look at the data.

The data will tell you what's going on. So one of the posts I did last week, I had talked about our new travel sets that we have coming up and I filmed that without makeup. It was like the end of the day and the lighting was going really bad at our office. And I'm like, you know what, what the hell?

I'm just going to film it and just riff. And it got really long. Like I went on and on for quite some time. So I had to edit that quite a bit to even get it down to whatever it was.

I think it was like a couple of minutes and it had a lot of watches. It had a lot of comments, a lot of engagements, a lot of views. It reached a lot of new people and existing customers. And I felt a bit of shame if I'm honest, posting that because I felt like I wasn't looking like my most beautiful put together self, but it came across, I think is very authentic because I was being very genuine and real.

And that built a lot of trust and really helped make our launch successful. So I encourage you to try doing you on camera content. I know it's scary. I know it can feel icky, but top tips I have, get in some good lighting.

Natural lighting is always best. Make sure your backdrop is really clean. Even if you have to push stuff around your office or your home, wherever you're filming, maybe get some help if you feel up for it to help you film different angles and stuff like that. That can honestly be really helpful.

just even having a friend or partner hold the camera because sometimes using a tripod can be really awkward. And don't be afraid to do like multiple takes because a lot of the reason why a lot of these content creators get it right the first time is because they're not getting it right the first time. They're filming it multiple times. So if you're doing talk to camera, for example, content, film multiple takes and then just stitch them together later.

Honestly, the edits app and Instagram is so easy to use. You don't even need CapCut anymore and you don't even really need to understand how to use it. It's just so intuitive and I'm sure there's so many features I'm not using in it, but even just basic like splitting and editing and changing sound and stuff like that is so simple and that's just like where you need to get started on. So that's one approach.

The next approach which is tangential to that is you behind the camera. So let's say you have a product that doesn't really require it to be on model, aka I'm jealous, then you can do a lot of behind the scenes content or showing the product without actually even having your face in it. Great examples of this would be like if you sell hand cream, if you sell jewelry, you can do a lot of like close-ups on your hands or your neckline or your ears showing the jewelry without putting your whole face and body in it.

You can also show behind the scenes, packaging orders, how you make stuff if you're involved directly in the making of it. And this can all be filmed using a tripod or a flexible tripod, or again, having somebody help you hold the camera and then just stitching these little bits together. You'll be surprised how well this type of content does. People really do love a sneak behind the scenes.

And I think with big brands, they rarely do that because honestly, they don't even probably know where their product's being made for the most part, especially in fashion, if you're in the fashion category and they would never have their marketing teams in their factories. So I think it can be a secret advantage to you to show this behind the scenes stuff and really connect with your customer. And you don't need to show your face. So for those that don't want their face or their body and the content, this is one of the best options.

So I highly recommend going on Instagram and searching around for some content creators. There's people who literally, this is all they do is give you content ideas and ways you can set up shots so that you're not in the shot. There's literal people dedicated to no hands, no faces on camera kind of content. So look around and find some people who are good at that and give them a follow.

Another option is to hire a content creator. And this would likely be somebody local to you because you want ease of getting packaging and products to them. You want them to be able to come grab samples, et cetera. You may even want them involved in the process.

So you may even want them helping brainstorm the content to create and then actually creating it, editing it and sending it to you to schedule. That could be a setup. I worked with several content creators over various periods of my life And the easiest to work with were the people who are local for sure because it just faster to get stuff to them and from them and it probably worked best when I was directing the type of content that we wanted and they were doing the editing especially if they're strong editors because don't underestimate the power of editing and making a video look really polished.

I know I talked about edits being a pretty easy tool to use for Instagram and it is, but if you really want that extra polish, having somebody who creates content for a living do the editing will make a huge difference. So option number four is influencers on the gifted side. So this would be gifting an influencer with one of your products, whether it's shoes, a handbag, jewelry, face cream, lip balm, whatever. Now this can be a bit of a controversial one because nowadays influencer gifting probably doesn't really yield the same results that it used to back in the day when influencers were more new in the space of marketing.

So I've been in e-commerce for way too long, for now 14 years. So when I first started, influencers were bloggers, number one, and they were creating a lot of content on websites. And you would see a ton of lift if you sent them something and they posted about it. It was just the way it worked.

Now it's very different. And also a lot of influencers won't work without getting paid, which is fair. That's totally their prerogative. But it's also really challenging for small brands as to hire an influencer without any proven, what I would call product audience fit.

So So if you hire an influencer and their audience is completely divergent from your audience, even if they do the most amazing content, it's probably not going to convert into anything. And the thing that's happening now in the influencer space, and I love influencers, but a lot of them are saying, now we're top of funnel, we don't have to drive conversions, which is true. They do create top of funnel content, which means they're creating content for like awareness and whatnot.

But in my opinion, if you're paying somebody a lot of money to do a lot of content and it's not converting, you're wasting your money. So I think there's a certain little bit of push pull here. I think with small brands, you have a better chance of leaning on your small brand, small business, ethical business, sustainable business, and using that as an inroad to get a gifted influencer to be interested in creating content for you. But it is challenging.

I've done a lot of influencer gifting in the last few years, and I would say maybe about 20% of them post something beyond a story because a story isn't very effective. They'll post, 20% might post a reel or a static or a carousel or feature you in something. In the odd time, you get like just an amazing win. But for the most part, the content isn't that usable for you as your brand.

it's maybe not the right clientele or customer. So that's again, why we need to test these things with low investment and gifting can be one of those ways. And then you'll have the odd one where it just like really hits and you have no idea why, but you want to learn from that for sure. So I think gifting can be a way to get content, but it's risky because you can't really ask people who are gifted a product to do specific content for you unless they're offering.

So this is the other things. Sometimes you'll get influencers who are really interested in your brand and want a gift and want to do work in exchange for that gift. And in that circumstance, like definitely if they're a fit for your audience, I would take them up on that because that is a great opportunity to get some reels or some statics that you can utilize and nurture an ongoing relationship. So it could be an opportunity for paid in the future when perhaps you have a little bit more revenue.

so the fifth approach I guess it's 4a technically is paid influencers so when I say paid influencers hiring a content creator almost that is an influencer so it could be somebody that you hire ongoing to create content for you that's an influencer so you give them product you pay them monthly and they create x number of videos for you or it could be like a one-time engagement where you pay them money and give them product and they create maybe three static posts or two reels or something like that.

Now, I think this can be a good opportunity. I actually like the former, which is where you hire influencers on a retainer because I find you just get a lot more value out of it and then you get a lot more consistency because that's the difference I think with influencers is you need to have that consistency of them showing the product because if it's true that influencers are now more top of funnel, then you're going to need to have your product show up not once, not twice, but multiple times in order to make an impression on their followers.

So in that case, you either need a really big budget or you need something recurring with them to be able to put that in front of them. Now, always the question is like, how much is this going to cost me for Instagram And it really varies I would go on the micro influencer side of things here and look for people with really engaged audiences There lots of free tools out there where you can check for this. People who make amazing, beautiful content because you want it to look good and do some research around audience and ask them for information on who they speak to.

Because sometimes you'll get an influencer, for example, who I've had influencers where they've done posts and it's seemed really good because they have 500,000 followers. But then when you start to dig into their analytics, you realize it's all men or it's all women 25 and we skew a lot older. So you definitely want to take a peek under the hood here and start to understand more about the actual influencers before paying them. But again, if you can get them gifted first, that will be the validation.

And then honestly, if they like your product, they're going to post about it. And if they like your product genuinely, then that might be a relationship where you actually do nurture them into a paid partnership of some kind, whether it's like affiliate revenue or one time paid or recurring or something like that. You want to work with people who genuinely love their product at the end of the day. Okay.

So that was 4A and 4B. Number five approach to creating content on Instagram when you're just running the business by yourself is to actually hire a freelancer, like a social media manager. This could be expensive for you depending on the size of your business. And one thing I will highlight with this is depending on who it is, they may struggle with content too.

So they may need somebody to feed them content. Again, this could be an opportunity where you hire somebody, you know, who's part-time and maybe they actually, part of their job is creating content. So I've seen brands who've hired people who do other things like emails and whatnot, website updates, and then part of the job is social media management and creating content. So that's probably like the biggest payoff, I think, is an entry-level role to try and get somebody who can do a little bit of everything for you.

Probably somebody fairly entry-level who's really savvy with social. And this will be an opportunity to get you completely out of it. But then you're also committing to like paying this person, obviously, which can be a bit scary. I understand when you're just a solopreneur, but there are limits.

So there is a limit to your scale by when it's just you. Like it's really difficult to scale the business past a certain point when there's only one person. So at some point you're going to have to hire freelancers or contractors or employees, somebody to help you. So a social media manager is definitely a very valuable position, especially if you don't want to be on social media, then you need somebody else to be there.

And the last approach is graphic content. So instead of doing on camera reels, or you behind the camera reels, it's to create like really beautiful carousels and statics and stuff like that that can form graphic content on your feed. This likely is not to do as well. It might engage really highly with your audience.

So it's worth testing. But if you can nail the angle, I think you can get some good reach here. So I've done some posts on fast fashion, which have gotten 50 to 200,000 views. So I think it's just really about finding the niche that you're in and speaking about it in a way that's shareable and that people feel like you're adding value.

So those are the six approaches. Those are a lot of options for you on how to show up if you're a one person brand on Instagram. Pick one to start on and things to consider are your budget, like how comfortable are you on camera, are you okay with trying that, your stage of business and you know what your goals are for Instagram. If you're not even trying to activate on Instagram you probably shouldn't be listening to this episode but But if you are, or you can probably lift a lot of these ideas for TikTok as well as other social channels.

But I know a lot of my clients want to grow on Instagram and that's a big thing for them. So don't try to do all the approaches at once. It can be really overwhelming. I recommend starting off doing some posts, being consistent with that type of post and measuring the impacts of it and seeing where that takes you.

Does it grow your following? Does it grow your reach? a lot of the time on Instagram, the one thing I learned is that you have to be careful about posting too much content like about you because the world is not wanting to hear about your products all the time. They want to hear about like the benefits of the product to the lifestyle that your product is creating.

So they don't necessarily want to hear, oh, you just launched like a new mascara. Congratulations. They want to see, oh, this mascara won't come off after four hours of swimming and they want to see like a demo video of that. So try and think about your content in a different way.

And that's where I think you'll unlock a lot of the value on Instagram and start scaling there and hopefully be able to hire out your content at some point in time. All right. Thanks for listening and we'll see you next week. Thank you for listening to Brave and Boss, the podcast.

If you want to take your e-commerce brand to the next level, be sure to check out my website at christysumer.com where you can find all the show notes, free resources, and blog posts and printables to help you grow your online store. You can also follow me at K-R-I-S-T-I-S-O-O-M-E-R on Instagram. Find your purpose, make it happen.

I'll talk to you soon.