Are You Serving Your Audience on Instagram? 5 Ways To Go DEEPER with Corie Clark.
Do you stare at Instagram and wonder why your audience isn’t talking back to you? Are you struggling with how to serve your audience on Instagram? Building an authentic Instagram audience doesn’t need to be hard.
Get ready to GROW an authentic audience. Corie Clark will teach us how to reach an audience on Instagram at a deeper level. She shares 5 unique ways to serve our audience on Instagram at a DEEPER capacity that will help you GROW an authentic Instagram audience.
No matter where you’re at in your business journey, Corie shares the ONE thing you SHOULD be doing NOW on Instagram.
Connect with Corie on Instagram @corieclark
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Full transcription available at the bottom of this blog post.
Hey sister! Before you go, I have some gifts for you to GROW on Instagram and ways for you to connect with me on a DEEPER level.
Make sure to connect with me on Instagram @allisonscholes
If you’re ready to take your Instagram brand from “meh” to memorable, then we need to work together! Click here.
Looking to spice up your Instagram captions and start having REAL conversations with your audience and build relationships? I invite you to grab my FREE Caption Template Guide!
And don’t forget to join the sisterhood over in my Facebook Group – Social Media for Mompreneurs.
Full Transcription
I think it would be an understatement to say the last few months have been crazy and the unknown has been overwhelming. I’m sure a lot of you had to take a hard look at your business, your purpose, and how you’re showing up my guest, Corie Clark dives, deeper into all of that. And you’ll walk away inspired to serve your audience and maybe learn a new unique way to serve. Corie Clark is a personal brand expert, the author of the simplicity project creator of the purposeful planner and host of the purpose babe show. Corie is passionate about helping women discover their purpose and turn it into a life in business. They love. Now let’s dive in.
Hello, Corie. Welcome to the show.
Hi, thank you so much for having me.
Oh, thank you for being here and I’m really excited to have you on the show, but before we step into purpose and serving our audience, please tell us about your business and your purpose.
Awesome. Okay. So my business well my business was really founded on my purpose and so I, I help women. I help them in two ways. I help them discover their purpose and simplify their lives so that they can live more purposefully. And then I also coach and help purpose driven women build their businesses. And so and I do that through a membership and a mastermind and my podcast. So but ultimately like as far as purpose goes, that’s kind of where this all started. And I really just felt like I was being called to live more purposefully and intentionally. And that’s when I started actually simplifying my life and helping other women do the same. So they, my business and purpose kinda just go hand in hand.
I love that. So Corey, why is it important for entrepreneurs, female entrepreneurs to align their business to their purpose?
Yeah, it’s, you know, I honestly, this is something that I think it’s the first thing that someone should do when they are creating their business is make sure that they know their purpose and they are aligned with it because if you start to, I’m sure you’ve experienced this as entrepreneurs and creatives, we get distracted by shiny objects. We get distracted by new business ideas and and we can end up chasing things that actually aren’t aligned with our purpose. And those are the things that we can get burnt out on. Those are the things that we can, you know, get tired of doing and maybe even throw in the towel. So I think it’s really important. Like, not even just at the beginning of your entrepreneurial journey, but to have those check-ins like every few months, like is, you know, is my business aligned with my purpose? Is this working? Is this making sense? And just making sure you’re not veering off that path.
I love how you said that because I think you’re right when people have to do the occasional check-in because how I started my business, that’s when I realized it wasn’t aligned with my purpose anymore. I had to make a pivot and I had to tell myself that, Hey, it’s okay to stop doing this in your business because it wasn’t bringing me joy anymore. It was more of just a weight on my shoulders. And I just, I felt so much pressure. And you know, when it was like one night, I was like, why am I doing this? You know, because if it’s not serving me and it’s not aligning with me and bringing me joy and purpose, how could I really serve those that need me?
Yeah, exactly. And that’s, I went through something similar with my business as well, you know, and we had the planner business going and it was starting to feel like I was building a stationary business, but that, wasn’t what I wanted. You know, I was creating tools to help women, you know, live purposefully and simplify their lives. And I started creating something that I did not like. And so we had to, we did, we kind of did this pivot. We still make the planners, but it’s not about building a stationary business or brand. It’s really still about just equipping women.
And I think this is such a great time to talk about this because I’m sure during quarantine, some female entrepreneurs are choosing not to sell in their business right now. What should they be doing no matter what?
Well, no matter what, if they’re choosing not to sell, then they still need to be showing up and serving, you know, in any way they possibly can. I think you know, it’s been a long time now at the beginning, a lot of people weren’t selling it all, but I’m seeing more people kind of getting back into that rhythm and finding a new rhythm, maybe pivoting a little bit to get back into that selling and at the end of the day selling is serving. So I think that the more that you can get into the habit of serving it, it’s not going to feel so like sleazy or like you’re trying to take advantage of someone.
And I believe you
Have five unique ways on how we can serve our audience. Yeah. Yeah. I would love to share those with you. I identify cast episode recently sharing some of these because I did have, you know, I had a women in my coaching group and, you know, they’re just like a little nervous. They’re just not sure what to do right now. And so I really just wanted to make sure that they were equipped with something that they could like take some action on. So so the first one would be to like host a free workshop or a free webinar. And like when I say free, like, I mean like no strings attached, no pitch at the end, you know, just do a free training. You know, something that you’re good at something that you can, you know, you don’t have to be a coach. You can be whatever it is that you are good at just host a free class and it can be on zoom.
It can be just a Facebook live or an Instagram live, but it’s a great way to just connect and offer that service and value to your audience without asking them to buy anything. The second one that I had said was to create a brand new freebie. So some of us, yeah, we have like our freebies and our opt-ins that are just kind of on autopilot, but maybe it’s time to make a new one. And, and even if it’s not for the purpose of building your list, but to serve your current list, just create something new for them, a new guide or a new checklist or an ebook or something. And then at the same time then hopefully you will actually be building your list, you know, with new subscribers. And then the third one would be to go into Instagram and send some voice DMS to some of like your, your best fans and your best, you know, followers, the people who are commenting, the people who like every picture, you post just surprise them, like slide into their DMS, not just with a text, but actually with some, like, you know, the voice one, because there’s a big difference between when you get a voice DM.
And when you just get like, you know, some little texts that could just be copy and pasted, you know? And and I think it’s a great way to connect, honestly, to just like break down some of those walls that they might have between, you know, you and them and show, show them that you’re just a real person and that you appreciate them. And then let’s see, number four, I wrote them down. So I made sure, I wouldn’t forget number four would be to actually send a handwritten note maybe to some of your customers or clients and actually send some snail mail so that they have something, you know, something exciting when they go open their mailbox. A lot of these people aren’t leaving their houses at all. You know, there’s nothing exciting to break up the day and that’s something that would be really special and unique.
And, you know, so maybe your best, if you do have clients and you have their addresses, you know, some of your best clients sit and write out some handwritten notes. And then the fifth thing would be to just continue to show up as exactly as who you are, you know, let your audience know how you feel about how this is going, let them know what you’re doing to get through. What are some ways that you’re, you know, working through this with your kids or your spouse and just continue to show up consistently, you know, letting them know you’re still there and you’re, you still care about them and, you know, and just being vulnerable.
I love all of these unique ways. And I think my favorite one is number three. I always try to do that when I have someone brand new in my following. And they well DME with just like a really basic question. I never ever answer in text. I always love that voice message though, because it’s like an immediate connection and you are showing your audience that you really care about them. You took the time to think about what you’re going to say and you know, and it’s a one on one conversation. It’s nothing that has been like copy and paste it. Cause you can always tell the DMS that have been copied and paste it exactly right now when it comes to business, what is something you wish you would’ve known sooner?
Oh, wow. Excuse me. Kind of a loaded question. Well, there’s so much, and that kind of does go back to the being aligned with your purpose because even because my business started that way and honestly, when we had to pivot, it was really hard. And so I wish I would have known that in the first place before we started growing it, everything kind of took off for us with our business. We unit, when we did the planners, that part of our business just kind of took off and we just kept kind of rolling with it just doing what we needed to do to like keep up with the demand and to keep up with customer service. And we got so sucked into that part of the business, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. But we really didn’t understand that like, that actually just needed to be a like its own complete yeah.
Separate part, you know, and it was really pulling me away from what I really wanted to be doing, you know, and like just constantly working on like in the back end. And so I think really knowing like your, like what you want, not just your purpose, but what’s the purpose of your business. Like knowing that and like staying true to that, to your values. And and then I think like hiring, like getting help because like the busier your business gets, then the more it’s taking from you and how you serve your audience and your unique way. And so if you’re not doing that, if you’re not able to show up for your audience for your customers it’s really gonna like put a wedge between you and them. You know, it’s not going to, you’re, it’s going to be a lot harder to build your audience. It’s gonna be a lot harder to grow. So yeah, I mean, I didn’t want it to sound like the whole purpose answer again, but I truly do, like, that was kind of like our biggest learning point in the last like six years was having to take that step back. And so I had wished I wish I would have known that ahead of time cause we probably wouldn’t have had to do such a hard pivot. It probably would have just
Then more organic and natural. Well, that is so inspiring because I’m sure we have a lot of listeners who a lot of listeners have gone from the nine to five corporate or whatever they were in. And they are wanting to be an entrepreneur because they have a why they have a purpose, but it’s so easy. Once you step into that entrepreneurial journey that you are flooded with information and overwhelmed and you feel that you just have to do all the things that everyone else is doing. And that’s when you need to have that real true check in and give yourself permission to put the blinders on. And do you like, don’t do what everyone else does just do you. And I’ve had to have those really hard lessons in the last year where I thought I had to be doing what everyone else was doing. And I thought, but I’m not enjoying it. And I’m not jumping out of bed every morning to do this. So it’s like, no, take a step back and just choose to do what really fulfills me on a day to day. So listeners. Yeah,
Exactly, exactly. You have permission to do whatever you want, you know, and if you decide like, Oh, I hate this business I need to pivot, then, then that’s what you need to do.
Absolutely. It’s okay to pivot. I had to pivot in the middle of the night with a handful of, you know, fudge cookies to get. Yeah.
[Inaudible]
Corey. I would actually love to know a little more about your purposeful planner because I think the title it’s really cool and I’m sure it’s very different from your typical like time management planner.
Yeah, absolutely. It is. So, well, the reason I even created it in the first place was I actually had written a book called the simplicity project. And this was in 2014 and I, I wrote the book based on our experience that basically I had taken my family through and myself to simplify our lives. You know, I had felt this like calling and I just felt like I wasn’t truly like living out my purpose because we were just living in chaos. We were just keeping up with the Joneses and keeping up with, you know, the, to do list and running kids, places and being involved in so many things that I was just stretched too thin. And so we decided to simplify our lives. Well, I kind of decided the kids were a lot younger, so it was just something we were doing. And I wrote a book on that experience.
And, but what I based it on was simplifying your health, your home, your finances and your time. Because a lot of times people are just like, Oh, I’ll just, you know, I’ll just declutter something. And, but really like all four of those areas of our life bleed together. So if one of them’s like a little bit too chaotic, it’s going to pull from other areas. And so that’s why I really tried to focus on creating some margin in each of those areas. So once people started reading the book, they really wanted like a planner that implemented what I like so that they could implement what I taught in the book. And I couldn’t find one that, that had space for each of those four areas. You know, there’s a lot of planners that are just for your time, or maybe you can get a meal planner or you can get like a budget thing.
So this actually like encompasses all four of those areas. It has a place for you to work on your budget. It has a place for you to plan your menu. It has a place where you can track your water and you know, your health and, and it has obviously like the time step. So and it, that’s kind of the biggest difference is because it can help you in your whole life and not just time management, you know, we’ve got like a little 15 minute tasks that you can do each day just to help you keep up with household stuff that you wouldn’t normally think of. And so the whole point of the planner was really to just give people like one place where they could simplify their entire life.
That is so cool. I love that. And I will be checking out that planner because I do feel like I have the time management planner and then I have the sticky notes for what I need to do around the house. And Oh yeah. I need to incorporate now my son’s e-learning in mine. I’m just like, Oh my goodness. So yeah, it is a little chaotic right now, but I know it’ll get better. So Corey, last question. What is the best piece of advice you can share with the listeners who are feeling stuck during this time?
Hm. I think if you’re feeling stuck, then you should do a big fat brain dump of all the things that you would ever wish your business to become all the things you want to do in your life. Just do a big that brain dump. Cause sometimes when we’re stuck, it’s really just cause everything’s just stuck in our head and then we freeze. And so, and then you need to take action. Like even if it’s just the tiniest little bit of action, even if it’s just, I don’t even care if it’s something in your house, like go declutter a closet. Like when you, when you take action, like you get clarity, you start gaining momentum. And so if you’re feeling stuck in your business, like what’s one little thing can do to take like a tiny little step that will actually bring you some clarity. And like don’t overthink it because honestly, even just drafting an email to send to your list can, can bring you clarity. And like it can open up a whole floodgate of things that you actually need to do and start building that momentum. So I think find something that you can actually take action on. It’s going to lead you to the next step and the next and help you get to that place where you’re hoping to get to
Corie. This was so informative and so inspiring. I can’t thank you enough for sharing all of the wonderful value you put in to the show today. And I know the listeners are going to love you. So where can we connect with you on social media?
Definitely Instagram. That’s where I love to hang out. And it’s just Corie Clark. Yeah, nothing special, no underscores. And that’s where I live. Honestly. That’s where I love to connect with people. I’m the one who’s in my DMS. I don’t have like an assistant wasn’t doing it or anything like that. So I am on Facebook and stuff as well, but Instagram is where I love to hang out with my people.
That’s awesome. And I will make sure that I put all of your information in the show notes, but Corey, thank you so much. And I hope you have a fabulous day.
Thank you so much for having me.
