Let me ask you a question: do you want to get more followers on Instagram? Duh, who doesn’t?! It’s like our self worth is attached to that one number, followed by how many likes our last post got. Frankly, it’s exhausting. No matter how good it feels to get more Instagram followers and likes, it won’t necessarily find you new paying customers, but that’s an entirely different post. Today’s article is ALLLLL about how to get more followers on Instagram by taking better pictures.

I kind of cringe when I think about my business growing (or not) based on a pretty picture, but let’s all accept the fact that Instagram is a visual platform. Pretty pictures will always get more likes than less attractive ones.

Your pictures have to be so attractive that it makes someone stop in the middle of their mindless scrolling and actually read your caption or listen to your video, which is where you’ll win them over with your sparkling personality (and get them to buy stuff). No pressure.

Over my last 11 years of business, I’ve heard all the excuses for so many things (clients not drinking enough water, eating at the drive thru for every meal of the day, or even why they don’t have time to pee), but it’s not just limited to our health clients. I hear excuses every single day as to why wellness entrepreneurs and health business owners can’t build their businesses.

Not only that, but a questionnaire I recently sent out showed that although I had a good cross section of email subscribers with varying years of experience (anywhere from just thinking about a business to 5+ years growing one), with a background in everything from professionally trained nurses, chiropractors and naturopaths, all the way to self taught essential oil educators, one thing was the same across most of them:

80% of wellness entrepreneurs who were polled said they weren’t making enough money in their business.

I intimately know that feeling (see my business history here), and so I know that it’s not for lack of trying! I know how heartbreaking it can be to put your all into something that feels like it’s never going to have the level of success (or even a fraction) that you dreamed about.

However, I see a ton of wellness entrepreneurs pouring their heart and soul into things that aren’t productive, the top one being addressed as #1 below. You can work and work and work, but if you aren’t working on the right things, you’re just going fast in the wrong direction.

I recently sent out a questionnaire to my email list filled with health coaches, nutritionists, essential oil educators, real food bloggers, yoga teachers, chiropractors, and naturopaths (to name a few), and I asked them what they needed to know to build their businesses. The results are fascinating, but the top 3 things that people want to know is:

1. Time management and how to focus on what will really grow your business

2. Social media marketing; and

3. Website marketing (including blogging, newsletters, webinars, etc)

What if I told you that there was ONE way to tie all of these need to know things together … and that it’s called Pinterest. You heard me: not Instagram, certainly not Facebook, but Pinterest.

Pinterest is the ultimate, under the radar social media platform that hardly anyone in our niche is using effectively, but the one that can bring you in qualified, potential new customers on autopilot, 24/7, 365 days a year.

Does this sound like something you want to know about? Then stick around to learn 6 ways to use Pinterest to grow your health business.

A few weeks ago, I shared about how I use stock photos on my Instagram feed, and my followers went bananas. So I asked them in a poll on Insta Stories if they'd be interested in me sharing my fave stock photo for your health & wellness business on my next blog post ... and overwhelmingly the answer was YES! One person answered no, but I have no idea why they follow me 😂.

While I'm a recovering perfectionist and try not to have everything perfect, there's no doubt that beautiful pictures on your website and social media DOES encourage people to follow you and stick around to read your content.

It's one thing to chase followers and clicks to your website, but to make money you have to turn those people into email subscribers and leads to develop a relationship with you first!

And since you own a business and not an expensive hobby, you don't just chase simple numbers like followers, you actually want to make a profit, right?

That's what beautiful pictures do: they entice people to stay around a little longer, read another post or two, and start to like and trust you. Hopefully they opt into your email list so that you own their information forever and aren't at the mercy of perpetual algorithm changes on social media.

Marie Forleo has shared that "after 3 seconds on your website, a prospect has already formed an impression of you". You could say the same for social media or anything public facing. You only have 3 seconds to communicate something of value, and think about how much information someone can absorb by reading for 3 seconds versus looking at some pictures.

It's true when they say "a picture is worth a thousand words".

It seems superficial to focus on pretty pictures, but studies show that babies look at the faces of attractive people longer than unattractive ones. It's literally built into our brains and DNA to want to see pretty things.

You know when you come across a new Instagram feed or Facebook page and you're drooling over their pictures? It instantly makes you want to know more, right? Maybe you stalk that person on social media for months before you even click to their website to see if you want what they're selling. I've done this SO many times, and I have businesses like this on secret Pinterest boards so that I can easily go back and find them when I'm ready to redecorate my house or buy gifts for my doTERRA team. And when I love something or think I want it, I'm also sharing it on my social media feeds and spreading the word for them! That's when you know you've hit the holy grail of marketing.

The way that most of us find out about new businesses now is generally through social media, and if those social media accounts are a hot mess, chances are that I'm not clicking through to purchase anything. Granted, I'm a very visually driven person, so if their feed or product isn't pretty, I'm not following them and I'm definitely not buying anything. Maybe you're not exactly like me, but I think we can all agree that beautiful branding pulls you in quickly, but a quality product that you actually need is what will make you purchase after you've already established trust with that company.

Because that's all that those beautiful social media feeds are: effective branding

They know what they want to share, they know how they want it to look, and they're attracting people who feel the same.

That's all that branding is! It's just a feeling that someone gets when they interact with your business, which might be looking through your social media feeds, reading your website, or watching a webinar with slides that you've created.

Ahhh, social media, what a love/hate relationship I have with you! I was talking a few weeks ago with a colleague whose goal in her business is to never have to use social media, and I could totally get on board with that. Can you grow a business without social media? Of course! However, there are so many examples of business owners growing quickly by effectively using social media that you can't ignore their results. But when it starts taking over your life, like it can sometimes do, some boundaries need to be put in place.

Even though Instagram isn't the biggest referrer for me, I do get lots of questions from my followers about how I use it for my business. Questions like: if you're with doTERRA, why do I see you using the #youngliving hashtag? While I'm definitely not an expert in social media marketing (some people specialize in just this!), consider this Instagram 101 for your holistic health business.

Truth be told, I've invested in a course (two, actually) to teach me how to use Instagram in my business. One I implemented about 2 years ago, which pretty much solely focused on growing your following, and the other much more focused on generating business from Instagram, I purchased in a course bundle and haven't started yet. Excuse me while I add this to my calendar for the summer ;).

So even though I don't have it all figured out (spoiler alert: no one does), here are my secrets for how to use Instagram for your holistic health business:

It's summer right now, which means that everyone is out on their boat, at the beach, the cottage, out of town, visiting friends and families, having BBQ's, drinking bevvies on a patio, and taking the kids on day trips. All these people are your clients, and they're not interested in working on much right now. There are always seasons in life and in business, and summer is the season of slowing down. Try telling that to your bank account or your credit card company.

It's not just summer either. For us holistic health practitioners, depending on your niche, there's probably at least one other time of year when business is slow.

If you're a massage therapist, chiropractor, or naturopath, the two months before everyone needs to use up their benefits is insanely busy, but the two months after that are probably slower.

If you're an essential oil advocate, the busy times are September to December and March to June. The other months of the year aren't quite as hectic.

If you're a nutritionist, it depends on your niche. If your focus on weight loss, mid-November to the end of December is probably pretty dead, and then picks up in January and February when people realize they have a food hangover. If your focus is something else, you might find that you're busy up until mid-December, and then hit a lull until March when people come out of their winter hibernation.

The point is that there are at least 2 times during the year when you have the space and time to work on your business, not just in it.

You might not be selling a whack load of programs right now, but there are still tons of things you could be doing to build your business.

I have a mainly online based business, so I have a running list of things that I could be working on at any time of the year. Website updates and changes, pics for social media, completing the online course that I just purchased, recording a new webinar, truly the list could go on forever.

You might be just starting a website and realizing that you can use it as your master marketing machine year-round. You might have several social media platforms going that you know you aren't using to their fullest.

You can totally use this down-time to make shit happen in your business and bring in new clients  for the next 6 months, but you can't just try things willy nilly.

When you look on someone's Facebook timeline, Instagram feed, Pinterest boards, or website that draws you in and makes you want to click around, what's the thing that stands out the most? Amazing photos. When you're searching high and low for a website template to use, what usually attracts you to one over the other? The amazing, colourful photos they use in the preview template (nevermind the fact that the photos aren't yours ... they're just so pretty!). You might be building your first website, re-branding an old one, or changing businesses completely, but there's one thing you're going to need: a professional photo shoot.

My first photo shoot was done by a local photographer friend in late 2011. I picked out 3 different outfits, did my hair and makeup myself (it's kind of painful to see that I was growing out a pixie cut, worse time for a photoshoot ever!), and baked some cupcakes that I was going to ice during the shoot.

Wait, what? Why would a holistic nutritionist be icing cupcakes in photos for her website?

Well, they were gluten free, soy free, vegan cupcakes with a homemade buttercream icing, and my new website was called lovewhatyoueat.ca. I was going to focus on people with food allergies (like me!), and teach them that no matter what they could eat, they should be able to love what they eat.

The idea was a good one (or so I thought), but anyone seeing those pictures would have thought I was a home baker or something. See?