Welcome to the Stop They Hey Girl Challenge Day 1! 

Today’s goal: walk away from Day 1 of the Challenge with an understanding of what needs to change on your Instagram profile in order to attract dream clients. Of course, I also want you to understand why we’re making these changes in the first place as well.

How you present yourself on Instagram right now is keeping you from signing clients and it's keeping you stuck. The good news is, the problem that you're experiencing ends right now. But ONLY if you do the work. It's very quick work — it will take you 10 minutes max — and you are going to notice massive changes in your ability to sign people to your team. 

The results? You make connections and make money. 

Optimize your bio and make your audience the star

Your Instagram profile needs to evoke emotion from the person that's clicking on your page within milliseconds. They make up their mind about who you are and what you're about within that time frame. 

If your audience is arriving on your page and it's not crystal clear what you do, you are leaving money on the table and you are decreasing the likelihood that someone will come back to your page. 

We don't care about vanity metrics, we don't care about followers, we want people to think of our brand while they're on our page and long after they leave us. Whether you’re a service based business or a product based business. 

Things you SHOULDN’T have on your bio:

✔️ the fact that you’re a mother of two 

✔️ the fact that you’re a dog mom

✔️ your Starbucks order 

✔️ the fact that you’re “taken by a hunky dadbod”

These “facts” and this first impression tell us diddly squat about why your audience should pay any attention to you. 

People are more choosy than ever about how they spend their time on social media, because they want to feel like they're getting something out of it. They're seeking comfort, understanding, security, entertainment and education. If they don't feel like they're getting it from you — they're leaving. 

Your customer needs to be the star of the show and the star of your social media presence. Your audience is the main character, not you. 

Choose an appropriate username 

Your username is one of the first things that leaves a lasting impression. You need to make sure that your username actually represents your brand. If it doesn't, your audience is confused. 

Avoid underscores and periods

Don’t make your username complicated. It shouldn’t have vague words, or an infinite number of underscores and full stops. SEO optimization is important on Instagram because people generally recognize you in this space by either your name or your brand. Commit to one or the other. 

Your username should be easy to search and remember. It shouldn’t look like: @happy_fit_girl_starbucks_lover

For example, my username is @kaylaybanez but I could have used @stoptheheygirl because that’s a huge part of my brand. 

Don’t use numbers in place of letters

It might look cute and clever to use a zero in place of an O, but this isn't 2004 and we're not on MySpace. It will make it hard for people to remember you and find you. 

Avoid a username that's tied to a specific network marketing company 

If your company disappears tomorrow or if your niche changes, or if you want to go in a different direction with a different product line, you become tied to that and it makes it hard for you to pivot if you decide at some point that you want to pivot. 

Avoid overused words like fitness coach

Again, it makes it hard for you to stand out when so many people have “coach” and “fit” in their name. 

Aging, you want to stand out. Using that lingo is tying you in with a slew of other people again unless this is your specific brand name. 

If you got an LLC or you've got a trademark that's got “coach” or “fit” in it — that’s okay because that’s your brand name. You're known as that. 

But I want you to remember that you're so much more than just a fitness coach, you're so much more than just a health coach, you're so much more than someone that sells makeup and shampoo, you're more than a mom — you're more than that. 

Own your name

No matter what happens, nobody can take your away from you. You have full ownership of that, and it's going to really help you stand apart. 

I understand that not everyone has a wonderful exotic last name like Ybanez — I get it. So here are some options that can help you own the search engine optimization on Instagram, and utilize your name, without periods, and without underscores. 

Here are some options: 

@TheKatieSmith

@MsKatieSmith/MissKatieSmith/MrsKatieSmith

@It’sKatieSmith

@KatieJSmith

Create a memorable title

After your username, comes your title — and this is what's missing for a lot of you. 

Your name and the title show up in the DMs and you all know DMs are a big priority right now. You’re in a relationship based business. So why is someone going to open your DM if they don't know who you are and what the heck you're about?

Give yourself a title that shows your niche, your expertise. This needs to be something that describes what you do, who you help and adds credibility. Don't put something here that's not true, such as “certified coach”. If you do not carry a certification in your niche to coach, don't put that in there. 

Make sure the lingo you're using is something your audience understands and No. Do not put your network marketing name here because it's not all that you do. You have so much more that you're bringing to the table. Don't change this, or add something and hit done until you're committed, because you can change it only once every 14 days. 

Mare your profile picture stand out 

A trend popped up last year where everyone was putting a duplicate story bubble line inside of their profile picture. So guess what it didn't stand out anymore? Duplicate story bubbles. 

You know what does stand out? Colored backgrounds for your profile picture. The people who use these always stand out when they post stories so if you want more views on your stories, changing your profile picture and having a colored background so it stands out. 

Make sure you use a headshot style photo. Don’t use an image with other people, because it will confuse your audience and they will wonder who they’re talking to, even if it seems obvious. I recommend shoulders or chest upwards, because people want to see your smiling face. 

Instagram highlight covers

Incentivize people to click your profile highlights. You can make covers on Canva very easily. Don't put text in the covers, it's distracting. If you're putting the text in the covers and text in the description, it's repetitive, and confuses people. When people are confused, they leave. 

Use either a solid color for your covers, or use an icon that represents what each highlight is about. 

Don’t have too many highlights, because again, people don't know where to go or what to look at. Deleting old ones or ones that don't necessarily serve your audience or represent your brand.

Categories I recommend

Client love: whenever anyone says anything nice to you, screenshot it (you can make an anonymous) and post it to your stories. It not only adds credibility to you, but also when you're doubting your abilities, or you can go back and watch everything that people are saying about you. That's going to give you the confidence boost that you need to keep going when it gets tough 

Transformations: only share transformations that you have facilitated. If it’s not your transformation, it’s not adding credibility to you. 

The transformation doesn’t have to be someone retiring from their full time job, or losing 100 pounds. It can just be about how someone felt before working with you and how they feel now. That's more powerful than you sharing a random transformation. 

Please share the social proof that you facilitated because I promise that is one of the biggest things that stands in the way of you signing dream clients. 

CTA’s and link in bio

We're going to talk even more about this on day five but I want you to start to thinking about the link that you're using and the CTA that you're using. 

A lot of you have LinkTree and I have one question: why?

LinkTree creates barriers between you and your audience 

Let me tell you exactly why, from a marketing perspective, LinkTree, or Milkshake or any of those other multi-link hosted sites are hurting you. 

As humans we make thousands and thousands of decisions every day. We're also the most distracted we've ever been in our entire lives, mostly because of social media so if you want people to take action when you tell them to take action, you have to make the barrier to entry as simple as possible. 

Change your link as often as you need

I know you feel like you need to promote your blog and your Amazon affiliate link, and your application for eight different groups running at the same time. But using LinkTrees confuses people and the conversion rate is dismal. 

Instead, change your link as frequently as you want. You should only be talking about one thing at a time so if you're talking about a freebie one day and then you’re pitching something else the next day,switch it. 

Stories and feed posts have a 24 hour lifespan, so if for some reason someone's scrolling to an old post or an old link, they can always message and ask for that link. 

Your link isn’t long and ugly

People don't care about what the link looks like but if you're super concerned, use Bit.ly. 

What’s the CTA for your link? 

Why the heck should we click it? If you don't tell us what we're going to get out of it, we're not going to click it, boom, stop the Hey girl challenge straight to the point. instinct confidence boost. 

The follow/unfollow ratio

I know you're concerned. You’re worried because you have 1000 followers and you’re following 4000. Don't lose sleep over it.

I recommend aiming to follow 50% or less than the number of people that are following you. 

Do not go on a massive unfollow spree because your account is going to get shut down and you're going to be banned. Instead, click on your “following” and you will see a “least interacted with” category and unfollow three accounts. You do not want to look like a bot. 

Do not use third party apps for this. It will throttle your account. Instagram knows, and they are shutting accounts, down, left and right. 

Watch the full Day 1 training here

Not part of the challenge? Join here.