After blowing up my own beauty account I wanted to test my skills on a personal profile.
But not just any profile.. my own (@alexwillkie).
Through looking at other “Instagram Experts” in the space a lot of them have shit niche pages with no vision or applicability.
Then they claim, “I’m the best at building personal brands”.
Well… I watched, I learned and I saw the market's thoughts.
The biggest critic BY FAR is “if you are so good why is your profile shit?”.
Obviously as a social media manager and strategist I understand why, some people don’t want to build their own because it doesn’t lend them the ROI or they are busy with clients.
I get that.
But no one gives a fuck about my opinion.
It sounds like field of cow shit.
Just baby cows running, shitting everywhere. Big bulls dropping hot and warm cow pies.
But guess what?
I now have the means to monetize from this traffic and ANY traffic MWAHAHHAHA.
Also.. I want to show you exactly the moves I make and why.
So let’s take a dive into my profile and how I executed my own profile optimization.
*** The Handle ***
Luckily I have my name as my handle. Ideally you want your website and all social media handles to be the same.
It helps with SEO and the ability to find you on other platforms.
The handle is searchable! So whenever anyone types in “handsome Alex Willkie”. I can pop up
*** Profile Picture ***
I chose a clear picture of myself for relatablility with a touch of sass. I’m looking more at the camera than prior.
Ideally I would have it a little closer with better lighting and a bigger smile!
I did not put that ring around my profile, I just had a story. I think doing that looks stupid imo.
*** The ‘Name’ aka Black Bar ***
This section is also searchable! I filled it with “social media | marketing”.
Mainly because I do much more than Instagram and my strategies transcend the platform actually.
*** Business Account ***
I turned my account into a business account! I think it’s vital if you want to conduct any sort of business.
I personally haven’t seen any reach issues or any of that bullshit. BUT I can now get an in depth look at analytics I never had before.
This step is critical in being able to successfully monetize. You get access to a ton of data and retargeting you otherwise wouldn’t have.
Plus the swipe up feature is very powerful at 10k.
>>> Profile Bio Layout:
I follow a simple template with every profile and each line has predetermined intention.
I follow this format because you want to be relatable (who), you want to show how you can help (what) and you want to back up your claims to what you do (results).
Any other way you look like a 15 year old who delivers papers and puts “ENTREPRENEUR” or “CEO” in their bio.
WEAK.
I’m sorry but no one cares what you own, what you manage, your company unless it directly ties to a result and is framed.
XX MISTAKES
My old account bio was a literal piece of dog shit. Steamy and all.
Here are the mistakes I made when I built it over 2 years ago.
1. Boring bio, didn’t showcase me at all
2. No results
3. WEAK CTA
4. Link was not top of the funnel… led to my FB business profile…
5. “I try to do the fitness…”. Ever wonder.. what the fuck was I thinking?
6. Highlight was a picture of me HAHAH
7. Profile logo was not clearly looking at the camera
8. No vision.. no purpose. Just pictures of me and my girlfriend.
>>> WHAT: Instagram is my shit.
It’s what I do. I also couldn’t fit anything more.
My personality is charismatic and over the top.
I played college sports and became one of the captains.
I talk shit and back it up.
In contrast to what it was before, it’s more original and overbearing.
I’ve always found putting “Management & Monetization” or “Instagram Expert” gross.
It’s super overplayed and feels cheap to me.
>>> WHO: loving big brother to his autistic sister.
This is my WHY.
I had a lot of different iterations of what I’m all about, but it always came back to this.
My sister has low-functioning autism. She can’t really speak or fend for herself.
Kids in school used to make fun of her all the time and I felt embarrassed at that time.
But now I don’t care about opinions. My thought process is “Good for you, fuck off?”
She’s all I have and in the future I’ll have to take care of her and give her the best life possible.
This is my major motivation.
It pains me to be at the mercy of programs that aren’t designed for her. She ends up getting kicked out because she doesn’t do what they want.
I can’t stand for that.
>>> RESULTS: 500k+ in ~7 months w/ @beautify.basics.
If you don’t use results in a line it makes the account feel cheap.
You want some to get who you are, what you do, and social proof. If not it can come around as fake.
I believe any business or person has a major result that they can reword to still be true but sound bad ass.
I could have put 2000+ per day or something but I liked the overall result.
The reason for that is so someone can say “WHAT! No way…” then that forces them to check that page out.
It makes it so everyone who visits my profile will likely also visit my beauty account’s page.
It will also shock them at how much higher that number is presently than the 500k stated.
It adds context to the badass-ery.
If you notice I have also added the handle. This allows them to be able to click directly from my profile there with ease.
It also links the accounts. If I’m logged into my beauty account, I can actually see which of the people I follow on my personal account follow that account.
It’s super cool!
>>> CALL TO ACTION: How I Gain 100,000+ Followers a Month
I used the CTA in two separate ways.
I packed another result in there AND made it sound sexy that you can do it too.
I made it compelling for new people coming in to be like “DAMN what is it..”
>>> LINK: insideinsta.com
If you want to avoid the negative side effects of bitly links on IG, buy a domain. It looks way more credible and professional.
Also I’m running this traffic to my FB group, just straight to it.
This is my “top of the funnel” objective.
Meaning this is the first step for me to provide value and qualify people to work with me.
The FB group has questions that actually get their email and give them goodies.
After I get their email I have software to collect the email, put it into a google sheet, push it to my autoresponder, and then send them an email welcoming them with instructions on how to get the most of the group.
So I both build my list while building my community.
I could also take those emails, make a 1% look alike audience, and advertise my group to them.
*** Highlights! ***
This feature allows you to save stories to your profile past the 24hr mark. This is a newer feature and I’ve seen people just stuff every story or random shit into highlights.
It’s not the best thinking for longevity sake.
An easy start is to make 3 distinct highlights; WHO / WHAT / RESULTS.
Your whole profile should mirror this premise. Make content around these 3 and you’ll be set.
Just figure out how to improve it each and every time.
This feature is amazing for story telling. So jot down how you can build a story arc to each highlight.
I prefer bringing a theme to the images to liven the profile up and put 1 word text below it. I think it just looks better personally. No one can see when you put text in there unless it’s large.
*** The Willkie Way ***
Is my learning experiences through business. Not as “DO THIS” but more of “I learned x from y”.
I have to constantly remind myself to put the date & time to reinforce that story telling element for anyone looking a year ago from now.
But this allows me to communicate with my audience to see more of my behind the scene struggles, failures, and winnings.
>>> GAINZ
I believe each and every person is responsible for their health. In entrepreneurship I see health failing all the time.
I’m in this game for life and I want to always be able to function. I put this 4th highlight here so I can document my progress with diets, thoughts on bio-hacking, or experiments I do (I’m always testing).
I want to spread the message to my audience that THIS. IS. IMPORTANT.
>>> WINS
This is my results section. As I get more testimonials and change lives I’ll be placing those in here.
I envision this section to be more about the end result vs Willkie way is the in progress journey.
So when I launch group training, get featured, get complimented that will go here.
>>> HOW TO
I’m breaking down content in bite sized portions to help people and show them how I do what I do. To me this is the hardest part.
Because the information has to be concise, correct and empowering. But I know this is super important to building credibility to my audience.
From data I can tell there are a lot of people who will view your profile (80%) and not follow you.
I want them to have something to look at so they keep creeping ;)
>>> CONTENT
Like I said, the content I am building out will be following the WHO / WHAT / RESULTS.
Of course I may mix in some viral content, it’s stupid not to in my opinion.
But going strictly viral content isn’t wise. I will be personalizing it to fit my audience and message.
Tai Lopez actually does this very well.
To get content I cut down long form videos I shoot and write longer copy around experiences I’ve had to share with my audience.
This takes time and is hard. But consistency is key.
I could say I haven’t posted anything because I just wanted to showcase that all I did was change my profile…. But I’ve just been lazy af.
>>> Distribution
I’M SO EXCITED BY THIS.
Most of you know I leverage Niched Engagement to grow my beauty account so rapidly.
But that’s boring.
I will test out some of it. Mainly getting engagement from a beauty account just to see if that does anything at all for shits.
I’m not hopeful on this.
I will be building custom shoutout videos to place on other beauty accounts that encourage people that if they want to grow, you need to check out @alexwillkie.
When they come in I’ll be doing or have a Livestream up teaching instagram.
This will give them value, build credibility and lead them to my group.
For every profile view I will also be retargeting and segmenting the audience to lead them to the group and monetization.
I’ve plastered my handle everywhere. I’ve also built a value post every week for the past 2 months...
Which will get tons of engagement and recognition from the digital marketing community.
My next step is doing more livestreams / podcasts to build even more. I also have plans to test running story ads and what that could do.
To be honest there are like 10 key ways I’m looking to test in order to maximize the profile views I get.
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In my opinion this is the Number 1 indicator in how an account will perform.
Not impressions, not reach, but profile views.
If you reach 100 million people but get 10 profile views you can’t fucking grow because they need to click on your profile to follow you first.
