HustleCo Workspace

Instagram
Marketing
and
Content
Generation
E-book 
 WHY

DOCUMENTS DESIGNS MADE

CREATED AND EDITED

TEACH YOU HOW TO INSPIRE PRODUCTION REDEFINE THE VALUE

FISH OF GOOD CONTENT IN MARKETING
EDUCATION

BUILD A HUSTLE
COMMUNITY
 WHY ?

Instagram is a rapidly growing social media

platform that has over 800 million active monthly
users. Millennials prefer to use Instagram and
Snapchat more so over Facebook. It is only a
matter of time before Instagram becomes as
ubiquitous as Facebook. The advertising
opportunities are not as exploited as Facebook
and innovations are happening frequently on
this platform which allow for early entry and
adoption. Instagram is very useful for reaching
out to local influencers, individuals and
businesses in a meaningful way because of how
the platform is designed to reduce spam and
because it’s relatively underused for reaching
out.
 Content Generation
Fundamentals

What Makes
A Good
Content
Strategy?

For entrepreneurs, freelancers and gig-

economists, it is critical to have an
effective content generation strategy to
market their brands effectively in a
sustainable way. HustleCo has
summarized 6 fundamentals of a
superior inbound marketing and content
generation strategy for small businesses,
entrepreneurs, consultants and
freelancers.
VALUE
Entertainment
Tools
Knowledge
Inspiration
...

This might seem basic, but the majority of the content your
brand produces for marketing purposes should provide value to
your market first. This means your Facebook posts, blogging
efforts, Instagram action and other forms of media, provide value
first before promotion. Instead of promoting your brand by
telling people what you offer, promote your brand by attracting
people to your valuable content which also encourages sharing
(and virality).

Hard Examples of Valuable Content (including but not limited

to)
Entertainment: Instagram account @fuckjerry curating, creating
and posting funny memes. He first started with the memes, and
now sells tons of merch through his Instagram account
Inspiration: Gary Vaynerchuk is a perfect example @garyvee. He
provides free video content to inspire and educate people on
the entrepreneurship journey. This promotes his own media
agency as well as fuels his paid talks and merchandise sales.
 SCALABILITY
Can I post
multiple
variations
of the same
content?

If you can’t scale your content generation strategy

in the long term, it’s not a sustainable strategy. The
key is that you want to proceed forward without
ever having the prospect of running out of content
to produce for that particular stream or topic. For
example, a roofing company could take before and
after shots of every roof they did. As long as they
are doing roofing, they won't run out of new roofs to
photograph. However, what if they break down and
write about all the components that make up a
shingle. It seems cool and would provide value but
it’s not scalable because there is a finite amount of
compounds in shingle and the strategy will die
 CONSISTENCY
Don't leave
them hangin'

Going to the gym and eating well will get you

results, we all know that, but the key to it is
consistency. Just like a healthy lifestyle, it is
important to be consistent in your content
generation strategy. It’s important to build up the
momentum and attention of your followers as you
continually produce content regularly. A pause in
content production or breaks in consistency
confuses your followers, leave them hanging,
awaiting more content from you. Long breaks can
kill the momentum. The goal is to continue to
remain consistent with your marketing even as your
company grows.
EASE OF PRODUCTION
Will it
always take
forever, to
produce the
content?

This is important and varies between businesses

because of their financial situation. Content can
provide value and your followers can love it, but if
it’s not relatively easy to produce that creates 2
problems. 1) If it’s too difficult to produce you’ll end
up allocating too many resources to it, costing you
and your business 2) because it’s so difficult you
will be less motivated to stick to it, and end up
sacrificing the consistency of your strategy.
 RELEVANCE  
Is it related
to what is
happening #TBT
around your
business?

Whatever you choose your strategy to be it

needs to be dynamic enough that it can be
adjusted to refer to or be relevant to what is
happening now. It must also be relevant to
your demographic and geographic basis as
well as other bases. Take advantage of the
topics on their mind at the time and piggy
back your content strategy off the thoughts
that are in the forefront of their mind.
Newsjacking is a perfect example of why time
relevance is so important for content
generation.
 AUTHENTICITY
Be
yourself
baby!

Whatever content you produce, make sure

that it’s authentic to you. If it’s a representative
of you and your brand, nobody else, not even
Budweiser can copy you. No matter how
much money they have, they cannot replicate
you and your brand (you’d be tempted by a
big payout though). That’s how we leverage
the power of authenticity to overcome a lack
of resources to produce good, valuable
content that converts.
FUNDAMENTALS 
 Profile

Basically your home page of Instagram where some important

information is stored.

Followership: This shows you the number of profiles you follow

(following) and the number of profiles that follow you (followers).
When people refer to your ratio, they are referring to the ratio of
how many followers you have compared to how many people
you are following.

Link: In your profile you can also put 1 outbound link which takes
the user to that link and outside of Instagram. This is good for
driving people to event pages, websites etc. It should be
changed frequently as you get only 1 custom outbound link.

Business Account: It’s a good idea to make a business account if

you are running a business. It must be linked to a Facebook
business page to do this. Business accounts give you a “call,
email, directions” calls to action as well which are tracked
through Instagram Insights (basically the graph icon gives you
analytics regarding traffic, impressions, follower locations and
times etc.)
 Engagement 

Define Engagement Rate: Engagement is a number that

indicates how many times your content has been engaged
with. Likes, shares and comments are considered an
engagement. Engagement rate is the amount of engagement
you have compared to how many followers you have. A higher
engagement rate indicates a more engaging and targeted
audience.

Edge Rank?: When content is posted, Instagram decides

automatically which percentage and which followers are most
likely to engage with your content. If you have a limited amount
of engagements within a certain amount of time after launching
your post, Instagram will start to de-prioritize your post, and
show it to less of your followers. They basically rank the
importance of your post based on the amount of likes and
comments it gets in a specified amount of time
 DM'ing

Direct Messaging: It is possible on Instagram to direct

message people, businesses and profiles, so long as they
have not altered their default settings which allow messaging
and read receipts.

Direct messaging is effective for reaching potential new

clients, influencers and hard to reach people. As a form of
communication, it is highly undersaturated compared to how
often Instagram is used. That’s why it works so well. Unlike
email and Facebook messenger, it is underutilized.
 Posting Times

The time you decide to post an image or video will

affect how “well” your post will do in terms of
engagement. It is important to post when your
followers are using the app, but there is less posting
going on (less competition). Some of the most
successful times we’ve had are late evening on
weekdays but it does vary based on the demographics
of your target market.
 Explore

Instagram is a unique and fun platform because it’s very easy to

explore on the app, finding news businesses and people that are of
interest to you. To find targeted content, it is easy to search posts that
were given a specific hashtag. Basically a spaceless word preceded
by a # (pound) sign. By engaging on public posts and commenting
legitimately, you can gain new followers and learn more about what’s
going on in your community.

Filters

Instagram has various in app photo editing tools such as cropping,

tripping, clipping etc. One of the most famous features is there filter
options. You can automatically apply present photo filters to photos
to enhance their appearance. There are also custom saturation and
contrast options too. Filters aren’t necessary but when they make
the photo look better they should be used.
 People

This is a social media platform where you interact with

people. You should treat these interactions as if they are
real life human interactions. Social media is a two way
street. Comment meaningfully, remember to respond
to legit comments and don’t use automation programs.
You wouldn’t use them in face to face, why should you
on social media? The importance is an engaging
audience, not just numbers. When meeting people in
person, it’s very unassuming and simple to follow them
directly on Instagram. It’s an excellent form of the new
way to “exchange business cards” or “contact info.”
 Mentioning
Others

There is a digital way to mention others on Instagram, and

this is common courtesy and etiquette to do when
someone, or a place of business has contributed to that
piece of content. For example, if you take an instagram
photo at a nice restaurant or one of their signature dishes,
you should mention using their instagram handle (@____).
This gives people the option to click their handle in your
caption so it takes them to their profile and also notifies them
you posted about them. This can result in freebies from the
business or reposting which will get you more followers.
You can also tag them or people in the photo so that it
shows up on their profile under tagged photos since they
are somewhere or have something to do with the photo.
Don’t over tag people, or tag people/businesses who aren’t
in or had nothing to do with the photo, it is spammy.
 Hashtags

Hashtags are great way to promote your content to people

exploring posts and profiles for free. Unlike other social media
where it is difficult or expensive to get outside your network, with
Instagram it’s relatively easy. It is more possible to meet and
discover new people and profiles on Instagram and then
become friends with them, versus the other way around (friends
first, then exchange social media handles). You can use a
maximum of 30 hashtags per post, the format for example is as
follows: #calgary #yyc #yycfitfam #yycdogs. That counts as 4
hashtags. It is important to use local and common hashtags.
When typing a hashtag, Instagram will start auto populating the
amount of posts associated with that hashtag so you can
choose either broad or targeted hashtags, or a combination of
both.

Since for some reason, people think hashtags “look ugly” it is

important to hide them when you post. This can be done by
filling in placeholder text in the form of “dots” or periods, as
displayed below. After writing your caption just say in your head
and type on your keyboard. “Enter, period, enter, period, enter,
period, enter, write hashtags”
Example: Caption goes here where you talk about the post.
.
.#hashtagheaven #herewego #yes #amenforhiddenhashtags

You can also post, and then add the #hashtags you want by
commenting on your post, but this “looks” spammy and the slight
lag from posting to posting comments can create enough a
delay that it reduces your edgerank.

Following others

If you want to build followership, a good technique is to follow people

you think that would be interested in following you. One of the easiest
ways to find these people, is to look at, and follow your competitors
followers. It is also important, that if someone mentions you in a post,
that you follow them, and for those that like your posts or comment on
your post it is polite to follow back. It is okay to avoid following people
you believe are spam accounts, robots, or using Instagress. This way
you avoid following junky, useless accounts. For example, if someone
from San Diego or Santiago likes my post, it may not do much good
to follow them. They likely won't be a client. But if a young
entrepreneur likes a @hustlecoyyc post and they are located in
Calgary, that’s a great follow.
Note: You can follow roughly 7000 people on Instagram, make them
count!
 BUSINESS 
DEVELOPMENT

Since it is not currently being used extensively for business

development (compared to LinkedIn or Facebook),
Instagram is a very useful tool to become the big fish in a
small pond. Having access to people’s profile lets you
understand who you reaching out to so you can tailor your
introduction message accordingly. Most people don’t even
get 1/10th of the direct messages per day on Instagram that
they do in their email account, yet they spend plenty of time
daily on the Instagram application.
 INSTAGRAM 
STORIES 

Instagram stories are a unique feature that was added to

compete with Snapchat. It allows users to post 10 second
snippets, either video or photos, that we’re taken on their phone
within the last 24 hours. The objective of stories is to show a
“day in the life” or your profile. You can also use stories to display
animated videos to your followers as a way to promote your
brand. For users that have over 10,000 followers and are a
business account, they are able to add links in their stories, so
people can be directed away from the app to a specific call to
action. For those that have less than 10,000 followers, viewers
can only direct message you to respond to your story. Currently
over 250 million Instagram users use stories daily.

One unique fact about stories is that, if you tag the location the
story was taken at, it will be added to a geographic story. For
example, if you report the location as HustleCo Workspace on a
story snippet in video or photo format, there is a good chance it
will be selected to be placed in the Calgary story. When you are
in the Calgary story, random people can view your story and
your views can increase exponentially.
Typically, when added to the Calgary story, our stories get an
added 300 views on average. If posted late in the evening or
early morning, we’ve been known to achieve over 1000
random, Calgary story views. Keep in mind, for you to be viewed
on the story, or found using the explore function, you cannot do
so with a private profile. You must be public.

What makes a good story?

Make it a story! Experiment Consistency

Use Locations Mention others Animations
Examples
 ABOUT US
The HustleCo Workspace is a coworking and event space in
Calgary with a superior motivational and engaging work
environment optimized for entrepreneurs, freelancers and gig
economists. The winning and athletic workspace coupled with
access to beneficial resources and superior marketing
guidance enables members and visitors to reach their full
potential unlike any other coworking space on the market.
HustleCo’s mission is to inspire its members and followers to
grow everyday and challenge the norms by embracing the
HustleCo Workspace and lifestyle.

Check us out

@hustlecoyyc
 We are on a mission to empower Calgary
entrepreneurs. We exist to support
entrepreneurs, freelancers, gig-economists
and consultants. That’s why we launched.
The founders, Husam and Steve, having
entered entrepreneurship over 3 years ago,
know the importance of a strong and
supportive community to help grow your
business and personal self. We love to help
and see people succeed and we’re here to
help in anyway possible.

Click to follow

hustleco.space