In case you haven’t noticed, Instagram is a powerful money-making platform, especially for bloggers and small businesses.
So if you’ve ever wondered how to turn your Instagram followers into customers, meet Sharon Beason; the founder of Womeneur, an entrepreneurship-based platform offering everything from digital guides and coaching sessions, to skill-building events and daily doses of motivation.
In a little over a year, Beason has attracted a highly-engaged community of over 50,000 followers. Black Enterprise caught up with the enterprising trailblazer to learn more about the specific strategies she used to grow and monetize her Instagram following.
Since launching Womeneur, describe the work you’re most proud of.
Beason:
- Giving the Womeneur site a complete makeover and adding more features, tools and resources.
- Creating a preferred partners program — a group of small business owners representing various industries nationwide and in Canada. They sharing their expertise via digital guides; consult services and packages/bundles to be sold on the Womeneur platform. I’m really excited about this because I really offer the Womeneur audience all the tools & resources they need to operate their business in all facets: legal, finances, social media, branding, marketing, building relations, web development, etc.
- Creating a kick-ass advisory board of power women. I’m so very grateful and thankful that they recognize and appreciate the Womeneur vision enough to lend their valuable time and expertise to help me take Womeneur to another level.
Womeneur has a variety of revenue streams; from digital guides and a membership program to products like notebooks and mugs. Did you intend to make money selling services and products on Instagram?
I absolutely planned to make money for Womeneur and began selling custom merchandise (mugs, notebooks, prints) seven months after launch. Sales were good. But when I launched a few eBooks in February of this year, I got a ‘taste’ of the power of passive income and knew I had to figure out a way to make Womeneur become a six-figure earning company. Nothing beats waking up or being out socializing or just living life and watching money coming into your account without you having to lift a finger.
Can you share the specific strategies you used to grow your audience and market your business?
- Well, I can honestly say it takes work — lots of it! I was dedicated as all hell, but now I’m fortunate enough to have two people oversee the account.
- I optimized the Womeneur bio to make it easier for people to find us via keyword search: updated the first line to include ‘women’ and ‘entrepreneurs’ — people really do search keywords and have found us that way.
- I engaged like crazy — the minute I posted I’d ‘hang out’ for like 15 minutes and respond to whoever was liking and commenting on our posts. I made it my business to respond to every comment and follow and engage every loyal person —regardless if they had 5 or 50K followers
- I found my target audience through hashtag searches and a little competitive analysis, but I also maximized my hashtag usage (you’re allowed 30) and ensured they were researched and relevant to my industry and not just ‘trending.’
- I remained authentic, humble, transparent, accessible and shared my story — this is one of the ‘key’ things that I realized really drew the Womeneur tribe in.
*Note, the writer, Kandia Johnson is affiliated with the Womeneur brand.