The number one question I get from my marketing students is, “How can get more local followers for my Instagram account?”

A lot of people ask this because their followers are primarily their family, friends from acupuncture school, or people from the other side of the country. In other words, people who are unlikely to become paying patients.

If this is you, you’re not alone! I hear this ALL THE TIME from  my students.

Luckily there are quite a few ways to get your Instagram account in front of real people in your community and get them to decide to follow you.

Today we’re talking about seven ways you can do just that.

And remember: Getting more followers is NOT a vanity metric. It’s not about the number. It’s about getting in front of new local people so you have the opportunity to teach them about acupuncture and how much it can help them.

The more followers you have, the more people you can reach with your message, the wider pool of potential patients you have. It’s that simple.

Let’s get into the episode and talk about these seven simple and effective methods!

🎙️ How to Get More Local Followers on Your Acupuncture Instagram Account:

Show Notes:

– Free Workbook: How to Optimize Your Instagram Bio for More Acupuncture Patients
– Instagram Marketing for Acupuncturists online course

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Transcript:

Hey there, welcome back. This week we’re talking all about Instagram and how you can get more local followers for your acupuncture clinic.

One of the number one questions that I get from my marketing students about Instagram is, “How the heck am I supposed to get local followers on this app that has a billion people? I’m getting followers from the other side of the country or the other side of the world, or my followers are mostly, my friends from acupuncture school, and my family members.”

So basically they’re saying, my Instagram followers are people who are wonderful and I’m happy they’re here, but they are not likely to become my patients. And what I really need is to get in front of local people to get visible in my community using Instagram.

Today we’re talking about seven different ways to do that. If you’re an Instagram beginner and you need help, I have an online course, Instagram Marketing for Acupuncturists, that walks you through everything. I’ll pop the link for that in the show notes. It’s all the ways you can capitalize on the features of Instagram to get people to actually make an appointment. To turn followers into patients. Because that’s the whole reason we’re making an effort on social media. We want the real people in our communities to come into our brick and mortar clinics.

And before we dive into these seven methods, it’s important to get your Instagram profile set up for success. Basically, everything we’re doing in the suggestions in this episode is with the purpose of driving new people to visit your account profile, which is like your homepage, and getting them to chose to follow you. So before you start, ideally you’d want to optimize your profile so that it appeals to your ideal patient. That way, when they land on your profile, they immediately know they’re in the right place, they’re excited to follow you and learn more from you.

So to do that, I have a free workbook for you. It’s short and sweet, I promise, that walks you through how to optimize your Instagram bio to appeal to your ideal patients, so you not only get MORE followers, but you get the kind of followers who eventually become your favorite kind of real-life patient.

I’ll put the link for that in the show notes as well. [Linked here.]

Okay, here we go!

Tip number one is my absolute favorite way to get new local followers. It’s a method that I did not come up with, and I’m really sad to say I cannot remember who I learned this from on Instagram but it is genius. It works really well. It’s just not my genius, full disclosure.

This method is really simple. First you want to think about other business owners in your community near your clinic who have the kind of Instagram followers who would be your ideal patient. So maybe that’s a yoga studio or chiropractic office near your acupuncture practice. Think about businesses that already have people who are in a wellness mindset, who are inclined to try acupuncture.

And of course, you want to think about your specific target market and ideal patient avatar. Ask yourself, where are my ideal patients already hanging out in my community? If you’re a cosmetic acupuncturist, maybe you would want to look for holistic estheticians in your area, that kind of thing.

Once you have selected another small business owner who has the kind of followers that would be wonderful to become your patients, then what I want you to do is go to their Instagram account and click on “Followers.” So these are the people who are the followers of this account. Ideally, because this is a local business, their followers will primarily be local real-life people, right? Then all you’re going to do is scroll through that list of their followers, and click on each one, one at a time, and for each follower, you are going to like five of their posts and leave one comment.

What happens is, the next time this person logs into their Instagram account, they are going to see that someone, some business – your clinic – left them five likes and one comment. And they’re going to say, “Who is this, what is this about?” and they’re going to go visit your Instagram profile, which is sort of like the homepage of your Instagram account. And they’re going to decide in that moment, do they want to follow you?Some of them are absolutely going to choose to follow you right away.

Basically, it’s a very effective way to get your account out in front of new members of your community. You’re kind of waving at them. Getting their attention so they notice your business, but on Instagram.

Now, don’t freak out if this sounds like a lot of work. I recommend doing this 10-15 minutes a day. And this is also the perfect task to delegate to someone else. For example, if you have a virtual assistant, a VA, or a social media manager, all you have to do is give them your Instagram login information, and they can log in as you, and easily do this for you 10 to 15 minutes a day.

You could also offer this job to someone you know who’s already spending a lot of time on Instagram and they really love it. Maybe you have a niece or nephew or maybe your receptionist is already on Instagram all the time. Now you can pay them $10 or $12 an hour to do something that they love.

And of course, you would want to take some time to explain what kind of comments you want them to leave, the tone of voice, even phrases you would use.  So that is reflects your voice and your brand. They’re effectively just representing your brand on the app.

This method really is effective. If you get started, within 2-3 days you’ll notice new followers on your account. If you feel like, I really don’t have time for this, please seriously consider assigning this task to someone else and giving it a try.

So the number one question that I get about this particular technique is, what kind of comments am I supposed to be leaving? Because I really don’t want to sound fake or false or anything like that on Instagram. I totally get it.

It’s actually pretty easy to leave genuine comments. You don’t have to leave anything that’s super deep or thoughtful. I mean, you certainly can, of course. But if you’re trying to scroll through this quickly and do like 15 at a time, it’s absolutely fine to leave comments that are genuinely how you might feel, but not super deep. So things like, “your dog is so cute,” or “That looks delicious,” if they post a picture of their dessert, or “That sunsets incredible.”

Keep in mind that Instagram comments and likes are like currency. One reason people make an effort to post something on Instagram is the hope that they will get a response. Even if they are not running a professional account, they still want likes and comments. They still want some kind of positive feedback that, yes, the photo of the sunset they took was actually incredible.

Again, to review, you’re picking a nearby business that has the kinds of followers who would be great to become your patients. Visit their Instagram account profile and click on “followers.” Then scroll through the list and like five of their posts, and comment on one post.

Before we move on to tip number two, the other really common question I get is, “How do I know if the people are local or not?” Sometimes when you visit their profile, you can see immediately whether or not they are local and if they’re not, I just skip them. They’re not really worth your time because the whole thing you’re doing is trying to get in front of local people.

Tip number two to get more local followers is to be featured on the Instagram account of another local business. Often people will do this as a trade. I’ll feature your business, you feature mine. Think about local businesses that you could work together with who offer something complimentary to what you do, and who have the kinds of followers you want more of.

The goal is when they feature you, it’s a kind of endorsement of your and your business, which builds trust and authority, and your account is now exposed to all these new local people in their audience. And of course, some of these people are going to take the opportunity to check out your profile and decide to follow you.

And the other business also gets exposed to your Instagram audience in order to get new followers as well. Win-win.

Being featured by another business could mean that they write a post about your business, or they could feature you on their Instagram story, or if you really wanted to go big, you could do an Instagram live interview, or you could record an interview and then publish it, as an IGTV.

A great example of this is recently another small business owner in my town had an acupuncture facial treatment with me and she loved it. I asked if she might share it on her IG, and she wrote a post about it with several pictures. Immediately after that, because of her enthusiasm and her endorsement, I had 3 calls for new patients who wanted to try cosmetic acupuncture, and new followers.

And her business is a plastic-free home goods store. So her followers are not even necessarily familiar with acupuncture, but they’re committed to a lifestyle using natural products and remedies, which is what she sells. So keep your mind open to who might be great to work with, and where your ideal patients might be hanging out.

Number three is to make sure you’re using local hashtags. This will really help you get in front of new people in your community who are following these hashtags. My marketing students often ask me, “How do hashtags work? What am I using them for?” etc.

In every Instagram caption, you can use up to 30 hashtags. I recommend using all of them, every time. If people have a particular interest, they can chose to “follow” a hashtag for this interest. For example, patients with IBS might follow #IBSwarrior. They’re following that hashtag because they want to see what interesting things people are sharing related to this topic. And when you follow a hashtag, that means IG will start showing those posts in your feed.

So you want to make sure to use local hashtags in your posts, so that the people who are following those hashtags will get to see your posts.

My recommendation is that when you are writing your post caption, and you have those 30 hashtags that you can use, use all of them. Half of them should be location-based, so you can have half the hashtags related to your town and a few towns near you, like where you might draw new patients from.

And then you could have the other half, the other 15 hashtags, be related to your specialties, symptoms or conditions that you often treat and you want more of those patients. You’re trying to get in front of that kind of patient.

The reason I recommend using at least half of the hashtags as local is because, as I said, people are following those local hashtags.

And it’s a way for people to discover new Instagram accounts, including yours.

And then of course, they have the opportunity to visit your account profile and decide whether or not they want to follow you.

One of the things that I talk about in Instagram Marketing for Acupuncturists is that everything that we’re talking about in this episode also requires that you have optimized your Instagram profile, so that when people land on it, they know immediately whether they want to follow you.

You want them to land on your profile and say, “Oh yeah, definitely following this person, this is really great.” There are ways that you can cultivate your profile, bio, grid layout, and Instagram story highlights so that they appeal specifically to the target market that you want. To get them to say, “Yes” and decide to follow you.

I’ve included a link to a free worksheet that walks you through how to optimize your Instagram profile in order to get more of your ideal patients as followers.

So before you dive in with any of these tips, I recommend that you take a little bit of time, like a half hour, to quickly optimize your profile.

Tip number four to get more local followers on your Instagram account is to use geotagging in both your posts and stories. Geotags are kind of like hashtags in that people can use them to search and discover new things.

Let’s say that you create an Instagram post and you add your location, the geotag. Then people can click the geotag and see where it is and also see other nearby or related accounts.

Let’s say we’ve clicked the geotag for a local coffee shop. What it will do is it will bring you to a page where it’s grouped together everyone who has used that geotag.

You might have clicked through the geotag from the local coffee shop, but then when you get to that page, your’re going to be able to see all of the other businesses or people that are also using it, including yours.

So then people if are curious they can click through to visit your profile and decided to follow you.

The same exact thing is true the Instagram Stories “location” sticker. You can add your location to your story. I recommend doing this on every single story that you create for your clinic. You want as many stories as possible tagged with your location because people can click through to see what other local business or people have recently tagged the same location. It’s about discovery.

Tip number five is to get interviewed in other places in the digital world, or even by your local news station, and share your Instagram handle and invite people to follow you on Instagram.

Let’s say for example that you’re interviewed by a podcaster, and at the end, they’ll often say, “This is great, thank you so much. Where can we find you online?” And you want to keep it brief and say, “My website is localacupuncture.com, and you can find me on Instagram, which is where I spend most of my time @acupunctureglow, where I teach about natural skincare.”

Make sure you drop that explanation in there – this is why you should follow me on Instagram because I teach a lot about XYZ subject that you might be interested in learning.

You could do that if you’re interviewed on a podcast, on your local news station, radio station, if you’re interviewed by a blogger, anywhere. It’s sort of like the footer of your email where you want to make sure that you are adding in all the places that people can find you. But you’re being succinct about it and focusing on Instagram. So instead of saying, “You can find me on Face, Instagram and Twitter at –“ all these different handles, just pick one. You don’t want to overwhelm people with choices, and you don’t want them to get distracted. If you want more Instagram followers, that’s all you mention, so people can go straight there.

Tip number six is to invite your email subscribers to follow you on Instagram. You can always put your Instagram handle in the footer of your email newsletters, in your email signature. I definitely recommend that.

But what I’m talking about is to put together a specific email newsletter for this week, where the only content is just one paragraph inviting people to follow you on Instagram. I can guarantee you that a lot of your current patients and email subscribers have no idea whether you’re on Instagram, unless you’re actively talking about it with them, which we usually just aren’t, right?

All you have to say for this email newsletter is, “Join us on Instagram!” And explain the three major things that you teach about or share about on Instagram. Tell them, why should they care to make the effort to follow you on Instagram. For example, I’m going to teach you about natural skincare including foods for beautiful skin. Or at-home anxiety remedies, etc..

You can add a little hook, a mystery link where you say, “Check out our most popular post right here.” And then link the words “right here” directly to the post itself.

People’s curiosity is going to be so high, they’re going to ask themselves, “I wonder what their most popular post is?” and be much more inclined to actually click through.

To find your most popular post, you can go through your Instagram analytics.

Writing an email inviting people to follow you on Instagram and explaining what kind of information you teach and share on Instagram, and why should they care about it – this might be only three sentences. A very short email. But that’s totally fine. It’s simple, it’s easy, and I think you’re going to get new followers from it.

Lastly, you can host a giveaway on your Instagram account. This is a really great way to increase your followers. One thing I will say is that the rules for hosting a giveaway vary hugely between different countries. And so that’s something you’re going to have to research. It should be pretty easy to Google, “Rules to host an Instagram giveaway in Australia or New York State.” I definitely recommend doing that because in some countries you might not be able to give the prize to someone who lives outside your country. I’m just saying that you want to give it a quick Google.

But giveaways are an amazing way to build your followers, because you can have one of the entry requirements be that first people must follow your Instagram account.

When I host giveaways, I’ll say, “I’m giving away XYZ. In order to enter, you must first follow my account. Second, you have to like this post. And then third, you have to tag a friend in the comments. Or you could tag two friends.”

Now, the friends tagging thing is so important because this is how you get new followers. The friend will notice, “Hey what is this thing I was tagged in?” And they’ll check it out, read through your post, and hopefully say, “I want this thing, too,” whatever it is that you’re giving away. And then they’ll follow you, like the post, and tag a new friend. It gets to be sort of exponential and puts your post and your account in front of all of these new people who maybe never heard of you before, but are probably a good fit because they’re the friends with someone who follows you already.

All right, I hope these methods are helpful to get more local followers on your Instagram account.

This might be an episodes where you might want to try to set aside time for each different section. For example, trying one method consistently for a month before moving onto the next, so you don’t feel overwhelmed. It’s a lot of tips and advice, right?

Although of course, you can certainly just start doing all of them at the same time if you’re feeling motivated. That would be super.

Don’t forget to download the free workbook that walks you through optimizing your Instagram bio, so that you are attracting your ideal patients and getting them to say yes to following you the moment they land on your homepage.

Then once you start putting these methods into action, you’re going to see better results, and a higher percentage of people choosing to follow you, versus not.

I’d love to hear if you’re using any of these methods. I know that many of you have been to my Instagram webinars in the past, and I love when you reach out and tell me, “I’ve be using this method that you taught and it really is working.” So please give me a shoutout and say hello on Instagram @michellegrasek.

I also offer an Instagram Marketing for Acupuncturists course online. It’s primarily geared towards beginners. It walks you through all of the different parts of Instagram and why you might use each different area, like posts versus stories versus IGTV, and there’s a section on each.

In addition I cover how you can use the features. I give you ideas for Instagram Stories, for example, what you can share to get good engagement and get people to actually click the button to schedule an appointment. This is our whole goal, right? Everything we’re doing on Instagram should be with the goal of driving people to click that link in your bio to make an appointment.

I’ll link to the Instagram course in the show notes.

I hope you enjoyed this jam-packed episode and that you put some of these things into motion.

Thank you so much and I will see you next time.