64: This Instagram Mistake Is Costing You Hundreds of Leads

Think your content's the problem? What if I told you it's actually your conversion path that's broken?! In this episode of The Creative Bodega, I'm sharing the exact moment from a recent one-on-one call that completely shifted how a realtor (with really good content!) was thinking about her Instagram strategy. Spoiler: her content wasn't the issue—it was what happened after people found her. If you're posting consistently but not seeing leads, inquiries, or email signups, this episode is going to be a game-changer.

Check out the full show notes for this episode HERE.

Things I cover inside this episode:

• Why good content alone isn't enough—and the missing link between your posts and actual conversions
• The simple question to ask yourself that will instantly reveal where your user journey is broken
• How to create a clear next step for your audience (in your bio, pinned posts, and every single post you make)
• Why Instagram should never be the final destination—and where you should be sending people instead
• The exact framework I use to make sure every post invites people to take action (without feeling pushy or salesy)

Resources & Links mentioned in the episode:

• The Content Coven - My $97/month membership where we tackle conversion path issues with templates, prompts, and live feedback. This month we redid pinned posts together.
• Start and Grow Your Email List (LIVE) - My small-group course running live in May where I hold your hand through launching your newsletter. Get on the waitlist!
• Start & Grow Your Email List (SELF-PACED) - if you don't want to wait and you know you need to get your list up and running, access this amazing program immediately here!

Connect with me:
🫶🏼 Follow me on Instagram for daily insights
🫶🏼 Join my 321 Create Newsletter for weekly content tips 
🫶🏼 Check out The Content Coven Membership

Be sure to hit "Subscribe" or "Follow" so you never miss an episode! 

Transcript

Emily Connors 0:00

if you're frustrated with your Instagram results right now, I want you to seriously stop and ask yourself, what is my actual goal here? And am I making that abundantly clear? What do you want someone to do after they find you join your list? Like what is the next step? Because once you get really honest about that, it becomes so much more clear to spot where the path is broken. Hello, welcome back to the Creative Bodega Podcast. Today I'm sharing the missing link between your content and conversion. So this episode actually came from a one-on-one call that I just had yesterday that really made something click in a really big way for the female entrepreneur that I was working with, because her content was actually really good. Like, I mean, and I'm not just trying to be nice except'cause I can't do that if I don't like your content, I'm gonna tell you. But, it was good. And she's a realtor, which is obviously a pretty saturated market yet she was really positioning herself uniquely. She had really varied content, a lot of reels and carousels, which if you're gonna make anything, those are the two to completely lean into and what the algorithm likes. and she's showing her face. All the time. Like I knew exactly what she looked like before we got on the call, which is not always the case when I work with someone. And she was really sharing her personality, and it didn't feel bland at all. It didn't feel cookie cutter, and it did not feel like, oh, here we go. Here's another realtor saying the exact same thing right on Instagram. So when we got on the call. She basically said something's wrong. And I have you tell me the top three things you wanna talk about on our call. Right? It's an hour long call. It's, I don't even advertise this. she reached out and she's not in the coven and she just said, do you do one-on-one calls? And I was like, I do. I just don't talk about'em. here's the link. And she booked immediately. And the number one thing outta the three things that she wanted to talk about was. She just wrote, figure out what's wrong. And so we got on the call and I'm like, what did you mean by that? what does that mean to you? Because it could mean a lot of things. And she said, I'm not getting leads, right? And I said, okay, so what's the number one thing you want someone to do when they land on your feet? And she said to book a call And. That was the moment right there because the issue was not her content. The issue was that the journey ended after people consumed her content or her posts. There was nowhere for them to go next, or it wasn't clear at all where she wanted them to go Next. As in when I looked at her bio, there was no call to action at the bottom saying, book a call. There was no pinned post at the top saying, here's how to get started, or just plain and simple. Book a call. And then when I popped into maybe 10 of her posts, none of them said, book a call in the caption at the end of the carousel, at the end of the reel. It, it wasn't anywhere. So a lot of people. Think they have a content problem and when they really just have like a user journey problem or a conversion path problem, or honestly just like, what the hell do you want people to do? Next problem. And is that abundantly clear And, oh my gosh, listen, when we're so close to our content, I mean, this happens to me all the time. I told her on our call so many times, I'm like, listen, I could raise my hand and say I'm guilty of this. You think you're being so clear. About what you want people to do or how to take the next step, when in fact, when an outsider comes and looks, it's not clear. Okay? And I completely get why this happens and why people get frustrated, and why people come to me and just say, my content's not working, you know, or My engagement sucks, or, I'm not getting results. But you really need to dig deep and figure out like, what does that mean? Right? And I always ask, what does results mean to you? Do you want more views, more followers, more inquiries, more email subscribers, sales calls booked, because those are all really different goals, and if you're not clear on what your goal is. Then how's your content supposed to support it? Right. And this actually reminded me so much of when my hubby and I owned our CrossFit gym and I was the nutrition coach, and I would ask people who were sitting in my office, you know, what, what is your goal? And without fail, I mean, you could fill in the blank, I want to lose weight. Okay. And I'd be like, okay, but like, you're not allowed to gimme that answer. If, if it's, if I'm telling you you can't say lose weight, what would you say? And they would kind of laugh, but I was dead serious. I wanted the real reason. So I'd keep asking, okay, why do you wanna lose weight and why does that matter? And okay, then why does that matter? Right? And it's the whole concept of like asking why five times, right? And when you keep going, you get to the actual thing. It's typically not about losing weight's. How you're gonna feel after that and why that's important to you? It's about confidence. It's about energy. It's about keeping up with your kids, your grandkids. It's about wanting to feel comfortable in your body again. Right? And that's the important stuff, right? That's really tangible and you know, wanting to walk into a room and just feel really confident and good in your skin. When that feeling, ugh, like is there anything better or high as women when we try on 5,000 outfits before we have to go somewhere, it's slightly important just. Feeling like everything looks good, you know, and everything fits like to me, there's no better feeling. And um, that was really the goal. So I think we need to do the same thing with our marketing, right? When you tell me you want better Instagram results or more results, I'm gonna ask, what does that mean? What does that, what's the tangible thing? Like, and I'm gonna keep asking until we get to a real answer, because if the answer is like, I want more likes. I don't really care. I mean, I like, I love that, but that's, likes aren't gonna do anything for me. They're not gonna help me grow, like they're not gonna help me grow my business. and yeah, likes and views can be really helpful data. Like, and you know, I'm all about the data, right? They can tell us what's catching people's attention or like what's resonating. But if your content's getting attention and it's not leading people anywhere. Then that's where this story's gonna end. Right? And that's exactly what was happening on this call. She wanted leads, specifically, she wanted people to book a call with her. But when we looked at her Instagram through that lens, I was like. Okay. Like I'm fully seeing the issue. There was no clear call to action in the bio. There was nothing saying to book a call. there were no pin posts encouraging the next step. Her carousels weren't ending with a call to action. Like, I already list these things, right? She had freebies. But she's not talking about them.'cause she's actually not collecting email addresses yet. So you know me, that was the first thing I said. I said, I see you don't have an email list. We need to talk about this. Like, I know this is not what you want to hear because this is not a low lift thing, but we can make it quite low key. Right? Like as a realtor, I think a once a month newsletter, boom. Chef's kiss. That's all you need to do. Right? But we're not gonna make this into full, a full on email podcast, although, you know, I would love to. so yeah, no opt-in right now. No email captures. In fact, she had two freebies and she just had them in her link and bio and you can just get that. You click on it and it opens up. Like absolutely not collecting email addresses. So that means there's no follow up, there's no nurturing. We are just posting on Instagram and praying it gets in front of our people, which I think we all know at this point is insanely hard, right? What do they say? Three to 5% of your audience sees what you post versus whatever the size of your email list is. That's a 30 to 50 plus percent open rate. I mean, I have 12,000 people on my email list, and I have a 53.7% average open rate. Y'all. That's a lot more people that I can reach directly versus Instagram, and that's why I am so annoying about email. Like I just believe in my heart of hearts. You know, I love Instagram, but email's where it's at. By the way, I'm just gonna plug start and grow your email list right now. I am gonna be running it live most likely in May, and hop on the wait list. I'll put the link in the show notes because you know it's small group. I hold your hand. I'll get you up and running in no time at all, uh, as far as launching a newsletter anyways. If someone finds you and likes what they see, what did they do next? And is that obvious?'cause if it's not obvious. Most people are not gonna do the work to figure that out, right? They're just not. People are busy, they're distracted and they're half paying attention and they're saving your posts and telling themselves they're gonna come back to it, but they probably never do. And if they follow you, they, in the moment, they wanna follow you, but then they probably won't even remember what your name was when they go to look at your content again. Right. That's happened to me a lot actually. I'm like. God, who did I just follow? And yeah, I could probably go into Instagram and see my recently followed and figured it out. But that's a lot of work. And actually I never do it. So we need to stop acting like people are gonna do all this work to work with us. You know what I mean? So you gotta make that next step so clear. And I think this is where a lot of people get tripped up. Um, they think better contents the answer. And in fact, this woman was so relieved, she actually took a huge deep breath and was like. I'm so relieved that you're telling me my content's good like that. That's not my problem, because I like what I'm doing and I'm in a good rhythm and I like my content that I'm putting out. And I was like, yep, you're Gucci. Like you're good there. She didn't need better design, better hooks, a better schedule. Right. and I'm not saying that content quality doesn't matter'cause obviously it does. but good content by itself is not enough if it dead ends on Instagram. So Instagram should not be the final destination. I'm gonna repeat that. I'm gonna do an a EP if you're multitasking, come back to me. Instagram should not be the final destination, and I believe that in my heart of hearts. For me, the goal is not to keep people on Instagram forever. I actually want them off of Instagram and I want them on my email list. That is my goal. I want them reading my weekly newsletter. I want them hearing from me in a space that I own. I want to keep nurturing them there. I want to keep building trust there, and I wanna share stories and member wins and thoughts and tips and ideas, and I want a place where I'm not depending on this. Stupid effing algorithm to decide if I'm gonna get seen that day because that part of Instagram makes me absolutely insane. And relying on Instagram alone to warm people up is so shaky at best. Like you're basically posting and crossing your fingers and hoping the app shows it to the people that you want to see it. It's just not my favorite plan. It is way too unreliable. And I get it because Instagram for me is discovery. It is the visibility platform for me. It is my top of funnel. It's the widest part, the very top of my funnel, and it's great for letting people get to feel my vibe and my perspective and my face and my energy. I, you know, I'm not anti Instagram. Obviously, my business literally was built on Instagram, but I do not think it should be the whole plan, especially if you're asking people to make a bigger leap. Which booking a call is quite a big leap. Like if someone doesn't know you from anything and you expect them to see one post from you and then book a call, like that's a very big ask. So the better way and what is happening in this day and age when it comes to the user journey, it takes so. Much more visibility and consistent touchpoints. So your better ask is for them to download something, a free resource that they find really useful. And she and I talked about that too. Like, I'm like, girl, you, this doesn't need to be a big thing. She said, her freebie right now is 11 pages. I said, Nope. No. Find the best part of that. Make it a list, make it something super simple and usable for your person. so it's just a big ask. If, if someone's landing on your feed for 14 seconds and you want them to book a call, the better way. Download is freebie. Get on my email list. You're gonna hear from me consistently. I'm gonna warm you up and I'm gonna ask you to book a call somewhere in that newsletter every single month for her would be prompting you to book a call. I was trying so hard on this call to convince her to start her email list and I, you know. Again, even if it's monthly, even if it's simple, I didn't care, but I needed people to go somewhere after Instagram to get to know her better. because if your content's doing a good job of attracting the right people, and then those people have nowhere to go, or it's not painfully obvious what you want them to do next, it's like doing all the work to get someone in the front door and never opening your front door. You know what I mean? So I told her in every single post I make, I am inviting people to take action. In every post I ask myself, what can I offer that makes sense to get these people to take the next step with me? And the next step with me is to get on my email list. So I'm promoting my newsletter, I'm promoting freebies. I am asking them to do something in every single post, I have a call to action. And it's typically two places. It's at in a reel at the end of the reel, and in the caption or at the end of the carousel or throughout the whole carousel, kind of at the bottom, like comment this, and in the caption like. Because you got your, your post readers and your real watchers, and you've got your caption readers. So I'm trying to hit them everywhere. Right? And imagine how different this would look for her if her freebies actually required an email opt-in instead of someone just grabbing it for free and disappearing, you know, we want them on our list, and now she can keep showing up in their inbox. She can showcase new houses that she has. She can share, you know, local happenings, restaurant openings, stuff like that. She can explain what's gonna happen on a call if you get on a call with her. She can talk about, great testimonials or positive stories of things that have happened with past clients. Current clients, she can tell stories, right to build trust, and she can just warm these people up without relying on stupid Instagram. To do the heavy lifting, and that's huge. So if you're frustrated with your Instagram results right now, I want you to seriously stop and ask yourself, what is my actual goal here? And am I making that abundantly clear? And vanity metric goals are not the goals. Please like erase that from your mind. Why do you want more likes and views? Right? What do you want someone to do after they find you join your list? Book a call dm, you inquire, listen to your podcast. Like what is the next step? Because once you get really honest about that, it becomes so much more clear to spot where the path is broken. it could be the bio could be too vague. Maybe it doesn't tell people what to do. Next could be that you don't have pinned post. Maybe you're not actually helping a new person understand who you are and how you help. maybe it's your content. Maybe your posts are valuable, but they never invite people anywhere. Maybe it's that you have one freebie, but you're not really talking about it consistently, so there's no real nurturing happening.'cause you can't even get them on your list.'cause you're not even talking about your freebie. Right? I just want you to have a simple, clear path. That's it. A simple, clear next step for people to take. And I think we underestimate how much easier marketing gets when we stop trying to do all the things instead of just ask what do I want them to do next? And have I made that painfully obvious that one question is gonna be so helpful? I also think this is one of those things that can be hard to see in your own business because you're so close to it. I know I am, you know, you know your offers, you know your links, you know your key words. You know what you mean. You know what people are supposed to do, but a new person doesn't know any of that. And sometimes just a pair of fresh eyes is gonna help a ton. And honest. Honestly, honestly, honestly. Either ask a friend to do that who understands your world or join the content coven. Because if you made a post in the content coven right now saying, that's my membership, can someone tell me if it's obvious what to do when you land on my feed and you drop your Instagram link, you better believe five to six of us are gonna chime in and say what? What we think. Right? And I think that outside perspective can help so, so much. It can be a game changer. so if you want a quick little audit after this episode, here's where I want you to start. So, grab a piece of paper and pencil or type this into your phone. What is my actual goal on Instagram? What do I want someone to do after they land on my account? Is that next step clear in my bio, in my pinned posts and in my content? Are my freebies helping me build my list? Am I nurturing people anywhere off of Instagram? So those questions alone will help you so much. And if your answer's honestly not really, like that's perfectly okay. That's actually really good information because now you know what needs attention. I don't want you to panic and assume your content sucks. Your content might be doing exactly what it's supposed to do. You just might be missing that link between your content and conversion. And for a lot of you, that missing link is gonna be getting people onto your email list. So I'm gonna leave you with this. Instagram is such a great place to get discovered. I, I, I owe my whole, ugh, I don't wanna say my whole business success, but I owe, I owe a lot to Instagram. It is a great place to connect. I fricking love being in my dms with people. I love helping people. It feels like a warm hug when I log onto Instagram. but it shouldn't be the final destination. You should get people somewhere deeper. You should get them on your email list. And if you want support with all of this. With your content, your messaging, your strategy, whatever. This is exactly what we're doing inside the content covenant. In fact. This past month, our challenge, we have a challenge every month, was to redo your three pinned posts. I provided Canva templates. We edited two of them together on a call. I provided really detailed prompts for chat GBT or wherever your favorite AI tool is. Helping you create those posts, right, and get the words, the copyright, because we all know copy's so hard. But it's a great place to get going. So again, if you want my eyes specifically on your Instagram, that's the place to be. Okay. I also have one-on-one calls, but I literally never talk about them. If you're interested, DM me, just like she did. it is something I offer just a couple a month and it's really fun. It honestly, I really do enjoy my time on my one-on-one calls. Okay, I hope this is helpful and I will talk to you in the next episode.