Lessons - How She Turned One Instagram Page Into a Full Social Media Empire | Theresa Depasquale - CEO of Capture Social Group

In this lessons episode, explore how social media can become a long-term growth engine when used with strategy and intention. Discover why short-form video remains essential for building awareness, understand how authenticity creates stronger audience trust and deeper engagement, and uncover how using platform features strategically can turn everyday conversations into lasting conversions. One thing that you mentioned that if you find the right audience, this is the this they will convert and that's really the objective of a business putting out content obviously. I also find that TikTok is brand awareness but there's like a trust factor that I feel isn't built on TikTok for some reason. I feel like TikTok is a very low trust building platform with your audience. That's because anybody a house mom from New Jersey can all of the sudden be come and expert on you know what I'm saying? Yeah it's like they people don't carry over like you look at it. Anybody can be famous. Exactly so you have somebody with 5 million followers on TikTok they have like nothing anywhere else. The audience isn't carry and it shouldn't be about audience but it's a it's a leading indicator that your audience doesn't trust your care about you that much. If your audience only sees you on TikTok and then doesn't go anywhere else and you look at YouTube for example you every YouTuber where you're talking to somebody for 10, 20 an hour long they have a big audience their audience cares about them their audience follows them other places. Instagram, Facebook, correct email list. Yeah yeah yeah okay so without without doing a full full strategy because other things I want to talk to you about outside of just Instagram. What are some what are some things that you want to leave a business owner entrepreneur with that are just things to think about for Instagram right now in 2023? Okay that's a load of question. I know it is you have to pick the things that are top of mind. I know it's a load of questions. Yeah I think you know I think this might sound funny to you because you're doing it but like if you're not leaning into the shore from video trend you've got to start and you can really do it to what makes sense with your brand and like your personality it doesn't have to be silly you know whenever trending real with like lip-sinking audios. I think a lot of extra brands get like really intimidated by reels but if you're not on the Instagram or even TikTok or whatever even YouTube shorts now like some kind of short-term video that should be part of your strategy it doesn't need to be a whole thing but like if you're not leaning into it you really need to start like just leaning into more video content and like learning the nuances of it there's so much nuance with video content like the editing the lengths the scripting like there's a lot that goes into it. That would be number one. Number two is like really not being cavalier with it because it's such a powerful tool organic social media like I was talking about it can benefit your business in so many ways. Long-term look it as a long-term play it's not a short-term play it's a long-term play so like really getting Siri doubling down on it because what I've learned is like say I'm doing Facebook ads you could be crushing it and this has happened to me personally with my ex-husband business. We were literally crushing crushing crushing from Facebook we owned Regina medicine clinics and they changed they basically de-platformed us off of Google overnight so we couldn't advertise Regina medicine because it's scientifically unsound they changed the Facebook insights it became very oversaturated and so like in a matter of months our entire eight-figure business almost dried up and the lesson that was learned from that a couple years ago was don't have all your excellent basking and so as a business owner like this will you organic social is owned media it's never going to go away so like you could you know I'm saying like yes the platform could close down you should be getting people on your email list things like that but I'm saying it's your content you can save the post it's content you create and it's such a good long-term play to support all these other things and God forbid one of them goes away at least you have this foundation built. Yeah you're like de-risking yourself one level further than just paid because yeah it's very smart very very smart and you have that audience again to always tap into. One thing that you you mentioned you mentioned this a few times is being very purposeful about the type of content you put out which is understood but then you also mentioned authenticity and I think authenticity is key to your strategy but it's also a buzzword that's really thrown around a lot that I think loses value because people don't understand what it really means like does it mean I'm Gary Vee and I'm swearing all over my my Instagram or what does it actually mean in terms of like content creation. So for me when I would like coach somebody I'm being authentic it would be more of like when I'm looking at a personal brand there's like the business side of the personal brand which is like my master content my expertise but then I'm also a person right so like one one of the things I teach about personal branding is like you are a person in your business is one thing that you do so you should also be sharing with your audience like things about your personal life and like that's where the authenticity comes in because like who are you and what do you do you don't have to try to be anything just be yourself like I've had so many doctors that are like you know I'm afraid to let not a professional like they're doing all this really cool like dancing or like whatever and I'm like put it out there like let's show your audience they're so scared that when they do it like the audience loves it because it's just like that's who they really are and so I think a lot of experts are worried about not liking professional or whatever and it's like showing people who you are and being authentic isn't gonna you know sway people away and at the end of the day if it does they're not your people anyways they're never gonna buy your stuff not everyone's gonna like you in social media so like just don't be afraid to be yourself I think is what that means to me. I love that and and that's just I feel like I notice is sometimes when I even do podcasts it's like when people are recording something they like a different person comes on it's like the person that comes on when you're in front of a mic in the camera it's like it's like this alternate ego persona whatever and then the second the camera shuts off then the person becomes real and the person actually is like a human being and then the conversation you have when somebody you want to have the conversation on social that you would normally have off camera for most people that's what you were trying at a coffee shop that's always something cool stop writing like you're writing a dissertation and write yeah it's like there's real value in your brain it's so fucking talk about it and don't just think you need like this like manicured perfect no because it's but you know you you see it I'm sure you see this oh my gosh yeah I mean I think that people are so tired of that they don't want fake perfect people they won't reel that's why oh my gosh look at so many of the Facebook ads it's literally people taking their cell phone out and they're like putting it up you can see them pushing the button in the ad they don't even edit that out anymore because it's like they want that unpolished like they're just hanging out with a friend feel that's what people want is authentic okay let's talk about let's just do like rapid fire of other social things that I'm interested in your opinion and and only because I was complaining about features on social and you're like no Scott you're an idiot there's not a stupid fucking feature this is actually a very useful feature I'm like okay whatever we'll talk about it so I I was just curious about your your view on a couple different things so let's just go through the list you already mentioned tiktok you don't necessarily double down on it do you have any opinions about tiktok in terms of like data privacy do you have any care about that do you think it's going to stick around do you concerns interesting too because if you're going to put out all this work and effort into a platform that's so volatile like it's yeah it's banned in a couple of other countries so like we don't know what's going to happen here so that there is that chance who knows it could be totally not existing but yeah I mean I won't worry too much about it but that's definitely something to think about and consider um meta metaverse virtual anything do you care about that at all you know I know I should because it's coming and I'm trying I actually have one of our clients he's one of my good friends she's like one of the biggest experts in crypto NFT space and so I'm learning a lot from her name is Lee Richter I know Lee oh that I know Lee yeah yeah I know Lee we have a couple mutual friends yeah um I'm trying I'm learning so much from her but it just like I had not resonating with it yet like the whole virtual reality metaverse like it doesn't do it for me personally but I'm learning because I don't want to be behind the curve you know like I'm trying to learn more about all these things and like like she's we we do her social but I believe she's one of the best people teaching people like breaking it down to make it understandable like she's the only person that I've understood it from because I read it and I'm like that's like Chinese yeah but she's doing a really good job of like breaking down all this stuff and making it like also like how to apply that to your business and branding so like using NFTs and smart contracts for your business and like really cool things that people are doing so like I'm learning a lot from her so I'm trying but I have it and I haven't done anything with it yet you know it's funny her whole business is about making it more accessible that's that's her whole like the whole NFT pay businesses about making it like super accessible to everyone she's she's very we had dinner like a month ago that's so cool yeah she's one of our very good friends yeah yeah um what about influencer like what about badges paid badges on Twitter paid badges on Instagram we don't know what's gonna happen with that I mean as someone that's verified that earn my verification it's a little frustrating for me yeah um I got it because I'm like a published author that actually a serious book you know what I mean so I got verification that way um I think that it's great what they're doing but I'm hoping we don't know because they haven't commented on it but I'm hoping maybe the people that have verification will have a different color or something to signify something different like I think it's great what they're doing because you know anyone should have I do think on social media you should have some kind of verification anyways it should be like the initial step um but I'm curious to see how this works when they roll out on Instagram like if if people like me are gonna have a different color or we don't know yet we have no idea or or if because what's happening on Twitter right now is Elon's actually getting rid of legacy verification so even if you were legacy verified and notable unless your government or or there's maybe there's some categories he's just making it so if you don't pay for Twitter blue you're not verified which is silly I mean like that means like personally I mean it's like Kanye or you know Kim or whatever wouldn't be verified unless they're paying for Twitter blue interesting whatever yeah it is interesting um useful features new features I I was completely what's that feature in Instagram was complaining about you put it mostly like this picture so stupid I don't get it so so I don't understand it so the reason I said it's useful is because one of the main things that you do about Instagram is like engagement is a currency of Instagram if you want to go organically so you've got to have engagement in your content the more you can get people engaging the more that's assigned Instagram that you're keeping people on the platform and they like that because it's a business they want to sell ads to people on the platform right so it's like that's the signal engagement metrics signals that algorithm that they should be pushing your content to more people so anything that is a new feature that could foster engagement is good so like notes if you use it smart people will DM you and reply to the note do you see them saying so you can put things in there to foster DMs which is engagement so that's like a smart thing if you learn how to use it right and and that would potentially help engagement across your entire account your entire profile mm-hmm okay that's not much of a hard sell to be honest that that'll get me to do it for sure but it's not like you have to put up things that are going to foster engagement don't just put up like I love my dog well I see people I see people just putting the city that they're in a lot people use it differently I mean but like that's where I'm saying like for me it's a strat everything is strategic for me I don't think it's a given example like give it like what would be a good I can probably try and think of some but like what have you I don't know the last one I replied to that I was laughing is my friend Elizabeth went to South Beach and she put each almost killed me and so I messaged her sort of and I put a lamio it got me a lot I laughed because I was like yeah I know South Beach will kill you well spring break too so yeah for sure yeah so I'm I'm here and I don't even go down there I don't even I don't even I don't think I've been to South Beach once in the past two years I've been in Florida so like that right like that residue with me because it's almost killing me also so like thinking about your ideal audience what would resonate with them to get them to reply to you do you see them saying like what little comments like if there's like a controversial timely thing happening ask them a question Trump and that's a good remark that is a smart thing to think about just like the the new features coming up on social like use them like find a way to use them and explore them because that's obviously what they want all about and building a relationship and like a dialogue with your audience I always say conversations lead to conversions so the more you connect with them the more that it will work um niche social sites like be real good reads weird stuff like that that I haven't really used but I know they exist you see them having no okay I know that people use them I don't know who I my girlfriend has all these like she's obsessed she reads more than anybody have ever met my entire life so she has actually it's a really cool news app it's not social but it's kind of like a Facebook for news have you seen it's like hang on the new one that Instagram wants no it's called it's an app that has like a news feed but it's like news that you can pick and like show in your feed the news that you want oh I don't know this no like yeah social media for news it's cool I don't see that stuff I don't I just don't my thing I spend so much time on Instagram and social media that I can't I need to turn my brain off thanks for tuning in if you found this valuable don't forget to hit that subscribe button so you never miss an episode and if you want to dive deeper into this conversation check out the links in the description to watch the full episode see you in the next one