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How to Use Instagram To Dramatically Improve Your Business: “Learn about Gen Z through their eyes” With Jaya Jaya Myra and Candice Georgiadis

Learn about Gen Z through their eyes. Every generation has differences in what is the best way to market to them. Since so many young people use IG, take advantage of this. See what they’re saying and doing, and why.

I had the pleasure of interviewing Jaya Jaya Myra, an internationally acclaimed author, motivational speaker, and creator of the Well Method. After healing herself naturally from debilitating fibromyalgia, Myra developed the Well Method to teach others how to live a healthy, fulfilled and successful life based on each person’s unique elemental composition. Her approach to wellness and purpose shows why one-size-fits-all solutions don’t work for everyone, and how to find what will work for you.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?

Wellness has always been a priority of mine, growing up in a family that was anything but “well.” I’ve always wanted to heal people and help others live their best possible lives. I started out thinking about this only in terms of what I could do to help, but I later learned how I promoted myself was equally as important as the message and work itself. That led me to learn everything I could about marketing, branding and publicity, and to keep current with social media.

Can you explain to our readers why you are an authority about Social Media Marketing?

Many years ago I opened a marketing, branding and PR consulting firm based in NYC, working with agencies, major brands and startups. I’ve been leading marketing initiatives for amazing clients for over 12 years. In the current marketing landscape, social media marketing is crucial to understand well if you want to grow your influence and really succeed as a brand or business.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you started this career?

The most interesting (and exciting) thing to me was being able to become a recurring guest on national TV. That was so much fun! My first national TV experience solidified for me the importance of media (including social media) for inspiring and motivating others to succeed. That was the point of no return that solidified my desire to do more with visual media on TV, and also social media. In case you’re wondering the connection between TV and social media, TV needs ratings, and if you have a large following you are more likely to get featured on TV than if you don’t have a social following.

Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

When I first started using social media, I avoided Instagram completely. That was a huge mistake! It’s by far one of the most dynamic and engaged social media outlets out there right now. I was intimidated because it’s all visual, and I am not a designer or a photographer. I’ve since found ways to use IG that work well for me, and now it’s my favorite channel to create content for because the type of content is so authentic and engaging.

Which social media platform have you found to be most effective to use to increase business revenues? Can you share a story from your experience?

Twitter and Instagram. I’ve found you get lots of very high caliber business people on Twitter, probably because of the low barrier to entry (aka, a 260-character tweet and click of a button to retweet works great for busy CEO’s, versus a visual IG post that takes time to create). Also, Twitter doesn’t limit the number of people you can follow, so you have near unlimited growth potential. It’s a great way to connect with lots of people. I’ve made some amazing business deals from people and brands I’ve met by connecting on Twitter, so don’t ever underestimate this channel! People tend to, but my experience has shown that Twitter can outperform LinkedIn for business, if you use it right.

Instagram has also been great, especially for growing my mailing list; I’ve found people tend to be more engaged and communicative on Instagram. For example, if I send a message saying I have a free offer available on my website if you join my mailing list, I get a thoughtful reply and people join my list. This doesn’t happen much on any other social media channel.

Let’s talk about Instagram specifically, now. Can you share 6 ways to leverage Instagram to dramatically improve your business? Please share a story or example for each.

  1. DM’s to followers — grow your list. If you direct message your followers, they will likely write you back, making it easier to communicate with new people and grow your business. I’ve found it’s easy to grow my mailing list this way; even better than my free offer on my website.
  2. Show behind the scenes content. People want to know, like and trust you before they’ll do business with you. IG allows a great visual platform to show people what’s going on behind the scenes on a daily basis. In fact, people tend to like authentic content of this type even more than highly curated video or graphic-designed posts.
  3. Brand segmentation. If you really look at the kind of content your followers are posting, you can get great insight into what people in different audience segments value. IG makes this easy since it’s so visual. This is a great exercise to use when working on your brand and knowing how to target audiences of different types.
  4. Learn about Gen Z through their eyes. Every generation has differences in what is the best way to market to them. Since so many young people use IG, take advantage of this. See what they’re saying and doing, and why.
  5. Poll your followers. Instagram makes it super easy to poll your followers via your IG story. You can get tons of data this way from your followers and know exactly what they want from you.
  6. Launch a content or giveaway. This is a great way to engage your current followers and attract new ones. You’ll likely find using IG for this works much better than your email list. Post your giveaway and tell your followers to tag 2 of their friends in the post to enter. You’ll draw more people to your page that will likely engage with you (because people don’t ever want to tag their friends and spam them, so they’ll tag people who are likely genuinely interested in you). Hopefully you’ll get more followers this way, and also remind your current ones why you’re so awesome. Remember, if they like you they’ll want to do business with you.

Because of the position that you are in, you are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂

I would like to inspire people to be the best possible version of themselves. The more you work on yourself, the more confident and charismatic you’ll become, and this is how you start to influence others and make change in the world. There is so much a single person can do, and more people would realize this if they’d only get out of their comfort zones and try. I believe being the best version of yourself helps individuals to be more successful, and can help build an empowered, diverse and tolerant society.

Some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them 🙂

Definitely, Harry Connick Jr. His daytime show was the first national TV appearance I did, and the first time I was there taping, it was my birthday. It was one of my most awesome experiences ever; a day I’ll never forget, and he is such an awesome person! I did segments on his daytime show talking about food for mood, and how food can affect your mind and emotions in powerful ways and make or break major life events. Harry mentioned it would be fun to have dinner so I could tell him how the food would affect his mood, and I agree!

Thank you so much for these great insights. This was very enlightening!


How to Use Instagram To Dramatically Improve Your Business: “Learn about Gen Z through their eyes”… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.