How to Use Instagram To Dramatically Improve Your Business, With Emily Lyons of Femme Fatale Media Group
Know your target audience and appeal to them. If you’re a personal trainer then you probably don’t want to be posting photos of junk food everyday. You want potential customers ideally so posting fitness related things is a given!
Be consistent — Don’t post something and then disappear for weeks. Have a schedule and stick to it.
Be genuine! Be true to who you are and let your personality shine through in your posts. Everyone loves a good story behind a company or brand, show yours!
Don’t overthink it. It’s usually better to post something then to not post anything at all!
Plan your posts ahead. Get an idea of how the over aesthetic of your page will look with all your future posts together. Look at special events coming up on the calendar and how you can tie your posts into that.
Be unique. Obviously you want to stand out from the crowd. Fortune favors the bold!
I had the pleasure of interviewing Emily Lyons. Emily is a serial entrepreneur with a business track record that can be summed up in one word: unstoppable. Emily is the founder of Femme Fatale Media Group — an event staffing agency headquartered in Toronto, Canada (but with a presence sprawled across North America and soon into Australia). She’s also the founder and CEO of three other companies — an organic makeup business (True Glue), a luxury matchmaking agency (Lyons Elite), and a watch brand which contributes to research on cystic fibrosis (JWLS). In addition to this, she heads up a non profit in her late sisters name, The Julia Lyons Foundation, that helps Cystic Fibrosis patients in need of financial assistance.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?
I started my first company Femme Fatale Media in 2009, when I was 23 years old. Prior to that I was working as a promotional model and really had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. I then read a book that my sister gave me that inspired me to become an entrepreneur.
Can you explain to our readers why you are an authority about Social Media Marketing?
Over the years social media marketing has been an integral part of my business strategy, so much so that we now offer it as a service through our PR division, FFPR. I’ve grown my combined pages to almost 400,000 followers.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you started this career?
I once went into a meeting with a very large F & B company for a contract we were bidding on. The CEO entered the meeting, looked at me and said, “hey! I follow you on instagram!”
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?
I started my company with my small town values at the heart of everything I did, and I quickly got taken advantage of. I grew up in Stratford Ontario and I don’t think we ever locked our door! Everyone knew everyone and for the most part was filled with good, honest people. I quickly learned a happy medium between stay true to who I am, without being exploited.
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?
For business revenue I’d say Linkedin is definitely the best, followed by instagram. Linkedin you can interact directly with your target consumer in a professional capacity.
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.
- Know your target audience and appeal to them. If you’re a personal trainer then you probably don’t want to be posting photos of junk food everyday. You want potential customers ideally so posting fitness related things is a given!
- Be consistent — Don’t post something and then disappear for weeks. Have a schedule and stick to it.
- Be genuine! Be true to who you are and let your personality shine through in your posts. Everyone loves a good story behind a company or brand, show yours!
- Don’t overthink it. It’s usually better to post something then to not post anything at all!
- Plan your posts ahead. Get an idea of how the over aesthetic of your page will look with all your future posts together. Look at special events coming up on the calendar and how you can tie your posts into that.
- Be unique. Obviously you want to stand out from the crowd. Fortune favors the bold!
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. 🙂
No more photo editing apps! I’m so guilty for this that it’s just become the norm. It makes me self conscious to meet people in real life. If we got rid of these we would all have better self esteem!
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 🙂
Ellen, Jack Ma or Warren Buffet!
Thank you so much for these great insights. This was very enlightening!
How to Use Instagram To Dramatically Improve Your Business, With Emily Lyons of Femme Fatale Media… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.