"My biggest piece of advice is to collaborate and work with influencers" with Chloe Panta

Chloe Panta

Chloe Panta is a holistic therapist, healer, NLP Practitioner, and Spiritual Life Coach. She has spent the last six years of her life helping people transform their lives and live out their fairytale realities.  She began her career as a spiritual coach, helping men and women overcome trauma, anxiety, and depression naturally. As a natural healer, She helps women and men across the world remove money and mindset blocks so that they can live life on their terms and manifesting their dreams into reality.

What is your background?

I’ve always been an entrepreneur in some form of my life but I spent my time in HR in corporate America and learned the foundation of how companies are built and sustained. With that knowledge, I felt a calling to help people in some way and studied and trained to become a life coach. I have been able to use the tools I learned in the corporate world and incorporate them into my business.

How did you get involved in your industry? 

I felt I wasn’t really happy in my role in HR and that I wanted to do more with my life. I wanted a way to help people in a different way and I began to seek out answers. I came across a website that trained life coaches and I immersed myself into coaching and dug deeper into spirituality. It changed my life and I wanted a way to help change the lives of others. I have been doing inner work for the past 5 years and answers I was searching for just kind of fell into my lap. Afterlife coaching training, I began studying other techniques, such as quantum physics, NLP, hypnotherapy, and energy work – all in which I incorporate in my life and the lives of others.

What three things does someone starting in your industry need to know? 

You need to have a passion for helping people and a passion for growing on a spiritual level. Those are the foundations for this type of business. You also need to take a walkout on faith and have an inner knowing that this is the work you’re called to do. If you have those three modalities, everything else will fall into place.

What would you do differently if you were starting in your industry now? 

I would fully immerse myself in learning and growing. There is a plethora of information out there available for anyone to start a holistic business today. You just have to have a passion for it. I would also start with a social media platform and grow an audience of loyal fans who want to hear what you have to say. I’d start with Instagram, as that’s what I use now and I love it. I’d focus on one or two platforms so I can grow them successfully and nurture the audience from those one or two platforms. 

Which people or resources have had the most influence on your growth and why? 

I would say growing an engaged audience has had the biggest growth for me. It’s allowed me to grow my email list and help people who are looking for what I’m offering. Posting content regularly on social media with a call to action has worked as well as reaching out to other people in my industry that have larger audiences and asking to collaborate with them to help spread the word about who I am and what I do has worked as well. The more people who know about what you do and know your name, the better as you can start to generate an organic audience without the use of paid ads.

Talk about the biggest failure you've had. What did you learn from it?

My biggest failure what last year when I wasn’t for sure what I wanted to do anymore. I was shifting from doing something strictly for money into doing more heart and soul work. It was a bit scary at first because when you leave a safety net to doing something you believe in fully – sometimes you question your rationale on if this is the right decision.

After some inner reflection, I decided that I wanted to build my business based on helping people and that the money would follow because I genuinely, deep down inside, just wanted people to realize their full potential. After a few days, I got a client who just happened to find my information somewhere online and I began shifting my business into more heart and soul work. It helped me realize that I have to listen to myself and my own inner voice for decisions. A lot of outside information may steer me unintentionally in the wrong direction and I have to ultimately make the decision as to where I want my business to go and how to grow my business, holistically.

Now, we’re going to pivot to Instagram. We’re looking for actionable tips our readers can implement immediately.

I use Instagram to tell stories, generate leads, and engage my audience. This is how I nurture my list, grow my platform, and provide value.

What are your favorite features? Why?

I love Instagram Stories. I feel I can get really personal on there and tell my audience how I’m feeling or what I’m going through. My father passed away in May and I was really hurt by it and I had a way to express my grief through Stories, in the hope to let off some pressure but also help someone else who may be grieving as well.

What is your favorite Instagram marketing tip?

My biggest piece of advice is to collaborate and work with influencers. They are your chance to helping you create a larger, engaged audience. Work with influencers that compliment your niche and have an audience similar to yours. I’d also suggest posting product teasers that will gently nudge your audience to buy your product or service.

How can entrepreneurs grow their Instagram followings and increase engagement?

Post content that is relevant to what your audience wants to see. If you’re solving a problem, hit the pain point on the head with whatever your audience is facing. If you’re a money mindset coach, talk to them about how having a scarcity-mindset is preventing your audience from growing or living their true potential. Focus on how you help solve their number one problem. Ask your audience questions and reply to comments they leave you. Your audience wants you to be engaged with them as much as they engage in your content.

How can someone just starting out use Instagram to reach potential customers?

Post engaging content that leads your readers to a call to action. Engage in your audience’s posts. Like their pictures, leave comments on their photos, ask them questions. This shows you really care about your audience and how you can help them with the problem that you are trying to solve as an expert in your field. 

How can our readers get in touch with you?

You can find me on Instagram @chloepanta, on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/chloepanta/ or on my website, https://chloepanta.com

"Hire for problem-solving skills" with David Morneau

David Morneau

David Morneau is CEO and co-founder of inBeat.co, an influencer discovery engine for TikTok and Instagram. He has also co-founded inBeat.agency, which helps online brands work with micro-influencers at scale. Their team has orchestrated 13 000+ collaborations with micro-influencers. 

What is your background? How did you get involved in your industry? 

I finished a law degree, and I hated it. While I was finishing my studies, I got involved in a Startup Weekend (a Google-sponsored event where teams build a company over a weekend) and fell in love with technology and the Internet as a whole. 

I began looking for ways to work in the industry, and that’s when I started helping local business owners build their online presence. We grew that local practice into a small team of 5 employees by doing web design, social media management, and SEO.

We were exposed to an e-commerce brand through our work. Our team completely fell in love with the richness of e-commerce marketing. The scale of our efforts was just shocking for us. With the same amount of effort, we could drive 5x to 10x the results we were driving for local businesses.

We uncovered micro-influencer marketing by accident, and we stuck to it as our core service. The untapped potential of the channel excites me. It gives me that feeling for which I started doing what I’m doing. 

We repositioned ourselves as a scaled micro-influencer marketing service. Our work is specialized for brands that are looking to work with hundreds of influencers. From there, we built our own software to find influencers, and we are now selling it under a Software as a Service model. 

What three things does someone starting in your industry need to know?

-       Stay focused. Selling a single service is much easier than selling multiple services. You can streamline your work, specialize, and partner with other agencies without being in direct competition with them 

-       Keep your eye open for opportunity. It’s hard, as it contradicts the first piece of advice. The challenging part is recognizing a real opportunity. We all suffer from Shiny-Object Syndrome, which distorts our ability to know if something is a real opportunity.

-       Hire for problem-solving skills. Everything in online marketing is easy to execute once you have a step-by-step. The real challenge lies in the way you tackle problems. Problem-solving is the skill I chase at all costs in our team members. 

What would you do differently if you were starting in your industry now?

I would invest a lot more in partnerships. 80% of our sales come from referrals from other agencies and partners. It’s crazy how powerful these partnerships are. I would cold email people, get on a call with them, try to see how I can help, and build relationships. These actions can seem useless, but they compound.

Which people or resources have had the most influence on your growth and why?

Jake from Leadcookie had such a profound impact on what I do. The guy is a relationship builder, and it is his biggest asset, by far. He just builds deep relationships with other entrepreneurs and leverages the network effect it generates.

Ryan Stewart from webris.org also had a profound impact on what I do. This entrepreneur is a systems thinker, which has brought much clarity to how I run operations.

Talk about the biggest failure you've had. What did you learn from it?

The biggest failure I had was during the early days of our agency. Not knowing much about how this whole Internet thing worked, we were taking on pretty much anything that was thrown our way. 

While migrating one of our client’s websites, I destroyed their entire email setup. This was a construction company, which managed all their project management by email. I remember the amount of anxiety I went through. I was at their office for 5 days, just scraping backups from their local email servers. It was a pain. I learned that before you touch something, make sure you have backups. It will save you so much time to have a backup. I also learned to talk to smart people, before touching something you do something in which you have no knowledge. 

Now, we’re going to pivot to Instagram. We’re looking for actionable tips our readers can implement immediately. 

How does your business use Instagram?

We use Instagram as a means of creating partnerships for e-commerce brands we work with. We have orchestrated 13 000+ collaborations, and we are well on our way to 20 000. Instagram has brought our clients’ outsized returns.

What are your favorite features? Why?

My favorite Instagram feature is the swipe-up because it allows you to direct traffic outside the platform, and to your website. 

Here is a quick playbook, which still has a lot of potential:

1.     Contact influencers with 10,000 to 25,000 followers in your niche. Give them freebies (product, exclusive app access, etc.)

2.     Host a contest for which the user signs up with their email address on a landing page

3.     Have your influencers promote this contest through swipe-ups.

This tactic works like a charm. 

What is your favorite Instagram marketing tip?

Personalized outreach is underutilized. Record a quick video of yourself and pitch big pages your brand could leverage through DM.

How can entrepreneurs grow their Instagram followings and increase engagement?

Create repostable content. A lot of pages live off repost. They will typically have a hashtag you can use for a chance to be reposted to their feed. Tag your pictures with those hashtags. In those reposts, you get a mention, which will bring followers and engagement.

How can someone just starting out use Instagram to reach potential customers?

Check out the following of your competitors and start interacting with them (DM, follow, comment, etc.) I would also look at creating partnerships with bigger pages in your space. Find something you can offer them that will get their attention.

How can our readers get in touch with you?

You can contact me by email at david@inbeat.co. I love answering questions about everything related to influencer marketing. You can also follow me on Twitter at https://twitter.com/morneau_david