How to Book Interviews Through Instagram Direct Message A step by step guide for booking interviews through Instagram direct message.
This is an extremely useful, efficient, and quick tool to use to build a pipeline of interviews.
The Strategy
The strategy is simple: every morning send 5 messages out to Instagram Pages.
This is a great activity to do when you cannot book interviews on the phone or in person (because it’s too early, too late, or the weekend / holiday).
Now, do NOT expect replies right away! Sometimes it takes a couple hours, or even days. The goal is to build your pipeline of interviewees (and prospects for your business!)
The Process
STEP 1: Identify Search Terms (Location, Industry, Business names, names of people, etc.)
It’s a great practice to connect with as many people on Instagram as possible by following them, that way you already have a relationship with them.
STEP 2: Pick 5 Pages
Likely in your search results you will have more than 5 pages of businesses to choose from. You can prioritize who you would like to interview based on their number of followers, this will provide great brand exposure for you!
The nice thing about Instagram, is that it will give you businesses that are around you.
- For this to work, ensure your location services are enabled while you are using the app (this can be done in your location settings, app permissions, or general settings depending on the smartphone you have)
STEP 3: MESSAGE THEM
Select the business you would to interview, on their instagram page you will see three dots in the top right hand corner. Click the three dots and you will be provided with many option, including the option to 'send a message.'
There are 2 main opening scripts, the key is to keep it simple! No need to tell them everything in the first message, let them ask questions naturally :)
This is a simple opener: best used for pages where the owner might not be running their Instagram page.
“Hello! I was looking to speak with someone about having (BUSINESS NAME) interviewed and featured on a local website.”
Below is the more extensive opener: best used for pages where the owner will be running their Instagram page.
“Hey (BUSINESS NAME), I was wondering if we could do an interview with you and feature that on a local website! https://parkbench.com/YOURAREA ”
STEP 4: WAIT FOR REPLIES
It’s time to close people!
This is what you’re trained for!
Answer any questions they have.
Get them excited.
Book the interview.
Schedule into your calendar.
Send the invite.
Send the questions over.
And then move on to your next task!
PROS & CONS
Advantages of Booking Interview through Instagram DM’s
- Extremely time efficient
- A great thing about sending an Instagram message, is that you will end up using template messages for each request sent out
- A simple copy, paste, and insert names, and you’re good to go!
- You have the ability to hyperlink your Parkbench site right into the message
- As you can imagine, providing someone with a clickable link to your site, will receive more first time visitors than telling someone the site over the phone
- Easy record management
- By simply going through your sent Instagram messages, you are able to see in a snapshot all the businesses/people that you’ve messaged
- This allows you to analyze the efficiency of your messages
- Times of the day that you sent the message
- Which of your templated messages works better
- How many interviews you’ve actually booked
- Ability to start an ‘online relationship’ with that business or professional
Disadvantages of Booking Interview through Instagram Messenger
- If you send too many messages out during a 24 time frame, Instagram can and might temporarily block your account for suspicious activity
- A little less personable
- The potential interviewee doesn’t get to put a face to your name (yes, they can click on your name and check out your Instagram profile), but we all know sometimes it just isn’t the same as in person
- Delayed responses
- Sometimes, business pages and professionals won’t respond for a day or two
- Potential Scheduling Conflicts
- Because some messages you won’t receive responses for until a couple days later, you might find yourself with 4 or 5 people asking to be interviewed all on the same day. But this is a good problem to have ;)
ACTION STEPS
- Create at least 3 different Instagram message templates for booking interviews
- Search for businesses, professionals, entrepreneurs on Instagram in your area
- Do a search and like/follow your favorite places to frequent in your area!
- Check out some of the pages or businesses you may already like or follow
- Test out a couple of your template messages with a couple friends
- Ask them for feedback :)
- Send them out!
- Test their bounce rate / close ratio
- Continue to alter and edit these moving forward