Your bio could be enhanced by more information and an incentive to follow such as participating in giveaways, getting a discount for the first visit or getting a step-by-step tutorial of a popular class. Search line currently shows the following – “Bravo Maine” which is repeating the name of profile and not improving searchability. Instead of “Bravo Maine” you can use “Cooking classes Maine”. This phrase is explanatory and would rank higher in search due to Instagram algorithms.
When you are searched for by a specific name of your business, you will be found. However, if people are looking for an awesome local business and they see you due to Instagram algorithms, you get new followers who convert into customers or brand ambassadors in an effortless organic way.
Account has Stories from time to time, no highlights. Account could be enhanced with videos of food-making processes, of cutting the meals and tasting them with appetizing and descriptive way to characterize your creations, of interactions with people and educational process.
Highlights act like a table of content for your Instagram page. Possible highlights:
- BTS Process/ How it happens / Time-lapsed / Our videos – make it fun, make it visual! – give a glimpse of Meal prep that goes into creating different dishes, make people excited by showing the transformation of ingredients. Reveal the fully decorated meal, describe it, show emotions. Ask your guests for permission to film them during cooking show and make a nice video that demonstrates fun ambiance, flow of creativity, sharing knowledge and heritage by the chef and encouraging to make the best meal possible.
- Essential tools/ equipment – talk about tools that your subscribers can use at home. Give some advice, tips & tricks.
- Fun facts – this could range from funny situations that happened during classes to some entertaining stories from your chefs.
- Italy / Greece / France/ Germany / United States, etc – showcase your cooked appetizers and meals that you offer for specific national dishes. Create expectations, make it appealing and super flavorsome.
- Our team – talk about background of your chefs. People love storytelling and hearing about other people’s traditions and unusual types of food.
- Quick ___ desserts/ salads/ Easy Meals – share good recipies that your followers can replicate and be grateful for.
- Recipe Testing – if you want to keep your chef’s recipies secret, you can always google or find on youtube a plethora of recipes from the same cuisine that you currently do not offer for public. This way you can follow the recipe, give your own advice, and upgrade the final dish to perfection. If your chefs cook that way while talking about their background and showing their authority in bringing authentic flavors to life, people who follow and love the flow of your advice will trust you more with their money.
- Try @home – give a few recipes for your customers to try to make at home. Make a reward for sharing, decide if everyone gets a special prize or if there is going to be just 1 winner who gets a 50% discount for your existing lessons.
I noticed that you are not using hashtags. They are actually useful for organic growth of Instagram profile. For any post (excluding REELs) I would not recommend using very popular hashtags (>2 million posts) too often as it will be hard to get traction with thousands of new posts daily. A good range of hashtags is 10-20.
Profile at this point serves informative function about the hours, new cooking classes. Your online presence does not sell this way, it just gives updates to people who know about you and want to be your customer.
Instagram Basics file has a step-by-step checklist of major mistakes and growth points for any business that is on Instagram, check it out below ⬇️
Highlights of your profile are the following:
- Being open to giveaways in exchange for information about interests and increased word-of-mouth. You are giving 2 free tickets and that is very encouraging for people to participate!
- You are making your profile more dynamic by showing video of Indian class offerings – vegan naans.
- You are responding to comments and letting your followers know about upcoming events – “Hi, which class you would be interested :)? We will have in the future vegetarian, croissant and French pastry, vegan Indian , Mexican and Greek.”
- You are letting people know where to find all the needed information – sending them to your link in BIO.
- You are interviewing your potential customers in a friendly and playful way. It is smart to offer discounts for favorite classes while figuring out the tastes of your potential customer.
- You are open to collaborating with other awesome businesses.
- You are creating the sense of urgency and limited supply that helps your potential customers consider their participation in a faster manner.
- You are using a smart “Pay as you can” tactic– people always appreciate the ability to pay what they think the service and product is worth and they like to be in charge of their own finance. If service is not meeting expectations, they will pay the fair price, if the service meets expectations, they pay fair price and give a tip… if service exceeds expectation, customers give their monetary “thanks” and carry that warm feeling of having a great time to themselves, their friends, family members, coworkers, etc, creating sincere word-of-mouth. I know that well because for the first 2 weeks of my café’ s opening I had “Pay what you want” deal which gave me an understanding of what my product was worth in the eyes of my customers. Spoiler alert – people were excited to be in charge of their gratitude that was not set in stone by prices or sneaky restrictions.
- You are showing people who are visibly enjoying time spent at your events. It is an important Social proof for your potential customers who might be afraid of feeling uncomfortable and awkward during their first cooking event due to the lack of cooking techniques or knowledge. The more you show successes of newbies who never cook at home, the more trustworthy you become as a source of knowledge and cooking fun with zero judgement.
- You are sharing your own path and entrepreneurial story.
Let me know if you are interested in accounts that I consider to be inspiring and role models for presentation and selling tactics.