Jenn Herman on How to Build Your Brand on Instagram

Things are good. Every day gets a little bit better. Monday was really bad, Tuesday was horrible, Wednesday was manageable, Thursday I survived. It’s kind of like each day we’re one step closer to getting through this. It’s been fine. I actually have my day job—still so am I, I’m director of communications for an aerospace company that has a government contract as our customer. So I’m a little busy right now, just, like, constant communications to all the employees, trying to stay on top of everything. So it’s definitely been like—usually Friday I don’t do anything, and I have been going since 6:30 this morning. It’s just like, “What is happening?” But things are good. I’m good, she’s good, everybody’s fine. It’s just adjusting to the unknown, which for me is really hard.

It’s by the hour. I’ll literally turn off my phone, go have dinner, come back, and I’m like, “What just happened?” Things can change that quickly.

Stay at home, in place, and all these things. Like, literally last night, my boyfriend was here yesterday. We went for lunch—or got lunch and ate it at home since we can’t go out. We hung out for a couple hours, then he went home. He’s in charge of global risk for a big company with offices in 16 countries, so he’s been dealing with this since December. But all of a sudden, last night around eight o’clock, we’re like, “Oh, apparently we’re locked in our houses now.” He started explaining what the stay-at-home mandate meant. It was crazy—within hours of him being here, we’re suddenly like, “So we can’t leave our houses?” It was so confusing. Things are changing so fast right now—it’s crazy.

Yeah, and they’re not really going to enforce it. I think at any point—even with my daughter and exchanging custody with her dad—I’m not going to not take her there, and I’m not going to not pick her up. That’s an essential service, and no one’s going to fine me. They just don’t want you going places you don’t need to go.

We call it “wine and Zoom,” because all of us girls will hop on Zoom with a bottle of wine. We’ve actually been doing this for months, because there’s a group of us friends all around the U.S., and this is how we get together. Now it’s kind of funny, because we’ve been doing it for a while, so we’re asking if we should do more or fewer of them. It’s a great way to connect.

That’s an essential trip. I’m out of wine. I have to go get more wine!

You know why you need it, right? And you know how much you go through. Like, it’s me and my daughter. One case of toilet paper will last us three months. I’m like, we don’t need to buy toilet paper for the next five years. They’re gonna have pantries to fall over the next rest of their lives.

It’s not really fine to go out in your neighborhood, as long as you’re six feet apart from other people. It was—

It will be interesting to see, like you said, in terms of friendships—how many more people will reach out, even if it’s just virtually or over the phone, to people they wouldn’t normally call. Having our kids at home, when we’re used to sending them off to school, we’re also used to rushing through dinner, bedtime, and homework. Then we grab a couple of hours on the weekend, but between all the extracurriculars, that’s never much time. Now we suddenly have all this time with our kids—what’s that going to do for relationships and parent bonding? It might have some really good results in a lot of ways.

I think no matter what happens, this will reframe how a lot of us do things going forward—how we set up our schedules, our lifestyles. We’ve gotten so used to being busy, busy, busy, constantly on the go. Now this is forcing people to realize, “Oh, this whole chill thing isn’t so bad.”

I guess, quickly—yeah. I’m like, here to hit the fast-forward button, skip this whole part, and just get there.

No, not at all. I’m originally Canadian, so I was born and raised in a really small town in northern Alberta—where they have six-foot snowdrifts by Halloween. The town is literally called Cold Lake, because it’s really cold. Super creative, yes. But yeah, I grew up there, lived there for eight years, then moved east and lived in Ottawa for a few years. After that, I moved to Vancouver Island and lived in Victoria, which I consider home—that’s where my friends are. I went to high school there. I went to the University of Victoria. So that’s my home base. If I was going to pick a home, that would be it. And then my parents actually retired back to Vancouver Island about four or five years ago, so now they’re just a few hours north of where I grew up on the island. They’re up there, so now I can go back, visit them, see my friends, and do all that whenever I head back in that direction. It’s really nice.

17 years. So I’m this weird hybrid. My best friend is Canadian, and I have a lot of American friends. We always joke that I’m the translator between the Canadians and the Americans, because I’m this weird hybrid that understands the Canadian mentality—like, a bit different in terms of upbringing and certain cultural things—but I also understand the American way. In general, people say, “Oh, you’re so nice, you’re so Canadian,” but then the Canadians are like, “Oh, you’re so Americanized. You’re not Canadian anymore.” I’m in this weird, middle ground.

And it’s like, I always laugh because, I mean, it really is true: the stereotype that Canadians are the nicest people you’ll ever meet is pretty accurate. There are just certain things that are ingrained. In fact, I did it yesterday—I went to pick up a package from FedEx. I had to go to the distribution center because I had the door tag, so I went in to pick it up. She had to search for it, running around for, like, 10 minutes. And the Canadian in me was like, “Oh, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean for this to become a whole treasure hunt for you.” I’m apologizing for something that’s totally not my fault—that’s her job. But that’s the Canadian thing: we’ll apologize for things that aren’t really our fault.

It’s like people say, “You can take the girl out of Canada, but you can’t take the Canada out of the girl.

Well, it was one of those things where we traveled a lot while I was growing up. My parents wanted us to see as much of the country as possible, so we’d take summer camping trips. We’d travel by camper van, sleeping in tents at campsites. That way, we got to see the whole country, and my parents were big on making sure we saw more than just what was in our backyard. We weren’t wealthy by any means, and I didn’t get to go to extravagant places, but I did get to explore the country. I really appreciate that I got to see a different side of it—like how you have West Coast vs. East Coast here in the U.S., with different climates and cultures and all that. So I’ve always been grateful that I experienced all that with my parents.

So I grew up as a kid always wanting to be a detective, right? I wanted to solve murder mysteries; I read all the Nancy Drew books and everything. I totally wanted to be a detective, but growing up in Canada a bazillion years ago, that wasn’t really an option. They didn’t have crime scene units or forensics units, and you had to start as a beat cop and work your way up to detective. I didn’t want to be a cop…

So that’s how I ended up here. Because I couldn’t pursue detective work in Canada, I decided to become a veterinarian instead—I loved animals and wanted to do large-animal veterinary work at a zoo or something similar. I started my undergrad with every intention of going to vet school. But about two years in, halfway through my degree, I realized I could move to the U.S. and do a master’s in forensic science. I was like, “Sign me up.”

I applied, got into a school in San Diego, and pivoted my biology degree so it was still science-based—obviously still biology—but more focused on the criminal side. I finished my biology undergrad, moved to San Diego, did my master’s in forensic science, graduated in the top percentile of my class, and was ready to jump into the forensics world. But then life happened. It’s a super competitive field—people hold those jobs forever and rarely leave, so there were just no openings.

Meanwhile, I took a sales job in Orange County, loved it, and the forensics thing just wasn’t working out. Then the recession hit, and it was all about survival. I went back to waitressing and bartending, then found another corporate job. In that corporate job, we had to start using Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn to market the company, and I fell in love with it.

The company was mostly retired military, very wary of “opening up the curtains.” They didn’t want to share what was going on internally, so I had to overcome all these challenges to get us into social media. Seeing how I managed to make it work, I thought, “If I can do this, maybe others can learn from me.” That’s how Jenn’s Trends started. It was just a hobby blog to share what was happening in social media and how to overcome challenges. Seven years later, here I am, specializing in Instagram.

I wouldn’t change any of it. I’m so grateful for all the things that fell into place when they did. Because if anything had been different—if I’d taken a different job, if I hadn’t moved when I moved, if I’d worked at a different company—I may never have started gens trends. I wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing. And I love the things I get to do, so as much as it’s this crazy, roundabout excursion to get here, I would never change it.

Yeah, well, that was the thing. Every time I moved, I moved someplace warmer. I started in northern Alberta, then went east, then west, then came south, and now I’m the world’s biggest complainer. If it drops below 70 degrees, I’m wearing a wool winter coat, and my friends and family back home make so much fun of me because they’re like, this is a balmy spring afternoon, and I’m over here bundled up like we’re gonna go fishing in the Arctic.

I know. I’m running out of options. I’ve got maybe Palm Springs, Arizona, if I want to head desert-ish. Otherwise, I’m heading to the equator at this point, and that’s Leland.

Yeah, so when I started the blog, it was called Jen’s Trends in Social Media. It was meant to cover things that were trending—new features, news, all that stuff. I was on all the major platforms except Instagram, and all my friends were on Instagram, and I was like, Oh, I don’t have time for another social media platform. But I figured if I was going to do this blog, I had to learn Instagram. That was just a reality: this was a trend, this was the direction things were going, and that’s what I was writing about.

So I jumped on Instagram, downloaded the app, started playing with it, and I fell in love. I really loved the community, the connection, the interaction. I love photography—I’m not a photographer by any means, but I love it—so it was a natural fit. Then I thought, Okay, how do I use it for business? So I started Googling, and there was nothing. Everything I found was so superficial: use more filters, post more often, leave more comments. Nothing was strategic. So I went, Eff it, I’ve got this blog; I’ll just start writing about it. And I did. If you dig far enough in the archives, those old posts are still there: I tried this, it worked in this context, it didn’t work in that context. I have a very strategic mindset—understanding different business applications—so I tested everything strategically. The more I wrote, the more I realized I was the only one out there talking about this. I started ranking in Google searches left, right, and center, and all of a sudden I was getting podcast interview requests. People wanted me to speak at events, and I was like, Okay, apparently this is my thing now, so I’m just gonna roll with it. I definitely didn’t wake up one day and say, I’m going to be an Instagram expert. It just evolved that way.

Along the way, I’ve been really blessed. I have great people in my network who, when they get beta features or early releases in another country, they’ll share screenshots, let me test them, or give me access. That means I can write about it or record a video. So I stay at the forefront because people trust me to get that information out there. It’s been an amazing journey to get to this point. Now I typically speak, do webinars, podcasts, and teach Instagram marketing. I wrote Instagram for Business for Dummies and Instagram for Dummies. That’s what I’m known for—consulting with clients. I don’t consider myself a coach, but in a similar way, I help people with their social media strategy. I come in and figure out how to get them from A to Z, all the steps in between, not just on Instagram but across social media in general, as well as other major platforms.

I guess it’s coming up on seven. I started Jen’s Trends in 2013, and within three or four months, I jumped on the Instagram bandwagon. So it’s probably been almost exactly seven years.

That was the funny thing. It was totally like the whole Snapchat thing: we had the Snapchat experts, and now there’s TikTok. Everyone’s like, “I didn’t jump on the bandwagon with any sort of intention, but wow, you really hitched your wagon to the right post on that, didn’t you?” And I was like, planning on it.

So I don’t use a lot of tools, partially because in order for me to know what’s happening on Instagram, I have to be natively in the app, doing all the things. If I’m relying on external editing tools or external publishing tools, then I’m not in the app—so I might miss when they change a button or move something. For me, I do almost everything 100% natively, but I do use some other tools. Personally, I’m a brand ambassador for Agorapulse, and I use them for all my social media management. For example, when I get swamped—if I speak at an event, I’ll get a ton of notifications, and I can’t keep up with them on Instagram because there are just too many. They exceed the amount of notification options, but I can catch up on them in Agorapulse, make sure I don’t miss people mentioning me, and so on.

I also love Tailwind and Iconosquare for dashboard management and analytics. They’re very specific to Instagram, so they’re not cluttered by a bunch of other platforms. In terms of editing tools, the one I live and die by is PhotoPHY—P, H, O, T, O, F, Y—because it lets me do text layovers on images, and it has my branded font (which is hard to find). It’s all native in that app. That was a huge advantage for me since I could put my branded content out there without worrying about finding the right font. It’s also a great tool for collages or putting layovers on images. I’ve been using it for years, and honestly, that’s pretty much all I use.

They are amazing. That’s not to turn this into some big infomercial, but I feel the reason I love their company is because of the people behind it. If they see an opportunity, they jump on it. I’ve had multiple calls where they say they’d love to see how to get me on board, and I’ll introduce them to the sales team. I might have to get your name and an account, but I’m absolutely on board. They really go above and beyond on customer service, which is miles ahead of most of their competitors. So that’s so cool.

I get a full eight hours of sleep every night, because mama does not function on no sleep.

I know, and I don’t drink coffee.

I rely on soda. Soda is my caffeine source, so that is my downfall. I do still rely on caffeine to get through the day.

Yeah, I try.

Ask me, I totally get it, but yeah, it’s for me. It really is time management like I’ve been doing. I still have my full-time day job. I run a full-time side business as Jen’s Trends. I travel and speak and do all these things. I do have my daughter—single mom—but I’m lucky that I have a good co-parenting relationship with her dad. We split about 60/40. So I’ve been able to say, when I don’t have her, I work, and it’s Jen’s Trends. I’m up late, working till 10 or 11 o’clock at night, finishing those big projects so that when I have her, I’m not turning around going, Wait, wait, wait, I gotta go work on this, and Mama’s gotta finish an email. I can give her the attention I want to give her, and I enjoy it more. Then I go back to working when I don’t have her.

I’ve figured out a schedule that works for me over the years. I’m really bad about having availability on my calendar. People will call me for a consultation, and I’ll say, I’ve got time in three months, and they’re like, Nothing sooner? Nope, because I only have so many time slots I can fill without driving myself crazy and still managing everything. I only have a couple of time slots on a Friday, and once those book up, that’s it. It kind of keeps going from there. I do the best I can to keep my schedule as balanced as possible, but there’s always some flux. And obviously, the current state we’re in with all the coronavirus stuff is really throwing a monkey wrench into my life—my kid’s not in school and is home with me. Normally, I’d record a podcast with no child in the background dumping Legos in the room next door!

Bad night—but yeah, like seven to eight hours. I go to bed at like nine o’clock. I get up at five or four-thirty, depending, get up, get my daughter ready, drop her off at school when she’s in school, and then I go to work at the day job. I’m home from the day job by four in the afternoon. We have early hours—we do seven to three-thirty, so I’m able to get home. I can jump on a client call at four, or record a podcast or a couple videos—those types of things I need to do. Like I said, I just kind of worked the schedule in a way that I’ve learned works, and how to manage the time and expectations.

But yeah, it’s definitely—I mean, this is seven years in the making. It’s not like I woke up one day and successfully managed a calendar. Every time there’s a change—like when she wasn’t in preschool and then went to preschool—that was a shift in the calendar. That took me a good month to adjust to. I had breakdowns, crying, and freaking out. You think, This isn’t gonna work, but a month is usually what it takes to figure things out. After a month, I was like, Okay, we’ve got this. We can move forward. So we all, you know, do the best we can.

A hundred percent. That’s always been my commitment to her—she comes first. And the reality is, I work and have the full-time side business because that’s what I need to sustain my lifestyle and give her what she needs as a lifestyle. I could pull back on Jen’s Trends and not have the luxuries and things I choose, and she wouldn’t get all the passes to Southern California theme parks or the amazing trips we take. But those are my choices. I choose to work at the level I do to sustain that lifestyle.

At some point, there are times you pull back. There are points where I lean on other people to help. I was getting to the point where I was thinking about hiring a VA in 2020 to offload projects and expand my bandwidth. So there’s always room for growth and learning curves. But for right now, it’s all up in the air. Who knows what will happen three months from now.

Okay, well, the funny thing is he travels a lot for his job too. He travels, though not right now with coronavirus, but typically at least once a month because they have offices in sixteen countries, and he has to visit all these different offices. So there are times where we might not see each other for more than two weeks—even when we’re both home in the same city—because of our schedules. We can go ten days without seeing each other.

But we Zoom call, text all day, every day, and stay connected as best as possible. Then when we do get together, we don’t have drama or issues—we just enjoy being together, because we’re not tied at the hip all the time.

I always love this question. I always say any business can be on Instagram—not every business should. Anybody can, and I’ve seen the most bizarre businesses be massively successful on Instagram. From my forensics background, there’s a woman who’s a coroner and has an incredibly successful Instagram account. You’re like, “Why?” And then the TSA, the people who literally make you take your shoes off at the airport, have an incredibly successful account—and it’s actually one of my favorites. So it can be done. If you do it the right way, have the right strategy, and your audience is there, it absolutely can work.

But especially for smaller businesses or people pulled in multiple directions, you can’t be everywhere. You have to pick and choose. If your audience is mostly on Facebook and LinkedIn, great, go do that. Don’t add Instagram if you don’t have the bandwidth. If you’re a solopreneur trying to do it all with family and responsibilities, don’t add another platform that’s going to take ten more hours of your week. You need to think logically about who you are as a business and what content you have.

I’m actually a huge proponent of B2B businesses being on Instagram, which most people don’t think about. Instagram is usually seen as very B2C—pretty pictures, sell a product—but you absolutely can succeed as B2B. I’m a huge supporter of that. It just has to be the right fit, and something easy for you to create content for. Your audience must be there and willing to accept your content. Instagram has over a billion monthly active users, so your audience is definitely there. There are more people over the age of 45 on Instagram than on Twitter. So if your audience is on Twitter, I promise they’re probably on Instagram, too. But are they there for the right reasons? Are they looking for what you offer? Maybe, maybe not. You have to find your right place.

I always use the example of car insurance. No one’s going to Instagram to buy car insurance, right? People think, “Oh, I can’t use Instagram.” But you absolutely can—if you do it well. I have a friend here in San Diego, Jacob Zapatnik, who is an immigration lawyer, and he’s incredibly successful on Instagram by showcasing his business, industry, employees, building trust, and sharing his family so people know and respect him. Hugely successful, even though you might not initially think Instagram could work for a lawyer.

You really have to dig into who you are, what your goals are, and who your audience is. Then figure out how to strategically use Instagram to achieve your goals. Don’t use it as a constant sales pitch. Nobody’s looking to Instagram for car insurance quotes, but they might come to you for educational content and helpful information—which you can absolutely provide

I mean, it’s a little of both. He’s actually spoken at numerous conferences because he was so successful in building his brand on Instagram that many people have had him speak about using Instagram as a lawyer or in that type of industry. So in that way, he is kind of an influencer, but really he’s built his business. He gets clients every day, every week, who find him on Instagram and hire him as an immigration attorney. So he’s not getting revenue just from being successful on Instagram. He’s getting it by doing business and building a brand that people respect and want to work with.

In full disclosure, I actually have a video on my YouTube channel called “Did the Instagram Algorithm Change?” Basically, the long and short of it is—no, it didn’t. Usually, you’re the problem. That’s not to say the algorithm never changes, because it does. But the core algorithm really hasn’t significantly changed in the last three years. They’re constantly tweaking things in the background, and yes, that can impact you. Engagement can fluctuate.

A lot of times when people think there’s been an algorithmic change, they’ve actually been flagged for spam or inappropriate content. Horrible, mean—non-Canadian—people will sometimes be rude and flag you as spam for no good reason. Other times, people genuinely feel your content is poorly formatted or spammy, and they flag you. Unfortunately, some people will just be plain old mean. The problem is, once you’ve been flagged, you don’t even know it—you don’t get a notification. All of a sudden, you’re basically in Instagram jail. You’re not getting any likes or views, and you see a huge drop-off. That’s usually a major contributing factor.

Other times, there can be shifts in content trends. Something that worked really well before might not now, because the type of content the AI is prioritizing changes. Whether you’re showing up in hashtag searches matters. Again, if you’ve been flagged, you won’t appear in searches, so no new people see your content unless they already follow you.

I tell people if you feel your engagement has dropped, let’s look at your account. I’ll take an average engagement of their last ten posts, then the previous ten, and the ten before that—and usually, the average hasn’t changed. It’s almost identical. They just feel engagement is dropping.

Also, if your followers grow, your engagement will naturally drop as a ratio. When you had 100 followers, they loved everything you posted—you had crazy engagement. But at 1,000 followers, you gain a bunch of casual users who don’t log in daily. The percentage of people interacting will decline because your followers aren’t all targeted or dedicated. They’re not consistently interacting.

I experience this myself. I’ll speak at a conference and get 200 new followers in a day, but maybe half of them won’t log back into Instagram for another month. Suddenly, I have this huge influx of followers but no increase in engagement, because they’re not actively logging in to see my content.

There are all these different things always at work. I tell people, one of the first things you can look at is your actual engagement rate—has it really dropped off? Then look at your posting frequency. The way the algorithm works is that if you post every single day, you’re literally competing with your own content for placement. If I’m a casual follower of yours, I might not see all your posts from Monday through Friday. Maybe I’ll see your Wednesday post, but not your other posts because the algorithm chooses how much to show me higher in the feed.

For the record, Instagram doesn’t hide content; Facebook hides stuff. Instagram simply re-sorts it. If you scroll far enough back, all your content is there. But if your content is falling lower in my feed, I might only see one of your five posts. There goes your engagement. If you’d posted only once, I’d have seen that one post, and your engagement would be exponentially higher because it wouldn’t be filtered across multiple pieces of content.

If you feel your engagement is dropping, look at your posting frequency—maybe slow it down. Try two times a week instead of five. Also, look at your content itself; it has to stand out. People have to literally stop scrolling to like, comment, click, share, or engage with your story. If they’re not seeing that content, it ranks lower, and engagement suffers.

Additionally, if you’re putting effort into your stories, know that stories and feed are mutually exclusive. If you’re putting all this effort into your stories and getting lots of views there, but half-assing your feed content, your feed won’t reflect your true popularity. Even if someone likes all your stories, it won’t boost your feed’s visibility. So if you’re half-assing your content, you’ll rank lower because people aren’t interacting.

There are all these components—you have to be strategic about your goals and determine how to create content that serves your end goal.

It really kind of is, though, because you won’t know until suddenly you don’t get engagement, or you can’t comment on someone’s post, or send a DM. Then you’re like, “Oh, I must have been put in jail.” For first-time offenses, it’s usually 12 to 24 hours, then you get out of jail. Repeat offenses extend to multiple days—three to five days, even seven days—to the point of eventually shutting down your account and preventing you from doing anything.

If you’ve been put in jail, you probably won’t know why immediately, but look at your content. Was it the types of hashtags you used? Were you appearing in searches associated with spam-type content? Was something in your messaging potentially spammy or inappropriate? Were you sending too many DMs or copying and pasting messages? Those are things that can get you put in jail. You need to check these things carefully. But typically, if you’re a first-time or casual offender, it’s about 12 to 24 hours.

First, I’d pick my best friend, Amanda Robinson, who is @TheDigitalGal. She’s a Facebook ads expert—because, you know, all my friends work in social media—but she’s my best friend, and I love her to death. We don’t get to see each other nearly enough because she lives in Canada and I live in San Diego. We usually try to see each other every two months, but right now, I don’t even know when I’ll see her again this year. So she’d definitely be the first one—I just want my best friend there.

Second would be Bethenny Frankel from Real Housewives of New York, who’s had her own spinoff shows and has the whole Skinnygirl brand. I’m fascinated by her as a mom, as a human being, as a woman, and as a business owner. She also launched her nonprofit called BStrong, which does incredible work helping after hurricanes and disasters, like in Puerto Rico. I’m really fascinated by her, but she’s also kind of a little crazy—like my level of crazy—just crazy enough to be fun, but not certifiably crazy.

Yeah, like, the conversations. I’m just like, I know her, and I would just have the best time. And then, because I’m obsessed with the Royals, I would love to sit down with Meghan Markle. I’d love to understand the transition and everything she went through. I’ve been a fan since long before she was on Suits, but with all the years on Suits, then having her transition into the Royal Family and everything that came with that—motherhood, and now they’re living on Vancouver Island, in a town near where I’m from. So I have all these connections, and I’d love to know how those transitions worked and how they’re adjusting to everything. I think that would be a really fascinating conversation.

So the best place to find me, obviously, is my website: jennstrends.com. It’s Jenn with two Ns, J-E-N-N-S-trends.com. You can find me on Instagram at @jenns_trends—again, two Ns—and join my Facebook group. That’s a great place to hang out with me. If you just search Jenn’s Trends in Social Media, you’ll find both the Facebook page and the group. But the group is where I share all breaking news related to Instagram, any big social media news, and I update everything there first, then I go share it elsewhere. It’s a great place to stay on top of everything, a super-active group where people ask questions and get help, and I’m always there to help with simple questions.

But then, obviously, yes, hit me up on the website or shoot me an email: jenn@jennstrends.com. If you’re interested in consulting, if you want me to host a webinar, speak at an event, or any of those sorts of things—that’s where I love to shine, helping you and your team be successful with all the training that I do.