Ep. 42: What we learned from 1 year of podcasting; Top 5 downloads

Authentic Online Marketing with Ruthie Gray

Today, we're celebrating one year of the Instagram Insider Hacks podcast by revisiting our top 5 downloads of the year. Can you believe it? To help me celebrate, I've invited my audio engineer and virtual assistant to join me today. We're going to review the top five downloads of the podcast as they surprise me one by one, because I don't know the results. So, stay tuned to the end. We will wrap up this episode with a big red bow for a special announcement. Oh, and the people I mentioned? They are my son and daughter, it's a family celebration! Click below for show notes https://ruthiegray.mom/top-5-downloads-instagram-insider-hacks/ Top 5 Downloads of the Year Like I said today, we are celebrating one year. A year flies by much faster than you realize. Before we get started, I just want to introduce my son and daughter to you. My son is my audio engineer and his name is Nolan. Nolan, why don't you tell the folks what your business is and the name? Sure. My business is called Indigo Sound. I do audio engineering for musicians, as well as podcasters like you and sound design for film work, basically anything that needs any sort of sound engineering. I also edit this podcast that I'm talking on right now, which is going to be interesting listening back! R: You do such a great job. People ask me all the time, “How do you edit your sound? Why does it sound so good?” Well, it's because my son takes all of my gulps and the weed eaters in the background and just mouth noises and everything, and he makes them disappear. My lovely assistant Hayley Carpenter is also with us today. Welcome Hayley! Why don't you tell the folks what you do as well. Hayley: So my position is basically a virtual assistant to Ruthie! I handle all of the visuals for the Facebook page and also some of the Instagram visuals, Pinterest graphics. I also help with the scheduling and just keeping you organized. R: Yes. You also help me with my membership and just keeping everyone straight, telling them what days they have for feedback or Hotseats. It's more than one Facebook group, she runs several. There are any number of things in a day that Hayley will do for me. It's just really up-leveled my business since having her on as well as Nolan with the podcast and everything. It's just totally made a difference. 5. How do you use hashtags on Instagram? Since we're celebrating today, we're going to start with Nolan and Hayley taking turns, starting with the lowest to the most downloaded podcast episode of 2021. Let's go! H: I'll start with number five! The fifth top episode was Episode 8: How do you use hashtags on Instagram? You answered this question with some special guests like Pat Fenner, Dawn Klinge. You talked about narrowing your IG niche. R: Wow. Probably the reason that’s number five is everybody is wondering what in the world to do with hashtags. It's like this big mystery that the world wants to know. I gave some super basic but important tips that still are relevant today at the time of this podcast taping, which is late May early June. Niching down hashtags N: So about the hashtag niching--I actually went back and listened to this episode like two weeks ago, just because I've been trying to get on my game with Indigo Sound and our Instagram, and basically I’ve just been like, okay, what are all the quick tips and how do I make these hashtags effective? That was obviously the number one thing was that I wouldn't do hashtags because it would have billions of views and no one would see. I would just get lost in a sea of hashtags at that point. So, I just niched them down and it's already even doing like Knoxville music matters because that's where I live is Knoxville, even that has connected me to other musicians in the area here. We just met online now because of those Instagram hashtags. So that was a really cool episode.