Yolanda Keels-Walker

Yolanda Keels-Walker is an author, small business strategist and serial entrepreneur with a knack for networking with other entrepreneurs. Yolanda began her career with the Central Intelligence Agency after graduating from Hampton University with a BS in Business Management. She owns and runs two businesses sweet and hair salons.  She has been able to grow a base of over 30,000 in less than one year by doing 3 simple things.

Expert session

Tactic that has had the biggest impact on Yolanda’s success

Figuring out her why and getting 32,000 followers in 12 months

Result if you follow the steps in Yolanda’s session

An authentic and consistent Instagram channel that helps grow your authority and influence

Full session with video, notes, audio and discussion inside EHQ Club. Learn more

Expert session snapshot

Transcript

I’d say definitely identifying your why the same reason that you’re in business might not be the same rationale as to why you might be on Instagram and your why might be different for Twitter versus Facebook versus Instagram.

And the why is simply you know what, the entire point of me really having this page isn’t for my personal brand, is it for my business brand is, it just to you know, grow, grow an audience.

So once you’re able to really kind of hone in on your why, then, you know, ask yourself, well, why are people following me? You know, what is it about me specifically what is about my business? Or really the topic of the page? Like, why would people follow? Is it interesting? Is it fun?

If you’re patient now consist of you just posting selfies and you know, pictures of your satellite or that great Indian spot that you went to? You know, sorry, but that might not be enough you that that’s really interesting.

So, you know, really kind of add some personality to it. It’s, you know, because you want to be a brand influencer? How do people find you friendly? You know, are you, could you be someone’s friend in their head? I know, from following certain people on Instagram, exactly how they would answer certain things exactly what they would say about certain things.

And it’s because of the way that they’ve been able to curate their page. I can get a sense of who they are. I like them. I find them interesting and I want to know more.

If you kind of, you know, just take a step back and look and say hey, with your page, is this something that you know people like? Is this something that, you know is attractive? What I consider you know, the popular person in high school based off that this page, then you know, I felt like you really have a good base for your why.

The second part to that is really like after you figure out that part and things that might be interesting to you might not be interesting to the type of people that you want to follow. So specifically speaking for me, I am super private. I’m actually very, very shy.

But by my page, you will not be able to tell that because I’m always constant like, hey, life of the party. And that’s because honestly, I know that that demographic or the people that respond well, to me, those are things that they respond well to. And so unfortunately, nobody wants to see me curled up with my glasses on like reading a business book.

Yes, I show them but I might show them you know, on my desk, with like some flowers and perfumes and makeup just something more interesting versus you know like, hey, this is real life. Like yeah, you can you can still show real life and be real but jazz it up a little bit so that it’s more interesting.

So the second part would be consistent messaging once you really hone in on that why just saying okay these are the types of posts that I need to post so like Liam said, for one of my pages, I have a hair salon you can only look at you know like a bob so many ways before you get tired of it.

And so we add interesting topics like when you go to a hair salon you really want to dish with your stylist on all the hot gossip and things that’s going good. So we’ll cover you know like award shows or what was she wearing? Why did you do that with her hair? Do you like this with you dye your hair that color?

We go outside of the envelope so that it’s not boring and so that our cliente for that page know, you know, when I come to this page like, I know, I’m getting the same experience that I was in that salon. And so we just covered different topics, we call them, you know, shop talking, we asked for our clients health opinion.

And that is something that, you know, just kind of helps them feel more relatable, like, you know, they could friend us. It might be you know, like a cute bob, hey, what do you think about this? Oh, I think this is really cute, I might try this. Or oh, I really wish that she would have worn her hair longer.

It’s just it just creates the dialogue and it gets you absolutely more in tune with what your audience is thinking, how they respond to certain things.