5 tips to use Instagram DM for business development and networking according to Gary Vaynerchuk

While privacy features may be added at a later stage, for now anyone can easily use Instagram DM for business development and networking opportunities to their heart’s content. According to Gary Veynerchuk, the world is filled with people who are trying to market, sell or take from you and there are a small few who think of giving or ‘adding value’ to someone else.

Through Instagram DM (Direct Message) you can connect with anyone, irrespective of them being a social media influencer or a Fortune 500 CEO or even a celebrity. Here’s Veynerchuk’s 5-step guide to make the most of this under-utilised, unprecedented opportunity to win!

Target new Instagram accounts

There is a lot of noise in the world of social media, thus filtration is the first thing you need to do in order to find the right leads. You can search for an infinite amount of leads using hashtags, location or even user among other options. One tip to increase your reach is to include relevant hashtags in your posts that are common to your industry.

If you own a hair spa in Delhi’s Greater Kailash, you could easily use related hashtag topics like ‘haircut’ etc and filter by location according to the address of your store. You don’t need to audit accounts with 100,000 followers, unless you have big budgets to play with. Reach out to ‘micro-influencers’ i.e people with smaller followings but high engagement.

Study their Instagram profiles

When you see someone with a comparatively small following but gets high engagement levels on their posts, reach out through the Instagram DM. Their strong engagement means they have their followers’ attention – which is crucial in all the digital noise.

So watch out for these micro-influencers as they can add a lot of value to your business. All you have to consider is, do they interact? Do they engage? Do they post regularly? Do their fans like them?

Offer them value

As mentioned earlier, you can DM anyone on Instagram, be it Elon Musk, Deepika Padukone or anyone else that has an account. However, unless you can offer value, addressing what that person wants or needs, you may never reach them – you may even be looked upon as a spammer. The key here is to remember that they have the leverage, so you need to bring value to them!

Keep in mind, helping them solve a problem they are currently facing or haven’t considered yet is where your key value proposition lies.

Don’t get discouraged

For every yes there will be a hundred no’s. What’s worse is, you may not even get a reply most of the time. Don’t lose courage, it’s just how it is. They probably have similar skills already, if not, they’re probably well connected and can source their requirements anyway.

Keep going, you will get one “Yes” and then you just need to keep the ball rolling to gain speed and momentum.

Just start

Stop pondering and thinking it over, just open your account, tap the three little dots in the right corner and begin typing and hit ‘send message’.

While reaching out is a good start, know that it doesn’t end with getting a reply – you need to deliver. Out of the 900 people you DM, the 2 that say yes need to be given whatever you were offering. Skill and execution is everything, DMs just get you a foot in the door.