Ashlyn Cook of UniMovers: Five Ways To Leverage Instagram To Dramatically Improve Your Business

An Interview With Candice Georgiadis

Engaging within your niche — It does you no good to interact with a food truck whose specialty is farm-raised hamburgers if you are a vegan supply company and everyone should look at niche engagement with this lens. You will more times than not find other companies or individuals within your niche or related niches who have created an online community to help each other out and learn from each other. You simply need to engage within your related community to create engagement and begin networking.

As a part of our series about How To Leverage Instagram To Grow Your Business, I had the pleasure of interviewing Ashlyn Cook.

Ashlyn is currently the Community Engagement Manager for UniMovers and a student studying Business Administration, Public Relations, and Marketing at Coe College with anticipated graduation in May of 2023. She manages all outreach and content creation for UniMovers with an emphasis on social media, blogging, and email marketing. Her efforts are directed towards promoting the community initiatives of UniMovers such as their annual nonprofit donation and scholarship.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?

I am currently a student at Coe College in Cedar Rapids, IA studying Public Relations and Business Administration with an emphasis in Marketing. My freshman year of college began in the fall of 2020, only a short while after the beginning of the Coronavirus pandemic. I struggled an immense amount when moving to a new city and starting over completely amidst partial lockdowns that rocked Cedar Rapids and Coe alike. After the first semester of what felt like a complete wash of a college experience, I challenged myself to find a way to make my freshman year count. This was when I began checking Handshake for a summer internship that would give me a new life experience while still building my resume. After my original internship plan fell through I applied for a position with UniMovers as a blogger. During my interview, I posed questions to Collin Flynn, our CEO, and Co-Founder, about the specifics of the job and blog program. We then moved to have a discussion on how to implement things like social media and email marketing to improve the results of the traffic being driven to the site. Following my interview, I was offered an internship which turned into a long-term position to oversee the ideas I presented in my interview and continue to build our audience.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you started this career?

The most interesting thing that has happened since starting with UniMovers has to be how my lifestyle and mindset have changed since the beginning of this career. I come from a lineage of Iowan farmers who have to stay in one spot their whole lives for work and have to trade their time for money. This career has revealed the benefits of remote work and the opportunities which lie within it. Since starting this career I have been able to work flexibly as I’ve worked through school and traveled across the United States. I’ve learned to automate some aspects in order to focus on others that continuously allow my responsibilities to grow and allow me to grow as a professional.

Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

As a college student, I don’t have a complete education behind me and have had to learn on the job from the get-go. However, I also didn’t understand that your boss doesn’t always have the answers either. I had to be told a couple of times to “Google it” as if it was the most profound advice I could have been given. It definitely reshaped the perspective that I gained through formal education and taught me to continuously learn in pretty basic ways.

Ok. Let’s now move to the main focus of our discussion. For the benefit of our readers, can you explain why you are an authority about Social Media Marketing?

From the beginning of my career, I have had to learn better ways to do things. I have yet to formally learn social media marketing in school so everything I do know, I taught myself. I soaked up every resource I could (and can) get my hands on about the subject and continuously try to implement processes and aspects recommended and proven to work by other companies and social media managers within or outside of UniMovers’ niche. I have had to learn that not everything you execute will be successful and oftentimes people will not respond to your attempts at engagement. When this happens, you just have to try again with a new approach and take note of what does and doesn’t work.

When I began my work with UniMovers I truly thought social media marketing was the most effective for most audiences. I had to learn that not everyone is seeking out services or products on social media and from a social media management perspective you have to work to get your content in front of new eyes. One of the most helpful things I have learned and implemented is jumping on new methods that social media platforms are pushing from their end. They are very willing to boost your content when they are trying to get their general audience to accept a new feature. For Instagram, this previously looked like Stories which was essentially Instagram trying to edge Snapchat out of the main attractive component of their platform. Currently, Instagram is doing the same thing to TikTok with Reels. This feature is highly promoted across Instagram and has “suggested Reels” in front of new eyes every time they log onto the app.

Which social media platform have you found to be most effective to use to increase business revenues? Can you share a story from your experience?

LinkedIn is by far the most useful social media platform for businesses to be on in my experience. LinkedIn is a concentration of professionals trying to learn from each other and network- one of my favorite things in the world to do. When I first began with UniMovers I was tasked with making press connections on behalf of the company for press releases. I was also able to learn an immense amount during the conversations I shared with various journalists. Each person had their own history and journey packed with insightful knowledge that led to some of my other professional successes. My stature as a student seeking professional advice also helped foster productive and astute conversations. LinkedIn also offers the modality to post free and paid job listings which proved to be helpful when hiring new bloggers and content writers.

Let’s talk about Instagram specifically, now. Can you share five ways to leverage Instagram to dramatically improve your business? Please share a story or example for each.

1. Engaging within your niche — It does you no good to interact with a food truck whose specialty is farm-raised hamburgers if you are a vegan supply company and everyone should look at niche engagement with this lens. You will more times than not find other companies or individuals within your niche or related niches who have created an online community to help each other out and learn from each other. You simply need to engage within your related community to create engagement and begin networking.
2. Community outreach — When done properly, networking on Instagram can be very simple. Before you blindly reach out to people/businesses on the platform, you should be interacting with their posts and other content. This allows you to build a relationship that isn’t one-sided, meaning the other business can see how partnering or networking with you will be beneficial to them and not just you. Sometimes you may not even be looking for partnerships or other exposure from the help of a different account but may just be looking for advice or to share some wisdom with others. One of the best pieces of advice I was given when I started out as a professional was to always find a way to solve someone else’s problem. This could be as simple as sharing a relevant blog post or recommending a new program to them.
3. Partnerships — If you are in the area of forming partnerships with fellow businesses and professionals Instagram has recently made it easier than ever. Another one of their new features allows you to partner on sharing posts so two usernames will be displayed at the top of the post and it will be posted to the feed of both accounts.
4. Automation — This is something very simple but can save you so much time and headaches in the long run. Originally, I created content maybe once a week or every other but never had a complete plan of what I would put out on our accounts for the whole month or beyond. When you bulk produce your content ahead of time you won’t be left scratching your head the week before trying to plan. This also allows you to make cohesive campaigns that build on themselves. Recently I have seen a surge in the engagement of our profile as a result of running a month-long campaign that involved the nonprofits UniMovers partners with.
5. Use different methods to get in front of people — Instagram can be an immersive experience for a platform user when accounts take advantage of all Instagram has to offer. When you show up in people’s main feed you have the option of posting a singular picture or video or posting multiple in a carousel post. The latter entices users to swipe through the content and follow the story throughout the carousel. Somewhere businesses should aim to show up daily if only for a few short minutes, are Instagram Stories. There are endless content options for Stories but popular choices are behind the scenes, “day in the life”, and polls/quizzes. Stories can be featured on your main page as well so you don’t have to worry about meaningful content being lost after 24 hours. Stories are also a great place to get feedback from active followers. Currently, the biggest feature to use on Instagram is Reels which I discussed earlier. Other options for Instagram engagement methods include live videos, direct messages, and partnerships.

Because of the position that you are in, you are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)

If I could inspire a movement for the good of most people I would try to create a program that teaches the youth about financial literacy. I was subjected to a personal finance class in my high school but I found very little of it stuck or was all that helpful. I would want to create something that would engage students in the content and allow them to willingly take interest in their money while teaching them important life skills like how to invest and how to make your money work for you instead of the other way around.

Some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them :-)

I would love to meet with Natalie from BossBabe Inc. I believe in their initiative to help women grow their businesses through social media. I recently watched her Social Media Masterclass and learned a ton of helpful and useful tips that will aid me to keep the content I create relevant and enticing for my audiences. My biggest takeaway from the class was that the type of audience that you have is more important than the size. She also has worked on other resources like the 30 days of content guide that has helped take some of the guesswork out of how to accomplish my social media goals.

Thank you so much for these great insights. This was very enlightening!