Joe McCarthy

So we’ve actually done the math, if you were to get 10,000 followers through ads, typically it’s gonna cost you over $10,000.

Chris Dreyer

Get the most from your marketing budget. Trust the social media experts.

Joe McCarthy

It’s definitely not worth spending when you can spend like a thousand dollars to get 10,000 followers use that other 9,000 for other types of marketing.

Chris Dreyer

You’re listening to Personal Injury Mastermind, where we give you the tools you need to take your personal injury practice to the next level. CEO of JEM Social, Joe McCarthy has helped thousands of clients – and has barely hit the age of 20. Over the past three years he has grown his personal Instagram page to over 300,000 and has secured similar results for many of his clients. Todays episode is a masterclass in Instagram growth. We cover: Why Instagram is your new business card, the secret sauce of growing a meaningful audience, why celebrity campaigns are not as effective as you might think, how to get the coveted blue badge verification, and the step by step process to gain a massive following from scratch. I’m your host, Chris Dreyer, founder and CEO of Rankings.io. We help elite personal injury attorneys dominate first page rankings with search engine optimization. Being at the forefront of marketing is all about understanding people. So let’s get to know our guest. Here’s Joe McCarthy, CEO at JEM Social on how he learned everything he knows on the family farm.

Joe McCarthy

I started social media with farming, so I’ve been raising chickens, pigs, sheep, all kinds of things. Since I was like, six, seven years old and I was doing these like old school methods with just putting up road signs, door to door and nothing seemed to be working. Like I had tons of product. I had no clients. Around, I’d say 13, 14. I came across social media, Facebook and Instagram. And I saw other farmers in my area in Virginia, marketing their stuff. So I decided, Hey, why not try it? Started building a personal brand on Facebook and Instagram, just, around the farming and my day to day stuff and lifestyle. And, after that first year, I just quickly started selling out all my farm products. And so that kind of, put me in the trenches of like how to, market on social media, what works, what doesn’t, how to create cool looking content. And just like learning the ins and outs of, primarily Instagram and a little bit of Facebook. So obviously since then, I’ve just used that to build my brain and, the rest is history.

Chris Dreyer

It’s the power of leverage and distribution. And one of the things you’ve got over 300,000 Instagram follow you’ve helped me grow tremendously, which we’ll talk about that as well. And also you may be the youngest guest that we’ve had on the show, but you were in the mix and you were on the cutting edge of Instagram. So I thought it was really valuable for our audience to have you on. To talk about, how personal injury attorneys can really implement some of the tactics that you talk about, when you got into this, you did a lot of intense self studying and you went down the rabbit hole. And I see a lot of the, motivational books. So tell me about that journey, that the self education and just some of the books that really impacted you.

Joe McCarthy

I don’t know if Ty Lopez, but he was like a big like guru in the space. He was big into reading as well. And the funny thing is I was studying his first mentor. His name is Joel Southton and he’s like a big sustainable farmer. So I got into farming. Obviously I started reading Joel South’s books just about farming and building a farm business. But he kept mentioning Ty Lopez. So I was like, I wonder who this Ty Lopez guy is. So I looked him up and, watched a few interviews and I was like hooked. And he, he kept saying if you wanna get like this, success, if you wanna get money, wealth, you have to read, like he was big into reading. And so he almost got me into, just reading like the classic, like Napoleon Hill Robert Kiyosaki, rich dad, poor dad that kind of. So I just started, studying up on those books. Probably 15 years old. Obviously I have a big bookshelf in the back. I’d say I read like 50 to 60 books by the time I was about 17. And then, obviously that’s just, I’ve just used those books to basically build like the foundation of, the business that I’m running right now. But I’ve been reading those successful books since I was, 14, 15 years old.

Chris Dreyer

I’ve seen Ty do some amazing stuff just from the brand perspective lately picking up some of these businesses that were, traditional at like malls and brick and mortar. I think he had, I think picked up some, just really marque brands and turned him into e-com businesses, which has been pretty crazy. So let’s dive right into it. For most that are unfamiliar, gimme the basics, what do you do? What are your services?

Joe McCarthy

Primarily what we do at Growth Agencies, we just build like your overarching branding, like the aesthetics, the looks, and then most importantly the metrics. So obviously. Whether you’re a business owner, a coach, lawyer, if you have a service or a product, or even just content to offer people, that’s where we basically come in and help you get out to more people. Cause like with social media, especially Instagram, especially right now, 2022, it’s it’s so hard to grow just completely organically. There’s so many people on social media it’s really saturated. So the organic game is almost like dead in a sense like you really can’t reach people and Instagram is actually kind. Making it harder, cuz they want you to spend money with them, with ads and boosts and all that stuff. So we come in and help you, more forward. We’ll just get you more followers, more engagement, help you reach more people. Cuz like with Instagram specifically, it’s almost like your new resume or your new business card. You could be the most successful guy ever. But if you don’t have a decent social media presence, then people, don’t really take you as seriously. So if you can get, 50,000, a hundred thousand, 200,000 followers and then get really good engagement and reach on your social media, that just, opens up a ton of opportunities. And that’s what we do at Grow as Agencies just build the overarching brand, the credibility. So when people do come to your page, they instantly see that you are, an authority, you got followers, you got a fan base, and then that obviously can translate into sales.

Chris Dreyer

Let’s first start with the organic perspective. Back in the day when people posted the Facebook, everyone would see the content and the feed you posted on Instagram, you’d see it on the feed. let’s break that down from organic perspective,

Joe McCarthy

Let’s say, just getting Instagram either even just like one to two years ago. And you’re just trying to just grow by posting content, maybe like networking with people here and there it’ll, it could take you 2, 3, 4 years just to get to five to 10,000 followers. And that’s just because, like I said, it’s really saturated. So when, before, you, your content would end up on the feed and it would stay there. Now it’s it doesn’t even end up there unless it gets a certain number. Interactions within an hour or two. So it almost is like paid to play. And if the funny thing is if you look at any of the big guys, anyone that has over 200,000, a hundred thousand followers, verification, even like Grant Cardone, Tony Robbins, the list goes on and on. They’re also investing millions into their brands, their growth. Just because, like I said, it almost is like a pay to play game to where if you want to actually reach more people and get more exposure, you have to create somewhat of a catalyst so that you can start doing that. So if you scale to 50, a hundred thousand, And then get more engagement, then you’re gonna start to organically reach more people, get on the explore page, that kind of stuff. But if you just try to grow like completely organically from the start, it, you almost have zero chance of actually, reaching a large, massive audience.

Chris Dreyer

The first thing that, that everyone talks about is buying followers, is it, and it’s some people think it’s taboo and others don’t, but it’s the first are these real individuals with real accounts? Like what goes into kind of. Given it that kickstart, so to speak, to really, build the foundation so that your organic can get.
Any regional that’s a great question. So yeah, you really don’t want to go into the, just completely like bot followers. Like you can go to websites. Online and buy like 10, 20, 30,000 like bots or like fake followers. And they’re not really gonna have any content profile pictures. They may not even engage with their content. So what we like to do is obviously it’s not gonna be a hundred percent organic, so not every single person who comes and follows, it’s gonna be. A die hard fan of you, but we can make sure that they’re all real and they’re actually all us based. And essentially the way that works is we’ll send out like a mass and DM. So I’m sure like in your request, you might see like DMS here and there. They’re almost like ads. So we can actually send those. And instead of, bringing people to a website or a landing page, we can bring ’em to follow you. So we might send something out for you. For instance, let’s say we send that out to 10,000 people a day, and it’s a link to your page. Maybe like a quick message below that says. Hey, go check out. Chris Dreyer, super cool. Agency owner helps law firms build scale up, go give him a follow check out his content. So we’ll send that out. It’s almost just like running a huge ad. And obviously the only people who are gonna come and follow and engage would be people who click on the link, follow you. And so that’s how we can make sure that all the people coming through, are real people. And like at the same time, they’re not all gonna be a hundred percent. Die hard fans and you may not end up converting all of them, but as long as they’re real people and even us space is another bonus. That’s like the most important thing. But I would not recommend just going out on a website and buying followers, cause that can usually get you, suspended banned or or deleted. If that makes sense. It seems like the doing the DMing, do you hit filters? Is there caps, on Instagram like, like for example, on Twitter, was a common practice back in the day where you could follow unfollow now that’s entirely different. so what kind of filters and caps

Joe McCarthy

Do you hit for the DMS? So as far as the DMS, there’s actually like a software you can use where you can send out DMS from a ton of different accounts. Like obviously with Instagram, I think you can only send out 40 to 50 a day or something like that. So I, I do like organic outreach, for or 50 a day, but we actually have a software for our clients where we can send out. over 10,000 a day, and just build up more of a following. So let’s say out of 10,000 DMS, we send, maybe you’ll get like 500 to a thousand followers per day or something like that. But yeah, as far as like caps go that’s like the biggest one, but obviously we’ve been able to get around that as far as like the mass DMS. Yeah.

Chris Dreyer

So that makes sense in terms of the follower base and, that’s social proof, right? So they see, instead of having a hundred followers, you’ve got a hundred thousand, so other individuals may be more likely to then follow you in turn. But let’s talk about that next piece where you talked about engagement. So when you post a piece of content, if you don’t have a follower base, it’s just, no, one’s gonna see it. And it’s not gonna have those interactions. how do you get the interaction? How do you encourage that? What are some tactics on that front?

Joe McCarthy

Yeah, so we actually have a big group of over 3000 people in one big engagement pod. So it’s essentially what they do on LinkedIn and stuff only. Like one step up, cuz like these are all past clients of our, so like I said, we’ve worked with entrepreneurs, business owners, coaches, speakers. So any content that our clients post, we just add it into this like engagement group and they work as a unit to build up each other’s, likes comments, views. And the cool thing is like I said, if you can get like a good amount of interaction within the first, like one to two hours of posting. Instagram will see that and they’ll be like, oh, people like this content, let’s push it to more people and see if it’ll reach more. So they’ll go and take that, put it on the explore page, put it at the top of people’s, feeds when they open their phone. So that’s how we can almost leverage the algorithm to get even more engagement and almost go, semi viral. That’s how we can make sure that all your content’s getting. 10 20, 30,000 views per video consistently is cause we’re leveraging, thousands of people behind the scenes, in our groups to almost boost it or become like the catalyst to reach more people.

Chris Dreyer

Some of the contents, that’s very difficult to get that organically. So you just need a little boost, a little bit of a community to help with that. I’ve seen certain individuals that’ll like partner up with Floyd Mayweather or a Kardashian. So tell me about those. What are those called and what’s that other tactic as it relates to Instagram?

Joe McCarthy

We actually used to do those one to two years ago and they’re called like celebrity giveaways or like campaigns, right? So either us or like our clients will partner up with a huge celebrity, someone that has clout and that celebrity will essentially give you or ourselves like a shout out or like a promotion. And that would bring in more followers. What’s tend tended to happen is, a lot of celebrities, like you said, they’ll charge five, 10, $15,000. It could still work. But again, it doesn’t really get you the engagement. So there’s still people out there that will just run solely, run their growth solely on these celebrity campaigns. They’ll scale up the followers. One downside, like I mentioned is the engagement. The second one is actually the retention rate. Cause people are getting in, usually it’s the celebrities saying, Hey, go follow this list. 30 to 40 people to win like a, Gucci bag or like an iPhone. And it’s after the thing is over, it’s one or two people win. And then the other people who follow you because they want a prize they’re gonna unfollow you because they didn’t win. So that’s the one issue with celebrity campaigns. And that’s why we switched over to the mass DMs because, with the mass DMs, they’re not gonna follow unless. See the page, click it, click the follow button. So the retention rate’s a lot bigger. And then obviously we also add in the engagement, which is another big.

Chris Dreyer

As your reach grows, it is important to pull back the curtain – see what is really working. And what is not. Joe shares the content that PI lawyers should be creating to see results.

Joe McCarthy

I think as far as your your client base, I would probably be posting obviously more short form stuff. So you don’t want it to be too long and drawn out. Cause obviously everybody knows their attention spans. Two seconds or whatever. So I would say short form reels, make sure you have a catchy title so that it captures their attention and then make sure you have actual like subtitles throughout the whole video. So that’s what I would recommend you guys posting. And as far as like the content itself, I’d be posting tips, tricks, advice, make sure you’re providing value and it’s not just, just some random, video. Like I, I do recommend like sprinkling in some like behind the scenes stuff. Maybe, you at the office. Life or travel or whatever. Just so people can get like the gist of who you are as like a person, cuz people like to get to know you more behind the scenes as well. But as far as like the 90% of the content that you’ll be posting, I do a lot of short form stuff, a lot of videos and reels. Those are, the best performing that I’ve seen in the past for pretty much every every genre of business. And then also, like I said, you’d want to make. Catchy valuable. And then have, subtitles so people can watch it even without.

Chris Dreyer

And we had Chris DOE on a while back and he really grew an audience through slides. Are there any new, advances on Instagram? It seems like whenever they. Create something new. They don’t make it pay to play as much. They give it a little extra attention and you’re and it will get more reach at least at the beginning, especially when they’re introducing something. Is there anything new on the platform? Are they really kicking up reels to compete with TikTok? So what are you seeing there?

Joe McCarthy

The main thing to be catching on the trends side would be real. You wanna make sure you’re posting a lot of those because yeah, like you said, they’re almost like competing with TikTok in a way. you can grow pre organically with that. And it’s a lot easier to grow, following in a fan base through the videos that you’re posting on TikToc so, yeah, Instagram’s almost giving you a chance to do that with reel. So if you can capitalize on that that can shoot you through the roof and they’re actually gonna pay you as well. So like a lot of big guys, if you can get 10, 20, even like 50,000 followers and you’re getting consistently good engagement on your reels, they’ll do these things called bonuses where it’s like, if you post a certain number of reels within. 90 days or whatever, they’re gonna pay you anywhere between $500 to $2,000. So that’s almost like another incentive to hop on. And that’s why I think like the main trend to hop on, is reels. So Instagram is paying for this content creation.

Chris Dreyer

So if you go to your settings and if you can apply for bonuses, I think you can, I think they pay you for per view. So if you hit. A hundred thousand or a million views or whatever it is within a certain timeframe then they’ll pay you out. So that’s an incentive for you to consistently post more reels. Let’s talk about that blue badge, right? So we’re all hunting for that one. We’re all trying to get, it’s really difficult. I know you guys are working on it for me, so what goes into that? We see these people that are verified. How do you get it? What’s the process look like? How can attorneys set themselves up for success to try to get that blue verification?

Joe McCarthy

Back in 2000 15, 16, 17, it was way easier to get it just it used to be way easier to get engagement. So if you were just a famous person or a well known person or a celebrity or someone in the government, you’d get it right off the bat, just because they wanna make sure you have a page that’s like legitimately yours. So you don’t have scammers going out and, pretending to be you, but these days. There’s so many people paying for it that they have such a more strict process for the verification. So typically there’s two ways to get it, which is super interesting. There’s the entrepreneur route. And then there’s the artist route, right? So the entrepreneur route, which is the typical, just everyday person route, what you’d basically do is get about 15 to 20 press articles written about you. There’s certain ones like LA weekly Disrupt Magazine, couple other big ones. And essentially what you’re gonna have to do is get all those published, get a Google panel. So if you Google like a famous person, there’s like a whole panel about who they are when they’re born. So we essentially have to write that for you. And then what we’re gonna do is go to Instagram, maybe do a couple tweaks with like your content and then we can get you the verification that can take anywhere between two months to eight months. I’ve known guys who go for other agencies, they’ve been waiting two years. For the verification with that route. But a lot of people are actually starting to go the artist route. And essentially what that means is they’re almost getting labeled as an artist. So they get like a Spotify playlist. They get that verified, put out a couple albums. Typically it’s just like beats. So like you don’t have to sing or anything. And then we’ll get that verified, connect that to your Instagram page and get your Instagram page looking like an artist. So we’ll switch that to. Artists, if you’re like a public figure or an entrepreneur, we switch that to artists, add something to your bio, maybe put out a couple posts, get you verified. And then after that, you can just switch it back to whatever it was. And the cool thing is that so many people are doing it that way, that there’s like basically like a 0% chance that Instagram’s gonna go and revoke it because if you switch it back, they’re not gonna know. Plus, obviously if you can get that done, it’s also almost like half the price, which is super interesting. And it’s interesting seeing like a lot of other people doing it this route as well.

Chris Dreyer

Yeah. And on that, so would like a podcast host be considered an art artist or is. So you could utilize

Joe McCarthy

A podcast for that. Yeah. Yeah. So if I don’t know. Do podcasts have verification on Spotify or is it just music?

Chris Dreyer

I’m actually, I’m unsure.

Joe McCarthy

I Def I’ve seen, I’ve seen like the Rogan course. Yeah, exactly. I’m sure if you get big enough, I’ve seen it. It’s a lot easier to get verification on Spotify. If you’re like a music artist versus a podcast. Podcaster, but I think you, if you have a big enough podcast, I think you could also leverage that to get the verification on Instagram. Okay. Nice.

Chris Dreyer

And then basically from that, once you have the blue verification, that’s just another social proof signal?

Joe McCarthy

Like just besides credibility purposes, like if you DM someone, their response rate goes through the roof, cuz almost everybody responds to somebody with blue badge. Or , it’s a benefit to the sense that if fake accounts, create a page of yours and go sell crypto, whatever, you can obviously have your blue verification page and say, Hey, if you get any DMS from any accounts that don’t have the verification, it’s fake, right. So there’s a lot of issues with. Like even myself, I get probably four or five fake accounts created, every single week. And it’s if they go out and sell or scam people it can become a huge issue. And that’s like the that’s the whole benefit of that verification is it’s you, right? Like only you, the real you can get the blue badge. So that’s the main benefit aside from just, the credibility is like the cherry on top. If that makes.

Chris Dreyer

I wanna circle back around to the building a follower base. Yeah. We talked about the DM method, but like, how does the cost of that compare to say just straight running ads? let’s just say, I just wanted to pump some ads into it. What’s my cost to acquire a follower there versus food DMS.
It’s 10 times, like it’s actually 10 times the email, so we’ve actually done the math, me and my partner. And if you were to get 10,000 followers through ads, typically it’s gonna cost you over $10,000. Maybe they’ll be more targeted, it’s definitely not worth spending $10,000 to get 10,000 followers when you can spend like a thousand dollars to get 10,000 followers use that other 9,000 for other types of marketing, other DMS, stuff like that. So we’ve seen, it’s literally like almost 10 times the cost to run ads versus what we. I do recommend doing both, but it’s a sequence. So you don’t wanna do both at the same time. What I recommend is do The branding first. So make sure you build up like the actual followers, the engagement the first impression, like the credibility. And then once you have that established page, then start to run ads and marketing and match DMS and all that stuff. if you’re trying to run like marketing and ads, kinda asking someone on a date and the reason they say yes or no is gonna be based on your brand. So if you have a crappy brand, you can run all the marketing you want. and it’s not gonna convert. If you have a really good established brand and then run the marketing and the ads, then you’re gonna get a much bigger conversion rate. It’s gonna be a lot more worth the money. So that’s why I recommend, and I tell a lot of people that if you’re gonna start to do outreach and spend money on marketing and ads, make sure you have the branding in place first so that if people do come to your page, which they inevitably will, they’re gonna see like this credible, social presence. If that makes sense. So I’m gonna do a little exercise here. We’re gonna have a little fun. Sweet. Okay. Let’s say Joe, McCarthy’s starting his PI law firm. He’s starting his law firm, right? He’s going to, you’re going to create your Instagram profile. What are you doing? What are you doing to try to get it attention?

Joe McCarthy

So first I would get a base of maybe like 12 to 15 posts out, just so you have something out there. So I would, scratch up, let’s say 10 reels, couple different pictures and stuff, and just intertwine those, if you wanna create like cool layout too. So I would maybe almost do a checkered pattern where you just do one after the other. So I start doing that matrix, like good quality, make sure it all looks similar. If you get like a color theme, for instance, I think you have one too. Mine is red. If you go to my page, you’ll see that pretty clearly. So I would choose one or two colors stick to those critical layout, get at least 15 posts up. And then once you have those posts up, you might have one or 200 followers by then. So I would start doing outreach, right? So you might want to reach out to just people that have maybe four or 5,000 followers do a little bit of collaboration. And that will help you get to at least a thousand followers, let’s say within two to three weeks after that, it’s pretty much impossible to scale up to 10 20 K, unless you’re just like pumping out content like crazy and just dedicating your life to Instagram, which most people don’t have time for. So at that rate, after you have a thousand followers, you’ve, connected with some other guys, maybe in the space who are a little bit bigger, maybe like micro influencers, then I would start to do the actual investing into. You know the growth. So you might wanna start out maybe with 10 to 20 K or if you go big, you could go to a hundred K and we’ll, consistently scale up your following. If you were to partner with us, for instance, and then we’ll also help you get engagement. And then at that rate, like we can scale to the moon, right? If you scaled a 10 20 K get the engagement. Then maybe after that you could start investing in mass DMS or the outreach, or, just ads in general. But that was, that would be, how I would start it out for instance.

Chris Dreyer

Nice. Okay. why should personal injury attorneys be considering this? Is it more a brand play? Is it a Legion play? Is it demand generation? Like what’s is it all above? What’s the big reason they should be investing into this platform?

Joe McCarthy

Ultimately like it’s a free platform, right? So why not leverage it or why not use it? And yeah, I’ve seen a ton of people leverage it to bringing clients. I’ve seen others. They just wanna get a huge brand. Like it’s really up to you, but ultimately you could easily do all two or three, right? If you scale up to a hundred thousand, 200,000 followers, you’re naturally gonna have credibility. You’re gonna have a bigger brand, a bigger following, a bigger fan base. So that’s just almost gonna be a given. And then if you go a step further and you start investing into actual like marketing, you’re gonna have a 200% better chance of converting actual clients and leads versus if you just didn’t leverage the platforms at all. I don’t know how much you guys charge for instance, for a client or a product or a service, but, even if you just bring in five to 10 clients a month from social media, like that’s a huge. Add on to the revenue that you guys would, generate throughout the year, versus if you just don’t leverage those free services at.

Chris Dreyer

Couldn’t agree more. And I like the whole, the owned asset for distribution versus the least as asset. We talk a lot about that for, from an SEO perspective versus pay per click. How can people get in touch with you and, what’s next for Joe McCarthy?

Joe McCarthy

I’m primarily on Instagram. That’s probably where I’m most active. So at real Joe McCarthy, you can follow me there, check out the content, highlights, see what we’re all about, what we’re doing at grow us agency. If you wanna check out the agency page, you can look at GW agency and that stands for grow with us agency. What’s next for me? right now I’m honestly in the mode of just, building up this next egg to be able to invest into just like a huge launch. So I have the business obviously Grow This Agency, but I think I might come out with a newer product called gem social, and that’s gonna be more coaching, mentorship, consulting. Cause I can scale up your page, but if you don’t know how to use it, it’s it’s, that’s only 50% of the puzzle. I’m thinking probably like late March next ne next year is probably when I’ll be launching that, but I want it to be like a huge launch. So I’m just scrapping cash right now to just have this huge launch, investing into brands, podcasts, articles, press, all that kind of stuff. And then I’ll just scale that up, like Gary V does with his, marketing agency and just, help tens of thousands of people with their brands.

Chris Dreyer

Like baking a cake, if you wanna grow your Instagram – you gotta follow the recipe. Add 15 posts that establish your brand Sprinkle in engagement for credibility. Turn up the heat by collaborating with micro-influencers in the space. Once you’ve reached your first few thousand followers, it’s time to mix in ads and DMs for outreach. And the cherry on top? The blue verification badge. We covered a lot today, so go back and listen to this episode again to make sure you have all the measurements right. And if you want the help of a pro – reach out to Joe on instagram at Real Joe McCarthy. I’d like to thank Joe from Jem Social for sharing his story with us, and I hope you gained some valuable insights from the conversation. You’ve been listening to Personal Injury Mastermind. I’m Chris Dreyer. If you liked this episode, leave us a review. We love to hear from our listeners. I’ll catch you on next week’s PIMM with another incredible guest and all the strategies you need to master personal injury marketing.