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Jac Kalaher is the founder and CEO of @stjohnsbff (St. Johns Business, Faith, and Friendship) and recently launched her education platform, @themissionsocial. Through both ventures, she helps business owners grow with purpose and build real relationships—not just followers.
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Jac joins us again to share her best Instagram growth tips, especially for local businesses with a physical store trying to grow online and turn followers into real customers.
Jac explains how she uses remixing, smart caption placement, SEO-style tricks, and easy batching to help clients get noticed and grow faster. We also talk about what Instagram wants right now—and how to work with the algorithm instead of fighting it.
Watch the previous episode on YouTube, “Building a Business Around Faith and Friendship featuring Jac Kalaher“
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- Connect with Jac on Instagram
- Follow St John’s BFF on Instagram
Speaker 1:
Welcome back to the Art of Online Business podcast. Dak Callagher is with us again, and if you don’t know her well, you should listen to the previous episode, because it was really fun as we get to know her. But here is a quick bit after. I share what she’s gonna talk about, which is Instagram growth strategies. She does have a social media agency that helps brick and mortar businesses grow on Instagram. She takes care of their marketing for them, and so if you’ve been wondering why haven’t I been growing on Instagram and I’m doing the things that I see online, but something’s not working. This is going to be the episode for you. Jack Callaher is a mama. She’s a mom of four boys. She’s a devoted wife. She is a daughter of the Most High King, jesus, with over two decades of transformative experience in marketing. She also has a certification as a transformation life coach, and she’s dedicated her career to helping others achieve their true purpose through intentional, purpose-driven marketing strategies, and we were talking about in the previous episode just this little group that she started called BFF.
Speaker 2:
St John’s BFF St.
Speaker 1:
John’s BFF, but it’s not the BFF that you’re thinking. This is a networking group for women in well, not in St John’s. Where is it? At St John’s.
Speaker 2:
It is in St John’s. However, it’s going to be global, like the D is global, it just is.
Speaker 1:
So we going to be global, like it’s global, it just is. So we are in St John’s right now, but we are going to be coming to a city near you.
Speaker 1:
I feel like that should be right. I was impressed. I mean so, business, faith and friendship. You’re now over 5,000 women in there and you were talking about this, and the vision all started from you moving to a new community because your husband’s in the military and you did not want to be alone. I won’t spoil it for the listener. Like, dear listener, you can click down in the show notes below and listen to the full first episode. But Jack is back, welcome. So my question for you is really simple what have you seen that works the best for not only growing on Instagram, but converting viewers into paid customers? Because we’re not just marketing, because we want to have thousands and thousands of followers.
Speaker 2:
And it’s not just post and pray, right? Nope, it’s really not, although I’m going to tell you, I lived in the post and pray for years because I couldn’t sad them. Sitting down and creating a content calendar because I am very busy. I’m also ADHD. Sitting down is challenging. I’m like, oh my God, I have to work somebody. I’m a creative, I need to. I’m a peacock. You gotta let me fly? I don’t think, so Hold on.
Speaker 1:
I’m asking you to give you I’m going to ask chat.
Speaker 2:
As long as you’re posting and praying every single day, sure you’re going to grow. However, I really highly recommend sitting down and batching content, and this is like I mean this might be taboo for people that like to schedule things out you are going to get the best results if you’re actually pushing the button and posting and staying on Instagram. So one, I would say, posting five days a week, posting with purpose, right, instead of post and pray, let’s post with purpose. So what is your business? What are you trying to do? Let’s have five content pillars, three content pillars. Honestly, if you only got three, it’s fine.
Speaker 2:
You create your content pillars. You create your content and then you post daily, and daily I mean, I don’t post daily on the weekends, it’s all kid stuff, it’s secrets inside my life, whatever it is, and it’s not very intentional. Like, hey, my name is Jack Keller, I’m sitting down to teach you how to knit today. I don’t know how to knit, so I don’t teach you that. However, you life of real. So if I sit down, I have my content pillars, I create my content calendar ie, what am I posting every day? And aligning it with those pillars so it makes sense, and then you’re actually getting yourself in there or pay someone. Pay someone if you hate it. If you hate it, pay someone. I say it over and over and over again because it’s stealing your joy and your time where you could be better serving in the space that you’re excellent at in your zone of genius, right, don’t get stuck in the zone of excellence.
Speaker 2:
So when you do that really priming your audience, like being on before liking, loving I call it love bombing or like it kind of looks like stalking a little bit. Don’t be a stalker. But if you’re like I just liked all of my stuff, 10 posts in a row, well, I’m not only like one. I probably haven’t seen your stuff in a while and I wanted to see your stuff and I want Instagram to show me it. So I’m love bombing. I am liking a bunch of stuff, commenting a bunch, telling the algorithm hey, I’m online. And then, two, I want to see these people’s stuff and then three, boom, I primed my audience to post. Right, algorithm rewards us, instagram rewards us for being online present.
Speaker 2:
So you have these businesses that will say, hey, you get real time posting from me or you get, you know, meta scheduling posts. There is a difference and there’s a difference in your audience. Now that, or how many views you’re going to get. Because, guess what? Right after you post every single day with purpose from your content pillars that you’ve created and laid out, you are going to like your own post. I know it’s horrible, but I’m the only one that liked it. Like your own post, you’re going to like it. I take the caption, like the caption that I wrote, and I copy it and I paste it directly into the comments. So not only did I like it, I commented my caption as a comment, because what that does, and so okay, yeah, what does it do?
Speaker 2:
Oh, it’s wild. I’m such a nerd I could geek out on this stuff, so okay.
Speaker 1:
By the way, chat said that peacocks do fly, just not very sure?
Speaker 2:
Yeah, that’s right. Little, flying, a little bit at a time, fly from one day to the next into the feet, yeah, and so, like I said, I could geek out on this. So the algorithm rewards us for being online, being consistent, posting in the moment, engaging with other accounts, and you’re like this is so much work. You’re right, it is, it truly is. And You’re right, it is, it truly is. And that’s why, when people are looking to these social media marketing agencies, it’s like you can have a cookie cutter business and you can pay, and you can do that, and you can pay a little bit of money to have that, and that’s fine, as long as you have a presence.
Speaker 2:
If you have an online business, you have a storefront, brick and mortar. You need an Instagram these days, or don’t do one at all. Just have your website and answer calls, and that’s fine too, because what happens is I see these, these companies, start an Instagram and they post one time and that was in 2022. Well, google them and they’re still in business and they’re getting reviews and they’re there. You know, doors are open. Guess what? Your Instagram tells me that your business closed down, just delete the old.
Speaker 2:
Instagram. If you don’t want to run it or delete, pay someone to do it for you and you can just afford to post, time-wise, one time a week. Or money-wise pay someone one time a week. We offer all sorts of packages. It still says my doors are open. This is a legitimate business. That is the game we play. This is a world we live in, it’s business, and so the more time you spend on Instagram, the more Instagram rewards you. Therefore, more followers. Your stuff is going to be shown to more people. I mean, there’s so many tiny hacks and knowledge and, like I said, I geek out on this because the algorithm is reading it. You know SEO, search engine optimization. I actually used to sell that in 2009.
Speaker 1:
Oh.
Speaker 2:
I know. I graduated college and I got into an SEO company and I love sales. I was like so it’s spiders. This is the easiest way of people like, oh, I hate SEO. I don’t understand it. What are you talking about?
Speaker 1:
Spiders crawling your website. Jamie might be asking that.
Speaker 2:
So each night, google sends out iPhone spiders Because if you’re watching this video you can see my fingers are like ding ding, ding, ding ding. They’re reading. Right, they are, they’re reading the code. They’re scanning, scanning, scanning. Does the code behind match the code in front? Okay, and I’ll throw this all the way back to my Instagram post and caption and comment and I’ll tell you why. Does it match up? Yes, okay, so they’ve done the work. They other websites Did they link back.
Speaker 2:
The more legitimacy you have on your website that the spiders can read, the higher you can naturally get your Google ranking right. That’s what it is. So spiders front and back of your website, that’s what it is. Well, if you transfer that over to Instagram, I don’t know if they have spiders or they have something else. I don’t know right, but the way I see it is the more times that those words like coding, it’s reading the coding, the more time those words are there, the more it can be read by the spiders, so the more it’s going to show it. All the systems are very similar.
Speaker 2:
That’s my easy breakdown, because I’m not techie, but I understand sales and reading and algorithms and data and things like that. So what I do with that is I go ahead and I take my caption. If it’s a real. I put the caption actually right on the right on Sorry, my hi, I love you so much. Nope, I love you my children. Just sorry, hi, this is my life. My son just got off the bus and he doesn’t understand the get out hand signal.
Speaker 1:
I know right, my son just got off the bus and he doesn’t understand the get out hand signal.
Speaker 1:
I said I know right, my son just opened the door a moment ago and he had like his blanket and he’s like hold on, try it off camera and like he’s opening the door more because apparently I’m like, stop behind the scenes, that’s okay like this can stay in the show, because I had one lady who I remember early on, so sometime last year, and she had said you know, it’s refreshing that you talk about your family on the podcast, because I felt like the longest being guests, or even on my own show. It’s taboo.
Speaker 2:
I’m like it’s taboo that the listener would know that, like you and me are like real people, that we have a family that we don’t just sit here behind like our screen 24 hours and like we, we can’t talk about family or our beliefs or anything like it encourages people that want to start a podcast that think, oh my gosh, I don’t have the perfect studio space, I don’t have a quiet like my. My life is never quiet. Now the dog’s in here he’s going to start barking at some like an elf, uh. But when I hear that when I listen and watch, I’m like those are my people. Yeah, those are my people. Now I’m gonna listen more because it just seems unattainable. Right, yeah, this is. This is real life real life.
Speaker 1:
It’s the spring break and the kids are home yes, you were saying, you were saying watching the caption as that first comment, because then the spiders see. Yeah, you know about alt tags I have heard that when you, before you finish a post, you scroll down and there’s like the alt, which is the alternative text for your image. Is that what?
Speaker 2:
you’re talking about. Yeah, I just go ahead and they often move things on Instagram. So if you hear like, oh, alt tags, we said it was at the bottom, now it’s going to be at the top right, you’re never going to find, just google it. If you can’t find it, because you might be listening to this in a year and you’re like it doesn’t exist, it probably does. They probably just renamed it by now, but at this current stage, in April 2025, it is alt text.
Speaker 2:
Like you said, I take the entire caption and I put it in the alt text oh, okay, and then I also put it. If I’m making a reel, I put it directly, like when I’m in the building phase and I’m on there, I put the whole caption right on the reel and then I drag it down to the bottom right corner and I hide it. So if you’re yeah, it’s now those words, I actually have a reels course that I created. It tells all of these things I don’t know, it’s like 200 bucks or whatever. It’s like the ultimate to all of this stuff. But you, you again, you have to want to do it and if you don’t want to do it, don’t buy the course. Buy it or you can buy it and give it to your VA and make them do it.
Speaker 2:
Because I tell them don’t waste your time, don’t waste your time, because it is a full-time job. Learning it frustrated the heck out of me, but if I start something I have to figure it out. I’m like I will ask the system themselves. I don much time on this, however, in wild drag it right there and now, boom, those spiders are reading hey, the words are on the actual screen, the words are in the alt text, the words are in the comment, in the caption, in the comments, and then final is you go ahead and you add that comment. So you’re going to add it to your story. Okay, no, when you add you’re sharing a reel to your story, you go ahead and click add the story. Well, you’re gonna go ahead and you can actually hold down. I think it’s a slide right or hold down at this time. It changes every time I turn around. But on the actual comment, yeah, hold down on it and you can add the comment to your story, that caption literally everywhere, in five places. Yeah, isn’t that wild. And you’re like what the heck now? I mean when you do this and you post.
Speaker 2:
I went kind of crazy a couple years ago or less. Yeah, a couple years ago now. I did a challenge for myself and I was like I’m gonna figure this out because I was Facebook all day long and that’s my generation. I’m like I love Facebook. Facebook does. I’ve got Facebook on lock. Instagram frustrated me, me and I was like, okay, but there’s a whole different world out there of people that I can connect with. That I know it. It was just bothered me. So I I did three reels a day for a month and I wrapped everything. It was ridiculous. I mean, I have four kids. You know how busy I am, but I was hiding in the bathroom at 10 o’clock one night and I just did them three in a row, bump, bump, bump, bump, because I was like I am going to do this. I committed to this. Well, in a couple of months, I gained like 30,000 followers.
Speaker 1:
Wow.
Speaker 2:
Then I was in a groove. So then, when I scaled it back, I was posting once a day. We’ll get. I got rewarded a ton for being on. I learned about remixes, I learned about hashtags, I learned about all these. I was down the rabbit hole. Now, for my free time, I stalk other social media marketing and I start and I watch reels on how to make reels better. That’s all I just. It’s fun. That’s like my. That’s my decompression time. People do other apps to watch short videos. I watch short videos on how to hack the algorithm on a daily basis. Isn’t that crazy? It’s mind-blowing.
Speaker 1:
That’s why we called this episode what Instagram Actually Wants. If you Want to Grow.
Speaker 2:
Okay, so do you have another question? If not, I have another thing I want to share. Do you have another question? If not, I have another thing I want to share, do you? Know. No, go ahead. I think that’s great if you want.
Speaker 1:
You mean the social media manager doesn’t have another question. She’s in charge of posting on our account, so better about posting, but this is exciting to to hear this.
Speaker 2:
What’s the thing?
Speaker 1:
What’s the thing you want to share?
Speaker 2:
Okay, with the planning, I will say I don’t want to skip over here yet because this is I’m just going to hold this little nugget. If you’re watching, I don’t want to lose it, so I’m just going to hold this nugget right here. But with the planning, don’t get, don’t spend so much time planning that you don’t. Don’t do it once a month. Plan out for the month and then be done and just keep it super simple. Y’all know chat gpt. However, I highly recommend that you make it sound like you are speaking in your captions so when people read it, they hear your voice, that gpt is great in the pinch. Claude, whatever, ai, greco, whatever you want to use. However, I want to hear your voice when you’re doing your, your captions, and so you want to go over to chat gpt, get an idea from it, then rewrite it. So it’s you.
Speaker 2:
It’s creative stimulation. That’s what I call it. Ai is just creative stimulation. It should not be copy paste. It shouldn’t. It doesn’t represent anybody. It’s a reference for a lot and you won’t connect with your audience. You just won’t. So that’s what I highly recommend spend like one hour batching content for the whole month. That’s it. Write out your captions. You can figure out and you can hide in the bathroom at 10 pm like I did. It’s great, you’ll get it all done, but and then the next thing, right beyond all of that, is remixes. Have you guys done remixes? I get so excited zero.
Speaker 1:
Never I’ve had my editor make them like in the video editing software, but I’ve never actually used the remix of Instagram.
Speaker 2:
So remix? Now what remix is is you’re actually taking in viral videos something that speaks to your content pillar, maybe something that makes you laugh. I personally love old people. I do. I love them so much. Like I said, they’re just. I think they’re so smart and funny and they can say whatever they want.
Speaker 2:
I’m like, why can’t I say that? Well, cause I’m not 90. 90 people are like, yeah, they can’t say that, but they do, so just walk away, tiptoe, right. My audience knows I love old people because what I did was I whatever video I find so funny or touching or moving or whatever. So, but I’ll stay on that humor because, people, how do you sell things when you make people feel things? Okay, it’s not your best, it’s not that, it is literally when you can make people feel. And so when I feel something on a video that I’m watching and it’s viral and I’m like, oh my God, this, if you go to my I think I have it pinned to the top it’s this old guy. He trips his friend, he falls. The old man runs away. He looks like a leprechaun when he’s running away. He’s this cutest little oldest person and it’s really inappropriate Swears.
Speaker 1:
It says the F word.
Speaker 2:
Don’t play it right now, and I know that, but I do cuss. I’m trying to get better. I grew up in Massachusetts, so it’s just the thing we don’t swear at me, just it’s just the way it flows in our verbiage and I’m like, oh, that’s not very classy for a lady, but it makes me laugh, especially when old people fall or swear or dance. And so if I feel something off this short clip video, what I do is I literally take it and you hit the three dots here. Let me go, okay, and again, this would change right. I’m gonna walk you through it.
Speaker 1:
I’m looking at taking.
Speaker 2:
I’m hitting the three dots on one of your videos too had three dots and then in there up top you see these options across the top. Again, these will probably be remixed. Click it and then up pops a reel, ready to go right. So now I’m ready. Yeah, that’s a remix. So again, this is the biggest hack in history. I swear They’ll probably now cut it out because we’ve nailed it and figured it out. So, but now to post this. Instagram says you have to put something on it. So I’m like, okay it, I don’t have to do anything else, I just put some crying. Oh oh my, yeah, that’s the cussing parent one. So that one too. That went over. That could over almost close to two million views. And so I say the effort right, put crying, laughing faces on it.
Speaker 2:
So see how I and then, you make them smaller, move them. You can actually move up, move them off the screen. This is what I was talking about with the alt or with the caption right there and click next Boom.
Speaker 2:
Now you have a remix, you have your own reel and you can do this. So I repurpose my own content. The other day I had nothing to post, so I was like I got to post. I have to get back to every day. We’ve just been busy, jack, remix your own content.
Speaker 2:
What that’s doing is you’re taking all of the views that you already have, all of the stuff that’s already telling Instagram hey, this video is going, this video is exciting, and in the comment you don’t have to do a big, long caption, do nothing. But if this is you and do a call to action, if this is you, or send this to a friend. I always say do a call to action, send to a friend, save this video right now. Currently they change it every month. They’re rewarding for sends. It used to be saves Last month. They were big into whatever video got saved, because you can see how many times it’s been sent, how many saves, how many yada yada. Last year it was saved, this year it’s sent Because when you like a video, first thing I do the top three people. I’m like sending to my husband, sending to my best friend, sending to you know, jess wellness.
Speaker 1:
When you really like a video, that’s what you do.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, exactly. So now they’re rewarding for how many times it’s being sent. So so when you’re looking at it, you’re like, okay, so your call to action should be send this to a person that gets it.
Speaker 2:
That’s it, that could be your whole direction perfect, right, and so remixing is really truly like unlocked everything people like. Well, what if someone? What if someone says, like you stole my video? Also, there’s the ability to turn remixing off. So if you’re the creator, you can turn it off. If you don’t want people remixing your stuff For me, I don’t care. If you’re going to remix my stuff, someone’s going to find me. Thank you for doing my work.
Speaker 2:
Right and she gives him credit and I’m like no, it gives credit because you could look at the remix, you can try it and then it will show you all of the remixes that have already been created. So in my course, I’m like the remix hack and I honestly didn’t learn that anywhere. I learned that because I remixed a video by accident, playing with all the features in that month oh, okay and I saw, and every time I would laugh so hard I was like I gotta share that.
Speaker 2:
and then I was like, well, how do I share a video on Instagram? And I know I was trying to screen, record and trying to do all I’m like this has got to share that. And then I was like, well, how do I share a video on Instagram? And I was trying to screen, record and trying to do all I’m like this has got to be a better way. And then I found the remix button.
Speaker 1:
I was like oh my gosh. I mean they should listen, because these are good. Really good, yeah, and you got 60,000 followers on Instagram.
Speaker 2:
And I’m telling you I’d call it my fake account because I just remix things, I play with different algorithm hacks and so, of course, and I post about my family. Everyone’s like, well, that page is a little inconsistent. I was like that’s like my tester page, my real page, that’s where you’ll learn about my life, that’s where I’ll put stuff about the conference. I’ll put stuff about BFF, like all of my life encompassing. If you’re like Jack, you do too many things and go over to BFF page, it’s only BFF, it’s just. It’s just our events. You want social media? Go to the mission social page. They’re all organized in the way they need to be organized to communicate effectively to my audiences.
Speaker 2:
But I mean this guy, I mean yeah, I mean I’m telling you how many times you get distracted if you’ve never gotten a message in the cloud and then he pops on. I think it’s so funny. So like, what are you doing? Like it’s a man in a pillowcase or a woman? I, I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t care, it’s funny. I would remix that because I thought something that’s great okay, yeah, those are life hacks, those are hacks we’re gonna stop here.
Speaker 1:
Where does the listener go to follow your instagram account? Can you say it one more time?
Speaker 2:
I mean, yeah, jackkallaher, j-a-c-k-a-l-a-h-e-r. And on there you can follow all the other things, my website’s on there. You can follow the bff one, you can follow the mission social. The mission social is funny. I only just started it because my client were like you don’t have an Instagram for your Instagram like for your social media marketing business?
Speaker 1:
and I was like good idea oh yeah, I should, yeah, but I was like why do I need that?
Speaker 2:
I have enough other accounts. Like I got work to do, I don’t have time to be running that Instagram. If you want to work with me, work with me. Look at my work on all these other pages right.
Speaker 2:
I know what I’m doing and it’s funny because the oh, you did just start this one in december 26th of 2024 yeah, just now, and I don’t even like, and I just I just started paying my team to run that for me because I don’t have time. But it’s very social media and marketing specific, which is great, but I I like the like funny, feel good. So we do some remixes on there. But for all my clients, there’s my other dog, don’t mind him, it’s just really loud.
Speaker 1:
It’s time you’ve been in there for a long time.
Speaker 2:
He’s a hundred pound great pyrenees, and this one’s a hundred pound pyrenees lab mix.
Speaker 2:
Oh my goodness that’s a lot of pounds yeah, so yeah, they can follow on all of those. But I’m telling you if you can figure out remixing and it’s not easy and but I’m telling authentic marketing, which is what I love, right, authentic marketing, and how that gives people just another level of like into your humor, into your and you’re not having to recreate these videos like I’m not gonna go step my face in the pillowcase I would, I don’t have time and I don’t have an extra pillow, you know, but they want to have an extra pillow. I’m like my pillows cost money and I need them.
Speaker 2:
I have a huge family, but yeah, I mean, there’s so many things and I do have, like I said, I do my two hour strategy sessions, I do my intensive days, I I do my coaching. If you want me to speak on stage, that’s apparently where I’ll go one day. But social media marketing I have. I have brick and mortar, but I’ve run all my businesses online for so long. I don’t know why brick and mortar I attract them, but I think it’s honestly because of bff and I’m local and they need help.
Speaker 1:
so yeah, yeah, well geez thank you for sharing and I’ll put that link up in the show notes below, especially if you’re a listener. If you want a social media like strategy coaching session from Jack, that link will be down in the show notes below too, and thank you for sharing.
Speaker 2:
I get so excited about this stuff. I’m like who are you? This, you know.
Speaker 1:
These are great hacks I’ve never heard of of.
Speaker 2:
I think most of those any questions you guys had just ask me literally ask me. I’ll take voice message me so we’ll get each other’s like phone numbers. After voice message, two minute conversation. I can walk you through all it’s so fun, thank you. Well, thank you for being on the podcast. Oh, it’s here anytime. I loved it. Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1:
Absolutely.
Speaker 2:
Until you see us or hear from us next time, be blessed and we will talk to you soon. Take care.
Speaker 1:
All right, bye, bye.
