An Empty Audience

When it comes to social media...many of us are “preaching” to an empty audience. Why? Because we mistreat the relationships we have in front of us.

On social media, we are protected by our computer, so we will typically be more bold in the things we say and ask. That’s why you’ll see people fight about politics on social media, but they would never say those things to that person if they were sitting across a table from one another.

We hate making cold calls, we hate knocking doors, but we are totally cool with just asking for business blatantly on social media.

If we are being honest with ourselves, we are ruining our influence because of what we choose to post. We just go about asking for business and try to convince people how awesome we are without actually adding or creating value to others. 

As I taught marketing more and more, I reverse engineered what I’ve done for the last few years in order to help teach others in an easy to understand way, and it led me to this pyramid.

For us to take advantage of our influence from our personal accounts, using this pyramid will show super helpful!

There are six zones: 

#1 - Engagement. 

This is the most practical way to post on our personal accounts. Don’t try to make this about business. Simply make it something people will be passionate about or excited to engage with. For example...ask if they are a dog or cat person and comment below. You’ll have a ton of comments. If you are passionate about food, have people vote on what is their favorite restaurant. The list goes on and on. Don’t over think this...just make sure it’s super engaging. You may even feel “unproffesional” when you do this, but remember, this is your personal page, stop being so ”official” all the time. You should post at least a post of week for the simple reason to get people to like and comment on your post. 

#2 - Value. 

After you begin to increase your engagement and people are paying attention to you, you can move to adding value. Adding value comes in many forms. You could post an inspirational quote. You could interview a new restaurant owner. You could provide tips for your industry, parenting, marketing, healthy living, etc.  Value is really easy...when you stop just thinking about yourself. Think about what you are passionate about and start there.

#3 - Influence. 

As people start to notice you more (engagement), then they start to enjoy what you post (value), then you begin to develop influence. Influence is when shares really start to happen. People begin to see you as an authority in their life. They will start asking you questions online and when they see you in person. They will start tagging others in your posts. These are the signs that you have influence over your online audience. When this begins to happen, we want to turn up the value and begin to implementing “jab, jab, jab, right hook.” This was created by Gary V. He wrote a book about marketing and how to not wear people out. When you know you’ve entered the influence zone, start adding value 3-4 posts at a time, then throw your hook (which is whatever you sell). Your audience is far more open to this because you’ve added so much value up to now.

#4 - Vision. 

After we know that influence exists between ourselves and our audience, we can begin to cast vision for our business. This is where most make the biggest mistake. Most people will try and bypass the first three and go straight to vision. Because it’s easy. But nobody cares about your vision when they don’t know a reason to care about you. We have to earn the right to cast vision to others. If I am just constantly talking about “my why,” people will get annoyed if I haven’t given them a reason to care. Earn that right. I promise it’s worth it. And here’s how this could look...as someone in sales, we all have sales goals. Most of us just tell others what they are, then it can seem arrogant or braggy. Or we just post success picture after success picture thinking that makes people want to work with us. But without the earned influence, it can actually work against us. What if you put your kids in Mickey Mouse ears and post a picture about if you hit your sales goals, your family is going to Disney World, now you have given others reason to be bought in. Who wants to live in a world where kids don’t get to meet Mickey. Casting vision the right way is imperative to the growth of our business online.

#5 - Walking Ambassadors. 

When you move your sphere up the pyramid, a small amount of them will become walking ambassadors for you. These are the people who have referred you at least once, but usually they have sent people your way several times over. They may never have been your customer, but they are sold out to you. They believe in you as a person and they believe that what you are doing or selling to people really is beneficial. Be in front of these people constantly. Because if someone has referred you once, they could have referred you more if you were being more intentional with how you create value for them. The more of these you have in your pyramid, the more consistent your business becomes.

****DON’T MISS THIS**** 

If you will start treating social media more like coffee with a friend, your sales from social media will increase dramatically. If you wouldn’t say it at coffee, don’t say it on Facebook.  

Finally, do an assessment of your social media to this point. Go back through all of your posts for the last few months and ask one question...

Does this post cause someone to trust me more or less? If the answer to that question consistently becomes yes, you are on your way to doing great things through social media in your business. 

If this blog helped you, please comment, like and share. Have a great weekend, everybody!