THEN drive sales!
In this blog post, I share with you what I believe is the most valuable gem of everything I teach from my experience of building a community around a brand of over one million people. And I attracted that community 100% organically. I did not boost any posts, I did not pay for ads, and I certainly did not “buy likes or followers. It is a real community, and a highly engaged one. Everything here with help you Grow Your Following.
Context
In my blog post, The Real Purpose of a Post: “5 to Keep Your Brand Alive” I mention the topic of Value, and how you need to Be Helpful as one of the five crucial elements. I also mention that you need to Be Inclusive. And I share the fact that this particular element is what skyrocketed the numbers of my lifestyle brand, Drum Talk TV. They continue to soar today in our 8th year, far surpassing anything our industry peers are doing. “Industry peers” is a fluffy way of saying competition.
What to Avoid to Grow Your Following
The whole idea is to post content that avoids what is depicted in the image above, which is essentially this:
You cannot build a community of people in love with your brand if all you do is hammer them over the heads with what’s for sale. This should account for only about 20% of your content, 30% at the most. When I teach this in person or live online, I see all the blank stares looking back at me. The faces basically say, “What the heck are we supposed to post?”
And I get it. We all got social media channels to promote what we/our business has to offer. But if that makes up the majority of what you post, you will lose your audience. This can happen in a couple of different ways. Let’s use Facebook as an example. They have clicked “Like” or “Follow” for your page. But then you wear them out with posting nothing but “sales r advertising content.”
The User Experience Mechanics
Now, remember, they see your content in their newsfeed(if you are lucky – that’s another upcoming article). They may not bother to go to your page to unlike or unfollow. When they see the post that pushes them to their breaking point, they may simply click “Hide all posts,” and then it leaves their Like and Follow statistic on your page. The amount of followers stat on your page doesn’t matter if they are not following your content or engaging with you.
This is why there are so many big companies–and even entertainers–with huge followings, but if you look down the timeline of their page, there is little to no engagement on their posts. And it’s a “Timeline,” not a “wall.” Facebook hasn’t called it a wall in 6 years.
Guaranteed To Grow Your Following
So, take it from a guy with over one million followers and a reach of a few more million people a month: It’s all about the engagement. And if all you do is advertise to them, there is nothing to engage with. We have an average of 500K to 750K post engagements every seven days:
The post engagement of your content is representative of how interested your audience is in what you/your brand have to say. Please take a moment and do two things and then I will show you the magic of the 80% content category:
- Look at your overview of your Facebook Page and see what you have for these same statistics above. There will be a few other categories, but these are the once that matter the most. By the way, if you don’t have a Facebook page for you as a business, get with the program, seriously. It’s the largest online population of people and your customers are there.
- If you work for a company and don’t have access to the insights, you can still do the next step as a telling exercise.
- Look at your last 20 posts on your Facebook business page and calculate how many are advertising something.
“Engagement” is comments, shares, and emoji’s on each post. Emoji’s mean nothing because you can’t really learn anything from them. Comments are where you and your audience learn from each other. And it’s where you build a relationship with them. It’s also where you answer questions (imagine that!).
Shares are how you grow organically. If your posts are not getting shares, people are not finding your content compelling enough to share it with like-minded people. When people see a lack or reach and engagement, they freak out and eat Facebook’s (or whatever other platforms) carrot: Boost this post to reach more people. Big Mistake.
The Rub with the Boost
Think about this for a moment: If your post is not getting much engagement organically, how will boosting help it? Essentially, it means you are paying Facebook or whomever money to show something that’s not working to more people. That doesn’t fix it. It just shows more people what’s not working. This “strategy” does not fall into the category of Content to Grow Your Following.
If you apply what I teach it is guaranteed to work. You will absolutely have content to grow your following and if that’s happening, you will be reaching more people and getting more engagement. It will make it easier to drive more traffic of people interested in what you are offering when you post the 20% Sales Category posts.
Becoming a Content Factory
So, here’s how to succeed at becoming a content factory that won’t wear your audience out. The answer is so big and so easy to understand once you see it, that I can tell you in two words. This is always an eye-opening forehead-slapping moment when I work with people on developing exceptional content that get’s results:
COMMON INTERESTS
Yep, that’s what I call the foundation of “Community -Building Content.” This is what makes up the 80% category of what you are to post if you want to grow your following and keep them paying attention. Because, now you will have a captivated audience when you do post the 20% category of sales content. And now you will have earned their trust and built brand love. When most of your content is made up of common interests between the audience and your brand; what you do; what your expertise is, that is a game-changer.
Examples of Content To Grow Your Following
If you are in the music industry in any way, post about artists within the genres and instruments that relate to you.
As a brand of cookware, you would post about recipes and nutrition.
A bicycle store or brand could post about maintenance, customization, and amazing bike trip stories.
A life coach could post about the most common hurdles people face and success stories.
A business coach could use the same format.
And make them part of the experience; the Inclusive factor. When you post about any of the community-building content categories, ask your audience to share the experience they have had with it. I go into more depth ion this element as well in my “The Real Purpose of a Post: Five to Keep Your Brand Alive” article.
Are you beginning to get the picture? Translate this strategy into whatever you/your company provides. Sometimes the sales category messaging can seep into the community-building content category. This is OK, if it’s done correctly. That’s a whole new lesson.
Thanks for checking out this article. Apply what I reach and it absolutely will work. Be sure to poke around some more and subscribe to my list to receive tips, notifications about FREE live online workshops with me, course discounts, and more! You can also learn more about what I have to offer as far as full courses here, and if you are interested in just a focused workshop on Content to Grow Your Following or any of my other blog topics, send me an email through here to set up a complimentary video conference consultation. I encourage you to learn more about me by going through the site as well.
Happy Marketing!
