I’m looking forward to talking about this today because it’s something I get asked about quite a lot. After reading this I hope you will have a really clear understanding of how you can stand out from the crowd on social media. You might be a bit surprised with what I’m going to say to you.
We all know that social media is a noisy old place. There’s over three billion people who use it and who are sharing content every single second, of every single day. But don’t worry that doesn’t mean that you are trying to compete with three billion people, nor are you trying to attract three billion new customers. Goodness me, can you imagine if that actually happened. No, we don’t want that to happen. I want to talk about this sticky tape, quick fix effect that happens all the time.
I often get asked how someone can grow their business and how someone can grow their social media followers thinking that that will lead to growing their business. That question of how do I grow my social media followers is actually just looking for a quick fix and a bit of sticky tape to hold things together. The thing is, there just aren’t any quick fixes. It doesn’t work like that.
I can’t just say oh, here’s how to quickly grow your followers and then hand you two or three things. If I looked through your social media, I would be able to come up with a list of things that you’re doing, that if you stopped doing them you’d get better results. It’s always a bigger picture of all these things. Quick fixes don’t exist.
I know there are loads of people out there on social media who will sell you 10,000 followers by next week programmes, or cheat sheets, but it’s not going to help you. No, quick fix like that is going to work and it’s just adding more noise to what’s going on. We want less noise. We want to stand out from the noise. We don’t want more stress and anxiety and falsely promising a quick fix or the quick fix, just not working.
It isn’t helping business owners like you. It’s something I really care about it’s always made me really cross that people are saying, you know, just download this cheat sheet and you’ll have ten thousand followers by next week or if you just do this one thing or if you just buy this template – it just doesn’t work like that because each business is unique. You are unique and this one size fits all approach just doesn’t work.
The best thing I can do when someone asks me the question of how to increase their social media followers is answer it with a question, I would need to find out actually what’s going on with them and their business. It might be that they’re worried about the number of customers that they have, and they think that the best way to get more customers is to get more followers on social media but growing your social media accounts isn’t going to solve the problem of wanting more customers or needing more customers. I would need to know more about you before I could really kind of help with that. As I said, you’re unique and your businesses is unique.
I can’t just give you this off the shelf solution to things. This will happen to you in your business as well. You will get people saying to you, how do I quickly fix so and so but you need to do the same to them. You need to answer that question with a question to try and find out what they’ve already done to try and solve whatever it is that they want the quick fix for to try and solve the problem.
Then you can dig a bit deeper and see why they’re not already solving the problem, despite the fact that they thought they knew what they needed. Quick fixes and sticky tape just won’t work. You have to be really careful that you’re not becoming one of those gurus on social media who sells quick tricks that don’t really work. You keep trying to sell them, giving away these quick fixes but it can ultimately cheapen your expertise and you don’t want to do that. It also won’t help you stand out from the crowd on social media because there are so many people doing it. So please, don’t turn your knowledge and expertise into a commodity. Don’t get known for cheap tricks and gimmicks.
I want you to keep three questions in mind before you post anything to social media.
- Does this content you’re about to share create a longing or an aspiration or a desire for your products or services? Is it making people curious about what you do? Will they want to click through to your website and find out more or send you a DM about it?
- Does this content fit into the know-like-trust cycle? The know-like-trust cycle is the journey that we all take with anybody new that we connect with. First of all, we get to know them, then we get to like them, then we trust them, then we buy. This is a cycle that all of your followers will go through. Is your content helping people to get to know you? Is it sharing your personality? Does it fit with your overall business strategy and brand, or is it some crazy way out there thing that’s like, wow, what was that? What was that now?
- Does this content really help people or is it just filler? You think you need to post something in order to stand out from the crowd
Ask yourself those three questions. If you look at your social media posts, how many of these posts actually answer one of these questions and you can be brutally honest with yourself here. How much of your content is intrigue? How much is building the know-like-trust cycle and how much is helping people?
I would imagine that the majority of your content is to help people. The bits that create desire for your products and services is probably quite low. I bet the real stories about you injected with your personality and your vulnerability are really pretty low. If you’re not showing a rounded picture like that, you won’t stand out from all the noise, from all everybody else.
If you’re not feeling your content from your heart, if it’s not genuine, then no one’s going to care. If you don’t really believe it, then no one’s going to care what you’re doing. Now is your time to turn that around.
If you’re known for tips and tricks already, that’s fine, too. I’m not telling you to go back and delete loads of stuff. You can just change it now. You can just start from now to think about it differently. You can be more conscious with your content and you can be more strategic. Today is a good day to do that.
You’re not in business to give everything away for free. You have clients behind your paywall who get all the good stuff, who get all your support, who get all your love and attention and knowledge and everything in your head. You don’t need to give all that stuff away for free as well – it’s what people should be paying for. That’s your unique knowledge.
If you’re sharing content that creates desire for people to tap into more of your knowledge, you’re going to make more sales without giving it all away for free. That’s the simple formula that’s going to help you stand out from the crowd and make you a big winner in terms of your sales and your turnover. Don’t forget that even if people don’t comment, they may well still be watching you.
The more you share real information that helps people, that builds the know, like and trust cycle and most importantly, creates a desire for your product and services. The more you’re going to stand out from the crowd and the more you’re going to build this wonderful, glorious, happy niche of followers who are wanting to become customers of yours.
