Transcripts
1. Class Introduction: I think it's safe to say that social media has become a part of pretty much everybody's daily lives. And with that brands, personal brands and businesses have realized that they need to be building presences on these platforms. But with all of the update algorithm changes, new platforms come in along. Starting can be incredibly daunting. But for those of you looking to build a brand and an audience, I want to eliminate all of those worries that you might have and create that clear picture of where you need to start and what you need to do. So han, build that brand and that following that you truly desire. Hi guys, My name is Ethan bridge, and I have actually been building my brand and audience on social media for the past couple of years. I am the host of the social media marketing school podcast where I have thousands of people tune into my episodes weekly. And I'm the guy behind the Instagram page, the marketing Ethan, where in just over a year I've been able to amass over 40000 incredible followers. And today I want to teach you everything I have learned along that process with regards to building a loyal brand and audience on social media. So if somebody who is even struggling to pick your niche, wanting to know how to build a content strategy, what you actually need to do to build a brand on social media by brand, I don't just mean a logo, which is what many people will think branding is. I mean, everything below the surface. If you are somebody that's struggling with any of those, there is something for you in this class that you can take away and begin implementing into your own social media journey. So I hope this was an interesting introduction as to what to expect inside this class. And I hope to see you in the first module.
2. Picking your niche: So often on Instagram or pretty much any social media platform, We're told you need to pick a niche. But what people don't actually tell you is what you actually need to consider to come up with a conclusion as to what niche you are actually going to pick. So today, I wanted to talk through four different points that you need to consider so that you can actually pick a niche you want to create content for. So without any further ado, let's just dive straight into point number 1. And that is that you need to ask yourself, what do you actually enjoy? You need to remember that you are going to be creating content on this topic and talking about this content and creating a business around this niche for years or however long you end up doing this for. So if you hate what niche you pick, you have no chance in succeeding. If you want to stay consistent, if you want to continue to do this for years, you have to enjoy what you talk about. I have posted over 300 pieces of content. I have recorded over 190 podcast episodes all around the topic of social media marketing. Now if I did not enjoy this, I would never have been able to produce this much content. There would be no chance and nobody would actually like the content I created if I didn't enjoy what I talked about, because if it didn't enjoy what I talked about, it would be boring. It wouldn't show my enthusiasm, it wouldn't show my personality and people wouldn't actually be able to connect to that because of that. But because I do enjoy it, all of those qualities already. And it really helps increase the quality and the fact that people actually like consuming the content. I hope anyway. So please make sure whatever niche you pick, you actually enjoy what you're talking about. Because if you don't, you have no chance in succeeding. You won't want to come up with content ideas. You won't want to research what you're going to create the content on. You won't want to produce content every single day. You won't want to discuss this content topic with people. You wouldn't want to engage with people because why would you go out of your way to do the extra work and talk about that type of content with others. You just won't. So please do yourself a favor and actually pick something you're interested in. Everybody that ends up succeeding if you ask them, Do you enjoy what you do? They all say, yes, there's very few. There'll be a very, very tiny amount of people that may say no. But I do think is a very easy point to understand. So I'm not going to talk about it for any longer. Just pick a niche. Do you actually enjoy creating content on? Now point number 2, and this is one that actually many people forget to talk about. And that state you actually interleukin-2, how many content ideas or how much content can actually be created for the niche you pick. Because as I said, if you want to build something sustainable, if you want to build a business around this, if you want to actually grow an engaged audience over time, you need to be creating content for years. And if there's not enough content ideas, content types to talk about in order to do that. Then you've already set yourself up for failure because you're gonna get 67 months down the line and go, oh, I've exhausted everything that I can talk about. What on earth do I do now? And that's the last thing you want. You want to be able to go every single day ago, right Today, I'm going to be able to do this next week and they'll be able to do that. Oh, last week I made this mistake. So I'm going to create a piece of content on this. And you want to be able to keep up these content ideas for years. I've been creating content on Instagram for over a year now. I've been creating three podcast episodes a week for over a year now. And I've only scratched the surface with the content I've spoken about. If there weren't enough content ideas, I'd be struggling every single week to come up with three podcast episodes and content ideas for my Instagram. But luckily I've picked a niche that has so much to talk about. So never going to run out of ideas. I'm always, no matter how many years down the line, going to be able to come up with a piece of content to post. The great thing about social media marketing is that it's always evolving. There's always an algorithm change. There's always a new platform. There's always a new strategy to implement, you name it, and because it evolves over time, that brings in more content ideas. You don't want to pick a niche that isn't evolving, that isn't having new things bought into it. Because eventually all those content, ideas and content types will dry up and you'll get to a point where you go. There's nothing left for me to do. And you do not want that because that means you have to stop creating and therefore, you won't get to continue to produce and you won't be able to continue to attract an audience and you won't be able to continue to grow our business. So before you even start. Do yourself a favor, come up with content ideas for the next month, two months, three months if you have time to do so. And that should be a good indicator as to whether you can actually keep this guy up. Because if you're struggling to come up with content ideas for just the first month, that's probably a good indicator that you're not gonna be able to keep that up for years. But if you're easily able to come up with content ideas for the first month and you've got way more ideas and the bank that you can bring in and implement over the next few months after you're off to the races, you have to have very good star. So consider that. How much content is there that you can actually create for this niche. Point number three that I want you to consider, is that actually an audience for the content you are creating. Now this is a point that can be looked at from different perspectives because to be honest, there is an audience for everything. If you like something, then it's likely that there's other people out there that like it also. But there's obviously going to be. So Nietzsche's that have a larger audience than others. You don't want to pick something that's super, super, super targeted, that potentially there's only a few thousand people in the world that it applies to. Because then the chances of you finding those few thousand on social media is very slim. But if you get a bit broader with it, for example, MY social media marketing with a specific focus on Instagram itself. There are millions of people out there that this niche actually applies to. So I can be confident in knowing that when I'm creating this content, when I'm posting this content, that there is an audience for it. And because there's an audience for it, I know that I can build a following and a business around it. But if I wasn't sure as to how big that audience was and I was taking a guess, a stab in the dark. How many audience members there were? I wouldn't be as confident going into it. I would be thinking, is this really sustainable? Am I going to be able to build an audience, can attract a significant number of people that saw it, can actually build a business around it. These are some serious questions you have to ask yourself and be honest with it. Because you do want there to be enough people out there interested in what you're selling or what you're creating content on, so that you can actually make this sustainable over the long-term. If there's only a few thousand people interested in it, one, you've got to find these people to, that's only a few thousand people you could actually sell a product or service to should you want to monetize their audience. And it's not going to be sustainable over a long period because you're gonna exhaust that audience very, very quickly. But if there are a hundreds of thousands, millions of people that are interested in this topic, you're going to be able to attract these people for years and there's going to be new people that become interested in this topic also, which you will be able to bring in as well. So please pick a niche that has a significant audience number. Make sure that there is an audience for the content you're going to produce because you don't want to star. And then realize there's actually many people that are interested in this. I'm not going to be able to build something significant. Don't get me wrong. You don't have to build an audience of thousands, tens of thousand, twenty, thousand, hundred and thousands of people. You can build a very solid business with 8 thousand followers, even less. But you do want to be able to build this for years to come. You want to always be attracting new people. And if there's not always new people to attract is going to dry out very, very quickly. So please just consider this. Is there an audience for the content you are producing? Now the final point I want to mention, and this is one that is very business-related, but you also need to consider, is the niche you are picking actually monetizable. Most people who consume my content consume it because they want to actually build a business or make money on the social media platforms that they are using. So if you're hearing what I'm saying now, you probably need to think, okay, the content I'm creating is attracting an audience that I can actually make money from? Is there a product I can create? Is there a service that I can offer? In the majority of cases, the answer will be yes. But if you are in one of these very few cases where the answer is no. But you did want to build a business around the content you are creating. You need to reconsider, or you also might want to reconsider if maybe you can create some income from the content you create. But the income earning potential isn't as high as you want it to be. With social media marketing. There is a lot you can do. You've got affiliate marketing, you've got coaching, you've got digital products, you've got brand sponsorships, you name it. There are a ton of ways that you can create an income from creating content on social media marketing. But there will be other niches where they won't be as much of an opportunity. So before you start creating, before you pick your niche, ask yourself the question, can I make money from this in the future? This is, if you want to build a business, if you're doing this for fun, it's probably not a question you need to ask yourself because you're obviously not worried about the income that you may be able to produce. But if you're doing this with a reason of actually making some money and building a business, then this is a very, very important point to consider. Is there money to be made? Is there a product you can sell to the people that you attract with the content you can create is their service you can provide? Is there a way that you are able to monetize the audience you build from the content you create for this niche. Very simple question to understand, but one, you need to answer. And that does wrap up some points you need to consider before you pick your niche that you create content for on social media.
3. Questions to ask yourself before building your brand: Now, when I first started creating content on Instagram and social media as a whole, I didn't really think or have a proper focus on branding. And it wasn't until I did that, I saw that exponential growth in my account and people becoming genuine fans in the content and the message I was putting across to them before then, it was more or less just me creating content and then consuming it. Opposed to being a real community and a movement are trying to achieve something together. So building a brand isn't just having brand colors and, or having a logo and a website. It's about building something that people want to be a part of because it's bigger than themselves. So there are some certain questions that I asked myself, and this wasn't at the beginning of my journey. It's something that I realized throughout my journey that I needed to do if I really wanted to level up what I was creating. So I asked myself these questions and it's those questions I'm going to talk about. There are five of them and I'm going to go through each of them one by one. And these are questions that you do need to ask yourself when you are building your brand. And they are questions that you should revisit. They're not questions you asked yourself once. And then they are only answers because things may shift over time and consequently your answers may change. So every year or so, these are questions that you should ask yourself. And then your answers should then direct you to which avenues you go down with your content, with your messaging, with whatever you may be doing at that moment in time. So without any further ado, let's just dive straight into the first question, question number 1. What do I want to be known for? Now? This may seem like an incredibly broad question, but it's really, really important because if you can pinpoint this reason, pinpoint, we actually want to be known for it deciphers your whole messaging throughout your content on what you produce and what you strive towards. So ask yourself this question, what do you want it to be known for? Do you want to change perspectives towards a certain narrative? Do you want to create a movement in your niche? Do you want to better peoples lives in a certain way so that they can have more fulfillment. All of these different things that apply to your niche. This should be a question that you're asking yourself. Because as soon as you can pinpoint this, you know what you need to do. You can then begin building that roadmap to how you're going to achieve that so that you do become known for that. This is one of those questions that probably isn't going to shift too much overtime. You might come across something that you want to do instead or build upon what you've already done. But ultimately, this is your vision, this is your goal, this is what you want to achieve. So deciphering what you actually want to be known for in the very beginning is incredibly important for your branding because it pretty much encompasses everything you end up doing. So question number 1, what do I actually want to be known for? Question number two, who is my target audience? If you don't know your target audience, you're never gonna be able to track the right person. You're never gonna be able to leverage that audience, and therefore, you're never gonna be able to make any sales. This is more catered towards those people that are building a business, but not necessarily because you may be creating a movement or a vision or a community where you just want to attract certain people. But you still need to have a complete understanding of who those people are so that you can create content that is catered towards those individuals. Or you can outreach and find these people so that they then discover you and follow what you're doing. Now this is incredibly important before you even start anything, because if you pick a niche and you don't understand the people that are going to be attracted to what you're actually doing, then you're never going to attract anyone. Because knowing who your target audience actually is is going to allow you to create content, especially on social media. Social media is a contact game. You can create content that's cater to the needs and wants of this audience. When you solve problems of a specific audience, you're going to attract the right people. If you're creating content for a problem that isn't catered towards your target audience, then you're never going to attract the right person that's gonna consequently buy your product or service. So knowing who your target customer is or your ideal customer, creating content for that individual that is then going to attract them. And then you can assume that everybody who is following you on your journey on social media is someone that could be a potential customer or client in the future. So please ensure you have a complete understanding of who that target customer is. Cray a client avatar, literally write on a piece of paper who the exact person is that you want to be following you. How I would do they, what are they interested in? What are their visions? What are they trying to do? What are their goals? Write them down. Because when you know exactly who this person is, you know exactly what you need to create for them. And you can know exactly who you need to reach out to because you know exactly what you're looking for. But until you know exactly what you're looking for, you're going to be attracting random people who have maybe no real interest in actually what you're doing. They just follow you because they found you somewhat interesting, but they're never going to buy. You want people who are actually going to buy, are genuinely interested and therefore you can grow your business. So question number two, who is my target customer? Question number three, how do I describe myself and or my business? I've said and all my business because you could be creating a brand or company page, or you could be creating a personal brand. If you don't know how you would describe yourself, you then don't know how to portray yourself or the message or the enthusiasm within your content. You want to keep a consistent message. And if you don't know what you stand for and you don't know what you're actually like yourself, how would you expect someone else to be able to decipher that? You want a consistent opinion of your brand. You don't want someone coming in thinking one thing of you, someone else coming and thinking another thing and someone else think it another thing. All because your messaging and the way you put yourself across to these people was inconsistent. You need that consistency because if you describe your business in a way that is a game changer, a community build a movement. Then everybody that actually looks at your brand is gonna see that in the same way. So understanding how you would describe yourself allows you to channel that within your content, the way you portray yourself, the way you engage, the way you come across. And that altogether encompasses what your brand is perceived as by other people. So question number three, how do I describe myself and all my business? Question number four, and this is my favorite question out of all of the ones I'm going to mention on today's episode. So listen carefully. Why should someone buy from me opposed to somebody else? Because at the end of the day, this is business. This is a competition. You are competing for the attention. And if you can't crap that attention, somebody else is going to take that attention. So having a unique selling point, having a reason for somebody to buy from me, you opposed to somebody else, is so, so, so important. Because if you don't, there are always going to go with the competitor. And then you'll get no business. You'll gain no following your gain no audience. So having that reason is going to attract people to you and you specifically over somebody else. But it shouldn't be a case of 01 cheaper. That's not a unique selling point. If your unique selling point is that you are cheaper than only take somebody to come in and undercut your price and charge less than you lose all of your customers. Because that was your unique selling point. You were the cheapest, but now you're no longer the cheapest. And now all of your customers, because they are solely focused on price, are going to switch to that cheaper, new competitor. So having a proper, proper, unique selling point that tells people why they should buy from you opposed to somebody else, is vital, is one of the key rules of business. If you don't have a unique selling point, if you aren't giving your customers a reason to buy from you opposed to somebody else, then, then never going to buy from you in the first place because they're always going to buy from your competitor because they have a better, unique selling point in you. How does this translate to social media as well though? Why should someone for a your account opposed to somebody else's? This is why uniqueness on a social media is incredibly, incredibly important. And I'll always tell you never to copy another creator, seek inspiration, but never actually copy them. Because, why would someone follow you if you're copying another creator? When they can follow that original creator in the first place where the ideas are actually coming from. Because that's all they're going to do. But if you're unique, have your own message, have your own style, have something that you are known for, then people are going to follow you. So your uniqueness is incredibly, incredibly important. So make sure you have a reason for people to buy or follow you opposed to somebody else? Question number 5 and the final question of the episode, how do I want people to feel when they consume my content? This is something that shines through in all of your content, whether that be a carousel, single image or video, your stories, the way you share your message, the way you portray yourself. That is how people are going to fill when they actually consume your content. If your video and you are monotone and talking like this, and it's incredibly boring to listen to. And you're incredibly boring as a creator, as a presenter of that content, then the audience is going to be bought as well. But if you're enthusiastic and you're excited and you're happy, and you're genuinely showing interest in the content you're creating, then your audience is going to feel the same way. They're going to be enthusiastic and excited to actually consume it. Because that's how you're putting yourself across on the camera. And compare those things. Go back on the podcast episode and rewind it. That part when I was monotone and talking like this with no enthusiastic and then compare it to me talking like this, where I am showing enthusiasm. Which one makes you more motivated to listen to? Obviously, the one where I'm being more enthusiastic is simple. So you need to be thinking in your mind, how do I want people to feel when they consume my content? If you want to come across as really professional, make sure you are professional, suit and tie, if that's what it means. But you get what I mean. This can also translate into the language you use within your content or captions or carousels. If you want to be more lighthearted and jokey, have a few jokes in your carousels. If you want to be serious, make sure that your language is consistently serious. But something I would always do is create my content in a way that I would actually speak it, especially if it's written. If I'm trying to be someone that I'm not with the content I create them when they actually come to meet me in person or a calm in front of them on a video or my stories, then there could be incredibly confused if I come across really incredibly professional within my content and use long fancy words with my captions and all of this industry jargon. And then I come on video and I don't use that language. And I'm enthusiastic and creating content and the way I am now in the way I'm actually portraying myself, then it doesn't align to people gonna get confused and they're going to be thinking, right? Or they like that on how they write their carousels in real life, or are they like that, how they create video content I've just consumed? You've got to keep it consistent so that when people actually meet you, all consume your video content or consume that more personal aspect of the things you create. That it all aligned so that they know what they are getting from you. So think about it. How do you want people to feel when they consume your content? Because if you want them to feel excited, you need to be excited. If you want them to feel professional, you need to be professional. If you want them to be bored, speaking monotone like this. And then now people would be, you don't want that. You want them to be excited, to be enthusiastic. Be encouraging if you want them to be motivated BY motivational in the way you speak is as simple as that. I could list of all of these different examples for the rest of the day, but I'm not gonna do that because it would be incredibly boring. But that wraps up the five questions you need to ask yourself when you're building your brand. And like I said, ask yourself these questions every year of so your answers may change and therefore your content and the way you portray yourself on social media is going to have to change as well. You progress, people progress. You may not have thought your answers we're going to change. You may come back to the questions that they have and that's fine. That's business as personal development, that's personal growth. So ask yourself these questions. You will develop that brand, you improve that brand, we improve that message and your community will be more loyal to you. As a result.
4. Why you need a content strategy: Something that really, really surprises me is that a lot of people will just jump on social media with our plan whatsoever and just go with the flow every single day and just hope everything will eventually fall into place. They're just posting content every single day, picking ideas out the air. They've got no real strategy behind anything they're doing and consequently, they are just failing. And it's unlikely that things will fall into place. And that's why today, I'm going to explain exactly why you need a content strategy when you are trying to succeed in growing a brand on social media, there were four key points as to why you need one. And they are what I'm going to talk about in today's episode of Social Media Marketing School. So without any further ado, let's just dive straight into the first. And that is the, a content strategy gives you direction. If you don't know what you want to achieve or what you're aiming to achieve on social media, then you don't know what content you're going to need to produce. In order to get there. You're at point a, you want to be at point B, the content you produce is going to bridge the gap between those two points. But if you don't have a strategy and a layout of the content that you need to produce to bridge that gap. You're never going to be able to. Because if you don't know where you're going to get to and your content is all over the place. How are you expecting people to find you, follow you and help you to get to that point in which you want to get to, let's say you are a personal trainer and you want to get online clients to join your coaching program firm that you know, that your outcome you want to achieve is that you want to get clients to join your online coaching program. Now you need to think to yourself, right? What content do I need to produce in order to get those online coaching kinds? Now you're getting there. And then it's a case of finding those content topics for the content you are producing that is most likely to convert those clients to those online coaching clients that you desire. It's very simple, but you need to decide on an outcome that you're aiming to get too. Don't just posted hope that things will fall into place. Have an idea, where are you aiming to get? You can then work backwards and work out the content that you need to produce in order to get there. And now you have some form of direction with the content you are producing. The next great thing about a content strategy is that it gives you brand consistency. If you're listening to this podcast, it's likely that you've heard of GAVI Wagner, Chuck, He's one of the biggest guys when it comes to entrepreneurship. And a produces a hell of a lot of content on social media. If he has a solid content strategy and his brand consistency is phenomenal. You will notice that he talks about a lot of the same topics over and over and over again. And that's not because he's run out of ideas or he's being boring. It's strategic. He wants to be known for something very specific. And therefore, that's what he's talking about. It's highly likely that he's going to repeat himself on a lot of the things he's going to talk about. But that's going to make him known for that thing that he is talking about because people are going to continue to see that over and over again. And it's worked perfectly because I'm now telling you how well it's worked for him and given him the credit for it. And now he may potentially gain some new followers from that. And think how many people he's influenced. I'm a very small fish in a big pond. He's one of the biggest fish. But if you've got all of these other smaller fish talking about you, that big fish is going to get even bigger. So that brand consistency is going to help really, really unify your message over time, which in turn is going to help people promote you more as an individual because you will be known for that specific topic that you are talking about. People will also become very familiar with your values if you are very directional light we mentioned in the previous point of where you want your content to get you people understand where you come from. People who buy into your content for you as the individual and fully you because of your values and they like the content you produce and how you say it. So if you are consistent over an extended period of time, people will realize what these values are. And they will potentially join that online coaching platform because your values aligned with theirs. The people that are most likely to buy from you are the ones that like you as an individual. You may be the best at what you do. But if people don't have the same values as you or they don't like the certain way you talk about things. The chances of them buying from you aren't as high. They may go with the person who has slightly less knowledge, but all of their values align. So if you were just consistent with your brand message, you will have your values. They're out in the open for people to see if they like them. Great, if they don't, it's not a lost to you because they probably weren't going to buy from you. Anyway. You want the people who are following you to align exactly to the people that you want to work with. So by having those values out there showcased consistently through that brown consistency, which a content strategy is going to give you, it will do just that. So from a content strategy so far we've got direction of where we want to go. We've got Brian consistency. We're unifying our message and showcasing our values. Next, a content strategy is going to be able to give you efficiency in the content. You produce. You know what you need to produce, because you know what direction you need to head in. You know, therefore, the topics that you need to talk about. And therefore this is going to allow you to come up with high-quality ideas, which in turn will help you produce high-quality content efficiently on a regular basis. If you know what you need to do, you know what you need to create and when you know what you need to create, you can be very specific and create high-quality content around those topics. You're able to tell people that don't have any true direction in what they're doing because the quality of their content will lack. Because they aren't specific enough. They don't know enough about what they're talking about. And therefore the quality of their content's going to lack. But if you know what you need to create, you can learn about that topic in great detail, but so that you are able to best service your followers, your audience by producing the highest quality content. So it's all becoming a streamlined process now. And it all stems from the fact you've got that structure. You know the direction you need to head and you know the content you need to produce in order to get there. But having that content strategies not just about knowing how to get from a to B, it's knowing how to create that content effectively and efficiently. So having that content creation process that I've spoken about a lot before, knowing that you should be posting five to seven times a week to really attract as much attention as you want. And therefore, you need to create those posts in advance and not rushed him on the day of posting, having that solid content creation strategy. I've spoken about batch content creation. I create all of my content on the weekend so that I can have full focus on it so that I don't have to worry about it. I'm Russia in the week. I've created a week in advance. And therefore, I know that every single piece of content I create is of the quality I want it to be. If I rushed it, it wouldn't. So having that strategic direction have in that brown consistency allows me to then efficiently create high-quality content because I know what I need to create. So now we have direction, we have brand consistency, and now we have efficiency. And these things combined lead to the fourth I want to mention, which is structure. All of these things need to come together to form a whole. The structure of your brand needs to be consistent. It needs to be efficient, it needs to be high-quality. But when you've come to terms with all of this, the aesthetics of your grade are going to align. The message you are trying to put across is going to be consistent. And therefore the people that follow you are going to understand the journey you are taking them on is structured. You are taking them from point a to point B with your content. For example, let's talk about what I do. I help individuals, business owners, personal brands, grow on social media so that they can then leverage the audience they build to then grow their business. So the content I produce needs to help them do just that. So if I'm consistent with that message, consistent with the content I produce revolving around that. I then have that structure that is clear to these individuals. When they visit my page, they know that is what they are going to learn if they follow me. If you didn't have that direction and your content was all over the place, people are going to follow you and look your page and go, What the hell am I learning here? Nothing's consistent. There's no consistent brand message. The quality of the contents low because nothing's the same. I'm not really learning anything because it's all really random. It's not taking me in the direction. I want it to take me. But if you've got those other three pillars combined, you now have this structure to is compelling to the people visiting your page, which in turn makes them want to follow you when you've got them as that follow with it now in your ecosystem, they are now in your sales funnel. So if you now continue to produce this high-quality content over time, you will build that trust. You will show your authority, which will help them follow them down in to your sales funnel even further, you may potentially you could build that relationship in the DMZ organized that discovery, cool, or they may head to the website link in your bio. I want to buy straight directly from you simply because you've built that trust within your content. But without the effective content strategy that you have created, none of that would have happened. So having that structure, it makes your content more compelling. It makes it more engaging. And when it's more engaging, much more likely to increase your conversion rate. So that is why you need a content strategy. If you don't, you have no direction right now, your content is going to lack brand consistency. And therefore, you won't produce high-quality content or be efficient with the content you create. And therefore you have no structure. So please, if you haven't already take a step back from what you're doing now and come up with that effective content strategy.
5. Creating your social media content strategy: When I first started building my personal brand on Instagram, I was one of those people. I believed that I could simply pick content ideas out of nowhere, start creating content and think. All is just going to randomly fall into place. It was only when I pecan creating that content, not seeing the success I thought I would have when I suddenly started to realize, wow, I do need to have a content strategy in place. How can I expect to get from point a to point B when I have no strategy to bridge that gap between B, you need to know as a content creator, as a brand, as a business, how you are going to get to that goal you have on social media. And with content being the main thing on social media, you need a content strategy that's going to help you do just that. So that's why today I want to share some key points that you need to be considering when you are building your content strategy for social media, because it isn't as simple as just creating content and posting it. You need to have an idea of what you need to do, what you have to do, and what you should do in order to get to the point in which you desire. So without any further ado, let's just dive straight into the first. And that is understanding your end goal. Why are you on social media? What are you trying to achieve on social media? Because that end goal, that desire is what drives that, how content strategy or at least should drive that whole content strategy. Because if you don't know your end goal, then you're constantly going to be poking in the dark, hoping that you achieve what you think you want to achieve. So as a business, you might be on social media to simply build brand awareness. And therefore your content should be created in a way that is going to build brand awareness. But brand awareness might not be your goal. Sales new clients may be your goal. So if that's the case, you need to be creating content that is going to increase those cells and brand awareness and reach may not matter because as long as you are making sales and getting new clients, nothing else matters. So understanding what you actually want to achieve is crucial. And I can see it all the time or see brands and individuals just, their content strategy is all over the place. One minute they're creating a piece of content on something or next it's the complete opposite and it jumps back and then it jumps into something that's completely random again. And I'm sitting there thinking, what on earth are you actually trying to achieve here from social media? And they're thinking that it will just all fall into place because they are producing content. But if you don't know as a brand, as a business, where you want to get with social media or what you're trying to achieve, your content will never perform because you aren't on that road to achieving what you're setting out to having a set strategy, knowing what content you need to create to get to that outcome will form that content strategy. So understanding what you actually want to achieve is possibly the most important part about social media and building that content strategy. So no, as a brand, as a business, what you are on social media for that will sculpt the rest of this content strategy that we are actually talking about. Next, we actually need to understand who our ideal audience or potential customers actually are. Because when we understand who they are, we understand what problem is these people are facing and these problems, especially if you're in a niche similar to mine. Dr, what content you should be creating. For example, me, I create content on social media marketing and on Instagram. I do have somewhat of a focus on Instagram marketing, content creation. So therefore, I need to understand as the creator, what problems people currently face when it comes to Instagram or content creation, because that drives the content I produced because people want to have their problems solved. When you solve a problem that is seen as value. When you solve problems, you build credibility, you build trust, you build that audience because people want to follow you because you will solve more of their problems. But if you don't know who that target audience actually is. And what problems that target audience actually has. You have no idea what content you actually need to create. Because if you go onto my page and look at the content I produce, the majority of that content is solving a specific problem that my potential audience member hats. And when I solve that problem, as I said, I increase my own credibility. I increase that trust, I build that with that audience. And those things in tandem really help when it comes to generating leads, generating sales, increasing my credibility when I'm doing outreach myself because it's growing my audience. But that came from understanding the needs and the wants of my audience, which came from knowing who my audience was in the first place. When you've actually began building your audience is much easier to understand the problems of that audience because you can simply ask them. So actually creating content based on the needs and wants of your audience is really, really important. You shouldn't be guessing, you shouldn't be just hoping that the content you are creating does solve a problem. Get down to the details with these people. Genuinely ask them, what do you struggle with when it comes to XYZ? What problems you currently facing in your business and when you understand and get direct responses from your audience, take those and turn them into a piece of content. Because if one person has that problem, it's likely other people will have that problem as well. So by knowing it from one person, you're being able to solve the problems of the rest. Now, if you go through a problem, if you go through an experience and you solve it and find a solution shared that because if you've gone through a problem, it's very, very likely again, somebody else who's been through that problem. So sharing your experience can be turned into a piece of content. But you can see here by understanding your audience and knowing the problems they have really drives the content you produce. And therefore, that is why it's a key element of your content strategy. Next, you need to decide on a posting schedule. Consistency and frequency is very, very important when it comes to posting content on social media. I posted daily content, I believe for around 270 days daily. And then I went down and I do take a day off every now and again, but I make sure I post at least five times a week and the days I do post on, I will be posting at the same time every single day. Now if you are starting on social media right now, I do recommend that you keep that frequency up as much as possible. I do recommend daily posting. The more you post, the more people you're going to reach, the more people you reach, the quicker you're going to grow your audience. If you're posting one time a week, then it's very unlikely that you're going to grow your audience at the rate you want to. Can you succeed posting 34 times a week? Of course you can. Nothing is impossible and it will come down to the quality of that content you're producing. If you make sure those three to four posts of very, very, very high quality than people are still going to want to consume them. But if you are posting more frequently, then you will, in my opinion, and from my own experience, be able to grow that audience at a quicker rate because you are reaching more people. But deciding on that posting schedule, deciding when you want to post every single day, I would stick to a specific time yes. Experiment at first because you want to understand when the best time to post is for you and when your audience engaged most because that's going to help increase the engagement on your content, which increases the chances of you having your piece of content pushed out to that wider audience. But that comes through experimentation at first, but deciding on how many times you're going to post a week and when you are going to post is very, very important because consistency is what really, really helps with engagement when your audience knows you're going to be posting at a certain time, every single day or the days that you do decide to post on, they will be ready to engage with it. Some will even have post notifications turned on that is going to help with then coming back and engaging with your content, which as I said, is a key indicator to the algorithm on the performance of that piece of content, on whether it's keeping people on the platform. When that piece of content keeps people on the platform, the algorithm is going to want to push it to a wider audience. Because the longer you keep people on the platform, the more ads they can show them more ads they can show, the more money they make. It's really that simple, but that all comes from that frequency and consistency of your posting. So decide on how many times you want to post and when you're going to post each day. Now there is one final thing that I do want to mention that Yes, I understand that I have kept this very, very simple when you're creating content strategy, there are obviously many other things that you need to consider, but I don't want to make this three hours long, which is mod, it could potentially be if I went into incredible detail, I just really wanted to pick out the key points. Understanding why you are on social media is arguably the most important point. Understanding who your audience is. So that is going to be able to drive the content you create. Again, incredibly, incredibly important. Those two points alone should be the two key pillars of your content strategy. Understanding what you want to achieve, understanding what your audience wants. Pinning those two together is going to help you reach that desired outcome. If I had to nail it down to two specific points, they would be the ones. But then understanding how many times you're going to post when you're going to post picking brand. And these are all different things you can think about. But one final thing I did want to mention is experimenting and analyzing. When you create content. At first, it's likely that it's going to suck. If you look back at my original content, it was awful and it didn't perform very well. But what that was doing was giving me data. I began to understand and be able to hone in on what might audience really wanted, understood what headlines grabbed attention, what kites of postwar in the most engagement. And when you start building up this bank of data, you're able to analyze it and understand what your audience wants and what types of content are bringing the greatest return. And when you can do that, that is really when you begin to propel that content strategy and growth on the platforms that you are using, you need to understand your analytics and understand the numbers that those analytics or showing understanding why your pieces of content are performing. That way, you are able to do more of what works and less of what doesn't. And this is a really, really important part of that content strategy. Analyzing the content that you have already produced so that you can replicate the successful posts and really help pick up speed when it comes to growing your audience and getting a higher reach with that content. But the majority of it will come down to testing, try different things. The definition of insanity is doing something over and over and over again, yet expecting to achieve different results. If something isn't working, don't expect it to fall into place and suddenly start working. It doesn't work like that when it comes to social media content, you're obviously doing something wrong. Tweak something, see if it makes a change. It might just be one word within your headline or the imagery that you're using on your cover slides if you're creating carousel. So those first three seconds you're talking in the videos, you are creating, tweak them, test them, try different things until you optimize that content you are producing. Then it comes down to just repeating what works, getting rid of what doesn't, and cycling that parses. And that wraps up the final point that I did want to mention when it comes to creating your social media content strategy.
6. The 3 content types you should be creating: The three types of content that you need to be creating. If you want to build a following, establish authority, build trust with that following that you've built and actually make some sales from your presence on social media and the content that you are creating. Because it comes down to these three different types of content. And you need to be utilizing all of them, but you need to find a balance between each of them which works best for you and your business. So without any further ado, let's just dive straight into the first content type and that content type is nurturing. Now this is a type of consent that you will see most often on Instagram. There the value providing posts, the interesting posts, the eye-catching posts or posts that actually teach people something, especially if you're in the niche that I'm in. So for example, I am in the social media marketing niche. If you go onto my page, you will see that the majority of my content is value adding. I'm teaching people different things. I'm making people aware of certain strategies, tips, tricks. All of these things are going to help benefit authors that is nurturing content. And this is the core pillar of the content that I'm creating. Because what this does is it builds my following and it establishes my authority. One, it builds a following because it reaches more people. And when people see content that they value and that benefits them, they're going to want to consume more content just like that. So it encourages those page visits, encourages those follows, and grows that audience. But what it's also doing is it's establishing my authority. Because I am teaching these things. I'm establishing my name in the social media marketing space because I am providing this value in teaching these people these tips, which therefore reinforces my knowledge within that niche, so establishes that or authority. So this is the core pillar. This is the content you want to be creating the most of. Because if you don't create any of this content, you're not going to attract anybody to your page if all of your content is very salesy, which we're going to talk a little bit about later. Nobody's going to want to follow your content because they don't want to just see a sounds post every other day or every day in some people's cases, you need to be nurturing that audience. You need to be bringing in new people and keeping people around that have already followed you into do that. You have to keep providing them value. And I know value is this very cliched piece of advice, but you should understand what value means to your audience. For example, value to my audience is how to grow on social media, how to leverage an audience on social media, how to monetize that audience that you have built. That is the value that I am providing to my audience and that they see valuable to them. Value's going to be different for everyone. But as long as you want nurturing your audience with this value, adding content, you are going to be doing just fine because you will attract new people and you'll keep people sticking around that have already followed you. So that is the core pillar. That is the content you need to be creating the most of. But the next content type that you need to be thinking of is the personable content. Content about you. Content that's going to show people behind the scenes into your daily life. People need to understand who you are, especially if you are a personal brand, if your business, your employees. So personable content is going to build that trust. You're never going to sell anything if you don't have trust with your audience. But to build trust, they need to understand who you are. And especially as a personal brand. Because people trust people, people don't trust content per se. People do business with people. If you want to create a coaching business, people aren't going to hire you as a coach if they've never seen who you actually are before. So having that personable content gives people are behind the scenes, allows them to understand what you're like as a person, your mannerisms, your enthusiasm, get on camera. The personable content for me comes from my Instagram stories. Instagram stories are a very, very good way to just be personal with your audience. It's a much less polished content format. You want having to edit things so that they're perfect and look nice and create this lovely anesthetic feed. It's none of that. Go on your stories. Hold the camera, say what you're thinking. Show people what you're doing and they will enjoy it. It's personable. People want an inside look into your life. Trust me, people were nosey. If you could see your favorite creators. Livelihood and what they do on a day-to-day basis. Great. And even though you don't know these people one-to-one or on a personal level. In real life, they're going to feel as if they do because they see your everyday life every single day. And that's from the fact that you are posting personable content on your stories. I see the most interaction or people actually damning me from my stories opposed to my feed content. So they're a great conversation starter because let's say you like going down the gym, might I think in relation to your content. But you will have audience members who also like going down the gym. So if you post a picture of you in the gym or showing your workout or eating a certain type of food or going somewhere. And somebody else within your audience enjoys that same thing they're going to reach out to you and relate to you on another level that you didn't know beforehand, which in turn helps build that trust, build that relationship, and consequently could potentially lead to that sale, which is what you are looking for. But without that personable content is going to be very, very difficult to actually build that trust with your audience because it's very difficult to trust somebody who isn't a person. It's very difficult to trust a logo when you don't know who's behind that logo. So Get your face out there, get on video, show people what you're doing. Be personable, be you. Because that is going to build trust with your audience, which is going to really, really help close that cell should it come to it. So we have nurturing content, we have personable content. Now the final type of content that you need to be producing is call-to-action content. Content that actually sells. Because you've provided that nurture in content, you've continued to add benefits, to add value to your audience and new audience members. You've built that trust with your personable content. And now it's time to leverage that audience that you've bill with some call to action content. Content, whereby you're actually selling a product, promoting your service, telling people about your coaching, because if you don't do this, then you're never going to sell anything because people won't understand you've actually has something to sell. If people don't know you have a coaching service, then they're never going to ask you for coaching because you haven't told them about it in the first place. So that final content pillar of call to action, sellable content is key because if you actually want to make some money, which I assume if you're listening to this podcast, you do. Without this type of content, you're never go into. So you could also do this on your stories. You could be personable, be building that trust within your stories and then throw in a little call to action story telling people that if they do want to sign up for your coaching, they can and give them a call to action of how they can do so. If you want to put it on the final slide of your carousel, That's value-adding. Find by all means if you want to have a soul dedicated call to action post, do it. But the one thing I want you to be wary of is that this has to be balanced. All of these content pillars have to be balanced. Yeah, you can pose personable content on your story whenever you want. Please do. And did the majority of your content needs to be nurturing, value-adding. You can't just post a call to action post every single day because you will annoy people, people will unfollow you because people don't like to be sold to all the time. You need to give more than you take. So find a balance, find what's right, find what your audience is okay with test different things. But don't post every single day a call to action piece of content. Every now and again, once a week, maybe pick out that call to action. Because then that's a good balance between the fact that you are providing or this value. But then only asking very little in comparison for something in return. And that's it. They are the three content pillars that you need to be focusing on. Nurturing contents and value adding content, personable content, and call-to-action content. Because that nurturing content builds your audience, it builds your authority, the personable content builds trust, and then the call to action content actually cells. But those call-to-action content won't sell if you haven't posted the other content beforehand to build their authority and the trust with the audience. So you need to be doing all three, but find a good balance between how much you should be posting of each.
7. Should you post daily on social media?: Now I am a huge advocate for posting daily on Instagram. I posted daily for roughly 270 days. And it's something that I've promoted for people to do if possible. But today, I want to cover the pros and cons of posting daily on the platform so that you can come to your own conclusion as to whether you should do the same. So without any further ado, let's dive into the pros. So let's start off. This one is pretty simple. The more you post, the more people you are going to reach. I think this one is more mathematical, pretty simple and straightforward to understand. Let's say you post a piece of content and you get a 1000 people seeing it. Now if you were to post one piece of content a week, you would reach 1000 people who are weak. Now if on average that stayed the same with every piece of content you created that you posted daily, you would reach 7 thousand people a week. 7 thousand versus 100. I know which one I would prefer. Now, the more people you reach, the more people that will visit your profile, the more people that visit your profile, the more people that are actually going to follow you. Assuming your content is good, of course. So if you want to grow your page faster, post more often, I think it's a pretty simple concept to understand. But there are also indirect things. Prose that come from creating content every single day that I personally think are much more important than increasing breach. The first one being the fact that you actually become a better content creator. The more you create, the more you practice, the more you practice, the better you're going to become. You only force yourself to create one or two pieces of content a week. That's not enough to improve. But if you were posting content every single day, creating at least seven pieces of content are weak. That is far more opportunity to hone in and improve your skills, especially with regards to design and copywriting. Copywriting is one of the hardest skills in my opinion to master when it comes to content creation. And if you're only writing once or twice a week, you're never going to get anywhere very fast when it comes to copywriting. But if you're writing seven times a week, mastering the way you engage attention, keep people hooked, provide the value that you want to provide. If you're doing this every single day, you're gonna get better, far, far, quicker. Also, design. Design isn't easy, especially if you're using things like Photoshop or Illustrator. They're incredibly difficult platforms to get to grips with. When I first started creating my content using Illustrator, which I still do now, I had no idea how to use that app. But now, after creating content daily and consistently, I know it like the back of my hand. Well, not the back of my hand. I'm not that good at it, but I am far better than when I first started. But if I hadn't been practicing every single day and using that app, then I'd be nowhere near the level I am today. So by creating more, not only do you get more reach from your content so that your page grows faster, you're going to become a far better content creator. And the better content you create, that's also going to feed back into the increased reach, which gets your page growing faster again, because more people are seeing high-quality content and because your content is becoming higher and higher quality, people are far more likely to follow you. So you get the increased reach coupled with the increased likelihood that people are actually going to want to follow you, which is going to go full circle to your page growing faster than if you were only to post once or twice a week. And because I just don't want to ramble on forever about all the pros from daily content creation because there are a lot. The final thing I want to talk about is the algorithm. The algorithm has to understand the content you create and the people that actually like to consume your content. If it's going to push your content to a wider audience, you will notice that when you follow people up comes that suggested for you tab, which associates certain content creators with the person that you have just followed. So if you followed someone that gave design tips when you follow them, the suggested for you tab is likely to show other creators that post similar content to the one you have just followed. Now if you are a new posting once or twice a week, the algorithm's going to be faster or slower understanding the content you actually produce. So you're going to hinder your organic growth through the suggested for you tab through the explore page because it's going to take the algorithm longer to understand the content you create. And it's going to take the algorithm longer to associate you with other creators who creates similar content because of that. So if you want the algorithm to understand your content quicker. And the value you provide quicker and associate you with other content creators quicker and other content being produced on the platform through hashtags and the Explore page, then you need to post more often. And that's again why I did post daily for 270 days. Because if I didn't, the organic growth would nowhere near have been the same. So they are three key good prose that I wanted to talk about when it came to posting daily. But now I have to talk about the other side. I have to talk about the cons. Number one, being posting daily isn't easy. And for some, it just won't be sustainable. I got to a point where I had such a refined content creation process that creating seven posts a week wasn't difficult for me. If you don't have that in place and you're taking so much time out of your day to create all this content, it's likely that you'll go into become burn out and you will stop enjoy creating the content. And that means you won't keep posting content for a long period of time. There's no point in posting content every single day for 30 days and then stopping from that point onwards because you're burned out, it's much better to reduce the number of posts you are creating to, let's say four to five times a week having those two days off. But then continuing posting on Instagram three years. Simply because you now have a sustainable content strategy that you can keep up for a long period of time because you won't see the results in 30 days. So even if you are posting daily, the chances of you succeeding in that 30 day period of very slim content creation is a long-term strategy. You have to keep it going. And if you can't keep that daily posting schedule up, Don't Bother. You need to help yourself. You need to take care of yourself. You need to make sure that you can continue to produce content for a long time to come if you want to succeed. So if you can't post daily because of that reason, cut it down to 45 posts are weak. Now the other point I want to manage and that is closely related is that for some, even if you are posting and managed to post seven days a week, you don't want the quality of your content to take a hit because you're simply trying to put out those seven pieces of content. You want to ensure that you hold yourself to a certain quality level. If you're having to rush your content in order to post daily, that's going to actually hurt your reputation. And people won't want to consume your content because they were expecting a certain level of quality and you gave them something else. So you're actually doing more harm than good in that sense. So you need to find a good balance. If you can't post 7 quality pieces of content a week, it's far better to cut that down to four to five posts a week and ensure that the posts you are creating are of high quality. Do hold to that certain standard you set to yourself because it's far better to post four to five high-quality posts a week, then seven average posts a week. And that's just my opinion. So I might disagree, but I see that as the best combination, high-quality content that can be posted consistently. If you can post seven pieces of high-quality content a week, perfect. But if you can't, don't stress yourself out about it, cut it to four to five times a week, but ensure the quality level is there. But I would make sure you do stick to at least four to five posts a week. Posting once or twice a week isn't good enough. It will not get you to the point. You want to be quick enough. So you still need to post frequently, but at a quality standard that is high. So think about it that way. So now we've gone over the pros and cons. I just want to summarize what I've said. Yes. Posting daily is very, very helpful and they do encourage you to do so. If you can keep the level of quality of the content you are posting high, that is a key point and it needs to be sustainable for a long period of time. I was able to do it for 270 days straight without stopping, known as single day was missed. The only reason I stopped posting daily is because I ran out of time. I had other obligations to fulfill such as client work, outreach, actually focusing on the business. So content creation kinda took her back for by still post four to five times a week like I also promote if you can't post high-quality content seven days a week. And I just want to point out as well, if you want to succeed is not essential that you post daily. It helps. And for all the reasons I mentioned, it helps. But don't stress yourself out about it. If you can't at least post four to five times a week, but should you be posting every day if you can? Yes. That's all I wanted to say.
8. How to post daily content: I understand how difficult posting daily content can be. So today, I wanted to share a few tips as to how you can create daily content so that you can also set yourself on that journey to posting every single day. So without any further ado, let's just dive straight into tip number 1. And that is simply that you need to have a solid, sound, efficient content creation strategy. When I first started, even though I set out on this 90-day content challenge, I had no idea what I was doing. I had no content strategy whatsoever. And it was stressful. I would wake up every single day not knowing what I needed to create are used to create every single post I was going to create on the day that I was supposed to post it. It was stressful. Do not do that. I do not recommend that what? So ever instead, you need to have something that is streamlined. I now create all of my content on the weekends. And this is something that is called batch content creation. So I don't create content every single day and post it on the day that I create it. Instead, let say a Saturday, I'll sit down and create every single piece of content I need to post that week. That way, it's all done. It's there. It's ready to post on the days that I need to post them. I'm not having to wake up, stress Russia piece of content and post it on time for that day. There is created, I just export it and upload it on the day that I want to post it. It's simple. I also have a sorted way that I go from start to finish with regards to creating each part of the content, I have my idea or do the copywriting in a separate word document. I then copy and paste that copy writing into pre-made templates I already have in Illustrator. And because my content is so simple, It's just copy and pasting the text. Because every single design for every single post I create is the same. Suit. So streamlined. I've got the ideas already because I'm record ideas throughout the weekend. Just keep a massive bank of content ideas. So I can just plug an idea, do the copywriting, copy and paste the over arching into the templates, export, ready to post, done. And I do this every single Saturday so that it's ready for the next week. And I'm not stressed every single day of the week wondering what piece of content I need to create and post. I just post it. And that gives me so much more time to do much more important tasks, such as actually trying to grow a business, which you might be in. It's far more important than stressing for three hours a day creating content. And once you have this streamlined content creation strategy and process, you can create far more content in a much shorter period of time. I can now create a week's worth of content in the time it used to take me to create just one. So please, if you haven't already come up with a content creation strategy that's efficient and effective. Point number two that I want you to consider. And I did kind of touched on this in the last point. I want you to keep an idea bank. I want you to have a Word document, an Excel spreadsheet, a note section on your phone, or even just an old classic pen and paper. But I want you to have one of these so that you can keep an idea bank for all the content ideas you have. One of the most frustrating things when it comes to creating content. Sitting down, ready to create and going, Damn, What was that piece of content I thought I wanted to create, but now I forgot an idea is so annoying in the week you may have come up with this amazing content idea that you knew was going to go viral. But when you come to create it, you've completely forgotten about that content idea. What would've solved that? Writing it down. And that's why having an idea bank is so, so valuable. Because let's say you come up with 30 ideas in a week. You only have to pick seven those if you're posting daily, one a day. So when it comes to the day that you actually create this content, it now gives you the chance to pick out the seven best. You can. Just push aside the ones that you don't actually think of that great that you can now compare with the others you've come up with and go write these seven are killer. The seven are going to do so, so well. And then you can take those ideas and plug them into the content creation strategy that you come up with and come up with all the content. If you haven't got the content ideas, you're going to waste so much time. In my opinion, it's the most time consuming part of the content creation process, actually coming up with the ideas, especially if you're creating daily because you have to come up with seven or week, It's not easy if you have to think of them on the spot, but if you haven't already, if you've been recording them throughout the week, if you know what you need to create codon the time you actually need to create it, because it's already there. It's so much more efficient. So it's a very, very simple tip to follow, but please have a content idea bank. It can be on the note section of your phone, Excel spreadsheet, pen and paper, you name it, just 1.5. Now, tip number 3, and this one is arguably my favorite of all the tips I'm going to mention. And that is that you need to be thinking of ways that you can actually repurpose your content. And this is something I do all the time. And I'm going to give you an example of how I do it. When I record my podcast, I'm not actually recording just the audio. I'm actually also recording a video with a camera as well. So this now gives me a YouTube video because I can also upload the podcast episode as a YouTube video. It gives me the podcast recording because I can strip the audio is an MP3 and use it as the podcast episode. But what I can also do is pick out the clips from each podcast episode and turn them into social media posts, whether that be a TikTok and Instagram, real, a classic YouTube video and IGTV, you name it. And now that one podcast episode that I simply recorded as a video so that one piece of content can become 10, 15 depends how many clips are confined within the content I've recorded. But it's now not just a podcast, is so many more forms of content. And you need to be thinking about the ways you can do this with your content. If you write a blog, shorten it down, condense it into a carousel, a video if you want to record it, you can even make it a podcast episode by recording blog post as speech. There are so many different ways that you can actually repurpose content, but it saves so much time because the content is already created. You just have to repurpose it specific for the platform you're going to be posting it on. So like I say with the podcast, I can't just put the video because podcasts on video on all the apps that it goes out on, you have to strip the audio and have it as an mp3. The formatting for an Instagram real change the dimensions of the video because a YouTube video won't go into an Instagram real because one, it's too long and it's not in the dimensions it needs to be in, so you just have to crop it. But the majority of the content's already done. The core value of the content has already been recorded. You just have to crop it into the right dimensions so that you can upload it as a real is so simple to repurpose content. But from recording 3 podcast episodes a week, I can come up with a month's worth of content from the clips I can produce for my Instagram page. So please, if you create YouTube videos, if you create blog posts, dink of ways that you can actually repurpose them. Because it's going to allow you to create so many more pieces of content for your other social media platforms, because you just have to make them specific to the platform you're actually going to be posting on. So you've got those and then you may come up with the separate ideas for content specific to the platform, such as a carousel, which come up with an Instagram carousel to post on Instagram and Instagram only. You just bring this all together and then you have a solid content strategy to be able to post daily far more frequently, maybe even multiple times a day. Who knows depends how well you can actually repurpose the content you create. But I would strongly recommend doing what I do, having a podcast, YouTube channel, and the news and all the clips to upload as a video or Instagram Reels and TikToks. You name it all of those different things because it is so, so effective. Now, the final point I wanted to mention, and this one is a bonus because I don't actually specifically do it myself and I'm gonna explain why, but it's scheduling your content. I hear a lot of people giving me an excuse of, Oh, I didn't post yesterday because I didn't have time to post. You will always have five minutes a day to post a piece of social media content, especially if it's on something like Instagram. And you've already created the piece of content because it was a part of your batch content creation on the weekend, we've got to do is export it, upload it. There are a lot of people will give me that excuse of I didn't have time or you didn't have those five, 10 minutes yesterday where I actually uploaded that piece of content. So I always say, well, on the Saturday when you did all this batch content creation, and why didn't you just schedule it using the Instagram Creator Studio is free, is actually offered by Instagram to assist you so that you can post that content every single day. And you know it's going to post every single day without fail because you've told Instagram to do it for you. It's very simple to do and then eliminates the excuse of Oh, I didn't have time to post yesterday. Now I don't actually do this because I like to be able to respond to comments straight away and had that initial engagement and go on to previous content or like comments to get people to come back onto the new piece of content so I can be present when this new piece of content is posted. That's something I like to do. So that's why I don't personally schedule posts. But if you weren't too worried about the initial engagement and you simply just want to be able to post every single day, get a post scheduler. Instagram Creator Studio, it's there for you to use. So use it eliminates that risk of missing a day because you forgot when you didn't have time, because you've already done it. Just do it straight after you've created all the pieces of content on whatever day you choose to do your batch creation. And then you'd have to worry about it for the rest of the week. You can just check in on Instagram every now and again to respond to comments DMZ, and engage with others to bring them to your content so that you can increase your engagement. It's a very simple tip. However, it can really help you stick to that daily posting schedule because you just upload everything and forget about it. But they do wrap up some very simple tips I wanted to share with you to help you actually post daily and whatever social media platform you may be posting on.
9. Quantity vs. quality when it comes to social media content: I want to talk about quality versus quantity in the content that you were posting on whatever social media platform you may be using. Because this is something that I'm asked all the time. People say, should I focus on the quality of the content I'm putting out? Or should I just be posting a lot of it and not focusing as much on quality of the content that I'm producing. So essentially just producing content in mass quantity. So I thought today I may as well just cover this topic because it's one that I have a mixed opinion on. Because there is the common blanket piece of advice of the fact that you should focus on quality over quantity because nobody wants to see poor quality content. But I personally have a different opinion. I personally believe that quantity breeds quality. So in the end, you could be doing both at the same time because you're never gonna get good at creating content unless you create a lot of it. Because if you're always thinking about the quality of the content you are producing, then you're always going to be focusing on making those pieces of content perfect. And if you're making pieces of content perfect, you're not going to be creating much of it. So you need to find a good balance. So just want to touch on a few points in this episode where I do cover this topic in more detail. So let's start off by talking about the importance of quality because it is incredibly, incredibly important. There is no point in pushing out hundreds of pieces of content or months. So let's say you want to post two to three times a day, which is pretty substantial from a single creators perspective. But you are pushing out content that is of poor quality, doesn't matter how many pieces of content you're putting out. Nobody's actually going to want to consume it because it's rubbish. You are going to be competing with hundreds, possibly thousands, possibly millions of other creators in the niche you create content for. So if you are pushing out quantity sure, you might get more eyeballs on your page. But if it's poor quality, nobody's going to want to follow you in the future. And that could give you a bad reputation. So you want a good mix because if you produce quality content, that's going to be what attracts people to your page, keeps them coming back and builds you a good reputation as a creator for having good quality content, which is going to help you grow long-term. Sure, pushing out two to three pieces of content a day will attract more people to your page, but they probably won't stick around for as long as if you were going to be posting quality content. So quality content is incredibly important. But that doesn't necessarily mean that your content has to be perfect. There comes a point where there's diminishing returns in respect to the amount of time you are spending creating your pieces of content. You can get your piece of content to a certain level of quality. But then the time you spend thereafter trying to improve that post is going to become time less well-spent. And you could have been using that time to do other things that were better way to spend that time. For example, it takes you half an hour to create a solid, solid post, a good quality post, but it's not perfect. But to make it perfect, you then have to spend another hour. That's not a good way to spend that hour. You could have created another two pieces of content in that time that was solid, that we're good, that people would have wanted to consume. In my opinion, that done That's solid piece of content is far better than wasting another hour trying to make it perfect and perfect in the IOs that Behold are anyway, somebody may think that your piece of content is perfect when you just thought it was good because you just held your standards to a higher level. So I wouldn't worry too much. Get it to a level where you would actually consume it yourself. That is something I always ask myself before I post my piece of content, would I actually consume this piece of content myself? If the answer is yes, I'll post it. If the answer is no, I continue to improve it until the answer is yes. Now it doesn't take a lot more effort to try and bridge that gap between the knowing, yes. But don't aim for perfection because you'll never post anything, especially if you set your standards really, really high. Get it to a point where you would also want to consume it and hit Post. Don't worry about anything beyond that point. Now just want to develop on the point of done is better than perfect, because the only way to improve your content is to create more. There is no way my content quality would be at the level it is today. If I had always strive for perfection and only posted two or three times a week. I held myself to a standard whereby I was going to post daily. When I first started, I set out on a 90 day content challenge. I was going to post every single day for 90 days. Now when I first started by sucked, I was awful at creating the content. I wasn't a great designer. It wasn't very efficient. It wasn't a great copywriter. But I knew the only way to get better at creating that content was to practice. So that's why I wanted to post daily every single day for 90 days. Now this obviously rode on towards 270 days. It's something I talk about quite often. I posted every single day eventually for 270 days straight before I then took a little break of only posting four to five times a week. I'm now posting more or less every other day. But if I hadn't posted every day for 270 days, I wouldn't have got that practice in to get to the point my content is at now. And I don't delete any of my content. You can go back to my original posts and see the development I've made throughout my journey simply from practicing. So if you're constantly focusing on trying to produce perfect content, sure, the content you put out is going to be really good, but you're not going to put out much of it because you hold yourself to that standard and not post a piece of content because you don't think it is perfect. Which then in turn doesn't allow you to practice as much because you're not creating as much. So in my opinion, quantity breeds quality. But then they're obviously is the point that you have to hold yourself to that certain standard of quality. And that's why I have that rule of word. I consume this piece of content myself. So you kind of have to merge the two points. There's no one or the other. There's no quality is better than quantity or quantity is better than quality. It's quantity breeds quality, but always hold yourself to a certain standard. But don't focus on being perfect. It's that simple practice makes perfect how cliche? But I do really want to drive this point home because I see so many small creators with huge potential there just holding themselves back because they're not creating enough. Whereas if they were to focus a little bit more on the quantity rather than the quality, they would progress much quicker and that quality will come naturally regardless. So it's just a case of getting used to not try and create that perfect piece of content and just posting on posting and posting and posting. And then you'll see that over time, naturally the quality improves despite the fact that you weren't initially focusing on that in the first place because you practice your copywriting, you practice your design, you practice your captions, you practice your call to actions. You practice your headlines. You practice engaging your audience. And then it all pieces together on compounds over time. And then at the end of that you have quantity and quality. So you've now got the best of both worlds. So that's it. That's my opinion on quality of content versus quantity of content. And I hope you guys now have a different perspective and just create more content.
10. Improving your social media content: As a Content grades and myself, I'm always looking for these little ways, these little tricks, these little tips that I can use on my content to make them better. So I'm analyzing other creators, I'm consuming other content, I'm experimenting with in different ways, all in order to improve my own content. So today I thought I would just share a few tips and tricks that I personally use all my content to make them better so that you can also use them to make your content better. So without any further ado, let's just dive straight into tip number one, and that is design consistency. Now there's a few reasons as to why design consistency can actually be pretty good for your content. And I'm gonna go into detail on two of them. Number 1, it makes it look presentable. Your feed when people come and visit, It can see that there is that consistency in your design. There is the same type of colors used over and over again. It just makes your page look more presentable. And that does play a role in your reputation if somebody were to come to your page, especially if it's going to be a potential client or customer. And they come to your profile and they see that it's messy, sloppy, there's no real care gone into the design. May have a bad first impression on that individual. They may think of this person doesn't care about their content, then they're not going to care about their products or me as a client and you don't want that. However, if you had that design consistency, you put some effort into the way your posts actually looked, that there was consistency in the colors you use. And that consequently makes your page, your profile look far nicer and cohesive, then leaves a good first impression. People could have come on and go, Oh, this person cares about their content, they're going to care about me also. You do something is how you do everything. So if you want to give off that vibe that you do really care about everything you do, then you have to care about the way your content looks also, because as I said, if it looks rubbish, people are going to look at that and go in. This person doesn't really care. And you don't want that because that may lose you that next potential client or customer. Now the other reason that design consistency can work in your favor is that people begin to associate certain content with you as a creator, I've always kept a similar style. So when somebody is scrolling through their feed and they come across my content, they know it's mine because they've already consume content in the past that looks pretty similar. The same color schemes, the same cover photos, the same slides within the carousel, the same type of video. They know it's me. And if they like my content and they're scrolling through their going to stop because they're gonna go, Oh, that's Ethan's post. I like consuming Ethan's content. So I'm going to stop. I'm going to zoom out and engage about going to like it. So it works in your favor in that way also. So get your followers, get your audience knowing the type of content you create so that when they are scrolling through their feed, bang know it's yours. So they will stop and they will consume, and they will engage. So there's two good reasons as to why design consistency can be incredibly important and level up your content and it's not hard to do so just use the same colors and the same design process. It can make it much more streamlined also, once you know what you need to do and how you need to design, It's just clockwork, rinse and repeat tip number two. And this one is huge, huge. You need an attention grabbing headline. I see people using headlines that are far too long. 12 words, for example, way too long for headline. You need it to be short, snappy, straight to the point and intriguing. How to get more followers tells people exactly what they want. It tells people exactly what they're going to learn. They know it's going to be valued providing because it's a how to post. It intrigues them because they want more followers obviously. So they're going to think, how on earth do I do it? I'm going to consume this post because I want to learn how to get more followers. And finally, it's not too long how to get more followers? Five words, simple, short. People aren't going to waste time having to read the headline if it were 12 words to actually learn what they were going to be consuming it straight to the point, how to get more followers, complement that with a nice image and they go as a great headline slide, how to solve whatever the problem is. They are short, snappy headlines. Grabbing someone's attention is the main thing when it comes to creating social media content. There is so much competition and a lot of people follow hundreds, if not thousands, of other creators. So when that news feed, you are competing with so much content. So if you aren't able to have that attention grabbing headline, that attention grabbing cover slide. Nobody's going to consume your content. Actually getting someone to stop and actually begin scrolling through your content or watching your video is so important. It's so important because if you can't grab the attention initially, there's no chance in them consuming the rest of it. All about grabbing attention, retaining it, and leveraging the attention you've built. So please pay attention to your headlines. You learn as you go on, what sort of headlines work? You test different things. You realize what your audience interacts with most what actually they enjoy consuming so you can tailor your headlines accordingly and your copywriting will just improve in general. But please pay close attention to your headline on what your writing because it can make or break your post. Now the next simple tip that I want to mention is our Ask an easy to answer question. If you consume my carousels, you would see that on the final slide or at the end of my caption, I always ask a question. That question is always going to be related to the posts that I have just put out. But what that question is doing is it's raising a thought within the viewer's mind, which they can then comment about. And you can increase your engagement on your content accordingly, which is then going to increase your chances of reaching the Explore page ranking on hashtags you name it, achieving more organic reach, which as a creator is what you want. You want your content to reach people beyond your audience so that you can grow. So if you can focus on the amount of engagement you are receiving, that is fantastic. And to increase your engagement, you've got to ask a question. If you ask a question than people who are likely to answer that question, you don't want to leave the engagement completely down to the discretion of the audience members. Because if you don't raise a thought in their mind or prompt them to come in in a certain way, you're leaving the decision up to them. And if they aren't prompted to comment in a certain way, it's less likely that they're going to comment to begin with because they have to think of something off the top of their head. Whereas if you ask a question whether it be controversial or simply relating to the content, people love to share their opinion, especially if they're knowledgeable on the topic and can provide more value themselves, it gives them that sense of self appreciation than the fact that they are going to be providing value to an audience. So the likelihood of them commented is much, much higher. But that's all down to the fact that you asked the question in the first place, which prompt that thought in their brain own that light bulb switched on and they thought, I'm going to comment in that way. But if that question wasn't there originally, them commenting may not have happened. So by simply asking and easy to answer question that relates to the piece of content that you have just made them consume is going to dramatically increase the amount of engagement you get. So ask the question and maybe a little smaller font below, like I do just simply put comment below. How do you gain more followers? Comment below. What do you do to increase your engagement? Comment below. This is going to prompt people to share their opinion, share their advice, rather than simply scrolling on to the next post. So very simple way to increase your engagement. Now the final point I want to mention, and this is one that you have to increasingly practice over time again and you will get better over time. And that's the actually tell a story within the content you create. When you tell a story and you take your viewers of your content on somewhat of a journey Throughout the consumption of that piece of content, it's far more engaging, is far more interesting to actually consume. It holds and retains that attention. I've consumed a lot of content where it seems all over the place. There's no structure. Um, let's say it's a 10 slide carousel on I'm on slide 2 and it's already sent me all over the place with thoughts and directions. I'm not going to continue to read that until the 10th slide. I do apologize. But it's just not interesting, hasn't retained my attention, is not kept me on a direct path to help him we learn what I want to learn in the easiest way possible. So I encourage you to use as a simple formula called ADR. So eta is an acronym. It stands for attention, interest, desire, action. And you need to use them in that order. So your headline slide on your carousel or the start of your video attention. That's that headline. That's what's going to grab people's attention. Who would have thought it? Interest? This is where you begin to build their interests in the first three to five slides of your cows out, don't go straight into the value. Get people excited, warn them up, make them realize they have a problem, build the interest, desire. The final few slides, the end of your video or the mid to end of your video, depending on what type of video you're creating. Solve the problem. Give them what they desire. Don't build up all of this suspense and interest and then leave them hanging because you don't give them what they want, what they desire, provide the value, and make sure you do it in the best way possible. But now because you've done all that, you've gauge the interests and healthy interest. You've given them what they desire. Action, call to action at the end of your post. Whether it be a question like a previously mentioned to get them to go and comment or engage, or get them to go and listen to your podcast, visit your website, go to your shop, you name it. But don't waste all of this attention that you've built throughout this post leveraged. Send it on. Don't let them simply scroll on to the next post in the feet. And because you provided this person with the value, they're much more likely to act on that call to action. So structuring your post in a way that actually tells a story is gonna make it far more engaging and far more successful as a piece of content. So think about that aid of formula or variations of that aid or formula so that you can maximize the potential of your content, have a solid structure, and tell somewhat of a story in what you're actually creating because it's going to help build and retain and leverage attention, which consequently makes your content far, far better. So they are for very, very, very simple tips that you need to be taking on board and implementing into your content to improve it. And not hard, yes, you have to practice a few of them, but they only need to be considered when you're creating.
11. Creating evergreen content: I wanted to talk a little bit about producing evergreen content. When you create content on social media, you need to have a good mix of evergreen content and content that is very, very short term and applicable and reactive to current trends. Evergreen content is essentially content that is going to be able to be applicable over an extended period of time and stay continually relevant no matter when somebody may click on or consume that piece of content. So essentially it lasts forever. Whereas a lot of content that you consume on Instagram will only be, oh, who consume at that very specific point in time or within a very specific time-frame. That is more what we like to call reactive content. Now it's good to have a mix of the two. You don't want all of one and none of the other or all of the other and none of the other. So it's a good idea to make sure you have a mix. Now, reactive content is very easy to talk about is content where you adapt to trends. If something that is continuously going viral or you see that something is doing and performing well, you jump on that trend, create content. And it normally is only applicable for that point in time because trends tend to die down after a couple of weeks or maybe even a few days. But that is where you need to also backup that content strategy with evergreen content. Content that where people will be able to come to your account and consumer no matter the time. So that's why today I wanted to talk through some tips to producing this evergreen content. So without any further ado, let's just dive into tip number one and that's to make sure that you are keeping your language simple. Don't use any industry jargon or complicated words to make your knowledge level sound like it's higher than it actually is. Or try to impress an audience with these big, fancy words you're using. No one actually cares. They just want to be able to consume your content in the simplest way possible. So keeping that language simple was actually more of a talent in my opinion than being able to use these fancy big industry jargon words. Now, you've also got to think that when you are using that complicated language, you very much niche down that content to a specific group of people, people that will be able to understand that language is not applicable to everyone. Now because not everyone's gonna be able to understand it. Whereas if you were to make that language simple, it's going to apply to a wider group of people. Now you can see how we're edging on this evergreen content here because no matter what knowledge level someone may be at, no matter where they are throughout their journey, no matter where they may be coming from to consume your piece of content. No matter who they are, they will be able to understand it because the language that you've used throughout that piece of content is simple. If you were to make it complicated, it wouldn't be evergreen because if someone was new to the journey, they wouldn't be able to consume that piece of content because they wouldn't be able to understand it because of the language you've used. They would only be able to understand it when they reached the knowledge level where they would understand the terminology that you've used. But if you kept it simple, they would have been able to consume it. If they were a newbie or whether they were incredibly experienced, it doesn't really matter when they consumed it. So keep that language simple so it can be consumed by anyone no matter their knowledge level, no matter where they're coming from, no matter their experience with the topic that you're actually talking about. Tip number two, do not date your content. Now this is one that is actually incredibly, incredibly simple, but a lot of people do tend to do it. If you go onto YouTube, for example, you'll see that people have these clickbait thumbnails of the best content strategy to grow on Instagram in 2021. That limits that piece of content to 2021. Unless you go back and change the title every single year, which is just extra effort, people are going to assume that that piece of content was only applicable to that year. So let's say someone found that piece of content in 2023. They're not going to want to consume that because they'll see it as being outdated because you have actually dated that piece of content 2021. Whereas if you are just named it, the best Instagram strategies to grow your account. There's no specific time-frame that you want Saint people that it was the best in 2019 or it's going to be the best in 2022. Just for a wide range of data could be applicable anytime no matter when somebody is actually consuming it. So by not dating your content, people aren't going to associate that piece of content with a specific time period, which means that they are more likely to consume it no matter when they are actually finding it, even if they're consuming at five years down the line, if it's still the content topic they want to learn about, they will still see it as being applicable because you haven't specifically date stamped that piece of content. So do not mention dates in your headlines, in your descriptions in the content itself. Because if you do, you're making it specific to that period of time. Then doesn't make it evergreen tip number 3. Try and be a little bit more specific with the topics you are talking about. When you talk about really, really broad topics, you open up more opportunity for change. If you're talking about a real range of topics, then it's likely that over the next 23 years, strategies within that topic, I'll go into change. But if you niche down into a very specific topic, is much less likely that those tactics that you may be talking about or the property numerous solving is going to change because you have been much more specific. Whereas if you were to be broader, you're opening up for that opportunity for something to have changed. I hope you understand what I'm trying to say here because I feel as if I'm I'm waffling or bits, I do apologize if this isn't specific enough. But if you really niche down, there's less to change. But if you are much broader with what you were talking about, there's way more topics within that broader idea that you're talking about that are susceptible to change. So the more niche you can be, the less likely that niche topic will change, which means it's much more evergreen because it's less likely to change over a period of time. So be specific with that. Content is a shorter point I wanted to mention, but I did want to throw it. Now the final thing I want to mention is talking about the fundamentals. The fundamentals of pretty much anything will always be standard when it comes to Instagram growth, content creation, engagement strategy, building a community, these things, no matter when you're trying to grow an account on Instagram, they will never change. When you're growing a podcast. Being consistent with your uploads, picking a niche, building an audience, building an email is any of these things. The fundamentals are never going to change. The quick tips, the shortcuts, the in and out strategies. They are susceptible to change because they aren't the fundamental people come up with these little strategies over time that are very popular for a specific time. And then now wherever off and they weren't perform very well, That's not evergreen content because they change. But the fundamentals stay the same. If you create content about the fundamentals. You know for a fact that the specific fundamentals that you're talking about are going to be evergreen pieces of content. But you need to know that they are the fundamentals. Let's just talk about weightlifting. For example. Squats, dead lifts, bench press, the fundamental left. They are never going to change throughout weightlifting future. I know this is a podcast about social media, but it's just an easy one to talk about if you're playing football, passing, it's a fundamental skill within the game that is always going to be there. If you don't know how to pass the ball, you cannot play football. But this just shows how it is applicable to a niche you may be talking about on social media if you're building a business, sales, sales is a fundamental skill if you want to close new clients. But that Instagram, like I was saying, building a community, having a solid content strategy, having a solid engagement strategy, these are the fundamental things that will always stay the same no matter when you're trying to grow a page on Instagram. So if you talk about some fundamentals within your content strategy, you know, these key pillars that you're talking about here will always be evergreen pieces of content that people can refer to. There will always be applicable when people see your page and they round up my tips for producing evergreen content, Let's just quickly recap. Number 1. Be simple with your language. No industry jargon, no long complicated words because you need anyone no matter the experience level, no matter where they may be coming from, to be able to understand your content and simple language is going to help them do just that. Number two, do not date your content. This is a very simple one, but a lot of people do it. If you date your content, you're making it specific to that time period that you have mentioned. Number 3, be more specific if you have a broader topic idea, the ideas within that are more susceptible to change because there's more to talk about. Whereas if you are more specific, there's less things that are susceptible to change. And finally, talk about the fundamentals. The fundamentals, no matter when someone may consume your content, will always be the same and it could be applicable across thousands of different niches, the fundamentals of the fundamentals for a reason, people need to learn them if they want to succeed in whatever they may be doing. So create content on the fundamentals and you will always have those solid pieces of evergreen content for your page.
12. The elements of branding (below the surface): Now, when we hear the term branding, a lot of people who instantly associate this with a logo, your brand colors, essentially your visual identity as a whole. Now, that's just the surface of it. That is how people see, but it's not how people think of you. Far too many people who are focused on that visual identity, that logo, those brown colors, the images you use, your fonts, that layouts of your stories, all of these different things that people see visually. And that is just the surface of what branding really is. And especially because we focus on building personal brands. Guys, not something that you want to spend too much time focusing on because dies, as we say, just the surface that is the visual layer that doesn't go any deeper. I want to talk through those deeper layers, those things that you must be focusing on, as well as your visual identity. Because yes, your visual identity is important because that is what people associate you with. But you need to be thinking on a deeper level because that's what people remember you for. All of these things come together to build your brand. Not just your logo, not just your brand colors, not just the font. You use. Everything I'm going to mention, and you've got to think about it this way as well. There are a ton of accounts, ton a personal brand. The OU's similar fonts, similar colors. But are they all the same? No, they're not. They aren't the same because yes, they're visual identity may be similar, but those deeper branding pillars are the ones that make them unique. That's what makes them stand out, is what separates them from the competition and leads to their growth. So although you may have the same brand colors or someone else, you could be completely different. You may be in a completely different niche for one, until you may have completely different values. All of these different things that can, things I'm going to talk about. But the pillars are the ones to really think about and focus on because they will separate you from your competition. So without any further ado, let's just dive into a few of these into some more detail. So firstly, obviously we can have your niche. You might have the same font, the same brand colors are very similar visual identity to someone else, but you may be in a completely different nations. So for that matter, your audience has no idea. They may not even know this of the Creator exists and may not stumble across them because you are creating a completely different type of content. So that's fine. So you don't need to worry about your colors or your visual identity in this situation. Instead, you need to be focusing on the content you create, the quality of that content and the value is going to provide to your audience. As simple as that. Also, let's say your visual identity was similar to someone in your niche. Your content can separate you from the individual. Your content could be a million times better than that is focused on your storytelling. Focus on the topics you were talking about, focus on the value you are providing within that content. Because if all of these things are better than that person who has a similar visual identity to you. You are going to be the one that is remembered for that visual identity, not them. So your content type and the audience you are targeting plays a huge role in the branding of your profile. Number two, the way you engage with other accounts. We talk a lot about engagement on this podcast and the way you engage plays a huge part in your personality and how people look at you as an individual. You don't want to be this person that just goes on to posts and leaves a thumbs up and a fire emoji is your comment every single time you want to be seen as this individual that comes onto content and leaves a thoughtful, meaningful value adding piece of engagement. Because in turn, that is going to cement you is that all authority is that figure to look up to within the community because you are, this person is continuously providing even further value outside of your own content to other people within their content. So the way you engage with others is going to be another thing that really, really helps you separate yourself from your competition, from your peers and build that brand as the individual you actually want to be perceived as if you want to be perceived as an expert. Add value, be genuine. If you're going to be a dick, don't comment. Because it can take years to build a brand and a matter of seconds to destroy once you don't want to be this person, that consistently builds up your reputation by consistently providing more and more value and then ruin that with one comment where you're being rude and talking badly of someone because that is instantly going to ruin that reputation and destroy this brand you've built for yourself. So just be meaningful with the way you engage. Add value. Be a kind person. It costs nothing to be nice to someone else and be that individual that people will want to look up to. Because that's going to help you build that authority, build that trust, and build your audience. So the way you engage as another factor that built into the branding of your page. Your tone of voice is another thing. I post a lot of video content, a lot of stories with my face of me talking to the camera because I want people to connect with me, me as an individual, me as a creator because no one else can be me. And that's why video content is really, really important. In my opinion, if you're building a personal brand, you can't get across your full personality in the way you engage, in the way you create your carousels. You can in a way, because you can write your copy, you can engage in a similar way as you would speak in person, but I still not the same as you talking face to face with the camera and someone actually listening to your voice, your accent, your tone of voice, your enthusiasm, all of these different things that will build your personality and build that picture. Someone is creating a view. So video content and showing your personality is key when it comes to building a personal brand. Because at the end of the day, a personal brand, Personal is you and no one else is you. You can have the same brand colors or someone else in the same visual identity, but they aren't you. If you've show your face, they can't mimic that. They can't copy video content. So get on camera. Show your face on your page. Show your voice if you ask it to get on camera, listen to the previous episode of the podcast where spokes through some ways to feeling more comfortable recording video. But you could also just record a podcast and break up that poker and post chunks of that on your Instagram page with an audiogram. One of the things that goes up and down as your voice torques and that can be used as your piece of content. Yes, people aren't seeing your face, but they're hearing your voice. It's still builds that more personal connection with your audience and dice what you want when you're building a personal brand. So that's another pillar. Next, we have your reputation. Your reputation, as I said, is something that can take years upon years upon years to build a matter of seconds to destroy. So you want to be this person is always mindful of the way you are acting, the way you engaging the content you are creating, staying true to your message, saying true to your values, and just being an outright good person within the community. You are someone who is kind to everyone, responds to someone is not egotistical when it comes to the numbers or getting angry when someone has something bad to say about you and having that reaction, you just want to be this person that is liked by the majority of people. You won't be liked by everyone. And that's okay, that's life. You can't do anything about that. But you don't want to retaliate to these people. You don't want to respond to their negative comments and paint a bad picture of yourself in the fact that you are reacting in a bad way. You just need to be this person that focuses on those individuals that do follow your journey are enthusiastic about you as a creator and trust you and look up to you because they are the ones that matter. Who cares about the people leaving negative comments? Who cares about the people that are interested in your journey? You don't need to focus on those people. Focus on the people that are already following. You focus on the people that are already engaged with you because they are the ones that you should really, really be carrying about. So, think about your behavior on social media. I look at it from two different perspectives. One is a common saying, but treat others how you wish to be treated. Don't speak to someone on social media in a way that you wouldn't want someone to speak to you, treat people, how you wish to be treated. And another one, I heard this from someone else, but you should treat everyone as if they could get you a feature in Forbes. You don't know the influence people have over other people, the connections they may have. So if you want nice to everyone and engage with everyone no matter who they are, they're following what position they're currently in in the future that could come full circle and benefit you. I could get you an incredible opportunity simply because the fact that you were nice to them when they had no real following, no real audience and we're coming up in their journey. But because you were nice to them, they feel as if they had to repay the favor. And maybe 3410 years down the line, they repay that favor in a way that is massively on proportional to what you provided them, but they were thankful and always thought of that point where you were thinking of them, even though they had nothing at that moment in time. So behavior is a huge thing and really separate you from others even without your visual identity. And the final thing I want to mention is obviously products and services. You can have a similar visual identity, but if you provide a different product or service, your content's going to be different. All of these other things that we've spoken about are going to be different because you have a different angle to them. So your product or service can set you apart from the rest. You can build your authority. Let's say you are a coat. You could have a book. A book really changes people's perception of an individual when someone writes a burka almost cement yourself as an authority. Psychologically, people think are this person must be an expert because they've written a book on the topic. It's one of those things where it can just instantly separate you from someone else by having that free, but by having that product, by having that service, all of these things can cement yourself as an authority within the community. So think about the production can provide. Think about the services because these all built into your brand and all the overarching goal of your social media page, you need to remember that your social media page is simply a traffic generator. It's not your business. You were taking people from social media and funneling them into your business so that you can make money. Instagram is in your business. So the product or service you sell. And considering these, when you are creating your content, when you are interacting with others, when you are thinking of your audience, when you are creating video, all of these different things we've created, they are going to be influenced by the product and service you create. And that is ultimately going to separate you from everyone else. Now, they are the deeper pillars and there are a ton more. I don't want to have this be a 60 minute to two hour-long episode books. I could talk for hours upon hours upon this and how you can separate yourself on branding. But these are just a few of the things you need to be considering on social media aside from your visual identity, of course, you still need that visual identity. You still need those brown colors. You still need to think about your imagery. You still need to think about the structure of your content because all of these things are the visual things. These are the things that people will look at and associate you with. But they aren't the only things people will associate it with. Because the deeper aspects, those deep pillars that we have mentioned are the ones that build that reputation. And in turn, make people more engaged with you as an individual, as a creator. So you need to bring all of these things together and that will then become your brand.
13. The importance of brand authenticity: I want to talk about being authentic on social media because you hear this advice time and time again. If you want to succeed on social media, you have to be authentic. And if you want to be authentic, you just have to be yourself. This is great advice because ultimately it's true. But why is it true? And in some cases, just being yourself 100% of the time isn't quite going to cut it because almost in some cases it can work against you. So I'm going to start off today's episode explaining in a little more detail when actually not to be yourself. And then I'm going to go into more details as to why being authentic on social media is so important. So why should you not be yourself in some cases? Well, let me paint a scenario. There's another created the post a piece of content that you don't agree with or you don't enjoy consuming. Now, if you were to just be yourself and speak your mind, then ultimately you would have to comment something saying that you disagree or you don't like that piece of content. And if you're not careful, that expression of your opinion could actually damage your reputation. If you come across as this individualist continuously arguing with other creators, not agreeing with their points. Now in some cases, if you see somebody sharing advice that is just outright wrong and shouldn't be followed, voice your opinion, but back it up with evidence as to why you What you're saying is correct and what they're saying is incorrect. But you need evidence. If you don't have evidence, don't comment. Now if you're going to be commenting on something in a horrible way because you don't agree with something. Comment at all. Because you don't want to tarnish your reputation through speaking your mind. You need to have a filter. There's a lot of people out there that simply don't. And although they are being authentic, because they are speaking their mind and they are being themselves. It doesn't look good in all scenarios. And you don't want to be doing that time and time again because people are going to look at you as this person who simply just disagrees with everyone and you don't want to be that person. So just be yourself. Take this advice with a pinch of so don't take it word for word. Be yourself when you should be yourself. If you don't agree with someone in you have to comment in a horrible way. It's better to just not comment at all. You don't have to comment on every post you see you or engage with a piece of content if you don't like it, nobody is forcing you to do that. Nobody's even forcing you to follow certain people in the first place. If you don't agree with someone, move on. Don't think about commenting because it's only going to go again, this Jew long-term. Now I did want to start off the episode by talking about that, but now I've got that out the way. I want to go into a little more detail as to why being authentic on social media, it is incredibly important. So I've got three key points I'm going to talk through. So without any further ado, let's just dive straight into the first one. And that's the being authentic allows your audience and potential customers to see the true u. And when they can see the true u, that allows them to connect with a human being rather than content itself. And that's why you see personal brands succeed on a much faster basis, then somebody who is hiding behind a brand page. So if they've just got a logo, for example, when you're sharing your face, when you're sharing your personality, when you're sharing what you actually care about. And other people are able to see this, then they are going to be connecting with you as an individual, as a creator, them what they would just be consuming in your content itself. If nobody knew who you actually were or who was behind the page and who that person really was. As in your personality, your values, what you believe in your enthusiasm for IE talk about, then they never is going to be that true connection with the content you are creating and your brand itself. Elon Musk for example, people who love Tesla because they love Elon Musk. And he's paid on that personal brand, Tesla do know advertisement. All of their advertisement is done through a Elon Musk and his social media escapades. And media outlets promote in Tesla themselves. So there's never really any Tesla adverse you come across. It's just there press conferences. The Hague articulates in certain ways that allow other media outlets to share it for them. And it's his personal brand that he's bill that's allowed Tesla to succeed on the level where people connect with him. And the brand does so well because they love him. And that just shows the true potential of that personal brand. So when you are truly authentic with your audience, it allows them to connect with you rather than your content, which allows you to succeed in many different ways. Now point to that I want to move on closely relates to people being able to connect with you. So benefit number two, if being authentic on social media is that when people connect with you on a personal level, you are far more likely to increase your conversions very similar to what I just mentioned with Elon Musk and Tesla. Because you need to remember that people buy from people. Especially if like me, you're a coach, I could be producing the most amazing content in the world. But if people don't like me as an individual, then they're never going to want to hire me as their coach. And that's why within the content I produce, especially with this podcast, I try and get my personality, my form of teaching what I believe in my values all across in a certain way that I hope you guys connect with. And because you are hearing my voice, you are hearing the way I express myself and present myself. I hope that builds that more personal relationship with you guys, which makes you in turn more likely to want to work with me as a coach. And from my past experience, it has worked. This podcast is generated me so many great friendships, great relationships with regards to content collaboration on social media. Clients have come to me on a more personal level saying Look, I love your way of teaching on the podcast. I'd love this to be more personal in your coaching program. How do we proceed? And that's all come from the fact that with the podcast, you're hearing my voice. You're hearing me. You're not reading what I'm writing on a carousel, on Instagram or in a caption of a post. And this is also why video content on social media is so powerful. People are able to see you as a person. You're not hiding behind a carousel or a single image post, you're showing your audience who you truly are as the creator. And because people connect with people, people will buy from people. And when you can build that trust and relationship with your audience as an individual rather than through content, they are far more likely to buy from you. So the authenticity actually leads to more conversions. Now the final thing I want to mention is that when you are forcefully engaging or falsely putting across a personality through not being your true self or being truly authentic on social media. When somebody comes to work with you, they're going to be incredibly confused. When you get on a sales call, for example, when people are expecting you to be one way, but you turn out to be the complete opposite because you haven't been truly authentic. The likelihood of them than buying from you as slim, because you've created this false persona of who you really are. So again, this point pretty much closely relates to my previous two. But you need to remember that painting a true picture of who you really are and allows people to connect with you. And if you were to do the opposite and pretend to be someone you're truly not. For example, you paint yourself to be a really enthusiastic, personable individual. But then when you get onto a sounds cool, You're the complete opposite. You're not personable and you're very level headed and straight to the point, which is what a lot of good coaches actually are. It depends on your teaching style. One person may have been coming onto that coaching call thinking that you are going to be that personable individual that they were going to be able to connect with in a more emotional level because they thought your conversational skills we're going to be better. And they got and that sales call and it turned out it was the complete opposite. They may now be thinking that they don't want to work with you because they thought you were one personality when he turned out to be the next. So you don't want to jeopardize the potential of onboarding a new client because you think you should be someone else. When in reality you will attract the right people who you will want to work with, who will also want to work with you if you're just your true self. Different people want different things. And I understand that as a coach, I understand many people probably won't like my style of teaching. They would prefer somebody who has different personality traits to me. But to me as a coach, I don't particularly want to work with people who wouldn't want to hurt me, me in the first place. So it doesn't really matter. But showing my actual personality and being truly authentic, people already know what they're signing up for when they book a cell, it's called me. They know what I'm going to be like and they get on that sales call and then know exactly how I'm going to react. Because if they listened to this podcast, they could have listened to a 165 episodes of me talking and completely understand my teaching style, enthusiasm for what I teach, personality. So that is going to translate perfectly when among that sounds cool and they're going to enjoy speaking to me. But if that wasn't the case and I was being somebody I wasn't. And they get on that sales call, they're going to be confused and the likelihood of me converting them is going to decrease. So just be yourself. Ultimately, just be yourself. But don't just be yourself and voice your opinion if it's going to tarnish your reputation, like I said at the very start of the episode. But they do wrap up my key points as to why being authentic on social media is incredibly important. Ultimately, is going to attract the right people. And when you attract the right people, you're far more likely to convert them. Simple.
14. The importance of clarity on social media: I wanted to talk about the importance of clarity on social media. And I'm going to look at this concept from a couple of different perspectives so that you can gauge just how important it really, really is. So I'm going to look at it from a profile standpoint, but also a content standpoint as well. So without any further ado, let's just dive straight into the profile side of things. Now what I mean by clarity is that anybody visiting your profile or anybody that follows you, they need to know exactly what they're getting. They need to know what you do.
15. Caring about the way your feed looks: Now a piece of advice that were commonly told us that we shouldn't really care about the way of feed looks. It shouldn't look like an art gallery. We shouldn't care whether it's an aesthetic or not. But I don't actually agree with this advice. Now this advice stems from something that Gary V. Tends to preach by feathers if this advice has been misinterpreted and taken in the complete wrong direction. Now, it's all good for Gary V. He's got hundreds of employees. He's got the resources the US individual creators simply don't have the access to. So how on earth can we expect to compete with someone like him? You've also got to remember that he's got millions of followers on other platforms and hundreds upon thousands, possibly millions of listens on his podcast every single day. And that means he can just funnel his audience wherever he wants them to go. So sure. The way his feed look may not matter. But what he's actually trying to say with this advice to us, everyday individual is the we are missing out on opportunities. If we are solely focused on our feet looking perfect. Because w1 is far better than aiming for perfection and not posting at all. That's the core of the advice. But that doesn't mean that you shouldn't care whatsoever about the way your feed looks Saturday. I actually wanted to share a few points as to why I think that the way your feed looks does matter. So without any further ado, let's just dive straight into point number 1. And that is that if you care about the way your content looks and the way it is presented on your feed. This is going to give a fantastic first impression for anybody that is visiting your page. You can be posting amazing content. You could be attracting a ton of people to your page. But if they get to your page and they are left with a poor first impression, sure, they may have visited your page, but they're not going to want to follow you because there is that bad first impression and therefore your page visitor to follow a conversion rate is going to be pretty low. But if those first 12 pieces or nine pieces of content on your feet that they see are highly attractive, highly engaging, and look gray. You've got branding there. You've got people that are enticed by the graphics you use, your bio looks great. Then these people are going to be left with a really solid first impression. And the likelihood of them then clicking that follow button is far, far higher. So you've got to think about this. Yes. Gary Vee can get away with it because he is posting for five pieces of content a day. We sustainably cannot do that. So when you're posting high-quality content a masses like he's able to do because he's got hundreds of people behind them. That's probably fine. And he's proved it's fine because he's now got 9 million followers on Instagram and millions of followers and other platforms. Now, just wanna say that I actually loved the content, carry the post. I think he's a phenomenal creator and there's a lot to learn from him. So I'm by no means putting a downer and what he's producing because he's sort of paved the way for the rest of us content creators. I just got a little bit frustrated with people taking certain advice the wrong way and misinterpreting it. And it's consequently hindering their growth long-term with what they're doing. So point number 1, it does leave a good first impression. And that good first impression is going to really help increase that page visitor to follow a conversion rate. Now, positive point number two about having a good-looking feet is that it's actually going to set you apart from your competition. This is how we can compete with the big names like Gary Vee, like Gronk car, don't like Tai Lopez. All of these big creators that have people behind them producing their content in masses. The smaller creator we gotta do things to help us stand out. We're creating one piece of content a day or four to five pieces of content a week. We have to think about little ways that we can capitalize on the fact that we are small creators and capitalize on the fact that we need to attract people to our page and hit that follow button to help us grow. So having that attractive feed is going to really help us stand out from our competition, even these other smaller creators within your niche, the ongoing for that non attractive feed, because they're not carrying about it, because it's what some people have told them to do. They're just posting the content. You may be posting as valuable content to them. But because your feed And your page is far more attractive, then people are going to want to follow you over them because you've set yourself apart in that way. So being able to set yourself apart by simply just having that acetic feed can make a huge difference. And some of you may think, but it takes so much more time. It doesn't really, you just have to have similar brand colors on every single cover slide you create. If it's a carousel or a single image, you just use similar colors to the rest of your post. You get similar imagery from the same size and you see the overtime. It all just does fall into place and come together. Don't get scrappy with your fonts and use a different phone. Every post and different brand colors show you may have an unorganized for you, and then different brand colors work really well. But having that cohesive branding, very simple to do. So think about it because it's going to help you set yourself apart from your competitors. Point number three, and this is a big one in my opinion. It actually shows you. And this is obviously going to translate into other things within your business. Content is just the surface of your business. It's that client attraction method, but it's all going to play through into your morals and your values. So if you're not carrying about the content you create, people might think you won't care about your clients. So having that care within the content translates through to other things and the perception of your business. So showing that you care about one thing is going to make people believe that you care about everything. This is a very, very minor cog in a very big wheel. But it can help. And if people are looking at your content and going, wow, this is incredibly well put together. This design is phenomenal. This person has put so much time and effort into this. I want someone that puts this much time and effort into their content to put that much time and effort into helping me with my business and grow my business or create my content for me. If you're a content creator, for example, and you want to create content for other people. If you're content itself isn't good enough that why on earth are people going to want to pay you to create content for them? Because you've got to think about it this way. Your feed itself is essentially your portfolio. And if your portfolio is an attractive to other people, then that definitely not going to want to hire you to help them. So think about it that way. Showing that you care about the content you create, shows that you're also can they care about helping other people with their business? Should they hire? You? Just carrying around is a great thing. Now the final point I want to mention, which I think is probably pretty obvious, but it's different to the ones I've mentioned is the good design makes your content much more enjoyable and easy to consume. It's easier to tell a story with good design. And you can add imagery, the attracts, and draws attention to certain points, explain certain points in more detail. Good design is going to help attract people to your content more. That complimentary headline with a complimentary image is going to draw that attention and actually get people to want to consume your content. Having good typography is going to make your content easier to consume. So when you've got all of these different design elements coming together, showing that you care and putting effort into them is going to make your content better all-round. Because it's easier to consume, adds a motion and makes it more effective. And when you combine all of these different aspects, your content will perform better. And when your content performs better, it's going to attract more people. And when you attract more people, you get more people to your page. And because you care about your content and you have the acetic looking feed and great design. People get that good first impression. When people get that good first impression, a actually want to follow you. And when they follow you, you grow your audience. When you grow your audience, you get more clients. So it's all a part of this process, but the good content and actually getting good results from your content is going to stem from whether the content is easy to consume and tells a good story and gives value. And having good design in carrying about that design is going to help with that point. So it's just all one big circle. Good design, good content, good content, more engagement, more engagement, more page visitors, more page visitors, more followers, more followers, more clients. Better content can be produced because you've got more money and more resources to put into it. And it goes around, around, around and that's how Gary these got to the point where he is he didn't have any followers at 1, he started at 01 day. But he's been able to constantly go through this cycle of improvement because he's been out to outsource, hire people to a better than him at some point, put out more content and it just keeps coming round and round and round. And he's built his business from doing so. So that is why I personally believe that you should give a damn about the way your feed looks. So I've, it's opened your eyes to a different perspective.
16. Branding advice you must follow: When it comes to branding, most will just think, oh, this is the colors I use on my content. That's the first thing they'll think about when it comes to branding. But in reality, this so much more. It's like when people say, Oh, I've got a business, when really all they've got is a logo and a website using the same colors on your content over and over again doesn't mean your branding. There's so much more to it. So today, I just wanted to discuss some of the important things that come into play when you are actually building your brand. So without any further ado, let's just dive straight into it. And point number one being your profile itself. So yeah, Those brown colors, those content colors, they play a role, but that's not it. You've got so many more things on that profile. You need to consider for a multitude of different reasons. Starting with your profile picture, your profile picture plays a huge role in the Instagram search function. And when you are being shown as a suggested for you account, when people are following others. If you haven't got a strong, compelling, powerful picture, no one's going to come and visit your profile. So if you're a personal brand, please get a good head show. Get that nice picture review, get you out there. Don't have a logo for your personal brand. Personal brands a personal, you need to show your face. You also need to be considering your username and your display name. What Nietzsche you in, who are you? If you can have your actual name as your username. Perfect, but what you need to be thinking about in your display name is actually putting your niche. For me, it's social media marketing. I have Ethan than a bullet point. And then social media marketing, that way when people are searching for me, they can find me whether they know my name, that's Ethan, or whether they want to find content on social media marketing. By searching either of those, I have the potential to show up next or bio, this is really, really important when we're branding ourselves online. It's like your mini CV. What do you do? Why should people follow you? What is in it for them? This is where you can explain all of that. This is where you're starting to build those surface level elements of your brand. What people actually see on the surface like that logo or that website landing page. Like I said, we're the cliche examples. This is the same for Instagram. So you've got your profile picture, your username, and display name, your bio itself. This is where you give away everything you really sell yourself to those potential followers, visiting your page and your first bio isn't going to hit it off. You're not going to be off to the races straight away. You need to test different things. I've tested so many different bio combinations and they've all resulted in different page visitor to follow a conversion rates. So you need to be testing all these different things, keeping a record and making sure you can optimize that bio. So it is given you that maximum follow a conversion rate. And obviously adding on to that, you have your content design, your colors that you use, your highlights, all the aesthetic things alongside your page that really do add to your brand. Because it's how people associate you and your content and it helps it stand out on that feed. But I want to go into a little more detail now. Things that you may not think about on that surface level, but really do mean a lot when building a brand. The next point being, finding your own voice as a personal brand, as a business. You don't want to be the same as everyone else. The whole point of being a personal brand is it's personal to you. Your uniqueness is what's going to help you stand out as a brand in comparison to where everyone else, your voice be the true u. And that may sound incredibly, incredibly cringy, but no one can be, you know, one is better than being you than you. And this is why I say that Instagram is never too saturated when it comes to building a brand on, in any particular niche. Because if you're good at what you do and people like you and like your opinions and love your content, then they're going to follow you. And because no one else can be like you, you're not competing with anyone. If you create the best content and you be yourself in the process, you will succeed at what you do. You're going to find people coming in, seeing your success copying you, not being themselves and consequently failing as a result. But because you've stayed in your own lane and been unique and found your own voice. That is what's going to help you as a creator. Having a podcast has been huge for me, is being able to help me connect with my audience on a more personal level. Every podcast that is listened to, that listener is listening to me talk for 10 to 15 minutes, three times a week. That gives me so much opportunity to connect with my audience and share my voice on certain topics. And I hope people enjoy it in the process. And because I've showcased my personality through these podcast episodes and through my content that I produce, people get to know me on a more personal level because they understand how well your brain they understand my sense of humor. The stamp, my passion towards what I'm actually talking about. And these are the elements of branding that many don't actually consider. So when you are creating your content, focus on that voice that you are actually building for yourself. Focused on your own voice, being unique, talking about what you believe in talking in what you're passionate about because that will shine through in the content you create and make it better as a result. So think about it. What is your voice? Find your own voice at first. It's very difficult. This is a very difficult concept to understand because you've never done it before. Especially if you're going into a niche that you haven't really spoken about, but it's something you're passionate about. You're going to take inspiration from others at first, you're going to still an elements from other creators until you find who you really are, what you like doing and find your own style and voice in the content you create. So it's a process, it's not going to happen straight away and that's understandable. I didn't have my own voice specifically at first, it took a while to find it. But once he did, that's where my personal brand began to level up because I was made now I was in my own lane and nobody could compete with me because of that. So to number two, find your own voice. Next point, your content style. Now this is a combination of a couple of the points I've already mentioned. Your voice, the college, you use, the design of your content, the topics you actually talk about. This is where you can really find your own element here. When you see other creators creating content, you will notice that a lot of people might have a very similar design or one creator comes out with something that's very unique. And then quickly there'll be a few sheep that jump in on that trend and start using that same design element. But the original creator knows they're onto something. People willing to copy something that you've done, that you know, you've done originally, then it works and people like it. But then being unique, that design, that topic, whatever they've done at first, that now applies to them. And everyone else knows that. So when they see other people copying this individual now, they know where they've stolen that idea from, because they've stolen it from that creator. And that's going to tarnish the reputation of the people copying because they're going to look at it and go. They didn't think of that themselves. They just took it from that created, that made it originally, which actually really assist you as that unique created that came on to that trend in the first place. Because of how popular is, because it shows that you've come up with something really special here. But if you hadn't tried to be unique in the first place and find your own style of content, then that would never have happened. And you want to stand out on this competitive feed of content. There is so much content out there nowadays being produced on a daily basis. People are posting daily. A lot of people were posting daily. So you've got to compete on this daily basis with hundreds, if not thousands of other creators in your niche. So if you want being unique and find in your installed and you will just going to blend in. You'll not going to stand out amongst the crowd into never going to succeed. It is up and you're never going to succeed as a result, take that risk, try something new, find your own content style because when you stand out, that's when people notice you. I believed for a long time that I was creating my content in the right way. I was growing steadily. And I was happy with that because those heading in the right direction quite clearly, but I wasn't actually happy with that. It wasn't enough. I knew I could be doing more. So one day I decided to bang, change my content style, change it up, something that people haven't really seen before. And that day, the day I change the style of my content, it worked, something clicked and my brand took off to this new level. And now every time I post a piece of content because I have this unique style. People know it's me that's scrolling through the feed and if they enjoy my content, they now know the style of content I creates. When they see it, they go, Oh, that's Ethan's piece of content, so they consume it. So when you now have that unique style of content, and people know it's yours if they enjoy your content every time they say in that faith that stopping they're consuming it, they're engaging. And that's what you want. And that's why you have to have that unique style of content because it adds to that personal element of your brand, associates content with you, and that is what you want. Now the final point I want to talk about, I'm not going to round alone about this one for too long because I talk about it a lot and it's so, so important and this is community. Your brand is nothing without the community behind it. If you don't have people believing in you, if you don't have people believing in your content, then you're never going to get anywhere. And that's a fact. Think about the biggest brands out there. Apple, Tesla, Microsoft. All of these brands have humungous communities. And people that fight for their communities. Look at the Apple versus Android. Each has their own community and each feel so strongly about the side they choose. And we'll actually have arguments with the other community over this side and brown that they have chosen. Thus what you want when you're building a brand, you want that community behind it. It's going to back you through thick and thin. And if you don't have that, you're not going to be able to take your brand to the heights you truly want to take it to. So building your community as a personal brand, as a business is so, so important because these people fight for your brand, they promote your brand, they live for your brand. And that is what you need as a creator. Social media, because a lot of people, they just treat their follower count as a number. They don't treat it as true. Real human beings behind a phone screen that could be part of this bigger community. That is what you want, that is what you need, because that is what it's going to take your brand, your business to new heights. So please focus on community. Don't think of every new following you get is just an increase in number on your follower account is noise. So real person. So if you can build relationships with these people and create a true solid community around what you're building. You're going to see fantastic success.
17. Things that are actually damaging your brand: I want to talk about three different things that many people think are helping them. When in reality, they are actually hurting your brand and causing you to not sell as many products as you may think. So without any further ado. Let's just have straight into the first. And that is that you think sometimes being cheapest is being the best. Many would think that if they make the product cheaper than everybody else's on the market, then they are going to sell more than anybody else. When quite simply PR, that will not be the case. And this is for a few reasons. Number one, when you are the cheapest products, your only real selling point. The only real motivation you are giving people to buy your product is the fact that you are the cheapest. It will only take one competitor to come along, slash their prices, sell their product for cheaper the news. And then the whole market that currently buys your product is going to go to them. Because you Ernie key selling point, you're only differentiator was the fact that you were cheaper than everyone else. So if someone becomes cheaper than new, people will stop buying from you. And because you are the cheapest, still doesn't necessarily mean people are dying to buy from you. Because with being the cheapest comes negative connotations. People do think about cheap products and relate them to a poor service or not as much value. And although you may know for a fact that your product is better than everybody else's. People aren't going to think that way. The average person doesn't think like that. People want quality and they're willing to pay extra for that quality. If you are selling a product for, let's say 24, 99, and your competitor is selling it for 34, 99. In reality, there's only a $10 difference here, or ten pound difference, whatever currency you're selling in. So in the grand scheme of things, that's not a lot of money. So people will be willing to pay either. If the 34, 99 products seems like it provides more value, somebody will buy that one even though your product may provide more value and be cheaper. Because yours has the negative connotations of being the cheapest and width that people may think, oh, it's cheap, it's not going to provide me with as much value. Now another aspect to look at this from is the do you sell 1999 product or do you sell that product for 4999 because you could sell it for each, similar to what I mentioned in that previous point. You think that you may sell more products being cheapest because more people can afford your product. But let's say you want to make a 1000 pounds or $1000 with you would 1999 product, you have to sell 50 units. But if you are selling a 49 1909 product, you only have to sell 20. Now I can assure you right now, much easier to find 20 people to purchase a 1499 product than it is to find 50 people to buy a 24, 99 product. And this can be the same for going even higher ticket is going to be much easier to find one person willing to pay $1000 at 1000 pounds for your product. Because finding 50 people isn't easy. Show you could run and show you could pay an influencer to give you a shout out. But still the chance of finding 50 people in a short period of time isn't going to be easy. Whereas finding just one, just one. To purchase a one hundred, ten hundred pounds, $1000 product. It's likely that you're probably going to do it quicker depending on your ad budget. Of course, there were a lot of factors that will play into this. But you get the angle I'm trying to come from here. So think about it. Do you actually want to be the cheapest in the room? Sure, You may be affordable to more people, but that doesn't necessarily mean you're going to sell more. People don't always want the cheapest. People want quality. And they associate quality with a higher price. So being the cheapest won't necessarily bring you more cycles. So in reality, you think it's going to improve. The amount you sell, you think it's going to improve your brand. You think you're gonna get more customers. But it's not always the case because it only takes another person to come in, be cheaper than New. And then you lose all of your customers. Build a solid brand, build something that people want to be apart of, like Apple. And then people will pay anything for your product as the iPhone isn't the best phone on paper. But people still buy it because it's Apple. Branding does, and that's what you need to do if your product make your brand bigger than the product itself. So no matter what you sell that product for, people will want to buy it. The second thing that is actually hurting your brand is saying yes to any client that approaches you, or any requests the current client actually has. When you say yes to every client approaches you for work, there's no real exclusivity to wanting to work with you because you work with they're free. One, good, bad, big snow. You've just pretty much given your time and effort to everyone that's come towards you, then you may think why the more clients I have, the more money I make. And you're so focus may be money, but that's not always going to be a good thing for you. Being selected with who you pick as clients is one of the best things you do business, selecting only the highest quality, highest paying clients will be good for you long-term, if you have a client that comes along, they don't align with your values. They're asking for work that you can't necessarily provide or there being too pushy or too demanding or things that you just don't agree with. And you end up saying yes to working with this person, they are going to cause you so many problems and the amount of money that they are paying you to work with them just won't be worth it. Because they're going to cause you stress, they're going to cause you problems. They're going to take up far too much of your time than what you agreed with initially. And long term. That's going to stop you from being able to work with other people. It's going to damage your reputation because they're going to complain and tell other people that you're not providing a good service when in reality you actually are. And this all terms into them damaging your reputation. When in reality, you could have just said no, the very beginning when they request it to work with you. So be selective with the client you choose. When you are selective, it creates this exclusivity barrier. It's not you being desperate to work with anyone and everyone because that's what it's going to appear like if you say yes, people would just think, are there begging for business, they need it so we can get any price off of them. And no matter what we say, they're going to say yes, when you create the exclusivity is not you wanted to work with other people. It's the people wanted to work with you. And when you have that direction, when you want other people to work with you, that's when you hold all the cards. That's when you decide the price. That's when you decide what you do that you decide how much time and effort you put into it. And when you decide those things, that's when you are in complete control of your business, That's when you are in complete control of the services you provide. And clients will respect that. When you have people bossing you around, they'll tell it now take advantage and you won't be able to stop it because you let your guard down at the first hurdle. Whereas if you were saying no beginning and you were making yourself exclusive and you were making yourself seeming control. That will stay the same throughout that relationship with that person. And you will get along much better. You will see better results. You will want to work well for this person. You will want to provide the highest quality service. And therefore you will provide them with the craters return on their investment, which will lead to them getting good testimonials, recommend a new two other people bringing other successful clients for you to work with. So be selective with who you choose. Don't say yes to everyone because you think you're going to earn more money and you think they'll bring testimonials, and that means you can get better business because that won't be the case. If you say yes to anyone and everyone, you look desperate, you will come across bag clients who went up tarnishing your reputation, which isn't what you want. You want the highest quality clients. You want to provide the highest quality service, and you want to have the highest quality reputation. And to do that, you have to be selective with who you work with, which will consequently make you desirable as a company and provide that exclusivity to make people want to work with you rather than it seem you want to work with them. Now the final point I want to mention, maybe a little bit controversial. Many of you may not agree with me on this one. And it's only going to be a sharp point, but it's something I wanted to bring up. I don't think as a business, as a coach, as a service provider, you should provide your customer with all of the answers. Many may think that it's within your duties, within your expertise, you have to give all the answers because that's what people are paying for. But I feel as if as a coach, as a service provider, not giving all the answers is the better route to go down. Because when you don't give all of the answers, that makes your customer think, that makes your clients think about things. And when they have to think about things, they will see better results because they will have to tweak things. They will have to implement things themselves. They will have to learn more, which will make them appreciate the process and the input and the work much more than if you had just done everything for them. So for example, when I've worked with people to help them grow their social media pages. When I've structured their profiles, when I've pretty much got everything on-point to set them up in the best possible way to achieve what they want from social media. I don't do it for them. I teach them the how, the why. I let them go away and start doing it. Sure. Once they've done it and we'll tweak it and perfect it for them. I'm not just gonna do it all for them. Because when you do everything for someone, they don't understand the how and the why. And if they then got to go on and do it themselves in the future, they're not going to know where to start and what to do. So when you teach them the how and the why, they would understand for the rest of time why they have done what they have done. If you do it all for them, they won't understand why you have done that for them. So if they want to change something, if they want to tweak something, they won't have any idea what to do. When you teach them the how and the why. They then have to think. They then have to learn. They then have to think, Okay, where do I go from here? And then when you allow them to find the answers for themselves, they can see much better results. Yes, you can tweak it for them. Yes, you can perfect it for them, but make sure they understand what they are doing and why they are doing it. Don't give them all of the answers. And the best thing about it is if they want in the future, they can then pass that information onto someone else. I never know this person who I am helping may want to become an Instagram growth coach or social media coach in the long-term. And if I teach them how and the why now, they can pass the information that I have taught them onto someone else in the future. So you shouldn't, in my opinion, give all the answers. Allow your customers and clients to think for themselves a little. That will then give them a greater understanding of what they're doing, why they're doing it, and how to do it. And that wraps up the points I wanted to make about things that you may think are actually improving your brand, improving your product or service when in reality, they aren't, they are actually damaging it. So just to recap, number one, being the cheapest. Being the cheapest doesn't mean you are the best. It doesn't mean you're going to sell the most products. So don't just can't and slashed prices in an attempt to make more sales. Number two, you are always saying yes to any client that approaches you. Be selective, be exclusive, make people want to work with you rather than making it seem that you were begging for all business and wanting to work with anyone and everyone. When you are exclusive, you can charge higher prices, you will see better results. And finally, number three, don't give all the answers. Allow your customers, allow your clients to think for themselves a little. Let them appreciate the how and the why to what they're doing and they will learn a lot more when working with you.
18. Attracting your desired audience: How on earth do I attract the right person, the actual people? I want to be following me to my page. Because if you are a personal brand or a business brand, it's likely that you have a product or service to sell. So you ideally only want people who are going to buy that product or service to be consuming and following your content. You don't want just anybody and everybody who aren't interested in it. You want the right people. And many people find this difficult. They don't know where to start and this causes them to go down that wrong path of building an audience of the wrong people. So I wanted to share a few tips as to how you can actually attract the right people to your page. So without any further ado, let's just dive straight into the first tip that being creating targeted content, Let's just have a very vague example of a service being teaching people how to build an audience on social media. Now if your content has nothing do with building an audience on social media, your audience isn't going to be full of people who actually want to build an audience on social media is a pretty self-explanatory concepts. But when I look at people's pages who tell me what they are selling or tell me the person they want to attract. And then I look at their content. They're posting content that has nothing to do with what they are selling or who they want to attract. You aren't going to attract people interested in social media growth. If you're posting fitness content or motivational content or productivity tips, you may get the odd person with the crossover. However, you're not going to get people who are directly interested in exactly what you are selling if you want to attract people who are interested in social media growth, talk about social media growth. Tips for growing your social pages, tips for creating better content, because all of these things attract the right person. And if you are solving problems, catering to the needs and the wants of these people that you want to sell a product or service to. They will naturally stumble across your page because they will be actively seeking content that is going to help them solve those problems and cater to their needs and their wants. So the first step is actually creating that targeted content that these people are actually going to want to see if you are selling Instagram growth products. Don't shun people your breakfast or your cute little puppy, not going to attract them for the right reasons. And you don't want to build that audience of the wrong people because they won't be interested when you come and sell that product or service, it's far, far better in my opinion, to have a seriously, seriously targeted audience of a 1000 people than a random 10, 20000 people who are actually interested in what you're eventually going to sell. So don't focus on the numbers, focus on the quality of the audience you are building. And the initial step for doing that is obviously creating the content that caters to their wants and their needs. And the next step I'm going to dive straight into is that you have do actively seek out these people. Also, you can't simply just expect people to stumble across your page, especially very early on in your journey, you'll realize that as you begin to grow in the algorithm understands the content you create and who you provide for that you begin ranking on the Explore page and the suggested for you tabs, but very, very early on, you don't have that advantage. You don't have that organic reach that will come further down the line. Instead, you have to actively seek out that audience to make them aware that you can help them. There's no point in creating all of this fascinating value, providing content that you are taking hours to create per week. And nobody viewing it in the first place because you haven't made people aware that you actually exist. So you can't just expect people to stumble across your page. You have to actively find them. And that's why you so often hear people talking about the importance of having an engagement strategy. Having an engagement strategy whereby you actually actively seek the right people, your potential customers, those are actually interested in the content you create. That's how you get that ball rolling. That's how you get those initial fans. These are the people that you have to show the most attention to, the most care towards because they are the people that are going to support you in the early stages and help promote you to that wider audience further on down the line through that organic reach like I was talking about. But you do have to go and seek this audience, especially if you want to get super, super targeted. When you are seeking somebody. Who is interested in your content? You can get extremely specific. You can look at someone's page and go, Yes, No, Look somebody else's page and go. Yet there'll be interested or no, they're not going to be interested. So I'll skip on. You can be incredibly targeted. You can even send DMs, video messages, voice messages, you name it. The best ways to actually build those relationships is to jump into the DMZ and send those personalized messages via voice or video because they get to know you on a more personal level. And when they do that, they're more likely to follow you and then follow your content. Or because you went out and found them in the first place. If you hadn't gone out and found them, chances are they probably would have never stumbled across your content. So actually be proactive. Go out there and look for the right people. Don't just expect them to come to you. Now, there is one final point that I want to mention, and this does kind of coincide with the previous point and is a side effect of having that engagement strategy and that is embedding yourself into the right communities. Now when you're very early on in your journey in new to certain platforms, embedding yourself into a community can seem quite an alien concept. You don't know where to look. You don't know who's a part of these communities. You don't know what communities you belong to you or which communities you're going to be welcomed into. But it is a case of simply just throwing yourself right in there. Engaging with like-minded creators, engaging with people's content who you find fascinating that closely relates to the content that you create or you're going to be creating. And it's doing this consistently over time. Not a case of jumping into the comments section once and then leaving and never coming back is a case of making people aware that you actually exist. And the more you do this, Let's say you comment on the same person's post 20 times. People will start recognizing you, and people will start doing the same on your content. Let's say you comment on a creator that has 40 thousand followers. You comment on their posts 20 times. Over time, they're loyal audience is going to see that you are consistently in the comment section providing value, showing interest, showing that you actually exist. And then they'll start to realize, Oh, who is this person? Let's go and check out their content. These are people that are like-minded and create similar content and have the same goals as you. And you can create relationships with these people to benefit from that organic reach. Because Instagram is now going to realize that you are associated with these creators. You create similar content and therefore you will help the same audience. So people that are looking for social media growth advice, Instagram or no, No. Okay. This person is engaging with all of these people as part of their community. Let's group them amongst the suggested for you tab of people that also create content based on social media growth. And therefore, anybody that wants to find that sort of content, they can just find the creator there. So you can see how actually embedding yourself into a community makes the algorithm realize who you are, what you create, who you help. And that does help with that organic reach further down the line. But that will come through that solid engagement strategy. So you need to make sure that you are doing that consistently, regularly and over a long period of time with a lot of value, I might say, Don't just engage for the sake of engaging or saying great post or just posting a heart emoji loved this, that's useless. You may as well not engaged at all, actually provide value, voice, your opinion, should it be a good one, don't be too controversial because you don't want to come across as this person that argues with everyone, but just be a genuine person B, you provide more value, be great towards your community. And then people will begin to wonder who you are and want to follow you and build relationships with you because of how great you are as a creator, social media is called Social Media for a reason you have to be social. That's the whole plane in all of these different platforms. So if you aren't social, you're never, ever going to attract the right people to your page. So that is there. They are three very, very simple tips to help attract the right people to your page. Let's say you have a product or a service you want the right customer following your content, implement those three simple tips over a long period of time. And you will see a much more targeted audience being bill for your brand.
19. The reasons why people actually follow you: Why people actually follow you on social media. There's so many different reasons, but today, I just wanted to bring together some of what I believed to be the key reasons as to why people follow you on social media. So without any further ado, let's just dive straight into point number one, that being the most crucial point. And that is great content. Or HE, all of these different excuses, Oh me, oh, people do on following me. I'll have my hashtags aren't working. I'm sorry. But that is because your content is rubbish. A, all begins with fantastic content. If you aren't creating great content, people aren't going to want to consume it. If people don't want to consume your content, the algorithm isn't going to push it to a wider audience. If people want actually seeing your content, then nobody's going to follow you. And why would they follow you? If they see it? But it's rubbish. They just won't. If you want to have people actually follow you, then you need to create great content because you want people to keep coming back. You can't post one piece of amazing content followed by a bunch of rubbish content because their lung follow you because they thought they were going to be experiencing great content over and over again, but didn't get that experience. And they're not going to follow you if they included human rubbish piece of content, come to your profile and see that it's more rubbish content. They probably won't even make it to your profile in the first place because they probably didn't even consume that piece of content because it was rubbish. It all comes down to creating great content. Task, what you post on social media, what people come on social media to consume, they come on social media to consume content. So if your content is in good, Why on earth would they want anything to do with you? So don't blame anything else if it's not working for you. If you're not getting any followers, if you're not ranking on hashtags, if you're not ranking on the Explore page, if you're not ranking on the For You page, if it's Tiktok or, or on any of the search suggestions, if it's YouTube, then that's because your content isn't good enough. None of those reasons the algorithm doesn't hate you is just because your content isn't up to scratch. So start by creating great content. It's the core pillar behind everything. Without a fantastic content strategy, you're never, ever going to get anywhere. Now, moving on to tip number two after my little bit of around about content there, something a little bit different and that's actually having a compelling bio. This one is specifically important when it comes to Instagram. Having a compelling bio can massively increase your follow a conversion rate on the platform. Your bio is essentially your mini CV. It needs to tell people who you are, what you do, what is actually in them, if they are going to be following you and your content in the future. Because if there's nothing in it for them, then why on earth do they need to follow you? Well, they going to get out of your content. If they're going to get x amount more clients, if they're going to get more money, if they're going to learn how to do something, tell them. Because that's the reason people are going to stick around and actually follow you. If you're an expert in whatever, if you have a podcast in whatever, if you do whatever, tell these people they add to your credentials, they add to your social proof. You need people when they come to your page, exactly what they're getting him for. You weren't no confusion. You don't want them to come to your page and wonder on what does this person actually do? They just need to be able to read the first line or two of your bio and go facet. That's why I'm here and this is why I'm going to stay. You aren't going to hit it off with the best bio combination of the bag. You may have to try a few different combinations before you reach that optimum follower converting bio. It took me awhile. I tested so many different combinations. I still tests multiple different combinations every now and again to see if I can just edge up that percentage by maybe buh, bye, maybe even one or 2%. Because if you get a lot of profile visits, then extra percent O2 is a huge difference. So make a note of it. I have an Excel spreadsheet where I keep track of all the different combinations to a US over that say a 23 week period may be even a mumps will get a good sample basis of how many people are visiting my page versus how many people were actually following me that visited my page, that you'll follow a conversion rate. Now, you want that percentage to be as high as possible. So then you'd look all of these different bio combination, switching out certain lines, same which ones work better. And then you can build this perfectly optimized bio days, actually making people follow you because you couldn't be done all the hard work. You could be getting a ton of page visitors because your contents amazing, but You'll confusing people when it comes to your page because they don't actually know what's in it for them, why they should follow you, who you are, what you do. So you're failing at that final hurdle with regards to the buyer. And it shouldn't be like that. It's a very simple change to make. Can be a long-term change as well because you constantly changing it over time to improve it. But a compelling bio instantly increased that photo, a conversion rate if you don't currently have a good one. Moving on to point number three, and this is effective branding. Branding is incredibly important when it comes to branding. Most people think, Oh, it's a logo or yeah, that's the colors I'm going to use on my content is so much more than that. You'll branding is your voice, is your community. It's the type and style of content you create. There's so many elements of brand. I could list of so many different elements of branding for 10, 15 minutes. I'm not gonna do that, but it's so much more than just a logo and it's something that you're going to build over time. But when you build a brand, look at brands like Amazon and Tesla, people believe in them. People fight for them. People actually argue with other people about why they like brands. Look at the whole Apple versus Android situation. If feuds over these two different sides of branding, effective branding, it's going to really help you push your social media presence to that next level. Because people are going to start promoting your content, screaming from the rooftops about you. And that's how you reach the extended audience you haven't reached before. Gary V is a perfect example. He's built a cult like following of entrepreneurs that rave about pretty much everything. He talks about whatever comes out of that man's mouth, his followers believe, and they implement, and they live by it. That is effective branding, Guys, effective community building. And that's how he's been able to build something beyond any other entrepreneur on the platform, multiple social media platforms. In his case, he has done it. So, so well. You may not like him, but I'm telling you now there is so much to learn from him. So please just take a look at these content. You don't have to enjoy it. Just look at how he's doing things because he's doing it the right way. But with effective branding, you can take everything you're doing on social media to that next level. So effective branding, definitely consider it. Now, the final point I want you guys to consider, and that is actually uniqueness. Your uniqueness is going to attract so many more followers than if you were to just blend in with everyone else. There is so much competition on social media that it's very easy to just blend into the crowd. There is so much content being posted every single day. If he's got no uniqueness with regards to your content, then why you going to look any different to everybody else that's in the feet? If you've not got something about you that's unique, you've not got your own voice, you've not got your own style. And these play into the branding elements I mentioned in the previous point. Nobody's ever going to find you or want to look at what you do. You'll uniqueness is what makes you stand out from the crowd. When you stand out from the crowd, that's when you begin to get noticed. And when you begin to get noticed, that is when people start to follow you embrace uniqueness. It's scary. I understand it is much easier. It's much more comfortable to just conform to the rules and follow what everybody else is doing because it's worked and if it's work for somebody else, it could work for you. That's not the case. Just because it's worked for somebody else. If you do every single step the same as them, doesn't mean it's going to work for you also. You have to take risks. You have to go off the beaten track and try things for yourself. Have that element of uniqueness about what you do. Because when you do that, as I said, that's when you stand out. When you stand out, that's when you reach more people because everyone begins to notice you've got that element of uniqueness. So people actually enjoy your content a little bit more. It's more engaging. It's not the same as what everybody else has been producing. They get to experience something new. When people experience something new, they like it because it's different, is fun to consume, is engaging to consume. And when they engage with it, inscribes going to look at your content and go Wow, people really enjoying this. So I'm gonna push it out to a wider audience. You reach more people, you rank on the Explore page, rank on hashtags. And that's when you reach that wider audience. Who comes a follows you, you build your following. That is why people are going to follow you get different to everyone else. Your breath of fresh air. And that's what people like. So please do not be afraid to head into your own lane and stay in that lane. Don't conform to the rules. Do what you want to do, because that uniqueness will play massively in your favor and making people actually want to follow you. And I do wrap up some key points as to why people actually follow you on social media.
20. The mindset needed to succeed on social media: I wanted to talk more along the lines of mindset. Things that have to be taken into consideration every single day, not necessarily implemented into what you're doing, but just something you always have to be consciously aware of if you want to succeed on social media. So that's what I'm going to talk about, the mindset to succeed on social media. Because a lot of this stuff, I've learned the hard way. I didn't know it when I first started. And it's something I've had to work on and continue to work on every single day since the day I began. So the plants I mentioned maybe pretty eye-opening for a couple of you who may not think along those same lines, but you should switch that mindset. And if you switch that mindset to the points I'm about to mention, it could dramatically changed the outcome of your success on social media. So today I want to talk about three different mindset orientated subjects, which I hope will help you in your social media journey. So without any further ado, let's just dive straight into number 1. That being, everybody starts from 0. I started from 0, you started from 0. Gary Vee started from 0. Guang caught don't started from 0. You name it. Richard Branson, Jeff Bezos. They all started from 0, but at 1, they were in the exact same position as you or I. Nobody knew who they were. They didn't have a ton of money. Some may have had a ton of money. However, they were at nothing. So there's no reason as to why you can't achieve something like they have. You look up to your favorite creators, Gary. They may be, for example, a 7.8 million follower base seems pretty unachievable when you first start. But he's done it. He's shown is possible. One day he was at 0, he just took the time, implemented the strategies, pushed out the content, continue to work and got to that point. There is no reason as to why you can't do exactly the same. And when I say exactly the same, I don't mean copy his format copy has content because that won't work. He came up with his own style, his own voice, his own strategy, and put that into place and didn't stop. If you can do the same for you, your niche, what you talk about, your brand, your voice, message, and continue to do it every single day. You can, there is no one stopping you. It's just down to you and you only to put the work in. So when you look at these huge creators with millions upon millions of followers, or your favorite creator may only have a 100 thousand followers, which is still a lot. You may look at that and go mass impossible. There's no way I can do that. Why not? It only takes hard work, consistency, and dedication to actually achieve that goal. And that's the reason those people have done it. They have done what most won't, so that they can achieve what most Khan. So don't think from that perspective, always remembered that everybody started from 01. We all started in the same position. It's those that actually implement the strategies and do the work that end up achieving what they want to achieve. And you have to do the same. So anything is achievable. Don't put yourself down because you don't think you can reach that next big goal you want to achieve. You can, it's just down to you to put the work in and anyone can do it. Anyone can overtake you. You can overtake anyone. You could be bigger than Gary V. If you put the work in, It's not impossible. So just remember, everybody starts from 0. Now the second mindset shift I want you to think about is that you should never ever, ever compare your day one or day 10 to somebody else's day 40, 50, or a 100, 365. It's an unhealthy comparison. And this is one that I struggled with massively when I first started. So I completely understand what everybody else is thinking when they are comparing themselves to others. When you are creating all of this content, putting in all this hard work and watching all of these other creators grow at a much faster rate, make way more money than you. It's discouraging. And it causes a lot of people to actually stop putting in the work because it just seems pointless. You're putting all this work in and getting no results. However, you don't know or don't know when that person first started. They may have posted to 300 more posts, the new. However, you are comparing yourself to them when your only on day one or day 10 and very early on in your journey, and that is not worthwhile. The only healthy comparison you can ever make. And this is something like only do now after realizing just how damaging comparing ourselves to others is the only healthy comparison you can make is yourself today versus yourself yesterday or last week, yourself and your self in the past. Because if you've made progress from those two points, that is all that matters. You're on your own journey. It doesn't matter what anyone else is doing. Forget about them. This is you, you're on your own journey, achieving your own goals, setting out to achieve your own success. Forget everyone else. Doesn't matter how many followers they've got, how many likes they getting, how much money they're making. Because that's not you. Focus on you and you only when you stop caring about what others are doing, everything changes. Trust me. The minute I stopped comparing myself to others, one, I was much happier because it is upsetting comparing yourself to others when you're not achieving what they are, you don't feel like you're good enough. You feel as if you should be achieving more. Like you disappointing those around you simply because somebody else is got more followers knew what after crap, honestly is so, so upsetting. However, the mini I stopped, my happiness increased dramatically. My success increased dramatically because that all I was doing now was comparing myself to myself, understanding my floors, where I could improve, how I could make some little changes, see a little bit more success in the content that I was posting. That's what mattered. And that's how I was able to snowball further and further and further. So for example, if you're comparing yourself to me right now, but you are only two weeks into your journey. Don't. I've been doing this for years now. This podcast, for example, this is episode, I believe 180. I have created 180 podcast episodes, three episodes a week for over a year. If you're starting a podcast and you're using this podcast to learn how to build your social media accounts to grow yours. Don't compare your podcast of mine, just focus on yours. Focus on making your episodes better. Voice recordings, more interesting, the actual value you provide, far more valuable. The quality you name it, focus on that. Don't compare it to mine. Just focus on what you posted this week versus what you posted last week. I do all the time. I looked back at my first 2, 3, 4 podcasts and compare them to what I produce now. And the quality increase is insane. And that is the progress I should be looking at and be proud of, not compare myself to someone else and go, Oh, I'm catching up with them or, or Vicodin and further away from me, know what's happening. Don't think like that is going to discourage you a new we'll quit because it is disheartening and de-motivating and it's not going to help you get anywhere. So never, ever, ever compare yourself to others. And never compare your day 0 to somebody else's day 180 because they've put so much work in those 180 days. You don't know how much research they've done. You don't know how much practice they've put into their design, their copywriting, I put in hours, but somebody else may have put in more hours than me. So you cannot compare the amount of work because they've done more work than me, but I don't know that because I can see what they're doing every minute of every day. So it's not healthy comparison. So please, please stop comparing yourself to others. Now the final point that I wanted to mention, and this is another one that's really, really, really important and it's a common thing that a lot of people talk about, but so many people just don't take on board. And it's that this is a long term game. Patients is everything. When I first started, I knew and had connections with people that I thought were dedicated a year down the line. There are very, very few people that stuck around and is still producing content, growing narrower audience providing value to others. I don't know what happened to all of the people that stopped. I used to speak to people on a daily basis and then suddenly didn't speak to them again because they gave up. I now I don't know why they gave up if they didn't enjoy it, fair enough. You shouldn't continue to do something, you don't enjoy it because that's not sustainable. You won't keep things going for a long period of time. Others, they may have just got discouraged with their growth. They expected more of what they were doing. And they didn't give themselves long enough to get to the point and they wanted to achieve the beauty of social media is the, you don't know when you're going to get that next viral post or you don't know when you're suddenly going to start achieving that organic reach that you always wanted. It could be tomorrow, it could be next week. But if you don't continue to post, then you're never going to know. It could have been tomorrow that you got that viral posts that changed everything for you. But you didn't post because you gave up and we're stuck on, oh, sad because I haven't grown as many followers as I wanted to. Again, it's just a load of rubbish. You have to keep consistent. You have to see this as a long-term game. When you go in, I think I'm going to do this for the next two to three years. I'm going to give it a solid, solid effort. There hasn't worked off to that amount of time. You should probably look at what you've done and gone. Okay. This didn't work. Maybe I should try something else. You're only going to try something for two to three weeks. And at the end of the three weeks go, Oh, I should have had 5000 followers by this point. Let's just unreasonable. Especially if you're not putting the amount of work in the others are pulling in. Don't set out on a journey to achieve that follow ago that will come naturally when you put in the work and provide the value. Do it because you love it, do it because you want to do it and do it with the mindset of you have to be patient and it could take two to three years to get to the point you want to achieve, not two to three months. Because when you have that long-term mindset is far more sustainable. You won't get discouraged on the day-to-day fluctuations in the amount of engagement and followers you have. You see it from a long-term perspective and you see the growth over time and how far you've come. If I had started this podcast and after three weeks, looked at the amount of plays I was getting, after irony posting nine episodes, I would have stopped. But I knew that podcasting was incredibly, incredibly difficult. I knew that growing an audience on a podcast was hard and after nine episodes, there was almost no chance of succeeding whatsoever. However, now, over a year down the line and 180 episode hours of recording, hours of editing, hours of research to actually produce these episodes for you. I'm not ranking in the Charles. I've got a solid fanbase. I get reviews from people praising me for what I'm producing and it's so some encouraging. But if I hadn't continued and seen this long-term and continue to pump out these episodes three times a week. I would never have got to this point. It's a long-term game and I'm still looking long term. I've barely scratched the surface with what I'm doing. I'm only a year in I could be doing this for the next five, 10, 15, 20 years. Who knows something else might come up and I might change directions. But that's just all a part of the plan. So you've gotta just take every day as it comes. Think of it long-term. Don't think short-term because long-term is sustainable and you won't get discouraged from the short-term fluctuations in what you're doing day-to-day. So they are the mindset shifts I want you to consider. That is the mindset I want you to have. And that is something that I have been working on and continue to work on every single day is a process you can't so I need to switch like that. You have to take it into account if they take it in your stride and work on it. And that is when everything changes.
21. Conclusion & Class project: And that does wrap up this skill share class. I did just want to mention however, that this is one of the classes that I will consistently be adding new modules to. So if you are taking this early on, just check in every month or two to make sure whether any new modules have actually been added so that there's more value for you to actually consume. But now it is time for your class project, and it's a pretty simple one actually, I want you to set out on a content strategy. But obviously first you're going to need to build your profile if you haven't done so, already, implement everything I've mentioned with regards to actually picking your niche, Understanding what you actually want to achieve so that you can set off on the right path by them want you to set out on a 90-day content challenge, focusing on those branding pillars that I have mentioned so that you can actually build a loyal brand and following behind your social media account. So 90-day content challenge, I want you to post every single day for 90 days without fail attracting the audience. You want to attract that targeted content. So you can build the audience you want to build that you can actually benefit from. So it's pretty simple. Build your profile using all of the branding elements I've mentioned throughout this class. And then go on to post a piece of content on whatever social media platform you choose every single day, for 90 days. That is it. And I want you to post the results at the end. If you've already built on account and you're already posting content, I still want you to do this, but I want you to take a screenshot of where you started from and the screenshot at the end so that we can compare the two either side when you're finished. And that is it. That is your Skillshare class. Good luck. Let me know how you get on. But if you did enjoy this class and digits, want to mention that I am actually the host of a podcast called Social Media Marketing School is a podcast that covers everything social media marketing. So if you enjoyed today's class, there is definitely going to be something over there for you. So you can actually find links to this podcast on my Skillshare profile. We can actually find a link in the about section of this class. I release episodes every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. So you can expect to consume a lot more value over there. But if you've got any questions with regards to anything I've mentioned in this class, you can either leave a discussion point or you can reach out to me on Instagram, my handle is the marketing. Ethan, just reach out to me, send me a DM and I'll make sure I get back to you no matter what. And that's it. That does wrap up today's Skillshare class if you did enjoy. Thank you so much for tuning in and I hope to see you in my other classes.
Ethan Bridge, Social Media Marketing Coach
