A few thoughts on engaging your audience according to communication medium and purpose.

I found this a bit complex to write, so if you want clarification on anything, let me know. I think it includes some pretty important stuff that you might find useful.

When it comes to email, I find a singular focus is usually best, especially since we are usually trying to gain a result from our emails. This means you need to understand your subscribers and craft emails they will open based on the subject line and what will inspire them to click what you put inside.

But for social media, we don't always have or need a singular focus.

We are usually looking for engagement to build community...or at least, that's how I see the best way to use social media, unless you're specifically advertising a product and l'll talk about that next.

On social media, if you want to engage your audience, you still likely have a singular topic but you have different engagement points so they are more likely to like and comment on your posts. Because when they like and comment, your post will be seen by more people.

We do not have that phenomenon via email.

Some ways to add engagement points to your posts (and in many cases, use more than one of these):

* Add a photo to illustrate your point. Personal photos usually work better than stock photos.

* Add side notes and thoughts or inject some humor.

* Ask more than one question that would catch the attention of different people, but still keep your post concise and clear.

* Some questions you can include: Ask for their opinions, have them talk about themselves (people love this), have them tell you if they would like more information like this, ask simple yes or no questions for the shy ones, use the poll feature.

* Sometimes your engagement points won't be phrased as questions and can simply be invitations to engage. I've done it a few times in this post.

As for advertising on social media, which I admit I am NO expert on, I do believe you should experiment between the singular focus and multiple points of engagement because engagement still matters in social media ads.

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What should you do when your audience just doesn't seem that into you?

It happens, but it's not the end of the world. We're excited about we're doing and we grow our list and/or social media audience and things seem to fall flat.

There's no point in trying to force what you've got to sell on an uninterested audience. You have to step back and try to figure out what they want AND/OR how to target the audience that ALREADY wants what you have.

Some thoughts on how to get back on track:

1. Craft your free offers, so they are a direct match with the products you sell and follow up immediately. By the way, we have a free course and templates to help you with this very thing.

2. Listen to your audience more. Figure out what makes them tick. Ask them questions, share free items, products via affiliate links and see what they respond to BEFORE you make a product to sell them.

3. Test the waters with our "get paid before you create your content" method, so you're not wasting your time and valuable resources. We also have a free guide and templates for these.

Keep working at it, it's not that hard to build an audience of a decent size if you work diligently. The challenge comes in building an audience that is ready to buy what you want to sell. 

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One of the best things in life you and your clients can do is to be confident in the fact that there is ALWAYS enough.

When you worry about what you're lacking, you aren't creating space to receive everything that is actually out there for you. The universe tends to deliver exactly what we're expecting.

Now that doesn't mean you can wish for anything and then it magically appears on your doorstep.

What it does mean is that if you believe it, you will see the OPPORTUNITIES that present themselves for you to get it.
And the opposite is true. If you don't believe in it, you will probably never see your opportunities because you don't think the reward actually exists.

There is also another side and that's desperation where you think it's possible, but you want it so badly and you aren't quite sure you can get it. In this case, you aren't open to seeing your opportunities either. You try to forge them where there aren't really any, instead of letting the universe show you what is there waiting for you to exploit (in a good way, of course).

So when you look at someone who you consider to be "lucky", it's unlikely luck has much to do with it. They just expect life to deliver what they need, or they're at least open to it and they're willing to do the work to get those things.

For me, I really see this in my business especially in an online business with digital assets.

The possibilities for success are endless with an enormous pool potential customers (that I barely tap into) and the products I create are infinite, so I can give them away for free, sell them or do whatever I want with the goal of growing my business. I don't have to force anything.

Information marketing certainly is an abundance place to be. There isn't much limit to what we can do. We just have to see our opportunities to do it and I promise, those opportunities are abundant.

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Have we been doing Instagram wrong? I know a lot of people struggle with Instagram as a promotional tool, but might I suggest switching your mindset and seeing it as an absolutely fabulous LEARNING AND DEVELOPMENT tool?

I think as entrepreneurs and also as individuals, we look at social media wrong or at least in a way that isn't usually productive. We're so worried about building followings, trying to convert that following into sales, etc. Sure, those are things you CAN do and if it works for you, keep doing it.

But for me, as I've mentioned before, I pretty much let go of social media when it doesn't serve a PURPOSE. Simply broadcasting for the sake of broadcasting is a waste of time, resources and can be quite stressful.

 
So what I'm starting to embrace is Instagram for learning, motivation and inspiration. It's a great way to connect with like-minded people and it's a perfect way to create a nicely curated visual representation of your work.

 
I have set up a few accounts, for specific learning purposes. As you may know, I have a yoga account that I shared freely and I've also set up a couple more for developing my culinary and painting skills.

I kind of started the yoga one out in the wrong way, but I'm correcting that.

Here's How I See These Accounts Now...

* It's for my learning and development only. It's not about following or likes, but I will use hashtags to help connect with other like minded individuals and to get feedback on my own work.

 * As I mentioned above, it's a great way to create a visual curation of your work and progress. I feel that's very inspiring.

* I post when I feel like it and log in and see what others are doing when I want to. There is no pressure or requirement to post.

* I am not trying to achieve anything by posting. It is basically for my records, to see my progress and to remember something I like or am proud of.

* Stories are great for your own motivation as you work through a project and to ask questions from other people, so you can get feedback as you go. And using a topic specific account means I'm not boring my personal followers about all my cooking adventures, even though some of them really do love food.

 * Having a specific topic account also means that your feed is very focused and you have a perfect place to connect with like-minded people and get inspiration.

Also if you want to keep your account public so you can interact, but still private from people who may know you (as you may not want to share about what your learning with everyone and it relieves any of that pressure to keep up appearances, you can just be you), use contact information that others don't have. Otherwise, Instagram may list you as a suggestion to follow to people who have your contact info, I added my son's phone number to my new accounts.

Perhaps the biggest sales mistake I see so many people make is not understanding or speaking to their audience in a way that resonates with them. Most people promote largely with their goals in mind to make the sale.

And while sure they may consider why their customers want their product, they don’t consider it in any depth or regard to the communication medium being used.

ALWAYS keep your audience in mind and your existing audience is DIFFERENT when you communicate with them on different platforms (email, social media, etc.) even if they are the SAME people.

Email is more commercial, you can broadcast in a more sales focused way to them. But if you copy and paste your promos to your blog or social media, you likely appear a bit tone deaf and self serving.

On more content-based platforms (blog, social media) people want to be informed and entertained. They want some benefit from reading what you posted, even if they don’t but at this time or they’re going to tune you out.

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