Have you noticed how it’s getting harder to reach new people on social media?
You’re on social media to promote your coaching, consulting, speaking, books, programs or courses. You’re doing what you’ve been taught to do. You’re on the platforms everybody tells you to be on.
But…something has shifted in the past couple of years.
It feels like the same 100 people see your posts. You get encouraging comments and “engagement,” but you know most of that engagement comes from folks who will never buy from you.
And no one wants to talk about why social media isn’t working as well anymore. After all, there’s a metric ton of people selling programs and products to help us reach people on social media.
And why would they want to tell you it’s not working as well?
To top it off, most of the gurus giving social media advice are extroverts. So being more social energizes them.
If being on social media energizes them, why wouldn’t they tell everyone to do more of it? Makes perfect sense for them.
So all we hear is “More!! Be everywhere, respond to every comment, try every new platform, be omnipresent!!”
Basically the message is, “Be an extreme social butterfly, or you’re going to be irrelevant.”
That doesn’t work for introverts. Pretending to be an extreme social butterfly is exhausting.
You know it isn’t sustainable for you.
You don’t enjoy being on social media that much while also trying to serve your clients and build your business. Social media just doesn’t light you up in the same way. So if you’re pretending to be a social butterfly, it’s just a matter of time till you burn out.
Introverts are left with two choices:
1. Pretend to be an extrovert – Give in to the standard advice, push through the burnout, and post more content, more often, in more places.
2. Pay for traffic – Facebook and Instagram ads, YouTube ads, Google PPC, etc.
There are a whole bunch of introverts struggling to reach new people online. People who sell coaching or consulting, people who speak and write business books, people like you.
And there’s a good reason introverts struggle.
It’s like we’re playing poker with a stacked deck, and the “house” is Facebook and Google.
They’ve figured out a way to extract cash from our wallets with zero guarantee that it comes back to us in sales. It’s genius, really.
And don’t take my word for it. Do a quick Google image search for “Facebook organic reach.”
Here’s a little sample of what you’ll find:
[insert screenshots of Facebook organic reach]
Not a pretty picture.
Now let’s look at what the experts say.
[insert webinar slides of Simon Lamey and Born Social quotes
That’s what I call the 3 Step Process for Extracting Cash From Our Wallets.
And now that this proven process is out there, why wouldn’t every future social media platform use the same model?
OK, so what about paid traffic. Again, let’s look at what the experts have to say.
[insert screenshots of Perry Marshall and Seth Godin]
So according to the experts, paid traffic can be profitable…but only after an extensive period of dedicated testing and experimentation.
So paid traffic is no quick fix.
In other words, two important things are happening in social media…
- It’s getting harder to reach new people on social media organically… while at the same time…
- Paid traffic is becoming less profitable with a steeper learning curve.
So what does that mean for introverts?
The answer is to play a different game.
There is a whole other world you can tap into for essentially free.
A world where people are looking for solutions to problems.
Podcasts.
If you have skills and expertise, there’s a podcast host who would love to interview you.
The average podcast episode gets 200 downloads.
If you have 5000 friends on Facebook, that’s probably the number of people who see your latest post or live video.
So let’s compare apples to apples.
Reaching 200 people by getting interviewed on a new podcast every week, versus…
Going live on Facebook and 200 of your connections see the video, and let’s say Facebook does you a favor and shows your video to 10 new people a week.
[insert webinar slide of reach]
Almost 9000 people reached in a year. And that’s not even counting bigger podcasts with 1000s of listeners.
That’s why I make it a priority in my business to get interviewed on podcasts 2-4 times a month.
And I want the same thing for all introverted experts.