Salome Schillack (00:00):

Hello, and welcome to episode number 85 of The Shine Show. And today, we're going to talk about how you can build your engaged audience without ever feeling like you're selling your soul on social media, and I want to wish you a very happy, prosperous, and peaceful 2021. I know that this is going to be your year and that you are ready to shine, my friend. I wish you everything that is beautiful and everything that your heart desires for this year. May this really be a peaceful and abundant year for us all. And speaking of wonderfully abundant things, today's episode is brought to us by my brand new masterclass called the three little known secrets to building engaged audiences and getting paying students faster using Facebook and Instagram ads without wasting your money, selling your soul on social media, or hiring an army of geeks. And if that sounds like something you want to learn more about, then head to shineandsucceed.com/buildmyaudience, and secure your seat on the masterclass today. Let's jump into the episode.

Giving up your time and freedom to make money is so 2009. Hi, I'm your host Salome Schillack, and I help online course creators launch, grow and scale their businesses with Facebook and Instagram ads so that they can make more money and have an even bigger impact in the world. If you're ready to be inspired to dream bigger, launch sooner, and grow your online business faster, then tune in because you are ready to shine, and this is The Shine Show.

This last Sunday afternoon, my husband and I was lazily lounging on the couch. We have just started watching the Sitcom Superstore, and we've just binged all five seasons in the last month. It is so funny, I loved it. So Sunday afternoon, we are lying on the couch, and our kids are downstairs, and our house is built on a hill and it has a few levels. So the kids are, literally, below us in the downstairs, like there's a play area, and we hear a sound that sounds like somebody is breaking down the house. But you know, when you can clearly hear the difference when your kids have had an accident and it sounds like it's breaking down the house, and someone's doing something on purpose, and it sounds like they're breaking down the house, so this one was one of those on purpose sort of things.

So we've paused the TV and we call them and they both kind of sheepishly come upstairs, and, Elle, my youngest, immediately starts explaining. She just immediately starts saying, "We weren't doing anything" and I just had to laugh because immediately, of course, because of how defensive she is, I knew that she was indeed doing something that she shouldn't be doing. Turns out, she was hitting the ceiling fan with a piece of cardboard to see what happens to make the ceiling fan turn with the piece of cardboard, not a good idea. It kind of reminded me of... That defensiveness that she had when she walked into the room, kind of reminded me of how defensive I have been at times when people ask me, how's my business going? Or how's my audience building going? Or how many people do I have on my email list?

And you kind of want to go, I'm doing something, I'm getting there, it's working, it's going well, but deep inside, you kind of go, I'm working my ass off and it's not really getting anywhere. And because you kind of on the defense already because you invest so much in it, and it would be really hard to admit that this is slowly going nowhere, so it's easy to become defensive like Elle was, and it's easy to feel that way about social media, especially, when you're working really hard and you're never getting any engagement or never getting anywhere. So if it's kind of this feast or famine situation and there's nothing, or you put all your energy into it, you pull yourself together, you diligently create content, you even download a few content calendars or Trello boards, or done for you posts, [inaudible 00:04:54] even here's one that I've done too is, you hire someone to do it for you because you think that might be easier, and then we kind of go... And then there's still no results.

So we kind of go through these times where we pour our energy into social media because we know we're supposed to build an audience on social media, and then it just doesn't go anywhere, they don't respond to us, we don't feel like we've make any progress, we don't build our audiences, so then we give up on it again. And if I ask some of my students, sometimes, when was the last time you emailed your email list? I can immediately see kind of the same expression as what Elle had when she was hitting the fan with the cardboard box, it's this kind of, don't ask me that question response, and I know because I've been there. But just like Elle, we become a little bit defensive when someone asks us how big is your email list, or how big is your audience? It's kind of like, just leave me alone already.

It's kind of the same as when my husband used to ask me, when I was just building business and failing for three years. When he would say, "When are you going to show me the money?" That was that just triggered me so badly because if I knew, then, of course, I would show him the money, but if I admit that I don't know, then that would cause me some problems as well. So it's important to understand why it is so hard for us to build engaged audiences in 2021, especially, when we're just starting out and we don't have a giant budget for ads, and all we really have is hustle energy and our time and our energy. And so I wanted to create this episode to speak to you, specifically, about why it is so hard to build an audience on social media.

And I will admit, I'm not one of those people who go, you should only use ads, and social media is terrible, and it's a waste of your time, and the air, all those things. I am not the girl who's going to tell you that ads is the be all and end all of your solutions to all your problems in your life. But I will say this, that I feel really strongly that people should start using ads earlier than they think they should and, especially, when you're in a period where you're really trying to build an audience on social media and you don't have a lot of time and you don't have a lot of resources, maybe your business is still a side hustle like mine was for a long time, you want to make the most of the time that you're going to spend on social media, and you want to make sure that when you are spending time on social media, it results in, actually, moving the needle in your business.

So every time you post, you can actually show something for it, and you know that you are getting closer to making money online. And very few people today can do that without using ads from early on. So I want to share with you three reasons why it's hard at the moment to build your audience on social media and then tell you where you can get help to fix it. So the first reason that it's really hard to build an audience on social media right now is, because you're implementing strategies that worked in 2017. The truth is, in 2017, it was easy to build an audience on social media, you post, and your posts would be seen by the people who like your page.
Those people who liked your page, see your content because of the fact that they liked your page, and so, therefore, Facebook puts your post in their newsfeed, and then they comment because they're not inundated with 700 other pages, and when they comment, then Facebook takes that post and it shows it to other people, to new people, and when those new people see your post, they come over to your page, they follow your page, or they like your page, and that was the beautiful old days of organic algorithm. But what happens nowadays is, you post, and then Facebook doesn't show it to any of the people who like your page, then nobody comments, and when nobody comments, Facebook algorithm sees that no one is commenting, and then buries your post where no one will ever see it ever, it will not see the light of day.

You get no comments on there, you get no likes on your page, your page doesn't grow, your audience doesn't grow, and your email list doesn't grow, and possibly you quit social media, or you feel like I did. I felt, well, because I'm an introvert, this just doesn't work for me, or you feel like this is just not worth the hustle if it takes that much hard work for a handful of likes on your page. And that's not really your fault, because a lot of people are still teaching strategies that worked in 2017 because they're still working for them, and that brings me to the second reason why it's not working for you is because you are using strategies that works for people who already have large audiences. And a lot of these people who are teaching social media skills, I beg your forgiveness, but do you have any insight into how hard it is to build a social media profile from scratch with zero followers?

Some of them do, because they're really invested in their students and they build the relationship with their students to know how challenging it is. But some of them just still teach these strategies from 2017. The truth is, engagement begets engagement. In 2018, Mark Zuckerberg announced to the world that the algorithm is going to change and it's going to affect who sees your content. And the short summary of what he says was that the size of your audience doesn't matter anymore. The only thing they care about is engagement. And Facebook will look at the ratio between the size of your audience and the engagement in your account, and they rank your page accordingly. If you have disproportionate likes to engagement, that is a red flag for them that's usually an indicator that you bought an audience, or you're doing something dodgy with bots or something that is getting you a lot of likes because you wanted to appear as though you are legitimate when in fact, you don't even really have an engaged audience.

So engagement became the new currency. Engagement became the measure of how good you're doing on social media. And that ranking that they give your account based on the engagement that you have, that carries over into your ad account, and your ad account in return it didn't fit that engagement ranking, affects the quality of your ad account, and that quality, that ranking that you get, will either keep you stuck if you were stuck before, or it will propel you forward if you already have momentum. Because if you're already have engagement, Facebook's going to put your stuff in front of people, they rank your account as quality, then put it in the newsfeed of other people who then engage, who then gives Facebook the feedback that you have quality stuff, but if you're brand new and you're already stuck before you've even started, and Facebook's not putting your stuff in front of people, so therefore, people aren't engaging. You just stay stuck and it might feel like you're walking through mud.

So if you don't have an audience you literally can't grow one, and if you have one and they're engaged, then your audience grows. So it's a bit of a catch 22, you see? It's easy for those who already have large audiences or engaged audience, but it's harder for those of us just starting out. And then the third reason why it's hard is because you're not giving Facebook what Facebook wants, and this is really where the importance of engagement comes in. And I've explained to you this quality ranking relationship between your engagement on your page, and the amount of people you're reaching, and how they're dealing with your content. And this also pulls through into your ad account and your page and your ad account literally becomes like two little organisms that works together to create this beautiful ecosystem. And the bots also known as the algorithm, which is really just a really smart artificial intelligence, will favor your content over other people's content that has lower rankings.

So it's really important to get your account this higher ranking. Your ads will get more impressions if you have better engagement than those people with lower rankings. We've literally just had a call with Facebook the other day and they recommended to us that we tell our clients to spend at least 30% more, in other words, increase their ad budget by about 30% over the Christmas period, because that's on average how much more everyone else is spending, and for the people who are spending more they are going to be the ones who gets the quality impressions. They're the ones who's going to get in front of more people. Whereas, if you don't increase your spend over this time, you're going to have to settle for the lower value impressions. You're going to have to settle for the harder to get in front of people, so you're not necessarily going to get in front of your ideal customers because you're not going to be winning at that bidding war. The person with the higher budget is going to win the bidding war against you.

So you end up paying less for video views, you end up paying less for engagement, and most importantly, you end up paying less for conversions, aka, list building ads, aka, webinar ads, aka, sales ads, it ends up costing you less to get real business results, measurable business results, when you have an engaged audience, and then you were also able to sell to them sooner at lower costs. So engagement, really is the key to building audiences who actually wants to buy from you.

So now, you know why you've been feeling stuck trying to grow your audience organically on Facebook and Instagram. In an upcoming masterclass, I'll be teaching you exactly how to break this cycle with those super easy, cheap engagement ads that I'm forever talking about.

I'll show you, literally, how you can reach thousands of people every single day by spending as little as $5 a day on the right type of engagement ads. I'm going to teach you the two types of ads every online expert should be running to stay in front of your audience and build your email list on autopilot, and I'm going to give you a step-by-step walkthrough of how to start making a dollar for every dollar you put into Facebook from day one, aka, how to get paying students from your ads.

Now, the seats are limited on this class, so I recommend you head over to shineandsucceed.com/buildmyaudience to secure your spot really quickly before they fill up, and I really can't wait to see you on the class when you join me live there. I want to hear about the impact that you're making in the world, I want to hear about how you're changing people's lives, and most of all, I want to hear about how you're growing your online business so you can create more freedom for you and your family in 2021. That, my dear friends, is my deepest desire and my greatest wish for you all. I can't wait to meet you on the class, I'll see you there. Have a lovely week. Bye

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