As I write this blog I have to laugh, recently I had a conversation with a friend that is trying to grow their personal brand on Instagram.
They couldn’t figure out why they were losing more followers than they were gaining and even though I had offered advice in the past, they didn’t think that advice would apply to them. They figured since I worked with small businesses and entrepreneurs, it wouldn’t apply to them as a personal brand.
The issue with what they were doing, and I’ll be honest, it’s something that I was doing for a long time when I first started creating content, I would create content I liked and something I would engage with.
When I first started creating content for Russtek I would create content that provided value but with that content I would use images (hooks) that I liked. I used a lot of images that had my BlackBerry KEY² and, that’s something I loved and was passionate about, not many people liked it.
For me, I thought using images of my BlackBerry KEY² were good for 2 reasons. 1, I was posting about something I love and 2, I was posting about something not many people see any more…a phone with a keyboard. I thought that was the perfect “hookâ€.
After looking at my analytics, I’d come to find out, I was wrong and not many people cared to see a BlackBerry as a “hook†in the images I used. The only engagement I was getting was from my BlackBerry following, and although that’s great, they were not my target audience.
When I created that content, as I said, I was getting engagement and I never thought to change things up, but the engagement I was getting was from the wrong audience. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t from my dream 100 and that wouldn’t do anything for my business.
If you really want to start growing your audience and have them engage with your content, you want to create content that they want to see, content that appeals to them. In order to do this, you will need to do a little research.
How do you research the content your audience wants to see?
The first question you have to ask yourself, are you following your Dream 100? If you aren’t, that’s the first thing you will need to do. Knowing this is key as your target audience is also following your Dream 100.
Look at it like this, think about someone in your industry that you love to follow. For me, that’s Russell Brunson. Russell owns a company called ClickFunnels , and it’s his mission to help entrepreneurs, exactly what I love doing.
As I follow his accounts and engage with him, I’m also looking to see what kind of content he creates, and I can use that to model for myself and tailor it to my audience. I will do this for all of my Dream 100, and after I start creating the content my audience finally likes to engage with, I will use the analytics to see what’s working and what’s not.
Using analytics was something I also talked about with my friend that day, and at first they didn’t see the benefit in it. I showed them that the difference between the content they were posting, the content that worked was getting a good reach and engagement and then the content that was getting little to no engagement and no reach at all. Sadly, the bulk of their content wasn’t getting any engagement because they created content…THEY liked to see.
That’s when I showed them how to see what was working and what wasn’t and using that, they could create more content that was similar to what was working.
Using your analytics is key to not only grow your audience, but keep your current audience engaged with your content.
This is all from the value I got from Russell Brunson and his books. We’ve talked about Dotcom Secrets and Expert Secrets but when it comes to your Dream 100, finding them and knowing how to reach them…Traffic Secrets is the book he really dives deep into this subject.
If you want to really know how to find your audience and reach them, that free book is something you’ll need. Best part is, it’s free, and you just need to click the link below to get it!