2. Your Favorite Social Media Platforms are Using You
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Before we get started did you miss the first episode in the series? If you did you can read it here first!
Okay, I want to tell you some hard truths about social media. In doing that, I also want to shed light on the power of podcasts. It’s no secret that the pandemic has escalated our phone addiction, and as smart and savvy CEOs, you need to look at the current habits of consumers and predict what it’ll lead to.
Business owners are becoming increasingly burnt out, and a lot of it is because social media platforms are demanding more and more from business owners. We think, “oh, this platform is free – so if I invest my time, I’ll get an amazing return.”
Makes sense, right?
Except when we take the recommendations of the platform and create content to keep that algorithm happy versus what actually serves us in our business, it’s a dangerous game. That’s because that means we’re giving the platforms the power to dictate how we invest our time and money. While money is a renewable resource, unfortunately – time is not. We can’t get that back!
So let’s dig a bit further into the idea that social media platforms are demanding a lot of us with minimal return, shall we?
Do Social Media Platforms Care About You as a Small Business Owner?
I want to tell you something that I know to be true: social media platforms simply don’t care about you as a small business owner. A prime example of this is how hard they make it for people to post on your behalf. I know this from working with my clients – they make it extremely difficult.
While most business owners are shifting towards creating what could potentially be viral content and not so much what happens once that content actually attracts followers. When this happens, these business owners are content creators and not the CEO they want to be.
While this is happening, social media channels are competing against one another, coming up with insane recommendations of what business owners “should” be posting. They want all of these super specific things so they can use what you’re creating to pull in more users, helping them ramp up their ads, and allowing them to make more money.
None of this is them thinking about you and the good of your business. What happens when we get sucked into these practices is that we end up sacrificing our time and energy – we can be using this time for something more productive or effective.
Being Smart About Social Media
In my own business, I’ve realized that most of my leads come from places other than social media. They come from Google, searchability, referrals, and podcasts. But the truth is that social media is a tool. It’s not bad, we just have to be smart about how we use it.
Once we attract the right people through social media, we have to have the right next step for them to go to. Only focusing on content and not what comes next means that we won’t convert the way that we want to. That’s why it’s important to leverage social media as the first step in a journey. So once they find you on your social platforms, what’s the next step to help them continue working with your business?
Creating Something That Converts
The goal is to convert followers into sales, right? So how do we create content that converts?
Let me give you some stats on this topic:
- Only 1/3 of people signing up for a webinar will actually show up
- Less than 5% of people who sign up for a five-day challenge will actually complete it, and it usually only equates to about a 1% conversion rate
- 24% of sales emails are open-end on average, and the conversion rate is even less than that
- There’s typically a 1-2% conversion rate on cold traffic
So, how can we create something that will convert higher and leverage an intentional audience? Well, that’s where the podfunnel was born! My business started by servicing weekly podcast clients, which we still do on a scaled back capacity. Now, our main focus is podfunnels.
The Power of Podcasts
We’ve found that there’s supreme power in podcasts – they increase the conversion of other efforts in a big way. That’s because they’re easy for people to consume. They can multitask as they listen to them and no one is asking them to physically sit in front of a screen.
According to the Interactive Advertising Bureau, podcasts are the preferred way for people to consume content. This is because they can listen when and where they want on demand. Plus, there are other compelling stats behind the power of podcasts to back them up:
- People will listen to 80% of a podcast
- Listeners spend an average of 6 hr 37 min listening to podcast every week
- Podcast listeners boast a 80% retention rate
- 54% of people are more likely to purchase something after hearing it on a podcast
These stats are pretty powerful, and coupled with our experience and knowledge, it led to us creating the Podfunnel. These are 10-episode podcasts that take focused and calibrated content and messages and put them on a platform designed for people to binge. Much like our favorite Netflix shows!
This allows a business to build a strong relationship with their customer through their headphones. We’ve had incredible results for clients that out-perform anything else. It’s an amazing converter for cold traffic.
Social Media is Not the Most Effective Method: The Bottom Line
Even though many of us believe it is, social media simply isn’t the most effective method anymore for converting leads. It’s not set up for you as a small business owner, and the platforms will just continue to demand more and more. Let’s be real – how much more do you really have to give?
Start making business and marketing decisions to get people off of those platforms and into action. Social media can be absolutely toxic and detrimental to our mental health – so let’s step outside of those things. We don’t HAVE To be a part of them! We have the amazing power to find new and innovative ways to find the results we yearn for. So let’s pursue those and break the status quo.
Read the next episode in the Podfunnel PWR Series here!
