068 – What’s the Point of Social Media? [Spark Infinity]

Why bother with social media? Is it even worth doing? And if you are going to do it anyway, wouldn’t you rather get results than not? In this installation of Spark Infinity Office Hours, David illuminates how social media can bring real business value to an individual, creator, entrepreneur, or business. Later, Jody and Karlo join the discussion to share what they’re getting from David’s presentation. Download the PDF Transcript Sponsors: Productivity, Performance & Profits Blackbook: Get a free copy of the “Definitive Guide to Productivity for Artists and Entrepreneurs.” Highlights: 00:17 – Why you shouldn’t get caught up in vanity metrics 01:06 – The importance of building connections 01:50 – The cruciality of growing your subscriber list 02:53 – Sales are highly valuable and desirable 03:39 – If you do this right, opportunities will come to you 04:34 – Mindset landmines you must circumvent and avoid 08:05 – Group discussion Transcript: David: Alright, welcome to Spark Infinity Office Hours. It is September 26th, 2024. Today's topic is what's the point of social media? Why do we do it? Why Vanity Metrics Don’t Matter If you are a creative or business oriented individual, you're not doing social media for the vanity metrics. That's things like likes and shares and comments and even follows. They might make you feel good. They might stroke your ego. They might offer validation. No judgment here. It feels good to feel good, but those don't have any inherent business value. There are two examples of people I know who are killing it without a major following. You can look them up yourself, James Schramko being one, Gary Spivey being another. They may not have massive followings, but in the background, they've got multimillion dollar businesses. Okay, so what has business value on social media? Connections – Your Net Worth is in Your Network Number one is connections. If you really stop to think about it, most opportunities you've gotten to this point, including jobs, gigs, partnerships, any other opportunity you can think of, it's not because of your talent, skills, or experience, which can be helpful, but it's because of who you know. Your talents, skills, experience are valuable, but they're secondary to relationship. I can think back on gigs that I got paid $800 for as a guest guitarist. It's not because of my skills. There were other people that could have filled those shoes, it's because of who I knew. And social media is a great way to build new connections. We're not covering how to do that here. That could be a whole can of worms unto itself, but it is valuable. And out of everything we'll be talking about today, connections is probably the easiest thing to build. That's of value. Subscribers – an Asset You Own Number two is subscribers. And in this case, we're not talking about YouTube subscribers, although that can be valuable because if you reach certain metrics, you can monetize your channel. I'm pretty sure TikTok works the same way. But we're talking about building your list, your email subscribers, preferably, but it could also be a text or SMS text message list that you're building. Unfortunately, you can lose followers for a variety of reasons. It could be because people don't like you, which has happened. It could be because you're shadow banned or demonetized or your account's been deleted. You don't get to keep the followers you have on social media unless you turn them into subscribers. Your number one goal on social media, hopefully, is to turn people into subscribers. And then you can grow the relationship with those subscribers to the point where customers are sharing their mailing addresses with you. This is kind of advanced, but if you can send them stuff, direct mail, thank you notes, birthday cards, maybe even the occasional book, you're going to build a better relationship with that customer. They're going to keep coming back and stay with you. Sales – Cashflow Keeps the Creativity Alive Number three, this could be the hardest thing to get on social media, but of course it is valuable when it happens. That is sales. I dug up some stats on this that are really interesting. A good conversion rate on social media is two to five percent. So, for every 100 people that engage your content and take it seriously, two to five people should buy. But that has to be 100 really, truly engaged people. And the monthly average conversion rate on Instagram is 19.7%, which outperforms Facebook and TikTok combined. For organic content creation and generating sales organically, Instagram pretty much outperforms all the others. But this comes with the disclaimer or caveat that your mileage will vary based on your following, your reach, number of impressions you get, your industry and other factors. Opportunity – They Come to You on Autopilot I identified one more thing that could be a value on social media, and that's opportunity. This is what comes to you rather than what you go out there and generate. Big followings, sometimes even small followings can land you free products and services, courses, coaching, watches, gigs, roles, sponsors, and more. I've gotten free guitars to review and share. I've gotten free watches. I've gotten free keyboards. I've gotten free headphones. I've had many opportunities to promote other people's products. And the bigger your following is, if someone is doing an A to B comparison, “should we book this musician or that musician,” there's a pretty good chance the person with the bigger following is going to be booked. So having a following doesn't have to be big, like I said, but a sizable following, whatever that means to the person evaluating you, because it's really subjective, can be useful. Mindset Traps You Must Navigate I want to cover a few mindset traps because it's really easy to get stuck in this whole social media game. Sometimes it feels like a grind and little else. So here's what to avoid or to recognize: Giving up at the first sign of difficulty or challenge. Life has ebbs and flows. We all go through things. If you want to win someday, you’ve got to commit to continuing today. Today is really all that matters. I heard recently that when Joe Rogan was asked, “so what are you going to do with this podcast before he got his sponsorship with Spotify?” His answer was, “I don't know. I'm just focused on getting better every day.” And then the $250 million deal comes through. Constantly thinking about what you don't have. This tends to keep you stuck where you are. Being lazy in the way you connect with others. Templated messages are only useful if customized to the individual. For example, if you're reaching out to Dave, don't call him Bob. “Hey, Bob,” or “hey person,” or “hey” is even more impersonal. And a really good tip here would be to read – if you haven't already – How to Win Friends and Influence People. You’ve got to customize your message. This is like pitching 101. You’ve got to think about the person you’re reaching out to, why it's a benefit for them. Make the message about them, not about you, but also make your ask really clear. Being more aggressive than you need to be. Now I think it's really okay to share your offers with a sense of urgency and even to share them often. Just don't let it become snake oil sales or spam or scams. That's a good way to get unfollowed. I guess we're not talking to the crowd that's less ethical in their approach to social media and sales in general, but I think it's good to have this as a value – honesty and integrity – when promoting your stuff. Promote your stuff often. Just don't be so aggressive that you're like, “okay, whatever, I'm just going to throw this out there and bait people.” Having to know everything. You don't need to know anything. You don't need to know your mission or purpose. You don't even need to know what you're building towards. All you’ve got to do is start, keep moving, improve, enjoy the journey and things will show up. That goes back to the Joe Rogan example from earlier as well. Have fun, strive for improvement, or commit to improvement, and that's it. Eventually everything will start to show up if you act with that level of trust. Trying to do everything perfectly. This is something everyone here at Spark Infinity should be quite familiar with already. Bottom line is messiness on social media is practically expected. Misspellings, grammatical errors, and low-quality videos can sometimes boost engagement because people comment saying, “oh, there's an error in your post.” So, authenticity and showing up is what matters. Expecting success to hit you over the head. Chances are it will take time. I think there are people who can do it fast. I'm not advocating doing it slow, but it may take six months. It may take a year. And for some people, it might take three to five years. And for others, it might take five to ten years. If you're focused on what you're not getting right now, some of the other mindset traps that we talked about, then it will be really easy to give up. But if you focus on daily improvement, becoming better at what you do in your craft, then things will naturally begin to show up. Follow Along – Join Us on This Journey As always, don't forget to follow me on Instagram: @DavidAndrewWiebe. Group Discussion What did you get from this, Karlo? Karlo: For me, it's a practice. I’ve got to get myself out there now that I have this new reiki and tarot venture. So, it's time to spend some time and create some content. David: You’ve put some effort into sharing your offer, building your website, ads and stuff like that. So now your thinking is, in addition to that, adding some content into the mix to support your efforts. Karlo: Yeah. David: Do you have thoughts on what sort of content you would create?