*Puts on serious voice*
It’s time to get focused on growing your audience and your email list. You CAN’T put it off any longer. ⏰
You’ve probably heard the phrase, “The money is in the list” and I can confirm that it’s 100% true. My business didn’t start to scale until I got to around 2,000 subscribers.
For me that’s the magic number you need to start to get some real traction.
Growing your email list is straight up the fastest way to scale your business and it’s also the only bit of marketing real estate that you own. If you lost access to all of your social media channels tomorrow, at least you’d still have your list.
However, it can feel really daunting when you’re trying to get new subscribers in the early days.
Because the truth is that audience growth becomes easier as your list grows. When you have a decent-sized audience, you can start to feed that audience into the Facebook / Insta / Meta machine and generate lookalike audiences who are likely to be much more interested in your content than random strangers on the internet.
Boom – snowball effect!
Doesn’t seem fair though.
So I’m going to share some audience growth hacks with you that anyone can use, no matter how small your audience is.
All you need is a blog. And the name of the game is borrowing other people’s audiences by making them look good.
Ever been asked to give your expert opinion on your specialist subject? Flattering, right?
Here’s what we’re going to focus on:
???? Networking with your existing suppliers to build a content sharing network.
???? Using your blog to find and connect with people who have much bigger audiences that you.
By the way, with all of these blog post strategies, don’t forget to ask them for their headshot and / or logo. It’s an added bonus for them to have a visual prescence.
Networking with your existing suppliers
When you’re looking to grow your audience, you need to make sure you’re targeting people who can actually help you. Look for businesses that you share an audience with but aren’t in competition with. A great place to start is with other suppliers who serve the same clients as you.
For example, a few of years ago, I worked with a new US-based photography client who had just moved across the country from a rural area to a big city where the wedding photography competition was fierce. From the beginning, she told me, “I’m not a blogger – I can’t write”. But we knew that her blog was the quickest and easiest way for her to make a big impression in her new area.
She started by approaching wedding venues explaining that she was writing an article about the best wedding venues in the city and that she’d love to include them. It was a great excuse to visit each venue, meet the wedding co-ordinator and take a complimentary portrait as well as asking them for their top wedding tips. Were they thrilled? Yes, of course they were. More importantly, every single venue shared her post through their own social media channels and two sent it out to their own newsletter list of wedding clients. The result? She booked her first five weddings within two months of arriving.
She worked her way through different wedding vendors throughout the city, tackling subjects from floral trends to wedding catering, recommending other vendors, showcasing her archive of images whenever possible and taking images of vendors to share with them whenever she could. By the end of her first year, she had booked over 30 weddings and had her own column in the city’s leading wedding magazine.
It’s a simple but effective strategy and a wonderful way to make genuine industry friendships and most importantly, book more clients. She still says she’s not a writer, but creating structured blog posts took the fear out of writing for her.
Your action:
Make a list of who is influential in your own network. Who can you interview or write about who has an audience you want to reach?
Using your blog to find and connect with people who have bigger audiences than you
More established businesses still need two things – good quality backlinks to their site and content for their audience. If you can help them with both of those things at once, then you’ve got a good chance of tapping into someone else’s bigger audience.
The way to collaborate with bigger players is to make sure you’ve got something juicy to offer them that fills a specific gap in their content or offer.
For example, a web designer might need an SEO expert or a copywriter.
It can be hard doing a cold pitch to someone you don’t know and who has a bigger audience than you so take a little time to do some research.
Do you know anyone in common who can introduce you? Can you opt into their email list?
Even better, can you join their free Facebook group?
If so, this next tip is a straight up brilliant growth hack ????.
Facebook groups are GOLD but I often see other marketers recommending that you need to establish yourself in the group as an expert over a period of time, by answering questions and dropping helpful links.
However, most groups have rules about self-promotion, so you could do that for a LONG time and still fail to get much traction. And you definitely don’t want to be that person sliding into someone’s DMs after commenting on a group post.
You do still need to spend a little time making helpful comments so that you look like you’re active in the group – a couple of weeks should do it.
Now here’s the hack. You’re going to write a blog post which the group owner will find irresistible – because they feature in it.
When it comes to topics, you have three options.
A topic that the group owner can’t solve with their own expertise.
For example. In my free Facebook group people ask me about SEO all the time. I know the basics but it’s not my specialist subject, so I have one or two people I regularly send people to that I know are experts.
If one of them wrote a blog post specifically with my audience in mind and included a quote from me in it, I’d be sharing the hell out of it. Hint, hint!
eg. “I asked Melissa Love, owner of The Design Space, what creative business owners really struggle with when it comes to SEO, and she said….” etc etc
A topic that the group owner is an expert on that also relates to your area of expertise
This is a great opportunity to round up quotes from several prominent business owners, giving each of them a nice write-up.
eg.
10 Facebook Groups Every Photographer Should Belong To
The 10 Best Tools For Compressing Images
An interview with the group admin or business owner
Business owners who lead communities often get asked to be interviewed or appear on podcasts and if you represent a niche or service that they are interested in, you might have some good success here.
It does require a bit more time commitment from them, so offer several ways to be interviewed.
I usually offer a written form, a 15 minute Zoom call, or a video questionnaire (using VideoAsk) to have them answer a series of questions via video prompts.
The video questionnaire or Zoom call means you also have a bonus piece of content for your social media channels and to embed in the blog post.
Publishing The Blog Post & Beyond
Once you’ve written your post, if you feel you need to, run the copy by anyone appearing in the post. For this reason, I write all of my blog posts in a Google Doc first.
Give them advance warning of the publishing date so that they can plan it into their social media calendar. People with bigger audiences tend to plan content in advance.
Ask them to share the post with their audience.
Share it on all of your social media channels, tagging them in the posts.
Build on the relationship from there. You might want to invite them to do an Instagram Live with you, or offer to create some training for or with them or suggest that you write a guest blog post for them.
I’ve grown many many solid business relationships by networking in groups, with suppliers and then blogging and creating content for them.
Borrowing other people’s audiences is a tried and tested shortcut to growing your own audience.
Now go out there and get them!
Your action:
Make a list of business owners with bigger audiences that you that you complement rather than compete with. Bonus points if they have a free Facebook group.
PS. Want to see some real life examples from business owners who have got this nailed?
Corey Potter says “This has been one of my most successful blogging activities over the years. Both for relationship building and SEO! Here is one where I just wrote about my favourite venues in town (which ended up ranking well in Google and getting attention from some of the venue owners who have since started referring me personally).
Paul Swift blogs about styled shoots, which are a great way to network with other vendors.
http://paulswiftphotography.com/inspirational-styled-wedding-shoot-at-marine-hall-fleetwood/
Cris Lowis often tags other vendors in his blog posts and on social media, which usually leads to them sharing the post.
http://www.lowisphotography.co.uk/weddings/somerford-hall-wedding-photography/
Thomas Blake invited a local makeup artist along to give her top makeup tips for brides. Nicely done!
http://www.purephotoni.com/blog/2016/6/27/northern-ireland-wedding-make-up-tips-for-brides-guest-post-bliain-fitzpatrick
Here’s a round up of amazing wedding cakes from Patrick Duddy, shot in different venues, who are all tagged in the post.
http://www.patrickduddy.com/my-blog/pretty-elegant-wedding-cakes
Hannah McClune spent a whole week blogging about vendors and says her brides found it really useful.
http://www.hannahmcclunephotography.com/2016/01/12/melissa-woodland-cakes-wedding-supplier-shoot/
HI Melissa – thanks for the mention…