Entrepreneurship Mini Course: Building Audiences, Part #3

How you can learn to build and monetize your own audiences.

This is the third and final installment of the first Entrepreneurship Mini Course from Entrepreneur Office Hours. It’s teaching about the importance of building audiences. In case you missed them, here’s Part #1, and here’s Part #2.

Yesterday’s lesson ended with me explaining how our featured entrepreneur, a spin cycle studio owner named Sam [not his real name], had nearly cracked the code on using social media to get more customers. We saw that his own social media was working, but Sam’s instructors weren’t able to replicate his success. Ultimately, they had to be taught the same fundamental lessons I’ve decided to share with all of you in a live webinar, but I’ll get to that in a moment.

For now, understanding why the process worked for Sam but wasn’t working for his instructors requires discussing a challenge every creator struggles with: consistency.

In fact, consistency is such a big challenge for entrepreneurs trying to leverage social media that I want to be 100% transparent about the reality of pursuing this particular marketing strategy. Yes, building audiences on social media is an enormously powerful way to grow a business, but it’s not easy or magical. It takes sustained, consistent effort over the course of months – even years – before seeing valuable results.

Sam inherently understood this caveat, and that’s why he was so easy to teach. In contrast, his instructors needed more motivation before they began to see the value of regularly posting content, and it was up to Sam to provide that motivation.

At first, Sam’s process involved what basically amounts to brute force. Every day for a few months he checked in with all his instructors to make sure they posted their content and were following the content calendar. He hounded them with text messages, calls, and possibly even Game-Of-Thrones-style ravens. In other words, he was so sure of the value he was going to create that he did whatever he needed in order to get his instructors posting.

Yes, it was lots of work, but the effort paid off. Once Sam’s cycling instructors began seeing real results from their consistent posting in the form of filled classes and growing online followings, they began doing the work on their own and maintained the habits themselves.

Reaching the tipping point

This ability to build a habit is critical. It was true for Sam, it was true for his instructors, and it’s been true for every person I’ve ever trained on the process of building social media audiences. Simply put, in the beginning, consistently posting on social media is hard. It’ll take lots of time, you’re going to feel self-conscious, and you won’t see any significant traction. The lack of immediate results is going to make you doubt yourself and the strategy.

Ignore your doubts, and trust the process.

If you keep posting consistently on social media, and if you keep experimenting with how you post based on audience feedback, you’ll eventually start getting traction just like Sam and his instructors. Yes, reaching this tipping point takes time, but, once you do, the value will become obvious.

For Sam, within three months, he started seeing a small rise in revenues. After about six months, he was growing faster than ever before. By the end of the following year, his studio was in the top 10% nationally, and he was acquiring more cycle studios.

It’s time to get started

Like you, when I met Sam, he didn’t know how to do any of this. He had to learn and be coached. He also had to find a community, tools, and resources. None of that was magic. It took time. It took effort. It took being able to connect with someone like me who could help him figure all this stuff out.

But here’s the good news: anyone can do what Sam did.

I’m so certain of this that it’s become the core of how I teach entrepreneurship. Simply put, leveraging social media to build an audience is the most efficient and effective way to scale most startups.

Since you’ve read this far, I’m assuming you’re at least willing to entertain the possibility that I’m right, which is why I want to help you get started. Everyone reading this is invited to join me for a (FREE!) 30 minute, live webinar where I’m going to cover the basics of how to start growing your social media.

Again, it’s going to be a LIVE webinar. I’ll be there. Hopefully, you’ll be there, too. Plus, since I know everyone is busy at different times, I’m going to teach the session twice. They’ll be:

Tuesday, October 24th at 12pm EDT (register here)

Wednesday, October 25th at 4pm EDT (register here)

Seriously, this webinar is specifically for you… the person still reading to the very end of the third email in this mini-course about the value of building audiences. You’re clearly interested in the topic, the webinar is only 30 minutes, and I’m going to get you started on leveraging what’s basically an entrepreneurial superpower.

Don’t miss out! Join me Tuesday, 10/24, at 12pm or Thursday, 10/25, at 4pm.

See you soon,

Aaron

---