Ep 87: Why your social media isn’t working

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Dawn McGruer:

Welcome to episode 87 of Dawn of a New Era with myself, Dawn McGruer. I am focused today on a very special episode. As we’ve reached nearly a hundred episodes, we are winging our way there. I’m going to address one of the biggest issues in business today, and this aspect in business is often totally neglected, outsourced, or is the poor relative in terms of marketing. Now, what is this? It’s social media. Now, social media is one of the most powerful tools in business and can actually be a huge, huge asset in terms of driving revenue, driving profit in the business. So why doesn’t social media work? In particular, if you are posting on social media and you are getting a tumbleweed effect, you are not getting comments, you’re not getting likes, and you’re not getting shares, then there’s a very good reason for it. And it could be quite simply, your content is boring.

One post = £72000

Now, this is a very controversial statement, I understand. But when I look at people’s social media, it focuses on them. It focuses on the business, the features, what they’re doing, and the story needs to change, the whole piece across social media needs a complete shift because I think over time people have seen social media as something that is outsourced. It is part of the marketing that they don’t want to do. And in essence, the opposite is true because it is the most important. It’s one of the things that when you look at how a business scales and grows, social media is central to this, social media and stories sell. In particular, I did a post only a couple of weeks ago that generated, in one post on LinkedIn, 72,000 pounds. Now, that was one post. It took me 10 to 15 minutes to write, curate, put a picture on, find the right hashtags and post it.

Now, I did that. Now, you might be thinking, “Well, why is a CEO spending time doing social media?” Because it’s so important. If one post can generate that level of revenue, I have had other posts that generated even more than that, then it has to be a priority. In fact, social media is so important to me that it’s one of my three tasks I do each and every day. I take control of it. Now, I might not always be the person posting it, but I am absolutely 100% committed to the curation, the content, and the topic of that post, because if you get it right, that one post, that 10 minutes has just earned me 72,000 pounds. Now, I think that’s a pretty good return on investment. So why would I outsource that? Why would I get someone else driving my story? Now, I know I can write good content because I am the business owner.

I know how my business works. I know what motivates my clients. I am the best salesperson to do with it because I created it and I know what brings clients in, and I know what people want to see. They want to comment, like, and share. Why? Because I’ve tried and tested it. And when I create stories, and I am not selling in these stories, I sell more. And the weird thing is that when you actually look at your posts and you look at how you create them, if for instance, you were launching a masterclass, let’s say, or a free asset, a lead magnet, something that you wanted to give away, the most common mistake, and it is awful to see in this day and age, and many of us have done this before, is that we see someone going, well, I’ve created a masterclass.

Generating leads

It is on this date. It’s going to cover these things, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. There is so much other content on the web and on social media talking the same way that you have to be prepared as a business owner to do what other people won’t, to stand out from the crowd so that you can absolutely drive your social media forward and start getting sales from it, start generating leads, getting people to reach out, getting people to engage, comment, like, and share. Now, how do you do this? Well turn it on its head, and let’s look at the opposite. Instead of talking about the masterclass, talk about the story behind it. I could start out saying, when I started my business, first of all, at 21, one of the things I noticed was that as I work with more and more clients, the biggest gaps were X, Y, and Z.

And this is why I continually create content to help my clients do X, Y, and Z. And this is why obviously I’m hosting a masterclass. So we start to think of the story behind why the masterclass exists and why does your client care. Now, there’s lots of different ways of doing this, but the whole point here is, and you can go and see this on my LinkedIn profile, just go and find Dawn McGruer. And the easy thing is that once you get the spelling right, which is M-C-G-R-U-E-R, there’s only one of me. So go on and have a look at the posts. You will start to see the different tone, the different way that I’m presenting content on social media. Now, on average on LinkedIn, I may be getting 3000, 5,000 views and impressions on my post.

Now, I guarantee that a lot of people on LinkedIn are not getting even a thousand. You could indeed even be falling into that category. The shift is true, and we have to think about how we change that up. How do we make it look different? One of the great things is is that once you start nailing the way that you talk to your audience, the way that you format your posts, you start to see that people start commenting, liking, sharing, getting involved, direct messaging you, and you have to think about posting with purpose and thinking about how you want people to think, feel, and do every time you post something. Now, when I think about the post that brought me in 72,000 pounds, there’s probably lots of you sitting there thinking, “But what did it say? What did it look like?” Well, let me read this post to you as my final parting gift because you can go and find this on LinkedIn, and it says, “Last month, I won an award for making more than a million in course sales for one of my programs.

#hashtags

In the first month, it failed. Messaging was off point, but it still made 30,000. Three months repackaged the proposition, made another 250,000. 17 months later hit the milestone of a million pounds, and 2022 is pacing towards eight figures for that course. I’m not ruled by content creation and work a four day week. I make really amazing connections and form collaborations daily. Ask me anything for 30 minutes, just jump on a call with me. There’s plenty I don’t know, but I can give you my perspective of how I scaled my business to consistent high income months. Who knows? Maybe that’ll spark something for you.” And then there’s a link to my calendar. My calendar does have questions in it, so I can find when someone books in, and you might be thinking, “Oh my goodness, Dawn, how many calls did you get?” Not huge amounts, but really good quality calls. I motivated something within because this post resonated, related, and built a relationship. I was telling my story. I wasn’t just telling my success, I was telling my failure too. And at the bottom of it, I’d used hashtags.

The hashtags I’ve got are business advice daily, sales, business coach, and entrepreneurship. And I think about these hashtags in terms of the types of hashtags that people would follow that I want to reach, not just about what my post is about. And then I have, “Ring the bell on my profile if you want to be notified for more of this type of content.” And then I have my tag for my profile. So they just click on Dawn McGruer and they get back to my profile. If you’ve not seen it before, the ring the bell method or the tool or feature means that if you just click on it every time that person posts, then you’ll get notified or your audience will if they’ve clicked on yours. Now, the great thing is there that if you’re using hashtags, you’re getting more and more reach. And the brilliant thing is that if you are reaching the right people, the people that you want to be seeing that post, it’s not just posting to your audience, you’re bringing new people into your world.

Tell a story

In turn, they’re choosing to either connect or ring the bell to follow you, and they’ll get notified. So you have another chance of reaching those people again if they don’t actually connect with you or follow. Now, it’s an interesting one because that post got about 3029 impressions in the first few hours, and people started commenting, liking, sharing, and people started reaching out and did direct messaging me. People were booking calls, and on those calls in those … well, from that post, and in those calls, I made 72,000 pounds. Now, I know this because people said to me in the questions how they found me, why did they book the call? And people linked back and said, “I saw Dawn’s post. I read it on LinkedIn and I was so inspired, and I thought it was really true and honest, and I booked the call.” So my point here is that if you actually tell a story, you sell more without actually selling.

And why is this important? Well, number one, you want people to engage in your content. You want to stand out, you want to share your epic story, your journey of how you or your business or your role or career has developed. And the important thing here is that we want to step things up. We want to switch things out and make sure that your social media is helping your brand and business shine online. So I hope you enjoyed this week’s episode. Go and check out my post on LinkedIn and go and see what amazing social media you can create and start getting the results that you want and deserve. Now this week, I’m off to Einstein Marketer Conference in London at the O2 speaking on stage with several dragons and many other amazing entrepreneurs talking about LinkedIn. So I may see some of you there. If not, you will be able to catch up on my social media where I’ll be sharing the behind the scenes of who’s there, what we’re talking about, and what the latest digital marketing tactics, tips, tools, and insights are that are working right now in business.

Thank you for listening to Dawn of a New Era Podcast. And for your free checklist to find out how to boost your business for growth, profit, and success, and join our community, go to dawnmcgruer.com.