How to Fix Your Social Strategy Now | Build a Powerful Audience That Actually Cares

This ring is hurting. I gotta bring it up or something. Hello, Believe Nation! Today we're going to talk about 7 ways to build huge followings on social media quickly. So I'm getting a lot of questions from you guys about how to build an audience on social media. How do you get people to care about your content? How do you get people to engage with with the stuff that you're making. And so today I'm gonna share with you my s— 7 ways to be able to build huge audiences quickly. Way number 1 is form alliances. And I like this strategy not just for social media, but in business as well. The fastest way to bring on an audience, to build a base, is not to go after people one at a time, one at a time, one at a time. It's to find somebody who already has your target market and find some way to collaborate with them. Find a way that you can offer value, that you can help them out, build some kind of connection so that they will help promote you to their base. There's a couple ways that I did it in the early days of my channel. One, as an example, I made thank you videos. And so I look at some YouTubers that I looked up to. I looked at Derral Eves and I looked at Tim Schmoyer and I looked at Gary Vaynerchuk And then I thought, I like these guys, I'm consuming their content, I'm enjoying their stuff, and I'm being engaged on their videos. I thought, I want to thank them. I'm going to make a thank you video for them. But not just me thanking them, I reached out to all of their most active subscribers and said, hey, I want to make a thank you video for Tim Schmoyer. Can you put together a 30-second quick thank you because you like him too, and I'm going to mash them up and put them together. Thank you very much, Tim. I just wanna say thank you so much for all the help you have given to me. You've certainly made a huge impact on my life and my channel, and I'm incredibly grateful for your guidance. Surprise! Hey! It's a lot of work, but you need to find a way to stand out. You need to find a way to offer a lot of value. If you're just getting started, an interview with you isn't gonna really bring somebody big a lot of value. But doing a lot of work to make a thank you video will. And so everybody recognized it. Everybody that I've done it for was so grateful, so thankful, and it created openings, created opportunities for me to get a lot more exposure. With Tim, I did 3 different guest videos on his channel back when his channel was bigger than mine. I did 3 opportunities on his channel. He's been on my channel. We've done mastermind groups and other projects together and opened up a lot of opportunities for us. So find people who already have your target audience. They could be huge, they could also be smaller, and find a way to help them. Whatever it is that you are great at, find some way to add value to their channel. Another quick example: I like helping entrepreneurs. I've connected with other channels who are not in the entrepreneur space but might need some entrepreneur help, right? If somebody has a YouTube channel talking about YouTube success, you know, a lot of Their audience is going to still be entrepreneurs even though the topic of the channel is not entrepreneurship. So I can reach out and say, hey, I'm an expert in entrepreneurship. I'd love to collaborate on some kind of video together to bring value to your audience. Forming collaborations and alliances is one of the fastest ways to build your own audience for yourself. Number 2 is you need to be prolific. You need to create a ton of content. It does a couple things. One, it helps you get better, right? The more you practice, the better you'll get. The quantity leads to the quality. You can't just put up one YouTube video and expect to be great. Your first YouTube video is probably going to be pretty bad because you've never done a video before, and the lighting will suck, and the audio will suck, and the editing will suck, and you, your message, your message will suck, you know, because you haven't had practice. Be prolific. Get really, really, really good. I got better at YouTube and I became the best at the agency that I'm with from being the worst in a couple months 'cause I did videos every day, 'cause I grinded it out, because I practiced and I improved. And if you go back on my channel, go back 6 years ago and you'll see how boring and stiff I was compared to how I am today. Hi, I'm Evan Carmichael. Welcome to another edition of #AskEvan. This is my first post of the year for Teles talks business and we're starting a new series. It's called the Challenge Series. We're gonna be answering the questions of entrepreneurs And how did I go from there to here? Just practice. A lot of the points, a lot of the messages are the same, but my delivery is better because I've done 3,500 videos on my channel, and most of them are public. So you need to be prolific to get better. You need to be prolific to start attracting attention. When you create a video or a post on a certain topic, people who like that will find you. Or when you do collaborations with other people, people, see point number 1, they're gonna come to your channel and give you a shot, right? Oh, he just did a collaboration with that person, okay, let me go check out his channel. You have to have content on there. Why am I gonna subscribe to your channel or follow you if you don't have great content, right? The collaboration gives you the opening, gives you some awareness, they're gonna hit your page, they're gonna see your Instagram messages or your Facebook posts or your tweets or your videos. There has to be something there that is quality that people are going to want to consume it and to consume it again and again and again. You have to be prolific. Create constantly. One video a week is not enough. One post a week is not enough. Be prolific. Number 3 is have a message. This ties into my book, Your One Word, but I believe everybody has a message and that has to come out because people buy why you're doing something much more than what you're doing. My message is believe. It's my one word. It oozes out of everything that I do. And as a result, I'm known as the Believe Guy, especially for entrepreneurs. And whenever people see the word believe, they're thinking of me. I want people to be able to think about you and your mission and not just the content that you're creating. Because you might put out one great post, fine, great, they consume it. I wanna know why you're doing it. I wanna know the mission that you're on to make the world a better place. And if I'm on that same mission, I'm gonna consume everything that you create. I wanna watch every video you put up. I wanna see every tweet that you push. I wanna see every Instagram or Facebook picture. I wanna see every Snap that you're writing, 'cause I need more of that. If you want more Believe in your life, you're gonna love my content. You're gonna wanna consume as much as possible, 'cause you need to believe in yourself and your mission more. The same thing for you. What is your message? What are you trying to get out there, and does that ooze out of every post that you put? Now, if you hate Believe, you say, Believe is stupid, Believe isn't for me, you're gonna hate my content too, right? Like, you're not gonna wanna watch anything. You are not watching anymore on this video 'cause you don't like the message, and that's fine. I want people to love your message or not. I don't want you to just be another person doing the same thing, right? And so understanding what your one word is, understanding what your message is, and then having that ooze through every piece of content makes a huge, huge, huge, huge, huge difference in the people that you'll attract and the shareability of all your content. Content. Number 4 is model success. Whenever you don't know how to do something, this has been my default go-to. If I don't know how to do something, I try to model success. I try to find somebody who's done what I want to do, or close to it, and see what worked for them. What are they doing that is really working, and how can I take pieces of it to help me? And it's not being the next Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs, or being the next Evan Carmichael, or being the next Gary Vaynerchuk, or whoever it is that you look up to, it's taking pieces from them to help you be the best version of yourself. And so every time I've modeled success, I couldn't do exactly what that other person was doing because it didn't feel right to me. Not because I'm stealing their ideas, just because the way that it worked for them, I needed to tweak. I always needed to tweak it, but I understood their strategy, and once I tweaked it, tweaked it, I could make it my own, and that's where I started having success. Where I had a media coach helping me at my agency to be better, we would review videos, and she would tell me every week something to work on. And I always tried, like, you give me a task, I'll try, I'll work it, I'll try to do it, but it never felt perfectly right because that's her view. That's what she would do. That's what she's seen work in her own stuff, and I can't be her. And I always needed to tweak it to make it my own, but there was always a growth lesson. Everything she told me, I could always find a way after some uncomfortableness of trying to then say, "I like that, I'm gonna go here and do this." And so whenever you don't know what to do, model success. Find the people who've done it, bring it to work for your company. Number 5 is get in the media. More and more and more and more, traditional media are looking to the people in social media as experts. So whatever it is that you're an expert in, right, you should be an expert at something. You have expert opinions on things, and anytime somebody's writing the story on something, they're always looking for an expert. And so be looking at who are the reporters in traditional media that are covering your space, and then anytime they write a story about it, you're reaching out and you can give some commentary on it. And the next time they write a story, they're gonna remember you. And what you're all about and what you're doing. Understand that reporters have a hard time. Reporters are not the experts on a lot of things. They always need these guest people to come in and give them more insight and context to help their stories, 'cause they need a source for every story that they write. If you are a credible source that has great information, you're making their life easier. You're making the life of that reporter easier, and they're gonna come back to you again and again and again anytime they have something that covers your niche. And so I'd be reaching out to reporters, especially if you're using social. Most of them are on some kind of social platform, whether it's Twitter, whether, you know, it's Instagram, whether it's LinkedIn. You can find them on social. It's way easier than ever before. Comment on their stories, show yourself to be a successful expert, to know what you're talking about, to add value to their content. And then the next time they do an interview, they're going to be talking about you. You sharing your amazing opinions. Number 6 is get some help. I'm not a big believer in spending money until you're making money, but if you found the path to be able to make some money from this, whether you're doing social content and that helps drive business for you, either selling product or services, as soon as you start making some money from your social path, then bring on some help. Bring on people to, to give you assistance. For me, on YouTube, the first person I hired was an editor. I was doing everything at the start. And I had money. I just don't like spending money till I'm making it. I could have taken money and start— started it all and got the lights and gear and camera and all that stuff, but I didn't know if I was gonna stick with it. And the worst thing you can do is spend a ton of money on something, try it twice, and then give up on it, and you're sitting with all this expensive gear in your basement that you can't get rid of. And so I was the cameraman, I was the researcher, I was in front and behind the camera, I was editing, I was doing all the analytics, everything. I was everything for my YouTube channel at the start. And as soon as I started to get some traction and it was generating sales for me, I hired an editor and that allowed me to move from a video a week to a video a day. And now we're up to 3 to 5 videos a day depending on the day because I've built up my team. We've got more people working for me. And so thinking about what you're really great at. Are you great at designing? Are you great at writing? Are you great at copy? Are you great at being in front of the camera? Are you great at editing? Are you great at strategizing? Like, what is your strengths? And then as soon as you can afford it, bringing on people to complement your strengths, to take over your weaknesses so you can be even more prolific with higher quality stuff that you can put out. And number 7 is you have to be passionate. Whenever you are passionate about the things that you are doing, you will get better results. If you are creating content because somebody else is creating content, or you're posting something up because you think it's gonna be a hot thing, but you don't have any interest in it, it's not gonna work. You're not gonna get the right people. You have to create the things that make you excited, that you would wanna show your kids and grandkids. That should be the acid test. If you're making a piece of content, whether it's a video or a picture or a blog post or whatever it is, you're making a piece of content make something that you want to show your grandkids, to say, "Look what I made!" And if that passion comes through into every piece of content that you're creating, I promise you, you are going to attract like-minded people who also love the work that you're doing and will be your ambassadors for you. Where if all you're trying to do is chase clickbait titles and you don't actually care that much about those topics, you'll get some people coming in, but they're not gonna stick. They're not gonna join your movement. They're not gonna really wanna follow you. They're not gonna really share all your future stuff because you're not deeply connected to the message. And so it's super important that when you're creating this content, you feel connected to every single piece and you want to show it to your grandkids. So those are my 7 tips on how to build a massive audience super quickly. I'd love to know what do you guys think? What was your favorite tip? What is most relevant and applicable to your business that you're gonna start immediately working on? Did I miss some? Is there an 8, 9, 10 that you guys wanna add to the list? Leave it in the comments below. Super curious to figure out what you guys are gonna say. I also wanna give a quick shout out to Daniel. Daniel, thank you so much for picking up a copy of my book, Your One Word, for posting that awesome review on Amazon along with the 2 pictures. I really, really, really appreciate it. I appreciate the love and support and hope you're enjoying the book. So thank you guys again for watching. I believe in you. I hope you continue to believe in yourself and whatever your one word is. Much love. I'll see you soon.