A Social Media Strategy for People Who Hate Social Media

Is social media a waste of time for your business? Well, 2 years ago I thought so. I was a real big time hater, a genuine, vocal, committed hater of social media as a growth tool for your business. And my position was very simple. The effort required is enormous. The return on investment, pretty unpredictable. The algorithm changes all the time. It's hard to know what's going to work. And the whole thing looks like a rat race designed to reward people that dance on camera, and just didn't feel like it was good for business. So I ignored it for years. And then 2 years ago, I decided to prove myself wrong. Yeah, I'm kind of crazy like that. I like to challenge myself. And I went all in on social media. What happened? Well, our revenue doubled. And today I'm gonna give you the strategy that helped us produce that result. I'm gonna give you the exact framework. What we've tested, what failed, what finally worked, and what cost me 18 months and failed experiments and nearly $200,000 to figure out. And you're going to get it in just 15 minutes. So let's go. Let's start with principle number 1. When it comes to social media and succeeding in social media, the first thing you need to understand is you need to put video first. Always. If you're going to invest in social media, video is non-negotiable. Not because it's trendy, but because video does two things that no other format can do simultaneously. It builds genuine connection with your audience and is what major algorithms are currently rewarding above anything else. If you want to grow, if you want to get exposure, the algo wants you to do video and we gotta feed Daddy Algo, okay? We gotta make sure that he's happy. So make sure that you understand that whatever you do, you got to start with video. These two facts together make video the highest return format available to any business owner on social media. Text posts can communicate information. Images can communicate your aesthetics or your vibe. Video communicates who you actually are. It actually connects with the audience at a deeper level. Why does this matter? Why do you want to communicate and connect with people with video? Well, the name of the game in social media is attention. We wanna make sure that we have their attention. You have to understand, people's attention is very valuable and very limited. So if you can grab their attention by connecting with them via video, your energy, your personality, your conviction. With video, audiences don't just learn from you, they feel like they know you, that they can trust you. And that is really the goal here because at the end of the day, we don't buy from people we don't trust. So make sure you are prioritizing that in all your videos. How can I build that connection so people feel that I have their best interests in mind? Principle number 2: Everything is an experiment. Here's a number that humbles me every time I say it out loud. We've published over 150 YouTube videos and over 500 videos on Instagram and TikTok before we even started to understand what actually works. I know that sounds crazy. 150 videos, long-form videos and 500 short-form videos. Well, yeah, that's what it takes. Because every time we put out a video, every time we put out a piece of content, we learned what worked and what didn't. And it took us some time, some iteration to figure out what to fix, what to improve, what to double down on. Let me say that again. 600 pieces of content just to find some traction. Not 10, not 20, not 30. People often come up to me in events and they say, hey, I've been posting, I've been posting, nothing's happening. And I ask them, how many times have you posted so far? How many pieces of content? And they tell me like 20, 30, 50. I'm like, that's not enough. That's just not enough. You need more at-bats so that you can win. And here's what I want you to understand about that number, the 650 pieces of content number. Those are not 650 failures. Right? They are 650 experiments. Each one taught us something, whether it did well or it didn't do well. We learned which hooks stopped the scroll, which titles drove the clicks, which topics really resonated with people and got them engaging and commenting. We found out which thumbnails really performed well on which videos. And we could not have known any of this if we didn't put it out there in real time, in the real world, not just playing around in our head or just, you know, keeping this content saved on our phone and not out in the world because you need a reaction from people to understand what is good and what's not. You can't get data if you're not sharing it because once you share something, now you have some information that you can measure and that data from 650 experiments is worth more than any social media course I could ever take. Why? Because it's specific to our audience, my voice, and the content that we put out there. No course can give you that. Only your own experiments can. Social media is not just about creating great content. It's about learning what your audience needs and wants. One of the things you can do to prove this point is go to your favorite creator on YouTube. Let's say you go to one of the biggest creators ever, MrBeast. Go to his channel and scroll back to his first videos. His first videos are terrible, okay? And didn't perform well at the time when he put it out there. But he was happy with 10 views and then 20 and then 50. And then he learned what worked and what didn't, changed his thumbnails. And he had this group of friends that he worked together with where every time they put out a video, they test something new. Let's test out a new hook. Let's test out a new style, a way of editing that we didn't do before. And every time they iterated, Okay, they learn something new because they're putting something new, they're testing something new and getting new information. And now MrBeast is the biggest YouTuber ever. But it all started with those early experimentations. Principle number 3: Hire for experimentation. This one is the one that is a mistake that I think I made for a very long time. And I'm pretty sure many people who are watching and listening have either done this before or are doing it right now. Okay? You keep experimentation on your own to-do list. Okay? You say to yourself, I know I have to experiment. I know I need to gather data. I need to A/B test. I know I have to do this. And you just put it on your to-do list and you have good intentions, but those good intentions often, you know, die in the graveyard of to-do lists, right? Every week you tell yourself, oh, I'm gonna test something new. I'm gonna try something new. I'm gonna see a new format, a new thumbnail. And it just never gets done. And I'll tell you why it never gets done, because you're running a business, right? You have other things to do. You have a product to sell, you have customers to serve. And these experimentations don't always feel so urgent. They're not something that you have to get done right away. It's kind of like a nice to have. But the moment you hire somebody to take care of all your experiments, this is when your business changes. You now have somebody dedicated to giving you the information you need to improve your content. And this proved to be true for us. We hired Shanae, who's our head of experimentation and growth, and she makes sure that we are testing every little thing when it comes to the things we put out in the world, not just our videos, but our social media posts, our newsletters, our ads, everything. And her whole job is to run experiments, grab the data, and report back. She tests hooks, thumbnails, titles, descriptions, what I wear on camera, the way I move my hands, how I say the words I say, the pacing of the edit, the format of the content. Everything is a variable. Everything gets tested. And because it's her job, it actually gets done. Not eventually. It doesn't get thrown, you know, on the back burner and one day, one day, one day. No, that's her whole job. And what we love about Shané is that she loves it. And when you find people that love experimentation, love data, and love doing this stuff, they just produce results for you because they're hungry to see you win. And this is the lesson, this is the point that I'm making in this part of this episode. Experimentation that is nobody's specific responsibility never happens. It lives in that too hard basket in our life, where we just kind of say, "One day I'll do it," and one day never comes. So trust me, this will change the trajectory of your growth on social media more than anything else, where you have somebody that is holding you accountable to saying, "Hey, I told you to change this or do that. Let's see it so that we can experiment and see what happens." And by having that person on your team, you're able to get the data you need so that you can not only be consistent and grow, but get better at what you do. Get better at the content and get better at understanding what resonates with your audience. Principle number 4, volume is non-negotiable. This one is where people really push back on, and it's the one I am least willing to negotiate on, okay? This is non-negotiable in my book. Quality matters, but you need volume of content to make social media work for you. Okay? And when I say volume, I'm talking about at minimum 50 pieces of content per week. Now you might be saying, "That's a lot of content." Yeah, don't worry, we're going to break down on how to do this in a moment. And I know that sounds like a lot, but here's why it's necessary. You might have heard me say this already, but social media is an iteration game. You need a good enough volume to generate meaningful data. Now sometimes when you run experiments and you figure out what's working, what's not, if you don't have enough information out there, you don't have enough volume of content, it's hard for you to really understand what's working. It's more of a guess. For example, if you publish 3 pieces of content a week and one performs well, you don't know if it performed well because of the topic, the hook, the thumbnail, the format, the day it was posted, or is it just, you know, random variance? The sample size is too small for you to know anything for sure. At 50 pieces a week, the pattern changes. You can see clearly which hooks are stopping people from scrolling. You can find out which ones are just falling flat. You can find out which topics are driving more saves and shares and, you know, people that are commenting. You can see which formats generate the most engagement. And once you can see the patterns, you can double down on what works and you can leave what doesn't. That is the compounding effect that builds a social media presence that actually grows. And without volume, this is impossible. And I'm stressing this because this is why social media didn't work for me in the past. I was inconsistent. I was not publishing enough content. I was maybe publishing maybe 3 or 4 pieces of content a week. That's not enough. You know, a week we currently publish nearly 100 pieces of content. And this gives us enough information so that we can know the next week week what to do. But when you're just kind of putting up a piece of content here or there, when you feel like it, with no publishing schedule, it's really hard for you to succeed. You're really fighting against some forces out there. You gotta remember, social media is a very crowded place. People that are— there are people that are posting every single, you know, hour, going live, putting video, putting posts, images. They're just all over. They live inside of social media, right? So I'm not saying you have to be that, but you have to at least have a baseline of volume so that you can have the data you need. I'm hoping this episode is giving you a little sneak peek about how social media works and how you can actually use this medium, this free way to market, to grow your business. And we're gonna get into the details in a moment, but I wanna make sure you hit subscribe because there's an upcoming episode I don't want you to miss. That episode's called How to Create a Business You Won't Regret. Okay? A business that's not going to send you to the hospital. A business that's going to make you feel better than your day job. Okay? A lot of people, they create businesses and they're like, man, I should go back to my job. I had less stress then. I want you to hit subscribe so you don't miss it because we're working on it right now and I can't wait to share it with you. Subscribe and I'll see you then. Principle number 5, the 50/50 rule. I came up with this rule by chance because I was trying to experiment again with the volume that we had. How much content should we be doing when it comes to branding and awareness, and how much content should we be doing where we're actually getting people to take action, where there is a clear next step, whether it's to subscribe, whether it's to comment, whether it's to sign up for a program. And I found that half your social media content at least should be branding content where you are just trying to create more awareness about what you do, about who you serve, about the problems you solve. This means in these posts there is no need for a call to action. You don't need to say, you know, link in bio or comment below to receive a free gift or whatever it might be. You're just giving value. You're just meeting people where they are. This is something I didn't fully understand, that when people are on Instagram, for example, they don't really want to leave Instagram. Okay? They don't really want to go somewhere else and do a bunch of steps. They want to just enjoy their time on Instagram. So give them a good time, you know, give them the information, give them the value, educate them, make them think, make them chuckle, right? And have a good time with them because they'll come back to you and they'll trust you and they'll like you. And then one time when they see a post where you are asking them to do something, they'll follow through because now they're bought in on what you're all about. Now, the other half, like I talked about, the 50%, is where you actually do have a call to action. And what I like to do is I like to make sure that I give our audience a call to action that makes sense in terms of that content that they've seen. It's congruent with the content they saw. So for example, if we show them a clip of a podcast interview that we had with Ramit Sethi, who has a Netflix show called How to Get Rich, and he's a New York Times bestselling author and he's a personal finance expert. And if this content resonates with them, this clip from an— from the interview, there's a good chance they're going to want to see the full interview, the full hour and 15 minutes. So we asked them to comment the word or the name, Ramit, in the comments. When they do that, we use a tool called ManyChat, which automatically sends them a direct message with the full links of that episode, whether it's on YouTube or Spotify or Apple. Why does this work? Because I'm asking them to do something to get more of what they've already shown me that they like. Okay, they're not gonna comment if they are not interested, if they're not interested in more of this content that they saw in the clip. So I like to make sure that everything is super congruent, almost like a continuation. Like if you want more of this, then do this. It's a lot easier to convert people into something that they're already shown interest about rather than you saying, hey, if you like my interview with Rameen, sign up for my program. What? That makes no sense, right? Some people are just so hungry for a sale, you know, they really look desperate in that process. And, you know, desperation is a stench that you don't want to have. So make sure that whatever your call to action is, it's congruent with the content that you're presenting. That combination of 50% value and 50% conversion is a good balance to have. Too much of one or the other really allows the audience to start to feel like, hey, this is either too salesy or just too entertaining, or not really— there's no way to kind of continue and learn from you. I want to be able to go deeper. For those who want to go deeper, you got to give them that opportunity. Principle number 6: Collaborations only work with chemistry. Many people use collaborations, meaning they collaborate with other creators on social media or YouTube or whatever it might be. In order for you to leverage, they try to leverage that person's audience. They have a big audience. I want to collaborate with this person so their audience becomes my audience. Makes total sense. But what I found is that this really doesn't work unless that collaboration actually has some meaning behind it. Like you actually know the person and there's some chemistry between you and that other person. And this is why we rarely do an interview or bring somebody on the show here that I don't know personally, that I haven't had a conversation with socially before, because we know that it's just going to fall flat. Like the person in front of me, the guest, they're not going to trust me. They're not going to feel comfortable enough to, you know, loosen up and be themselves. And this is why when you collaborate with somebody else, make sure you invest in a relationship with them beforehand. Also, when you're in these collaborations, whether it's an interview, whether you're doing like a joint video together, whether you're doing even doing like a partnership with brand, you'll feel more comfortable if it's not the first time you've spoken to them. And to be quite honest, I dedicate time on my calendar. I usually try to do this on Fridays where I set up lunches on Fridays. I try to do this at least 2 or 3 Fridays a month with people that I want to connect with, where in the back of my mind, one day maybe I'll get them on the podcast and they'll be very valuable for our audience. But right now, my first job is to get to know them and see if that we can be pals and see that if we can vibe together so that when the cameras are on, it's not uncomfortable. This makes great content when people come together and people see them and say, oh, these guys seem like friends. You know, one of the best, most popular, most successful podcasts out there is called Smartless, which is 3 comedians that have worked together for a very long time. They're very close friends and they make fun of each other constantly during the whole podcast. And it's a lot of fun because of the banter and because of that chemistry. Principle number 7, get used to being personal Be vulnerable. Oof. This principle took me a while to figure out. It took me the longest actually to embrace, and it's the one that was the biggest difference when I started to finally understand it and finally get it and start applying it. Social media rewards vulnerability. It rewards authenticity, rewards people that are just themselves and not just putting on some sort of performance. You see, the moment you share something that actually costs you something to say, a failure, a doubt, maybe a struggle that you had. The response is completely different from a completely polished piece of content. Once you start sharing stories, you start sharing maybe some mistakes you've made, people start to see you differently. They start to see somebody that they can relate to, somebody they can trust, because you are trusting them with that vulnerability. Because everyone is struggling with something, okay? Everybody has got their own issues and problems and have a history of, you know, struggling with something. So it's okay, it's fine. And it's— you don't have to be perfect. This is something that took me a while because when I was growing up, you know, the, the, the, the popular business people and the personal development people, they seemed perfect. It was like a veneer, right? But I realized that people don't want that. People don't want the guru. What they want is basically somebody that's a few steps ahead of them, somebody that they can relate to, somebody that can share, "Oh, wow, they had struggles too and they still made it. I want to be like them." Listen, I get it. This is harder than it sounds, especially if you're someone who spent years building your reputation and protecting your reputation, especially if you came from the corporate world where, you know, you don't show your weaknesses because you might be afraid someone's going to backstab you or sabotage you or use it against you one day. But if you look at social media, the businesses that are winning are the ones that are being vulnerable. The brands that are willing to be real in front of the camera and not just the experts. Listen, no one wants to be told what to do. They want to be inspired to do what they want to do, right? They want to look at somebody and they want to hear from somebody and say, hey, I want to follow in that path. I want to do what they did instead of being told, hey, this is what you're supposed to do. I'm the expert, I'm the guru. Listen to me. You know, if you're an entrepreneur especially, you're very opinionated. My mom used to say when I was a kid all the time, One of my first few sentences was, "Don't tell me what to do." But there's some truth behind that. You know, we all want to feel like we're making our own decisions and we want to be inspired, but we also want to carve our own path. Principle number 8: Build the team. Social media without a team is a burnout machine. Now listen, Nicole and I, we started The $100 MBA in 2013 all by ourselves. We didn't have any help. We did all the work, we did everything, and it was very tiring. We realized this is not sustainable and we decided we have to start building a team. And I encourage you to do the same, even if it's just one hire. And let me tell you why. The most time-consuming parts of a content operation, uh, are, are things like editing, clipping, posting, not the actual creating, right? What I'm doing right now, you know, talking to you in front of the camera and through the mic. This is not the time-consuming part, okay? It's everything around it, right? It's, it's the ideation, it's the planning, it's the scripting, it's the editing, it's the posting. It's all the stuff that happens. It's the clipping of these videos, it's the descriptions, it's the SEO. All that stuff is what takes all the time. And guess what? All that stuff has nothing to do with your secret sauce. The reason why people want to hear from you is because of your ideas, of your content, of your delivery, your personality. You need to focus on that. You need to build a team around you to allow you to just use all your creative energy to deliver the best version of yourself when you're delivering your content. And that's how you serve your audience. You build a team of great experts, hardworking people that are going to allow this content to reach people through their expertise. And listen, you could take it in steps. Like, for example, the first hire we made was we had an executive assistant. She was actually a virtual assistant, Cindy, who's still on our team and who's been promoted several times on our company. And now she's a production assistant. She does a great job with the podcast. But at the start, she did all the posting for us on social media, and she still does some of the stuff here and there when we need her help. But the point is, is that we just outsourced one part of the equation. We were still shooting, we were still recording, we were still doing the editing. And then we slowly then made another hire. We made another hire with Carl, who edited the podcast, and Carl took something off our plate. Now we and focus on the content. And slowly, slowly, we started hiring more and more people on our team to be able to build, you know, eventually our media company. But the point is you have to get started. You have to start taking things off your plate. Why? I'm gonna tell you how this works, okay? Once you take something off your plate, that frees up time for you, time for you to bring in more customers, to build your business, to grow your revenue. That revenue then can be reinvested to do what? Make another hire, take something, another off your thing off your plate. So say for example, You, the first person took 20% off your plate. Then the next person takes 30% off your plate. Now you got 50%. Now you can make more money. Now you can focus on your customers. Now you can build better products. Now you can do better marketing. And then you make more money and more revenue. And then you can reinvest and buy, you know, get another hire on your team so that they can continue to do the same thing, relieve you of other things that are taking a lot of time that you don't actually need to do. Like it has nothing to do with your expertise. Or your brand. Principle number 9: Everything is content. This is a mindset that you have to start adapting sooner than later. I used to think that content required a dedicated idea, but everything is content. You don't need to manufacture ideas. They're all around you. For example, you might have had a team meeting about planning an event, or maybe you are going to have lunch with a client. That's content. I'm not saying you have to film your lunch with your client, but the story behind that, and you can keep names out of it, but what you talked about, maybe a discussion you had, that's a piece of content. That could be a blog post, that could be a LinkedIn post, that could be a little video that you shoot after your meeting. Hey, I just was meeting with a client and we had this interesting discussion about XYZ. He said this, I said that, we disagreed, but guess what? He still signed the contract. That's a piece of content. People wanna hear what it's like to actually do business. One way to look at this is that instead of you trying to produce content, document content, almost like a diary. Document what's happening around you. Document the trip you're about to go on. Document what you pack in your bag before your trip. You know, you've probably seen episodes about that on the podcast or even seen some of my reels on TikTok or Instagram. The moment you start looking at it from a documentation point of view, you start realizing, oh, I just have to live my normal life and then take those nuggets, take those valuable insights and those ideas and share it with the world. 2 years ago, I was a social media hater. And today our revenue has more than doubled because of what we focused on, because we focused on not just building more content for social media, we built a media company. We understood that the name of the game here is systems and volume experimentation. Understanding who our audience is and serving them better every single time we put out a piece of content. It's not a hack. It's not some sort of secret strategy. It's not that, hey, TikTok is hot right now. Let's jump on TikTok. No, this applies to any platform. If a new platform comes out tomorrow, you can apply what you learned today to do really well with your media on that new platform. What I shared with you today cost me 18 months and over $200,000 to figure out. It costs you just 15 minutes today to hear it. Now your job is to execute. Take action. Take some notes if you haven't taken 'em already. Figure out what you are going to focus on and up that volume and make sure you have somebody in charge of experimentation, even if that's you for 1 hour every single week, even if you just have 1 hour in your calendar on Monday to do that, and then you can outsource it and hire for it soon after. That wraps up today's episode. Thank you so much for tuning in. If you wanna continue learning, we have a recent episode we recently published called If Your Marketing Is Not Working, This Will Fix It. 99% of businesses get this wrong, and I want to make sure that you don't get it wrong. Marketing is not an art. It's not some sort of mystery. It's actually a science. And because social media is a part of marketing, I think this episode works perfectly with it. So go ahead and check it out. It's called If Your Marketing's Not Working, This Will Fix It. 99% of businesses get this wrong. Go check it out and go ahead and start executing on what you learned today. Thanks so much, and I'll check you in the next one.