Sheryl Plouffe identifies three reasons audiences don't grow: hiding your face on camera, over-selling instead of providing value, and posting inconsistently. She recommends showing a visible spokesperson, following an 80/20 value-to-sales ratio, and committing to a regular publishing schedule.
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It's Sheryl here with another famous video from the car. Well, it's not that famous, but if you've been following me for a while, you know that this occasionally happens, and it does relate to today's topic, which is why your audience isn't growing. So thank you so much for being here. I do this video every Thursday at 2 PM Eastern time where I go live on my Facebook page, and today's topic I think is an important one If you are an entrepreneur, if you are a small business owner and you are struggling and, and racking your brain trying to figure out why is my audience not growing, I'm going to give you 3 reasons why that may be happening and how to mitigate that. My name is Sheryl Plouffe. I am a video strategist and I help emerging entrepreneurs and I help establish small businesses to build brand loyal, profitable brand loyal audiences by using uncomplicated video, i.e., smartphone, which is what I'm using today as an example. And I also help businesses to not only build their audiences, but to really put themselves out there and be seen and really gain more visibility. So the reason why we're talking about why your audience isn't growing is because this is a common frustration that a lot of people have. They are posting, you know, videos or they're writing content, or maybe they're writing blogs, spending a lot of time and a lot of energy in what they think are the right things in order to grow their audiences, but they're missing some really key components. And that's what I want to talk about today. So if you're struggling in this area, let me know in the comments below. Say, yes, Cheryl, amen. I am struggling in this area. Why is my audience not growing? Or it's only growing incrementally or not as fast as you would like. So let me start with number 1. The number— and this is in no particular order, by the way. These are just 3 reasons why your audience may not be growing as much or as fast as you'd like. The first reason is that you're hiding. You are hiding. So what I see a lot of the time is that people will— businesses will be creating content, what have you, but they're not adding the really key component, which is the human factor. So in other words, like what I'm doing right now from the car is doing a video for you guys, but I'm being, I'm showing you myself on camera. There's a human person, a human being on camera. Now listen, if you're a business owner and you, you maybe are really camera shy, I actually just spoke to someone just a minute ago, or like about 30 minutes ago, who said, I'm painfully shy. I get that. But even if you yourself are painfully shy, is there someone else within your organization? Is there someone else in your business who could be the on-camera human being spokesperson for the business? Is there? There needs to be a person in the content who is seen, who is not hiding. So hiding is one of the reasons why your audience may not be growing as fast as you might like. I got something in my eye because you're hiding. So think about that the next time you're creating content. And it could be photos, but especially as it relates to video, have there be a human being who is seen on camera. Doesn't necessarily have to be for the entire video, but for a portion of it, you have to allow the audience to connect with a human being. Okay. The second thing that, that you know, I see a lot and could be holding you back from helping you to grow your audience as fast as you might like is this one. This is one I see a lot. You're selling. You are just unabashedly selling stuff all the time. Now listen, if you use the Pareto principle on this, like the 80/20 rule, 80% of the time, provide value, give without really expecting anything in return. Just be a service-minded content creator and provide some content, provide some context to information, tell stories, what have you. If you do that 80% of the time, then 20% of the time you've earned the right to sell or promote something. Most people have it reversed. They are selling 80% of the time and then 20% of the time they might just say something valuable. You want to reverse that because part of the reason why your audience may not be growing is because you are sell, sell, sell all the time or promote, promote, promote, buy my stuff and it doesn't work because it's social media. People want to be social. They don't want to be sold to. Now, can you add a call to action at the end of a video? Yes, you can say, hey, If you've enjoyed this video, by all means visit my website or whatever that call to action is. Absolutely. Okay, so keep that in mind. Don't be selling all the time. Make sure that you have the right balance. And the third point is, if you're feeling like my audience isn't growing, I'm stagnant, it's just not happening, you have to ask yourself, how consistent are you? If you're inconsistent, that's going to have an impact on how fast your audience grows. And I'll tell you something, for the first many years of being on social media, I was, I was inconsistent. I was very inconsistent. And only in the last, I don't know, 4 or 5 months or so did I make a commitment to myself and to you to be consistent no matter what. It's really kind of the Marie Forleo type mindset, right? Come hell or high water, I'm doing a Q&A Tuesday. This is my version of Q&A Tuesday, right? And that is Thursdays at 2 PM. I always go live, which is why I'm in my car right now. I could have easily said, "Oh, I'm busy. I've got so many things going on. I just can't do my video right now." Or no, I find ways. I find— I have contingency, you know, plans so that if I'm in a situation, which I'm often in, I'm doing the video anyway. I'm consistent, which is why my audience continues to grow and does grow consistently. It's because I'm being consistent. So you have to ask yourself, is my inconsistency part of my problem? And if your answer is yes, then you can solve that. You can solve that by being consistent. Okay, so 3 reasons why your audience may not be growing. 1, you're hiding. 2, you're selling. And 3, you're inconsistent. And we want to help you to solve those things. I want to mention something real brief to you here. If you have not heard about this, and you'll want to go to my Facebook page at Cheryl Plouffe to find out more information about this. But what we're doing in order to help you to grow your audience is we're launching a free 7-day challenge, a free 7-day video challenge. You can find out all of the information on my Facebook page, and you're gonna want to join that because that's gonna help you with the consistency piece It's also going to help you to create valuable content that's not always selling. It's also going to help you from— to stop hiding. So we would love to see you in the free 7-day challenge. This is something that we're going to be doing periodically, and we'd love to see you in the next one. So be sure to visit my Facebook page, facebook.com/cherylplouffe. Learn more about this free 7-day video challenge, and we would love to see you in the group. All you have to do is comment, and we're taking all of the people who comment. We're writing a list and we're connecting with you and giving you the instructions on how you can participate. It's really exciting, completely free to you, and we'd love to see you inside the challenge. On that note, be sure to, um, to stay committed to growing your audience because without an audience you cannot have a successful business online because you won't have anyone who can benefit from the products and services that you offer. Okay, so make a commitment to yourself. I need to grow my audience, and I will see you in the next video. Thanks so much for watching today. I really appreciate it, and I hope you have a great rest of your day and heading into the weekend as well. Bye now.
