Why you aren't increasing from 0 followers
Why aren’t you aren't increasing from 0 followers?
The biggest issue nowadays is people posting billions of posts and videos online, every day.
Is it that many? I don't know.
But the fact is, you're competing with all the other content that your audience could possibly want to engage with.
I know you're trying to help them, but they can literally watch:
Mr Beast
Porn
Hot influencers
Gaming videos
Loud twitch streamers
Netflix
Anime
etc
Bet you didn't think of Netflix huh?
So we need to somehow strike the inner mind and hopefully inner soul of the viewer so that they actually want to engage with us.
"But Riley, my content is so good"
Is it?
You've learned heaps and might be posting stuff that's too advanced.
Forgetting about the fundamentals.
Start by developing an understanding of your understanding.
Make a Canva flowchart connecting everything you know together.
Here's mine.
Once you've got that downpacked, we need to talk about the serious issue:
Marketing vs Value
I bet you see a lot of creators online posting very surface-level, kinda shit content and getting lots of engagement.
But consider 2 things
They may not be making money
They may be making money.
If they be makin the money, it means they're leveraging human psychology to impact the viewer instead of purely value.
Now you can go too far with this where it's just unethical because the advice is actually so horrendously shit despite the impactful way it sounds.
But it's fine.
You need to learn how to catch people's attention online with:
Hooks that interrupt the pattern of complacent scrolling
Showing in 1-2 sentences:
Why what they're doing is fucked
Why what they want could be magnificently incredible and they should get it as soon as possible
Combining both and bridging that gap with a simple solution
Simple, generic CTA
If you don't have an interruptive hook, you're fucked because the viewers default is to just keep scrolling down.
If you don't highlight their current state and/or desired state, they won't be emotionally engaged enough to care about your advice or you.
Generic CTA doesn't sound great does it?
Well it's better to be clear and broad so that they can easily imagine whatever they want to get out of it, rather than what you think they want to get.
Take this CTA: "Significantly reduce social anxiety and be more mentally free: Join my email list within the next 24 hours for a brilliant way to do that"
Vs
"Join my newsletter for daily insights that will immediately start reprogramming your mind for success".
The complex one takes too much effort to comprehend and therefore the prospect is likely to just leave your content and continue scrolling on easy mode.
Complex CTA > low CTR
Simple CTA > high CTR
Do I have data to back this?
Nah.
The biggest problem beginners face besides making content they think is good but actually sucks is this:
No social proof.
I don't know about you, but if I see something with no views and no likes I immediately view it as lesser quality because others clearly don't see it as valuable.
Whereas something with millions of views, lots of likes or hundreds of comments I see as valuable and I at least give it more time of day.
So what can you do about this? You don't have views!
Well guess what - there are bigger creators in your space already.
Or in spaces similar to yours.
They have audiences already and you can leverage them in 3 steps:
Follow and then DM those creators their own posts and say something that you otherwise would've commented.
Like and comment whatever God-forsaken stuff comes to mind on their posts. Don't think just hit send.
Write posts inspired by one of theirs, share their post on your platform and then DM them with that post saying your recent post was inspired by them.
The first 2 things are enough to build rapport in the DM's and you can just send your own posts to them in future saying you thought of them.
The last one is how you get your posts actually shared in front of other creator's audiences.
They'll either respond that day and check your recent post or they'll ask you which one was inspired by them and you'll either have @'d them, tagged them or can simply share your post with them.
But it looks better if you only DM them your post after they've asked which one it was.
This is free Influencer Marketing.
Sure this might take time to work out.
But you can be fairly efficient with your networking and do it all in 1 hour per day.
You'll be growing faster than you would if you were just posting content.
"But Riley I don't have enough time to post content and network".
Well then you're spending too much time on content.
Getting lots of views is actually really good because conversion rates require traffic.
However, even with lower views (not low and measly), you can do very well.
Especially if that's on long-form content.
I've done short form content a lot. However, I mostly did that to funnel people onto my long-form YT videos. "More on this in recent YT video".
I converted a lot more people on long-form than on short-form. Seriously, the conversions are super fucken different.
What kind of videos did I make? You're concerned about how long all this shit takes?
I made entirely unedited videos about whatever I'd posted short form that performed well.
So that's another purpose of short form:
To test ideas and angles.
I would sit down in my room, phone up against my lamp recording me talk unscripted.
People liked me for my personality and so the number of people who joined my paid community for that reason alone was fucken astonishing.
Recording these could take 10 mins to 1 hour depending on how long you talk,
Editing them takes 0,
Unless you add subtitles, then it's 5 minutes.
Uploading time doesn't matter because you can do other stuff while it's uploading.
So:
Networking (1h)
Short form posting (15 mins)
Long form posting (15-65 mins)
The long-form posts aren't even done every day. Probs like twice a week or once every 4 days.
Start there.
Talk soon,
Riley.
P.S. Turn Overthinking into Power is a pretty solid way to develop yourself massively and stop relying on self-help content for your answers.
Much love.
