How to Use Social Media to Grow Your Email List – Episode 115

Kiva: My question is when starting out with no list and having to go to social media to do reach what are, what are some best practices for that?

I'm looking at specifically Facebook and my worry is that I'm seeing a lot of people that have Facebook groups now saying that as the admin of the group, they're getting practically no reach anymore that maybe their members are getting some reach, but if they post something, maybe only 1% of their people see it.

Paul: So your goal is the want to,, are you building a list or you just want to build a following or do you want to bring people into an offer? Like what, where do you, what stage are you at? 

Kiva: List first. 

Melissa: Okay, All right. So let's open up to the group. Does anyone have any feedback or suggestions, anything you've done as far as on Facebook with growing your list, or if you seen anything that the people have done?

There is Sarah,

Sarah: I'll put my hand up.

 So I actually launch which builds my list. So I run five day challenges too, and they're free challenges to then sell into my membership. Yeah. And it builds my list at the same time as launching 

Paul: that's one of the fastest ways to build a list is the launch.

Kiva: So then a question I have on that is who do you address the challenge to if you have no list yet?

Paul: So are you, are you looking to do things that are going to be more organic? Are you willing to do paid traffic? What's your, method.

Kiva: I do some paid traffic, but I'm not bringing in any money yet. So I don't want to spend a lot of money doing that. 

Paul: All right. Sarah?

Sarah: I didn't use paid traffic when I started so I'm a dog trainer. So I posted it. I, I spent a long time doing it, looking for every relevant reap that I was allowed to share my challenge in. 

The first challenge I ran, I had about 150 people in the grape. Then I just, each time I gradually gray or I started finding more grips, but I could share.

So yeah, now yes, I do run paid ads to it, which is so much easier. But initially I didn't, I didn't know what was going to happen. So yeah, I did it all free. I just didn't, I didn't pay for anything to start. 

Paul: Yeah, I love it. Thank you. So we always have a resource we have to give up in order to have something grow when we build something, so if we pull back on the financial side, that means we have to give our time and our energy with, to put the sweat equity in. 

So as Sarah shared as well, you want to think about, and I think it's kind of the illusion that's online is like, oh, I have to create traffic. Nope, we're not getting people online that were never online before we're not creating anything. 

People are already online, they're already doing things. So we have to detour traffic that already exists. So we need to think of where are people already hanging out? Where are they congregating? Where are they already having conversations?

What's relevant to them? what's their natural engagement that they have all the time. And then we have to ask ourselves, like, are we invisible in that group? Are we invisible in that space? 

You know, and this is real world and online. So if you had a real-world business like for years we had a photography business and it was in the wedding niche at one point.

Well, we went to bridal shows. We went to like, we went where brides would be type thing, brides and grooms. Because if we weren't there, we weren't visible. Then that's where the traffic was. Like, we had to be relevant where they were. But we also looked at networking events and we found other people that already had traffic and we got on their radar and we helped.

And in a lot of ways, so we had a lot of other people that already had traffic, you know, like DJs, wedding, reception halls, things like that. We got on their preferred vendor lists and things. So that allowed cause they were already influencing these people. 

So on your end, where are people already hanging out?

And in like Sarah's case, she found spaces where the groups or the spaces real-world or off online, they allowed a certain amount or a controlled element as far as being able to promote your offer or whatever it is. Not every group is set up that way. A lot of groups are set up by influencers that they themselves want to promote something.

So they're more protective. So you respect those sandboxes that's those spaces, but where are the places that are safe that you can go and create relevancy. 

When somebody wakes up this morning and they want a solution that you provide, do they think of you or do they not even know you exist?

So we had to create relevancy. So when they do think of this solution that they are looking for you and the only way to do that, as we have to put in the sweat equity, we have to go in and serve and give value and show up in other spaces. 

And you can accelerate some of these things, you know, so instead of just posting when we get off of this call in an hour is an hour, right?

Melissa's going to go into, she was invited to go into a paid membership group to give value on things that are our area of expertise. Because the membership is serving. I think this one what's this group is this 

Melissa: It's a group of engineers , but they have side they're in entrepreneurial space. 

Paul: Yeah. So it's something like we don't have, we don't have a membership that goes after that, you know, an offer, but what our knowledge and expertise is in marketing Memberships and courses and everything. 

They invited and asked Melissa to come in and speak. Now, can you see how that authority is very high? And like, because it's the person of that paid program is inviting Melissa in as an expert. So by default, we're probably going to see our email list, 

pop. You know, today and tomorrow people watching live as well as the replay that are from this person's membership.

So we do a lot of speaking into other groups. Some of you that are in Amy Porterfield's world would have probably seen earlier this year she has a paid program that has several thousand people in it. And their team asked us to do an at one hour presentation inside of their group to talk about a technique that we do for our challenges.

So can you see how that like has incredible opportunity because this isn't a free Facebook group. This is a paid one where people are paying monthly and we have the opportunity to go in. We get the stage and go in and speak for an hour on a very specific topic, which then creates some immediate social proof and authority.

And naturally people went and hunted us down for, for some of the things that we offer. Yeah. So it just, but we have to get out. We have to, what I recommend though, is put it in your routine, a daily routine to go in and give value where it makes sense. 

And it's not always a straight line approach. You don't have to always look for like, You know, like in, for instance, in Sarah's case like dog training groups, you don't have to maybe it just pet groups.

And there's a dog question that comes up all the time, or maybe , it's a dog agility group and she actually does different types of training. She comes in and speaks a little bit differently. Like it could be a pet owners group.

 It could be different peripheral topics that would also have the same potential client in it.

But I would make a list and I would just go and see like, which ones allow you to play in their sandbox. And if you just follow the rules and put in a daily routine, like give yourself 15 minutes, don't spend all day here, yourself, 15 minutes, go in and give value. Show up, get out, come back tomorrow.

See if there's any posts that are relevant, go in and give value. Next day, go in and give value and you're just dripping. And then suddenly you're gonna find people are in front requests. You, people are gonna start clicking on your links. People are going to cause good, better and different from what do people do.

It's called market research or other people call it stalking is they're going to click on your profile. They're going to see your business. They're going to click through, you could have your cover image, 

Melissa: Just make sure that your cover images, all up-to-date and everything with that too. 

Paul: Yeah. And it looks like Sharon you had your hand up.

Sharon: Just a question. How do you find out whether or not these groups that like I'd been doing exactly that there are a couple of them that are very explicit. You're not allowed to promote yourself. Does that mean you should be doing things in there. And how do you find out which groups are not overtly saying you can, but do 

Paul: so what I recommend is that you treat this like the real world and you wouldn't go in to, like, if you had a pizza shop, you wouldn't go into somebody else's pizza shop and hand out coupons, everybody and tell them to come across the street. So it just knowing just normal social. Cause a lot of us think don't think that way when we come online, like we throw out the social cues that we do in real world.

So what we recommend is always read the rules, number one, but typically what I do when I do networking in the real world, people think I'm an introvert because I didn't talk immediately. I listen, I read the room. And a lot of us don't do that properly. 

You should go into these online rooms and not immediately post, you should read the room.

You should see what the tempo is, the attitude, the belief system, the vibe going in, like if it's one person in there and they're controlling every conversation and they're the admin, you can tell what's going to happen. Your stuff's going to get deleted. You know, you're going to be booted out in a day or two anyway. 

It's like being respectful and somebody else, but just, you see the tempo what's going on. And what I'll tell you is like some of the groups that actually have those rules, we become such a valuable friend and resource that the admins normally go out of their way, to quietly make us aware of posts that we can contribute to.

 The roles are just there for the people that kind of come in crash and burn, like they're coming in. They're like, boom, I don't want to make any friends here. I just want to take, and really that's what a lot of times, but when you're, when you're making deposits in a relationship bank, every once in a while, you're going to be able to make a withdrawal from that. 

And it's really because when you have that tempo, that what happens is the admins. You're going to have a different type of relationship with them and you're gonna actually talk to them and, and, you know, look out for them. They're gonna look out for you. You know, it's just a natural, evolving relationships, I think longer term when it comes to those types of things.

That's why we get invited to speak in a lot of those is because we see the long game versus like trying to make a quick sale. And, and when you do that, it'll benefit your business as well as the relationships. We've had some people over the very I remember Matt couple of people had very large Facebook groups when we were in a photographer space.

Like we were so collaborative, the people could have saw us as like competition, but we're so collaborative. There's two different Facebook groups at two different points in time that the admin just wanted to abandon, like they were moving on from the group and they gave us the group. 

So one was mark, that was a lighting one and the other one was about workshops.

So that was Matt. Like they gave us a groups that were like tens of thousands of people in it, you know, because we were just such a positive element in there. So just, just keep that in mind, you know, as far as the long game. Yeah. Yeah. 

Melissa: Patty, did you have something to 

Patty: the one thing I was going to add is that I've been very respectful.

If I want to post something, I send something to the admins and I ask, and if they say yes or they say, no, I respect it either way. And they have started tagging things in my posts and saying, please share it in the group with me. So building that relationship with them and respecting that they do have rules for a reason and, and following them could be helpful.

Paul: Yeah, great. I love it. 

Melissa: Awesome. Awesome.

Paul: And here's a ninja thing. Sometimes when it's a big influencer, we give them access to one of our products as a complimentary give, and then they become one of our biggest raving fans and they actually promote us in their group.

Kiva: I just did that. 

Paul: Yeah. So you never know, there's no guarantees, you know, we're just improving our odds. Okay. Awesome. 

Melissa: So keep us posted Kiva. 

Kiva: All right. Will do. Thank you.