Twenty twenty has been a ridiculous year for every person, in whatever way that has looked like for each of us, one thing is for sure, it has thrown most people for a six. Every year I spend time on New Year ’s Eve amongst all the celebrations, setting my vision for the upcoming year. I love goals to work towards and I like to be clear on what I want to achieve in every area of my life. One thing that I do with that is write a phrase for the year that I really feel is the purpose of that year. This year’s was, ‘the year to step out of my comfort zone and do things that scare me.’ I thought that deciding to go travelling in a van on the other side of the world was me putting that phrase into action, so then when our trip was cancelled due to Covid19, it made me really question how I could achieve my goals or phrase this year.
Then I had this revelation that there were a lot of things just here at home that I could be doing that are out of my comfort zone or that scare me. So, I did what I do best, I wrote a list! A list full of things that are out of my comfort zone that I decided I would do in the last 6 months of 2020.
While I was thinking about this, I started thinking about many conversations that I have on a regular basis with other business owners about their marketing and how putting themselves out there is really out of their comfort zone. There are a lot of things today that you need to do in your marketing that can be very overwhelming; doing photo-shoots for website content, being personal in your posts on social media, showing the behind the scenes of your business, showing your face on social media stories and more. If you are not used to showing up for your business in this way, it can feel very awkward and you may struggle to be yourself, which can lead to you not ever doing it at all.
Which if you are not showing up for your business by being personal, then you are not giving yourself the opportunity to connect with new customers. Because your face and story are what attracts new customers to your brand. People are attracted to other people. Many of the most successful start-ups in the world were built around the owner and their ability to connect with the potential audience.
In today’s world you can no longer just put print ads in the paper and expect new customers to call you. You need to build up the know, like and trust factor with your dream customers. This means you need to be getting in front of them on a regular basis connecting, sharing and establishing expertise so that they can first start to know who you are and how you are going to help then, then start to like you and then finally over time trust will be created where they will purchase or become a loyal client.
So, how do we build know, like and trust factor with our dream clients??
I am glad you asked!!
We can do this really successfully on social media.
Here are some ways you can build KNOW, LIKE & TRUST factor with your audience on social media.
- Firstly, you need to know who your dream audience is, so that you can create content on social media that is going to connect with them.
- Tell your clients how you can help them or solve their problems through your products/services, infuse this into your content.
- Show up on social media stories (Instagram stories & Facebook stories) and make sure you show your face and have a chat with your followers. Use stickers (polls, questions and bar sliders) to get your followers to engage with you throughout your talking.
- Write some social media posts that are fun and show more of your brands personality.
- Share some behind the scenes videos in your stories so that your followers get a feeling that they are getting an exclusive look.
- Doing live videos where your followers can ask questions, or you can do live training videos to walk them through something they would want to learn off you.
These are some starting things for you to do to help to get your followers to get to know you better, so that you can build up that know, like trust factor and in turn grow your business.
It is great to find what works for you and your personality. We are all different and there are different customers for everyone that will suit you better. If you are a more introverted person you don’t have to pretend to be really energetic on stories like you may see other people do. Maybe you prefer to do shorter stories or even write more posts? For myself personally, I love chatting and could talk for hours on end and still not run out of things to say… hehe. So I love jumping on stories and chatting away about different things in my business or helping my followers with tips and training’s. It did take me time though to become confident in getting on stories and not overthinking what I was sharing or worrying what people might be thinking of me.
These are some tips that I can give you that might help you with showing up on stories more:
- Firstly, remember that you are the only one who is overthinking how you will look or sound in the story. Your followers and customers are going to think you are great!
- Hold your phone out and up from your face. This will create a great angle so that you always will look great on camera.
- Find some natural lighting where the light is towards your face. This might be standing facing towards a window in your office or even going outside.
- Write down the one thing you want to talk about in your story so that you are only focusing on one thing. Then it won’t get confusing and you can be more confident sticking to the one topic. Sometimes I will stick sticky notes to my phone or computer screen so that I can keep on track with what I want to talk about.
- Just imagine you are speaking to one of your favourite customers. Speak in your stories the same way you would to them. You don’t have to be an actor or excessively over the top (unless that is your personality and if so, go for it!) you just have to be yourself.
So, to my friend who is reading this right now. It is time for us to step out of our comfort zones and into the future where growth is waiting for us in our business. You can be confident that I am doing it with you. This past month I opened the doors to my marketing membership, which was a huge new thing for me in my business that I have wanted to do for SO long! I was so afraid of failing (hello perfectionist over here!) that it almost stopped me from stepping past my fear and into a successful Founding Members launch.
So, you can do it too!! Whatever is scaring you about your marketing right now, that you know you should be doing so that you can step into your future and growth in your business- it is time to take action and do it!
I am cheering you on!
Ams