How do you promote your valuable content?
Many people struggle with getting people to read their amazing content.
They spend hours writing, filming, or producing great content.
But they can’t seem to find anyone who cares about what they create.
I struggled with the same thing.
After making mistakes and learning from experts, I finally mapped out the gameplay to follow.
It’s a 3 step process that includes:
In this post, we’re going to dive into each step.
Let’s begin.
Curate your Community
Community = Growth
When you’re surrounded by people who are interested in the same things as you, here’s what happens:
The fastest way to get stuck when trying to build a community is to surround yourself with people who:
Don’t inspire you
Talk about things you don’t care about
Don’t care about anything you’re saying
You have to be careful who you surround yourself with.
Your environment determines your happiness and success as a writer/creator.
As the kids like to say:
“You need to curate your feed.”
Be careful who you’re following.
Take note of what you’re consuming.
Does the information you’re hearing and seeing feed you?
A better question might be:
Are you being fed the right information?
If you don’t have a strong community, you don’t have a real way to promote yourself.
If your community doesn’t support your growth, it’s time to find a new group of people to talk to.
Here’s what’s gonna happen if you don’t find a strong community to support you along the way:
Finding people to connect and grow with online follows the same rules as it would if you were hanging out with people in real life.
Imagine you’re talking to someone in person.
Who would you want to surround yourself with?
With that in mind, it’s time to make a plan.
Ask yourself (and answer) these questions first:
When you answer those questions, you’ll naturally find the community to hang out with.
This applies to your personal and professional life.
Both online and offline.
Why would you hang out with people who don’t:
You need to be around people who want to see you succeed.
When you do that, the rest takes care of itself.
But you need to be intentional about it.
If you don’t make it a priority to choose who you hang out with, you won’t grow.
Growth takes many forms.
Growth looks like:
Expanding your horizons
The amount of clients you land
The amount of money you make
Becoming a better writer/creator
Experiencing new places and cultures
Transforming YOUR perspective on life
Transforming people’s perspective on life
The number of opportunities that come your way
Impacting people with your message as a writer/creator
But remember one thing.
Without an understanding of:
You won’t build trust, and you’ll struggle to grow.
With that said, let’s explore trust on a deeper level.
Build Trust
Trust = Human Nature + Psychology + Selflessness
If you can’t build trust, you won’t build a community that supports you.
Yes, even if you’ve curated your feed and put yourself in a strong community.
People are still people, no matter which industry or community you’re a part of.
You still need to know the basic rules to grow within your community.
Here are the rules:
Listen more than you speak.
Give more value to the group than you take.
Genuinely care about other people in the group.
That’s it.
I talked about being a servant in my last post: Setting eternal goals.
People don’t want to be taken advantage of.
If people see that you:
Care about them.
And that you want to see them grow.
They’ll support your work.
Think about it.
Most people don’t have a servant attitude.
Most people have a “Mine-mine-mine” mentality.
They see things, and they want those things.
Very few people see something and think:
“How can I use that thing to help other people?”
“How can I help people who are struggling?”
Most people see something and want it for themselves.
They don’t think twice about giving anything back to the group after they’ve consumed something.
But…
And this is a huge but.
If you GIVE to people, they will naturally appreciate what you’ve given them.
And when you give to people over and over and over again, they will begin to look at you as someone who:
Knows what you’re talking about.
Has their best interest at heart.
And can help them.
People always go to other people that can help them.
It’s human nature.
Which is why it’s important to know human nature.
Become known as the person who can help other people.
If you do, you’ll always have an opportunity for your voice to be heard.
But it has to come from a place of selflessness (on your part).
Now that you understand:
It’s time to learn how to persuade people to pay attention to what you have to say.
This is the 3rd and final pillar of promoting your ideas in your community.
Persuasion
These are two ingredients to the community growth formula.
Community
Trust Building
Now, let’s talk about persuasion.
Persuasion is taking someone's interest and applying psychology to it.
You could have the best ideas on earth.
But if you don’t know how to package and explain those ideas to people in a simple way, they’ll never listen.
It’s all about HOW you frame your ideas.
For example:
Did you know that your thumbnail and title are the most important factors in getting people to read or watch what you have to say?
I’m sure you know that.
But are you making the most interesting thumbnails and titles?
Or do you create amazing content and neglect the thumbnail and title?
Do you create curiosity in your thumbnails and titles?
Did you also know:
Most people skim your content and look at the headers…
Do you write amazing headers?
Did you also know that people skim just to look at the pictures in your blog posts?
If you know this, why aren’t you putting more effort into creating the best:
Thumbnails
Titles
Headers
Pictures
PS - I’m writing to myself right now.
This is the internal dialogue that I’m currently having with my own brain.
Bear with me.
These 5 elements keep people engaged with your story.
Thumbnails stop people when they’re scrolling on social media.
Titles create curiosity and get them to click.
Your first sentence entices them to keep reading.
Your headers allow them to find pieces of content that resonate.
Pictures allow them to create stories in their mind’s eye.
Did I mention that you still have to be a good storyteller?
Each one of these pieces works with each other.
They all lead people to the end of your content.
Think about it like a journey you’re taking someone on.
The journey goes like this:
You get someone interested to take the journey with you.
You give them a roadmap to follow.
You guide them along that journey (and don’t let them fall off track)
Lead them from point A to Point B (without getting distracted)
That’s all you’re doing with persuasion.
You’re keeping their attention along every step of the journey.
First, you get their attention and create interest in your journey.
Attention is the hook.
The hook has 3 parts to it.
Throw out an interesting image that captures their attention
Create an interesting title that sparks their curiosity and gets them to click
Write an amazing first sentence that keeps them reading.
Second, you tell them why it’s important for them to keep listening to you.
This is where you future-pace them.
Tell them why it’s important that they need to keep listening to you.
Throw a common problem out there to get them interested.
People relate to problems.
Give them a list of reasons they need to solve those problems.
Third, You give them a roadmap to follow.
Show them that you have a solution to their problems.
Give them the name of your solution.
Show them the step-by-step path they’re going to follow with you to solve their problem.
Fourth, you walk them through every step of the roadmap.
This is where you really have to practice keeping attention.
Most people will skip this part of the process.
This step takes the longest.
This is the value of your story.
This is where the bulk of the story is told.
This part is what you would consider The Trenches of the journey.
This is the nitty gritty.
You have to keep their attention.
You keep people's attention by creating exciting:
Headers
Pictures
Quotes
Bullet points
Line breaks in the right places
Your tactics for keeping attention will vary from time to time, but that’s why you should follow writing structures.
Writing structures keep your content streamlined and smooth.
They allow you to systemize your writing.
When you’ve perfected your writing structures, you can freestyle.
Until then, become a master at writing structures and plug your content into them.
They’re proven structures for a reason.
This process works for Blog posts, YouTube videos, LinkedIn posts, and pretty much anything else.
If you follow these persuasion steps, you’ll keep people engaged.
People will finally start to read & watch all of your content.
Your engagement rates will skyrocket.
And you’ll finally be able to build an audience.
How you package things matters.
Persuasion matters.
Community & trust don’t matter if you can’t get people to see what you’re talking about.
Don’t neglect this step.
Become a master at persuasion and writing structures.
In a nutshell, this is...
How to Build An Audience
Curate your community
Build trust
Master persuasion
Enjoy.
Kaelan Moss - MinuteAdmin Out ✌🏽
