One of the things that has been fascinating to me recently is the fascination with “brand leaders” or “influencers” who have a large social media following.
On various social media platforms, you see movie stars and celebrities who have millions of online followers and to the uninformed, it seems like a really impressive feat.
It’s not.
It’s relatively easy to build a large following of people. There are lots of people who are looking to FOLLOW you if you’re even halfway interesting. Riddle me this though – how many of those people would BUY what you have to sell?
Think about the movie star with 24 million followers whose movie isn’t number one at the box office the first week it comes out.
You have movies that come out with a star and 3 co-stars who combined may have 100 million followers and the movie debuts at number 4 at the box office.
What about the singer/rapper/artist who has a combined 30 million online followers and sells just 65,000 copies of their album during the first week?
Think about that – 30 million followers – 65,000 copies of an album streamed and physically purchased.
The problem is simple. Movie stars generally are trained to be movie stars not to cultivate and sell to their followers.
Now most of you don’t have the problem of millions of people following you BUT you need to ask really tough questions about the followers you do have.
[clickToTweet tweet=”If you have people endorsing your business BUT not buying, you’re probably doing this all wrong.” quote=”If you run an online business and you have a TON of people endorsing your business BUT not buying from you, you’re probably doing this all wrong.” theme=”style5″]
The entire point of building an audience is to create a community of SUPPORT for that thing that you do. Whether it’s accounting/acting/singing/producing or blogging, it’s important to think strategically about how you build a RELATIONSHIP with that audience.
The people who follow you need to feel that they KNOW you and/or your business. They need to be willing to defend you in conversations and feel somewhat invested in your success.
Remember this is not charity work, it’s an implicit two way relationship. You offer VALUE, they offer SUPPORT($$) that enables you to offer more VALUE.
You need to learn how to build and cultivate an intimate relationship with your customers and followers so that when that time comes (and it will) when you need to ask them for the sale, they are happy to support you.
Most seasoned internet marketers know that it’s a lot better to have 3000 dedicated supporters than 3 million occasional voyeurs (because that’s really what they are at that point).
Over the next few weeks, I’ll be sharing some simple techniques you can use to help your business become more intimate and relatable to your followers.
I want to hear from you though – in your business, does your conversion rate reflect the number of followers you have?
Use the comments below and let me know.