Why Social Media is the WORST Way to Grow an Engaged Audience

Courtney Elmer

Hey, welcome back, my friend, you are listening to the AntiFragile Entrepreneurship™ Podcast, and this is episode 144. Today we're talking about why social media is the worst way to grow a business. And I'm going to show you the surprising reason that you might be tanking your own engagement right now without even knowing it. So if your goal is to grow a highly engaged online community, and generate leads and sales consistently to grow a business, then this episode is definitely for you.

[INTRO]

Courtney Elmer

We are in the middle of a Lead Generation episode series right now, where I am showing you the exact strategies that we've implemented within our own company to grow a business, double our social media engagement, and triple the growth of our email list and take our email open rates from a very low, very embarrassing 10% to up to 98% consistently and add 1000s of dollars to our company's bottom line each month.

Courtney Elmer

today we're talking about the reason why social media is the worst way to grow a business, to grow your following, and why you're not getting the engagement you want from your community. And in order to understand why social media is the worst way to grow your audience and grow a business, we first have to talk about the difference between short term lead generation and longterm lead generation.

Courtney Elmer

Most people are looking for a quick way to generate leads and grow a business. And I get it we know that leads bring sales without leads, there's no sales without sales. Well, you can't grow a business. And we see these people on social media bragging about how quickly they grew their following. I went from zero to 100,000 followers in 90 days, I grew by 20,000 followers last month, here are my three tips for growing by 1000 followers and the next week, blah, blah, blah, womp womp, womp. And we assumed that we can grow a businesscan quickly on social media as a result of seeing claims like that. And maybe it's true, maybe they really did grow a business that fast. And we also assume often mistakenly, that they must be making all kinds of money as a result of this growth.

Courtney Elmer

But I'm here today to dispel those grow a business myths. Because take Instagram, for example. Have you ever noticed that most of the people bragging about how quickly they grew on Instagram? Teach people how to grow on Instagram? How meta is that? No pun intended? Of course, with Instagram being part of the metaverse at all. Seriously, how often do you see someone who has an Etsy grow a business that fast on Instagram? Or someone in the fitness space? Or someone in the parenting space? Sure, it can happen, theoretically. And that's the myth that everyone has bought into that social media equals fast growth.

Courtney Elmer

So they spend all their available time on social media. But is it 100% True 100% of the time that social media equals fast growth? Well, that's a big fat no, I've been on Instagram since back in the day long before reels long before stories. Back in the day when you could post a selfie of you in your car making a weird face and get 400 likes. I know because it happened to me. And it is also a thing of the past. So as a general rule of thumb, organic marketing strategies, or what we would call long game strategies, meaning that they take longer to grow because they're dependent on the element of time.

Courtney Elmer 4:51  

So don't make the mistake of buying into the whole overnight success story of people who have exploded in growth to grow a business in a short period of time Don't think that there wasn't an insane amount of work that went to grow a business, or dollar spent behind the scenes. And this is a lot of what these marketers don't tell you, which is one of the reasons why I respect Alex for Mozi. Because he grew relatively quickly, and he doesn't teach Instagram. When I started following him about a year or so ago, he had a couple 100,000 followers. And now he's well on his way to a million, but he had a decent sized community to begin with.

Courtney Elmer

And he has talked about how he invests $70,000 or more a month, into content creation for his organic platforms, YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, and he posts several videos a day across multiple platforms. So unless you can do that, too, and put 70k a month into your organic marketing, then don't expect to grow a business that quickly. Social media is what I call a short term lead gen solution. Now, here's some characteristics of short term lead gen solutions. You don't own the content, you don't own the audience. And you have to publish content with increasing frequency to stay relevant.

Courtney Elmer

For example, Instagram, Instagram could be gone tomorrow, you'd be left with nothing. You don't own the content, you don't own the audience. And you have to publish content with increasing frequency to stay relevant. Twitter, tick tock, be real, any of the social media platforms operate as a short term Legion solution. By contrast, a long term lead gen solution is unchanging. It's independent of the trends. You own the content, it's your platform, you own the audience, you must publish consistently, but with far less frequency to stay relevant. Examples of this might be an email list, a podcast. And if you want to be seen as a recognized thought leader, you need both to grow a business. These are assets for your business, whereas social media, social media is a liability.

Courtney Elmer

I'm gonna repeat that: to grow a business long term solutions are assets for your business. But social media is a liability. Look at the stock market. If you had a million dollars, where would you invest it? Would you invest it in something super risky? Knowing that, oh, it can generate me a quick return and do that overnight. But I could also maybe lose all of my money and then have nothing? Or would you choose to invest that million in something that's a bit more stable? Yeah, sure, maybe takes longer to yield a return. But it doesn't have the risk of losing all that money tomorrow. If the market goes south, the majority of people would invest long term, they wouldn't expect to see your return overnight. They understand that no matter which way the market turns, as long as they stay in the game, they can't lose.

Courtney Elmer

Just ask my dad, he has been a financial advisor for well over 50 years. Don't tell him I told you that. That is quite a good bit of his life. And I've heard it my whole life. I have been through many bull and bear markets, observing his behavior, and how he coaches his clients. And early on, I particularly remember back when the stock market crashed in 2008, he would get a ton of calls, people were so panicky, and now they're going to lose all our money. And what do we do? Do we take it out? What do we do, and he would just coach them cool and call them as cucumber, stay in the game. Stay in the game. And as time has gone on, the market has been up and down many times since he would get fewer and fewer calls.

Courtney Elmer

And now with this most recent downturn last I heard he didn't get a single call. Because his clients know they're invested for the long term. So when it comes to your organic marketing strategies to grow a business, we're talking about an investment of your time. paid marketing strategies, obviously, it's an investment of money, but organic marketing, you're investing your time. That's what organic marketing means. It's free the element there is time. Some people have called it the tortoise strategy, organic marketing, or as the hare would be paid ads and many people make the argument for why you need both to grow a business, but I believe that you can have an incredibly strong, incredibly solid, incredibly systematic,

Courtney Elmer 9:48  

organic marketing strategy in place that pays you dividends in terms of leads and customers long term and still grow a business. So let's say you have an hour to invest Where's the better use of that hour? Spending it creating an insightful podcast episode. Once a week, that's evergreen, meaning that people can go back to that for weeks and months and years to come and get value from that content, or spending that hour batching 10 reels that are forgotten within hours after you post them. Or let me ask you this way, what sounds like a less frustrating investment of your time to grow a business. I've been down the rails Road, we've had ups, we've had downs, we've had moments where I've given up altogether. And we've had other moments where I've said, Alright, we're going to do this, and we're going to try this out and maybe grow a business.

Courtney Elmer

And really what I've really deduced about the whole grow a business thing, , it's a playground, it is a playground for us to test out new content ideas. But guess what, I am not dependent on my Instagram for customers. This is really important. Do we get customers from Instagram? Yes, we do. But it is by no means our primary source of leads. Our primary source of leads and sales is our podcast, and our email list. And the reason why is because we're building relationships, I know that people will try to say that building relationships is what you do on social media. That's the point of it, you're supposed to be social, you're supposed to build relationships. When the truth is, most people look at social media. As what's this gonna give me.

Courtney Elmer

And we all know that when you enter into a relationship like that, it's not going to be long before it goes south. To build a real relationship with someone, it takes time. You don't take someone on a date and ask them to marry you tomorrow. I mean, maybe some people do can't imagine those marriages and very well, because it takes time to get to know someone. And so, look at it, like dating your ideal client to grow a business. You're courting them, if we're going to use a term from the 1950s, we're recording our ideal client, we gotta get to know them, we got to put in the time, we got to show up for them. But as a business owner, you're busy trying to grow a business. So we also need to be able to show up, do it consistently. And do it in a way that utilizes the least amount of our time invested to get the maximum return. So you got a choice, you get to choose where to invest your time.

Courtney Elmer

One way is risky. The other is study. The risky one might theoretically take less time to grow. But the risk is that you are spending more time to grow it and you won't get that time back, the content disappears. As soon as you post it, it is more competitive now than it ever has been. So you have to post continually to stay relevant. The other is steady. Yeah, it takes longer to grow. But it establishes you more as a brand. It enhances your credibility. It deepens the connections with your audience, and it helps them trust you. It helps them get to know you in the relationship. It elevates your status within your niche. And the content remains evergreen, so that people can go back to it again and again and again.

Courtney Elmer

But it's up to you how to grow a business. It's your hours to invest. You have to choose how you're going to invest it. And this is one of the main reasons that we teach podcasting as a visibility system to grow a business. And depending on when you are listening to this episode, you might have heard an announcement at the beginning of the show about an upcoming workshop where I'm going to teach you the insider secrets to launching a profitable podcast as a lead generation machine to grow a business. And to position yourself as an expert in your niche.

Courtney Elmer 14:08  

Now this grow a business workshop is totally free. This is a no pitch training. But we get asked so often how we grew our podcast so quickly how we are now ranked among the top one and a half percent of shows globally, and how we are utilizing it to drive leads and traffic to our business so that I can play with reels and I'm not dependent on showing up on social media to get leads. So if you're interested in learning how we did it, and why we did it and how you can do the same and grow a business. Then go to this link to register.

Courtney Elmer

Now if you happen to be listening to this later and you go to that link, you'll be redirected to the waitlist, go ahead and add yourself there as well. That way the next time we offer this workshop, you'll be the first to know now We'll let you know that this particular workshop is first come first serve, we limit the number of seats because I want to be able to answer some questions for you, as well. So like I said, if you're listening to this in real time, and you're interested in that, make sure you go to systems made simple.co/workshop. So you can save your seat. And then if you're listening to this later, don't worry, we are going to announce our next workshop again soon. But we usually do sell out, so make sure you don't miss it.

Courtney Elmer

Now one last thing, before we wrap up this episode for today, I mentioned at the start that I would explain why social media is the worst way to grow a business. And I also mentioned a surprising reason that you aren't getting the engagement you want from your online community. And one of the major reasons for that, is this. focusing too much on your solution to your ideal clients problem, and failing to acknowledge their problem and create a Demand gap. Let me explain. If you're creating and posting social media content, without creating a clear demand gap for what it is you offer, you're leaving money on the table. And I know right now, you're probably wondering, Courtney Elmer, what the heck is a demand gap, which is normal.

Courtney Elmer

This is not something that many people teach. But it is something that today's top influencers do in their content to grow a business without you even realizing it. But now after you leave this episode, you will start paying attention. And you will notice it. Because the demand gap is when you intentionally designed content to highlight a gap between where your ideal client is right now. And where they want to be, which drives demand for your product or your offer wants you to imagine a river for a moment, your ideal client is standing at one bank of the river, they want to be on the other bank. Particularly if you have achieved the transformation that they are looking to achieve.

Courtney Elmer

They want to be on that side of the river where you are. But there's this giant River in between and it's deep, and it's swirling and the current is fast. And they need help to get across. And the bigger that gap, the harder it is for them to get across the river on their own, the more they need you. And the reason that content that creates a demand gap is valuable, is because it helps someone gain awareness of the mistakes that they don't even realize they're making that's causing them to stay stuck on their side of the river, the side that they don't want to be on. And simply by helping them realize these mistakes, you can help them stop making those mistakes.

Courtney Elmer

So they can start getting across the river. And it increases their trust in you. And when that trust goes up, it increases the likelihood that they're going to buy from you and that will grow a business. Because they know that with your help, they'll be able to get across the river faster. Just like what I'm doing right now, helping you become aware of the real mistakes that are preventing you from getting the results you want. Because once we remove those, then the path is clear. And then when I tell you, here's what you got to do next, in order to get the result, it's easier to achieve that result because the obstacles have been cleared out of the way. So one of those mistakes that I've been helping you become aware of today, just inside this episode is the mistake of focusing too much of your time on the short term lead generation options like social media, and how the long term lead generation options might take a bit longer to get established, but they give you a far greater return over time and grow a business.

Courtney Elmer 18:57  

And that's what you want. And I'm also demonstrating what a demand gap looks like here for you within this entire episode series. Chances are you're listening to this because you feel overlooked in the online space, you feel like you're putting your best content out there, you know that you have something valuable to share, but people aren't paying any attention. And now you're aware of some of the reasons why. And you're also aware that there's a gap between where you are feeling overlooked in the online space and where you want to be, which is the recognized thought leader that you want to be seen as and respected as and when you stop making these mistakes, and start shifting your time and your energy into long term lead gen solutions you will already be well on your way.

Courtney Elmer

And that is exactly what we're going to cover in the next episode. The visibility system that you can install to grow a business that is going to help you win the organic marketing game. How to position you as a recognized authority in your space and help you start getting the attention, the leads and the sales that you deserve to grow a business. And I will see you right back here next week. Until then, you know what to do. Go live your EffortLESS Life®.