Do you dread the thought of posting to social media every day?
Then don’t.
Marketing only works when you’re excited by it.
Besides, I’m not a fan of doing things that make you miserable every day just so you can hopefully make money later.
So, here are 7 ways to build an audience without social media:
1. Create partnerships
This means teaming up with other people so that you get exposure to their audience. You write content for their blog/newsletter, do a Facebook live for their group, give them a referral link to a course you want to sell, or even pay them to get mentioned in their newsletter.
2. Write books
I added 10,000 people to my email list with my first book and my more recent books continue to grow my list. I don’t recommend you write a book as one of the first things you do in your business but it can work well when once you’ve built something of a track record.
3. Run ads
Use Facebook ads (or another platform where your audience is) to bring people directly to an optin page on your website. Mastering an ad platform takes a lot of learning but boy does it pay off!
4. Write a blog
Blogging still works though it sure is more crowded than it was 15 years ago when I started out. Blogging can still be used to bring organic traffic to your website. Or there are new options like Substack that won’t bring traffic to your site but do have lots of tools to fuel subscriber growth (plus it provides a paid subscription level for your superfans).
5. Public speaking
Speak on stage at events, or online at summits and the like and you can reach a good size audience quickly with a strong sense of intimacy (which really helps turn people into clients).
6. Get in the press
It’s not that hard to get into the press when you know how. I’ve been in countless newspapers and magazines for my books, events and programmes. The key is to find an interesting hook. Sometimes that is nothing to do with the thing you’re selling but is an aspect of your personal story. Eg an early client of mine got press for starting her natural skin cream business after the age of 50.
Press coverage doesn’t always convert to leads so you need to be smart about carrying people across to taking some action. When I was first featured in Psychologies magazine I created an online quiz for scanners and got me 2,000 new subscribers.
7. Podcasts
Don’t just think about starting your own podcast, appear on other people’s podcasts. That often gets you much faster results! If you’re going to start your own podcast, you need to go all in on it to make it work (rather like blogging and writing books). If you’re creating a podcast just because you want to grow your audience it likely won’t work. But if you create a podcast because you are so excited about your idea for it that you can’t NOT do it, then you’ll likely find it does get results for you.
Final thoughts
Hopefully you can see there are many ways to grow your audience without being chained to social media but bear in mind they are not easier options. Whether you choose social media or one of these 7 things you need to find one marketing channel you are happy and excited to go all in on.
That’s the only way you’ll get traction.
And before we write off social media altogether, I find that people who claim to hate social media say that because they assume they have to do it the way other people do it – eg be boring on LinkedIn, post beach selfies on Instagram, post humble brags on Facebook. F**k that! Do it your way. Be you. It’s shockingly refreshing when people do so.