Jaiden Robinson 00:00:10  We’re back, babies! This is another solo episode with just me, your host Jaiden. And welcome to The Rave Social Podcast! I’m so excited to have you here and to be listening today. before we begin, I feel like I owe this to you. I have big news. I’m engaged. It’s so funny and so exciting to talk about it. And literally, I don’t know, it’s like all my dreams are coming true. As you guys know, I was married when I was 18, so. Yeah. And then we later divorced. And as you can imagine, heartbreak, a lot of soul searching, just so many years of me trying to figure out who I was and what I wanted, and to be in this place now with someone who just like, loves and cares about me so much and like, genuinely wants the best for me and wants to marry me like it was crazy because we haven’t. We’ve talked about getting married, but we didn’t really talk about like when or anything like that.

Jaiden Robinson 00:01:18  So it was kind of a surprise to me. But that alone has just made me feel like so happy and loved because it’s like, wow. Like, if they wanted to, they would, you know, like, I didn’t have to beg. I didn’t have to be like, oh, like, when are we getting married? Or be one of those girls that have to, like, nudge their person like a million times for it to happen? It just he took the initiative. So anyways, there’s a little sob story about my engagement happened in Mexico a couple of weeks ago, and I’ve just been like, so happy ever since. I can’t even lie, it’s been a little bit hard to work because I’ve just been so excited. Like I don’t even know what it is. It’s difficult to focus because I’m just like, oh my gosh, like I’m engaged. Like I just want to tell everyone. So anyways, welcome to the podcast. Today we’re going to talk about how to build a community to then later sell to.

Jaiden Robinson 00:02:15  And this is inspired by a question I was asked by someone we don’t know anonymously in the audience, a couple of weeks ago on my stories. So if you aren’t following along on Instagram every Monday, I do an anonymous question box. You can ask me anything and I try to respond to everything. So this is kind of piggybacking off that question because I thought it was so good. This person actually said they have under 300 followers, and they want to build a community that they can later sell to. And what would what would I do? What would I tell them? What would Jaiden do, if I wanted to achieve that same goal. So we’re going to jump right on into that. The first thing is, if you want to have a community, you absolutely need to establish yourself as the expert. So you need a place for people to come to gather and get information from you, the expert. And from there you can build a really strong community. And I think when we talk about being an expert, it feels like, oh, I should just post, like everything I know, but you do have to be.

Jaiden Robinson 00:03:28  That is one part of it. Yes, you do need to share what you know, but you have to be strategic about how you show up as an expert. You don’t want to use too much jargon that your audience doesn’t know what the hell you’re talking about. You don’t want to be just like talking at them, you know? You want it to be a conversation so that you’re not just in a lecture. Like, does anyone even like to be lectured? I don’t think so. so as you’re showing up as an expert, I would just think about that and think about how you can serve your audience. And that is naturally going to lift you up to be the expert that they need. The other thing with being an expert is that you may know the most out of everyone in the whole universe, right? Like you may be the smartest person ever, but if you don’t look like an expert, people aren’t going to trust you. So what I mean by that is your brand. Your brand needs to look like an expert brand.

Jaiden Robinson 00:04:32  Cohesive colors, consistent fonts. Not just using like whatever Canva graphic you search up and seems to fit the vibe of what you need to post about. That’s giving amateur, so we don’t want to be doing that. and an expert shows up with Have confidence. They show up like a leader, and they’re not nervous and shaky like they stand on two firm feet and they say what they know. and they teach and they lead like that. An expert also has good quality content. And yes, that can be the substance, like what you’re talking about, what you’re teaching about, whatever. But also like is your video good quality video. And if you’re wondering and if you’re nervous, like, is my content making me look like an expert or not go to the accounts of people who are already the experts in your industry. Maybe go to the industry leaders account and just look at them visually. You don’t need to look at what they’re posting and compare yourself that way. That’s super silly, but go look at the quality of their videos, the types of videos they’re taking.

Jaiden Robinson 00:05:47  Like, are they taking videos at their desk? Are they doing it out in the wild? Are they highly curated, like really high level production videos, or are they more casual? Are their camera lenses blurry? Think about all these different things, and then you’re going to want to replicate that with your own content. And I’m not saying copycat it, but I am saying like if they have really clear video and it’s beautiful and gorgeous, they’re going to trust that person over you. So you need to make sure that you are establishing yourself as an expert in that visual way. Okay. Moving on from being an expert, the next thing is finding a balance of high reach content with nurturing content. So if you want to build a community to later sell to, you can’t just post only reach content. Because if you’re only posting reach content, that’s going to be more broad content, more trendy content, things that are applicable to a really broad audience. But if you want to build a community, you need to nurture them.

Jaiden Robinson 00:06:56  So that is going to look different than reach content. That’s going to look like more getting nitty gritty into education or problem awareness and things like that. So I would say in the early stages, if you’re like, I have nothing to sell right now, I would do 80% reach content, 20% nurturing content. And the reason for that is like your main priority is going to be getting people to see you, right. Brand awareness, your secondary priority is going to be keeping them around and building that community. As you shift and as you get ready to launch something or, have a product to sell or whatever it is, you are going to want to shift that to probably more like 60% reach content, 40% nurture content, and then you’re converting. Content will mostly live in your Instagram stories at that point, but that’s for another day. So there you go. That’s my $0.02. You’ve got to reach. You have to reach your community and then balance that with nurturing them and keeping them around. and then the third thing I would recommend to you, if you want to build a community to sell to later, is share your story and bring people in to your behind the scenes journey.

Jaiden Robinson 00:08:14  This type of content is going to overlap with your reach content, but what this is going to look like is telling your story. Like why did you start this business? Why did you create this product? What lights you up? What does your day to day look like? What does the behind the scenes of creating your very first offer, or your very first product look like? Really inviting people into that process is going to make them feel involved in it, so that when you do have the product or the service or whatever to launch. They feel like they helped you build it. They were with you that entire process, and they trust you and they know you already. So they’re really warm lead and easy to convert at that point. Along with this, your stories. So that was telling your story, your personal story. But your stories are a place where you can really bring people in to this process. No matter if you have ten followers or 10,000 followers showing your audience what you’re doing behind the scenes every day on your Instagram Stories, what are you working on? You know? How are you engaging with your your audience’s stories? You know, are you asking them questions, pulling them, saying, do you like this version or that version? Are you struggling with this, over that? Anything that you can do to bring them into that process is going to make it your community tighter, for one, and then also a thousand times easier to convert your audience when you are ready to do that.

Jaiden Robinson 00:09:46  Okay. We’re chugging right along. The last and fourth thing that I would recommend is posting a ton. It can be so painful, I understand, to be consistent. When you have 100 followers, 200 followers, 300 followers, and you feel like this is a waste of my time or this is a waste of my life, you know? And that’s just not necessarily true, because becoming a content creator, which is essentially what you’re doing, is something that you have to practice and learn. It’s like learning a new sport. You have to learn video editing. You need to learn graphic design. You need to learn sales psychology. You need to learn how to use the actual Instagram app in all of its features, and that takes time. You’re not just gonna show up and know how to do all of that easily, and that’s totally normal. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. But that is why I say post a ton. Because even if it’s not getting the most reach, even if it’s painful, at least you’re learning these things.

Jaiden Robinson 00:11:05  When you have a smaller audience and you’re not standing on a stage in front of 100,000 people giving a speech that you could totally mess up and they’re all going to laugh at you like that is scary. Creating a lot of content that maybe doesn’t get seen or engage with, who cares? Especially because you’re doing that when no one’s really watching. It’s just not going to make a big difference, you know? And another reason why I say post a ton is because you need to figure out what kind of content you like to create. Because here’s the thing you can follow every hack. You can do all of those things that the gurus say, but if you don’t enjoy creating content that is going to come through in your content and your audience is going to be like, this is disconnected, it’s probably going to be on a subconscious level, and it’s going to result in you, your brand, just not taking off the way that you want it to. So finding what kind of content is easy and fun for you to create, and that cross section between what content your audience really connects with and builds that strong community.

Jaiden Robinson 00:12:23  You’re going to want to do that as soon as you can. I recommend doing a literal like 30 day posting challenge post every single day, like Monday through Sunday, post every single day for 30 days, because what that is going to do is help you get really good at content creation really fast. Help you know what you’re good at, help you know what your audience likes to see and help you get that edge on your content that will make you different. I’m a big fan of failing fast, so if you’re posting, you know, 1 or 3 times a week, your growth is not always about your growth, but your growth is probably going to be more slow at that point. But beyond that, if you’re only posting 1 or 3 times a week, it’s going to be really hard to learn for yourself about your business, about yourself, about your content. And that is going to make it a lot harder to have a sustainable, consistent presence on social media. All right. That is a wrap on how to build a community to sell to later.

Jaiden Robinson 00:13:30  Let me know if you guys have questions on this. I’m really excited because I’m actually working behind the scenes on a new offer for you, where I’m going to help you create a custom content calendar that has fill in the blank prompts for your stories and your feed that will help you get started on this. Get started building that community that you want to sell to later. So stay tuned and follow along on Instagram and I will talk to you guys soon. First, I want to say thank you so much for being here and listening to my podcast. It means the world to me, and I just appreciate this community more than you could ever know. If you love this episode or a previous episode that you’ve listened to, go ahead and head to the. Leave a review link in the show notes and leave us a review. We would really appreciate it and we’re so glad that you’re here. Thank you.