Are You a Victim of the Social Black Hole?

Hey entrepreneur or professional in sales or business development, is this you?

You post and post and post, yet you are struggling to get clients. You are exhausted, frustrated, and puzzled because you were told to post a lot! Maybe you even paid for a program about growing your social accounts or hired a coach who told you to post every day. So you think, “I’m doing everything I am supposed to. Why isn’t this working?” Some people even leave social media in disgust and burnout. My grandmother would have called this a ‘wild goose chase.’ It is pointless and not the way to gain clients.

Let me tell you. This is one of the biggest lies in online business that infuriates me to no end and is frankly a scam. Coaches and online ‘experts’ are pushing training with names like “Double Your Following in 3 Months” or “Learn My Growth Secrets,” and entrepreneurs fall right into the trap like bees attracted to honey. These experts will not get you sales, only your money. And ultimately, growth without sales is purely vanity metrics. Enough.

Do you want to make money? Then stop chasing growth. Growth is overrated, and frankly, it doesn’t matter unless you are growing on YouTube for ad revenue. If you want to make money, stop doing the following time-wasters:

• Post daily on social media for the sake of posting
• Spend time networking “socializing.”
• Check your likes daily
• Spend time working on courses and other materials (websites, brochures, social posts, etc. :)
• Hop on Zoom calls with random people
• Spend hours online on platforms like Clubhouse
• Spend time attending free workshops and training
• Spend time-consuming others’ content to compare yourself to that only makes you have unrealistic expectations and become depressed.

Let me tell you what to do instead.

1. Develop Your Brand for One Clearly Defined Micro-Audience Using a Unique Value Proposition and Amazing Offers They Will Jump On

Sorry to break the news to you. Your profile may be a bit bland or without enough exciting offers. You may not stand out enough. Clients scroll right past you. There are thousands of profiles that look similar to yours. I don’t even understand most of what you do nor why I should ever buy it. There may be nothing getting people to stop and read more. Don’t believe me? Look at your website stats for your bounce rate. If it is over 50%, you aren’t exciting anyone. You can also measure this on socials by the number of quality connection requests and follows you get weekly. Don't despair if your traffic numbers are low and your sale inquiries even lower. This is fixable. Just keep reading.

A brand needs to catch my attention among THOUSANDS of others I scroll past daily. Think about how to get creative and stand out. If you are trying to please everyone, you will please no one. You lack clarity about whom you serve and what is in it for them. Hire a personal branding consultant or a marketing professional with 10+ years of experience whose own profile gets your attention if you need help.

2. Build a Free Community

Being social doesn’t mean posting. That is one-sided. That is all for you. No, being social means giving to others. Set up a free community that attracts your micro-niche instantly. The name of the group is 90% of it. You must pick a name that I would google if I were your ideal customer. For example, if my specialty was time management, I would call my group From Overwhelm to Free Time Again with the promise to ‘Reclaim your life by getting your daily schedule under control again and taming your To-Do list.”

3. Build an Email List

I can’t overstress the importance of the email list for business owners. The size of your list usually directly reflects your sales. If you set a financial goal for a launch, take the number of your email subscribers and calculate your expected profits by assuming 1% will buy. That’s how powerful your list is. Business owners should start building a list from Day One and then email them weekly, preferably on the same day and in one defined format for consistency. A neglected list is a dead list. Content may be valuable to them, not sales pitches.

4. Get Over Your Sales and Money Hang-ups (Finally)

If you are in business, you are a salesperson. There is no way you can avoid sales. You are always selling. Every time you post, have a session with a client, or even a networking event, people are judging you. If you don’t learn how to get comfortable with sales and charging good rates, you will not succeed long-term in business and you will always struggle financially. Sales is simply delivering value.

5. Drop Your Perfectionism

No successful person lasts as a perfectionist. Failures are perfectionists. To succeed, one must launch before they feel ready, do less yet achieve more, and get over the detail obsession. If this is something you struggle with, I have some?tips?for you.

6. Get the Right Attitude

Mindset is the key to wealth-building. If you wallow in comparisons, jealousy, negative thoughts, or self-pity, you won’t go far. Successful people have the right attitude. One of the best tools you can cultivate is?positive self-talk.

7. Stop Being Self-Oriented or a Narcissist

It’s never about you, and it is always about your clients. If you operate as a taker, you will always deliver mediocre services and never attract abundance. One must act as a giver and regularly ask ‘How can I be of even more help to my audience?’ as opposed to asking ‘How can I make even more money?’. This is the true secret to building an exceptional services business and never running out of clients.

8. Take Responsibility

Too many people love to live in a reactive way instead of a proactive way. They deflect blame for everything on others, including employers, parents, spouses, and even their own kids. It is convenient to live this way. You are never responsible for your success or failure. But it is a lie. Once a person accepts full responsibility and set an action plan for themselves, big things happen.

9. Embrace the Hustle

There is nothing glamorous about the work one must put in to attain success. Ironically, I regularly work with intelligent, talented people who say a version of the same sentiment: “I like my work but I don’t want to have to put in all this effort into Sales, Marketing, and investing in order to succeed.” The truth is that there are no shortcuts. Everything in life requires time or money or both. The sooner one gets over the fact that they will need to put in the work, the better.

10. Invest in Your Business

Not only does success require effort, but it requires money too. One must?invest in their business. Not once but again and again. It takes money to make money. If you want to estimate the costs, you can use my?30-Day Checklist?for new businesses. Of course, you want to be profitable. Just know that it isn’t independent. Instead, it is linked directly to how much you have invested into your business. When new business comes in, you will see the correlation.

Wishing you only to work with the best people this year! Want more tips? Subscribe?here?to get my weekly newsletter.

I’m Krista, a marketing expert and business coach. I built an 8-figure digital agency in San Francisco with zero funding and a lot of trial and error, but never giving up on my dreams, and now I help others build their online businesses. If you enjoyed this article, please consider joining my mailing list?here. Please also stay in touch by following me via?LinkedIn?or?Twitter?for weekly success tips.