Did you know that there are an estimated 600+ million blogs online today? Some of those are blogs that started way back when I started my first site, and they have the benefits of being early adopters of Pinterest and Facebook back when those platforms drove tons of traffic to your blog for free.
But it’s 2021, and Facebook is no longer a blogger’s best friend. Pinterest is still a great option, but more and more, you have to “pay to play.”
Can you still stand out in today’s online market if your audience isn’t in the millions or even the thousands?
Yes, you can! And today, we are diving deep into how to market yourself to any size audience with Bree Pair.
IE 248: Marketing Yourself to Any Size Audience with Bree Pair
Bree is the founder of Thrive, which you may know as an in-person blog conference. Before Covid, the conference was held once a year and was limited to 100-150 attendees. But Bree didn’t want to limit her teaching and influence to such a small number and only once a year.
So she took the business online. Thrive now has a podcast, a free Facebook community for bloggers, and online events.
What Are the Best Ways to Market Yourself in 2022?
Things change drastically from year to year, and with almost everything we’re doing being online these days, the first and most important way to market yourself in 2021 in through what Bree calls “message mining.”
You begin with knowing who your audience is, what problems they have, and how they would feel if those problems were solved.
Bree sets up Zoom calls with a member of her audience and spends 10-15 minutes just having a conversation about what problems they face and how she can help them through her content.
When you do this, you will attract the audience you want to attract because you put out the content they need without telling you they need it.
If you’re caught up in the rat race of constantly pumping out tons of free content, trying to be consistent on every social media channel, and you’re feeling frustrated and burned out because your audience isn’t growing, it’s time to find your people and discover exactly what they need from you.
If you’re just starting and don’t have enough of an audience to feel like they’ll respond to an invitation to chat with you, reach out to your close friends. Ask 3-5 of your inner circle to have a conversation with you and ask them the questions you would ask your audience.
Does the Size of Your Audience Matter?
Not every blogger will have an audience in the hundreds of thousands or more. Some of us will start out and remain micro-bloggers. Does that change the ways you need to market yourself?
Bree says that focusing on the numbers of our audience to the exclusion of everything else is a dangerous place to be. Obviously, we have goals as bloggers, and we are in this to build a business. So, numbers do matter to an extent.
But whether you have 100 followers or 100,000, it is an excellent thing for your mental health to focus on the one person who needs your help than it is to focus on the people you wish were following you.
When you focus on creating content that helps the person following you, your audience will grow organically.
Where Should You Focus Your Marketing Efforts in 2022?
Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, email, YouTube, podcast platforms, etc. There is no shortage of platforms where you can market yourself in 2021. And they can all be very successful.
But you can’t do them all. So, where do you start, and where do you focus?
Bree says you begin where your audience hangs out. If you aren’t sure, ask yourself where you go to find content around your niche and start there.
Maybe they’re in a FB group, maybe they’re on IG stories, maybe they don’t do social media at all, and they only get emails from the people they follow. You just need to start with the one place you think your audience might be and focus there until you either discover them or find out you need to build somewhere else.
How to Make Marketing Easier Across Platforms
Whether you’re a blogger, podcaster, or influencer, the hardest thing for content creators is creating enough content for multiple platforms. It has burned out many a content creator trying to keep up with all that content.
But there is a simple solution. It’s called repurposing content.
Here’s what that looks like. You begin with a piece of content; let’s say it’s a blog post. So you start by writing the large piece of content, the blog post.
Then, you go live on FB and talk to your audience about that topic, using the same points you wrote about. You can create a Reel for IG that gets them hooked and drives them to the post to learn more. Send your audience an email where you tell a story and lead into the blog post, and ask them to click through to read more.
Consider your one large piece of content an umbrella. Then, you will take smaller portions and chunks of that large piece and create smaller pieces that live under the umbrella.
You can do this with blog posts and podcast episodes, lead magnets, and digital products.
Did You Grow an Audience Based on Trends?
I hear from a lot of bloggers that they have an audience everywhere, on every platform. How do they serve them all?
Bree has some tough love for all of us when it comes to this.
First, ask yourself how you grew that audience. If the audience is on TikTok, did you jump onto the bandwagon of doing a fun dance and post it? Did you get a large following from that? Do you intend to do more dances? Or is that very much not on-brand for you?
If you grew your brand on a platform by following a trend, it’s time to examine whether that is the audience you want to attract.
Always, always create content that is on-brand for you, not on-brand for the platform. If your brand isn’t compatible with TikTok dances, stop doing them. Instead, start sharing content on-brand for you on TikTok and see if your audience continues to grow on that platform.
Don’t focus on a platform that doesn’t resonate with your brand and your audience.
Are You Ready to Grow Your Blog?
Bree shared so many great tips in this episode, so please listen even if you usually read and skip listening!
She also has a free download for my audience to help you make more money without wasting time. Don’t we all?!
As online business owners, we are all pulled in many directions, and we don’t have time to waste on strategies that don’t work. So Bree created a resource where she teaches you what will work and how to generate more profit.
You can grab your free download at thrive.mykajabi.com/class, or as usual, you can DM me on IG, and I will send you the link.
Bree also has a podcast called The Thrive Blogger Podcast, and you can follow on IG and DM with any questions.
Action Steps:
- If you liked this episode of Influencer Entrepreneurs, please subscribe and leave a fabulous review!
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