While Social Media is a fantastic tool to connect with each other, build communities, share our thoughts and spread knowledge, it also has a darker side like everything else in this world. We live in constant duality and social media is no exception to this either. Having spent some time on working on your spiritual development, you probably realised by now how social media can be used to not only feed our ego unnecessarily but also to create an illusion world that many souls are hiding behind. It has become our new shields and walls that we build around us to conceal our authentic selves.
The same applies to many businesses on social media as well, chasing after the number of likes, followers and comments to falsely believe it will generate more customers, better positioning against their competitors and overall better survival for the business in the long-term. Producing posts after posts displaying how their product is revolutionary, how their staff is having the time of their lives and whipping out the hashtags when a social issue occurs. As someone whose business is focused on strategic marketing consultancy, I shouldn’t be telling you not to focus all your efforts on growing your social media following count. However, I believe in being authentic and speaking the truth.
It is way too simple to display an array of followers and make your brand “look good” by saying you have 5k, 50k or 500k followers. In reality, how many of these people are actually interested in what you stand for? Or are they simply in for the ‘like4like’ game to feed their distorted sense of self-worth? Obviously, there are some great brands and public figures out there who do have a genuine audience, don’t get me wrong. What I’m warning you against is to not fall into the trap of the illusion game on social media. You can easily grow your follower count, your likes and post engagement by investing (very little) money But I will explain why I’m recommending you against this by sharing a recent experiment.
Let me show you how I reached 14778 accounts in 7 days while spending only €25.
I took a conscious decision to keep my social media follow count lower than what you would expect a marketing consultancy business to have. As my niche is the Spiritual and Esoteric industry, my audience has a very different profile than other industries. Having spent over 20 years journeying through my own spiritual development, it became clear to me a while ago that the only way to have a fulfilling life is to speak the truth and be authentic. After many internal battles, I’ve eventually managed to apply this core value into my career as well when Connect One Marketing was born in my mind. So here comes some truth for you to help you get a better picture of why it is more important to have maybe a lower follower count but the audience who is growing with you virtually is your real digital tribe.
I started planning Connect One Marketing in February 2020 and had my first 3 major projects by early April. I invested zero effort (and money) into my social accounts as my priority was to get customers first who would receive a high-quality service from me. As some of my projects were calming down by July 2020, I started focusing more on content for social media to reach the people who are genuinely interested in what I could help them with. During these months I’ve also crossed paths with a wonderful soul who has become my right hand, and together we started testing what was working and what wasn’t. Testing is a crucial part when starting a new adventure especially if you haven’t done extensive market research. In my case, I did have my market research data however the world has turned upside down since then and I needed to test just as well.
Fact #1 buying followers is cheap
I was approached by a “growth marketer” to offer me their services to grow my audience. Here’s my email exchange with them:
3500 followers for $159. I questioned how they can be sure that the increased followers are actually interested in my services and what I stand for based on my core values as mentioned earlier.
There are many companies and freelancers who offer similar services and the price ranges massively swing from one extreme to another. As I was not interested in increasing my follower count just to feed my ego, I decided to run a small campaign to demonstrate how efficient it can be when you are on a low budget and want to make sure that your message reaches the right audience. Understanding your real audience is key to a successful marketing strategy.
fact #2 refining your audience pays off
I selected my preferred locations (not only countries but cities as well), defined the age group that I knew from my testing was responding well and I narrowed down my target audience to only show my social media advert to people who are working as spiritual, holistic and esoteric entrepreneurs. Some examples of this audience included Herbalists, Spiritual Coaches, Chiropractors and Reiki Masters just to mention a few. Before I launched the advert I spent about a week engaging with accounts on Instagram that were using similar hashtags and we were not going crazy following just any account. We were very strategic and selective. Throughout our testing, we quickly realised that content that was featuring my personal stories were performing best so it was a no brainer to use something similar for the paid campaign.
This is what I launched and ran for 7 days with only a €25 budget.
As I have a strong marketing experience behind me, I knew more or less what kind of engagement to expect with such a low budget but it was better than what I anticipated. With paid campaigns on social media, anything around a 3% engagement rate counts as an ok performance, Social Media College backs up this average statistic as well.
My engagement rate was 13% when the campaign finished.
The advert was displayed both on Instagram and Facebook for 7 days. The majority of the engagement (90%) happened on Instagram.
At the end of the week, I reached 14778 accounts on social media including the 7362 people I got through to with the paid post. Ultimately I received much better engagement via DMs as well, connected with like-minded people who also believe that it is our task to raise the collective consciousness and make this Earth a better place. From a business perspective, I have generated quality leads and 30+ real followers (which was not the objective) who genuinely interested in what Connect One Marketing could help them with.
fact #3 social media can be effective
Going back to my initial advice to you: do not allocate all your focus on growing your social media followers, I must add this key fact: having a strategic approach to your social media activity can be very effective when you are looking for new customers for your spiritual business. Understanding who your audience really is will help make better decisions either when you launch a paid campaign or when you are interacting with other accounts.
Don’t measure your success based on how many followers you have but look at the quality of who interacts with you. I have many leads and customers who you wouldn’t find within my followers as we both share the same views when it comes to the social media world. Instead, I have personal check-ins with them, they receive newsletters, customised recommendations and they still check out the fresh content on my social account when they feel like it instead of just scrolling past them in their newsfeeds.
All in all, use your social presence wisely and most importantly: in an authentic way. People who spend time to reflect and invest in their spiritual development, will not be interested in the illusion world. They want the truth so I encourage you to show them exactly that.
If you are a little confused about how to get started, here’s an 11-step guide for you to plan and launch your spiritual business that remains fully authentic.
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