The other day, I had the misfortune of going onto Instagram. I have to do it every now and then to check my clients' ad copy.
As soon as I went on, I was immediately reminded that on this platform, there are thousands of people with no business experience whatsoever who are selling something they don't have. They’re business ‘coaches’ who have no business.
You can almost tell just by looking at their profile.
I saw one in particular who has relatively few followers on Instagram. That's no big deal in itself – you could have an enormous email list and no social media following – but when I looked a bit closer at their website, they had no way of opting in.
The so-called “business advice” they were offering was clearly nonsense and had no basis in reality.
I've also seen very successful social media “artists” with big personalities who grew massive followings (which is great for them!), but I can tell from the way that they're making their offers that there is no chance they're being financially successful despite that huge followership.
Any influencer will tell you: a big social media following does NOT equal a big income.
It can certainly help if you know how to set things up the right way, but it turns out most people don't have a clue how to make it work.
Why am I sharing all of this with you?
Because I've had several clients over the last few years ask me how to grow their following on social media in order to grow an email list and eventually get clients, and I tell them the same thing I'm going to tell you right now:
That's the long, slow, hard and unlikely way to be successful in coaching.
There are certainly hacks out there that can speed things up, and if you really love the social media game, I can show you how to make it work. But if you're not super into social media and you don't love using it, my number one advice is: don't.
What you can do instead is (and here’s the big take-away for today)…
Use those platforms to advertise on, ONLY.
Use real ads, where you pay money to get the message out – and enjoy all of the fruits of Mark Zuckerberg's platform without letting your time, energy and mental bandwidth get sucked into it.
Otherwise, you might end up like the broke Instagram business coaches who spend all day posting, because they've literally got no paid work to deliver on.
If you want to know a reliable, evergreen system that always works – one you can plug social media ads into, along with social media posts if you have a following – then check it out here: