- Let me ask you a simple but important question.
Do you own your audience?
Participating in social media
and growing your follower list is a great first step.
And if you have engaging content
you'll likely benefit from the recommendation engines
and viral loops built into the platform.
But time and time again, influencers
and brands have seen their valuable audiences taken away
from them overnight.
With algorithm changes or editorial decisions.
For example, on Facebook,
you used to be able to reach at least 15%
of your audience with every organic post.
Now it's more like one to 2%.
Even if you have millions of followers,
if you rely on the platform to reach them,
you don't own them, and they could be taken away from you
if you don't play by the rules, or if the rules change.
That's the difference between earned and owned media.
If the platform doesn't share user records with you,
you can't take that contact detail
and reach the user on a different medium.
If you rely on the platform for distribution,
if they change their algorithm
or the editor makes a decision you could be cut off.
Typically on earned media,
the user doesn't remember they interacted with you.
You're just one post of many in their feed.
And also, the platform could take a cut
of earnings if they're the ones billing of the customer,
if they're the ones with the customer credit card on file.
So the key becomes moving your earned media
across to owned media.
So, when you're getting impressions, followers, comments,
how many of them can you convert into email addresses,
home addresses, or phone numbers?
And for that you need a conversion funnel.
So from all of the people that see your content,
how many of them actually visit your profile
or search your brand term?
Can you increase that number through using tactics?
When they do get to the website,
can you convert more of them into an email address,
or a purchase or any other own property?
One tactic for doing this is putting the link in the bio.
This is really common on Instagram,
where you can't post links directly.
One thing that works on LinkedIn is putting the link
in the first comment, rather than in the post itself.
You get something like three times as much engagement.
Once they get to your website,
you need to offer them something of value
in return for an email address or phone number.
So for example, can you offer them a checklist,
or a white paper, or can you offer you a service for free?
This works really well for social media traffic,
in particular, because it tends to be top of funnel
and much lower intent.
They're not likely to buy something straight away.
Success in business is about predictability.
The more users you can convert to own channels
the more well your business becomes.
Now, you know about the dangers of losing your audience
you can work on making your business
less risky and more predictable
by actively moving your audience to a safer place.