Why Your Social Content isn't Getting Traction

In this episode I talk about what I did when I noticed my social posts weren't getting any traction...and what I did to turn my Facebook posts into a client-getting machine.

 Hey there, and welcome to the Client Attractor Show. I'm your host, Jacob Ratliff, client attraction coach and author of the brand new book Client Attractor. If you have not gotten your copy of Client Attractor yet, you can just go to clientattractorbook.com. and get a free copy today. All you have to do is pay shipping, and we'll send your copy out right away. 

Today we are going to be talking about social media content, more specifically, how you create social media content in a way that actually connects with your ideal clients, and results in new clients. Now, regularly creating social media content is a really big stumbling point for a lot of entrepreneurs, and with good reason. You have to create a lot of content; you have to put content out every day; you have to see whether your content is working and continually adjust to make sure that it is having the intended effect. 

For years, I followed the same content routine: I would post three-to-four really long social media posts every week. They were not just a sentence or two, but they were more of a mini blog article, and they were really focused on helping my ideal clients solve a specific problem or look at a specific issue in a brand new way. And I'll be honest with you, these posts were great. To this day, they are some of my best writing, and even when I was writing Client Attractor, a lot of those posts actually served as the starting points for a lot of what is in that book right now. So these were not poorly written posts. But for some reason, they weren't getting any traction.

I would write something that I thought was pretty genius. I would put it out into the world, and then I would hear crickets. Now usually, if you put something out into the world and you hear crickets, my first question, the first place that my mind goes, is to ask, well, is anyone actually seeing this in the first place? The reason I say that is that a lot of us pour a lot of energy into creating content—so this is content in general: blogs, podcast episodes, social media, articles, whatever—and we are under this impression that if we put content out into the world, that our ideal clients will see it. That is a huge myth. That's not true. Creating content does not mean that people will actually see it.

But in this case, people were seeing it. I had a strong following on Facebook. I had a pretty decent level of daily and weekly web traffic coming to my website, so I knew that people were seeing it, and what that told me was that the problem is that the content itself, for some reason, is not resonating. And that really, really frustrated me, because as someone who has been in marketing for a long time, as someone who literally has a degree in writing, I knew that these were really strongly written posts, that they were good. And the fact that they were getting no traction, that no one was responding or engaging in any way, was honestly really discouraging. So I began to slowly make adjustments to what I was posting, to what the actual content was. 

 What I began to realize really quickly is that the posts that I had been putting out into the world, while they were strong, weren't necessarily what my ideal client needed in that moment. To put it really bluntly, I was focusing too much on educating my ideal client and not enough on connecting with them. This was a really hard pill for me to swallow because I had believed, previously, that educating my ideal clients was not just a good idea, but the only way to connect with them. And educating your clients is still a good idea, but it is not the best way to actually connect. 

 I began to shift my entire approach to creating new content. Instead of making posts that were to the effect of “Hey, here's this problem you have. Here's what happens if you don't fix it. Here's how to fix it.” Right? That really educational approach? I did a complete 180, and I focused on several types of posts. The first type of posts that I focused really heavily on was questions, actually just asking really simple questions on Facebook—in Facebook groups, on my Facebook profile—to get people to respond, to hear about their experience. These are not questions that are meant to guide them to tell you a certain answer, but rather to hear their experience and figure out what their situation is. Because when you do that, you're able to meet them where they are, and that is such an important part of connecting. 

 Now, the second type of post I began making a lot more of were really simple story posts from my own experience. So instead of framing posts as “Here's this issue you might be having,” I'm framing them as “Here this issue that I was having,” and these were true stories about my journey as an entrepreneur, what the problems I was facing were, what I learned about it, and how I overcame them. Using these two types of posts created a really big shift in how I was showing up online, because I was suddenly focusing less on converting, converting, converting, and significantly more on actually connecting. The larger effect that these had was that my personality was showing. 

 I wasn't showing up as this robot lecturer who was there to disseminate information. I began showing up as an actual real person with a real personality. And that is so important, especially for coaches and consultants, because people want to work with people they know, like, and trust, and your personality is one of the best ways to build that know, like, and trust factor. 

As soon as I made this shift, I immediately started noticing that my social posts were getting more traction, that people were not just answering the questions or saying, “Wow, I've been there.” They were actually saying, “Oh my goodness. This is great.” They were messaging me asking how they could work with me. They were replying with follow-up questions to help get even more clarity. They were raising their hands saying, “Wow, that's me. I am totally, right now, where you were two years ago,” and that level of engagement is so important and so valuable. 

 The reason that happened is that I was actually showing up and letting my personality shine. The next thing that led me to was—I started realizing this as I was seeking these results—that wow, people are really, really responding when I just show up as myself. So how can I keep building upon that? And what that led me to do was to start showing up on camera, something that honestly terrified me. Like I said, I have a degree in writing. The way that I have communicated best in the past has been through writing, and the idea of showing up on camera was truly horrifying to me, but I did it anyway, and I started posting a couple videos a week. 

 I wasn't doing any live streams yet because that was just a step too far at that point, but I started doing a few videos a week, short one-to-four minutes, nothing too long or fancy, and I started getting even more traction, even more engagement. Honestly, looking back at some of those early videos, they're really cringy because you could tell that I was so nervous to be on camera, but I kept doing them, and now, I can show up on camera significantly more confident than I could then. But I just started doing it, and I was able to let my personality shine through the camera. And that was huge for me because, like I said, this idea of getting in front of the camera at that point was still pretty horrifying. 

 What that led me to do, even further down the road, is to start this podcast that you're listening to right now, because the idea of people listening to just my voice was equally scary to me then as was getting on camera. The big overarching lesson that all of this has taught me is that the best way to connect with your ideal clients is to try to connect with them rather than convert them, and the best way to do that is to not hide behind the keyboard. This is something I've always been guilty of since I started my business: I would do anything in my power to stay behind the keyboard, hide behind the keyboard, rather than get out there as myself, get out there on camera, on audio, whatever the medium would be, and just show up. That has been the number one thing that has really driven my business forward. 

 Thank you so much for joining us for today's episode of the Client Attractor Show. I'm your host, Jacob Ratliff, and if you have not picked up your copy of Client Attractor, make sure to go to clientattractorbook.com, where you can get a free copy. All you have to do is pay shipping. Thank you so much, and I will see you here tomorrow.