Monetization For Creators Part 2: Selling Your Products And Services On Social Media

I have relied on social media for most of my sales and marketing since 2015. I founded V Squared in 2012 and hustled for my first 2 clients. I did time-consuming cold outreach just to get a few meetings. Those clients referred me to new companies, and that's how I survived the first 3 years. I cannot underemphasize how much luck played into that.

Most companies and products fail because they aren't so lucky. If early referrals fail to generate new business, the hustling for new customers becomes unsustainable. It takes too much time, and early conversion rates are poor. Most turn to some type of online marketing.

From experience, I can tell you that ads and SEO are not cost-effective methods for selling for Creators and SMEs. It takes more time and budget than they have. Most Founders and Creators I have talked to echo my sentiment.

The recent drop in advertising revenue for companies like Meta, Snap, and others is influenced by the economy, but a more profound reversal is happening. Marketing teams have scrutinized campaign effectiveness metrics, and the ROI for social media advertising is terrible. It's possible to succeed with social media marketing, but not through traditional approaches. What's the alternative?

Views Don't Matter On Social Media

I started posting on Twitter in 2014. By the end of the year, I had gotten noticed and won my first influencer award. That revealed how much business I could generate from social media with an established brand. I spent a few hours per week curating a Twitter feed, and my marketing was taken care of.

Social media solves a problem most startups and Creators don't realize they have, access to distribution. Just because a business launches a website and offers its product doesn't mean customers will show up. If no one knows the product is there, no one buys.

Companies look at social media as a panacea for building product awareness. However, most fail to realize their objectives because social media differs from traditional advertising. Views are assumed to create awareness, and they don't.

Most social media platforms' endless scroller UI causes low-quality impressions or views. Twitter frequently surveys users to see if they remember an ad that was served to them. The retention rates are low, between 15%-35% depending on the platform. Posts must stand out to be remembered.

The key to solving the distribution problem with social media is standing out amongst a sea of content. What content do people stop and read vs. scroll past?

Creating A Virtuous Cycle On Social Media

Influencer marketing provides higher quality views, meaning people remember the ad and products that were marketed. Influencers have built trust and a connection with their follower community. When I run ads for clients on social media, followers buy at much higher rates than clients see from other paid social media marketing forms.

There are two reasons for influencer marketing effectiveness. People want to be associated with the same things the influencers they follow are. In the leadership learning path post I sent yesterday, 7% of readers clicked a link. I did not use affiliate links, so I don't know how many people bought a book from that post. My conversion rates for books and educational marketing campaigns are about 30%.

I began tracking conversion rates in 2016. The data showed me that community composition is critical to understanding what products and services will have the best success rates. After a lot of work, I discovered that the easiest way to learn what the community wanted me to sell them was to ask.

I have surveyed my community regularly ever since. There's a virtuous cycle in social media marketing and community building. I build content based on the community's top interests. You see examples of my approach to zeroing in on those interests in this newsletter. Every Monday, I ask for feedback. More importantly, I listen.

That is critical because communities are not built around an individual alone. It can feel like a famous singer, or thought leader is enough to support a community, but there's much more involved. Creating feedback loops and serving the community's needs are critical. I have built and maintained this community across 4 social channels for over 8 years. My personality and thoughts alone could not have done that.

Content, connections, and control are the central themes of a community. Building the virtuous cycle comes from understanding the community's needs. The content they consume, and give the best feedback to, aligns with the most significant problems community members are experiencing. Any product or service that solves those problems is a good fit for marketing.

Most Founders have a deep understanding of their target market's needs. That's a great place to start. Share content that amplifies the need, supports your products/services and aligns with your approach.

Creators have a more difficult time because they don't start their community building around a product or service. They started the way I did, sharing their knowledge. How did I go from sharing knowledge to marketing my products and services? It might seem like Founders and Creators need different approaches to social media marketing, but it's the same system. The starting point is the only difference.

Becoming Your Own Brand's Influencer

I started on Twitter sharing other people's content. I read an article or research paper and found it valuable. I curated a feed of high-quality content and a community built around it. That's how thought leadership begins. Posting my thoughts would have been broadcasting into the void. That is most Founders' and Creators' early experience and why many abandon their journey.

When followers trusted me enough to follow the content I shared, they were ready to learn from my experience. I talked about what I was working on. I started with Tweets and moved on to longer-form articles. That framework is essential to follow. I'll explain more in the next section on the sales funnel.

My early content focused on the problems I saw in data science and how I approached solving them. Step 2 in creating a community is Founders and Creators sharing their knowledge.

The best communities self-assemble around content that cannot be found anywhere else. Unique perspectives and experiences are one example. Underserved communities, content gaps around needs, are another.

I have always looked for gaps in knowledge sharing and gravitated towards gap topics that overlap with my experience. That strategy took me from big data to data science to machine learning monetization to MLOps to applied research to strategy to leadership to technical Creators' advice. I surf waves of underserved needs.

That's an effective process for building a thought leadership library and community quickly. A lot of trust-building happens 1 on 1. It's unsustainable in the long run, but those interactions lead to the most engaged followers. Founders and Creators need 25-100 of them, or communities fail to thrive.

Harpreet Sahota summed that up very well, and he's an excellent resource for deep dives into community curation advice. I have also posted about growing a community. When it comes to selling, thought leadership and trust-building are critical. Views and follower counts are much less important. Trust leads to sales, so the virtuous cycle begins small. Once the cycle is in place, worry about scaling to a larger community.

Creating A Social Media Sales Funnel

A structured sales funnel is critical for selling through social media. I did not realize that early on and just played it by ear. As a result, I wasted a lot of effort, and sales were inconsistent. It took me 3 years to build a first draft sales funnel, and I have been refining this for over 4 years.

The metrics are the most important part because I know what to focus my attention on to drive sales. Social media metrics alone don't correlate with sales and revenue growth. Getting access to an audience is very different than starting a virtuous cycle and gaining access to distribution. Here's my process.