As an influencer or online business owner, it can feel like there's a whole lot you "need" to do.

You need to be optimizing Facebook. Instagram. Twitter. Pinterest.

You need to have a newsletter. Sales funnel. Lead magnet.

You need to be posting content constantly. Guest posting. Posting to Medium. Posting to LinkedIn.

We would argue that all these "need tos" can be distilled into one REAL need: the need to cultivate a community. After that, the decisions are simple: go where your community is and provide what that community needs.

So what does that look like in practice?

Here to talk with us this week about cultivating community to grow your business— and the tools that can help you to do that effectively— is Nicole Culver. A former food blogger, Nicole started her own food company, Blissful Eats, in 2011 and grew her company to over 6 figures in revenue using non-traditional methods like Facebook Ads and email marketing. As she had more success, bloggers and influencers came to her asking for help. Now she focuses on supporting bloggers and influencers so they can grow their reach, get paid what they’re worth, and be the go-to expert in their niche. Nicole shows them how they can work less with the time they have and increase their income by being smart with their growth strategy, by using tools like Facebook Ads.

In this episode, you'll hear about:

* Nicole's evolution from teacher to blogger to food business owner to podcaster to blog business coach
* the value of Facebook groups to build relationships
* the stumbling blocks that get in the way of building a strong influencer business
* the importance of forming a strategy from the start
* one sentence that all bloggers need to eliminate from their conversations
* a huge untapped opportunity that many bloggers and influencers are missing out on
* Nicole's recommendations on optimizing Facebook (Facebook ads vs boosting posts)
* one (not so sexy, sorry!) tip to use RIGHT NOW to grow and scale your influencer marketing business.

You don't need to wait until some point where things will magically unlock.

Because if you keep waiting, then it's just never going to happen.

-Nicole Culver
Resources:
Nicole's website: NicoleCulver.co
The Blogger to Business Program
Fall in Love with Facebook
Nicole on Facebook and the Blissful Bites Community
Building a StoryBrand: Clarify Your Message So Customers Will Listen by Donald Miller

Your thoughts? Lay 'em on us over in Businessese HQ, our own private Facebook community.