Heather Porter’s tip to Grow Your List Without Social Media

Laura: Heather, this might sound kind of strange given what we do for a living, but I would like you for a moment to completely take social media out of the equation and pretend it doesn’t exist.

That being the case, what is a different avenue that you use and that you recommend for other people to use who want to grow their list and expand their presence?

Heather: There’s actually so many things you can do. Where do I start?

So let’s start with a video. So gosh, you can do an online sort of TV show and utilize YouTube, which… Oh, does that count as social media?

Laura: No.

Heather: It does.

Laura: You know, I don’t think it really does because I think there’s a lot of people that actually don’t use YouTube because they’re intimidated by it. They’re intimidated at the thought of creating their own video.

Heather: Yeah, and I use it more as a library resource, I suppose. It’s the way I’m referencing this. It’s because you just create a video, pop it in there, and then people are already going in there to look for stuff. So it’s almost like… It’s the second largest search engine so it’s a place for you to stick content and to be found.

And you know, gosh, you can do video on your webcam, on your phone. You could set up a studio in your home, whatever. There’s so many beautiful ways of creating that and there’s interview styles. There’s online sort of TV banter styles, but that’s one thing you can definitely do.

Another thing is podcasting just like what we’re doing here. Podcasting is brilliant and it’s something that allows you to not only… We can get banter, but you can also reach out and do interviews. And podcasting is a great tool to also look beyond your own industry. It allows you to reach outwards to discover what else is going on. I often say, you know, you can get some of the best ideas by looking at other industries instead of your own.

And so podcasting is not just… It’s not just reserved, I suppose, for asking questions in your own space. You can go outwards and get interviews from people just in general, which is a great way to lift your brand and also promote yourself to other external industries and get leads that way, because of course, every podcast can have a call to action to send people back to your website. So you’re also tapping into huge, huge resource on iTunes and all these different podcasting platforms, and then you’re basically taking these listeners into your own database that way.

Gosh, blogging. Blogging and the whole blogging newsletter model where you do great articles on your website and then you can send it out to your email list via a newsletter.

And here’s another one for you; live events. We’ve spoken about this before in other episodes. It’s definitely something that I think is very, very, very valuable. I know you agree. Live events allow you to get out into the marketplace and meet people, and when you meet somebody face to face, you build a certain level of trust that you kept very easily in the same way online.

Laura: Yeah, I hate to share something negative on a call, but it’s something that people should be aware of. It is absolutely so imperative that you have extra, you know, list building activities outside of social media.

I have a client who their entire Facebook or their entire focus has been Facebook, and they really built up a great following on Facebook. And then they did something that violated Facebook’s terms of service and their Facebook account was shut down.

Heather: You actually know somebody that happened to?

Laura: Yes.

Heather: Oh boy.

Laura: And that was the soul method that they had for driving their business.

Heather: Yeah.

Laura: Now when their Facebook page was shut down, when their account was shut down, think about what that means. That means you cannot do ads because your Facebook ads are attached to your Facebook account.

Heather: Uh-huh.

Laura: They no longer had access to all of the people that had liked them. It just was so debilitating that it really is… It just goes back to the old adage ‘Don’t put all your eggs in one basket…â€

Heather: No.

Laura: And I think, you know, part of the reason I wanted to bring this question up to the OMS mentors – and I’m so glad that you shared as much as you did – is that it is important that you remember to spread yourself.

Don’t spread yourself thin, but spread yourself intelligently so that if any one basket is taken away, you still have others to help your business survive.

Heather: You want to own your leads. You want to own your space. And the beautiful thing about, even though I mentioned YouTube, those videos are yours. No one can take those away from you. You know, you can put them in multiple places. Same with the podcast. You can put them in multiple places.

So the things that I’m suggesting are in different areas. If one thing goes under, you have, you know, lots of other places to put them in.

And I think the key thing here is a lot of people get hung up on social media as being then, you know, the ultimate thing to drive your business, when actually, it’s just a tool. It’s one of many tools that you use, and yes, it’s very important. It works very well, but it’s not, you know, the ultimate thing that you need to use in your business.

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