AL 013: How Do I Make My Audience Feel More Connected to Me?

AL 013: How Do I Make My Audience Feel More Connected to Me?

Liz Wilcox: What’s up, what’s up? Liz Wilcox here, and you’re listening to AskLiz over here on the Smart Passive Income Podcast. I am so grateful to be here. So first and foremost, before we get into this amazing question, I just want to say thank you for listening. This is our 13th episode, I believe, lucky number 13, if that’s a thing.

And it’s just I’ve been looking at the download numbers and people are actually listening. I wasn’t sure, right? This has been Pat Flynn’s thing for so, so long, sixteen years and counting, and I just feel so much love. I feel so much gratitude, if I can be a little corny there. So thanks for listening, truly.

Like I know that I’m not Pat. I know I could never be Pat, but it brings me great joy to help Pat and to help you in the different ways, right? Help Pat serve you and help you directly by answering your questions. So I really, really… Oh my gosh, am so, so grateful. All right, all right. That’s enough talk.

Let’s get into it today. As you know, this is AskLiz, so you can literally go to the link in the description, record a quick 30-second, two-minute audio of asking me a question, and I will answer it, all about entrepreneurship, marketing, business, lifestyle design, you know, whatever. Just don’t ask me about Survivor, okay?

I’m gonna skip those. I’m kidding, I’m kidding. Okay, so today we have Anita, and Anita is one of our amazing SPI Community members. So if you want to know what all the SPI Community is, you can click another link in the description, but I’m gonna let her get to it and answer.

Anita Sandoval: Hey, Liz, it’s me, Anita Sandoval, longtime member.

My question to you is, how do I connect with my community? What’s one thing I can do that is simple? Keep in mind, I’m neurodivergent, so I want to go all over the place. I’m not really comfortable with just putting myself out there, but I know I have to, and this is my community. But I just want to do one thing, simple thing, repeat it, make it consistent, and really just master that before I do anything else.

What’s one thing so they could see me, connect with me, and that way I can feel more comfortable with other things. What would you do?

Liz Wilcox: All right, Anita. I know you’re only asking for one. I know you said you have ADHD, but I’m gonna give you two ideas. Pick one, and then you’re gonna pick the other one later, all right?

So I’m giving you that permission slip that you don’t have to do both. Do not do both. Pick the one that seems simplest, most effective, and less time-consuming for you today, and then, like you just said, as you get going, as you get moving and grooving, you can pick up the other idea. So first I wanna congratulate you and anyone listening on community building.

It is not for the faint of the heart, but it is so good for the heart, right? Like, I just spent the first minute saying how grateful I was to be welcomed into the Smart Passive Income family and community. So I love that you, Anita, are trying to grow your community and you want to connect with them. That is so, so, like, spot on.

That’s the right attitude. That’s the right place where you should be thinking. So here’s my first idea. My first idea is to get replies and talk to people in the inbox. So you’re growing your email list, and you can do this in the DMs or, you know, in the comments section. I know Anita has a YouTube video.

I know she’s on Instagram, and so you could do this here. But I’m thinking in the, in the context of email because while we don’t often think about it, email is a great way to grow our community and to connect with them because it, it’s more intimate than a YouTube comments section, right? People are gonna share more.

So every time you email, and I know you have a newsletter ’cause I checked you out, congratulations, ask a yes or no question. Ask a yes or no question. Again, you can do this on your socials, but really in your emails, ask a yes or no question, and then I want you to commit. I want you to commit to, you know, 20, 30 minutes a day going in and answering those questions.

Like, or responding to those questions, okay? So for example, you help women. Maybe you ask them, you know, “In the last seven days, have you taken a shower and actually felt relaxed after? Yes or no. Hit reply, yes or no.” For me, I teach email marketing, right? So I might ask, “Did you write your weekly newsletter this week?”

Or Pat might ask, “Did you post a video today? Yes or no, hit reply.” And then, ’cause it’s never about closing a sale, right? We all wanna make money through this. That’s why you’re listening to the SPI podcast, right? Eventually, you wanna make money, and by eventually, I mean yesterday, right? Right. But it’s never about the sale closing.

It’s about opening a conversation. So I’m really suggesting to Anita and to you listening to commit to those 30 minutes a day in the inbox, in your comments section, in your DMs. And what I do often, I just came through a launch on my LizWilcox.com side, anyone that asked a question or responded to a question, I made them a video.

Yes, even though I have 15,000 people on my list over there, I’m still doing that. You know, some things, and Pat talks about this, are not scalable, but they are worth your time. Anita’s talking about wanting to connect. Nothing connects more, and nothing stands out more than if I reply to you and you send me a video.

You can use something called Loom.com. You could use Ecamm. I’m using Ecamm to record this podcast, by the way. You know, you could use anything, right? So just commit to sending those questions, yes or no, and then commit to answering them. So why do I say yes or no questions? Because yes or no questions are very easy to answer.

If you ask an open-ended question, you’re not gonna get as many replies, right? People are busy, right? If I asked, “How do you feel about sending your weekly newsletter?” Mm, you know, that’s a, that’s a convoluted answer. You know, sometimes I feel good, sometimes I feel stupid, sometimes da, da, da, right, right? But if I ask, “Did you write one, yes or no?”

Somebody might say, “No, because…” or, “Yes, but…” Right? They’re g- they’re gonna open up more. It, it’s just a very easy way of turning the brain on and getting them to open a conversation with you. Then you can come back. For example, if somebody says, “No, because I had this, that, and the other, and I just didn’t get to it,” I can say, “Hey, totally get it.

I’m glad that you understand the importance of email If you want to write emails that just take real- a really short amount of time, you know, here’s a blog post, here’s a podcast, here’s my membership, right? I can link out to a resource. Suddenly then we’re off to the races. Hit reply and let me know if this helped, right?

Then they, they’re gonna hit reply, “Oh my gosh, yes,” or, “Yeah, I watched that, but now I have five more questions,” right? We’re opening up the conversation. All right? So that’s the first idea to connect with your audience.

The second one is to turn your newsletter, ’cause I know Anita writes a newsletter, that’s why we’re talking about it, into a video or audio format.

So Anita also has a podcast. So just like Pat used to have AskPat, now we’re doing AskLiz, right? You could do that on your podcast as well. So you could do your regular podcast every week, every other week, whatever your cadence is, and then you can do a short, like, Anita Reads Her Emails, and you could do that video and audio.

You can upload that to your YouTube and your podcast player, whatever you use, something like Fusebox would be amazing. So this is because when you can connect with people visually or in an auditory manner, right, like when they hear you, when they see you, they’re gonna connect more than reading. And so that’s why in the first one I said, “Hey, make a video.”

For this newsletter, you could also make an audio, like, “Hey, if you want to watch this newsletter, click here. If you want to hear this newsletter, click here.” Again, this is gonna be some extra work for you, but it might be worth it. Another, I don’t know, take on this is maybe you don’t have to turn the newsletter itself into a video, like you reading it, but you could put a video or an audio clip in every newsletter you send.

So like, “If you would rather listen, click here,” and then it just goes to a YouTube video. That way you’re not, you know, they can listen to the YouTube video or they can watch the YouTube video. That might be a little less work for you. It might be a better thing for you. But again, I’ve found over and over again, now I have that Tim McGraw and Nelly song stuck in my head, over and over again.

You know the one. Anyway, for 10 years, any time I put a video into my email, I connect more. It’s not like, you know, I get crazy clicks, but the people that do click, they’re committed now. They hear me, they see me, they’re more likely to buy. And here’s the thing, what I didn’t mention at the top that I wish I would have, Anita said, “How can I connect with my community more?”

I didn’t mention this, but your community are those paid customers. You know, a lot of people say, “Oh, well, I’ll, I’ll sell something when I build a community.” It’s the other way around. Customers create community because they invest, they take action, they share their results with friends. That’s a community, right?

We’re investing, we’re taking action, we’re sharing. And so to the point of, like, making a video to put into your newsletter, that’s gonna connect and that’s gonna, that’s gonna fast-forward the buyer journey for your people because they feel connected to you.

All right, Anita, I hope these were helpful to you and to the audience at large.

If you are listening and you’re enjoying this, please ask me a question, leave a review, all that stuff I’m supposed to say at the end of a podcast, and I will see you next week.

Hey, hey, hey. Are you still there? Don’t go anywhere just yet because I’ve got something really good for you. You just listened to AskLiz, duh, which means you’re serious about growing your business, duh, and I want to reward that.

So here’s a little secret just for you. The SPI Community is where I hang out, and man, it is so good over there. You get access to the complete Superfans System, everything Pat Flynn has built to help you grow a real loyal audience that actually buys from you. Yep, it’s in there. We’re talking courses, playbooks, implementation guides, the whole shebang-a-bang, okay?

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