AP 0548: How Do I Get My Social Media Ready for a New Business?

AskPat 548 Episode Transcript

Pat Flynn: Hey, what's up everybody? Pat Flynn here. Welcome to Episode 548 of AskPat. Thank you so much for joining me today. As always I'm here to help you by answering your online business related questions, five days a week. We have a cool question today, from Josh.

But before we get we get to that, I just want to ask you: Hey, have you picked up my new book yet, Will It Fly? You can check it out at WillItFlyBook.com. It is a Wall Street Journal best seller. I'm so happy to say that. It's helped a lot of people already, with validations of their next business ideas. That's what this book does, it helps you validate your business idea, to make sure it's one worth working toward. Because as an entrepreneur, it's really hard to know if that thing your working on, is actually going to work out if you have paying customers on the other end. It's a challenge because, as an entrepreneur you don't work X hours and get paid for those X hours right away. You invest a number of hours up front on something that, can be hard to tell whether or not that thing's going to work out. So if you need help discovering whether or not this idea you have is actually something that will pay off, check out my new book Will it Fly? Again you can check it out at WillItFlyBook.com. It's available on Kindle as a paperback book. And will soon be available on audible.com, as an audio book as well. Again willitflybook.com.

Alright. Here is today's question from Josh.

Josh: What should I do with my social media presence, before starting my online business?

Pat Flynn: Hey Josh, thanks so much for the question. This is a very simple one because, it's very clear. So I appreciate that. Before you start your business, and again I talked about this actually in my book Will It Fly? It's great to get involved in social media, because you get to know people. And when you know people, things can happen. Absolutely. You get to know the influencers, you get to know people in your target audience. Set up a profile and if you don't know what your business is yet, that's okay. I think personal profiles are great. Even if you are a business owner. That's why you see people who own large businesses, they are still themselves on social media. I wouldn't be afraid to do that and connect yourself to your business.

Now, if that's something that you're worried about, always know that you can set up a new profile later. Which is fine. I think it's really important for you to understand that, there are people out there in the world of social media, who are sharing information. Who you could connect with. Who you could learn from, based the language that they use, they conversations that they have, the problems that they have. At least, sign up on on social media, to see who's out there all ready. In the book, I talk about this exercise called, “Creating Your Market Map,” where you find the three P's of your audience. The first P, is the places. The places where all the people in your target audience hang out. The second P, is the people of the influencers in that space, who have all ready earned the trust of that particular audience. And then side note, the third P is products that are all ready being serviced and offered to that particular audience.

The second P, the second column, social media comes into play. And Twitter specifically is a great one to get started in because, you can then reach out to people. You could converse with them, talk with them. Start to build a relationship. Even if they're with people who you feel are way beyond where you're at. At least if you stat that conversation now, on twitter, which is very nice because it's limited. In terms of how many characters you have to share and what those conversations are like. They don't go on forever and people pay more attention to other's often on that platform. Because of that, when you reach out to these people later on via email, or some other social media platform. You will have already had a conversation with them, so you can pick up from where you left off on twitter for example.

So, if you wanted to get started, the first one I would start on is Twitter. Now, I will give you some tips from this point forward in this answer about social media because, it could get really kind of cumbersome. There's a lot of different social media platforms out there. Because of that you feel like, especially when you're starting out, that there's just so much to do. There's Facebook and Linkedin and Twitter, and Google Plus. Now there's Periscope and Anchor and Peach, and Snapchat. And all these other things. Yes, it's important to be on many of those platforms, eventually. But at the start, you just need to pick one and go with that one and utilize that one. Start to build relationships on that platform. Then you can go to two. And then in terms of overall, even down the course as you're starting your business, and as you've built your business and as you get experience and gain experience, I would focus on only two. Two as your primary platform. Then over time you're going to start to discover, which ones work best for you but also which ones work best for your audience.

You might find that you have the personality and that your audience responds best to something like Periscope, for example, which is live streaming, where you live stream and you could answer question's and inner act with your audience. You might find that, that works really well for you and maybe that just sounds disgusting to you. You won't want to touch that because you're afraid of putting yourself on camera. Which is fine, in which case something like Twitter and Facebook might be a little bit more interesting. I personally feel that I have two primary platforms. Twitter by far, is my number one platform. Then Facebook. The others that I'm on, they're kind of experimental and they round out the sort of brand in whole. But again, I didn't start on all of them at the same time.

It's important to know you start with one, get comfortable with that one. Make a few connections, build a few relationships, get to know people from there. Research your target audience from there. And then you could expand out for there too. So, yes. Get on social media, it's important because that's where your people are at. That's where people you need to know are at, as well. But I wouldn't go crazy with it. Again, make sure to focus on one first, before you branch out onto the next one. You could reserve your usernames for the other one's if you wanted to, just to make sure you have those available, if and when you choose to get active on those platforms. Plus you might, through the discovery of those other platforms, feel and get to know one that's better for you than some of the others.

But again just start on one, and I would start on Twitter. It's the easiest one to get started with. You can have conversations. Again, the way to approach social media is this, this is a final tip I have for you. There are conversations happening all ready. In this space that you're trying to get onto. Don't come into a conversation brand new. And just ask for things. Give, provide value. Continue those conversations that are all ready happening and add value to those conversations that are all ready happening. I think it was Gary Vaynerchuk, or somebody had talked about social media, like this big giant party. It's like a big giant party, you walk into the gym, there's a lot of conversations happening. There's pocket's of people over here, there's those people over here, there's this crew hanging out over here. They're all having conversations already. Don't go up to one of those groups and go, “Hey, guys want to buy this thing?” Don't even go up to those people and be like, “Hey guys, what's . . .” and start asking questions. They're first going to want to know, “Well, who are you?” We'll add to the conversations, provide value. And then you'll earn the right to ask questions. You ‘ll build real relationships, then they'll want to get interested in you.

Again, the more interested you are in others, the more interested they will become in you. And what you have to offer and what you're doing. So, it's going to take a while to find your voice, and that's okay. It's going to take a while to navigate the social media realm. And that's okay. Figure out how it all works. It's going to take time, but you need to get up on it. But again, get on it slowly. Pick one, master that one and move on to the next one. And don't go too horizontal. Stay in a couple verticals, and then you'll make it work from there.

So that's that Josh, thank you so much for the question today. We're going to send you an AskPat t-shirt for having your question features here on the show. And for those of you listening, if you have a question that you'd like potentially featured here on the show, just head on over to AskPat.com. There's a record button right there on that page. Just hit record, ask your question. Your audio doesn't need to be great, I just need to be able to hear it. It's my job to have the audio sound great on my answer. Your job just to ask the questions. Then again, thank you so much for all the questions that come in. I and my assistant listen to as many as we can. And we pull out the ones that we feel like will be good on the show. If you get featured, we'll send you an AskPat t-shirt. Again, free of charge no matter where in the world you're at.

Again, we want to thank all of you who picked up Will It Fly? and helped to make it a Wall Street Journal best seller. If you haven't picked it up yet, go to willitflybook.com. And make your purchase there. I would love to help serve you with that book, and future episodes of AskPat, and everything else I do here for you in the Smart Passive Income brand.

And as always, I like to end with a quote. Today's quote is from Tony Gwynn, the late San Diego Padre. Rest in Peace Tony. Thank you for all you've done for San Diego. He was a baseball player. Anyway, he said, “The minute you're satisfied with where you are, you aren't there anymore.”

Cheers, take care. See you in the next episode of AskPat. Thanks, bye.