LinkedIn’s Login Issue Today Is Exactly Why You Need to Diversify Your Marketing
What would you do if you lost your audience overnight?
I tried to log in to Linkedin today, but I couldn’t.
I spent about 10 minutes figuring out why until I did a google search to find that many users are facing issues right now.
This is a reminder as to why you should never count on any single form of marketing.
What would happen if you lost your account overnight?
All that work is gone.
That’s why you must have multiple forms of marketing, and ideally, some way to keep up with your audience if you were to lose one of your platforms.
Organic Marketing Has Changed In The Past Decade.
The reality is that social media can and will do whatever it wants.
If you’re counting on generating leads to your coaching service just through social media and organic content, you’re putting your entire business at risk.
Once upon a time, organic was easy to grow (according to Hootsuite).
Writing blog posts on Google, creating posts on Facebook, making pins for Pinterest.
It was pretty easy to build an audience and never have to pay for ads.
You could quickly generate sales directly from social media without ever needing a contact list of some kind.
I know a lot of coaches, including myself, who loved to sell over direct messages.
No need for a website or clunky landing page software, right?
But here’s the thing.
Organic doesn’t work that way anymore.
For starters, all the platforms are getting more and more competitive.
Everyone wants a piece of the pie, which makes it harder to get attention in the first place.
Social media platforms continuously need to find ways to get rid of spammers and black hat marketers who don’t care about making good content for their users.
Not to mention, they need to make money.
If you do enough research, you’ll find more and more updates where the platforms like Google and Facebook are promoting more and more ads and pushing down organic.
Linkedin changed how content is distributed last year, too.
Even Facebook groups have problems with content; I’m in multiple closed groups where the coach has complained that the students do not see announcements.
Years ago, organic was a dreamland.
Today it still works well, but only for a small percentage.
It’s getting harder and harder to make organic content marketing work.
In fact, influencers like Gary Vaynerchuk have revealed that they spend tons of resources every month promoting organic content.
How are most coaches going to compete with that?
The truth is that they can’t.
That’s not to say you shouldn’t do organic content marketing.
But that is to say — if that’s the only thing you’re doing, you’re going to be in for a world of hurt as more wantrepreneurs decide they want to make money online.
That’s why you need to diversify your marketing efforts.
Email List, SMS List, or Messenger List. You need at least one.
You’re probably tired of hearing that you need an email list.
I get it.
In my opinion, email isn’t like the end all be all of the marketing options that gurus claim it is.
But I believe you need a database of contacts of any kind to keep in touch with your audience.
Today with Linkedin going wild, it proves that counting on a single platform can cause you to lose your business overnight.
That’s why you need a list.
It doesn’t have to be an email list, though.
SMS and Messenger work well nowadays.
Ideally, you’d use all of them, but you can get by with one option.
The reason you need a list is that you “own” that list.
Russel Brunson refers to this as the traffic you own in Traffic Secrets.
“When they join my lists, I can email them as often as I like for free, instead of just getting them to click once. It’s the same with traffic that I earn. I want to direct these people into funnels where I get their information and get them on to my lists. That way I can follow up with them over and over again.”
- Brunson, Russell. Traffic Secrets (p. 83).
Unlike social media, where they can throttle your reach based on many factors, the traffic you own doesn’t have the same limits.
You don’t have to worry about a social media platform changing how content gets ranked in search or how content gets recommended to your audience.
By the way, did you know that only a portion of your followers see your post when you post on social media?
It’s another reason you need to diversify your marketing and have a backup plan is that something happens to your social.
You don’t own your profile. The social media company does.
How To Get Started With Building a List
There’s plenty of tools you can use to get started building a list.
You’ll need some sort of program to manage the list, depending on the type.
For example, Mailchimp is pretty popular for email, while ManyChat is a reliable Messenger list option.
You’re also going to need some sort of landing page to get the contact information.
If you have a website based on WordPress or a website builder like Squarespace, there are usually plugins or apps you can use to collect leads for you.
Otherwise, you can get a program like Leadpages, which allows you to build a landing page online without a website.
You might feel tempted to overthink and create a fantastic design.
I found that basic, fundamental designs work best for those starting out.
In this screenshot below, you’ll see my landing page was a simple black and white design.
I also included a “freebie” or a “lead magnet,” which gives my audience an incentive to sign up to my list.
It’s not required.
There’s plenty of companies like Morning Brew that have nothing to offer except the emails themselves as the reason to subscribe.
If you’re not sure where to begin, I would recommend starting with an email list since that’s the easiest to begin with, and the costs are minimal compared to SMS and Messenger list-building tools.
Depending on your budget, I’d also recommend hiring someone to help you build and implement everything you need.
It’s pretty easy to learn how to build a landing page and set up an email service provider, but every person is different and may have other challenges.
It’s also a good idea to poll your audience and see what tools they might like to use.
You never know.
Now the next question is what should you send to your list?
This is where it gets good.
You send them content, just like you would with organic.
You tell stories, share case studies, ask questions.
If you treat your list and your audience like they’re a real, valuable, important person, they will love you for it.
The reason things like email lists have negative connotations like spam is because most people do spam their audience with offers.
Don’t do that.
Focus on content first, just like you’re already doing for social.
Build and grow your raving fans in your list, and you’ll never have to worry about any overnight changes to social media ever again.
