The Basic B: SEO, Storytelling, & Social Proof

Digital Marketing Without Social Media w/ Robyn Graham

July 31, 2024 Brittany Herzberg, Robyn Graham Season 1 Episode 58
Digital Marketing Without Social Media w/ Robyn Graham
The Basic B: SEO, Storytelling, & Social Proof
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The Basic B: SEO, Storytelling, & Social Proof
Digital Marketing Without Social Media w/ Robyn Graham
Jul 31, 2024 Season 1 Episode 58
Brittany Herzberg, Robyn Graham

📲 Text me! (Seriously—just click this)

Growing a business without social media seems to be a common desire in 2024. But everyone makes you feel like it’s NOT doable or wise. Not Robyn Graham! She’s been growing her businesses (yes, plural!) without social media marketing for quite some time. And she’s here to share everything from her blogging workflows to tips for podcast guests to how SEO can actually be a wise choice for your mental health! Press play—and don’t forget that notepad.

With this episode you’ll be able to:

  • Discover the importance of using keywords for business growth.
  • Uncover how SEO marketing actually benefits your mental health.
  • Learn what podcast guests can do to make the most of an interview.


Grab The SEO Bundle (feat. Brittany & Robyn) this August!

Links:
Brittany on The Robyn Graham Show
Brittany’s
Media Kit
Podcast SEO Resources

Related Episodes:
Image Optimization
Erin: SEO & Accessibility

Connect w/ Robyn:
Website
Resources

Thanks for joining me on The Basic B podcast! Help me reach more


Supercharge your podcast show notes with SEO—and easily turn podcast episodes into blog posts with templates & training videos created by SEO podcaster & copywriter, Brittany Herzberg!


Get SEO to work for you—with the DFY SEO Packet from SEO copywriter, Brittany Herzberg. More details here!

———
Find B on: Instagram, YouTube, Threads, & LinkedIn.

Often mentioned:
Buzzsprout (get $20 off)
Legal templates ($50 off w/ code: BASICB)
Hello Audio (15% off w/ code: BASICB)
Styled Stock Society
Brain.fm (1 mo. free!)
Book of the Mo. Club
HoneyBook (25% off)

(*affiliate links included, which means I might make a lil money when you click. I only recommend people, products, & programs I use & ❤️)

🎉 This podcast is brought to you in partnership w/ Leah Bryant Co.

Show Notes Transcript

📲 Text me! (Seriously—just click this)

Growing a business without social media seems to be a common desire in 2024. But everyone makes you feel like it’s NOT doable or wise. Not Robyn Graham! She’s been growing her businesses (yes, plural!) without social media marketing for quite some time. And she’s here to share everything from her blogging workflows to tips for podcast guests to how SEO can actually be a wise choice for your mental health! Press play—and don’t forget that notepad.

With this episode you’ll be able to:

  • Discover the importance of using keywords for business growth.
  • Uncover how SEO marketing actually benefits your mental health.
  • Learn what podcast guests can do to make the most of an interview.


Grab The SEO Bundle (feat. Brittany & Robyn) this August!

Links:
Brittany on The Robyn Graham Show
Brittany’s
Media Kit
Podcast SEO Resources

Related Episodes:
Image Optimization
Erin: SEO & Accessibility

Connect w/ Robyn:
Website
Resources

Thanks for joining me on The Basic B podcast! Help me reach more


Supercharge your podcast show notes with SEO—and easily turn podcast episodes into blog posts with templates & training videos created by SEO podcaster & copywriter, Brittany Herzberg!


Get SEO to work for you—with the DFY SEO Packet from SEO copywriter, Brittany Herzberg. More details here!

———
Find B on: Instagram, YouTube, Threads, & LinkedIn.

Often mentioned:
Buzzsprout (get $20 off)
Legal templates ($50 off w/ code: BASICB)
Hello Audio (15% off w/ code: BASICB)
Styled Stock Society
Brain.fm (1 mo. free!)
Book of the Mo. Club
HoneyBook (25% off)

(*affiliate links included, which means I might make a lil money when you click. I only recommend people, products, & programs I use & ❤️)

🎉 This podcast is brought to you in partnership w/ Leah Bryant Co.

Brittany Herzberg:

Welcome to the basic be podcast, a show for the wannabe SEO savvy service providers among this for the coaches and consultants who dream of becoming known for their storytelling skills. Not to mention the solopreneurs who straight up need to master all things social proof to increase sales. After a little reluctantly, fully committing to this online rather business, I quickly realized I needed to get people to come to me, I needed to tell them I was here and how I could support them. I dove headfirst into social proof which led me to SEO, which led me to storytelling. And now it gives me great joy to share what I've learned with other business owners so they skip the hard stuff and ease straight into sales. This podcast gives you expert insights, actionable takeaways, and casual combos with some of the online world's best and brightest experts and strategists. I think that's enough of an intro. So here we go. Welcome to The Basic B podcast. I am so thrilled to have you back and I've got another incredible human to introduce you to Robyn Graham is here with me and we're gonna be talking all about how to build a business without using social media. So I'm really excited to get into this topic. But before I welcome Robyn on, I'm gonna read you her quick intro and then we'll get right into it. Dr. Robyn Graham is the founder and owner of Robyn Graham LLC and they're creator of the purpose to results success without social method. With an emphasis on Mindset, Strategy and Action for one stop Business Growth coaching. She helps small business owners grow sustainable businesses for a lifetime of limitless earning potential while having a meaningful impact without a focus on social media. Robyn is a business growth strategist and coach hosts of the globally acclaimed podcast The Robyn Graham show, a speaker and the best selling author of you, me and anxiety, take action over anxiety to enjoy being you in which she shares her lifelong journey with anxiety to help others navigate anxiety to live a joyful, peaceful and purposeful life. When not working you'll find Robyn spending time with her husband, three children and two dogs, most likely doing an outdoor activity traveling or enjoying great food. Robyn is also on the board of directors for face to face Germantown. Robyn, I did not realize you had so much going on my friend.

Robyn Graham:

Just a little bit busy.

Brittany Herzberg:

Oh, thank you so much for carving out time and letting me get to show you off on my podcast. And of course, I'm going to link our podcast episode which went live today on your show. Yes. And it was so good. We talked all about case studies, which is part of growing your business without social media. Exactly. That was such a good conversation. And I can't wait for another one. I'm going to start us off with the slightly loaded question that I asked all of my guests, we can't mess it up. So don't sweat it. But I would love to hear your thoughts about which you believe is the most important for sales, SEO, storytelling or social proof?

Robyn Graham:

Can I say all of the above?

Brittany Herzberg:

Yes, you may.

Robyn Graham:

Because they each have their place, but they also overlap. So we have to tell stories to get engagement and to build relationships and that emotional connection, which builds trust, we also have to have social proof. So people believe the claims that we are sharing that we can do an SEO is how we're found. So our stories and our social proof link to the SEO the keywords key phrases that we're building our business on.

Brittany Herzberg:

I love it. You could not have said that more perfectly. And I really love when people pick all three, because that's actually my answer. So I love it well done. So let's get into how to grow a business without social media. I know you did this. But one thing I'm curious about is did you actually start your business without using social media? Or was that a change that you made later on?

Robyn Graham:

So when I originally started my business, I was on the photography side of things. I was a brand photographer. And so when I started my coaching business, I was still doing photography. So I was using Instagram and Facebook at that point in time more is a visual showcase of my work. To be perfectly honest, from a coaching perspective that's not where I have built the relationships that have gotten me clients. So I have been on social media, but it wasn't that I was necessarily using it to build my business. Did I post things about business? Yes, I did. But they were more from an inspirational perspective, more of a how to and more to grow my email list than anything. So in some regards, did I use it to build my business kind of because of the email list factor, but I wasn't actively going into DMS or selling or doing the things that most people do in order to grow their business from Instagram, or Facebook. I have a Facebook group but it's been stagnant around 500 people. And I used to do live trainings in there. But it was a very short, limited period of time that I did. Because what I discovered was that my email list and SEO, Pinterest marketing and the podcast were my platforms where I was able to really showcase my expertise, grow my authority and the business coaching realm, but to do it in a way that was building relationships and trust much more quickly and easier than all of the time and energy of social media.

Brittany Herzberg:

Yeah. Oh, I couldn't agree with that more. And you're bringing up a lot of points that people have also been bringing up in conversations that I've had recently. So one conversation, and you know, top of my mind as you were talking, and that is that someone can even remember who it was, was sharing that they don't feel like podcasting, especially public, podcasting is a great way to get leads to grow an email list. So could you speak to that a little bit? Because you do have this really phenomenal podcast? That seems to be part of your funnel? Could you share about how you use that?

Robyn Graham:

Absolutely, I think it depends on the host. And I think it depends on the content and the value you're providing, and whether or not your listeners trust you because I use my podcast to share valuable information for free. They trust me because we've never let them down. When I have guests on, we're providing great value, and they're trustworthy guest. We use the podcast also to run ads for the email list. So we create a lot of different free ebooks or video trainings, or we do master classes. And all of those things are promoted on the podcast. So that drives traffic to our email list. Because people want to join those things. They want that information. They want to garner that value that we're giving away for free, and they're happy to give us their email address because they trust us because we've been in their ears for so long.

Brittany Herzberg:

I was making notes because you said some really smart stuff. So you were mentioning the blog. You were mentioning the podcast. You were mentioning SEO and then you even talked about Pinterest. So I'm thinking they probably all overlap and work with each other in your world. Do you have a certain system that you work through where you start here? And over here?

Robyn Graham:

Yeah, so a lot of times, I would say, the blog and the podcasts kind of go hand in hand. I do do a lot of blogging that is SEO optimized. That is not part of the podcast. But most of the time I link them because if I'm creating content for the blog, I may as well share that with the podcast world to just for more visibility, why not? It's great information and it will help more people. So when we do a podcast episode, always that's converted into an SEO blog post, and then vice versa. So those go hand in hand. But from there, we use both to drive traffic to the email list. And we feature our like I said, the free resources that we offer to gather email addresses the same thing. If we're doing a masterclass, we'll do a complete blog post on the value of that masterclass and the benefits of that masterclass and then share that on the podcast as well to drive traffic to that master class. And of course, those are always related to keywords, key phrases that we want to be ranked for, for SEO. And then we use Pinterest to drive traffic to the podcast and the blog. So when those blog posts are on the website, and they capture the essence of whatever was on the podcast, we have some really good show notes that are SEO optimized. And then we drive that traffic there. And at the end our call to action is it can go check out the other people the links are always there for the guests like your link is in the show notes this week. But we also have a call to action to download one of our free ebooks. And so we're constantly cycling those free resources to grow our email list, whether it's from Pinterest directly to the blog post or from Pinterest to the podcast, because our goal is always going to be to get more traffic to the website. So Google sees us as a valuable platform that they want to then send people to for sure.

Brittany Herzberg:

Do you ever feel like you're being repetitive I feel like someone listening is going to be like, I'm going to be saying the same thing over and over and over again. And I'm going to sound so annoying. Do you ever feel like you are being repetitive with talking about these different resources you have?

Robyn Graham:

I really don't because when you are creative and strategic, then you can do it in a way that Okay, so let's use an example like you and I talked primarily about case studies. But you can link and I'm very big on personal branding because I believe that your personal brand is the foundation of your business. We have to build the foundation first. And this is where a lot of people get it wrong. They start with oh I'm going to be on social media, and I'm gonna build my business on social media. No, no, no! You've got to build your personal brand first so that you can differentiate yourself, have complete clarity and who your soulmate clients are. And then your website becomes that cornerstone, the foundation of your business where anybody can find you at anytime, from anywhere, right? And discover the value you provide your expertise, the results that you get your people, and all of that good stuff. So let's go back to your episode, we talked about case studies. Well, case studies are part of your personal brand, you're going to differentiate yourself in that case study by sharing the people that you work with the problem that they had, the experience that they had working with you the benefits that they got from working with you the value that they received, and then their results or the transformation you helped them get. That all goes back to what makes you unique as a personal brand. So we can tap into say one of our resources is five crucial strategies to start and grow your business for sustainable success without social media. Well, one of those strategies is creating your personal brand. So we can add that into, for example, the ebook that I included at the end of the show notes for your episode. So if people want to learn a little bit more about building that foundation from their business, which does correlate case studies, they can go and download that resource to get additional information. So we may be sharing the same ebook over and over again. But we're tying it to a different topic, a different point of interest, or a different piece or strategy, that you also need to be able to grow your business.

Brittany Herzberg:

Linking and link strategies. And Link building is such an overlooked and usually just an unknown. Either people don't know about it, or they don't know how to do it and do it well. And I could not agree with you more, because even going back to case studies, my favorite subject, that is one reason I really like case studies, because you get to link out to the client to possibly the work that you did to more about you more about this client. It really is just an experience where the reader gets to touch and feel and see and smell and experience, what it's like being in your world, what it's like getting help from you. And they either get to decide this is amazing. I'm so connected to this, this is what I want. And they're in or they're like, Yeah, this really isn't the right fit for me, which is also great. But going back to link building, that is an SEO strategy for sure. Where we can link within our site, we can link outside of our site, we can link back to our site. Oftentimes we have other people like when we're going on and being a podcast guests, we get a link from the podcast host, what other SEO strategies or tactics or things have been helpful for you.

Robyn Graham:

So I want to put big exclamation points behind what you just said, Because Link building is huge. And you know, Google looks at our website, and they want to make sure that people are not just jumping right off that they're staying on the website for a length of time, that that demonstrates that we're providing value, and that Google should be sending people our way, because we're going to keep their customers happy. So that Link building is number one, because when you link to other posts, so for example, we'll use your interviewer, again, that blog post that is optimized, has links to other episodes. So we talked about case studies in SEO. So I can link to other episodes on SEO, I can link to other episodes on other things that came up as part of that conversation. So people aren't only coming to that blog post to read about you and your work and what we talked about about case studies, but they can then go down a rabbit hole to discover so much more information throughout the rest of my blogs. And each one of those blog posts may have a different call to action. And, you know, they may also have links to other people that are providing value. So I'm indicating to Google how important the information on my site actually is, and that there is concrete value there. So also, using keywords and key phrases is a huge SEO strategy that I think is often overlooked because people don't understand exactly how to use them. So they may say, Coach instead of business coach, or they may say business coach instead of business coach for women, or they may say business coach instead of business coach for female small business owners, the more specific we are, the more likely we are to be able to be found. And we want people to find us based on what we do and who we serve. It's about having those keywords, key phrases, I like to use better, because they're more specific and specificity is so important. But the more specifically are, the more likely we're going to be found by the people that we really genuinely want to work with. The other SEO strategy that I absolutely loved and I think you and I have talked about it before is images. And having the alt text and the description and the title on your images. Because when you do so, not only are you helping non sighted people know what that graphic your image is, but you're also using your key phrases there. And that helps Google find you and send people who are searching for you, or for the answer that you're providing a solution for. So that they can help find you better that way, too. Yeah. So those are a few of my favorites.

Brittany Herzberg:

I know we can't give everything I mean, we could but we'd be here for the rest of the week! And there's so much SEO and you pulled out 3 really important pieces, the link building the key words, key phrases. I love saying key phrases! If you're listening to or watching this, you may have also heard of longtail keywords. And that's another way that you know, Robyn and I are just saying key phrases. And then the third piece was yes, I love image optimization. And it is something that like I am transparent—I have not been perfect with on my website. But as soon as I learned about it, I'm like, Okay, I need to move forward with these best practices. I don't think it's live yet. But it will be soon. And I'll make sure it's linked when it is live. But there's going to be a whole podcast episode on my three step and then optimization process. And it's really simple. But if you start thinking of the images that you already have on your website, you might feel overwhelmed. I did do and that's why I just chose to move forward with best practices. But it can be really incredible. And I do remember you and I talked about this because I know I shared with you that I think it was healthcare copywriter. My image, my face different pictures were like the first two rows of that images tab for that key phrase. So it was really cool. I can't remember Did you have a fun story about that as

Robyn Graham:

Well, that's how I built my photography business well? when I was in photography, because I had headshot photographer Doylestown on almost every image that was a headshot or branding photographer, Bucks County. And so that's how I grew my business was because I was found every time somebody put those key phrases in, I was what came up. So that was pretty cool.

Brittany Herzberg:

Yeah, and not a lot of people know this. But let's say you do a Google search, obviously, that first page, nine times out of 10 is you're looking at that list of articles. So you've got all the words, you've got all the blogs, website, pages, things like that. The second most visited page is that images tab though. So optimizing your images is very huge. And it's smart. And it's strategic. And just like Robyn was saying, that's in addition to also just making your images accessible to everyone. So don't sleep on that opportunity. My friends. I have a question because we keep talking about podcast guesting and interviewing and things like that. So I don't want to miss this opportunity to ask you. What can podcast guests do to the only word that's coming to mind is like capitalize on that interview on someone show? There's a couple things I have in mind, but I feel like ours are going to overlap. So what would you say someone could do once they've been on, for example, The Robyn Graham Show?

Robyn Graham:

Hmm, this is so good. I love talking about podcasting, because there's so much weight there in terms of being found by your soulmate clients, right? Like you invited me on. So you clearly Trust me, I invited you on my show, I clearly trust you to provide value. Your audience is already a warm audience for me and vice versa, which is key for building trust. So super great way to market your business. But here is what is so important. If you want to be a podcast guest you have to be a good podcast guest! So show respect, show appreciation, leave ratings, leave reviews, but do the host a favor and do yourself a favor by having a media page on your site. And then showcasing that you were featured there and backlink to the show or to their website, because that gives you SEO credibility, it gives them SEO credibility. The other thing you want to do though, is make sure that you absolutely positively have the correct links, because you don't want to have broken links on your site. And you don't want to have a broken link that's supposed to go back to their site, because then Google's gonna see it as a faulty link for both of you. So that's super important. Share that episode with your email list, share it on your social media pages, if you're on social media, share it on LinkedIn, and help drive traffic to that podcast episode.

Brittany Herzberg:

Exactly. I love everything that you said Because the more people that hear that episode, the more you are going to grow your audience and your opportunities to then grow your email list. If you're a guest, make sure that you have a call to action, send them where you want them to go, that's going to provide more value to them, but also grow first of all, and there's two other things that I was thinking your email list. So I always send people to my resource page, because there's so much information there that they can reach the podcast, they can learn more about me, they can see all of my free resources that I have available, they can see affiliate links. So when I'm providing value, yes, if they liked me enough, they're going to be happy to give me their email address right? And they're going to get something in of. And I haven't been the best at the second one that I have return, which is always going to be something of value that they can then implement in their business to then grow their So have your name in there. For example, what some of the business faster. headshots that I have in there, say something like Brittany been good with the first one. And the first one is, and this Herzberg, case study copywriter, or Brittany Herzberg, SEO is another episode I'm going to do is optimizing your headshot copywriter, I tend to use the headshot that either works best with the podcast hosts colors and their you know, color escapes that they've got going on for the stuff that they're using to promote the podcast episode. And or always the topic. So I may even change, you know, make a copy and make a change to the image title if I'm going on and talking about case title for when you go on a podcast because that's something studies with this person, but SEO with this person, but have your name. Have some keywords in there about what you want to be known for what you help people do how people know you. Because in my role people know me for SEO and case study. So make sure you're doing that to extend your reach and help the podcast host to help you even more. And then think too. And this is where I'm the best at is blogging about your that you can do to really just help your reach as a business podcast guessing experience. So my intention, I had two podcast interviews go live for I was on someone else's show this week Robyn was one of them. And my intention is to go and create a blog and share in some way shape or form, whether it's about the topic, whether it was about my experience with connecting with Robyn and being able to be on each other shows. And then linking back to her owner as the podcast guest, you're going on someone else's show. website is just like Robyn said, that's helping my SEO and the top and Robyn SEO. And that's a really nice gift that we can give each other. So even if you haven't done this to date, you can do what I'm going to do and go back and backtrack and blog about those podcasts guesting experiences in interviews. Those are brilliant.

Robyn Graham:

And I used to do the latter, I have to go in and do my headshots like I've never done that. I've got to do that. But I mean, on my own side I have, but they're just like the photographer's label. Yeah, my media kit, right. So as you were saying that, though, I was thinking like having a media kit is also important, because then all of those links are readily accessible in one place for the host. Don't ever make a host have to go search for you. Information about you your bio, your headshot, anything like that, provide it for them. And so a lot of times we have questionnaires now, right, we have our streamlined process. So we gather that information. But if you have a link to your media kit, that's also super helpful. So that's just something you have in one place, because it's great for speaking, it's great for podcasting. And then I was gonna say I used to do the blog post. But then I started getting on so many shows. I was like I don't, there's not enough time to blog for every one of them. And then I'd feel bad if I wasn't blogging about one and I blogged about another. And so I haven't done that in a while. But it is something that I probably should, like, revisit and at least do a summary, even if it was a monthly oh, here's where we were featured this month and do it that way. Yeah, that would be a great idea. So that is definitely something that is a piece of good sound advice. And I think we mentioned share with your email list, right?

Brittany Herzberg:

Yes, definitely. I really liked that idea of doing the roundup of where you were featured. Because anytime that I can remove a barrier for someone to actually get that thing done. One thing I was going to say is I am a big proponent of doing shorter 500 word blog posts. A lot of people are like, No, it has to be 2000 or 3000 words. And it's like, no, it doesn't. And also, if you tell a lot of business owners that they're just flat out not going to do. It sounds too time consuming. And they're just going to give up right there. So I really, really like what you shared and I've done some roundup recap blog posts by month. My podcast producer and friend Leah mentioned that and so I was like, Oh my gosh, I have to start doing that. So I've done that for January and February and I've got my one for March. I love that idea of doing like this is where we were featured this month. Brilliant. Yeah.

Robyn Graham:

And we do that in our email like we do a monthly podcast recap. So that shows all of our episodes. But then we have at the bottom, additional resources where Robyn was featured. That's something that we do and it makes it simpler but it gets the word out. It helps you look credible, like people are searching for you people want you on their shows people are featuring you, and it helps people see that you know, you are an expert, and then it also helps the host by driving traffic to them. So it's a win-win.

Brittany Herzberg:

It really really is all of these pieces are. So we've talked about blogs. We've talked about podcasts are talking about podcasts guessing but I kind of want to tie the two together. Do you have any SEO advice for podcast hosts on what they could do for their show?

Robyn Graham:

Oh gosh, absolutely. So depends. then on your podcast platform, some have more flexibility than others in terms of like categories that you're listed in tags that you can use and the number of tags you can have. You always want to have key phrases in your tags so that people you know, if they're searching for that topic, they can find it. Your title for your episodes should always have your key phrases in it. Throughout the, like I said, I optimize every blog post for every podcast, I don't just do transcribed notes. It's actually an optimized with headings subheadings key phrases sprinkled throughout. And oftentimes, we can do multiple key phrases for one blog post or one episode because there's so much value there. So it's about being strategic with how you present the content. And then of course, doing those links to other either episodes or blog posts. So that people you know, stay around for a while and continue to listen, that's another thing to do, too, is when you're having episodes, and you mentioned it earlier how you're going to link back to an episode on images. And so doing so in the interview, or the episode that you're airing, does help get more traffic to your site or your other episodes. Also, in your titles. When you do the description for your podcast, like your show is The Basic B Podcast, mine's The Robyn Graham Show. So we don't have a lot of key phrases. And those two titles. However, in your description. And in your platform, your hosting platform, you can add a longer description than just the title of the show. So you want to make sure you capitalize on key phrases are the things that you're going to be talking about, or at least who your audience is, in that extended title. As well as in the description of the show.

Brittany Herzberg:

I could not agree more! You dropped a lot of really good things that people can take advantage of. And I feel like out of that list, the thing that is the most missed by a lot of podcasters is linking to and from other episodes. I mean, it's time spent on anything time spent on a platform time spent on your website, these are things that will help your findability, it helps your SEO on your website, of course, but it also helps your find ability on a podcast platform, because that's more people consuming more of your content. And that's telling the podcast platforms, hey, this show really has something going on. And people really like what's happening over here. So do not sleep on that I love those tips. Okay, next thing that I would love to chat about is whether someone is a newer business owner, or they've been around for a while, if it's a newer business owner, maybe they're like, I just don't even want to tackle social media, I don't want to look at it, I have no interest in being that visible. Or it's a business owner. Like I said, they've been around for a while. And maybe they've gotten to the point which I've heard this a lot from a lot of friends. They're over it, they want to drop Instagram, or Facebook or whatever it may be. They're so done with it. What advice would you have for them?

Robyn Graham:

There's a reason I say success without social because you can achieve success without social media! There are million dollar business owners, billion dollar business owners who aren't using social media. There are so many other ways that you can build your network, build relationships grow your community! And some of those we've already talked about today. No matter what—you have to have a personal brand, and you have to have a website. We can try to grow our businesses on social media all we want. But if we try that, we are subject to algorithms. And we're subject to platforms that are owned by other people who want to make money off of them. They aren't interested in our growth, they aren't interested in our businesses unless we're paying them. This year 2024, it's expected that there will be over an 18% drop in engagement and visibility on Instagram. The percent of people of your followers that actually see your content is estimated to be 7.6% this year. That's down from 10%. So you can create your email list, build your email list, send emails, you can write blog posts, you can drive traffic to your website, you can do all of these things on your own, and you own these platforms. And you can be present in a way that is more meaningful because it's not subject to an algorithm or somebody else dictating who's going to see your content. I still like face to face interaction. either in person live or online, virtual there are a lot of virtual network opportunities now. And anytime you can go in and explain who you are and what you do and who your ideal customer is. That's it an opportunity to bring people into your community. So every time you tell someone, even in the grocery store line, somebody may ask you what do you do? Share your business. Don't be shy. Be proud that you've been brought to this place in your journey. where you have this opportunity to serve other people, help other people, and take advantage of being front and center and tell them about your business, you're more likely to grow that way than you are creating reams and reams of content for platforms that you don't own. And not to mention, I will say, Brittany, this is the biggest push for me not to be on social media is the comparison doubt fear imposter syndrome. That often happens, and especially for new business owners, I see it so many times with my clients, they'll be on there thinking they have to be on there, because everybody says you have to be on there. But what happens is they follow people in their niche, right. And then what happens is they start comparing themselves. And then they doubt that they're ever going to get clients because these people are already successful. And they're already getting all the clients and they're already making all the money. And then they start to feel like an impostor, because they're trying to do what somebody else is doing that somebody else is already successful at. And it takes them down a downward spiral, that it costs a significant amount of money because it wastes your time, waste your energy. Now you have a negative mindset. So you're procrastinating and you're not moving the needle forward on your business, the way that you actually could if you didn't have that distraction.

Brittany Herzberg:

That doesn't get to me frequently, but the times where it does, it feels kind of crushing. I mean, if anyone's listening to this know, like, oh, my god, is that happens to you—that happens to all of us. It literally happens to all of us! I don't care how successful you've gotten, or how new you are like, it happens. The whole scale. So I really appreciate you even like mentioning that and bringing that light, because it's a big issue and it gets to a lot of people. And it can, you know, cause some people to literally want to just throw in the towel and fold it up and call it a day. And that would be really, really sad.

Robyn Graham:

It would be really sad. Because if we've been called to a purpose, which we all have been, we're not fulfilling that if we give up, and there are people out there that need us. So if we give up, what are those people going to do, they're not going to get the help they need because we're the ones that are meant to help them. And something else I'm going to add to that Brittany, kind of what you just said, if you are naturally an anxious person, it's going to elevate your anxiety, being on these platforms and going down that spiral of comparison, if you're not a person that has anxiety, that is a way to trigger anxiety. So be cautious of that, because the entrepreneurial journey causes anxiety anyway, whether you have a history of it or not. So just be cautious. Like if you are prone to anxiety, then definitely limit platforms or doing things or setting expectations that are going to elevate your anxiety. And if you're not a person prone to anxiety, but you know, entrepreneurship could trigger most likely will trigger anxiety at some point in time or another. Just be aware. And if you start to feel that then step away from whatever that is that is causing that.

Brittany Herzberg:

That's a really good step that people can take. I can't thank you enough for joining me and sharing all of your knowledge and talking through all of these tips. As you know, I just love anytime we can offer some different options. So if social media if you've been feeling the call to possibly ditch it, or at least spend less time on there, you've got other options that we talked about a lot of them today, as I know people are gonna want to connect with you. Where can they connect with you?

Robyn Graham:

Thank you, Brittany! My website is the best place to find me you can access absolutely everything about me there. And the free resources page is available under the services tab. But it's TheRobynGraham.com. Robyn spelled with a Y Graham like the cracker.

Brittany Herzberg:

I love it. And I'll make sure all those links are below. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much for loving the show and for joining me today.

Robyn Graham:

Yes, it's an honor Brittany, always. Thank you.

Brittany Herzberg:

I know it's so fun. Okay, I will catch you next time. That was really something wasn't it? What that really sink in and guide you toward being the answer to even more Googled questions. Thanks so much for joining me this episode. You are the reason this show exists and that it keeps growing. You know, thanks to all those follows and reviews. If you know someone who could benefit from what we've shared, send it to them. We don't do shy around here. If you thought of clarifying or follow up questions about listening, you know what to do. Say hi on Instagram, check the show notes for all the things that were mentioned and I'll talk to you soon

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