Build an Audience on Social Media with Amanda Natividad

Amanda used to wish there were more women creators for her to look up to. But she realized two problems: 1) It was her own fault for not paying closer attention, and 2) She could be the change she wanted to see. So she took her Twitter account seriously and started publishing online. One year later, she grew herTwitter following from 1k to 60k. And she would love to share her learnings with you. I will be interviewing her this Thursday at 12pm EST on LinkedIn Live

What you will learn:
Why the world needs more women to create and publish online
How to uncover your personal "why"
Redefine the typical audience building goals
Define and create your content strategy
How to deal with trolls (and red flags to look for when engaging online)

Bio:

Amanda Natividad is VP of Marketing for audience research startup, SparkToro. In her 9-year marketing career, she has managed B2C and B2B marketing teams across consumer packaged goods, software-as-a-service, and agency side. Earlier in her career, Amanda created Fitbit��s B2B content program and helped build their B2B marketing team. She also led marketing for ski lift ticket company Liftopia and for SEO content agency Growth Machine.

Amanda has spoken at marketing events like Demand Curve’s Growth Summit, and guest lectured at Columbia Business School and Cornell University. She is also a contributor for Adweek, a Le Cordon Bleu-trained chef, and a former journalist.

Joya is currently enrolling members for international (Europe) and domestic (NYC) strategy days. She also leads a year-long intensive mastermind of C-Suite level women, which is accepting applications for 2024.

https://www.joyadass.com/
info@joyadass.com

Transcript

Joya: 0:00

Welcome welcome. It is 12 o'clock on Wednesday. And my name is Joya Dass. For about 20 years I'd say I was a news anchor here in New York city. I covered the financial markets from the floor of the stock exchange, but for 10 of those years, I've always had the women's leadership lab where I'm really arming you with tools that I wish that I had when I was first starting a business. So today I want to tell you that we're speaking to Amanda Natividad who is VP of a company called SparkToro, VP of marketing there. And Amanda, we're going to be talking about how to build an audience. I host events all the time. I host all kinds of things all the time, and people are always looking to get new clients, to get in front of new audiences. And so I feel like a piece of that is what we're going to be talking about.

Amanda: 0:46

Yeah, sounds great. Thank you for having me Joya.

Joya: 0:49

I'm a big fan of story. So I would like to start there. Tell me about you and how you ended up at SparkToro?

Amanda: 0:56

Oh gosh. Well, starting from the very beginning briefly, I too have a journalism background. I started, yeah. More so in online journalism. Yeah, it worked for some of the original tech news blogs, like paid content.org and gigaown.com. This was many years ago. Then I pivoted into marketing a couple of years later, by way of food. I had gone to culinary school to the Cordan Bleu because I thought I was going to become a food writer, a world renowned food writer. But I did not do any research in the industry. And didn't realize until later that there are very few food writing jobs. But that ended up being a good thing, because that was how I discovered content marketing. And from there grew my marketing career, but as I, as for getting to spark Toro. SparkToro is an audience research startup started by Rand Fishkin and Casey Henry, formerly of MAs. And what we do is we help people. We help people conduct audience research at scale. And I got connected to Rand my boss, by way of building an audience online. So this was probably just over about a year ago that I almost a year ago that I joined SparkToro and it's been pretty great ever since.

Joya: 2:12

And to clarify for our audience, your zone of genius, when you say you built an audience, is Twitter. Right? Are there any other platforms, or would you say that some of the principles we're going to talk about today apply to LinkedIn or apply to Instagram or apply to other places?

Amanda: 2:26

Mainly Twitter, yes. And someone on LinkedIn. I think what we will talk about today will apply mainly to Twitter and LinkedIn, less so on the more visual platforms like Instagram and TikTok.

Joya: 2:38

All right, so let's dig into it. And I want to remind you to please put questions, audience in the chat. And I'm going to start asking those as soon as we get through our top five or six points here. So Amanda, what does the world need more women specifically to create and publish online?

Amanda: 2:54

Because we deserve and we need more representation, I think. And there will never be enough women creators or women thought leaders out there. I guess the way I see it is, and forgive me this could be also my own bubble, right? We all have our own little bubbles or industries in which we, in which we work in exist. But I just feel like in the circles of marketing and technology, when people ask or when you think about who are some of the people you pay attention to in this space? Who are some of the thoughts for lack of a better term thought leader. I would venture to guess that most of the time people are thinking of men. And now does that mean there are more men creators and women creators? I don't know. I don't know how that actually shakes out, but I do feel like there is this feeling of, it says that there tend to be more men than women. And so I would love for more women to share their expertise, put themselves out there because we deserve that representation.

Joya: 4:01

When I think about, as you were saying that when I think about the people I follow on Twitter, they are male. And I'll tell you why. It's that I am not a fluffy person. I'm very like black and white to the point. And I love people. The people that break through for me are very to the point. So I feel like there's a teaching moment here for women that want to be on the same level of the Justin Welch's of the world or the Josh specters of the world that I'm following. How do they get on that queue or do they even want to? Do you even want to?

Amanda: 4:33

That's a really great question because I'm not sure that they want to. Forgive me here, but I, if I were to speak in kind of broad generalizations course, everybody is different. Each unique person is different, but in broad generalizations, I tend to think that the way men and women use social media as a platform is very different. Right? I feel like very generally men tend to use it for I'm going to build an audience. Therefore, I'm going to talk about my expertise in this industry. I'm going to stick to that and then grow my audience from there. Pretty straightforward in a way. I think when women are posting on social media, using that as a platform for their voice, I think women tend to not seek so much status as men do, but tend to seek community and connection. And I think when you're seeking community and connections, You don't think about, oh, I'm just going to tweet about my expertise. You think about like, I'm going to tweet about the things that matter to me. It could be work one day. It could be family, it could be life, it could be health, it could be love. And I think that makes it such that when a complete stranger might find either of these online presences, men, women, whatever, And if somebody is thinking, I really want to find people who tweet specifically about B2B software companies. Then I think they're more lucky to find a man who is tweeting about that niche very regularly. Right? So they might, that person might think, oh, I'll follow this guy. He tweets about this often. But it doesn't mean that there are no women in B2B software. It might just be that they are not as easily searchable in that specific way. It's does that make sense?

Joya: 6:22

Yeah, but before I leave that topic, we're on LinkedIn, obviously. So how does that translate to LinkedIn? Someone yesterday said that they needed more information on the medical drone space and they didn't want somebody who's a drone playing in the medical space, they wanted a medical professional who's experimenting with drones, right? A very specific niche. She's like, so who do I connect to? And somebody else said, I would recommend following people on LinkedIn because people will comment and you'll start to get into the universe. So translate what you just said to linkedIn.

Amanda: 6:51

Yeah. So for LinkedIn, I think LinkedIn in particular is a very unique opportunity for all types of creators because for one, it is the only social platform where you can find people based on their job industry, job title, and location, right? It's the only, it's the only social network where we know where people are putting their job titles, willfully. And so you can find people based on that. So there's that, and there's also still greater demand for content than there is supply of content. And so what that means for creators is that your content ultimately has a longer shelf life. So if you're posting about something more likely than not, that post will continue to get engagement for maybe a week, maybe two weeks. On Twitter, that kind of engagement if you're lucky, like if something goes viral, it might last a week, but the average tweet it, the shelf life is maybe like 24 to 36 hours. The other thing I would say about LinkedIn is it's also w what's also unique about it as a social media platform is you start out with more of a built-in audience, right? So when you start on Twitter, The following is a synchronous, right? You can join Twitter and have zero followers. And your could be, you could be following tons and tons of people, but on LinkedIn, that is a place where people are looking to connect with other people regardless of industry, right? Like I am connected with friends and family who are other corporate workers or blue collar workers. Who? We don't work in the same industry, but we're still connected because we know each other in real life and things like that. So I would, I should look up the statistics, but I would venture to guess that when you join LinkedIn and you set up your profile and you add your friends and connections, when all is said and done, you probably have a few hundred or maybe 100 connections, Twitter isn't really like that. Right? Because LinkedIn is that way. It means that you have more of a built-in audience. When you start posting, you have more people who are there to maybe they don't know about B2B software or whatever it is you might be writing about, but they do know you and they support you and your work. So they might be willing to like, or comment, in support of you as a person. Got it. Right.

Joya: 9:19

So you built an audience of one and a year later, he had an audience of 60,000. Did you start with who you're going to go to market talking about, in other words, your riches are in your niches, right? Did you narrow in on that first?

Amanda: 9:33

I did. Yes. And for me, it's. It's boiled down to, I only write about the things that I know well, because they only write about what I'm comfortable writing about. So it's what I have lived, what I have experienced things that I have studied or analyzed for a long time. That's just my personal style. And in doing so most of my marketing expertise lies in content marketing and a little bit of kind of brand or PR. So that's where I stuck with or have stuck with for the past year, because that's what I know best. And I think in, so doing it made it clear what people would get from following me. Like they would know, oh, this I never said hi. I tweet only about content marketing. However, if anybody were to look at my feed, And especially over a year ago, that person would see, oh, this, Amanda talks mainly about content marketing, a little bit of marketing strategy. Okay. I know what I'm in for. That's the kind of content I want to see. So I'll follow her or not, or maybe they don't want that, so they don't follow me, but it makes it such that it's easy for the audience to self-select whether or not they want my car.

Joya: 10:42

Now did you get even more down from that? Cause I went through this exercise when I thought about my audience. And so it wasn't enough for me to just say women executives or senior leaders. I had to go one step further and say it was women leaders or senior executives who are at a critical inflection point in their career. They need something in the way of support or communication skills. And that is who my sweet spot is. So did you even go that niche?

Amanda: 11:08

I'm trying to think in some ways, yes. In some ways I did. And it's partly because if you keep writing about producing content about what you know, you have to keep thinking about more ideas. Like, well, what else is there? So a couple of times I've gotten, more niche with some of the content marketing topics I tackle. I've written content about like blog posts and Twitter threads about writing effective case studies. That's pretty specific or effectively managing a video production agency. Things like that that are pretty niche with regards to content. All right. So then how did you drill down on your why? Because that's the next step in building that 60,000 person audience? Yeah, I guess I had one first false start with audience building and it was, I had joined an SEO and content creation agency called growth machine. The founder of the company, Matt Eliason was the face of the brand. He had built his audience over the years, and then started his own agency. And so people who knew growth machine knew Matt. And when I joined, the goal was to have another person also be the face of the brand and to help scale the company from there. And so that second face was me and that was when I started to grow the audience. And I had launched, I had relaunched the company podcast, published more so on the blog. And then it was thinking, okay, the first goal that I had was how can I bring in pipeline or grow the pipeline and bring in leads for our business. That was the first goal. But then over the months, I was there for almost a year. And we started to think about next steps of my career. And then at that point it became my next goal, which I think will be more relatable to people here is I wanted to not have to do a traditional job hunt ever again. I had it over the years of my career. I'd experienced choosing fun employment, right? When I was in a career pivot, I've been laid off furloughed, or even just miserable in a job where I wanted to move on to the next thing, but didn't, but wasn't really equipped to be in a position of power to just choose my next job. So when I wanted create for myself was I wanted to create some personal leverage and create more opportunity for myself. Whatever I do next in my career, I can more so choose it versus uploading my resume into a job portal and crossing my fingers.

Joya: 13:36

Yeah. So that was your why, but what was your process of getting down to that? Or did you just share that with me already?

Amanda: 13:42

Yeah. The process was then it became being a lot more purposeful with what I was posting on Twitter. And by that, I just mean I really came to think of Twitter or posting there as my water cooler at work. I say that because what I mean, and what I mean there is, I don't mean that I only talked about marketing. It wasn't that it was, I saw it as, this is my water cooler where I could talk to other marketers about marketing, work, corporate life, things like that, things related to work. And so I was able to really bring my whole person self to that. And I tweeted and still do mainly about marketing a little bit about tech working at a tech or tech startup. But also, funny anecdotes from being a mom, having a kid, having a toddler.

Joya: 14:35

I hear one in the background.

Amanda: 14:36

Do you hear dang it. It's not my house. I know. Hopefully he's quiet. But yeah, so I you're tweeting about, having a toddler tweeting about cooking, cause I'm still passionate about food and some of these things that are more reflective of who I am as a person. And these are all things that I would be comfortable sharing in a workplace. So I think a key thing here is that when you're building a personal or building a following, it isn't about just only tweeting about your expertise and only that you can bring in your other interests or your other passions too. It's like what you would talk about comfortably at work during lunch with your coworkers.

Joya: 15:20

Right. All right. So I laid out a strategy for one of my mastermind members yesterday, and I said, you know, I think that when you're first starting out, let's just say, ground zero, you may be, have to post two to three times a day. Do you think that they, that thesis holds and folks, I would love for you to start putting your questions in the chat. I'm going to definitely ask them to Amanda, as soon as we get through these points, but I'm going to start looking out for those two. So yeah. What's the cadence at which you typically would suggest people posting either on LinkedIn or on Twitter?

Amanda: 15:50

I post daily or so once a day, but I do think two to three times a day works too. I know that there's somewhat, some people were even recommend posting seven times per day and seeing what sticks, the way I see it is I try to focus on very high signal to noise. And so I'll take the time to spend an extra 10 minutes or so drafting a single tweet, just making sure it's phrased clearly doesn't have typos ideally, and things like that. What I think if someone is wanting to grow their community and grow their following, I think it's also important to spend time leaving comments on other people's tweets or LinkedIn posts. So the way I see it is, LinkedIn and Twitter, I see it as a sort of, it's like a big party. Right? When you come, when you arrive at someone's party, you don't just walk in and start shouting over everyone and say, here are the things I want to talk about. You kind of join some like smaller conversations. You introduce yourself, you contribute to those conversations. And then as you feel more comfortable and as things so more relevant, then you start creating your own conversations and people join yours. That's how I see it. So I would say, you know, I post daily on Twitter. Sometimes I skip weekends because I take a break on weekends. And then for LinkedIn, I think daily is ideal. But because content has that longer shelf life there, I think even a couple of times per week is also good.

Joya: 17:20

Now, when it comes to the commenting piece, how long would you spend? I read somewhere that some person spends one hour every day, adding value to your point about the party, walking into circles, where there's conversation already underway and starting to add value there. And then eventually you're seen as the nucleus of a certain kind of knowledge. So people will start to come to you. But how much time would you recommend spending on engagement and adding value in that way each day?

Amanda: 17:48

It's hard to put a specific time limit on it. But I would say spend at least twice as much time commenting as you do creating your own original posts.

Joya: 17:57

And why is that? I think that that piece is lost on a lot of people.

Amanda: 18:00

Yeah. Even one way to look at it. You could look at it as an impressions or numbers game, where if you are still growing your social media following, and maybe you don't have a ton of followers yet, then that means that you're not going to get a lot of impressions on your content because there aren't a lot of people following you. But if you comment on other people's tweets, that's a way to increase your impressions at scale, right? You could comment on one person's tweet and that person has. 1000 followers. Okay. That could be theoretically, a thousand people who would see your reply, or you can comment on the tweet of somebody with 50,000 followers, a hundred thousand followers. I don't think too deeply into how many followers someone else has, but I think about it as, okay. Here are. Unique potentially unique or discreet new people to who can be reached by message. So that's how I would think about that and think about it as like, you could look at it as a boost impressions game and you boost your impressions by getting seen in other conversations. Versus only being on your own profile.

Joya: 19:08

And when you comment on somebody else's LinkedIn, just to bring it back to the LinkedIn platform, you're going to see not only is your audience going to see that, but their audience is going to see that. And so it's a little bit of two for one.

Amanda: 19:21

Exactly.

Joya: 19:22

All right. I want to go back to the building of this to 60,000. You had to redefine your audience building goals. What does that mean?

Amanda: 19:32

I for when I first started out, I was an employee at a company and was thinking more so about company goals. And then as that kind of evolved, or as you know, I grew in the sort of audience building function. I started to also think about. Well, what do I want out of this? Because it hadn't really occurred to me to think about what I would personally want from it. And that was how I got to my personal, why, like, what is all this for? And what does this lead up to? And so then it became, I just want to empower myself with my career. And that became the new north star. I think, and in doing that, that was how I got to know Rand Fishkin and my current boss. He followed me back on Twitter. I was thrilled and mortify that now he was seeing my tweet. But then from there we became friends in real life. And then I ended up joining SparkToro and I in a very untraditional kind of way. And it was an experience. It has been an experience and I'm very grateful for. And so once I felt like I achieved that goal of not having to do a traditional job hunt. I've been thinking more about, well, what's my next goal? And I think about that. I think one goal that I do have is having conversations like this, wanting to connect with more people and wanting to help and empower more women to adopt similar goals for themselves and help them figure out their own personal leverage. And hopefully, one of my hopes is that some people will see what I have built and will some women will see what I've built and think I want that for myself too. And I would love that and I would love to support other women creators like that.

Joya: 21:13

Folks. I want to encourage you to put your questions in the chat. I'm going to be asking Amanda. Amanda's going to be taking your questions live as soon as we finished our conversation here. When I think about where I see women get really tripped up is like, oh my God, creating content every day. That's such a heavy lift. There's an argument that you can sit down in one sitting and create batch, create content for a month, a week, two weeks. So how do you define and create your content strategy?

Amanda: 21:43

Yeah, so I have done that before. I think I was doing that about a year ago. I was right. Okay. Drafting some content, doing it week over week. So like on Fridays or so I would draft the following week's content. So one tweet per day or one Twitter thread per week. And that was how I managed that. And that kind of helped me think about, okay, cool. So my, the kind of content buckets that I'm going to talk about are content marketing slash marketing. That's the main one. Corporate life or people management, a company culture stuff, and then fun stuff like family slash food. So the main content was the marketing content. So I'd focus on that. And then maybe in the weekend I would post a fun anecdote about my parents or things like that. But today it looks a little more different. I think we know because. Been able to grow the following. And now, I have less of a plan cadence of content, and now it becomes more like I treat it as many blog posts for the day. Like what are the things on my mind today? Like, was there something in my Workday that I'm really excited about or that I'm frustrated by, or something that can become a thought like a mini kind of 180 character, 200 character blog posts that will help provide value to someone else. Maybe experiencing a similar pain point or a similar level of excitement about something.

Joya: 23:17

So, do you still sit down on a Friday and map out your strategy for the week? Or is it more ad hoc?

Amanda: 23:24

It's more ad hoc, but what I will do is if I have an idea for something, I will go ahead and draft it and probably just leave it in my Twitter drafts. And I'll just get the thought out there, even if it's not fully fleshed out. I just started there and then I leave it be for a little while, like just to half forget about it so that I can come back to it. And the next day, or a couple days, or a couple of weeks from then, and revisit the thought with a fresh perspective after having some distance from it. So it does help to just write out my ideas and save them somewhere and then just come back to it later. And, maybe I refine the thought in publish, or I just delete it because the moment has.

Joya: 24:04

Yeah, Gail Johns wrote a fantastic article in medium about a writing system. And so he believes in one stage being where the ideas just get put in a parking lot, whether it's a notebook or otherwise, then to your point, there's a second stage where you pull one of those ideas and drafted out, not fully fleshed out, but you're workshopping it. And then the third sort of activity is, and it's not all in one same sitting that you are revising it so that you put it out to the world and that system can be much more effective than thinking you're going to just birth the child, conceive the child and all of the stuff in between in one sitting.

Amanda: 24:38

Yeah. I shouldn't build up a better system though.

Joya: 24:43

So before we go onto the next point, which is how to deal with trolls. When you look back on your 2000 follower self, what are some of the things that you wish that you could have told her?

Amanda: 24:57

Hmm. I think I, I think I would have just told her to, well, one thing I would say when I look back at some older threads that, didn't perform as well as I'd hoped. I go back to, I can now see some of the flaws, like, oh, I didn't, I. Well, when you're writing a Twitter thread, it's important to make sure that each tweet within that thread has a valuable or standalone insight so that each tweet theoretically becomes retweetable. And I've written some past content where I've put too much context behind stuff where it slows down the progress of the insights and it makes it just a slog to read. So I would say that, I would tell that kind of past me to. Review some best practices in direct response copywriting and consider you, using those insights to better inform the way that I've wrote. And then just focusing on delivering the value that I intended to provide.

Joya: 26:03

So for anyone here who wants to unlock the secret sauce, if you will, how do you get to 60,000?

Amanda: 26:10

Let's see, commenting on other accounts, tweaks, especially if the ones who are bigger than your account. Writing some, trying to optimize for writing viral threads. Right? I go back to threads because the beauty of them is they're like these short blog posts where you are taking enough time to shed some light on a specific topic or getting a little bit deeper into a specific topic. And it's also short enough where usually these threads are they're shorter than the average blog post. So it's not about turning a thousand words into a thread. It's maybe more like, what can you say that that is defensible in 200 words or so. And I think when you can achieve that, I w if that thread goes viral or it gets a high amount of engagement, you're proving why or worth the follow. Right. If you can write a fed about marketing strategy that gets a lot of traction, it kind of becomes defensible for your story, right. It becomes like, oh, this person is knowledgeable, but marketing. Therefore I trust them and I'm going to follow them. And then I would also say, you know, treat it like a dinner party where you are meeting where you are welcoming new people, introducing yourself to new conversations and, you know, focusing on adding some kind of value to whatever conversation it is you start or join. And the value can be providing professional Intel or like expertise, or it could be entertainment. Entertainment is value. Focusing more on who you're writing for and what they will get out of your content versus tweeting about what you just feel like writing about.

Joya: 27:55

Right? At the bare minimum, no one really cares about you, but they do care about what they can get from the knowledge that you're putting out there. And I think that's probably one of the biggest mistakes people make is that it's all about me, me, me, but really what are you saying and what are you doing in service of your audience? Can you talk about that for a second?

Amanda: 28:12

Oh gosh, I completely agree. Yeah. I mean, I don't want to make it seem like, oh, you are only there to provide value, but it's a little bit of that. If you are thinking about it as wanting to build a larger community at scale, You can't do that just by talking about yourself and your random thoughts, or like what you ate for lunch. It's about like, well, why would people want to connect with you? And it could be by way of your expertise could be by way of your writing style, you know, where the humor that you provide, whatever it could be. But I do believe it needs to be valuable in some way.

Joya: 28:50

All right. Let's talk about trolls because there's always going to be those folks that don't agree with your viewpoint. Social media makes it very easy to hide behind some other avatar and to start posting. And you never are none the wiser because you don't know who it really is. How do you deal with the trolls? How do you deal with the hate mail?

Amanda: 29:12

I mean, one thing I'll say is I think because I have focused on writing about what I know well and what I have experienced and you know, the things that I've studied for a long time. I don't see trolls too often. So one thing I would say to anyone watching right now is they are a little bit more rare than you might think. Or then you might fear because I used to, I was on Twitter for 10 years before I ever actually tweeted anything of substance, because I was just terrified of people coming out of the woodwork to be hateful for no reason. So I will say those instances are pretty rare. So there's that, but as far as dealing with them, I think it's on one hand, it's a good sign because if you create content that is very high engagement, that lot of people are liking and sharing that. And you get a little bit of some troll action there. I think it means that you've struck a chord and that's a good thing. You elicited a reaction in someone or you sort of, you start up an emotion. It's a good thing, because that means you're onto something. Right. But also, I would say that to deal with them you ignoring them goes a long way, like just ignoring the comment and, cause moving on from it. I think now you can, downvote on Twitter. You could download it and just move on. I think the best way to, I think when in doubt it's best to just ignore. I don't even think I, I don't even hide replies anymore. I think I just ignore them. If it's, if I feel like it's hateful in some way. You could clap back in a way or report back at them. But I think where this is most effective is if you are punching up and not doing. Right? Like if somebody came to your tweet or your content to just say something like, oh, you're stupid and I hate this. And then you clap back, that would be punching up. But if someone came to your page to disagree with what you're saying, and you happen to not like it that's different, right? That's not necessarily trolling. It's just a difference of opinion. So being mindful of those nuances. And I think it's also just the last thing I would say here too, is when it comes to the type of behavior you, that happens on your page or your profile, I think for the most part, you receive what you attract or what you put out there. You receive what you put out there, right? It could, because of the content you're putting out, serves as a sort of beacon or a lighthouse, and it attracts the like-minded people. That's usually what happens. Again, I know trolls can happen. They're not as common, but if you are pure of heart and posting about the things that you know well, and posting about it in a way that is. Meant to help other people like, oh, I have spent five years in marketing and I learned how to do influencer marketing really well. Here are some tips for how you can start your own influencer program. Like something like that is not very likely to get a lot of hate because you're helping and earnest. And I think you'll find that more people will reciprocate that than they will provide hate speech on your page. So that's one thing. So that's why I say it's kind of rare to see hate or to see trolls, because for the most part, you will attract what you put.

Joya: 32:32

Yeah. I've made my living in television and people would comment about what I was wearing or my weight, or other parts of me and this. And I, I often think if you took the time to pause your day to comment on like my clothes, I think this is a far bigger commentary on you. Then it is ever on what it is that I put out in the world. So I've just of built a little bit of Teflon around that because it's actually screaming volumes about the other person.

Amanda: 33:01

Oh, completely agree. But I would love to pose a question to you. You've spent this career in broadcast news and on TV, very different from online. How has your experience been in terms of how. You've dealt with those types of trolls on TV versus online. How is it different now?

Joya: 33:20

Yeah, I used to, thankfully when you're working for a big network you're sort of. You know, it was, I started when Twitter was not there. So it's not like there was that real time feedback of people saying stuff to you. It was much later in my career where all the social media platforms came up when people started writing. I think A, I came to terms very early with the fact that this was more about them than they were about me. I used to host a Saturday morning show and I used to get a lot of comments that were just not at all related to the content that I was actually putting out there. And I asked the producer very specifically, I'm like, I'm here to do one job and I want to do it well. And this to me is a distraction. So from now on, I don't want any of these comments. I'm going to come in. I'm going to bat a thousand every single time, but I don't need to do this. And if you, the person that is my target audience, I E the person who's hired me decides that I no longer am worthy of this job, then let's have that discussion. But all of these other people who were really just putting their stuff on me, because I'm an easy mark on their, out, in the public eye, and I'm an easy target, I'm not really interested. I'm really not interested. And so, you know, many, many years later now I'm not doing television anymore. I've left it to run my business full time, but I'm astounded by how many people still come up to me and say how inspirational it was to see representation on the screen. And to see someone that looked like them talk like them on screen. And I had no idea cause I was just in a silo. And that's the benefit of doing television is you're talking to a camera is very different than talking to a live audience where people are giving you feedback in real-time they're on their phone. They're talking to their friend or walking out of the room. I would wager that speaking in front of a live audience is incredibly harder because that feedback is subtle. It's nuanced and it's right in front of you. Whereas with television, you've got the benefit of being very insulated because, I would go into a closed circuit studio with tape, what I needed to tape, and then I was out the door. And so that's my answer. I don't know if that's the answer you were looking for?

Amanda: 35:20

No, no, I think it's fascinating. I think the other thing is what's also interesting about, you know, TV versus the sort of internet niches in which I am in, right? When you're on TV, any random person is watching you random person, any walk of life they're watching you, they're reacting to what they see. They are like, they probably have a cuckoo attitude about how to treat people. Right. But I think when you are playing in an internet niche, right? Where like my, in my case of it, content marketing, I'm talking to other content marketers or small business leaders, and those are pretty specific audiences. People who see my content are not likely to be the random average American Joe. Who's like, oh, what's this. I hate it because they just don't see my content. And I think that's why when I say I think trolling is pretty rare it's because when we are talking about our specific things in our industries, we're just not likely to attract the average common denominator person, right? We're more likely to attract other people like us in some capacity who, even if they don't like what we have to say, they're probably more likely to just move on and keep scrolling.

Joya: 36:34

I remember seeing statistics where they ranked like the IQ level of people that are engaging in different platforms and Facebook. Unfortunately it was at the lowest and then there was Instagram and then there was LinkedIn and the smartest people are on Twitter and that's just the numbers don't lie. Right? But IQ level like Twitter and LinkedIn, where we're the highest ranking. Ziel Shaw asks, what do you recommend for those that often get analysis paralysis when they're about to post something they're essentially getting the equivalent of stage fright.

Amanda: 37:05

Yeah. I would say if your audience is still on the smaller side, one way to look at that is if you just tweet or if you just publish it, publish what you set out to say, just do it. You could make the case. If people don't see it, then they don't see it. And there's not, there's nothing. There's nothing to be afraid of. If it doesn't, if it doesn't hit, you're not going to get people saying, oh, this is horrible. And I hate this more likely, you're just going to get people who don't notice it, who don't see it, which is a lot less scary than fielding more inflammatory responses. So I would say to just go for it, as long as you are saying what you believe is true. Like you're from your own lived experience or what you've experienced or what you've studied. It's defensible and of itself and you should go for it.

Joya: 37:56

I have a YouTube channel and I work with an SEO person who explained to me how we went from one to 2000 and then he went from two to 10,000 and then he went from 10 to 20,000. He laid it out, that there was a different strategy at each of those benchmarks. Would you argue that that's the same for you as you went from 20,000 to 40,000 to 60,000?

Amanda: 38:17

Oh, that's super interesting. I think so, but I think everybody's different. I think there are some people who, as their audience grows, they still stick with the script of, I'm just going to tweet about my niche. However, an issue with doing that is you could grow your following to a hundred thousand people and who all whom want that specific expertise from you, your, that your expertise about web three related content. I don't know. But if you wanted to veer away from that and talk about other stuff, then you're at risk. People not wanting that. Right? If you built your 100,000 person following on crypto and web three, and suddenly you decided you wanted to write about sales. Yeah. All that audience would be very confused and they would be unlikely to want to engage with your content. I would say whatever it is, you do be mindful of the type of engagement you want to receive and sort of create your content based on. Does that make sense?

Joya: 39:20

Yeah. There are a lot of women that'll say, oh, I'm afraid to put myself out there. And I say that your content can fall in three buckets. You repost something, an article that you liked, but don't post it. Just carp launch. Make sure that you've got your three sort of pieces of that article that resonated for you. So you're putting your stamp on it. I think the second thing is to, of course generate your own. And then there's the elite level where you're doing this right, where we're doing interviews like this generating our own content, both on video and audio. Where does the beginner start?

Amanda: 39:54

I would say that beginner could start with maybe think about it. I really liked the idea of using your social media to make your job hunts easier. Right? So how can you avoid a traditional job hunt again, and then treating your social media platform accordingly? So let's say you are using Twitter to create career opportunities for yourself. Then I would say. Start with your resume, right? Look at your resume, look at all the great KPIs that you have on your resume, all those incredible business outcomes that you helped achieve. And then start thinking about how you can tell the stories behind those KPIs. Like you could say, I grew business by 12% quarter over quarter. I dunno. Right? What are some of the stories that the experiences that you had, or the strategies you drove that led to that kind of outcome? And that's where I think. That's when those threads can come in handy, it could be like, from the perspective of our business was tanking. And I did this one thing that brought us a thousand new leads that very same month, right? Stuff like that. And that becomes you communicating to potential employers at scale. Like the things that you're awesome at, what you're good at, how a worker you are. But then also, you know, having fun with it. And that's where it also comes into play, where you can comment on other people's content. Offer recommendations for things or could say something funny if you're funny. But yeah but I would say it is start at your resume and think about the stories you can tell that support the outcome. That you've very deservedly bragged about.

Joya: 41:40

When this person asks, you know, there's some masterful people that are role models to follow on LinkedIn. And so for your space or any space, are there any people that are doing it right? That are worth looking at?

Amanda: 41:56

I really like content from Katelyn Burgoyne, the founder of customer camp. She's way, you know, to me, she's one of the experts in marketing psychology or buyer psychology. So I learned a lot from her. Of course my boss, Rand Fishkin, who writes about the interesting day to day from being a startup founder, right? Whether it's about marketing or about product market fit or sales or things in the techs and the tech space. I also really content from my friend Stu Hillhouse. Stu runs content over at a company called mutiny. And he writes about content marketing and, he's on the front lines every day, you know, running a blog and doing what content marketing managers do. So I like getting his perspective of somebody who's on the front lines of content. But those are just a few that come from.

Joya: 42:46

I had a member asked this morning, she couldn't be at this talk, but she is struggling. She's got a health and wellness business, but she herself is not doing well because she works in the ER of one of the biggest hospitals in America. And as you can imagine, the ER is quite distressful place to be given what's happened in the last two years. So she's like, I feel like a hypocrite going to market talking raw wellness when in fact I'm not well. So, my immediate thought went to will take us on the journey. You're on the journey yourself, like who better to learn from than someone that's actually on the journey. So I'll put that question to you. Like how do you blog well on either Twitter or LinkedIn and take somebody on the journey with you?

Amanda: 43:34

I think about. The people I'm writing for. I feel like are the people who are maybe just two steps behind me who just need the extra push or the extra information to find their edge. So I think about it as like, what can I say or write that will help the version of me from last year or the person who is trying to grow their SAS business. From zero to one, like the people who like things that speak to the experiences that I've recently had. That's how I think about that. It's like, how can I use this? What can I say? That can be helpful to someone who needs the solution?

Joya: 44:17

So that can be a frame that you can use when you're stuck and to Zillow's point, and you're getting analysis paralysis on what to post.

Amanda: 44:25

Yeah, absolutely. And I think, I mean, important to remember that we all. Truly all of us have expertise that someone else does not have. And I think we also into trust ourselves and know that we are good at our jobs. We're good at what we do and to keep writing for that because we, because people deserve to hear from us.

Joya: 44:50

Amanda, we're coming up on the hour here. What is it that I should have asked you that I didn't ask you when it comes to building a social media audience?

Amanda: 44:59

Oh, gosh. Let's see. I am trying to think, maybe we could have talked about how about the notion of, is audience building even? Is it icky? Is there something gross about it?

Joya: 45:13

Another way that people always often say to me, I don't like being salesy. It really turns me off. So I don't want to be that. So is that another way of saying what you just said?

Amanda: 45:21

I think so. Yeah. I think when sometimes when people think about audience building or growing their following or whatever it is, there's that reflexive feeling of like, that's gross or that's salesy, that's scammy. I think, I just, I think it's important to reframe some of how we think about that. Or it's like saying people are worried about, it sounds, oh, it sounds like I just want to be famous or I just want status. But I would encourage people to take some time to think about what it is that feels icky. Is it, does it feel salesy? Does it feel like your status seeking or that your fame seeking. Or does it feel like you just want to go viral all the time? Right? So I would encourage people to think about, okay, what are those, what are the things that you have a problem with and how can you shift your mindset about it? So the notion of salesy, is it salesy, or do you want to just be more confident online? That's a completely valid feeling. And it's something that. People should think about, like it's about being salesy. It's not being confident in yourself and the way you communicate or it's not about being status seeking or fame seeking. It's more about how can you create meaningful connections with people at scale? I don't think there's anything wrong with that. And then finally, when you think about. You know the itchiness of, oh, I don't want to just be someone who goes viral. If you don't have to, you could think about it as, it's not that you want to go viral all the time or have all your tweets get 50,000 likes. Maybe it's just that you want your ideas to resonate with people, with which as large of a group of people as possible. Like when I say. I think I'll wrap up with an example of like I had posted some Twitter thread about, I think people management and there was an error in the way that I posted it, and it was a broken thread. It was like some Twitter functionality that was broken. And as a result, it only got a couple of likes and I was bothered and I deleted it. And, a friend of mine was like, why do you even care so much? Like it's just Twitter. Get over it. Yeah. Like come on. And I understood that perspective of, yeah, I get it. Like it's just online interaction, but what bothered me was no I'm bothered because I had something to say that I feel is important and I wanted people to see it because this thing that I said matters and people, I want people to hear about it for. And I don't think there's anything wrong with being disappointed. When you feel like you have something meaningful to say, and it doesn't hit, or it does, or it doesn't reach a wide audience of people. Now, don't get too down about it, I would say, but I don't think there's anything wrong with wanting your ideas to find people.

Joya: 48:15

I like what you said, it's sharing your ideas and doing it at scale. And I actually often say to my students to have a masterclasses that if you can flip the paradigm from boasting to educating what's up here is coming out here and really be in service. I think that's the paradigm shift that most people don't see.

Amanda: 48:33

Yeah, absolutely.

Joya: 48:35

What is the question you want to ask me before we wrap up?

Amanda: 48:38

Oh my gosh. Is there anything you miss about being in and working in television or in broadcast,

Joya: 48:45

I still get pulled in from time to time to do it. I don't haven't dropped it completely. I do not miss getting up at 2:30 in the morning. Oh yeah. That was all through my twenties and thirties, and that is very hard living in a place like New York city having to go to bed early. I think it's perfect. If you have children, you're going to bed at seven. I think there's a great adrenaline rush that comes with the performance aspect of television. I truly love business news because everyone's always going to care about their money. And I was specifically interested in the science and the technology that went into explaining it, which is why I chose that. And so for me, I love that every day I got to talk about stuff I cared about, but I also wrote everything I said, and that was truly the deal breaker is that I got to write. In service of others. And the bonus was that I got to deliver it. Once I started doing morning TV, of course, so much of that is chat. And you just get to chat and the way that you and I are chatting right now, and you get to do that at scale. So I think that that piece is missing, but I'm doing that in my own way. And now I own the entire ecosystem and I can build my own following, which is what, you know, a lot of people when they're like, well, how can I get on TV? I'm like all the tools that you need today to build a following and are are produced through your phone, you don't need all of unity, somebody in an ivory tower, deeming you worthy of being on any kind of channel. You can build that own following and the media will come find you. So I think there's real proof of concept and the power struggles and really been put in our own hands. It's about how much you're going to show up and how consistent you're going to be.

Amanda: 50:17

Oh, absolutely. That's the other thing too, is with doing this online for yourself, it becomes like you. It all rests on you, right? How consistent will you be? How prolific will you be? It comes down to, what are you willing to do?

Joya: 50:33

Amanda, if people want to work with you, what is the best way for them to get in touch with you?

Amanda: 50:37

The best way to get in touch with me is through Twitter. I'm on Twitter as a@AmandaNat. I also have a personal site and newsletter@amandanat.com.

Joya: 50:48

So I'm going to put that up here just for everyone's benefit. It's Amanda Nat, is that right?

Amanda: 50:52

Yes, that's correct.

Joya: 50:53

Awesome. And that's on Twitter?

Amanda: 50:54

That's on Twitter.

Joya: 50:55

All right. And if anyone wants to get in touch with me, I run the women's leadership lab. I have a mastermind for women leaders who are at that critical inflection point, and they need the support, the accountability, the group around it to get to their goals. And you can always email me Joya@JoyaDass.Com. This has been great. We went 55 minutes and I don't even think we got through all the questions.

Amanda: 51:16

This was so much fun. Thank you for having me Joya this was great!

Joya: 51:19

Enjoy the sunshine today and we'll see you soon.

Amanda: 51:21

All right. See you soon. Bye bye.