Ep 6 | Followers Don't Build Sustainable Businesses

Welcome back to The Backend of Business podcast.

Let me ask you a question.

What would happen if Instagram disappeared tomorrow?

No followers.

No account.

No messages.

No content.

Would your business still generate leads?

I know it sounds dramatic, but it's a question every business owner should ask themselves.

In this episode, I'm talking about why relying on social media alone is one of the biggest risks you can take in your business, why your email list is one of your most valuable assets, and how to start building systems that work even when you're not posting.

In This Episode

•  Why social media is rented land 
•  What happened when I temporarily lost access to my accounts 
•  Why followers aren't the same as an audience 
•  The power of building an email list 
•  Why email marketing still outperforms social media for many launches 
•  The business assets you actually own 
•  Simple steps to start growing your email list 
•  Why systems create freedom 

Key Takeaway

Social media is brilliant for getting people to discover you.

But your email list is where relationships grow, trust builds and sales happen.

The goal isn't to stop using social media.

It's to stop depending on it.

Links Mentioned

Download the Shit Hot Launch Framework

Follow me on Instagram

Find out how we can help you build your backend systems

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 1:15

Hello and welcome back to the Back End of Business Podcast with me, Carly Murphy, the founder of Maybell Tech Agency. And today I'm gonna ask you a question. What would you do if Instagram disappeared tomorrow? Gone. No warning, no access, no account, no followers, no content, no messages, nothing. How would your business survive? Now before you panic, I'm not saying Instagram is gonna go anywhere. Touch wood. But I do think it's really important question to ask yourself. So many business owners I see have built their entire business on rented land. And that is exactly what social media is. We don't own it, we don't control it. Like we remember the days when Facebook disappeared, it went down, and everyone were like, What are we gonna do with our life? And I remember that day. I remember what I was doing, it was Squid Games first came out, and I sat and watched was watching loads of it, and I can remember looking at my Facebook and we're like, oh my god, Facebook's down, it's gone. And that was like before I used Instagram as much as I do now. But it's scary, we don't make the rules, and we're borrowing space on someone else's platform, and this hit me while I was on holiday. While I was on holiday in May, I got to Spain and I'd been using uh um I call it a drop signal slim, a sim called that drops in if you lose signal, and it obviously dropped in when I was in the airport and things like that. And obviously, that plus me being in Spain triggered me up for being hacked, and I went to log into Instagram, gone. My AV May's football account, my Maybell Tech uh Maybell VA account, all gone. WhatsApp, gone, Facebook, gone, and I shit myself, and I was like, what am I gonna do? Manage to luckily get Instagram back by putting some ID in, um, but only if the Maybell tech agents say nothing else, I'm not going back, still not going back. And I believe it's because I pay for the blue tick, and I only pay for the blue tick because I seen someone saying, What happens if you get hacked? What happens if someone makes another account? You can prove you're the real you. They make another account and say this person pretending to be me, you're done for. So, like I said, we're a borrowing space on someone else's platform, and if they decide to change the rules tomorrow, there's not a lot we can do about it. It's a dangerous business model that a lot of us are using. Like, I put my hands up, I grow my business on Instagram, but I also do what I'm gonna touch about as well. So we do this, so we've we've all seen it. Someone's got 5,000 followers, 10, 20. They feel really secure, they've got a good business, they've got leads coming every day through social media. But what happens when I ask them how many people from them 5,000 followers or on your email list? There's three answers like don't really have one. There's got 5,000 followers, but only 100 more on my email list. There's oh been meaning to start an email list. I've been clicking some emails. Or I don't have any email lists and emails at all. Everyone I know is on my social media, and that's where the problem starts because followers aren't actually your audience. Instagram decides who sees what they see, they decide where you reach, who you get to be on their page, decide whether your content gets to be pushed out or not. So it'd be lovely if it was Hust that decided, but it's not. So you can spend years building an audience and wake up one morning to find your engagements dropped overnight. We've all seen it happened. Followers don't pay your bills. So now before anyone comes to me, I love Instagram. Lots of clients to me come through social media. It's freaking amazing. It's an amazing tool, but it is just that, it is just a tool, not a business strategy. Because followers don't automatically become clients, it'll be lovely. I'd be like, oh yeah, I am I am on the brink of hitting a thousand, and it might seem low, but it has taken me time to get where I am. I never never really had a social media strategy at all. Like I was just posting as I post. Now I'm starting to be more strategic about what I do. But that's a process, it's a journey that we go through to turn them into clients, and something that takes people from discovering new to actually buying you. So it's where most people owners, most people, most business owners get stuck. They're spending all their time creating amazing content, but very little time creating a journey that happens afterwards. So today we're going to talk about the power of an email list. One of my favourite things to do email marketing, love it. So if someone joins your email list, it is a very different relationship. So you've got direct access to them. You can email them tomorrow, next week, next month, next year. Without worrying about algorithms, without hoping your content gets seen, without fighting for attention, and that is really powerful. Some of my biggest launches that I've ever seen or ever done didn't happen because of social media. It happened because of the email marketing side of it. So people are an audience that you they can communicate with whenever they want. Like the only thing we've got to worry about with email marketing is people actually opening up your emails. And if you're doing it god, they're gonna want it. So, what happens when social media goes quiet? Do you stop posting for a week, a couple of weeks or a month? Would your business still generate leads? If you wasn't posting and there was no email marketing strategy in place already, would your business still get leads? Would people still discover your services and your offers? Would people still inquire? Would you still make money? There's many business owners, the answer is no. And it's not because they're bad at business at all. They built attention, but not systems. The business assets you actually own. So let's talk about the things that you do own. So you've got your website, you've got your email list, your customer database, your products and your services, your systems, your automations, your client experiences, your content library. These are all assets. These are things that continue to work for you, even when you're not posting every day. So if you listen to last week's podcast, I talked about going on holiday and still earning money. And yes, I had a team working for me, but there wasn't any social media going out. I think I did two wheels while I was on holiday. Um, there was no social media happening at all. But I built systems that give me recurring revenue. My business is built, I don't even work out how much, but 90% of recurring, recurring monthly revenue, because these systems are in place to collect payments each month for people to get access to what they need to get access to. So when you're not posting, when you're on holiday, when you're having a bad week, when life gets messy, and honestly, this is where freedom stops. So, what I do first, so if you listen to thinking, okay, Carly, you've convinced me I need to do some email acting, where do I start? So, step one is create a freebie. Go and listen to episode two of this podcast, and we're looking at the the lead setup. You can download my freebie, this is your op launch framework, to learn how to build or this we're gonna chat about the the freebie steps and the automation. So we'll create a free freebie first. So something useful that solves a problem. So my freebay is a framework that solves the problem of manually doing everything yourself, bring in leads in through just through social media. Obviously, when you have a freebie you show it out on social media, but once you've got them emails, then it they're locked in. So step two, build a simple opt-in page. So you've got a freebie or you've got an opt-in page. An opt-in page could be opt in to buy newsletter, opt-in so you don't miss out on weekly emails with hints, tips, and free surprises along the way. And then so you've got this freebie, and this freebie you've got this opt-in form. So the opt-in form could be to download this freebie. We are then gonna connect it to an email sequence. So an email sequence, again, go and listen to the last few podcasts. Uh, podcasts two, three, and four break down my shut up launch framework. Um, and it's not just if you're launching, it's if you want to create a freebie and things like that. It talks about the benefits of it, what you need in there, and why. So a freebit is a simple way of getting people to exchange their email address for something free. An opt-in page is the exact same thing. So an opt-in page is a freebie, it's a landing page, it's somewhere to collect someone's details. So you want to pop in an opt-in form into this freebit, then we're gonna have an email sequence. And the email sequence is then where we nurture. We nurture, we talk to people, we connect, and they start to get that no like and trust factor. So after that, we start talking about it. So we're gonna share it on social media, so that's when it's great to come in, but we're gonna share it on social media, we're gonna get out there. You don't need a 17-step funnel, you don't need a really complicated setup. This is something that you could build really simply mail alight uh for free. MailAlight, I've actually just brought in some new new steps to their free account, and you can only make um I think it's free. I don't know. The uh you'll have added an email if you with mail alite if not go and have a lot. But the free thing, you can only create like three pages, um, so many, so many automations, like they've really tightened up to start getting people wanting to pay them because they know email marketing is getting bigger and bigger. Step four, start talking about it. That's when social media comes in amazingly that you can share it on your socials, but you can share it in networking, you can share it in different conversations with different people. You don't need a complicated setup, you don't need 50 automation, 17 funnels, you don't need all these things in place. You can have it as easy as you want it to be. To start building a way for people to move from social media into something that you own. Social media is the invitation. One of the best ways I've heard it explain is this social media is the party invitation, your email list is the actual party. You want social media to bring people into your world, but not to be your entire world. Because if your old business depends on one platform, that is a risky place to be. So, some final thoughts for you today. Simple, simple question that we asked Div, if Instagram vanished tomorrow or Facebook, what would happen to your business? Would you still have a way to reach your audience? Would you still have a way to generate leads? Would you still have a way to make sales? If the answer is no, don't panic, stop building the pieces now, one step at a time. Because the goal isn't to stop using social media.

unknown 13:17

Never.

SPEAKER_00 13:18

It's to stop depending on it. If this is something that you're like, I really want to do this, but I have no idea how to, or you've listened to last week's podcast and you're like, I don't want to do it myself, come and have a look at what we do. We have social media retainer packages where each week you pop in the copy, we create the graphics, we go into the system, we schedule it in for you, and all you have to do is think about the topic for each week. Yeah, it's it's gold, gold dust, like it is needed in your business. So, thank you so much for listening to this week's episode of the Back End of Business Podcast. If you enjoyed today's episode again, please feel free to take a screenshot, share it on your Instagram, and give me a tag at Maybell Tech Agency. And um, if this episode is giving you a little bit of a wake up call, I would love to hear it. Like, share this with someone else that you think would love it, and I'll see you next week. Bye.