Have you ever said or thought one of the following?
“I posted and it bombed”
“I posted and no-one commented”
“My last post didn’t do very well”
Views are low, comments are zero it’s crickets on your social media posts. You’re tempted to delete the post and erase all evidence of the fact you feel ignored. Deleting a post is the equivalent of looking around after a fall to check if anyone witnessed you embarrass yourself. But deleting posts doesn’t help. You’re deleting it to try and protect your ego. But if you let your ego make your marketing decisions you’re on a slippery slope.
We need to talk about why your post didn’t do as badly as you think. And why ignoring your stealth audience is potentially a big mistake.
What is a stealth audience?
A stealth audience is a group of silent watchers. Lurkers we call them. They are the people who follow you and consume your content but never comment, interact or engage with your content. They’ve often been following you for a while but for whatever reason they’ve never engaged or responded. You probably don’t even know that they are there or who they are. But they are there, trust me.
You know they are there because they will message you out of the blue (to you) and they usually start their conversations with “I’ve been following you for a while…” This normally comes as a complete surprise because you don’t recognise their name. They’ve never commented on anything. Never reacted to anything. But they know you and they know your content.
Even if this hasn’t happened yet, it will in the future. But not if you keep deleting posts.
There are a few reasons people lurk and why not everyone wants to make themselves known on social media.
Here’s why your audience remains stealth
They don’t want their employers or colleagues to see them
I recently worked with a coach who supports mid-career women who want to leave their jobs. These women are burned out, fed up and often working in toxic cultures. My client was telling me her Linkedin content wasn’t getting any traction. When I asked what she meant by “traction” she said no-one was commenting.
These women won’t comment. The content is too vulnerable, and they don’t want to expose themselves.
LinkedIn is where they have their professional profile. They have industry connections and are connected to their current colleagues including their boss.
If your content is dealing with toxic cultures, being unhappy at work, or wanting to change jobs, they aren’t going to run the risk of someone they work with seeing them engage on your content. It’s safer not to. But that doesn’t mean that they aren’t reading it and that they aren’t getting ready to make their move.
They’re not ready
Your audience is full of people at different stages of their buying journey. Some don’t have the problem that you solve, some don’t know they have the problem you solve, and some have the problem that you solve but aren’t ready to fix it because it isn’t big enough yet.
We keep showing up so that they come to us when they are ready. If we disappear off the radar when it’s the right time, they’ll go to the person who kept showing up and talking about how they solve that problem.
They’re busy
People are busy. Think about how you use social media. You start scrolling and reading a few posts, but do you comment on every single one? Commenting requires taking time to stop, think and formulate a response. People don’t have an automatic reason to reply if you haven’t asked a question. But not commenting doesn’t mean they don’t agree with you, enjoyed your post, or have started thinking more deeply about your shared content. It could just mean someone walked into the room, they got to their bus stop, or a notification popped up on their phone, and they left the app.
Think about every book you’ve ever read, did you write to all the authors to tell them how much you enjoyed it? I doubt it. It’s not a requirement. Likewise, if someone sent you a DM asking for your help, would you say, “NO, I’m not going to take your money because you haven’t liked or commented on my last three posts?” It doesn’t make sense. Does it?
Ignore your lurkers at your peril
We’ve established that you probably have a whole audience you don’t know about. How do we get them to come out of the shadows?
1. Stop deleting posts. You can’t fight the algorithm, and people can’t read posts you’ve deleted.
2. Keep showing up “Some will, some won’t; so what—someone’s waiting.” Jack Canfield. When they’re ready make sure you are. If you’re not showing up, someone else is. Don’t hand over your potential clients to your competitors.
3. Remind people how they can work with you. Make sure you have a simple, clear and easy-to-do call to action. DM me, comment below, click on this link etc.
4. Talk about the results your current clients are getting, and often—FOMO is real, and so is inspiration. Share how you are transforming the lives of your current clients to paint a picture of what life could be like for your future clients.
5. Remind them why now and why they shouldn’t wait – what is the cost of inaction? Does the problem get worse? Does it change because it certainly doesn’t go away on its own? Remind people that delaying in doing the work is also delaying the solution.
Would you like to learn how to create content that connects with your ideal clients and gets them interested in finding out more about you and how they can work with you?
Email me at clair@upwriteonline.co.uk to start a conversation about how we can start transforming your content