Don't pull a Houdini and disappear from your audience!
Consistency is a huge piece to developing trust with your audience.
And it starts with your image content.
It’s no secret that it’s pretty damn noisy on social media these days, and it’s only going to get noisier.
The key to breaking through this seemingly impenetrable wall of distracting shit circulating throughout the digital ecosystem is purpose and consistency in the messaging that you share with your audience.
Create content that informs, entertains and inspires those you serve into action so that they are better than they were yesterday.
And by leveraging image content to visually punctuate the sentiments of all the stories you share, that will help draw attention to who you are, who you serve and why you do what you do.
But, there’s one catch…
Once you start, it’s important that you don’t just randomly stop, :)
Why is that a big deal, you might be asking (and if you didn’t, I’m going to tell you anyway)?
Once you start drawing a crowd and receive attention for the value that you offer through stories that illustrate your expertise, life as a business owner and life as a human being, your audience will begin to develop expectations.
They expect you to keep pumping out the good, juicy stuff to feed their need to learn more about how to get past their roadblocks.
That expectation will lead to more curiosity and thought around whether or not your services and personalized attention are what they need in their lives.
That curiosity will drive them to your other online outlets - website, blog, etc. - where they will consume more of the value that you share.
It will draw them closer and closer to a buying into your services.
And, as long as you keep the train on the tracks and keep offering new insights, tips and actionable steps through your social feeds, they will continue to stay engaged.
But, what happens when you abruptly stop sharing this type of value?
Well, what would you do if someone that you follow suddenly disappears for a couple months?
Do you stick around to wait? Do you email the person to ask what the hell happened?
Or, do you begin to question the motives behind the person falling off the face of the planet?
I can tell you that the moment someone I follow consistently disappears on me, the trust bond is broken. And once the trust bond is broken, boy oh boy is it a pain in the ass for them to gain it back from me.
I used to think that this was simply a reflection of my own values towards trust, but, I’ve spoken with colleagues and mentors about this, and turns out that this sentiment is quite popular amongst them, as well.
It’s because of this possibility that I suggest to clients investing in branded lifestyle portraits to start slow with sharing their image content, especially if they’re starting from a place where they’ve been only posting once in a blue moon…
...or whatever moon is really, really rare!
If you’re only willing to set time aside to create 3-4 posts per week to start, cool - just commit to it every month and make it happen. You can always build on that should you want to up the frequency.
The other option is to make time in your schedule to create a much larger pile of content and schedule it so that you can set it and forget it once a month.
Either way, pick a lane and stay in it!
Nurture those you serve with content that not only feeds their curiosity, but also draws them in because you’re creating connection and rapport.
Get their attention by leveraging your branded lifestyle portrait image content to act as a beacon on your audience’s feeds so that they can spot your work from a mile away, and will happily click on it to read more.
And, if for some reason, you need to break from the norm, give your people the heads up through a post and/or article.
But, whatever you do, don’t pull a Houdini without warning on your audience or they will disappear on you!
PS - For those of you who aren’t in the know, I mail out these blogs 3x a week, and lemme tell you, they’re a real party, so, if you’d like to get in on this,sign up for it here and I’ll throw in a free gift for you, because I care, :)