Why nobody is liking your posts

Imagine you're on a date with someone who:

• orders a pumpkin spice latte 🎃
   
• tells you about how Love Island is the best thing to happen to modern TV 🚩
   
• takes a couple of selfies for their story. During the date. Using the dog filter. 🐶

You’re thinking, "I’m out of my depth here."

But you file down the rougher edges of your personality to win their approval.

You try to be as bland and boring as possible to fit in.

You even pretend to watch Love Island.💕🏝

One of two things will happen. Either:

Your date will see through you right away

Or worse:

You'll manage, by some miracle, to tick all of their boxes and you’ll hit it off with them.

Three months later, you're in a committed relationship with someone who loves boring people.

And you're just waiting to be exposed when they find you out.

We all know that when it comes to dating, being upfront on that first date will save you both a lot of time and headache further down the line.

Because putting on a mask to try and fit in is exhausting, and you shouldn’t try to be someone you're not.

So, why do we find it so hard to apply the same logic to social media?

You don’t have to impress the entire internet

For some reason, when we post content online, we think we have to impress the entire internet.

Johnny and I made the same mistake when we first set up Propane. We tried to be as inoffensive as possible.

If we even ran the risk of offending someone, we'd reel it back even further.

And we succeeded. We didn’t offend anyone. But we also made zero sales.

So, what did we learn from this?

People are on the internet to be entertained.

Putting yourself online means opening yourself to criticism.

If you want to dominate a market, you need to find the sweet spot between:

• your niche
   
• your personality

Once you nail that, nobody can catch you.

If you don’t believe us, look at who it is that you follow or hire.

You probably didn't hire the author of a marketing textbook to learn about marketing.

You hired someone you resonate with, someone who moves your soul a little bit.

Be more of what you are

You don’t have to change what you are when you post on social media:

Just be more of what you are. And give people a chance to see that.

That doesn’t mean you have to share stuff you’re not comfortable sharing online.

Let's say you're super analytical.

Show that in your online content, and you’ll attract people who are also super analytical.

If you’re into gaming, show people you’re really into that…

And you’ll attract other gamers.

This might make you feel vulnerable. It might even annoy some people.

But the people you annoy will never have bought from you anyway.

The Three Flavours of Content

You might have heard of the three main flavours of content, or personality:

• authenticity
   
• growth
   
• authority

If you lean heavily into authority and growth, you'll generate sales, but not much loyalty or engagement.

If you lean into authority and authenticity, you'll get loyalty and people following you as a brand.

If you lean into growth and authenticity, you'll get engagement, but you might not get people buying from you.

But if you really lean into all three, that's when real leverage happens.

Remember the difference between guide and guru.

You don't have to be the guru at the top of the mountain.

You're the guide with them, climbing the mountain alongside them.

Which means you don't have to be perfect; you just have to be relatable and know the route.

You

People buy coaches, not coaching

Buying from someone is picking them over other options.

You need to capture someone's attention and open up some intrigue.

So, don't be beige.

Be polarising.

There probably isn't a single meme on your phone that you could send to your entire phone book and get a positive response.

And that's just the people in your contact list.

So, of course you’ll be Marmite when you put yourself out there for the whole internet to see.

Let go of wanting to be liked by everybody because it's just not possible. People buy coaches, not coaching.

Push your limits a little bit, get out of your comfort zone, and see what happens.

Find out more about growing your online business

Download our free training video to find out more about growing your online business, including we we selected our ideal client and advice on selecting your niche.

At PropaneBusiness, we help personal trainers develop their coaching systems to

• achieve financial independence
   
• make the move to online coaching
   
• grow and scale their business

Book in a call with us if you'd like to find out more about how we might be able to help you.

Read more of our posts to make sure you're using social media in a way that helps you attract clients and close sales.