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Twice weekly show providing social media updates, trend alerts, original content ideas, strategy session, industry guests, tutorials and more!
Do you want to know one thing that will improve your shop or affiliate content? I'm gonna tell you. Welcome to the Muthership Creator Strategy, and it is another Friday. Happy to have you with me. And before I kick off, I want to give a shout out to our creator of the week, Dee Mahn, and she's titled it's a d e e underscore Mon, m o n.
Helen:And a little side note about her is many years ago when I first got on social media and gained a following, we made a connection and we're going back and forth. And I was traveling to Miami, and she knew that somehow in my content, and we actually met in person. So, Demon, I'm so excited that you're now a studio member and you're getting a big shout out because she's working on podcasting and learning all the things and leveling up. And I'm so excited because we've had a long history of knowing each other on the app, so it was really great to see her join in the fun. So now let's talk about what can improve your shop or affiliate content.
Helen:And what's funny about this is it does apply to what can improve your content overall. But the reason I wanna focus on the shop content is because so many creators that have been joining in the studio and they have shop video after shop video and they're trying to do affiliate marketing and sales and sell things. And I am here to tell you, firsthand actually, because I have the same issue, is if you're constantly trying to sell something, you're gonna lose your audience interest. Because think about it, if you're a commercial, if you're a walking commercial, nobody wants to only listen to the commercials. They want the show, and then they'll watch the commercials in between sometimes.
Helen:But they want the content. They don't necessarily wanna have an ad every single time. So, you know, it's I think it's kind of a basic understanding, but I know a lot of the shop creators are being fed this bill of goods. I don't know if from the shop, service itself on TikTok, for example, or what they advise on Instagram, but that you constantly have to sell and you have to have five videos a day selling. And I get it.
Helen:I mean, yes, the odds are the more content you put out, one of them is gonna hit. But if you only have that type of content on your page, it is going to be very difficult to build a following. It's just gonna be tough. So what I wanna start with is before you even had the idea like you wanted to sell something on social media or be a shop creator, what was the reason you wanted to start posting on social media? If you can really tap into what is your why, what is the connection you hoped to make, what do you hope to bring to your audience, what do you want to talk about, what is I don't want to I hate like the word passion is overused, but what are you passionate about?
Helen:What do you talk about at a dinner party? What do you like to converse about? That's where you're gonna make your connections, just like you do in real life. It's the it's the things you have in common with people. It's what you do when you hang out together.
Helen:So that is what we're missing a lot on social media, that the social part. It's the part where you build connection before you try and convince them to buy someone, something to someone to buy something. And I always use the analogy of if you're walking down the street in New York, there's always these people on the corners with the clipboards, and I'm like, oh my god, I'm always avoiding the clipboards because they're trying to sell me something or get a donation, and it's just like, ugh, right? But when if it if it was somebody on a street corner that I knew, I'd be like, oh my god. What are you doing here?
Helen:What are you representing? And of course, I'd be more likely to make a donation or get involved with in a conversation with them. So it is the same principle. If you are constantly coming at your audience with a this is the coolest this and this is the coolest that and you gotta get one of these, you're gonna have people like, here she is again, and they're really not gonna connect and make that connection about what's gonna make them wanna follow you. So loyalty and trust is built not in the shopping content.
Helen:And you could say I'm going to really go back to the why for a second. Because my why is I've always wanted to shine a light or make people feel seen. And I think sharing things where it teaches people is is saying like, I see you, and I see you're struggling with how to do your camera settings, so I'm gonna show you how to do it. So even though I'm doing tutorials, my core mission, my North Star is always so that people can feel seen, feel included, that kind of thing. So you've got to look at your why.
Helen:Okay. Let's say you do want to do shopping content. Potentially, you want to do it because you've been burned by buying stupid things off the Internet, and you're finally going to be the voice of reason that tells people truthfully about items and not lie to your audience. So maybe that's your why. But before that, there has to be a reason you're coming on, and you've got to find what it is.
Helen:Is it to find other gen x, gen z millennial, boomer group? Is it to connect with people who love I don't know why I came up with this one, who love roller roller derby. You know, there's things that you might have a common interest in that you might wanna share if there's something that you love from someone who's probably never watched the roller derby. Don't even know where that came from, except I know my mom used to love the roller derby, and she used to roller skate in them, I think. Anyway, I digress.
Helen:But the idea is to establish the clear goal for why you're getting on in the first place. And I have a lot of studio members now who are coming in with you know, they wanna monetize. They have goals of monetization. But I will always urge them to think, what is the special thing you can bring to your audience before the monetization? And I'm gonna use one of my current studio members as an example, Molly, who used to be on Romper Room, if you remember the show, have to be of a certain age, where there was a magic mirror and she would see you in her magic mirror and kids would just wait for their name to be called in the magic mirror.
Helen:I don't remember the exact, way the show went, but it was something about that, and there was a magic mirror. So she's finding out on her page that nostalgia is what is getting her an audience. And now she has this potential connection to a lot of people in her age group that used to watch her show on the old school television. And I think that's kind of a cool thing to think about. We have something.
Helen:We all have something. Even if you weren't on TV, I was never on TV. And yet, I now have connection with lots of people who I am sharing my skill set with, and I'm also helping them feel be able to feel seen by doing what they want to do on social media. And so it all kind of goes around in a big circle. But if you can build a kind of a trust with your audience, and if you can make connection, something relatable, whether it's some you know, there's a lot of there's like an RV community, and they all are you know, RV people tend to follow other RV people, they have a lot in common.
Helen:There's a certain the RV culture. What There's the hula hoop culture. There's so many different areas where you can lean into and not think, oh, well, that person's doing that, so I can't do that. No. That person has nothing to do with you.
Helen:That person's doing their thing. You're gonna do your thing. Even if you think, it's the same thing. It's not the same thing because it's not you. So it's differentiating you from also what you want to share.
Helen:It's just so important to figure that out, build that trust, start to curate the people before the real money is made. And eventually, your people are gonna trust you. And in the pandemic, this is funny because I had a very small following in the beginning of the pandemic. And mostly I was on Instagram, and I was doing Instagram raffles, and I was just, I don't know, sharing things in my house that I loved, and I'm talking about my Dyson. I have followers.
Helen:I don't know if you listen to this, Lindsay, but Lindsay is somebody who actually wrote me a letter later on when I had cancer. She wrote me a letter, she wrote me all the things that you have influenced me to get in my life that has made my life better. Like I'm going to cry even saying it. But she listed the things that she learned from me during the pandemic and the things that she uses now because of my suggestions. That is not because I was trying to sell the things.
Helen:I didn't even have promo codes, no affiliate links, nothing. I was just sharing. And so that's just proof that you can make an impact and you can make an impact without even selling something. But that means that the people that are trusting you are already trusting your opinion even before you're trying to sell them something. So now, if I was promoting something, you bet your damn dollar that Lindsay, hi, if you're listening, would probably buy it because she'd probably go, I trust her because her other recommendations were really good.
Helen:So you can you can be an affiliate salesperson and have success. You just need to build the trust. It has to the trust has to come first to be uber successful. And most of the influencers who are big have built their audiences and gained the trust long before you even knew about them. And knew about, okay, now they're selling products, now they're repping brands, etcetera.
Helen:That but that happened. You're only seeing this part. That's what I always say to my kids about my career. They're they only remember the part where I was an entrepreneur. They don't remember when I worked for companies and I had to go to the office every day and I had to you know, do the corporate game.
Helen:They don't remember it because they were too young for that. So you also don't know the history of the creators, where their journey was before you they became well known to you. So there's there was growth and there was trust that was built from following and all that. So finding your why statement is just the one of the most important things in that. I have a whole, a section of that in the studio about how to do it, the content strategy once you find your why, how to think about what your content categories are and how you're gonna start to find your voice, what type of content resonates with you.
Helen:And each time you do it, you bucket down to the next thing and you go down to the next thing and it's like a little step ladder to get you, maybe it's a step ladder going up or down, whatever you wanna say. But it's a step ladder that gets you to, here's the type of content I should be creating, and this is gonna build my audience that's gonna have trust and loyalty, and then eventually, I'm gonna be able to sell to them. And this is not to say you can't put out a few sales videos now. It's just that someone who's doing promote, promote, promote, promote, promote is gonna be have a hell of a hard time gaining a following. That's just the truth.
Helen:It is the truth. Think about it. Think about it as your favorite creator and know that at some point they were sharing value way before they were trying to sell you anything. They were sharing and making their own connection. So I guess part of this that I want to make sure you're aware of is that a lot of people are jumping into the party now.
Helen:And they just see dollar signs because you have a little bit of a tangent, by the way. You have the people that are lying. I'm making 20,000 a month. I made I made 6 figures this year. Half of it is them getting views from saying those things that nobody's going to come at them and nobody can prove otherwise.
Helen:So I don't want to just call people liars, but I kind of do. But there's so many of that BS going on that we all feel inferior. Like, oh my god, how is that person making 10,000 a month when I I I can't even pull it together and I have way many way more followers than them. You know, something like that. That's the stuff that plays in your head, and that's what they bank on because it makes them viral.
Helen:It gives them more views. The more they sell their fake story, the more you're believing it, sharing it, buying their course, and putting money in their pocket, ultimately. But the thing is you've got to sort out, like, where the value is. What are you getting back from doing if you're investing in something that someone's offering, what are you getting in return? Think about where they're coming from and how are they proving to you that what they're saying is the truth.
Helen:It's so tough. You're always comparing yourself to people who are not always truthful, and it's such a struggle. So if you're nervous about putting yourself out there online, you know the fact is that it is vulnerable to do so. And you are going to have self judgment. You're gonna have self doubt.
Helen:You're gonna have impostor syndrome, all of the things. And all I can say to you is support. Support. Support. The creators that I'm helping in the studio are feeling more confident because they're seeing their fellow creators doing the things.
Helen:They are getting my support, and I'm like pump you know, I'm giving them the pump up talk. Like, you should do more of this. You have a great voice. Or, my God, you're so good on camera. Talk about your hair more because your hair is fabulous.
Helen:Like, I can see the things, and it's so much fun for me to do the audits now because I can scroll, look through people's videos, and completely get a sense of their strengths, their weaknesses, where they should be leaning more. This is one of my favorite things. And even though I know my people might think, Oh, you go live and you're I offer audits when people join the studio during my lives. And I mean, you might think, Oh, that's so much work. And it kind of is.
Helen:But it's also work that helps me improve at what I do, helps me get better at what I do, because I'll see the results of somebody using my advice and having success. And I see it again and again. And I'm like, That was good advice I gave them. I really saw that in that person. I saw that person's talent.
Helen:I just did an audit this morning. The woman has the most calming and peaceful voice. And in her comments, people were commenting on it. And I'm like, this woman should be doing more speaking videos. And there was one or two speaking videos in her content.
Helen:I said, No, you got to talk, baby, talk. Because people love your voice. And this is the kind of thing that I can see. And I love to solve. It's like a puzzle for me every single time.
Helen:So anyway, if you're listening to this and you want an audit, you actually can message me and say that you heard about this on the podcast. You'd love to get an audit on your account. If you join the studio because a lot of times, people don't see me on TikTok live to be able to join in that moment. So I am putting it up as a out as a blanket, offer right here on this episode that if you would love to have your account audited, you can message me and say you heard the podcast, you heard this episode, and you'd love an account audit. And then you simply have to join the studio for one month to get your audit.
Helen:That's it. And the month comes with a discount code. So you can freaking use the discount code. It's all caps LEARN, the number 10. So if you hear this, LEARN, all caps, and the number ten, one zero, will get you a $10 off for the first month.
Helen:You just need to message me. You can, use you can message me on the, I don't know if you listen to this on YouTube. You can message me on TikTok. Message me on Instagram. Say that you heard the podcast.
Helen:You can also email me. The email I'll put in the show notes. You can email me and tell me you heard on the podcast about a free audit and you'd love to get one with your membership. And I will honor it because the reason I built this community is to provide creators with a space to feel confident, to feel that they can connect with people who are going through the same things, and then have the I guess, I just the word motivation maybe is overused, but it would almost spur you on by watching someone else do something that they're uncomfortable doing that it's like, oh my gosh, she did that. And it wasn't perfect, but it but I think it was cute.
Helen:You know, you could even look at somebody's video that isn't perfectly done, and then it gives you it sort of takes the pressure off you to be perfect. You can say, oh, that person did it. It wasn't exactly right, but you posted it anyway. I'm gonna do it too. And that kind of shared, progress and making those transformations together is really what makes the difference.
Helen:Before I leave, I have to back up and say on Monday, May 18, on when you're listening to this, Monday, May 18 at 7PM eastern, free editing workshop. I'm going to put the link right in the show notes here and right below the YouTube video here so that you can click. You just join my studio preview section and tap on events to RSVP to get the link to join. And that way, you can see what it's like to be a part of the studio without making the commitment. But honestly, just make the commitment.
Helen:On that note, I'm gonna leave you. Have a great weekend. Enjoy it. I hope the weather's nice where you are. I hope you're doing something fun, either doing content or taking a break from content.
Helen:And I'll see you next week. Bye.