“Focus on giving your audience value, entertainment, or both relating to your niche. During your search for information, did you notice any audience pain points? This is a great place to start when creating content.”
Interested in starting a business but not sure where to start? Have a business currently but are seeing limited growth? As an entrepreneur who built a tour company and an online brand that brings in six figures and has over 250% YTD growth, I bet I can help you! This article will provide a brief overview of the steps you’ll need to take. However, to get the full details and all of the resources, I recommend you join my FREE Bublup folder. In it, you’ll find everything you’ll need to get started kicking a** in the business world!
1. Select An Underserved Niche
One of the biggest mistakes I see aspiring entrepreneurs take is selecting a niche that is too broad. I know this because I’ve made the mistake personally! Originally, I wanted to be a travel blogger. I worked for two years (while having a full-time job) on trying to grow my travel blog, but nothing was working. Why? Because the travel industry is oversaturated. Once I realized this and switched to NYC tourism, I achieved success in growing my brand. This is because travel is too broad of a topic. First, start in a small niche, then expand outwards. I can cover general travel today only because I grew my brand as the place to go for NYC travel advice first.
2. Become An Authority In The Field
Once you’ve selected a niche, you’ll need to dedicate endless time to become an authority in the field. Read as many books, blogs, etc. as you can about that topic. Search the web for any information you can. You need to become an expert so you can move to the next step.
3. Keep Yourself Organized
Since you’re learning a lot about your niche and planning a future business, you’ll need to implement practices to keep yourself organized and in line with your strategy from day one. I use Bublup to do this. Bublup is a chic combination between Pinterest and Google Drive. In their online cloud, I create folders organizing my top resources, information, and content I’ve created (you’ll learn more about that in step four). Since Bublup is digital, I can access all of my files from anywhere in the world. This is key as a business owner because you are often working on the go! Once you begin to have employees, it is also an easy way to share collateral, such as your logo, marketing photos, and other essential assets with many people at once without clogging up your inbox.
Use my link to sign up for Bublup and get 1GB of free storage!
4. Create Content
You’ve consumed as much information as you can about your niche and know more than most people on the topic. Now it is time to create content about it on social media. Focus on giving your audience value, entertainment, or both relating to your niche. During your search for information, did you notice any audience pain points (questions people had that weren’t being answered)? This is a great place to start when creating content. For example, when I decided to start my YouTube channel about NYC, I noticed that there weren’t any good video guides on NYC that were made by real locals. I felt this was a huge miss in the market because most people that are traveling to a destination want to get an honest guide that is local and knows about the best things to do when they visit that space. I filled that void in the market.
5. Build A Following
You’ve started to create content on your topic, and now it is time to build a following. This can be the most frustrating part for people because many people expect to get results quickly. It took me six months of posting YouTube videos every single week before my channel started to grow. Please don’t get discouraged if you don’t see growth right away. Instead, take actionable steps to prepare for long-term growth. Create a posting schedule. For example, I told my audience I would post a new video every Thursday. I believe that quality over quantity is the most successful long-term strategy. Once you start posting content relating to your niche, look at the analytics, and see how it did. Post more content that did well, and post less of the types of content that didn’t. You need to be willing to be flexible to grow a following.
6. Monetize, Monetize, Monetize
The key to any successful business is to have multiple income streams. This is especially true when you start building a business on social media. I have nine income streams. They are ad revenue from my YouTube channel and blog, affiliate sales, sponsorships of Instagram or YouTube, brand work (non-sponsored content that is for a brand’s marketing use), licensing of videos or photos, course sales, e-books, my tour company, and hosting jobs (on-camera personality or event appearances). It is important to do this because if something happens (COVID-19, for example), you will still have other income streams you can rely on. For example, if I only made money from my tour company right now, that would be a big problem because people temporarily cannot travel.
7. Find A Product Or Service To Sell
Once you’ve gained a solid following (I would say at least 10,000 on one platform), now it is time to consider a product or service. Since you’ve established yourself as an expert in your field, people trust your opinion, and they will be more likely to consider purchasing a product or service from you. Which product or service you create depends on what your audience is most interested in. For example, when my YouTube channel reached 40,000, I noticed that a lot of people were asking me if I offered tours of New York. I didn’t at the time but realized that this could be a solid income source. I was right.
8. Sell Your Product Or Service Through Content, Not Traditional Ads
I have personally spent $0 on advertising, and I run a company that makes six figures in revenue. This is because content is a more powerful sales tool than advertisements. People hate feeling like they’re being sold to. Traditional advertising has its place in gaining awareness, but using more modern methods of content marketing helps establish your brand voice and values. Watch my video below to see how I organically incorporated my tour company into my 3-day NYC guide video.
Those eight steps will get you far when it comes to building a business using social media. However, there are many other steps that you’ll need to take as well. I recently did a webinar about these steps. To watch the recorded webinar, join my free folder on Bublup. I put the recorded video in there, along with all of the other resources that will help you on your journey to success.
Good luck!
