759 – Rachel Miller Shares Doable Tactics to Get Engagement and Grow a Brand to Reach 1 Million Fans and Beyond

Podcast: Download (Duration: 34:57 — 32.1MB)

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Podcast highlights:

01:16 – From six kids and a mortgage
05:12 – For the love of paint
8:10 – Work that bumper sticker
10:21 – You don’t target just anyone
14:20 – How to stack your content
15:23 – Photo, video, conversation starter
16:57 – Are they just dumb questions?
20:00 – Music to work by
21:03 – Must you become a social media addict?
22:56 – Rachel’s secret to endless pep
24:32 – Speed up your content creation
25:21 – It started with kids’ products
27:40 – A gift for naming
28:34 – Social media platforms of choice
31:36 – You’ve got the content, then what?
32:23 – Wrapping things up

Keep up with the latest and best marketing strategies with help from James

Transcription:

James: James Schramko here. Welcome back to SuperFastBusiness. This is Episode 759, and we are chatting to Rachel Miller. We’re going to be talking about doable tactics for getting amazing organic growth. Like, we’re talking like millions of people, even if you have a tiny little social following, which sounds pretty incredible. So welcome to the show, Rachel.

From six kids and a mortgage

Rachel: James, thank you so much. I have been a longtime fan. But more than that, I don’t know if you remember, but it was about 14 months ago, I was in one of your high-ticket coaching programs. It was a membership. And you helped me through my understanding my net worth and what that means in my life.

And you encouraged me. I don’t know if you knew this at the time, because – I’m in the United States, I’m in Texas. And with kids at night (I have six kids), and it was difficult to get the timing right. So we only, like, met for like five or six weeks, and then I paid off the house from that, though.

So that five to six weeks was super impactful for me and for my business, because it helped me get out of my way in some different spots. It helped me get rid of some of my mental trash about money, which I still probably have tons of mental trash. I needed more than five weeks.

I don’t have a mortgage anymore, y’all.

James: That is the best. Like, I don’t mind if the engagement’s short and a result is gained. That’s still my benchmark that I’m responsible for, is I have to make sure there’s a return on investment. And that’s great news. You know, I would say this is a common theme, is that we’re often talking about money, because I think a lot of entrepreneurs, they get into the money game, and that becomes the focus.

But then, of course, you’ve got a lot of kids. I mean, you have even more kids than I do, which is impressive. Not that it’s a bragging contest. But I think this forces you to reflect on life differently. Your time becomes a premium. And relationships become a premium, like the time that you have with your kids. If you’re out there chasing all the money, I often talk about people leaving life on the table while they’re grabbing all that money.

But also for you, you know, being a provider and having a family, you really want to be in a secure position of confidence in the marketplace, especially when things don’t turn out as well as they happened after our chat, by the look of it.

Rachel: Yeah, yeah, that’s one of the things you taught me, was my net worth is more than just my bank account. But it’s also the security which for me, paying off my house, paying off all of our debt – so we literally have zero in debt right now – doing that, like, a huge cloud of weight came off of me.

I thought I needed to have that in the bank so that that way I would have money that would be leveraged. And you got rid of that notion and freed me from being, not a slave to money, but having to always be aware of those payments. And now I don’t have payments besides, like, basic utilities, which I’m very, very grateful for. And that was you that freed me from that.

And then again, then I was motivated to rebuild that nest egg, which we were able then to rebuild it because I depleted it. So depleting It was a gift. Freedom was a gift. And now I have a new nest egg, and in perfect timing, too, because with everything that’s happening right now – COVID, the pandemic, my kids aren’t going to school next year – all of that, I have the freedom right now to step back in my business.

Yes guys, my business is growing. I mean, I’m still selling a bit, things are still happening, but I’m stepping back in my business because of my family life. And that conversation with you about 14, 15 months ago helped me set those priorities straight. And I am forever grateful. So thank you, thank you.

James: I’m grateful for you as well, because I actually purchased your course and sent quite a few people there as well. And one of the things you shared with me was to make our thumbnails messy. You know, you were kind enough to hop on a call, you went through our social media stuff, and you said, Look, your videos look kind of plain and predictable. You need to mess them up a bit, make them more engaging. We’ve got a lot more video views since that advice.

So it was such an exciting opportunity for me to have you to come along on this particular show, because our audience, I would say they’re a little bit like you and me. They’re kind of intermediates. And they are, you know, looking for things that will take them to the next stage where they probably already have something in motion.

For the love of paint

And you’ve been really driving a lot of traffic for your students, your customers. In some cases, you told me an interesting case study – you want to share the one with your lady who had only 8000 Facebook followers?

Rachel: This was Sam. Sam is actually in Australia. So she’s where you are. And she has 8000 followers, and get this – the girl sells paint. Like, I have the funnest and the weirdest and the coolest people, and she sells paint. And she’s like, how can I sell more paint? How can I get people to like, hoard and collect paint, and think that they need the next color that’s coming out, of paint? And it’s just the funnest thing, like, the funnest niche.

And so she’s in Australia, so she wants to have people in Australia, but also in the world, because she’s able to get distributors for her paint in other locations. She wants people to want to do projects with paint. So what she came up with was a monthly box of a project, and then paint colors that would go into that box for people to consume and use.

Now, how do you find the people that are going to want to buy this box? What she did, she collected 8000 crafters and painters. They’re not all over the world. She didn’t target all over the world. But she didn’t do one of those global audiences and attract people who don’t speak her language and are never able to buy her paint. She attracted 8000 people who are obsessed with painting projects, just like she is.

And then she put out content a couple of times a day to those people. And she was talking about, not her paint project and how awesome her paint was, because it has baby blue comes with eggshell finish. That’s not what she talked about.

What she talked about was, Oh my word. Look at this random shed in the woods and how magical it is. Would you have this shed? She basically gave her audience all of those project ideas that they would drool over. And they would literally say, Who here has more than 10 gallons of paint in their garage right now and you’re not getting rid of any of them? That’s who she wanted.

And she got those people to respond to her content with those types of posts, ones that are about who they are, not about her paint store. And Sam had a post just, not this past Tuesday, the Tuesday before, so it’s not even been eight days or nine days. She was able to get a single post to 10 million people.

And she was like, everyone shared this, which put her business in the forefront of people’s minds. She was able to back and forth have a conversation with so many people, she’s not even remotely through her list, and get people to launch her paint membership program, which is where they get a color of paint a month.

James: That’s incredible. I’m definitely sending my friend Danny who’s got a surf paint business, it’s paints for surfboards. And he’s using a lot of visual stuff, and I think he’d appreciate this. What an amazing result from such a small audience.

Now, what instruction did you give her to create this result?

Work that bumper sticker

Rachel: Basically, we have like three strategies, three primary strategies. I probably have like 15 strategies, but the three core strategies are, one: to wear a bumper sticker. So what that means is, what does your audience say about themselves that they’d almost, like, wear on their shirt or put as a stick front – kids have that where they put sticks in the yard that say, My child’s an honor student at such and such school. Right now, my neighbor’s like, plastered with it.

James: I don’t think so. In Australia, I think that would be very quickly removed. We have this “tall poppy” syndrome. We like to pull down people who are full of hot air.

Rachel: In the United States, they have these signs that people put on their front porch about, like, what happened good in their kids’ lives. And then they have bumper stickers that say like, 26 point something, means you ran a marathon. And so everyone who’s run a marathon sticks a sticker on the back of their car.

James: You’ll see a surf sticker on the back of a window, or a baby on board, maybe. Signs are funny here. Like, even rival real estate agents will push down the other players’ signs off the front yard.

Rachel: Here, we’re more pro signs. But the reality, though, is even in an area where they’re anti-signs or they don’t think of themselves as wearing a sign, we all wear a sign with what we do and what we say and how we interact. So like, a surfer would say, I’m a surfer.

James: Of course. You know when you’re following a surfer. Where I live is a surf region, right? And along the beaches, there’s all these tradespeople, and they have their vans. And they go for a surf during the day if the weather’s good. So like, it’s really hard to get anything built when the surf’s good, because all the tradespeople are having a surf. But you can see the stickers on the back window. You know, if they come to quote a job, and they’ve got all the surf wax sticker and stuff, you know, they’re not going to be there when the waves are good.

Rachel: If it’s sunny and there’s a good breeze, then no.

James: But I get it. I get the bumper sticker concept, or you know what someone would print on a T-shirt. It’s like all those individual cool kids who want to be individual, but they all look exactly the same, because they’ve got their standard sort of uniform.

Rachel: And we think that that’s, like, a high school thing, but the reality is, as adults we do the same thing.

James: It’s a life thing.

Rachel: We seriously do.

You don’t target just anyone

So one is the bumper sticker. The next strategy is targeting the right people. So I don’t want you to target everyone. I only want you to target the active people in your niche. And then we do a second, like, sub tactic, called niche neighborhooding, which means you connect yourself to that other person.

So like, I’m on a podcast right now with James, which is awesome. And I grabbed some screenshots as we’re talking. And guess what I’m doing, is I’m making, like, memes out of these screenshots with James saying things, and I’m going to put them on my Instagram feed, and I’m going to tag James and I’m going to put a little hashtag, I’m going to hashtag it and put it out places. I’m connecting myself to James’s brand.

And that is what niche neighborhooding does, is it helps you attach yourself to another person and kind of ride their coattails a little bit. And that’s what I’m here to do. No shame here. That’s what I’m here for. And the reality though, is, that’s what every one of you who’s listening can do as well. And you can do it in an easier way.

So I’m on a podcast. Let’s say I want to connect to someone and I’m not on their podcast. I can grab a picture of them, write their quote next to it, and then tag them and share it to them. So that way, they feel loved while I’m connecting myself to their brand. And it’s another way of niche neighborhooding.

But I don’t want to niche neighborhood with everyone. Because some people, they might purchase fans so they could have social proof from maybe a global audience. And they don’t speak their language, and they never engage. And maybe they’re full of bots. That’s, like, a legit thing. You can go onto Fiverr right now and you can spend 10 bucks and buy 1000 likes if you want to, for your page. That’s a thing people do. Or do like ads on Facebook. And neither of those are actually going to bring you those diehard fans.

So I don’t want to connect myself to a page that’s full of dead people. I want to only connect myself to other brands who are the most active. And so Facebook has a tool, Audience Insights, that lets us find out who’s got the active people, and I want to connect myself just to them and not to the other people. Does that make sense?

James: Yeah, totally makes sense. Like, it’s working around clusters. It’s like, who’s got your audience? And how can you appear in their sphere?

Rachel: You actually talked about this in your episode, Misfits and Rejects.

James: Right.

Rachel: I really think the whole world is misfits and rejects.

James: Definitely. I just was on a podcast earlier, and one of the key points I made is that everyone’s little system, their belief system or their world, is pretty much unique to them. When we use these broad terms, like success, they could be so different for other people. It’s like that classic old, you know, think of the color blue, and everyone’s coming out with you know, is it light blue? Dark blue? etc.

For me, if I work more than 25 hours a week, then that’s an unsuccessful week for me. But for another entrepreneur, if they work less than 80 hours a week, then they might be unsuccessful. So they’re completely different results. So we have to be careful with this labeling.

I imagine you have a lot of fun niche neighborhooding with the people who have got the similar audience. When they hop on, you get the effect that happened to Sam, where her audience is connected to other people and it goes viral.

Rachel: It does. And so she was able to connect to other paint companies and the perfect people. So she wore a bumper sticker, and she found where her perfect people were, and she connected to them.

James: What was her bumper sticker?

Rachel: Her bumper sticker is I’m a paint-a-holic. I mean, something like that. I love to craft.

James: Gotcha.

Rachel: Painting is my freedom.

James: So people see that and they identify, Oh, yes, that’s me.

Rachel: They say, I love to craft and I’m a maker and I’m a painter. They say those things just like she was. Your people don’t necessarily have just one bumper sticker they might say. They might say, I’m a surfer. And they might also say, I ride waves.

James: Yeah.

Rachel: Or whatever those other phrases are that surfers say. I don’t know what they say. I don’t know what they are.

James: Clearly. That’s okay. You know, you do have a wave pool in Texas, and you can also go tanker surfing.

Rachel: Tanker surfing. Okay.

James: That’s when the tankers come into the port, they ride the bow wave.

Rachel: Oh, fun.

James: It’s a thing.

Rachel: It’s a thing. Awesome.

How to stack your content

Okay, so one was bumper sticker. Next is finding the perfect people. And then the third strategy I have is to content stack. And what that means is you put content in front of your people, that’s stacked in a way that Facebook knows what you’re about, and knows how to deliver your content, and that people are trained how to interact with you.

Because frankly, our audience, they don’t know what to do when they see your page. You have to kind of train them that when you see my page, almost like a Pavlovian thing – you see my page, you like, you comment. If I post something, you engage so you can see more of it. You train them how to behave.

And when you content stack, it literally teaches the audience how to talk to you. And when they talk to you, Facebook sends more people to you. And it tells Facebook, these are the people that are talking, so send more people just like this to the post. So content stacking.

James: Gotcha. It makes sense. So I know I’m being presented feeds where I’m interacting more. Because they can’t show everything. So they have to say, well, of all the things we could show you, which ones have you been interacting with or liking or, you know, behaving in a way that is good for our platform? And then they’ll show you that.

Photo, video, conversation starter

Rachel: Yeah. And the thing with content stacking is you want to use a photo, a video, and a conversation starter. And then I’ll post something that’s about me or that I want people to know about, that I’m promoting. But my photo is usually like a meme, something that people can connect to a quote, something that people can say, Oh, this is who I am.

And then after the meme, then I do a video. And the video’s so that they can trust my face. Photos tend to get more likes and those micro reactions, sometimes comments. Videos get time on page. If you just do likes and micro reactions, you’re never actually creating a relationship, because people need time to build a relationship. They need to have spent time with you. And Facebook wants time because they put ads out. So they want the person consuming content.

So photo, video, that means I get likes, and I get time on page. Both of those tend to get comments, but what really gets the best comments are conversation starters. The thing with conversation starters, though, is that they’re not driving traffic to a link. They’re not even driving traffic to me.

It’s basically saying, Who here is an entrepreneur who’s also growing their family and their business at the same time? That’s a question people are going to say, yeah, that’s me. Actually, I have three kids, I only have furbabies. Does that count? They all respond, but that’s not doing anything but letting them brag about themselves. So conversations are, I don’t want to do just conversation starters because I’ll never be able to sell. So I want to mix those together.

But when I have a three-liner comment, a micro reaction, like a like, a share, and then I have someone spending time on my page, Facebook looks at that and says, they left long comments, they like your posts regularly, they spend time on your page, we are going to show them all of your content for forever.

Are they just dumb questions?

James: I wanted to ask about the conversation starter, because this is something that maybe you can educate me on. And I don’t know if it’s just me. When I see those education, or sorry, the posts that ask pretty basic questions, you know, like tea or coffee, or which superhero would you be? I kind of find them insulting. It’s like, Okay, this person is just making a question to get comments to manipulate Facebook or me.

Rachel: Possibly. The tea or coffee, though, if that came from a tea supplier…

James: Sure, but it doesn’t. It comes from a blogger who is just on social media all day long, just asking dumb questions to get people to interact.

Rachel: Yeah, it has to go back to that bumper sticker.

James: Right. So it should connect. That’s a really good thing. Because the ones that I’m seeing, I don’t know why it creates that infuriation in me, but I’m just like, I’m just like, do they think that I’m this dumb? That I don’t understand what’s happening here?

And maybe I’m just being too clever. But I do react to it in a negative way. I’m just like, this is just a waste of time. This is like, I’m not going to be the one answering this question. You’re not baiting me. But seriously, a lot of people do get baited into those very basic questions that don’t seem in any way connected with whatever that theme is.

Rachel: The problem when they do that, yes, they’re going to get people to bait and jump on board. I could, on my marketing page, say, how many of you are cat owners?

James: Right.

Rachel: That would get cat owners to say Hi, I’m a cat owner. That’s not relevant on my marketing page, because my marketing page is trying to reach people who are entrepreneurs and small business owners or are marketing agencies, those are my three different people.

I do, however, have a page full of cat owners. And so me asking, how many cats do you have, on my page of 163,000 people who own more than three cats, they love to tell you all about their three cats and their eight cats. And here’s pictures of them. And this is the one that died, and I’m still mourning him. Like, the comments, I’ll get thousands of them. Because it’s relevant there.

If I put that in the wrong spot, though, I’m going to repel people. And that’s where you need to wear the bumper sticker. So if they’re just putting a conversation start out to get engagement, what they’re really telling Facebook is, I want all of these people who just engaged to engage with my future content. And the cat people are in my cat audience.

James: It’s the classic win a free iPad thing where you get a whole bunch of people who want a free iPad, but have no interest in the thing you actually would like them to buy.

Rachel: Which doesn’t help anyone, you know? That’s where you want to make sure it’s zeroed in on your right people.

James: I’m so glad you mentioned that. Because a lot of the people that I’m seeing do this just don’t really have a clear strategy behind it. And I’m probably right to be confused by it.

Rachel: I would call them out on it, too, but that’s me. I call people out with love.

James: I’ve actually stopped commenting on Facebook, mostly. I don’t know if it’s just me, but for the last few months, I’ve seen people get extra emotional and posting things that defy logic. And I don’t see a real upside for educating or calling people out other than me getting dragged into more time on Facebook, which is really what I don’t want to be doing.

Rachel: One of the things I do, because I do find myself dragged on Facebook and get that Facebook’s my business…

James: Yes, you’re on Facebook. I think that’s a key distinction.

Music to work by

Rachel: I work by song. So I’ll turn on the song. And then I only get to engage while that song is on, and then when the song is over, I stop. So I like, only when the song is on. It’s almost like a guide, going back to Pavlovian training, like, whatever.

It’s a song that, it doesn’t ever play on the radio, it doesn’t play anywhere else. It’s, like, a funky YouTube guy playing his flip flops on these PVC pipes, okay? So that song, no one, I’m not going to hear it anywhere else. But as soon as I hear that song, because every day I type to it, that song gets on, I start typing and I can type fast. And when the song’s over, like, I stop typing.

James: I’m the same. My baby has a playlist. So when the playlist is on, she’s asleep, and I can do my work. But it’s also the Pomodoro Technique, is, you know, working to a specific deadline. I like that. Great tip.

I think social media is almost the death of productivity. And, you know, when people have the phone app that tells you how long you spend on social media, I think, you know, until that became a thing, people would have been shocked to know what it was. But now it’s like, Hey, rein it in, buddy. I think there’s a fine edge to do.

Must you become a social media addict?

And I think in your case, you are on social media, your specialty is growing social media. How do normal people like me get the advantage of it without becoming a social media addict?

Rachel: Well, bumper sticker, you can do all of those things without being an addict, when it’s just thinking about what your audience wants. You don’t have to be on more than three or four minutes a day, or even just maybe 15 minutes a week, even, unless you really want to.

James: Yeah.

Rachel: Okay? So the videos, you can, like this podcast right now we’re on, we could be filming it and we could chop it up into videos. And that could be our video content that we put out.

James: It probably will be.

Rachel: Then you’re done.

James: But that will be the team. The team will post it, and I won’t be anywhere near there.

Rachel: So there’s ways to create great content. I like to batch content in 100-day batches, where I create 100 posts, and then I schedule those out for, like, 90 days. We actually, right now, with one of my businesses, have 10 different batches that have between 50 and 100 posts. So I actually will not be writing any content for that site.

James: And what’s the tool? Someone’s going to ask, what’s the tool that you use to schedule?

Rachel: To schedule, I use my Facebook’s tools. So I don’t use a third-party app, because they tend to get less reach. And for me, I don’t want to waste my time creating a content, a post that’s not going to get as good a reach. And Facebook has a scheduling tool called Creator Studio. So you go in there, you can mass upload videos, so you can upload 20 videos at a time if you want to.

Put all the content, type them in, and then schedule them out. And for me, I have them in drafts, a huge batch of drafts. And then every month, I’ll go in, I’ll schedule the next batch up for the next month. And that way, I’ve got content going out.

If for some reason, let’s say on Tuesday, something happens on Tuesday, and I want to make a post about what happened on Tuesday, I just go in and I post it. And then I schedule whatever else was going to be for Tuesday at the end of the batch. So I’ve always got this buffer. I never feel rushed, and it’s super freeing.

Rachel’s secret to endless pep

James: Well, you can’t be, you got so many kids. I mean, clearly, you’ve got something going on. I don’t know if it’s the water where you live or whatever. How do you have so much energy and enthusiasm? And I have seen you go on Facebook Lives, but you’re just, like, you’re always 12 out of 10 for energy. What’s the secret?

Rachel: I think I was just born ADD or something.

James: You’re just super outgoing?

Rachel: Super outgoing and super, that kid who couldn’t sit still and needed, you know, the one that had to sit next to the teacher’s desk and kept kicking the teacher’s desk because she just didn’t even know she was kicking the teacher’s desk, and she was a teacher’s special helper? I did not realize until I was a high school teacher that that kid was the problem kid.

She was making me stay with her at recess because I was in trouble. I thought it was good.

Anyway, I’ve always been probably the high-energy, pushing-the-envelope person.

James: So you found the perfect medium for your skill set. Can boring introverts do well on social media?

Rachel: Yes. Because we’ve actually made tools. Because even though I am an extrovert, and I love being on social media, and I love social media, I’m also a mom of six kids, and my husband works full time and he doesn’t want to quit. He actually told me, even though we now have enough revenue, he doesn’t need to work, he told me, I would never make you quit your job. So you can’t make me quit mine.

I admire that, and that does mean that I’m kind of managing more than most women who work full time might be managing. And my kids are home because of COVID, they don’t have school now, and they won’t be having school this fall. So this is loads of fun. I’ve got a real good attitude. I’m working on it.

Speed up your content creation

So, but my point in that is, I’ve had to come up with hacks to get done faster. So we actually have an app. I wasn’t really planning on mentioning it, but it’s a $4.99 app that literally creates your content for you. So you don’t have to wonder, what should I post? You can open the app, and it says, post about this today. You copy it and paste it.

It’s got blanks, so if the blank’s, you could say, you know, paint. So in the blank, you put paint. Or in the blank, you put cat. So for me, I’d say entrepreneurs. So there’s like little blanks inside of each post that you adapt for yourself. And that, for me, if I am super busy, I’ve already got content that I can use in all of my businesses. So those big banks help you crank it up fast.

James: And where’s the app?

Rachel: It’s called Post Deck. So it’s PostDeck.io. You have to go to our website for it because it’s a web-based app.

James: Cool.

It started with kids’ products

You started out doing kids’ experiments books.

Rachel: Oh boy, and I even folded my laundry on national TV.

James: I think, you know, I’m coming into the zone where I think I need a book like that, the 101 Kids Activities That Are the Bestest, Funnest Ever!

Rachel: Yeah.

James: You’re still in that market though, right?

Rachel: I’m not in that one. I was crazy, because I was, like, this high school teacher, and I quit high school teaching, and I had no skills. And I was like, What am I going to do? My husband’s like, just go make a website. I hear people can do that now. So I made a website. And I still am, like, looking back, I can’t believe that I was able to do that.

And I built the website, and then I started thinking about, what do people want? Like, what are missing in their lives? And we kept creating content for those things. And we grew our website to 10 million pageviews in a single month. That’s people clicking from social media. So they were viewing content on social media, clicking over to the website. It’s still reaching millions and millions and millions.

I sold it because it got too big, and I was expecting my fifth and sixth child. We’re an adoptive family. And we were a little bit on the surprise with our fifth and sixth.

And so when that was happening, I was like, Okay, I’m not going to be able to work for at least the next six to nine months. And if you stop working completely, if you like, hard pedal on next Thursday – I’m not going to work for six months – and you don’t have, like, a whole plan for that, your business is going to die. And so I built this business, and I love this business, and it was not going to die. So I sold it.

And, once my kids were like, two, I was able to start working again. And so I built a second website and grew that to multiple millions, and then grew two more websites before I decided I would teach people how to drive traffic to things. Yeah. So that’s kind of where I learned all this system of how to run websites. And they’re still running. And currently my websites are reaching over 64 million people across their platforms. All the platforms.

James: Oh, wow. So basically, you can just tip petrol on the fire if you go do a website. You just bring in Rachel. You’ve got social media management, do you do it as a service as well?

Rachel: No. I stopped that.

James: You just teach people how to do it.

Rachel: I stopped. It’s just not scalable. Because if I’m doing it as a service, I was managing people. And then I was managing, like, people’s accounts. And then I was managing people to do it, and I realized, I don’t like being a boss. So for me, I didn’t like running an agency, so I stopped that.

A gift for naming

James: You come up with good names. Very appropriate names, too. Quirky Mama.

Rachel: That was because some guy in college called me quirky. I think he was trying to, like…

James: You are the definition of quirky. And the other one, One Crazy House.

Rachel: Because my house was one crazy house.

James: It has to be. It has to be one crazy house.

Rachel: And Crazy Cat Lady was the lady next door.

James: And then you had Moolah Marketing. So that was, you know, bringing in the money.

Rachel: Yeah.

James: Did I see you rebranded something recently? You had a new product out? I saw a bit of a buzz for it.

Rachel: Yeah, that’s probably Post Deck is the new one, we had a little bit of a buzz because it was on iTunes, and we got kicked off of iTunes.

James: Oh, it’s not hard to do. I had a video podcast and they just shut it down, and I have no idea why. They were just short episodes. But you know, this is the challenge with a platform. If something changes or whatever, then it stops working.

Social media platforms of choice

Now I imagine – and I’ve been through your course – a lot of things you teach would apply to different mediums, which is good. But would you say you’re pretty heavily Facebook-centric?

Rachel: Facebook and Pinterest.

James: Right.

Rachel: Those are my two primary web platforms right now. I’m also active on Instagram. We also have YouTube. We’re everywhere. And I’ve grown YouTube audiences into 100,000. I’ve grown Instagram audiences into 100,000 for clients. But for me, the primary place that I love is Facebook. And I use Facebook to drive traffic to Pinterest and then pins to go viral. And then pins drive traffic back to Facebook. So it’s a lovely cycle for the long game. So Facebook does spikes of traffic. Pinterest does, like, a slow burn. So when you combine those two together, that’s how I have 64 million in traffic right now.

James: Is Pinterest particular to different, you know, certain types of markets?

Rachel: I would have said yes three, four years ago. Now, I would say no.

James: Okay.

Rachel: Because there’s more and more men on Pinterest. It used to be more women. But more and more men are using Pinterest. Think of Pinterest as when people are dreaming.

James: Yeah, it’s a vision board.

Rachel: Yeah.

James: I notice when I’m searching surfboards, a lot of the time they’ll come up on Pinterest.

Rachel: Yeah.

James: And sometimes cars. But yeah, I would have thought it was mostly females, and mostly for very visual things. If you’re selling handbags or whatever, you definitely want to be on Pinterest, right?

Rachel: I think everyone wants to be in more than one platform. So for me, I don’t want to put all of my eggs in Facebook, even though I’m known as the Facebook organic girl. If you put all your eggs in that, well, Facebook can top the bucket and you’re kind of left with nothing. So I want to always have my eggs in more than one bucket. But I don’t want to start with my eggs in two buckets. Because then you’re starting with, like, no eggs.

James: Yeah.

Rachel: So I start with one egg basket, and then I build my second egg basket and then I build my third egg basket. And then eventually I say, Okay, I’m done. These are bringing in enough revenue. I’m just going to hang out here because I’m going to practice what James taught me in my coaching session, and I’m going to have my true net worth, which includes my relationships and my freedom and my time.

James: Yeah. We sort of cast the net fairly wide. We used to post our posts to Pinterest and so forth, and didn’t see much of a result. But then we were surprised by how well LinkedIn was going for us for our audience, which is 65 percent male, mostly older people, and a lot of them are on LinkedIn.

Facebook’s been solid. We don’t really do that much with YouTube. And Instagram’s mostly personal for me. But I think we’re definitely going to flex our muscle a bit more with social media. But the podcast has been core. Like, I’ve been just chipping away with podcasts for a while. And that’s our main thing. That’s the thing that drives the business, and it’s something I’m prepared to do as well.

You know, I think you and I’ve talked about this before, but I’m not the guy to flip on Facebook Live and just chat to the camera and talk to people. It’s just not, it’s not something I want to do. But I don’t mind recording something and then giving it to the team and saying, Here you go, and they publish it.

So I think sometimes it’s a matter of finding a style that works for you, and seeing where your customers are. And then of course, having the team help out for the things you don’t want to do, but you should be doing.

You’ve got the content, then what?

Rachel: Well, the cool thing is you’ve got the content. So now all you have to do is get photos, videos and conversation starters to match each podcast. And you don’t even really have to do that.

James: Exactly.

Rachel: Like, Post Deck will make your conversation starters for you. Photos, well, get a graphics designer. If you need a name, I’ll help you out. And they create those pieces of content, and you’ve got your machine running and you didn’t have to do any extra work to make it happen. And podcasting is still your main baby.

James: That’s it. We do. I usually make a little video to talk about the podcast. So I’ll make a little video to talk about this podcast, where I’ll talk about the main things someone could learn listening to the episode. I’ll reference the episode number so they can go and look it up easily on the website. And then my team will put it into the various places.

Wrapping things up

But, you know, we went through your course. It was one of the few courses we purchased. Because I’ve seen firsthand, and you know, the work that I got to do with you, I got to see the success you’re having. I know the people you’ve been getting results for are amazing people. You’re the real deal, which is tremendous.

I expect you’re going to get a flood of people after this podcast episode. Where should they go to find out about Rachel Miller?

Rachel: I have a Facebook group called Grow Your Audience, where they can learn more about strategies to grow. But ultimately, if they’re an overworked business person who just wants to get content out there quickly, the app is probably the easiest and fastest way to get attention with the least amount of effort.

James: Cool. I hope you’ve got some in-app ads for your business or something around, you know, the email database or something.

Rachel: Oh, we’ll get them, we’ll get them.

James: Yeah, you’ll get them all. You’ll get them all, just purely on attitude and personality and enthusiasm. I would say you’re one of the few people whose videos I will actually watch on social media, because you’re so engaging. But I generally am just going to just move past. I’m a fussy customer when it comes to social media, because I know how dangerous it can be on my attention. And I think that’s the most vital currency we’ve got, right, is where we place our time.

Rachel: And like I said, turn on a song if you’re one of those people who gets distracted. Or even there’s this timer that you can put on your computer, which will shut down a website after you use it for so much time. Put tools on. There’s tools you can use to say, I need a babysitter. For me, especially if you don’t have an option, you have to do social, you don’t have a team that help you yet, that’s okay. Don’t let it take over your life. There are ways to get around it.

Thank you for having me on today. And thank you for telling me to pay off my house and get rid of my debt, because the freedom, and you were so right, and thank you, I am grateful to you.

James: That is amazing. Well, thank you for coming along and sharing. And I’ll, you know, continue to follow your amazing content, and hopefully see our own social media results improve as a result of my team going over to that app right now as they listen to this. Thank you.

Rachel: Thanks, I appreciate you.

James: Thank you. Well, there you go. That’s Rachel Miller. And this has been Episode 759. If you want some help with your business, of course, I’m happy to do some coaching there at SuperFastBusiness.com. Maybe you’ll pay off your own house, as well. Who knows?

Want to stay in tune with what’s working in marketing? Join James inside our online business coaching membership at JamesSchramko.

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