← Woman of Influence
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- [00:00]
Julie Solomon
When your messaging is aligned with those core desires, urgency isn't a hard sell. It's just the natural consequence of them seeing the value that you bring.
- [00:10]
Unknown
Welcome to the Influencer podcast. I'm your host, Julie Solomon. If you found yourself here, it means you are ready to unleash the powerful visionary that lives inside you, turning you into an authentic leader who creates influence, impact and change. Let's get started.
- [00:32]
Julie Solomon
Hello, friends, and welcome back to another episode of the Influencer podcast. I'm so excited today to dive deep into the world of community and how we are building community. How we are remembering to focus on having more of a community brand in 2025 instead of a personal brand in 2025. Now, I know that we are already in spring by the time this podcast is coming out. I'm recording it a few weeks prior. This is gonna be May. We're like five months into the year so far and I wanna just make sure that we stay tapped in and tuned into the importance of scalability and the importance of growth. And I think that community has such a big part to play in that. So I wanna dive through my thought process on this and really just the importance of moving people into the community lanes of where you want them to go. So with that, my friends, let's get started. As we head more into this year, I am seeing, and I think I'm going to continue to see a big shift from these big audiences to hyper targeted niche communities as the most significant shift in community building. One client that I work with, Elise, was building her brand for a while, but she kept struggling to make what she felt were true connections with her audience. She had a wide reach, but she kept feeling that the engagement just wasn't as strong as it could be. And so we did a few things to support that. We focused on refining her messaging to speak to her ideal clients. We really rooted in to what was the experience that she was wanting to create for this ideal client once they were in her world. And the result from this is that Elise went from feeling like she was just talking into a void with pieces of content to actually having conversations with clients who were ready to invest. We were able to narrow down her niche and really tailor her messaging around the desires that her clients had. But most importantly, what that led to was deeper engagement. Because when you speak to the right people, you don't need massive numbers. You just need that focused connection. And so I want to talk about like, what does that actually mean? And so I want to use this idea of a niche community right Niche communities are thriving. It's about quality over quantity. The engagement's more valuable than sheer size. But. But how do we really know how to refine the audience targeting and what's worked best when deepening that? And I truly believe that to deepen engagement, we need to target people who resonate with our core message, not just the offers that we are creating. So I'll give you an example. One of my clients, Dana, she's a business coach and she came to me really feeling overwhelmed with how to scale. She was worried about being too niche. She was worried about not being able to attract enough people. But when we aligned her messaging around women who just want to essentially step into their power without sacrificing their sanity, that's when everything clicked for her, because that's kind of the world that she's in. And so we were able to really craft messaging that positioned her as that thought leader for women. And this clarity allowed her to create content that wasn't. That didn't just feel like generic surface level advice. It actually directly spoke to what they were experiencing. And most importantly, it put her in the driver's seat of leadership, made her be so obvious as the choice of the person of authority that they needed to learn from. And I think that that is a huge distinction in how we need to go about having this community first mindset and how we create content for it. That it's not just about sharing tips, it' not just about value, but it's really, how am I leading? Right? Because followers don't follow followers, they follow leaders. And community needs leaders. They need people to lead them to where it is that they're going. And so we really have to hone in and honor who we are as leaders and who we are as people in positions of authority. Stop hiding that, you know, like, actually let that radiate. That kind of goes back to that episode that I did on using beauty as a strategy. If you haven't listened to it, you should. It was a couple of weeks ago, but it's kind of of that mindset about how are we moving people to where it is that we want them to go? How are we enticing and creating a feeling that goes beyond just the surface? One way that we can do this is really thinking about the different platforms that we use. So I'm going to take Instagram, for example, and how we can approach Instagram in terms of our community building. How can we attract people on these platforms? How can we make sure that we are not just attracting them and providing value for them, but we're actually showcasing our leadership. And so for me in my business and for a lot of my clients businesses, Instagram is the most powerful front door channel. But what I've also found to be just as crucial is my podcast. You know, it's not just a place for me to share expertise, but this is really where I go deeper. You know, I build relationships with you over time, you come back. Over time you're able to drop into so many different types of podcast episodes and conversations that are going to hit so differently depending on where you're at in your business and where you're at in your journey. And I really use podcasting as a consistent touch point where listeners can get to know me, they can learn from me, they can feel like they're part of the journey that, that we are essentially on together. And I mean, yes, it's one of the also the best ways to warm up leads. But more importantly, I think that a piece of content that goes beyond an Instagram story or an Instagram reel, and when you're really kind of zoom, zooming out and thinking about content strategy and how it supports you in building community, is that each piece of content that you create, and this is why I love podcasting, because each episode can essentially lead to deeper engagement, lead to deeper calls to action, lead to more thought provoking conversations. And it's all strategically woven into the content that I create. And that's really how I want you to be thinking about it too. It's like, how is every piece of content that I create, no matter what platform it's on, how is it woven together so that listeners or consumers or community members can naturally see how we can work together?
- [07:31]
Unknown
Hey friends, it's Julie. Now, all the time I hear from so many of you that you're wanting recommendations of people that I know, that I like, that I trust, that can help you build your business. So if you've ever thought about launching a podcast or already have one, but want to finally get out of the weeds of editing, uploading and managing all the moving pieces, I have to tell you about Commonwealth Company. Now, I've been working with Erin and her team at Commonwealth Co for over a year now, and they handle absolutely everything for this very show that you're listening, listening to or watching right now. From editing to production, to making sure it all sounds polished and professional, they are my go to source for all things podcast production. And when you let them know I sent you, you get a little savings, you'll save 10% off your first month of services. Again, I cannot recommend them enough for all of your podcast production needs. Just head over to commonwealth-co again, that's commonwealth-co.com and mention my name when you reach out for 10% off your first month of services.
- [08:37]
Julie Solomon
And I think that that is a big one that I don't know if people really see the value of as much. I think a lot of times, you know, people just see it as, oh, it's a lot of work, you know, to have these multiple platforms and it is. And I, I'm not a firm believer that you need to have multiple platforms and be everywhere. I'm not, I'm, I'm on Instagram and I'm on podcasts predominantly. But I do think that really thinking of matter where you choose to land, it needs to be through that connection of deeper, more thought provoking, more intentional relationship building. This is another reason why I don't really believe in freebies and in terms of how it helps you grow in scale. And so I want to kind of break this down and really where this idea comes from is that there is a growing shift right now toward audience to community monetization and like how are we essentially turning casual followers into paying community members that want to be here for the long haul. And that's why I don't really believe in freebies the way in which I think that they supported a lot of online business owners in like the late 2010s. And what I mean by freebies, it's not like necessarily free experiences or free trainings. Like I will still do some of those every now and then when it makes sense. What I'm talking about are like lead magnets and you know, opt ins that are designed just to grow your email list. There's so many other more connected, integrated, meaningful, intentional ways to grow your email list nowadays. And I want to explain why, if you are constantly offering free content in exchange for emails, what you're doing is that you're attracting people who are looking for free value. They might not be ready to pay or more importantly, they might not even be ready to invest in a deeper relationship with you, invest in time and getting to know you as a coach, as a mentor, as a service provider. On a deeper level, that person, if they're not interested in that, they're going to be a lot harder to convert and they're going to be a lot harder to please. So when you give away content without a clear intention behind it, it can dilute your brand and it can make it so much harder to convert followers into paying clients. It can also diminish your brand's essence, your brand's beauty, your brand's voice, your brand's mission. So if that's the case, you may be thinking, okay, well then, Julie, how do do I build community? How do I get people into my world? How do I grow my list? So what I believe in is more focusing on something that is lower ticket, meaning it's going to cost something. It doesn't have to cost a lot, but it's going to cost something. But in exchange, you're not just giving them an opt in or a lead magnet or some kind of diluted freebie. You're giving them something that's high value. You're giving people a taste of what it's like to work with you behind a paywall. And these are things, offers, whatever they are for you, that speak directly to the transformation that your ideal client is seeking, rather than offering just information. Why? Because when you speak directly to the transformation that they're seeking, you are instantly creating a deeper relationship with them than you would if you're just offering information. Why? Because anybody can offer information. A robot AI ChatGPT can offer information. But when you say, hey, I'm here to offer a transformation, I see you, I hear you, I'm with you. That is a different energy. So the shift here was moving just from collecting a bunch of leads to really giving yourself the permission to create a high value experience and whatever that is for you that people would actually want to be a part of. And here's the thing, if you're gonna offer something free, you have to make sure it's intentional. If you want to build a strong community from it. It has to connect directly to where your ideal client is and where it is that they're going, because that's where the transformation is. And so I think that's just a really good thing to remember. When we think about the growing shift and when we think about community and when we think about building community that is strong and rooted, that's going to be here for a while. I think that that is a really important kind of shift in the mindset and it also allows you just to kind of breathe a little bit and create not more, but better, in my opinion. Now the other thing that I think is really important when we're talking about community and really building a community first brand is this idea about sense of urgency. Sense of urgency around pricing, sense of urgency around your offer, sense of urgency around working with you and what strategies really move the kind of community that you want in your world. And what doesn't.
- [13:48]
Unknown
When I first launched my online coaching business, I was juggling everything like so many of us. Writing the content, managing the DMs, setting up the offers, doing all the backend funnels, figuring out how to make it all look and feel aligned not only from a brand perspect, but from a customer experience perspective. And honestly, it was so overwhelming. I remember thinking back at that time how I wish that I had had a business partner that could really support the backend while I focused on what I do best, which is messaging strategy and serving my clients. But as we know, being able to do our best requires us to have a lot of systems and processes to support that. And that is why I love to recommend Shopify. Shopify powers millions of businesses globally, including coaches, service providers and creatives. Building personal brands and businesses with beautiful, ready to use templates and very smart AI tools that write product descriptions and headlines for you.
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Shopify makes it really easy to build.
- [14:50]
A brand, a line storefront that actually.
- [14:53]
Julie Solomon
Sells so you can focus on what you do best.
- [14:56]
Unknown
Turn your big business idea into. With Shopify on your side, sign up for your $1 per month trial and start selling today at shopify.com influencer. Go to shopify.com influencer shopify.com/influencer.
- [15:18]
Julie Solomon
So creating a sense of urgency is an art form. And there are of course many different strategies that you can use to drive this, especially when promoting very high value offers. Right? One effective approach that you could use, and I'm just gonna, you know, talk about these fast, is like limited time bonuses, special pricing, limited time discount, you know, VIP bonuses, all that kind of thing, Right? That said though, here's where I think there's a key distinction between building a more rooted, fruitful community versus not, I don't believe that the majority, not all, but that the majority of your ideal clients need urgency to buy from you if your messaging is dialed in and if it's truly rooted in the transformation that you provide them. This is a critical part of my approach of how I sell and really a critical part of my evolution as a brand. And again, going back to the idea of like, what is your brand beauty, right? It's going to be different for all of us. But for me, if I could paint the picture of the most beautiful brand that I could possibly have, it is not gonna be filled with a bunch of urgency tactics. It's just not. So if you've done the work to craft messaging that speaks directly to your ideal clients desires and transformations and aspirations, they're actually gonna feel compelled to act on their own. There's not an urgency that's needed. And I've even tested this out like I have tested it out along the years of me doing this. And I promise you, the desire for the transformation that should be so strong that the urgency to buy actually becomes a natural byproduct, not something that you have to implement in order to get the sale. The other thing is that when your messaging is aligned with those core desires, urgency isn't a hard sell. It's just the natural consequence of them seeing the value that you bring. And that's why I focus so heavily on messaging clarity in my business and in my offers. It's why I'm an expert at that. And I am always working on strengthening my expertise at that. Because when you get that right, you do not need to force people to act. They are going to feel compelled to take action themselves.
- [17:42]
Unknown
So, yes.
- [17:42]
Julie Solomon
Can urgency strategies be effective? Sure. But I think the real key to building the kind of community that I know that you want, that reflects that beautiful brand that I know that you want. The real key to driving urgency is making sure that your messaging is so aligned and so clear that your ideal clients know exactly why they need you and why they need you right now. And so the urgency isn't just a tactic. It actually becomes part of the transformation that you're offering. And that is huge. That also leads me to the next thing and the final thing before I wrap this up, and that is retention. You cannot have a community if you have a revolving door of people constantly coming out and coming in. That is not how you build a strong community. Retention is what keeps a community thriving. And that's everything. And for me, I think the key and what I really work with my clients on is, yes, providing consistent value, but most importantly, fostering the authentic relationships that are necessary for retention and creating that ongoing transformation for your members. And this is all about meeting them where they are and then you having the skill set and you having the offer flow and the positioning set up in your business to not only meet them where they're at today, but to be able to continue to meet them as they grow and evolve. So for example, a client comes into your world today, you help them solve a specific problem. Within three months that problem is solved. Guess what? Now they have a new problem and they have a new transformation and they have new desires that they want. You need to be able to meet them there. Then six months from now you need to be able to meet them there. Then a year from now, you need to be able to meet them there. That is how you keep retention flowing. It's not just about keeping people engaged for the sake of it or for the short term. It's about ensuring that they feel like they're consistently progressing toward their goals and you are always there to make that next goal happen for them. For example, with the Revenue accelerator and then my High Touch VIP sessions, my luminary world, my mastermind, we actually have a structure where members not only get core content right, but it's also tailored guidance through the one on one intensives, through the VIP sessions. So when clients see their unique challenges being addressed in real time, they feel seen, they feel valued. We have benchmarks of what they have to meet and that directly impacts their long term engagement and retention with us as a business. So it's about going beyond just delivering content, but it's really about providing hands on actionable support that moves the needle for them now and three months from now, six months from now, a year from now. The other thing is community connection. I think that it is so easy for an online community to become just another place where people consume content, but you really have an opportunity here when it comes to retention to foster a real sense of belonging. This is where you get to create opportunities for members to share win struggles advice with each other. But it goes beyond just a community portal. This is about you being able to create. And every business is going to be different, every team structure is going to be different, but this is about you really setting the tone with yourself, with your team, no matter how big or small, with the people that you work with, to let them know, like, this is what we are creating as an experience for our ideal clients so that they know exactly what it is that we do here, where we're going, who this is for. This is where you know you have to make those key decisions of. And like what I talk about with my team, I said this, you know, earlier this year, I was like, what do I need to raise the bar? And for me, like, I want everyone that comes into my world, no matter where they're at in my world, no matter where they're at in their business. I want Magical to be the standard. I want Magical to be the standard in terms of their experience, in terms of support, in terms of communication, in terms of troubleshooting, whatever it is. We have to be a reflection in a mirror of how this can be. It's not about just settling, but it's about how do we actually create and be a mirror and show them what's possible to have a true sense of belonging, a true sense of deep relationships and deep connectivity, no matter where they are on their path. So that they feel like whenever they drop in, that it's about progress, not perfection, but that they've got somebody that has their back, they've got somebody that hears them, you know, that they feel held. They feel heard in a way in which makes it safe, but also makes it feel expansive for them to move forward. Also, I think another thing is, is. Is really supporting people outside of the business dynamic, outside of the community. You know, I want my clients to be able to go to their spouses, their support system, whoever that is, and be like, this is exactly what happened this week. This is exactly what I'm working on. This is exactly how I've progressed. These are the challenges, and this is what we're doing about it. These are the solutions that we figured out for those challenges. To me, that's. That's what the real sense of belonging is about. It is not just this transactional execution of an offer, but it's really about allowing yourself as the leader, as the visionary, as the coach, to hear and hold them in a way that allows them to grow and thrive and really figure out for yourself, like, what is that magical experience that I am creating? So those retention strategies that I use, they. They center around creating a very customized experience. And even when I first started out, you have to remember, I'm like nine years into my business now, but even when I was starting out, I would just try to think of ways to make as customized as I could, really providing that ongoing transformation. So I don't want you to feel like, oh, well, I'm just getting started, so I can't do this. Absolutely, you can do this. Or maybe you're thinking, I'm five years in, I'm too late. Absolutely, you're not too late. What keeps the community feeling connected, celebrated, and consistently challenged to level up is what keeps them there. That is the magic. And when you do that, your community will thrive long term, for sure. So with that, my friends, those are just some off the cuff, babbling ways that I have really been rooting into community and what it means to have one in 2025 as we go on.
- [24:22]
Unknown
Throughout the rest of this year.
- [24:23]
Julie Solomon
I hope today's conversation was supportive for you. I hope it gave you maybe some new aha Moments. Maybe it unlocked some moments of resistance or places that you've been stuck if it did, I would love to hear what really resonated with you. Please slide into my DMs and let me know. I love your feedback.
- [24:41]
Unknown
I love knowing what's supportive for you.
- [24:43]
Julie Solomon
I love knowing what you want more of. Maybe what's not so supportive for you, what would be more supportive for you. That's another way that we build community about meeting our incredible community members where they are and then helping them level up from there to create that magical experience. So I would love to hear from you. Thank you so much for being here with me today. I will see you next week, same time, same place.
- [25:10]
Unknown
As always, thank you so much for joining me today and every week here on the Influencer Podcast. If you're wanting to dive deeper into the topics and discussions that we have here, I would encourage you to head over to juliesolomon.net and sign up for my weekly newsletter. It is in our amazing newsletter community.
- [25:30]
Julie Solomon
That we are able to really support.
- [25:32]
Unknown
You you on a much larger scale. And I love to do a ton of amazing things that I send inside.
- [25:38]
Julie Solomon
Your inbox every single week.
- [25:39]
Unknown
So just head over to juliesolomon.net you'll.
- [25:42]
Julie Solomon
See a little spot there that you.
- [25:43]
Unknown
Can add your information in and you.
- [25:45]
Julie Solomon
Will get on the list and start receiving all of that good stuff.