3 Keys To Building a Six-Figure Business on Social Media

It’s 08:37 in the morning here in New Zealand.

And I’m knackered.

Skye isn’t sleeping well at the moment, which means Meg and I aren’t, either.

Everything’s harder when you’re tired, but my ability to think clearly and creatively plummets.

Hence why I’ve spent the last 20 minutes staring at my computer trying to think of something to write!

However, that struggle made me reflect on the boxes I need an idea to tick in order to invest the time and energy required to turn it into content.

So I thought I’d share what I came up with – and my reasoning behind it.

Here’s the line I wrote to myself to summarize what I should be looking for:

Find a proven idea you can speak to and that relates to your model/business.

There are three components worth diving into here.

Together, I think they represent a useful trifecta for creating social posts that are both authentic and full of performance potential.

1. Proven

People with an established audience can post anything they want and get results.

People in the growth phase don’t have that luxury.

We aren’t just building a following, we’re building status.

Humans are social, hierarchical creatures.

Strangers on the internet only tend to pay you attention (especially, from what I can tell, in the B2B world) when you’re perceived as having a higher status than them.

For what it’s worth, in a knowledge economy, you can establish that status by proving you know more about someone else on subjects they want to know more about.

But I digress…

My point is that growing an audience is hard.

That’s why it’s sensible to post content with a track record of results.

Think of the topics you cover online. Find people in those general niches who are more established than you.

Then look through their content.

There will be outliers – occasional posts with exponentially more views.

That’s a proven idea.

Don’t just copy it. But take it and put your own spin on it.

This gives you a head start. You aren’t posting at random anymore.

You already know this idea resonates with your target audience, which means it’s more likely to get engagement.

2. Personal

A proven idea is great.

But I also want to be able to speak to it.

While I don’t need to be an expert on the topic, I do want to have some affinity, experience, or familiarity with it.

Social media makes it incredibly easy to pretend you know more than you do.

But I don’t want to just ‘grow a following’.

I want to a) be proud of how I do it and b) have an engaged audience who knows I’m not going to BS them.

That’s mainly because I want to be a good person.

But it’s also strategic.

One of my core beliefs is that having an audience will be a huge advantage (if not essential) in the future given the rise of AI.

In other words, this isn’t a short-term pursuit for me.

I don’t just want an audience now. I want an audience that’ll be interested in what I’m doing, saying, and selling in 30 years’ time.

And that’s never going to happen unless people trust me.

I could try to bullshit my way to quicker results. But it’d backfire over time.

So, I’m trying my hardest to speak to what I know in my content – or make it very clear when I’m giving advice based on something I’ve seen versus experienced myself.

3. Relevant

There are two ways to monetize an audience:

From the very beginning. Or as an afterthought.

It’s tempting to grow the following first and assume you’ll be able to sell to them in future.

The problem is that you build an audience of viewers, not buyers.

It’s a completely different mindset, so the danger is they simply won’t buy whatever you try to sell them later.

A more efficient approach for anyone in the education space (i.e., you have a skill you teach others) is to sell a product from the start.

From there, you can orient your content accordingly.

Instead of posting at random, you can create posts that relate to your products and services – and/or the audience you’re targeting.

So, a proven idea is great.

And a proven idea you can speak to from experience is even better.

But the magic happens when it also relates to what you’re selling.

The good news is most topics connect to your products somehow.

For example, this is a post about ideas.

And the Daily Content Machine is a product I sell that puts idea generation on autopilot for anyone creating content.

If you don’t have the time or desire to audit your competitors for proven ideas that you can speak to, then it’s a very effective alternative.

In March, the first 50 people who buy it can get 50% off ($20 vs $40) using code DCM250.

​Here’s the link if you want to check it out.