🛼 Let’s get transparent — Our top 10 marketing practices at Softer Sounds

[0:03] Off the Grid is a podcast for small business owners who want to leave social media without losing all their clients. I'm Amelia Hruby, a writer, speaker and founder of Softer Sounds podcast studio. On this show I share stories strategies and experiments for growing your business with radical generosity and energetic sovereignty.

Download your free leaving social media toolkit at softersounds.studio/byeig and join us as we do it all off the grid.

[0:32] Music.

Hello, and welcome to Off The Grid a podcast about "Leaving Social Media" without losing all your clients. I'm Amelia Hruby. I am a writer, speaker and the founder of Softer Sounds a feminist podcast studio for creative entrepreneurs. I am also the host of this podcast and your guide and fellow explorer as we launch and grow thriving, feel-good businesses without social media.

If you're listening along live, we are just coming back from a midseason break. I don't know about you, but I love breaks, pauses, deep breaths, I feel like there are opportunities to rest, to integrate, to recover, even to celebrate.

So, on our break, we announced a very cool giveaway and some upcoming live events that you can head back to the last episode and hear about. But now for today, we're going to remember and integrate a little bit of everything we've heard so far before I dive into my favorite marketing channels, strategies and tools that I use at Softer Sounds.

[1:42]: So, what are we integrating as we head into that conversation? Well, we've covered a lot in the first six episodes of this podcast. We've talked about the myths that social media tells us and how to compare them to our lived experience on social media platforms as small business owners.

We talked about how I left social media and how you can too, and I shared my five-step plan for leaving any social media platform. I also shared my list of 100 ways to share your work off of social media, that one is a crowd pleaser. It is the most bookmarked thing I have ever created. So, head back to that episode, if you want to listen to that list, or get your own copy of it.

After that we explored how to create a fun feel good marketing plan. Based on creative marketing experiments. We talked about my framework for centering radical generosity in your business without totally burning out in the process.

We talked about how to cultivate energetic sovereignty and invited our first guest to share more about centering relationships in our marketing. So, in Episode Six, I had my dear friend and collaborator, Mary Grace Allerdice on the podcast, and she talked about how email is her love language and how we can cultivate energetic sovereignty in our bodies, our businesses in our lives. And then here we are, that's a lot, right?

So, I hope the midseason break was a nice reprieve, and that you're feeling as ready to dive back into this exploration of how to leave social media without losing your clients and customers as I am.

So, what are we diving back into? As we head into the second part of season one of Off The Grid, we're going to be focusing on different marketing channels and strategies that you can apply in your business. We really started this in the last episode when we talked about email with Mary Grace.

[3:35]: Email is certainly one nonsocial media channel that you can use to market your business and sell your offerings or products. But now in the second half of season one, we're going to talk about many more channels and strategies.

We're going to talk about podcasts. We're going to talk about Pinterest. We're going to talk about systems. We're going to talk about hiring.

And all of that will give you lots of ideas for new marketing experience for your business, including a lot of hands on how to’s, because I'm a Capricorn rising, and I love practical advice, as you can probably tell on this podcast. I'm like, all here to chat about a big idea. And then I'm like, how do I implement this? So, that's what I'm gonna share in the second part of season one of Off The Grid.

[4:16]: Okay, what are we doing today? Today, we are doing one of my very favorite things, which is getting to see behind the scenes in other people's businesses. We're all curious. We're all a little nosy. We all want to know what other people are doing right? I certainly do.

So, today, we're gonna get that behind-the-scenes peek into whose business you may be wondering well, as you might expect, it's mine. In today's episode, I'm going to walk you through all of the ways that I market and sell our offerings at Softer Sounds, or at least the top 10 ways.

And I'm going to emphasize which ones have been super successful, and which ones have been a mixed bag so far. My goal is for you to feel inspired. And to learn from my mistakes, trying to help you start out a couple of steps ahead of where I am, or was, we're gonna get real today, we're gonna get vulnerable today.

And I'm gonna let you see everything I do, which is a little terrifying, but also, really exciting. I love inviting people in closer. And I just don't think there's any reason that our marketing tools or strategies need to be a secret from each other, we can all have more thriving, feel good businesses, there'll be easier for us all to have thriving, feel good businesses, if we share the things that we are learning and doing together.

[5:40]: So, before I dive into my list of my top 10, marketing, channels, strategies, tools, all of the above that I do at Softer Sounds, I want to give a quick plug to leave a voice message for the podcast for me so that I can hear what you're thinking about.

There's a link in the show notes, you can also, go to speakpipe.com/offthegrid, and leave us a quick voice message. Tell me what questions you have. Tell me what marketing strategies or channels you love that aren't social media, like what's working really well in your business, or what's really not working in your business.

I want to know how I can better support you and your marketing and your business growth off of social media. So, I'm gonna get super vulnerable today, I'm going to invite you to be vulnerable in those voice messages, head to the link in the show notes to leave yours now. If you listen to the last episode, you know, that's also how you're entered to win our giveaway.

So, go ahead, press pause, leave that message. And then when you come back, we're going to dive into the top 10 ways that we market our offerings at Softer Sounds.

[Music]

[7:00]: Okay, the top 10 ways that we market our offerings at Softer Sounds. Number 1, the "Leaving Social Media" toolkit is the tools I use. I know this might feel like a cop out if you're somebody who's been listening all along, and you're like, Amelia, I already downloaded that. But if you have not gotten your free download of the "Leaving Social Media" toolkit, I want to be really clear that that is what I use!.

Those tools are what I go back to time and time again at Softer Sounds. That five step plans in there is how I left social media, that list of 100 ways to share your work off social media, I returned to that all the time. And the creative marketing experiments database is the core of my fun feel good marketing plan. I was literally updating it this morning.

So, the number one tool that I use is the tool that I created. Those are the things that are the core of our marketing plans here as Softer Sounds. And they're the three tools I wanted to share with you as you start your journey to grow your business off social media. So, number one, the "Leaving Social Media" toolkit.

[8:12]: Number 2, I pitch clients directly via email. Now this one is a little scary, I understand that cold emails or messages can feel really overwhelming. And sometimes they can be, frankly, like, gross and weird. So, I am not encouraging you to spam people. And let me tell you a little bit more about how I use emails to pitch clients directly.

When I launched Softer Sounds, I emailed 44 people in my network to share the business with them. And I did that, I think, over like two or three days. So, when I was preparing to launch the company, I had my offerings figured out, I had a couple core things I was like, this is what I want to do with people.

And then I made a list of everyone I could think of that I'd worked with in the past five years, who would either be interested in knowing what I'm up to, or potentially interested in starting a podcast. And I emailed those people with a really nice like, Hi, how are you? Here's what I've been up to like over the past however long since we've talked here.

[9:18]: I'm really excited to share the here's what I'm doing now. Here's the link to the website. If you're interested in podcasting, I'd love to talk to you. If not, like, please think of me and share my work. If you come across anyone who's interested in podcasting, those emails were super successful.

I would say the first like three months of my business ran purely off of business that I got from those emails. Now, maybe you're not launching your business, maybe you're like, really, I've been in business for five years. No one cares that I have a new offering. I'm not going to email my whole network that that's great. I don't think that this approach is for every moment of your business, right? Like you're not gonna email your whole network every time you put out a new product. That's what your email list, which we'll talk about is for not your like direct one to one outreach.

But another way that I pitch clients directly via email is that I listen to a lot of podcasts.

[10:07]: And anytime I hear someone mention that they need an editor or want an editor or like are thinking about that for the future, I email them. I've got a little template at this point where I introduce myself, I share why I think we'd be really aligned. And then I just send them a link to my offerings and say, if they're ever interested, I'd love to chat more, with a link to book a discovery call with me.

I'm not sure I have yet to book a client that way I'm trying to remember. But I've gotten lots of enthusiastic responses that say, like, this is great, I'm really excited to know about this, and I've bookmarked it.

And that kind of interaction always pays off in the long run in my experience. So, again, the number two marketing effort that I used at Softer Sounds, is that I pitch clients directly via email.

Number one, was I use the "Leaving Social Media" toolkit number two is I pitch clients directly or potential clients directly via email.

[10:59]: Number 3: I create SEO optimized blog posts. So, if you have a business, you likely have a website. Ideally, your website has two types of traffic, direct traffic, which is people typing in your website, and referral traffic. So, people coming to your website from social media, if you're still on there, from emails, and from search engines.

One of the primary sources for referral traffic is search engines. So, search engine optimization, in its most basic form, is optimizing your website So, that search engines can index it, and it will rank highly in searches.

Now, that's still kind of technical language. What does that mean? Search Engine Optimization means making sure everything on your website is set up. So, that is the most likely to appear as the top answer for searches that you want it to show up for.

So, for instance, I run a small business that's based on podcasting. A search that I might want to optimize my website for would be how to start a podcast. And then I might create a lot of content on my website about how to start a podcast, which signals to search engines that they should make my website show up higher when people search how to start a podcast.

Now, in reality, my tiny podcast studio cannot really compete with the giant media outlets that are constantly setting up how to start a podcast blog-posts. That's not actually a search term that I'm optimizing for, because it's just one that's really saturated already.

So, the approach that I've used is to think about other more niche parts of the podcast launch process, and to create really thoughtful and rich blog posts around those more specific questions than the general how to start a podcast question.

So, on the Softer Sounds website, there is a free resources section where all of these blog posts live. I decided that I didn't want my website to simply have a page that says blog. Because I didn't feel- I was like, who cares about reading a podcast studios blog, right? Like, I'm rarely, like, excited to go read someone's blog on their website, not 100% true. Most of the time, true. I'm just like, like, what could be in their blog? I'm not sure I care what this business’ blog has to say.

[13:18]: But what I always want when I meet a business for the first time is to go get that free stuff, right? I'm like, what are the free things where I can learn from them before I buy something from them. So, on the Softer Sounds website, I use that logic and just made our quote unquote, blog, a free resources page. And if you go to those free resources page, it's full of blog posts that are really rich, and that answer very specific questions about podcasting. So, things like how to find podcast music, how to create your podcast cover art in Canva, how to get all your podcast equipment for under $100. Right? So, these are much more specific questions than how to start a podcast. But as they get served, and as people click on them and use them more, it just boosts my entire website in search engine rankings higher.

So, that's the way that I've created these SEO optimized blog posts, to market Softer Sounds offerings. And I really do think that any business can do this.

Now, I am not an SEO expert, like that was kind of a crash course. But I highly encourage you to go find other SEO resources that can support you. There are lots of great tools out there. And I'll link to some of them in the show notes that I've used in the past. And hopefully if this is something you're interested in, I can get you started on your SEO journey.

[14:43]: The other thing I wanted to say about SEO optimized blog posts that will come up in a few minutes when we talk more about your email list is that every single blog post on my website has a form for capturing email addresses in it. Because what I really want is not just for people to read the blog posts, but for them to opt into an ongoing conversation with me.

So, when you think about your blog posts, you want to be thinking about, what are those search terms I want to show up in? And how do I create content for them? And how am I capturing people that land there and getting into an ongoing conversation with them?

Hopefully that makes sense. If it doesn’t, send in a voice message, ask me more. And I will return to this on a future episode. Link is in the show notes.

Okay, so, quick recap. Today, we're talking about the top 10 ways that we market our offerings of Softer Sounds. And so far, I've shared the "Leaving Social Media" toolkit, pitching clients directly via email, and creating SEO optimized blog posts.

[15:46]: So, let's move on to number four. Another way that I market our offering of Softer Sounds is by joining cool business adjacent online communities.

I'll start with my favorites. And then I'll walk you into my logic for how I use these. So, my two favorite online communities I'm a part of right now are the Holisticism Hub and the North Node hosted by Holisticism.

The Holisticism Hub is a free community for intuitive entrepreneurs and the North Node is a paid membership related to that community. That includes a lot more I say how-to content and exclusive conversations. I love that community because it is full of fellow creative small business owners and big business owners and aspiring business owners. And because my business is set up to work with creative entrepreneurs, by being in the places that creative entrepreneurs are, anytime I introduce myself or talk about my business, or somebody hops in that community with a podcasting question, I get to answer and become the go to podcast person in that space.

[16:48]: So, I love the Holistic System Hub and North Node, like I get a lot of value out of them. And then I'm also able to provide value through my expertise and in providing that I market my offerings, because I'm sharing my business and more people are learning about it.

Another community I love for creative entrepreneurs is The Fiery Well hosted by my friend Patty, who I'm hoping should be on the podcast in a few weeks. And The Fiery Well is more, I'd say, like, focused on tech and systems and your businesses and your business. But there are lots of cool creative business owners in there. And I again, kind of have that mentality of coming in to share to be present, and then to offer value by sharing podcast expertise anytime this comes up.

So, when I say that joining cool online communities is a marketing effort for my business. When I mean, it's really it kind of boils down to networking, but in, like, a lovely values aligned way, not in a spammy way. So, I never go into these spaces and just, like, drop a lead magnet or a paid offering or anything else. I share when that is asked of me when there's an invitation to share.

Like in the Holisticism Hub, there's a thing called Free Offering Friday. And the gist is, you know, we don't do self-promotion in this community. But here's your opportunity to promote something that you have that's a free offer. So, I always drop something in there a different thing each week trying to share something about my podcasting resources. Or if someone asked a direct question about podcasting, or is looking for a podcast editor, I'll go into that thread and answer and share my experience and my offerings.

[18:28]: Online communities can sometimes be immediately effective. Sometimes you will join one and it will just bring like a bunch of people into your business. And sometimes they're a slow burn. I personally like to be in a mix of free and paid communities. I've had better luck sourcing new clients in paid communities than free ones. That's not a rule, but it is like my experience over the past six or nine months.

But I think as you're thinking about this for your business, you want to think about where do my potential customers or clients hang out? So, say you run a retail shop for witches? Where do witches hang out on the internet? And how can you go be in there and be active and get to know people? So, when they think, oh, I need to go buy this, they're like, who do I know that sells this sort of witchy thing they think of you.

You're just you're really, you're building community and you're being a good community member. And this goes back to our last episode with Mary Grace, again, like marketing is about building and nurturing relationships. And so, by joining these online communities, I am building and nurturing relationships. And that brings me business.

I've gotten business from both the communities I've mentioned the North Node and The Fiery Well, both paid communities. So, that's number four. At Softer Sounds, we market our offerings by participating in online communities.

[19:47]: Now, number five, I grow my email list with lead magnets. We talked about this a little bit on the last episode with Mary Grace. And I kind of just alluded to it when I was talking about SEO optimized blog posts.

So, I have created, I'd probably say a half dozen really valuable free tools. They're all PDFs or audio workshops or webinars or whatnot. But they're all free things that I've created for people who want to start or improve their podcasts. And I share those for free in exchange for someone's email address.

So, that's what a lead magnet is, it's trying to bring in new potential customers or clients. By getting their email address in exchange for a free something could be a playlist, could be a how-to, could be, I mean, really could be anything that you're that you want to share that you think that your community like you think it's valuable enough to exchange their email address for.

So, I grow my email list with lead magnets, I put those lead magnets in every single blog post, like every single blog post on my website has a lead magnet embedded in it. There is also a pop up so that if you go to any page on my website, there'll be a pop up that invites you to download a free podcast launch checklist. Or I should say any blog post on my website, it's not across the whole website. But the free resource section is geared towards new podcasters people who want to start a podcast.

[21:20]: So, I'm like, if you're on this page for how to find podcast music, you probably want my free podcast launch checklist. So, there's it's embedded in the bottom of the blog post and it's a pop up, I think when they scroll like a third of the way down the page. That is so much more successful than a general join my mailing list approach. I have used that in the past. I loved it for a very long time, you know, but I think to join someone's mailing list, you already have to be invested in their voice and in what they're doing. But somebody who's just lately on your website, from a search from a search engine, may not know who you are, and may not yet be invested in just like getting your emails in a general sense. But they might be really invested when they read your blog post. And like cool, this is great information, I want the rest of the how to from them. So, they might give you their email address in that way.

So, I think that that's my approach to growing an email list with lead magnets. Please know this thing: none of these things are things I've invented. These are all strategies that I've learned from other places. And actually, like email lists and nurture sequences and things that go deeper than just lead magnets is something I learned a lot from the Holisticism team in the North Node. So, I will just plug that in there. I also learned it from Mary Grace, who had a course on nurture sequences as well. So, lots of great places to go deeper and really learn how to do this.

For now, I'm just saying like, that's one of my strategies, and channels. So, my strategy is to use lead magnets to grow the channel of my email list. The marketing channel is my email list.

Okay, that's our top five. Can you believe it? We already made it through the top five marketing tools that we use at Softer Sounds. I'm going to take a deep breath. You want to take one with me because this is a lot.

[23:08]: All right, I'm gonna inhale. And exhale. I say this every time I do that, but I really wish more podcasts would just like, give us a break. That isn't an ad. All right, great. Don't we want that. Of course, ads are good, too. You're gonna hear one in just a moment. But for now, thanks for taking a deep breath with me. Take a couple more while you listen to this ad break.

[23:45]: Hi Off The Grid listeners, Amelia here interrupting our conversation today because I want to share with you one of my favorite marketing tools.

When I left Instagram, I invited all of my followers to subscribe to my mailing list in order to keep in touch with me and I promised to send them monthly-ish notes on a lot of the themes I used to talk about on social media. I've used many email service providers in my day, but my favorite of all of them is Flodesk.

Flodesk is a gorgeous, easy to use email service provider. It helps you create beautiful, thoughtful emails and even better, it's really set up to help you create easy to use landing pages so people can join your list and workflows. So, you can automate sending messages to folks who sign up through different pages. Flodesk is how I ran all of the welcome sequences and lead magnets at Softer Sounds. It's also how I ran the "Leaving Social Media" toolkit that you might have downloaded after listening to this podcast. I'm surely not sending those emails out myself manually. Flodesk is doing all of that auto magically.

If you'd like to give Flodesk a try, please use my affiliate link below in the show notes. You'll get a discount. I'll get a kick back and we will all send more beautiful emails together. Again, check out the affiliate link in the show notes. For now, we're gonna get back to this episode of Off The Grid.

[25:14]: Okay, So, let's recap the first five, marketing tools, channels strategies that I use at Softer Sounds. The first is the "Leaving Social Media" toolkit. The second is pitching clients directly via email. The third is creating SEO optimized blog posts. The fourth is joining online communities. And the fifth is growing my email list with lead magnets. Now let's dive into the next five.

[25:44]: So, number six, I use Pinterest to drive traffic to my business. Now, you may think to yourself, Amelia, isn't Pinterest just a social media platform? And my answer to that is no. Pinterest is a search engine. So, there's definitely a feed in Pinterest where it algorithmically serves things to you. And in some senses that gives it the appearance of being a social media network. But really what it is doing is asking people to search for things on Pinterest, and then feeding them over time like more and more responses to those searches, and noticing what things they pop open and then feeding them more adjacent results for that.

So, at Softer Sounds I work with a really great partner. Her name is Brooke at Embody Socials. She's going to be on the podcast later this season. And she helps me create Pinterest content and create pins from all of my lead magnets.

So, on Pinterest, I am creating these pins to drive people to the free lead magnet So, that I can get their email address, and they land on my mailing list. So, I am not using Pinterest to promote paid offers, I want to be very clear, there are a few pins that just send people to the business in general. But I use Pinterest to drive traffic to lead magnets and free resources to get people's email addresses. So that on my email list, I can be nurturing them.

[27:23]: So, if you go to the Softer Sounds Pinterest page, you're gonna see a lot of pins, sharing things from our podcast launch checklist sharing our like top three places to get podcast music, sharing our top eight Canva templates for podcast art, I can't even remember all the titles of these things off the top of my head.

But basically, there are many pins for each lead magnet. And they all drive traffic to the website and to the email signups. I do also do paid advertising via Pinterest. And so, I have worked with some of the account managers at Pinterest to set up ads. And to basically just get more and more views of the different content that I have in exchange for those email addresses. And Pinterest is the one place that I use paid ads in my business. We're going to do a whole episode on Pinterest later this season. So, I'm not going to dive into the nitty gritty of that, especially because I'm not an expert in it.

But when I have Brooke on the podcast, we will share a lot more about how to use Pinterest to drive traffic to your business. And again, this goes back to that SEO optimized blog post thing, right like referral traffic is a big source of traffic or like you really want to be courting referral traffic. So, that comes from search engines, and also, from Pinterest. So, Pinterest is the place that I do the paid ads. You can also do paid ads on search engines, such as Google. I'm not currently doing that in my business, but maybe one day.

[28:50]: Okay, let's go to number seven. Another way that I market our offerings at Softer Sounds is I offer free workshops. So, in January of 2022, I offered two Launch
Your Podcast in 2022 workshops. Those are great ways to bring in new potential clients who wanted to start a podcast and to invite them to get to know me better.

Those workshops do a lot of trust building. And then after the workshop, I had a sort of upgrade into a low cost paid offer. There was an opportunity for them to learn my podcast production workflow with me, I think it cost like there's a sliding scale offer. So, it was like $50 to $150 or something like that. So, I find that free workshops are just a really effective tool for building trust with an audience.

So, I advertise those workshops in a few different ways that I'm going to talk about in a second.

But what you might be picking up on, that's going to become one of the key takeaways from this episode is that I offer a lot of free resources to get people on my mailing list where I will then sell them into paid offerings. Those free resources are a lot of just like trust building and goodwill cultivation that I'm doing to as I establish my business and to keep growing off social media.

[30:08]: Now number eight let's move on to number eight. For number eight, I place paid ads in newsletters. This is something that, like, almost every business owner I talk to is not doing that I really want to encourage you to do.

So, anytime I offer a free workshop, I place ads for that workshop in other newsletters that I think have an audience that may be interested in it and aligned with my ideal client.

So, for instance, when I did the Launch Your Podcast in 2022 workshops, I advertised them in a newsletter called pod news. That's all about podcast industry news. I advertise that workshop in a newsletter called I Love Creatives, it's all about creative people, starting cool projects and getting cool jobs. I was like, oh, yeah, those people want to start podcasts. And I got like, over a dozen sign ups a day, I think that that went out.

Those ads generally are low cost. Not all of them. But the ads I've placed at all costs well under $100. And they're great ways to get people into my community. Again, I'm just trying to capture a portion of the audience of someone else's audience that's interested in what I'm doing. So, I advertised free offers and newsletters and that's been a great strategy for me so far.

[31:25]: Number 9: the ninth way that I market or offerings, a softer sound is I guest on podcasts. So, I love to be on other people's podcasts. As you can tell already, I love to talk.

And I think that podcast guesting is becoming a strategy that's talked more and more about to the point where most of my beloved podcasters are like, I get way too many pitches all the time. So, I want to encourage you to be really thoughtful if you're going to pitch people about being on their show, and to pitch people that you really have a strong alignment with, and that you think makes a lot of sense for you to be on. And there's kind of a reason you should be on at that time.

If you want to talk more about advice for guesting on podcast, that'd be a great thing to leave a voice message about and I could do a much more extended segment on this. But what I want to say about guesting on podcasts is really it's just another opportunity for you to get in front of someone else's audience.

Again, we're gonna do some key takeaways in a moment. And that's going to be one of them, like how can you get yourself your business and your offerings in front of someone else's audience where they're at least going to be a handful or a lot of ideal clients for you in that audience.

And when you're on a podcast, someone else has invited you there, they are using the trust they have with their audience to establish trust for you with their audience. And so, it's just a really beautiful way to grow.

[32:47]: And that leads us into number 10. The number 10 marketing strategy that I use at Softer Sounds is I launched a podcast! So, this here Off The Grid podcast that you are listening to. This has been a very successful marketing strategy and channel for Softer Sounds in the sense of it has really grown my audience. It has grown just general awareness about Softer Sounds as a company,

I get way more emails in response to these podcast episodes than I necessarily did in response to some of the other things that I've shared and what I'm doing by offering such a rich and free resource. Like I really think that this podcast is like the most beautiful, richest thing I can give you completely for free. As I'm building, I'm hoping that I'm building trust with you that anything you were to purchase from me in the future would be as valuable. And like I truly believe it is, I try to build this much value into all of my offerings and services, and potential products if I ever launch products in the future.

[33:47]: And by offering something like this podcast where you're spending time with me with my voice, you build that trust, and you're more likely to become a client in the future.

So, hopefully, if you ever decide you want to start a podcast, you'll come to me and we can work together. And if not, that's okay, too. I'm here in the spirit of radical generosity.

Okay, we like breezed through that top 10 list. Like that was really, really fast. So, I want to wrap up with just some takeaways. As we look in the behind the scenes of Softer Sounds, what am I hoping you take away from all of these ways that I market our business is that they are all audience growth efforts.

All of them are trying to bring my business to new audiences. And the reason I'm focusing on that is because I think that often that's what we're trying to do on social media. For those of us who are small business owners who are or have been on social media like myself. We're there because we want new people to find us. We're trying to get new clients; we're trying to make new sales. And so, we're using social media as an audience growth effort. And when I left social media, I had to get really creative and do many more things to grow my audience.

[35:06]: Now, if you remember the episode about our fun, feel good marketing plans. Audience growth is one of the three things we need to do, right? We're growing our audience than we're nurturing our community. And then we're selling our offerings.

So, if I look back at this list of the top 10 things, what are the things that grow my audience at Softer Sounds? Creating SEO-optimized blog posts grows my audience, because I'm trying to bring in new people through search engines and other referral traffic. Joining online communities is an audience growth effort. I am tapping into an existing community to try to get new people to learn about me. Growing my email list with lead magnets, also, an audience growth effort. Using Pinterest to drive traffic to my business, again, new people coming in offering free workshops, new people coming in placing paid ads and newsletters, new people coming in guesting on podcasts, you got it, new people coming in. And launching a podcast is also, trying to capture a new audience. So, of those things that I shared, almost all of them capture a new audience in some way.

Now, one of the things I do to nurture that community, once they are a part of the audience when they're not new, that's where my email list is huge. Right? So, at that point, I am with all of those things, I am capturing people's emails by providing value for them.

Amelia Hruby [36:41]: And then I am providing more value and getting to know them over time on my email list. So, that's the way I nurture my community. The other thing on that top 10 list that is nurturing community is those direct pitches to people I already know. So, when I pitch people directly via email that I already know, in some capacity, that is a nurturing community, it's also a making the sale effort. When I participate in those online communities, I'm a part of, the more I participate, I'm nurturing community over time, right?

Like, in many of these communities, like, there's gonna be a guest on the podcast in a few weeks to talk about podcasting. Her name's Chelsea, and we met in the north node. And we just saw each other posting more and more. So, at a certain point, we're not new to each other anymore. We're just getting to know each other, and we're nurturing community together.

When I offer free workshops, normally, I'm bringing in new people, but I'm really nurturing them once they're in the workshop with me. So, that is also, an audience growth and a nurturing community effort.

[37:43]: Same with launching the podcast, for your first episode, you are new to me, and I was getting to know you, that's audience growth. But have you ever tuned in again, that's nurturing community, that's nurturing our relationship, right?

And if I ever sell something on the podcast that's selling the offer. For now, it's just been an invitation into a lot of free resources and experiences. But you know, in the future that could change.

So, as I share this list of the top 10 ways that I market our offerings at Softer Sounds, it's really a top 10 list of the ways I grow our audience. So, the top 10 ways that we're growing our audience and nurturing them once they're here, and then eventually selling offerings to them.

Ok, I don't know about you, but I'm a little tired after all of that. It definitely felt like a take notes kind of episode. So, I hope that you were able to capture what you wanted to learn and return to it over time.

As we wrap up, I want to encourage you to get your copy of the free "Leaving Social Media" toolkit. Those, again, are the tools that I use as the foundation of our creative marketing experience experiments, and fun, feel good marketing plans here at Softer Sounds.

[39:00]: That's where I think about the sort of strategic efforts I want to do. It's where I make a plan for the channels I'm going to accomplish that with, it's then where I plan out when and how that's going to happen. So, you can get that free database at softersounds.studio/BYEIG, that's BYEIG.

And I also, want to encourage you to leave a voice message. Like of this list of 10 things, what interested you the most? and what questions do you have for me? it's really simple to leave a voice message for the podcast all you do is click the link in the show notes or go to speakpipe.com/OffTheGrid.

A really simple interface will show up. You hit record. You record the message on your computer or phone. You hit stop. And you just enter your name and your email and that's it!

And again when you do that you'll be entered to win a free Instead Deck from Inner Workout. So, it's like a win-win truly for you. But you get both the wins. Because you're gonna get your question answered on a later episode. And you're entered to win a cool deck that'll help you scroll less.

[40:03]: This is the part where I have to say that the giveaway is only open to US residents. I'm really sorry. It's just a shipping issue. But anyone can submit a question and I will do my best to answer it for you on air later this season.

So, that's it for today. Thank you for joining me for another episode of Off The Grid.

I'm really excited to be back from break. I really hope this top 10 List helps you grow your audience, nurture your community and sell your products or offerings.

Next week, I am going to be back to talk to you all about podcasts and how podcasting is a way to slow down, embody your values and think for the long term in your business. All things I love.

So, I can't wait to be back next week. Have a wonderful, wonderful weekend till then and I will see you Off The Grid.

[40:59] Music

Thanks for listening to Off the Grid. Find links and resources in the show notes and don't forget to grab your free leaving social media toolkit at softersounds.studio/byeig. That’s softer sounds dot studio / b y e IG.

This podcast is a Softer Sounds production. Our music is by purple planet and our logo is by n'Atelier studio. If you'd like to make a podcast of your own, we'd love to help.

Learn more about our services at softersounds.studio. Until next time we'll see you off the grid.