Justin Welsh is wrong about value

Dear friend,

A couple of weeks ago I read a newsletter article from famous solopreneur Justin Welsh about how to grow your social media channel for your brand or business.

Justin is a very big internet personality in the field of solopreneurship (A one-person business).

His personal brand makes millions every year through online courses and affiliate marketing.

In the issue, Justin followed up on what is apparently a recurring question from aspiring entrepreneurs:

"How to grow my audience on social media?"

Justin claimed that growing an audience is the wrong strategy when starting off. To him, you should only aim to provide value instead and wait for the audience to materialize.

Today I will tell you why this crazy idea won't grow any of your channels in 2024 or even 2124, and what to do instead if you're looking to advertise your part-time side hustle or lifestyle service business and find new customers.

The paradox of the creator

There's so much content today online that to truly stand out one has to sound as contrarian as possible.

Every content creator sooner or later will fall into this trap - Except for us, obviously (wink wink).

It's the paradox of the creator.

Despite Justin's massive success, he is no exception to the rule.

This approach demands that you criticize the mainstream making it look silly and then provide a revolutionary idea nobody ever thought about before.

This is how it usually begins...

• 99% of people believe that...

• The majority of entrepreneurs think...

• The most common question people have is...

Then proceeds to display a groundbreaking thought nobody was thinking about.

• But the reality is that...

• But in reality, this is how it works...

• Unfortunately, they don't know that...

Now, nothing wrong with that approach. I use it too. It does work to catch people's attention.

BUT

• Is the mainstream really silly?

• Are people who voted for Trump all morons?

• Are followers who ask questions about how to grow on social media all stupid?

Think about that for a moment...

Value is a subjective metric

As for Justin's claim about social media, the problem with value is that it's a subjective metric.

What matters is how something is perceived as valuable not how valuable it actually is.

If this wasn't the case, all outstanding businesses would thrive.

Unfortunately, it's only the outstanding businesses that get noticed that thrive.

Justin forgot about a very important rule in nature that, until machines take over the world, NOBODY will ever be able to change.

The heuristic of social proof

“The greater the number of people who find any idea correct, the more a given individual will perceive the idea to be correct”

From “Influence” by Robert B. Cialdini (Not an affiliate!)

See two restaurants...

• Restaurant1

• Restaurant2

Both say: Here we cook the better seafood in town

But Restaurant1 has thousands of reasonably positive reviews.

Restaurant2 has none.

Before having tried any of the food, which restaurant do you think most people will go for?

Surely, we all agree that Restaurant 2 might be just as outstanding as Restaurant 1 but until we know it, our innate instincts will direct us to the best decision to make: Restaurant 1.

From a survival standpoint, we've been engineered like this. If this wasn't the case, we would have gone extinct.

It's called "Social Proof" and it's a vastly recognized rule in marketing and behavioural science.

The chicken or the egg?

You might be wondering what comes first then.

Am I saying that social proof is more important than value?

Not at all!

But it should not be easily dismissed as I see big content creators doing all too often.

From their perspective, it's easy to grow by providing valuable content because they already have someone to feed it to.

When I was starting on Twitter, I was

• Posting every day 3 times a day

• Writing 3-4 threads per week.

I was very consistent and did all of that for about 3 to 4 months before realizing that something was wrong.

Was I providing poor value?

It's certainly possible.

The problem is nobody was engaging in the first place so I had no way to know it.

Things changed when I started to reach out directly to other content creators.

The assumption was that by knocking on their door they would one day stop by my neighbourhood too.

I was focusing on social proof (getting people to line up to enter my restaurant).

And it did work to catch people's attention.

Value is important

Now, it's good to get people to try your food. Because it's the only way you know if it's tasty or not.

But the mistake many creators make is the opposite.

They focus on social proof only forgetting about value altogether.

Remember Restaurant 2 above?

If you did try to get in and taste their food, and the food was awful, you certainly wouldn't go back would you.

In the same fashion, if people do stop by your account but:

• Your profile is messy

• You don't have a clear value proposition

• The content you provide is poor

They'll leave real quick.

How to combine value and social proof

Ideally, you want to deliver the best value possible, with the aim of collecting the most social proof possible.

Sounds hard?

It should be. Easy things rarely produce any meaningful results.

So you need to compromise on value first:

• Forget about ground-breaking ideas

• Create the most valuable content you can

• Don’t spend too much time on it

• Focus on getting people to see that content.

To my knowledge, the best way to obtain social proof is to actively get it.

For example, say there are some aspiring or actual entrepreneurs in the same industry as you, with a similar audience and account development.

Pick 5 to 7 of these people and start leaving intelligent comments below what they post. I promise you that sooner or later they'll get interested in you and check out your profile too.

Once they do that...

Are they fully engaging with your content as well?

By this I mean, do they comment and eventually follow or just leave random likes?

• YES: It is probably valuable enough.

• NO: You need to adjust.

That's the game when you're starting.

Surely Justin knows this well and he's proven it.

TL;DR

Focusing on providing value is a too simplistic strategy for growing your social media channel if you're starting from 0.

If nobody gets to see your content, it doesn't matter how valuable it is.

Focus on getting as many people as possible to see some of your content first, then adjust accordingly.

Increase the value while you're moving along.

Alright.

I hope this was useful, but even more, "I hope you'll do something with it".

Here's Justin's publication if you're curious.

I'll see you next week.

Yours truly,

N.

Sent while being very mainstream