Social Media Project Introduction and a Quick Update

I wanted to provide an update on a few of the things happening in my business.  I typically do this on a monthly basis.  

However, beyond just a normal update, I also want to provide a few more details on the social media project that I mentioned briefly in my last post.  I'll dive into what the social media project is and why I'm doing it.

First, let's jump into what happened in the last month…hopefully some of these updates will be useful to you in your own business.

Monthly Update

Even though I no longer give income numbers, I still want to give a general update on what I've been up to. 

Business sale

As mentioned last month, I was able to find a buyer for my “Home Goods Brand” through EmpireFlippers.  We agreed on a price and started the due diligence period.

Unfortunately, the process has taken much longer than anticipated.  We agreed on a price in early October, and now it's near the end of November and things are still in limbo.

The primary reason is that the new buyer is located in Canada and needed to get a US business entity and US bank account set up.  Anything that involves attorneys, accountants, and the government can take a long time.

However, I'm happy to say that in the past week the new buyer was able to get everything set up and we are now in the process of transferring everything over.  I was hopeful it would happen this week; however, due to Thanksgiving…I expect everything to close out next week sometime.

Fitness Brand

I'm excited for the future of this brand.  This is the brand that I've building the Facebook page for (see my post on 10,800 followers in 17 days).  We are seeing some really high engagement with this audience; especially, in the new private Facebook group I created last month.

This new private facebook group already has over 500 members and it's INSANELY active.  Here's an image showing the top posts in the past 30 days.

Getting 50 or 60 comments and 100+ likes/reactions is HUGE for a group of around 500 people.

By comparison, here is the Niche Pursuits private FB group with over 16,000 members.  The top posts are not anywhere close to as engaging as the top posts for my fitness brand:

I think it's great that I have a 16,000 member private FB group, but I wish the engagement was much closer to that of this newly formed group in the fitness niche.

In addition to jumpstarting the social media presence of this brand, we are also working on a few new products.  We are currently manufacturing 3 new products that we plan to sell on Amazon and through our own website.  

In addition, I'm working with a partner to create a membership website that people will pay $10 a month for (hopefully).  We plan to make the private FB group part of the membership along with a few other information/digital “products” that we believe people are willing to pay for.

I'm hoping to launch the new membership area in December.  

The plan is to the leverage social media to grow this membership product.  (This will likely include both organic reach and paid ads on Facebook).

Social Media Project

I've mentioned the social media project and have been in the planning stages, but what exactly is it?  Ah, that is the question!  I share my 10 point plan and explanation of it below…

So, I sent out a survey a few weeks ago asking people what their experience and concerns are with social media.  I was trying to get a feel for what the interest level was in learning about social media.

Here's some of the response I got:

Most people are getting none or very little social media traffic to their sites; over 70%.  So, there is room for this type of traffic growth for most people.

Nearly 80% of people are open to seeing strategies for both free and non-free strategies.  I think this is realistic for most business owners…free is great, but if you can pay and convert at a profitable rate, that's great too.

I'm not surprised to see that most people are interested in Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and Youtube.  I plan to focus on Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest throughout this project.

This is just a small sample of over 200 responses to this question.  The answered varied from just knowing how to get started, to finding a way to truly convert social media traffic into customers.

The ideas I got were all over the board.  Some people wanted me to conduct this project in a similar fashion to the Niche Site Projects, while others wanted larger group training.

So, after taking into consideration the feedback I've gotten, here's what I've decided to do for the social media project.

10 Point Plan for the Social Media Project

1. I plan to share my strategies and what's working for me as I try to build a social media following on various platforms (Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest will be the focus) and as I find success in monetizing those followings.
2. I do NOT plan to take on students and make this project reliant on how others perform.  All the “coaching” will simply be publicly available to anyone that reads my blog posts.
3. I do plan to post at least twice a month with either updates OR social media strategies.
4. I do NOT plan on letting this project go on forever.  This project will last 6 months (until May 2018) where I'm providing regular updates.  After that, I don't plan on blogging twice a month about the social media project (but may still provide occasional updates).
5. The 6 month goal for the project: See how large of a social media following I can get AND see how much revenue I can generate through that social media following.  I'll be updating these 2 stats at least once a month: social media following size and revenue attributed to my social media following.
6. I do NOT plan on focusing my efforts on growing the social media following of NichePursuits.com…that would seem disingeneous.  This project and my social media efforts will be focused on a niche outside of NichePursuits.com.  In other words, I can't leverage my “fame” from NichePursuits.com to this other niche.  The niche I will be focusing on is in the fitness space, and I've never revealed the domain publicly.
7. I will not be revealing my domain or social media profiles publicly.  I'll simply be sharing the strategies I learn and growth statistics.
8. I would like to share the opinions of other experts.  So, I hope to bring on guest posters or interview others that have had great success in social media.  If you are one of those people, please reach out to me and let's figure out when you can share your knowledge.
9. I do want to hear success stories from you.  Even though I'm not coaching anybody one on one, I still hope that others will be following along and implementing some of these strategies on their own.  As you do, I hope you will reach out to me and let me know that you are seeing success!  If it makes sense, I'll ask a few of you to write guest posts for me to share your success stories.
10. Overall, I want this to be a fun and enjoyable experience as we all learn together!  You can interact with others following along with this project right here in the Niche Pursuits Private Facebook Group.

How can you participate?

Just because I won't be coaching anyone, doesn't mean I don't want you to feel like you can following along and participate.  Please apply the strategies I share (like this strategy from last week), and let me know how it's going!  Send me an email or post in the private FB group.

I hope the private FB group can be a hub where participants interact and learn from each other.

Final Thoughts

As shared last week, this project is already under way!  I was able to grow a brand new Facebook page from 0 to over 10,000 fans in 17 days.  However, that was just one idea and I haven't really scratched the surface of what could be done and how to monetize that following.

Overall, I hope you are excited to join in and follow along with the social media project!  Even though I won't be coaching anyone one on one, I think just putting myself through the project is the best way to see what happens when someone focuses on social media project.

I hope over the next 6 months that I'm able to share a few things that I learn along the way so that you can apply it into your own business.

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