How to motivate your followers by reading their mind

Have you ever wondered:

• Why won’t my followers just click on that link?
• Why don’t they subscribe?
• Why don’t they purchase?
• Why don’t they comment?
• Why don’t they do anything to engage? 

What Crumbl Cookies Can teach you about how to motivate your followers

Before I jump into the content of today’s post, I want to tell you a quick story. When we first went back to two hour church after Covid, my Primary teaching partner was telling a story about how she felt prompted to buy Crumbl cookies for her son and take them to him.

Her son lives 45 minutes away from her, so she followed the Spirit halfway. She decided that she was going to go get the Crumbl cookies. She bought them. She brought them home. And then she sat there for a few hours because she didn’t want to drive all the way to give them to him when she was going to his house the next day anyway.

But the Spirit really impressed upon her the need to take him those cookies that day. So finally she decided to obey. She drove to his house and she gave him the cookies. His first question to her was “Who told you?” She said, “Who told me what? Nobody told me anything.” And he said, “Well, my kids and I have been in an argument all day today. They haven’t been obeying and I got really angry and told them that I wasn’t going to buy them any Crumbl cookies.”

He was all upset and he felt bad. He wished that he had not given them that consequence and that he had worked things out differently with them. So he thought that his kids had called their grandma and asked her to bring them Crumbl cookies, but they hadn’t. The spirit had asked her to do that, to solve this tiny little problem for him that was very specific and unique to him.

You should know that this son is no longer attending church and is wondering if God really knows him and cares about him. He’s wondering if God is even real, so this experience that he had with his mom helped increase his trust of his Heavenly Father and his willingness to act on the things that his Heavenly Father asks him to do.

I want you to take just a minute to think if you have any similar stories in your life, either where you were the recipient of such a gift from your father in Heaven or where you were prompted to help Him deliver such a gift. It wasn’t the cookies. It was the fact that Heavenly Father knew him and his very specific problem.

Your followers will take action when they feel understood

As humans, we tend to act when we feel understood and known this is simply human nature. I am much more likely to listen to my husband’s perspective and his point of view, when we disagree about something if I feel that he has taken the time to understand me and to try to see what it would feel like to be in my shoes in that situation. If I feel that he has done that, my heart is far more open to considering his point of view and possibly acting on the things that he wishes we would change or do differently.

I grew up in a household that had family council regularly, and my parents would sit and counsel with us over nearly every large decision. The freedom was given to me to completely express my opinions, my fears, my thoughts, my dreams, my hopes about almost any big topic in our family.

My parents didn’t always give in. They didn’t always do what I hoped or wished they would. Sometimes I was required to face the things that I feared, but the fact that my parents took the time to listen to me and really understand me before they made a decision, made me far more willing to follow them in whatever decision they did make.

The curse of knowledge

So how do we do this in business? How do you create a culture where your followers feel that they know you understand them? They know that you have taken the time to truly understand the problems that they have? When you can do that, you will be able to motivate your followers. They will be willing to act for you and do the things that you recommend that they do because they know that you get them.

The way that we do this is by using their own words when we speak to them. So what do I mean by this? Well, first of all, let’s talk about the curse of knowledge in your specific niche.

It’s very, very likely that you suffer from the curse of knowledge. I suffer from that here, in the marketing world and the tech world. I will create tutorials, inside of Tech School or I will answer a question inside of Ask Me Anything, and someone will come back with a follow-up question that makes me think, “Oh, I didn’t even realize that could be a question. I didn’t even think about that. I thought that was just a given, just a known fact.” Because I am so knowledgeable about those topics, it is really hard for me to step outside that box and remember everything I didn’t know over a decade ago.

Whatever your topic is, whether it is organizing your home or decorating or finances. It is very likely that you have have the same curse of knowledge. So immersed in what you are doing, that it is very difficult for you to step outside of that box and remember what it was like to not have the knowledge that you have.

One of the biggest mistakes we all make as business owners is that we use language that is above the head of our ideal client. We assume they know things that they don’t know, and this creates a distrust. It makes them feel as if we don’t understand them. We don’t really know where they’re coming from, what they feel like, what their struggles are.

Creating your information inventory

So how do we solve this? Well, we figure out how they describe their problems, their concerns, their fears, their dreams, their hopes, their frustrations. We figure out the words that they use to describe those things. Only when we have their words, will we be able to build trust with them and help them truly feel understood and safe enough to take action, to be motivated to do something.

I have eight suggestions for you today. Four of them are for those of you who do not yet have a following of your ideal client and the other four suggestions are for those of you who do have people following you on social media or emails who are your ideal client.

 I’m going to encourage you to create an information inventory, where you are gathering the following information:

• What problems does my ideal client have?
• What solutions do they want?
• What frustrations do they have?
• Why haven’t they solved this problem already?

You’re going to be collecting all of this information. I use Infinity to do this, but you could use something like Trello, you can use an Excel spreadsheet, a Google spreadsheet, whatever works for you. I actually want you to be creating an inventory of this information.

2 Things you need to know about an information inventory:

Creating this information inventory is not easy. It’s not something that’s going to be done in 10 minutes. It’s something that, initially, to get going on it will take you hours. This is what it takes to really be successful in business. It really takes understanding the people that you are serving. Don’t skimp on this. Take the time to really make this happen. If you do, I promise it will pay you back tenfold.

In addition, this is not something that will ever be finished. I am continually adding to my information inventory as I hear from you. When you respond to an email, when you ask a question, when you send me a DM, I am using those words and I’m putting them into my information inventory so that I can continually improve how I speak to you, the words I use to talk to you.

I want to understand you. I really do want to make sure I am delivering on what I promised and the only way that I can truly deliver on what I promise is to really understand where you’re coming from. I encourage you to do the same in your own business.

4 tips to help you with your information inventory if you don’t have a large following

Let’s start with those of you who do not have a significant following. If you only have,100-200 followers on Instagram, you’ve got 20 or 30 people on your email list, or you have nothing. You’re starting from scratch. These four suggestions are for you.

#1 – Quora

The first place I want you to go is to something called Quora. Quora is a website where you can search questions that people have asked on specific topics. They have, I think they’re called rooms, but they have these groups that focus on specific topics.

I’m a part of a blogging group and I’m a part of a website design group, and a copywriting group. The topics that I talk about and that I teach you about, I’m part of those groups. I can go into those groups and I can search through questions that have been asked.

Quora is simply a bank of questions. So you can go here and you can find out what questions people are asking about website design, finance, organizing, teaching children, whatever your topic is. Find some groups in Quora that focus on that topic and see what questions people are asking.

#2 – Amazon

I want you to head over to Amazon and find books that are on your topics. Now, I don’t want you to find some obscure book that nobody’s purchased. I don’t want you to find a book that has really negative reviews. I want you to find a four and a half plus star rated book that is popular. And then I want you to scroll down to the reviews and I want you to read both negative and positive reviews.

I want you to read the things people felt were missing in the book, the things that disappointed them. But I also want you to find, in the positive reviews, how it exceeded their expectations, what they loved about it. These are going to be great little pieces of information that you can use to help you develop your content and then to speak to your ideal client.

#3 – find some of the bigger players in your niche

So if you’re in the financial niche, you might go to Dave Ramsey. If you’re in the marketing niche, you might go to Amy Porterfield. You’re going to go to some of these really big names. People who have a lot of followers and who you are certain are going to get comments on their Instagram posts.

Then I want you to go through those posts and find comments that are applicable to what you are trying to do. For example, Dave Ramsey may talk about buying a house and maybe that’s not your thing. Maybe you’re just trying to help moms budget.

You’re looking for comments, not about how to buy a house or when to buy a house with cash, you’re looking for comments about budgeting. So you go through those posts and you search through them and you spend the time looking for comments or questions that people make about budgeting, and you add them to your information inventory.

#4 – Facebook groups

 There are hundreds of thousands of Facebook groups, maybe even millions. There are a ton. There are so many Facebook groups.  I want you to find two different types of groups. The first is a group full of your ideal clients. So for me, this is groups of Latter-day Saint moms.

And number two, I want you to find groups that center around your topic. So for me, this could be email marketing, website design, website copy. I am in all sorts of groups around those topics. These need to be fairly large groups that are active. I want you to use the search function.

So, if I was to go search in the Latter-day Saint mom group, I would search for email platform or I would search for website or I would search for work from home. I would search what my people, Latter-day Saint moms, are asking about that specific topic.

In the groups that are topic specific, in a email marketing group or a web design group, I would search for Latter-day Saint, I would search for faith. I would search for those people who are in my target market. What questions they’re asking about that specific topic?

That’s four ways. Let’s review them.

1. Quora
2. Amazon book reviews
3. IG comments
4. Facebook groups.

4 Tips for if you already have a following of ideal clients

Once your following starts to grow, we want your language to become even more refined and specific. We want it to come directly from your followers and there are four ways I suggest doing this.

#5 – Use Instagram

There are two ways I want you to use Instagram.

First, It’s just like you were using it before. For the larger players content or comments. I want you to use your own comments. When somebody asks you a question in the comment, I want you to copy and paste it and put it into your information inventory.

Second, Use IG Stories, plus the DM’s. For instance, I could ask, “do you want to know how to create a homepage that makes you money?” And then everybody who responds, yes, I want you to send them a DM and I want you to ask them questions like “What has kept you from doing this in the past? Do you have a website? Why or why not? Who did you build your website with?” You’re asking them questions to get them talking and find out their dreams, fears, and frustrations with that specific topic.

So let’s go back to the finance example. You might say, “do you feel like your budget is always failing?” And then everybody who responds Yes, you could respond back with “Okay. Tell me about it. Why do you feel that way? What do you see as failure? What have you tried so far?”

You can be totally upfront and tell them you are asking them these questions because you want to create content – blog posts, podcast, episodes, videos, Instagram posts, and products that actually solve their problems. You want to create things that are specific to them. Be totally upfront about it. And then add the things they say to your information inventory.

#6 – In your own Facebook group

just like I’ve had you look through other Facebook groups, you can create one of your own. As your following grows and you have an active group, you will find questions that your ideal client, your very specific followers, are asking. They will talk about their problems. They will talk about what they wish was different. This will happen naturally inside of a good Facebook group.

#7 – Ask your email list to respond to a question

This one is one of my favorite.  You can start this no matter how small your following is. As soon as you start an email list, one of the very first emails that I send to my people, I ask them to respond to me and to tell me what their number one problem is surrounding the topic I’m talking about.

So I will ask, “What is the number one problem you are facing in making money from your website?” I get responses, people! I get responses and they are wonderful. Not only am I able to add information to my information inventory, but I am able to respond to them. I can give them links to podcast episodes that have helped with that, or an IgG highlight or an IgG guide that helps with that specific topic. And that builds trust in and of itself.

But in addition, I’m able to take the words that they say and add them to my information inventory.

#4 – Ask people for testimonials of your product or course or services

So if your product takes a week to use, send them an email after a week. If your product takes about a month to use, send them an email after a month and so on. But I don’t want you to simply say, “Hey, can I get a testimonial?” I want you to ask what their life was like before they found the product and what their life is like now. That is the type of language you want. You want people to say, “this is where I was and it was hard and this is why it was hard. This is how this product helped me.”

Of course, you can use those exact testimonials on the sales page for that product, but you can also take that language and sprinkle it in other places.

Where to use your information inventory to help you motivate your followers

So let’s talk about where you’re going to use the words that you are putting in this information inventory. You are going to use them anywhere you want somebody to take action. So if you’re writing an email and you want somebody to take some sort of action, purchase something from you, tell someone about you, respond to you, click on a link, you need to be using your ideal customer’s language.

You can use this in captions on your Instagram post or a Facebook post. You can use this language on your sales page, you can use it on your homepage. You can use it on a squeeze page where you’re trying to get someone to sign up for your email list, anywhere that you want your followers to take some type of action, to do something that will solve a problem for them.

You want to be using their words because it will help them to feel that you get them. It will build the know, like and trust factor, and they will be far more likely to take the action you are recommending.