In this LMScast episode, Chris Badgett from LifterLMS and Linda Puig, creator of the program Your Audience, Your Way, discuss how to build your audience in alignment with your personality type. Linda explains how to build your audience through other people’s networks and social media.
Linda Claire Puig is an internationally recognized marketing expert who helps solo-business owners develop profitable relationships and portable businesses that go with them wherever they want to go. Linda has taken her own business abroad for months at a time to locations that include a medieval-era Italian village, the grand cities of Paris and Rome, the Andean highlands of Ecuador, Bali, Australia, Prague, Lisbon and many more.
Click here to learn more about Linda Puig and her programs.
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Episode Transcript
Chris Badgett:
You’ve come to the right place, if you’re looking to create, launch and scale, a high value online training program. I’m your guide, Chris Badgett, I’m the co-founder of Lifter LMS, the most powerful learning management system for WordPress. Stay till the end, I’ve got something special for you. Enjoy the show.
Chris Badgett:
Hello and welcome back to another episode of LMS Cast, my name’s Chris Badgett and I’m joined by a special guest. Her name is Linda Puig, she’s from 6-Figure Newsletters. We’ve got something for you. Go to lifterlikes.com/linda. This is all about building your audience your way, not everybody’s the same, and this is Linda’s superpower. Before we dive in, welcome to the show, Linda.
Linda Puig:
Thanks so much, Chris. Great to be here with you and with everybody.
Chris Badgett:
I’m excited to chat with you today, because in this audience here, not everybody’s exactly the same. There’s these education entrepreneurs, these course creators, these coaches, these web professionals, who are trying to serve this industry. My grandfather once said, “It takes all kinds to make a world. That was a lifetime of management advice was summed up in that sentence. Tell us about the different ways you can build an audience based on who you are, because some people feel like they’re pushed to go one way or the other, but it doesn’t feel like them. How did this come together for you to kind of specialize in audience your way?
Linda Puig:
It’s so true, Chris, that there are a variety of people and a ton of different ways to build your audience, and why should we all be forced into doing all of them? Because you know the things that appeal to you, right? You know the things that you feel like you’re so heavy because you have to do them. There’s this quality of lightness that comes with the things that are just right for you. So there are a gazillion different ways to grow your audience. And I like to divvy it up into two different categories basically. One is, other people’s networks, getting in front of other people’s networks and the other is social media. And so social media has all the different platforms that are involved, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, et cetera, YouTube, LinkedIn, those are the primary ones. I feel like I’m forgetting one.
Chris Badgett:
TikTok maybe.
Linda Puig:
And no, I’m not or I am. I’m forgetting about a dozen, right?
Chris Badgett:
Well, I just mentioned TikTok, that’s [crosstalk 00:02:38] the new hot one now.
Linda Puig:
TikTok. That’s a new one that I have not yet entered into my soiree of social media platforms, mostly because I haven’t figured it out myself and I’m not sure it’s right for most of the people that I happen to work with, but that could be wrong. So I’ll be checking out TikTok pretty soon. But anyway, so those are the platforms. And within each platform, there are a variety of tactics that you can utilize to create your attracting factor that’s going to bring people over to your email list. Important factor there, bring them over to your email list, right? Whatever you do on social media, get them to your email list. Other people’s networks, I feel are easier, and in my experience, more productive, more results come from my efforts dealing with other people’s audiences, being introduced to other people’s audiences. And there’s again, a variety of tactics and events that you can put on that can help you utilize the relationships that exist between your colleagues and their audiences.
Chris Badgett:
So how does the personality type fit in? Is there a better person for other people’s audiences, a personality type versus social media? Or is it more how you operate within those areas?
Linda Puig:
Well, that’s one of the things that our archetype quiz, our audience attraction archetype quiz is going to help people discover. And people can find that at the link that you mentioned.
Chris Badgett:
Yeah, just real quick [crosstalk 00:04:14], I’ll just throw that out there again, the link is lifterlikes.com/linda. But go ahead, tell us about the quiz.
Linda Puig:
Yeah. I think there are characteristics and traits about the way we approach our work and the way we approach our life that make us inclined toward one platform or another or one technique, one strategy over another. Just as an example, how many of you who are watching or listening to this, have the desire to go on YouTube and just strut your stuff, right? And to be just the expert of all experts and the most entertaining and engaging. How many of you? Maybe not. Maybe not all that many or maybe only half or maybe only a quarter, but the point is that you need to find the methods that will work for you. I spent many, many years trying to do everything. I had already started my business by the time social media started becoming a thing for business.
Linda Puig:
So along with everyone else, I tried all the things that came along and I think I was in the part of my business where I was listening to everyone and trying to do everything. And it can mess with your mind when you start comparing yourself on X platform that you don’t really love, and you’re kind of having to force yourself to do. You compare yourself to the other person who’s using that and terrifically and enthusiastic results happening. There’s this FOMO of not getting all the benefits that everyone else is getting because they’re doing X, Y, and Z. But really what really happens when you focus on the things that feel more natural to you, and that, what’s the best way to say it, that light you up, that you don’t hesitate to do. You don’t procrastinate. You get out of bed thinking, “Okay, cool. I’m going to do that.” Those are the things that you should gravitate to, and when you focus on one or two, or maybe even three of those, rather than everything, you can go much deeper. You can have a lot more exciting results.
Chris Badgett:
Speaking [crosstalk 00:06:53]. Go ahead.
Linda Puig:
And you’ll feel better about yourself.
Chris Badgett:
Well, speak to the introverts out there. And I’m considering myself a card carrying introvert-
Linda Puig:
Ditto.
Chris Badgett:
I come off. I do a lot of marketing, so people are like, they think I’m an extrovert, but I’m not. What works? What have you seen work well for introverts? Maybe more so than being a YouTube star like you mentioned, maybe. What can work?
Linda Puig:
When I think of introverts, I think of writing, I think of interviewing. So for an example, you’ve heard of speaker summits, right? One person gets a bunch of speakers together. Everybody emails their list about it. It’s great list building event for everybody involved. The introvert is great at interviewing people because it casts the attention off of them and onto the guest, right? So those are just a couple of the tried and true introvert techniques.
Chris Badgett:
That’s cool. What about you mentioned other people’s audiences. Let’s dive in there a little bit. How do you leverage other people’s audiences? Some people know about affiliate marketing, but there’s so much more you can do. What’s a real partnership or content creation? What can people do?
Linda Puig:
Yeah. I know that there are people aware of and familiar with affiliate marketing, and it’s a very different animal from what I talk about and teach about. I’m talking about real relationships. We always talk about building a relationship with your audience and nurturing that relationship, but there’s another audience for you to be building and nurturing, and that is your audience of potential partners. Your audience of colleagues that serve the same clients as you do, but not with the same topic that you do.
Linda Puig:
And those kinds of relationships that you develop are super, super important. So there’s a variety of ways that you can address other people’s audiences through those people. You can gather a bunch of people together, for a giveaway event or a summit, you can go one on one, be introduced to another person’s audience directly from them, by them, either in writing or in person on the event that you’re offering to that audience. There’s just so, so many different ways to partner together for mutual benefit and for long lasting, long term relationship.
Chris Badgett:
Long lasting, long term relationship, I know you’re really good at nurturing over time. What are some keys to that? Not everybody’s ready to buy right now or to do a big business deal together. How do we nurture a relationship authentically? How do we approach that kind of long term task?
Linda Puig:
Yeah. That’s actually going to be on one of the webinars that I have coming up that I’m really excited for people to come to and it’s on the 27th and it’s about nurturing and engaging. And I’ll just give you a sneak preview of what that’s about. I like to break things up into as simple a category as possible. And so again, I have two ways of doing that. And one is through demonstrating your credibility and your solidity of character, if you will, in educational type articles. So articles that are addressing the needs that you know your audience has and giving them little bits of information here, and little bits of education there, and helping them understand that you understand them. So that’s what I call, I guess, the content part. And then I always, always, always encourage people to include personal information about themselves.
Linda Puig:
And this is such a tightrope for some people. For those of us introverts, I don’t know if you relate to this Chris, but when I first started emailing my list back in the early aughts, I was just terrified. I just wanted to be in the background and not have anybody pay attention to me. And so for the first couple of years, the newsletter that went out from my business came out from the business, right? I wasn’t in there at all. I didn’t talk about myself. I didn’t show my picture. Linda was not there at all. And when I finally realized that, that was super important, I started experimenting with that and I have now written, amazing number of things about my life. And I always try to relate it to the business that I do, which is helping people build audiences and nurture those relationships.
Linda Puig:
So I try to write about seeing the Northern Lights in Norway in January, from the perspective of a business owner, or sometimes I write just purely personal things about my dog or about… Let’s see, my dog, is it still there? There she is. My other dog. And this one too. And about my son going to college. People want to know that you’re a real person and that there’s a real, vulnerable, but solid, intelligent here with us on path together, kind of a person. And the more that they know you in that fashion, the more likely they are to buy your things when you make your offers.
Chris Badgett:
That’s awesome. Before buying your things, when you make your offers, how do you get them on the email list? What kinds of lead magnets or kind of bridging the chasm from other people’s audiences or social media. What’s the best way to get them on your list and start that nurture process. And I know [crosstalk 00:12:57] there’s not one way.
Linda Puig:
Yeah, no, it’s true. It’s the most important part. That’s where everybody falls down. It’s like, “Okay, I’m going to participate in social media to get more clients, but what’s really the process? So the process is engage with them, begin the relationship there in social media, and then offer them something to opt in for and by virtue of them opting in, they are then getting on your list, at which point you can begin nurturing that relationship and eventually make them offers. But you have to get them on your email list.
Linda Puig:
And so the way to do that is to either, entice them with some sort of a freebie or entice them with some sort of a training or entice them with some sort of event that you’re hosting or you’re participating in. So that’s the key thing is get them over from social media to your list, because you don’t actually own any of the connections and friends and followers and any of that stuff that are on the social media platforms, you don’t actually own those.
Linda Puig:
You could get them ripped away from you unceremoniously at any moment’s notice. And it’s not something that happens frequently, but it’s not uncommon. I know a couple dozen people probably that have had an account shut down, whether it’s mistakenly or from a miscommunication or whatever. So it’s really important for you to get those people over to your email list, that’s your biggest asset.
Chris Badgett:
That’s awesome. One of the things I see people struggle with, with audience building is they’re kind of inward focused about themselves or their specialty or whatever. Do you have any advice on the whole customer avatar thing or really kind of getting clear on who it is you’re actually trying to reach and maybe there’s some variations in there, but how do you kind of get out of your own way?
Linda Puig:
Absolutely. Super, super important. That’s one of the first things that we go over in my course, which is called, Your Audience Your Way, is understanding very deeply, who your audience is and shifting your focus from, it’s all about me, to it’s all about them. Because that’s what happens is a lot of people go into business and they’re like, “I’m really good at this. I like doing this. I’m going to do that.” And they don’t yet have a sense of who they’re doing it for or what those people actually are wanting, initially.
Linda Puig:
It may be that you end up doing exactly what you want to do, what you’re really good at, but you have to do your marketing in such a way, you’re only 95% of the time talking about your audience and what they need and what they aspire to and what problems they’re struggling with. So it’s a mind shift. I won’t even call it a mindset shift. It’s just a mental shift to always be thinking about your audience. I imagine that people, that if you’re watching or listening to this, you’ve probably heard this, but I’m going to say it again. WIIFM, that’s the radio channel for you to tune yourself to anytime you write anything for your business, make any business decisions. And that means, what’s in it for me? That’s your audience asking you, what’s in it for me? And that’s where you have to go.
Chris Badgett:
That’s cool. A couple tactical questions. I see people get hung up on how often to communicate or how many times a week, if I’m building a nurture sequence in email or is too much, or how do we, how do we find that sweet spot of quantity or frequency?
Linda Puig:
Yeah, it’s a common question I get all the time as well. I think that the bigger answer is your audience will tell you, your audience will let you know, but some things to be thinking about as you’re putting things into place are, number one, when people sign up for something, whether it’s a training that you’re going to give or a freebie that you’re going to give them, that means that they’re kind of hot. They’re very interested right now, right then. So you want to email them a little more frequently then perhaps you will be emailing them later. So every other day is not too much. Some people do it every day.
Linda Puig:
So that’s the nurture sequence that’s connected to an opt-in opportunity, but then you’ve also got just regular, every day nurturing. So whether you call it a newsletter or you call it a nurture email or whatever it is, those are something that are generally sent out once a week, once every couple of weeks, something like that. You want to make sure that you’re providing that kind of value on a real regular basis and consistently, and I think, again, it depends on your audience. I know a woman who emails every single day, has something of value every single day and promotes the heck out of other things every single day, and her audience loves her.
Chris Badgett:
That’s awesome.
Linda Puig:
Yeah.
Chris Badgett:
If we’re doing a long term nurture sequence, how long should we go for, and I’m telling you, I have one and it’s over a year long that I build-
Linda Puig:
Wow.
Chris Badgett:
But, is that excessive?
Linda Puig:
Well, does that mean that you’re not offering anything?
Chris Badgett:
Well, we have-
Linda Puig:
During that period of time?
Chris Badgett:
We have broadcasts and things that happen throughout, but that’s just more the general long term nurture that’s rolling in the background.
Linda Puig:
Yeah. I have no problem with that. As long as they’re still getting the other things. I think what’s important is to nurture for a while. Whether that’s a month or six weeks or two or three months, but nurture for a while until you’ve really established that relationship and help them understand who you are and what you have to offer them. And so then once that happens, then they can get all the rest of the emails that you send, all the other broadcasts and whatnot. So if you’ve got an automation of nurture emails that are set up for a year long, I think that’s a great use of your time. Set it up, forget about it.
Chris Badgett:
Are there any mistakes that people make or that cause things like low open rates or lots of unsubscribes or something? What mistakes do people do in audience building related to email metrics like that?
Linda Puig:
Yeah. One of the most important mistakes they make is not nurturing at all. Build a great list, yahoo, and then promote the hell out of that list without the in between part. And so yeah, that nurturing is super, super important and that it be a serious effort, that you seriously engage in getting to know your audience. The other thing that’s so cool is that the more you nurture, the more you understand your audience, the more clarification you get about them and their specific issues. And you can ask them to respond to you. You can ask them to go to a blog and write comments. There are a variety of ways for you to see and assess whether they are actually taking in what you have to offer. So that’s one big mistake I see is people not spending enough time on that and sometimes not even doing it at all. And then the other mistake is… I just had it. Lost it.
Chris Badgett:
It’s all good.
Linda Puig:
That’s the biggest one that I mentioned.
Chris Badgett:
Let’s go to social media mistakes. If we’re kind of nurturing through, or maybe we don’t have them on the email list yet or whatever, but we’re kind of nurturing that relationship. What’s a social media mistake in terms of how we behave in social media or the types of content or comments we make?
Linda Puig:
Yeah. I think a lot of people have an antenna up for authenticity. And so what I see, the mistake I see people making is kind of being there in a way that they think they’re supposed to be seen rather than the way they really are. And I don’t mean show yourself as the slob you are on a Monday morning, right? That’s not what I’m talking about. Although for some people, that might be appropriate. But I’m just talking about being real, being earnest, being authentic, being you, and that’s going to look different for every person. And then just actually engaging with people, not just be all about like, “Hi, nice to meet you. Sign up for me. Sign up for my training.”
Chris Badgett:
DM here, because [crosstalk 00:21:48].
Linda Puig:
Yeah, exactly. Messenger on Facebook, people that do that drive me crazy. Yeah, so I think authenticity is a really important piece there.
Chris Badgett:
Can we get into your story just a little bit with your journey into online entrepreneur? How did that go? I know that’s a giant question, but how did you get here? Where did you start?
Linda Puig:
I actually have a really amazing serendipitous story that got me here. I had been a journalist in San Diego and I stopped doing that and did a couple of other things while I was trying to figure out what was next. And I knew a woman, a colleague there, who had started this wonderful little business. It was a little newsletter business, print newsletter, and she served mental health professionals with it. And what she did was create one newsletter and then personalize it with everybody’s logo and photo and stuff like that. And when she told me about this, I remember just having this brain explosion of, “Oh my God, I can make my writing,” which I was doing on a fee for hour at the time, “I can make my writing into a product.” And that was really exciting for me to hear that.
Linda Puig:
Fast forward four years, I’m no longer living in San Diego. I’m cleaning out my filing cabinets and come across some stuff about her. And I’m like, “Will I ever have a reason to be in touch with her again? Well, I’ll just keep her business card and I’ll throw away the rest.”, And a week later she called me, out of the blue and she said, “I’m moving to Barcelona to finish my novel. And I’m looking for somebody to buy my newsletter business.” And I was like, “Holy shit, that’s just amazing that this happened a week after I was thinking about you, after four years.” So I flew down, decided I definitely wanted the business and immediately started serving coaches with a print newsletter and then moved into electronic newsletters and ready to go articles, all of the articles that I’ve written over the years on one big site where people can find the articles that work for them and their audience and added them, use them if they want.
Linda Puig:
And it just kind of grew up after that. And then I started training. I was so scared in my first training program. I didn’t know anything about it. And I just thought, I kept thinking to myself… I said for years, “I don’t have a teacher’s bone in my body,” Not a teacher.” And it’s a process, I think that a lot of people go through of slowly becoming aware of what you actually do have to teach, what you actually do have to share and how you can help people. And so that happened for me over a period of a few years. My first program, I thought, “I got to get 100 people in there,” for my very first one.
Linda Puig:
And I got 25 in and I was a little disappointed. And then I realized much later that, that was a pretty good effort for the first one. And the next time I offered it, I got five. And then I was like, “Oh, I can’t do this.” So I took two years off. Did not do any programs. And I think that is another thing that happens. When you don’t get the results that you want, for whatever reason, your confidence gets a hit. And so I needed to lick my wounds for a couple of years and I came back and started really putting together all that I’d been learning. And I started really enjoying it.
Chris Badgett:
That’s awesome. All these early programs, were they around audience building or around something else?
Linda Puig:
They included it. They were more focused around newsletters. That’s my flagship program for many years was called 6-Figure Newsletter Secrets. And so the that’s where the main company branding is around 6-Figure Newsletters. So it’s the nurturing that gets you all these different things and how to use the nurture to convert, et cetera.
Chris Badgett:
Just so I understand your friend’s business and the one that you got. Was it a print, you said it was a print newsletter.
Linda Puig:
Yeah.
Chris Badgett:
Would the clients then have a branded version that they would send to their clients?
Linda Puig:
Yeah. What we would just deliver a PDF that already had the branding done.
Chris Badgett:
Okay. And the content, and it’s all done-
Linda Puig:
Content was the same for everyone, except for the header and the photo on page two and the return address on page four. So it was a very minor process to go around and brand everybody’s. So, it was really fascinating. So we would send them a PDF. They would take care of printing it out and whatnot.
Chris Badgett:
It seems like newsletters are having a rebirth in popularity with Substack.
Linda Puig:
Yes.
Chris Badgett:
I’ve never thought-
Linda Puig:
Not print though [crosstalk 00:26:58], not so much print.
Chris Badgett:
Yeah, not print.
Linda Puig:
Yeah.
Chris Badgett:
It’s never going to die. The newsletter is awesome. A nurture is one thing, but if you’re going to do a regular newsletter, that’s maybe kind of episodic or current, with the times, how does somebody approach that or build a framework, so that’s not so overwhelming about what do I write about today or whatever?
Linda Puig:
Yeah. I really highly recommend an editorial calendar so that you can project out into the future. The first thing that you want to put in that are your marketing things, the offers that you’re going to be making throughout the year. And then based on that, you can back it up and create a series of nurture emails around a particular topic that support, or it will support that eventual offer that you make. And then the rest of the time, you can just plug in a variety of articles that you want to include. I used to have a, what I call a fancy newsletter. It had a designed header and it had various sections. And each of the sections had a really pretty designed section head. And there were photos and it was really pretty and I loved doing it and it was well received.
Linda Puig:
People loved it, they created special folders just for it. But I had an experience in 2016 and 2017, actually 2015 is when it started. I just had a big year of a huge amount of work that I really discovered I did not like, but I’d already committed to. And so by the end of the year, I was really burned out. And I was at a meeting, a mastermind meeting and all these other seven figure business owners were going around the table, talking about all their intentions and their goals and their plans for the following year. And it came my turn and I just kind of whispered, I said, “I just don’t want to work.”
Linda Puig:
And that was my big goal, right? And I was a little embarrassed. No, I was a lot embarrassed to say that to them, but they were lovely about it. And what that resulted in was me taking a two year semi-sabbatical, mostly sabbatical. And so it was during that period of time that I let go of the fancy newsletter, but I still wanted to keep writing people. I still wanted to keep nurturing that relationship and not letting it die, even though I wasn’t creating new programs. I wasn’t looking to rock it that year.
Linda Puig:
And so I just started writing simple nurture emails. So I’d write an article, maybe include a photo or something, but not even necessarily. And so now, that’s the way that I nurture. But I think that fancy newsletters do have a place. Sometimes they’re really good for branding. So, especially if you’re new and sort of in the first few years of really building that relationship, it’s not a bad idea to have one of those. And the focus of the newsletter is always going to be the what’s in it for me, right? It’s what does your audience want to hear from you about? So you can start with a survey and then just build it out.
Chris Badgett:
That’s awesome. You have a program coming out very shortly called, Your Audience Your Way. You can find that at lifterlikes.com/linda that’s L-I-N-D-A. Tell us about the program one more time and what people could… Who it’s for and what people can expect from it. And I know you have leading up to it, you have a personality quiz and stuff, which is awesome. It’s all the same link, lifterlikes.com/linda. What’s Your Audience Your Way?
Linda Puig:
Well, it’s my way of addressing this problem of overwhelm that happens among a lot of entrepreneurs where, I’ve got to do Pinterest. I’ve got to do Facebook. I’ve got to do Instagram. Oh my God, I haven’t done Instagram. LinkedIn, oh, I forgot. Oh, I have to do LinkedIn now. All of this feeling of, you can almost imagine the hyperventilation happening of all these things I’ve got to do. And then, I’ve got to create these. So it’s more about, let’s zero in. Let’s get our foundations in place so that you’re ready to rock it and then let’s figure out what rocking it looks like for you in terms of building your audience. What are you going to be incorporating? What are you going to be focused on? And then how to turn that into a growing audience and then how to nurture that audience and then how to help them take the next step, which is to convert to offers that you’re making. So, we really take that whole journey of audience, hello audience to audience saying, thank you for what you’ve just provided us.
Chris Badgett:
That’s awesome. So that’s Linda Puig, go to lifterlikes.com/linda, L-I-N-D-A. Is there any other way that people can connect with you?
Linda Puig:
Yeah, I’m always open for email, if you want to email me at [email protected]. That’s my corporate name. Linda, L-I-N-D-A, @claire C-L-A-I-R-E, communications plural, dotcom. [email protected].
Chris Badgett:
Awesome. Linda, well, thanks for coming on the show and sharing your journey and providing the audience building tips. It’s been awesome. We really appreciate it. Thank you.
Linda Puig:
Thank you, Chris. I appreciate being here.
Chris Badgett:
And that’s a wrap for this episode of LMS Cast. Did you enjoy that episode? Tell your friends and be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss the next episode and I’ve got a gift for you over at lifterlms.com/gift. Go to lifter, lms.com/gift. Keep learning, keep taking action and I’ll see you in the next episode.
