The idea behind scaling a business is really simple, and quite literally means… growing. Scaling your business doesn’t mean working towards million-dollar months and hiring a CFO right away.
Really, scaling your business truly just means elevating your processes, upping your engagement, growing your customer base, and ramping up with bigger and better projects as time goes on. That’s it! While sky-high revenue is great and all, there are so many other methods to use that help you gauge your company’s growth over time—through things like incredible content, high engagement rates, and people who truly love your brand.
I was in the business of scaling other businesses through content, and I’ve scaled my other marketing business so much over time that when I was doing 1:1 services my company was reaching 90,000 customers across the globe daily. I can promise you that my company didn’t always look like that, though— not even close. Instead, we scaled smart over the years to attract clients we love, create content that we’re proud of, and strategize our way to the top. Now, I’m ready to share with you all of the things I know about simple ways to scale your business.
I have tons of tips, but there are a couple with the biggest payoffs that I really want to focus on so that you can implement them. Are you ready? We’re going to dig into how important it is to involve your audience in the whole process, the vital realization I need you all to have is that content is still king, and how to batch out your processes and optimize them to help you grow. You in? Notepad ready? That glass of wine? Let’s go!
SURVEYING your customers, ASKING them what they want, and ENGAGING with them online.
I know that, deep down, a lot of us understand that tons of success lies in our audience and our customer base. Actually, all of it does. However, I also think that we tend to look for the more fancy solutions—an expensive CRM, a new email marketing tool, a top-notch web designer—instead of focusing where we should, which is on what our audience wants from us.
Your audience wants you to grow and to succeed. They care about what you’re doing—if they didn’t, they wouldn’t be following along with you and buying from you. Go figure. So, give them a reason to keep caring and get them invested and involved in what you’re doing! That’s exactly how you scale your business… for free.
One of my favorite things to do—and something I recommend to all of my clients—is to set aside specific touchpoints during my day where I take the time to engage with my audience. Sometimes, that means spending a while responding to DM’s, replying to comments, or chatting around on social. Other days, I’m having coffee dates with people, or I’m typing out thoughtful email responses.
One of my absolute biggest focuses in my business is growing actual, genuine engagement, which takes forging actual, genuine relationships. There’s nothing worse than coming off as robotic or fake, which is why I specifically carve out time to craft-friendly, warm responses. Without dedicating time to building your engagement, you A) won’t have any or B) will alienate your audience with generic responses and half-hearted like taps. That’s… a big no. But, when you DO commit to engaging with your people, you create an audience who’s thrilled for your successes, ready to offer up suggestions and feedback when needed, and who are way more likely to purchase what you’re offering. You’re priming them & at the same time giving them a sense of community. It’s a win-win.
I also seriously shake my head and get discouraged when I see people invest in these huge consumer interest firms, okay? While they’re probably pretty valuable for corporations, you. Do. Not. Need. One. Instead, you need to survey your audience. What is it that they like? What is it that they want? What is it that they need? What do they want to see more of? What do they want to see less of?
Take advantage of your audience (in a good way, of course), and put them to work for you. Conduct your own research. It’s such an easy… and again, I’ll say it… free way to tailor a strategy that will actually work for you. Every time a business I love or an account I follow asks questions on content preferences or user behaviors, I always answer because to me, it shows that the decision-makers behind the business truly care about what I think. It tells me that the business is client-focused, loves to create content based on its audience, and wants to be of help.
I know you want to be of service to your audience, too, whether that’s through a product or a site or a service you provide them! After all, why else do people start businesses? Innately, helping people is at the core of each and every good business out there. Make helping people the hero of your everyday strategy, and your audience will scale alongside your business. You can quote me on that.
On another note, show people love and appreciation by simply tagging them in your posts, reposting what they’ve shared about your business, and giving them shoutouts when you can. Whether it’s a business that makes YOUR life easier, a client that you adore, an Instagram follow that truly inspires you, or someone that you really want to work with, don’t be afraid to engage with them. Some of my favorite people are people I met via the internet, and I have some good friends that I’ve never actually talked to in person. It would have sounded bizarre 15 years ago for a business to tell you this, but we’re in living in a world where that is not only accepted, it’s expected.
Content IS king, content HAS been king, and content WILL stay king.
Great content is absolute magic for businesses. Content is the best way to drive your audience toward a purchase, to build trust, to position you as the expert, and to engage with your customers as a whole. Plus, the content is WAY more than you may think. While a lot of people tend to think of content as blogs, that’s only the very tip of the iceberg.
Just think about the different forms of content you consume in a day, whether or not you realize it. You might watch Netflix every day. You probably drive by a billboard on your way to work, and you may very well listen to a podcast while you do it. You consume social media, you watch Instagram stories, you scroll through TikTok, and you watch a news video to get you caught up on the latest headlines. You Google questions when you have them, and then you read a related blog post or article to get the answers. You flip through beautiful catalogs that you got in the mail, you take a look at a brand magazine that came with a package. You consume content all day long, and you might not even realize it.
Now, I want you to think about the different forms of content that you and your business put out every day. Perhaps are you writing emails? Are you drafting blog posts? Do you have relevant video content? Are you pushing out on social media? Do you have a podcast? Do you do all of those things? Do you do none of those things? Do you do some of those things? While I certainly don’t think you need to do all of them (for example I don’t have a Twitter account, and I don’t plan on it), I am a massive believer that a content strategy is a pivotal piece of owning a business in the 21st century, and I do not think that will ever change.
Why, you ask?
Because we live in a consumer culture. The digital entrepreneur who has great Instagram stories, writes info-packed newsletters, and curates smart blog posts? That entrepreneur will go much further in scaling their business than the one with two blog posts circa 2016 and a dry social media platform. They just will.
So… which entrepreneur do you want to be?
If you don’t have a content strategy yet, don’t stress. You can start really quickly, and really simply without a ton of prep work. Just choose one lane, and start. I always recommend blog posts first, because I think that they work really well as pillar content. You can make so much content out of a blog post, from a social graphic to a podcast script to a video.
Gary Vee talks about this a lot with his content pyramid theory, I talk about it with my Amplify Method – it’s where you take one piece of larger content (like a blog post), break it into what he is called micro-content (like gifs, quotes, memes, and so on). You can use that one piece of pillar content to create 30 total pieces of content that you can drip out over time. It’s brilliant because it’s a much simpler strategy to use than our usual methods of creating every single little and big piece of content completely from scratch every day… Uh, I don’t know about you, but that sounds exhausting.
Also, not all of your content has to be incredibly, perfectly polished. Like right now I need to take a water break – see – the world didn’t end. I love an excellent videographer and I think there’s huge value in hiring a copywriter, but I also don’t think that every piece of your content needs all of that. Take advantage of the tools at your disposal to create content at a moment’s notice, like on Instagram Stories, Facebook Live, or TikTok. People love seeing really authentic, real-time, uncurated content, and it’s especially great for building more brand trust. Plus, it’s fun to create!
I’ll shout out Gary Vee again because I just think he’s brilliant… He has a quote that I think is fantastic, and it’s this: “document, don’t create.” When your team is working on an amazing project, show off the behind-the-scenes. When you’re up at 2 AM, first of all, go to sleep! But if you don’t or can’t, then don’t be afraid to post an unfiltered Snapchat of the occasional late-night entrepreneur lifestyle. Let your audience into these real moments. People really do enjoy seeing things like that, and it shows that your business has a human attached to it, and people connect with humans, not lifeless brands.
Great content scales your business in a myriad of ways, but one of my favorite ways to harness it goes back to what I said a few minutes ago: use your audience’s opinions. Every once in a while, dig deep into your analytics. What is your audience clicking on time and time again? What are your readers loving? What do people not seem to care about? It’s free market research, you guys. All because you wrote a blog post. Trust me on this.
Optimizing your workflows through BATCHING.
If you’re wondering what batching is, it’s pretty simple—and highly effective. It is taking time to work on ONE thing. That’s it. Just one thing! That way, you could spend an entire afternoon working on a month’s worth of weekly blog posts instead of spending an hour – 4x a month to do it. Or, you could spend a few workdays recording and editing podcast episodes—and then you wouldn’t have to touch them again for a few months.
You might be thinking that sounds insane or incredibly draining… but it’s really not. I promise! There are tons of studies that point to the benefits of *not* multitasking, and you might find you get into a better creative groove by sticking to one task for a while—with breaks built in, of course – don’t forget to stand up and stretch – remember we are all about holistic entrepreneurship over here… It’s incredible for your focus, your concentration, your creativity, your productivity, and your business as a whole.
Instead of spreading yourself thin to tackle tons of things in your business back to back, batching allows you to really hone in on the specifics of a certain task. When you get hyper-focused on something, you’ll find that you have better results, you’re able to approach things more strategically, you’ll get more creative with what you do, and you’ll be remarkably impressed with yourself.
I completely and totally founded Gigging for Gold on this entire principle—in fact, it’s still the way I work today. I will create a monthly editorial calendar for my businesses, for my blog content, social media content, newsletters, and Instagram stories – you name it.
That way, we KNOW that we have effective content, I KNOW when it’s supposed to go out, and I DON’T have to spend any more frustrating Thursdays frantically trying to create a blog post for Friday morning. It’s one of those things that wildly transform a business by giving it FREEDOM—and I challenge you, right now, to get really strategic about your next month in business. What is something you can optimize to up your productivity and streamline the heck out of your content strategy- in turn scaling up your business?
Ding, ding, ding—it’s taking the time to plan out your content. It is a priceless method.
Conclusion:
I know I threw a lot at you there, but I promise you it’s incredibly valuable. When you implement genuine connections, smart content, and optimized workflows into your business, your business will start to scale by itself. Your audience will grow, your self-confidence and trust in yourself will grow, your numbers will grow, and your business will, in turn, grow.
The thing is, it’s not as hard as we like to make it out to be. Scaling a business happens when you take the time to truly care about what you’re doing by intentionally creating structures and processes that make real, solid sense and that invite your audience in to see it unfold.
Are you feeling really ready to ramp it up? You owe it to yourself and to your business, and I can PROMISE you that you’ll see returns when you implement these scaling strategies into action. Now go into the world, respond to your DM’s, write incredible blog posts, be smart about your social media, and optimize the heck out of your workflows. Just watch what happens! I’ll be here waiting on you to blow me away!
I’m cheering you on from the mic…
Signing Off, Sonja Thorsvik
