This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
Just made it past the ides of February. This is now the 16th of February, at least today's episodes going out that day, episode 2,603. Welcome back to Cytosol School. It's Chris Guillebeau here with you. Today, the segment falls in the theme Failure Friday. Failure
Friday. A collection of short stories about mistakes, missteps, disasters, and of course failure, all of the things that go wrong, all of the non-success stories. And just to be clear, we present these stories as a learning experiment. How can we either avoid this particular mistake, and in this case, I think it actually has a lot of applicability to a lot of people out there, or it's just how can we understand maybe how to bounce back when something goes wrong. Or if nothing else, how can we be inspired by other people who have been through difficult entrepreneurial situation, entrepreneurial, small business slash side hustling. Okay,
so you get to hear directly from a side hustler who struggled to get something off the ground or otherwise encountered a difficulty. Today, we're going to hear from Lena. She's from New Jersey. And let's see, Lena is an influencer with a very large Instagram following who failed to boost her home decor sales. Well, I should say that differently. The large following
failed to boost her home decor sales. Basically, she had a lot of followers, but they didn't buy. Followers are not buyers. That's the key point. So she is here to highlight the gap between social media popularity and real world purchasing behavior. Like I said, this
is going to help a lot of people because if you're focused on the wrong metrics, you're not going to have a business. You might have people liking your posts, but you don't have a business. I know so many small business owners who are crushing it with a very small social media profile, not even posting sometimes, like they just have not even focused on that. So you got to focus on what actually drives sales if you want to drive sales. As I said, if you want to do something else, then that's a different thing. But lots of followers,
but few buyers. That's our story today. I'll come back at the end with a quick wrap up. Once upon a time in the digital world, I found myself riding a wave of social media success that many would envy. My name is Lena Morris, and I had somehow cracked the code of gaining followers on Instagram. It started with my passion for interior design, a mix of vintage
charm with modern minimalism. My posts of beautifully curated home spaces caught the eye of an ever-growing audience. Before I knew it, I had amassed tens of thousands of followers, and it felt like everything I wanted. The next goal was to monetize. This should be easy, I thought. With such a large following, selling should be a piece of cake. I launched
a line of home decor items, each piece carefully selected to embody the aesthetic that my followers had come to love. But then, reality hit. Despite my large following, sales were abysmal. Post after post, promotion after promotion, the result was the same. Likes and positive comments, but hardly any purchases. I couldn't understand it. My followers adored my taste and decor,
often flooding my posts with likes and comments, so why weren't they buying for my own line? As weeks turned into months, the harsh truth dawned on me. Having a lot of followers did not necessarily equate to having a lot of customers. My audience loved the inspiration and ideas my account provided, but that didn't mean they were willing or able to buy the products I was selling. Moreover, many of these followers were international in countries like India, where pricing is very different from the US. I realized I had fallen into
the trap of vanity metrics. While the number of followers was high, I hadn't cultivated a targeted audience genuinely interested in purchasing home decor products. My content was more about providing inspiration rather than driving sales, the disconnect between what my audience wanted and what I was trying to sell was stark. This experience was a tough pill to swallow, but it was also a valuable lesson in the world of social media marketing. I learned that audience engagement is more than just numbers. It's about understanding
and aligning with the interests and needs of your followers. So I pivoted. I shifted my strategy to include more direct interaction with my audience, asking them what they wanted, conducting surveys, and slowly building a more sales-oriented community while maintaining the essence of what had drawn them to my account in the first place. Today, the journey continues. While I still enjoy a large following, my focus is no longer just on growing numbers, but on cultivating a community that's engaged, loyal, and aligned with the commercial aspect of my passion. I'm also focused on building a new account from the ground up, this time
more aligned with what I actually hope to accomplish. Never confuse a single defeat with a final defeat. That is the tagline or the overarching message of Failure Friday. You can always bounce back. In this case, I think you can use the story as a learning process to maybe even save yourself the trouble. Not to say
that social media doesn't have its place. There are lots of businesses that do grow with social, but if you're growing as an influencer, whatever that means, whatever that looks like to you, you've got to make sure that you're actually connecting your message and what you're sharing and your posts and your stories to the actual business and trying to drive people towards that. If it's not working, then you're probably attracting the wrong people. It doesn't matter that you have all these people or these numbers. Vanity metrics, we could say. The metrics you need to focus on are your sales. We'll talk about that some
more going forward. For now, I'll say thanks to Lena for sharing this story. Listeners, if you have a question and update for us about your hustle, www.sidehustleschool.com. Lots of resources there as well. Once again, this has been episode 2,603. I'll be back again
tomorrow with a new episode, always completely free. My name is Chris Guillebeau. You're listening to Side Hustle School.
