If you’re interested in a new way to grow your following, check out this episode where I share:

+ What the “treadmill effect” is and why you need to avoid it at all costs.

+ A NEW way of creating content that will transform the way you think about building an audience online.

+ ONE quick check to see if you’re missing out on this FREE way of getting more eyeballs on your brand.

Episode Show Notes

Well, hello, and welcome back again to a second episode this week. If you missed my episode earlier, I let you guys know that this week and next week I'm doing something a little bit different. I've been going live on Facebook to talk about some blogging related topics. And they've been a little bit shorter, like twentyish minute videos. And I thought I could repurpose those on the podcast over these next two weeks,

because I think they're important topics that you would be interested in as well. So that's what I'm going to do today. I'm going to share some audio about a Facebook live video that I did talking about the number one way to grow your business. That you're probably not taking advantage of right now. And I think you're going to like this one. I have a few other really exciting videos at my sleeve coming soon as well,

but this is sort of all in preparation for the opening of my SEO Made Simple course on Monday, June 28th. So really, really shortly, if you want to be notified about exactly how you can enroll in the course, once it's open, go to SEOwaitlist.com and enter your name and email. And I will send you all the details on Monday when everything's open.

But basically on Monday, I'll be putting together a masterclass presentation where I talk to you all about the four step framework for getting more people to your website, without spending money on ads or spending all day on social media. And that's a really valuable presentation where I not only explain everything about what I teach in the course, but I also give you the opportunity to enroll.

And this is going to be the only opportunity to enroll moving forward. There's not going to be like a big, fancy public sales page on my website. It's going to be a more automated sales system where people who joined my email list eventually get invited to join the course throughout the year. So my email list is going to be where it's at. So if you're not on there,

you can again add your name and email at seowaitlist.com to get all of the details. And I hope you enjoy this episode. Welcome to the unconventional RD podcast, where we inspire dietitians to think outside of the traditional employment box and create their own unconventional income streams. We'll talk all things online business to help you start, grow and scale your own digital empire. Hi.

Hi. Yeah, I am live on Facebook right now this time, not from the native Facebook platform because we tried that last week and it was like abysmal. So now I'm trying out a tool called stream yard, which at first glance seems like 1 million billion times better. So hopefully it is. And this time I'm going live, hopefully simultaneously to my page and my group.

So hopefully you'll see it in one of those two places. But basically the reason why I wanted to hop on live today was to talk to you about the number one way to grow your audience, that you're probably not capitalizing on. So I'm very excited to talk about that today. If you can hear me, it would be awesome. If you could drop maybe like your favorite emoji or your most used emoji in the comment section,

that'd be super helpful. I'm trying to use my nice mic, but has been having some weird issues lately. So I was just wanting to make sure everybody can hear me. Let me see. I could probably test it myself. Oh, sweet. It's working. Okay, cool. So for those of you who aren't familiar with me, my name is Erica Julson and I am the founder of the unconventional RD.

And my specific specialty is teaching dietitians and wellness professionals, how to build their websites and attract thousands of people to their brands every single month via the internet so that they can create stable, successful, and profitable online businesses. So again, today, I want to talk to you about growing your audience online and specifically the number one way to grow your audience.

That you're probably not capitalizing on right now. And I also want to introduce you to something called the treadmill effect and why you really need to avoid it at all costs. I will share with you a new slash different way of creating content that will transform the way you think about growing your audience online. And then I'm going to wrap up this broadcast by showing you one quick thing to check,

to see whether you're currently missing out on this freeway of getting more eyeballs on your brand. So to start out, I want to know, does this sound like you, you are a dietitian, a food blogger or other wellness professional, and you want to build an audience online, but it feels like you're shouting into the great void. And no one is listening.

You are posting daily or maybe multiple times per day on social media, like Instagram, Tik, TOK, whatever, trying to gain attention. But it kind of just feels like you're drowning in an ocean of other voices. And sometimes you feel like you can't take a day off without messing up the algorithm and risking torpedoing, your engagement metrics and visibility. And that might leave you feeling burnt out and stressed from having to be so on all the time.

I know that's how it makes me feel sometimes. And you might be thinking if this is what it takes to build an online business. Like I'm actually not sure if it's for me. So if this is you, you are currently suffering from what's known as the treadmill effect, which yes, I made up. Coined by me. So basically if you're suffering from the treadmill effect,

you are caught in this never ending loop of content creation that requires you to always be on always be producing or fear that that fire is going to die in your business and you'll lose all your momentum. And that is actually a recipe for burnout and resentment in your business for a lot of people. And nobody wants that, right? Like that's not the point of trying to build your audience online,

but I am happy to tell you that thankfully social media is not the only way to grow your audience online. There is another way to grow your audience. That requires a very different type of energy. And I personally gravitate towards this method. It fits my personality a lot more. And I feel like there's probably other people out there in the same boat.

This is another type of content creation where you don't have to show up on video or stories or reels every day. If you don't want to, you don't have to come up with endless piles of witty, engaging content day in and day out. You don't have to bounce around pointing out words on your screen and you definitely don't have to dance and no shame if you love that stuff.

But like I know it's not for everyone and it's not something that I personally really enjoy that much. So I'm sure there's other people out there who are like, oh, can I get found without that? And yes you can. So with this other method, you can be much more behind the scenes and still attract thousands upon thousands of people to your brand.

You could sit on the couch and create content in your pajamas all day. If you want it to no video or selfies required, you could put focused high level attention into deeper pieces of content that really connect with your people. And you can spend your time answering questions that, you know, your ideal clients, customers, or readers are desperately looking for.

And you can do all of this with the confidence that this content that you're spending this time on creating, isn't going to get lost like a flash in the pan, but it will continue to work for you and attract people to your brand for literally years to come. So what is this magical method of content creation and audience building? Any guesses? If you think

you know what I'm about to say, type it in the comment box, we'll see if anyone gets it, but basically spoiler alert, this method is blogging. So if you said blogging, you were right. And before I go too far into more about blogging, I think it's important to define what blogging is because I have noticed as I talk about this in places like my free Facebook group,

there's some confusion. I think still out there about what a blog is. So we'll start off by telling you what a blog is not. If you blog as a business tool, it's not a glorified personal journal. It's not a stream of your thoughts for people to subscribe and follow every week. And it's not just a place to create content around whatever's on your mind at any given time. Bottom line.

The blog is not about you. When you blog with business goals in mind, a blog is really a place where you create the ultimate resource on a subject for your ideal customers, clients, or readers. So for example, a vegan food blogger would aim to create the best place on the internet for people to go to find vegan recipes. A geriatric dietitian would aim to create the ultimate resource for people who are caring for the elderly and looking for trustworthy information.

A pediatric dietitian might create a website for parents to find everything they need to feed their child, their children under five years old on, on and on. So see how all of those examples are user-focused. So it's not a collection of your favorite vegan recipes or a handful of tips that you've gleaned from working in long-term care, or one-off whenever you have the time tips for picky eating.

For example, you've got to think bigger than that. You want to stand out and become an authority within your chosen niche, and blogging with strategy and intention (i.e. creating a well-organized collection of super high quality content that answers your reader's most burning questions and gives them exactly what they're looking for) is the way to do that consistently over the long-term. So bottom line,

jump off the crazy content creation treadmill. Cancel the treadmill effect. And hop on the slower moving train to long-term online business success, because by creating content that you know people are looking for on Google, it just becomes a game of persistence and consistency. So basically what you'll be doing is mapping out the content that you want to create creating it with the right strategy so that it shows up on the first page of Google and then watch all your hard work snowball until you've built something uber successful.

That brings you tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions of people to your website every single month. And then you can do with that audience, what you will. So some things that people do include joining an ad network. And if you join an ad network, which basically means you sign up for a company who will put display ads within your content,

and those ads are earn you money and you can expect to make about a thousand dollars per month for every 50,000 or so visitors you get to your site every month. So if you can get, let's say 500,000 people to your website every month, which is definitely possible after a few years, you could be making $10,000 or more per month in passive ad revenue from all that hard work that you've just already done.

That's just sitting there bringing traffic to your site without you really having to do that much more. So it's definitely like a snowball effect and that's just one income stream. You could also create content that creates, contains affiliate links and earn hundreds or thousands of dollars every month when people purchase products that you recommend, which is also a very passive income stream. So for reference last year,

I made an average of $2,000 per month in affiliate income, simply from recommending other people's products to my existing audience, which is like nothing to laugh at, right? That's great. You could also pitch yourself to brands to create sponsored content on your blog that features their products or services. It's not uncommon to be getting hundreds or thousands of dollars per piece of content,

especially if you get a lot of visits to your blog and have a loyal following. And then you could also create digital goods, online courses, maybe a membership site,services, or group programs to sell to people in your audience. And these can all be super successful business models as well. When I ran a nutrition focused membership site, I was able to quickly grow it to a $30,000 per year project working on it just a day or two per week,

and without doing any formal advertising outside of a once a year black Friday promotion to my email list. And then likewise, last year, my online courses brought in over $180,000 in revenue and that's without spending 1 cent on paid advertising, it's a hundred percent organic. So you could totally build any of these income streams into your business as well. So one of the biggest keys honestly,

is just establishing that core audience to earn reliable money online. You need eyeballs on your brand. And again, blogging with the right strategy is, in my opinion, one of the best ways to gain that audience. So to wrap up this chat today, I wanted to show you a quick way to tell if you are currently getting any visitors to your website from search engines like Google,

and if you're not, then this is definitely an area worthy of focusing your attention on to grow your audience and your bottom line. So how do you tell if your website is currently attracting people who search for things online? Well, honestly the best tool is something called Google Analytics, but it requires some setup on your part on your own website. And I walk you through exactly how to do that in my step-by-step in my SEO Made Simple course,

but if you don't have Google analytics yet, I do recommend that as an important first step for every website owner. But once you have it set up, you can track exactly how many people are visiting your website, how they're getting there, and even what content they're looking at once they're there, which has obviously great information for any business owner. So let me share my screen with you and show you what the backend of Google analytics looks like and how to figure out exactly how many people are visiting your website right now from search engines like Google.

And I'm going to demo this using stats from my incredibly old food blog, just to show you the staying power of search engine optimization, SEO, and how you can get visitors to your website for literally years after you've published content. So here is an example of some stats from my food blog that has not had anything new published on it since literally 2017.

So that's four years now at this point, and it's still getting almost 10,000 people a month coming to the website. So basically if you want to see whether your website is getting traffic from search engines like Google,just set up Google analytics. And this is what the home screen looks like once you're logged in and then go to acquisition, then overview. And there's obviously a lot more detailed information that you can get.

But what I want you to look at is just simply this graph here. So this is a pie chart showing you how people are currently getting to your website and you can adjust the date here. I've adjusted for adjusted it for the last month, but if you just set up Google analytics, obviously it doesn't start tracking anything until you set it up. So you'll have to wait maybe a week and then extrapolate that data,

just look at the last week and then multiply it by four to figure out how many people are coming to your website every single month. So the main thing I want you to look at is number one, how many people overall are coming to your site every month? So how many sessions are you getting? So you want to look here under sessions. A session is just like every time a person comes and looks at your site on any given day.

So 9,948 people came to check out my food blog in the last month, which is freaking awesome for content that hasn't been updated in four years. So that is still earning me passive ad income without doing anything at this point. So, but if you're serious and you want to actually make like thousands of dollars per month in ad revenue, your goal should be to try to get this number,

this 9,000, whatever yours happens to be. You want that total sessions number for the last month to be 50,000 in order to be eligible to apply for an ad network called Mediavine. And then once you get accepted there, you should be making at least a thousand dollars per month in ad revenue. Once you get accepted. And there are some networks that you can join with lower numbers,

like Ezoic is one that will accept you if you're around 10,000. So I could use Ezoic, like if I wanted, on the site and you can expect to earn a few hundred dollars in ad revenue per month at that level. And then the second thing I want you to look at is where are your visitors coming from? So if you have a solid blogging strategy that attracts people from search engines like Google,

you should be getting thousands of people coming to your site each month from this quote unquote organic search. So here you can see on my pie chart, my top way that people are getting to my site, my food blog, 76% are coming from Google searches, or it doesn't have to be Google, but Google just has like the biggest market share. So I just say that,

but it could be Bing or whatever, any search engine really, it will track it in Google analytics. So if you hover over, it will tell you there's 7,577 people in the last month that came to my site from Google. And you can see the breakdown here as well. Organic search is number one, direct is number two. So people bookmarking stuff or clicking links in emails or things that are offline.

Social is third. So you can see social media is not really a big player in getting people to my site, organic search, basically just creating the right content for it to be found in Google outpaces, social by like 10 X, more than 10 X, et cetera. So those are the different ways that people are coming to my site.

So all I wanted you to do today is to look and see how many people are coming to my website right now in general. And how many are coming from organic search, AKA people typing stuff into Google and finding your site as the results. So I'm going to unshare my screen here, go back to talking. So basically if you're not getting thousands of people to your site every month from Google,

you really are missing out on a huge opportunity because it's totally possible for all of us. You have the expertise, so you just need to get out there and show it off, become the authority in your space that you've always wanted to be and do it on your own time with focused introspective work that will build on itself for years to come and really make a difference in people's lives.

And I'm really super passionate about this because I want to see food and wellness professionals get out there and own the space on the internet that their training and their expertise really deserves. I mean, when someone is out there Googling something related to your niche, you can and should be the one to show up in the search results with the answers to their questions.

And that is how blogging with business strategy works. But your assignment today is basically install Google analytics on your website. If you don't have it set up yet. And again, if you've just set it up, you'll need to wait a week or so to collect enough data before you can do the rest of the assignment. And then number two, go to the section acquisition, overview and write down how many people are coming to your website every single month.

And how many of those sessions come from organic search. If it's less than five or 10,000, you are really missing out on a huge opportunity. If you're currently getting over 10,000 people to your site every month, you honestly are sitting on a goldmine with just a few tweaks, your content creation strategy. You can see some serious results. Then of course,

pop on over to my free Facebook group, the unconventional RD community, and share what you found, because I really want to hear your results. I'm very curious to see how many people understand organic search traffic and are capitalizing on it and really shining I'm in the nutrition, food and wellness space. So if you missed any part of this live stream,

make sure you go back and watch the replay because we covered number one, the number one way to grow your audience that you're probably not capitalizing on right now. We talked about what the treadmill effect is and why you need to avoid it at all costs. A new way or a different way of creating content that will transform the way you think about building an audience online.

And then I showed you one quick thing to check, to see whether you're currently missing out on this free way of getting more eyeballs to your brand. So that's it for today. Again, I'd love to continue this conversation inside my Facebook group, the unconventional RD community. You can just search for it on Facebook and request to join. And I'll also share a link underneath the video in case you're watching this on my Facebook page.

So hope you have a great day. Can't wait to continue this conversation in my group. And thanks for hanging out with me on this Monday.

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Erica Julson is a registered dietitian turned digital marketing pro. She has over 12 years of experience blogging and building online businesses and has taught over 900 wellness professionals inside her signature program, SEO Made Simple.