You know your people are struggling with a problem, but they won’t engage with you in any of the content you create about it.

They don’t comment. They don’t share. They don’t DM.

On this episode of Content Creation Made Easy, we're unpacking WHY this happens & what to do about it.

You'll learn the top 3 reasons this continues to be a struggle and how to get out of the endless "I'm creating but all I get are tumbleweeds & crickets!".

We talk about:

1. The one mistake that's making you feel too frustrated & burned out

2. A simple invitation that some of your audience may be looking for

3. How your expertise & training might be getting in the way of your audience connecting with you!

Learn strategic & simple tweaks to make that get you thinking about your approach and will help you STOP wasting time and START connecting with your audience.

Because THAT is the entire reason we DO content: so we can connect with the people we want to serve - so we can EVENTUALLY convert them to customers & clients!

Listen in & share with your colleagues & friends struggling to get THEIR audiences to connect, engage - and who are tired of feeling like this is just all not worth it!

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Full Transcript

Hey. Welcome to this episode of Content Creation Made Easy. I'm your host, Jen Liddy and today we're talking about a problem I hear a lot of people complaining about: “Why aren't my people engaging with my content?” And a lot of people struggle with this problem.

But you're saying “I'm creating content. I know it's good content, but for some reason my audience won't engage with it. What's going on? Am I doing something wrong?”

Your people won't comment, they won't share, they won't DM you.

So today we're going to talk about why this happens and what to do about it.

Let's start with a specific issue of a client who is a life coach. She focuses on women who struggle in their lives because at the core of what they're dealing with is they don't feel worthy or valuable. And this particular client uses the word worthiness all the time in her content. And it's a really core piece of what she is doing with her clients and in her marketing.

So in her content, what winds up happening? She tries to get people to see that their real problem is that at the depths of who they are in their soul and their values is that they don't feel worthy.

They don't feel worthy to receive love, they don't feel worthy to make a lot of money or to put boundaries in place or fill in the blank with whatever the thing they want is.

But they don't have that's what her audience wants. And she knows from the work that she's done in the training she has that the problem is there's a real lack of worthiness going on inside of them.

Now, the frustration for my client is that every time she has a discovery call or even a conversation with people in her life, she can easily see that everything that's going on for them is because they have this lack of worthiness.

She can always point to it. She can always see it because of her training and her expertise. They struggle with worthiness. However, anytime she creates a podcast or an email or even an Instagram post that speaks to these troubles with worthiness and self-value, she gets very little engagement and her audience doesn't connect with her.

And of course, this is incredibly maddening because she puts out great content. She knows her stuff. She knows that they need her help. So what is the problem? Why aren't they engaging?

Let's talk about that. Number one, she's doing the thing of talking about their pain points, which is something that really helps your content. But why aren't they engaging? Well, number one, the biggest reason this happens is that your people might not be ready to admit that this thing that you're talking about is even a problem. They might not be ready to admit it to themselves.

They might not be aware of it. Your people, whatever it is you're an expert in, your people still might be telling themselves that it's external problems or external challenges or external issues that are causing their pain. And a lot of what service providers especially teach in their content or teach in their work too, is that something that's going on with you requires you to look within yourself and have some kind of transformation or to admit something that's going on with you.

And a lot of people in our world are just not equipped to do that yet. For those of us who are in the personal development, the coaching, the therapy, the healing industry, we're surrounded by this conversation all the time, right?

Like we're always talking about self-growth, self-development blah blah blah.

But we have to remember there are a lot of people who aren't surrounded by that all the time. And for them to be engaging with content that maybe speaks to something they really haven't been aware of yet could be painful for them, so they might not be willing to engage.

And if your audience is filled with people who aren't even admitting to themselves yet that there is a problem in their life, then they're not ready to become a customer or a client.

And trying to convince people in your content that there actually is a problem is a quick drive for you over to BurnOutVille. So your content wants to avoid or stop convincing people that they have a problem. That's a huge heavy lift for you. It will burn you out. Convincing is not helpful and it's not what your audience needs actually in your content.

Of course you can talk about the problem you solve and the pain that people have. You can be specific enough and the more you do this, the better. Be specific enough to hold up a marketing mirror so they can see themselves. For example. The more that you can be specific with what is the problem.

The ripple effect that the problem causes in their life. What the problem actually looks like in real life. How this might manifest or look in a specific example. What possibly could be underneath the problem. Beyond the symptoms.

Like what's really causing the problem. Maybe giving the problem a name. Putting some vocabulary around it. Giving them the words to understand that this problem exists. It's not made up in your head and here are some ways to look at it and hey, there are solutions and these are what the solutions look like and how the solution can make you look better.

You can talk about all of those things in your content, but if your audience is not ready to admit that there even is a problem, you're going to feel like you're convincing them. For example, back when I ran the fitness studio, I felt like I was always convincing people that they needed fitness to solve their problems. And it felt like I had a lot of convincing energy. Like why aren't you here? This is amazing.

This is the way that you're going to solve your problem and it kind of burned me out from content. And people can feel that convincing energy behind your stuff.

So the number one thing to remember that we're talking about right now is your content's job is to make people aware and to elucidate things for them, to define things for them, to open their eyes to things.

But you can't convince them that they have a problem in the first place.

So for this client that I'm talking about, the life coach, for her, if her people weren't aware that worthiness was even an issue or that word didn't mean anything, (we're going to talk about that in a minute),

Or they weren't ready to admit it to themselves, they're certainly not going to engage with your content.

So that's a big thing for your people. Another reason that people don't engage with our content goes beyond these problem unaware folks. Because number two is that there are many people who are not only not willing to admit it to themselves, but even if they've admitted it to themselves, they might not be ready to admit the problem to the world.

So they're not going to be commenting or sharing or responding or posting about this. If they're simply not ready to admit the problem to the world, then yeah, that makes sense, right?

But these people, if they're problem aware and they are willing to admit it to themselves, those people really could use an invitation to come and talk with you.

That might be a private message, an email, a DM, maybe even getting on a conversation call with you. They might need invitations. Now, please do not you know, my style is not to be pushing out and DMing people with your solution, but to invite them in because some people really require that invitation to come in, meeting that client, that potential client, that audience member at the problem aware solution, curious stage.

Think about that in your content rather than that heavy lift of constantly convincing people that they have the problem you're talking about.

These are the people we'll just wrap this up for.

Number two is that they know something's wrong, they know something's amiss, but they are wary about waiting deep into some uncharted waters and they also want a more personal approach to connect with you and so inviting them and could really be a true service to these people. But those they're probably not going to engage because it feels too public or too scary for them.

The third reason that people don't connect with your content is that the concept you might be talking about could be very broad or vague or abstract for their understanding of it. Let's go back to that client who was the life coach.

She's talking about worthiness, right?

Like that could be a vague concept to somebody who's not immersed in the healing world, who's never done therapy or coaching or any personal development.

Now, on Discovery Calls, this client would really get specifics from people. She would really hear their stories and understand their situations, and they would be able to give exact issues of what was going on in their life and she could unpack it for them because that's what she was trained in.

And she could show them in these calls how worthiness was at the core of all of this, but only when she started to use their specific situations and apply this term or this idea to their specific situations and have it bounce off of their examples.

Because then suddenly the word “worthy” wasn't a vague word anymore.

It was a very specific concept that people could apply to themselves. I asked her in one of our calls, “Is there kind of a spectrum that your people might be on when it comes to not feeling good enough or worthiness?”

Like. For example, I'm okay as a mom. But I'm kind of crappy as a best friend. Or I'm a good wife. But I don't feel like I'm cutting it when it comes to being a mom to multiple children.

Or I'm great at the office. But when it comes to showing up as a community leader, I don't feel like I'm worthy enough or valuable enough to step up.

So I'm sure that you can see the difference there of thinking about the specifics, of how the not good enoughness starts in their life and shows up in their life and give that to them in specifics in your content to help them maybe identify with themselves and see themselves in a more clarified way.

Because that client realized she could be doing a much better job in her content speaking to specifics rather than this huge than tackling this huge, huge being unworthy thing.

And it felt like she understood it really clearly. She knew what it meant, but it was just too vague, broader, abstract for her particular audience. Right?

So in your content, can you start speaking to moments or specifics so that people can start to again see themselves in your marketing mirror?

And for this particular client, talking about not worthy, being not worthy in pockets of our life gave her a new lightness to her content.

It didn't feel like such a heavy lift for her.

And before, she would kind of describe content as being like a heavy, weighted down rock on her chest. But when she could start speaking to these moments and tie them to the concept she was trying to teach, everything became a lot easier for her and her clients.

Her audience started to connect and could become clients much more easily.

So let's wrap this up by saying if you're finding that people aren't engaging with your content, let's return to these three notes.

Number one: are the majority of your audience willing to admit that there is a problem to themselves? And if not, are you trying to convince them you don't have to convince people like those aren't your right audience members. Your exact right audience member knows there's a problem and is wanting to learn more about how to get out of that problem.

Number two: Are you asking your people to admit the thing to the world by engaging with your content? Or are there options for them to connect with you personally?

And are you inviting them in?

Number three: is the idea you're trying to convey too conceptual or too abstract for your audience? Because if they can't apply it to themselves and they can't see themselves in it, they're going to keep going by.

It's going to be an email they delete or podcast they stray away from, or even a social media post they don't. They just scroll by.

Give them a way to see themselves in your content while being able to keep themselves safe.

Because you have to remember, we don't make changes in ourselves or in our world until we are at the lowest of our low. In your content, people need to see themselves, but they really will only take action when their pain is big enough or their desire is big enough, or basically they're sick of their own bullshit.

And so does your audience. Maybe they need to hear stories, whether it's a story of yourself or an anonymous client or a situation where you express the lowest moment.

Because remember, your audience may have become desensitized to the thing that you're talking about. So can you show them what the problem is with specifics and then show them how a solution actually relieves the pressure, relieves the pain for them, paint that picture for them in your content?

Ultimately, your people need to protect themselves and that's what they're doing when they're disengaged.

If your stuff is speaking their language, they're much more likely to engage.

But give people the opportunity to protect themselves, even if it's from themselves.

Help them with content that they can consume and gently identify their pain or their desire. Identify with it and then show them what life looks like once they have a solution that works for them.

But one last thing: your job is not to convince anybody of anything

And once you really lean into that, your content creation life will become so much easier. I hope that this was helpful for you. I hope you can take away a nugget or two and apply it to your own content creation life. I would love to hear what your thoughts are about this. If you could leave a review about whether the podcast is helpful and how it's helped you, I would be so grateful.

I'm really trying to lean into helping people with their content in a way that feels good for them. So I would love to hear your thoughts. You can always connect with me at Jen Liddy.com and look forward to seeing you next week. Bye.