Welcome to episode 452. This is your host, The Stacey Harris. I’m going to get a little nerdy today, just a medium amount of nerdy. I want to talk a little bit about some things I highly recommend having in place before you start handing off any of your marketing stuff. I know that the people who listen to this show, people like you, are in varying stages of handing things off, so if you haven’t yet handed something off, or handed anything off rather, these are good things to have in place before you do that. If you have handed some stuff off, this is a good time to start putting those pieces together because they can make the job of running your marketing a whole lot easier for whoever you hire. But also it allows there to be a lot less back and forth with, does this work, does that work, is that okay, kind of stuff because some things are figured out up front.
So I want to walk through three things that I recommend everyone have in place, and these are pulled from working with a lot of clients at Uncommonly More. These are the sorts of the things we ask for upfront, and when clients have these, our ability to sort of get the show going, start producing really quality stuff, gets a lot easier, like a lot, a lot easier. So let’s just jump right in.
The number one thing is a strategy.
I know it’s shocking that I was going to start with this. There are a ton of episodes where you can go listen to all things strategy, but this is such an important piece that we actually require it of our clients. This is the one thing of the three things we’re going to talk about today that we require, and this is one of the pieces that you need to have even if you’re DIY, honestly, especially if you’re DIY. Everyone should have this, everyone. How in depth or how robust it is depends on you and where you’re at and what your goals are, but you want to make sure you have this in place.
So a strategy, ‘What do you mean you require this, Stacey?’ I can hear you saying it. All clients who come into Uncommonly More and work with our team on an ongoing basis for implementation, social media management, email management, funnel creation, ad management, podcast production, any or all of it, have to first work with us in one of two ways. You come spend the day here with me in Southern California, and we build a 90 day strategy via the VIP day, or you sit down with me, and we have a call, and then I go over the course of about two or three weeks, depending on how big the strategy’s going to be, and I build a 12 month strategy. Until either of those things are done, our team cannot be hired for implementation. That’s how critical this piece is.
And it’s critical because all of the decisions that your social media manager, your virtual assistant, your digital marketing team will need to make are going to be based on this document. It’s going to outline what your focus is content wise. It’s going to answer questions about frequency and content type and how things are repurposed. It’s going to lay out their job. It’s also going to allow you to know exactly what’s happening and why it’s happening so that you know where you need to fit in.
Because here’s the deal with hiring somebody out or hiring some of this out that people don’t realize. This is not a set it and forget it kind of hand off. This isn’t about you coming in and saying, “Okay, this isn’t my problem anymore. I’m out,” and just throw the deuces up, and we’re out. No. This is about you partnering with someone to make the most of what you’re doing with your marketing, to make the most of the time investment of marketing your business and the financial investment of marketing your business because there is both sides, right?
So I want you to look at where you can make sure that you are 100% getting out of it what you need to by, are you ready, having a strategy. So this is number one, have that plan. Again, this can be as robust or as simple as you need it to be. For years, mine fit on one page. I’m here. These are some content examples. This is our frequency. This is how often we email. This is what the podcast is about, and that was it. Now, we produce strategies for clients that are in the neighborhood of 20 to 30 pages. That’s a little more detailed. We’ve had some run bigger than that. Some run smaller than that. It just depends on what you need, so that’s number one. Once you have that, use that to build out, and we actually include this in our strategies, the roles for your team, and that’s number two.
I need to know who is doing what.
This helps make sure that everybody is getting what they need, and everybody knows where they need to show up. And so before you hire someone, I want you to know exactly what you need them to do. This has been a big lesson for me as we have expanded the team more and more this year because where I thought I would need help or want help really early was actually not the case. Where I thought I could sort of go all in, in one place, I’m realizing that there are holes that kind of need to be filled before I can go deeper down one road.
A great example of this is I fully anticipated hiring more social media managers before I hired podcast producers and editors. This has not been the case. I’m realizing that the social media managers we have in place are solid, but we do need more podcasts editors. I’ve also very recently realized that some of the things I had our managers doing could be done by someone else on the team. And so those roles are shifting a little bit. I’m able to do that because I know initially this is what I need done, and this is who does it. I know what I need done because I have a strategy. I know who needs to do it because I know what needs to be done, and I know who’s on my team, and I can fill in those gaps. And wherever there is still a blank spot because I need to put a name in, I can now hire for that really confidently because I know what’s needed.
And so that’s again, that’s the number two thing, identify who on your team can do what, hand it off to them. Hand it off to them completely. Give them total ownership. Get in whoever else you need to fill in those gaps to fill in those gaps. I can not recommend enough talking to your team about this. Get them on board. Now for me, this has been super, super helpful because I was able to talk to my team, and they were able to say yeah, I can do this, this and this. That sounds great. They got to do things they were really excited about, and I got things done that I didn’t think I was going to get done. It’s awesome. It’s like this magical, where you don’t have an awareness, you can’t find a solution. And so when I talk to my team, I get to use my awareness and their awareness, and that’s the real gift here. Okay, so look at where your team can start checking some of those boxes from the strategy. Now, I want to wrap this up with something you might not be expecting, but I would highly, highly recommend you have.
I call it a social media bible. Some people call it a voice guide.
It can be called a lot of, a brand guide. I don’t care what you’re calling it, but you need to have it. I actually loved working with the team at North Star Messaging. I sat down. I had a half day, VIP day, kind of intensive kind of set up a with Jessi and Marie of North Star Messaging, and we built this out. And it was so great to look at the words that we use all the time, the words that we never ever use, and get some tactical on paper examples of the stories we use, the things we talk about.
Because here’s the deal, guys, and I think I say this at every single backstage live, but we only really talk about three things, and if I’m honest, I really only talk about one thing. I dress it in different clothes, but at the end of the day, there’s one piece there, and that is strategy. Even today, even in the confines of this episode, we talked about one thing, and that was strategy. And so I want you to look at all the ways you talk about your one thing, and that’s what sitting down and hammering out this voice guide really empowered me to do because I could then hand that off to the team and say, “Here you go.” I could hand that off to a copywriter if I needed to. I could hand that off to a social media manager or a VA or somebody building out a landing page for me or whatever. But have that piece in place.
The other part of the social media bible for me is the aesthetics. And for me, this is Jillian Dudek of the Brand Barre. She built out all of our brand stuff, and she put together very similarly a brand guide, a PDF that has our fonts and our colors and some examples of how things fit together and some textures, so that very quickly, I can hand that to somebody. I could hand that voice guide and that brand guide over to somebody, and they can create a landing page for me. They can create a month’s worth of content ideas. They can create some social media posts with that in my website. Very quickly, we can get somebody ramped up and onboard with what they need to know to execute quality work for our team because I have that sort of, bible as it were, in place. Because I have this thing that very clearly tells them all the rules, this is what we use, this is what we look like, this is what we say, and on the flip side is what we don’t say, this is what we don’t use, this is what we don’t do.
And I want you to look at where can you put the pieces of this together. So it’s centrally located because it’s my guess that you probably have this in lots of places. I say this based on looking at a lot, a lot of client asset file folders. Very, very frequently, we get sent batches of client asset folders. They can be media kits. They can be called brand kits. They could be called lots of things. But at the end of the day, it’s their logos and their photos, and if they have a brand voice guide, stuff like that. Examples of PDFs, evergreen content pieces, and they’re all kind of hodgepodge together.
And so take some time to put yours together in a way that’s going to be handable. Meaning, if I joined your team tomorrow, you could send me a link, and I could dig into it, and I could know what I was looking at that. That’s critical. Point one, know what I’m looking at. Okay. All right, so that’s it. Those are the three things that everybody needs to have in order before they start handing things off. These are the absolutely critical pieces that there’s too often a missing link from.
Okay, so to recap, your strategy, knowing who on your team does what, clear look at their roles, and that brand voice, brand guide, bible, seriously, what I call it, okay? Put those things together so that you can hand off your social, your content, your email, whatever it is, and really partner with a company, with a person, with a subcontractor, whatever. This is going to help you move your brand further. Cool. All right.
I’m going to bring this one to a close. I want to remind you, I know it’s only June. I know we’re just finishing Q2, and we’re going to be starting Q3 any day now, but I want you to look ahead to the end of Q3 as you start planning Q4 because here in Southern California, we’ll be coming together for another Backstage Live. This one, live and in person. This will be our last in person one for the year. We’ll have a virtual one in December, which you can also get your spot for right now.
But if you’re going to join me here in California, where it’ll be sunny and beautiful because I will it to happen that way. You’re going to want to get your ticket now. We have limited seats, and of course, we’re going to be in person, so there may be travel or whatever else you need. So go over to thestaceyharris.com/backstagelive to reserve your seat today. I absolutely love these events because it’s absolutely incredible to bring these people together and watch them support each other, watch them get clarity around things that they didn’t quite have a grasp around before, and really leave the room knowing kind of what’s next for them. So I hope you join us. If you have questions, let me know. But either way, I will see you next week for another episode of this very show.
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