Welcome to episode 401 of Hit the Mic with The Stacey Harris.
I am so filled with gratitude. We had a fantastic live show. Generally, I batch this recording or batch these episode’s sort of months at a time. Or a month at a time. And I actually intentionally waited until after we did our live show, on Tuesday, to record 401. Because I wanted to be able to really sit in that epic gratitude for the amazing time. I had such a great turn out.
I really enjoyed getting to hang out with you guys. We gave some really cool prizes away. We gave away, I think all in all, we ended up giving away two Backstage passes, a spot in BAM for 30 days and a $25 Amazon gift card. There is still up, for just a couple more days, up for grabs. Another prize of your choice. Meaning you can choose one of those three things. Either a backstage pass for 30 days, Bam access for 30 days or of course the $25 Amazon gift card. And that will actually be closing up on Thursday. I’m going to announce that on Thursday’s live show. Which will be the official, official episode one, of Hit the Mic TV live. Which of course, is the new weekly live show. And all you have to do is sign up for reminders.
So Bettie Bot, our Facebook bot, will hook you up and let you know, hey, Stacey’s going live right now, don’t miss it. All you have to do is sign up. So, if you go into the link in the show notes. I’ll actually just put a link in the show notes, that automatically gets you set up. Everybody who gets set up for that is going to be entered to win. Again, the prize of your choice. And you can turn off those notifications at any time. You can unsubscribe at any time. And this is good to know. I know bots are fairly new. But, if you’re finding that you have ended up, maybe signed up for a bot that you didn’t fully intend to be signed up for. Or you’re just not enjoying anymore, just like you can unsubscribe from an email list.
You can unsubscribe from bot notifications. All you have to do is type in stop. Stop. And that should, in theory, stop the messages. If it doesn’t, then you need to really connect with them and be like I really want you to stop sending me these messages, find out a way to make it stop! But, in theory, most tools will allow you to unsubscribe, just by typing in the word stop. And it’s no different for Betty. If you ever want her to stop talking to you, just hit stop and she’ll unsubscribe you from any notifications. Although, it is really nice to get notifications.
Alright, today I want to talk about why social media sucks. And when I say sucks, what I mean is, it’s not working, it feels really gross, you hate every minute. And moment of things and tasks and focus you have to give that part of your marketing. Because it doesn’t have to feel that way. Like, legitimately, it can work, and it can be fun, and it and it can be something you enjoy. It can also be something you outsource guys, like it doesn’t have to be something you spend all of your time doing. And so, we’re going to talk about three things specifically, that I run into a lot. My clients are telling me their social media sucks.
So, we’re going to start with number one. There are too many voices.
And what I mean by this is, you have too many gurus. You have a ton of people telling you that this is the thing you have to do. Now, you’ll very, very, very, rarely hear me use the word, have to do. Or the words rather, have to do. When it comes to your marketing because I’m a big believer that it depends on what your strategy is. It depends on who your ideal client is. It depends on what your goals are.
There is very few things, there are very few things that come up, that are “have to do things”. You know, when I think about the realm of have to. Following the rules, being a nice person, I can’t really think of anything else off the top of my head. That comes up, that’s a requirement when it comes to marketing. So, when you hear somebody telling you, you have to go live, or you have to post 19 times a day. Or you have to use Instagram. That might not be the case for you.
Find the voices that A. are knowledgeable and are not just sort of like, echoing whatever they’re hearing somebody else tell them they have to do. But also, find the people who are interested in helping you build a plan and a strategy, that’s going to work. That can be me, that can be other people. I don’t care who it is. But, really figure out who it is, that in this stage of your business, this is who I want to listen to. And listen to just them for a little while. And it doesn’t have to be one single person but, it also shouldn’t be 19 people.
When you start to find some focus and where you’re getting advice from, then you want to filter in what parts of their advice you take action on. So, sometimes too many voices isn’t just necessarily you’re listening to too many people. Maybe it’s trying to take action on too many voices. And those voices may full on be in your head love. I’ve been there. Figure out what am I going to take action on. Chose one thing that you really want to do more of, do less of, start, finish, whatever it is. And do that.
Now, I’m not saying chose one network and only do Facebook marketing and ditch your email and everything else. Absolutely not. But, figure out one thing you want to adjust in your strategy. Maybe it’s increasing your frequency on Instagram. Maybe it’s adding Instagram stories. Maybe it’s doing Facebook Live once a week. Maybe it’s upping your emails. When we’re testing things we don’t want to test all of things. We don’t want to try all of things. We want to try one thing. We want to test incremental changes so that we’re actually seeing where we’re getting the results from.
Because here’s the reality. If we spend our time testing 100 things. And we get a 15% boost, we have to keep doing those 100 things because we don’t know which of those 100 things, actually gave us the boost. And in full disclosure, it could be all 100 things. But, it also could be one thing in there. And it could be that the 99 other things kept your 15% from being a 50% boost. So, that’s why we test small things. So, too many voices avoid too many voices. Even if, again love, they’re coming from your own mind. We’ve all been there. Ease into it.
Number two, too many places.
No one can be all the places, all the times. So, focus. This is where we come into our rule of two guys. We talk about this a lot. A rule of two is, two primary networks and two secondary networks. And our two secondary networks, don’t really become a factor until our two primary networks are on point. That means we’re strategically focusing our time in two places. They are our priority. They are where we show up. They are where we provide value. They are where we create content. They are where we engage.
Now, when I’m talking about this, I’m not talking about your content or your email. I’m talking about just your social. So, choosing Facebook and Instagram, doesn’t mean you don’t write blog posts or send an email. Those are separate things. When we talk about the rule of two, we’re just getting right into the one category of your social media channels. And the great thing about focusing on two social media channels, instead of all the social media channels. Is where going to allow ourselves some time. To actually, see results. Oh my gosh, results guys! From our emails and our content because we’re really making sure that we’re focusing our marketing of those things. In these two networks, okay?
I really encourage you to use more than one because here is the deal. Real talk time guys. When you use one network, you are completely subject to their changes and whims. And we’ve seen this a lot this year. Across the board. Everybody uses Facebook as an example. Let’s use LinkedIn as an example. We’re rocking through a LinkedIn guide in backstage right now. We’re doing new modules, every Friday and live call on Tuesdays. Also, the rockstar guide to LinkedIn will be completely released by the end of the month. But, we’re actually working through it together.
And one of the things that’s amazing is as I’ve filmed these modules, I was realizing how much I, somebody who does this for a living. Had let slide, because of the massive amount of LinkedIn changes that had happened in the last, 12 months. Realistically, probably six or eight months. Seriously, have you looked at your Linked In profile lately. It looks different. Yeah! It’s changing all the time. These networks are always evolving because guess what? They want to stay relevant and they want to stay interesting, just as much as of us do.
So, we need to make sure that we are not counting on one to avoid making a change that may screw us. The thing that comes up with me for Facebook specifically is the algorithm changes. We end up in a real bad place if our entire marketing is built around Facebook and then Facebook makes an algorithm change that means we can’t get anything in the news feed. Anybody want to raise their hand on that one? I know we’ve felt we’ve had a few clients come to us in the last couple of months who are like, hey, this thing that’s worked for five years doesn’t work anymore. And so we’re like, oh that’s ’cause you’re only doing the one thing. And we’ve had to figure it out.
So, that’s why contrary to too many voices. When we talk about too many places, we don’t want to scroll down all the way to one. We want to keep in again, that two place. If you’re really comfortable with the three networks that you’re using right now, great! But, make sure that they’re all on point. And they’re all really working for you. Okay?
Number three, too much time.
Here is the biggest pitfall of social media, it can be a total time suck. And again, all of us can fall prey to it. What I want you to do is want you to start setting up actionable blocks of time on your calendar. Meaning, we’re not just for funsies going, I’m going to hop onto Facebook and do some businessey stuff. That’s not a plan.
Instead we’re saying, I’m going to go into Facebook and I’m going to gauge in the hits on my backstage community. That’s our private Facebook group for backstage members. That’s where I’m going to go. Or I’m going to go into my free group for my community and I’m going to answer questions for 15 minutes. Notice that I gave a specific action and a specific time limit. This is really important because it’s so easy to hop into Facebook for just a minute and two hours later crawl out of the pit of cat videos and BuzzFeed quizzes. You’re not alone. But, it’s fixable.
This happens for me, not so much on Facebook but YouTube. I will get onto YouTube to go into my channel and set up a live event or go into my channel and find the link for a video to share with a client. And 20 minutes later, I close the LinkedIn tab and I’m like, what was I doing? Or, I’m sorry the YouTube tab rather. And I go what am I doing. Oh yeah, I need to go on YouTube to find that, whatever. Because I got sucked into videos.
So, now I have in my bookmarks bar, in my Chrome browser, a direct link to my creator area. So, the back end of my YouTube channel so that I don’t hit the YouTube home page because it is a dangerous place for me to be. The only place I’m watching YouTube videos is on my phone. And that’s when it’s my free time. So, often this is like, while I’m waiting for Charles to do something or I’ll be fully honest, thank goodness Colin doesn’t listen to this podcast. Occasionally, it happens at soccer practice that I get into the YouTube videos. And so that’s when it’s my YouTube consumption time. That’s when all of your great channels that I’m subscribed to, that’s when I’m watching your content.
Because, if I go into the abyss that is YouTube, in the middle of the day, to find something. I get sucked in and I know that about myself. So, I make sure that I am focused around what the actionable item is and what the time limit is. If I need to go and respond to comments. I’m going to right to the creator area of my channel, where I can see your comments. I’m responding to comments for the time I allotted for myself and then I’m out. That’s the whole show. That’s everything from start to finish.
So, I want to encourage you to do the same. Put in the restrictions because that’s where you get the freedom to see those results. That’s where you get the freedom to see the growth. And actually not hate what you’re doing. Because what’s happening right, I’m guessing, for at least one person who listens to this. Maybe it’s you, maybe it’s the person in the car next you also listening to this podcast. Let’s just pretend that’s a thing.
Then, here’s the deal. They are hopping in because they’re going to engage with their community and they’re getting sucked into maybe, negative conversations. Maybe perfectly pleasant conversations but they’re losing sections of their day. And that gives them a negative feeling about the entirety of social media. Losing your time, your most precious commodity, will make you hate whatever it is that is costing you that time. It’s just the way it is.
So, we need to put these pieces in that are going to prevent us from doing that. So, actually marking out on your calendar, 15 minute chunks of time to take specific actions. And also larger chunks of time, less frequently, that are for scheduling your social media foundational content. So, your scheduled posts that have to go out. Your sales messages that have to go out. Scheduling your Facebook lives or your YouTube videos or whatever those things are.
Remember, it’s about you taking control of the time you’re spending by putting the time on your calendar and committing to a task. And that’s it. Not getting sucked into being subject to the schedule of social media notifications going off at you. Or whatever that is. And yes, there are some notification we need to pay attention to. I still absolutely have some notifications turned on. But, I don’t jump to respond to them, at all times.
That’s why Betty Bot on Facebook exists. So, that you guys can get an answer and a response when you show up on the page and you want to know about the backstage trial or whatever. You don’t need me to respond. You just need a response. Now, Betty knows that if you tell her, I want a human. Or you hit a specific button that says give me a Human. She will send me and the team a message. Saying, hey somebody needs a human. And that’s the notification I respond to. That’s the thing that goes, oh we need to pay attention to this. Does that make sense? Does it help? I hope it does.
If you want to learn more about this stuff. There is a brand new free training. It’s over at thestaceyharris.com/quickstart if you’re at the show notes page for this episode you’ll find a link right here. Right where I said it probably. Or in the resources down at the bottom. And so, use that to get through some of these things. We actually talk about five things on there at are really frustrating, most of my solopreneur clients who are DIY’ing this stuff still. So, the folks that are in backstage or just ahead of getting into backstage. These are things that are getting them frustrated and more importantly, it’s the things that you need to know to get you over the hump. Alright.
Alright, that’s our show for today. Thank you for listening, thank for being a part of this community. I hope to see you in backstage. Be sure to check out that quick start training it’s 100% free and it’s going to help you alleviate a lot of these pain points. Okay. If you have any questions, if you want to tell me what you thought of the episode, head over to Instagram, drop me a DM. I’d love to hear from you.
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