Welcome to episode 297 of Hit the Mic with The Stacey Harris.
All right guys, 297. We’re going to talk about something that I feel like a lot of social media people are afraid to talk about, and that’s the three things you must know about hating your social media. Sadly, many of you e-mail me and tweet me and send me notes on Facebook and things like that, and let me know you hate social media, and you hate doing it, and you hate everything about using it at as a marketing tool. I want to take a look at that, and tell you what you can do to make it better, maybe let you off the hook on a couple of things, and really establish the idea in your mind that you can like your social media.
It can be cool. It can be great. It can be fantastic. It can be powerful. It can be connected. It can be engaging. For as long as you hate it, your audience is probably going to feel that you hate it, which is not generally something we tend to want to engage in any way, shape, or form. That’s why I want to talk about the three things you must know about hating your social media.
Let’s start with this. Number one thing you must know: Take a step back.
I want you to really look at your social media objectively, and that’s going to mean turning off your computer and stepping back and really thinking about a couple of things. One, what do you hate about your social media? Don’t just tell me you hate doing it. Don’t just tell me you hate Facebook. Tell me what it is that rubs you the wrong way when it comes to social media. Is it a lack of engagement? It is that you feel like it’s not working? Is it that you feel like you’re doing it all the time? What is it specifically? I want you to actually write this down. What do you hate about your social media?
Then, I want you to tell me what you love about your social media. Is it that it’s connected you to really amazing people? Is it that it’s a great tool to help you grow your business? Is it that you just super love Snapchat like me? What is it that you love about your social media?
Write down both of those things, love and hate, because that’s going to give you a really clear picture of where maybe some changes need to be made. That’s what we’re going to talk about step two, so I don’t want to get too far ahead of myself, but once you have that brain dumped out you will probably feel better just instantaneously because you’re not going to be twisting yourself about. You’re not going to be twisting around this idea that it’s this thing you have to do, and it’s this thing you hate, because now you know exactly what you hate about it and exactly what you love about it. We can make less of what you hate, and more of what you love.
The next thing I want you to do as far as stepping back is really remember why you’re doing this. I don’t mean, “Oh, because it helps me get clients.” Why do you want to get more clients? What change are you trying to make in the world? What impact are you trying to have on people’s lives? What freedom are you trying to create in your own life? What are your revenue goals? What do those goals mean for you and your life and your family and your business? Think about your why’s, your big picture stuff, and then go back to that list of things you love and hate and think about the things that you could more of on the love list and think about the things maybe you could mitigate on the hate list to make it worth it. Or, to step away from completely.
Then, I want you to turn your computer back on, and I want you to take a really honest look at your numbers. What networks are you on? Write those all down, and then tell me what’s happening on each of those networks. By me, I mean the piece of paper you’re writing all this down on. What are your Facebook numbers look like? What are your Twitter numbers look like? How many people are engaging? What clients can you connect with conversations that happened on Twitter or Instagram or whatever? Where can you see your funnel growing because of Facebook ads or whatever it is? Think about what’s working in social media, because that’s where we want to focus our energy. That’s where we want to create more of that, and once we know what that is, it makes it really easy for us to dissect it.
Now, the reason I want you to start with stepping back is this: Most people who tell me they hate their social media hate it because they don’t actually know what’s happening. They feel like they’re throwing a ton of time and or a ton of money at something that’s just not working. When they step back and they look at what they love and what they hate and really why they’re doing it, and then they look at their numbers, which is something, unfortunately, almost none of you are actually doing, you can see the impact it’s actually having as far as as getting you to your goals. Or, you can get a really frank look at the fact that it’s not working, and you can figure out how to change that. All right? That’s what I want you to do first is I want you to take that step back.
The second thing I want you to do is I want you to focus.
Again, a lot of the people who tell me they hate their social media are trying to do one major thing wrong, and that’s be everything all the time in all the places. That is really hard to keep up, and it’s really hard to do successfully on all fronts. Instead, I want you to go with the two and two method. Meaning, you have two primary networks, and you have two secondary networks. That’s it. Again, two primary networks. This is where you’re going spend your time each and every day. This is going to get priority attention. These are going to be your bread and butter as far as community and connections and engagement and content. Then, two secondary networks. Support networks. Maybe they support your brand. Maybe they are networks you’re trying out. You want to see how they fit. Maybe they’re networks you really love but maybe you don’t have a massive audience yet, i.e. Snapchat. For me, anyways. What is it? Two primaries and two secondaries.
I want you to focus all of your energy there. Stop trying to be on every single network that pops up. Sometimes chasing the next thing just causes us to leave the thing that’s working. That’s not to say that you’re not going to have to change and evolve, and that new networks don’t have any credibility, but let’s not all of our monkeys in the new basket, okay? Let’s keep some of your monkeys in the baskets that they like. I don’t know why we have monkeys in baskets. I am not the metaphor queen. If you listen to Your Biz BFF, the podcast I do with my co-host and business partner Brandy Lawson you know this, but monkeys in baskets is what we’re going with guys.
Back on track, speaking of focus, I want you to focus on, again, those two primary networks and those two secondary networks. In addition to that, I want you to have focused social media time. Again, a lot of what I hear from people who tell me they hate their social media is that it’s a time suck. That they’re spending all of this time on Facebook. I always really love when clients tell me “I spent three hours yesterday on Facebook, and I don’t know what I did.” Then I go and look, and I don’t any comments. I don’t see any posts. I don’t see any engagement in groups. I don’t see any activity at all. That’s because they spent three hours lurking and clicking and not engaging. I want you to have scheduled social media time with focused tasks.
Meaning, you’re going to say I’ve got two hours a day to do my content curation and scheduling of the foundation for the week. Then, each of the rest of the week I have two, three, maybe four fifteen minute chunks of time, and each of those chunks of time have a very specific task. That task may be to engage on your page. That may be to re-tweet. That may be to respond to messages. That maybe to answers questions in a group. Whatever it is, it’s focused time to do a specific task. That way, you really start to see the impact each task is having on your core following, your engagement, and your bottom line. That’s what really matters, right? Again, focused time in focused places.
We’re not being everything all the time to all the people everywhere. No. We’re spending the right time in the right places presenting the right brand and answering the right questions for the right people. It’s as simple as that. I know it’s not that simple, but it really is simple. Once you embrace the narrowing, you will see growth.
The third thing I want to talk about that might help you not hate your social media anymore. Outsourcing.
Now, outsourcing can look like a lot of different things. It doesn’t have you be you hand over a fat load of money and the entirety of your social media every month. There are so many other options. You can hire somebody who, like me, is a strategist and does strategy consulting where you work with someone and they build you a strategy, and you, and possibly your team, go and implement. You can book a one-off social media coaching session with someone like me or someone else that does a one hour coaching and you work through strategy. You work through some of your blog, some content suggestions, how can we make this better? Maybe they review your numbers and give you some feedback.
I have a lot of clients actually who have started doing monthly one hour calls with me. Once a month, we sit down for an hour, and we do an honest evaluation of their social media. They have somebody who runs their social media alongside them, or in some cases they’re DIYers and they’re doing their social media on their own, but it helps them to sit down with a strategist once a month and say, “Here’s where I’m at. Here’s where I want to be. What can we do differently? Here’s what I’m loving.” In a lot of cases they start with, “This is what I’m hating. How do we fix this?” That’s a really good way for you to outsource your social media or outsource parts of your social media and get some external feedback and get some external advice on what needs to change.
Again, this doesn’t have to look like one thing. It can look like lots of things. Maybe it’s you outsource just the foundation part, and you handle the engagement. That’s what a lot of our management clients really like to do is we take care of the boring stuff, the stuff that has to go out, the content curation and things like that, and then they handle the part where they’re talking to their community and they’re building relationships and they’re having a good time doing that. That’s the part they like, but it gets possible when you have a really solid foundation. Or, you could be talking to somebody who’s full on handling everything.
They’re doing all of your social media management. That’s another outsource option that comes in at a range of price ranges and it comes in a range of skillsets. Interview a lot of people. If they’re not willing to answer every single one of your questions, run immediately in the other direction. If they’re not ever willing to explain anything to you, run immediately in the other direction. In some cases, it comes down to maybe hiring a strategist to help you find a manager who can execute the strategy they’ve built for you. Again, this can look like any combination of things that works for you and your budget, but I encourage you to get some outside support.
If you just hate your social media right now, you’re just frustrated with it and it’s not doing what you want and you don’t like it and you have to see a change, book a coaching session. There’s so much we can accomplish in an hour, and sometimes just talking to somebody for an hour and getting some positive feedback and getting really honest about what’s working and what’s not working and where you need to be focusing and how you’re wasting your time and getting some outside perspective on that can make a massive difference. Book a one-on-one session with me or with someone else and get that clarity so that you know what your next steps are.
Again, this doesn’t have to be a huge time investment. It doesn’t have to be a huge financial investment. It just has to be you moving forward in a positive space with your social because, trust me, for as long as you hate it, your audience will feel it, and it will continue to not work. That is just going to increase your frustration, not your bottom line. Okay? All right.
That is episode 297. In case you don’t get the e-mails every Tuesday, which you totally should, I have big news. Episode 300 is coming up. It is just a few episodes away now. A little less than a week. It’s a week from Tuesday actually. We’re going to do a live episode for episode 300 where I will be also unveiling the brand new Hit the Mic Backstage site and membership community for … Well, the membership community’s not brand new, but the membership site where all of the stuff lives is going to have a brand new look. Come check that. Head over to TheStaceyHarris.com/episode300, and you will see the invite page so that I can e-mail you a little reminder and let you know that we’re going to be live.
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