Hello love. The Stacey Harris here, social media strategist and trainer. Super stoked for this episode because once again we’re bringing you three things you must know and really for the last time this year, we’re bringing you three things you must know, because it is officially December 2018. I’m really, really excited for 2019, but with that means I have a lot of excitement going into this month because we are wrapping up … We’re in sort of the last crunch or the last mile, whatever. We’re in the final sort of stretch, I think that’s the right cliché, the final stretch of 2018 and therefore the final stretch of some big projects we have launching in January. Ahead of that though, and working through the stretch, I decided I wanted to help you get really on clear what was happening in the first three months of 2019. So, I put together a brand new live workshop.
I originally thought about doing this as a free webinar style thing and then I changed my mind. I decided, as I was putting together the content, that it was way too much content for a free training. So, I instead am putting together a half-day virtual workshop. It’s on a Tuesday, it’s December 11th. It’s one week from today. We’re gonna come together and we’re gonna talk about putting together your marketing plan for Q one. We’re gonna actually build out a content calendar for 2019. We are going to create an action item list for what needs to happen in the last couple of weeks of December to have you ready for January. It’s gonna be amazing. There are a few spots left to upgrade your ticket to include a one on one call with me in January. So, if you wanna join us and you wanna upgrade to that one on one, I highly recommend doing that now.
I’m … This is gonna be a really good call. It’s going to be a legit workshop. This is not gonna be me sort of broadcasting at you for a while. This is going to be an actual real live we’re working through the stuff workshop and the best part is it’s totally virtual. So, I know there are a ton of people here in the states and certainly those of my friends here up in Canada, you guys are already buried in snow and so you don’t have to go anywhere. You don’t have to fly anywhere. You don’t have to miss anything. It’s three hours. Gonna be 9:00 AM to noon here on the west coast of the states. So, translate that to wherever you are and there’s gonna be a replay. So, if you miss something or you wanna relisten to something, you can do that.
There’s also gonna be a pop-up Facebook group. I say pop up because it will not be alive forever. We’re actually gonna keep this open just for a few weeks. It’ll be open until January 8th. So, you can join us and ask questions and get feedback and share your experiences, ask me questions and ask each other questions. So, there’s really no reason not to join us. There’s no reason not to make this time investment in yourself and in your marketing because guess what? That plan, that strategy that makes all the difference, okay? So, join me on December 11th, head on over to the show notes to grab your ticket. You can do that at TheStaceyHarris.com/backstagelive. That’s the best way to make sure your spot is reserved. All right? All right. What do you say we jump into the show now and we talk about three things you need to know this month. Sound good?
So, the first thing I wanna touch on is January.
I know it’s a whole month away. Feels far, but it’s not and the best way to start the year off right is to prepare for it. So, figure out what’s happening right now in January. This is especially important because one of the things we’re gonna talk about later is taking some time off and unplugging and if that’s something you’re doing, sometimes we don’t allow for the bounce backspace in January, especially if you take a ton of time off. So, I usually take off about a month. This year I’m taking two weeks off because we’re finishing the production of the videos for the new backstage courses and of course launching the agency, Uncommonly More, which by the way, if you haven’t heard that episode yet, it was three episodes ago now. Four episodes ago now. It’s great one. But anyways, I’m taking about two weeks off this year, but this was a lesson I learned in taking a month off and I’ll do that again in 2019.
And as I was laying out my 2019 plan, I had to remind myself of this. And that’s why I wrote this down for you today because something that I have done more times than I care to admit is preparing to have December off and cover everything in December, but not think about January and then come back to work and be like, I’m buried. There’s so much to do, I’m gonna catch up. I’ve gotta get ahead. I no longer have the wiggle room that I normally have with my content or with my social stuff or whatever, because I just planned through the end of December because I was getting so far extra I had anyways. So, don’t do that.
Make sure you have everything ready for January before December ends, that way you go into 2019 with some space. This is so, so important if you’re somebody who is currently feeling really up against it and you can’t get ahead, don’t lose the wiggle room you’ve built in this year. Don’t lose the wiggle room you build in by doing your December content early. Get your January stuff done too. Now, if you have no idea what you’re gonna do in January, make sure you attend the workshop with me because that’s gonna solve that problem, but either way, do this work. Sit down, take the step back and figure out what needs to happen for your January stuff to be on point. You have to make that plan now. Even if you’re not launching anything in January, you have to do that work now, because that is how you go into January without feeling like you’re drowning, which is not a good way to start the year, because I find that it drags on into February and March and July and through the whole year. So, that’s number one thing.
Number two, Instagram has rolled out some updates.
Couple months ago Facebook rolled out where you could see info and ads. So, basically you can see name changes to the page when the page was launched and also any active ads are running. You can do this from the desktop and mobile. You can now also do this in your Instagram app. So, you can now see what Instagram ads and Instagram account are running. You can now see what changes they’ve made when the profile was launched, things like that. I love this as a research tool. This is a really great way to get ideas. It’s a really great way to see what’s happening. I don’t so much do this with competitors. Who I do this with is people who are also talking to my audience, because this allows me to get inspired with some language.
It allows me to see what kind of ad formats are getting a ton of engagement when I’m looking into a, maybe a new segment of my audience. Maybe I’m looking at reaching to a new group of people for the first time or a new location. This is a great place to start to kind of … And this is a great book, but steal like an artist. Go in and see what they’re doing and use that as an inspiration point. And I usually go and I look at 12 to 15 different ones and I’ll pull a tiny thing from each one and I’ll create sort of from there our own starting points strategically that we can measure and then improve on. I especially love this for copying graphics, because it gets me out of my own way really.
It really … It forces me to sort of take a beat and see what other great ideas are out there for people, right? So, take that beat, figure out what was gonna work for you from their stuff and of course leave the rest. You don’t have to take it all, right? So, that’s an update to Instagram.
The other cool thing coming to Instagram or has rolled out Instagram last week is close friends.
So, this is a really cool way to share things with just a segment of your community. So, maybe you have through Instagram some connections who are in your mastermind. Maybe your coach, these are people in your mastermind. You could create stories and send it just to them. How fun is that? This is a really cool way to surprise and delight your most engaged people and you get to pick who was on this list.
You can add and remove people. No one can see who’s on or not on this list, but you can, in stories, you’ll see sort of where it’s … To post your story or post to Facebook and then where it’s to post to close friends and only your close friends will see those stories. This is, again, it’s a really cool way to surprise and delight or on the flip side of that, it’s a really great way if you’re somebody who occasionally shares more personal stuff or you wanna legitimately just share things with some close friends, you can use this for that as well. Personally, I am going to be toying with this throughout a little launch period we’re doing in December and January for backstage to segment some of my most engaged members so that I can, of course, surprise and delight them. All right? So, figure out how you can surprise and delight or just use this for connecting with close friends. That’s cool too, but it’s a really cool feature that just rolled out to Instagram last week, forcing me to update this section of the episode. All right?
So, let’s move onto number three. All right. The third thing I wanna talk about today is unplugging.
So, we’re actually gonna do a whole episode next week, December 11th, on unplugging and some things you need to put in place if you’re gonna be disconnecting from social over the holidays, which quite frankly I highly recommend and I will be doing my best to do the very same thing. So, if that’s something you wanna do, putting a plan in place is really critical. What I really encourage you to look at between now and next week’s episode is how much time you wanna take off because once you know that number, it gets a lot easier to plan everything else.
And I also wanted to touch on today ahead of that episode, why it’s really valuable to do this. So, I’m going to give a big shout out right now to my friend, my client, my coach, Tara Newman, who is the leader of leaders and she’s a really great model of this. She’s a really great example of this leading by example idea and that’s one of the things. If you are preaching to your audience about being engaged or taking a step back or unplugging, you can’t be populating content 24/7 to everywhere. So, model that behavior. If that’s something that is in an important value for you and your business, lead by example. And again, this is something that Tara does really well and something I really appreciate about what Tara is. She really leads the way she wants the people around her to lead and behave and lead their life and lead the people around them.
And so I highly recommend unplugging for a little while. You’ll probably see stuff from me when I am not working because we’re gonna be doing some fun family stuff and I’ll be sharing some photos here and there, but you won’t see me in my office. You won’t see me all the time. You will see some regular foundational stuff because guess what guys? I’m actually gonna model running through a launch while I’m not working. So, you’ll see some things going out, but everything you see is gonna to be scheduled or is going to have been posted by someone else. Transparency, because one of the things we’re gonna talk about in January is how to successfully launch without losing your ever-loving mind. And so we’re gonna run a promo period around the price increase of backstage. For two weeks, I’m not working.
All right? So, you can do that. You can still generate revenue, you can still build your business, grow your audience. It just takes some up-front work. So, we’ll talk more about that next week. This week what I want you to do is figure out how much time you wanna be unplugged. All right? All right. That’s it for today. If you have any questions at any time, of course, head over to the Facebook page or the Instagram account. I am most likely to answer it quickly on Instagram, but you can absolutely do that on Facebook too. I hope very sincerely that you join us December 11th, because it’s gonna be good and the sooner you join us, the sooner you’ll receive the email with some pre-work that I want you to do that it’s most helpful if you give yourself some time to do that before our session. And of course, we’re welcoming people into the Facebook group as they request to join. So, if you’ve reserved your ticket already, make sure you have requested to join the Facebook group as well. All right? I will see you next week, hopefully on the live call. I’m very excited about this. All right, I’ll talk to you guys soon. Bye.
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