Welcome to episode 475 and prepare yourself. We’re going to get a little soap boxy today. I am taking a deep breath before we start this episode because I want to talk about five posts types that I want to stop seeing. Now, some of these might be posts that you too have seen, some of them may have been posts you looked to as an ideal, however, they’re dumb. They’re just dumb.
So these are the five posts that I know and I’m going to make an effort to get through these very quickly. So these are the five posts that I do not ever want to see again. Never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever. And before I get into them, let me just say, I want to hear from you on this one. So be sure to come over to Instagram and let me know, or Facebook if you prefer it, or LinkedIn if you prefer that, whatever, come find me and let me know if you agree, which you will. And more importantly, let me know what additions we should make to this list. All right, let’s do it.
All right, post number one and this one is, it’s a personal thing for sure.
This one might just be me just because I think they’re dumb, but this is the best time to post on Instagram. Post a story. Post to Facebook, do a Facebook live, release your podcast, send your email, launch your program… Whatever it is. Here is the deal. There is not a best time. There are some well known best practices that could apply for a lot of people, but there is no one time to rule them all to do anything. In fact, I find that more often than not, these kind of pieces, these kind of posts, these kind of shares mostly just stop us from doing anything. Here is the real talk. Almost no networks still operate on a time based delivery system, meaning the Instagram post that you made sure went out at 10:00 AM on Tuesday because that’s when the Pinterest pin told you to post might not get seen by your audience until eight o’clock that night because that’s when it’s had enough traction to get in front of them.
More importantly, they may not be around at 10:00 AM and even if they are around, they might not be paying attention to you. And so I want you to really think about those questions that we ask at the beginning of every strategy. What are we selling? Who are we selling it to and where are we selling it? I want you to zoom in on that who. Because that, who are we selling it to? That’s going to be the place where you get your answers around the best time to do anything. Again, it rubs me when I see these specifically about best times to post on social mostly because wrong, but this is true of anything. It could be launching a program. It could be opening your store. It could be starting a business. It could be going for a jog like I don’t care what the best time is. I care what the time is that you’re going to do it. I care what the time is that your audience is going to see it or engage with it or connect with it. There is no one time to rule them all for literally anything. Ever. Okie dokie? Okie dokie.
Number two, the best hashtags post.
I see these a lot from marketers. Specifically around, “You have to use these hashtags to get traction.” Again, I want you to go back to your who, because that’s going to tell you where they’re connected, where they’re following along with. Here is the reality of hashtags. Hashtags are part of the equation. They’re an important part of the equation. They can absolutely help you get in front of new audiences. They can help you find new people to follow and connect with… But also I want to be really, really clear that hashtags are more helpful for some than others and also that it is not the only way to get traction. It is not the only way to connect and utilizing them on your profile and your posts is only part of the equation. We also want to be connecting in the hashtag with other people. We also want to be using hashtags that our audience actually checks as well as hashtags that represent what we do and so there is no one universal best hashtag to use for everyone. In fact, what this frequently does is create an unnecessarily high amount of competition, completely unrelated competition and a hashtag that was once upon a time relevant. So stop posting it.
Number three, the just do X.
I find this is also really specific to the online business space. In the digital marketing space we see just post more frequently, or just use better hashtags, or just post at this time, or it’s generally a sort of like vapid and shallow solution really to a symptom of a problem versus an actual real meaty value solution to an actual real meaty problem. We see this a lot, a lot from coaches and I love, I love coaches. We work with a ton of really amazing coaches. I have a coach, I’m incredibly, incredibly in awe of coaches. However, we see this a ton in the coaching space when we are researching, doing competitor analysis, and things like that of our clients, or for our clients, rather like it’s super frequent or it’s like just journal daily, just meditate. Just eat less carbs. Just go for a 30 minute walk and all of your problems will be solved, which is like real crap, like real, real BS because generally what it does is it makes our consumers, our audience, our community lose trust because A, they’ve probably tried the just-whatever-the-magic-pill is that we’re selling and it didn’t work because, let’s be honest, almost no magic button, no anything, solves an actual problem. It may treat a symptom, but it’s not going to solve a problem or provide the cure as it were. So I want us to let go of these just do X, Y, Z posts. All right, in the spirit of powering through the final two, let’s keep going.
Number four, and this one’s going to get real soap boxy the faux vulnerable post.
Here’s the reality of vulnerability: It’s become a bit of a buzzword. That doesn’t mean I don’t want you to be vulnerable. It doesn’t mean I don’t want to be transparent. That is a huge component of why I like providing the content we provide is I am a firm believer that transparency and vulnerability can be a really important part of connecting. However, it needs to have intention and it needs to have purpose and most importantly, it needs to have value. What I see with these sort of faux vulnerable posts is they tend to be a pull for engagement. They tend to be a pull for, “Oh, I know I’ll get traction because I’m talking about this and I’m going to start with saying I’m being super vulnerable. So don’t…” And by doing that, we immediately put our audience or our consumer on edge. We immediately put them in the caretaker role instead of the hero role, right? And what we want to really put them in the position of is hear how this is valuable for you. And so when we think about transparency over vulnerability, when we think about providing lessons from a place of experience, that’s a very vulnerable action because we’re letting people in on, very potentially, our not most shiniest moments. I mean, in some cases, downright failure, outright suckage right?
And so I want us to instead lead with the lesson. Lead with the value. Lead with why this is important and you can ground that in I’m speaking right next to you like this is us shoulder to shoulder. This is us in the mud together. This is us leading from a few steps ahead instead of a pedestal of I just magically knew this and that transparency and that vulnerability is real. It connects and that’s the purpose of these kinds of posts. That’s the goal of sharing in that way and here’s the most wonderful part of it is when it connects, people take action from it. When it connects, people do the thing, they act on the value and so they see a result and that’s why we hear and we see vulnerability becoming such a buzzword because it does work. But faux vulnerability, pretending, mimicking transparency is not going to work. In fact, it almost always feels real fake, and in the long run that kills us. That hurts us because we are now losing trust. We are now disconnecting from the relationship we’re trying to build with the audience. That’s never going to work. And so I want you to again, lead with value, lead with the lesson and layer in the transparency instead of leading with this is super vulnerable and then going in to maybe some value-ish. All right?
And last and certainly not least, a downright epidemic online. The magic blueprint or formula for success.
All you have to do is step one, step two, step three and you three can also become a millionaire. I say you three because I became a millionaire after my mentor was a millionaire and now you’re going to be a millionaire. See? All of us millionaires. These drive me absolutely crazy because they’re so unbelievably disconnected from reality and we see a lot of people speaking out around “bro marketing” and they most often call this kind of blueprint formula marketing, bro marketing. But what I think is interesting is that even the anti-bro-marketing camp is guilty of this sometimes. They are rolling in with their version of the formula and their version of the formula is not the Lambo and the rented house, but the anti-Lambo, right? The “I’m a real person.” So layer on a couple of these. Blueprint formula, the faux vulnerability, the just do this idea. It’s so, so frequent. We want to make it so easy for our audience to say yes. We want to make it so clear that this is not going to be a scary thing. This is not going to be hard. When guess what? Life is hard. Business is hard. Marketing, occasionally hard. It does not mean that it can’t work. It doesn’t mean that you have to destroy yourself to see a result, but it is going to take more than following some mass blueprint to get where you want to go because here’s the deal.
You might be following a map to the wrong destination. The blueprint they’re selling might lead you someplace you don’t want to be. I see this most and I see this most probably because I have an agency and it’s the arena I’m in, but I see this a ton in the digital marketing space. Not so much in a like how to be a digital marketer, or how to market online, but in the sort of like targeted at digital marketers. Here’s the three-step formula to build your digital marketing agency. Here’s the five steps to a seven-figure agency. It’s ridiculous how little of that blueprint holds true and it is so easy to want it. I want it too guys, like I’m all for like, is there a magic formula where I just like complete X, Y, Z steps and I’m done. I’m a woman who loves a system and a process.
You might be following a map to the wrong destination. The blueprint they’re selling might lead you someplace you don’t want to be.
Give me a mother loving-blueprint! But here is the deal. You have to create your own blueprint. You have to create your own road map because that’s the only way you’re going to get to where you want to go in the kind of journey you want to be on. All right? And so let’s put an end to furthering this idea that a blueprint or a formula will work. It doesn’t mean that we’re not building systems that we can sell to our clients. It doesn’t mean that we’re not creating structures that our clients can learn from. A great example is how we start every strategy, and I absolutely created content around this and will continue to. The idea of those three questions, but mine are questions and not steps because the answers are your blueprint, but I can’t give you the answers. I can only give you the questions because the answers are far too varied from business to business.
We have worked with dozens and dozens and dozens of businesses over the years. Without a doubt, there are some overlaps in somebody’s strategy, but I guarantee you that there are no two strategies I have ever built that were verbatim exactly the same formula, structure, top to bottom, because businesses are different. Ideal client groups are different. Networks and expertise and tools and tactics and voice and brand and personality are different. And so the formula for us, is not a formula, it’s a question. It’s a guidebook to help you build your map. Instead of me just handing you a map and that’s what I encourage you to look at. Where can you be guiding them to create their own blueprint, empowering them to find their own way instead of trying to sell them on a journey that’s yours and not theirs. All right. That’s it. That’s the five posts that I’d never, ever, ever want to see again.
I hope it was helpful. Again, I want you to come over to social, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, whatever. Drop me a note and let me know what you would add to this list because I know, for a fact, there are more. Lots more. I would love to hear from you. Thank you so much for listening. I did also want to add, we do have spots open for strategies right now.
In fact, we are booking Q2 clients right now, so we’ll be building them strategies for Q2 and into Q3, or of course from Q2 of this year through Q1 of next year, depending on which strategy package you choose. So let me know if that’s something we need to talk about for you and your business so that we can do your custom blueprint and formula. All right? All right. I will see you next week.
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