Welcome to episode 377 of Hit the Mic with The Stacey Harris.
Let’s talk strategy. I’m excited about this because now’s the time guys. Not necessarily because this is gonna be the thing that changes your life in 2018, but because right now, this will make your social media time less stressful. This is not one of those big, grandiose, you know, ‘this is the only way you’ll see success next year’ kind of episodes or kind of conversations. What it is, instead, is ‘here’s what you need to do to make your day-to-day less frustrating.’
Now, as you’ve heard me talk about over the last month, now really is the time to be thinking about what’s been happening and what you want, moving forward. Not because it’s the end of the year, but because I’m guessing there is some goal that you have for the next 30 days or for the next 12 weeks, or for the next 12 months, that you’d like to see happen. And if you want to see that happen, you’ve got to be doing the work and looking at what’s worked, and what’s not worked. So that’s what we’re gonna talk about today, we’re gonna talk about the fundamentals of building a strategy, and I’m gonna let you know about a way you can dive deeper that’s 100% free. We’re actually gonna be doing a live free training on this in December in just, like next week, so I want to let you know about that. So details about that will be on the show notes page for this episode and of course, at the end of this episode, I will remind you.
Now, the other cool thing is, what you’re going to be putting together here, is the fundamentals of nearly every training we’re gonna have in Backstage next year. So now is a great time to join us Backstage, especially if, it is the end of the year, you’re looking for your 2018 mastermind setup. And 2018 coaching support. Great time to look at BAM, because we do have a couple spots open for next year. There’s one-on-one support with me, you get a private area of the forum that’s just for you and I, so you have access to me literally all the time. Now, I don’t answer at all hours, but you get a much faster response there than you would just about any other way. It’s really the only way to get direct one-on-one support from me that doesn’t involve me actually managing your strategy for you, with our team. So, that is the way to go if you are looking for the support throughout next year, hitthemicbackstage.com is the place to go to learn more about that, and of course the BAM level of Backstage. Cool?
Alright, let’s jump in, because there’s no time like the present.
Where are you right now?
Alright, so I kind of hit on this earlier, I’ve talked about this on Facebook live recently, but the first step is really knowing where you’re at right now. What kind of traffic are you getting to your website? What’s the demographic of the people who are currently liking your page, or currently following you on Twitter? What kind of engagement are you currently getting on Instagram, or whatever the networks are, for you? What are you currently sitting at, as far as connections on LinkedIn?
So look at your numbers.
Also, when you’re going through this evaluation, look at your profiles. Make sure that you’re updated. I know for me, I often sort of realize, ‘hey, I haven’t added something,” or “hey, I haven’t asked for recommendations lately on LinkedIn,” or “I haven’t updated my Facebook pages about information in a really long time.” So come in and do that when you’re looking at these numbers. Evaluate your foundations. Review everything, see what needs to get done. And I’m not saying you have to necessarily do that all right now, you can wait and see what your plan is gonna be, but definitely, make note of what’s there, and maybe what’s not 100% serving your goals. But that’s really the place to start, because without that information, without that foundation stuff, without looking at, “hey, I’ve got this going on right now,” it’s hard to look at where you want to go, but also, how you’re gonna get there from the sense of ‘maybe you’re paddling up a stream that is not gonna get you to your destination.’ Alright? Alright.
Number two, and we talked about this last week. I can’t say it enough and trust me, this is me telling myself this as much as it’s me telling you, as much as it’s telling me, every single client I have, who do you want to talk to?
Know your clients.
Spend some time reviewing who your ideal client is. Getting really familiar with where they are. Because guess what guys? This changes. This evolves. This can shift. You also learn more about who you like working with. Maybe who you thought your ideal client was, going into 2017 is not who you want to be working in 2018.
And really, that ties into our next one, which is ‘know your plans.’ Maybe the ideal client you had in 2017, that was perfect for one-on-one consulting, is not gonna be your ideal client going into 2018 where you really wanna focus on online courses, or a group mastermind, or whatever it is for you. Because the ideal client for one-on-one support is not necessarily the ideal client for group support or for a DIY solution. Or even a ‘done for you’ solution. So, make sure you’re really clear, especially if you’re shifting- I know a couple people who are looking at putting out physical products, maybe a planner, maybe a book, maybe a workbook, maybe support materials, as far as a product side to their business. Well, guess what? That’s gonna be a different ideal client.
So again, revisit this ‘who,’ and also look at your ‘what.’ Look at what you’re gonna be doing, what you’re gonna be releasing, what you’re gonna be sharing, because if you don’t know these three things: You don’t know where you’re at right now, so that you’re aware, you don’t know your who, so who are you talking to? And you don’t know your what, which is whatever it is you’re going to offer them, we literally cannot build you a strategy. We cannot say, “here’s the kind of content we should be running.” We can’t say, “here’s how often we should be emailing them.” And we certainly can’t be saying, “hey, these are the kind of networks that they’re engaging on and this is the kind of copy they’re gonna respond to, and here is the audience we need to target for our ads.” It gets real hard to build ads when you don’t know your ‘where,’ you don’t know your ‘what,’ and you don’t know your ‘who.’ Like, impossible. Some, like me, would say.
So I want you to look at that. And I want you to actually write this down. If you’re a computer person, write it into a google doc. If you are a pencil and paper planner, write it down in your notebook. If you’re like me, and you’re a scribble kind of person, big ass post-it notes on the wall, way to go. Whiteboards, whatever way works for you. My friend Brandy Lawson over at FieryFX did this a couple of years when she was looking at her ‘who,’ who her ideal clients were. She actually went in her kitchen, and she’s got cabinets, obviously, and she took post-it notes, and she designated three different cabinets as, like, “I love them,” “they’re all right,” “they need to go.” And she wrote all of her clients’ names down on post-it notes and she put them in those boxes. So, get creative. Whatever way sort of fires you up to do this. After she told me about this, we were talking about it, and it was like, “well that was a lot of clarity, sort of seeing it right in front of me.” Like, “oh, well, yeah, that’s- having to look at that name and say, ‘okay, I need to make a choice.'”
So get creative. Put yourself out of your comfort zone. Push yourself out of your box.
I actually have a date in December on my calendar, where, instead of being in my office, I’m renting the conference room in my office suite for an afternoon so I can do my planning outside of my space. Now, that’ pretty simple, it’s literally down the hall from my office, but it’s not sitting behind my computer, getting distracted by my emails, getting distracted by Facebook notifications, whatever it is, it’s getting me outside of that space.
So mark some time on your calendar to do the same. In fact, mark your calendar for two times. The first time being for December 6 at 9:00 a.m. Pacific Time, or noon Eastern Time. And the second time being later that week or two weeks later, whenever later that month works for you, because on December 6, I’m going to walk you through this even further. We’re gonna take this to the next level, because we’re actually gonna lay out what your strategy documentation should look like, how far, what kind of things can be put on it. We’re gonna walk through building an editorial calendar and breaking that editorial calendar down into social media updates, understanding how long ad campaigns need to run and at what frequency and at what kind of lead time. We’re gonna figure out all of that stuff and we’re actually going to outline what your strategy needs to entail, so when you take that other day, you are working through a system to actually lay out your plans. We are not going to do it for a whole year, but the process is the same.
We’re basically gonna look at what a 30 day strategy would be, for the sake of time. When I layout year strategies, it honestly, when we do it for you, done for you service-wise, it takes weeks, days, weeks. So yeah, we’re gonna look at 30 days. But it’s the same process, whether it’s 30 days or 365 days, okay? Reserve your spot now. Plus there’ll be some really great follow-up emails after that workshop, sort of reminding you, ‘hey, here’s what you need to do, here’s some other resources for those things,’ so check that out. And if you want to get ahead of the game, and you want some support from me on this, I do have, we opened up super, I decided not, okay, let me pull this back.
I, in my own planning, for 2018, have decided to take June and July off. You’ll still get podcasts, Backstage will still run, things like that. But I won’t be doing any kind of client work. I won’t be doing any coaching, I won’t be taking any meetings, the only calls that I’ll do in June and July are with our five BAM members that we have, because we max out BAM at five people, so that’s it. Other than that, I will be not working.
To make space for that, I decided to go ahead and work this December. Something I usually don’t do. With that said, I decided to open up a few more one-on-one spots with me. As of recording this, we have about four left, I think two of them are before this December 6 date, and two of them are after the December 6 date, if I remember correctly. So if you want some support on that, signing up for one of those is a really, really, really good idea. I will link to that in the show notes episode of this, show notes for this episode as well, because that’s gonna be really helpful to get some outside perspective. Somebody to push you and say, “okay, and what else? Okay, and what else?” And someone for you to ask questions to. Okay?
Alright, that’s all the things- definitely, this is one of those episodes you’re gonna want to go to the show notes page, thestaceyharris.com/episode377 because you’ll find the link to the strategy webinar, and the link to get one-on-one support, and of course, the link for Backstage and BAM if you’re interested in joining us for that. Okay?
All the things today, guys. This is a big one. This is gonna be, this is one of those things that’s going to change the way your day to day runs, and now. Not come next December, but this December. Okay? Alright, that’s it from me, I will see you guys on the webinar. Thanks for hanging out with me today. Have a good one.