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Full show notes and transcript at https://thestaceyharris.com/episode455 Let's talk about relevancy and your marketing... and you won't be surprised but this is A LOT more than the latest tool, trick, or feature. This is about having the conversation your audience needs, working your plan (and then working it some more), and using data to make these choices, not Google. The doors are open NOW to Hit the Mic Backstage! Learn more about this training community and access brand new Strategy and Stats trainings + an ALL NEW Instagram Guide at https://hitthemicbackstage.com

Welcome to episode 375 of Hit the Mic with The Stacey Harris. Today on the show, we're gonna talk about change. Change is scary. But also, super like, gonna happen to everybody and every business and everything in your life. It changes, it evolves, it grows. And that's good. But I feel like this time of the year, November, we kind of see the end of the year ahead, or depending on maybe when you start your year, I know a lot of people do like, mid-year is kind of their start, so maybe you're at the halfway point of your "year," your reflection time, I feel like for me, though, I kind of run my year either ... I feel like I have a lot of these refresher times. Like, the school year, I guess September I always feel kind of like, it's new. But definitely, as the number changes, so in December and November, when we're looking ahead, this year is 2018 and like, January/February ... you have this whole. It's like the first page of a notebook. You have this whole stretch of time ahead of you. And I try not to plan or get too caught up in massive time periods. I definitely have a general idea of what I want the next, honestly, three years of my business to look like, in a really general sense. Like, super general sense. But now, in November, is definitely when I start looking at what's up for next year in a slightly less-general sense. I tend to get more, more, more detailed when we look at 12 week quarters. But I'm a big fan of mapping out things, like Backstage trainings for the year. I really like to put together a general sense of what my editorial calendar will be for the year, what my launch periods will be for the year because that helps me know ... when I get an opportunity to be an affiliate for something, if I have the space for that, or if ... I get some crazy, awesome new idea. Again, if I have the space for that. Or, more often than not, what needs to be removed from my life so I can make the space for it. So, in November, I start looking at what do I need to change to hit my goals? I also like to look back at what's changed since the last time I looked, so over the course of 2017, what's changed in my business? And so today I want to talk about why change is good, and how to look at that. Before I jump in, I want to remind you, if you love this show, which I know you do, you need to join us Backstage. HitTheMicBackstage.com is the place to be. We are all about giving you what you need, right now, to help you with your digital marketing. This is the place to stay updated with what's happening on networks, to pay attention to what you want to focus on, because we have how-tos on all of the major networks. And speaking of change, we have some change over the course of 2018 that'll happen, because we're always making that community better. That community is always changing in the sense that, in 2018, for the first time, the bulk of our trainings that I have laid out, are gonna be about strategy. We have an entire library of step by step, how-to use networks, and now we're gonna delve into some of the why's and the strategies that can help us grow and help us, you know, actually see results and stuff. Doesn't that sound lovely? So if you want to be a part of that, HitTheMicBackstage.com is the place for that. I highly recommend you join us, because well, it's just frigging cool. And I'm there! And lots of other cool people, so I'd love to see you there. All right? So. Start with your brain... Moving right along. The first thing I want to talk about is when we're looking to change something. Maybe ... and I feel like this is the most common one that comes up, the initial change is, "I want to make more money," or I want to change the ways I'm making money, so maybe you're moving from one to one services or one to one coaching and you really want to shift to a one-to-few or one to many model, so maybe it's small group coaching or small mastermind coaching. Maybe it's a course. Maybe it's a membership, something like Hit the Mic Backstage. Whatever it is, there's a change. And here's the first thing that you have to look at, is you have to go full on brain with it. You have to look at, okay, so where am I at now? Because until you know where you're at now, you literally can't change anything. There is no place to go if you do not know where you are. That's why on every mall map/directory in the world, there's a little sticker that says, "You are here." We have to figure out what "You are here" is in your business right now. And that's ... that's everything from, how much are you making, to where are you making it? To what's your community size look like? But it's also diving a little deeper than that. Is the community size you have now made up of people who are going to be interested in whatever this next iteration is? A great example of this change, as I went through it in my business, was honestly looking at when I moved from on demand, virtual assistant, which was a virtual assistant business, to Hit the Mic Marketing, which was the original iteration of The Stacey Harris. My clientele was not all people who are going to move with me. My mailing list was not all people who were going to be interested in what I was gonna start saying, and so I had to get really clear on if there was anyone, and if there was anyone, how I moved them, and also how I let go of those who were not a fit, from a client perspective, it was a lot of referring. Handing those people off to somebody who was gonna be a good fit, because obviously I still want to maintain those relationships. I still care about those people. And I did that with my email list, too, the people who ... when I sent out an email saying, "Hey, this is what we're doing. We're actually closing the doors of On Demand, we're launching a new company, Hit the Mic Marketing." Guys, I'm super original with these names, right? We're moving to Hit the Mic Marketing. I'd love you to be a part of that if you're interested in that, here's where you stay on the list. If you are interested in more of this VA-focused, in more of the things I helped with, here are some really good resources. So I set up a referral piece, not even just for my clients, but for my email subscribers, my blog readers, because this was before the podcast existed, so they would have that, for lack of a better term here, safe space to land. So that's really important to me, but again, it can't happen if you don't do this brain work first, which is knowing where your numbers are, knowing who those numbers are, because those numbers represent actual, real live people, something we forget. So pay attention to that stuff first. Look at your community size. Look at your budget. Look at your numbers. And then, you gotta go heart. You do. As much as it's about who your ideal clients are, it also has to be about how do you serve best in the way that is in alignment with you. I mentioned blog readers before. Part of that looking at, who am I and how do I serve best in the sense of what do I enjoy most doing was part of the reason there's not a blog anymore, guys, there's a podcast, and it's because I don't particularly like writing blogs. Like, it's just ... I used to say I wasn't good at it. I've since shifted that. I don't like it. It's not even that I'm not great at it, it's just not my favorite way to create. It's not how I feel creative, even as I go through the process of writing my first book, it is an effortful process because again, it's not my favorite way to create. I'm a very visual or like, audio. Audible. I don't know what the word is I'm looking for. But you know what I mean. I like stuff that I can see or hear. Which is strange, because I'm a huge reader. I love to read. And I'm not a huge fan of audiobooks. So there you go. All right? But the point is, from a creative standpoint, I like to talk. This is how I best serve. And that was a feel thing, and you have to do that. Another feel thing was when I closed On Demand and launched Hit the Mic Marketing, and even more recently than that, when Hit the Mic Marketing became The Stacey Harris, it was less about the numbers. It was honestly less about you, people who listen to the show, the people who were my clients and who worked with me, who were on my email list, and more about me, and who I wanted to be as an entrepreneur and who I wanted to be and how I wanted to serve as the leader of my community. And so, that heart part? That feel part does matter. Because the things that we don't like doing, the things that are not in alignment with us, are never our best work. It's just the way it is. And so as much as it's about your ideal clients, and you guys have heard me say that, I don't know, 475 billion times, it's also about you. And it's also about how you best show up. All right? So, take that into account. What's Next? Our third step is going to be bringing those two things together and figuring out what our next step is. What are the actions? And really looking at, okay, so who are my ideal clients? What do they want? What are these numbers? What do I have right now? Where do I want to be? Okay now, where's the map? So now we have, you know, going back to our very bizarre analogy of the mall directory ... I don't know where I got this one, guys, but we're going to stay with it. We have our "You are here," because we did our brain work. We have our "Here's your destination, here's where you want to be," because we did that inner heart work, that "this is how I feel best." This is how I serve best. The third step is, okay now, what's my route to get to that destination? And that is the most important step, because if you don't take that step and then follow that map, which I guess would be like, 3A or 3B, 3A being figure out, 3B being actually use, if you don't do that part, you're gonna stay where you are. You're gonna stay at step one and you're never gonna get to step two. You're never going to get to that destination part. You're gonna end up living at that "You are here" spot. And that's not where you want to be. And that's okay. It's natural for us to evolve. I think this is one of the most important marketing lessons and business lessons I've learned, and I say that not at all lightly, because man, oh man, are there a lot of lessons that we learn about ourselves, and about how business works and about how marketing works, and you know, tactical stuff and mindset stuff and everything. But one of the most important lessons I've learned is it never stops changing. You never stop changing, and so nothing you do is permanent. Which is kind of freeing, because one of the biggest, like pieces of feedback I get from clients when I make a suggestion about trying something new or tweaking something is, "What if it doesn't work? What if people don't like it?" Well, great. Then we try something else! Nothing is permanent. Nothing is forever. I mean, even tattoos can be removed at this point, right? Seriously, though. All of mine are original. It comes down to just take the next step now, because you don't know what will be different later. You know, when I opened On Demand Virtual Assistant, I thought that's the thing I would be doing forever. It lasted about 14 months. And then I opened Hit the Mic Marketing, and I was like, "Okay, so this is the thing I'm going to do forever. I'm going to provide management services. This is what I'm gonna do forever." It lasted about a year, and then we launched The Stacey Harris, and I thought, "This is the thing I'll be doing forever," and it was programs and a lot of one-on-one coaching. A lot of one-on-one coaching and still some management services. And here we are a few years later, and it's very little management services. Very little. We do still have a couple of management clients. It's mostly strategy development, and it's the membership, which wasn't something I ever thought I'd be able to do, and here we are, two years into the membership. And I'll be honest: I've kind of stopped saying this is the thing I'll being doing forever, because I just know better now I guess. I'm not comfortable with the idea of forever and ever, still. I'm still kind of commitment-phobic guys, it's cool. But ultimately, what I wanted to do with this episode is I wanted to remind you that if you're looking at next year and you want to see something different, something in you is saying, "Hey, it's time to evolve," that's okay. It's cool. It's actually totally expected. So do it. Find out what little steps you need to start taking now to see those shifts and those changes happen. If you are interested in partnering with me to make those changes, I do have some spots open at our VIP Level for Backstage, which does involve monthly one-on-one calls with yours truly, The Stacey Harris. I don't know why I'm referring to myself in the third person. But it's a really great way to get the support and the on-going coaching you need to see that change from a marketing and business perspective, because you know, you got someone to say, "Hey, is this crazy?" And I'll straight up tell you if it is. I promise. So, check that out. All of the information for all three levels of Hit the Mic Backstage, meaning the monthly, the annual or the Bam VIP Level are over at HitTheMicBackstage.com. Heads up: the really cool thing about BAM is that instead of where you're looking at those 12 month, six month, nine month masterminds, right now and you're saying "I don't know if I am ready to jump into something that long-term," BAM, just like any other level of Hit the Mic Backstage, is completely customizable to how long you want to be there. If you want to join us for a month and just get a one on one call with me and access to the community and check it out? Awesome. If you want to commit to 12 months with me and spending all of 2018 really rocking it out with me, killer, let's do that. That's up to you. You can cancel at any time. So, if you're at a point where you're like, "You know what? This is the year where I really kind of want to have this one-on-one support throughout the year, but I'm not sure if I can commit to that kind of investment," not a big deal. Let's try it out. Let's see how it goes, and you can cancel at any time. HitTheMicBackstage.com is the place to go to get all of that information. And I will see you on the very next episode of this show, which, you know, comes out next Tuesday, because that's when this happens. That's not changing. There's no change there. All right? Thank you for listening. Have a wonderful rest of your day and I will see you next time on Hit the Mic with The Stacey Harris. That's me.

Welcome to episode 374 of Hit the Mic with The Stacey Harris. All right, guys, it is November. Like, for realsies. And we have the first episode of November hitting you, which means it's three things you need to know. And they're all social media focused this month. Two Facebook notes and one Instagram. I'm amped. I'm really amped. I apologize in advance for my voice. I'm getting over a cold. But the content will be good if you can just bear with the voice, all right? All right, so let's jump right in by saying this episode, like all 373 episodes before it, is sponsored by Hit the Mic Backstage. HittheMicBackstage.com is the place to go if you are looking for a social media lifeline. Really, a lifeline is the right word here. Because that's where I'm doing updates all the time. Whenever networks make changes, that's where I share them. And in December, we have a brand new, completely revamped Facebook ads training coming out. We just released in the last two months LinkedIn, YouTube, and some other really great trainings. We also have a monthly mastermind where you get a little feel for one on one time with me, because you are the focus for five to fifteen minutes as long as you submit a question. That's all you have to do. So join us, HittheMicBackstage.com. Again, this is your online marketing, your social media lifeline. Use it. This is how you phone a friend. I'm your friend. Cool?   All right, so let's jump into the three things I want you to know in November about social media. Yeah? Cool? You in? Facebook Newsfeed Changes Let's do this. Number one, I did a Facebook live about this, and I'll link to it over in the show notes. But there are some newsfeed tests happening, there's also some newsfeed changes that have rolled out. Don't freak out just yet, but it does mean some changes are coming. Right now, they are testing the idea in six countries on Facebook of having two newsfeeds. One for sponsored posts from pages and stuff from your friends, also people who you have agreed to connect with one to one so to speak. So your profile connections. And then a second newsfeed that would actually be all about your pages. That would be the organic post content from pages. Now, this has some people kind of up in a tizzy for lack of a better word in the English language, because they're freaking out that their stuff's not going to be seen. I take a little bit of an issue with that because of two things. A, Facebook has even said there are not currently any plans to roll this out globally. And B, I don't think it's a totally horrible thing if it got rolled out globally, to be honest with you. For one, I think it separates the kids from the grownups a little bit. I'll be honest with you, the people who are really serving their community and getting engagement are still going to get organic traffic. The people who are willing to invest through ads are going to see an ROI on it because that content's going to show up in the main timeline. So I don't think it's all bad. I think it may also improve the user experience for Facebook users, which means their more apt to use platform that we're trying to market them on. There's no downside to that for us. Now, yes this will change the way we as pages show up. That's a natural part of social media. For those of you who have spent a lot of time learning Facebook, wouldn't you rather have to evolve the way you show up here than start over somewhere else? Right now, we're seeing a lot of people use their Facebook page as a megaphone to sell, sell, sell, sell, sell, sell, sell without being of any real value, and completely for free because they can. When we change that environment we make it so the people who are doing this well, the people like you who actually care about the people seeing the content and want to actually serve a community, they see results. They actually build a community. They actually engage. And here's the real talk. Like unfiltered. And this is probably the moment that this podcast gets a little E next to it for this episode. I'm going to try though. Marketers have become really, really, really, really entitled. Here's the deal guys. 10, 15, 25 years ago, if you wanted to market your business, you paid for it. You bought ad time on the radio, you bought a billboard, you bought a spot in the Yellow Pages, you paid for a bigger, brighter sign than the guy next door. You invested in that exposure. Social media made us a little soft. We thought we could ride this out forever and ever without any investment, and here's the deal. The pages who are seeing really massive results, the businesses that are seeing really epic ROI, they're investing. Not just money, but time. And maybe money not just in ads, but in having someone who knows what they're doing build them a strategy. Or run their retargeting campaigns. Or write copy for their ads. Or write copy for their content that their sharing. Whatever the case may be, they're investing either time or money in building a platform and sharing a message on Facebook, on Twitter, on Instagram, on whatever the platform is. So you're a business. You need to invest in getting in front of your audience. That may be time, that may be money. In all likelihood, in 2018, it's going to be both. Here's the bright side. Never, ever, ever, ever in the history of the internet, 10, 15, 25 ... In the history of the world rather, 10, 15, 25 years ago, has it been cheaper to market your business. You don't have to spend, I don't know, whatever a billboard costs. You don't have to spend whatever a 30 second commercial costs. And here's the even better part, you get to track the results of whatever your investment is. If that's $100, if it's $500, if it's $1,000, if it's $10 thousand, if it's $100 thousand, you get to see numbers. You get to target exactly who sees it. Your not playing a commercial during the evening news and hoping the right person sees it. No, you're putting an ad right in the palm of their hand for the exact right person who's going to have their life changed by whatever message you're delivering to them. That is epic. That's amazing. That's powerful. So open up to the idea of investing, because, in 2018, you're going to hear me talking about it a whole heck of a lot. I mean it's, full disclosure, it's why the Facebook ads module ... Or training rather in December is a complete revamp of the Facebook ads module from Backstage. Because here's the deal guys, it matters more than ever before. And again, it doesn't have to be $10 thousand a month. It doesn't have to be $100 a day. It can start smaller than that. It can start wherever you're comfortable. Obviously, the more you invest, the better your results are going to be. But we can start small and figure out where we see the best results, and then throw more money there instead of just sort of making it rain all over Facebook and hoping for the best. All right? All right, so that's number one. I'm going to move on from that one. Loosen up a little, all right. Re-Targeting Ads, don't forget them... All right, number two, don't forget to re-target. I know a lot of you are running ads right now for your Fall launches, or I know a lot of people who are running e-commerce sites, and this is a big time of year for you guys. We've got some Backstage members who sort of, the companies and the teams they work with are making all of their money in November and December. And so if you are running ads, make sure you're retargeting. Make sure one of those ad campaigns is a retargeting campaign. "Hey, you visited this site, and you didn't buy. Here it is again." "Hey, you opted in but you didn't buy. Here it is again." Whatever it is. "Hey, you read some content. You want to see what's after that? Here's this." Run those retargeting ads. If you don't know what a retargeting ad is, go into Backstage, go into the Facebook training. Learn about pixels, because that's how you do it. Make sure your pixels, not your pencils, your pixels are set up and makes sure that you are building a campaign targeted to those people. That's absolutely mission critical. There's no other choice. This is not optional. If you are running any kind of ad right now I want you to be running retargeting ads. Honestly, retargeting ads are the only ones I'm running right now because for me, it doesn't make a ton of sense to run ads to a cold audience right now. So what I'm doing is I'm running ads to an audience that's been to the site but is not a part of my email list so that I can grow the email list so that when we launch something cool in February or March of next year, you guys can know about it. All right? So I see you're not on the email list, you should do that because there are things coming guys. I'm excited. All right, so that's number two. Don't forget to re-target. Seriously, retargeting, retargeting, retargeting. Do it now. Do it now. Do it now. That's all I got for that. Instagram Stories to Connect Number three, if you haven't started using Instagram stories yet, I really, really encourage you to start doing it. It's a really fun way to engage with your audience, but there are some best practices. And we're going to have an episode, I think we have it in the December calendar of this podcast all about Instagram stories and some best practices going into 2018. I think it's after our social media planning episode. There are such good episodes coming for you guys in this last eight weeks of the year. I'm so excited about this section of the editoral calendar. But anyways. But real quick, what I want you to know is give Instagram stories the same planning and strategy time that you're giving your other pieces of content. It's easy to feel like Snapchat or Instagram stories or Facebook stories is something that you can kind of do on the fly. You know, if I get inspired I'll share something. But waiting for inspiration is the fastest way to lose consistency. Because it's really hard to every day, or twice a week, or whatever it is on demand get inspiration and be clever and engaging. It's why we preplan this show. It's why we prerecord the show. Also, because sometimes I get sick, and then I have to record sick because I did not do a very good job executing my plan on time. Full disclosure, guys, I'm not perfect. I know, shocking to all of you. But it's true. But with Instagram stories, having an editorial calendar has been a game changer for me. It's one of the ways we're getting a lot more engagement, a lot more messages and people voting in polls and all those cool things as a result of the stories. Certainly a lot more views over the duration of the story. And realize that your stories don't have to be a day in the life every day, and they don't have to be all about you and your personal life. If you're not a personal brand, that makes no sense. Give different people on your team a takeover kind of thing. Work with clients and do takeovers that way. Share packaging. There's a lot of things it can be. It does not have to be all about you, and your family, or your boyfriend, or girlfriend, or husband, or wife, or kids, or dogs, whatever that is. It can be a daily tip. Like a little mini two minute show. Whatever it is that fits best for you. And again, and we'll talk more about strategy on this in the future. In fact we have a training that's going to roll out to Backstage I think in January. Don't quote me on that though because I don't have the calendar in front of me. Again, all about Instagram stories, kind of now that Instagram stories have been around for awhile, and less about how to do a story and more about how to use stories. By the way, we have lots more strategy-focused trainings coming in 2018, because after two years, we've kind of got the baselines of how-tos. We've got some updates happening here and there, but we have a lot of strategy-focused stuff. I'm super amped for 2018 guy. I'm like I'm jumping out of my skin so I can just like tell you guys all this cool stuff. Any who, so that's the three things today, all right? You start using Instagram stories to really, really up level the way that you connect with your community. It's a good way to get that bond, that like trust factor a little easier, a little faster. Cool? Cool. Cool. I'm also really stoked to start testing out Instagram story ads. I've not done it for myself. We've talked about it with a couple clients who have rolled it out for themselves. But I really can't wait to try it for myself. It's going to be super fun. Super, super fun. Okay. I'm done now. I'm done teasing you about what's coming. I'm done with your three things. If you haven't joined us yet, if I haven't convinced you over the course of this episode to join us backstage, I just don't know what will. So HittheMicBackstage.com is the place you do that, okay? I will see you very, very soon on I'm sure a Facebook live or Instagram or Twitter. Wherever you want to hang out with me. All right? Have an awesome rest of your week. Clearly, the cold has made me delusional. I will see you guys very soon. Bye.

Welcome to episode 373 of Hit the Mic with The Stacey Harris. All right guys, let's talk YouTube. So over the last several months I have raved and raved and raved about Facebook lives and how fantastic it can be to connect and I actually had somebody email in and say, "Well, what about YouTube? Do I still need to be doing videos on YouTube if I'm also doing all this Facebook video stuff?" And so that's what I wanna answer today. I want to talk about why YouTube is still totally relevant, still totally important and valuable, and wonderful, and how to use it to support what you're doing, maybe with other video channels. Before I do that, I do want to jump in and let you know Hit the Mic Backstage is absolutely your next stop after this episode because tomorrow, November 1st ... Holy crap, I can't believe it's going to be November tomorrow, we've got a brand new training launching a new training YouTube best practices, so it's really going to expand on everything we talk about today. This is going to be your one-stop shop for exactly what you need to do to get the fundamentals of your YouTube game on point. All right, so hitthemicbackstage.com to check that out. Let's jump in. We're going to cover three things today.   The first one is just answering the simple question of, does YouTube still have a place for me in this video content arena? And the answer is yes. YouTube is the number two search engine in the world. And guess what guys? It's owned by the number one search engine in the world, and results from YouTube actually pop up in Google results, so yeah, guys it's still relevant. The power here comes from not saying, "I'm ditching YouTube and I'm going to Facebook video." But sharing them in both places, because there's not an exclusive rule here. No one says that just because a video's a Facebook live originally, it can't go to YouTube. In fact, any content I've put up on YouTube this year has originated from Facebook live. Don't skip it, use it. Facebook is fantastic for video and it's wonderful for the short period in which you're live and then the following, slightly longer period in which it can show up in the news feed of people paying attention to your page, then it kind of loses some of its steam. That's not the case with YouTube, because again, number two search engine in the world, the relevance is still there because it can still show up in search results so if you're creating content that's valuable, it's still findable, it's still searchable, it's still reachable, it's still viewable. That's why you gotta continue to pay attention to this tool. Let's talk about two thing we can do to really up our YouTube game. Number one, don't forget to do the SEO work, and when I talk about SEO or Search Engine Optimization, what I'm really talking about is your headline, or your title, your video title, and your description. That's where you want to make sure that the keywords that your audience is using to find that video. One of things we've started doing with some of our client's videos is actually including transcripts in the description. We've seen some great results with that. The best results have really been though in keeping it short and on point, relevant links, keyword packed description, and when I say keyword packed, let me just clarify that I do not mean keyword stuffed. I do not mean inventing a place to put keywords so that we can just shove as much as possible in there. What I do mean is using the words your potential viewer is going to use when looking for that video to describe that video. It really is that simple when we're talking about the SEO. Then making sure our tags are on point, now this is where we can start stuffing keywords. This is where we can start ... just everything that we think of, put them in there. Again though, they need to be relevant. We're not putting keywords to just random stuff because we think we'll show up in the search then, no, we're putting relevant keywords to the video. Okay? Do your SEO work. Make sure it's on point. In the video that you ... The training we've gotten backstage that goes up tomorrow, we're actually talking about one of my favorite tools which is TubeBuddy and how I use that to do a lot of this stuff, to monitor a lot of this stuff, and to make sure this stuff is on point for our stuff and our client's stuff. So pay attention to that part of that video because that's going to be a really beneficial one when you're looking at this part of it. Number three, be consistent. Now, I'm the first one to raise my hand on not being super good at this year. We've been really solid with doing Facebook lives fairly consistently. We've missed a few here and there, but on the whole, we've done it pretty consistently. I've been less consistent with making sure that those get up on YouTube, but it's something we're doing better the last part of this year and really committing to in 2018, because we are seeing results when we do it. Be consistent. That's really your best way to get subscribers. It's really your best way to grow an audience. It's really your best way to get consistent views on your videos. Make sure they're going up with some regularity. You also want to be consistent with things like your titles, and your keywords, and the process you use when a video goes up. So have a system. Having a system, being consistent with the tasks and what needs to be done makes it really easy to outsource, to hand off. Our admin team and the team we recommend most often for handling this stuff, AdminEase, they are fantastic with knowing this process and getting it done because they do it for a lot of their clients, they do it for us. I really encourage you to work with your VA and figure out what is the checklist of things that happen. Where does our keyword research go? What are our sort of standard keywords? Here's the deal guys, you talk about a fairly specific topic, because that's your business, so you're really going to have a good foundation of keywords that are probably going to go up pretty frequently. And then you kind of have a list to pull from depending on the specific topic of that video. There you go, there's your problem solved. Build those tools, build that list, and get it going so it's executable to maintain that consistency. Make sure your editorial calendar is built to maintain that consistency, all right? Super short ones to end October, if you're listening to this today, be sure to join us in Backstage so that you can grab the new training tomorrow. If you're listening to this sometime in the future, go to Backstage, the training is live, you're not going to want to miss it, all right? I will see you next time, have an excellent week. Resources Join us inside Hit the Mic Backstage Learn more about repurposing content with AdminEase   Connect with Me Connect with me on Facebook Tweet with me and include #HittheMic Be sure to leave your review on iTunes or Stitcher for a shoutout on a future show

Welcome to episode 372 of Hit the Mic with the Stacey Harris. I'm really excited for today's episode because I know it's one that only the truest of action takers is going to listen to. Thank you for listening to this because I know it means that you are somebody who is going to get it done. We're talking about LinkedIn today and LinkedIn is by far the least amusing social media network. However, it's also hugely valuable for pretty much everybody so we're going to talk about that a little bit today and I'm going to give you some tips on how to use it to score some business. Especially for those of you who are B2B but if you are not B2B, maybe you are business to consumer, there's still relevance because I'm guessing some part of your business could work B2B. A great example of this is health coaches who work with, let's say, new moms. You're fairly business to consumer. You don't have to be a business owner to be a new mom or to need a health coach. Getting not necessarily physically back but your diet and feeling really good. Anyways, that's business to consumer. However, a B2B component could be you handle a wellness trainings in corporate businesses or you want media exposure. You want to get on things like the Today Show. Guess where you can build those relationships? That's right, people. LinkedIn. So I'm pretty excited because, again, this is going to be something that's universally helpful for the people who take action. Now before we jump in I do want to remind you, Hit the Mic Backstage is the sponsor of this here Hit the Mic podcast because it is the place to be, the best place to be, to stay up to date with all things social media, email, content marketing. That's why I need you to join me backstage this month because there is a brand new training inside of Hit the Mic Backstage that expands on exactly what we're talking about today. It digs in on some of the LinkedIn strategies. In fact, one of the things we do in that training is I actually jump in on my computer and we go through your profile so you can do a self-guided profile review. Even better, you want to take it a step further? Go through that, make the changes, then submit it in the private community for me to take a look at, give you feedback where we can make adjustments and where you're just doing a super awesome job. All right? All right. Join us. HittheMicBackstage.com. Again, the place to be. I love, love, love, love, love inviting you and people like you to join me backstage because it's the next step for this show. All right? All right. Let's jump in. Number one, this is the place where they're thinking about business when they're there. Communicate with them with that in mind. We run into clients all the time who are pretty strictly B to B and they're talking about Facebook. I go, "Not necessarily." You know, Facebook might not be the best option for you if you're B to B. Now if you're a B2B and you're working with online entrepreneurs then, yeah, Facebook still does have some pretty good pull. However, there's still some quality to be had on LinkedIn and quite frankly with a lot smaller time investment. Pay attention to that but also pay attention to the language differences. When I'm looking at writing content for LinkedIn I'm thinking about a slightly more professional tone. Now if you've spent any time listening to this podcast before you know my professional tone is unique. Right? I'm me. I have my voice and that's my primary objective. Professionalism in the traditional sense has never been my primary objective. Connection has been. With that said, there is going to be a direct connection to that B2B pain point when I'm writing LinkedIn content. Pay attention to that voice because that's what they're thinking about when they're consuming that content. That's the mindset they're in. The additional benefits of them being in that mindset is you're not going to have to write copy that's competing with cat videos. You are not going to have to write copy that's competing with baby photos. That's valuable. That's something very, very cool to consider and probably why it takes a smaller time investment. Number two, the thing I want you to do is I want you to establish your expertise early and often. That's going to mean doing sort of this profile touch-up stuff that we covered in the video training inside of Backstage. It's also going to mean providing content in this space that's relevant to this audience. A great way to do that is to publish your platform. Now if you don't know what that is yet, don't walk, run, to join us Backstage. Essentially what it is is a blogging platform right on LinkedIn so we can actually write content. The best news is it doesn't have to be brand new, unique, never before seen content. It just needs to be valuable. A lot of what we do is we actually repurpose the podcast transcript into guest posts that drive traffic back to my site and the podcast episode in its entirety. That's a really great way to look at this content. If you do have written blog content you're writing right now, though, take one tip, take one section of that blog post, expand on it a little bit on LinkedIn and, again, point traffic back for more information on your website. We're using this as a tool to establish expertise on the site because we are giving value on LinkedIn Publisher. We're giving value right there. You could get something from that and never leave LinkedIn. That's an important difference between LinkedIn Publisher posts and a status update. You're going to get the value right there. However, if you want more, you want to dive deeper, you can do that by going to the site. That's going to give us really qualified traffic back to our site. That's going to be people who are ready to take the next step. That's, again, super valuable. The third thing I want to touch on because this is a LinkedIn episode and I want to keep it brief for you because I know none of the people who listen to this show have ever told me LinkedIn is their favorite network. I'm assuming the same is true for you. Number three, give it some of your time. Don't post and run. Give it the same investment of your energy as you would the other networks. You would never post and run on Facebook. You'd go back, you'd check the comments. You'd engage with other people's content. You would spend some time networking in your groups. Now I will be the first to admit a lot of LinkedIn groups, total crap. Total crap. Find the good ones. Sift through. Just like Facebook, you have to sift through some crap to find the good stuff. It's just part of it, all right? But do that networking work. This, just like any other tool, is a social network. Now the socialization is a little bit different. It's a little more networking party versus dinner with friends. That doesn't mean it can't be a happy hour networking party, right? It doesn't mean it can't be fun. It doesn't mean it can't be relaxed. It doesn't mean that you skip out on the engaging. This is not throwing your business card to people and running away. This is staying in the room, giving it a little bit of your time investment. With that said, you also need to give it time in the sense that doesn't say, "All right. Stacey totally sold me on LinkedIn. I'm going to do this. I'm going to stay in the room. I'm going to do the work. I'm going to show up" and then do this for a week and go, "Well, I didn't get any new business so clearly LinkedIn doesn't work for me." Seriously? Like, that's not enough time. You need to really test this over the long haul and you need to be looking at your site numbers. You need to be looking at the quality of relationship building you're doing. The connections you currently have, are they your target? Are they who you want to be talking to? If they're not, well, then I would expect it to be working. You need to build a network that is relevant. All right? Give it some time. On both sides. A time investment day to day or week to week. Also, some real quality testing time with real quality connections. Okay? Again, to take this a step further, and this is one I really do encourage you to take a step further, join us Backstage. Hit the Mic Backstage dot com. The brand new training that went up this month was exactly this using LinkedIn to build your business B to B or to get B to B business. Take the time to join us and watch that training and implement it. Remember, Hit the Mic Backstage is no long-term commitment. You can cancel absolutely any time. If this sounds relevant to you and you want to jump in and you want to take that training and then you're out? That's not a problem. I encourage you to take the time to join us, actually watch the training, and actually implement what you learn because that's where you're going to see results. Okay? With that said, I will see you next week. Resources Join us inside Hit the Mic Backstage Get Your Facebook Ads Strategy to Re-Engage Your Audience Facebook Ads Policies Connect with Me Connect with me on Facebook Tweet with me and include #HittheMic Be sure to leave your review on iTunes or Stitcher for a shoutout on a future show

Welcome to episode 371 of Hit the Mic with The Stacey Harris. Welcome, welcome, welcome. This week we're going to talk about Facebook Ads. Some major changes and updates happening that I'm actually really excited about because I think they will make it easier for those of you who maybe are not super in love with Power Editor or even Ads Manager and the idea that there are two spaces that do different things. You're going to like today's news. Before we jump into that though, I do want to remind you Hit the Mic Backstage is the place to go for all things Facebook ads trainings. In fact, I'm currently working on and outlining some brand new Facebook Ads trainings that are actually doing to launch in just a couple of months in December, actually December 1st. Some brand new Facebook ads videos will launch inside the membership. Until then, the ones that are in there now are super awesome. And we have a brand new opportunity to grab a Facebook Ads training all around a strategy that's generally only available to Hit the Mic Backstage members, but I've made it available for you. If you head over to the show notes for this page you will see a link pointing you to the Facebook Ads strategy that will help you re-engage cold audience. I know, I know, you want to build a bigger audience. This is the first step to that. Get the people you already have interested actually talking to you. So head over and check that out. Again, thestaceyharris.com/episode371 to grab the show notes for this episode and while you're there, just listen to all the episodes, okay? Fantastic. I can't speak to the greatness of the first hundred, but since it's been all uphill. Or downhill? It's been all good, that's what I'm trying to say here. All right? Okay. Let's jump in.   Let's talk about the three changes I want you to be paying attention to when it comes to your Facebook Ads. FYI, I know some of you right now, right this second, are self-selecting out saying, "You know what, I don't want to know anything else. I want to hire someone to do this for me." I get that. I think that's fantastic. But I want you to make a good hiring decision. Good hiring decisions come from having just a little bit of information, so knowing and staying with me for the next 10-ish, 15-ish minutes, that's what's going to get you to a place where you can comfortably and confidently have these conversations so that you can make sure that you're hiring well. A little bit of knowledge goes a long way when it comes to hiring. And, if you're somebody who wants to DIY, what we're going to talk about is really going to set you up for success, so stay with me. Don't self-select out because you think Facebook ads are going to be boring. Stay with me, all right? Number one thing I want you to know: the Power Editor and the Ads Manager are coming together. The Power Editor is still available. However, the Ads Manager is getting a lot of the Power Editor features, meaning we can do some really, really cool things like duplicate ads or campaigns in a way that we could not previously in Ads Manager. On the bright side, we have a lot of those analytics so that you can see if your ad campaign is working, making sure that we're getting that ever so important ROI, return on our investment, that comes from knowing our numbers. And so, an easy to read yet robust amount of information now resides in the Ads Manager so that you can check and make sure your ads are working. Now, I want to throw this in there, four-and-a-half minutes after you launch your campaign, not the best time to check your numbers. In fact, ads tend to kind of work themselves out over the first probably 48 to 72 hours, so right around day two or three is when I start to make tweaks, unless something has gone horrendously wrong in the first 24 hours. If things are just kind of borderline, I'm like, "Okay, let's stay with it. Let's stay the course." If by day three they're not doing what I want them to be doing, that's when we make changes. You can do that now thanks to the Ads Manager. You can check all those numbers and get a really good understanding of what's happening there. You can also set up rules. This isn't a new feature, but it's something worth knowing. We talk about it inside the trainings of Backstage. If you're not keeping a helicopter parent-like eye on your Facebook Ads, you can automate some of that supervision. So if gets to a certain point, the emergency report is pulled and the ad is stopped. That's really helpful. Or, if an ads going super killer and you want to double down, you can automate that double down and it to the budget. Okie dokie? Okie dokie. Speaking of things you can see when you look at your analytics. This is going to be our number two thing, I want you to be paying attention to that relevance score. Relevance scores are not new, however, they are wildly underutilized. That's what I want to talk about next. Your relevance score matters because it shows you whether your ad is resonating with the audience seeing it or if it's not. Relevance scores are based on negative feedback, so if your ads are hidden, your page is unlike due to the ad, those kinds of things. Also, what percentage of people seeing the ad is paying attention to the ad in the sense that they're clicking or commenting or liking or sharing or engaging in some way? The more people you get to engage with the ads, the higher that relevance score is going to be. The more negative feedback you get, the lower that relevance score is going to be. I really want to see you guys hitting a relevance score of six, seven, eight. If you're hitting a relevance score of nine or 10, A, you're probably targeting a really killer ad at a warm audience. The only time I've seen relevance scores of nine or 10 for us and our clients has been when we've been targeting an ad to an audience that sees us quite frequently, so retargeting an email list. Over the summer we tested ... We're actually going to be rolling this out again in November and December ... retargeting our membership base and saying, "Hey, there's a new training," or, "Don't forget this training," or basically just running an engagement sequence of ads to our active membership list. That's one time that we see relevance scores of nine or 10. Generally what we're seeing on our ads is seven or eight when we're looking at a cold audience, and I can see immediately if I've got a relevance score of three or four, time to shut that ad off and look at what's wrong with it. Maybe the call to action's not clear. Maybe the targeting is wrong. Maybe the copy's bad. Maybe the image is bad. Whatever. Then we can go back to the drawing board and diagnose that problem because we see really clearly, in a really easy way, "Hey, this is not connecting. This is not working. It's time to adjust." Now, again, we have to give it time for that relevance score to balance out. The relevancy score is not going to show up until a certain amount of people have seen the ad. I think it's 1,000 people. And there is a reason for that, because when you look at the first five people, if five people see the ad and five people ignore the ad, they don't click on it, they don't do anything, then you would have a really poor relevancy score. But five people is not enough people to make a judgment call on. Again, give this 48 hours, 72 hours, and then look at it, and depending on how low that score is. For me, if the score is two, three, four, we're probably going to close it down and make a pretty sweeping changing, meaning we're going to be looking at all of the copy. All of the audience. We're going to be looking ground up because that's a really low score for us. However, if we're seeing something at five, six, it's, "Okay. What can we tweak here to change it?" I'll test a couple of things. I'll say, "Okay. Let's tweak the call to action and make sure it's solid. Let's tweak the image." When I'm making these tweaks, I'm changing one thing not everything, so that when I go to make the next ad campaign, I have information to work from. If I change six things about the ad, I don't know what made the difference to improve it. However, if I duplicate that ad and run some tests with just one change, then I can go, "Okay, so this one performed really well." Often times, what I'll do is I'll make six versions of the ad and I'll test that. Now, I don't get to accumulate the social proof on an ad on people liking and commenting, but I can do that later. What I want to know for the next few days is if I run these six ads to this ad set, which one's going to perform the best? Now I can go about making an educated choice, get that out on a wider scale, and be building social proof with it. There's a shift there in the way you're thinking about it, but all of that stems from paying attention to that relevance score. Now, to find your relevance score, you're going to be looking at your analytics, so you're going to be looking in your Ads Manager information. When you click on the Ad tab and then the Performance View, you'll see the option that says Relevance. Again, we want to see that relevance score be in the neighborhood of eight, nine, 10, maybe a seven. If we're seeing eight or nine, that's awesome. If we're seeing five or six, let's start making some tweaks. If we're seeing one, shut it down right now. If we're seeing two, three, four, we need to make some probably more sweeping changes. I will straight up shut those ads off and start again because we're clearly missing the mark. Again, if we're seeing things closer to five, six, then let's make some tweaks and see what we can do. Does that make sense? All right, so that's number two, your relevance score. The number three thing I want to talk about, you need to know the rules. Now, I'm going to link in the show notes again, thestaceyharris.com/episode371, I'm going to link to two things. I'm going to link to the Facebook Ads policies, meaning these are the rules set forth by Facebook. They are telling you what you are not allowed to do. I'm also going to link to the Facebook Guide and Checklist. The guide and checklist is something we use in-house here at The Stacey Harris to make sure that all of our ad campaigns are checking a certain amount of boxes. It's the checklist we go through to actually build ads, and then a guide as far as getting ads approved. Facebook is legit cracking down on ads that are not following the rules. Make sure your ads are not one of them. To do that, check out the policies. Now, there are also some things that are not necessarily stipulated in the policies as clearly as they could be. They are lessons learned, so I'm including that checklist and guide because that guide is where you'll find that information. Some examples, keeping your ad positive and keeping your ads not personal, meaning you do not want to say, "Are you struggling with ..." No, you're going to a pain point and you're making it specific to them. You're basically assuming that the viewer of that ad is having some sort of problem. That's not what you want to do. Instead, you want to talk about possibilities in a general sense. I know that sounds super vague, but instead of saying, "Are you struggling with ..." instead say, "What if every day started with ... and what's possible." For example, let's use a health coach, because health coaches have the hardest time with this because you cannot speak to personal health problems in a Facebook ad and get it approved. No weight loss, no, "I'm tired," no assuming symptoms of any kind. One of the things we do with our clients is we, again, focus on what's possible. "Wake up every day rested and ready to go." It's positive and it's not specifically about some problem I'm having or whoever is seeing the ad. "Wake up rested and ready to go." "Skip the afternoon slow down," or, "Make 2 PM as energetic as 9 AM." Again, we're talking about what's possible. And then we feed into that, "This is how." You know what I mean? That's where we're then saying, "A change in diet could ..." and you're going to use the word diet, but, "Allowing what we consume to fuel our day." Or something like that. But you have to be super careful. You want to keep it positive and you want to keep it general. Again, I know that seems vague, but with good targeting, with good ad copy, with good graphics, it becomes a no-brainer. It becomes a lot easier and a lot more clear. All right? All right. So head to the show notes. This is one of those episodes where you're going to want to make sure you go to the show notes, thestaceyharris.com/episode371. Go there, grab everything I mentioned in this episode. And then, honestly, your best next step, go the Hit the Mic Backstage. Hitthemicbackstage.com is the place to be to stay up to date with all things social. All of the changes happening with Facebook Ads, there's been a ton of Instagram changes lately, all of those things are inside Hit the Mic Backstage. We've got two private communities, one right on the site for your question and network updates and things like that, plus a private Facebook group allowing us to connect and socialize and we do some Facebook Lives in there and ask questions and things like that. These are your resources to connect with me. Hitthemicbackstage.com. Don't miss this opportunity. Again, thestaceyharris.com/episode371 links everything I mentioned today. I will see you next week. Resources Join us inside Hit the Mic Backstage Get Your Facebook Ads Strategy to Re-Engage Your Audience Facebook Ads Policies Connect with Me Connect with me on Facebook Tweet with me and include #HittheMic Be sure to leave your review on iTunes or Stitcher for a shoutout on a future show

Welcome to episode 370 of Hit the Mic with The Stacey Harris. So recently I was asked to give a 15 minute talk at an event. I was like, "Okay, so 15 minutes, what do you want me to talk about?" They were like, "Oh, well like digital marketing." I was like, "Okay, more specifically." And they were like, "Search engine optimization." I was like, "Okay, more specifically." They were like, "Social media." I was like, "Still gonna need us to narrow that down for 15 minutes." So what we came up with was the one thing you can do right now, to improve your digital marketing, also known as your online marketing, but really this applies to anything marketing. Your marketing in general, your social media, your content, whatever. This one thing will make all of them better, so that's what were going to talk about today. Before we jump into that though, I want to remind you that this show is brought to you by its big brother, its natural upgrade, it's next step, and that's Hit the Mic Backstage. Hit the Mic Backstage is a one stop shop for all things social media marketing, trainings. We also have some email marketing trainings, and video, and we have an entire podcasting course. So it really is the place to be. If you love this show, and you want more of it, come join us at Hit the Mic Backstage. We've got two brand-new trainings that come up every month. They're either updates to previous trainings, meaning that all of the trainings in there are actually reflective of what's happening in social media now, and not two years ago when this community launched, or earlier than that. So join us, hitthemicbackstage.com, we do have a couple spots left for the VIP level, as of the recording of this. That may not be true when it airs. If it isn't true, you can get on the wait list for the VIP option, and join us in the regular community in the meantime, which does give you access to me in the two private communities we have. One right on the website, and one over on Facebook. So there's lots of ways for you to connect with me, and the rest of the Backstage peeps. Also, hitthemicbackstage.com is the place to go. So I will see you there. Let's jump in, and let's talk about this one thing, one thing you can do to improve your digital marketing right now. Are you ready for it? This could be the shortest episode ever. Are you ready? Now? Take stock of what you already have. Seriously, the biggest digital marketing mistake I see people making, social media wise, content wise is, "If I just do XYZ, that'll solve all the problems." So they keep building on this total lack of a foundation. They say, "Oh, I saw at a conference that Instagram Stories, that's what I have to do. So I'm gonna do that. Oh, I saw that Facebook Live is where it's at, I'm gonna do that. Oh, I saw that podcasts are the only way to go. I'm gonna do that. Oh, that's not working, so I'm gonna do two episodes a week. Oh, that's not working so I'm gonna do two episodes, plus a blog post, plus a video, plus a whatever ever, ever, ever else." Here is the real talk. Before you add anything else to your marketing plans, be it online marketing plans in general, be it just your email, be it in person networking, be it any part of your efforts to get customers, look at what you already have. Look at what's happening in those places, right now. Meaning, say okay, so I've got an email list of XYZ. I've got this many likes on my Facebook page. I have this much traffic going to my website. These are the kind of things that people are doing. If you can't tell me any of that information, then you need to take a big step back before you add anything else. If you can't tell me how many visitors you're getting to your website right now, make sure you have Google Analytics installed. If you can't tell me what they're doing on your website right now, make sure you have Google Analytics and something like Hotjar. I use TruConversion, or Lucky Orange, or any of those kind of tools where you can actually see how people are engaging with your website. You can see how they're working their way through these pieces of content, and where they're getting stuck. I love this for sales pages. Heatmaps and things like that, I love them for sales pages, because I can see where people stop. So I know exactly where I lost you, if I lost you. That's really powerful. If you podcast, make sure you're looking at your download numbers. If you have an email list, which if you're listening to this show, I'm assuming you have an email list. Don't just look at how many people are subscribed. How many people are actually reading your emails? How many people? And not just opening, because that can not always be 100% reliable. I'm talking about clicks. How many people are actually going, "Oh, this is really great information. I'm going to engage with it." That gets really tough if you don't have any clicks. This is why I don't put the entirety of my content in an email, because I don't want you to read it in your email. I want you to read it on my website, because then I know you're actually consuming the content. So that's why there's a click, because I want to see a click. An open, it's a grayer area as far as the stat. If you click, I know you actually clicked. Then I can see what you are doing on the site. I can see how long you're there. I can see, again, are you reading the podcast show notes, or are you listening to the episode? I can find all that information out. So look at what you already have. Now, when I said this was going to be the one task, I did not say it was going to be an easy task. This one task really is a lot of little tasks, but it's the most fundamentally important part of your marketing. Again, I don't care if you're talking about email, or content, or social, or whatever else. You have to look at what's going on right now, before you can build on it. Before you can improve it. Before you can make it better. Before you can evolve it. So take stock of what you have right now. When I'm talking about looking at these numbers, when I'm talking about looking at your email list numbers, and your website numbers, and your social media analytics, I also want you to look at what pieces do you have already there. Do you have an email list? What kind of content are you putting out? What social media channels are you already using? So actually make a list of what all of those places are. Then start diving into the appropriate stats for whatever location, or tool, or whatever you want to call it is, and say, "Okay, is this providing value?" If it's not, don't worry about it for right now. If it is, why is it providing value? All right, now how can I utilize the information that's working here, and maybe make some of those places that aren't working work? Or, let me dive into further about why they're not working, because if they're not working because I'm not using them effectively, that's one thing. If they're not working, because they're not the place that I can connect with my community, then I don't care if I can fix it, because if my community is not there, there's not a lot of value. This is something I bring up a lot with our corporate clients especially, because we have a couple of corporate clients who are B2B. We'll have conversations with them and it's like, "Everybody is talking about Facebook. Everybody is talking about Facebook." And I'm like, "Great, no one is buying your, insert really technical B2B kind of thing here on Facebook." Maybe it's insurance consulting. Maybe it's some sort of telecommunications stuff. Maybe it's business based web solutions. The people who are making those buying decisions, are not making those buying decisions when they're on Facebook, even if they are on Facebook in their regular life. So spending a lot of time on Facebook, not a hugely beneficial activity. On the flip side, if you are selling baby carriers to stay-at-home moms, LinkedIn is probably a colossal waste of your time, when it talks about going directly to consumer. Now there may be a value there when you're talking about building relationships with retail people, retail distribution, or event planners who do baby gear events, those kind of things. But when we're talking direct to consumer sales, no. That's not the best use of your time. So then you look at what are your goals. Right? So you kind of see what I'm saying here. I want you to take stock of exactly what you're doing. This is a really great time of year to do it, because we're kind of coming off that summer slowdown, going into the fall pickup, before we go into sort of the holiday season, and things like that. So now is a really good time to take stock and say, "What do I want to do differently in Q4? What do I want to do differently in Q1 of next year? Where do I want to be spending my time?" When were looking at things that work, that are just on point, "Well great, how can we replicate that, and if it's not the best use of my time to do it, how can we outsource it?" So again, we're just taking stock of what's already there. We're not looking for the newest, greatest, latest, hottest, sexiest, cure all, silver bullet, magic pill solution. We are looking at what we already have built. This is something I'm actually working on in-house right now, is a content review. We're looking at, so what episodes do you guys really love? What episodes did the people who listen to the show really not seem to care about? The reason the three things episode has lasted so long, is because they're one of our most downloaded episodes. We have a lot, a lot of people who only listen to that show everyone, which is fine, but they're missing this show. So I like you better. So know that it's about figuring out what is going on right now. Initially, and for a lot of you, it will literally just be about figuring out what are you doing right now. You would be amazed by how many conversations I have with people, where they can't tell me if they have a specific schedule for email. They can't tell me how frequently stuff gets posted to their Facebook page. They can't tell me if anybody has used their Twitter account in the last month, 6 months, 12 months. 24 months in some cases, because at some point it was handed off to a VA, and it kind of fell through, and I think she still does it, but I'm not sure. No, that's a solution. That's not gonna get you to where you need to be. So again, taking stock of what's happening right now has got to be the first step. From there, looking at how is it working. Or, is it not working, and how can we change it? So that's it. That's the one digital marketing thing I want you to do right now, to improve your marketing. Again, I think digital marketing, because this applies to social media. It applies to email. It applies to your content. It applies to your Facebook groups. It applies to your Twitter chats. It applies to you, "Should I have a LinkedIn profile?" It's the first step. It's why when clients, if you book a one-on-one call with me, if you go to thestaceyharris.com/1on1 and you find a time on my schedule, and you go to book it, I ask you for the URLs for your major social media channels. I don't ask that just because I'm gonna go look at them, although I am gonna go look at them. They're a key part of me researching before the call. But it forces you, before our call, to take stock on what you have, and where it is. I am constantly, constantly surprised, by how many people tell me, "Oh, actually have three Instagram accounts." Or, "Somehow I have four Facebook pages." Seriously guys, regularly this happens. So taking stock can be a really valuable thing, to make sure you're streamlined. To make sure everything is updated. To make sure everything is current. To make sure everything is working, and if it's not working, what needs to happen to let is go. Or make it work, whichever one you choose. Okay? All right, that's it. Again, if you want more of this kind of content, if you are looking for more support when it comes to social media, and email, and podcasting, and content, and blogging, and video, and all of that stuff, if for no other reason than accountability, than someone saying, "Hey, how's that going?" Be sure to join us inside of hitthemicbackstage.com okay. I will see you Backstage, and I will see you next Tuesday for another episode of Hit the Mic with The Stacey Harris. Have a great week.

Welcome to episode 369 of Hit the Mic with The Stacey Harris. All right, so today I wanna talk about the three things you need to know for October. Yes, it's October, straight up, month one of Q4, holy macaroni. I can't believe it, where did this year go? It's a crazy month for me, I'm doing a lot, a lot, a lot of traveling, which, I'll be honest, I'm pretty excited about. I've got some vacation time planned, yay. I've got a business trip planned. It's gonna be a good month. So, I wanted to jump in and I wanted to give you guys the stuff for October right at the start of the moth, so you can make the most of your time this month, no matter what's going on. Before we jump in, I wanna remind you that Hit the Mic with The Stacey Harris, this podcast you're listening to right now, where we talk about all things online marketing, and digital marketing, and social media marketing, and e-mail marketing ... Yes, a lot of that was the same thing. It's sponsored, it's brought to you thanks to Hit the Mic Backstage. Hit the Mic Backstage really is the upgrade for this podcast; it's where you get twice monthly trainings, constant updates on what's happening with networks, accountability from me and the rest of the community, and two different private forum areas, one right on the website and one in a private Facebook group. It is the thing to have, the place to be if you are struggling right now, with knowing what to do, or where to do it, or when to do it. It really does cover all things strategy and implementation when it comes to getting your marketing on track, specifically your social media marketing, although we do cover some other pieces as well. It really goes in depth in all things social. Cool, cool, join us today, HittheMicBackstage.com. And we do have a couple spots left in our mastermind level, at the VIP level, which does include some one on one time with me. I will be closing the doors to that pretty quickly, either because it will fill up, or because I will be capping it a little bit lower going into the holiday time. So, if you want in, now is the time; HittheMicBackstage.com. Let's jump into this month's three things you need to know, right? Number one, Q4 planning. It's gonna be really easy, in the next four to six weeks, to start thinking about Q1 of next year. And so, what I really encourage you to do, is take some time today, or this week, and reevaluate your Q4 plans. Maybe you don't have any, maybe you totally rocked the 12 week year, or 90 day planning, or whatever you call it, and you are working on building your Q4 plan because that's your next 12 weeks. Fantastic, you're right on mark. But maybe you're one of those people who, at the beginning of the year you set up a plan for the whole 12 months. And, now is the time to check in and make sure that your Q4 plans that you came up with in January of this year, or honestly Q4 of last year, so October, November, December of last year, are still relevant. And not because you screwed up planning; if 12 month planning works for you, do it. Whatever works for you, that's what I want you to do. But, sometimes, and I know this is especially true for me, and I've talked to a couple clients about this and that's why I wanted to bring it up, maybe you've learned some things about your business this year, or your clients this year, or yourself this year, and you want to change something. Maybe you had planned on launching something that you're not gonna launch, but you still have revenue goals, so what do you wanna launch in its place? Or promote in its place? Or do you wanna shift out of that completely and move into something else? Whatever that is, I really encourage you to take some time this first week of the month, these first few days of the month, and look at your Q4 plans. And I don't just mean that from a, "I wanna launch this," kind of perspective, but I mean from a, "This is the content I'm putting out. Here's my editorial calendar, here's my social media schedule, here's how the team is helping me. Here's who we need to add to the team, here's who maybe isn't a good fit for the team anymore." Figuring out where you're gonna take some time off, if you're gonna take some time off. I know a lot of people are really interested in the fact that I take December off; it's just because it's what works for me, it's not something you need to do. Maybe for you it's November, maybe for you it's January. Whatever it is that works for you, do that. I'm actually not taking as much time off this December. I do have a trip planned, so I'll be out for about a week, and then I'll take a little bit of time off over the holidays. But I've got a big, big, big, big project that I will be doing, and launching, and sharing with you a ton more, in February of 2018, and I need December of 2017 to finish it, to finish all of the pieces that need to go in place. So I will actually be working a little bit, 'cause that's what works for me this year. Figure out what works for you, but take some time this month to look at what your plans are for the next three months, and make sure they are on track, and that you have the social, and the e-mail, and the content, and the team, and whatever else, ready to support whatever it is you wanna do. Cool? All right. Number two, Don't live and die by those live numbers I have been talking to a lot of people about Facebook Live lately, and you've all kind of heard my spiel about, you know, "Hey, do it." The pushback I'm getting is, you know, "Less and less people are starting to show up live, or no one's showing up live, and so I just feel like it's not worth my time." I encourage you, if that's the case, to look at your replay numbers. To look at the numbers that you're getting over on YouTube when you upload it there as well. To look at the Google Analytics for your website, and see what kind of people are hitting and watching the YouTube video on your site. Now, you'll notice I didn't just talk about Facebook there, I talked about two other places, YouTube and your website, where people can see that content. That's because if you're relying on live viewers alone, and you're not repurposing that Facebook Live content, that video content, wherever it's recorded, has value, if you're not repurposing it you are leaving views on the table, and it doesn't matter that no one's showing up live. That's the end of you being able to get value from that video, if you never do anything else with it. For me, I totally agree. Across my stuff, across my clients, we're seeing fewer and fewer people show up live and tune in the whole time. What I'm actually getting a lot of right now, is somebody will jump in for 30 seconds, 15 seconds, and then come back later and watch the rest. And I know this because they message me and they're like, "Oh, thank you, that was great," or, "Oh, I have a question," or whatever the thing is. So remember, as fantastically fun as it is to have people show up live ... And for some of you the structure of the kind of thing you're doing live means you need people to show up live, it's important that people show up live, maybe you're doing a Q&A, then not having anyone live is really kinda killer. With that said, for a lot of you, you're just dispensing content, you're not being super interactive. Maybe you're responding to people who do say something, but it really is mostly about you doing something like this, where you're just providing value and people can consume it. People don't need to be live to consume this, that's why it's a prerecorded podcast. You know, you could listen to this whenever you wanted to listen to it, and you're listening to it now because that's what worked into you schedule. If I popped onto Facebook Live right now, that may not be the same case. Understand what I'm saying? So A, if you really want people to show up live, adjust your times, tweak things like that, see what you can do. But B, don't put so much stock in people showing up live, because again, there's value for you and there's value for them in the replays and the repurposing. So make sure you have those two things on point. One of the things I do, is you'll notice when I do a Facebook Live every week, if you go to my Facebook page, it's actually pinned up at the top of my page. And I drive traffic to the replay through my e-mail, so when the e-mail goes out on Tuesday I usually point to the Facebook Live on the Facebook page, because that's been really helpful in increasing my like and things like that, as well as my engagement on my page, and I do it there. Now, we're shifting to putting them on the website as well, I will still link to them in the Facebook page, because again, that's been really helpful in driving traffic to Facebook for me, increasing those likes organically, and increasing my engagement organically. Which is awesome, because then it gives me a little more help when it comes to talking about retargeting. Especially people who watch a video where I'm promoting Backstage; I can retarget those viewers with an add for Backstage. You kinda see how the inner workings work? So don't live and die by those live numbers, they are not the be all end all. The third thing I wanna talk about today is LinkedIn. LinkedIn gets a bad rap as being the boring network, and I would 100% agree with you, it is not nearly as entertaining as Facebook, if for lack of BuzzFeed quizzes alone. With that said, LinkedIn has some real value. If you're service based, if you are wanting to speak to corporations, if the person who makes your buying decision, if the ... I'm stealing a term from Ryan Deiss over at Digital Marketer right now, but if your ideal sales conversation happens with an HR department, or a business owner, or whatever, if you're in any kind of B2B space, LinkedIn matters. It really does, because that's where they're spending time when they're making those buying decisions, that's the head space they're in when they're thinking about those things. Yeah, sure, they might also be on Facebook, the head HR person for XYZ corporation, Acme incorporated let's say, absolutely is on Facebook probably. Absolutely is on Facebook probably; that was a horrible one. Is absolutely on Facebook. And likely Instagram, or twitter, or something else, Pinterest maybe, who knows? But guess where she's making decisions related to the HR department of the company, Acme incorporated, that she works for? It's not when she's on Facebook, it's not when she's on Instagram, it's when she's on LinkedIn. That's when she's in that head space, and so that's where we wanna touch with her. That's where we want to get content in front of her, that's where we wanna be of value in that vain. All right? So don't undervalue LinkedIn. The cool thing about LinkedIn is that it can take a little less effort than something like a Facebook does, to get really solid traction. So don't undervalue that space if you're doing any B2B work. Maybe you wanna do some consulting. Maybe you wanna do corporate training. Maybe you're a software as a service kind of thing, or something like that. Great, B2B, pay attention to LinkedIn too. I'm not saying you ditch everything else. I'm 100% B2B, with that said, I do get traction on Facebook, because my ideal sales conversations are happening with people that are a little bit different than the HR department. With that said, I do get business on LinkedIn for corporate consulting, corporate training, because the marketing director is usually making those hires, or the VP of marketing, or those kind of titles; that's who's making the decision to bring me in for corporate training, or to supplement their marketing strategy with a social media strategy. And so, guess what guys? That's where I connect with those people, it's not on Facebook. The clients that come from Facebook are totally different than the clients who come from LinkedIn. All right? Okay. Don't undervalue it, it could be really valuable. And if you haven't yet played with their video stuff, it's actually pretty cool. So, I'm excited to see LinkedIn really making an effort, okay? So let's make an effort too. There you go, that's the three things I want you to be paying attention to this month. If you have any questions, let me know. The best place to ask questions really is inside Hit the Mic Backstage, that's why it exists as an upgrade for this show. Also, head over to HittheMicBackstage.com and we can connect more there, I will see you backstage. And of course, I will see you next Tuesday. Have a great week.

Welcome to episode 367 of Hit the Mic with The Stacey Harris. I wanna talk today about behind the scenes content. I freaking love behind the scenes content. I think it is such a fun way to connect with our audience, and so I wanna talk about what it is, why we use it, and then I wanna give some examples for some different industries on how you can use it. So stay tuned for that, 'cause this is gonna be a really cool, kind of quickie episode about a fresh way to start sharing content. So, let's get started. Number one, what is behind the scenes content? So, behind the scenes content is any content that we're looking at, photos, videos, swipe files, anything where we're showing sort of the inner workings of our business, or maybe it's businesses that we work with, whatever it is. It's sort of, and this is the first thing that comes to mind, and it's a horrible, horrible phrase for this, but it's how the sausage is made; because sometimes people do wanna know. We're kind of in a time period where people like to know where stuff comes from, right? So let's show them. So that's exactly what behind the scenes content is, it's showing them how something is created. So if you're a physical product, it's showing how your physical product is made, or what your factory looks like, or packaging, or shipping and distribution, and things like that. If you're a service based, it's behind the scenes of you working with clients, or how things are created, or websites, or whatever that is for you. For people like me, who sell digital products and information, it's showing the creation of that, it's showing building landing pages, or writing copy, and podcasting, and all those things I do to sort of make the wheels turn around here. And I love that, because it is a connection point. So really, it's just any kind of content that shows what's happening behind closed doors. And it does not mean, by any stretch of the imagination, that you're giving away trade secrets here, or you're oversharing, or you're sharing sort of the negatives of business. Sometimes ... You know, I've seen some business coaches do this really well, and we'll talk about this more in examples, but I've seen some business coaches show really well sort of the chaos and stress behind running a business. You know, the crazy messy desk or something like that, and then sort of how they move past that. That's a great example that's both behind the scenes, and also an example of moving forward. So it doesn't have to be just one thing. It doesn't have to be a video, or a graphic, or a text, doesn't have to be one of those things, it can be any of those things. It could be some combination of those things. So that's exactly what it is, it's behind the scenes, it's pulling back the curtain and showing them what's happening. Now let's talk about WHY. So, why does behind the scenes content matter, why is it valuable? Behind the scenes content is hugely valuable, because of that connection. It's your proof, it's your walk and talk, it's your taking your own medicine, eating your own dog food, whatever cliché horribleness you wanna use here, that's what behind the scenes content is. That's where, sort of the proof, it's right in front of you. "Here's what I do every day." And it also allows people to feel really connected on a human level. They're the humanity in this business, there's not sort of robots running the machine, and everything just sort of comes out magic. No, it's the day to day, it's the real life, it's the minutiae of it all. You know, a lot of times that will be, you know, good, sometimes that will be stressed, sometimes that will be celebration, and sometimes that will be like, "Here is the reality of a normal Tuesday, recording content for you guys." Okay? The reality of even that, "Here's a normal Tuesday, recording content for you guys," is, "Hey look, she sits there and takes the time, and records content for us. Hey look, she's doing the work. Hey look, there is some effort put into creating this product. Hey, there's the people who thread the whatever on the bloom to whatever," I'm not really very crafty, but you know what I'm trying to say here. You know, "There is the design work that happens to print out those really killer T-shirts I love. Here is the group of people that put together those delicious meals that we eat at this restaurant. Here," you know, whatever that things is, it's the connection, it's the humanity. It's the people part. And remember, we're approaching social, we're approaching digital marketing, we're approaching our audience as if the people on the other side, those customers, those profile photos, whatever it is, those are real live humans, and they, you know, enjoy being treated as such. And so, we treat them as such. Cool? That's the why behind the scenes, it's because we're showing that on this side of the profile photo, on this side of the business, on this side of the creation of that thing you love, that food you just ate, that product you just consumed, the coaching you're getting, the website that's getting built, is also a human. Simple as that. The internet has just made the idea of small town mentality, knowing where you get your meat, and your milk, and your clothes, and your yarn, and whatever else, knowing who you get those from, is the same now, it's just we get them from someone much further away. So be conscientious of that, you know? Be conscientious of treating these people like your neighbors. You know, if you were a retailer in a small town you wouldn't be cold and distant to some guy coming to buy milk from you because you wanted to automate the sequence, no, because then everyone in town would know that, and guess what? He's your neighbor, and you also live next door to him, and that's gonna be awkward when you pull into your driveway later. Instead, you would say, "Hey, how are you doing?" The same is true online, okay? So treat it like a small town. That's why I like behind the scenes content thought, is because it gives that small town connection, that where it came from, who is producing it, who is delivering it, who is sharing it. It fills that space. That was my whole small town rant by the way. It's actually much longer, but I abbreviated it, you're welcome. Number three, the final thing I wanna talk about, are some examples. So what does behind the scenes content look like? What can you do to showcase behind the scenes? So first, let's talk about an online, service based, one to one kind of business; so maybe you are working one on one with coaching clients, maybe you are providing some sort of expertise to them, one on one consulting, coaching, that kind of thing. Real talk? Swipe files, that counts as behind the scenes content. So, you know, this is how ... And this is great sort of lead magnet, opt-in kind of content, is swipe files. Or, if you're somebody who's in this space and you really, really, really, really would like some sort of paid thing, swipe files are a really easy, low hanging fruit, low price point kind of thing that doesn't take much for you to produce, and is easy to add on as a bonus in your coaching or consulting. So swipe files. If you're a health coach, maybe it's a swipe file for meal planning. If you're a business coach, maybe it's a budget form. If you're a marketing coach, maybe it is e-mail templates. If you are a mindset coach, maybe it's affirmations. If you are a money manager, financial services kind of coach, maybe it's a account checklist, the kinds of accounts I need to have. So swipe files. On the flip side of that, behind the scenes of you putting together some of this stuff for clients. You know, building strategies, behind the scenes shots of you reviewing marketing, or reviewing meal plans. Behind the scenes of you building meal plans for clients. For video, maybe it's behind the scenes of client calls. Now, that's something you have to absolutely get client permission on, but you may have clients who are totally okay with a snippet of a recording going out on social, and their name's not mentioned. Maybe it's, you know, "I actually get this question all the time about meal planning, would you mind if I shared this clipet of our call on Facebook? Just with a photo, and we're gonna do it as a video. Yeah, I'll leave your name out of it, no problem." And then you say, so, you know, you preface it with, "Hey, I had this call with a client this week, and I really want to answer this question for everybody. Here's her question." And so, you share what the question was, and then you share the clipet of you giving feedback, you answering the question. It's a killer behind the scenes look at what it's actually like to be on a call with you. That's a really great way to be looking at behind the scenes content. So let's shift to somebody who is in that same info space, maybe you're a health coach, business coach, marketing coach, mindset coach, whatever, but you sell products, you sell information. Maybe it's a membership site, like Backstage, maybe it's info courses, whatever. Maybe it's live events, whatever it is, it's a one-to-many kind of set up, right? So, in that case what we're going to do, is we're going to shift to looking at what is it like to receive information from you. So if it's a membership site, or a digital program, maybe it's a snippet from that program. Maybe it's a section of a course pulled from your membership site. Maybe it's a clip from a video that sits in your training program. Maybe it's a clip from your live event. Maybe it is photos from backstage at your life event. Maybe it's photos of your team and you mapping out a marketing strategy for your new course, or an event plan schedule for your live event. Again, it's just showing them how this thing that they're going to consume is coming together. And again, swipe files, the same thing we talked about earlier, works really well in this space as well. Again, it's the same kind of swipe files, if you're somebody who teaches a program about meal planing, it's a meal planing worksheet. Maybe you're a personal trainer, maybe it's a, you know, couch to 5K run training style; something that you can do in a pretty generic way. But again, often times that's at least the baseline for when you work with clients. I don't know any personal trainers who are from scratch building, from nothing, custom training programs. No, they have sort of their library of tools they work with, and it gets customized for client needs. You know, "This client needs to focus more on upper body, so we're gonna do this. This client needs to focus more on cardio, so we're gonna do this. This client needs to," whatever, so it's customized, but you're working from a set of tools. Give me a subset of that tools, and say, "This is the kind that works for most people. Here's three exercises that can help your posture if you're somebody who sits at your desk all day." So those swipe things, those little bits about how you work, that is killer behind the scenes content. Again, behind the scenes content is not just pictures of you working, it is the inner workings of your business; how you make things for work, for you or for your clients. Again, that becomes that connection point. Now, when you can add things like, "This is a shot of me building a meal plan," or, "This is a shot of me working out with a client," or, "This is a shot of me on a consulting call," or, "This is a look of me coaching inside of our training program," or whatever, that's all the better, because now we're really adding the humanity to that behind the scenes. Again, this is where humanity meets proof, and that's why behind the scenes content is so killer. Before I go I do want, for the small section of people that listen to this show, and maybe that's you, that have products, like physical products in their business; manufacturing, shipping, choosing labels, designing T-shirts, designing coffee mugs, creating marinades ... I'm trying to think of the clients I've had and the very limited amount of products they've done. But, showing people how it's made. You know, there's an entire show on the Discovery Chanel, and I know this 'cause I have a very nerdy eight year old son who loves these kind of shows, also, it's mostly because I have a very nerdy husband who loves these kind of shows, they're like, How It's Made on TV. That show will suck you in faster than anything else, and it's literally telling you how things are made, like products that you consume. On Food Network there's a show called Unwrapped, that's, like, literally it's just showing you how candy and food is manufactured; which is frightening, and also interesting. So sharing the behind the scenes, giving them an inside look of how whatever it is that you're proving for them came to be, that's your behind the scenes content. Now, if you would like to see behind the curtain in my business, the best way to do that is join Backstage, because that is where I share the most. But also follow me on social, because occasionally I do things like that there. Hit the Mic Backstage to take advantage of the upgrade to this show and join us there. I will see you next week, have a good one.

Welcome to episode 366 of Hit the Mic with The Stacey Harris. As I talked about last week, we talked about the fact that it's a little bit launch season. People are launching. So one of the things I wanted to talk about today is what you need to do, on social, and really what you need to do about your social, before you launch something. This could be a new program. This could be a new offering. This could be a new opt in. This could be a new podcast. Whatever it is that you're launching, I want to talk about some things that I want to do in regards to your social, before you open up Facebook and say, "Hey guys I have a new XYZ, go buy it please." All right? All right. Number one, build your plan. I know, and you're going to notice a lot in these next three steps, or this one and the following two steps rather, that it sounds a lot like planning your launch. I want you to apply the same logic to your social. This is called building a social media strategy, and it's absolutely critical. So number one, build your plan. Know exactly what networks you're using, what kind of targeting your using. If you're targeting organic posts as well as your ads. What kind of content to share? When do you share? Where do you share it? How frequently do you share it? Where do you pull your other people's content from? Built that all out into a plan. This does not have to take weeks, and months, and years. We build them for clients in the matter of about 10 days, because we're usually doing more than one, and we have other things going on. You could probably sit down and do yours in a couple of days. Maybe even a day. I'm not asking you to build out content. You're not gonna write content at this point, but what you're going to look at is, who is my audience. What are my networks? What are my types of content? The reason I want you to do this prelaunch, even if you have a general strategy in place, is now you're looking at a very specific topic. So maybe you're launching a new podcast all about your subject, and you're gonna have really killer guests. Well, for the two weeks before the podcast launch, I would be featuring other people's content, from exclusively, those first few guests. That way, I'm getting my audience excited about hearing from this person. I'm giving my audience name recognition on whoever it is that going to be on the show. If this is a program, maybe you're building a program all around counting Macros. Maybe you're a health coach, or a personal trainer, and you are launching a program all about Macros. Great, I want to see Macro content. I want to see content about Macronutrients, Micronutrients, calculating them. I want to see content from you, and I want to see content from other sources. I want to see conversational content. So just engagement focused content, around Macros. Maybe you are a business coach, and you have a killer sales call training coming up. It's all about executing a successful sales call. I want to hear, I went to see rather, content about sales calls. Facebook lives about sales call tips, podcasts, blog posts, guest posts, other people's content, everything is going to be around and supporting sales calls. That doesn't mean everything is gonna say, "This is how you do a sales call." But this is how sales calls make for a smoother sales process. This is the one fundamental tip to getting more sales calls. This is about doing more with sales calls. This is about best time of day to do a sales call. I don't know, whatever it is. How many sales calls do you do a day? Those kind of things. Do you see what I'm saying? It's focused, and that comes from really building a plan. Also, really cool thing is when you build a plan, guess what, you know exactly what to do, and exactly when to do it. Is never going to be a point where you run into, "I have nothing to say today." And that's horrifying when you're at a launch. The reality is, launches are exhausting. So as little thought as you can put into the day to day, of getting things out, the better, because your brain is going to be doing 847 other things. It doesn't matter how much help you have. Okay? So build your plan. Number two, map out your content. This is where I actually want you to start constructing some of your posts. I always work backwards, especially in a launch window. So I'll say ... Let's just pull a real-life example here. We have Backstage. Hit the Mic Backstage open year round. It's Evergreen. It's always available. Right? That awesome. It's fantastic. It means I'm in launch mode constantly, essentially, because there's no cart close. There's no sort of ups and downs of push, push, push, chill. No, it's always kind of a certain level of, "Yes, this thing is here." So each month, we kind of focus around what's going to be new in backstage. That's a lot of what I'll talk about on the podcast, and my Facebook Lives. Now, because it's open all the time, it is not as constant. It is not as ... This month inside Hit the Mic Backstage, we have a four ad, ad strategy to reengage a stale audience. That's the brand-new training that came in backstage. This whole month isn't about Facebook ads. However, we did that because it's launch season. So a lot of the podcasts this month are kind of about launch stuff. That training would fit very well if you are listening to this show, because we're talking about launching. That's something we do pre prelaunch, is we run those campaigns. So it fits in maybe a less obvious way. If that makes sense. But anyways, so what we'll do, is we'll run content around that theme. We've got that new training up, that's what were going to do. Or sometimes, we'll pick an older training. One of the most popular reasons for people joining Backstage, is there's an entire training on Facebook ads in there. Power editor, boosted posts, ads managers, targeting, pixels, all that stuff is inside Facebook Guide, which sits inside of Hit the Mic Backstage, which is fantastic. So sometimes we'll say, "You know what, we don't have a new training on Facebook ads this month, but we're talk all about Facebook ads. We're gonna put out a new opt in, and that's gonna be our subject." And guess what? That so we talk about every Tuesday on the podcast. It all feeds to the new opt in. We kind of do a faux launch around it, a soft kind of launch around it. Again, I can do that, because I've mapped out the content. So if I say, "All right, we're gonna do a new opt in. We're gonna go a full on Facebook ads, and we're really gonna promote that part of the community." I would actually map out what podcasts are we doing, and I would base that on the Facebook Guide that's inside of Backstage. So I'm working backwards from that Facebook Guide, because that's essentially what I'm promoting. Even though it's through a membership site, that's essentially the program I'm promoting. So I worked back from that program, through content. I worked back through that content to social. I worked back through that social, to what part of these posts are gonna need more ad focus, and what can happen really organically. Where can I find support pieces for that? That's how we map out our strategy. So this doesn't mean full on writing every piece of content, but I do outline the content, and I will highlight what the social is going to be. Sometimes I'll put example posts in, especially if we're doing this for somebody else. I'll put in, here's sort of the six kinds of things I would suggest. You can basically model these for the rest of your content, so that's what we do. That kind of gives you an idea of how we map it out. Number three thing I want you to do, is set your budget. One of the biggest Facebook ads mistakes we see, is people building Facebook ads, and then going, "Oh my God, I spent $500. I have no idea how that happened." It's a double whammy. A, you didn't set a budget, and B, you didn't then create ads that supported that budget. So if you have a smaller budget, your ad targeting needs to be tighter. If you have a smaller budget, I suggest leaning hard on look-alike audiences, and custom audiences based on your audience that you have already. So your email list, your Facebook page, engagement on your Facebook page, video views, likes, comments, those kind of things. But also, look-alike audiences that look like your audience that's already purchased things. So one of the things we do to keep our ad budget down here, is we actually have a look-alike audience based on members of the Backstage community, because guess what, if you already bought Backstage, you're already a member. I want more of you. Right? So I build an audience based on what those people look like. Then we do refine that a little further, because sometimes it can look like not at all what I want. So we'll refine that with their interested in certain things, or they're between a certain age demographic, they live in a certain place. I'm in the states, and I speak English. Unfortunately, it's the only language I speak at this point. Something I'm going to actively work on changing here, very soon, because it drives me crazy, but that's neither here nor there. But I only speak the one language, so I can only help people that speak the same language I do, unfortunately. So that needs to be in my targeting, because I would love to have a look-alike audience that spoke French. However, I would not be able to help them, because I do not yet speak French. All right? So when you have a smaller budget, lean on those kind of things. Lean on those kind of targeting. When you have a larger budget, you can open up that refining a little bit more. Now your language thing should probably still be on point, but your age demographic could be a little wider. Your location demographic, as long as the language is on point, your location demographic could be a little wider, if that makes sense for your program. Now, on the flip side of that, if you are a local brick-and-mortar shop, we have a client who has seriously, a three mile demographic for their locations, so that's pretty tight. So we go a little wider on age. We go a little wider, and do men and women. We refine other places like income level, and job, and family status, and things like that, because his location is finite. It is a strict sort of border. You may be running into the same thing, and thinking, okay, well that's gonna narrow my audience down to the point where it's just impossible. No, play with the other points. Target in other ways, to make sure you're getting the right people in that location demographic. Again, the narrower you are, the smaller your budget. The smaller your budget is rather, the narrower you need to be. If you have a little more money to play with, your budget can be a little wider. My other thought is you have a bigger budget, create more ad sets. It doesn't have to be that you open one audience up to a larger number, a larger spectrum. It could be that now I have some extra money to test with. Or, now I can increase my daily budget, and maximize getting in front of more of those people. All right? Okay. So those are the three things I want you to think about, as far as social media is concerned, with your launch. Oh, actually, one more thing, bonus tip. When you are thinking about your budget for social media, for your ad campaigns, A Facebook ads, not the only ads in town. Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, all have ad platforms, Pinterest. So depending on your market, Facebook ads may not be the only option. In fact, some cases they might not even be the best option. I will say, four out of five times they're the best option, but in some cases they're not. So pay attention to that. Look at maybe splitting your budget across a couple of places. But also, if you want to hire someone, you need to factor that into your budget. I have had so many potential clients get on the phone with me and say, "Okay, so yeah, I've got $1,000 ads budget, and I want you to run these ads over the course of four weeks. I'll just send you the $1,000." They didn't budget for what it would cost for me to run that campaign for them. On the flip side of that, I have people who contact me who say, "Okay, I have XYZ budget to pay you." And they don't factor in their ads cost on top of that. I don't know a single Facebook ads person, anyone who runs Facebook ads, in fact we don't even run them anymore, we refer them out, but I don't know of anybody who runs Facebook ads where the ads budget is included in their cost. There may be someone. I'm not saying they don't exist, but you need to factor in if you want to have someone else running your ads, or even managing your social for you. Factor in that cost, in addition to the cost the actual ads. All right? All right. If you would like to join us Backstage, and you would, because it's the killer, awesome upgrade to this very show, and you liked this show, or you would not still be listening, in theory. Seriously, if you don't like this show, and you're still listening ... Anyways. Anyways, it's the upgrade to this. It's the next step for the show. So join us over at hitthemicbackstage.com if you have not already. If you are already a member, don't forget, we do have an Ask Me Anything office hours coming up. Plus we've got the Facebook group, and the VIP community, where you can ask questions anytime. So if you're already a member, which I suspect you are, I trust that you are, I hope, head on over there and join us. I think that's all I've got for you today. If you have any questions, at any time, hit me up on Facebook or Twitter. I will see you next Tuesday.

Welcome to episode 365 of Hit the Mic the Stacey Harris. Three things you need to know, September 2017 edition. It's that time of year, guys. Summer is over in the northern part of earth. Winter shoulder be coming to a close in the southern part of the earth, and it's launch time. I'm sure you guys are already getting inundated with emails about launches. I know I certainly am. I've been getting a ton of emails. Not just on promotion side of things, but potential clients and clients saying, "Hey. We want to do this in September. We don't want to do this in October, we want to do this in November," and I say, "Great. Welcome to launch season." I wanted to talk about some launch-related things today for the three things you must know. Really, they're all kind of around Facebook and using Facebook as a tool to launch whatever it is you want to launch. Number one thing I want you to know, don't just jump in and start selling on Facebook with your ads or with your organic content, whatever it is. Don't just jump right in and be like, "Okay. It's launch time. Here you go." No. First of all, look at your audience as it is now. Are they engaging? Are they paying attention to you? If they're not, we need to make sure we run an engagement set of ads before we open up our ads for whatever pre-launch and launch content you have. In fact, we talked about this in this month, we just went live on Friday, inside of Hit the Mic Backstage, we talk about a four-ad ad sequence to run to reengage a stale audience. If you are looking at launching, be sure to check that out because that really is going to be where we dive into what this four-ad sequence looks like, what these ads are, and how they really lead into your pre-launch and launch content. Check that out if this is something that's sort of hitting home for you. Be sure, be sure, be sure that you do whatever you need to do to make sure your audience is paying attention to you before you start selling them because if the first post they actually see from you in six months is an ad to buy something, it's going to be a tough sell. On the flip side of that, the same is true for your email. If you haven't been sending any emails, make sure you start sending some content before your first email to your list is, "Hey. Here's my new program." I'm not just talking about here's a new mini-class and that mini-class is your launch content. No, I'm talking about just pure, unpitched, no-sale content. Just literal value. It's all it is because, again, if they're not used to hearing from you, if you maybe took the summer off, or the last three months off I should say, and you're like, "I should probably get back to emailing the old list-a-loo. I'll just send them this free mini-class that's going to then pitch my program. They'll all buy. They read my emails before." No. First of all, you're going to get a massive unsubscribe, which is probably not horrible because they're cold leads, so why pay to have them on your list? On the flip side of that, they're not in a position to buy from you right now, so don't just jump in and sell. On the Facebook side of things, you want to make sure you're running some ads to reengage the audience. On the email side of things, you're going to want to make sure you're sending them some value. Be aware, if you haven't been emailing your list and you email them, even with just pure, undoctored value, you're going to get some unsubscribes because there are going to be people who forgot why they're on your list or who've full on forgot they were on your list. Be ready for that, but this is the time to reengage your audience. The same is true for Twitter and Pinterest and Instagram. If you've been gone for a while, don't make the first thing they see a pitch cool. Again, even if that pitch is for a free master class or to opt in for something, that's still a pitch. It's still an ask. You may not be asking for money, but you're asking for time, you're asking for an email address. You're still making an ask. I want that first piece of content they see to be ask-free. Cool? Cool. Number two: make sure you're following the Facebook ads rules. Facebook has been cracking down a lot this year and over the last couple of months on people not following the Facebook ads rule. By that, I mean, and we have a whole Facebook checklist and guide, Facebook ads checklist and guide, and I'll make sure it's linked in the show notes. You're not using negative copy. You're not assuming the feelings of the person reading the copy, meaning you're not saying something like, "Hate your body?" No. You're not saying something like that. On the flip side of that, your landing page matters too. This is where I see most people drop the ball when it comes to Facebook ad rules. You need to have a privacy policy in terms of service kind of thing on any page that an ad is running to. FYI, you should have one on your site anyways, but make sure that if you're using a lead page or something like that, maybe by default it shows up on your website, but now you're using a lead page or something like that, a third-party tool. Maybe you don't have that defaulted to the bottom of your page. Don't delete that little link lead page put there. Put the link to your terms of service where it says legal or whatever tool and whatever verbiage it used. You need to have that on there. You can't autoplay your video on the landing page. The other thing you need to really be aware of is that on your landing page, you're also not making any sort of crazy claims, like "make six figures taking naps." I'm totally making stuff up here, but just like you can't use that kind of language in your ads, you can't use that kind of language on your landing page. Be really conscientious of that. Then just sort of some of the best practices. There have been some ads that have been running into problems with an overuse of Emoji or an overuse of all caps. I know there are a lot of Facebook ads experts who gave you templates that are loaded down with Emojis and all caps. Use them responsibly. Somebody said to me the other, and I cannot remember for the life of me who it was, but they said something about attitude is like salt. A little sort of spices it up, but too much and you ruin the whole dish. Emojis and caps are like salt. A little bit spices it up. Too much of it ruins the whole dish. Okay? Use responsibly. Alright? That's just something I wanted you to remember. If you're not sure about what the Facebook ads rules are, because everything I listed here is not the entirety of them, I will link to the Facebook ads policies. Be sure, do yourself a solid, even if someone else is running your ads, quite frankly, especially if somebody else is running your ads, and familiarize yourself with this. It's not a long document, but it's worth reading. This is not like your Apple terms of service kind of thing that we all just sort of skip past. Maybe that was just me. This is something where the ability to run ads is on the line. If you ever want to run ads again, don't let just a lack of knowledge cost you that. Cool? Number three. I can't remember if we talked about this last month, but I really wanted to hit on it because we've tested it now for a while and it's really been a game changer. Facebook frequency. Across my page, across our clients' pages, we are seeing a benefit to actually posting less frequently. In fact, I've got a couple of clients who are posting two or three times a week and they're seeing a 25 to 40% organic reach on their content. By organic, I mean they're not boosting. There's no ad money behind that. It's just their reach. They're also seeing engagement go up, which is what's helping their reach. Test it. I'm not saying you skip from twice a day to once a week. Test it incrementally. I've shifted from twice a day to once a day. Again, my organic reach has about tripled, which is awesome because I have to produce less content. I have to schedule less content. This is something definitely worth testing on your own content as well to see if yours is lining up the same way. Again, every page, every industry is different. We absolutely, all the time see pages, usually really massive pages like Starbucks that post three or four or five or six or eight times a day. We see that a lot with publishers, you know, Buzzfeed and Refinery29 and those kind of places. They have new things to publish all day. You probably don't. Again, test decreasing your frequency a bit and see what it does to your reach. Don't just test this once. Don't just test this twice. Give it a good 14 days and see what your numbers are like. Go back and review and see what your reach is like, see what your engagement has been like, and go from there. Decreasing your frequency may increase your organic reach and your engagement, which is super killer. Alright? There's your three things that I want you to know in September. Most of all, I want you to remember that now is the time to take action. Any day now, we're going to start getting those end-of-the-year emails that I rag on every year, but you'll probably get one from me. Not in September because it's not even quarter of yet. Anyways, now is the time to take action for this year. Not just next year. There's no reason to fold it up. Look at what you said you wanted to do in January. Where are you with that? If you're not there yet, what can we do to put you in alignment with it before the end of the year? What can we do to put you on track to blow that out of the water next year? There's plenty of time left this year. Do not fall prey to, "Okay, what are we doing in January? What are we doing right now?" Okay? A big part of that can be a part of joining a community where there is some accountability. That's why we now have the VIP option, the Bam upgrade available inside of Hit the Mic Backstage, meaning you can join us, get monthly one-on-one coaching with me, get some serious accountability with me. If you are interested in that, we do have a couple of spots open right now, so go to HittheMicBackstage.com and you can see that there is now three options to purchase. One of them is the VIP Bam option. If you all want to learn more about what's included in Bam, just go to thestaceyharris.com/bam. There's also a link to sign up right there and I will see you inside of Backstage, whether it's at the Bam level or not because I want to see you taking action and getting the information you need without any fluff and without any ulterior motives is a really, really good place to start. Join us backstage. Even better, join us at the Bam level and get some serious, butt-kicking accountability. Cool? Alright. I will see you next week and of course, I will see you backstage.

Stacey Harris is joining me in the very first episode of Behind the Membership to discuss her site, Hit the Mic Backstage. We delve into Stacey's membership journey so far, including: Positioning the membership as an upgrade to her podcast How she created her membership in just 2 weeks The sales funnel she uses to attract new members The impact of $1 trials Why she loves running a community How Hit the Mic Backstage has evolved over the last two years and more!

Welcome to Episode 364 of Hit the Mic with The Stacey Harris. All right guys 364, and we're talking about tools. Social media tools and what to use and is this the right one or is that the right one; is probably the question type I spend the most time answering. Especially, when I'm at events, and I'm speaking to people. A lot of times it's not really about what should I be hosting, or where I should be hosting, it's literally what can I use to make this easier. What can I use to make this more painless? How can I automate this in a way that makes sense. I want to talk about three types of tools that you need to have. Now, I will say that there are a whole plethora of options within these tool types to chose; I'm going to share my favorite in each category. Again, and I've said this before, and I guarantee I will say it again, maybe in this show; the best tool for the job is the one you are going to use. The smanciest, fanciest most wonderful tool that every expert recommends, is totally useless if you never open it. The best tools for the job is the one you will use, but I will tell you my three favorites the ones I use. Cool? All right. Let's jump in tool type number one; a scheduler. Now, I want to put a little asterisk next to this. Not everyone needs a scheduler. I do have a couple of coaching clients who focus mostly on Facebook and Instagram, and they don't use a scheduler. They use a scheduler inside Facebook, and they use an alarm reminder to schedule to their Instagram, and that's where they're at and that works perfectly for their demographic for their industry, for their ideal clients and for their set-up. There is no reason for them to pay X-Y-Z per month to have a scheduler, when that's the best option for them. That's my little side note there, but jumping back in, a scheduler Some option of posting is the most-most necessary tool. I use eClincher. There are a ton of reviews of tool options, and if you go down to the resources on the Show Notes page I will list links to those episodes. We talk about Buffer, Hootsuite, eClincher and Sprout Social. We talked about CoSchedule, and a whole plethora of choices. Again, the right one is the one you'll use. I use eClincher, because it allows me to do a couple of things. A. It allows me to have something called queues, where my content is actually recycled. That allows me to put all 364 episodes of this show and content for that in a list. It gets shaken up like a snowball, and those tweets go out. When the snow all settles, and the tweets have all been sent it gets shaken up again, and the whole process happens again, without me or someone on my team going in and making that happen. I really like eClincher. In addition to that, I have the option for social listening, because I've got my social inbox where all of my Facebook comments, LinkedIn messages Twitter replies and direct messages' sort of things come into one place. I can simply go in and monitor that space. I don't have to over and over and over and over again dig into each of those places. On the flip side of that, I can also schedule specific messages at specific times. If I'm a part of an affiliate promo, or I'm launching something, or there's something I need to go out on Tuesday at seven, I can schedule it to go out at one time. Tuesday at seven. I really like that. That's why I like eClincher. They've also got a lot of great built-in analytics and things like that. So, that's what I use. But a scheduler, something that's going to help you streamline the process of scheduling your social media foundation is really key. When I talk about your social media foundation, I'm talking about, and I've talked about this in past episodes, the content that has to go out. Your content. Your other peoples content. Your social messages. It's the content that you know goes out week after week, month after month, year after year. It's the baseline, the foundation, see how it's named that, of your social media time. So get that stuff out. Schedule that. Make time to do it once a week. A scheduler allows you to do that. That way when you're going in you can trust that your scheduler is taking care of your foundation and you can go in and engage. You can go on and post something live and fresh. Whatever it is. You can go focus on your groups. Whatever it is you need to do, you have that option. Again, ding-ding-ding, your scheduler has allowed your foundation to be going out. Cool? All right. Number two. A graphics tool. I'm not saying you have to have Photoshop, in fact in most cases you don't need Photoshop. I use Canva, and I'll be honest for some stuff we do use Photoshop. But we actually have templates that we had a designer build for us in Canva. We used those 98% of the time. We just rolled out new cover images and new Instagram quote graphics and stuff like that; guess what guys? We do those with Canva. It doesn't have to be a highly complicated tool. Again, there are a whole range of choices for you. I really love Canva. We even spring for the Premium version, I think it's like 12 or 15 bucks a month, and I think it's actually ten bucks a month if you pay annually. You end up with a couple of months free, so it kind of shaves it down to be less per month. Yeah, it doesn't have to be complicated, it can be simple. One thing I will say though. When you're using a tool like Canva, or some of these real quick social media graphic template-based tools, remember to make yours look like you and your brand. That does mean just adding your logo in place of whatever logo was defaulted in the template, because for a lot of people in the online business space we see those templates so often, and we know this tool so well I can identify a Canva graphic, nine times out of ten. They use one of the top six templates in the list and they didn't really do anything in the way of customization. So it looks like a Canva image to me. Their brand is completely washed out of it, because I immediately identify it as a Canva image. Do some tweaking. I'm sure there are some designers who can probably identify them at even a higher level than I can, but put a little bit of time in and you know what, if you really want invest in having a designer help you. I'm happy to give you the name of my designer, if you guys are interested in that. Send me a message. The team will get you her name, and put you in contact. But you need to make it look and feel like your brand or it's not representing you, it's representing Canva or whatever tool it is that you are using. Canva is certainly not the only game in town with that kind of stuff. Number two, a graphics tool. I'll also say that your graphics tool doesn't necessarily need to be desktop-based. For a lot of you that may be something on your phone. A editing app on your phone that you use. For example WordSwag is massively popular. Again, I can identify a WordSwag image pretty carefully. Make sure you give it your own feel. Don't use default everything, give it your own vibe. Graphics tool massively important, especially now, we know how important visual stimulation is in the grand scheme of social media. That's why photos and videos are doing so well. Number three, before we close this up, some sort of tool to collect your stats in. Now, I'm trusting that I don't need to mention that you are actually going into your Facebook insights, your Twitter analytics, your LinkedIn analytics, your Google analytics, and paying attention to your stats and that these numbers mean something and will give you information. However, you also need to collect that information somewhere. I actually keep it stupid stupid simple, we use Google Sheets to track things like followers count, engagement rates, click through rates, most popular links, and things like that. My friend Brandy Lawson over at FireyFx has been talking a lot about Google Data Studio, which is actually a really cool tool that we use to put together parts of our client's reports. So they can see what's happening on their website, it's a really cool option. You can absolutely be pulling those and collecting your data there, but also keep a record of those things. Again, I keep follower counts and stuff in Google Sheets. I keep a record of this stuff because guys social media is not an immediate payoff. It's not you hire someone or you start doing something or you make one tweak and suddenly the flood gates open. That's not what social media is for. It's a long-term game. You're looking at three, six, twelve months to start really seeing that you've got some solid leverage. Yes, little things should start happening. Follower count should start increasing. Engagement should start increasing. Low level sales may increase, the email list may start growing incrementally over time, but it is not a switch. It is not something you flip. When you have the numbers and you can look at them month over month, and quarter over quarter, and year over year, you really start to see the difference that's made when you just keep plugging away. You just keep doing the work. You just keep being of value. You just keep being consistent. You just keep sharing information and making those sales offers. Making those pitches. In the words of Gary V, "You're doing your jobs, but you're also doing your right hooks." All right guys, so make sure you are tracking that information and you are paying attention to it. Not just day to day, but over the long-term. So having some sort of tool where you collect those stats, that's going to be really valuable. That's the show for today. Big, big, big reminder. We have a brand new training happening Friday actually. It'll get released on Hit the Mic Backstage. This month is going to be our ... Next month ,rather, September is going to be a really good one. We're actually going to talk about how to use Facebook ads to engage a stale community. This is particularly important at this time of year, because maybe just maybe you have spent the last couple of months chilling out. Maybe not posting quite as much. Maybe not engaging your community and now you want to launch something. Now you want to release your program or grow your e-mail list so you can launch something in January, whatever it is. You want to hit those numbers that you set in January of this year. So we're going to talk about setting up your Facebook ads to engage that community. If you would like to join us, and I know you would, HittheMicBackstage.com is the place to go. And I will see you backstage in the private V.I.P. lounge, and of course the Facebook group, and of course I'll see you again here next Tuesday. See you soon.

Welcome to episode 363 of Hit the Mic with The Stacey Harris. It’s that time of year again. We’re mid to late August, and here’s the deal guys, launch season, it’s right around the corner. Once September hits, that like back to school vibe, a lot, a lot, a lot of people go into launch mode, and maybe, just maybe, there’s something that you would like to launch this fall. If there is, this episode is a good one to listen to, ’cause we’re going to talk about some of the ways you can start using social now to prep for that launch and some of the ways that you can support your launch through your social media efforts, both paid and organic. Cool? Cool. So let’s first start talking about why is this important to think about now? Often times when you’re thinking about a launch or when you’re planning a launch, you get so caught up in the production of sales pages, and e-mail copy, and maybe the actual creation of whatever it is you’re launching, the program, the video series, whatever, and sometimes we forget to think about the social media. In many cases, we’ll think about, “Oh, we’re going to create this ad campaign.” Or “I hired this person to do this ad campaign.” But there’s a lot of organic stuff that we can be doing during pre-launch to get the benefits going before the launch is ready. That can be everything from re-engaging your audience on social, just putting out really engagement focused content, running ads. That it’s purely about getting comments and shares versus getting clicks to a website. To putting out more of your content that is related to what it is you’re going to be launching, so that you can Pixel those people and re-target them with ads. Now if you don’t know what any of the words I just said meant, you need to be joining us inside of Hit the Mic Backstage, but basically what it does is when somebody visits your website, if you have a Facebook Pixel installed, you can then re-target them with ads by creating an audience based on the traffic from that Pixel. Again, if those words do not make sense, you need to be in Backstage, ’cause that’s the kind of stuff we talk about. But, it doesn’t even need to be that you’re running Facebook ads for this content. Now, pre-launch, I do like to run Facebook ads to focus content for the sake of Pixeling those people and re-targeting them with launch sequence stuff, meaning let’s say I’m doing a launch and I’ve got this group program, and the focus of the group program is really rocking out Q4 this year. So it’s all about accountability, and business strategy, and marketing strategy, and it’s going to be just the most epic program ever. I’m totally making this up by the way. This is not something I’m offering. I’m sure someone offers a really great one. I do not. With that said, I can start creating content that speaks to that in let’s say August for before my September launch, and then run ads to a cold audience to that content. Meaning, I’m not running an opt-in to them, I’m not running sign-up and you’ll get this blog post or podcast or video or whatever it is. It’s purely a link to the podcast episode, or the blog post, or, again, whatever it is. From there, I can Pixel them. Again, if you don’t know that that is, Backstage. We can Pixel them, and then when we are ready to start running maybe ads for a webinar or for a video series, or depending on whatever your actual launch content is, we have an audience primed and ready for that kind of content. So we’re making our ask a little bit later. So now, before the launch, is the time to start thinking about using social to sell, to build your customer base, especially for those of you who are going, “I really want to launch something, but I don’t have a very big following, and I don’t have a very big e-mail list, so how can I really hit some really great numbers financially if I don’t have very many people yet?” A big part of that is going to be engaging new people, and the earlier you can start building trust with them, the more likely it is that you’re going to be able to get them to say yes on a program opportunity, or a coaching opportunity, or whatever it is that you’re launching. Again, think about ways you can start providing value, building trust, and connecting with your audience, new and old, before your official pre-launch content even goes out. All right? Second thing I want to talk about, don’t forget that you don’t have to do this alone. When you are in a launch space, there is a lot of stuff that needs your attention. There is a lot of stuff you’re doing, so now might be a really good time to get someone to help you with your social media. It doesn’t have to be that you hire somebody who does this for you all the time. Maybe it’s just somebody who helps you manage your social media through your launch period. That’s okay. You can hire people on whatever terms you need. If you want to take that a step further, you might see, and I say might because there’s a ton of variables here, you might see more success with your Facebook ads if you hire somebody who does Facebook ads. One of the big differences we’ve seen with clients is when they hired somebody, whether it was us or we worked with another team, or just depending on the kind of client it was. Hire somebody who that was their bread and butter is Facebook ads geared toward selling XYZ, a program, a product. One team we worked with when I was partnered with a start-up, they wanted to do a Kickstarter for product, and we partnered with a Facebook ad company that that is all they did is they ran Facebook ads for Kickstarter kind of campaigns, that sort of funding kind of setup. That was all they did, and that was money well spent because that was all they did. They knew it inside and out. They had the depth of knowledge to really maximize the results that the client was seeing, because that’s where they live. So bringing somebody in who, again, that’s where they live … Maybe you have your VA who’s already doing your social media, and if that’s the case, fantastic, wonderful, great. It might still be worth investing in somebody who can run your Facebook ad campaign for you, who can launch your Facebook ad campaign. It might be worth hiring your copywriter that did your sales page to write you a certain amount of ad copy, or a certain amount of organic posts, social media content that compliment and really speaks to your sales copy. Think about ways you can tap and use your team to support you through this, because launches are stressful. Launches are crazy. It’s the nature of the beast. It can get easier, though, if we ask for help, if we allow for help, and if we spend our time doing what we do best, and not trying to do all of the things. I say that as someone who has made that mistake repeatedly, who continues from time to time to get sucked into that trap. I’m getting better about it, for sure, but just, I mean, full transparency, we all fall victim to it at least once, and I’m guessing that most people do it a lot more than one time. But remember, asking for help, building your support team, this is a good time to do that. Again, the people you hire during a launch don’t have to become people that are permanent, don’t have to people who you work with all the time. They can purely be working with you for a launch. A great example that is another client we had several years ago now, she hired an extended VA staff, virtual assistant staff, to help with customer service during launch periods, because inevitably there would be text snafus or refunds to handle or things like that. This allowed her to deal with all of those things, and stay at the same level of customer service that she wanted to be providing. So for the, I think it ended up being like the eight weeks of the launch and the program, she kept these extended staff on. It was temporary. It’s kind of like the holidays. I mean, people expanding, physical stores, expanding their staff. I think we probably see that in the biggest way with like UPS and FedEx and the postal. They have seasonal employees. You can have seasonal launch time employees. The final thing I want to talk about is don’t think of these pieces of your marketing, of your program development, or your program delivering as separate pieces, because really, all of these pieces need to be working together, especially on the marketing side of things. I mentioned earlier, hiring your copywriter to build you some social content, maybe hiring them to help you write some e-mail copy. All of these things need to compliment each other. Our sales page, our e-mails, our social content, our blog content, our podcast interviews. All of these things need to be interwoven for the magic to happen, for us to continue building trust with potentially a very large amount of new audience. I mean, ideally, when we talk about having big launches and having big success, a lot of that doesn’t come from suddenly my audience just all decides to buy something at the same time. No. A lot of that comes from audience growth, and for me that’s always one of the big benefits of doing a launch is my audience grows, my e-mail list grows. Even if they don’t buy that time, they’ll buy the next time, or they’ll buy a down sell opportunity that I have on the backend, or whatever that thing is, but that happens because there’s audience growth there. That means, it’s even more important that we have a consistency across these different pieces of our marketing channels, across the different pieces of the actual program delivery, and coaching experience, because we want to maintain that trust. We want to maintain the expectation of the experience they’re having. So don’t think about these things as wholly independent things. Think about them in parallel. Think about them that they all kind of need to fit together, they all need to kind of work together to complete the puzzle that is your launch. All right? That’s all I’ve got for you today. If you’ve got any questions, anytime, be sure to head over to the Facebook page, or even better, join us inside of HittheMicBackstage.com. As of recording this, we do have a couple of spots left inside of the new VIP upgrade for Backstage that I talked about last week. If you are interested in that, head over to HittheMicBackstage.com. All the way at the bottom you’ll see the three ways you can join, monthly, annually, or at the VIP level. The VIP level does include, once again, one-on-one calls with me each and every month and a private area in the VIP lounge, which is our private community. It’s awesome. I’m loving it. I’m having a really good time with it, so if you are interested in that, check that out. If there are not spots available at the time you’re listening to this, get on the wait list. There’ll be a list … a link there to a wait list if there is not a purchase opportunity there. All right? I will see you guys next Tuesday. Have a good week.

Welcome to episode 362 of Hit the Mic with The Stacey Harris. We are celebrating. Yes, that's right. This month marks two years since the launch of Hit the Mic Backstage, so we're starting the whole month celebrating the anniversary. I wanted to talk about what I have learned and has taken for me and the lessons I've had in running this community for the last two years and in continuing to run this community. I see a lot of the membership sites that started just after I launched or in the year after I launched, a lot of them aren't around anymore. I think a lot of that comes from not really being super clear on what it takes to maintain a membership site. We spend a lot of time curious about what it will take to launch, what tech we need to build it on, and how big our list size needs to be and how to process recurring payments and all of those things. Sometimes, I know this was definitely true for me, I didn't think nearly as much about what it would take to run a membership site. That's one of the things I love and you're going to hear me shout these guys out probably several times during this episode, The Membership Guys, who have a great podcast. Mike and Kelly are fantastic. They have a great membership site I'm a part of. They also have done masterminds that I've been a part of and live events that I've attended and they're friends of mine. They're just fantastic people who genuinely know their stuff. They spend a lot of time in their community and in their marketing talking about not just what it takes to launch, but what it takes to run. They're doing a really good job of educating us on this stuff. I wanted to tell you from somebody who doesn't teach this day to day what my experience has been, my lessons have been, maybe a couple of things I wish I would have known earlier. We're going to focus on three or four main areas and we'll dive in in that way. The first thing I want to talk about though is commitment. You really have to be committed to growing this membership site. One of the things that I had to choose very early is if I wanted to have launch periods and I wanted to launch multiple times per year or if I wanted to have it open all of the time. I chose to have it open all of the time, which basically means I'm always in some way in launch mode. Instead of having the collective stress of a very intense launch over a week or two weeks and the work it takes to do that both before the actual two week open period and then during that two week period, I have a slightly lesser version of that all the time. I'm always selling the membership site. We have put in place a lot of pieces so that the membership site can always be in launch mode. It can always be in sales mode. That means little stuff like budgeting for Facebook ads all the time, meaning I don't have a launch budget that's XYZ and it scales down for the month afterwards. No. I have a budget for 12 months and there's a monthly budget for Backstage. In addition to that, there's a monthly budget for anything that I do have a launch period around. Earlier this year, we launched the Backstage Amplifier Mastermind, which I will talk more about later because we're changing it up a little bit. That was a more focused launch period. It had an open and it had a close. In addition to my always going Backstage budget, I needed an additional budget for that. That's something to consider if you're going to have a membership site that sits alongside more traditionally launched courses or programs or opportunities. That's something to consider, but also things like my sales funnels. Being aware of having to keep those both working but also fresh. We've got a Facebook ads training that we do, which full transparency here, guys, sells Hit the Mic Backstage. Shocker. As much there's value in there, the next steps are in the membership site, right? I have to keep that fresh in the sense that I have to keep it updated. That's something to consider. It's not a set it and forget it, it's got to get revamped. Same thing goes for the courses inside the membership site. I built a membership site largely because I was selling programs that I was having to keep updated. However, I had charged one lifetime price, meaning I was no longer getting paid but I was still having to basically completely redo those courses at least once per year. Again, that's at a minimum of once per year. Having a membership site, I'm able to monetize that redo over and over again. That's helpful from a business model perspective, but again, that takes commitment. I'm committed to keeping that stuff current, to keeping that stuff going. That's something to really, really consider when you look at, "Is this for me?" Number two, and it's in that same vein, this is not passive income. 100%. Passive income for me honestly is affiliate revenue because I don't do a ton to sell it and then I don't have to deliver anything. Now there are absolutely exceptions to that rule like all of the others. For example, sometimes I'll go really into a launch as an affiliate. A great example of that is Denise Duffield-Thomas launched a new course over the summer which I was a part of. Because I was going to be doing this live course in there, I really wanted to get some of you guys in it with me. I had a really solid email series and I ran some ads for it. That wasn't 100% passive, but nine times out of ten, my affiliate revenue really comes from, I've talked about it in this podcast and there's an affiliate link, or I've got a resource page with affiliate links. You guys will find what you need there. Click on it, purchase it, and then I get a check. That's, for me, passive income. The membership site is not. I spend a ton of hours every month not just engaging with community and monitoring things that way, handling customer service issues, but also creating content. We have two trainings, one live, one recorded every month. I'm revamping old trainings, I'm redoing funnel videos for the sales process, I'm revamping the website. The website has looked different. We've had a website redo I think three or four times in two years because I'm always trying to make that community better. I'm always trying to grow that community from the sense of a user experience. I want it to be better all the time. It's not perfect now. Full disclosure, I'm not entirely sure it will ever be perfect because there's always something that I want to make better. You know what? Partially The Membership Guys are to blame for that. Kelly and Mike put out some amazing content and have an amazing community. They always have me thinking of ways that I can make the experience better for my community and for my membership. Again, this is all about growing and helping my community get from problem to solution like any offering we have is. I want to make that better and better and better and better, so again, this is something that is not passive. I spent a ton of hours. I think that's one of the most common reasons when I've talked to membership site owners who have ditched their membership site, who have closed it out, the most common reason why is "I thought it would be passive income." "I was looking for something to add passive recurring revenue to my business and that was not what that was." Again, there's exceptions to every rule. There are absolutely people who build 100% or 95% passive revenue in a membership model. Congratulations. I have not yet figured out how to do that, nor is that something I really have an interest in. For me, I would like my membership site to be taking up more and more of my time as far as the time I spend in my business, a percentage of time I spend in my business. As it grows, it becomes more and more of the primary offering of my business. That's what it's structured to do. That's what it was created to do. I spend less and less time working one-on-one and that gets more and more high level which, again, we'll talk about very soon. It becomes more the way I work, so it's instead of being a passive, it's a one-to-many. It is leveraged time in a way that one-on-one isn't, but it's not passive. Number three though can help that, which is automation helps, so does a team. We have a team in place that helps and that role will be growing more and more over the next, I don't know, several years. Definitely this year over the next several months. We've got Charles and me and the VA team we have. They help me with everything from customer service to some of the tech stuff. We also have contract people who come in when there's a tech issue that I could maybe someday figure out, but I'm not going to very quickly. Even once I figure out what the problem is, I probably don't have the expertise to solve said problem, so I have a team. On the flip side of that, I have automation. There is a sequence of things that happens when people sign up for a training to be sold into Backstage. I'm not doing this through sales calls. I'm not doing this through cold calling or something like that. There is an automation sequence in place. Again, I'm leveraging my time by leaning on these tools and these team members to help me get to more people, to help me get more results from my time. Again, like when we're talking about passive income versus leveraged time income, I'm talking about leveraging these tools to help make more of my hours. Automation helps in a big, big way. It also helps the deliverability standpoint. When I think about what I am trying to do with this community, when I think about what I am trying to serve people and what I'm trying to change for them, I think about things like instant access. I think about things like fast responses and an easy, easy access. I have to have automation in mind and I have to have team members in mind so that I can, ensuring that they're getting what they need right when they need it, not two or three days later. One of my big goals with Backstage was replacing Google as your default, "Is this new? Where do I need to have ... Where do I find ..." I want to make sure you're getting accurate information when you need it and so things like when you purchase, you are automatically sent your login information so you can get in right then. When you request to join the Facebook group that we have as a part of the community, someone will let you in relatively quickly. If it's not me, it's a team member. Someone's paying attention to that, not 24 hours a day because we don't have a global team. All of our team members are here in the States. If you request to do it at 2:00 a.m. my time, then yes, there will very likely be a delay before you are given access. You will be given access as soon as somebody is awake and online the next day. I have to lean on these support systems, these support pieces, again, whether that's automation or whether that's people to ensure that I am delivering on that promise and on that expectation that I've set for the community to be easy access, easy to take action on. That's why I spend so much time in our VIP lounge, which is the the forum community we have right on the site and our Facebook group. A, I want it to be accessible in wherever they prefer to spend their time and, B, I want to make sure I'm there when they need me. Again, that's why this is being built and being structured and evolving to being more and more and more of the time spent in my business. I want to be accessible. This is the way for my people, my customers, my clients, my community to get direct access to me as often as possible. That's why it's priced the way it is and that's why we have the options we have as far as membership. I want this to be the way you get help when you it. It's as simple as that. I want it to be something that is there for you when you need it, whether that's through an automated sequence or a direct person, all right? Off my soapbox. I feel like I'm getting all fired up on that one. The last thing I want to talk about and this really speaks to what I was talking about earlier, but change is a requirement. You're going to be spending a lot of time learning as you build this community. That means things may change. A great, great example of that is in the course of the two years, we actually changed how we offer our monthly training. For a long time, we had a recorded training and a live training on totally new content. Then we had two recorded trainings for a little while, again, on totally new content. It shifted to having a recorded training that is either new or a revamped version. Whether it's a completely new training, whether it's something we've ... an updated version of what we did before, for example, we relaunched at the beginning of this year all of the Facebook videos in our Facebook course it's a part of. We have a six module Facebook program that's a part of membership site and I redid that whole program top to bottom. Since then, we've updated videos in there as part of the monthly training. We have a new bot training that went live this month, we have had Facebook ads trainings that have been updated because there have been changes throughout the year. Instead of inundating my audience with just more and more and more, sometimes we simply are updating. Sometimes we are simply making sure that what's there is current and accurate and reflective of what's happening right now and what you need to know right now. I realized that doing more and more and more was not actually better. Doing better and better and better and keeping it updated was a much better way to be of service. Then we shifted to a record, and this is what we do right now, so we have that recorded training that's either new or an updated and then we have a live training every month. That's traditionally an Ask Me Anything, so it's just my audience, my members' chance to ask me questions live on video versus in one of the forums. Sometimes we have extra content in there. We'll dig deeper on one of the things we talked about in recorded training or I'll be working ahead. For example in July on our Ask Me Anything live training, I actually worked ahead a little bit. I primed them for what was happening in August with bot stuff. It was some very basic intro bot stuff ahead of us talking bots in 20, or I'm sorry, in 2017, in August. That varies, but it's always a live training built for me to be immediately accessible to anyone who wants to ask questions in the chat box. Things will change. Again, the layout of our site has changed three or four times in two years. It will change again later this year. More realistically, probably early 2018 because, again, I'm always trying to make it better, make it easier to use, make it more consumable, make it more actionable, make it easier for people to implement stuff. Change is a requirement. Get comfortable with it. Enjoy it. You learn so much about running a membership site by running a membership site. The things that I thought people would find really easy with the first design really stuck people and were like, "I don't know where to find such-and-such." I'm like, "Oh, well, it's right there." No, it wasn't as simple as I thought it was. That's why I have things like heat mapping and I can actually see. I use a tool called Lucky Orange, but you can use HotJar or a ton of other tools to do this. I could really record how people engage on the site. I can see how people are using the, and there's not a name or anything, so I don't know who they are. I could see where they're from, but that doesn't necessarily help me. I can't see what they type in, so I don't see passwords or anything like that, but I do see how they're engaging, how they're moving through the site, what they're clicking on. I can see, is it intuitive? Is it easy to use? Is it structured so it's helping get people from problem to solution? Change is important. Okay, so that's it. That's what I've got. Your four things as a recap. Commitment. Requirement. This is not passive income. Automation helps, so does having a team. Change is also a requirement right up there with commitment, a commitment to make changes. That's what I've learned in the last two years aside from the fact that I really freaking love doing this. It's hands down my favorite part of my business. I have the most fun doing it and the most fun engaging with my community this way. That's why it's growing. That's why we're actually expanding in a little bit. I mentioned earlier that earlier this year, earlier in 2017, I think it was the summer, we launched it originally or early in the summer we launched it. BAM. Backstage Amplifier Mastermind. We opened it up to a few people and it was going to run for six months and that's how it's been structured. I learned that I wanted to shift that a little bit. Now what we're doing is we still have a cap on how many people can be in, but it's no longer a term commitment. People can actually get BAM as a VIP level offering for as long or as little time as they need it. You could join us for BAM level membership or the VIP level membership, which is called BAM again for one month or you could do it full time 12 months a year. It's totally up to you. What's really cool is it's everything in the membership site amplified because you also get one-on-one time with me and direct access in the forum with me, meaning there is a private area of the forum that only you and I can see and you can ask me questions there any time. You can ask questions that maybe you're not comfortable asking in the public forum. They're really specific to your business or because they're based on a conversation we had when we had our monthly one-on-one call. It's really the most direct access you can get from me because it's essentially one-on-one plus. Now what's really cool about this is generally speaking, my one-on-one calls are $297 right now at the time of the recording. That could change at any time. I never know. I mean, I do know how much they are, but that changes from time to time. For me, one-on-one one time, $297. That includes a call recording, but it includes no follow up. You don't have an email access to me unlimited for a month or anything like that and you don't have Backstage unless you happen to also be a Backstage member. With this VIP option with BAM, you're going to get that follow up time, that one-on-one call, and the $40 per month Backstage membership all for, that's right, $350 per month. You're essentially getting the one-on-one call with me and the Backstage membership. For an additional, I think it works out to $10 per month, you're getting unlimited direct access to ask me questions in our private forum that's just you and me. It's an incredible value for this price point. Again, it's $350 per month and it's hands down something I think everyone will love and get from because there's accountability. Yeah. It's not just, "Oh, I signed up for the membership and I'll do it as I have time", no. You have a one-on-one call with me. You have direct access to me, which means I have direct access to you. I can say, "Hey, how is this going? Hey, we tested this. How's it working? Hey, have you implemented that? Hey, you went live on Facebook today. I saw it because yes, I pay attention in a whole different way when you're client like this. How's that going? That looked great. Let's try this next time. Hey, you forgot the call to action." Whatever it is. That's powerful and that's a game-changer. This is going to be a really incredible value for people who join in. Again, we are capping it at a very, very small number. Literally, I only have so much bandwidth because I do still have some one-on-one consulting clients and we've got the management team we're growing right now. I only have so much time. There's only so many people that I can deliver to at this level. There are a limited number of spots, but they are open now. If you join us, go to hitthemicbackstage.com, you'll see all three levels. By all three levels, I mean our monthly level at $40 a month, our annual level at $400 per year, and this new BAM monthly option. Again, that's $350 per month. I'm really excited for this. I hope that a few of you join us. If you have any questions though, email backstage@thestaceyharris.com. Someone on the team will answer it. Probably me for these kind of questions. I look forward to seeing you Backstage and of course, one-on-one through BAM. All right? I will see you very, very soon. Talk soon. Bye.

Welcome to Episode 361 of Hit the Mic, with The Stacey Harris. All right, guys, I want to talk Facebook Ads today, because there are some things I would like you to know, right now. I know we're going into that time of year. It's August now, we're looking at fall launches, and end of the year promos, and things like that. And that means a lot of Facebook ads. Maybe you're even look at your list growth goals for this third quarter, and you're realizing it's gonna be over soon. Whatever it is, you want to run some Facebook ads, here are the things I want you to know, right now. We've got three things for you today. Number one, Messenger ads. So we haven't talked a ton about Messenger ads, here, yet, but basically, they're ads that run a lot like News Feed ads they've got the same sort of description photo layout. They run in the Messenger area, and destinations, can be, and by destinations I mean wherever they end up when they click, can be a Messenger, meaning they can click to send you a message, or the other destination can be a webpage. So, something like a landing page, something like you would do with a News Feed ad. I actually really like Messenger ads set up with destinations to send me a message, because that's the environment they're in, so it makes more sense to click out, and end up sending me a message versus sitting on a landing page. Both can be run successfully, but I like the Messenger destination in that ad format. It's worked really well for a lot of people. So, I really like that, but the news about this is that it's now available globally, meaning we can all do it now, which is exciting. Again, these are just gonna look like News Feed ads, and I'll actually include a picture of it on the show notes, but it's gonna look photo destination, that kind of thing. It's just gonna appear in their Messenger area. So, your Messenger app on mobile, or your message area on the desktop. Cool? So, this is a really cool opportunity for you to connect with your potential audience. Or, I really like these ads, like retargeting kind of things, meaning I put the ad in front of a custom audience made out of people who have, maybe signed up for a webinar, and this can be a followup sales sequence, meaning "If you have questions about xyz that we offered on the webinar, send us a message, and we can answer them." Or, upsells, "Hey, you joined us for let's use Hit the Mic backstage, for example, if you'd like to upgrade that, and get a jumpstart here's a way to ... you know, you can book a call with me, drop us a message, or book your time here." If I want the destination to be a landing page. So, that can be a really cool way. I like to do that. I like Messenger ads to a warm audience, just because they recognize the face, they recognize the person, so that can be really helpful. But, I have heard, I have not seen, I have not executed, successful one to cold audience, just because I've only tested, so far, to a warm audience. But, that's how we have been utilizing them, for us and for our clients, all right? Number two, Destinations matter. Number two, kind of building on that, destinations matter. So I want to talk about this in two ways. Number one, I talked about, with Messenger ads, I really like to send people to message us, to a message destination because that's the environment they're in. That's something that's really valuable to think about. Where are they when they're engaging with your ad, and what's their kind of mindset, what are they thinking about? On the flip side of that, that also impacts not just what the destination is, but what the destination looks like. For example, if I'm sending an ad through Instagram, they're gonna be on a mobile device. I need to make sure wherever they're ending up looks good on mobile. For a long time, I would say probably the first twelve-ish months of Hit the Mic Backstage, I ran no ads on mobile, because the sales process ... so the sales page looked great on mobile, it was gorgeous on mobile, right? However, the checkout process, which at the time, was just linked through PayPal, there was such a delay in the redirect to finish that process, that on mobile, it would time out. And that was something that took a long time to get past tech-wise, and now we have a great cart option. We use Thrive cart, which I absolutely love, and was seriously one of the best investments I made towards the membership site in the last two years of running it, but that's when we started running ads on mobile for backstage, because the sales process worked on mobile. So, think about what your destination is, and that's gonna impact where you run those ads, what those ads look like, because maybe your mobile site's got something different about it. The mobile version of your landing page, you've looked at how your heat map is on your landing page, and they way people engage via mobile is different. Then you want to answer some of the questions they're not seeing on your landing page, you want to answer those in the ad. Or things like that. So, that destination matters. Be educated on it. Be thoughtful about where you ad is going, and where your ad is ... what the copy of your ad, the graphics of your ad, based on what's going to be happening with your destination. Just consider that, because I'm seeing, a lot of times, people are running ads, and they're not thinking enough about that destination. I have said this over and over again on this podcast, and probably even more than that backstage, but a lot of times, a lot of times, I would probably ... thinking about it, I would say probably two out of three times a client comes to us, and they say, "My ads aren't working." It's not necessarily about the ad, and it's very rarely actually about the ad copy, or the graphic itself. It's generally one of two things. It's targeting or a lack thereof, or it's the destination. It's that there's a disconnect between the ad and the landing page. Or, the call to action in the ad is there, but there's no call to action on the landing page. There's no call to action when they get to where they're going. So, make sure that your destination is setting your ad up for conversion success, because you got that first one. You got that click. Fantastic. Who-hoo! But, if you don't get the conversion, you're not gonna see the ROI, or the return on your investment, from that ad. So pay attention to that, because it's critical. So, destinations matter, that's number two. Number three, Have a plan. Number three I'm just gonna side my soap box out here, have a plan. Hitting the boost button is not a plan. Now, if you're hitting the boost button as part of a larger plan, I got no problem with that. I got no problem with that, however, hitting the boost button on every other post, or every post, is not an ad plan, and this is true not just of you're launching something, but this is true all the time. That's not an ongoing Facebook ad strategy. It needs to be clear, what am I getting from this? What's the goal here? Where are they going? Who am I talking to? What do I want them to do? Am I clean on telling them what I want them to do? Have a plan, and if you're not sure what that looks like, you're not super confident that you, yet, have a solid plan, what I want you to do is go, if you're on the show notes page already, if you're listening to this on the website, below this episode, there's a black box. Sign up for the training that's in there. If you're listening to this, and you're not yet tuned into the website, you're not on the show notes page, maybe you're listening on iTunes, or whatever, wherever it is you consume podcasts, go to thestaceyharris.com/facebookads, and you will find an awesome Facebook ads training that is built to help you make a plan. So, we walk through building your plan over four days in that training, and spoiler alert, you'll get access to a webinar when you sign up immediately that essentially the same information, so you can watch that training, and then work through it with me over four days through some more video trainings. If you ... if I say make a plan, and you have no concept of what that look like, spend a little time with me doing that free training. It is a really, really solid way to work through you who, look through your where, to figure out your whens, and what graphics, and what copy, it's going to help you build your plan. That's why that training is there. It's 100% free, so all it's gonna take is a time investment. And the time investment is actually pretty simple. I make it as short as possible, but it's going to be one that pay off big time, because, after you watch that training, after you build your first ads plan, your second one's easier, your third one's easier, and pretty soon, you have a replicable process that you just ... it's a no brainer. You go through it every time you're gonna create an ad, every time you're gonna create a campaign, every time you want to launch something, you just sort of go through this checklist, and you figure out what you need, and there you go. So, take the time, it's gonna be really valuable, but again, thestaceyharris.com/facebookads is where you will find that training. Again, it's a four day training, but there is, spoilers alert, a little surprise instantly you'll get a webinar version of it, so you can start immediately, if you want to. Cool? All right. So check that out, and that's what my three things for you are today. So, again, first, Messenger ads are now global. We talked a little bit about what Messenger ads are. Number two, your destinations matter for so many reasons. Please don't forget to care about that, all right? Think about that ... some thought process behind it. Number three, build a plan. The boost button is not a plan. The boost button can be part of a plan, I will allow that, but it's not a whole plan. So, build a whole plan. You gotta know who you're talking to. You have to know what you want them to do. You have to know how you're telling them what you want them to do. Where your ad's gonna be. Where your destination's gonna be. That's where you're gonna see, again, those conversions. You're gonna see success in both goals, the click goal, and the conversion goal. And I talk about click goal versus conversion goals a lot in that Facebook ads training I mentioned. Also, if you want to take this even further, come join us inside of Hit the Mic Backstage. We are celebrating two years of Hit the Mic Backstage. I'm so freaking excited about this. Very, very, very soon, we're gonna be launching a new level, a high VIP ... high level VIP option, which is going to include some one-on- one time with me monthly. So, stay tuned for that, in fact, if you're listening to this late, it may already be up, so go to HittheMicBackstage.com to see your now, or soon, three ways to join us. I'm really excited about this, it's going to be a really cool opportunity for the people who get in, which is, by the way, capped. There are only so many spots. So, check that out. And, if you have any questions any time, head over to the Facebook page, or Twitter, and ask them there, but again, the best place to ask your questions is inside of Hit the Mic Backstage. And I'll see you guys Backstage, as well as next Tuesday for another episode of this show. Thanks for listening, and I will see you soon.

Welcome to episode 360 of Hit the Mic with The Stacey Harris. All right guys, episode 360, first episode of August 2017. It's August 1st today and I'm like, "Dude, where is the year going?" Oh, it's killing me. But we've got some cool, cool stuff to talk about today. I want to talk about three things I want you to know right now when it comes to your online marketing, when it comes to your social media time, all three things are social media related today. We've got two Facebook things and a LinkedIn update, which I'm very excited about so let's jump right in. Number one, Facebook bots, do you need to be paying attention? Okay, so real talk, Facebook bots are amazing. I'm absolutely obsessed. I think they're really, really cool. I think they're going to be a really powerful way for us to connect in a new way with our community and they're going to be a really powerful way to serve our community on Facebook in a different way. However, like all new gadgets and gizmos and fun things, there are some people using it in some really screwy ways. There's some people using it in some really, really awesome ways. I want to make sure you are one of those awesome people using it in a really cool way to connect. I actually first really dove into bot stuff and how it worked and the structure back in March when I attended a conference that Digital Marketer puts on called Traffic and Conversion. The CEO of the Digital Marketer who's a guy by the name of Ryan Deiss, for those of you who are not familiar with Digital Marketer, I'm obsessed. Ryan made a really good comment and I really, I run all of my bot related conversations through this filter, which is that bots allow you to automate the start of conversations. Not conversations completely, not sales, but the start of conversations. The bot is really allowing us to get in front of someone and say, "Hey, can I help you?" "Hey, what can I support you with?" "Hey, where can I direct you?" "Hey, what do you need?" Now automating the need for me to never, ever respond to messages again. I think that's a really important filter when you're looking at how are you going to use your bot for good and not for evil. That's what I really encourage you to think about when you're setting up your bots. If you want to learn more about bots we're talking all about bots in The Mic Backstage this month. In fact, just today a brand new training went live with some cool Facebook bot options. We talk about how to use Facebook bot right inside of Facebook. There are some bot features right in Facebook and I do suggest turning those on, looking at those, setting those up. If for no other reason to say, "Hey, I got your message, I'll be back soon or someone on our team is going to respond quickly." You don't even have to offer them up a resource right there but just saying, "Hey, you're heard. Hey, we got this, we'll be right back," or, "Hey, we only answer messages between such and such and such and such, we'll get back to you then." Again, we're just making sure that these people feel heard. We're automating the start of a conversation, we're not automating the conversation. Those are really low hanging fruit bot stuff to set up that Facebook is actually doing natively and that's killer. Also in the training we're talking about some more advanced stuff using the tool I use for my chat bot, which is Many Chat. I love Many Chat, I think it's fantastic. If you're looking to get into the bot game I really, really recommend you check out Many Chat because again these guys are doing some really killer stuff with bots. Also, they're really paying attention to, from a marketing perspective, giving us the features we need to be able to start those conversations and serve our audience the best way possible. What I really love is I'm able to through Many Chat set up sequences, meaning I can post something like, "Hey. If you want to take advantage of a cool trial backstage go to the messenger bot and type the word trial." You know what? If you go to My Messenger on Facebook right now and you type the word trial you will get some very cool trial information to check out Hit the Mic Backstage. I can automate that in a way that those people get exactly what they need right away, they don't have to wait for me. Then I also have those conversations in a dashboard so that I can go in later and say, "Hey, are there any questions I can answer for you?" One of the rules I wanted to cover before I end this bot conversation and invite you formally to come out the training in Backstage ... Okay, so not formally but I want to remind you there's one there, is this. Never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, never, pretend your bot is human, your bot is not human. Your bot is not you. Don't try to trick people into thinking that. That would be like when you call your bank and you get the automated voice and they're trying to pretend they're human. No, they're not. That's not the purpose of this bot. We have actually named our bot, our bot has its own personality, her name is Bettie Bot. We named her because I wanted it to be very clear that she is a bot and she introduces herself. If you go check out facebook.com/thestaceyharris you can drop them a message and you will meet Bettie Bot. Bettie Bot will help you get what you need or find a human who can help you, and she actually says that. Again, never ever make your audience try and believe that this bot is a human, that's not the purpose of this, and Betty says that. "There's a couple things I can help you with, here are some choices. Otherwise, I'm going to find somebody on the team who can help you." Then I can jump in or somebody on my team can jump in and say, "Hey, this is so and so. What can we do for you?" "Hey, this is so and so. Are there any questions I can answer about whatever?" A lot of times if they've engaged with some of those button choices we kind of have an idea of what they need so it's, "Hey, are there any questions I can answer at Hit the Mic Backstage?"  "Can I point you in the direction to book one-on-one time with Stacey?" Whatever the situation may be, that'll get us able to help them a little more quickly so they're not having to just hurry up and wait. All right? That's it. Again, bots, Facebook, big deal? Not killing email just yet contrary to what some of the big guys trying to sell you programs that will teach you how to do it are trying to tell you but it's definitely got a place in the hierarchy of how we connect and how we engage. Yes, pay attention. Yes, check it out. A great place to start is hitthemicbackstage.com. If you want to check out a trial go to the Facebook Messenger Bot, she'll give you a trial, she's very cool that way. All right? Again, hitthemicbackstage.com or my Facebook page is Facebook.com/thestaceyharris if you want to see a bot in action, that's a great place to start. All right? Number two, I've been getting a lot of questions from you guys on this one, Facebook groups. Some of the major names in the health coach, business coach, business anything arena are closing their free Facebook groups. A lot of people are emailing me and are asking why? Here's the deal. I can't actually answer that because I'm not them and I don't know but I can give you some ideas. Based on the conversations I've had with people who have closed their groups, I'm definitely one of them. I closed my group a year and a half ago. Yeah, we're celebrating two years of Hit the Mic Backstage this month by the way. That's a big deal, we'll be talking more about that. I think I only had the free group for three, maybe six months after we launched Backstage and then I closed it. Honestly, the reason I closed it, and I can only really speak for myself, was because at that point what I was seeing happening was my free group actually pulling value from my paid offerings. One of the big value points, one of the big incentives and benefits of being a part of Hit the Mic Backstage is access to ask me questions, access to talk to me directly and get my feedback and things like that. What was happening, people were using the free group for that. Even members were going to the free group to post their questions, which is partially my fault because the free group was called Hit the Mic VIP because that's what my email list was called. The paid group was called Hit the Mic Backstage because that's what my membership is called. There was a lot of crossover there but, again, it was pulling value from that premium experience in the paid group. It was a matter of, "I got to clean this up, I got to make sure that this is clear for my members and I got to make sure that I'm maintaining this value point for my members." I say the same thing all the time about giving people free advice, we've talked about it on this show, I wrote about it at YFS Magazine. We've talked a lot about this. The benefit, the reason we say no to people who want to brain pick or who want to just scope out free information and run away is we're protecting the value of the people who are investing with us. We've protected the value of the people who are saying, "Hey, I want to pay you for your time and expertise." The same thing for me was happening with the Facebook group. I was protecting the investment and the value for the people who were paying me for that time, energy, and expertise. With that said, a lot of the feedback I'm getting is that groups and how people are using them have changed. Over the course of the last several years people are seeing now it's really hard to keep up with cleaning a group and keeping a group engaged and keeping a group spam-free and on point, and on conversation, and a positive environment especially as the groups get larger. Some of what we're seeing is people closing groups and opening small popup groups around challenges, meaning a group is open for 30 days and then it's archived. You can still see what was in there but you can't post or share. It doesn't have to be maintained anymore by the people running it and so that's a great alternative to running a group full-time. With that said, no I don't think it's the end of Facebook groups and I don't think that you have to close yours just because everybody else is. If you're seeing value, and you're seeing conversions, and you're seeing a return, and you're seeing those benefits then no, don't do something because someone else did, that's crazy. Keep using it. However, this is also a really, really, really powerful reminder for those people who are putting all of their eggs in certain baskets. In this case it's being able to market in other people's Facebook groups. When you put all your eggs in that basket those are the people who are feeling the pain now. Two years ago when everybody was saying, "Oh, I only do Facebook, I just post on Facebook organically and I get clients," they felt the pain when the algorithm changed and the newsfeed got a little different and they were having to pay to get traffic to their page or it just wasn't working anymore. Again, this is why we have multiple pieces. This is why we connect in different ways with our audience. This is why we engage on different networks. This is why we have two primary networks and two secondary networks and it's why we have different pieces to our strategy. We're not going all in and saying, "Facebook groups are the only way I get business," because that's where you end up in a world of hurt when it comes to changes like this and so many others that happen. All right? That's the Facebook group conversation. Number three, we're going to wrap it up with a quick one. LinkedIn has made a very cool update. There is now native video on LinkedIn. For a long time if you wanted to share a video on LinkedIn you used a YouTube link. That will absolutely still work if that's what you want to do but you can also upload video natively to LinkedIn. It's interesting to me because this is the first we're really seeing LinkedIn really embrace some of the changes of other networks and go in on it and say, "Hey, this could be a value point." I absolutely see this being a value point for a lot of you who are in the B2B space. Maybe you're a speaker or maybe you go in and you do corporate wellness or maybe you do corporate sales training or maybe you're a leadership coach. This is going to be a really good way for you to stand out, to separate yourself from your competition or from the other people in your industry, however you want to refer to them. It's going to be a really cool space for those who take advantage of it especially, again, in these early days like bots. We're going to be running into the people who do it well and the people who do it in a not so great way so make sure you're one of the people who especially as an early adapter are using these tools for good and are using them to engage and provide value. That's where you're going to see the difference. That's where you're going to see the conversions. That's where you're going to see the conversations. That's where you're going to see the money coming in, is when you are using these tools to be of service and to be valuable to your potential clients and your current audience. Cool? All right, that's it, that's the three things I wanted you to know. Again, we talked about bots, we talked about Facebook groups, and we talked about LinkedIn video. If you have any questions be sure to come over to the Facebook page, Facebook.com/thestaceyharris. That's a great place to ask questions. The best place to ask questions though is inside of Hit the Mic Backstage. Very cool update in July that I don't know if you know about yet. If you're a member, which you should be, you do know this but you might not, you might have missed the email. We have reopened the Backstage Facebook Group so now there's two places for our community to engage with me. We've got a private community right on the website, The VIP Lounge. Of course we also have the private Facebook group, again, members only so you can ask me questions in either space. It's a really cool way to get to connect and engage and see what's going on, all right? All right. Hit the Mic Backstage for that. Otherwise, I will see you next week. If you have any questions be sure to come over to the Facebook page. That's a great place to ask questions. The best place to ask questions though is inside of Hit the Mic Backstage. Very cool update in July that I don't know if you know about yet. If you're a member, which you should be, you do know this but you might not, you might have missed the email. We have reopened the Backstage Facebook Group so now there's two places for our community to engage with me. We've got a private community right on the website, The VIP Lounge. Of course we also have the private Facebook group, again, members only so you can ask me questions in either space. It's a really cool way to get to connect and engage and see what's going on, all right? All right. Hit the Mic Backstage for that. Otherwise, I will see you next week.

Welcome to episode 359 of Hit the Mic with The Stacey Harris. I'm really excited to talk about e-mail marketing today because inside of Hit the Mic Backstage right now, you'll find a full version of best practices, tips, tools, all of that stuff to grow your e-mail list and to actually use your e-mail list. Because as we're gonna talk about, it's not just about growth, it's about using it. And so you can check that out at HittheMicBackstage.com. Let's jump in on today. So, we're gonna talk about four things today. The first being goals, and the reason we're gonna talk about goals is because literally everything else we're gonna talk about ... In fact, growing your e-mail list at all doesn't matter if you're not clear on this part. I want you to really think about why you need an e-mail list, and we talked about this a couple of weeks ago, but really, like what is the purpose of your e-mail list? Now, I don't want you to tell me or yourself or whoever you're talking to about this because quote the money's in the list. Yes, you can monetize your list, but you still need to know how and who and why and with what and all of that stuff, and so you need to know your goals. My e-mail list absolutely has multiple goals. Ultimately, it's about getting clients, but it's not about getting one kind of client, and so ... And we're gonna talk about this a little bit later, then we have to look at things like segmentation, but that comes down to, again, knowing my goals. I am building new e-mail funnels all the time. Great, those only work if I know the goal. Think about what the purpose of your e-mail list is, it may have multiple purposes, it probably does as far as selling different things, but you have to know what those are. I had a client recently, and we talked about this a couple weeks ago, but I had a client recently and we were having this conversation and she was talking about just growing her list, and I was like, "Great. Why?" You know, maybe you want to run a live event. Okay, and obviously you want to have people to sell that live event to, but you need to know the timeline. There's your goal. Okay, so I know I want to have this event in January and it's June right now, it's gonna be July in just a few days, I want to build the list to increase interest in that. Awesome, now we have a goal and a timeline. We can absolutely start funneling an e-mail list towards that goal ultimately because we're providing them value. However, if it's, "I want to build an e-mail list because some day I want to do a group mastermind, a small group, high dollar, super VIP mastermind someday." Awesome, start building your list, keep building your list, and keep building your list, but now the people who joined your list let's say a year ago aren't necessarily in the same space. First of all, a lot of them might not still be in your list, but you're just building for the sake of building, and that's really where we get to our second point, which is the idea of quality over quantity. We talked about this in probably every scenario, in fact I know for a fact we've talked about it about this, a list of 10,000 people is only valuable if they're 10,000 people who give a crap about what you're talking about. This is why we don't buy e-mail lists, this is why we don't trick people into being on our list, this is why we don't break spam laws, this is why we deliver value and we keep engaging them because we want them to be quality leads. I would hands down rather have 1,000 quality leads or 100 quality leads than 10,000 names and e-mail addresses that mean nothing, that do nothing, to send an e-mail address and get no response, to send an e-mail broadcast and nobody even opens it much less clicks it. What is the purpose of that? That is not longer a business investment, it is now a business expense and that's not giving you any value and it's not allowing you to give anybody value. So, this is why we go back to point number one and we have goals. We know why we're building our list. It's also why moving to our third thing, this is why we get specific. We do things like segmentation and using our lists or tags or however your system is set up or groups, I think is what they are called in mail chimp, to be identifying the exact needs of people on our list. Not everyone on my list, for example, is created equal. We have people who are in sales funnels geared towards Hit the Mic Backstage, we have people who are in Hit the Mic Backstage who I can ... Who maybe interested in something like Bam or one on one calls. I also have people on my list who have signed up after seeing me speak or having met me at an event and who want to know more about what I know because they're looking at hiring us for strategy or consulting or hiring our team for management or hiring me for one on one coaching or their team training for their own social media teams or digital marketing teams or whatever the case may be, so we use segmentation to target content to each of them specifically. Now, I will be absolutely, completely transparent with you, this is not something I do a good enough job at right now. Hands down, absolutely, I wish this is something I would have started doing much freaking sooner than I did it because for a long time I had one big list and that list was just that, it was a list, and it had zero segmentation, and so as the list has grown and as we have learned, we do have some segmentation, but there is absolutely so much valuable information about the people who are on my list that I straight up don't have because I waited too long to start segmenting them. I waited too long to start using things like tags to identify what people were clicking on, how people were engaging, the people that read every single e-mail and click on every single podcast, and the people who haven't looked at anything in months 'cause guess what guys? It doesn't matter how long you've been doing this or how amazing you are, there will be people that fit into both categories. Absolutely I wish I would have started doing that so much freaking sooner, but it's absolutely one of the best things I've started doing in the last ... Let's see, I started really doing it probably 18 months ago. I started really taking it seriously this year, but something I wish I would have done like four years ago. Seriously. Take that step now. The sooner you can do it, the further ahead you're gonna be, and even if it feel like it's way too late and you already have 1,000 or 5,000 people on your e-mail list and you're like "Oh, there's no way." Start segmenting the new people. Start segmenting based on how people are clicking so you can get that data, get that information. Absolutely. Okay? And all of that of course leads us to our fourth thing, which is consistency really does matter. Not just in, "Okay, I'm sending them a weekly or a bi-weekly or a monthly e-mail update about what's going on in the website." But in that initial sequence, so they signed up for something, don't just send them a welcome e-mail and the next e-mail they get is whatever your frequency of standard newsletters goes out. No, have some e-mails in that follow up sequence. Have some content, some additional value, a sales message, whatever it needs to be for you where you're at in your business. It's one of the reasons I do like challenges and things like that, and if you've signed up for either of the funnels we have going right at the moment you know how we structure this, but basically people sign up for a multi day training series where they in the initial e-mail actually get a webinar that has all the same information, and then they get a follow up sequence with the training series so they can work through it. And then they get a follow up e-mail with the sales message and on that webinar there's a sales message, there's the opportunity to get a trial backstage, and then guess what? Then they go into our regular sequence of e-mails. Instead of just going, "Okay, here you go." And then, "Here's jumping into the middle of the book. Here's our regular e-mails." No, we take that time to get people starting and moving and going with us for a little while. We give them that value. We connect. We work through the thing they initially had a frustration around, and then we through them into the e-mail pool. Okay? And again, you can be using that segmentation to be sending them e-mails that are really specific to what their needs are. Now, my general newsletter, I'll be totally honest, it's the same for everybody. I don't segment that very much right now. That may change going into the third quarter of this year, I'm really thinking about testing specific e-mail copy to specific segments of my audience. I have done that around sales opportunities or affiliate stuff, but I think we're gonna actually test in probably August segmenting the actual newsletter and seeing how that affects open rates, and it's gonna start with just testing different headlines. But I can do that because I put that segmentation into place. Because I've been consistent already, I have a ground level amount of data. Because I focus on quality over quantity, I have a gaged e-mail list who wants to hear from me and who is actually engaging. So again, I will have some data to work with, and I have all of those things and I'm able to test these things because I have very specific goals. I know exactly what kind of result we're getting to so I can tell if these things work or don't work. Do you see how all of that really comes into being able to test these things? All right. That's it. That's all I've got for you today. I want you do take action on this stuff and let me know how this goes because, again, this stuff is killer. If you want to take this a step further, be sure to join us Hit the Mic Backstage, that's where you will find the extended version of this training. The full training where we're talking about more tips, more tools, more tactical how tos on growing your list, and like I said tools, my favorites, my preferences, and a lot more. Cool? In addition to that, pay attention because next week ... Next Tuesday, actually, so the next time you hear from me live in the training library of Hit the Mic Backstage will be a full messenger training using Facebook messenger, bots, running ads to your basic messenger, this is gonna be a really powerful thing to sit alongside your e-mail list. A lot of people are calling it the e-mail list killer, I prefer not to call things the killers of other things, it's just me. We'll look and see how it goes. The prize is gonna go to those people who use it correctly and use it authentically, so I know it's gonna be you. Check out that training HittheMicBackstage.com. I'll see you there.

Welcome to episode 358 of Hit the Mic with The Stacey Harris. All right, we're going to shift gears a little bit. I want to talk about landing pages. So often, I get emails or I'm talking to clients and they're talking about their Facebook ad's not working. One of the most common things that comes up is it's really not about the ad. The ad is killer, the targeting is killer. Everything from the ad perspective is on point. The problem falls into that what's next category. That is generally a lot of times, not all the times, but a lot of times a landing page. Whether you're running ads to an opt in or a webinar intro or whatever that landing page is for, maybe it's even a sales page and you're running a retargeting ad, whatever it is, a lot of times the problem falls to the landing page. That's why I want to talk about some landing page best practices today. First of all, what is a landing page, because sometimes these terms are used to represent different things. For our purposes today, a landing page is a one page on your site, meaning there's not a menu to all the other pages. There's not a bunch of links to content and things like that. It serves one purpose and that's to either get people to opt in or get people to buy or get people to get notifications for or to download something. Whatever that thing is, its job is to do that one thing. There is a singular calls action and a singular action presented as an option. That's what we're going to be referring to today when we talk landing pages. Be your brand. Let's jump in on these best practices, and I want to start with something that is becoming a bigger and bigger problem. That is don't forget to be your brand on your landing page. With tools like Instapage and ClickFunnels and LeadPages and all of these great landing pages tools, we're able to create really well optimized pages, but here's the deal. You have to edit them. I find it really easy to identify a LeadPage or ClickFunnels. Those are the two that I have the easiest times sort of spotting in the wild. The other ones definitely fall into place, and as tempting as it is to you just use that, ranks number one conversion page and dump in your information and be done, you're doing your brand a big disservice, and for a couple of reasons. Number one, there's going to be a disconnect between whatever sent me, whether that's an ad or a organic piece of content or a link someone sent me, and what I'm actually finding. If you have a totally different color scheme and the stock photos that were in there from your landing page tool, it's going to look like their brand. It's also going to look like about a million other landing pages I have encountered around the web. Absolutely there are going to be niches where people don't realize that. They're not as familiar with landing pages as I am or a lot of other online marketers are. For any of you, and I know a large section of you are business coaches, providing services to business, you're using the same tools potentially your clients are using, which means they can tell that it's really the LeadPages brand, and it's going to ... Really, whether it's conscious or not, it's going to cause a rub. It's going to cause a discomfort. I'm not saying that this is going to be something where it's like, "Oh, my god, I don't trust this person anymore. What are they thinking?" Psychologically, that touchpoint doesn't quite land. That's why you need to be making sure that these represent your brand. You can actually still use a basic layout, and there will absolutely still be people like me who have memorized what these pages look like because they've built so many of them, and can say, "Oh, yeah, this is definitely a LeadPage" or "yeah, this is definitely built with whatever." I know that you did the time, did the work, or someone on your team. It doesn't have to be you. I feel like I should emphasize that right here. It doesn't have to be you. You are right upfront, taking the time to present them with what they need in line with your branding, because that's where the connection is. That's where the touchpoint lands all the way. That's where we get comfortable in your space. It's because you are presenting your brand there. Remember, when we think of online business, we're thinking about our website being our storefront. Your landing page is a part of that storefront. Think of it as a display window.  When the store has a big sale, they dedicate one big window to this real cool opportunity. This is your display window. I always think of New York at the holidays when the big stores do the big holiday displays in the front windows. This is your big holiday display. Yeah, we understand that it's this space and it needs to operate this way and it needs to meet these requirements. It still needs to look and feel like you. I feel like I've hammered that home, but make sure, just make sure it's in alignment with your brand. From there, and this is going to sound counterproductive, but don't go so far into your brand that you become cute instead of clear. We still want to make it really clear what we're getting, why we're signing up, why we're downloading, why we're giving you information, why we're giving you money. Whatever the case may be, be clear. We talk a lot with sales pages and landing pages, not to worry so much about features, but to talk more about benefits. That's absolutely true, but you need to make those benefits clear. Give me a reason to give you my time and attention. Give me a reason to then take the next step and give you my email address or give you my credit card number or whatever the case may be. You need to be clear. Absolutely, when you're writing copy, you want to tell a story. You want to engage them. You want to get them saying yes to questions, and all of those sort of amazing copy things and tactics and tools. Headlines need to be on point and be guiding us down the page. It also just needs to be stupid clear. Stupid clear. Tell me what I'm signing up for, what I'm going to get, what I'm not going to get, if this is for me. Be ridiculously clear. Make it an easy yes. On the flip side of that, if it's not for me, make it an easy no. Because that's how I know when it is easy yes. That it's an easy yes, because I know exactly who it's not for, because I know exactly who it is for. Because I know that's me. Be clear. You have to, have to, have to, have to, have to, have to be stupid clear. I use that word very intentionally here. Make this idiot-proof. It's not because your audience is dumb. It's not because the people who are going to see this are dumb. It's because the people who are going to see this and the people who you want to engage with it and who you want responding to it don't know as much about whatever you're showing them as you do. As silly as it can feel to detail out these things, we sometimes forget we know a lot about what we're offering and we know a lot about what we're trying to share with somebody, but they're not in our heads. They don't understand that we have spent weeks or months or whatever putting together this whatever it is, webinar training, opt in program, membership, insert thing here. They don't know all the details. Make it clear to them. To us, it will feel like we are talking to somebody who's an imbecile. We're simply talking to somebody who does not yet know what amazing thing this is, because they haven't been in our head for again days, weeks, months, years we've been working on whatever it is. Stupid simple, guys. Stupid simple and aligned with your brand. Be legal. Third, and this is especially important if you are running this with Facebook ads. You need to have your legal bases covered. Speaking of legal bases, I'm not just talking about your little terms and conditions at the bottom of the page, although, especially when you're running Facebook ads and paid advertising to it, you need to have terms and conditions or a legal disclaimer or a link to your legal disclaimer at the bottom of your page. It's a requirement. On Facebook ads, it's in their T&C for ads. T&C, terms and conditions, by the way. Also make sure you're legal in the sense that make sure the photos you're using belong to you. Make sure the copy you're using belongs to you. Don't just pull copy from somebody's whatever. Use your copy. Whether you hire a copywriter or you write it yourself, use your copy. Use your graphics. I'm not saying you have to take the picture, but if you're going to use stock photos, make sure you buy them or you're pulling them from a resource that allows you to be using them for this purpose. Remember, not all stock photos are created equal. A lot of the free stock photos available out there are allowed to be used for certain purposes. Make sure whatever your requirements and privileges and permissions are for the stock photos you're using are in line with what you're using them for. You got to make sure you're on the up and up. You got to make sure you're keeping it legal. Okeydoke. That's it. Be your brand. Be clear. Be legal. It's simple. These are the best practices for landing pages that make sense, that work, that get results, and that will help your Facebook ads campaign succeed a little more, because again, a lot of times, it's not about what's in the ad. It's not about your targeting. It's not about choosing a different photo. It's about, "Hey, we're sending them here, but they don't actually know what do, because maybe we're not super clear on what they're supposed to do." A lot of that Facebook ad revenue could be lost in the what's next. Take some time to think about that. With that, be sure to join us actually today, July 18th, which is the day this went live, if you're listening to this later. We're doing an ask me anything inside of Hit the Mic Backstage. The cool part is, is in addition to doing the AMA, I'm giving you a little preview to next month's training which is all around Facebook Messengers and using it and bots and all of that. That full training will be available August 1st, not April, August 1st, but we're doing a little preview during AMA today. If, by some chance, you're listening to this later, that's cool. All the ask me anythings that we've ever done, along with every other training, are inside the library, hitthemicbackstage.com. Be sure to join us now and get your access to that training library. Again, in addition to today's AMA, we've got August training's coming up which will include another AMA, but also the full Messenger bot training which is going to be absolutely a killer. I'm so stoked to bring this to you guys. It's going to be a game changer. Other than that, I'll see you next week. 

Welcome to episode 357 of Hit the Mic with The Stacey Harris. I had a really interesting question sent to me through the website not too long ago, and I decided in addition to emailing this person an answer, I would bring it here, because I think several of you probably have this question. So we're going to talk about, does Twitter still matter? I have gotten a lot of pushback from people lately saying that Twitter is becoming sort of irrelevant and they're not getting traffic or they're not growing their followers, or they feel like it's a waster of time because they're just starting out there, and they don't know how to grow in any way. And so I wanted to talk about why Twitter can still totally be relevant for you, and why it might not be. Twitter does matter So number one, yes, Twitter overall is still currently, as of today, relevant. Like every social network, I'm sure it will come a point where it is not relevant, although I think social channels have done a better job in the last several years of finding ways to evolve. Facebook and Instagram are killer examples of this. LinkedIn, to a greater extent, is a real shining example of knowing their niche and knowing how to improve to speak to their niche. But who has evolved in a way it needed to, to keep up, so to speak? But I will say that I think everything sort of has its season, so I suspect at some point Facebook and Twitter and LinkedIn and the things of now will go away. They will be not necessarily replaced, but something will evolve to pull our attention. But for now, yes, 100% relevant. With that said, there is not really a network that everyone has to use. It may come down to Twitter just not being some place where your community spends time. And that's okay. It may come down to Twitter being some place where your community spends a lot of time, and in which case, yes it's super relevant. So it always, always, always, when these questions come up of whether a network is for you, whether it's Twitter or LinkedIn or some network yet to be named, it comes down to: Is it relevant for your audience? Does it speak to how they consume content and where they spend their time? If it doesn't, then no, it's not super relevant for you. Twitter automation Now, switching gears back to Twitter, the people who I have talked to through consults and things like that or who have come to engage our services, generally speaking, they're struggling with Twitter because they're doing something fundamentally wrong. And that's their over-automating. Now Twitter is a great and powerful place to add automation. With that said, you can't just autopilot it and expect it to drive thousands and thousands of pieces of traffic for you each and every day. It's just not the way it works. It's all about balance. I know some people who are really successful without doing any sort of automation on Twitter because it's their natural state and they enjoy that space, and they spend time there, and it works for them. I know people who automate 90% of what goes out on Twitter and they're really successful because A) they've automated really smartly, and B) they're still spending that 10% of time where they're coming in and engaging. And that's where I actually fall in. I don't spend a ton of time day in and day out on Twitter. However, I have put tools in place to do things like send out content and engage new followers. Now when I say engage new followers, I am not, and I have to put this right at the top, I am not talking about automated direct messaging. I am not talking about automated replies. Don't do that. It's not good. What I do is I do use tool where it connects me with people who check certain boxes. So I use a tool that's called Juicer, and it follows people in certain industries or with certain words in their bio, or words they're tweeting. And there's different ways you can set this up, different modules you can use to set this up, but essentially it lets me connect with targeted people who are going to be a fit. I can follow them, I can add them to lists. I like to add people to private lists so that I can make sure I go in and engage with new followers. But again, this is a way that I'm using automation to allow me to connect with targeted people, and then engage in conversations. So again, we're adding them to lists, we're following them based on a word that appears in their bio, or something they tweet, and we're adding them to a private list for the same reason. So again, I can actually engage with those people I'm connecting with. So that's a tool I use for that. On the flip side of that, we're using a tool like eClincher, where we're scheduling content. So we are setting up that social media foundation, that old content, new content, other people's content. All of that stuff gets scheduled inside of eClincher so that when I do go into Twitter, I'm not thinking of what I need to tweet. I'm thinking of replying or something that's actually happening fresh, live, that day, where I can add silly GIFs and whatnot. So that's the tools I use to automate that allow me to have that engagement part. So remember, you need that balance. You don't want to be spending so much on autopilot that you are forgetting that there are people out there. There is a way to engage with them and connect with them. I will say, I just want to button this up with, do not automate engagement. Do not set up tools that allow you to reply to tweets that have certain words or under certain hashtags, or auto-direct message people, or auto-reply to people when they follow you. Don't do those sort of things. Use these automation tools to set your foundation, so that you can engage live. That's where the value is. That's where the connection comes from. If you don't invest a little bit of time engaging with the people, why would they invest any time or money with you? All right, think about that next time you lean a little hard into the automation stuff. Okay? The other thing I want to talk about is, a lot of people who I talk to about Twitter, they feel like their messages are just getting lost. And that's why I really encourage you to add things like video and graphics. Just like Facebook, just like LinkedIn, adding these graphics, adding these videos, creating something that is on brand, relevant, and eye-catching can be really powerful ways to stand out from the noise. So you'll notice a lot of my tweets have graphics. When we tweet videos, we have either the video from YouTube or a graphic. We set up Twitter cards so that when the URL from my website gets tweeted, guess what? It pulls a graphic. So we're making it a little larger than just the standard issue tweet. That's a big part of standing out amongst the noise. So use these tools. Engage with them in a way that makes sense, that's again on brand, and relevant to the content you're sharing. But stand out. Be you. All right? I like to think that when you see one of my tweets, you probably know it's me. Because probably, I don't know, 7 times out of 10 it includes a graphic you're used to seeing from me. Either from the website, branded from the backstage stuff or, you know, just a straight up picture of me. You're welcome. All right? The last thing I want to cover before we wrap this up ... And I wanted to keep this episode short because I want to encourage you guys to take action ... Remember, followers are not the be all end all. So one of the conversations I had with a client recently, they want to grow their Twitter volume quite a bit to 25 or 50,000. And that's awesome, but only if those people are relevant. Only if those people are interested in what you're talking about. Anybody, literally anybody, can make the wrong decision and go buy 100,000 followers. But they're meaningless. A) It doesn't take me very long in looking at the account to realize you bought your following. And two, there's no value for driving traffic to your site or sales or conversations or re-tweets or shares or replies or any kind of engagement stuff. There's none of that happening. So I really encourage you to think twice about putting too much value in that follower count. Where I want you to put the value is in the people who make up that follower count. Remember, they're not just profile images. They are people. All right? Treat them that way. So it really goes back to not just follower counts being valuable, but not the end all be all, but also for being true with that automation stuff. Make sure we're doing these things the right way, in a way to provide more value, not less. All right? That's all I've got for you today. If you are looking for more help with Twitter, the best place to go is the upgrade to this show, which is Hit the Mic Backstage. You can join us at hitthemicbackstage.com. We've got a Twitter ads training as well as cards training, a Twitter 101 training, not to mention all of the other networks. But if you're listening to this, I'm guessing you're curious about Twitter. The best part is, though, you can join us in the private community and I do profile reviews. So if you have questions about how to optimize your Twitter profile, you can drop a link to your Twitter profile in there and I'll actually do a video review for you right inside the private community. I will see you backstage, hitthemicbackstage.com, and I'll see you next week. Have a good one. Bye

Welcome to episode 356 of Hit the Mic with The Stacey Harris. All right, 356 and it’s another three things you must know, this time for July 2017. Holy moly. I’m really, really excited because we’re going to talk about some cool stuff today including a massage change to Facebook groups. Actually, two changes to Facebook groups. Facebook groups are two of the things we’re talking about today, but one of them is way more exciting than the other. If you want to be the first to always find this stuff out, listening to the podcast is amazing, but here’s the deal. Hit the Mic Backstage members not only heard about this stuff a month ago, but they got it with tutorials. There’s actually a video walk-through inside of the community pages and now inside of the training area to use the changes we’re talking about today. There’s a definite upside to membership, so be sure to upgrade your life and your marketing knowledge by joining us at hitthemicbackstage.com. Again, that is the best way to find out about this stuff first and really see it in action. See it in practice and ask questions and things like that. All right? All right, let’s jump in. Facebook Group Units Thing number one, the thing I’m less excited about with Facebook groups. It’s very cool and for a lot of you it’ll probably be really amazing. I’m not really going to use it so I’m not as excited. Now, with Facebook groups if you have your Facebook group categorized as a class, so if you’re running an online program, or you have an online community component to your coaching or something like that. With a Facebook group, you can set it up as class, and you can set up inside of that something called units. That would actually allow you to give access to specific units to specific groups and attach homework or tips to that specific unit. You could break down your program for example into six modules and those six modules could be units on the Facebook group, and you could have extra bonus material in your Facebook specific to that unit and questions specific to that unit. Really allowing you to organize for the first time any kind of content in your Facebook group. Again, I’m not super excited about this for my own stuff because for Backstage we use a private forum right on the Backstage membership site, but I could see how a lot of you might really, really like this. In fact, we will be launching a strategy program that used to be called Social Pro. It’s actually changing its name, but we’ll be re-launching that in the fall, and it has a Facebook group. We may use this with that, or the community may just end up on the Backstage forum. I haven’t decided yet. Yeah, it could be really cool for a lot of you who are doing instruction online. It would allow you to put Facebook lives in certain units. You could organize those Q&A calls we’re doing if you’re doing them from Facebook live. Any additional bonus materials you want to put in the Facebook group, you could do it through there, and really organize it. The thing I’m most excited about with this is it’s sort of the first sighting, the first sort of hint at being able to organize Facebook groups in any way. This was something I always liked about Google Plus groups, Google Plus communities over Facebook groups was the ability to organize. It really has the ability to put things in specific places so people could find others questions or similar questions or find things a little more easily. I’m hoping units is the first look at having that option in Facebook groups. I’m seeing a lot of improvements to Facebook groups. I’m assuming it’s because they want to keep people using them because they want to roll out ads inside of them in the future. Stayed tune for that and be aware of that as you’re putting together your own Facebook groups. That’s number one. Facebook Pages Can Link to Facebook Groups Number two, and this is the change to Facebook groups I’m really excited about. You can now link your page to your Facebook group, which will allow your Facebook page to admin and post and connect and all of that good stuff inside your group. This is a game changer. Now, this is still not going to allow you to engage as your page in groups that you are not an admin of, but if you have a free group or even a paid part of your membership group inside of Facebook, you can connect with your page. This is going to allow us to drive traffic from a Facebook group to our page for the first time ever. I mean, really reliably because we’re actually posting as our page, commenting as our page, so when people click that link instead of going to our profile and having to find our page from that, or just choosing to try and engage with our profile. Which depending on how you run your social, you may not be open to, you’re actually going to be able to engage right with your page and connect right there. I’m amped about this. This is going to be killer, especially for those of you who have a free Facebook group because also your group can be listed on your page because they are linked. It’s going to allow us to really quickly move people from experience to experience right on Facebook. That’s killer. Again, this is going to let us admin, so approve members, decline members. It’s going to let us post, so your Facebook lives or your content post or your images or whatever it is you’re sharing in your group can come straight from your page. It’s going to allow us to comment, so all the comments you leave on the questions people leave on your page again coming from your page instead of your profile. I’m amped about this. It’s awesome. Again, if you want to see how to do this, there is a tutorial inside of hitthemicbackstage.com so be sure to check that out. Segmenting Email Lists Number three, wrapping this episode up. I want to remind you guys to segment your email lists. This is something we’re talking a lot about in the membership community this month because the new training that just rolled out a couple of days ago was actually an email marketing best practices training. I wanted to bring this to you guys and not just the members because I really, really think that if you want to see your email be effective in the next six, 12, 18, 24 months, you need to know why you’re sending each piece to the people it’s going out to. It’s becoming more and more important that we funnel the right opportunities to the right people, especially if your goals are to have a massive, massive email list. That’s fantastic. Email lists being huge are great. Everybody wants one. Right? Here’s the deal. It’s only valuable if you’re seeing a return on that. You’re only going to see a return on that if that email list is full and massive and wonderful of people who are actually interested in what you’re selling. We talked about this a little bit in the last episode, about really building your list with a goal. Here’s the deal. You don’t have to have just one goal. You can have lots of goals, and that’s where segmenting comes in, so that you can still be talking to those people who want your one-on-one offering. You can still be talking to those people want your masterminds or who want your membership community or what your entry level program, or who just want your content. You can speak to them with exactly what they need. One of the things we’ve gone through and done, and this is absolutely something that I wish I would have started doing earlier because figuring it out now is increasingly difficult. We are really segmenting email lists based on how people are engaging with the emails they’re receiving. Yeah, we have tags and things for how people got on the list, but guess what guys? There’s a huge section of my list that doesn’t have a tag for how they got on my list because they’ve moved with me from list to list to list provider, and somewhere along the way it got dropped off. There is a section of my email list that is like, I don’t know how you got here, but thanks for playing. We are tagging everyone based on how they’re engaging. If you’re on my email list and you click something about Facebook, or you click something about Instagram, or you click something about email marketing, or you click something about one-on-one coaching, you’re going to get the special tag so that I know in the future this is the kind of stuff they want to see. This not only helps me built future content, because I know, okay, so a lot of my list is clicking on this email marketing stuff. Maybe I need to put together some content for them on that. Also, I can make sure that when I roll out a free email marketing training, I let you guys know about it because that’s what you’re looking for. That’s what you need. It’s not to say that you’re only ever going to get or ever going to send Type A content to Type A segment of your list. There’s a lot of stuff that still goes out to everybody. In fact, the weekly email on Tuesday still goes out to everybody. As I improve the segmentation and as we look at who these different segments are, I can send out two or three different versions of my Tuesday newsletter to people based on their interests, based on where they are in their business. Maybe one of those includes a promo for one-on-one time, because I have some July spots open on my calendar. Maybe one of them is for BAM, when we reopen that, or maybe something for Backstage depending on where they’re falling in the segments and what kind of stuff they’re clicking on. This segmentation can come in handy everywhere. On the flip of that, this segmentation can come in handy in growing your email list too, because I can download a segment of my audience based on a certain tag. Let’s say a Facebook ads tag, upload that to Facebook as a custom audience, build a look-a-like audience based on that custom audience, and now run ads for my Facebook ad training that we’ve got, the four-day training. I can run ads to a look-a-like audience of people who are already opting in for that Facebook ads training. Now, I’m finding literally more people just like these people. Even better if you want to get even more specific with it, I can go and download the list of members who have the Facebook ads tag. Build a custom audience, build a look-a-like audience based on that custom audience and drive traffic to there. Now, I’m looking up people who not only opted in but who bought something. I’m getting really, really specific with I want people who look like people who are buying, who are buying because they’re interested in this. Great. Now, I’m funneling that content to that cold audience based on people who I know have made the purchase decision that I would like them to make. All right? This is where segmentation comes in helpful. Not just in targeting the right message to your current audience, but using that information to grow your audience, to grow that segment of your list. One of the things I really challenge you to do in this next quarter is look at how your list is being segmented. This doesn’t mean you have to spend a lot of time scrolling through your list trying to figure it out. It just means building some tags or whatever or groups or whatever they’re called in your email service provider, and making sure again that based on how they’re engaging with your content they get a certain tag. This is really easy to do in Active Campaign, which is what I use. If you have questions about active campaign, we have an Active Campaign 101 training at Hit the Mic Backstage, or you can ask me questions there. I can actually set up an action so when I highlight a piece of copy and embed the link, I can actually set up what’s called an action so anyone who clinks on that link get a specific tag. Now, I can use that to follow up. Maybe a set up an action that anyone who hits, who clicks this link to Backstage gets a tag that says Backstage interest, and then I can follow up with those people once a month. Send an email saying, “Hey, I know you checked out Hit the Mic Backstage. I’d love to give you this special offer,” or whatever that thing may be. Maybe it’s a preview training. Maybe it’s a trial membership. Whatever again that thing is, I’m able to do that because I have that segment established. That’s something I didn’t necessarily have to do before they joined a list. I’m doing it based on what they’re engaging with in the content now. All right? I know I threw a ton at you in that third one, but I really challenge you to spend some time paying attention to who’s on your list and what they’re doing, and building segments. It’s where email marketing is not just going but is now. If you really want to see massive amounts of success with your email list, it comes down to segmentation. All right? Okay. Again, I covered a lot here. If you have questions about any of this stuff, the best place to ask those is Hit the Mic Backstage. We have the email marketing training that just came out just a couple of days ago. We’ve got the Facebook group stuff that got added last month, so be sure to check that out. We’ve got another Facebook training happening with our live training this month. We’re actually going to be talking a little bit about running Facebook ads to messenger to engage people in a whole new way. Building a whole new list that can sit alongside your email list to really engage with people where they are in a way that’s not sleazy and gross. Cool? All right. I will see you very, very soon inside of Hit the Mic Backstage. Until then, have a great day.

Welcome to episode 355 of Hit the Mic with The Stacey Harris. Welcome again. Today we're going to talk about growing your e-mail list, but I want to shift the conversation slightly away from tactics or strategies. If you need those and some best practices check us out in Hit the Mic Backstage.  The July training, which will go up in just a couple of days, is all about best practices with your e-mail marketing, that's the place to get that. What I want to talk about today is this idea that you have to grow your list to do X, Y, Z, whether that's launching your program or building a membership site or writing your book or even launching a podcast. Some people are even saying to me, "You know, well, once I grow my e-mail list then I'll start really worrying about getting my content consistent." No, shift that perspective. What I really want to do is I want to challenge the way we think about the order in which we have to, and I'm totally doing air quotes right now, "we have to do things." Build Your List with a Purpose I was talking to a client recently about going wide with her message. She's had incredible success with her one-on-one coaching services and working with her amazing clients. She's done incredible things to grow her list to a small but engaged number, however they, the people who are currently on her list want one-on-one services and she's ready to take her message a bit wider to really grow her impact. We were talking on our call as I was coaching her through some online marketing stuff, and we're talking about growing her e-mail list so that someday she could do things like write a book or launch a program or whatever. It was funny, because we were talking about all these big things that she wanted to do, but we kept scaling it down to, "Well, you know, for right now I can do this and I can do X and I can do Y while I'm building my list, so that someday I can do that." Here is the thing, guys, the reason her list right now isn't purchasing group programs or interested in those kind of things is because she hasn't built a list of people who want those things. She's built a list of her ideal clients for her one-on-one services, which is amazing, but that's not where she wants to be for her next step. Growing her list more, doing more of what she's doing to get more people on that list is not going to be hugely valuable for her, because she's going to having more of those same people, that same ideal client for one-on-one services. That's why instead of worrying about growing your list to X, Y, Z numbers, whatever magical number is in your head, 100, 5,000, 10,000, 25,000, whatever number it is that you've decided is, again air quotes, "enough" to do the program or write the book or launch the membership or get consistent with your content or whatever it is that your end goal might be, I want to challenge you to shift that. Because if you don't know what you want to offer these people, if you don't know what you want to deliver to them it's really hard to target content to them that's going to get them to take those next steps. That's why instead I want you to build an e-mail list with purpose. I talk a lot about the fact that I'd rather have a 100 people on my Facebook page, Twitter follower, Instagram, e-mail list, whatever it is, that are, "Yes," that are like, "I want what she's got. Let me have it. I'm all about it," than a 1,000 people who don't want anything that I'm selling. Shift that. This is what we did on the calls, when do you want to do whatever those someday things are? Let's put an actual timeline to that, because if we know we want to launch a program in ... For example, we'll bring this sort of back to me so I can give you real-life examples, because obviously I'm not giving you real-life examples of client stuff. In January, we'll launch BAM again, the Backstage Amplifier Mastermind, it's a small, intimate mastermind we do with the Digital Marketing Focus Mastermind. It will launch again in January. If I had no list of people who were interested in that, I could write content to the ideal client for that mastermind and start building and segmenting my list of people who will qualified and able, and excited and interested in that in January, so that in January when I sell that ... Realistically, in December when I'm ready to open that up I have a list of interested people ready to go. I have a list of idle clients ready to go. The same can be true ... I've mentioned this on the podcast before, but I'm working on a book right now, that book will launch later this year, fingers crossed. I'm already segmenting my list of people who would be interested and being supportive of that book early. If you want to launch ... Let's say you are a health coach and you want to launch a weight loss program, you want to be segmenting and growing your list of people who are going to be targeted, perfect, who fits for that before it happens, but you need to know when it's going to happen. Because here is the flipside of this, if we start saying, "Okay, you know, I got to get my list to," and I'm just making up a number here, "I got to get my list to 5,000 people before I can launch my program." Are the people who are signing up for that list in the meantime, still going to be in a place where they need this program by the time the ever-interesting someday actually arrives? For me, and for this client that I was talking to about this, if they are, 12 months from now in the exact same space they were in when they joined my list 12 months ago, I'm not entirely sure they're an ideal fit. My ideal clients, and I'm guessing it's probably your ideal client too, they're action-takers, they're people who are proactive and who want to get things done, and who want to move the needle and make progress in whatever the thing is that we're helping them from problem solution. If they just sat idle for 12 months, that's an issue, however, if they are, for me, a good fit and they've been taking action, they're no longer a fit for the thing I was building for them, they probably moved past that. They probably need something a little more next level now, and that's great and that's wonderful, but I've been really worrying about for the last year or two years or three years, building that list to sell this program that didn't exist yet. Do you see the problem there? Do you see where we're running into a situation of, "I've got to know what I'm doing with the list so that I can build the right list, and I've got to have enough of a timeline that they're still going to need what I've got?" That's why I want you to shift from building a list for the sake of building a list. Building a list to check up some magical box that ... real talk, guys, you're putting on yourself, and instead focus on building a list to get you to such and such results, so that you can serve that perfect, prime, primo, wonderful, ideal client-filled audience with exactly what they need, exactly when they need it. Build your list with a purpose. Segmenting Your List On the flipside of that, be segmenting your list because not everyone on your list is going to need everything. Be sure that you're segmenting who are the people who are a perfect fit for a book or a low-cost program or maybe a higher, a more VIP program or a small group coaching or one-on-one coaching. That's five different stages and getting from problem to solution depending on where they are in their journey through the problem, in their ability to invest, and a lot of different factors. They may want different things and ideally they progress. Ideally people listen to the show and then join us Backstage, and then checkout BAM and then book one-on-one coaching, and who knows, maybe they shift over to management after that. Whatever it is, it's the same solution, we're providing the same sort of information, we're just giving it to them in different ways and different journeys, in different points of the journey rather. Build your list with a purpose so that you can be serving them what they need, when they need it, and be doing something with that list, monetizing that list, making sure that that list is a value and not an expense in your business. I really ... I needed to tell you that stuff. We had a whole other episode planned for today, we scrapped it because you guys needed to know this. I needed to share this. Producing a Program The last thing I want to talk about on this topic, because when we're talking about e-mail list and we're talking about really seeing the value from them. The other thing that comes up is when we're producing a program, "Do we need to prove that our audience will buy it, prove that our audience needs it?" Here is the deal, your proof of concept is the one-on-one work you've been doing. Now, the only time I say, "You're not ready for a group program yet," is if you haven't done any one-on-one work yet. I truly, deeply, in my heart of hearts and soul of souls believe the best way to build a group program is to work one-on-one with a lot of people, because that's how you build your system. That's how you build your technique. That's how you build your formula for success, and that's what you are going to build your program based off of. Look at how you're working one-on-one, there's your proof of concept. There is your proof that this formula, this system, this program will work, then it's just about getting it to the people who are going to actually buy it. Realistically, they're going to be different than your one-on-one clients in the sense that they'll probably be earlier in their journey. Fundamentally, all the clients that I work with, and all of the different ways we work with clients, again whether it's the Backstage membership or it's BAM or it's one off one-on-one coaching or it's more consistent one-on-one coaching, like long-term or even consulting in our management clients, they're kind of fundamentally similar people. They have similar personality traits. They have similar businesses models. They have similar business structures. The big difference is kind of, again, where they are in their journey from problem to solution, because the people who are investing in Backstage and the people who are investing in us, consulting, doing strategies or even managing their social are really just at different phases of their actual business, because their structure's a little different or their investment level of comfort is a little different or investment ability is a little different. Again, you may see some difference in who they are based on where they are, but they're probably going to be pretty similar personality-wise, because guess what? They're still connecting with you. They're still connecting with the way you talk about your solution or offering your solution or work with your clients or whatever that is. They're not going to be terribly, terribly different from your one-on-one clients, however they may be a little bit different because they're at a different stage.  And this is where segmentation in our list comes in really handy. Building those things like look-alike audiences with our Facebook ads comes in really handy. I don't pitch one-on-one consulting and management services to an audience that looks like Backstage members, because they're looking at different things, they're engaging with different things. They're economically at different places. However, I do target one-on-one one-off coaching calls to people who look like Backstage members, because a lot of times that's the next step for Backstage members, is either BAM or a one-off one-on-one coaching call, to sort of get their next steps. All right, think about that. The big takeaway I want you to have, the thing I want you to take action on sooner rather than later, is really looking at building your e-mail list with a purpose. Why are you creating that content? Why are you growing those numbers? What is the purpose of that? If it's for the sake of having a big e-mail list, that's ego, that's vanity, that's meaningless in the success of your business. What is the purpose? How is it going to help you deliver better results for your audience? That's what I want you to focus in on. All right? All right, soapbox put away, rant over. If you want to know more about e-mail best practices, as far as growing your e-mail list, connecting with your e-mail list, seeing results from your e-mail list, be sure to join us in Backstage because July 1st, of course the July Monthly Training goes up, and we're talking all about e-mail best practices. That would be the place to get, and of course you can ask me questions anytime in the private community at HittheMicBackstage.com. I will see you very, very soon. Have a great rest of your week and thanks for listening.

Welcome to episode 354 of Hit the Mic with the Stacey Harris. Hello. We are going to talk podcasting today because I'm guessing that if you listen to this podcast, you probably enjoy podcasts. You might think to yourself, "Should I have a podcast?" The answer is maybe, all right? However, the answer is definitely no if you don't do the things first, we are going to talk about. Some of these are lessons learned through doing it the wrong way. Some of these are lessons learned through doing it the right way, but all of them are lessons. They're lessons that I hope that you can learn earlier than I learned them, all right? Let's jump right in. I want to keep this brief because again, I want to keep this actionable. If you do not know yet, FYI, there is a free Launch Your Podcast training at thestaceyharris.com/launchyourpodcast that takes some of the stuff we're going to talk about today and amplifies it. Even better, you want to go all the way in, there is a full-on five-module podcast program inside of Hit The Mic Backstage, as well as some podcasting trainings on growing your audience, et cetera, et cetera, so hitthemicbackstage.com to get those. If you're not sure, you're still feeling this out, stick with me, and let's talk about some things. Number one thing that I think everyone should do and something that I didn't do nearly early enough in my own podcast was build a plan to repurpose, meaning audio is great. Podcasting is amazing. We all hear the stats of how podcasting is the only way to go, but here's the deal. It might not be for you. For me, it definitely isn't. In fact, a lot of people who consume this show don't listen to it. They actually read the transcript that goes up on the show notes page every week. I have a lot, a lot of people who consume the content that way. They don't actually listen to the show. They read it, and that's cool. How ever you best receive the value, as long as you take action on it, I don't care. On the flip side, some people prefer to produce video even though they want to have an audio podcast. Great. Record videos. Rip the audio. Make them a podcast. Get the whole thing transcribed, and do a blog post. Now you've taken one piece of content you've created, and it's consumable in three ways. We've talked a lot about doing this with Facebook lives. You can do it that way. You can do it prerecorded so you can still batch. Either one is fine. Some combination of the two is okay, but when you're building your podcast plan, when you're thinking about launching your show, I want you to take a beat and think about the repurposing of it. Think about how you can evolve it into being multiple things. Another example with this show and you may have heard me talk about this in the past, but you may not have, in addition to the podcast being transcribed and it being in full transcript on the show notes of my own website, this gets edited into guest posts. Every Wednesday, a version of this podcast, an abbreviated version of this podcast goes live on LinkedIn. Also, those get submitted to sites like YFS Magazine and Huffington Post and places like that where I can regularly supply additional value. Now, as I was saying, it's one of the words you've heard me say a couple of times is plan. The next thing I want to talk about is really building a plan. This is something we talk a lot about in the Launch Your Podcast free training, so if you hear me say build a plan, and you're freaking out, be sure you check out that free training because we actually walk through it over the course of four days, so that you can really actually figure out how to build your plan and actually do it. When I talk about planning, the first step is always knowing who your audience is, because real talk, all of the other information comes from that piece of information. If you want to know how frequently you should be sending out new episodes, how long your episodes should be, if you should have guests, all of that comes from knowing who's listening. A really good real-life experience for me with that was when I first launched this show in 2012. Oh my gosh. In 2012, I had no freaking idea who was really listening. I really didn't. I had an idea of who my ideal client was, certainly not in the same specific way I do now, so this is one of those lessons I learned the hard way. I just made it up. I just made a choice, and we did 30 to 60-minute episodes twice a week, so people could, I don't know, listen to them from me, listen to me ramble for a really long time, I guess. I don't know. As the clarity around who my ideal client was and who my ideal listener was and how I wanted to connect and serve and my goals for what they did with this content became more clear and in all honesty evolved a little bit, I realized that I really prefer to air on the side of brevity. I preferred to keep these short and actionable because that's what my ideal listener prefers. Now, there might be some of you who wish I went live or I put out more episodes. Now, we only have one episode a week now. We used to have two episodes a week up until this year, actually. That's why there's so many past episodes I'm guaranteeing. I can't think of anyone who has every told me they listen to all 300 and, well now, 54 episodes of this show. If you have, send me a note. I will send you a price because I'm genuinely curious of just anyone who has listened to every single episode of the show. There's a ton of past content now, so if you need more me, listen to that. Check out the YouTube channel. All of those things. There's just lots of different ways I'm getting value. Again, it came down to knowing who my listeners were and knowing what I wanted them to do and how I wanted them to consume that. Not just this value but all of the value in my business. Be really clear on that because that will help you all the other questions. The other reason I told that story is you'll notice that it's not the same now. Like I mentioned, we used to do two episodes a week. One with a guest, one just me. They were somewhere between 30 minutes and an hour long. I don't think we ever had any that were longer than an hour. We may have had a couple that were. We may have had a couple that were like an hour and five minutes that were interviews, but I can't think of any stand-alone episodes I did where it was any longer than 45 minutes. That's just really long. That's like three of today's episodes. That's a lot. Again, it was twice a week. Now, we very, very, very, very rarely have guests. We go live or we put out new episodes just once a week. They're usually again just me because we don't have guests. They usually are somewhere between 10 and 20, usually somewhere between 10 and 15 minutes long, because again, I want this to be consumable. I want this to be actionable. The other thing I have learned about my podcast listeners, this is not the only show you listen to, and so I want you to have time to listen to all the shows you want to be listening to each and every week so that you can keep up, all right? All right, so build a plan to repurpose. Number two, just build a plan. The last thing I want to talk about is feeding off number two. You need to know why you want a podcast. Now, on a completely appropriate answer to this question is I want to entertain people. My favorite podcast in the world is actually not a business podcast. It's actually one of the few podcasts I listen to that isn't a business podcast. It's called The West Wing Weekly. It's fantastic. The other favorite podcast of mine is the Kevin Pollak's Chat Show. I'm a big fan of storytelling. I'm a big fan of the West Wing, and so those two are my go-to's. They have a much different format than this show does because the goals of those shows are different than the goal of my show. Me setting up something like a West Wing Weekly or a Kevin Pollak's Chat Show is completely not in line with the why I podcast. Why I podcast is to, and I've said these words several times now, we could turn it into a drinking game, for you guys to consume this and then take action on it. I don't want consumption for consumption's sake. If you are going to listen to this and then literally do nothing with it ever, just stop listening. Seriously, because my goal for you is for you to see movement, for you to see change, for you to grow and evolve and progress and get more comfortable with content marketing and e-mail marketing and social media marketing. All the different pieces that are digital marketing. I want you to make changes. That means you have to take action. That means I need to set you up for success by making this really actionable, really easy to follow, giving you very logical next steps and giving you all the tools I can to get you to take that action, to get you to implement, all right? That's my why. Again, that's very different from a West Wing Weekly or a Kevin Pollak's Chat Show or even some of the other business podcasts I listen to. Know what your why is. Know the purpose for you in building this show. Now, on the flip side of that, my other why, of course, is this is a piece of my marketing. This is a preview of the kind of content and feel and vibe you get from working with me, especially for those of you who are interested in Hit the Mic backstage. That is the next logical step, the next upgrade to this show. It's the VIP version of this show. Obviously, that's a factor as well. Again, even the existence of Hit the Mic Backstage feeds into my overall why which is to get people to take action. That's why the trainings in there are also really easy to implement, really easy to take action on and really clear. You notice I don't have a lot of fluff. I don't try to make things particularly complicated. In fact, I try to make them as simple as internet marketing will allow me to make them, because social media networks like to have a certain amount of in-built difficulty. I don't know. For funsies, I guess. I try to make things as simple and as clear as I can, so again, people are taking that action. They're seeing those results. Even my marketing funnel kind of why feeds back to that general core why, which succinctly as I can make it, I want people to stop telling me their dumb. It really is. I do not want to hear anyone every tell me again that they are dumb when it comes to this stuff, because you're not dumb. You just don't know this stuff yet. We can fix that. I cannot fix dumb. I can fix you not knowing something, all right? That's it. Powered through. Now, go take action since I just went on a total soapbox moment about you guys taking action when listening to this show. Next logical step, check out thestaceyharris.com/launchyourpodcast. If you're on the show notes page, there's a link to it here. Here you go. Go check that out. It's totally free, four-day training. In addition to that four days, spoiler alert, in the very first e-mail I send you after you sign up, there is a ... I think it's 60 minutes. It might be half an hour. There's a full-on webinar master class version of the four-day training, so you can get it all now. Then, work through it with me over the course of the four days. If you have questions, facebook.com/TheStaceyHarris, twitter.com/thestaceyharris. Let me know there. I'm happy to answer them. If you really want to jump in, you really want to take action, you really want the VIP experience to this very show, Hit The Mic Backstage is the place to go. Check it out. We have a brand new training launch this month all about prepping your business for a time off, whether that time off was totally intended or not and, and, and, and we've got ask me anything coming up, so be sure you don't miss out on that. I will see you backstage. Bye.

Welcome to Episode 353 of Hit the Mic With the Stacey Harris. I feel an intense need to sing school's out for summer right now because my mom did every year when I got out of school. The kid's officially on summer break and I am also on summer break. Now full disclosure, I'm totally working right now, however, content for the summer has been created. It's done, it's ready, it's waiting for you. It's waiting for you because I want to be able to focus on, that's right, summer stuff. Now I am totally working this summer, with the exception of a ten day trip we're taking in July. I am totally in the office. My schedule looks different in the summer, I tend to work weekends and take days off during the week because one of the perks of our flexibility is that I don't have to try and entertain my kid when literally everyone else is trying to get their kid out of the house. We tend to go into hibernation on the weekends but it's lots of trips to the beach and Disneyland and shopping and movies and bowling and Dave and Buster's and all the things, plus a vacation in there. How do I get content out consistently? How do I deliver you guys the value that I want to deliver to you, that I want you to have available to you? Well I plan for it, so today we're going to talk about things, how I sort of manage to get all of this done in the time constraints of running my business per usual in the spring, getting ready for summer. I do the same thing in the fall, usually in November I'm a little bit nutty because I'm getting ready to take December off. I, again full disclosure, am working this summer. We've got Backstage members, we've got management clients, we've got coaching and consulting clients, I've got spots available for strategy build if you're interested. I've got some coaching spots available if you're interested, so I'm totally working, it just looks different and it's less hours and to make that happen I work ahead. These are the three things I do. Number one, I repurpose the crap out of my content. Meaning, we're covering things on Facebook Lives that we're covering on the podcast. We've built the system of repurposing all the time so I'm never in a place where I'm like, oh crap, I've got to get all this stuff done. Guest posts go out based on transcripts from this show. Facebook Lives are often topics straight up pulled from the show, to be honest with you and vice versa. Sometimes I'll test something on Facebook Live and see what kind of traction it gets with you guys before I pull it in here. I'm repurposing, I'm not reinventing, I'm reusing, repackaging. The same can be done with offerings and I just, we just last month launched two new funnels, sales funnels, full disclosure, they're sales funnels, opt-in kind of things. We've got brand new Facebook ads and a brand new launch podcast training. Well guess what? Those are things that existed already. I merely repackaged them, I updated them. I made them look better, I made sure the information was on point and made sure the email sequence was better. I improved it but I didn't reinvent it. It's not brand new, I never thought of this, I have to have a brand new idea every time. No, it's something that's been successful that I made better so it can be more successful and deliver more value so repurpose. Repurpose, repurpose, repurpose, I cannot say it enough. Literally, I could say 1,000 more times, it still wouldn't be enough. You've got to repurpose your content. Use what you've got. I'm willing to bet, there's one person who will download this episode of the show and they're going to realize that they have an opt-in they created that they've never used. Better yet, an entire program they created and they never sold to anybody because they've never told anyone it existed. I know you guys do it, I've done it too, so look in your Google Drive, your Dropbox, wherever you store this stuff, look what you've got hidden away and do something with it. This was actually, in August it will be two years since we actually launched Hit The Mic Backstage and so July of this year, so next month, is the two year anniversary of when I got the idea to launch Hit the Mike Backstage and guess what? Hit the Mic Backstage, the membership site, my favorite part of my business, the way that I love engaging with you, the next step after this, if you love this podcast, get your butt in Backstage because you'll love it there too. It's this plus. It all came from me having a less than successful launch in the spring, wanting to do something to up some revenue numbers to hit my Q3, my quarter three goals financially, but I didn't know what I was going to launch. I really didn't want to create anything new. I didn't have time or the energy to build something new. It was summer break and I was working less and how was I going to do that? Well I had launched this program, or this package of webinars about six months to a year before that called the Rockstar Bundle. It was, I think, 12 webinars, because I take my webinars down a couple days after we do them live, that I literally just had sitting in Google Drive. They were just sitting there. I had done nothing with them post webinar. They were just sitting in Google Drive. I had sold them as a package of trainings and people loved them. They bought them up like crazy, so I was telling my accountability buddy and business BFF that I had these trainings and so maybe I should just relaunch this Rockstar Bundle and I'll sell that again. She said, "Well is that what you want to do?" I was like, "Oh, I don't know." She goes, "Well what do you really want to do?" I go, "I'd really love to turn it into a membership site, because that would just be killer. I've always, always wanted one, but I just don't have the audience for it." She went, "Well that's dumb. You totally have the audience for it." She reminded me of the advice I give people all the time, which is, it doesn't matter how big your list is, it doesn't matter how engaged your list is, and so guess what? I repurposed not only all of these free trainings I had done, but a package of trainings I had sold before and that built my membership site, which is the core offering in my business at this point. It's the thing to join as far as a passive, not passive, because it takes a lot of my attention, but as far as a recurring revenue, as far as a non-service based, a non-one on one attention based, it fills that hole, that revenue source is the Backstage membership. It came from repurposed content, content that I had already been repurposed once before, so look at what you have sitting in Drive, look at what you have sitting in Dropbox, look at the things that you've thought about doing or have created and finish them, package them, do something with them. All right? That's my rant about repurposing in a way I have not done before, so it's a new repurpose rant. I repurposed my rant, do you see what I did there guys? Walking the talk. Number two, invest. I mentioned that this year we're going to be taking a ten day vacation, we're going to Jamaica. I'm very excited, I've never been to Jamaica. We have, there's WiFi at our resort, but it's not, I don't really want to deal with work for ten days. This will be the first time I'm ever taking a legit unplugged vacation. My phone will go with me, my laptop in all honesty will probably go with me, in case the wheels fall off of anything but I'm not working at all. That's not the plan. Really my laptop is going so I can watch movies on the plane. That's what it's going to come down to. It's a long plane ride guys. It really is, for me, completely being unplugged for ten days for the first time. A big, big, big way I'm doing that is, I've invested in support, I've invested in help. We have not just Charles, because he's going with me on vacation, so he's not helpful at that point. Well he's helpful, but like in a carry my bags kind of way, not a check my email way. We actually have a VA team that supports us now. They joined us in January, I highly recommend them. If you want to know their names, let me know. Admin Ease is who we use. Kristy and her team are fantastic. We love them, love them, love them but guess what? As they're transcribing, or having this episode transcribed and they're dealing with this episode, they're going to realize that they're going to be in charge while I'm gone. Yeah, totally in charge. They're going to be checking the email, they're going to be responding to your questions, dealing with any issues that come up for Backstage members, scheduling stuff, they're going to be the only touch point available for ten days in July, but that's because I made that investment and I built a team. Here's the deal guys, I did that before three days before I was leaving for Jamaica. Like I said, we started with them, I think it was January, it might have been February actually, earlier this year and it's hands down one of the best decisions I've ever made. We have tried outsourcing and VAs and stuff before, but Kristy and her team are just a perfect fit. If you are looking to get support so that you can unplug, which is what's going to have to happen to take time off, you need to plan now, you need to figure out who it is who's going to be helping. Whether it's scheduling social, whether it's monitoring social, whether it's making sure the content goes live. We have content that's going to go live during that time and not only are they going to make sure it's all scheduled and ready to go before I even leave, because it's already created, but they're also going to make sure it actually goes live. That if anybody responds to that email, they reply. Again, if there's an issue Backstage. Invest in support to be able to take time away. If you want to unplug from social, great, set yourself up for that. On the flip side, realize it's okay to unplug a little. It's not going to be the end of the world if you straight up take some time off. It's allowed, it's okay, I encourage it. Now if you go quiet for a month you're going to run into some reentry issues. I will have scheduled foundation stuff going out. I may occasionally post pictures from vacation. I'm probably going to do that because again guys, it's me. Figure out what that looks like for you, invest some time in laying out that plan and invest some money in getting the support you need. It will be one of the most valuable investments you make because it's straight up making you money while you're gone, even if you're still service based. Okay, so they're invoicing clients, they're delivering possibly for clients, they're handling incoming prospects, they're sending out contracts. All of those things can happen while you're gone. All right? Train your team to do whatever it is you need and ideally work with a team that gets it. Number three, our final thing, schedule some sales. We talked about Backstage was really birthed by a desire to make some money in the summer. Figure out some sales stuff to do in there, you know, taking time off doesn't mean you can't make any money. Now I wouldn't plan a massive launch in the summer, in fact, Backstage was the weakest, quietest launch I've ever done, yet somehow one of the most profitable as far as long term because, I mean, we have members that were founding members that are literally still members two years later, but it was also the easiest because we didn't put a ton of stuff behind it. We ran ads, we did emails, just sort of the low hanging fruit basic stuff. We had no affiliates, we did no webinars, we did no giant interviews, we didn't do any of that stuff. I just kind of told people what we had and said hey, check it out. Schedule those sales messages, schedule some ad campaigns to go to a passive income product. Make a sales pitch, write some sales sequences into your emails for your passive income or low touch stuff so again, even during this time off you're generating revenue. If you're hearing that and you have no idea what in your business you would direct, now is a really good time to again, go back to that repurpose step. Look at that stuff that you have hidden in your Google Drive, buried in the depths of Dropbox, maybe spread across both, yes, I've heard it all, and do something with it, monetize it and get it out there, because that is a really fun thing to do. There's literally nothing I like more than like making money when I'm on vacation or when I'm out shopping or out to dinner. There's something extra fun, I like it even more than making money in my sleep and I like making money in my sleep a ton. Somehow when I'm actively like enjoying my income, it's super double extra fun to make money then and that happens from scheduling these sales messages. Again, it doesn't have to be an intense all out launch, it just needs to be something that makes sense for you, a sales sequence in your emails, schedule an ad campaign, whatever that is. Cool? All right, that's it. A little bit of a long one today, this is how I'm preparing. I really, really encourage you guys to take some time off and set yourself up for success in that time off. Cool? All right. Last thing, if you haven't yet joined us Backstage, now's a really, really good time. We have a brand new training that launched this month, all about taking time off and prepping for time off from a, specifically from a a marketing perspective, so setting up those sales sequences, getting your emails ready, crafting your content, scheduling your social, what really needs to be there and what doesn't. All of that is available now. In the next few days, or actually next week, I'm sorry, next week, we'll have our monthly live call. That's your chance to come in, ask me literally anything. They're even called Ask Me Anything calls, so that you can get exactly what you need right now answered on video live in front of you like magic. Join us, hitthemicbackstage.com. I will see you Backstage and I will also see you right here next Tuesday. Have a good one.

Welcome to episode 352 of Hit the Mic with the Stacey Harris. Hello, hello. Let's talk ... New month, new three things you need to know. Today we're going to talk about the things I want you to be paying attention to in June. The things I want you to have on your radar and the things I want you to be - are you ready for this - taking action on. Yes, I said it, taking action on. Every month, every single first Tuesday of each and every month, we do an episode like this where we talk about the three things you need to know right now. Up until now, it's been pretty social media focused. I think we're going to widen it a little bit. Just the three things you need to know right now and the reason you need to know these things is not necessarily because it's brand new information, some of it is, but some of it is just the things I want you to be paying attention to right now. For example, today we have one thing where there's an update and we have two things I want you to be taking action on, I want you to be doing. Set aside some time to take action on what we're doing today. If you're listening to this in the car or while you're exercising, make a mental note. Better yet, make a note in your phone if you're like me. I do a lot of voice memos while driving and listening to podcasts or while running listening to a podcast. It's only awkward at the gym when people are like, "Who's that crazy girl talking to?" Myself. But I want you to pay attention to the action part of this. I want you to pay attention to the implementing part of this, because that's where the money is. That's where the movement is. That's where the progress is. Don't skip that step. Let's talk about the three things I want you to know in June 2017. Kind of just take a minute to say what you're all thinking, "How the hell is it June? When did that happen?" The kid is going to be out of school in like a week, two weeks? Maybe a week. No, it's next week. He gets out next week. I can't even remember. The kids getting out of school, summer vacations are starting here in the northern part of the world, but it's June. It's the halfway mark. It's six out of 12. Crazy. All right. We're changing. First up, update. Social media update. Snapchat and Instagram have both made updates, so pay attention to those. Instagram is what I want to talk about, because way more viewers are using Instagram than Snapchat. If you want to know about all social media network changes when they happen, make sure you're a member of backstage, because that's where I post all of this stuff as soon as it's happening. We have a whole section in our private forum called Network News and every single time there's an update, that's relevant, I share it there, so check that out. Hitthemicbackstage.com if you have been living under a rock and don't know what I'm talking about. Instagram updates. Instagram is adding some very cool new features to stories that are going to allow you to really look at other stories and connect with stories in your relevant space. You'll be able to actually pay attention and see other stories based on location. This is going to be really killer for people who are doing events or people with brick and mortar businesses, maybe a restaurant or a salon or a practice or a physical store, whatever it is, people will actually be able to share stories, tag your location in the story and share ... When I see that story, I can click on it and see other stories from that area. That's going to be really killer. On the flip side of that, they're also doing the same thing with hashtags, so for those of us in the online space, we can do a similar thing using our hashtag. Meaning ... For example, I use the hashtag hit the mic a lot. It's my thing, so I could now not only share it, but encourage you guys to share it and we could see stories of people using it. Behind the scenes of events, behind the scenes of webinars, when I'm recording podcasts like this one, whatever it is, I can share it actually using the hashtag in the story and you guys will be able to find it via the hashtag or I would be able to find your Instagram stories of you listening to the podcast, so if you're listening to this one, try it out and we'll check it out. Cool? I'm actually really excited about this because I think it's going to be a really cool way for stories to connect and bring communities together and that's really killer, so they're also going to be location based as far as cities and this is what Snapchat is doing, too. You'll actually be able to add stories to different events or locations, cities, things like that. You're seeing a little more leeway in that stories being super hidden and only if you follow me and kind of go down the rabbit hole you'll find them and you're finding this is becoming more of a core feature. More of a stand on its own, this is a cool way to use this kind of feature. I'm really excited about that. Check out the Instagram updates. Again, if you want to be the latest and greatest in knowing all of this good stuff, backstage is the way to go, because this news is actually a few weeks old now. Number two thing I want you to know in June, yes June 2017, Facebook live. Yes, I know I've talked about this three of the six months of this year, but it's not any less relevant then than it was now. In fact, it's maybe more relevant now, because some of you, and I'm not naming names, but you know who you are, really went gung-ho with this in January and you were like, "This is going to be great! I'm going to do this every single week and it's going to be fantastic," and I'm not actually seeing you go live anymore. You've fallen off. Some of you several months ago, but some of you more recently and it's going to be harder and harder for you to stay on top of that as the year progresses, because you get further and further away from those goals you set in January or maybe December, whenever you set your goals. I want to really encourage you to find ways to make this happen. In fact, one of the best ways to use this is use Facebook live as the starting point for your content. We've talked about this before. We have backstage members that do this. I have one-on-one clients who do this. They create the bulk of their content via Facebook live. What then happens is either they do this themselves, better yet, someone on their team. If you need names, I have names, drop me a note. Can take that, get a transcript, upload it to YouTube, pull the audio and upload it to a podcast host. I always recommend Libsyn. To turn this into now a three pieces of content and maybe they all go up on one page and for most of my clients and members, that's what they do, but they're presenting you one piece of value in three different ways, so now there's no reason to not consume the content. It's there. It's ready. It's waiting for you in whatever way you want to consume it. You can watch the video, because it's embedded via the YouTube video or you can read the transcript, because the whole thing is there in black and white. Assuming that's the color of your fonts, and number three, you can listen to it. If you are on the run, in the car, at the gym, whatever, listen to the podcast. Whatever way you prefer to consume content, you can consume the content. That is killer. We can also take that transcript, edit it a little bit, and turn it into a guest post for another site and now we're driving traffic back to the site. Oh my gosh, it's amazing. That can all happen based on a Facebook live. Now that can also happen when you bulk record a bunch of videos and run it through the same process. It doesn't have to be through Facebook live, but heres the deal, when it's through Facebook live, you also got that oomph on your Facebook page, and yes, oomph is an official social media expert term. On your Facebook page, so you've got that love there as far as getting it in front of your audience, providing them value, and you know what, engaging with them. That's powerful. Do that, Facebook lives, consistently. It does not have to be every day. It does not have to be every week. I would like to see it be twice a month to start with, but if once a month is all you can commit at definitely executing, then do it once a month. It doesn't have to be an hour and a half long. It can be 10 minutes, 15 minutes, that's enough. That's totally cool. All right, that's my rant on Facebook live. Number three, remember when you're doing all of this to be brand aware. A friend of mine, Julie Cottineau, of Brand Twist just wrote a blog post and I'll actually link it in the show notes, about representing your brand in other spaces. When you're at speaking events, when you're a guest at someone's event. Whatever. Even networking events. Representing your brand so that it's memorable, so people actually remember it and she presented three Rs, I think it was Research, Represent, and Repeat. That's what it was. Research, Represent, and Repeat. It's a great piece. Again, I'll link to it in the show notes, but if you're wanting to check it out right now, it's brandtwist.com. It's her site and we've had her on the podcast. I'm a part of the faculty for her brand school program. She's a branding genius. She used to work for Virgin with Richard Branson. She's got a great book. We've done a review on the show and I loved that she talked about doing these two events in May. She was in the NewFronts with Entrepreneur TV for a show called Business and Burgers and then she did a ... Tyra Banks is teaching a class at the Stanford Graduate School for Business or Graduate School of Business, I think it's called, and she was a guest to come in and talk personal branding, Julie was for Tyra Banks, and it was amazing, but those are some massive brands to be standing up against. How do you as your brand stand as important next to these like literally massive, Tyra Banks, brands and so the person in the room remembers you and your name and your value and your, what she calls, core brand message. Guess what? It comes from being really aware of what you're doing from a branding perspective. The same is true on social media. You need to be brand aware. Now when you are posting something on Facebook or going live or sharing something on LinkedIn publisher or whatever it is you're doing, posting on Twitter or Snapchat, Instagram, you are sitting next to, very possibly, some pretty massive brands. I have several people who follow me as well as Oprah. I don't think it literally gets any bigger as far as a brand than friggen Oprah. How does my content stand up next to her content as memorable? It's because I remember the same things I need to remember when I'm in a room. I remember what my branding is, my message is, my communication style is and most importantly, who is looking at it and what do they need from me and I make sure I'm delivering that consistently, because if you're not delivering it consistently, that's where you're going to run into issues being remembered. Check out your social and look at it through the lens of is this brand consistent? It's more than all of the images have my logo in the corner or I'm always sending people to the same website or whatever. It looks, feels, sounds, and engages like your website. Like you in person. Like your sales team in person, whatever size your business is, whether you're a personal brand or not, that brand experience needs to be consistent. Absolutely critical that that piece is there. Needed to get that out. That was a big one. Very excited about that. Big shout out to Julie again. It's a killer piece. I'm really excited about it, because it is intimidating to stand up next to brands like that and be like, "Hey, yeah. I actually remember you. That's great." Thank you for listening. This episode is, of course, sponsored by Hit the Mic Backstage, supported by Hit the Mic Backstage, because Hit the Mic Backstage is the next step. If you want to do more, feel better, and make progress with your online marketing, let me help you. The place to get that support is, of course, hitthemicbackstage.com. We've got a brand new training that just launched this month. All about prepping for any time off you might be taking this summer. We also in the last few months completely revamped our Instagram programs and our Facebook programs including all of the ads content and best, most awesomely of all, there's a private forum for you to ask me questions anytime you want. It is your access to me. This is one of the very, very few ways to get access to me to give you feedback. To answer your questions, essentially on demand. You leave it in the forum and I answer. I'm there every single day, but once a week for two hours, I'm definitely there during office hours. We even do profile reviews. In fact, we just did some and I love doing them. Again, that's the place to go, hitthemicbackstage.com. Other than that, I will see you next week. See you.

Welcome to episode 350 of Hit the Mic with The Stacey Harris. Content calendars, content calendars. Yes, I love them. Yes, I talk about them a lot. It's because of very, very important reason. Are you ready? They are critical to your consistency, and thus your success when it comes to not just content marketing, not just email marketing, not just social media marketing, but all of these things. When you can be consistent with your content, you can impact more people, you can grow your reach, you can grow your business. Why Use a Content Calendar Here is why content calendars really matter, because not only do they allow you to be consistent in execution, they let you be consistent in messaging across these different types of marketing, meaning I'm able to really easily keep the same consistent message across my social media channels, across my content, across my guest content meaning podcast guesting, guest posts, LinkedIn Publisher stuff, as well as my emails. All of it really relies on each other. We talked about this on a Facebook Live last month. Really these pieces work best together when they're reliant on each other and they're feeding off of each other. Building a content calendar really, really helps that because again, they're all spending time supporting each other instead of my email list gets one message, and my social media channels are getting another kind of message, and my content's talking about this other third thing over here, and none of these things support each other. It's really hard to fully convey a message because yeah, multiple touchpoints, that's right. You knew I was going to say it. You probably said it already out loud. Maybe people in the coffee shop are looking at you strangely, or that guy you just ran by, or wherever else you listen to this show. When you have a content calendar, it's really easy to say, "Oh, these all say the same thing," or, "Yeah, I need these guests posts to out this month because this is what we're talking about on the podcast," or, "This is what we're doing the Facebook Lives about," or, "This is what the email series is going out." That's why I want you to take the time to figure out your content calendar. It really comes from your marketing plans, your larger marketing plans, your larger launch plans. When we are doing a push for Hit the Mic Backstage, our content all supports that. Spoiler alert. This fall, I'm going to have a big, cool thing to share with you guys without that spoiler because I'm not going to tell you what it is yet. I'm going to have some cool things happening this fall. The content will start supporting that and priming you guys for that probably, let me look at my calendar here, in September. In September, you guys will start getting more information about this because in October the first phase of this cool thing we're doing in the fall is going to roll out and it will roll right into some cool stuff we're doing in November, and then we will build off that momentum for a launch we're doing in January for another round of the Backstage Amplifier Mastermind, which is happening right now as well. All of this stuff will feed off of each other, and I know that because I have my launch calendar, I have what I'm doing for the next 12 months already laid out. In addition to that, I have my content calendars, yes, for already next year laid out to support those launches so that I can, again, I can have content start going out in September priming you for what's happening in October. All of my content will be priming you for that because I know what's coming. Then when it launches in October, it will continue to get you ready for what's happening, evolving through October and into November. I know I'm being annoyingly vague here, but I just want you to understand the premise. I want you to understand one fundamental step. All of this is possible because I sat down and figured it out. However, however, it doesn't mean it has to execute that way. If something crazy happens and I need to share with you guys a change to a network or who knows, maybe a brand new network that's going to take out all of the current networks will launch in November. Then guess what? One of the episodes that I have planned for you will probably be about that instead of whatever is planned. It's the way it is, and it happens that way for a reason. I have that flexibility there for a reason, because I do share content from an industry that changes all the time. That's one of the things I love most about it. However, that doesn't mean I have to live not knowing. It doesn't mean I have to live episode to episode going, "Okay, so what should I talk about now? Okay, what should I talk about now? Okay, I've got to figure this out because we've got podcasts going out Tuesday. I need to figure that out." No, I can still have a structure in place that supports my larger business goals and launch plans while making space for things that come up. For you, maybe you're in an industry that doesn't change all the time. But you know what? Sometimes inspiration strikes. Sometimes you have a conversation with a client and you're like, "I need to tell all the people about this. All the people need to know," and that's okay. You can make space for that. Tools to Create a Content Calendar I've talked a lot about why content calendars are the bee's knees. What I want to talk about now is tools because one of the most common questions I get when I do one of these episodes about content calendars is, what do I use? I actually keep it really simple. Full transparency, this is not going to be high tech mumbo jumbo here. I use a Google Calendar. Legitimately, guys, it is a Google Calendar. I don't use my primary calendar. I have several calendars set up in Google Calendar in my account, one of which is called an editorial calendar. All the Facebook Lives go in there, all the guest posts go in there, the LinkedIn Publisher stuff goes in there, the podcast goes in there. Podcast guest appearances, when those episodes are going to go live, they go in there because that's what feeds my social prep because I know I need to promo certain things at certain times. I even put in affiliate pushes in there because hey, guess what? If we're doing a launch as part of an affiliate program or for supporting an affiliate launch, that's got to go on the editorial calendar because I'm going to need to create content supporting that affiliate promo. It's just a Google Calendar. Now, it doesn't have to be a Google Calendar. For a long time I used a paper planner. I had a physical paper planner that I used as my editorial calendar because I liked being able to write things down and move things around. I know people who use wall calendars and Post-its. They'll have content on Post-its and they'll just move it from month to month, or week to week, or whatever works for them. When I did the old structured YouTube show, Hit the Mic TV, we ran that show for about a year, we used Trello to manage the editorial calendar because it worked best for the team as far as our video editors and things like that. I have clients that use Trello with their team and it works really well for us. I really encourage you to find the tool that works best for you. I've even experimented with, and I couldn't let go of my Google Calendar, I like the idea of this but I couldn't let go of my Google Calendar because it works so well for me, is actually doing it inside of my project manager. We use Asana as our project manager. Instead of just podcast for Tuesday, it would be podcast, and the name, and the episode number. It worked really well, it functions really well. I really like having it in my Google. It's a comfort to me, I guess, in a weird way. I don't know. It's what works for me, and that's all I want you to care about when it comes to choosing how you're going to manage this. Again, and I can't stress this enough, for years, multiple years, I used a paper planner. It was all in there. I just got sick of physically having to erase and rewrite things. It's easier in Google Calendar. I can just move it from date to date when it needs to change. Really it's just laziness. Pick what works for you. Remember that this is only a part of your content puzzle. You also need to schedule a time to create the content. Listing out the 52 episodes of your show or the 52 blog posts you want to write because you want to do one a week for a year is great. Making time to record those things or write those things and then promote those things and repurpose those things, that's valuable. I mentioned earlier, on my content calendar we have guest posts and we have the LinkedIn Publisher stuff. That's not new content I've created. Honestly, I don't touch it. My team does it. They take my transcript and repurpose that content into guest posts and the LinkedIn, but it's still on the editorial calendar so that I know this is what's going out where all the time. Again, on the social side of things I know what to promote, but I also know we've made space for this content. We have content going out all the time, but it's not all brand new, crazy, exciting ... It's always exciting, I shouldn't say that. It's always exciting content, but it's not always brand new from scratch. Oftentimes, in fact more often than not, it's a repurposed piece of content. Factor that in as part of your puzzle. You need to make time to repurpose. You need to make time to create. I probably should've flipped the order of that. Create and then repurpose, not only XYZ's going to go on XYZ. Just putting, "I'm going to run on this day and this day," does not actually mean I've gone for the run. It just means I've allotted the time for it. Make sure you are actually going on the run, to keep the metaphor going, all right? You have more questions about stuff like this, be sure to come over to the private community at Hit the Mic Backstage. It's the best way to connect with me and the rest of the community of listeners to this show and members of that community, all right? I will see you next week. Have a good one. Resources Join us inside Hit the Mic Backstage Connect with Me Connect with me on Facebook Tweet with me and include #HittheMic Be sure to leave your review on iTunes or Stitcher for a shoutout on a future show

Welcome to episode 349 of Hit the Mic with The Stacey Harris. Today I want to talk about the newest option for custom audiences on Facebook. I'm ridiculously excited about this. These are some really cool options and we're going to talk about what they are, when to use them, and the one that I want you to implement right away. First things first, what are these new choices? I want to take a step back, because I realize I've mentioned these briefly in past episodes and we've talked about them in backstage, but in case you haven't watched the video of Inside Hit the Mic Backstage about custom audiences, let me just briefly say what custom audiences are. What are Custom Audiences Custom audiences allow you to save a group of people that you want to target as a demographic for your ad. These could be from an email or from a lead magnet or from a look alike audience, or they could be a saved audience that you've built with your targeting that you have figured out. Basically it's just sort of your little library of audiences. You can build these audiences a few ways. What we're going to talk about today is the newest ways. These ways are really based on engagement with your page. In fact, one of them is somebody, one of the options, is literally people who have engaged with your page in the last however long you want it to be. It defaults to I think 365, as in 365 days. But it's a really powerful way for you talk to exactly who you want to be talking to with your ads. You need to, need to, need to get clear on what custom audiences are. That's why I'm saying if you have not yet watched the video in Backstage about custom audiences, now really is a good time to do that because it pairs very well with this episode. Custom audiences. Also in the forum area of the membership site, there is another video specifically about these custom audiences. I'll actually add that to the training library before this episode goes live. Just you know, ignore that. Let's talk about the ones based on engagement. Again, people who've engaged with your page. Also you can do people who have opened your canvas, people who have opened or completed a lead ads form, and as well as video. We're going to talk mostly about video a little bit later in the episode. But I absolutely love these, because these are the people who are engaging with you on Facebook and maybe they just haven't gone that next step. They haven't opted into your email list or bought in at that level, so to speak. This is a really great way to target those people and really get in front of those people. Again, the new choices are all around engagement with your page, so people who have actually interacted with your page, people who have opened your canvas or canvases, people who've opened or completed a lead ad. We're going to talk about that again in just a second. Then people who have spent any amount of time watching one of your videos. When to Use Custom Audiences Let's talk about when to use these custom audiences. These are great for a, what I'm going to call sort of a soft re-targeting. Especially when you're  talking about that lead ad option. Maybe somebody opened the form and started completing it, but didn't actually finish completing the form and submitting the information. You can re target the ad to them and say, "Hey. You were halfway there, make sure you submit your information to get your x, y, z." Whatever it is that that promise was. Whatever that thing you promised was, it cold be a video or a report of some kind, or whatever it is. It's just saying, "Hey, I know you want to get this because it's fantastic and I'm wonderful." Don't ever write that in your ad copy, by the way. But you can re target those people who did not complete the form. On the flip side, you can also target people who did submit the form, saying, "Hey, now you've got x, y, z training, here's your next step." Again, that's super powerful because we can get in front of these people who have already engaged. Especially when you're talking about lead ads, where literally the entire interaction with you happened on Facebook. Cool? All right. That's a really great example of when to use that. Engagement with your page. I really like this one, if you're trying to up engagement on the page. In fact, one of the things we tested recently was I boosted a post targeting people who had engaged with the page in the last 60 days, just to see if I could get them to engage more. Guess what? It was an entirely engagement driven post. There was no call to action as far as hopping off of Facebook and opting in for anything, or buying anything. It was all about creating conversation, and it did. I had a great time connecting with people who I already knew were prone to engage because they have engaged in some way in the past. It was a really cool option to connect with them again. Now, when you are using this option, you have a couple of choices as far as specificity. You can do anyone who has visited the page, so just literally anybody who has been on your Facebook page. People who have engaged with a post or an ad, people who have clicked any call to action button, people who have sent a message to your page, or people who have saved your page or any post. I chose people who have engaged with any post or ad. Again, that allowed me to target people who had spent some amount of time engaging with me in the past. The other really cool place might be your call to action, targeting a follow up to people who engage with that call to action button on your page. Especially if you're somebody who keeps the same thing there fairly consistently. For example, mine is a link to Hit the Mic Backstage like 97% of the time. A great follow up would be people who click that button. I have not used the sent a message to your page, because we've put in a place a messenger bot set up on the o side, so I kind of have those subscribers and I can target those people through those tools. But this might be a really great way to engage them, if that's not something you have in place yet. The other one that I want to test, and I just haven't figured out how I'm going to test it, is again that same kind of concept with the engagement, but targeting people who have saved a page or a post. Again I haven't found out where I want to do it, and I haven't even looked to see if my audience would actually be big enough to do anything with. But these are really cool options to re engage your audience, or follow them up. You know, if somebody has ever in the last 30 days engaged with a post, whether it's an ad or not on your page, it's a great time for you to follow up with, "Hey, can I offer you this?" Realize that you can also exclude people from Facebook ads. One of the things you might do if you want to run one of those ads to people who have engaged with the page, is exclude people who were on your custom audience of your email list. You're not targeting an ad to people who are already on your email list. I tend not to exclude them from that because often whenever I'm offering might be something that they didn't get. Depending on how well you have your list segmented, what I would do probably is exclude a custom audience built on the segment that already has that opt in. For example, if I did, we've got the Facebook ads checklist and guide as sort of the standard opt in for my website. I could exclude people who are already have that checklist and target an ad to get that checklist. Just pay attention to that segmentation and that targeting, because obviously we don't want to spend a lot of money targeting an ad to people who already have something that we're trying to get them to do. That's not going to make a ton of sense. Figure out how that works for your segmentation. But again, that's where your custom audiences come in really handy when you have those custom audiences built, you can include and exclude those things really really simply. Custom Audiences for Facebook Live Okay, so next up I want to talk about my favorite one. This is where we're going to close it up. We're going to talk about video. With the rise and popularity of Facebook live, the ability to target people who are watching your videos is absolutely phenomenal. I'm so obsessed with this idea because it's going to allow us to actually put in front of the people who are watching a certain percentage of our video a follow up offer. One of the things we are doing, is as we do ads or a video where we're talking about something that's inside of the membership site, Hit the Mic Backstage, I can actually then target people who have watched a certain percentage of that video. Just to give you an idea of the options, it's people who have watched at least three seconds, people who watched at least ten seconds, people who have watched 25%, 50%, 75 or 90% of your video. Those are your six choices. I am going to be re targeting people who watch 50% of a video talking about something I'm doing in Backstage and video which I am sort of promoting Backstage through adding value and talk about Backstage. I'm going to re target people that watch a certain percentage of that with an ad for the backstage membership package. I could even re target them with a special trial offer. Some of you may have seen from time to time we'll run a one dollar trial for seven days inside of Backstage. It's a really cool way for people who aren't super familiar with me to get a look at what is Backstage and what's in there, and sort of the value in it. It's a great way to sort of try it on. I really love having that option to offer people who again, are maybe not super familiar with me yet. Maybe they don't listen to the show. They don't realize what value is in there. We could re target them, "Hey, you watched 75% of x, y, z, video, awesome. You're a perfect candidate for this." I can run an ad talking about specifically about the training that goes with that video. Maybe I do a video on, to keep the theme going, Facebook ads. Maybe I'm talking about this. I'm straight up talking about custom audiences. I'm basically doing this podcast in Facebook live form. Maybe so, right? Fantastic. It's easy for me to re target them with an ad saying, "If you're interested in Facebook ads, here's what we can do." Obviously I'd have better ad copy than that, but for the sake of my example here, I can very very quickly re target them with that offer because I know they're invested because they watched a certain percentage of the video. When you've got people watching 50, 75, 95% of a Facebook live, they're worth re targeting. It's ridiculously simple now, because literally the whole thing exists inside of Facebook. You don't have to import anything, you don't have to export something out of your mailing list and import it into Facebook, and name it, and build it. No. No. No. All you have to do is build a custom audience based on their engagement with the video and run the ad to them. That's amazing. For those of you who have jumped on board of Facebook lives, congratulations. Be sure that you are following up those call to actions that you're doing on Facebook lives with these ads. Re targeting people based on their engagement with you on Facebook. I'm stupid excited about this guys. If you are still a little confused, be sure to check out the training in Backstage. It's all of this plus, and of course you can ask me questions inside the private community. That's really the best place to connect with me because I'm in there all the time. Of course, I mean if you want to show me an ad or a follow up sequence, you can get feedback from me and the other members right there. Check out hitthemicbackstage.com for all of that stuff. That really is going to be your best place to get feedback on this kind of stuff. Otherwise, I will see you next week. Have a good one, bye. Resources Join us inside Hit the Mic Backstage Connect with Me Connect with me on Facebook Tweet with me and include #HittheMic Be sure to leave your review on iTunes or Stitcher for a shoutout on a future show

Welcome to episode 348 of Hit the Mic with the Stacey Harris. With all the changes in the last year with Instagram, I wanted to help get clear on how you can use it right now, how you can make these pieces, like Instagram stories and Instagram lives, and of course your good old faithful, your actual profile to work for you now. I thought I'd talk a little bit about how I'm using it, how some of my clients are using it, how we sort of mend these pieces together. We're going to do that by really talking about each of the three pieces, starting with Instagram stories. Then, we'll talk about Instagram live, and we'll wrap it up with our profile page. Okay? Let's jump in with Instagram stories. Instagram stories are a really powerful way for you to share what's happening that day. I do like having some plan if this is something that you are really going to be using. Even as far as actually planning what shots are going to happen or what chunks of video are going to go out. The cool thing about Instagram stories is that you can blend together multiple messages throughout the day to really tell one cohesive story. A really great example of that is behind the scenes of a product development, or a product launch, or packaging of some sort of special bundle. I do it a lot when I shoot video. If I'm doing a video day, I'll actually do stories throughout the day of my setup and what I'm shooting and my wardrobe changes and things like that, because it gives you again that connection point that we talk about all the time. We talked about it in the last episode. We've talked about it a lot in my backstage. That connection point is the reason stories is valuable. That really is going to give you the chance to showcase what's happening in that 24 hours. Please things things. Make sure they make sense, and make sure they're cohesive with what's going on. Use them to support the content you have going out on the profile, the lives you have coming up, the content you have going out on your website, the content you have going out on other social media channels, the ads you're running at the moment. All of those pieces, this is still a part of that. Don't think about short-term social and Instagram stories as something that's separate from your overall strategy. It's not. It's just another support piece. It's just another touchpoint for us to connect this way in a little more of a short-term way because it does expire. People aren't going to be finding it six months later. It allows us to touch base right then. It's also a really, really, really cool way to know who your biggest fans are. You can see who's watching those stories, so you can see. Oh, I know these six clients or listeners or viewers or readers or whatever; they watch every single story. Maybe I should reach out to them. Maybe I should make sure I'm engaging on some other content. Maybe I should see if they want to be a part of XYZ program, products, group, whatever. Utilize those stories to again support and also identify who you're going to connect. It's the only thing on Instagram that allows you to see who's watching in and out and it and out over and over again, who's lasting through whole stories. That's powerful. Okay? The second thing I want to talk about is Instagram live. Instagram did a really cool thing. In I think April they released this. You now have the ability to save your Instagram lives to your phone, which is awesome because now as temporary as they are, because there's no replay or anything like that on Instagram; you know at least repurpose. Meaning, you can now go and share that video on YouTube or wherever else it makes sense again for your brand. What I really love about Instagram live is they're really so far staying true to the original live video, on the go, on the fly model that Periscope and Blab had early on where content was only available for a very short period of time. Instagram has really taken that a step further. Instead of going like Periscope eventually did and saying these things can be available forever, like Facebook is and it just becomes a part of your library; Instagram doesn't even give you 24 hours. When it's over, when you hit done, that video is gone. There is no replay. Again, you can download them and you can repurpose them, but there's no replay natively on Instagram. That allows you to really see who in your audience is jumping it. It really gives you the opportunity to present those people willing to jump in during that section of time. Some coaching, some value, some special offer, some insight that maybe you literally have not shared anywhere else and don't plan to, and that is powerful. I really love this for speaking events. Some things like that I can do a short burst, "Hey, if you're here at the event, come see me." Or, something like that. I really like it during launch times. You can offer maybe a discount code or an added value bonus code. Again, you're rewarding those people who are saying, "Yes, I'm so invested in you and what you're sharing and what you're teaching that I'm going to stop what I'm doing and watch this." That's incredible. Don't underestimate that ability to connect, and don't underestimate your ability to repurpose content there. A lot of people ask me before Instagram allowed us to save them, "Really what's the value of me going live on Instagram if it's going to be gone and I can't save it, and there's no replay?" Great. Talk about the same thing you talked about on your Facebook live earlier. Talk about the same thing you talked about on the podcast. There is no replay. Nobody's going to know. Use that audience that shows up to drive traffic, and there you go. Utilize that space for repurposing. Share something you're sharing somewhere else. Share a slightly different perspective. Again, use it to drive traffic to that stuff that does stick around. That's the value of Instagram live. Again, be using your stories to support those. Using your stories to remind people, "Hey, I'm going to be live." Or, "Hey, I went live, and this is what we talked about." Make sure you have my notifications on so you see when I go live. See what we did there? Yeah. It's that simple. Next up, your profile. Now, when Instagram stories were released, I heard from a few people, and I'm not going to name names because I don't know who originally said it. This is not my original thought. Think of Instagram profiles like your gallery. That's your best of the best. That's your shiny, well developed, pretty, pretty, pretty stuff. The stories is more the day to day, where behind the scenes, how the sausage is made if you will. Okay, so that one was mine, but I'm not sure I want to take credit for it. All right. I agree, but one thing I want you to be cautious of when following that train of thought is not to overproduce your profile. Meaning, don't get so stuck on it being this gallery of shiny, magical, wonderful things that you forget the value, that you forget the voice, that you forget the personality that your brand has. Because it's absolutely critical that even when shiny and pretty and wonderful, it doesn't feel like a robot, whether it's scheduled or not. It doesn't feel fake or like a façade. It needs to still be something that people are going to when they're scrolling through their feed. Don't be confused. Instagram stories and Instagram live have not at all reduced the amount of time people are spending scrolling through Instagram. That's why Instagram ads are still delivering so well. Make sure that your feed still represents you in a way you want to be represented. That it's still representing your brand and driving people to the places they need to be going because they want to learn more. They want to know more. Now, there are absolutely things I share on stories that I would not share on my profile. Some of the sort of random behind the scenes silly stuff, but you bet that my profile is not just shiny, perfectly wonderful crafted photos. It's not just quote images. Yes, we do a lot of inspirational quotes because, guess what? You guys like them. They help grow the following. They engage. They allow me to ask you guys questions and connect and start conversations. You'll also see one post everyday. That's something that is happening that day. It's pulling in a little bit that idea of stories, a little bit that idea of what's happening right now into the feed. It's not over-scheduled. It's not over-autopiloted. It's not over-robotic. It's still me. It's still what's happening, and it's still about connecting. Don't forget that when you look at your profile. That piece still has to be there, or you're going to have a hard time getting people to watch the stories, to show up live for Instagram live. Make sure you don't lose the you from your Instagram profile. Okay? That's it. That's all I've got for you today. That's kind of how we're using Instagram. It's how a lot of our clients are using Instagram. If you have questions, be sure to check out Hit the Mic Backstage because in April we released a brand new training all around Instagram. It's got all the updates with Instagram live and Instagram stories, and all the things are in that new training. We talked about hashtags and all that good stuff. Check that out again, inside of HittheMicBackstage.com. If you just search, you'll find it in there, or of course it's in the most recent area because it just went live in April. Cool? All right. By the way, I just realized that some of you probably aren't in Backstage. If you haven't checked out Hit the Mic Backstage yet, what the heck, man? Go on over there. It's also the best place to ask me questions about this show or anything else. Okay? HittheMicBackstage.com. I will see you next week. Resources Join us inside Hit the Mic Backstage Connect with Me Connect with me on Facebook Tweet with me and include #HittheMic Be sure to leave your review on iTunes or Stitcher for a shoutout on a future show

Welcome to Episode 346 of Hit The Mic with The Stacey Harris. So Facebook launched stories much like we've seen on Snapchat for a longer time now and Instagram for quite a while now. We now have the option to share stories on Facebook and so today I wanted to have a little bit of a conversation around this idea of short-term content and its value in our overall marketing plans. Where does this content fit in our big-picture strategy? Does it really hold any value for us from a marketing perspective if it disappears? Goes away so quickly. 24 hours is not that long of a time obviously. So let's talk about that. And I encourage you to come into the private community on Backstage and share your thoughts, especially as we go into next week. while on May 1st you guys will get access to the full training on how to use this stuff and how to make this stuff work for you. We'll do a quick Snapchat review on there, quick Instagram review on there. Facebook stories review and we'll have some training on how to create content once and share it to the multiple channels in a way that makes sense. If that's something you want to do so check that out. I wanted to talk about this kind of theoretically today, kind of strategically how does this fit? So, first of all it's got to be more than marketing messages. Just like with any other channel the same rules apply when it comes to not being all sales, all promo, all the time. And I think that's one of the big mistakes we're seeing people make right now is there is a ton of actual promo content coming through those channels because the promo does disappear. So every day your posting on Instagram stories or Snapchat or Facebook stories or wherever it is that is your medium of choice and saying, "Don't forget to join this program. Don't forget to join ... " XYZ and that's kind of all you're showing. And so, we need to make sure that we're mixing that in with personality. Behind the scenes, those kind of pieces that really prop up the promo so that when the promo does come I'm going, "Oh yes, totally. I want in. Because I see the way he runs his business. I see the opportunity she has because of the things she's done. I see how he works with his team ... " Whatever it is for that business. So look at how you can make it, again, more than marketing, more than promo and more than sales messages, so that you're really connecting with the community. Obviously, that's what we want to do with our social media overall but this becomes a little easier to forget when we talk about short-term content. On the flip-side of that, you've got to choose the right space. You don't need to be on all three. Use the one that makes sense for your community. For example, a lot of you might be looking at Facebook stories and thinking, "Great, yes here's another option for me to show this content." However, I know that I'm not supposed to promote my business on my profile. I'm supposed to do it on my page. And so, I don't have a lot of business community connections there. I've got my colleagues who are not an ideal fit for my customers or I've got just friends and family and obviously they are not my customers. So why would I post content there? The answer to that is ... don't. If it doesn't make sense to you to use that tool because your audience is not there, don't use it. Don't freak out about having to use these tools because they're there. Use the ones that make sense. I'm seeing this a lot, a lot with Snapchat/Instagram. A lot of you said, "Why am I trying to build this audience on Snapchat? Why am I trying to move the needle there when my audience is already on Instagram, loves Instagram, it's their first open ... I'm going to use Instagram." And you guys are seeing a lot of success with Instagram stories and that's powerful. And that is a really good example of using the network where your audience is. Not to say your audience isn't also on Snapchat, not to say that Instagram stories has replaced Snapchat ... I use both. I drive engagement with my community and growth to my business with both but that's because that works for me. Doesn't mean it's going to work for everybody. So look at where your audience is when you're making these decisions. So we know our network and we know we want us do stuff besides promo but what is that stuff besides promo? What is that other content? I mentioned really briefly earlier behind-the-scenes stuff. That I think is the most popular stuff I do. I get a lot of engagement when I show behind-the-scenes of recording podcasts like this or recording trainings for the Backstage community or when we're doing office hours and also highlight something and say, "Hey, don't forget we're doing office hours." Or working away on projects or planning. I did some strategic planning at the beginning of April, end of March and I shared that on Snapchat and I shared them on Instagram stories and it allowed people to kind of connect. What I'm actually finding is I'm using Facebook stories a lot more as my same sort of ... "It disappears, oh how fun," short-term stuff but that's more casual. It's more friends and family because I can. The people who I'm connected with on Facebook are friends. Granted they're business friends mostly but they are the relationships I've built in Masterminds and coaching opportunities and with clients etc. So again, I'm sharing behind-the-scenes of my life there. So looking at behind-the-scenes content. I also really like sharing those actual tips that maybe don't make sense anywhere else. I don't want to record a podcast that day because maybe it's not enough content for a whole episode and it just came in up in a coaching call and I just really sort of want to share it with you guys. I love Snapchat and Instagram stories for that. Absolutely love it. It's such a quick way for me to say "Hey, you guys need to know this. This is coming up all day on client calls, coaching clients this question came up all over again and in Backstage," whatever it is, "You guys need to hear this. Here it is." And that's been really powerful for me. So look at ways you can do exactly that. Share quick tips, share behind-the-scenes. I think especially for those of us who have home offices, there is a whole lot of desire to see other people's home offices. It's a thing. It's a nerdy thing guys, for real, but it's a thing. I love on Instagram seeing people's desks and their workspaces and the way they do the hustle, the way they do their work. And so, I have a lot of fun with that. So I'll share that behind-the-scenes kind of stuff too and like I say, that stuff always gets me watching when I watch it from other people too. 'Cause it kind of lets you into their world in a way we don't normally, we don't normally see it. So look at ways you can share content. The last thing I want to talk about from a content perspective is the importance of call-to-action though. Remember, this content does expire in 24 hours. As much as we don't want to be all promo all the time, we still need to occasionally be promo. We do occasionally need to tell people exactly what we want them to do next. Maybe that's to send you a message, maybe that's to click a link, maybe that's to check out a program, listen to a piece of content, take action on something you shared in a tip. Whatever that is, when the content expires, when the content moves so quickly, when the content very quickly jumps from you right to the next person and you're totally out of my mind, it's more critical, it's more important, it's more valuable than ever to have that call-to-action, be clear, be concise and be strong. No sort of, "Yes and if you want to know more there's I guess a link in my ... like my bio may- ... " No. "Your next step is to check the link in the bio, that's where the ... " XYZ is. It's got to be clear, concise and strong. And it's got to be there with some consistency. Because again, this stuff disappears. So make sure you are balancing in, this is a marketing tool and this is how you want to share this stuff. For some of you, this may be just a support piece to the content you share on Instagram and so, in your actual sort of gallery-style posts on Instagram, that's where you have your strong sales calls action messages and your stories are just behind the scenes fun stuff. That's cool. That doesn't mean you can't also use that space to say, "Here's the deal, come check this out, this is what we're doing." Utilize those calls to action. Make sure you're ... again, you're telling people exactly what you want them to do, exactly where they need to go to do it and I'm really excited because Instagram is going to start making this easier. Verified users can do it already, they can actually have a link in the story. I'm really excited to see that roll out more widely. I would love to see Snapchat integrate something like that, I don't know if it's going to happen. Snapchat is honestly going to have to do something soon to snap back, no pun intended. I think that's going to come very quickly and we'll see what it is but I'm hoping that this linked content idea is how it looks. So definitely make sure that you have your calls to action because the networks are making it easier for us to execute those in a really, really simple way. All right? So we talked about content, we talked about networks, we talked a little more about calls to action in our content. Remember on May 1st the new training inside of Backstage would be available. You'll find it in the most recent area that morning and of course you'll get an email in your inbox saying that it's ready. And you can come ask questions anytime inside of Hit the Mic Backstage in the private community, just hit that community button. If you're not yet a member, what are you waiting for? HittheMicBackstage.com is the place to be. It is the next step to take action on all the cool stuff we talk about in this show and learn like way, way more too 'cause it's got all the things right when it happens. All right? I will see you backstage and of course right here next Tuesday. Resources Join us inside Hit the Mic Backstage Connect with Me Connect with me on Facebook Tweet with me and include #HittheMic Be sure to leave your review on iTunes or Stitcher for a shoutout on a future show

Welcome to episode 344 of Hit the Mic with the Stacey Harris. All right, beginning of a new quarter means it's time to check in on your social media numbers, if you haven't yet. And yes, I don't just mean your social media numbers. I want you to check in on how your content's doing, how your website is doing, how things are converting, where your revenue goals are. I like to check in on all the things a lot because there is a wealth of information and answers to a lot of our pressing questions that we're spending thousands of dollars asking coaches and consultants and paying people to execute on things. A lot of times the answers to the question are in the data and other times it's good to check in to see if the things they're telling us or doing for us are, you know, well, working. So that's what we're gonna start with. I want to talk about some of the social media numbers you need to be paying attention to and why they matter. Daily, I like to check in on my vanity metrics, my follower counts, a real big picture. Has anyone been engaging in the last couple of days or really in the last 24 hours? Full disclosure, I don't do this every day. I don't do it on weekends, just my work days. This is one of the things I do to literally start my day because it will impact where or how or what I am going to be doing during my social networking time. By social networking, I mean actual engagement on social media. It will really be impacted by how those numbers are doing versus my goals. So whenever I'm checking in on these things I'm looking at where my goal is and where my results are coming from so I can see if they're lined up. I actually keep these in an excel doc in my Google drive and it gets opened every single morning. We look and see what's working and what's not working. Again, basically our vanity metrics are the email lists, the Facebook followers, the Twitter followers, the Instagram followers, and a real brief look at engagement, what's happening engagement wise. The whole thing takes about 10 minutes. But what's cool is when I check in on these things quarterly, and I do my big review of the 12 weeks, if I hit my goals, if I missed my goals, and I evaluate what needs to be changed going into the next 12 weeks, it's nice to have that comparison of the daily numbers because I can see where my numbers were at the end of March versus the beginning of January or even the end of March to the beginning of March. I can see where there was growth, where there was some stagnant activity or, in all honesty, where maybe there was a decrease. Maybe I did a big promo push to ... Great example of this, in March we did an affiliate promo for Denise Duffield Thomas, who I'm a big big fan of and she's one of the two people who I promote their content and their courses as an affiliate, and that obviously caused some unsubscribes on my email list, which is absolutely fine. I'm a big proponent of not being upset about unsubscribes. But, I could see very clearly in my numbers where there was stalled out growth. Although there were still people subscribing and growth to my email list, you can't actually see that growth because there were also unsubscribes happening and a little bit of a peak rate versus where they usually are. Knowing what's going on and being able to see a whole stretch of numbers is really helpful. That's why I make sure I track those daily. On the flip side of that, weekly I'll go in and I'll actually look at my email list because I send an email once per week. I'll look at subscribes, unsubscribes, clicks, where they're clicking, what they're clicking on. I do this because, guess what guys, it will impact any testing or changes or evolving that I want to do to the email the next week. So, once a week I actually check in on those numbers. Again, I'm not somebody who gets upset about unsubscribes. I'm not somebody who lives and dies by the number on their email list, how many people I have. Everybody loves having a large list. Everybody loves seeing that number go up because it means their community size is going up. Obviously that's really important and that's really valuable, but the numbers I watch most are my opens, my clicks, and my conversions, meaning is the money actually in the list. Because sometimes, it can be really easy to think "Hey, the money's in the list. If I just keep growing it, I'll be making bank." Right? No. You want to make sure the money is in the list because there are people who are actually interested in what you're talking about on the list. This is something that I had to really come to terms with early in my business, because I was so about list growth and so about having this massive list. But literally no one on my list was buying. Whereas now, I'm fairly confident when I send out an email that there's going to be a certain percentage of purchases because it's a targeted environment. I'm not only sending out to people who are active and interested, but I am also sending out content that is directed at them based on their segment, meaning they are somebody who needs help with Facebook. So when I send them a Facebook thing, it's a no brainer that it's a yes for them or at least a click and a conversion through some follow-up emails or whatever. So it's really really important that you have a quality list and it's well segmented and that it's gonna take action. Names for the sake of names, email addresses for the sake of email addresses, not fun. You guys know, as members of this community, I'm really transparent about what's going on. This is actually one of the things I'm really tightening up in quarter two. We're really evolving how our email sequence systems and segmentation and, in all honesty, list clean-up happens in this year. I'm actually going to be implementing some new funnels that will drop people off the email list if they don't engage after a certain amount of time. If they're not clicking, if they're not replying, if they're not engaging with the content, there's no reason for me to continue to email them. There's no reason for me to continue to pay to have them on my list. When your list starts to get to a certain size, you have to pay a larger amount. There's no reason for me to be filling that space with information that they're not going to engage with. Again, this is a big big big big big project that we have going on behind the scenes for Q2, which is implementing a whole lot of new funnel structures into my own email marketing. So you might see some cool, crazy, weird emails. Okay, they won't be weird, but you'll see some segmentation happening either because you're going to get slightly different copy or whatever the case may be. Cool? I'm excited about it. But that's what I want you to be checking on weekly is your email content. If you're somebody who sends out a piece of email once a week, you need to be checking in on that stuff. One caveat to that before I go to the other piece of weekly things, if you are in a launch period or you are doing some sort of promo and you're sending out extra emails, which is fine, do that. It's important that you sell to your email list, because, again, that's the only way there's actually money in this mythical list. You might want to check on these things a little more often. When I'm in launch mode, I check email daily because it's entirely possible that there's an email going out to some section of my audience every day over the course of the launch period, depending on how big the launch period is, obviously. So it's something I do check more often when we're in active launch mode. The other thing I check weekly is we check podcast numbers, what shows are doing really well, what episodes are still getting some steam. That actually helps fill the content calendar because we obviously are going to do more of what you listen to. It'll also help with Facebook Lives because I'll repurpose content from the podcast for Facebook Lives when we run into popular episodes. Also we will make sure our download numbers are on track. If I tried something different with an episode or I had a guest or whatever, I want to know if that's working or it's not working really really quickly so that I don't do it again or that I do it all the time now, depending on the reaction. So we do check on content. The same can be said for your blog posts. We did the same thing for our Linked in publisher posts. We look at the engagement. We look at the clicks through back to the website, all of that, once a week so that we can make sure that this stuff is working. Right? All right. Then once a month I go through my daily and my weekly stuff and look at the big picture. What does this mean? I'm accumulating this daily data, this weekly data. What does that mean big picture? We go into Google analytics and we sort of dig in to what's happening. Maybe where we're losing people or where people are converting more often than other places and what does that mean for the following month. The reason I do this stuff so often is I want to be able to make tweaks and changes very quickly so that I can see growth. This is actually something I learned from reading the 12 Week Year. I don't actually execute the 12 week year. I have friends that do but I don't have that structure. I look at 12 months and then I break it down into quarters. So I have 12 week goals, but I don't treat them as separate years, if that makes sense. They all sort of rely on each other for the big picture of the 12 months. But really looking at the things that are happening day in and day out so that I can make decisions really quickly. Sometimes when you do 12 month planning like I do, it's easy to get into the habit that you only need to check in on these things once a year and it can really slow down your growth, and your progress, and your development, and the evolution of your business because you're just simply not checking in often enough. So I do, I check in really really often so I can make these adjustments really quickly. Oftentimes they're adjustments you won't necessarily notice because I try to test only one thing at a time, try being the optimal word there, but it's really important that I look at these things on the regular. Now, as far as the next steps, head over to the backstage community. In the most recent area, I think it's third or fourth down, there is a social media focused daily, weekly, monthly numbers. Exactly what to measure inside of there just for your social media. Then of course in the private community you can ask specifics about your stuff and content emails, those kind of stats, how to make those work for you. Should you have additional questions about those pieces, that really is the place to go to ask those questions. If for some reason you have not yet joined us inside of Hit the Mic Backstage, well now is the time to do it, hitthemicbackstage.com, but I know most of you are, in fact, members because you get that it's, again, the show upgraded. There's video trainings and the opportunity to ask me questions. You can post questions in the private community anytime, but of course I'll be there live from 10 to 12 Pacific Time every Wednesday, which means you'll get an immediate answer during those hours. That's it for today. I will see you guys backstage and of course I'll see you next Tuesday. So have a great week, bye. Resources Join us inside Hit the Mic Backstage Connect with Me Connect with me on Facebook Tweet with me and include #HittheMic Be sure to leave your review on iTunes or Stitcher for a shoutout on a future show

Welcome to episode 343 of Hit the Mic, with The Stacey Harris. It's the beginning of a new month and that means we're doing another three things you must know episode. These are the things you need to know about social media right now. We're going to talk about Facebook stories, we're going to talk about some Instagram updates and your overall social media security, and then we're going to talk about some Facebook ads updates with some new custom audience features that rolled out in March. All of these are things you need to know right now and you could have known them even sooner if you're inside Hit the Mic Backstage. I know a lot of you already joined us back there but if you haven't yet be sure to come on over to hitthemicbackstage.com because it is the place to be to find out all of this stuff as soon as it happens. All right? Let's jump in at number one, Facebook stories. Facebook has rolled out stories, again this is like a 24 hour piece of content, much like Snapchat, much like Instagram stories. I have to say I'm a little bit surprised because they did it with Instagram. I'm surprised that they're bringing this feature to Facebook as well just because I think the mentality of a Facebook user is a little bit different. With that said, people are using it, it seems to be going really well. It first rolled out in Messenger and now you'll actually see it in your Facebook mobile app right up at the top. This is a mobile feature, it's not on the desktop as far as I have seen. I've not heard anything about it rolling out to the desktop but you will see it in the app if you use the app. I know a lot of you don't use the app, maybe you just use the group app. If you're using it, let us know, come on over to the Facebook page and let us know how you're using it. This is so far for personal accounts, there's no option to create stories at a page. Yeah, it's a little weird, I'll be honest. It functions really cool, they've got filters a la Snapchat, it's interesting. I'm curious to see how people are using this long term. Right now I'm honestly doing the same thing I've been doing with Snapchat and Instagram. Content starts on Snapchat goes to Instagram and goes to Facebook Stories. Facebook Stories is not a real big priority for me, I'm not actually seeing a ton of people watching them yet but they're there and I wanted to tell you. Again, if you're using them come on over to the Facebook page, Facebook.com/thestaceyharris and let me know how you're using them and how they're working because I'm very curious. My biggest concern, and I'm a little nervous to say this. My biggest concern is that this is going to muddy that line of people using their profile to market instead of their page to market. I think groups already do that because we can use our profiles to market inside of groups. And I'm afraid this is going to do a similar thing in muddying it because it's not available to pages. So be cautious so that, because again it's still against the terms and conditions to market primarily for commercial gain, as it says. So be cautious of that. But it is a really cool way to connect if you use Facebook as a networking tool. I mean most people who I'm connected with on Facebook I've met at events or are clients or are mastermind friends, things like that. So it's a little muddy in that aspect, so this is a cool way to share another get to you know, touch point, behind the scenes kind of section of content. But really, I'm curious. I'm really curious how it's going to work and how it's going to roll out and how people are gonna use it, so let me know. I'm not a fan, all right? Number two, Instagram updates. So we just did a brand new Instagram training in backstage, so make sure you go check that out if you haven't check it out yet. It's fully updated, we're talking about live, we're talking about stories, we're talking about all the things, Instagram. But also one of the things we mention in there and what I wanted to bring to your attention because it just rolled out in March is sensitive content and a security update. Before Instagram was just sort of deleting content it deemed, or that its algorithm and filter deemed to be sensitive, which did of course lead to the deletion of content that shouldn't necessarily have been deleted. I'm sure you guys, if you follow any sort of like, Mashable or any of those kind of sources, you've probably seen those stories. But the algorithm is certainly not full proof on some very popular hashtags there's a whole lot of adult content. So now what Instagram is doing is it's actually going to blur them out and it will say sensitive content, and then you can turn that content on, so to speak. You can click it and actually view the content. I think it's sort of strange, personally, it's not what I use Instagram for, so I don't really care for it being on there, that's just me. But I do think it might be a better option than just full on deleting it, because again, that filter was deleting things that were not necessarily actually sensitive content. Alongside this roll out though was what I really want to bring up and that is two factor authentication, meaning you now have the option of having a little extra security on your account, great. Then you get a text with a number and you enter the number and now you're logged in. So Facebook has this, Twitter has this, I don't think LinkedIn has two factor notification, I should double check because I don't have it turned on if it does. I really, really like this because it gives us the option to make sure our accounts are a little more secure. And when we're using them for business purposes it becomes even more important that not be taken advantage of by people who are maybe not up to the best of intentions. So I really try and keep those accounts secure with really solid passwords, but also two factor authentication. I have heard a lot of people in the last couple of months talking about having issues with their Instagram accounts, maybe someone got in and locked them out, and having to go round and round with Instagram trying to figure out if and how they can get their account back. In some cases they were able to, in other cases they were not. So this is really, really valuable, because again it's just that extra layer of security. If you've not yet turned on two factor notification with things like your email and with things like Twitter and Facebook and now Instagram, I really suggest you take the time to do that. Also be using a tool like LastPass as a password manager. I really like LastPass because not only does it keep all my passwords so that I don't have to remember the goggley goop that is the password, but also it will generate secure passwords for you, so I don't have to even make up the goggley goop that is the password. So yeah, so check that out, make sure those things are turned on, keep these things secure, they really are ... I mean, they're a part of your business, they're a part of your brand reputation, you want to make sure that you are the only one controlling the content that goes out in those spaces, all right? Lastly, to wrap up the episode, the thing I'm honestly most excited about is a Facebook ads update. You can now build customer audiences based on engagement. Again, backstage members, you are not only already aware of this but some of you are already utilizing it, I think that's awesome. My favorite, and if you go into the community section inside of backstage, you can actually see me do a walk through of how to build these custom audiences in the network news section. But my favorite one, if you're gonna just pay attention to one right now and you want to play with it is the video option, especially for those of us who are doing regular Facebook Live content. To be able to target an ad to a group of people who have watched past a certain point, so let's say half of a video or 95% of a video, I can retarget you now based on you having watched a whole video, which, if it's a primer for Backstage membership I can now retarget an ad for Backstage. Or if maybe I did a Facebook Live about Facebook ads and we've got the Facebook ads free guide and check list, I can retarget an add for that option to the people who watched half of that video. So if you haven't checked this out yet, be sure to come over to the community page. Again, it's in the network news section of the private community inside of Hit The Mic Backstage. It is an absolutely killer video, it's super quick, and I'll be adding it to the actual formal Facebook ads guide inside of the membership site soon. But I wanted to get that quick up for you guys so that you could be taking action on it. Because this is going to be a killer option for a lot of you doing video who are really making good use of a call to action button, who are using lead ads, it's gonna be a really killer custom audience option. I'm stoked about it, so check that out. Again, network news section of the private community inside of Hit The Mic Backstage you can see the video where I walk through building all the custom audience options inside of this new Facebook engagement option. Cool, I'm excited. That's all we've got, if you haven't yet for some reason joined Hit The Mic Backstage, I'm assuming, if you listen to this podcast, you know that that membership community is the upgraded version of this podcast and it's like, everything in this content in this podcast plus video walkthroughs, network news, the ability to ask me questions, the ability to connect with each other, so it's a no brainer that you're there. But maybe you're new to the show and you haven't checked it out yet. Head over to hitthemicbackstage.com, get your access right now, there's a monthly option, an annual option, and there's gonna be some really, really cool VIP like options coming very, very soon, so stay tuned for that. We also have a brand new, members only affiliate program inside the community, so if you are a member and you haven't checked the affiliate community out yet, make sure you do. Because as long as you're a member, you can actually get a little love for referring new members. Cool, I'm excited. It's a good week, April's gonna be awesome, we're gonna have some killer stuff coming up on the show, we've got some awesome stuff happening in the private community, I've got some really cool stuff happening on the back side of the business, so it's good stuff. April's gonna be a good month, I'm excited to spend it with you guys. If you have questions, of course come on over to the private community and ask them there, that's what that space is for. I will see you next Tuesday. Resources Join us inside Hit the Mic Backstage Connect with Me Connect with me on Facebook Tweet with me and include #HittheMic Be sure to leave your review on iTunes or Stitcher for a shoutout on a future show

Welcome to episode 341 of Hit the Mic with The Stacey Harris. Facebook Live. I love it. It's fantastic. Last week we talked about how I've been using going live to really improve my social media community, and the engagement, etc, etc. Really, we talked about two reasons you should never go live on social media, or at least the two reasons people give me and why they're just utter BS. It was only a little click baity you guys. It was only a little click baity. Today I want to talk about three tips I have been using to improve my Facebook Lives. As I mentioned last week, I, you and I, we go live together on Facebook once per week, minimum. Generally speaking it's on Thursdays, I've gone live more than once a week a couple of times this year, but the Thursday show is pretty much the standard issue Facebook Live time for you and I to connect. I want to talk about a few things I've done to, again, improve that, not only from a you guys getting a better show, but from a me seeing real results standpoint. Transparency, guys. Seeing results is important. Number one. I started using OBS. OBS allows me to stream from my desktop on my webcam, in fact, to you guys in the Facebook world. It also allows me to do things like smoothly transition from me onscreen to my desktop to, if I'm going to have guests or anything, I can stream more than one person, and flip back between the two of us, and do side by side stuff, and I'm able to do that really seamlessly. I have not done Facebook Lives with a guest yet, although it's something that I might do at some point. I just haven't yet. Also, it allows me to do things like schedule an upcoming stream on Facebook, so I can actually let you guys know in advance, which is particularly helpful considering I don't go live at the same time. I go live around the same time, some time between nine and ten-thirty, usually on Thursdays when there's not a challenge or something happening. Also, when I have the challenges, I'm able to schedule when we're going to be live to do some video stuff, and then share a link to that live and the email before it happens, and say this is where we're going to connect. Just like I would a webinar link. That's been incredibly helpful and I'm able to do that through OBS. One of the first things I would suggest if you're looking at up-leveling your Facebook Lives, you want to move up from just your iPhone or your smartphone or whatever, look at using OBS. That's a really great way to up-level. That's not to say that going live on your iPhone or Samsung or whatever smartphone device you have isn't cool. If that's where you're at to start, do it. Again, pointing to last weeks episode, if you haven't listened to it yet, go listen to it. It doesn't have to be fancy, it just has to get done.  If you want to up-level it, and you want to be able to do some cool stuff, check out OBS. That was a big game changer in not only up-leveling the value I was able to give, and up-leveling the environments and the kind of content I'm able to share, but also for me, it has a much more pro feel, and I'm much more likely to do it when I have it scheduled, and I've already told you guys I'm going to be live Thursday at ten am. That's an advantage for me. Again, guys, transparency. When I tell you I'm going to do something, I'm a whole lot more likely to do it than when I tell myself I'm going to do something. It's just the way it is. Number two thing I have done to up-level my Facebook Lives, planning. I have an editorial calendar just like I do for the podcast. I outline what I want to cover in these Facebook Lives just like I do the episode of this show. Yeah, there's a plan here, guys. I know it's not always super clear, but there is a plan. That has been really helpful. It also keeps me from rattling on for 25 minutes about nothing. Not only on Facebook Lives, but again, on this show. I can keep my rattling to five, ten, fifteen minutes, which is much more consumable than getting somebody to hit play and stay live with me for 45 minutes, because I'm great, but woo! that's a long time. So plan. Use an editorial calendar. Get an idea of the structure you want to talk about. Know what the goal is for your show, and that's going to lead us into point three, but I always know exactly what I want to share, exactly why I want to share it, and what it feeds into, meaning is this about getting you to an episode of the show? Is this about getting you into my Backstage? Is it about getting you onto my email list? Is it about getting you into a webinar? Is it about getting you over to a joint venture? Is it about getting you to an affiliate link? What is the purpose? That comes from, again, having a plan. In January and February, you may have noticed that a lot of my content pointed to a singular topic, because that was really a focused marketing effort for the first two months of this year to get you guys to content I knew would be really valuable at this time of year. I knew a lot of you in January were looking at starting podcasts or up-leveling your podcast, and so that's what we talked about in January. We talked about content. We talked about podcasting. In February, I knew a lot of you are going into launch times. Maybe you finally built a program or even maybe you have that podcast, and you want to know how to really rock Facebook ads. That's what we talked about in February. This month we've talked a lot about going live because I'm getting a lot of questions about it. All of my content is centered around a single topic. Again, the podcast and the Facebook Live stuff can really feed off of itself, because we have a larger marketing plan, because we have a larger topic that we have, again, strategized and planned for, and now we're executing on. Look at your marketing plan. Look at your social media plan. Get your content plans, and figure out where Facebook Lives fit in there, and then plan each episode, because again, that has been a huge, huge game changer, and not just getting results from a business standpoint for me, but getting results in a value standpoint for you guys, for the people who watch. Again, take the time, plan, plan, plan, it's all good. All right? Number three, the final thing, and again, this really builds off of number two. Do not forget to make the ask. You're giving value. You are sharing your message. You get off and you're like, "Oh, how come nobody joined my email list, or bought my program, or whatever it is that I hoped would happen?" Did you tell them about it? Did you send them to a link, is there a link in the copy, the written copy above the video or next to the video or depending on what screen you're on, did you make some sort of call to action? If you didn't, that's why they're not going anywhere. That's why they're not taking any next steps because you haven't really told them what next steps to take. Again, when you have a plan, this gets a whole lot easier to do because you know where you want to feed. Going back to what I was talking about earlier, a lot of the content in January was about podcasting. February was about Facebook ads. So it was kind of a no-brainer to say, "Hey guys, we've got this inside of Backstage. Or we've got this happening on the podcast. Or we've got this webinar coming up, or this free challenge coming up", and point them to someplace where I knew they were going to get the next step in value, the next step in, again, taking them, and you hear me saying this, I swear to Bejesus, almost every episode, from problem to solution. The next step to get them a little further down that path toward solution was whatever the call to action was in that Facebook Live. Do not forget to make the ask. This is something that I was really, really crap at when I did Facebook Lives and even Periscopes last year, consistently saying, "Hey guys, here's what's next." I'd even in the past been not so great about it in the podcast. You may have noticed this year, we've really got a close that tells you what the next step is because that's what Hit the Mic Backstage is, it's the next step to this podcast. It is the next step from problem to solution, so guess what? I'm getting better about telling you guys, "Hey, this is what's in there, and this is why you need to pay attention to it." You've got to be doing the same thing in these Facebook Lives, or Periscopes, or Instagram Lives, or YouTube Lives, or wherever it is you're creating this content, and really in every piece of content you're creating. Blog posts, videos, podcasts, I don't care what they are, you've got to be making that ask. You've got to be making that call to action, because again, it's our job to get them further down step by step, sometimes baby step by baby step, from problem to solution. You have to tell them what that next step is. You are their Google maps. All right? All right. Your next step inside of Hit the Mic Backstage, we've got a brand new training on using lives to grow your community, so check that out. We've also got the revamped Facebook guide in there, which does have some videos on Facebook Live, in addition to Facebook ads, and pages, and groups, and events, and strategy, and all that stuff. That is your logical next step if you love this episode, and you want to dive deeper. HittheMicBackstage.com. Of course, I will see you Backstage.  See you. Resources Join us inside Hit the Mic Backstage OBS Connect with Me Connect with me on Facebook Tweet with me and include #HittheMic Be sure to leave your review on iTunes or Stitcher for a shoutout on a future show

Welcome to episode 340 of Hit the Mic with The Stacey Harris. Hello hello. We're going to talk about something I have been using to grow my community this year and something that you really need to be using. We alluded to this in the "3 Things You Must Know" episode last week, but we're going to dive in deeper, and it's going live. First thing I want you to know, going live doesn't have to be a certain place, a certain frequency, a certain length of time. Going live might look different for each one of you. For me right now, it has really meant using Facebook Live. My community is there, my audience is there, my attention is there honestly. It's been kind of a no brainer for me to use that. Then disperse that content in the other places, meaning that Facebook Live episode can go up on YouTube. I can share snippets of it in my story on Instagram and Snapchat. I can really break that out; I can share that YouTube video on Twitter and LinkedIn. I really can use that Facebook Live content in all of the places. There are some tools that will let you to go live in multiple places, I have not found one yet that I find reliable and quality enough to share with you and give a recommendation. Stayed tuned, I am on the hunt for something like that. For me, and honestly for a lot of you listening; the great entry point, a great place to get started, a great place to just start taking action is going to be Facebook Live. It really is a simple, simple way to go live. So do it, go live. I want to talk a little bit about the two big objections I get to going live because I see these all the time when I'm talking to clients, or we're talking in the membership community about how to go live and if you should do it. I want to combat these two big pushbacks. Number one; it doesn't have to be brand new content and it doesn't have to be content that exists only in that Facebook Live, or YouTube Live, or Periscope, or Instagram Live or whatever. Repurpose this stuff guys. Use your most popular blog posts as a great way to get started on doing video. Break those tips down into a series of videos, and then use that call to action to point them back to the full blog post on the website. You know your audience is interested in that, or it wouldn't be your most popular blog post. See what I'm saying? A great way that I have been doing this is taking pieces of trainings, or webinars, or podcast content and just repurposing that into video. By repurposing it, I mean really, really simply saying, "Hey, here's a little chunk of this content. If you want more, go over here." Sometimes that's join us at Hit the Mic Backstage. Sometimes that's join us on the podcast, sometimes that's go read this blog post. Whatever it is; it's taking a piece of something I've already created and presenting it in a new way. The big value point for this guys, is that not only is it a time saver for us, and you've heard me sing the praises of repurposing enough times that I don't need to do that; on the flip side of that, you're going to allow that content to reach a whole new audience, to reach some people who maybe prefer video or happen to be tuned in and just didn't see that blog post or that podcast. You're giving it to them in another way so that they can connect with it, so they can get what they need. I say this all the time, but it's our job to get them from problem to solution. If you're not getting them from problem to solution, you're not doing your job guys. Repurposing our content really allows us to present something in a way that's going to connect with them. Honestly, maybe they read the blog post, they listened to the podcast, but this time is the time that makes the difference. Maybe it's because there's the face to face feel with video. Maybe it's because of the timing; it could honestly be a hundred different things. What again is important is that it connects. Push past this idea that you have to create another thing, that you have to do something else. It's not necessary. The other piece of feedback I get, the other little bit of pushback I get to going live, and where I want to spend the bulk of our time today is talking about the tech. I get that it can feel scary if this is something that you have not done before and you're a tiny bit tech-phobic, as I know some of you are. It's literally never been easier to create video for your business. A; live is pretty forgiving, especially since most of us can do it from our smart phones, which by the way have pretty decent little cameras on them these days. Up until like maybe a month ago, six weeks ago, it was the nicest camera I'd ever owned, I was on my iPhone 6s Plus. I do now have a separate camera that I use for pre-recorded video that's a little nicer than my iPhone, but honestly not that much nicer than my iPhone. Don't underestimate the value of your iPhone camera or if you have an Android, your Android camera. Your smart phone camera is pretty damned good. In the case of Facebook, and in the case of, YouTube's rolling this out for the mobile app; Twitter, now you can go live from the Twitter app, you don't even need the Periscope app anymore guys. You can use your already existing Twitter app. You open it up and you hit go live. Same with your Facebook, same with Instagram. Literally all the places and all you need is your phone. If you want to go super techy you can add a stand, you can add a little tripod. I actually have one and I'll put the link in the comments, I'm sorry in the resources section of the show notes. I actually have a little, I don't know, I think this thing is four inches tall. It's got a little bracket on the top of it that holds my iPhone. It's got bendy legs that I can hang it around things and hold it if I want to. Again, set this up on your desk, go live. There's not a big tech barrier. Now if you want to go a little more pro, if you want to do something a little more advanced; that's also totally possible. I use a tool called OBS, it allows me to stream from my desktop into Facebook. Some of you may very well have already noticed that Facebook is letting you go live right from your desktop. Again, the barrier to entry is not high here. I like to use OBS though because I can do some kind of advanced things. I keep it pretty simple. I'll be honest, I don't do any super high end production stuff just because I want my focus to be on the content and providing value to you. In the spirit of full transparency, it's also because that's not my forte. I have simple things, but it allows me to really quickly, and seamlessly, and semi-attractively move between maybe a solid photo that's up in the pre-show, to me on camera, to my desktop and me, or just my desktop; that I can really move pretty quickly into showing you guys something on my computer if I want to be doing that, or again, talking to the viewers face to face if I want to be doing that. That's why I like OBS. The other cool thing with OBS is I'm able to schedule a Facebook Live in advance right through Facebook. If you want to know more about using OBS and scheduling Facebook Live and things like that, I actually just released, at the beginning of this a month, a brand new training all about going live inside of Hit the Mic Backstage. We do an OBS walkthrough, and we talk about scheduling Facebook Live and all of that stuff in that training. That would be the place to go to get a handle on that tech. There you go, I just lowered that barrier to entry for you too. It does not have to be complicated, it does not have to mean a super crazy studio, and built-in stuff, and lights, and cameras, and a permanent structure as part of your office. It can mean that, it 100% can mean that. If that is what you want to do, do it. Don't let having to have that stop you from doing anything. In fact, right now grab your iPhone, go live and put together proof of concept. Make sure that this is going to be something that A; you're going to actually do because you're going to be really upset you spent thousands of dollars building in this whole live studio when you never go live on Facebook, or Twitter, or YouTube, or Instagram, or anything, so start going live. Also, I find the best way to figure out exactly what it is I'm going to need tech and gear wise is to start doing whatever it is I'm going to do. In many, many cases I have discovered once I started doing something that I needed something that I didn't think of. Even more often than that, I find that I didn't need something I thought "I had to have". Anybody with me? Everybody sort of shamelessly raise your hands, because I know I'm not alone on that one. That's it, that's what I wanted to talk about because it really is, it's been a big part of what I've done. We've shifted this year into doing just one podcast episode a week, and in that it's not that I'm actually creating less content, it's that I'm creating different content. That's because, for the first now, what is it 10 weeks, 8 weeks of this year; since the beginning of January, I have gone live once per week minimum. There have been a couple of times where I've gone live more often than that because we've done challenges; we did the podcasting challenge in January, we did the Facebook ads challenge in February. During both of those weeks I went live four times in a week instead of just once per week, which was super fun but I'll be honest, not something I'm going to commit to doing all of the time, but it was a really good time. Just start doing it guys, because it has, it's been a really powerful piece for my engagement. It's been a really great driver into Hit the Mic Backstage. It's also been a really great traffic driver to my email list. I found going live on my page as part of the challenges really grew the traffic for those challenges during the challenge. The ads were obviously done because we're in the challenge, but I found my list increasing each day I went live because people were seeing live and finding out about the challenge. Maybe they had heard about it but they had forgotten to sign up, or they had heard about it and went, "Eh, I don't know." Then they saw a video and they were like, "Dude, I'm totally in" and signed up. I'm seeing the growth, I'm seeing the numbers and I want you to see them too. Don't let tech and don't let fear that you have to create something else prevent you from doing this. All right, you deserve it, your audience deserves it, and your social media and your community numbers will thank you and will grow. We're going to talk a little bit about live later in the month too, so say tuned. In two weeks I'm going to talk about some of the mistakes I've made and lessons I've learned. Make sure that you check that out. Actually no, I'm totally lying to you; that's next week. In two weeks we're go into a social media tool review, so stay tuned for that too, all right. Also, every Thursday, usually on Thursdays ... Okay, it's been on Thursdays always but I know for a fact it's going to be on a Tuesday coming up, that's why I'm saying usually, just in the sake of full transparency guys. Once a week you will find me live on Facebook, Facebook.com/TheStaceyHarris. If you haven't followed me yet, go ahead and like that page, that's where you'll find me. Of course, if you would rather watch the replay on YouTube you can do that; YouTube.com/TheStaceyHarris. Guess what guys, the best place to connect with me, the best place to find out information like this way sooner than you're going to get it here because I'm in there all the time; Hit the Mic Backstage. If you haven't joined us yet, fix that. It is the next step after this podcast to get even more value, even more information, and you know what? A little accountability to take actions, because you've invested and you're spending the time there. If you tell me you're going to do something, I'm going to ask you if you did it. Come join us at Hitthemicbackstage.com and I will see you backstage. Resources Join us inside Hit the Mic Backstage OBS Connect with Me Connect with me on Facebook Tweet with me and include #HittheMic Be sure to leave your review on iTunes or Stitcher for a shoutout on a future show

Welcome to episode 339 of Hit the Mic with The Stacey Harris. Welcome to our first episode of March which means it is a three things you must know episode, and so these are the three things I want you to be paying attention to when it comes to your social media time in March 2017. Now here's the deal. Some of these things will be relevant even outside of March, so if this is not March when you're listening, keep listening, because guys, these are things that I'm seeing questions on, I'm seeing frustration around, and so I really want to get this in front of you get clear. If you want to stay up on the latest and greatest of all things social media anytime, the place to be is of course inside of Hit the Mic Backstage. That's where I make all announcements on sort of network updates, strategy changes, tool updates, things like that. So if you are listening to this because of a intense need to be in the know, head over to to hitthemicbackstage.com because that's the place to be. All right? With that, let's get started. Number one thing I want you to be paying attention to in March is around the tools you're using. We're actually going to review a new tool this month called Viraltag. I'm a big fan of eClincher. I have done countless episodes reviewing tools, and still one of the most common questions I got in February of this year was what tool should I be using to manage my social media? What tool should I be using to schedule? What tool? What tool? it's not about the tools, guys. It's about using it, and the best tool for you to use to manage your social media is the one you're actually going to use. If that's Hootsuite, if that's Buffer, if that's eClincher, if that's Meet Edgar, if that's Viraltag, if that's Post Planner, and I don't care what it is. I care that it fits your needs and that you are going to login and actually use it, because that's where the difference happens. That's where the change happens, and that's where your business and your community is impacted is when you actually use the tool. You know, the same can be said about just about anything. The webinar that's going to make all the difference in your business is the one you attend and then the one you take action on. The course that's going to change your business forever is the one you actually use, so this is one of those things that applies to literally all the things, but I want you to remember, especially when it comes to social media, the tool that is going to work is the one you're going to use. Now there are different tools for different budgets and different needs a different network focuses. Again, I've reviewed a lot of them. I'll actually link to all of the review episodes in the resource section over on the show notes page for this episode, but at the end of the day, if you're not going to use it, it's not going to work. It's not going to make a difference. So make sure you are using it, and that means getting comfortable with it. That means setting aside time to figure it out, to watch the tutorials, to reach out to your social media person get training. Whatever it is that you need to make sure that you are, yes I'm going to say it again, actually using this tool, because again, that's where the difference is made. That's where the change happens. And you know what guys? That's where the results are. I know, it's magic. So yes, the tool that is best for the job is the one you will use. Number two, let's talk about number two. If you're not yet going live, seriously guys, do it. We're actually, we just launched last week on the first, a brand-new training inside of Hit the Mic Backstage about going live, and the power of going live. I actually walked our members through using OBS, which is what I used to go live for Facebook and YouTube. We talked a little bit about a tool that will allow you to go live in multiple places at one time, so if you want to check that out, of course that's all on Backstage, hitthemicbackstage.com. But going live is never been more important than it is right now, so do it. Start figuring out what that looks like for you and then do it with some consistency. One of the biggest things I want you to realize is this doesn't have to be all new content. This doesn't have to be you creating something else. This is a great play for you to be repurposing your content. This is a great way for you to be doing more with what's already there. Maybe you have a blog post the that you wrote or a video series that you did, and you can pull out one small point in that valuable piece of content and say, "I'm going to dive deep into this in five, 10, no more than 15 minutes really, and I'm going to provide the value that way."  Or you can be using your Facebook Lives or your Periscopes or your YouTube Lives, whatever you want to use, you can be using those to create your content. Actually record it going live, and then have it transcribed. I use Rev.com for all of my transcriptions for not only my Facebook Lives, but this podcast. So Rev.com, and then take that and edit it into, you guessed it, a blog post. Use the value in lots of ways, because that's how you're going to see it, but you've got to be doing it. You've got to be going live, and later this month, we're actually going to talk about a few ways I have up-leveled my Facebook Lives so that I'm really providing maximum value and really having the best experience from a creator's standpoint, but also my watchers are having from a consumer standpoint. So stay tuned for that. That's going to go live on the 21st, you'll see that episode. And again, if you want to do that right now, of course head into hitthemicbackstage.com when we're talking about Lives, and you can of course ask your questions there about Facebook Lives. And of course, you can join me. I go live once a week, so there you go. Number three, consistency matters. We talked about this at the beginning of February, but here we are going into the final month of this first quarter of the year, and I'm starting to see a lot of people who were really gung ho at the beginning of the year about their social media goals, about tracking their numbers, about looking at what was happening with their numbers and doing something about it, about implementing a strategy, and now here there are in March, and they're feeling maybe overwhelmed. They're feeling like they don't know if it's working. They're feeling like they don't have time. Something else has sparked up in front of them that seems way more fun, and I get that. I totally get that, but consistency is important, and it matters more than it ever has before, because there are more voices than there have ever been before. And so, as much as you can get distracted by the shiny object, so can your audience, and that shiny object might be someone else. So what I want you be doing is really looking back at January, looking back at those goals you set, looking back at those commitments that you made to change something about your social media and do something with it. If that means that you are going to do something, and this is what I really hope it is if you're not doing is already, looking at your numbers regularly, checking those insights, paying attention to those numbers so that you can see if those changes you're making are working. One of the biggest reasons people stop doing something is they're like, "I don't even know if this is working." Well, first of all, look at whether you've given it enough time to work. Two Facebook Lives is not enough time to know whether Facebook Live works for you or not, okay? It's just not. And number two, make sure you looked at the numbers before you started, and make sure you look at the numbers on the regular now, because they're gonna tell you if things are working. I can tell you that going live once a week since the beginning of the year is absolutely working. You know why? Because I'm seeing an increase in traffic to my site. I'm seeing an increase in new members. I'm seeing the impact made on my business from people telling me they're watching live. I'm seeing my view numbers go up. I'm seeing my viewers are staying longer. I'm seeing my engagement sort of fluctuate back and forth, but I'm still seeing the traffic drive and the members join and the sign-ups happen for the free stuff that I'm promoing. So I know it's working, even if I feel like, "Well, nobody actually watched live today," or, "Nobody commented today." Well, guess what? They did take action, though. They did sign up for that training. They did join us backstage. They did listen the podcast, whatever it was that I was talking about on that episode. So if I didn't look at those numbers, I wouldn't see that it really is working. So stay committed to whatever goal you set. Stay committed to taking action, and continually be measuring those results. And guess what, guys? In some cases, it will be that it's not working, and then it's okay to make a change. But making a change doesn't mean throwing everything out, it means "Well, you know what? I've been going live, and it's not clicking in the way I want it to. Maybe I'm going to start going live on Tuesdays instead of Thursdays, or in the evening instead of in the morning, or flip that around, because guess what, guys? That depends on who your audience is. It depends on when they're online, it depends on when they're available, and it depends on how you're executing your Live. Maybe it's not working because you haven't included a single call to action in a Live you've done all year. I'm seeing that and absolutely seeing that mistake made. I'm guilty of it from time to time. I'll get so excited to provide value and share something that just happened that I'll forget to say, "Click the episode. Check out the training. Join us backstage." Whatever the call to action is that episode. So make sure you're doing those things, but make sure most of all that you're being consistent. All right? All right. That's our episode for today. Again, if you want to be in the know of what's happening, not only strategy-wise, but what's happening on the networks, there were some changes that we talked about inside of Hit the Mike Backstage. Instagram is a great example, sort of a bonus thing you need to know, Instagram has now got a slideshow option for your Instagram photos. You can do up to 10 photos in like a little gallery kind of thing. If you want to know about that stuff first, Hit the Mic Backstage knows about it first, so hitthemicbackstage.com to join us.  Resources Join us inside Hit the Mic Backstage Hootsuite Review Buffer Review eClincher Review Edgar Review Sedible Review Co-Schedule Review Connect with Me Connect with me on Facebook Tweet with me and include #HittheMic Be sure to leave your review on iTunes or Stitcher for a shoutout on a future show

Welcome to Episode 338 of Hit the Mic with The Stacey Harris. Wrapping up February we're going to talk one more Facebook ads episode. Full disclosure, this will not be the last episode we ever have on Facebook ads because this is literally a humongous topic. Just the last one for right now, we're wrapping up February. I want to talk about some Facebook ads mistakes. These are the three most common and, in my opinion, the most fatal Facebook ads mistakes you can be making. I'm not saying you necessarily are making them but maybe a friend is and you want to tell them about this. We're going to break this down. I want to keep today really short and sweet because I want you guys to take some action on this stuff. I'm going to make this really, really quick and dirty. Are you ready? Well, maybe not dirty but quick. Let's kick off with my biggest Facebook pet peeve. Okay, that's a soapbox. If you know me at all you know what's coming. Boosted posts. Yes, the boost button is easy, it's right there. Facebook tells you all the time, "This post is doing so well you should tell more people about it. Here, here, here, hit the boost button. All the cool kids are doing it." Just say no, just say no. Now, the boost button can be fantastic if you have a goal in mind for that boosted post. If you have set a custom audience before and so you have somebody specific that you can send that boosted post to. However, most of you who hit the boost ... Okay, let's say this. Most people who hit the boost button are doing it because they're afraid of the ads manager or because they don't know what to do but somebody told them Facebook ads were a good idea. They're sick of their reach being nothing and so they hit the button. Then they spend 10, 20, 50, 100 bucks and they don't actually know what impact it had. Mostly because they don't know what impact they were hoping it would have outside of people seeing it. That can lead to frustration, wasted dollars, and deciding that Facebook ads just don't work which is simply not true. If you're going to use the boost button know why and know who. Why are you hitting the button is our call to action in there. Do you want people to engage in the comments? Do you want to drive traffic or something? Why are you hitting the boost button? Then know who's going to see it. Have you built a custom audience with your email list? Do you want to send it to your page likes? Even if you're sending it to your page likes make sure you fill out that demo information of age, gender, and location because, guess what, there are tons of people who like your Facebook page who are not actually in your target market, who are not actually in your ideal client avatar. We don't care if they see the post. We care if the right people see the post. Make sure that you are filling out that targeting information when you set the budget and boost the post. Do not just hit the boost button and say, "Well, I run a Facebook ads now, that's so exciting." No, that's not exciting. I want you to run good Facebook ads, okay? That's number one. Number two, and we talked about this in the last two episodes, you have no budget or you have no call to action or you have no clear idea of who you're talking to. I'm kind of lumping this one all into one because we have kind of touched on it in the last few episodes. Being unclear with any one part of the strategy behind your Facebook ads is going to leave you leaving money on the table. I don't want that to happen. I don't want to see you saying, "Stacey, I spent $200 on Facebook ads and nothing happened. You said that they were going to work and they don't work." They don't work when you don't know who you're talking to, when you don't know what you want them to do, and you don't know how much you're going to spend. What happens is then you go, "I'm just going to do $20 a day, that's fine." $400 later you're like, "What happened?" Set your budget, know who you want to see it. Guess what? That who you want to see it may not be everyone who likes your page, may not be everyone on your email list. It might be a look alike audience to your email list to help you grow your Facebook likes. It might be you are targeting people who have been to a sales page before and you want to say, "Hey, hey, hey. You didn't buy that but there's this." It won't necessarily be the same group for every ad. I'll be honest with you, when we run ads we run them to several different groups with varying posts so that we can hit whoever it is we need to hit with different kinds of copy. If you are on my email list or you like the page you're not necessarily going to see the same ad that somebody who is not at all familiar with me, like a look alike audience is going to see. Know who it is you're targeting with each ad set and, big picture, how that all fits together.  Okay? That's number two, you're unclear on any one part of your strategy; budgeting, targeting, any of that. Call to actions, tell them what to do, guys, just please, just tell them what to do. Number three, you take a set it and forget it attitude to Facebook ads. Now, Facebook ads has rolled out some really cool stuff, we talked about it earlier this month with these automated rules. If you haven't joined us on Facebook Live this month you've probably not yet heard me talking about this. This is why you should check out those Facebook Lives that I've been doing. I will actually link in the show notes to the Facebook Live where we talked about this specific change. We also covered it inside of Hit the Mic Backstage in our training we did this month, all around what you need to know with Facebook ads right now. This is a really cool thing because it is allowing us to be a little less hands on than we have been in the past as far as obsessively watching our Facebook ads. Once you start a campaign and you have a few ad sets and you have different ads, you need to pay attention to how are these performing. Quite often I'll have three to five ads inside of an ad set. By the end of the first 48 hours I can turn off two of those ads because they're just not performing as well. I run into a situation where I have five ad sets in a campaign and two ad sets are just killing me, they are just not performing at all. I can turn off those ad sets. There's no reason for me to spend that money if they're not performing. Don't set it and forget it. Some of you are taking this a step further and literally never looking at it. One of the things I want you to put on your calendar whenever you start a new ad campaign is when the end date of that ad campaign is and the next day I want you to put time on your calendar and go and review that campaign. You're actually going to dig through the stats, the conversions, the clicks. Who saw the ad, how they engaged with it, if they did convert or not, how it increased your Facebook likes, if that's the case. Whatever it is that's happening I want you to review that. If one campaign did better than another campaign or one ad set performed better than another ad set. If ad B did really well for set A then pay attention to what ads are connecting with which different audiences. That's going to help you make more educated decisions in the future. Hands down, for me the biggest mistake we're making in Facebook ads is not learning from them. Not paying attention to what happened during the campaign, not paying attention to what happens once we wrap the campaign so we can make better decisions in the future based on the information that is right in front of us. Okay? All right. Again, this is our last of our February series, All Around Facebook Ads. I had a great time talking ads with you. I hope this month helped. If you have more questions, and I am almost certain you do, Hit the Mic Backstage is the place to be. Like I said, we had that brand new training this month where we talked about what you need to know about with Facebook ads right now. We just re-launched the Facebook ads trainings inside of the Facebook guide which is set inside Hit the Mic Backstage. Not only that, well we have the private community where you can get my eyes on your numbers, on your ads, on your offerings, on your opt-in pages. You can ask me, "Hey, this isn't working and I don't know why." Guess what, sometimes it's not the ad so much as it's the landing page. We can talk through that in the private community. That is your access to me, my expertise, my opinions, all of that good stuff. We sure to join us, hitthemicbackstage.com. I will see you backstage. Resources Join us inside Hit the Mic Backstage Connect with Me Connect with me on Facebook Tweet with me and include #HittheMic Be sure to leave your review on iTunes or Stitcher for a shoutout on a future show

Welcome to episode 337 of Hit the Mic with The Stacey Harris. Continuing our February theme with Facebook ads, I want to talk today about setting your budget and I want to highlight a couple of expenses that maybe we don't consider when we're looking at a Facebook ads budget because sometimes things pop up that we don't think about. I want to highlight some of those things, and why they need to be factored into your overall budget. One of the most common questions I get is how much should my Facebook ads budget be? We talked a little bit about budgets last week when we talked about should you be using Facebook ads as part of your launch and I want to touch on this briefly. There is no right answer to what your Facebook ads should be. There is no, it has to be XYZ or you won't be successful. What happens though is your Facebook ads budget is going to dictate the other things you do as far as how many different campaigns you run, or how many different ad sets you run or where you run them or for how long you run them, to what kind of audience you run your ads to and how big the targeting range is for your ads. There is no magic number as you have a higher budget, you will probably get more results. Not necessarily better results, but more, not because one budget's better than the other, but because you have more to spend so that you can do it for longer and you can reach more people and things like that. That's something to consider but there's not one magic answer to what your Facebook ads budget should be. The biggest thing you need to remember is that when your Facebook ads budget is any size, you have to pay attention to the targeting because no matter how much you're spending, if you want to be spending smart, you have to be speaking to the right people. You have to be targeting to your audience. That's where going back to the drawing board and knowing exactly who it is you're talking to is mission critical. If you're skipping that step, you're leaving a lot of money on the table. Now before I go any further down this rabbit hole of budgets and targeting and things of that nature, I want to highlight a couple of places where you may be spending money that you don't realize needs to be part of that budget. The big one is graphics. If you're hiring someone to create graphics or you're paying for a graphics tool or you're buying stock photos, all of that needs to be considered because, guess what, your Facebook ads graphic, it matters. It needs to be eye-catching. It needs to be something relevant. It needs to be something that's going to get me to stop and read that text. Read that copy, because the more text that's on there, the less the ad is delivered. Now that used to be actually a hard rule on Facebook where you couldn't have more than a certain percentage of text. You may remember the 20% rule. However now you can have as much text as you like, however it will impact the delivery rate of your ad. For example, if you have an ad with a lot of text, maybe 50% of the graphic total, it will be delivered less frequently than something with no text at all. I tend to find that I have the most success when my ads have very little to absolutely no text on them. I kind of let the graphics speak for itself and then really take advantage of the copy that's under the graphic with the headline and that little bit of text and of course the copy in the ad itself. I've found the most success with that. Then you don't have to worry about a delivery issue with too much text. Think about that. It's something to consider. But if you're going to use text, you're going to want to use text in a very smart way and you're going to want this graphic to look good. You're going to be spending money for people to see it, so you might consider hiring a graphic designer. If that's the case, it needs to be factored into your ads budget, because, guess what? It's part of the cost of that and so if you have an overall marketing budget, that's going to be pulling from that budget so pay attention to what that number is. The other unexpected ad expense that isn't as common as that one is a copywriter. If you have somebody actually writing your ads for you or you would like to have somebody writing your ads for you, you need to factor that into your budget because that's going to be an investment. Notice I didn't use the word expense? I did use the word investment especially if you're hiring a copywriter who has experience writing ads, who is well-versed in this space. Then it's an investment because it's going to help, especially if it's something that you are not particularly skilled at. Absolutely if that's an investment you want to make, go for it. Find the right person, but go for it, but factor it into your budget. The third place where you might want to look at making this a part of your budget is if you are going to outsource. Not necessarily just outsourcing from the perspective of actually hiring someone to run the ads. Actually hiring a Facebook ads expert to create and monitor the entire campaign, but also if you're getting any Facebook ads coaching. This is something I have done a lot with clients, one-on-one, sort of on a one offer, a few off kind of set up, where we talk through creating the ads together. We talk through the targeting, we talk through ad placement. We talk through copy. We talk about how and what audiences and what ads to turn off and what ads to keep going. We do that because they know how to do it but they need a little guidance and they want a second opinion. That's a really great way to get the help you need as well. It doesn't have to be you full on handing it over to somebody, because a lot of times folks that you'll hire to run an ad campaign will require a certain minimum budget and may be outside of what you are comfortable investing in. Not just from an ad campaign but in actually outsourcing to them. Sometimes finding somebody who you can sit down with and get some one-on-one time, talk through some things, especially if you're comfortable with the actual execution, can be really helpful and really beneficial. Look at that, but again, that's got to be part of your budget. That's three things that could really sneak into your budget and next thing you know you don't actually don't have any money left to run ads. Pay attention to that. Again that's graphic designer, a copywriter, and outsourcing any sort of campaign running. Again all three of those are investments, not expenses. You will likely see dividends from that. You will likely see some increased ad goodness from that. They're not required but they're not a bad idea either. They just need to be considered in your budget. Okay? Let's talk again about what our budget means for different ways to run ads. If you're running an ad to just general list build, maybe you want to run ads to a piece of content or to an opt-in and you want to run these ads all the time. Then you're going to want to have a monthly budget for just that ad. Now if you're in a launch period where now you're launching a program and you're wanting some webinars, you may not necessarily want to be running that other ad all the time unless it feeds to the same end result, the same program. If you are going to run them at the same time, you need to factor in what that monthly cost is and what the promo for the launch budget is. On the flip side if you are running an ad for retargeting, meaning you are targeting an ad to people who've already been to a website or are already on a certain email list, so these are warm leads, that budget can actually be a little bit smaller because you're speaking to a smaller group of people. However, realize that you may end up paying a little bit more per click for them because you do have a smaller group and you're asking them to take a specific action. Generally with me for retargeting ads, we're retargeting straight to a sales page so the conversion amount may be more than when I'm running an ad to say a free opt-in because again, when I'm running an ad to a free opt-in that conversion is when they sign up and get on my list. When I'm running an ad to a paid program, which again I would only do to a warm audience, so like a retargeting ad or like an ad targeted to my email list. Even my Facebook likes, I don't tend to run a paid offer to them unless it's really, really no brainer like, if I'm running a promo for the trial for Hit the Mic Backstage or something like that. Generally if I'm running something to a sales page that's full on like the membership or a program, like when we had Social Pro last year, something like that. The only ads I'm running are to my email list and even that's a set section of my email list and people who've been to the sales page and haven't purchased. Again, the conversion cost may be higher, but it also is more valuable so there's that. Pay attention to that. That's one place where you can run with a smaller budget because you're not going to have as much traffic there as you do when you're running an ad to an email, opt-in, and a cold audience. That's something to think about when you're talking about setting your budget is how is it going to be divvied up for maximum results. You're going to want to put more in that column for the top of the funnel and where you're getting people through the middle, sort of towards the end of the funnel you can set that budget a little bit smaller because less people are going to get there. Now if you have any more questions about this, the best place to be to talk about your budget, your goals, your needs then it's time for you to join me inside of Hit The Mic Backstage because that is what the private community in there is for. It's for you to get feedback from me and some real talk. I'm ready for you to join us back there. I hope you're ready to join us back there, backstage that is. If you are ready and I have a feeling you are, head over to hitthemicbackstage.com. In addition to that private forum where you can get my feedback, we also do have the newly revamped all new videos inside of the Rock Star Guide to Facebook, which lives ... It's a whole six module Facebook program, inside of Hit the Mic Backstage. Totally, totally part of the membership. Free to our members and totally up to date because I spent all of January recording it. Including an entire module on Facebook ads. Including six new videos. We talk about custom audiences. We talk about boosting posts. Ads manager. Power editor. The pixel. All of that stuff. The pixel's going to be what helps us with the retargeting so that's a really important module or really important video. Check that out inside at hitthemicbackstage.com. That is the place to be to get the latest, the greatest and everything you need to know when it comes to social media and content marketing in 2017. I will see you backstage. Resources Join us inside Hit the Mic Backstage Connect with Me Connect with me on Facebook Tweet with me and include #HittheMic Be sure to leave your review on iTunes or Stitcher for a shoutout on a future show

Welcome to episode 336 of Hit the Mic with The Stacey Harris. As promised at the end of last week's episode, I'm keying off a whole series of three Facebook Ads-related podcasts. We're going to start today with one of the fundamental questions, which is, "Should you even be using Facebook Ads as part of your launch?" I want to bring this up because, A, I know a lot of you are launching, a lot of my clients are launching. We've been doing a lot of one-on-one calls with people who are going through launches and who want Facebook Ads advice. We know that this is a massive time of launching. We're a little bit into the new year now, it's time to stretch your legs. Get those things that you've been working on creating rolling out. That's awesome. I'm so excited because I love seeing what you guys are creating and offering. The question then comes up, "Should you even bother with Facebook Ads?" Most often this question comes up because of budget. That's where I want to start with. A lot of people ask me, "Well, I only have X amount of dollars to spend." Maybe it's $100, maybe it's $500, maybe it's $1000, is that really enough to run Facebook Ads? Here's the reality is, yes. $100, $500, and $1000 are all enough to run Facebook Ads. You do not have to have a $10,000 budget to run a successful ad campaign. Here's the caveat, though. Your successful ad campaign is going to look different than somebody who has a $10,000 budget. Also, your targeting is going to need to look different. You cannot the target the same size group when you have a $100 as when you have $10,000. You just can't. You have to be more specific. You have to be really, really tight with your targeting. You're not going to get 5,000 people on your list for $100. Make sure that you're paying attention to your expectations. Make sure you're paying attention to your targeting. Don't let budget stop you from creating an ad campaign. You can absolutely run a successful campaign with a small lower budget. That's really, for me, in my opinion, that's really one of the biggest benefits of Facebook Ads, is that you can run a successful campaign at any budget. It really does, it allows you to do things on another level that we haven't always had the opportunity to in the past. When we think about advertising days gone by, when the extensive advertising was billboards and commercials and things like that. Yeah, no, $100 budget is not going to get you real far. However, in the land of social media, $100 budget will get you a whole lot further than it would in traditional media. Yes, even if you have a small budget, you can absolutely run a Facebook Ad campaign. Here's the thing, though. You need to pay attention to that targeting and to the goal. Be really, really clear about how you're spending that budget. For me, when we have clients who have really, really small budgets, let's say $100. One of the things we'll do is instead of running an ad campaign to a cold audience created through interests and things like that, we will run an ad to a lookalike audience with half of our budget. Then we'll run a retargeting ad with the other half of the budget. Now, $50 will not get you a ton of opt-ins. However, will you then talk about a retargeting ad to your email list, to the people who have been on the page before. You start to get narrower and narrower with those warm leads, you're able to do a little bit more. We'll actually run retargeting ads to people who have been on the list and spent time on the website. Saying, "Hey, here's the opportunity that we're giving you," whatever the offer is, and actually go right for the sale from there with that other half of the budget. That has been really, really powerful for maximizing the profitability of a small budget. However, if you're just looking for straight up list growth, you want to get people on a challenge or a webinar or whatever, and you're confident that you can sell them there without a retargeting ad, and you want to throw all of your money at the beginning. Again, your target's got to be solid. You have to know exactly who you want to get in front of. You're not running ads to men and women all over the world between the ages of 18 and 65, and hoping that it shakes out. No. You're going to be out of your budget in a matter of minutes. Okay, that might be a slight exaggeration. You're going to blow your budget really quickly and to a really, really unqualified audience. Run the ad to people who are going to care. Build a custom audience, build a lookalike audience. Things like that are going to get a lot, a lot farther. Okay? All right. Number two thing to consider is really your expertise. If you're somebody who has no idea what they're doing in Facebook Ads, it just freaks you out. You're not comfortable, you want no part of it. First of all, why are you not at Hit the Mic Backstage because that will help a lot. Number two, then no, don't worry about running ads during your launch. Focus in on your content marketing, your affiliate marketing, your networking, your speaking, whatever other pieces your doing. Your organic social media, whatever other pieces you are using to fill your program, your client list, whatever it is that you're selling, you're launching, use those. Don't worry about Facebook Ads because in all likelihood, you're probably going to spend quite a bit of money and get very little results. You just simply don't know what you're doing. That's okay. That doesn't make you bad, it doesn't make you dumb, it doesn't make you ... You can have a successful launch without running Facebook Ads. It is possible. It's just going to look different. You got to make up that space other places. If it's something you're totally uncomfortable with, especially if this is the first time you're launching this program, or the first time you're launching at all. Then, no, don't worry about Facebook Ads. They are not required for program sales success. They are not required for launch success. You can absolutely find the results you want without them. You just have to hustle in other ways. Okay? The other side of that is if you're completely uncomfortable with the idea of creating ads, you've no idea what you're doing, and you have a decent size budget, instead of throwing the money at the ads yourself, hire someone to help you. Hire a consultant, a social media strategist, a Facebook Ads expert. Somebody who knows what they're doing to maximize your budget, if your budget allows that. That's a great way to get the results without having to know all the stuff. Without having to be comfortable on Facebook Ads. If that's something you're interested in doing, connect with me, I have a whole list of recommendations for you, people who do a killer job with this stuff. All right? All right. Again, if this is something you're completely uncomfortable with right now, and you want to do it, join us backstage. That's what that space is for, okay? The thing I want to wrap up with is really that if you are saying you can't do Facebook Ads because of one of the two reasons I mentioned, your budget's too small, or you have no idea what you're doing. No. Not excuses. You can absolutely have success with a small budget. There are ways around not knowing what you're doing. Learning, outsourcing, there you go. On the flip side, Facebook Ads are not required to be successful. They are not required to see any real results. They do not have to be part of your strategy. Now, do I encourage them? Do I use them? Have I been successful with them? Yes to all of those questions. I think Facebook Ads are fantastic. It's one of the best paid advertising opportunities for solopreneurs, and micro business owners like you and me. Absolutely, but they're not required. You don't have to do anything. Okay? Don't get stuck on this idea that you won't see results if you don't do this, because it's simply not true. Okay? Okay. If you want to learn more about Facebook Ads, the best, best, best first step is to go to thestaceyharris.com/episode336, scroll all the way down to the bottom of the page. There is a image there that you'll see that says, "Facebook Guide and Checklist." Click on that, put in your email address, and I will deliver that to you. You will also have the opportunity to take advantage of a $1, 7-day trial and to Hit the Mic Backstage. I would encourage you to take that opportunity, if for no other reason then you can use that seven days to ask me questions in the community. Watch the brand new Facebook Ads training videos we have inside of the Facebook Guide, which sits inside of Hit the Mic Backstage. You don't have to stay on after the seven days. You don't like it. It's not a fit. You've gotten what you need from it, fantastic. Send us an email, we'll cancel it. You won't renew. You love it, you want to stay, you want to be a part of this community, that makes me super happy. You will automatically renew at the regular membership price. Okay? It really is that simple and that really is the next best step for finding a way to make Facebook Ads work for you. Okay? Okay. I feel like I've said okay a lot this episode, so I'm going to go. I will see you backstage. Resources Join us inside Hit the Mic Backstage Connect with Me Connect with me on Facebook Tweet with me and include #HittheMic Be sure to leave your review on iTunes or Stitcher for a shoutout on a future show

Welcome to episode 335 of Hit the Mic with The Stacey Harris. It is the first Tuesday of the month which means three things you must know about social media this month is what's happening today. We are going to break down the three things I want you to know in February 2017, some of these things are updates with networks, some of these things are going to be relevant to you no matter what month it is, because I want you to pay attention to some things as you're moving into the middle of the first quarter of this lovely new year. Let's jump right in. Number one, and this is one of those things that I want you to remind yourself of every month, stay consistent. February is notoriously the time where we have all long-since ditched our New Year's Resolutions. However, this is also really, really true for those goals and commitments you made in January for your marketing for this year. You said this is the year I'm going to get visible. This is the year I'm going to be consistent. This is the year I'm going to do "whatever" when it comes to your social media. Here it is February and maybe, just maybe, you're falling off the track a little bit. You have let go of some of that steam and momentum you had coming out of December into January, and you're just not being consistent. I'm seeing this already a lot with Facebook lives. I know a lot of you emailed me at the end of last year and the beginning of this year and said, "Oh hey, I'm going to totally stay consistent. I'm going to do weekly, daily, twice weekly," whatever it was, Facebook lives. "I'm going to go live and provide that content, and I'm going to repurpose it," and so on and so forth. No more. Here we are in February and a lot of you have done one or two, maybe even three Facebook lives and now you're kind of like, "Eh, I just don't have enough time, I just can't," whatever. Here's the deal guys, just like any other thing ... eating healthy, exercising, learning a new skill ... you have to stay with it until it's a habit. You're not going to see results the first three times you do it. I always think about this when I'm at the gym and I'm doing something new and I'm like, "This sucks and I don't want to," but I still don't want to the third time. By the third time I've done it, I'm not suddenly super thin and super buff. That's not what's happening. The same is true for your Facebook lives. You are not yet really in a habit to do it, and you're probably not seeing massive earth-shaking results just yet. You might even be one of the people who have emailed me and said, "You know, I'm just not getting a lot of people to show up live." Okay, I want you to push through that because here's the thing ... you've done it three times. You've given them no reason to expect you to consistently show up forever and ever ... okay, maybe not forever and ever, but over and over again. I want you and I challenge you to look at the replay stuff. Look at the comments you're getting in your replay. My guess is you're probably getting a lot of engagement of views there because people just haven't caught on live. That's okay. You're just using the live time to create the content and if you get the engagement, awesome. You might not always, and you certainly probably won't ... that was a terrible sentence structure ... you very likely won't in the first three times you do it. Keep going, stay consistent. The same is true if you're starting to post on new networks or you're trying different ad strategies or you're adjusting something with your opt-in. Stay consistent, get consistent if you haven't been consistent, and stay with it. Stay in the room, keep doing the work, it will pay off. One of the things I try and remind myself all the time when it comes to these kind of things is the business I have right now is the result of the marketing I did three to six months ago. I learned this lesson over and over and over again, but it's absolutely true. The business I have right now is the result of the marketing I did three to six months ago. If you're three in and you're not seeing epic, earth-shattering results from whatever change you've made, you probably won't for another month or two. Stay with it, okay? Stay with it, stay consistent. Number two Facebook lives, in that same vein, have gotten a big update. We can now go live right from your desktop meaning you no longer need to use your mobile device to do it. This is a really, really cool update. I'm really excited to see them rolling this out because I think there are a lot of people who were really freaked out by the idea of doing it on their device because they were worried about the quality with running on wifi, maybe their wifi's not so hot, or their service isn't great, or they didn't know what to do with their phone. They didn't want to buy a tripod or whatever. It's just going to make it that much easier for you to do a high quality Facebook live broadcast and deliver value to your audience. You'll see this option below your status update box on your page. As of the recording of this they're still rolling it out, not everyone has it yet. I'm hoping by the time you hear this that has changed, but they are rolling it out relatively slowly as Facebook tends to do, because when you have a bazillion- I'm just going to pretend that's a real number- users, you got to roll it out a little bit slower. If you don't have it yet be patient, you will have it soon. Again, this is going to be on your page and your profile. One thing to remember though guys, pay attention to this, if you're doing a Facebook live to market, to provide content that relates to your business, to leads, to profits, it needs to happen on your page, not your profile. Although it's exciting that it's coming out to pages and profiles, I'll be honest, the likelihood that I'm ever going to go live on my profile is pretty much zero because there's no value for me there from a business perspective which is, as you probably know, the only reason I use Facebook. Be sure that if you are using your profile it's for personal stuff, if you're using your page it's for business stuff and that you're going live using the desktop feature if you haven't, because that's super cool. If you have questions about that, you want to know more about it, hit us up inside Hit the Mic Backstage, we are talking all about live content all of the time in there because it's something that Facebook is changing and evolving really quickly. I also have updated the Facebook guide that sits inside Hit the Mic Backstage, which includes entire training on using it to go live. Check that out. Number three, the final thing, what we're going to wrap up this episode on, is ads. I know a lot of you have settled into the new year and you're launching programs and things like that, and you're probably seeing a lot of ads for programs right now. We're just in one of those phases where it feels like a lot of people are launching, a lot of big people are launching, and it can feel really impossible to stand up against that, to get seen amongst that. Take a step back, remember to keep an eye on your game, and really focus your ads on your audience. Make sure that your audience is clear. I don't mean like, they're clear on who you are but I mean, you're clear on who they are so that you can be doing the right targeting because that's one of the biggest mistakes I'm seeing. We're going to talk a lot, a lot, a lot about Facebook ads this month because so many of you are launching. In fact, I'm looking at my schedule and we're really probably going to talk about Facebook ads in one way or another for the rest of this month. You can also check out the Facebook ads checklist which is right at the bottom of the show notes page for this episode, so if you go to TheStaceyHarris.com/Episode335 you'll see it. I really, really, really, really, really, really want you guys to make sure you're doing ads the right way so that's why we're going to spend a ton of time talking about it. That's why I just spent a ton of time updating the training inside of Hit the Mic Backstage all around ads. In fact it's not just one training, it's an entire module inside of the guide which consists of I think five trainings total. Pay attention to this. If you're going to be running ads make sure you're clear on your targeting, make sure you're clear on your budget, make sure you are giving them a clear call to action, make sure you're putting the ads in the right places as the right times and not trying to broadcast to everybody all of the time in the hopes that it lands somewhere. I really want to see you guys executing ads the right away and again, that's why we're going to spend so much time this month talking about ads. That's why we've got that free checklist for you and guide, and that's why we have the massive overhaul on the trainings inside of the Backstage community. If you really are ready to up-level your ads or you really want to see success with your launch and running some ads for that launch, come in and check that out. Again, HittheMicBackstage.com is where you'll join us for that. I'm super excited for this month because of the ads talk, because I know again a lot of you are getting ready to launch and I want you to be super clear on what's happening. Again, just for today, I want you guys to make sure you've got three things totally on point. You're clear on your budget, you're clear on your goals, and you're clear on your target audience. If you can be clear on those three things you will be far and away ahead of a whole lot of people creating ads. Again, make sure you're clear on those three things. All right? All right. Thank you for listening, I've had a great time with you. It's time for me to go now though. I want to encourage you to join us inside of Hit the Mic Backstage because we are doing a lot of talk about ads. In fact, we are going live next week to talk about Facebook ads and what you need to know now when it comes to Facebook ads. We just revamped the trainings inside the Facebook guide, all around Facebook but specifically ads for sure. Check that stuff out. Again it's HittheMicBackstage.com, and I will see you Backstage. Resources Join us inside Hit the Mic Backstage Connect with Me Connect with me on Facebook Tweet with me and include #HittheMic Be sure to leave your review on iTunes or Stitcher for a shoutout on a future show

Welcome to episode 333 of Hit the Mic with The Stacey Harris. Today we're answering a question I get all the time, the "how often" question. We're going to talk about how often you should be creating content, because it really hinges on three other questions. There is not, contrary to what Pinterest infographics may tell you, one perfect answer to this question. It really depends on the answers to a few other questions. We're going to go through those questions so that you can figure out the answer for you because, guess what, guys, it might be different than the answer for me. Just like my answer now is different than my answer was a year ago or two years ago or three years ago when we started this show. As you might know, we moved from two episodes a week to one episode a week moving into 2017. It's been a little weird because I created 300 and something episodes of the show going twice a week for three years, almost four years, so it's a little strange still, I'll be honest, but again, it became about, what is the answer to these questions. That's why I wanted to present this to you, because this answer might even be different for you now than it was before. Go through this. Remember there's not one right answer to this question. If you say, "Well, you know, you do episode once a week, maybe that's what I should do." No, not necessarily. Okay, so let's jump in. First things first, real talk, guys, your schedule. If you are currently doing the side hustle thing, then committing to doing five blog posts, podcast episodes, videos, whatever it is, a week, is going to be really, really, really difficult. Even if you're full time, it's still going to be really difficult. Five episodes a week is a lot. Five pieces of valuable content a week is a lot, so that might feel impossible to you, then that's not the best place to start. Or maybe you have gone full time but you have the content to do more than once a month. That may feel like just not enough for you. Great, if your schedule allows you to do more, do more. Factor in, first and foremost, what is your schedule? When do you have the time and space to create value? One little thing I want you to notice about that statement is, I didn't say to create content. I said, to create value. If you say, "Oh, well I can absolutely bust out six or seven blog posts a day, no problem, easy breezy." How much value are you going to be able to find in that content when you're busting out six or seven pieces a day? Not a lot. Certainly if you're doing that five days a week. It's tough. Now, full disclosure, I do tend to do four-ish episodes of these when I record them, but I don't do that every day, I do that every few weeks. I'm trying to get to a point where I'm doing this once a month where I record four weeks of podcasts in a day. That, A, it took me time to get there, B, I know the answer to a lot of other questions, so it's easier for me to create content. Also, C, it's the structure I've built that allows me to do that. I'm not creating that every day. Make sure there's value in there, okay. How much valuable content can you currently create in your schedule? Now, if you say, "Oh, well, I can absolutely do once a month." Do once a month. That's totally okay. Maximize that content, really use that content in as many ways as you can. I would rather see you honestly putting out one spectacular piece of content a month that you repurpose and you reuse and you promote the bejeezus out of, than eight half hearted pieces of content a month because you go twice a week, absolutely. First things first, what does your schedule allow? Number two, how much content is your audience consuming? This actually was one that I had to get really, really comfortable with at the end of 2016 when I was thinking about my marketing plans, content, social media, email, in person, everything for 2017. As I was laying out those content plans and marketing plans I was realizing that to do some of the new things I wanted to do, I was going to be adding a lot of extra content. For example, we've ruled out weekly lives, so we're going live once a week now, which I absolutely love doing, but when you figure out that, "Okay, I'm going to go live once a week. I've got two podcasts a week. We want to do this guest post. We want to do this LinkedIn Publisher post. I was putting out essentially four to six pieces of content per week, which is spectacular. It's great, it's all valuable. A lot of it's repurposed, awesome. It's a lot to promote, it's a lot to give my audience to consume, and it's a lot from an audience perspective for them to consume. I don't want people to spend all of their time consuming my free content. From a business perspective, the next logical step to Hit the Mic, you know we're all about transparency here so this is going to be a really transparent sentence, the next logical step, as I've set it up, to Hit the Mic, if you enjoy this podcast, is Hit the Mic Backstage, it's this podcast plus, it is this podcast with more detailed trainings, one on one access to me. It's this podcast even better. Here's the deal, if I give you guys so much free content to consume, you'll never make it back there. That's just a straight up real transparent sentence, okay? Think about how much content your audience is consuming. Are you going to overwhelm them by giving them too much to consume? That's a big reason we stepped back to only one, because also there is such a library of episodes to listen to. Now, full disclosure, I have zero interest in you going back and listening to episode one of this show, because, a, I don't think it's as awesome as this episode is. I like to believe that I am getting better every episode. I cannot bear the idea of even me going to listen to episode number one. Also, episode number one, if I remember correctly, is about Facebook Ads. It's three years old now, which means it's outdated. I don't think anyone's going to go through and sort of like, "I'm going to start at the beginning." However, with that said, there's still a huge library of content for people to dig through already there. It made sense for me to say, "Hey, my audience has a lot. My audience is doing a lot of consuming already. If I want to add more things, I'm going to need to make sure that I am taking some of these things out. I'm going to need to make sure that what's here is here for a reason. What's here is providing value. Because if it's not, then it's not serving anybody's goal and that's not going to be valuable and it's not going to be useful." Again, we come back to this place of value, we come back to this place of purpose. Think about your audience and how much they have to consume and how much they're willing to consume, all right? Number three, we've talked about your schedule, we've talked about your audience and their consumption style. Next let's talk about your funnel. Like I mentioned, kind of briefly in the last one, for me, Hit the Mic Backstage is a logical next step to this show. It is this show plus. I want to make sure that the purpose of this show is to get you from here to there. Now, there are a lot of you who don't need that and who want to just listen to this show and that's absolutely wonderful and listen away and I appreciate you listening. There are also a lot of you who are saying, "Really? That's what Hit the Mic Backstage is? I'm going to go check that out right now." To you, I say, "Welcome backstage." There's also a large section of people who are like, "I don't know, there's just so much here. Can I really ... Do I have time to go there and add that and blah, blah, blah, and I love the podcast and I want to listen to the podcast and blah, blah, blah, blah." You've now shut down. I know that third audience, because that's how I am with a lot of pieces of content, that's how I am with a lot of people. That's the other reason we have pulled back a little. We have replaced that Friday episode with other pieces of content, absolutely, but I'm not just continuing to add more, because again, I don't want my audience to fit into overwhelm because that's going to get them to jump out of the funnel. Where does your free content sit in your funnel? What is the goal? What is the purpose from a marketing standpoint, of your content? I would rather have less frequency and more targeted, more focused, more specific content that gets you guys to the logical next step of the funnel if that's a step you need to take. Now, if that's not a step you need to take, that's fine. Listen to the show, I love you, we're great, cool, thanks, welcome, thanks for being a part of the community, welcome to the community, whatever. For those who backstage is the solution, for those who are like, "Yes, thank you. I want it. I need it. Take my money." I want to make that solution easy. I want to make that answer easy. I want to make that answer obvious. This content needs to be really serving up that next goal, and so when you're looking at, what does your content frequency need to be, you have to to look at your goals. Because you're not creating content for the sake of content. You're not creating content for funsies. You're not creating content because, you know, well that's the thing to do. No, you're creating it because you want to help someone solve a problem. The best way, as we've talked about in past episodes, to get them to the solution, is to walk them there, is to guide them there, down the path from problem to solution, and that's all the sales funnel is. Where does your content fit in your sales funnel? By the way, this content can be podcasts, this content can be blog posts, this content can be live video, this content can be prerecorded video, this content could be something from each of those categories. I know for me, it's something from each of those categories. We do weekly live shows, we've got the podcast, the podcast gets repurposed in the blog post, we may be adding, because we're doing some cool stuff back behind the scenes, some more recorded video to the mix, because it's super fun to do and it converts and you guys seem to love it. Whatever it is, whatever piece of content you're creating, I don't care what the type is, it's got to serve a goal in your business and it's got to serve your audience in getting them to their goals from problem to solution. To recap, what does your schedule allow you to create value? How often? How often is your audience available to consume that value? Three, know your goal. Where does it fit in your funnel? If your goal is to get them into a membership site, then daily content might be a little bit of a reach, because guess what, I'm going to be so busy consuming your daily content I have no time to consume your membership content. Pay attention to that, all right? Big note, we are starting today, on the 24th is day one of the three day Launch Your Podcast Challenge. We're going to go Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, we'll have wrap up call on Friday. All of that's going to happen live over on Facebook.com/TheStaceyHarris. If you want to make sure you're getting the emails and you're getting where you need to go and you're launching your podcast now, check out the show notes for this episode, TheStaceyHarris.com/episode333. All the way down at the bottom of the post you'll see a link to the Launch Your Podcast Challenge, get on a list, you'll get the emails. I know this is starting the day this goes live, that's okay, join us anyways, join us over the live streams over on the Facebook page. Even if you don't necessarily want to launch a podcast, if you want to get serious about any kind of content, this is going to help, because we're going to talk about a lot of the fundamentals of planning that, and really getting content that your audience is actually going to want to consume and that's going to solve their problems, it's going to get them again from problem to solution, which is what a sales funnel is for. Okay? What's your content for? I will see you backstage.   Resources Join us inside Hit the Mic Backstage Connect with Me Connect with me on Facebook Tweet with me and include #HittheMic Be sure to leave your review on iTunes or Stitcher for a shoutout on a future show

Welcome to Episode 331 of Hit the Mic with the Stacey Harris. All right, guys. As you know, I just came back from December unplugged ... Okay, so technically I'm not unplugged during December, but I'm not in my office every day. I'm not sitting at my desk. I'm not creating content. I do tend to keep up with my social, although most of what goes out during December, I'll be honest, is scheduled, unless it's sort of an update of what I'm doing. I'm just not in it every day. I'm in vacation mode a bit more. We did really cool stuff over the last four weeks, and if you want to check that out, well then you should've been watching Snapchat and Instagram stories, because that's where all of the fun silliness of those kind of things take place, for future reference. Now, then. Here's the deal. I still had a podcast, technically two, go up every week. My social media went out, things like that, but what I want to talk about is how I'm able to keep my content consistent even when I'm not in content creation mode, even when I'm not actively in my office, at my desk, doing the content creation hustle and all of that day in and day out, so that's what we're going to talk about today, because I want to. Sound good? All right. Let's jump in. Number one, I have a schedule. Yeah, I know. It's not sexy. It's not exciting, but it really is the key to me keeping my content consistent because it allows me to know what I need to say and when I need to say it. It also, from a bigger picture, it's the key to knowing that my content's going to have a purpose. For example, this month we're talking a lot about content and that's because coming up on the 24th, we're going to kick off a three-day launch your podcast challenge. We're talking a lot about content right now. We're talking a lot about podcasting, and a lot of this podcast content will yes, feed information about podcasting, but this same thing is true if you do video, and the same thing is true if you write blog posts. Whatever it is, if you wan to be consistent, you need to schedule it. You need to plan what's going to go out and when it's going to go out, because that is how you can stay on top of it, but here's the other side of scheduling that we don't hear about enough. I'm guessing this isn't the first time you've heard me talk about editorial calendars and scheduling content, much less anyone else in the online marketing space. Here's the difference. I also want you to schedule time to create content. This becomes exponentially more important if you're going to be taking a large amount of time off, so if you know that you want to take December off, or you want to take two weeks off in the summer, or you want to step back during the summer altogether, maybe you want to take June, and July, and August, and just not be as heavily into your business during those months, that's cool. That's your prerogative. You are building a lifestyle, baby, but you need to schedule the time to create that content ahead of time, which means for me, in November, I have entire sections of weeks blocked out to podcast recording. I record for hours at a time getting ready for December. Seriously. Because I know I'm going to be taking that time off. If you want to take off a week or two, you might not need to make as much room to get ahead, but if you're going to be taking off a larger chunk, you're going to have to make sure that a large amount of time is scheduled for you to get that content created ahead of time. When you're looking at your scheduling, don't just schedule the time that you're gone. Okay, this is what I want to go out, but also schedule the time to create it. Personally, really guys, this is one of those things that keeps me on top of my content and consistently getting out quality content all of the time, even when I'm not working, because I do like to be ahead for those times where I take surprise time off, either good or bad reasons for that. I like to make sure I have that stuff ready to go, so I have content creation time on my calendar every single week. Yup, every single week I have time on my calendar to say, "Okay, this is what needs to happen. I'm gonna record one, two, three episodes on this day, whatever it is that needs to be done." Make sure you're scheduling time, not just scheduling topic ideas, all right? Here's the other part of that. Repurpose the content you're creating. When you are spending a ton of time creating content, you want to also find other ways to use it, and we've talked a lot about repurposing content in the last few months, partially because 2017 for me is all about doing more with less. It's all about creating really great content that I can use a lot of ways so that you guys get what you need, so that I can do other things like serve my members, and Hit the Mic Backstage, and do lives, and speak more, and things like that. For me, that's really, really important. It's also how it becomes really easy to take time away from content creation is to repurpose. Maybe you don't post videos for four weeks, but instead you have repurposed your best of content into blog posts, or into audios, or whatever, or ... You know what I mean? You can repurpose that. Maybe you talk about, especially this time a year, best episodes of the previous year, the things you need to know going in. Here's six of the best episodes I did in 2016 that really are going to help you have a better 2017. Something like that. Repurpose that content you've already created, repurpose that value, repackage that value, and make sure that ti's really working for you. That's another really great way to make sure that people are still aware of you, you're still getting out there, you're still giving value, you're still serving your community, even when maybe you're not directly available for vacation or whatever. Again, we're scheduling not only what we're going to create, excuse me, but when we're going to create it, so we're scheduling post topics, and when they need to go out, but we're also scheduling time to create those pieces of content. Again, whatever they are, video, podcasts, blogs, et cetera. We're repurposing. We're taking what we've already got, and we're doing more with it. We're taking the podcasts that we record and turn them into blog posts or guests posts, or LinkedIn publisher, or medium, or whatever. We are taking the content we have on our website and adding additional value, or extending the value. We are putting together collections of best-of episodes and videos, so that you can really, again, repurpose that value and give people value when maybe you're not available. For me, taking time off is a critical part of what I do. I have to step back. I'm really not very good at it, in all honesty. I am not very good at not being involved in my business. It's a constant practice when I'm taking time off. I think this year we're going to go on a trip where I have to be unplugged, so that will be interesting, but my social media stays going because I have a strategy for social and I have the tools in place to automate it when I need to. My content stays consistent because I have scheduled time for what goes up when. I have scheduled time for creation, and I'm repurposing, I'm reusing, and I'm bringing additional value into content that was already created. It really is the key for me. If you want to learn more about podcasting specifically and launching your podcast, if 2017 is the year you finally hit the mic, and launch your show, join us, join us, join us because I'm so excited for this. We're going to do a launcher podcast, three challenge, three days we're going to talk strategy, we're going to talk gear, we're going to talk launching, and we're going to do it all together. There'll be daily emails, and then we're also going to go live on Facebook each of the three days, as well as a bonus day on Friday the 27th. We'll go live for a wrap-up. All of that, the signup to get you on the list, is over at thestaceyharris.com/episode331. You'll see it right at the bottom of the show notes. Quick. You can just drop your information in. I will email you that we got it, and then I will email you on day one and say, "Let's get started." Okay? Do me a solid. Come join us for that, and if you have already launched your podcast and you want to know more about growing your audience, or marketing your podcast on social media, just come right over to Hit the Mic Backstage. That's the best place to take the next steps. Either way, thank you for sitting down with me, thank you for joining me, and I will see you next week.   Resources Join us inside Hit the Mic Backstage Connect with Me Connect with me on Facebook Tweet with me and include #HittheMic Be sure to leave your review on iTunes or Stitcher for a shoutout on a future show

Welcome to Episode 330 of Hit the Mic with The Stacey Harris. Welcome to 2017. I'm so amped. Today, we kick off the new show format. We kick off the new show schedule. We're going live this week on Thursday. I'm super exited to tell you about something else we've got going on this month. I'm so ready for the New Year. I'm so excited. 2017 is going to be a big, big year for us, because we're going to do some big things this year together. To kick that off though, I want to talk about the epic amount of things that happened in social media in December, because this stuff, is going to impact the changes you are making. It's going to impact the plans you are rolling out. I'm guessing, for several of you, there are plans already rolling, and for more than a few of you, there's probably plans still in the making, which is totally cool, but either way, this is stuff you need to know, because it's going to impact the way you market on social media this month, for sure, and definitely this year. Each month, the first Tuesday of the month, we will do this episode of Three Things You Must Know That Month. It'll be all about the changes that have happened, the trends that we're seeing, things that are going on. Occasionally, it'll be more fundamental, more foundational, but this month is so jam-packed with changes from the networks, that it's going to be all about that. Now if you want to know this stuff right when it happens, the best place to find that stuff out is Hit the Mic Backstage. Also, be sure to join us back there if you haven't, hitthemicbackstage.com, of course, is the place to go for that. I highly recommend that, because again, we talk about it right as these happen. I share it right in the forum. With resources, we can dig into questions. "What does this mean for me?" It's really the upgrade to this episode. This experience, but every month we will be doing one of these episodes where we talk about these changes, so let's jump in. Are you in? Let's do it. Change number one, or network number one. We're going to break this down by network today. These are not all of the changes that happened, by the way, in December. There were a lot of them, and if we reviewed all of them in the course of this episode, it would be an hour and a half long. These are the ones that I want you to know about primarily. If you wanted, again, to know all of the changes, join us Backstage. Let's talk about Facebook. Facebook has rolled out their new page layout. It's really, really unattractive, I think, but I like the priority that you can give things. You can actually adjust what comes first, the photos, the videos, your posts, whatever. This allows those of us who are really going all in on live video this year to, and consistent video content, to really prioritize that content up at the top of our profile, and people land right there. They see it, so that's really cool. You'll also see when you look at the sidebar on the right, you'll see your numbers for page links, and things like that, are a lot smaller, so you're not getting the same priority. You're not getting the same sort of emphasis on that like number, which I really like. I think is a really interesting take on the page. I know that there are going to be a lot of people who don't like that, because they have spent a lot of time and a lot of money making sure that number got big. Personally, though, I'm a big fan of the smaller number, because I don't think it has as much credibility as people like to think that it does, but you'll see that that number has gotten smaller. You'll also see that About area, if you've got your messages turned on, you'll see your messages, and then you'll see right there, a link. Instead of your About area having your Bio in it, your Bio is ... That short little note about you, it's a little bit higher up above where the page likes information is. It's actually a little bit larger text wise, than it was in the old layout. You've also got some featured stuff. You can change around that featured stuff. Again, for those of us who are going all in on video, that might be a really smart thing to do, but whatever. Kind of like your cover photo, it's probably going to change based on what you have going on at the moment. What you're promoing, what you're, if you're getting ready to launch, you're obviously going to have different things there than you would at other times. All right, but I wanted you to know that page has changed it looks, so don't get so bogged down in just putting content out on the page. That you're not making sure that the page and the user experience when people land on your page, is still solid. Is still doing what you want it to do, so go in and do that refresher. Do those updates. This is a really [cooler 00:05:30] time to update that cover photo, update that profile photo. That's something I'm going to be working on in the next, this month. Update these things and make sure that just everything that you're seeing there is stuff that you want people to be seeing. Especially if you're somebody who maybe hasn't uploaded photos, or uploaded videos in a while, and the stuff that's there is really outdated. It might mean you need to remove it and you need to put something up there in its place. Okay. All right. Number two. We're going to talk about SnapChat. Yes, SnapChat made changes, too, and we're going to talk about Instagram changes in a minute, but I want to end there, so we're going to talk quickly about SnapChat. SnapChat has made a couple of changes. The first one is the ability to take a photo and then make anything in the photo or the video, excuse me, a sticker. You could essentially take a picture of your face, and then cut out just your face, and then make a whole bunch of your faces all over it. It's kind of a fun change. I'm curious to see how people implement it. I have seen some really, really fantastic, creative, awesome ones, and I've seen some really, really creepy ones, so use on the cool side and not the creepy side, okay, guys? The other change, which I think is really cool is Group Chat, and this is going to be really awesome for anyone who is wanting to support people, or clients, or share something with multiple people. I really love this selfishly in my personal life, because I can snap things to friends and be like, "Hey, guys. Here's what's going on," so I don't know that there's going to be a good, a good marketing tool for this, but I wanted you to be aware of it, because I do have a sneaking suspicion there's going to be a lot of really bad marketing uses for it. I've already gotten a couple of group requests, or group chats, where it's just a blanket sales message that they chatted to all of us. Yeah, which is not good, guys. Don't do that, but you can remove yourself from the chat, and anything you've said in the chat will disappear along with you, so that's something to note. I wanted to bring this up, just because I feel like there will be a lot of people using this irresponsibly, and there will be some push back from some of you on SnapChat because of it, so let's wrap it up with what you all have been waiting for, the Instagram changes. Instagram went crazy in December, and I think the thing that excited me most about it was that it was such a great example of the fact that December does not mean you have to lay back. December does not mean you have to wait to see what happens. Come out with your biggest and your baddest punches, because it was absolutely some big, big changes in December to Instagram. Number one, we can now heart and reply to comments. If you're not seeing it, go ahead and tap on the comments, so where it says how many comments there are, tap on that, and you'll see a list of all the comments. Even if there's just one. That's where you'll see the engagement options. I thought that was really cool when that launched, and then the ability to go live on Instagram rolled out. I got really excited. Then I had to wait a couple of days because I didn't get it right away, and I was sad, but anyways, the things to know about Instagram Live. Number one. You're going to get a notification when anyone goes live. Number two. Your audience will get a notification when you go live. Number three. It exists only for the amount of time you are alive. There's not currently any replay, there's not currently any option to save. It's just not there right now. I don't know if it will be. Unfortunately, the folks over at Instagram do not loop me in on those emails, but I suspect at some point, there will be, but that's just me. For right now, there's not, so pay attention to that. If you are sharing stuff, this is not going to be something people can find later, but it's a really cool way to share a special offer, a special bonus, and act now kind of thing. It's going to be a really cool option for that stuff. The third update, not nearly as exciting as Live, but I'm doing this in chronological order, was the ability to Save Posts, so you can now, if you see something like an ad, or a promo, or something you want to make sure you comment on later, you can now save it. When you save it, you're just going to hit a little tab in the lower right hand corner of the image. It'll look like sort of like a bookmark call out, when you're bookmarking a page on your Kindle, and what's cool about this, is it's private. You go to your Profile, you can see a list of all the things you've saved. No one else can see that list. I really like this. Again, totally selfishly, because oftentimes, I see people who I follow post really great stuff, and I'm like, "Oh, that's fantastic. I want to read that, but I'm heading out the door," or whatever, and so I can come back to it later now. I can actually save it, and that makes me really excited, because I'm really, really awful about forgetting about it. As are our customers, so if there's something like that, make sure you're testing out a call to action, to not just go to a link in the Bio, but to save that post to remind them. I'm going to be testing that out over the next couple weeks in seeing how that works. Now that this ability to save is more widely known, and as people are using it more, so I'm really excited. All right. I just ran through those super fast, but again, Facebook updates, SnapChat updates, Instagram updates, updates galore. The best way to stay out of overwhelm and in the know, join us Backstage. Hitthemicbackstage.com. Right now, come join us, come ask questions about these changes. Come share how you are going to use these changes, because of course, we are all better together. All right. Happy 2017, and I will see you Backstage. Resources Join us inside Hit the Mic Backstage Connect with Me Connect with me on Facebook Tweet with me and include #HittheMic Be sure to leave your review on iTunes or Stitcher for a shoutout on a future show

Welcome to episode 329 of Hit the Mic with The Stacey Harris. Okay, so we spent a lot of time this month talking about reviewing and planning because, honestly, that's where my head space has been. I want to wrap that up with, if all this planning, and all this looking back, has led to some changes, how to go about making those changes. I'm also going to be sharing a change that we're going to be making to the show with you at the end of the podcast, so stay tuned for that. Let's first talk about the importance of evaluating and looking at where you're at, and looking at the possible impact of these changes. Here's the deal. Changes are going to happen. It's just a part of evolving, of growing a business, of living a life. Your needs change, your customer needs change, the industry you're in may change. As someone who works in the social media space, I can assure you that changes are inevitable. They will happen. It's all about how you respond to them and how you deal with them. A great example of this is the membership site; Hit the Mic Backstage. Before the membership site existed I had stand alone courses that I called 'Rock Star Guides'; they were fantastic. I sold them for lifetime access. They were a really reasonable price. I loved doing them, but here's the thing; I was finding that because networks would make changes, I would have to keep them updated. What was happening is my work was happening over and over and over and over again, but I only was getting paid the one time. Now, that didn't fit my business model. It didn't fit my goals, and it kept me from being able to create anything new because I was so busy keeping up with what I had created in the past. I evolved those 'Rock Star Guides' into the foundations of Hit the Mic Backstage, so now people can be committed to staying up to date with the changes, and see the changes that happen, and I've built recurring revenue into my business model. It allows me to continue getting paid to keep up, and it allows my clients to be invested in paying attention when those updates are made because, I mean, when's the last time you logged into a program you bought two years ago? Well, if it was a Facebook program you bought two years ago, that program may have been updated, or not depending on who you bought it from. Make sure that you're sticking with those changes. I know, for me, that is meaning that I'm going to be spending a lot of quarter one of 2017 running updates on all of the foundation programs inside of Hit the Mic Backstage; all of the how to use this network 101 kind of stuff, all of those trainings are getting totally refreshed based on the changes that happened in the last couple months of 2016. That's going to mean a lot of work for me, but it's also going to mean that my audience is going to have to be committed to saying yes, I'm going to take some time to re-watch that training, to review those changes and see what I need to do, and how I need to evolve. That happens a lot more when people are continuing to invest. That was an example of where I looked and evaluated what my goals were, but also the impact that changing how I was doing something could impact my audience. Another great example is your marketing. If you're not currently getting the results you want, something has to change. You can't keep taking the same actions and expect different results. I believe that is the definition of insanity. You have to change it up. A great example of that is changing your format. I went from writing blog posts, which was a real struggle for me to do consistently, just because it was a process I didn't enjoy, to doing this podcast. I've had zero ... zero problems, knock on wood, with consistency since launching this show, and this is episode 329. We've been going for three plus years now. Look at the impact that making that change could have. It might make you a little more willing to make the change. So, you've decided to make the change, the change is a-happening, how do you tell your community? Be really upfront. There's a lot of schools of thought about testing the change and then telling them. I'm going to be making a big change to this show, which we'll talk about in a few minutes, and I'm deciding to not test it; To just sort of do it and then make a formal announcement, because I want you guys to see what happens and be aware that the change is happening, and decide for yourself if it's something that you like or you don't like, or whatever. I like that format because a lot of times I use my business and what I'm doing almost as a case study for the show, and for the client look I do, and for the stuff that goes into Hit the Mic Backstage. I mean, we're testing some cool, cool things starting next week actually, with my marketing, and all of that is going to be put into a case study that we do when we launch a training at the end of Q1 in Backstage. I like being upfront with it, but you don't have to be, you can start testing things slowly and quietly, and then make a formal announcement. It's totally going to depend on what the change is, and it's totally going to depend on your relationship with your community, and the kind of transparency you want in your business. There's nothing wrong with saying, you know what, I want to feel this out, see how it goes, and then I'll make a formal announcement, or I'll never make a formal announcement and the change will just happen. There will be some people that notice. Most people will forget that it was ever another way. That's okay too. Pay attention to what works for your business, but don't let the possibility that a change may happen prevent you from doing anything. That's really one of the big take aways that I wanted to get out of this episode because I see it a lot with content creation. I see it a lot with program development, and I see it a lot with social media. People stay away from doing anything because they don't want to do it wrong, and the reality is you're going to evolve and things are going to change. Just start putting one foot in front of the other. Just start getting out there. Just start doing something because in that doing you will learn what works and what doesn't work in a much more reliable way, because it's for you and your business and your community and your audience and your goals, and there is a lot of variation from person to person, business to business, community to community, what works and what doesn't work. Sometimes a small tweak that makes it fit for you is going to be all the difference, but it's going to be hard to decide what that tweak is if you're not doing anything, alright? Whatever it is that you want to try, start trying it; start doing it, okay? Alright. Moment of truth. There are going to be some changes happening to this very show. For the last three plus years, and 329 episodes of the show, there have been two episodes a week. Starting next week there will only be one episode a week. We will be moving to a format where I only have new episodes released on Tuesdays. This is to make some space for some other things that I want to be doing for you guys. Because here's the deal; there's really only so much time in the day to not only create content, but for you to consume it. In my desire to do something else with you guys as well, we're pulling back on the show. If you remember, a year-ish ago, we had another show called 'Hit the Mic TV', which was a video show. Well, we're kind of bringing 'Hit the Mic TV' back. I'm going to be doing a weekly live show. It'll stream on Facebook and Periscope, as well as on my YouTube channel, so you can check in there and that will be the second piece of content that happens every week. If you're on the e-mail list, you will get a reminder of the upcoming episode, as well as a link to watch episode from the week past, but the only episode of this show that will go out to the podcast feed is once a week. On Tuesdays, you will see a new episode go out, and we'll keep pretty much the same format, 10, 15, 20 minutes for the show; somewhere in there. We'll be talking about the same kind of stuff; podcasts, content marketing, a whole lot of social media marketing, and we're also going to bring back something that we tested out earlier this year, which was once a month doing a 'Three Things You Must Know'; which is kind of a recap of the latest and greatest in social media. Basically, it's a really solid preview of what you get inside of Hit the Mic Backstage, which is an update on everything that happens in social media, and all of the changes that roll out to networks. This is just a way for you guys to have more space to get the information you need, and so I'm not just throwing more stuff at you, I'm going to adjust it and focus what we're doing so we have two lanes of traffic. You'll see a little bit less from me on the podcast, but you'll be able to catch up with me in another way through the weekly live show, in whatever format you prefer to consume it. There it is. I'm really excited. I'm really excited to see all the change. I'm really excited to go live with you guys more frequently, and I really challenge you, if there is a change you need to make ... a great example is exactly this; live streaming is going to be a critical part of my marketing in 2017. It's going to be a critical part of a lot of people's marketing. If that's something that you want to do more of, and you just don't see the time right now, look at where you can pull something else back; look at how you can repurpose that. Check out some of the episodes we've done on repurposing, and maybe find a different want to streamline it; a a different way to make the schedule work, instead of just adding more, because sometimes just adding more is the least productive thing we can do when it comes to making sure we're getting where we want to get and we're delivering a value we want to deliver. At the end of the day, I know for me, I know for you, that's what it's all about, is getting the value, alright? Thank you for listening. Thank you for hanging out with me. I will see you backstage. Resources Join us inside Hit the Mic Backstage Connect with Me Connect with me on Facebook Tweet with me and include #HittheMic Be sure to leave your review on iTunes or Stitcher for a shoutout on a future show

Welcome to episode 324 of Hit the Mic with The Stacey Harris. Let's do it guys, let's talk about the money. I sit back at the end of every year and I try to pay attention to what I spend. I do this more regularly than once a year now that Charles handles the bookkeeping, just full transparency. I'm much better at it when somebody else does the day-to-day of it, but I do like to evaluate what's going out because I want to know that I'm getting the value and that value may not be dollar-for-dollar, but I want to make sure that I'm getting what I need out of the financial exchange. I sat down and I've been looking at the investments I made this year and so I want to tell you guys about the four best investments I made in 2016. I'm not going to be naming physical things you can buy, really more the mental investments I made that were financial investments as well, but they may be different for you as far as the specific thing. That will make more sense once I go on so I will just go on. Are you ready to jump in? Let's jump in.   Number one, and I'm doing this in no particular order, by the way. The first one we're going to talk about: focused coaching and mentorship. At different stages in my business I've thought I need need a coach or I need a mastermind, and I was always right. I did, I needed a coach or I needed a mastermind and the programs I invested in have been fantastic. The coaches I've worked with, the masterminds I've been a part of, all wonderful. However, I needed this year something really focused on my goals in a way that I've not done before. Generally when I've been this focused on something it's been from the perspective of a program. However, this year I really wanted coaching that was super specific to my goals, and so that's exactly what I did this year. I invested in what was going to move my goal closer. I'm still in some of those investments, but that was hands down one of the best investments I made in my business because it was specific to what my goals were.  I wasn't trying to figure something out or working with somebody who could do nine different things for me and who was going to work on my mindset and who was going to work marketing and who was going to work on my program development. No, I got what I needed, so if you need to build and launch a program, find somebody who does that. If you need help with your money mindset, find somebody who does that. If you need help with your social media, find somebody who does that. By the way, I do that. Whatever it is, your needs. It may mean working with a couple of different people throughout the year. I try not to be working with more than one person or thing at a time because I'm very cognizant of the percentage of my time that is working on my business versus actually working on my business from the perspective of creating content, executing the things that I talk about with these coaches and these masterminds, so that's important. Pay attention to that. Find what it is you need. Absolutely if you have somebody you're working with on your mindset and you have somebody who you're working with on a program development, that does not need to be the same person. Get specific. Get really, really specific about what you need when you need it and do that. That's been huge for me. Number two, saying no to things that weren't a fit. This was not a "I laid money on the table" kind of thing, but this was a "I didn't take money off the table" kind of thing. It definitely cost me this year on things I said no to. However, saying no to those allowed me to make money somewhere else that was more in line with what my goals were. We had possible management clients and we had possible consulting things and we had opportunities to invest in sponsorships or to invest in events, and I said no. I said no because they weren't aligned with m goals at the time. I'm not saying that they were bad things or bad opportunities. Some of them were really, really fantastic, but they weren't a fit for where I was right then or where I'm going in my immediate future, so I said no. I think that's an investment that early in our business we're really, really afraid to make, but can be one of the most rewarding and most freeing investments we make. I challenge you in 2017 to invest more in saying no, because man, oh man does it pay dividends. You have the ability to do things that are aligned with you. You have the ability to do things that are what you're interested in and what you want to be doing, and that's incredibly powerful. Invest in the no. It's a game changer. All right, number three, physical gear. We talk a lot about our investments from a software perspective but one of the best investments I made this year was physical gear. I updated my iPhone and, full disclosure, I wasn't terribly out of date. I had a 6+ and now I have a 6S+. I'll probably have a 7 in the next few months. I think I'm actually going to wait until the 8. I made a conscious choice to just wait until the 8. I'm just waiting until the 8, or whatever comes out next year, but we also upgraded for Charles. He was working on a laptop and we moved him to a desktop and it has been a huge productivity increaser because just the nature of the machine he is working on and his setup and his flow is a lot better now. If you're working on a machine that's way outdated or way not serving your needs anymore, it's costing you time. Change it. In the land of live video and SnapChat and Instagram stories and photo sharing, you want to make sure that your gear can hold up to that. You want to make sure that your gear is going to serve those needs, so if you have a phone that's eight years old and it has terrible camera and terrible memory life and terrible battery life, that's hindering your business. I talked to somebody not too long ago, and they were like, "Yeah, I'd love to do SnapChat but it won't work on my phone because my phone's so old. You're leaving marketing money on the table because you refuse to upgrade your device. No. I'm not saying go out and spend a fortune on your gear. What I am saying is making sure that your gear serves your goals. If that means to need to upgrade, find a way to do that. Hustle the cash. Set a goal and achieve it. You can do it, but you got to be willing to say, "This is what we're doing." All right? Physical gear, that was a big upgrade for us this year and probably one of the best investments we made this year from a delivering great content, delivering great photos, and a productivity thing. That's really important. My fourth one was actually, I thought, a personal investment, but it's actually kind of a business investment as well, and that's my health. I started working out one-on-one with a trainer in the second half of this year, and it's been absolutely incredible. Earlier in the year I started investing really committed, dedicated time to running, to working out, and then I upgraded further to the trainer, and it's been a game changer. Not only do I feel better, and I'm starting to look a little better, if I do say so myself, but I feel stronger. I feel more confident. My posture is better. I'm more energetic. I feel better. All of that plays into my ability to hustle, to work, to make money, to serve my goals, to be there for my family. It really checks all of the other boxes. Also I would say, probably my best, most important investment is my health. It's easy, really easy as entrepreneurs, especially if you're doing the solo hustle thing, to leave that to the side, to not prioritize it, to say, "Oh, I'll get to that. When X, Y, Z happens or you know, whatever, then I'll definitely, I'll make that a priority again." I said "Enough of that," and I made it a priority now, and I'm so glad I did because it feels good and it really does pay dividends all the other places in my life, including my business. All right? There it is, four investments I made this year. Some financial, some a little less financial, saying no, but all absolutely critical. I want to hear from you though, so come over to Facebook.com/TheStaceyHarris, that's the Facebook page, or over on Twitter, Twitter.com/TheStaceyHarris if you prefer to tweet me, and let me know what the single best investment you made this year was. I want to know, and the really cool thing is is it can encourage the people around us to invest in themselves, to spend the money, spend the time, whatever it is to make their lives and their businesses better. Let's inspire each other, all right? If you're totally at a loss, you're like, "I didn't invest at all this year," head over to Hit the Mic Backstage. Let's invest a little bit of time and a tiny bit of money into making your social media marketing better because it will definitely pay dividends. All right? All right. I will see you Backstage.   Resources Join us inside Hit the Mic Backstage Connect with Me Connect with me on Facebook Tweet with me and include #HittheMic Be sure to leave your review on iTunes or Stitcher for a shoutout on a future show

Welcome to episode 322 of Hit the Mic with The Stacey Harris. It's once again that time, real talk time. I want to talk about membership sites today because we passed our year anniversary of Hit the Mic Backstage a few months ago and I have spent probably almost the entirety of the second half and for sure the bulk so far of the fourth quarter this year all in on making my community better in every way I can, upgrading things, like the sales page, like the checkout system, the onboarding sequence, all of that stuff because of these lessons that I have learned. The three things I want to talk about today, the three lessons that I want to talk about today are the things that I feel I don't get enough conversation, enough highlighting. I think we talk a lot about tech and plugins and content even, but I don't know that we talk enough about these things, certainly before you launch. These are things that I don't think I really digested before I started and so I want to talk about them with you today and I would love to hear your thoughts. Of course if you're a member already, good for you. Don't tell the others, but you're my favorite. You can come over to the private community and talk to me about this there. If you're not a member yet, dude what's your deal? Head over to the Facebook page or even better, join the membership and come talk to us in the private community. That's going to be the best way to do it. All right? Let's jump in. Lesson number one, and this is just a good business lesson in general, even if you don't have a membership site or want to have a membership site. It's not for everyone. Nothing that you do in your business will be something that's a fit for every single person. If you launched a membership site and you're just not feeling it, that's okay. Just because this is the thing that a ton of people really love right now, I know that I launched in August of 2015 and by October I think I knew of like 9 billion people who were launching membership sites. It's been the thing of 2016 because everybody wants the ever-so-mythical recurring passive revenue, which by the way a membership site is not passive. It is recurring if you can keep members. It's not entirely passive. It is certainly more passive than a one-on-one is, but it's not as passive as say me selling on online program like I did with the Rock Star Guides. It's not for everyone. I happen to really love delivering value this way. I happen to really love connecting with my members. I really like being of service to the people I get to be of service with through Hit the Mic Backstage, but it's not for every business model. It doesn't make sense for everyone. It doesn't feel right for everyone, and guess what, guys? That's totally okay. If this is not for you, and you're like, "Well, everyone is doing it, and should I do it? Recurring revenue, rah, rah, rah. That would be great," but it just doesn't feel right, then don't do it, because you will never build the kick-ass program which you want to build if it's not aligned with you and how you best serve your audience. Don't force yourself into doing this. Okay? Promise? Look, I'm just going to assume you said promise, okay? Thank you. Number two, sort of in that same vein, it is impossible to make everyone happy. The upside to that is through knowing who your ideal members are or your ideal clients, you don't have to make everybody happy. You just have to make them happy. Caveat to that though, you'll still not make all of them happy all of the time. You'll book calls the wrong time, you'll have the wrong kind of community aspect. They'll want a Facebook group and you'll have a private forum. You'll have a Facebook group and they'll want a private forum. You'll do trainings twice a month and they want trainings once a week. There's always going to be something that somebody wants that's not there and that either you're not going to do or you haven't done yet. That's okay. This is your membership site. You get to decide. Sometimes you'll make decisions that are not overly popular. That's okay, too. Personally, I've been going through this with moving from the Facebook group to the private forum. There have been a couple of people who really wanted me to keep the Facebook group, but here's the deal. I know stuff. I know what I want my community to look and feel like, I know the experience I want my members to have, and I also know that I can't control that in Facebook. Facebook is already testing rollings ads to groups, meaning I could be having a fantastic conversation in my membership community about how I can best serve them with something and they could be seeing ads for some other membership site exactly like mine at the same time. Not exactly the experience we want to have. On the flip side, Facebook has also stopped delivering the group stuff just willy nilly. It's going through the same algorithm that paid stuff is going through now, so again, it's not necessarily getting into the news feed any better. I know that that's happening and I know that that's not what I want for a premium environment, meaning people pay to be a part of this membership site. One thing I should mention because I'm big on terms and conditions and you guys knowing, you cannot just sell a Facebook group. You can have a training library and a bonus as a Facebook group, but you cannot be making money on just having a Facebook group. It's against the terms and conditions so pay attention to that. Another reason not to worry about Facebook groups. I'm not saying Facebook groups are bad; I'm not saying they're not a fit, I'm just saying that there's a reason I made that change and I know that reason, so even through there is some pushback to having moved to a private community, I know it's long term what's best for my membership as a whole. I have, full transparency guys, I have lost members over moving. Only one or two, but I can't be everything to everyone. I have to do what's best for the whole and I have to do what's best for my business, so I made the move and I wish them the best, and I hope they come back, that'd be great, but if they find what they need someplace else that serves them in the way that way that they want to be served, then fantastic for them. Remember, you cannot make everyone happy all of the time. There will be times when you get pushback and there will be times when you have to trust your instincts. You have to trust your training and you have to trust that you're doing what's best for your business and for the membership as a whole. That's just the way it is. All right? The number three thing I want to wrap this episode up with, is that, and I kind of alluded to this earlier, this is not passive income. Yes, it's more passive in a sense that I'm working one to many and not one-to-one, I'm not trading hours for dollars, so my income is not capped in that way, but it's not passive. I don't just sit back and enjoy those PayPal ca-chings. I do enjoy the PayPal ca-chings, but I'm not sitting back usually. Usually I'm spending time making the community better whether it's upgrading the sales page or changing the checkout system or rewriting the onboard sequence or running ads or working on the marketing funnel that gets more members in or hell, even creating this podcast because it's a part of what grows the membership is people who listen to the show and want to upgrade the experience they have with the show to an even more direct line to me. And guess what guys? [inaudible 00:09:18]. Also, answering questions in the private community. Building trainings for the private community. Testing things so that I can teach it to the private community. One example is I have laid out in Q1 of 2017 what we're going to be learning in the community, and guess what, guys? All of that stuff, I'm testing those theories now on my stuff with some client stuff so that I can present that information to members during those trainings in January, February, and March of 2017. Yeah, that takes time. That's all I do anymore is work on this membership site. We do have a couple of one-on-one clients, we do have a couple of management clients, but that's not where I spend the bulk of my time. One-on-one is with me, but management is happening through some me, but mostly Charles and the team. I just oversee strategy now. Really, really, really, really paying attention to what it's going to take to keep it running. I think one of the biggest mistakes I see other membership people running memberships making is that they didn't realize how much work it was going to be all of the time. To be honest it's not a ton of work, it's leveraged work from the perspective of I'm not capping my income. I can work one to 100,000 if I wanted to, but it is a project that doesn't end. It's not "I built the course and now it's out there," so pay attention to that. Be ready for that. Just to recap, real quick, the three things I want you to know: It's not for everyone and that's okay. You can't make everyone happy all of the time and that's okay too. Real talk though, it is an ongoing project. It is never ending for as long as you have members to serve, you will be making improvements and changes and tweaks and making content and all of that for them, and that's cool, but know that because that might really feed into the first one. It might not be for you, and that's okay. All right? That's it. I would love to see you come join us at Hit the Mic Backstage. If you have more questions about running membership sites, I get really, really transparent in there. We talk about all of the tools I use. I answer questions all the time, so if you want to get some support in building your membership site, that's a great resource to get started with. More importantly, though, it will help you market you membership site. Getting clear on your social media so that you can actually sell people into it. That's going to be important. One other thing, if you really, really want to go all in on building a membership site, I actually would suggest another membership site as well, it's called Member Site Academy. I am a member; I am affiliate. I will include a link in the show notes page for this episode, but the membership guys are fantastic. If nothing else check out their podcast, but the Member Site Academy, their premium membership is killer. It's absolutely amazing, so check it out if you are all in. It actually pairs very well with Hit the Mic Backstage because you can learn all the membership site stuff there and then we, of course, dive deep on the social media side of things and backstage so you're really building your audience and marketing to them and getting members in the door.  Check out those resources and I will see you guys on Friday.   Resources Join us inside Hit the Mic Backstage Member Site Academy Connect with Me Connect with me on Facebook Tweet with me and include #HittheMic Be sure to leave your review on iTunes or Stitcher for a shoutout on a future show

Welcome to episode 321 of Hit the Mic with The Stacey Harris. It's real talk time, guys. We're going to talk about the three things you must know about not having a Facebook group, because there seems to be this myth that the only way to get seen on Facebook is to have a group, and/or the only way to build your funnel or find success on Facebook or make more sales or grow your program or support your community is to have a Facebook group. It's not true. Even kind of true. Now in many cases, Facebook groups can be incredibly powerful. I've talked about them immensely on this show. We've got trainings about them inside Hit the Mic Backstage. I am a big fan of Facebook groups. I use them a lot; however, like literally everything else, there's not one right way and one wrong way to use these tools in your business. There's not a "You have to do this" and "You have to do that." No. It's just not true, guys. The first things you have to know is that you don't have to just because somebody else is. Maybe it's because someone you look up to has had a lot of success with Facebook groups. Maybe it's your coach or something is saying, "This is the only way to do it." It's just not all true. Let this obligation to having a Facebook group go. As of right now, right this very minute, I do not have a free Facebook group. I don't have a Facebook group that people can join free-of-charge. I do have a Facebook group for the Rock Star Guides and there's a Facebook group that goes along with Social Pro. There's no longer a Hit the Mic Backstage Facebook group. It's officially closed. We closed it yesterday, actually, and so everybody's over in the community now that lives right on the membership site, and guess what guys? The world has not come to an end. I haven't had a free Facebook group for probably about a year. I closed it down not long after we launched Hit the Mic Backstage, because quite frankly there was a lot of confusion over where to be and what group to join and the reality was if you want to engage with me in that way, if you want to have access to picking my brain and getting feedback and things like that, that's what the membership site's for. Offering that for free just didn't make sense for me. Especially when you talk about the epic sea of social media focused Facebook groups. There's a ton of them and some of them are super valuable, but I don't have to do that to be successful in my space. I've clearly proven that. Yeah, guys. You don't have to do it just because somebody else is doing it. The second thing I want to talk about, the second thing I want you to really think about is sometimes not having a Facebook group can actually help your Facebook page. I know a lot of people are moving to Facebook groups because their Facebook page just doesn't have the same reach or isn't performing on the same level as it has in the past, but a funny thing happened when I got rid of my free Facebook group. The reach and engagement on my Facebook page and really on my Twitter accounts and all of those, it actually increased, because if you want to engage with me, you have to use the page. You have to use my Twitter profile. You can't just go into our free group and hang out with me there. Here's the deal. Focusing, going all-in on providing really stellar content in one place, focusing on building a community and building a reason for people to be there on your page ... Day after day, week after week, month after month, there's something to be said for that. There's value there. In all reality, having a group didn't serve that goal. I know for a lot of people it does. I know some of you have had a ton of success with this, but again, if you're somebody who is feeling like you're already trying to do too much, if you're already feeling overwhelmed by the amount of time you have to spend on social or the amount of groups you're in or any of those things ... starting one, growing one, it's going to be a lot of time. It's going to take your attention, and so if you really want to be focused on something, focus on your page. That's the thing you can run ads with. You can't run ads with groups. Again, it's not necessarily for everyone and it may not be for you if you're just really feeling overwhelmed by trying to be all the things in all the places already, okay? The third thing I want to wrap it up with is pay attention to who your ideal clients are. I've had this discussion with you guys and with a lot of clients around going where your people are, because here is the deal. If you're B2B and your whole job is to connect with people in HR departments and people who run corporate wellness programs, a Facebook group is not going to be particularly helpful for your marketing. A Linkedin group might be, but even then it's a big might. Pay attention to who that ideal client is. For me, I was finding a lot of the feedback I was getting from a lot of you who listen to this show and a lot of the people who I talk to one-on-one ... They were feeling really overwhelmed by Facebook groups. There were so many, they were already a member of so many, and the idea of joining one more Facebook group was about as appealing as the idea of joining one more email list. Your ideal clients may eat up Facebook groups. They may just think they're the best thing since sliced bread and they totally get it and they totally want to engage in it and hat is what they want. Fantastic, but on the flip side of that, your ideal clients might rather poke their eyes out with dull pencils than get in another Facebook group. That's actually an analogy that I had a client use with me, so pay attention to who your ideal clients are. Pay attention to their needs and their wants and how they feel about it. I know for a lot of our ideal clients, the idea of joining a really big, crazy Facebook group is incredibly overwhelming. Jumping in in the middle of a conversation or engaging in that way, it just feels noisy and overwhelming, so pay attention to who your ideal clients are. That may dictate the size of the group. That may dictate how you market the group. That may dictate whether you have one or not. All right? All right, so this is a quick and dirty three things episode. I'm actually going to try to shorten up these Friday three things episodes, so they're really quick and actionable. We'll see how that goes. Feel free to tweet me or stop by the Facebook page and let me know what you think. If you have more questions about having a Facebook group versus not having a Facebook group, come on over to Hit the Mic Backstage and let's talk about it in the community, because this is a great discussion to have because again, I really want your takeaway to be that there's not one right way. Again, this is not me bashing Facebook groups, this is me saying what's right for you. If you're curious what you think, you want some feedback or you're just not sure, you want to talk through it, best way to do that is come on over to the community, hitthemicbackstage.com. That's where we have conversations like this. In fact, we had a conversation going on a couple weeks ago, about a month ago now, all around Facebook groups versus private forums, because we had some questions after I made the move from my Facebook group to a private forum. That's really the place to get these questions answered and these conversations to happen. Check it out. Again, hitthemicbackstage.com. I will see you on Tuesday. Resources Join us inside Hit the Mic Backstage Connect with Me Connect with me on Facebook Tweet with me and include #HittheMic Be sure to leave your review on iTunes or Stitcher for a shoutout on a future show

Welcome to episode 320 of Hit the Mic with The Stacey Harris.  All right, so recently we talked about repurposing content and recycling content for social media. Today I want to talk about actually breathing life into the content that's on your website. Finding new ways to drive traffic to it or just straight up reviving it, updating it, repurposing it. That's what we're going to talk about today because your value continues to be valuable. I want to make sure that you are getting every last drop of value for your own business out of the value you're providing your community because the struggle is real when it comes to creating content. As you may know, if you've listened to this show for a while, I'm actually recording this at the very beginning of November and this will go live at the very end of November and I am in ... This week has been back to back to back to back recording days where I'm recording 4, 5, 6 episodes a day of the podcast. That just reminds me how important it is for me to literally get all the use out of the stuff that I create, because as much fun as it is for me to create this content, the real fun is when you guys use the content and you get value from it and you see results from it and it works for you, whatever that is in that episode. I got to find as many ways as possible to get it in front of you, so that's really what breathing life back into your content is all about. We're going to talk about 2 ways to do this. We're going to talk about updating your content, and we're going to talk about repurposing your content. Both of these are parts and options when it comes to knowing that your content can get seen again , can be valuable again, and can really help website traffic and things like that. Cool? Cool. Let's start with updating. Depending on the way you put your content out, updating can actually look like a couple of things. Let's start with just the bare bones simplest. Let's start with blog posts. Written blog post, the best way to update it is to go in and just update it. Change any links that might be broken. Change any facts that may have changed. A great example of this is if you are somebody who like me who is in the social media space, things like Facebook measurements, graphic measurements, or tools you're using, or things like that. That stuff can get outdated because I'm discovering new things, networks are making changes, new things are coming out all of the time. That information evolves quite frequently and so that's going to be your simplest thing. Go in and just straight update the facts, update links and thinks like that. The next way to update might be to add to it. Maybe you have learned something else. Maybe you found another tip. You can always just add a couple of sentences. Change one of the points, update one of the points, give one of the points more priority than you did. You really are just going to go in an straight update the text. Now when it comes to updating something like a podcast or a video series, it can be a little trickier because you now have media that you have go and edit and things like that, but there's still a way. Really, the best way you can do it is to update the text that's on the page that is alongside your video or alongside you're audio. We're doing this right now by going through and adding transcripts to the show notes. For the last, maybe 40 episodes, we've done transcripts with every episode, but we are just starting to go back and work through some of our most popular episodes and give an update to those show notes by adding a transcript of the show. Again, this is great from an SEO perspective because we're adding more keywords, but also it's great from and SEO perspective because now all of that look like new content. In addition to that as it gets seen again, it's got more value, it's got new value and there's going to be people who are a fan of listening to that episode and who want to use it as a resource. That was actually one of the biggest requests I got from people when they ask for transcripts, it was really about, "Hey, these are great but I wish I had a reference so I can bookmark something or highlight something. I didn't have to listen to the episode to find one point you made." That's a big part of the reason the transcripts exist. That's why going back and adding those back in the past episodes is going to be such a valuable way to update it. Again, there's SEO value for me, there is incredible value for the audience in that fact that it's a new way to consume that content. Also there are people who are starting to find my site who don't particularly want to listen to me, which is fine, and if you're one of them, you're totally reading this and hello. Now you don't have to listen to me. You can skim a podcast and find the points you need instead of listening to me with all of my charm and wonder. For those of you who are listening, thank you. That's a really valuable thing I can add as far as updating and breathing new life into the first, I think we started at 280, so the first 279 episodes of the show. The other way we can do that with video is again, add transcripts but also updating our resources, updating those links, updating the information that we added in the resource section a lot like we do when we update a blog post, making sure those links still work. That's probably one of the biggest things that I'm probably really terrible at doing, which is going through and checking our broken links and making sure that those links that are on past show notes episodes are still working because we have had guests on the show in the first year or so whose websites aren't around anymore because they've changed their domains or they've gone out of business or whatever. That's an important thing to factor in. Once we have updated them, how can we drive more traffic? Well A, you can do things like recycle your content, which I'll leave a link in the resource section on the show notes page over at The Stacey Harris to the episode we talked about recycling social media content. We're driving traffic to old episodes of this show all the time, especially through Twitter and LinkedIn and Google+, which yes, I still use Google+, I just don't actually use it from a social perspective, just as a broadcast tool, but that's a whole other episode. I can continue to drive traffic to that. On the flipside, I can do other things. I can, for example, take these transcripts that I have from my episodes, write guest posts using that transcript and then use that to drive traffic back to the original podcast episode. That's right, I'm now using this to drive traffic as well as build my credibility and expose myself to a new audience. Even as I was saying that, it felt wrong, but you know what I'm saying. Getting in front of new people, showcasing what we do here on this show to a group of people who maybe haven't heard the show yet. That's a really powerful way to repurpose content and ideas and value I've already created. The same can be done with a blog post. Take a section of that blog post, maybe build off of it a little bit, tweak it, make it a guest post, and you just have to drive traffic back to your blog post. You can do that on a lot of sites but I think the simplest, the lowest barrier to entry, start using the LinkedIn publisher platform to do that. You can build it right there on LinkedIn, it goes out, your connections all get a notification and voila, you're not driving traffic back to your site using value you created a while ago in some cases. That's a really powerful way to repurpose your content. On the flipside, if there's one way you have created it already, create it in another way. For a long time, in addition this show, we also had Hit the Mic TV which was a video show we did on YouTube and a lot of those episodes were parts of things we talked about here on the podcast because it was a smaller show. We kept it under 10 minutes, usually. I think most of time it came under 5 minutes. A lot of times it would be a smaller idea or a piece of something we talked about here on the podcast. Again, I wasn't reinventing the wheel, I was just creating the same value in a different medium so it could connect with a different group of people, just like when I used the transcripts to create guest posts, maybe that don't link back to the podcast page. I'm still using that same value to connect to an audience in a different way. Now we're doing it through a written blog post instead of a podcast, but guess what? The value point, the connection, the content is quite often the same, it's just a matter of saying hey, this is the value in a way that you prefer to consume it. This is a way you can connect with someone where maybe the don't already know you exist or maybe they don't like podcasts or maybe they prefer not to read blog posts or whatever it is for them and for you. Really look at ways you can take that same value you've already created and use it in a new way on a new site. That's really what it comes down to when it comes down to how to breathe life into content that maybe hasn't seen the light of internet days in a while. Okay, so update it and repurpose it. That is the way to go. Of course head over to the show notes page, TheStaceyHarris.com is where you'll find it and check out the link to recycling social media content because that's a great way to continue to drive traffic to these old posts through social. I will see you guys on Friday.   Resources Join us inside Hit the Mic Backstage 3 Things You Must Know About Maximizing Your Content Connect with Me Connect with me on Facebook Tweet with me and include #HittheMic Be sure to leave your review on iTunes or Stitcher for a shoutout on a future show

Welcome to episode 318 of Hit the Mic with The Stacey Harris. All right, guys. We're going to talk about sales funnels today, because I have been getting some push back on the idea of sales funnels. I was actually in a Facebook group, and I was talking about sales funnels, and stating that one of my goals was improving my sales funnels for Hit the Mic Backstage. I got some negative feedback about how sales funnels were, like, manipulative, and it was really, really interesting to me. I wanted to talk about this, because sales funnels are actually an amazing thing for you to do for your community, because they serve two purposes. One for your business growth, and one for your community. I want to break down those two things, and I want to just quick and dirty get rid of this illusion that sales funnels are bad. Sales funnels are your friend. All right? First, let's talk about how sales funnels serve your community. Here's the deal. No one, no one at all, knows your business, knows your offerings, know how you provide value as well as you do. No one but you knows all the Tweets that go out and the Facebook messages and the e-mails and the content you've done. No. It's just, no one knows it the way you do, because you're inside of it. From the outside looking in, I still get people who ask me about a launch that I've been doing like crazy a month after the cart closes. I still get people who are like, "You have a membership community?" Yeah, I've had one for like 14 months, and I talk about it all the time. No one is paying as close attention to your business as you are, and that is true just universally, so you have to accept it. In having sales funnels, it allows you to guide the people who need you through a process. It allows you to say, "Hey, yeah, here is a small solution to your problem. Here you go. Oh, you need a little more help? Here. How about this?" "Hey, you want to go all in on getting help on this? Here you go." That's really all a sales funnel is. It's just a path from lead to customer. That's it. It's not some sort of, like, magic trick. It's not some sort of massive manipulation. It's just guiding them down a path. It's no different than sending up a follow up e-mail after you've been to a networking event. It's just part of having the relationship grow. It's just part of having your value become clear to them. I want you to just release the idea that this is some sort of trickery, some sort of sorcery to get people to do what you want them to do. Really, ultimately, your sales funnel is not about you. It's about your client. It's about, "How can I provide value in this focused way to get them from A to B so that they go from problem to problem solved?" It's that simple. Not everyone goes all the way through the funnel, because not everyone needs to go all the way through the funnel. There are absolutely people who click on one of my ads that is at the top of, let's say, the Facebook Ads funnel that leads into Backstage, and they listen to a podcast where I talked about Facebook Ads, and they get what they needed, and that's fantastic. There are people that go a little further and download the checklist and the Facebook Ads Guide, and that's as far as they go, because that's all they needed. Awesome. Great. You got what you needed. That's ultimately what I care about. Then, there are people that go all the way into Backstage, and go through the Rockstar Guide to Facebook that's in there, and they ask questions during office hours in our private forum. Great. I got to help those people too. Ultimately, this is about serving your community in a really focused way. It's impossible to do that when you don't have the pieces of a funnel in place. Yes, the funnel ultimately leads to you making money, but guess what? That's what makes this a business, and not a hobby. Yeah, I know. It's crazy to say, but it's okay to be making money on the end of this. It's okay to be financially rewarded for solving people's problems. That's called commerce, okay? That's called capitalism. Here's the deal, guys. This is about you being able to serve your community. If you don't guide them down the path, if you just put up your sales page, or you just start writing your blog posts, and you never do anything to get people there, to tell people that this is where the value is, to invite them to get their problem from problem to solved, why exactly are you doing this? Seriously. If you're not going to spend the time to help people get from problem to problem solved, then you're never going to be able to help them solve the problem. You're kind of wasting your time, and you're kind of wasting your corner of the internet, and your voice, and your skill. Embrace the sales funnel. Yes, it's a tactic word, and yes, it's a business thing, but that doesn't mean that it's slimy. That doesn't mean it's sleazy. There are a ton of poorly executed, extremely sleazeball like funnels. I am not going to disagree on that front. There are a ton, but there are also a lot of really amazing, authentically built, value-driven, incredibly community-serving funnels. I like to think mine falls somewhere in the middle there. I don't know that mine is like, you know, the holy grail of funnels. It's something I'm constantly working on. It's an important part of my business development as I grow, and my business model evolves, and my membership community grows. It becomes more and more obvious to me that this is a part of my business that will continue to need to be worked on, but ultimately it's about me making sure that you get the value you need. If this podcast is all you need, awesome. If you want to know more about sales funnels, there's a training in Backstage. Go get it. It's that simple. It's about me telling you where to go. Now, from a business perspective, a sales funnel is going to help you get people from, "I have a problem," to, "Can I give you money to solve it?" That's how they get from problem to problem solved. Build this piece of your business. If you're somebody who is running around in this roller coaster of income, and saying, "Yeah, I had my best month ever in June, and now it's October or November, and I haven't made any money in 30 days," it's probably because you don't have a sales funnel. It's probably because you don't know where you're getting leads, you don't know how to cultivate your leads, and you don't know how to get them to the end point of purchase. I say "end point of purchase" because that's where they shift from lead to client or lead to customer. I'm not saying that that's the end of the relationship. For me, I feel like my funnel never ends, because once I get you in the membership, it's my job to keep you there. It's my job to make sure I continue solving your problems. When you're talking about a four week course that you have, it's my job to make sure that you then evolve to the next level, or another program, or whatever it is in your business. Maybe it's getting people from a low level membership site to a higher end coaching problem, to a super high end one on one. Maybe that's your process. That is not a funnel where this drops out the bottom. It becomes more of a circle, and that's okay, but if you don't have anything, if you don't have any track of, if you can't tell me where your clients come from, if you don't have any track of, "Okay, so they meet me here, and they end up here, and this is where they become clients," then you're going to have a really hard time getting consistent income. Sales funnels aren't just for passive income. They're not just for group programs, and membership sites, and things like that. In fact, I think that's probably one of the most important things I wish I had learned early in my business. It never occurred to me that the things I was doing when I was a VA, or the things that I was doing early in Hit the Mic Marketing, which is now The Stacey Harris, when we were doing exclusively social media management, it never occurred to me that I was moving people through a sales process that was, in fact, a sales funnel. Had I given it the same amount of knowledge that I have now, I probably would have been even more successful. I probably would have been able to do even more and move more clients through that process, because I would have had that knowledge of, "Oh, this is how I serve them. This is how I give them value every step of the way, at every touch point, so that I can expedite the value they're getting, so that I can increase the value they're getting, and so that I can really make a difference in their business quickly, and ultimately make a big difference in my business quickly. Again, this serves both ends. This serves your community, and this serves you, because guess what? If you can't keep yourself afloat because you're on this roller coaster of revenue generation, you're not going to be there to solve their problems. You're not going to be there to help them with the things they need help with. Make sure that you are spending a fair amount of your time paying attention to how customers get from lead to client. Make sure you're spending a fair amount of your time knowing exactly where they get value throughout the relationship, so that a real difference is made, so that you can actually take them from problem to problem solved. It was kind of a soap boxy, ranty show. If you want to know more about how to actually execute sales funnels, and trip wires, and automation sequences for follow up, and things like that, do check out Hit the Mic Backstage. We have an entire training in there on sales funnels, and of course you can ask me questions any time in the private community. If you're ready to take that next step, and you're ready to really embrace this tool in your business, come join us. It's going to be the place to do it. Otherwise ... Well, really, either way, I will see you on Friday. Resources Join us inside Hit the Mic Backstage Connect with Me Connect with me on Facebook Tweet with me and include #HittheMic Be sure to leave your review on iTunes or Stitcher for a shoutout on a future show

Welcome to episode 317 of Hit The Mic with The Stacey Harris. Let's talk podcasting. I get a lot of questions about podcasting, especially now that we're 300, now 317 episodes into the show which apparently means I know stuff. One of the most common hurdles for podcasters, or wannabe podcasters rather, is what to talk about. That's what we're going to cover today. We're going to talk about the 3 things you must know about choosing a podcast topic because A, it is not as difficult as you think it is and B, I want you to stop using this as an excuse to no hit record on a podcast because that's what some of you guys are doing. I know things. Let's talk about choosing a podcast topic and let's jump right in. I want to keep this episode pretty brief because I want you guys to be taking action on it, so we're going to jump right in today. Number 1, what problem do you want to solve for your audience? What problem do they have that they are looking to you for? That could be inspiration, that could be understanding, that could be education, that could be training, that could be permission to take things less seriously. It could be a lot of things and I'm talking in sort of a grand scale. In the abstract at a really, really bird's eye level, what problem are you trying to solve? This might be the problem your trying to solve in your business in a lot of other ways, but now this podcast is how you manifest. For example, I have a podcast because a problem I want to solve is I want you guys to stop telling me you're dumb. I get a lot of I'm dumb when it comes to Twitter. I don't know anything about podcasting. I'm dumb when it comes to technology. I'm dumb when it comes to Facebook, and I hate it. Honestly. It drives me crazy because you're not dumb just because you don't know something. It just means you haven't learned it yet, and some stuff you don't have to know. That doesn't make you dumb, it just makes you focused, okay? That's the sort of grandiose problem I want to solve with this show. That leads to me doing 2 episodes a week answering questions in a way that's very driven by making you not feel dumb. Making you understand that you can figure this stuff out, that you don't have to know everything, and that it's okay to just learn it as you go or say forget it, I don't need to know it, because that's cool too. There are things in this world I have learned I do not need to know. I do not need to know a lot of things. I can't think of anything right now off the top of my head that isn't insane, but I don't need to know a lot of things. I don't need to know how my car works. I don't. I just want it to work. It's the joy of marrying a mechanic, I guess, because he can deal with those kind of things but I genuinely don't have any interest in knowing it, I don't have any need to know it, okay? There are things in my business I don't need to know. I don't need to know how the SEO on my site works. I know some, but I don't need to know it all. I A, have a plugin that gets me a lot of the way there, that helps with my limited knowledge. If I really, really want to amp up the SEO, I will hire someone who does know, because it's just not something I need to know. I do not need to know how to custom code my website because A, I have WordPress and B, I have developers. They know that stuff, okay? Social media, podcasting, that may be stuff you don't need to know a whole lot about, but that's the point of me doing this show is so that you don't feel dumb. You can get the minimum viable knowledge that you need, you can dive deeper if you want more than that minimum viable knowledge, or you can say, you know what? I can hire Stacey. I can hire somebody else who can take care of that for me, and that's okay. Number 1, what problem are you trying to solve? What are you trying to give your listeners. Number 2, who are your listeners? Who do you want listening to the show? Now for 9 and half out of 10 of you, it's going to be who you ultimately want to buy something in your business, but the important distinction to make is what section of you customer base do you want listening to your show? As an example, I don't tend to get a lot of consulting clients where I do large scale launch strategies and things like that through the podcast. Most of those people don't listen to this show. However, this is a primary way that people find out about and jump into Backstage. It's kind of your next logical step after listening to the podcast because it's the podcast plus, so to speak. It's the podcast where we dive deeper on all the things we talk about here and you get one-on-one attention from me in the Facebook group. You put profile in there, I do a profile review just for you. You ask for feedback, I give you feedback. It doesn't have to be that all of your clients will come from your podcast, but what section of your business do you want really to be fueled by your podcast? In a lot of ways, it's going to make the best sense if it's sort of your passive income or your one-to-many income kind of base. For a lot of podcasters, it's how they fuel their one-on-one business, their one-on-one coaching or one-on-one consulting. I know a few really successful health coaches and fitness coaches who have built, personal trainers, who have built their businesses through podcasting, through sharing their information because they're able to really showcase their expertise, but also give people an insight into their personality and who they are and how they talk and how they work and all of that through their show. People can feel really connected to them and then it's a logical next step to hire them. Get really clear on who you want listening. Not just age, rank, and serial number kind of stuff, not just like, "Oh well she's a 25 year old female and she's a stay-at-home mom." That is not an ideal listener profile anymore than it's an ideal client profile. I spoke at an event in Phoenix a couple of weeks ago now, a month ago now, 6 weeks ago now, something like that, in October. It's November now. In October. Somebody asked about their ideal clients and where they should be spending time on social and I said ... Where they should be spending time on social to connect with their clients and I asked who their ideal clients were. They said shallow middle-aged women who don't want to get old. I was like, "Well let me just raise my hand, dear." Then I asked her what middle-aged was. She said, I don't know, like 30 to 65. I was like, "First of all, not middle aged. That's all adult women." Almost all adult women. That's super general. That's really hard targets, impossible to figure out what kind of content to create, who to speak to, how often to do your show, sponsors, all of that stuff when you talk about a range that large. Get really specific. Who are they? What else are they listening to? What magazines do they subscribe to? What websites do they check out? What email lists are they on? What experts are they paying attention to in your space and in spaces around yours? Get really, really ridiculously clear on who do you want listening to the show? Number 3, what we're going to wrap it up with is where does this podcast fit in your overall business model? Again, that's going to tell you a lot about what you should be talking about when you think about, okay, where does this fit? Again, I don't talk about a ton of really, super, high-level big business kind of tactics and tools here because although my consulting clients are going to be interested in that stuff, they're not listening to this show. For most of the people listening to this show, they're trying to figure it out. They're trying to DIY it. They're trying to work with their new social media manager. They're trying to grow their business. They're trying to really support their micro-business in social media, on social media, and use it as a tool for that so what I talk about is different because I'm feeding into the Backstage part of my business model, not the high-level consulting. Not even, honestly, our social media management arm of the business. Those clients don't come through the podcast. They come through referral, they come through networking events, they come through social, but they don't come through the podcast. I know where this fits into my overall marketing funnel and into my overall business model. As sort of heartless as that sounds, It's critical because it's impossible to serve everyone all the time with your content. When you get clear on who you're talking to, what problem you solve for them, and where you're trying to move them to in your business, where in your business you can help them even more, it gets really easy to pick your topic, it's really easy to build your editorial calendar. Start with those 3 things and it's going to make all the difference as you move forward in really understanding what it is you talk about on your podcast week after week, month after month, year after year, all right? All right, if you want to learn more about launching your podcast, if you're ready to shift from idea to actual podcast, I've got 2 things to tell you. We've got a brand new podcast training that we just launched this month. It's totally free. You can find it over at TheStaceyHarris.com/Podcast. Also there is a gear list inside of there, as in I'm talking about all the gear you need to start and run your show. It's not as much as you think it is. Also, we've got inside of Hit the Mic Backstage, the 5 module Rock Star Guide to Podcasting program where I actually teach you from start to finish how to record, edit, and launch your podcast, whether you're a PC user or a Mac user. Also check that out. That's all inside of Backstage, so $40 a month. You can join us for as long as you need it. If you do check out the free training, though, there might be a 7 day, $1 trial for Backstage, and by might I mean there definitely is. Check that out if you want to give it a try, if you want to see if it's a fit for you. If you love, you stay in, fantastic. It's not a fit, you cancel, no hard feelings, we're all good, okay? All right. I will see you backstage and I will see you on Tuesday. Resources Join us inside Hit the Mic Backstage Free Launch Your Podcast Training Connect with Me Connect with me on Facebook Tweet with me and include #HittheMic Be sure to leave your review on iTunes or Stitcher for a shoutout on a future show

Welcome to episode 316 of Hit the Mic with The Stacey Harris. We all know that social media is a great way to connect, a great way to provide value, a great way to get to know your audience and their needs except what are you supposed to post? What are you supposed to share? Well that's what we're going to talk about today. We're actually going to breakdown building your content calendar because that is actually going to tell you exactly what to post. How awesome does that sound? Sounds pretty good right? All right, so let's jump in.   First things first, why have one? Why do this work? Real talk, we are very rarely creative on demand. Very rarely do I log into Facebook and I'm just struck by a wonderful amount of genius things to share. Even more rarely am I struck with something to share that's completely on point with the rest of the things happening in my editorial and marketing calendars, so I have a content calendar. Here's the thing. A content calendar is not the same as an editorial calendar. It is a similar tool, but it is a different tool. An editorial calendar speaks to what we're posting on our blog or our podcast or our video series. It's our actual content marketing calendar. What pieces of content are we creating. When I talk about a social media content calendar, I'm talking about the content that actually gets posted on social. A lot of this is your social media foundation. If you've heard me talk about that in other episodes, but it's just a little more specific than that foundation. Your foundation speaks to the strategy stuff of what networks am I on, how often do I post on those networks and what am I posting as far as this thing or that thing. When I talk about a content calendar, I'm actually talking about getting more specific. Not only do I post five pieces of other people's content to Twitter a day, these are the topics I want those posts to speak to. This is what I want them to support. That needs to be in line with your editorial calendar and your marketing calendar because that's what makes this whole machine work. I think a lot of times you hear email marketing experts or social media marketing experts and they speak to why this is the thing you have to do. This is the one thing you have to do. You see this with video marketing and email marketing and social media marketing, like I said, but here's the thing. There's not one thing you have to do. There's a lot of things that you have to do and they all have to work together. When they don't work together that's when you see confusion and disconnects and having a hard time getting people sort of over the hump and getting them to buy in from an actual purchasing perspective. Don't think about these tools as the same tool. Think about them as tools that complement each other. Really consider the fact that using these tools together is what allows you to continue to build trust, provide value and make sales. Because ultimately that's what it is. Is it's a tool that helps you reiterate the same value. A great example of this is right now, and I'm going to get super transparent here right. We're pulling back the curtain. Right now, in this month, November, we did a brand new training in the community all around your content calendar. Now, right now, because that's the brand new training, I'm doing this podcast episode about it, because it gives me an opportunity to tell you why you need to know more and start you down the path of creating your content calendar. I'm able to provide you value but also show you how I can give you even more value on the other side of this opportunity. Now, to take a step further, I'll also be sharing social media content about scheduling and calendars and knowing what to post and email marketing and editorial calendars because all of that supports the same message, which ultimately if you decide you want to know more about, you can do that inside of backstage. All of these things play a part together. Another example of this is we rolled out a new free training this month called launch your podcast. It's a free video training. It's about 30 minutes long and it's paired with a resource guide, and actual gear list, mics and what not, to get started with your podcasts. That program sells into Hit the Mic Backstage because inside of Hit the Mic Backstage we have the Rockstar guide to podcasting which is a whole five module program on launching your podcast, teaching you how to edit and record and stuff like that. In addition to that, later this month, we'll also have an episode of the show that's around podcasting. I'm also going to have some social media content around podcasting, because I know that's a big goal going into the new year. A lot of people want to launch their new podcast in January. Well, if you want to launch a podcast in January, now is really the time to do that planning and start recording so you have your episodes ready to go for a January launch. This isn't magic. This isn't some sort of formula that only I know. It's basic marketing. I'm giving you guys some value, absolutely. This podcast is 100% free and there's 100% value here, but I'm also giving you an opportunity to get more value by investing in yourself, by investing in what you want to do. When I have a content calendar and I have an editorial calendar, I can make those things work together and now I know exactly what it is I'm posting on social. When I go to layout what my social media updates are going to be I can tie everything in to these same couple of messages. For this month, that focus is going to be all around scheduling and content, and it's going to be all around podcasting. Now, that doesn't mean it's the only thing I'm going to talk about because it would get a bit repetitive. Also because of the nature of what I offer. I don't have to go 24/7 with it. An example of that is when I launch social pro program, I am more all about ... If you look back at January of 2016 when I was in launch mode for social pro, everything in January was about social media strategy. Everything, and that's because I was in a very condensed launch window for that program. Whereas with backstage it never closes. You can get in any time. Yes, not every single things feeds to that, but you guys hear me talk about it every episode. You hear a lot of what I tie in on social tie in to what I do there. That's because again this is all marketing okay. This is all going someplace. I can do that again, because I have put together a content calendar. Let's break down really how you actually know what to put in the content calendar. For me, it's A) based on my marketing calendar which is also what builds my editorial calendar, but it's also the questions you guys ask me. When I go into Facebook groups and I do Q&As, that's the stuff that fills out my editorial calendar, and by extension my content calendar. When we get questions in office hours from backstage, it's the same thing. It feeds that. That really allows me to make sure I'm answering the questions you need answers to because you're who I want to join the program. Do you see how that works? It doesn't have to be a guessing game. It doesn't have to be what some other expert is doing. It doesn't have to be what you think people want, because that's very rarely what people actually want, at least in my experience. What it does need to be though, is using the information that's in front of you. Again, we dive deep on this in the training in backstage, but ultimately I want you to look at really getting serious about building out exactly what gets posted on social, exactly what content is going to feed your goals and your audience at this stage in your business. Here's the thing is, you're not going to be building a content calendar that goes for six, eight months at a time because it might change. I sit down and evaluate kind of what content's going out every couple of months, especially because with backstage it runs all the time, I can be a little more hands off with it. We kind of know what's happening in the community and so it all stems back from that. We work backwards from that in a big way. Again, ultimately I have to revisit this regularly. We actually have to think about how do these things feed together? Again, that's how you figure out what to post, is hey what is happening in my business? What else is happening so that I can make sure that I'm speaking to that. All right? Again if you want to dive deep in this, and we talk about resources and choosing the actual content that's going to go on your calendar and filling that out, we talk about that in the community. On Hit the Mic Backstage, brand new training just came out November 1st. Also you can ask questions to me any time inside of office hours which is really going to help you dive deep on actually building this content calendar and making sure that you are aligned with your who and your where and you really figure out what that what is because that's what this all comes down to. All right? I will see you backstage, and I will see you on Friday. Resources Join us inside Hit the Mic Backstage Connect with Me Connect with me on Facebook Tweet with me and include #HittheMic Be sure to leave your review on iTunes or Stitcher for a shoutout on a future show

Welcome to episode 315 of Hit the Mic with The Stacey Harris. This episode is for those of you who feel like you just can't figure out where to get started. For those of you who are struggling along with social media, this is also worth giving a listen to because sometimes the struggle stems from a lack of foundation in our social media. I really want to talk about the three things you need to know, you have to know and you have to execute on when it comes to getting started with your social media because again, a lot of the struggles I see clients having, a lot of the struggles I see with our members at Hit the Mic Backstage, it really stems from not having those foundations in place. From not having these things figured out. Number one, I think this applies to literally everything and not just social media. That could just be me raising my hand on that one. Stop trying to do all the things. You don't need to be on every single network. You don't need to be doing social media 24 hours a day. You do not need to be glued to your phone when you're supposed to be at your kids soccer practice. Raising my hand on that one. You don't need to be obsessed with staying connected and staying in touch in all of the places all of the time. It's just not true. It's just not the way it is. I want you to very first, very foremost let go of that. Get yourself off the hook for that one because it's not serving you, it's not serving your goals and it is not serving your community which is generally the excuse we use to keep doing that. It's not really a value place and so I want you to let go of that. Again, you don't need to be in all of the networks. You need to be in a couple of places. You need to be in the right places at the right time not everywhere all of the time. I've talked about this in other episodes but it's worth re-mentioning here two primary networks. Yes, two. Not one, two and that's because when you're on only one network you're putting all your eggs in that basket. If they make a major change or that they are down, you're going to feel that. However, if you have another network to lean on, you have a little bit of a security blanket there should something happen. The best examples of this are in the last probably a year and a half, we've seen some major changes in organic reach on Facebook. The people who are most hurt by that are the people who only use Facebook. Especially those people who only had Facebook and didn't even legit have their own website set up. Those of you who are really feeling it but it really is the people who get hurt by those kind of changes are the people who are relying all on one network. A more recent example is a few weeks ago we saw major, major DNS attack that impacted a lot of our favorite websites like Twitter and Pinterest and Freshbooks and a lot. New York Times, a lot of major sites were down as a part of it. If those were your only networks you had no place to go. Having two primary networks is really helpful but also, again, it's two. It's not all of them. It's two. That's manageable. That's doable. I also like to have two secondary networks in addition to those primary networks. If you just want to have one secondary network that's fine but these are the networks to support what happens in your primary networks. They are really nice to have because if something shifts in a site or a community or in your business you can move those secondary networks into the primary position if you need to instead of going I have to start all over now. You literally don't ever want to do that. Right? Nobody wants to start all over. It's hard enough to start the first time so that's why I like to have those secondary networks. With those secondary networks, they are not going to be in the same amount of attention as the primary networks are on a day to day basis. Also if you're just getting started, don't worry about those yet. Figure out your two primary networks first. Get consistent there. Get established there. Build your habits, your strategies, your techniques, your tactics, your tools. Get really good in that space first then add secondary networks. Don't try to do it all at one time. Again, we're skipping right pass to try to do all the things. Okay, just fast forward. No need to do all the things. It doesn't serve you and it doesn't serve your community. If it doesn't serve you and it doesn't serve your community what the hell is the point of doing it? There's no point in exhausting yourself, in beating yourself up, in putting yourself through that if it doesn't serve anyone, you or your community so let it go guys. Let it go, frozen style. Is there anyone else who can't say let it go without thinking of that song now? It might just be me. Back on track. Number two, I want you to remember your who and your why. You know, I've wrapped up the first point in saying if it doesn't serve you and it doesn't serve your community then what the hell is the point? Sometimes when we chase this idea of having to do all of the things or having to be in all of the places, we get away from our who and we get away from our why. It's easy to end up down the road that doesn't serve our community because we've forgotten what it is we're doing. We can sometimes get caught up in the really well-executed marketing of experts who tell us we have to do X, Y, Z. There are a lot of people in my social media camaraderie who try and execute that way, who try to market that way. I'm a big proponent of not doing that. I'm not a fan of the do or die kind of marketing. What I am a fan of is the you do you kind of marketing and it's really easiest to execute that kind of marketing when you really stay connected to who you're talking to and what it is you want to tell them. This not only helps you build a strategy and provide value to the right people and provide the right kind of value, it really helps you stay in the room when it comes to social media. It really helps you stay consistent in putting value out there and getting your audience what they need from you and helping you give them consistent, reliable value and knowing they are going to hear from you and knowing that you're not going to have to stress out about it. Stay connected with who you're talking to and why you're doing it. It's really is the foundation of a strong strategy. Speaking of strategy, that's the third thing. If you're getting started and you're not sure what to do, take a step back and build a plan. It doesn't have to be a huge plan. It doesn't have to be the plan you use forever but having an outline of where you spend time, what kind of places you share from, the breakdown of the kinds of content that happens, how often you want to post per day. It really does make a difference in taking action because you spend less time wondering what to say and more time saying stuff. Honestly, saying stuffs getting going, getting moving, that's what's going to help you build a better social media environment for the future. That's what's going to help you know what kind of post connect because you can look at your insights. It's going to help you know what kind of problems your audience are having because they are going to leave you comments and questions and engage with you. It's really hard for you to learn when you're not doing. Build a bit of a plan, make some educated guesses and start executing. Don't let analysis paralysis ruin any forward movement for you. Don't let wondering and thinking and deciding and all of those things stop you from doing because when you start doing, you're going to have a whole lot more information to analyze. You're going to have a whole lot more information to work with and you're going to be able to make an actual difference for your community. Start moving. All right. To recap our three things. Number one, skip over trying to do all the things. Okay, don't do all the things. Remember those two primary networks, that's where I want you to start. Number two, remember who, remember the why. If you stay connected with those things it gets a lot easier to consistently provide value. Number three, build a plan even if it's a small plan. Even if that plan is definitely going to change which I promise it is. Starting somewhere is better than starting nowhere or worst, not starting at all. Okay. Get moving, get going. If you really, really need feedback and support and help which I'm sure you do or you wouldn't be listening this far of the episode, come join us Backstage. It's one of the best investments you can make getting started with social media because we have trainings on all of the major networks as well as strategy as well as things like foundations and understanding your insights plus partnered with all of that, you get to connect directly with me. You get to ask me questions. You get to get my eyes on your profiles. You get to get my expertise and feedback on your strategy on what you're doing. It really is the place to be to start executing, continue executing or get better at executing when it comes to social media. All right. I will see you Backstage and I'll see you on Tuesday. Resources Join us inside Hit the Mic Backstage Connect with Me Connect with me on Facebook Tweet with me and include #HittheMic Be sure to leave your review on iTunes or Stitcher for a shoutout on a future show

Welcome to episode 314 of Hit the Mic with The Stacey Harris. I'm really excited today because I'm going to empower you to really look at your Facebook page objectively. I'm going to walk you through the three things that I really want you to be doing whenever you assess what's happening with your profile on Facebook and by profile I should say page because remember we're using our Facebook pages for marketing and not our Facebook profile. Basically I'm going to teach you to DIY a Facebook page review. I love, love, love talking about reviews. We actually do them once a month inside of Hit the Mic Backstage. Every month we do profile reviews so members leave me a link and we review absolutely any profile. Basically, what I'm going to do is I'm going to walk you through the steps I take and the three major things I look for. There's definitely other things I look for but these are the three biggest missteps I see people making and so I want you to DIY yourself an objective look at your page. Okay? I want you to look at this and look at this from the perspective of somebody else's view, how it would look to a potential customer, how it would look to a potential client, a new lead, somebody who doesn't know who you are, doesn't know what you do and has just found your page or maybe they just got to your page from your website but they are not super clear on who you are. Ready to jump in? DIY Facebook page review.   All right, up first we're going to start right at the top of the page with your graphic. With the new Facebook page layout rolled out over the course of the summer, I say over the course of the summer because seriously they trickled out to people but pretty sure everybody has it now. With the new review, you see we have a larger unobstructed cover image. We've got our profile photo which is also a little bit larger to the left and then we have a massive call to action button. I want you to look at these three pieces first and foremost because here's the real talk, that's the first thing anybody sees. It's a huge, huge opportunity for you to connect with your audience, for you to connect with the people who are landing on this page. Make sure that that image is an image that tells me who you are as in an image of you if you're a personal brand. If you're not, a very clear logo or a team photo something like that. The thing to consider though is the bulk of the time that I see this image is going to be after I hit the like button and when you share status update or when I see an ad from your page. Make sure that as good as this image looks in this, air quote, "full size," make sure it also looks good in the smaller size which you can get really clearly in looking at that status box just under the like button where you would post the status. That gives you a better idea of what it's going to look like in the feed. It looks good both ways. It's eye catching both ways but make sure again it's you, okay? Especially for those personal brands. Most of you listening to the show are freelancers and coaches and any infopreneur space or providing services and when I buy something from you or I hire you for something, it really is about you so don't hide. Use that photo space to connect, okay? Also with that photo, make sure that when I click on that photo, the description isn't blank. Point me somewhere. Learn more about theStaceyHarris.com/about, that's what mine says because I want to use every opportunity to drive them away from Facebook and to my website because Facebook is distracting. My website is fairly focused on what I want you to do. Make sure that you're taking every inch of real estate that you get to point them some place, to get them to do something. The same is true with that cover photo. Again, we have a large, unobstructed cover photo. I'll actually put the sizes in the show notes of the episode down the resources section so you can actually create these. Canva is a great way to do it. If you have Photoshop and the expertise to use Photoshop, use Photoshop. I often create quick ones in Canva. In fact I just recently created one for the new free podcasting training that I'm offering. That's the cover photo now and guess what? I made that cover photo in Canva. If you look at the show notes page for this episode and you look down at the opt in at the bottom Facebook ads, I created that in Canva. Don't think you have to hire a designer. If you do not have the wherewithal to do that or the connections to do that, don't let that be a barrier to prevent you from creating something or really using that space to drive something somewhere to drive traffic to taking a specific action. Use that space. You can absolutely create something simple in Canva. You can actually create something really gorgeous in Canva or yes, hire a designer it that's what you want to do. Use the space. Okay? Use it. Then, make sure that that cover image ties in with that call to action button so for example, as I mentioned, the free podcast training is what's in the cover image on my page right now. When you hit that sign up button it takes you right to the actual lead page that you sign up for that training in. See how clever that is? It really is about making it a no brainer for people but also the description for that cover image also includes a link to that same lead page. If someone clicks on the cover image, I'm still able to point them to where I want them to go. I'm still able to get them to take the action that I want them to take. It's not about over-complicating this. It's not about making this more difficult than it needs to be. It's about keeping it really simple and really clear. Here's a free podcast training. Sign up. It's that simple. You can do this with an opt in before I had the podcast training up there I had just a straight up promo for Backstage. It said, Hit the Mic Backstage and then there's a little [blog 00:07:05] about what it is and the cost and then there was that sign up button. Again, super, super simple but tie it together. This is such a common misstep so really use these three pieces in conjunction. Really use these three pieces to be a really strong initial touch point for you and the person looking at your page whether a lead or a potential client ... A lot of you are speakers. A lot of you are building JV partners, an affiliate income. When people look at whether they want to hire you to speak, when people look at whether they want to partner with you, when people look about whether they want to have you on their podcast or have you write a guest post for them, these are the things that we're looking at so make sure you have your house in order and that initial touch point is so important because not a lot of people are going to scroll real far. Some people may literally only engage with that image that's in your profile, that image that's in your cover and maybe your like information or that first post or two that you have on your page. Maybe sure you're using this real estate. Okay? Number two. Don't forget your about information. Again, especially when people are looking at hiring you or they are looking at hiring you to speak or they are looking to purchase something from you, they are digging into who you are. Maybe you've wet their beak and they are excited and they want to know all the things, they might actually venture into your about area. Make sure that it's updated. We actually did a profile review several months ago now in Hit the Mic Backstage and I was talking about the about area for somebody and I went and showed them my about area as an example because they hadn't filled theirs out at all. I realized and I probably shouldn't tell the story but I'm going to. Mine was horribly outdated, horribly outdated. I referenced programs that didn't exist anymore. I didn't have any mention of Backstage which is a huge part of my business. I had to go through and update it. Make sure you do that especially when you're DIYing your Facebook page review. This is a good time to clean the house so make sure the phone numbers are updated, the address is updated if you have a physical space or a mailing address. Make sure that your descriptions are current, your links are current. Make sure all of that stuff is there and easy to consume for your clients or potential clients and all of that. Edit that page info, check out that about area make sure it's up to date. Yes, this is a mistake I'm totally teaching you guys out of experience. I was so embarrassed in doing this for review but you know, I'm all about transparency guys. That's what happened. Also, make sure that you have regular times to go check in with this stuff. Make sure that you go in and update this information whenever there's a change. Recently we moved from Arizona to California and so I need to update the address because our mailing address is different now because we have a California mailing address now. My phone number stayed the same but my address has changed so I need to update that there. Make sure that you do that stuff. All right, we started with our cover images and profile images then we talked about our about area. The third thing I want you to evaluate is your actual content. The best way to do this is not to scroll through your post and look at that reach number. That is not the best way. What I want you to do is I want you to actually go into your insights. I want you to actually go in and look at your reach and your page views and your likes and how people are engaging with your videos and your post and the action people are taking on your page. The people who like your page, are they your target demographic? Because if they are not, then you've got a whole bigger problem you need to deal with. It's not going to matter how good a page is, how engaging your post are if you're talking to the wrong audience, jump into your insights and actually look at these things because no profile review is complete without looking at the analytics. This is something that we don't get to do when we do our profile reviews in Backstage and that's why we have a how to use your insights training inside of Backstage because you have to look at these numbers. You have to see how your content is actually doing and that reach number or how many likes it got is not always an indicator of how your content is actually doing. Make sure, make sure without any doubts you're looking at these insights regularly and really digging deep into them whenever you're doing a profile review, whenever you're breaking down your page and its ROI and how it's performing and how it's delivering as far as part of your marketing strategy. Okay? The things I really want you to pay attention to is I really want you to pay attention to the people and making sure that you're talking to the right people. Don't only look at who your fans are made up of but also look at that people reached and people engaged because often just because your fans are totally on track you'll find that the people reached are slightly off track. The best example of this that I've got is I had a client who booked a one on one call with me and she didn't really understand her insights. We dug into her insights together and what was really interesting is in looking through her insights she was telling me this is who our target market is and I don't feel like this section of them are really on Facebook. I think they are out of the age range. When we looked at it in fact, not only were they a huge section of the people who like the page, they were the most engaged of the audience and the most commonly reached but they had kept writing content that was to a demographic that was a little bit younger because they were so convinced that they weren't able to reach this older age group on Facebook. When in reality, that's exactly who their Facebook audience was. Knowing who this is, knowing who's engaging with your page, who's actually seeing the content from your page, who actually likes your page, it's going to be hugely informative in how you write your copy, the kinds of call to action you create and how you use it. Because oftentimes you'll find that you'll reach two sections of your audience but you don't reach them in the same places. You reach them in different networks or you reach them with different copy. Pay attention to that. The other thing I want you to look at is I actually want you to look at your content so actually look at your post not only will it tell you when your fans are online and the post types that are doing well but you will actually see all your post published down below and you can look at the type of post it was. If you did any targeting with it, the reach of it, the engagement. What I think is interesting here is play with some of that targeting, customize your audience especially if you're one of those groups that's again talking to two different maybe age groups with the same page. Maybe look at, "Hey, this isn't going to speak to that group so let's target to this smaller demographic and then we'll have another post that we target to this other smaller demographic instead of one post that tries to speak to all the people." Then you can go look at these numbers and you can see what performed well, what connected with people. You can see what types of content or posting from the perspective of a link or video or a photo. You can see the topics that are really connecting so use this information to really, really look at, "Hey, this is what's actually happening." Not just the reach, not just, "Oh, this is how many people Facebook tells me this post actually gotten in front of." No, look at how they are engaging with it. Look at all of the information. You can actually click on the post and you'll get even more information like the likes, the likes that happen on the post versus shares, comments, comments on the post versus comments on shares, shares on the post versus shares from other shares. You can also look at clicks. You can actually see if people are clicking the links because often they won't comment or like a post but they will click on the link and in a lot of cases that's the goal. You may think, "This didn't performed really well. It got a big reach but no one is engaging with it but everyone clicked the link," not everyone necessarily but a lot of people clicked the link so it did performed well. Okay? This is why digging into the insights is so important because that's not information you're going to get from just looking at the front of your profile and saying, "Oh it reached 2,000 people, fantastic." Okay? All right. That's it, that's really what I wanted to pay attention to. The front end, make sure that top of your real estate those graphics are on point. Make sure you keep your about area updated and make sure you are regularly digging into your insights. If you have more questions or you want my eyes on your profile, be sure to join us Backstage. This is the exact kind of stuff that I built that community to do. We do have an entire training on how to use Facebook insights which is hugely popular and not used by enough of you so come check it out. All right, hitthemicbackstage.com to see how you can join us inside of the community and check out the brand new ... It's not so brand new anymore I guess but I'm still really excited about it, the really cool private community right inside of our site. Okay. I'll see you on Friday.

Welcome to Episode 313 of Hit the Mic with The Stacey Harris. All right guys, so last month in Hit the Mic Backstage I answered a very common question by doing a training all around free challenges. We see these all over the place, they're a huge list growing opportunity. Basically, what they are is a challenge to actually grow your email list. You're providing value for your audience, you're getting them engaged right from the start, and it's totally free for them. All it costs is an email address. Usually this up sells to some sort of paid program or coaching opportunity, something like that. It doesn't have to I guess but generally speaking I like to do something on the other side of that opt-in, right? That's what we're going to talk about today. We're going to talk about the three things you need to know about running a free challenge to grow your list. All right, let's do it. Thing number one that you need to know about running a free challenge is getting people engaged is critical but keeping them engaged, that's where the money is. Here's the deal. A lot of times we shoot ourselves in the foot by feeling like we need to deliver an epic amount of value. Here's the deal. I'm really, really happy that you want to increase your value and you want to provide your audience with this killer, killer information. Real talk, they can only do so much. Okay? They only have so much time in the day and because this is a free challenge you have to factor that into where you fall on their priority list. They've got to deliver to their work or their business, and their family, and their friends, and themselves, that's a lot of cups to fill up. You want to make sure that they have a reason to spend time with your challenge for the duration, whatever that may be. Now, that is going to directly impact what that duration is. Meaning you don't want to have a free challenge that's 21 days long because again, real talk, it's hard to keep somebody engaged for that long when there's no financial investment on the table. Think about how many courses you've paid for and fallen off hanging out with it way before 21 days rolled around. Make sure that, especially when you talk about something you're not financially invested in, you're not sort of trying to prove that it was a good investment, think about that when you factor in their attention span. Length of time but also the day-to-day of it, keeping them engaged from one day to the next. Making sure that you are giving them a reason to keep opening those emails, keep visiting the site, whatever it is that you are doing. Number one, yes, getting them engaged is absolutely critical but keeping them engaged, that's where the money's made, that's where the difference happens. Really, that is the most important decision you have to make when you get started. Number two, there are a lot of decisions to make and I want you to make them all before you start marketing. There's a lot of things you've got to decide. You've got to decide length of time, what kind of content it's gonna be, what problems are you gonna solve? You have to figure out all of this stuff. How are you going to deliver it? You have to figure out all of these things. We dove deep into that stuff inside the training, inside of Hit the Mic Backstage. If you want to sort of break through those questions I give some input on how to suss out those answers. The reality is, is too many of us fall into the trap of, "Okay, so I know I want to run this challenge around X,Y,Z. I'll just build it as I go." That makes it really difficult for us to do a good job of actually engaging the audience. It makes it really, really difficult for us to actually share the value we're trying to share because we get so focused on creation. We get so caught up in simply building and making sure that this thing is a real thing that we miss out on the opportunity to really say, "Hey, I'm here for you.  How can I help you? How can I support you? This is why I want you to take the next steps, this is why you're doing this. This is why you're staying in the room and staying engaged." Don't skip through the planning and jump right into, "Oh, I've got this idea. I'll just figure it out as I go." Take a step back, map out the email sequences. Map out the up sells. Map out the delivery methods. Map out what content you want them to have delivered. I'm not saying you have to come out of the gate with the primo super shiny offering. What I am saying is I want you to come out of the gate with the foundations of a valuable, consumable, engaging challenge. Have the decisions made already around is there going to be a Facebook group, how you're delivering the content, what that content is. Have all that stuff prepared because some of the best value they're going to get is from you actually showing up, you actually being available to them. That can only happen if you are able to be 100% in deliver-ability and outside of that creation space. Factor that in, make sure that you make time and you give it the attention it deserves. That is absolutely 100% a lesson I learned the hard way so please don't relive it because it sucks. Okay, guys? All right, buzzing right through this list, number three. Market this like you would any other program. One of the biggest mistakes that I see people making when it comes to these challenges is they take a really laid back approach to marketing it. They don't gut out their end run Facebook ads and share it in their group, and talk about it in their speaking engagements, and reference it in their content. They're not talking about these things all the time. Whether you're running this as a one off challenge and it's 100% live and it's just for this short period of time. Or you run this an an Evergreen thing and it's a standard opt-in on your website and people can get in any time, either way you have to market it. Sometimes we jump ahead to, "Oh, I'll just wait and I'll market the actual program I'm selling instead of this challenge. Really, the challenge is going to convert much more frequently to that paid thing than a cold ad is, than a cold sell is. Even a warm sell at the end of speaking engagement. You can say, "Hey, I want you guys to take the next step with this. Here's a free three day challenge I have. Text the code blah, blah, blah to X,Y,Z and here you go." Then sell them from that because you've given added credibility, you've given added value and you're going to convert at a much higher rate. Give this the same marketing attention, the same marketing investment. Not just financial but time-wise that you would any other program or offering in your business. It deserves that attention, it deserves that priority. Again, going back to sort of step two where I talked about make sure you're out of creation mode, make sure in addition to creation time you also have marketing time. You also have space for you to sell this, share this. Get people invested in it before they ever walk through the door. That's so, so important and it's something that I see so many people missing, all right? There we have it, out quick and dirty three things episode. We're going to start trying to keep these a little bit shorter. I want it to be super consumable for you guys and I want to see you taking action. If you're ready to take action on this and you want to take it a step further and you want to dive deeper, head over to HittheMicBackstage.com. You will find inside of Hit the Mic Backstage an entire 30 minute training dedicated to this. Plus, we have the brand new private forum which is so amazing, so much better than a Facebook group. I'm so excited about this. It is such a powerful way for you to engage, not just with me but the other members, and really get the feedback you need, the feedback you want on your challenge. Come through and work through it with us, that's what that space is for. Get feedback on your landing pages, get feedback on some of the copy in your email sequences. Get feedback on your Facebook ads, learn how to run the Facebook ads for it. Really take it to the next level by giving it the, again, the financial and time investment it deserves to really run at a next level epic for you. Okay? All of that stuff is inside of Hit the Mic Backstage so join us once again, hitthemicbackstage.com and it's going to be super fun. I'm excited to welcome you backstage, I can't wait to see you. If you're already a member and you missed that training go check it out right now, okay? All right, I will see you guys on Tuesday. Resources Join us inside Hit the Mic Backstage Connect with Me Connect with me on Facebook Tweet with me and include #HittheMic Be sure to leave your review on iTunes or Stitcher for a shoutout on a future show

Welcome to episode 312 of Hit the Mic with The Stacey Harris. Today we're pulling back the curtain on a big part of Hit the Mic Backstage actually. I get a lot of questions about running a membership and how I started it and things like that. What I want to talk about today is not so much how I started something but why I'm changing something. Up until now, the community part of Hit the Mic Backstage, which I guess I should rewind and say this. Hit the Mic Backstage is a private community full of a library of trainings on everything from Facebook to Twitter to LinkedIn to SnapChat to all the major networks. Plus some content marketing stuff like blogging and video. We have guest experts who have joined us to talk about Facebook groups, to talk about getting publicity from major publications and finances and all sorts of things. It's a really cool part of my business that I absolutely love running. It's without a doubt my favorite offering. I have the most fun doing it. It's a little more than a year old now. The consistent feedback we get from members is that the most valuable piece is the community because in there we do something called Office Hours where I answer questions. We do profile reviews once a month. I share news as it happens. We talked about last week with the Facebook changes. All that stuff went out to the private community and Hit the Mic Backstage first. Up and until the last couple of weeks, the private community was completely on Facebook. There was the membership area that is on the website with all the trainings but the community part where you connected with each other and with me, that all happened on Facebook and a private group. Recently though, as in the last couple of weeks, I changed that. It is now a private forum on Hit the Mic's Backstage site, instead of being on Facebook. I had a lot of questions from members about it and it's something I thought about for a really long time and struggled with, but I wanted to pull back the curtain and share why with you today. That's what we're going to do. When it comes to building a community for your membership. You want that to be a place where, not only to get engaged and connect with each other but also where they're getting value. For me it's one of the easiest ways for me to provide value because I can simply kind of share what's going on. Hey this is happening. Facebook made this change or SnapChat evolved this way or here comes Instagram stories. These kind of things or quick updates like you know about the fact that Facebook ads might be running you a little more right now. They're not broken. You're not doing anything wrong. It's just what happens this time of year. I really, really like that. I really like being able to provide that value. Again, it's consistently one of the top value pieces for members when they talk about why they stay and why they tell people to join. It's really important to me that I'm able to consistently provide that high quality, high level experience. That gets really hard to do when you talk about building it someplace you don't control. Facebook and all of its wonder is a very busy place. There's a lot going on and there's a lot of pulls and draws on your attention in that space. I don't know what they are going to do with Facebook groups in the future. I'm not saying that something's coming or anything like that. I don't know. Believe it or not, Mark Zuckerberg does not call me up and ask approval before making these kinds of changes. That would be super cool if he did but he does not. It's really scary for me to put all of my eggs in that basket when it comes to such an important part of my value because if something happens to Facebook or my Facebook account, or just even my group. Facebook decides there's something with it and shuts it down or if there's a bug in Facebook and it gets closed down. I have no recourse there. I have no control. I have nothing that I can do to make that better. However, by having it on my website that I pay for the hosting and I built and I control. I have a lot more leeway. I can make the rules. I can change the rules. I can change what the environment looks like. I can keep the people who are on the forum slightly more focused. I mean, there's still the draw of the whole rest of the internet and the forty-seven thousand tabs we all have open. I can do more to make sure that value is actually there. I can make sure that value was easy to consume, easy to search, easy to engage with and easy to be a part of. That's one of the big reasons I decided on a private forum on the website versus doing something like the Facebook group, moving forward. Let me say a couple of things moving people from a Facebook group to a private community. The feedback has not been universally, "Oh this is a great idea." I haven't had any massive meltdowns about it. Also that's why I decided to do it now and not later. I've seen other people try to make this move and it's been really difficult because their community was so massive already. We don't have a humongous community of thousands of people just yet, so now, really is the time to move. The people who are active in the communities now, they're the people who are going to make the move because they know the values there. That's what's going to make it even more attractive for future participants because they're going to have people to engage with in that space. I will say, that it was nice to have that core group to move over there with an established "Hey this is what the space is for," but that it's not so large that I have to worry about the natives getting restless on hating the idea. The common push back, the common thread is "Well I'm already in Facebook." That's something I really debated with before I decided to do it was I'm already in Facebook. From a moderation standpoint, I'm already here. From and admin perspective, my users are already here. They can just be attached to their profile and they don't have to set anything else up. That was something I had to make sure I could keep as simple as possible with whatever I introduced. It had to be easy to get to. It had to be easy to sign up for and it had to be easy to use. When it came to choosing a tool, I chose a tool called IP Board. I use the self hosted version so it's right along side my WordPress site. It is not a WordPress plug in. It doesn't site inside of my WordPress site. It actually sits next to it. I use a plug in to make them talk to each other. There's no additional thing to set up. Whereas with the Facebook group, we had a situation where members would join the community and then have to go to the Facebook group and request access. Now when members join the community they have access to everything because the community sits right inside their membership. Their WordPress login is their community login. When you're logged in to the WordPress site where you get the membership information, the trainings and stuff, you're also logged in to the community. It's all in one domain. It's all in one place. That actually moves a step for members. All they have to do is click over to community and start talking, start engaging, start reading. That actually made the process simpler. I also chose IP Board because it has a very social feeling layout. You can like things, you can quote things, you can tag people, you can set up your profile with the profile image and a cover photo. You can have status updates, you can do those kind of things like you would on a Facebook, however, now you can really target it and make it a part of the conversations we have inside of Hit the Mic Backstage so that you can be, again, all in. You can be focused on what's happening because going back to my earlier point, Facebook is noisy. Facebook is busy. There's a lot of pulls on your attention there. Whereas with this private community, you come in and stay focused and on target. I know for me is very valuable because when I'm in education time, when I'm in learning time, when I'm implementing time, it's really easy for me to get turned off of that by doing something else. I wanted to make this as simple as possible. With that said, the other pull back from people and concern I had going in was what if it just doesn't have the same level of engagement because people aren't used to engaging there. That's something we're still in the first couple of weeks but I'm seeing some early success with people feeling really good being there. The thing I'm doing is we've moved part of what happened in the Facebook group regularly, in there so that there's a reason to go and that's office hours. That's the place where you get my feedback. We started off with our first office hours and private community was actually our first profile review week. There was really an incentive to come to that place. Every week there's an incentive to go to that place. I'm definitely still feeling things out with how things are going to work. One of the things we've started rolling out that we're still playing with every other week but I may move up to every week is a weekly recap of what's happening in the community. Giving people a reason to come see these posts. Highlighting some of the people who are engaging. I like that because "a" I get to highlight members who are participating, who are taking action, who are doing cool things but also I get to get in-boxes and say "Hey this is what you're missing. Come hang out with us." That's something we're toying with right now again every other week but we may move to every week. As we build, those are good ways to make sure that people aren't just forgetting about it but they're coming on over with us and they're engaging. Those were really the big things I was concerned about before going in was, they're already in Facebook so are they going to just hate this idea. Is it going to be difficult for them. Is it going to be an extra step. In a way it actually made it easier. It actually streamlined the onboarding new member process. Then for my existing members, is it someplace they're just not go to. We've answered that with the other solution of getting people's in-boxes and e-mailing them and saying hey, "This is what your missing, come hang out." Also again, giving a shot out to people who are super active in the community. I love being able to do that. Again I chose to make this move. I don't know that it's for everybody. I'm definitely not somebody who's going to say my way is the only way, but I will say that I'm really enjoying my way. I'm really, really happy I made the choice to move it to a place that I could really make the best it could. For me, at the end of the day, it's being able to provide the best value I can to my members and this allows me to provide value at a much higher level than a Facebook group did. Now, full disclosure, I still have parts of my paid program groups on Facebook. The Social Pro group is still on Facebook. The old school rock star guides there are people who are still just customers to that and not customers to Hit the Mic Backstage. Those groups are still on Facebook and Google+. The Google+ group still exists. I haven't moved everything to a private group. I don't know that I would ever move everything over to this group but for right now, I'm really loving this group. All right. If you want to come check it out and see what's inside of this group. Come see us. Hit the Mic Backstage is a incredible resource where we talk more about stuff like this. I'm super transparent. I'm super all about giving them a behind the scenes look at what's happening so if you're interested in doing some of this stuff, it's a great place to learn more about how I'm doing it, how I market it and how you can do the same. All right. Thanks for listening. I will see you on Friday.   Resources Join us inside Hit the Mic Backstage Connect with Me Connect with me on Facebook Tweet with me and include #HittheMic Be sure to leave your review on iTunes or Stitcher for a shoutout on a future show

Welcome to episode 311 of Hit the Mic with The Stacey Harris. Yay Facebook changes! I know you're excited, I'm excited, we can hardly contain it. Let's jump right in. We're going to talk about three big Facebook changes happening rolling out now, and over the coming weeks. They're all going to have an impact directly on you. I want you to pay attention. This one would be a good one to bookmark, and maybe highlight for your Evernote some spots in the show notes. We've got the full transcript. Because these are going to be some things that are going to impact you again as they roll out in the next few weeks.   Update number one. There are some brand new call to action buttons coming to Facebook pages. Up until now you could do things like visit a website, sign up, watch video, call, those kind of things. Now, Facebook is actually hooking up with some third party apps to make that call to action button even cooler. Right now, they're talking about the current list of services for appointment booking, or requesting contact. Home Advisor, Microsoft Bookings, My Time, Booker by Booker Software, Booking Bug, Front Desk Porch, Setster, Simplybook.me, and Talk Local. These are going to be appointment booking softwares. If you want to have a call to action to book a consult with you, free 15 minute call, you could hook it up through these services. They simply hit the button. Yeah. How cool is that. That's going to be a really powerful thing. There's also going to be some Foodorderdelivery.com, and Slice. They're also going to be able to buy tickets through things like Eventbrite. If you have an event happening, maybe you run a networking business, maybe you do workshops, and you sell your tickets through Eventbrite. That's going to be really amazing. Also Ticketmaster and Fandango, which are probably going to be less helpful for you. I'm really excited about the Eventbrite connection, and the appointment booking connections. I think that's where you are going to see the biggest impact. These call to actions are going to be that big blue call to action button that sits under your cover image on your Facebook page. Again, if you want to send people right to booking a 15 minute consult, or right to booking an event ticket ... In addition to being able to connect them with lets say your phone number, or a contact form, or a sign up for a program or whatever, you're going to be able to send them right to actually doing something. It's a really cool integration. I'm excited that they're taking this in this direction. I'm excited to see how it evolves. I'm really impressed with what they've got going on. If you want to add the button, it's the same process as adding your button now, however there's going to be some sections you can choose from like booking your service, get in touch with us, learn more about us, make a purchase or donation, use an app. If you go to book our services, you can see book now, and then you'll actually be able to select options, and see which booking service you want to connect to. I haven't mentioned this yet, but you are going to need to have an account with that third party service. I shouldn't need to mention this, but if you don't have a Microsoft Bookings account, you won't be able to set up bookings. This may be a premium service that you need to pay attention to depending on who you're using it through. This is brand new, so some are still rolling out. It's coming soon when you look at the partner app and services area, but it's rolling out. I'm really excited about it. Especially for those of you who I know listen to the show that are health coaches, business coaches, relationship coaches, confidence coaches, and you're working one on one with clients. Or for those of you who are in the service base space, but you still offer that get to know me, let me answer your questions, 15 minute consult. This is going to be a game changer because it's going to allow somebody to find you, and connect for a consult really easily. Of course, you can also run ads to your call to action button, right? You guys have seen that. Why wouldn't you be able to do that now? That's right. Think about it. Running an ad directly to the call to action button to your fans. Getting them to book calls with you, buy tickets for events. That's killer. I'm really amped about this. I'm really excited. I wanted you guys to see that because I think it's going to be ... it really is going to be one of those shifts for a lot of you with how you're using your Facebook page. Number two. Facebook live is getting a massive upgrade. It's starting to roll to to some pages this week. If you're not seeing it yet, pay attention over the next few weeks. It's rolling out now. You know how Facebook rolls things out slowly because they have a massive user base. You can now schedule your Facebook lives. Yes. That means prep your audience before it's actually time to get in front of them. You're going to allow them to see, "Hey, I'm going live", and they can request a reminder. You can say, "Hey! Stacey's going live at 2pm today, get a reminder!". They hit a button, and they get a notification, "Hey! Stacey's going to be going live soon.". I'm so excited about this because I think one of the big complaints I hear from a lot of you guys about Facebook Live is that people aren't getting on live with you. Yeah you're getting some value from them watching the replay, and yeah you get the news feed bump, but you feel like you're talking to yourself for a lot at the beginning. This may be a very helpful way to get around this. This is also going to be a really powerful way to build Facebook Lives into your launch sequence along side things like webinars, and things like that. Because again, you're telling people when you're going live. You could do Q and A's about your program. You could do a weekly feature. You could do a ton of things, and actually build the audience before you hit the live button. I 'm so excited about this. To do it though is a little bit different than actually going in and going live. You're actually going to do it from your desktop. You're going to go to publishing tools, and you're going to need to copy your stream credentials, so your stream key and your server URL. If you don't have those available now, and you need to get them later, you can edit that. You can craft your actual announcements. You can write your copy out and say, "Hey this is whey I'm going live. This is what we're going to be talking about. Join us for whatever.". Then you're going to schedule it. Create an image, whatever you want to do, and there you go. How exciting is this? Again verified pages are getting it this week. Or I'm sorry, got it last week. All the other pages are going to be getting it over the next few weeks according to Facebook in their announcement. It's going to be a really cool thing you're able to do through the Facebook live API. You can actually schedule these things. Then you can go in, jump in, go live, and engage with your audience in a scheduled way. This is going to change the way people are doing webinars specifically, and the way people are using video during launches or big promo pushes. Whatever that looks like for you. For me, I don't have traditional launch schedules because we've got the membership site, and it's open all the time. But we do have built into the calendar, times where we have a real push for new members. We're actually rolling into one as we close out the year. That will allow me to say, "Hey! On this day I'm going to do a public office hours. Get what it's like to be in Backstage's Office Hours. Things like that. Schedule it. Make it available to people, and promote it before we go live. Instead of playing catch up once we go live. It's going to be really cool. I will link to these announcements by the way in the show notes page for this episode. The third thing I want to talk about, is something I actually found via following Buffer on Facebook. They're saying it's now confirmed by Facebook. They're going to be testing removing the page like count from some users and pages. You may not see that page like number on pages anymore. There's already a lot of back and forth about whether this is going to be valuable or not in the comments on the Buffer page. Some people hate it because they have clients who have paid thousands in ads to grow their likes and credibility on their page. Personally, I fall into the other camp. I fall into the camp of man am I glad this total vanity metric might be gone. Because the reality is the metric is not all that useful. Because you can do things like dump a ton of money into ads, or other way less ethical ways of growing that number where it's not really representative of anything valuable. It's a false credibility builder. It's a false number from a perspective of oh I have this many people who like my Facebook page. Great. That doesn't really mean very much. How much of them are doing something? The things that I check when I look at my Facebook stats are not my page like number, but are the clicks on the links I'm getting, the engagement. That's what I look at when I see client stuff. We don't look at the page like number first, we look at what are those page likes doing? Then we go in and we look at who are those page likes. So that we can see whether it's even going to be valuable to offer ads to that community because in some cases what's happening is yeah you've paid a fortune for Facebook like ads, and you've got a great number, but guess what, they're not representative of who your ideal clients are. They're not representative of who you want buying anything. We've had brick and mortar clients who've got thousands of Facebook page likes, and none of them are in their physical area. That's not actually helpful to get people in your door. Make sure you're paying attention to that. This is something again they are testing out. Removing it for some users and some pages, so you may or may not see this change. You may or may not see what comes of it. But I want you to be aware. More than anything, why I wanted to talk about it, was I really wanted to put in your mind that the value is not solely in that number. The value is in what's happening on the page. So don't put too much credence in oh I hit 100, oh I hit 1,000, oh I hit 10,000. Put more credence in the hey I got 100 clicks, 1,000 clicks, whatever on this link to a podcast episode, a blog post. I got 50 comments on a post, whatever that is. That has a lot more value than that number on the side that says so many people like your page. Okay. All right. Those are the three things. Just to recap real quickly. New call to action buttons, Facebook Lives can now be scheduled through the API, and Facebook is testing likes no longer being shown on pages. Huge, huge news. I'd love to hear your thoughts on these things. Guess what? The really cool thing is if you were a member of Hit the Mic Backstage, you already knew all this stuff. Because we talked about it in the community. We talked about it in the brand new private forum that's right on the membership site. Why aren't you joined us yet? This community is actively getting better than ever, so head over to hitthemicbackstage.com, and join us right now. Because this is the place to stay up to date with these kind of changes. You don't have to keep chasing and hoping you don't miss anything, because it's all inside of Hit the Mic Backstage. All right. I will see you on Tuesday.   Resources Join us inside Hit the Mic Backstage New Call to Actions Button Schedule Your Facebook Live Page Likes Test Connect with Me Connect with me on Facebook Tweet with me and include #HittheMic Be sure to leave your review on iTunes or Stitcher for a shoutout on a future show

Welcome to episode 310 of Hit the Mic with The Stacey Harris. Let's talk hiring, so a lot of us tend to, and I'm totally raising my hand on this one, guys, wait too long to hire help, and so today I want to talk about some ways you might know it's time to hire help, and some different ways that you can get help, because I think there's a lot of perception around, "You have to have XYZ, and that has to work," and that doesn't necessarily work for everybody, because we all have our different needs. We all have our different strengths, and that's okay. That's totally okay.   All right, so let's start with how you might know it's time to hire someone? Number one, you want to make more money, and you have no time. Not in a you need to trade more of your time of money, kind of one to one thing, but it's hard when you're slammed with keeping up with the business you've got, to do two things. A, market your business, so you continue to have consistent income, instead of that peaks and valley roller coaster kind of vibe, when it comes to your money, which sucks. Okay. There's no two ways to talk about it. It blows, but you also don't have any time to grow anything outside of your one to one offerings. Maybe you want to create a passive income product, to not necessarily replace your one on one, but to supplement it, or maybe you want to create a group program, so that you can serve more people at a lower price point, because you know that there's a group of your audience, who really wants to work with you, but they can't. They can't swing your one on one rates yet. They're not there yet, so you want to have a lower cost group program, or something like that. Maybe it's you want to have the time to create a passion project. Maybe it's a book. Maybe it could be anything, really, but to have that space, and that time to make more money through some of those other avenues, you got to get some of the stuff off your plate, and now we talk about this a lot on the Your Biz BFF podcast I do with Brandy Lawson, where we talk about not just delegating, but deleting, and so that may be something you need to do, but there's going to be some of that stuff that does need to get delegated, and it does need to get put on someone else's plate, so that's a really good indicator that it's time. Number two, there are things you are avoiding that have not been done in a very long time. A personal example of this is my accounting. Before I handed it off, it would sit, and wait until, quite frankly, I absolutely had to do it, which is usually tax time, and then I'd have a year's worth of receipts, and invoices, and just stuff to input, and check, and verify, and find, and it sucked. It sucked hard, and so it ended up usually taking a lot longer than it needed to take, but also, I really, really, really needed to get someone else to do it, and so that's what happens now, is I don't do it, but if there's something like that for you, it could be keeping up with your social media, it could be your accounting, it could be getting started with consistent content, it could be getting transcriptions for your podcast, another one for me. It could be absolutely anything. If there's something you're avoiding that you know can't be deleted, it can't be skipped, it needs to be done, that's a good indicator that it's time to hire, so those are the two things I want you to focus on, on initially. I think, a lot of times, we think, "Oh, it's time to hire a VA, because someone in the world told me that that's the only way I'll be successful." The frustrating thing with that is usually you don't know what to give them, and worse yet, you don't know who to hire at all, because you don't actually know what you want them to do, and we're hiring somebody who can do the things we need done, so look at those two things. Look at you need to create space, so you can make more money, or for your own life. Maybe you're just flat burned out, and you need to get stuff off your plate, that's acceptable, too, and then number two, there are things that you are avoiding in your business that cannot be deleted, that have to happen. Like your bookkeeping. These are really good indicators, "It's time to hire someone." Let's talk about what that looks like, and what that process is, so I have hired a lot of people in a lot of different ways, but for me, it always has come down to my most successful experiences have been where I worked with someone who could do exactly what I needed them to do. Instead of hiring someone who could do nine things, I hired one person who could one thing, and I hired another person who could do the other thing, and so in a lot of cases, I can get somebody who can do two things great, but I think my initial instinct was always to hire one person who could do all the things, so my initial instinct was, "Awesome, I'll get a VA," and having been a VA, I should have known better, but I did not. Because I tried to find somebody who was a generalist, and who could all the things, and here's the deal, is I ran into a lot of me having to train, which is a part of hiring someone, absolutely, but I wasn't training them to do things the way I needed to do them. I was training them on straight up how to run their business, how to work with my business, how to do every single task, and that was taking a lot more time, and it just wasn't working out. Instead, I've started shifting to hiring people to do exactly what I need, so if I need somebody to do some website work for me, I don't hire a generalist VA. I hire a VA with web knowledge, or I hire ... I will straight up go to a developer, and I will talk to a developer, and say, "This is what I need." On the flip side, if I need social media help for our clients, or I'm trying to get some of my stuff off my plate, I'm going to hire somebody with social media knowledge. Because I'm not necessarily just paying that person for their time, or for the execution of the task. I'm also paying them for the knowledge they have, and in some cases, this means I pay a little bit more than I would to have a generalist do it, but in the long run, it saves me time, and it saves me money, because it's done right, so that has been a big shift in mindset for me. Really understanding that I'm hiring for the job. In addition to that though, I have to hire for the personality. I have to hire somebody who I'm going to get along with, and who I'm going to trust, and I think that's probably been the biggest pain point for me, is hiring someone I trust. Because, I, like a lot of you listening, I'm a bit of a control freak. I know. It's almost unheard of in the online entrepreneur space, or really even any kind of entrepreneur space, but as business owners, we tend to be a little bit controlling, and we also tend to think that we're the only ones that can do anything, which is totally false. Because, some things we suck at, guys. I know. It was hard for me hear, too, but it's true, and so I'm big on that trust factor, so as soon as it's dinged, or it's lost, I can't go back. It's been really important for me to find people who I got along with really well, and could work with really well, and could trust to get things done in a way that they needed to be done, and the best way for me to do that has been referrals. A great example of this actually just happened the other day. I'm currently working on launching a new private community right inside of the membership site for Hit the Mic Backstage, and in fact, by the time you hear this, it will be live, and the members will know about it, so what's cool about that is this is now some place that I can control. Totally control the user experience. It checks all the boxes. It's exactly what I wanted in a private forum, and best of all, I'm not building a hugely incredible part of the value, and a hugely important part of the value in my membership site, on real estate I don't control. I don't own, in regards to like a Facebook group, so that's really important for me, so I needed to go in and deal with some FTP stuff, so that I could get the community area talking to the WordPress membership site on my website, so that they could be friends, and that the one log in page would work, and all of this stuff. This was something that was ridiculously simple, and I understood the process, but I don't know very much about, and honestly, I was a little afraid I was going to break it, and so I reached out to a friend of mine, Brandy Lawson, who does a ton of web stuff. In fact, does website builds for clients with her team, and who works on online presences for people, and who has been building WordPress websites for years, and who runs WordPress meetups in Phoenix, and who has intense, not only knowledge, but connections with people who know their stuff, so instead of going on Fiverr, or some kind of site like that, or running into my Facebook groups, and saying, "Hey, can anybody help me?" I reached out to someone I trusted, and tapped her network, and said, "Hey, I need a developer who can do like five minutes worth of work. Do you know anybody?" She had a name back to me within like a couple of hours. I emailed that person, and I had the whole thing done in less than twenty-four hours, at a great rate, and then flawlessly. We ran into one hiccup, because I screwed something up in sending it to him. He went in, and fixed it, and knew immediately what the problem was. Whereas, I would have spent days, and a lot of tears trying to figure out what was wrong, and I had total trust in handing everything over to him, because I took that first initial step of reaching out to someone I trusted, and knew would know who could help me, so when you're ready to hire, the first thing I want you to do, tap your network. There could be somebody in your existing network who can provide the service, or who can give you a referral, so before you run into a Facebook group and say, "Hey, guys. I need a VA," start tapping your inner circle. Start talking to the people in your network. Your Online Biz BFFs, your in-person biz BFFs, your networking connections. Start talking to those people about who they've hired, about who they've used for the task that you need. That's going to go a long way to setting up, not only just a solid get along relationship, because if the person you like gets along with them, it's more probably that you'll get along with them as well. It's not always perfect, but it's more probable. They're have definitely been experiences where Brandy and I have both worked with someone, and she has gotten along with them great, and I've run into issues. That happens, so it's not a sure thing. It's not perfect, but it's going to give you a whole lot of leverage ahead of, "Here, let me Google, and see who I can find." Okay. The next thing I want to talk about is if your network doesn't have anybody, and maybe you do want somebody who can take on a few several, or a few different, a few several, a few different tasks. I would check out a resource like IVAA, so it's the International Virtual Assistants Association. I was actually a member, a really active member when I still had my VA business, and that is still my go-to to hire VAs. Now, again, not every proposal is perfect, not every project I've worked on with people out of there has been perfect, because I'm not hiring IVAA. I'm just using it to connect with a community of Virtual Assistants, but I also know that there are some truly amazing business owners running out of IVAA, and submitting those RFP, or Request For Proposals, and finding out exactly what you need, is a matter of sifting through those things, but it's a great place to start, versus again, Googling and praying, so tap your network, and if your network doesn't work, check out IVAA, or start checking out your then maybe go to your Facebook groups in targeted areas, and say, "Who are you using? Who do you love for information about? If you have a favorite expert?" I get this question a lot. I have people who come and ask me, "Hey, I want to hire a VA who specializes in social media. Do you know anybody?" It's really cool, because we have some really awesome social media people in Hit the Mic Backstage, so if there's something that I can't help you with, or you're not at a place where you want to invest in the way that our management services work, that's cool. There's a ton of other resources that I can connect you with, so tap into your favorite experts. If you have a person you love, love, love, love when it comes to content marketing, and learning about funnels, and something like that, go into their community, and look for people. Reach out to them, and their team and say, "Hey, I'm looking for somebody who can help me with XYZ. Do you happen to know anyone who does that?" That's going to be a great way to get information. All right, so find out if you're ready to hire. Have an honest talk with yourself, and then do it. Tap your network, look at the people in your circle, look at resources, look at your favorite experts, find somebody who can help you with the task you need. Either on a one off basis, on an ongoing basis, I'm really lucky because I brought Charles in to help with a ton of stuff, so he helps sort of in the day to day things, and we bring people in to work on a project basis usually. We are expanding the team. We're going to be bringing in somebody else, either late this year, or early next year, to help with more of the customer service for Hit the Mic Backstage members, and managing a lot of the sort of general inbox stuff. Doing a lot of traditional admin stuff, and so, again, figure out what you need right then, and go from there. Okay. All right. Here's the thing. I just want to leave you with this one last thought. If you saw the title of this show, How to Know When It's Time To Hire and When, "Oh, my God. I need that." It's probably time to hire. Okay. All right. If you have questions, have thoughts, I'd love to hear them. Come on over to the Facebook page. Check out the post for this episode. Give me your thoughts. Leave a note on the page. I'd love to hear from you, and of course, if you haven't yet joined us, join us on Hit the Mic Backstage, because we do have the brand new very exciting private forum, where we can have conversations like this, and also, it's a really, again, it's another great community to tap if you need help with anything. We have members from all different sorts of backgrounds, and we would love to welcome you. All right, check that out, and I will see you guys on Friday.

Welcome to episode 309 of Hit the Mic with The Stacey Harris. All right guys, time to answer one of the most common questions I get. This comes up all the time at Hit the Mic Backstage. It comes up all the time at speaking events, when I work one on one with people. It's hands down, top five most common question. That's how to actually get seen on Facebook. How do you actually get eyes on your content, on your value? It can feel kind of like you're screaming into the abyss, like you're yelling into either a very crowded or a very empty room, depending on the day. I want to talk about actually getting connected. Actually getting eyes on your content. We're going to talk about the three things you must know about getting seen on Facebook.   The first one is a "what not to do," because what happens is people tell me, "You know, I'm not getting any traction with my page. I can't get any sort of reach. No one's seeing it, but when I'm posting to my profile, everybody sees it. I get so many comments. I get so much engagement, and so that's where I post, or that's where I go live." Here's the deal, and I've said this before, but there's always somebody who's listening that hasn't heard it yet, and I really want to make sure that you guys don't get dinged with this. Stop doing that. Here's the deal. It is against the terms and conditions, that thing you agreed to without reading- we all do- on Facebook, to use your Facebook profile, so the place you have friends, not page likes but friends. That's your profile. It's against the terms and conditions to use that, and this is a quote, "primarily for commercial purposes." Here's the thing, though, guys. Facebook gets to define what "primarily" and what "commercial" mean. It's not up for debate. Although you think your once a week blog post is not promo, or the once a week when you go live is not primarily, Facebook might. Especially if you start getting people marking your stuff as spam, or with any sort of negative feedback. When you're using your profile to connect with every single person who sends you a friend request, or you're going out and trying to collect an amass of friends based on your groups and things like that, you're more likely to get that negative feedback, which is more likely to bring you to the radar and attention of Facebook, and you doing these things. I get e-mails all the time from people telling me, "I lost my account." Or, in some cases, "I got a warning and now I can't participate in groups or whatever." If you want to keep your account safe, you have to follow the rules. To do that, you've got to use your page. The only time you are cool doing any sort of marketing or promoting using your profile is inside of groups, because you can't use groups as a page, something that I kind of actually like, but that's a whole other talk for a whole other episode. You're cool there. You still want to be using it the right way. You still want to be sort of ... You don't want to be gaming the system with it. You don't want to be mass posting a ton of just useless stuff. You want to be providing value, and we'll talk more about that next, but if you're doing any sort of status update to a page or a profile, if it has anything to do with your business from a marketing perspective, it needs to be on your page. It's not open for discussion. It's not up for debate. It's the way it is, so just do it. All right? Make sure that you are, again, using your page, not your profile, to market. It's mandatory. Let's move on to number two. Quality matters more than quantity. It can seem like Buzzfeed, and The Today Show, and Starbucks, and these massive brands are posting multiple times an hour, so why shouldn't I? Isn't that how I keep up? Here's the deal. They have a lot more content to share. They have a much larger audience. You're likely not getting everything from them in your news feed, but you don't necessarily have that same amount of content, or that same size audience. Although you should be posting consistently, I like to see most businesses, and again, this is going to depend on your niche, and your page size, and things like that. I like to see two or three times a day on Facebook, as sort of my general rule of thumb. Again, that's going to depend on your strategy, but sort of as a general rule while we're talking about this, two to three times a day. Those should be two to three quality posts a day. They should be things worth seeing, worth engaging with, worth spending some time consuming. If they're not, then people aren't going to engage with it, and it won't matter how many times you post a day. It's not going to get delivered to the news feed. Quality matters. The same is true with your group engagement. We talked a little bit about, I mentioned briefly about making sure that your posts in groups, which is the one place you get to market using your profile, we're not spammy and we're not gross. That's really important. If you're going to use this space, make sure you're really using it. Make sure you are giving it the time and energy it deserves. You are, again, not gaming the system by spamming five groups and copy and pasting the same marketing message right across them, because guess what? We notice. We see it. Admins are starting to get notifications from Facebook saying, "Hey. This might be spam." Group members are getting more and more comfortable reporting these things. Make sure you are focused on quality, focused on value. Quality and value don't mean you never make sales messages I am a big believer that a sales or a promo post can be just solid packed with value, solid packed with community building, consumable information. In fact, those are the promos that get clicked. Those are the promos that lead to sales. Those are the promos that work. Make sure, even when you are selling, you are focused on quality, you're focused on value, you're focused on community building. That's really going to be the difference maker when it comes to a "Yes, I engage with this," or a, "No, I don't engage with that." Quality matters everywhere. In your groups, on your page, all of it. When we talk about quality, I don't just mean your status updates. I don't just mean the content that you're sharing from your website. I also mean the curated content you're sharing. Your profile setup. Your cover image. Make sure you're using those descriptions. Your call to action button. Make sure it links someplace that works. Make sure that you are giving the attention to these tools that they deserve. If you want them to work, you have to take care of them. It's really that simple. It's that cut and dry. Number three. Investing is not bad. There seems to be this thought that the only way that it makes sense to do Facebook ads is if you can kick somebody to a sales page, or kick somebody to a landing page that's going to put them in a funnel for a sales page. That's not true. Some of the most lucrative ads I have run have actually been before a big ad campaign, when I was just promoting content, because A, they made the ads that I posted after that as a part of the actual campaign land a little softer. People sort of were aware of who I was before I got there with a "Hey, come join me." Also, they increased engagement on the page. They got some extra attention on targeted pieces of content. It did grow my e-mail list. In some places, it took people right to jumping into the membership site. Investing isn't a bad thing. Just invest wisely. Make sure you have a budget. Make sure you know who your audience is. Make sure you have a clear picture of what your goals are. I really suggest building in to your expenses, into your business books, a Facebook ads budget for each and every month, not just the months where you're launching something new. Investing isn't bad. Investing is how we grow. It's in how we make more money. What is that cliché? It takes money to make money, or something? You've got to spend money to make money? Something like that. Show up. Invest, but do it wisely. Don't just hit the boost button on every third post because you know, "Well, hey, I got a bigger reach so that worked." No. Know where you want them to go. Know why you're posting this. If it's a focus on, "You know, I just want to get straight up more engagement on the page so I'm going to boost this all text, engagement-driven post so that we can start getting some better engagement on the page. I'm going to do this twice a month. Yadda yadda yadda. It's also going to be coupled with some dark posts for a cold audience to drive attention to the page, and also drive attention to this piece of content that's really valuable. There's an opt-in there that leads to a trip wire, so that will sort of lead them to a sales funnel." Do you see how it wasn't, "I'll just hit the boost button and that will get more eyes on it"? It's a part of an overall strategy. Take the time to build that. Take the time to invest in it. Spend the money. It's a great way to get seen. This is a business tool. I think that there is this illusion with social media that it's a free marketing tool, and that it's just fun, and if you just go on and you snap a few selfies, then you will have next day social media success. You know what, guys? I'm done. I'm calling bullshit on it. This is a marketing tool. It takes money, and it takes strategy, and it takes commitment, just like anything else in your business does. Yes, a lot of what you can do on social media, a lot of the ways you can market your business on social media are straight up free, but they work more effectively when you show up to the table with a little bit of scratch, with a little bit of investment, and a whole lot of plan. A whole lot of strategy. All right? All right. I'm getting off my soap box, but that's what I wanted to cover today. Again, number one, use your page, not your profile. Number two, quality matters literally everywhere. Number three, investing is not bad. It's good. Do it. It's awesome, but do it smart, not just for the sake of spending money, which I don't think anybody really wants to do, but when you don't have a plan, that's kind of what happens. All right. If you are ready to take the next step in your Facebook game, you want to see actual results, you want to build profitable groups, you want to run ad strategies that actually work, because there's actually a strategy, you want to make sure your page is set up to maximum benefit, join us backstage. Hit the Mic Backstage is the place to learn all things social, but a lot of the most popular trainings are Facebook-driven. Not to mention, once a month I do profile reviews, which means you can get my eyes on your profile and I will do a video review and tell you what to fix, and tell you what you're doing really well, because sometimes it's easy to think we're not doing anything really well. I do this too, guys. I know. Join us, HittheMicBackstage.com. The community is growing and getting better every day, and I can not wait to welcome you. I will see you guys on Tuesday. Resources Join us inside Hit the Mic Backstage Connect with Me Connect with me on Facebook Tweet with me and include #HittheMic Be sure to leave your review on iTunes or Stitcher for a shoutout on a future show

Welcome to episode 307 of "Hit the Mic with The Stacey Harris. All right guys, 307, and we are doing another tool review. I love social media tools, I think they're super fun to play with but here's the deal. There are a ton of them, a ton of them, we've reviewed a bunch of them before. I talked about this last week. The one that's going to work is the one you use. For some of you that might be CoSchedule, and CoSchedule's what we're going to talk about today. I'm going to show you the three things you need to know about CoSchedule and I really want you to pay attention. If you are somebody who uses Wordpress.org, as in it's self-hosted, because on .com you can't have plug-ins. If you use Wordpress.org and you need help managing not just your social content but helping with your overall content strategy, and scheduling, and editorial calendar and stuff like that, this is going to be worth listening to because I'm going to break down why this might be the tool for you. Again ... 100% again, there is not one tool to rule them all, that's uniform for everybody. There is however maybe one tool to rule them all for you, and this might be it. Again ... Again, again, again, it's about the tool you will use. Check out CoSchedule if you listen to this and you think, "Hmm, that sounds really fantastical," then great, check it out. However, if you listen to this and you're like, "I'm happy with the tool I've got, it seems like everything ..." Then stay with the tool you've got. This is not me saying everybody needs to use CoSchedule. Full disclosure, I don't use CoSchedule. I used it for the purposes of telling you guys about it today but I'm going back to my tool, eClincher, because that's the tool that rules them all for me. Again, everybody's different and there's no wrong choice here, just do something. Cool? All right, now I will get off my soapbox on that one, put it away for now, and let's dive in to the three things you must know about CoSchedule.   Number one, CoSchedule, not just a social media management tool. That's right. What's cool about CoSchedule is it really does a great job of bringing together ... I'm actually pulling up the website in front of me so that I can tell you guys some specific features that I really loved. It actually does a really good job of bringing your content marketing plan into one place. What's cool is it will actually live inside of your Wordpress site. When you pull up a post you can see your scheduling stuff. You can pull up your CoSchedule calendar so you can schedule from there. What I really loved about this tool is, again, if you're looking for a one stop shop kind of vibe and you want to be able to jump in, get it done, rock out your content, rock out some social and be out of there, this very well might be the tool for you because this makes that super, super simple. What you'll see once you install the plug-in is on each of your posts down at the bottom you'll actually see your calendar. You can connect your social profiles there and then you can set up your shares to go to the different places. It really allows you to do it right inside of your actual site. You don't have to take your link and go to another site, figure it out there, and so on and so forth, keeping jumping through the tasks. What's cool is there's two levels, there's a team level and a solo level. If you've got a marketing team in place, maybe you've got a VA that helps you with your marketing or maybe you have somebody who helps you who's in a marketing role. You can give them access as well and they can go in and take care of this stuff, but you still have the admin access that can go in and review everything, set some things up, assign tasks. Again, this is not just a social media tool, it's literally a whole marketing tool. Some of the things that are really cool about it is it's going to be your content marketing area, your social media marketing area, your marketing project's area as in there's a calendar for you and your team to work from, and also your blog management. Your editorial calendar where you plan it, where you promote it, where you push it. What's cool is you write the content, you set up the stuff in CoSchedule for social, you hit the button and away it goes. It schedules the post and then it schedules all the social and actually puts out that social. Again, that's really, really powerful if you are somebody who's overwhelmed by having all the choices or all the tools or all the places you have to go. Check this out for that. The number two thing I want you to know is there's no social listening.  One of my favorite things about the tools I use, one of my favorite things about a solid social media management tool is the listening part. I would consider CoSchedule a social media publishing tool, not so much a social media management tool because, again, there's not anything where I'm seeing replies on Twitter or people engaging with the content, or comments onto my Facebook page or things like that. All I'm doing is I'm actually extending the marketing of my content, which is critical from a content marketing perspective. Content is only as good as sharing it and stuff but it leaves some money on the table when you start talking about listening, and engaging, and cultivating community. For me, I would need to use this paired with another tool which, if you've listened to this show before, one of the things I love about the tool I use now is it allowed me to go from multiple tools to just one tool. That's something to consider when you're thinking about CoSchedule. You're going to need something like Hootsuite or something like that to actually do a social listening or you're going to go into each of your networks and check things. That is a really, really important thing. However, from a social broadcasting perspective, from a publishing perspective, this is a great option, again, if you wanted all the things in one place. Be aware you're going to need a different tool to do the engagement, you're going to need a different part to do the listening. Please, please, please ... Pretty please, with sprinkles and cherries and all that good stuff, don't forget the listening part. It's absolutely critical that you go in and you engage. You don't want your content falling on deaf ears. Worse yet, you don't want it falling on ears that genuinely don't care. That's what happens when you leave a community unattended, so to speak. Don't forget that social media listening part but that's not something you're going to be able to get in CoSchedule. The number three thing I want to talk about is the two ways you can engage with this tool. As I said, you can actually engage with it right inside of your Wordpress site. You can actually go into Wordpress, write out your post, upload your podcast, whatever it is for you content-wise, embed your video, whatever it is for you content-wise. Then right on that same post page you can go in and you can schedule your social. Easy breezy, easy breezy, easy breezy. That's awesome! However, you can also go to the calendar inside of your Wordpress site and see your activities and your top posts and manage your team. That can all happen, again, right inside of your website. In addition to that, you can actually go to the web based app ... It's just app.coschedule.com so it's not like any sort of crazy far off land, and actually manage things from there as well. You can see your calendars, you can see top content, you can, again, manage your team. That allows you to get some analytics, some information about what's been shared and how often it's been shared. It allows you to get some love, some attention for what's happening because maybe you don't always want to manage it from your website. Maybe you want to go in and specifically pay attention to some of the things that are happening with your analytics and things like that. Well, you can do that in your app. Well, there is two ways to engage with this. If you're not always wanting to be in your website you can do it on the website on their web based app. If, again, you want to have all the things in one place you can actually manage this tool right from your website as a plug-in. Again, it's got to be Wordpress.org because it is a plug-in. Installing the plug-in took me literally two seconds. It's really, really simple. When you set up your CoSchedule account it will prompt you to download the plug-in. You just have to upload the plug-in into your Wordpress site and away you go, there you go. You just have to log in from there and it's all right there, it really is that simple.  If you're somebody who's a little tech-phobic this has a really low barrier to entry and, again, allows you to go in less places. You can manage it from your website or you can manage it from their web based app, which is really cool. Those are the three things I wanted to touch on. What I want to kind of recap is my final thoughts for CoSchedule. CoSchedule is a really great tool and it's going to be a really powerful tool for a lot of the people who listen to this show and who email me and are like, "I just want one thing." Here's your one thing with an asterisk. Meaning, you do need another tool for the social listening or to go into each of your profiles and listen manually, for lack of a better term. The pricing for CoSchedule is really, really reasonable. It starts at $15 a month when you bill annually or $19 if you bill month-to-month. There is a 14 day, risk free trial that doesn't even require a credit card which is really cool, and that's the solo standard. Again, you can set it up so you work solo. Great, you can use the solo levels or if you have a team in place and you want to be able to really manage your whole content marketing and manage the team's involvement all from one place, you can do that with the team level. The solo level is ... I'm going to give you the month-to-month price but it's $19 for solo standard, $39 for solo marketing or $79 for solo automation. I think the solo automation is really, really cool. For $79 a month you get a lot of information. Again, this is going to give you an all-in-one place, content marketing strategy. They're rolling out autopilot publishing which I don't have the details of but I'm thinking that may be something similar to the cues we have or the libraries we have in Edgar or eCligner because the description says easy republish, evergreen content with social automation. That will be a game changer feature that will be available in the solo automation level. Again, that one's $79 a month of $60 a month if you bill it out annually. When I first start using a tool I like to do the monthly to make sure the tool's going to work for me over time. I'll go about a quarter to make sure, and then if it's working then I'll switch to annual or, yeah, switch to annual building. Something to consider if you're looking at this investment-wise. Again, that solo automation is going to be really cool. Again, solo standard, $19 a month for the month-to-month, one user, five social profiles. For a lot of you who are just starting out or who are trying to get ahold of some of this automation and some of this content marketing, this is going to be a really fantastic entry level tool that will grow with you really nice, especially when you consider you can then move to a team level. The team level starts at $79 a month which gives you five users, 10 guests, and 10 social profiles. You're going to be able to have workflows, you've got social media templates, there's some premium integrations. If you have a team in place or you're working towards that this is going to be a really powerful option when it comes to getting it done, when it comes to getting this scheduled and out there. Again, this isn't just your social, this is your whole enchilada. This is your content marketing. Again, I think CoSchedule just like every tool, not perfect, not for everyone but for a lot of you this is the episode you've been waiting for. This is the tool you've been waiting for me to talk about because this is going to be the one that really flips the switch and makes it easy for you to understand. Check out CoSchedule.com, all one word, check it out. I can't wait, I cannot wait to have you join us backstage. We've been working on Hit the Mic Backstage, making it even better for you guys. We added descriptions, we're working on and there are some in there already, transcripts of a lot of the trainings. We're doing some major community upgrades in the next few weeks. I'm going to have a big announcement today ... I'm sorry, no, next week actually inside of the Facebook group for the next round of upgrades that are happening in the community. I'd love to see you get in now so that you can really be a part of this growth, really be a part of this evolution, and get in on some pretty killer content. Last week we talked about setting up your recycled content so speaking of those libraries and cues in things like Edgar and eClincher. I actually showed you guys how to set that stuff up. Of course, that's exclusive inside of the membership. On the 25th we're talking about using free challenges to grow your email list, some do's, some don'ts, some lessons learned. Promoting it, setting it up, the whole thing. Again, that is exclusive for members. If you want to be a part of this and you want to learn this stuff the only way to do that is come behind closed doors. That's at hitthemicbackstage.com. I cannot wait to see you there and of course I'll also see you on Tuesday. Bye. Resources Join us inside Hit the Mic Backstage 3 Things You Must Know About eClincher 3 Things You Must Know About Buffer 3 Things You Must Know About Hootsuite 3 Things You Must Know About Sendible 3 Things You Must Know About Sprout Social 3 Things You Must Know About Edgar Connect with Me Connect with me on Facebook Tweet with me and include #HittheMic Be sure to leave your review on iTunes or Stitcher for a shoutout on a future show

Welcome to episode 306 of Hit the Mic with the Stacey Harris. Real talk time, guys. How many of you are having a little bit of a tough time getting back into social media? Summer can sometimes mean we take a little time off, we slow down a little, and one of the things that can sometimes fall through is social media. Or maybe in September you launch, you hit that back-to-school vibe, launched a program, so you were feeling a little burned out, took a little time off, and now you're still trying to get back into it. You're not alone. Actually, I get this question a lot. Today I want to talk about the three things I want you to do when it's time to get back on track with social media, because it's not bad to step back. It's not impossible to get back into it. However, a lot of times the most painful part is the stress we put on ourselves about, like, "Why isn't this done? Why am I not doing this? This has to happen and I haven't done it. I suck." Then, now you've just attached all of this negative garbage to doing it at all, and so we continue to not do anything with it. That goes longer and longer and longer, and it gets harder and harder and harder to get back into our mojo, get back into being social, get back into community building, get back into providing a real value. Yeah, magic word there, "value."       Here's what I want you to do, three things. Let's start off at the top. Number one, reevaluate what you were doing. Step back. Look at your strategy. Look at your clients. Look at who you're attracting. Look at your community. Look at your ads budget. Go through and evaluate everything. Clean house. This is something you should be doing pretty regularly anyways. I try to touch base on my strategy about once a quarter, ads budget maybe a little less than that just because it's laid out beforehand what I want to spend around launches and things like that. Look at all of the pieces and make sure that all of the things you were doing feed your goals right now and feed your goals moving forward in the next quarter, in the next six months, however long you want to look at. I tend to look at like 12-week periods when I'm doing this evaluation because any longer than that and my brain goes blah, which is a technical term for brain-fried. I like 12 weeks. If you haven't read The 12 Week Year yet, definitely do that. We actually reviewed it over on the Biz BFFs podcast, Brandy Lawson and I, and she and I have both started using that in her businesses. It's a really cool way to break down the overwhelm, and it may help you stay more consistent on social over time because you're looking at that strategy at 12-week chunks and not, "I have to do this forever." Again, look at your strategy. Look at what's been happening and look at what needs to be changed or executed on moving forward, because that's going to be really the difference maker for you in actually getting stuff done. Step one, reevaluate your strategy. Number two, get started. Update your graphics. Update your bio. Update any links. I find a lot of times, especially for clients who go into maybe a post-launch lull, I call it the launch hangover, and they kind of disconnect, what I'll find is they'll hire me to come in and do a consult and I'll be looking at their stuff and I'll say, "Why am I linking to a sales page that doesn't work any more in all of your bios?" They'll go, "Oh, I forgot to change that after the launch." Clean house. Check your bios. Check your photos. Check your links for your call to action buttons on Facebook, your pinned post on Twitter. Make sure everything that's there, you're linking your bio on Instagram. Make sure everything that exists is really feeding whatever your goal is for that next 12 weeks. Maybe that's sales growth. Maybe that's another launch. Maybe that's community building. Maybe that's e-mail list growth. I think I said e-mail list growth. Whatever. It just needs to be serving that goal for you for the next 12 weeks. That's what's important. Again, updating your profile photos, making sure that it looks something like you look now. This is something I'm super guilty of and I promise I am working on. We're going to take some new photos here soonish. I'm working on it, guys, I promise. You need to make sure that all of that is updated. Check your strategy, and then of course clean house. Then the third step, and what we're going to spend the most time on today, is really then start doing stuff. The best way to get back into it is to simply get back into it. Maybe that's putting some calendar dates for Facebook Lives. You actually schedule it into your calendar just like you would a client call or a webinar or anything else. Give it that same level of importance. You're not going to promo a webinar and then just not show up. Do the same thing with your Facebook Lives. Say, "Hey, we're going to go live on Tuesdays at 11:00," and then show up on Tuesdays at 11:00 and go live. Schedule time into your calendar to set up your social media foundation. Reevaluate what your other people's content pieces are. I've mentioned a few times that I use Feedly to manage all of the blogs that I pull content from, just the sources I love, because having to search for them all the time is just not happening. I've got some topics that I pull from, and then I've got actual blog links that I pull from so that I can make sure that I am getting the best of the best out there for you guys in the other people's content and content curation stuff. There's got to be time for you to do that. Until you make time, if you're not in the habit of doing it, it's going to really hard to do. I find myself even doing this. We had a crazy summer. I'm not nearly as far ahead as I like to be on content, on social, on any of that. I've actually got my default calendar showing on my Google Calendar. I'm literally looking at it right now. It's right in front of me right now. It's got my social media time, my education time, my e-mail time, my content curation time, work on my Mastermind time. It's got my e-mail times are in there, the time I work on Biz BFF stuff. It's all actually in my default calendar, and that's actually showing on my schedule right now because I'm out of the habit of being in that structured schedule where I know I work best, where I know I get the most done. If you're getting back into this, put that social media time back on your schedule right in front of you all day. If you use a white board or you use a paper calendar or you use a Google calendar or you use the iCalendar on your iPhone, I don't care what you use, but I want to see that on your schedule, because that's going to be the difference maker. That's going to be the, "Hey, this actually happens." Actually get it on your calendar and then execute on it. The same thing with your engagement time. Like I said, I have social media time on my calendar. I actually have it in a couple of places because those are my times to go in and check in. This summer, in all of the craziness that happened in my private life and in moving and all of that stuff, I have kind of been ridiculously MIA from any of my Facebook groups that I network and I market in. One of the things I've been working on this week, because transparency, it's the way we roll here, is evaluating those Facebook groups, really going in and saying, "These are the ones that serve my goals for the next 12 weeks, these are the ones that don't," staying in the ones that do, leaving the ones that don't. Over the next couple of days, now that I've done that, that cleaning of house, I'll go in and do some reintroducing, some posting, some commenting, some connecting, and some networking so that I can be a part of the community again, because right now I'm not. I'm just member. I'm not a part of the community. There's a big difference there. That time is actually showing on my calendar right now because I'm out of the habit. It has to be on my calendar so that it actually gets done. The same is going to be true for you. Put it on your calendar and it will actually happen. From there, execute the strategy. Get in and do these things. Share your content. Share your old content. Look at your tools and making sure that your queues are full, making sure that maybe your other people's content resources need to be updated. Get in and do this stuff. The first two steps are a lot of evaluating, a lot of looking, a lot of seeing what's what. This third step is the most important one. The first two steps don't matter if you don't do this one. Get in and start doing stuff. You see that calendar schedule pop up, you go, "Oh, look, it's time for me to get engaged on social media. It's not a time for me to be distracted by something else. I'm going to stop what I'm doing and I'm going to go do that. I'm going to set the timer and I'm going to execute." That is where getting back into it is actually getting back into it. Until you take that step, the worry, the angst, it's going to stay. Here's the deal. When you get back in when you start taking action, don't announce, "Hey, I know I've been gone for a long time, but I'm back now." No. Just start posting, because here's the deal. Ego aside, a very small portion of your audience is going to realize that you were ever gone. Yeah, I know. It's a kick to the ego, right? It's true. Don't announce it. Just like if you've not posted an e-mail or a blog post or a podcast in a couple of weeks, don't announce it. Just start doing it again. From an e-mail perspective it will probably get you some unsubscribes because people will have forgotten who you are. It's just the way it is. In most cases, they'll just think they missed the e-mail. They'll just think they forgot about it. Just get in there. Just start doing it. Don't announce a big to-do. "I know, I've been gone for so long and I'm sorry, but it'll never happen again." No. Just do it. I'm super guilty of doing this on Snapchat. I'll miss Snapchatting for a while, and I'll be like, "I haven't been using Snapchat much." I've realized that like once a week I was posting this, "I know I don't Snap very often," which is dumb. Now I don't do that. I just Snap when I Snap, because it's not a primary network for me. Don't announce it. Just get back into your habits and execute your plan. That will make a much bigger impact. Remember, actions mean more than words. Especially true on social. Okay? All right. That's our show for today. If you want some support in keeping yourself active on social, if you want to ask some questions as you review your strategy, the best place to do that is Hit the Mic Backstage. It really is the next step for this show. It really is the extension of what you get here as far as trainings, partnered with some actual connection with me and with the people in the community. Head over to hitthemicbackstage.com to join us in the community. You can start right now for $40 a month and absolutely no long-term commitment. It's very cool. You can cancel any time. It's super easy. We're actually in the process right now of making it even easier, which is pretty cool. Join us inside of Hit the Mic Backstage. I cannot wait to have you as part of the community. I will see you on Friday. Resources Join us inside Hit the Mic Backstage Connect with Me Connect with me on Facebook Tweet with me and include #HittheMic Be sure to leave your review on iTunes or Stitcher for a shoutout on a future show

Welcome to episode 305 of Hit the Mic with The Stacey Harris. Hello, hello, it's a new month and I'm super excited to share 3 things you must know about social media in October, 2016. We're going to touch on a few things that are really good anytime, but they've come up a lot in either one on one calls, and that actually the second 2 things we're going to talk about both came up in Hit the Mic Backstage over the course of September. I answered out for them, and now I wanted to bring it to you, because I find when these things come up for me over and over again, it's because I need to share it with you, so that's what we're doing. We're going to touch on again, 3 things you need to know. Let's jump right in.   Number 1, this actually came up, I spoke at WordCamp Phoenix, which is a WordPress event in Phoenix, Arizona, this last weekend? Yeah, last weekend. This came up in a couple of conversations I had with people, either they were asking me a question about tools, or just in the course of our conversation about social media. I realized this is something that a lot of us struggle with, and that's the idea of choosing a tool. I had a lot of questions about, "I am in x, y, z business, what should I use for social media? I do x, y, z, what social media tool should I use?" Here's the thing, there is exactly 1 tool that everybody should be using. It's the tool you'll actually use. I like eClincher, I am a huge fan of eClincher. I've talked about it before on the show, we did a whole episode about it. We've done episodes about several tool options, I can link to them in the show notes if you want to go to thestaceyharris.com, episode 305, I will actually link to all the episodes we've done on tools. We have another one actually coming next week, we're going to be talking about CoSchedule next Friday. Here's the deal, all of these tools have exactly one flaw. They're not going to do it for you, you have to actually use them. That's not a flaw so much as how a tool works. When it comes to choosing a tool, try a bunch on. That's why they all have trials, and a lot of them have free levels that you can get started on. I think Buffer has a free level, and then you can actually trial the awesome, which is their premium level, which you need for stuff like Pinterest scheduling and access to more networks and stuff like that. You can actually get a feel for these tools before you have to commit to them for life. Try them on, and use them. If you find that you get in and you hate the interface, and you just can't function there, choose another tool. There are dozens, if not more. Social media marketing tools out and about and around. They're only going to work as well as you show up and you use them. Make sure you're utilizing those tools, try them out. Again, I will have links to a few of my favorites. My go to recommendations, because people still persist and want to know these, my go to is eClincher. I went from using 3 different tools to just eClincher. We've been using it for, I want to say like 6 months now, and we love it, it's fantastic. Hands down my favorite social media tool I've ever used. I'm not saying it's a tool I'll use forever, they could make changes, they could not make changes and somebody else could come in and fill gaps that show up in the future. It's hands down my go to when it comes to social media tools, I love it. eClincher is my recommendation. If you're looking for something free, Buffer's a great place to start. Hootsuite's a great place to start. I think Buffer is more intuitive and more attractive than Hootsuite, but I think Hootsuite's a bit more robust, especially at the free level. Again, it just depends on what your needs are, so figure out what your needs are, and then pick a tool, and the magic, use the tool. That's going to be mission critical when it comes to actually seeing results from that investment. Let's move on, okay. Number 2, and this is ripped from a one on one call actually that I had with a client this week, because especially going into launches, and big sales seasons for some of you, and then planning, maybe you're planning a New Year's launch, I'm guessing you're planning that now. Don't get so focused on ads that you forget the value your organic content provides. Sometimes it's really easy when we go into a launch, or maybe we're going to be really going hard at something like our membership side, or our passive income program we've got, moving into hitting our end of the year money goal. It's really easy to think, "Okay, so this is what I'm going to spend on ads, this is the ad campaign I'm going to create," and you go all in, you step up in a big, big way, you go pro with planning. Sometimes you drop the ball on your organic content, or the content you're not paying to get seen on social. You can do real disservice to that ads budget when you neglect to put some thought into what your organic content is going to be. Because you want that organic content to really boost up, to really support, to really reiterate the messaging around whatever it is your in launch mode for, whatever it is you're running ads for. Let's use a business coach as an example. Maybe I'm running a last launch of the year for a mastermind program that's going to kickoff January 1, or January 4th, or whatever the first Monday of January is. We're just going to say January 1, okay. The launch and the sale portion of this, is all going to happen in November and December. Then the program's going to start in January. There's going to be some pre-work they get to do to get them started. I'm totally making this up as I go, so if it makes no sense, that's why. We're going to do that, right? Awesome. We have a webinar series, we have an opt-in, and a download, and a tripwire, and all sales funnels lead to purchasing this mastermind. We are aces top to bottom getting people right into the funnel that is this mastermind. We go, "Oh, but we got to make sure that content is going out on the Facebook page and the Twitter accounts. Oh, I'll just schedule this, this is fine, this works," keep it going. The disconnect is, is you're leaving a lot of engagement space without any thought, without any intent, and it doesn't serve your goal, and it doesn't serve your community. That's going to hurt your launch success, because now I'm getting a mixed message. Now I've got people I'm connecting with on this thing I just threw up, when really I'm trying to funnel everybody over to this mastermind message that's geared around hitting their 2017 goals right from the start. Instead, we want all of the organic content we're posting, all of the stuff that just goes out to our Facebook news feed isn't getting any ads money, same with Twitter, LinkedIn, wherever you are. We want that all to support that same messaging. Maybe your mastermind, your business mastermind is all around clarity, goal clarity, and taking action, right? Awesome, sign me up. You want everything you're posting to speak to clarity, to goals, to achievement, to the pain points at which they're getting interested in your program to solve. Because that's going to be a consistency in message, it's going to be a consistency in what to expect from you, and it's going to mean that when I see your ad later for the webinar on the same topic, I'm already connecting you and that topic. Make sure all that content, even other people's content, even the content you share from other sources, make sure it all feeds that same message, that same thought process, that same opportunity for learning, and that same solution. Because again, it's a consistency of message, and it connects, even when we're talking about other people's content, it connects you, in my mind, with that thing, with that piece of the puzzle if you will, okay. Don't leave your organic content just sort of off to the side without thought. Give it the same intent, planning, give it the same strategy backed decision making you would your ad campaign that you're spending money on, because it's going to help the money you're spending your ads on. The money you're spending on ads is going to go further when there is a consistent brand message from all pieces. Cool? All right. The third thing I want to talk about to kickoff October, I'm pulling it right out of Hit the Mic Backstage. If you haven't joined us inside of Hit the Mic Backstage, we do office hours once a week, and then inside of our private community you can actually ask me questions anytime. I'm just guaranteed to be there for 2 hours once a week live. Once a month we do office hours with live profile reviews, and so it's really the best way to get a pro's eyes on your stuff all the time, your issues, all the time. That's a really cool thing about it. This is actually pulled right from an office hours question that I got this week, because, well, it's about the boost button. I give the boost button on Facebook kind of a hard time. If you've ever listened to me talk about Facebook ads before, you know that the boost button is not my favorite option. Somebody in ... One of our members inside of Hit the Mic Backstage asked me if the boost button was really bad, or if it could be used for what she needed? Here's the thing, much like social media tools, there aren't really bad ones. Well, there are bad ones, but the worst thing that happens is, is that people are using them without thought. It's a tool, so the same is true with the boost button. The boost button is a tool, if you're not using the tool correctly, you're not going to see success. However, if you use a tool correctly, it can be really, really helpful. I in fact, occasionally, do use the boost button, but that's because I've done some of the other work to make sure that that boost button is effective. No, the boost button is not bad. How you are using it in some cases, that's what's bad. How can we use the boost button effectively? Let's go back to our example where we were talking about, "I'm a business coach, I'm launching a mastermind." Let's say the cart actually opens January 1st, and then the program starts in February for the sake of this example. Right now as we're going into the end of this year, I want to start building a reputation around this topic, so that when I go full on in December, pre-launch, and then in January 1 when the cart opens, you're already connecting me. Again, that organic content I'm posting is going to land with ease, and the ads I'm posting are going to land with ease. I'm probably going to start talking about some of these messagings, these messages, excuse me, and getting you interested in this stuff, and maybe even getting you on a wait list, or signed up to opt-ins that I can later use to funnel you into the program right now, absolutely. That's fantastic, let's do that. In those cases, occasionally I will use the boost button because of 2 reasons. A, it will get you used to seeing my face so that when I start running ads ... Because here's the deal, we all know organic reaches a small percentage of the total people who like our page. It's just the way it is guys, embrace it, it's the way it is. There's a section of my audience that may not have seen my Facebook posts in a while. They may not have seen my face in a while. I want to make sure that I'm getting in front of them now, so that when my ads come and say, "Hey, come do this thing," it's not out of left field. It's, "Oh yeah," and they're already reintroduced to how epically awesome I in fact am. I will use the boost button on some content, and I will drive it to a targeted section of my page likes, and/or a pre-built custom audience. Now if you don't know what a custom audience is, we need to chat. Check out Backstage, so we have a whole training on Facebook ads, that will help get clear. You need to have that built. When a Facebook ads boost button is a bad idea, is when you have no idea why you're doing it, you just want to increase your reach for the sake of increasing your reach, and you haven't built any kind of audience. I don't ever want to see you doing, people who like my page and their friends, because here's the thing, your ... The person who likes your page's third grade teacher does not care about you, and does not care about what you're talking about. What's going to happen, is you're just going to be providing noise to their news feed, and best case scenario, they ignore you. Worst case scenario, they block you, they hide, and that's now negative feedback on your ad, which is negative feedback on your profile. You don't want that, you want the ad to be seen, you want the ad to be connecting. Put it in front of the people who are actually going to care about it. That is going to be critical in making sure that you see actual results with the boosted post, okay. Again, you need to know your goal, and you need to have a custom audience built so you know exactly who it's getting in front of. That's so, so important. All right? All right. Short answer, boost button, not bad. How some people use it, very bad. All right. I feel better now that I've been clear about that. There you have it, 3 questions. 1 from a speaking engagement, 1 from a client call, and 1 from Hit the Mic Backstage. I feel like that was a really good rounding out of sources of questions this week. If you want to join us at Hit the Mic Backstage, now really is the time. We've got some really cool stuff coming up. In this month we're doing 2 really cool trainings, 1 on free challenges. If you've ever wanted to run a 3 or 5 day free challenge to grow your email list, we're doing a whole training on how to do that, how to market it, this month inside of Hit the Mic Backstage. I'm so excited for that one. Again, these trainings are members only. Make sure you come and join us. You can cancel absolutely anytime, there's no long term commitment, and I would love to see you in there, and I would love to get my eyes on your content, and your profile, and all of that good stuff. Come check us out, hitthemicbackstage.com. All right. See you on Tuesday. Resources Join us inside Hit the Mic Backstage 3 Things You Must Know About eClincher 3 Things You Must Know About Buffer 3 Things You Must Know About Hootsuite 3 Things You Must Know About Sendible 3 Things You Must Know About Sprout Social 3 Things You Must Know About Edgar Connect with Me Connect with me on Facebook Tweet with me and include #HittheMic Be sure to leave your review on iTunes or Stitcher for a shoutout on a future show

Welcome to episode 303 of Hit the Mic with The Stacey Harris. Episode 303 today, and we're talking about social media goals. A lot of times it's easy to get into this process of executing. We're on social, we're doing things, we're scheduling, we're curating content, we're posting our blog posts and our podcasts and whatever, but what's the point exactly? What are you trying to do? I want to talk a little bit today about setting some social media goals, and more importantly, the 3 things you must know about setting social media goals. Because, especially for us entrepreneur types, we seem to really thrive when we have something to achieve. We tend to work really well when we are looking to accomplish a goal. Sometimes all the difference can be made on social media when you just have a lot of clarity about where you're going and what you're doing, and setting goals can certainly help that.       Let's jump right in with thing number 1, and that's where are you starting? Here's the deal, it's really hard to set goals, or work towards goals if you don't know where you currently are, you don't know what you're currently doing. You can't say, "I want to be driving a 1000 hits a day from this Facebook ad," if you don't know what you're currently driving. You need some concept of what's happening now. If you haven't in a while, and I'm sure there's a few of you who are shaking your head yes right now, check out your analytics. Check out your likes, and your followers, and things like that, but also dig into your traffic driver. What networks are you using that are driving the most traffic? What kind of traffic are they driving? Look at who makes up those likes and those follows. Pay close attention to the information you have in front of you, and use that information to inform your goals. Because you may see that all along Twitter has been one of your leading traffic drivers, whereas you're not spending very much attention, and you hadn't really thought about setting any goals around Twitter. Then when you find out, "Hey, this is a major traffic driver for me," you can say with an educated mind, "I want to spend more time driving traffic using this tool. I want to utilize this tool to help build my following some place else." Whatever it is. First and most importantly, find out what you're doing now. Figure out what's happening now with your social media, because it's really going to be critical in setting those goals, and really achieving those goals. It's easy to say, "This is what I want to do." It's harder to put in the work and do it. Make sure that you check your numbers. That's something that you're going to need to do when you're talking about setting a goal. It's something that you're going to make sure you're doing throughout the working towards the goal. Set up some milestones so you know this is what we're checking out in a month, in a week, this is what we'll check daily, this is what we check quarterly, whatever the length of time your goal sort of is set for. If you want to grow your following by a 100 people in a month, or in a whatever, make sure you're checking in on those numbers regularly. If you want to be driving a 1000 hits a day from Facebook, you need to be checking in on that daily to see what numbers you're hitting, what's increasing those numbers, what's decreasing those numbers, and figure things out from there. All right. Let's jump into the number 2 thing I want you to know, and that is why does whatever your goal is matter? Meaning, what is the larger purpose of gaining a 100 new followers, of driving a 1000 hits per day from a Facebook ad? What is the next step after that? Meaning, are you trying to get a book deal, and so you need to increase your following, because that's one of those times where follower numbers do matter. Maybe it's you have a launch coming up in the next 6 months and you want to be driving a certain amount of traffic to a certain landing page. Great, but knowing what the bigger reason behind the goal is will help you stay in the room to do the work to achieve the goal. Actually write that down. Actually where you're putting this in the strategy together, make a note of what the purpose of this goal is. What is the larger impact, success or failure that this goal has on your business. Noting that is really going to sort of help cement what's happening. Also, it's going to impact the how. If you're trying to drive traffic to a certain landing page because you have a launch going on, you're going to want to make sure that you're driving not just any people to that landing page, but you're driving the people who you want participating in that launch. Which may be just a subset of your actual niche. Pay attention to the why. If you want to grow your following because you want to get a book deal, you want to grow that following in a targeted way of people who are going to be interested in that book. Also, you want to focus on quantity, you want to really be making sure that everything you're doing is going towards increasing those numbers. Now, you don't want to do this in a sleazy way, like going and buying 10,000 Twitter followers. Don't do that ever. You do want to make sure you're participating in targeted Twitter chats, and you're engaging in constant activities that allow you to connect and grow your network. That's going to be your primary focus, because that's your goal. Again, it's easier to stay on track with that when you know very clearly why you're doing it. You know the reason behind that hustle. Number 3 to close this out, build a plan. Goals are not going to get you anywhere, they're really not alone. However, setting a goal and then figuring out how to work towards it, that's where action happens, that's where the magic is. Be really, really specific with your goal. Be really, really realistic with your goal. I like to set sometimes 2 goals. I'll set sort of like a bench mark goal, and then a stretch goal. I kind of like big scary stretchy goals though, something that sounds kind of impossible, I really like those goals. Again, it's what you're comfortable with. Then, how does that happen? I want to grow my following by 500 people this month. Great. What am I doing? What are my tasks each day? Not only am I setting out what those tasks are, but I'm also actually scheduling time to execute those tasks. Meaning, I know that on Tuesdays from 11 to 12 I participate in this Twitter chat, and then from 12 to 12:30 I'm following with people I connected in the Twitter chat, and going through and reviewing new people to follow, checking out who their following, and I spend another half an hour just going in and following and engaging with those people. I know that on Thursdays from 8 to 9 I go in and I follow targeted lists of people, or I go in and I look at my un-followers and clean out whatever I need to clean out. You're actually going to set on your calendar specific tasks to do each of these things that lead you towards ... I can't talk today, towards your goal. Figure out exactly what it needs to do. What I want you to really take away from this is that we're being specific, and that we're being clear, and that we're scheduling it. We're making time to make this happen. We're not sort of saying, "Okay, I'm going to increase my goal ... my Twitter followers by 500, and then I'm going to keep just doing what I'm doing." Because the actions you're taking now aren't getting you to those results, so you need to change those actions. It's as simple as that. Really take a step back, get really specific about what the goal is, and then break out the steps. Now, if you don't know what the steps are to get you to your goal, that's when it's a great time to join us at something like Hit the Mic Backstage. Because we have trainings that are going to have you move forward in whatever your goals are for your social media needs. Even better, you have access to the Facebook group to come in and ask me questions to get my opinion, and to get the support of the rest of the community to help you reach those goals. Make sure that you are inside of Hit the Mic Backstage. If you're not yet, go to hitthemicbackstage.com and join us today. That's going to be the best way to get the information you need to help move you forward. Okay. I will see you on Tuesday. Resources Join us inside Hit the Mic Backstage Connect with Me Connect with me on Facebook Tweet with me and include #HittheMic Be sure to leave your review on iTunes or Stitcher for a shoutout on a future show

Welcome to Episode 301. Our first episode since Episode 300, and the live show. If you missed the live show, well where have you been? You can catch it over at thestaceyharris.com/episode300. You can also see the sneak preview into the new website for Hit the Mic Backstage and all of that good stuff. Today, I'm so excited as a little celebratory gift to myself I upgraded the microphone. We are on the new Rode Podcaster mic today. This will be the mic moving forward on the show. Really, really excited about it, just got it earlier today. I'm really amped. It's going to be a lot of fun upgrading this new one because I'm kind of into the gear stuff. As much as I say you guys don't have to have fancy gear, it's fun to have it. We're going to talk aboutLinkedIn Ads today. Let us jump into that.   Because it's Friday I've got three things that you must know. Today it is three things you must know about LinkedIn Ads. Here's the deal.LinkedIn Ads are well awesome, however, they don't tend to get as much attention as say Facebook Ads. For a lot of you, you're leaving some money on the table by glossing over LinkedIn Ads, especially for those of you who are working business to business, especially those of you who are looking for consulting with high-level clients off corporate speaking gigs, things like that. Health coaches who want to be a part of some of the corporate wellness plans,LinkedIn can be a great way to get in front of those types of people. I want you to pay attention toLinkedIn ads, especially this time of year we're getting ready to go into October at the end of next week. In fact, a week from today is the last day of September. Quarter four is very much upon us. When that happens and I talked about this recently in another episode, Facebook Ads can get a little spendy and you just want more competition. Linkedin Ads, however, are not that way. When Facebook gets crowded, Linkedin is a great place to go. Again, especially if you're in the B to B space. If you're selling coaching or consulting or corporate speaking or you want to be part of a corporate wellness plan, you're trying out marketing stuff or social media stuff, whatever it is you teach and you speak about and you coach and you provide information, you provide services. I know we have a lot of freelancers who listen to this show. This is a good way to get in front of those peeps. There's a couple of things I want you to pay attention to but the first thing I want you to know this can be a really great alternative Facebook ad. One bit of pushback before I move into the second thing I get from people is that sometimes their LinkedIn Ads are a little more expensive and I'm not going to dispute that. Sometimes Linkedin Ads you will see a higher cost per click, however, I find that those clicks convert at a higher frequency. I may be paying a little bit more for the click but when I get the click it converts. That's worth it to me. I end up making more on the back end even if I'm paying a little bit more on the front end. That's something to consider. Number two thing I want you guys to know about Linkedin ads, just like Facebook, just like Pinterest, just like Instagram, just like Twitter, just like any kind of marketing period you need to know who you're talking to and you need to target those people from the perspective of that's going to influence what your copy is to the perspective of that is what's going to influence what your graphics are. To the perspective of literally who are you going to put these ad in front of? Your targeting matters. If you see that your ads aren't getting in front of anybody, double check who you're targeting. Make sure that it's wide enough that there are actually people in that window and make sure it's tight enough that it's actually going to only in front of the people who are in the window you want to be talking to in the niche or niche or whatever you want to call it. Make sure you're targeting those ideal clients. Going back to an example I kind of blew past earlier, especially this time of year, if you are a health coach and you're looking to expand your business, maybe you want to open up some corporate space in your business, corporations are reevaluating their benefits packages and things like that right now. Maybe as you go into quarter one of next year they'd like to up their wellness package to their clients and that involves maybe bringing in some speakers or making a nutritionist available or a fitness expert or a meditation expert.  You might know a great way to serve those clients. Know who your clients are, target them, target ads and copy to them and do it right now because that's when they're paying attention to that. Knowing your targeting, knowing who you're talking to, and then execute on that plan. Execute to that specific client and copy that connects to them and graphics that catch their eye. This is how ads happen and it's not any different onLinkedIn than it is Facebook or anywhere else. Okay. Your targeting really is critical no matter what ads form you're talking about. Again, you don't want it to be too narrow. We also don't want it to be too wide. You've got to find that sweet spot. Figure that out and you will be golden. But every ad you create before you figure that out is going to be frustrating because they're not going to get the results you want. You're not going to see the action, conversion, clicking, engagement, anything until you get that target down. Figure that target out and execute on it over and over and over again. Realize that maybe different targets are going to need slightly different ads and so target those to them. Maybe you want to speak to entrepreneurs who are burned out coming to the end of this year and you want to pitch to them how to plan for a year without burnout next year, and then maybe another set of your clients is also about burnout but they're employees. Maybe you're talking to from a corporate wellness, you want to talk to corporation or maybe you want to talk to the employees themselves. Again, that's three targets there. Pretty much the same place you're trying to get them as far as information but you're going to speak to each of those groups differently. All right. Your targeting matters. I really can't overemphasis that enough. Targeting matters. All right. We talked about how it's a great alternative to Facebook ads, especially going into Q4. I'll touch with targeting. I want to wrap it up with your goals. Here's the deal. A lot of people tell me that Linkedin ads don't work or Facebook ads don't work. Then I ask them what they were trying to do. They're like, "Oh, I created an ad and then I sent them to this opt in and now I won't be able to sign up." Okay. There's a lot of pieces in there. I don't think your ultimate goal is to just get someone to sign up. What is the goal beyond that? What is the point of them signing up? Are you working on list growth for an upcoming launch? Are you looking to straight up sell them something? Are you looking for higher engagement on your list? What is your specific goal with growing your list? Let's say for me my list growth right now is all about straight up sales. It's all about getting more people into the Hit the Mic Backstage community. Full transparency here. You guys know how I roll. If I'm trying to get more people into Backstage, then that's the goal. Now I'm not using an ad to Backstage. I'm using an ad to content with an opt in or I'm using an ad straight to an opt in which then is going to sell them Backstage. Okay. The goal here is still Backstage. We need to work backwards on those steps. We need to say the opt in. We need to say the piece of content if we're pushing them to free content. Then we need to go to the ad copy and the ad targeting and the graphics. Figure out what your goal is and then work it backwards. Again, this is true for a Linkedin Ad; this is true for Facebook Ads; this is true for Twitter Ads; this is true for every part of your marketing. These are basic marketing tactics, basic marketing standards as far as rules are. Figure out what the real goal is, not just I want to grow my list. Well, why do you want to grow your list? Because growing your list for the sake of growing your list is a colossal waste of time and money. What I want you to tell me is what your real goal is. I want to launch a program January 1st and so I want to have XYZ people on my list to launch that program. Great. If you're spending the next three months growing your list for a program launch in January, I want your content and opt in to support that program. To support the people who are going to be interested in that program in January. That way you're not just growing your list, you're growing your list with people who are going to be ready to say, "Oh my God, your talking to me. I cannot wait to get my hands on this program. Thank you, sweet heavens." Now I don't know if anyone actually says 'thank you sweet heavens' but they might if you target your list well enough. Again, know what that big goal is and then work backwards from there. That's going to be who you speak to. Your copy, that's going to be who you target. That's what the graphics are going to be targeted to, but it's also going to impact what your landing page says what your freebie offer is. What your follow up sequence looks like. Work backwards from that goal. Okay. Whether that's straight up selling somebody into something now or that list grows for an upcoming program. Whether that's community engagement, it can mean overall community growth. Whatever that big goal is that you're working towards work backwards from there. That's going to be critical. If you don't know your goal, it's going to be really, really hard to get there. When I say hard, read impossible because if you don't know where you're going, you're not going to show up at the right place. You're going to end up someplace completely different and you'll probably be pissed. I don't know why but I'm always mad when I end up in the wrong place. Okay. All right. If you want to know more aboutLinkedIn Ads or Facebook Ads or Twitter Ads, but specificallyLinkedIn Ads, we have aLinkedIn Ad training inside of Hit the Mic Backstage so come check it out because it's going to walk you through the process of the hows literally on screen, on video, in front of you. I'm going to show you from start to finish the process of creating yourLinkedIn Ads so that you know exactly how to do this, exactly how to execute this plan and exactly how to make these work for you and your business. It's just that easy and as a very cool sort of opportunity you also can come into the private Facebook group for Hit the Mic Backstage and ask me any questions you have. You come and I'm there to answer them which is, for most people, the coolest part of Hit the Mic Backstage. Make sure you've got Backstage access with us too. Join us right now. It's $40 a month. Killer, killer deal and it's so cool. All right. Thank you for being a part of this. If you didn't watch or listen to Episode 300, I spent a lot of time thanking you guys for being a part of this community.  Resources Join us inside Hit the Mic Backstage Connect with Me Connect with me on Facebook Tweet with me and include #HittheMic Be sure to leave your review on iTunes or Stitcher for a shoutout on a future show

Welcome to episode 300 of Hit the Mic with The Stacey Harris. I am so, so excited to be celebrating 300 episodes with you. I'm really excited. We're going to talk about 300 episodes, some of the lessons I've learned, some of the gear I've used and why you don't need to make it super complicated. We're going to talk a little bit about what's next and my commitment to you as the community. Then I'm going to be announcing a little giveaway which I'm really excited about because I love this community and I am so, so grateful for you guys listening each and every episode, each and every week. Whether you've been listening since the beginning or if maybe you're brand new, I am so grateful that you've taken the time to listen to the show and use the show and take action on what you listen to, right? Yeah? We're doing that? Awesome. I'm amped. Thank you, thank you for listening to the show and for taking the time out of your day to celebrate with me here live on this episode 300 day. I'm so excited. I can't believe it. It feels a little nuts, a little nuts. We actually won't celebrate three years of the show until November. I think November was when we first went live with episode one, November of 2013, but we hit 300 episodes. That's the joy of doing two episodes a week. I'm just saying. Okay. Let's jump in. I want to talk about some of the lessons I've learned over the course of 300 episodes because that's a lot of content to create. It's a lot of being in the creation space and a lot of having to show up and do it. The number one thing I've learned is consistency matters more than anything else. It's not always easy. I have been really, really consistent with the show. It has gone out twice a week every single week, come hell or high water, with holidays, vacations, impromptu moves, everything, every week, twice a week for the entire 300 episodes. A lot of that came from a really strong commitment to actually doing that. There has been no acceptable excuse to me to not get the show out, but also it's been about planning in a lot of cases and just doing the work. I've talked a lot about taking December off and the planning I do for that. We've done episodes about it. By the way, if you want to catch up on any of the first 300 episodes, hitthemic.com, there's a whole list of them. There's amazing search function coming to the website soon. Yay! Those are almost easy because I see that time change coming or I need to prep for it. That stuff is easy. What's been hard is the stuff that I didn't plan for: being sick, especially ... I learned this probably my first year, maybe my second year. I went on vacation and I had pre-planned the show and pre-recorded the show and it was totally good to go except I didn't anticipate being sick when I got back. I had taken December off and we had gone to California. We lived in Arizona at the time. We'd come to California for vacation over New Years' Eve. I was going to be back in the office on Monday. The next podcast episode was supposed to go out Tuesday. Well in pre-recording all of my content I recorded all of December in November and October, but I hadn't planned on recording any January because I was like, "Oh, I'll be back in the office then. I can totally just wing it and I'll get caught back up. I don't need to go that far in advance." Well, we got back from vacation and I was really, really sick. I had no voice. I couldn't keep anything down. I was really, really intensely sick. It was a couple of years ago when that really horrible flu virus was going around. I had to suck it up and get it done and do the work and record that podcast. I sounded God-awful on the podcast because I had no voice. It took me forever to record because I kept having to pause. I felt awful. I had no energy. I had no excitement. It was awful, but I had to get it done because A, I was committed to getting it done, but B, I learned a larger lesson which was don't just plan for the days you're going to be gone but give yourself a buffer when you get back. That's been a lesson that's stuck with me for a long time which is always plan a little bit further than I think I'm going to need and to make sure that I don't run too often into the, "Oh no, content needs to go up tomorrow," which I do probably more than I'd like to, but the more I can avoid that the easier it is for me to consistently get the show out, but ultimately it comes back to that commitment and knowing this show is going out. My first year in business I was blogging. I wasn't doing the podcast. I was horrible at consistently getting out my newsletter and consistently getting out my content. That was where I had a lot of issues as far as my marketing because I had a lot of peaks and valleys because I didn't have that consistency. At the beginning of 2013, when again, I was still blogging, I said from now on this is going out X, Y, Z. The podcast came around later that year and it was again, I'm committed to this is happening. That commitment to myself, to you guys, to creating something, to my business, to my marketing, it really is the critical piece to staying with it and doing it each and every week. It doesn't have to be twice a week. If you're thinking about starting a podcast or you want to do a blog you don't have to create content twice a week. It's a little nuts. I really like it. It works for me. It worked for my show. It worked for my audience. There are absolutely people who don't listen to every episode of this show. In fact, I don't listen to every ... Well, I listen to it when I edit it so technically I do listen to every episode of the show, but there's not a lot of podcasts where I listen to every single episode. I don't have an expectation that you guys are listening to every single episode. If you are, then you're my favorite, but for me it allows me to get enough variety of content out, that it serves everybody it needs to serve, but again, consistency matters. It's not always easy. Sometimes it's really freaking hard. That was probably one of my biggest lessons, probably the biggest lesson I've had in the 300 episodes of this show. Again, if you guys have questions or comments or you just want to say hi, hit me up in the chat box right below this video. I would love to hear from you or see from you or read from you or whatever. I really like engaging with you. That really goes to my second lesson. I didn't realize how much I would love engaging with the audience of this show. I'm a little bit of an extrovert, little bit. I really, really enjoy getting to meet you guys at events and connect with people when I speak and go to events and connect on social. I didn't realize how much fun I would have talking to the audience of this show on Snapchat and Twitter and Facebook and getting your Facebook messages and getting your emails. I love when you guys respond to the emails on Tuesday. It's my favorite. It's so fun for me, even when they're just little short notes or they're questions or whatever. I have so much fun getting to connect with you guys. I really didn't realize how much I would enjoy that. Thank you, thank you for all of your snaps and tweets and all of that good stuff. I absolutely appreciate it. I read it. I respond. I love it. Thank you for being a part of this community because that's been one of my biggest lessons is how much fun that is to really cultivate that community. A lot of that involvement you guys have had with the show is why I teach so much about community, because it makes it all a lot more fun. It makes it all a lot more entertaining. It makes it a whole lot easier to do when you guys are there connecting and engaging and hanging out. It really does make all the difference in knowing that you're there and you're a part of it and you want to be there and that it's helping and that it's entertaining. It really is the best part. It's my favorite part. All right. My next big lesson, and this is one I wish I would've learned so much earlier: Re-purposing is your best friend. When you create this much content there's a lot of stuff that I have out there. There's just a lot of stuff to consume on the website. When I can re-purpose it and I can make it consumable in a new way and I can make it new again ... One of the projects we're currently working on behind the scenes is actually going through and getting transcriptions for all of the past episodes of the show. For the last maybe 10ish episodes of the show there's been a transcription that went live with the episode. It's not an opt-in transcription. It's right there on the episode. You don't have to give me your email address to get it or anything. It's just right there on the episode. The show notes all have full transcripts now, for the last 10 episodes. One of the projects we're working on now is getting that back log, getting that first 290 episodes done because A, Google, they love it. It's already had an impact on my search topics. Two, you guys seem to really like it. There are some of you who really like being able to ... You know, you hear me say something and you want to go and you take a screenshot or you copy it and paste into your Evernote for your notes or whatever. It gives you a reference point. I think that's really cool. I can also take those transcripts. This is something I started doing a while ago before we started including the transcripts for the show. I would actually get the podcast transcribed and then I would turn that into guest posts on Huffington Post and YFS Magazine and different places like that. That's really cool except now I'm also sharing it with you guys, which is really cool, but that's a great way to re-purpose your content. If you're currently podcasting or you're doing videos, get it transcribed. Share that content with your audience. In fact today, this episode, it will get transcribed and the transcription will go not only on this page after it gets transcribed, but it will also go up on the YouTube channel where this video will stay because again, that's keyword heaven for the Google search box. Find as many ways as possible that you can maximize your content. That's actually what we talked about on Friday's episode so if you want to hear more about this, go to thestaceyharris.com/episode299. We just talked about it, but it's a great way to really maximize the time you're spending. One of the things people talk about when they tell me they're nervous about podcasting is that it's going to take a ton of their time. They follow people that are doing seven day a week podcasts or five days a week or even with me, two days a week. They're like, "I don't know if I can create that much content." Here's the thing. You don't have to create that much content but you do need to maximize whatever content you're creating. If you want to do once a week or twice a month or once a month with video or podcast or blogging, plan that out. Build your law of synergy, but then just make sure you're using that content to every last degree. You're using every inch of that content to really get it in front of your audience because it makes all the difference. Cool. I'm trying to see if ... Oh, the last lesson I want to talk about is that it's okay to change your mind. This is one that I don't think podcasters talk enough about. We talk a lot about gear. We'll talk about gear a little bit in a second, but it's okay to change your mind. This show has always been twice a week because I really like twice a week, but this show has not always been on Tuesdays and Fridays. We've done Tuesdays and Thursdays. I think for a very brief time we did Sunday and Thursday or something like that. I didn't like the weekend days. For a while we had Hit the Mic TV. For about a year we did Hit the Mic TV which was a weekly web show that went along with this podcast that did go out on Sundays. I had content going out Sunday, Tuesday and Friday. It's okay if you decide it's not for you. It's okay if you launch a podcast and do it for six months and then decide it's not for you or decide you work better in seasons or you work better once a week or you want to go to seven days a week. It's okay to make changes and adjustment. There are things ... Quick anecdote: I refused to marry my husband until I had lived with him. This was just a rule, because there's something you learn about people when you live together that you do not learn just spending the night or weekends away or just dating. There are things that people learn about each other when they live together. I feel like content creation and business and all of it is the same way. There are things you learn when you're just executing. There are things you learn when you're working one-on-one with clients that help impact the marketing and the onboarding and how you work with future clients. There are just things you learn through going through it. Don't feel like you're committed to the decisions you made before you experienced any of it. Feel free to change you mind. A, most of your audience will not notice or care. Tough love. I know, the ego wants us to go like, "Oh, they'll just be devastated if I go to once a week." No. Most of them will not care, not at all, not a little, not even kind of. Some of them probably won't even notice. In fact, I am sure that if I disappeared tomorrow there is a section of listeners of the show who would never realize I was gone. There are some of you who would email me. I like you guys best, but there are some people who would just never notice. That's okay, but it's also kind of freeing because it means you can make changes. Feel free to change your mind. It's okay. It's good. Make the best decisions for you and your business and your sanity, whatever those are. Cool? All right. Those are my lessons learned: consistency, connecting and community is still my favorite, re-purposing is magical, and that it's okay to change your mind. Those are my big four lessons for 300 episodes. I get a lot of questions about my gear. I'm going to answer those once again. If you guys ever have questions about the tools I use in my business, over on the website, the page you're on right now, if you go up to the top and hover over Meet Stacey ... Oh no. Hover over where it says Podcast. Right below that is Resources, or if you just go to thestaceyharris.com/resources you will actually see a list of all of the things I use in my business. Full disclosure: Some of these are affiliate links, but I only recommend what I actually use. I have my Samsung Meteor Mic which you can actually see right here. It's on a mic stand which is called On Stage Desk Stand, right on my desk. I edit using Garage Band. My host is Libsyn. When I do interviews, which is not very often anymore, but I actually use these for my client calls as well, we use Ecamm Call Recorder because I have a Mac. We do those via Skype. You can also use things like Zoom or Google Hangouts. If you have a PC and you want to record your Skype calls there's a software called Pamela that works really well. It doesn't have to be the stuff I'm using, but I get a ton of questions about what I use. That's what I use. I'm actually shifting into what's next for Hit the Mic. I'm actually upgrading my gear. I just ordered my new mic. We're moving to a Rode mic. Rode mics have long been my favorite mic brand. I'm excited to upgrade and make this change to the new gear so you'll start hearing episodes with the new gear probably in about a month you guys should start hearing those, maybe six weeks, but yeah. I'm so excited, but that's what I'm doing to celebrate 300 episodes is we're upgrading the gear. As far as what's next, there's not any big changes planned for Hit the Mic because this community is amazing. I love the format of the show right now. Again, guests will continue to be by invite only. Fridays will continue to be three things episodes. Tuesday will continue to be whatever it is that needs to be talked about then, and you know, occasional live shows like this. Ultimately, this show is for you. This show is for the people who listen and hang out and enjoy and connect and learn from this show. If there's something you would like to hear, there is something you need help with, let me know. I'll add it to my editorial calendar. I'm currently making some final tweaks to the last quarter's editorial calendar before I go and do my massive quarter four production schedule. I'm trying to actually get most of October and November done by the end of this month. I originally had hoped to get my content done for the end of the year but the editorial calendar is still going to need some tweaks because I want to make some changes, but if you want to hear something this year now is really the time to tell me. Tell me in the chat box below right now. Tweet me. Snap me. Send me an email, whatever. This show is ultimately for you guys. If there's something ever you want to hear, let me know because I love to do that. Also, I wanted to let you know Hit the Mic Backstage has made a little bit of a change. When we celebrated the one year anniversary in August the price did go up. It's $40 per month now or $400 per year, but also this week, actually on Friday, they got a brand new website. I'm really excited to share it with the community. They got to see it on Friday when it went live. You guys are seeing it now. If you'd like to join us inside Hit the Mic Backstage I would love to have you. Love to have you. It's over at hitthemicbackstage.com. To wrap it up, because we're hitting right about 20 minutes which is actually a little bit long for one of my episodes, I wanted to let you know I'm going to be giving away over the next week, I'm going to be giving away two 30-day passes to Hit the Mic Backstage. Two lucky winners are going to get to join us inside of Hit the Mic Backstage totally free for 30 days. No commitment to join after that, just a really cool way for me to say thank you and for you to get to check out the new environment. Check that out. Resources Join us inside Hit the Mic Backstage Connect with Me Connect with me on Facebook Tweet with me and include #HittheMic Be sure to leave your review on iTunes or Stitcher for a shoutout on a future show

Welcome to episode 299 of Hit the Mic thee Stacey Harris. Hello, hello, episode 299 is here and we're going to talk about maximizing your content today. I know you are producing amazing content each and every week, or month, or whenever you create content. Are you making the most of that content? Are you really making sure it's getting in front of the right eyes, or ears? Creation for creation's sake does not grow your business. That's not content marketing, that's just creation. I want to make sure that you are really maximizing that content, getting the most out of every single bit of it, and really using it to serve your audience. Ultimately that's why we create content, is to serve our audience. If we don't tell them about the content, or we don't produce it in a way that they consume it, or if we don't produce the kind of content they actually need, it's not going to do us or them any good. Let's start with talking about the content they actually want and need to consume. I want to talk about this in 2 ways. I want to talk about it from the perspective of actually sort of building out your editorial calendar, and then also making it consumable for them. First let's talk about your editorial calendar. I know I've talked about editorial calendars on the show before, but it's worth remembering that there's not just 1 way to build that. There are a lot of ways. I use Google calendars, I just have a editorial calendar setup in my Google calendar. It's not on my regular appointment calendar, it's just sort of in it's own calendar. That's really nice because it makes it really easy for me to see what's ahead, what's coming up. It also makes it really easy for me to move things around. Here's the deal, when it comes to editorial calendars, you are creating something that is just going to be there to make things easier. It is not sort of set in stone, rules to live by, the only options. If you get inspired, or you have a question that keeps coming up, or you just have something you have to talk about right then, move whatever was on the calendar. It's not sort of your commitment, and you have to do it, and it's the only way it can be. No, it's totally flexible. Remember again, this is to make things easier for you, not more difficult. That's why I like having Google calendar cause I can just move it around if I need to. I do probably once a month where I decide to shift around because I want to talk to somebody right then, or something new comes up, or whatever. That's first and foremost, find a tool that's going to let you build an editorial calendar. If you're a paper and pencil person, use paper and pencil, that's cool. For a long time I actually had a monthly paper calendar, and I wrote it out on the days of the month. Next up, how do we find out what goes on in that editorial calendar? I like to use the content, and the questions I'm getting from my community already. The questions that come up in Hit the Mic backstage all the time, the questions that come up when I am engaging in other Facebook groups, the questions that come over and over again on client calls. If you're somebody who is doing discovery calls, sales calls, those kinds of things, the questions that come up over and over again there. The problems that are coming up in those calls over and over again, those are great content because it's content that's going to very easily feed into a discovery call. It's really easy to convert on that content. Q and A's that you do, whether it's on a Facebook live, or in your Facebook group, or in other Facebook groups, or on your Facebook page, or over on Twitter. The things that people are talking about in Twitter chats. Sometimes I will sneak peeks at the questions that are coming up on some of the big social media Twitter chats, and that's going to help me inform what I should talk about in the content, the things that people are confused about. The struggles that are coming up over and over again. If they already have these questions, start answering them. It's really that simple. Answer what they've already got. Then put it in a format that's easy for your content, or your consumers to actually consume, your audience to consume. If that's audio's, do podcasts. If that's videos, do videos. Do Facebook lives, whatever. If that's written content, do blog posts. Later on we're going to talk about why doing it in multiple ways is a really, really good thing. That's first and foremost is focus in on what your audience needs and wants. If you're writing content for the sake of content, or you're recording podcasts for the sake of recording podcasts and it's not actually helping your audience, you're kind of wasting your time. You're actually super duper colossally wasting your time, and I don't want to see you doing that. Check out what your audience wants and needs. Number 2, don't forget to share it. T\his one is so, so easy and so, so mishandled in a lot of ways. Some of you are producing just epicly awesome content, and you're just not sharing it. When you create content use your strategy, use your social media strategy. Share it on your networks, schedule it into your social media foundation. Be putting it out in your networks, be talking about it all the time. If you have a Facebook live coming up on Thursday and you got a new blog post going out on Tuesday, then the great thing to talk about on that Facebook live would be something from that blog post on Tuesday. You can push that traffic back to that post. Make sure you're sharing it, and you're sharing it in all the places. If you see a question come up, and you've answered that question so thoroughly with great resources and a blog post, you don't need to rewrite that blog post in response to the question. Give them a little bit of an answer, give them some immediate value, sort of instant gratification answer. Then say, "I dive way deep inside of this post," or, "On this podcast episode," and then link to it. That's not being sleazy, that's not being promo-ey that's helping them, that's providing them with the resource they're requesting. I do again, like to give them that little bit of value saying sort of, "Here's the quick answer, but here's way more information in this post," so that I'm not just sort of driving traffic to my site without any sort of regard for a reason to go there. Absolutely share that content. Remember, if you're not telling people about it, it's going to be really hard for them to find it. It's going to be really hard for them to use it, and learn from it, and get better because of it. Share it in all the places. This goes back to using your plan, building your strategy, what networks are you on, how often do you share? Then it goes to what tools are you using? Are you using something like a HootSuite, or a co-schedule, or a MeetEdgar, or a eClincher, or a Buffer, or whatever it is you're using. Then where on your calendar do you have time to fill those tools so that this content is being shared? That this content is being seen, and this content is actually providing the value that this content is intended to provide. Again, share, share, share. Number 3, repurpose it everywhere. I was terrible about this, and I'm undoing that actively right now. This is episode 299 of this show, on Tuesday we'll go live with episode 300. I have literally hundreds of episodes of this podcast, and some of them have been repurposed, but a lot of them haven't. I can go through and I can utilize that content for a lot of things. An example, now with this show immediately after I hit done and export on the recording for this, and it goes into my website and all of that ... or I'm sorry, it goes into iTunes and it's all set. I also get a transcription made, I use Rev.com to create my transcripts. Then that transcript, with a couple of edits for clarity, go right into the show notes. There is 2 ways to consume this content. Moving forward when I get back into doing regular Facebook lives now that we're settled here in California, we're going to be re-purposing that into podcast episodes, we're going to be re-purposing that into YouTube content with transcripts. I want you to be able to consume video, audio, or that in written format if that is what you want to consume, that's how you best consume content. I want it available in every way, and then I take those transcripts and they get edited further to be guest posts. I take parts of that, and I turn it into a LinkedIn publisher post. Those publisher posts can feed back to my podcast on my website. You can also then take that and make quote graphics, and tweet-able takeaways, and everything else from 1 piece of content. All of that knowledge, all of that value, I want you to be re-purposing it, I want you to make it literally all the things. Then be sure that you're going in and you're keeping content updated. If you have added new resources, or you've talked about sort of 1 of the things you talked about in a blog post, go in and link it to the other post, go in and add some information. Keep your content fresh, keep your content updated and actionable so that people can utilize it over, and over, and over again. Then re-share it, go back to number 2 and share it over again. When I repurpose content I share all the ways I repurposed it. Pretty much all of my guest posts are also podcasts. I don't just share 1 or the other, I share both all the time using the recycle cues in eClincher. Make sure you're giving your content a lifespan it deserves. Not just the 3 days after you posted it, but forever and ever. Re-purposing it can be a great way to breathe new life into content that already exists. To recap, maximizing our content. Make sure you're creating content that your audience wants and needs, make sure you're sharing that content, and make sure you're re-purposing that content. These are the things that are going to make the difference in whether your content is content marketing, or just content that exists on the internet that no one ever sees. All right, reminder. Tuesday, we're live for episode 300. We're going to talk about 300 episodes podcasting, we're going to talk about what I got going on as far as this show and my commitment to you in the next 300 episodes, we're also going to have prizes. I'm going to be giving away some very cool stuff. Also make sure you join us live at 9:00 AM Pacific on Tuesday the 20th, September 20th, right here. Go to TheStaceyHarris.com/Episode300 and you can get an email reminder to join us. If you have any questions, best place to ask questions is inside of Hit the Mic Backstage. Let me know in the comments on the show notes. I will see you on Tuesday live. Resources Join us inside Hit the Mic Backstage Episode 300 Invite Connect with Me Connect with me on Facebook Tweet with me and include #HittheMic Be sure to leave your review on iTunes or Stitcher for a shoutout on a future show

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 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.    Resources Join us inside Hit the Mic Backstage Sit down 1 on 1 with The Stacey Harris Episode 300 Invite Connect with Me Connect with me on Facebook Tweet with me and include #HittheMic Be sure to leave your review on iTunes or Stitcher for a shoutout on a future show

Welcome to episode 296 of Hit the Mic with the Stacey Harris. Today I'm answering, possibly one of the most common Facebook ads questions. Which is how much should I be spending? There are a lot of questions around setting a Facebook ads budget and how much you should be spending and how often you should be spending it and how long you should be running ads for. Those are the 3 questions we're going to answer today. We're going to start with setting your budget and what that budget means. We're going to talk about how often to be running the same ads and we're going to wrap it up by talking about your overall budget. How often you're going to be running ads from a budget of a monthly perspective or annually and sort of that perspective. Let's jump right in.   I want to start by talking about setting your ads budget and what that budget means. There really isn't any sort of magical number that your ads budget needs to be. You can a $50 ads budget, you could have a $50,000 ads budget. What's really relevant is how you work with that budget and what that budget means for things like targeting and frequency and placement. Also realizing that during different times your Facebook ads budget may go a little further or maybe not quite as far as you'd hoped. Really be aware of what your budget needs. In this section I want to talk about an ads budget for a campaign. I have a couple of things that I want you to know when you're setting your ads budget. A, set your budget before you do anything else. Realize how much you are willing to invest in this Facebook ad. If it's $100, great. If it's $500, fantastic. If that's $5,000, whohoo for you. What it needs to be though is set, it needs to be known how much you're going to spend on this campaign. Once you've set that ads budget you need to stick with that ads budget. Let's say you have a smaller budget, maybe you have $100 or $200 to spend on a list building campaign. A webinar or driving traffic through an opt in or a piece of content or whatever but the goal is list building. You have, let's say $200, to spend. $200 is a smaller budget, it may feel huge to you and that's okay but it is, in the grand scheme of Facebook ads, a smaller ad budget. It doesn't mean that it's impossible, it doesn't mean that you won't see results but you're likely not going to get 2,000 new people on your email listing from spending $200 on Facebook ads. Be aware of that, set your expectations. Next, realize that with a smaller ad budget you really want to make sure that you're being really really clear on who you're targeting. You want that targeting to be pretty specific because you don't want to be spending money on ads that are not sitting in front of the right people. Not getting seen by the people who you want to be clicking and signing up for your email list. Know your targeting. The smaller your budget the less room you have for creative targeting. You want to be really really targeted so you know you're talking to the right people. Next, you really want to make sure that you're setting your campaign up so it is a daily budget instead of a lifetime budget. This can really impact how you're positioned in the feed and the priority you get. I have found that daily budgets just seem to spend better, spend more consistently and get placement more consistently. I don't have any sort of information from Facebook saying this is true. They're really really tight lipped about what the algorithm is. I'm just saying, from testing, I've found that a daily budget that equals out to a lifetime budget works a lot easier. Let's say you have a $200 ad budget, maybe you're spending $20 a day for 10 days or maybe you're spending $100 a day for 2 days. However it is you want to parse that out. Setting a daily budget is going to be really important. You want to make sure you have your targeting really tight and you want to make sure your budget is set per day. Next, I really want you to factor in your positioning. Where are you putting them? Right side bar ads on Facebook tend to be less effective. When I'm dealing with a small budget, and even when I'm dealing with a larger budget to be honest with you, I don't tend to put ads over there because I don't see a return on those ad dollar investments at the same level I do as a news feed ad. On the flip side of that, I have found a lot of success with Instagram ads and so I'll put a little more of my budget into an Instagram ad. Pay attention to where you're seeing success and make sure you're separating out where positioning so you can turn off parts of your ad if they're just not working as effectively and you can move that budget around if you need to. again, there's not really a magical number but it is critical that you know your budget and you account for it when you are factoring in positioning, targeting and how you're actually going to spend the budget. Again, not a magical number. There's a lot of people saying you have to be able to spend $10,000 before you should even talk about Facebook ads and that's crap. Total utter crap. What I want you to do instead is realize that whatever budget you have, and this is the magic of Facebook ads, whatever budget you have, you can see success with Facebook. You're not going to see the massive success somebody with at $10,000 budget is going to see in your first campaign if you've got a $1,000 budget or a $100 budget but you can still totally see some success. Quite frankly, if you're just getting started with Facebook ads, you've never ever ever run one and your DIYing it, don't go spending $10,000 because likely a lot of the return on your first Facebook ad investment will be learning, will be education, will be paid training. You will learn a lot about your ads, your audience and your goals in the future, in that first campaign. Don't come out of the gate wanting to spend 10 grand. It's not an effective use of that 10 grand. Number 2, how long should ads be running for? This is one of those questions I get a lot and I want to bring this up because there's 2 factors. A, it's going to go back to what your budget is and how much you can spend. Also, think about the people on the receiving end. If you are somebody who's got a really tight target, a really niched area, likely they're going to see your ads over and over and over again. If you have 1 ad you run for 3 months and yes, I have seen this happen from some major players by the way, you're going to get reported as spam, you're going to get hidden and that's because people are sick of seeing the same post. You do want to make sure you're changing it up, no matter what your budget is. I generally let ads run no more than 7 days and then I may run an ad to the exact same people with the exact same goal but the copy and or the graphic, generally speaking the graphic, is definitely changed but often I'll change the copy as well. It's different and that's because sometimes that 2nd, that follow up ad if you will, will be more effective because I've kind of [inaudible 00:08:16] them with that first ad. Sometimes I'll get people to sign up again because they don't realize it's the same thing which is weird by the way. That happens occasionally with webinars or they'll have forgotten they signed up, it's a whole thing.  I try and change it up, no more than 7 days. Also realize that, from a budget perspective, if you're talking about running a new ad every week to your evergreen opt in, maybe you run a challenge or you've got a free eBook, you need to be setting a secondary budget. You need to be setting not just a campaign budget but you also need to be aware, for yourself, of what your monthly ad budget is. This is something that doesn't get talked about enough when it comes to talking about budgets. It's not just that campaign budget that you need to worry about. We talk about, okay, well I'm running this ad campaign for 14 days and I'm going to spend $1,000. Fantastic. I also boosted this post for $20 and this post for $20 and this post for $20, oh, and these other 2 posts. Now I've spent $1,100 this month and you know what, I actually want to run a 2nd campaign the 2nd 2 weeks of the month that is targeting people who clicked but didn't buy, a retargeting campaign. I'm going to give that ad campaign another $500.  Now you've spent $1,600, not the $1,000 that you initially intended to spend. Realize, when you go out to set your budget, that you need to have a line in your monthly budget that says, this is what I spent on Facebook ads. This is the maximum that I spent on Facebook ads. You can actually go in and set a limit on your account of how much you can spend on Facebook if you want to make sure. Maybe you have somebody helping or maybe you don't very good self control when it comes to hitting that boost button which I have actually heard from clients. You can actually set a cap so it won't spend any more than that cap. You can actually set that, I should say. Figure out what your monthly budget is, as well as your campaign budget, and that's going to impact the length of time or how many different kinds of ads you create. It really comes down to knowing how much you're going to spend, sticking to it, knowing your audience and knowing your goals. That's how you're going to maximize any ad budget. Whether it's $100, $1,000, $100,000. It really is going to be maximized by knowing the strategic stuff first and then also factoring in that your ad alone is not the savior or the fault point if your ad campaign is not successful. It may be what came after, it may be the landing page, it may be the funnel they're going into, it may be the follow up that's happening. There are a lot of moving pieces so make sure you are aware of all of them, don't just say Facebook ads don't work because you ran a Facebook ad campaign and no one signed up. Pay attention. Especially if you're seeing a lot of clicks to a landing page and the landing page isn't working, that is not the fault of the ad. That's the fault of the landing page. If you have any questions when it comes to Facebook ads, head over to TheStaceyHarris.com. That is where you can get a Facebook ads checklist, so all the things you need to be going through before you build your Facebook ads and also, a guide to staying on Facebook's good side. This is a totally free bundle but check it out. Also, if you go to the show notes page for this episode you'll see a link at the bottom of the show notes to sign up for that as well. If you really are ready to take this to the next level, be sure to join us in Hit the Mic Backstage because inside Hit the Mic Backstage we have an entire Facebook program which has an entire module around Facebook ads and how to build them. We've also got a couple of additional Facebook ads trainings. Plus, there's a Facebook group where you can ask me questions about your Facebook ads which is killer. I will see you guys Friday. Bye.    Resources Join us inside Hit the Mic Backstage Connect with Me Connect with me on Facebook Tweet with me and include #HittheMic Be sure to leave your review on iTunes or Stitcher for a shoutout on a future show

Welcome to episode 295. Today we're talking about three things you need to know about social media in September of 2016. Today, the day this episode is live, anyway, is depending on when you listen to it. It is officially September 2. If you follow the Starbucks calendar for season changing, it's fall. Pumpkin spice lattes are back. They come out every year on September 1. Every year, I want to tell you guys how to pay attention to what Starbucks is doing with social. You want to talk about building a community around a brand and an event. Just check out your Instagram, your Snapchat, your Facebook page, your Twitter, whatever. You will see the people using it #PSL. You will see people snapping and sharing photos of their pumpkin spice lattes and assorted fall beverages. You will also see people angrily in the anti-let us have our summer, leave us alone fall mood. Their voice heard as well. This is not one of the three things, but I just want you guys to pay attention to what's happening on social with that. Starbucks does a very good job. As a brand, they have done a very good job of really getting their community fired up. If you check out their social channels, you're going to see that they're egging this along for sure. Have you gotten your pumpkin spice latte yet? I have not. I'm not a big Starbucks fan. Sorry. It's weird. I know. It's not my favorite place to get coffee. Pumpkin spice latte's not really my go to anyways. Anywho, pay attention to that. Today we're going to talk about three things I want you to know going into this new month, the ninth month of the year. Here in the northern part of the world, anyways, it's going to be moving into fall. You've got kids going back to school. Before you know it it's going to be the holiday stuff rolling out. I already am seeing Halloween stuff everywhere. I'm sure Christmas stuff is not far behind. I want to start off today talking about your holiday ad spend. I know we talked a little bit in August about planning your social media for over the holidays and what you're going to do. Now, what I want you to start doing in September is really getting clear on what your budget is to spend on ads in the last part of this year. Really, really, really, really, in the next couple of weeks, you're going to start seeing holiday ads. You're going to start seeing gift ideas and content targeted towards end of the year promos and coaching packages to get you ready for 2017. All those things. That means your ad costs are going to be going up because there's going to be more competition. Get really clear now on what your budget is because that's going to impact a lot of the things you're able to do and also maybe where you choose to spend those ad dollars. I think I mentioned this in the last episode, the three things you need to know in August. If you go to the show notes, I'll link to that episode. You really, really, really don't want to be relying on Facebook ads alone unless you really, really need to rely on Facebook ads alone. If that's the only place you're audience is, that's one thing. If your budget is smaller and you're not really sure you're going to be able to maximize them on Facebook, check out other networks. Check out Twitter. Check out Pinterest. Check out LinkedIn, especially if you're in the B to B space. Pay attention to those spaces because the ads are going to get a little more pricey, little more expensive on Facebook and probably not far off, Pinterest as well, because you're going to, again, see those gift ideas and things like that really increasing the price. However, if this a busy time of year for you, you sort of make your bread and butter through the holiday season, make sure that your ads budget is equipped for that as well. What I really want you to be doing here in September is planning that budget, planning that strategy to maximize that budget and really think about how you're going to spend those ad dollars over the holiday season. As business owners we have to think about Christmas and Thanksgiving and New Years and pumpkin spice latte season before it's actually here. Next up, number two, this question I've just been getting a lot of. I don't know if it's the back to school time or what, but everybody's kind of looking for this change, this fresh space or they're recommitting to getting out there and networking via social media. They're looking for Facebook groups. I wanted to give you guys a tip on finding really quality Facebook groups. I'm finding it harder and harder to get through the noise and find groups. I want to start this off, this next section of the show, off by saying that not all Facebook groups are created equal Facebook groups are not the only way to market your business. There seem to be this illusion that Facebook groups are like God's gift to marketers. They're not, necessarily. They can be a really great tool. I've had a lot of success with them. I really enjoy them. Being in five hundred Facebook groups does not make your business successful. It does not make your Facebook time worthwhile. Being a member of a group is not the same as networking in a group. You just put your name on list. That's all you've done. What I want to talk about is really finding a few, did you hear that, a few Facebook groups. I really want that to sink in. When I say few, I don't mean like a few dozen, I mean like three to five. Yes, three to five groups that you're going to actually spend time in. When you have three to five groups that you're going to actually spend time in, and by spend time in, I mean not just reading, but actually writing, commenting and engaging, you'll find that the groups that you're spending time in suddenly become a lot more quality. It's because you have stepped out of a passive position and into a active position. You are engaging the community that is there. Now you're seeing some benefit from it. That doesn't mean that all groups are going to suddenly become magic because you bothered to spend a little time in them. Some groups will continue to suck. Then, that's when you leave those groups and you go to new groups. You're not going to upset anyone. Honestly, I don't know anyone who has a Facebook group who's monitoring who comes and goes. I'm sure people do, but I don't know anybody who does. I really want you to focus. Focus in on the groups where you can provide value and where you can receive value. That may mean focusing in on groups that you pay to be a part of, membership communities that you're active in. That may mean getting more active in groups that came with programs. That may mean finding entirely new groups. Any of those things work. Any combination of those things work. It may mean just getting active in some of the groups you're in now, which might start with leaving a lot of groups. That's what I really want you to focus in on is finding good, quality groups to spend time in. Over this next thirty days, really commit to actually engaging, being active. Put the time on your calendar to go in and engage these communities. One of the things going into this time of the year, we talked first about Facebook ads. One of the things I hear a lot about is, "I don't have the budget to keep up with Facebook ads. My Facebook ads just aren't seeing the same results. I want to turn them off. I need someplace where I can market. I need someplace where I can connect." Start connecting through value and community inside of these groups. It will help supplement that Facebook ad stuff that you're missing. It will help supplement the organic view drop off you're getting. Whatever it is. Notice I didn't say, don't just join. I said, go be active. Go be engaged. Take advantage of these communities. Network and engage. These are the words that you're skipping over when you join groups in a lot of cases. Finding good quality groups and engaging in them, three to five groups maximum. I'm not saying you have to leave all of your other groups, but turn off the notifications and take them out of your favorites. When you have the favorite listed there on that left sidebar on your Facebook homepage, just in that, just the three to five you're actually engaging in. Yes, this can include groups you own. I include groups I own in this list. That's important as well. The third thing, I want to do a little refresher on scheduling. I've talked a ton about different scheduling tools. I've talked a ton about scheduling your time to engage. I've briefly talked about putting it on your calendar in this episode. What I really want you to spend some time looking at is are you doing this? Are you scheduling time to fill your foundation? Are you scheduling time to engage on these different channels, in these different spaces. Are you scheduling time to go live on Facebook? Are you scheduling time to snap between calls? Are you scheduling time to update your Instagram stories. Are you scheduling time to take photos to put on Instagram? Are you scheduling time to respond to people who tweet with you? Are you making the space to cultivate and engage with your community each and every day? If you're finding that you don't have any time to do these things, it's often because you're not making time to do these things. When it's on your calendar, it gets a lot harder to ignore it. It gets a lot harder to forget about it. Marie Forleo says something I always really liked that she's said it for a long time, "If it's not on your calendar, it's not real." It really is true. We are really good at filling time. If we leave space on our calendar that's not allotted for, we will find something to do with it. If you're anything like me, that thing you find to fill it up is probably not uber productive. Buzzfeed quizzes. However, when you put on your calendar just ten or fifteen minutes to snap something on Snapchat. To share a Instagram story, respond to some tweets, answer a question in a group, check in on the Facebook page, whatever those things are. When you have that time scheduled, that is when you're going to go in and do it. That is when you're going to go in and do the Snapchat, do the story, whatever it is. Make sure that you're scheduling this stuff. Then make sure that you're actually doing it. Give yourself a little accountability. Find a friend and say, "Hey, I really want to commit to upleveling my social media. This is what I'm doing. Will you keep me accountable?" Tell your coach. Tweet me. Whatever you want to do. Pop it into Hit the Mic Backstage and the Facebook group. Let us know that you're really committing to building and sticking with your social media schedule in September and we will cheer you on. Seriously, guys, this stuff makes all the difference when it comes to pitching that program you're launching in January, pitching that end of the year offer you want to launch in December, making up the difference when you decide not to run Facebook ads in November and December, building your list, filling your webinar, all of those things happen from consistent action. A coach very, very early in my business, I was having a really hard time with the rollercoaster of income. My coach said to me, the business you have right now can be credited to the marketing you did three to six months ago. If you want to start January 2017 off strong, with a big launch, with amazing program, with a best month ever, whatever it is, you can credit that success with the marketing you're doing right now. Schedule this stuff. Go in and follow through, all right? I will see you guys on Tuesday. Resources Join us inside Hit the Mic Backstage 3 Things You Must Know About Social Media August 2016 Connect with Me Connect with me on Facebook Tweet with me and include #HittheMic Be sure to leave your review on iTunes or Stitcher for a shoutout on a future show

We are talking about a very common question I get about Facebook groups versus Slack channels. Specifically, we're going to talk about them in the scope of a community for a membership, or a free community that you're having as part of your opt in, or as a bonus add-on for maybe a group program you're doing.   Facebook group versus Slack channels. First, let's talk about what each of these things are because you might not know what Slack channels are. First, Facebook groups. These are the groups that you can set at 3 privacy levels: closed, open or secret. Closed means that the group is searchable, you can see who is a member but you have to be a member to be able to post or see any of the content inside the group. Public means everything is searchable. We can see everything that is going on in the group without being a member. Secret means the group is not searchable. The member list is not available publicly and all of the content in the group is members eyes only. Those are your 3 options when it comes to Facebook groups. Facebook groups are 100% free. You do need a profile to run it. You can't create, use or access groups as a page you can only do it using your profile. They are a really really popular option for a lot of things keeping in touch with friends, mastermind groups, free groups to help build your email list, as a program add on, as a membership community piece. Most people kind of understand them. Nobody has to go to any additional place to get access to the forum. It is a really good option for a lot of people. Number 2 is Slack channels. Slack is a relatively new communication tool, in comparison to Facebook group anyways. You can create it, it's totally private to the people who have access. When you create a group you get a special URL. You can access it through an app on your phone, you can access it through desktop. I have a Slack app on my iMac even so that I don't have to go through the desktop, I can keep it open almost like a group chat or a messenger. It is a separate thing. I don't have to worry about having a tab open for it on the desktop, which is also really nice if you're somebody who has multiple Slack channels by the way. It is a really great tool for keep your team in communication, for groups, for meet ups. Basically, just anything to share what is happening with everybody. I really like both tools. I don't think that one tool is necessarily better than other just overall. I do think though that these tools have different uses.  They have different places and again it's going to come back to that question, and you hear me say this all the time. It's going to depend on who your clients are. Let's kind of break down the either or's on this on a case by case basis, and then I will kind of talk about why one or the other is better for each of these options. First, let's talk about for a free group as part of your email opt. Maybe you're running a free challenge or as a webinar you offer a bonus into Facebook group, it's something I did for a long time. Basically, you're using it to build your list. It is 100% free to be a part of. It is not an addition to any program it is just a free group. For those, I really like Facebook groups because they are easy to be found via search, they are easy to share with friends, they are easy to navigate, they are easy to use, and they are easy to get people comfortable in and keep people active in. What happens is when you have something like a free group there is no financial accountability to being a part of the community. Having it someplace that is really easily accessible, someplace where they're already spending time is really helpful as far as keeping them engaged. For free groups I really like Facebook. The reason I don't love Slack channels for free groups is because, again you're having to send them someplace else. It is not like you can just log into Slack and get all of the group you're apart of. Each Slack channel has sort of its own domain. I'm a part of several, one for mastermind, one for a meet up group I'm a part of, one for my team. I would have to go into each of those via the desktop. In my app I can flip through them but I still have to be intentional about going in to each of those places. There is not a really big way to pull me in the way you do where a group is showing up in your news feed or your notifications with Facebook. That's why for free groups I say Facebook groups. Next, let's talk about as a paid add-on for a group. The first disclaimer I want to put right here is it's against the terms and conditions from Facebook to sell access to a Facebook group. Meaning, when you have something you can't just have them pay to be a part of a Facebook group. An example of this is Hit the Mic Backstage. We use a Facebook group as the community forum kind of aspect. But when you pay for Hit the Mic Backstage, you're not paying for the Facebook group. You're paying for all of the trainings inside of the membership community. The Facebook group is an additional bonus to that. Whereas, I've heard from a lot of people they are looking for something they can sort of just sell access to to be doing group coaching and things like that. For that, you're going to want to use something like a Slack channel because it is actually, again, against the terms and conditions of Facebook to sell access just to a Facebook group alone. It's got to be partnered with some sort of content and then the Facebook group is an added bonus, an added value thing. It can't be I'm paying $5 a month to have access to this Facebook group. That doesn't fly. Make sure you have it positioned well to start off with. When it comes to should I be using a Slack channel or a Facebook group as that bonus added community piece to my program or my membership, I like both. It is going to depend on who you're ideal clients are. I will say, I prefer Slack for those things. I've been a part of a couple things now that have had Slack channels as the communication piece and I really really enjoy it because I enjoy Slack. I enjoy the way you can work in it. I like that you can upload things. You can very easily message the other people and share files and do things like that, so I really like it for that sort of thing. I also really like it because I don't have to go into the noise of Facebook to engage with it. I can be really focused and intentional with my time and say this is my mastermind time, but during this mastermind time I've got my Slack channel open because I'm engaging with the group or whatever. However, it depends on who your audience is. I know with Hit the Mic Backstage I don't know that my members would be particularly comfortable in Slack. I would have to teach them how to use it first. I don't have to teach them how to use a Facebook group. They can go someplace they are already comfortable to ask me questions versus having to go someplace where maybe they are a little less comfortable or an additional step they have to take to get access. I do know some people have started running both, run a Slack channel and a Facebook group sort of testing it out and seeing how it goes for them. I think that is really smart because it allows you to see what is going to work for your community. I think when it comes to Facebook groups versus Slack channels as that bonus for your paid program, it really does come down to where are students, or your clients, or you customers or whatever you to call them. Where are they going to get value? Because if they're not going to use it they're not going to get value and it's not going to matter how cool and shiny and fantastic it is or how easy it is to access with a Facebook group. If they're not using it it's not going to provide value. It depends on who they are. I like both, but again be cautions when you're talking about your Facebook group that it is a bonus. It's an added value, it's a part of it, it's not the whole thing, it's not the whole enchilada. You've got to make sure you got that. The third thing I want to talk about with Facebook groups verses a Slack channel is for your team communications. I have seen a couple of people tell me that they use a Facebook group to stay connected with their team. Their subcontractors or their VA's or whatever it is for them on their business' team. For that, far and away without a doubt I highly recommend Slack. What is cool about Slack is it integrates with a lot of the project management software. On our team we use Asana and I can actually great a task or talk about a task right in Slack. It's really nice because although we can comment on things in Asana, somebody can ask me a quick more general question. Maybe there is not a task for the thing that they need to ask me about. It's a really easy way to stay connected. It's a really easy way to stay in communication. Everybody can see it. Also, people can private message if they need to ask for a follow up or ask for additional information.  We can all kind of see what is going on there, so it is a really great way to stay connected for teams. I think Facebook groups, there's too many distractions. It's too easy for people to get pulled away. When you talk about those little notifications ding-ding-dinging. There's just too many distractions in my opinion for it to be a good team communications environment. For that one, far and away recommend a Slack channel. To recap, #1 for free groups Facebook groups win. For #2 paid programs it really depends on who you're talking to and who your audience is. I've seen both work really really well. Just look at who your audience is that will be the answer there, but both offer a really great option. And then #3 for team communications Slack runs away with it for me. The thing I want to sort of leave you with is don't pick one of or the other of these tools because XYZ told you it was the only option. These are not the only two tools there are for any of these jobs. There are other options. You have to choose what works best for your business, or best for your team, or what works best for your clients, and what is actually going to get used by whoever it is you need to be using it. That is going to be the most important piece, and that is going to be the difference maker as far as the decision. Make sure that you're considering the user over the XYZ told me it was the only way to go. Sound good? All right. I will see you on Friday.   Resources Join us inside Hit the Mic Backstage Connect with Me Connect with me on Facebook Tweet with me and include #HittheMic Be sure to leave your review on iTunes or Stitcher for a shoutout on a future show  

Let's talk Twitter ads, because we talk a lot about Facebook ads. We talk a lot about Pinterest ads, but the reality is there are a lot of ways to invest in your marketing. There's a lot of ways to invest just in your social media marketing. Twitter ads is definitely one of them. As we go into the end of the year, especially when it comes around to the holidays, and we start thinking about ... Facebook ads are getting really really crowded. It's really good to look for other alternatives. It's really good to look for some options that are going to allow you to get in front of your audience, connect with the people you want to, but maybe connect with them in a way that's more aligned with what they're looking for when they're on that network. Twitter is definitely a really good example of that because going to look at what are they looking for when they're here? What are they thinking about when they're here? What are they focused on when they're here? A lot time that comes down to getting the right content in front of them and that might be better to do on Twitter than it is Facebook any time of year, but especially going into the holidays. I know for me, during the holiday time starting in October, I don't run a lot of Facebook ads. In fact, November and December I don't generally run any Facebook ads, but I do take that budget and I put it over in Twitter. I put it in LinkedIn. I don't generally put it on Pinterest because you're going to run into the same distribution problems you're running into on Facebook. For me, Twitter and LinkedIn, I can maximize my budget in a big big way and drive a lot of relevant traffic to what I want to be driving them to. Whereas, it's just more difficult to do on Facebook. In the spirit of getting ready for that now, and not later which we'll talk about in the next couple of episodes, I want to share a little bit about what you need to know about when it comes to Twitter ads. I love this stuff if you're somebody who's thinking, "I have zero Twitter ads. I don't need to listen to this episode." A lot of the things we're going to talk about today are relevant for any kind of ads you're creating. Really if you look at it big-picture, these same lessons apply to any piece of marketing you're doing. If you don't know these things, you're going to run into less than satisfactory results, we'll put it that way.   Let's jump in and talk about what these 3 things are. #1: know your goals. If you don't know what result you want to see from a piece of marketing, you're going to fail right from the start. Here's why, not just because you're not going to be able to get any sort of good measure of whether it was successful or not, which you're not. Not because you're going to feel like you're spending money an nothing's happening, which you will. Mostly because you can't give your audience a clear path, you can't give the consumer of the ad, or consumer of the marketing, a next step and a call-to-action if you don't know where you want them to go, what result you want from it. That really is a really critical step 1. Know your goal. When you look at Twitter ads you can have a lot of goals. You can talk about trying to drive traffic to an opt-in. You can talk about trying to drive traffic to a sales page. You can talk about trying to increase engagement and replies. You can talk about trying to increase your following and actually grow the audience size that you have there. Those are direct goals for the ad. You want to that, but that direct goal for the ad is actually going to be based on a larger goal. Let's think about this from an example we'll used throughout the show. I like to have some sense of consistency with you guys. Let's talk about Hit the Mic Backstage. Hit the Mic Backstage is a premium membership community where people can get social media trainings. Let's say that I'm using Twitter ads because my ultimate goal is to increase the membership of Hit the Mic Backstage. Now, that doesn't mean that I'm running a Twitter ad right to the sales page. What I might be running is a Twitter ad to an opt-in that's got a trip-wire and then that trip-wire helps get them into the membership. I have to know my big-picture goal so that I can backtrack that to what's my goal for each of these ads. Within a campaign or within a larger setup, I may run a couple of different ads. In the stretch of a launch or maybe pre-launch, it's about me growing my following a little bit, actually getting some targeted new followers to help increase the scope of people I'm talking to. Then maybe it's driving traffic to value-based content. Then maybe it's driving traffic to an opt-in and a sales page. Know what your big goal is so you can work backwards. The big goal for today is getting members into Hit the Mic Backstage. We're going to work backwards and say, "Okay, we're going to actually run ads that are tweets about Hit the Mic Backstage and about the opt-in that drives traffic that." That's going to be the best way to go because now I know exactly what I want to say in that ad to help move them along that path and towards the goal I have outlined. You see how knowing your goals really is the first step. It's going to put everything else in place. Especially when you talk about ... If you don't know what your goal is, you don't know who your ideal client is. For me, for example, I don't know who I want to target an ad to if I just know that I want stuff to happen. Now, am I driving traffic towards Hit the Mic Backstage or am I driving traffic to consulting clients? Those are different clients for me and so those are different parameters. That's different targeting and so unless I know that goal, I can't know that targeting. That's why we have to do the goal first, because the #2 thing we need to know when we're setting up our Twitter ads is who are we targeting. You hear me talk about this a lot when we talk about Facebook ads because targeting really is the difference maker. It really is the piece that can make or break the success of the campaign, because you could have the best copy and the best graphics and the best landing page in the world but if you're showing them to the wrong people it's going to be incredibly difficult to see results. It's going to be impossible, in fact, to really get the traction that you want to get. Know your target, and not just the age and their gender and maybe where they're located. I'm talking specifics. Who else are they following? One of the cool things of Twitter ads that we can do is we can actually target the followers of other people. We can actually target exactly who is interested in other things. Think about the people you admire, the other people they're looking to for advice on what you're talking about, their favorite shows, their favorite actors. Those sorts of things where when you know them, you know all about them. Not just their age, not just their gender, not just the fact that they live in the states or they live in the U.K. or whatever. It's knowing what are they interested in, what are they doing, who are they connected with on Twitter? That's going to be a really valuable part of knowing how to target your ad. It's really really incredibly powerful when you can say, "The people who follow these 6 people are the people I'm speaking to and so that's what my targeting is." Now you're speaking to a much smaller audience, a smaller section of people. Especially going back to #1 when we're talking about your goals. If your goal is to increase your following, you're only going to see value from that if you're targeting the right group of people to follow you. You'll get followers. You can put $100 into the Twitter ads machine and say, "I want more followers.", and you'll get more followers. If you don't have specific targeting, the people who follow you are not going to add any long-term value to your business. Yes, you got followers. Maybe you paid 25 cents a follower, and I'm just making up numbers here for the sake of an example, but that 25 cents per follower is only money well-spent if that new follower is somebody who is interested in what you're talking about. Who is looking for your advice. Who is looking for your products. Who is looking for your information, your services, whatever. Make sure again that that targeting is there. I would rather pay $1 per follower and know that these are for sure people who are going to be buying from me in the near future, because now I've spent $1 to make whatever your product or service price is instead of spending 25 cents to get a number. A number that's very likely going to un-follow me if I don't follow them back. I've tested this a lot of ways and I've seen it play out exactly the same over and over again. When you don't get specific with the targeting, you will just see a mass follow and then a mass un-follow. You'll end up right back where you started. The couple of people who hang on just aren't quality. Make sure your targeting is there. #3: your budget. I feel like this is not talked enough about when we talk about ads of any kind. I feel like it might especially be important on Twitter. Twitter can blow through a budget very, very, very quickly if you don't know your goals and you don't know your targeting. You're going to be sort of all over the place, sort of fire hose of Twitter ads. Knowing your budget is really really valuable because the smaller that budget is, the more important it is for you to know that targeting is going to be tight. When you have a larger budget, you have a little more wiggle room with your targeting. You have a little more wiggle room with your goal, even. You have a more general goal, but when your budget is small you need to have a very specific end-result goal. You need to have a very specific set of targeting parameters so that you know you are getting your maximum value. Start early with your budget, and I don't just mean, "Oh, well I want to spend $100 on this campaign." How much do you want to be spending per ad? How do you want to be spending per week? It may be that you're running several different ads over the course of a month for a launch. Not just what does that month budget look like, what does the budget look like for each phase of that? If you don't have that, it's very very likely that you're going to spend way more than you anticipated spending. I don't want that to happen. Know your budget and then let those goals, let that targeting reflect what that budget is because it's going to be important that you keep track. When you don't know your budget, when you don't know your targeting, when you don't know your goals, it's impossible to get any sense of return on investment. It's impossible to say, "Yes these worked or yes these didn't." I've had people email me again and again and again and say, "You know, Twitter ads just don't work." They do work, just like Facebook ads, just like LinkedIn ads, just like anything. You have to do the work to make them work. It would be super nice if you didn't, but that's the way it is. Make sure you put in the time to go through these things. If you want to know the brass tacks of how to actually build your next Twitter ad campaign, check out hitthemicbackstage.com. Like all of the training since I've Hit the Mic Backstage, you're going to be watching me actually build Twitter ads. I'm going to walk you through every step, every screen, so that you can build your ads with success. That's the how, this is the what. This is the strategy of it. Make sure you have these things in place before you build that stuff, but come on over and join us at hitthemicbackstage.com and get the specifics of how to walk through Twitter and really build the ads that will make you some ROI goodness. I will see you on Tuesday. Resources Join us inside Hit the Mic Backstage Connect with Me Connect with me on Facebook Tweet with me and include #HittheMic Be sure to leave your review on iTunes or Stitcher for a shoutout on a future show

Guess what, guys? Facebook's making some changes. I know. Try and contain your excitement. Don't worry. I'm breaking down the three big things I want you to know about today on this episode of Hit the Mic with The Stacey Harris. These are changes that I think are going to actually be really amazing changes. The first one we're going to talk about is all about ads. The second one we're going to talk about is all about your page as a whole, and the third one we're going to talk about are some new video metrics that are beginning to be coming out. Good, good stuff. You ready to jump in? Let's do this. First thing's first, some ads changes are coming, and really mostly from a how users experience ads kind of place, how we interact with ads, with other people's ads, but I want to talk about how it's going to impact you as somebody who runs ads, okay? By the way, in the show notes for this episode over at thestaceyharris.com/episode290, you will find links to all three articles about these changes right from Facebook, if you want to check those out as well. I'm going to be giving you some of the information, and then we're going to talk about how it impacts you as a business owner, but if you want to read the whole thing straight from Facebook, head over to the show notes. There are links to all three articles. Okay? Let's jump in on this.   We're talking about how we can control our ads. As somebody who uses Facebook, and has ads in the timeline and on the right-hand bar all the time, I get why a lot of people turn their ads off. However, Facebook has created a way to not have that happen, so now your ad blocking software that you're using with Chrome or Firefox, maybe Ad Block Plus, or there's another ad blocker. There's a ton of them. They might not be working. You might see your Facebook ads popping back up, and as somebody who runs Facebook ads, I'm not entirely against that, because that's going to mean my cost will go down, because there's going to be more people who ads are being delivered to. However, with doing this, Facebook is also giving users the ability to control the kind of ads they see. When we create Facebook ads, we often target interests. Those interests are created from our user side by based on what we've clicked on, or read, or watched, and sometimes those aren't entirely accurate when it comes to what our actual interests are. It may be that you were Christmas shopping for your friend, a new, I don't know barbecue set. I'm making things up now, and so now it's attached to your profile that you have an interest in barbecuing. You may be a vegetarian who lives in a studio apartment, and has never once in your life touched a barbecue. You can see how these interests might not be always accurate. Here's the deal, though. Facebook now is going to let us go in and edit those interests, meaning we can stop getting the ads that are targeted based on gifts we've purchased in the past. Also, maybe you've had your profile for a really long time, and your interests aren't the same as they were always before, and so there's some stuff in there that's older. That's going to allow us to do that. Here's the thing, though. I know what you're thinking. At least one of you listening to this show is thinking, "Awesome. I will just go in there, and I will delete all of the interests, and then no ads will target me." Here's why that's a terrible idea. What's going to happen is you're still going to get ads. You're just going to get really poorly targeted ones. It's worth going in, and cleaning up this list, and making sure your ads are relevant for you, because I will be honest, I have purchased things based on ads because I have found out about something I didn't know about. Most of the ads I've purchased from are probably retargeting ads, which is why I love re-targeting ads. God, that's a whole other episodes. Go in and pay attention to these, and again, from the perspective of a business owner, this is allowing us to really make sure that our ads are getting in front of the right people. This is why knowing your ideal clients, knowing your target market, knowing your target persona, whatever you want to call that person who is buying from you, or listening to your show, or consuming your blog content, or watching your videos, or whatever, is so important. Now we're getting an even better way to target them, and an even more accurate way to get in front of the eyeballs we want to be in front of. This is really cool. From a user perspective, I would go in, and I would update these, because that's going to be really, really cool to be getting more accurate ads in front of me, ads of things I actually care about. Also, again, from a business perspective, we're going to have that accuracy. Also, you may, may see your cost going down a little because ads are being delivered to more people, because those ad blockers are not working. I know Ad Blocker Plus has already tried to announce a workaround, and Facebook shut down that loophole a couple of days later, so I suspect this will sort of be a back and forth between them, volleying this ad blocker on, ad blocker off thing back and forth, for probably quite a while. As ad blockers have become more and more popular, we're seeing more and more sites find ways to get around people using them, either by producing the ads anyways, or in some cases, just locking us out of the content altogether until we agree to either pay or turn the ad blocker off. Pay attention to that, and see what's happening. From a business perspective, this is not a bad thing, because it's going to allow us to get into the newsfeed. That also highlights how important it is that your ads really be of a high quality. It's really highlighting how valuable it is for your ads to be a seamless experience with the other content around it. Make sure your ads are something worth looking at. Make sure your video ads are worth watching. Make sure your link ads are worth clicking, because that's going to do a lot, a lot of good, as far as people not being interrupted by your ad so much as happy to engage with it. Okay? All right, so that wraps it up. Again, if you want to read the whole article from Facebook, you can do that. They had a posted it in their newsroom. I have a link to it over in the show notes page. All right? Next up, let's talk about ... All right, so let's talk about your Facebook page. Some of you may actually already be seeing this. I know some of our members and Hit the Mic backstage have started seeing it, I want to say a couple of months ago. I finally got it, I want to say maybe a month ago now. It's really, really great. They're rolling this out a little strangely, though. They're not rolling it out page by page. They're rolling it out user by user. Once you see this on your page, you will see it on all of the other pages. The best I can describe it is, it's a big, big upgrade. We still have our cover image. That cover image is the same size, but now our profile image, instead of sitting over the cover image, will sit to the left of the cover image above sort of a menu of about, photos, whatever it is specific to your page that you have. If you have the shop section on your page, that'll be there. If you have a services section, that will be in that menu. Right under the cover image, you'll see the like. If you have your message button showing, you'll see that, and then you'll see the more button that has like as a page, and report your page, those kind of options. You'll see underneath the cover image, and all the way to the right, you'll see a big, blue button, and that's your call to action button. Whatever call to action you have, contact us, shop, learn more, sign up, whatever call to action button you have will be there, giving it major, major highlight. Right under that, you'll see the page category, if there's a review or ratings enabled on your page. You'll see that star rating there. Then you see an option to search the posts of the page, which I think is really, really nice, and then you see the information like page likes, and check-ins, and hours, and stuff like that. That's center, so just underneath the cover image, but on the left column under the cover image, is where you'll see the timeline, the newsfeed, the actual posts and content from the page. I think it's a much cleaner experience. I think it's a big, big upgrade. I really like it, but what I want you to realize with this is now you have an entire unobstructed cover image to take advantage of when it comes to sharing some sort of information, and tying that in with a very, very well-placed, eye-catching, easy to take action on call to action button. I want you to make sure that you are utilizing those two pieces of those page to really make sure you are driving people where you want them to go, whether that's a website, or contacting you, or watching a video, or whatever it is. I want you to make sure you're using this real estate, because they are giving it to you in a big, big way now. This is rolling out slowly to everyone. I believe the official roll out in the US is still happening. I know that if you're in the UK or Australia, I don't think you're getting this until a later in the year, but it's coming. It's coming soon, so yeah, you're getting more prominent buttons, and that's really, really what I want you to take away from it more than anything. The cover photo is still displaying on desktops at 828 by 315 pixels. The profile pictures are now 160 by 160, so make sure that you have updated or optimized your content to speak to those sizes. Again, the cover image is staying the same, 828 by 315, and then your profile photo, which is now to the left of your cover image instead of sitting on top of your cover image. It sits to the left, is now 160 pixels by 160 pixels. The other thing to consider when you are creating your cover image is not just how it looks on a desktop, but how it's going to look on mobile. Make sure when you're doing things like pointing to the call to action button that it's still going to work in how it's going to look on mobile. Remember how many people are consuming this content on mobile. A lot, so make sure it's optimized by both user experiences, okay? All right. Let's jump into the third thing I want to talk to you about today. This is actually the thing I'm most excited about, because I know a lot of you are getting more and more into Facebook video, and using Facebook video not only in Facebook live, but uploading, I should say, uploading produced, gorgeous video. Metrics is getting an upgrade. You're now going to be able to understand the audience and the engagement of your videos a little bit better. Let's break down what is getting added. First up, audience demographics. You're actually going to be able to see who of your pages are actually watching your videos, and how long they're lasting. When you go into a video, and again, the link to the actual post from Facebook is in the show notes, and they've got great photos inside of that post of these different breakdowns. Check those out, but you're actually going to be able to the age, the gender, and the geographic location of those top viewers, so you can really see who is actually paying attention. A lot of times, I talk about insights and the value of knowing who's liking your page, but then also, the value of knowing who is actually seeing your page, and the demo information of who's actually engaging in your page. This is just that next step, because now it's getting as specific as, who is watching your video, and to what point are they watching it? You may have your target audiences watching five, ten, 15 seconds of a video, but it's actually a slightly different demographic that's consistently watching all of your videos, all the way through. That's an important piece of information to know when it comes to creating your videos, because it may adjust how often you post. It may adjust who you speak to. It may adjust how you speak to them through video. It may also adjust how long your videos are, so pay attention to these demographics. Again, top audience demographics, but then also the engagement. You're actually going to be able to see how engaged, and at what points they're engaging. You can really be expanding what works, and removing what doesn't. It's really giving you all the information, if you're just willing to dig into these metrics, because this is a lot of incredible value. By video engagement, what I'm talking is reactions, meaning likes, loves, wows, all the reactions we have now. Also comments and shares, so if you're getting to a point where you're just dropping some serious knowledge, people are loving it, and suddenly you see a massive increase in shares. Suddenly, everybody's sharing the video. You know that A, maybe you want to get to that point a little sooner, or you want to do more of that, because it's really not only getting your audience fired up from a point where they're still watching, but even better, they're telling their friends that they're watching, and they're telling them to watch, too. That's really, incredibly valuable for you. You can also see what the viewing habits are, and what kind of views you're getting from shares and from cross-posting. That's going to be really valuable if you're cross-posting in any sort of joint venture or partnership, and you're cross-posting to multiple pages, or maybe you're somebody who is a blogger, or content creator, or a freelancer for a major brand, and you're cross-posting on your own stuff and their stuff. This is going to tell you what kind of information you're getting from there as well. What I love is we're also able to see from the video views who's watching it with the sound on, and how many people are watching it with the sound off. You can really see the value of, do I need to invest in and get started with, on these recorded videos, having those captions? The answer may very well be yes. I know that's something I'm working on for my own stuff, because it really is impactful. Pay attention to this information, because again, once again, analytics will give you a ton of information. We see a lot of questions come through for me that are about when to post, and what to post, and how long to post, and a lot of it is educated guesses based on who your ideal clients are. Beyond that, looking at what you're creating, and seeing how they're engaged with it. All of the answers sit in knowing who your ideal clients are, and then testing things, and then reviewing the data. Reviewing the data is often skipped, so don't just ... Testing stuff doesn't matter, if you don't look at what happened as a result, okay? Pay attention to that stuff. All right. If you want to learn more about these changes, and how to make the most of Facebook, and how to really maximize your impact that your Facebook page is having maybe in the midst of some serious organic reach drops, then be sure to join us at Hit the Mic Backstage, over at hitthemicbackstage.com. This really is the place to be to keep up with social media, to get your questions answered, to stay confident and clear in knowing that you are taking the right steps right now, not the right steps from five years ago. Okay? All right. I will see you on Friday. Resources Join us in Hit the Mic Backstage A New Way to Control the Ads You See on Facebook, and an Update on Ad Blocking Changes to the Look of your Page New Video Metrics Connect with Me Get YOUR question on a future episode Email me at hello@thestaceyharris.com Tweet with me and include #HittheMic Be sure to leave your review on iTunes or Stitcher for a shoutout on a future show Get the Facebook Ads Checklist + Guide

It's Friday which means today we're going into our three things you must know, and we're going to be talking about direct marketing stuff. Whenever you're buying into sort of those larger companies and you're selling products for them, like in the old days it was like Tupperware, Avon and Mary Kay and now there are a gazillion of them for like fitness, weight loss, makeup, nails, lashes, all the things, all the things. We're going to talk about three things you need to know if you're in that space because 1) I see a lot of people doing it really, really poorly. 2) I don't think the training that you get from them directly is as solid as it could be. 3) There is a fair amount of you who are leaving a lot of money on the table by doing it in a way that is actively repelling customers instead of bringing them in which is the goal. If you are not in the direct marketing space, if you're not somebody who does this. If you're a solopreneur who has your own products and services, this is still going to be worthwhile to listen to because we're going to cover some of the sort of basic rules of social media and the things you need to know when it comes to selling via social. Pay attention either way, but this really is for those folks in the direct marketing space because I think some of the advice that some of you are getting is, well, wrong. That's what we're going to talk about today, three things that you must know as a direct marketer to sell on social media.   Number one thing you need to know. You're still a business. I see this a lot where you're selling from your profile, you're making friends with people, you're auto-adding people into a group, which is not a good idea. Basically, you're treating this business as sort of a hobby and something you do on the side, which is fine. It's legit, just something you do on the side and not a major revenue source. That's fine, but it doesn't make it any less business, so it needs to be treated like a business. That means it needs to have a business page. It's actually against Facebook's terms and conditions to use your Facebook profile, the thing you started initially when you opened your account, primarily for commercial purposes is the language in the terms and conditions. That means if you're mostly or at all really using Facebook profiles to make friends and message people and add them to groups and auto-invite them to events and whatever, you're doing it wrong. What's happening is you're actively pushing back your customer base because who you're speaking to are not your customers. Where you need to be doing that is a business page. If you want to run a group, great, but find a way to funnel people into that group where they choose to be in that group, not you automatically adding them to the group. That's really the difference. Treat this like a business. Facebook page needs to be a business page, not a Facebook profile. Don't be auto-adding people to groups. Don't be auto-adding people to events for virtual parties where you're going to sell and things like that. You need to structure this in the same way that it's a business. That speaks on a larger scale to knowing who your customers are. Yes, you have the customers of the company who you're selling on behalf of speaks to you, but find a set within there of the people who you speak to. The times I see this executed the best is in some of the weight loss and essential oil spaces where ... Essential oils work for a mass amount of people. These weight loss products work for a mass amount of people. Who in that mass do you connect with? Who can you provide value to? Again, treat this like a business. Build your ideal clients, your ideal customers and extend that even to your ideal team members because a part of direct marketing and making that really profitable is finding people who sell underneath your team. I am fully aware of that, but again, that's only going to work if you treat this like a business. Do the work to find out who you're selling to, to build a page that speaks to them, to build the content that speaks to them, that builds the community that they want to be a part of, not that you are sort of forcing them into and they keep having to leave and then they end up blocking you and unfriending you and all of those sorts of things. That's not productive for your business. Again, treat this like a business, okay? Number two thing you need to know. Consistency still matters. Even if this is something that you are doing on the side. Maybe it's a second stream of revenue to your primary business, maybe this is something you're just starting with and you're just trying things out. The most important thing is going to be consistency and that means not just consistently once a month going, "Okay, here's your last chance to get your orders in for whatever," but instead being consistent with value and being consistent with a message, a message that speaks to people who you want to be buying. Going back to the essential oils example, maybe your target market is moms who are busy and trying to get 600 things done, and so they're dealing with stress, and they're dealing with kid stuff, and they're dealing with all of the things. Speak to them all of the time with value, not just sales messages, consistently provide them value, consistently speak to them and consistently be in front of them. Consistency is going to be critical when it comes to your social media. Again, that doesn't mean blasting out a sales message every other day saying, "This is what we've got, come buy it." You have to find those value points. You have to find those points where you can connect with them. Going back to point number one. Just like any other business, you are a business even if you are in the direct marketing space. That doesn't make you any less a business owner. I kind of look at it almost like you're a franchise holder. You know what I mean? You need to follow certain rules, but at the end of the day you are your own entity and you need to market it as such. Make sure that you are being consistent with your social media, whether that's on Facebook, or Twitter, or LinkedIn, or Pinterest is a great option. No matter what it is, make sure the consistency is there because it will make or break you. Number three, make sure you are following the rules. I know I kind of talked about this a little bit in number one when I talked about you needed to have a business page, but I'm not just talking about the terms and conditions of these sites, although that's super critical, but also the rules of marketing. Again, you are a business. I know I've kind of gone back to this over and over again, but I think it's something that's so, so critical for you to understand. You have to be following the rules of marketing. You have to be promoting value. You have to be building relationships. This cannot be something that you go into and you expect to day two make a billion dollars. That's how it happens. The people who are really, really, really successful in business, especially in direct marketing, get that more than anything else maybe, is a relationship-based business. It's all about building relationships. It's all about building credibility, so make sure you are doing that work. Make sure you are putting in the time and the energy to build those relationships. Follow those marketing rules. Again, its about value. It's about consistency. It's about following the terms and conditions of these sites. It's about knowing what needs to be done to support your business when it comes to marketing it. That really is, I think, the thing that so many direct marketers sort of fall off the cliff with, is you're not realizing it's a business, so you're not following these rules. To recap: 1) Remember this is a business. Treat it as such. 2) Consistency matters. Even if this is a side hustle for you, you have to be consistent. Do the work to make sure that you're consistently putting out value. 3) You have to follow the rules. You have to follow the marketing rules about value, about consistency, about the terms and conditions of the sites you're using. You have to, have to, have to make sure that you are in line with that because it's absolutely critical. Okay? I want to close in with just sort of a rapid fire things that you need to stop doing because literally everybody is complaining about it. Don't auto-add people to groups. Don't auto-invite all of your friends to parties on Facebook. Don't spam email everyone in your email contact list saying, "Hey this is what I'm doing, come buy this." Don't focus on your product and what you're selling alone. Find the value. The big one I'm seeing right now is you find somebody, you send them a friend request, you send them a message, you say some nice things, kind of start talking to them and then you send them this massive sales pitch. Now, I applaud you for attempting to build a relationship, but when the entirety of our correspondence is three previous messages, never in any of those messages did I mention anything relevant to what you're trying to sell me, don't then try to send me a novel sales ... Like literally a sales page via Facebook message.  I'm seeing that one a lot lately. Don't do that. Again, going back to our first three things, treat it like a business, be consistent with value and everything else, and follow the marketing rules. Then make sure you just avoid these last few don'ts that I've kind of blasted in here because they really are mission critical, and they're actively, actively driving away your potential customers because you are losing people before they can ever hear what amazing value you can provide. All right? All right. Now, last note. I have nothing against direct marketing. I don't have any problem with it. No I'm not interested in any potential selling opportunity you would like to offer me because I know I will get the because when I've talked about it in the past I've always gotten them. I am not a direct marketer. It's just not my gig. There's nothing wrong with it, but I have chosen not to do it for a reason. Take this information and prosper with it, all right? If you have any questions, you want to learn to use Facebook pages and Facebook Live and those kind of things more effectively to help sell these products because you are treating this like business and you are investing in its growth, head over to Hit the Mic Backstage. That's the place to get all of the social media training you need to grow your business, direct marketing or otherwise. I will see you backstage. Bye guys. Resources Join us inside Hit the Mic Backstage Connect with Me Connect with me on Facebook Tweet with me and include #HittheMic Be sure to leave your review on iTunes or Stitcher for a shoutout on a future show

All right, guys. 287. In this episode we're going to talk about the 3 things you need to know about social media in August of 2016 because today is August 5th, 2016, the very first Friday in August. There are some things happening. I know that social media is one of those things that can feel incredibly difficult to keep up with. It can feel like it's changing all the time and there's new services and there's new opportunities from old services and there's new networks and there's new things on old networks. It can be really overwhelming, but not if you have a go to resource and that's why I built this show and that's why I built Hit the Mic Backstage, the membership community. It's so that you could have a resource. In the spirit of that, we're going to be that resource today. We're going to talk about the 3 things I really want you to be paying attention to in August. Not all the things, just the 3 things that I'd like to see you paying attention to right now.   Let's get started with the biggest news right now that you're probably hearing about in all the places, Instagram stories. There are a few schools of thought when it comes to Instagram stories. Some Snapchat lovers are quite angry about Instagram stories, saying that it's a total rip off. Some are saying, "I didn't really want to do Snapchat, but now I can get that same purpose happening in a network I'm already using." Then there's people like me who are like, "Awesome. Look how Snapchat is being taken seriously as a competitor and they're seeing that this is really working and so there's making other option to do it. That's really cool." I fall in that camp. I think Instagram stories are very cool. I am still absolutely using Snapchat, of course it's only be a couple days. I don't see myself stopping using Snapchat because I do have different connections on Snapchat than I do on Instagram. However, much like we saw with something like a Meerkat and a Periscope, where Meerkat we had to build a new audience and that took a lot of effort, and where Periscope we already had our Twitter audience built in, or with Facebook Live where we already see we have our Facebook audience built in. I think that Instagram is going to be a great option for those people who were not feeling Snapchat, were not wanting to go over there, were not wanting to build an audience some place else. I will absolutely still be using Snapchat because, again, I have an audience there, but for a lot of my clients that I've talked to already about this who are just starting to get into the idea of maybe doing Snapchat or who have started Snapchat very loosely in the last couple of days and they have really sold Instagram audiences already, I'm saying, "Hey. Let's use Instagram stories." Again, I don't think that Instagram is going to be a Snapchat killer. I think that we've seen a lot of innovation coming out of Snapchat in the last honestly 8 months to a year. We've seen them make massive, massive changes to the user interface. We've seen them make massive, massive changes to things like how the service works, like introducing memories. I think we're going to see more of that innovation come as a response to this. We're seeing them partner with Bitmoji. I was thinking about it earlier, that's the one thing that I really miss in Instagram stories is I loved Bitmjoi integration. It's a really fun way to personalize a story with some fun graphics. I don't think this is going to be the killer that maybe people are thinking it is right now. I think we're going to see Snapchat hammer back in a really cool way, which the social media nerd in me is very excited to see. Amy Porterfield recently talked on a Facebook Live about Instagram stories and how she couldn't get into Snapchat, she never felt comfortable there, but she's really excited to use Instagram stories and then I watched one of her Instagram stories where she did a behind the scenes in her office. The exact kind of content I would expect to see from her on Snapchat, but it was an environment she was already comfortable in and she made a really great point in that Facebook Live. Sometimes as business owners, we have to make decisions and for you, it may be the decision of, what do you have the capacity to take in? Where are you comfortable spending your time? Where have you built your audience? Where is your audience responding to? Show up there. That's what's most important. I'm a big proponent of not trying to be all the places all the time. Instead, be in the right places at the right time. That's going to get you a lot further a lot faster. Yes, Instagram stories, amazingly cool, but I don't necessarily think they're going to be the end of Snapchat. If you want to see more about Instagram stories, I did a brief talk about Instagram stories on Facebook Live yesterday. I will link to that in the show notes so you can watch that if you'd like to watch the replay. If you want to dive even deeper, there's going to be a Instagram stories update to the Instagram training page inside of Hit the Mic Backstage next week, because it's only the 5th. Next week. You'll see that the week of the 8th. That's just a really great example of when something happens and so there's a bonus training in the community. Be sure to check that out, HittheMicBackstage.com. Number 2. We talked about Instagram stories, let's move to number 2. Facebook page changes. Some of you may be seeing a change to your Facebook page. Here's the thing. Not everybody can see it yet. This some things Facebook has been rolling out and testing for quite a while now. I think my first Backstage member probably mentioned that they had it 4, 5, maybe even 6 months ago. I just got the new layout. They're doing it a little differently. They're rolling it out by user and not by page so, for example, I have it now so all of the pages I see are now in this new format versus some pages being in the new format and some pages being in the old format, which I think is a really smart way to roll it out because, from a user perspective, I don't have to go back and forth between the way pages look. However, I really, really, really am excited for them to roll this out for everybody because I think the new page layout looks so much better. If you head over to Facebook.com/TheStaceyHarris, that's my page, you'll see a snapshot of what it looks like now for those of you who don't yet have it. I'm hoping that they continue this roll out and they maybe speed up this roll out, however I appreciate that they do it at the pace that they do it at because there are a lot of users to roll it out to, but I'm really excited for you guys to see it. It looks amazing. It looks so much better. I'm really excited about this new change. It is going to mean some changes in your graphic sizes when it comes to your cover images and the way things are placed, but we also get a much bigger call to action button now. It's right under the cover photo and it's quite bit and it's quite blue and it's actually stands out which I really like. Our profile images are no longer going to sit on top of our cover image. We now have a round circle profile image that sits just to the left of the cover image. That side bar that you see on the right currently is now over on the left so where you see your page like and your page information and your videos and all that stuff is now on the right side of the page, so your eye goes right to content, which I really think is going to think a big, big help as far as getting people engaged with content on the page when they visit the page. Again, if you head over to Facebook.com/TheStaceyHarris, I will have a snapshot over on the Facebook page of what it looks like right now for those of you who maybe have not seen it roll out to you yet. Cool. All right. Let's wrap it up with number 3. Number 3 is not a change or a new network or anything like that. In fact, it's really all about planning. I know a lot of you listening are service-based businesses and a fair amount of people listening are product-based businesses and all of you need to plan for one thing, the holidays. The time to plan for the holidays is not during the holidays. The time to make those plans is now. Especially if you're in a product-based business that perks up at the holiday season, maybe you're selling gifts or calendars or ornaments or holiday fare or whatever it is, the time to be planning what that needs to look like is right now. Figuring out your ad strategy, figuring out your budgets, figuring out your creative for your ads, figuring out your content. Make sure that you are taking some time to figure out what the marketing needs to look like through the holidays now. I think it's really easy to want to be in the moment and stay like, "I'll worry about that. It's so far away. It's only August," but, dude, it's August and, in a lot of cases, you're seeing people who are already starting their holiday shopping. You need to be on top of what's happening for your customer base. Are they people who are early shoppers? I know a couple of you who listen to this, because you've emailed me, create custom gifts, so custom jewelry, or etched glass, or paintings, those kind of things that people very commonly give as gifts. I'm guessing you need those to be ordered in the next several months, not in December. Now is the time to get your audience primed. Maybe they're not somebody who usually shops early, but they need to be ordering early from you. Let them know that. Start talking about it in your content. Start talking about that in your social. In a big, big way, you need to be planning what your social media's going to look like over the holidays. What needs to go out, what doesn't need to go out, what's going to be your ads focus. I know there are at least a couple of you where this is your big time of year. This is your big income generation time. Make sure you're taking advantage of that and you have built out your marketing plan like you would for any other launch. For another section of the audience who may be a little more like me where you slow down over the holidays, you also need to plan for that. I've talked about it a lot on this show. A lot of people have heard me talk about this. I take December off, so my content and my social and all of that stuff, it doesn't stop, but it needs to be done before we get to December so I'm looking at that. What needs to be done for me in the next few months to make sure that my business can maintain and even grow while I'm not working, or at least not working very much. That's the holiday planning I'm doing right now. What content needs to be created? What social needs to be created? What stuff needs to be scheduled? Are we going to have any automated stuff happening as far as challenges that are all through automation in my email service? What's going to be happening? How am I still going to continue to drive traffic to Hit the Mic Backstage? I also know that Hit the Mic Backstage does not tend to be a big Christmas gift, although that would be super cool. Super cool Christmas gift to give to your team members or your biz bff. I'm just saying, but I also know that that means I don't want to be trying to run Facebook ads up against everybody and their brother trying to sell Santa Hats, so I turn my ads off. That also means that I would rather have a big October November before that December ads blitz, but really it starts in November, where my cost per click and my cost per conversion goes way, way up. I have to figure that out right now because that stuff's going to need to be rolling very shortly. Whether you are somebody who gets really busy during the holidays or you're somebody who goes completely quiet during the holidays, the time to figure out what needs to be done is really right now. In August, that's what I encourage you to do. Do some planning for the holidays for December and make sure that your business is set up for that lean time or that really busy time. Just to recap before we go. Number 1, Instagram stories. Be sure to come over and watch the Facebook Live where I'm talking about Instagram stories as well as join us backstage for the walkthrough of Instagram stories. Facebook changes. Head over to the Facebook page and you'll see a screenshot of what the new look is and let me know on that post if you have it yet, because I'm very curious. Number 3, holiday planning. It needs to be happening. This is the month to start figuring that stuff up. Okay? All right. I will see you very soon, on Tuesday in fact. Have a great weekend. Resources Join us inside Hit the Mic Backstage Facebook Live on Instagram Stories Connect with Me Connect with me on Facebook Tweet with me and include #HittheMic Be sure to leave your review on iTunes or Stitcher for a shoutout on a future show Get the Facebook Ads Checklist + Guide

I'm ALL about community, and it's for totally selfish reasons. Communities grow brands, it's just the way it is.  It can be tough though to get a community going when you aren't getting any engagement, and that's what this episode is all about. I'm sharing 3 ways you can get your community moving and more engaged.   Resources Join us in Hit the Mic Backstage 3 Things You Must Know About Repurposing Facebook Live Content Connect with Me Get YOUR question on a future episode Email me at hello@thestaceyharris.com Tweet with me and include #HittheMic Be sure to leave your review on iTunes or Stitcher for a shoutout on a future show

For a long time I was guilty of planning once a year, and by planning I mean I looked at the calendar and said I'll do this. In recent years though I made a major change, and now I'm sharing it with you.  I'm getting super clear and honest about what I'm doing now to make my business better in the last half of this year, and start 2017 off even stronger.  It may feel like it's too early to start talking about planning, but listen in and find out why now is the EXACT right time to start planning. Resources Join us in Hit the Mic Backstage  Connect with Me Get YOUR question on a future episode Email me at hello@thestaceyharris.com Tweet with me and include #HittheMic Be sure to leave your review on iTunes or Stitcher for a shoutout on a future show

Social media changes all the time, it's why I built Hit the Mic Backstage, and it's why I do this show. So you can get the info that you need right now to make your social media the best it can be (and more fun too).  With that said, I'm trying something new this month, and if you like it, we'll keep it. Here are three things you MUST know right now. We're talking  Facebook Video Showing up     Resources Join us inside Hit the Mic Backstage 3 Things You Must Know About Scheduling Facebook Posts Going Live is No Longer Optional   Connect with Me Connect with me on Facebook Tweet with me and include #HittheMic Be sure to leave your review on iTunes or Stitcher for a shoutout on a future show

This month we celebrate 4 months of Hit the Mic Backstage and it's been incredible. Without a doubt one of the best things I've ever done, and I'm so happy to continue to welcome members. I've learned a few things though, a few things I didn't expect.  In the spirit of transparency, and because I know several of you are looking to start membership sites, I'm sharing those lessons today.   Resources Join the VIP Community Join us Backstage Sit down with me Connect with Me Get YOUR question on a future episode Email me at hello@thestaceyharris.com Tweet with me and include #HittheMic Be sure to leave your review on iTunes or Stitcher for a shoutout on a future show

Facebook groups are powerful, that's why we have an entire training about them in Hit the Mic Backstage, plus another training in the Rock Star Guide to Facebook (also Backstage). Today though we're talking OTHER PEOPLE'S Facebook Groups and using them to network. We see a lot of ranty posts about what not to do, that's not what this is. These are three key steps that I want you to take to maximize your time in these super valuable networks.   Resources Join the VIP Community Join us Backstage  Sit down with me   Connect with Me Get YOUR question on a future episode Email me at hello@thestaceyharris.com Tweet with me and include #HittheMic Be sure to leave your review on iTunes or Stitcher for a shoutout on a future show Get access to the VIP community

Several months ago when I started looking at launching Hit the Mic Backstage and I went into research mode. I quickly found Robbie Kellman Baxter and her book The Membership Economy. Today I'm joined by Robbie to talk membership. A little about Robbie… Robbie Kellman Baxter is the founder of Peninsula Strategies LLC, a management consulting firm, as well as the author of the Amazon Hot New Release in Sales & Selling, The Membership Economy. She coined the popular business term “Membership Economy", which is now being used by organizations and journalists around the country and beyond. Her clients have included large organizations like Netflix, SurveyMonkey and Yahoo!, as well as dozens of smaller venture-backed companies. Over the course of her career, Robbie has worked in or consulted to clients in more than twenty industries. Before starting Peninsula Strategies in 2001, Robbie served as a New York City Urban Fellow, a consultant at Booz Allen; Hamilton, and a Silicon Valley product marketer. As a public speaker, Robbie has presented to thousands of people in corporations, associations, and universities. Robbie has been quoted in or written articles for major media outlets, including CNN, Consumer Reports, The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. She has an AB from Harvard College and an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Resources Join the VIP Community Get your Backstage Pass The Membership Economy by Robbie Kellman Baxter Connect with Me Get YOUR question on a future episode Email me at hello@thestaceyharris.com Tweet with me and include #HittheMic Be sure to leave your review on iTunes or Stitcher for a shoutout on a future show