In Your Business: Money Is A Renewable Resource; Time Is Not

Money is a renewable resource; time is not.

Read that again.

The chances are that your business is not styling and taking 100 product photos to get just the right one. Your actual business is not researching and writing blog posts. Your business is not writing captivating scroll stopping Instagram and SEO rich Pinterest captions. Your business IS something else.

Your business is a physical product, or it’s a service that you offer and provide to other businesses. Your business and passion is most likely NOT creating the marketing content to bring awareness to your target market about YOUR business.

In the monthly 20-minute speed marketing sessions, the top three frustrations that I hear from other business owners are:

1. I loathe social media. I don’t know what photo to post, what to write or have the time to do it.

2. I don’t know what platform I should be concentrating the limited amount of marketing time I block out to reach my target.

3. I feel like no one is even engaging or paying attention when I post, so I just don’t post.

After we discuss these issues and we chat about the services that Maven & Muse provides it always comes down to money and not time. The phrase, “I wish I could afford to hire you.” gets thrown out a lot.

We are all good at something, that’s why we have a business. The skills that we lack we need to learn to hire out. We are a society of multi-taskers, because multi-tasking gives us a sense of purpose. We feel empowered because we are capable of doing ALL of the things, except we are not doing all of the things well. If we flip our focus to investing our time on the one thing that we do well and hire out the rest the money will renew itself and our business will grow.

I personally suck at keeping up my books, and I hate doing it every month. So I have hired out these services. It’s totally a pain in the ass to pay for something that I am fully capable of inputing into my Quickbooks but I know that I would rather do anything else then keep them up. The couple hours that I would spend doing this each month has freed up the time for me to personally write content and market my own services which has in turn brought in the money to pay for the bookkeeper.

I encourage you to actually sit down and think about how much time you are actually putting into feeling frustrated by creating your own businesses digital marketing content. I will put money on the fact that it is the same amount of hours that a content creator would charge you for.

Money is a renewable resource; time is not.

The Social Media Apocalypse What's Your Digital Marketing Back Up Plan

The social media apocalypse of Facebook and Instagram being down is happening. It’s March 13, 2019, Mercury in retrograde and we’ve been experiencing the biggest meltdown in social media history.

Since 8am PST people around the globe have been unable to get into both Facebook and Instagram. At the coffee shop today the world seemed a bit quieter, people are having these things called conversations with each other instead of being preoccupied with snapping a quick picture of their latte to put on their Instagram story. (Ahem I am guilty of this as well, sometimes.) I don’t know if this is because we are all secretly freaking out just a little bit.

I will say that I have enjoyed the silence of only having to focus on other digital marketing platforms for my clients that do not include a member of the “Facebook Family” for one day.

The real question we should be asking is, “ Will Facebook and Instagram be back tomorrow?” Honestly, that could happen. We could wake up tomorrow with the same messages on our pages, or they could be erased forever. As of this posting Facebook, reps are saying, “Facebook is down for required maintenance. We will be back soon.” Historically when huge expansive platforms such as Facebook and Youtube have done an update it’s only been 1-3 hours, as of this writing we are going into hour number 12.

If this outage has taught us anything it should be to not put all of your eggs in one basket. I’ve been saying it in talks and to clients since the first Zuckerberg Senate hearings, start thinking about your digital marketing backup plan.

If these platforms do not exist tomorrow, do you have access to your customers? Do you know your customer's email addresses and how to get in touch with them? The only real channels that are guaranteed for you to directly communicate with your customers or clients are your blogs and your email campaigns. I know these are such a pain in the ass to do. These digital marketing campaigns actually take a bit of time, I get that. You can’t post a pretty picture and write an emotionally touching caption to get your message out there. But you should start considering a plan B.

There are other great platforms to build a presence on as well Youtube and Pinterest are two that if you are not already tinkering around on you should at least begin investigating.

Lately, I’ve been pushing current clients toward my Pinterest management package because it is a powerful search engine that as of right now I don’t see going anywhere but up. The power of brand awareness that Pinterest offers is incredible if you know how to use it. Start here, you already have amazing photo content of your products which is half the battle, because you have been posting those awesome images to Instagram. Just start posting them with a good description to Pinterest as well.

Consider blogging as well, if you are a service based business or a product based business you have things to say, things that your target market IS searching for.

I am really thinking positive that the “Facebook Family” figures it out and that we are back in action soon but then again if they don’t we’ll figure it out. We are in this together.

Analyzing Your Online Efforts

If you are a business there is one intimate relationship that you need to be having. That is the relationship with your analytics. You should have an ongoing relationship with your Google, website and all active social media platform analytics. 

I know that you are out there reading articles about what is the ideal time to post to my account. While these posts aren't wrong in the posting times, they suggest just not work entirely toward when YOUR audience is active. The key to figuring out your ideal posting time is research, reading your analytic reports from Google and whichever other platforms you are focusing on. For example, you might be throwing all of your efforts into posting onto Instagram but you have 25% more traffic coming to your website from your Facebook page that you hardly ever update. This statistic should trigger in your brain to refocus your efforts and test for 5-7 days upping your Facebook posting habits to see if they remain the same, increase or decline. 

Every single one of the accounts I manage is different, some have a crossover on the niche, but each of their ideal clients is different and unique to them as a business. Therefore making the "sweet spot" of posting times different for each of them. I know this because I am in an intimate relationship with their analytics. I'm checking daily the report of the previous day, how many profile visits, how many website clicks, what time of day was this all happening. 

Social media isn't black and white it's a whole lot of gray. Things are continually changing, and you've got to regularly read your analytics and actively test to find what is working. If you're not you are wasting your time by putting in any effort at all.  I encourage you to peek your social media analytics, Facebook and Instagram will display for you your top three posts of all time. Take a look at them and study what is the same or different about them.  Study your location sources, I recently did an assessment for a client and the second and third most popular sources were coming from Canada which is a place we weren't even targeting, and the places we were targeting came in sixth and seventh. We had to refocus and study what we were throwing down and why we weren't getting the attention from the locations we were hoping too. 

It's tricky I wish there was an easier way but this online relationship is the most dramatic, active and complicated one your business is going to have, so you need to take the reins and make your efforts work with you not against you.  If not you're just wasting your precious time. 

Must Love Media Kits

Media Kit. Two words that create a big punch.

What is a media kit you might ask? Well it's a multi-page document that businesses use to promote themselves and sell their services to potential clients. 

Who uses a media kit? Traditionally media kits have been used for magazine publication, but they've evolved into something that is beneficial for everyone to bloggers, photographers, writers, designers and other small businesses in between. Basically this document is a resume for your business, a way of describing who you are when you are unable to meet in person. 

Do you offer services or advertising in your business model? Then you for sure are in need of a media kit. The media kit is a great tool because it essentially gives potential clients all of the information they could possibly need in one easy to navigate document while often cutting  correspondence time in half because it’s already answered most of their questions.

Media kits can be formatted to market nearly any business. Whether you’re a blogger, writer, photographer or designer, a media kit is simply a way to explain what you offer in a streamlined, informative document. The easier you can make it for your clients to understand what you’re offering and how to book you, the more successful your business has the potential to be.

Below are the Six Things that MUST be included in your media kit.

I'm not going to lie this is a very time consuming document to create but I promise you that it will be the most important document in your arsenal.  

Together: A Bosslady Conference

Finalizing everything for my presentation this week at the Together: A Boss Lady Experience that is happening this week in Portland! Because helping you to keep your social media actually social is my new jam. Can't wait to network with a bunch of other ladypreneurs. Until then I'll share my promo video, but you've got to wait for the outtake at the end. 

Boosting Productivity

Ultra productive people don't work from a to-do list, but they do live and work from their calendar.  Do you really think that the billionaires like Bill Gates and Marisa Mayer write a long to-do list and prioritize items? Nope, if it's not on their calendar it just doesn't exist because a to-do list doesn't account for time.

I read this crazy Forbes article about time productivity and started to put everything on my calendar in timed increments, like the billionaires.  When I sit down to start the task I ask Siri to set the timer.  15 minutes of Instagram interaction, 20 minutes of Facebook group trolling, 30 minutes of email management, 60 minutes of content creation then a break.  

Bottom line if it doesn't get scheduled and Siri doesn't time it, it shouldn't get done.  It's a learning process for me but so far it's working out pretty well. 

Instagram Live: What You Need To Know

My prediction that one day Instagram will single handedly kill Snapchat and Periscope is slowly coming to fruition.  Welcome to the social media game Instagram Live.  While Instagram Live is not Periscope for so many reasons, one being that people have to be following you to know that you are live, where as on Periscope people searching a location see the live videos that are streaming, it's at least a start. 

When you are live on Instagram a bubble with the word live will pop up on your screen name. Some of your friends who follow you will get a notification that you are Live and will be prompted to tune in before your video is finished.  Similar to the new Instagram algorithm, Instagram will choose which of your followers or users to notify based off their interest in Live videos.  The reason being Instagram is looking out for it's users that it doesn't want to annoy then with an alert every time someone they follow goes live. Like Periscope when watching, your viewers can tap to heart/like your video, comment and type questions. 

I'm sure that you're now wondering, "Why should I be live on Instagram?" Well the real reason is that it is putting you directly in front of your audience. Live viewers choose what they want to watch and if they are choosing to watch you then they know that you have something powerful to say. 

Since this is such a newer update, here are a few ideas to get started and become comfortable on Instagram Live.

* Host a Q & A  like the every popular #fridayintroductions posts let your community ask you questions and get to know you and your business.

* Give a behind the scenes. These are always super popular because your community wants to be the first to know what you are up to or what you think is cool. That is why they are following you after all. 

* Show off something awesome that you are doing. At a historic place, at a place that means alot to you, show your community talk about it. 

Let's Go On A Social Media Adventure

Hello 2017. A new year with 12 new chapters, 365 blank pages and endless amounts of business social media adventure opportunity awaits.

If you are a business owner and made a goal to have a bigger or more consistent social media presence this year my one big question for you is, "Have you filled out your monthly content calendar yet?" If you are going at this whole social media promoting thing alone as well as running your business then you definitely need a social media content calendar. 

Content marketing is the only kind of marketing that is left. People stream and dvr shows from network tv and watch original Netflix and Amazon series.  Commercials are now obsolete, you will get lucky with a product placement deal in a show.  For the rest of us all that is left is content marketing on Instagram, Facebook, Periscope and Youtube.  You need to start planning your posts. Sounds easy right? Sounds like you can just sit in a coffeeshop for an hour over a latte and crank out a months worth of content, well you can start there.

Content creation and organization is the biggest and most time consuming part of my job. You would think that it would be easy to come up with blog and newsletter topics, Facebook posts, and eye catching Instagram posts, but the fact is people run out of ideas. We are human and ain't nobody that's  trying to build a business and strong social media presence got time to run out of ideas. 

The most valuable thing you can do for yourself and your bottom line is have an up to date content calendar. It helps plan, organize and schedule every single piece of content you publish online.

It’s the place where all of your social media posts,  blogs,  newsletters,  videos, podcasts and  graphics strategically come together to grow your business. Content marketing takes up so much time and if you're not squeezing your content for all you've got then you are missing out on traffic, post engagement, leads and money. 

Overwhelmed, my apologies, but start small. Plan out a week at a time. Every Sunday morning I sit in a coffee shop and look over the weeks plan for both mine and clients feeds for the week and tweak as necessary when things pop up in real time. 

Need more advice or want a personalized quote on your content management, let's chat. 

We're In This Together

There is nothing that makes me happier than being a part of a loving, thriving, and honest community of women. I am proud to associate myself with those who lift up and encourage each other, for they are what make me a stronger person, and a stronger business owner. I am honored to announce I will be speaking at the 2017 Together Experience conference in Portland, Oregon this February. This three day event will uplift, strengthen, and redefine your business in a community unlike any other.

I will be speaking on social media obviously and why you as a business need to be social and not selly on it. When I was asked to be a speaker, I was completely caught off guard, nervous and excited but my personal and business philosophy has always been when an opportunity presents itself to say yes and figure it out later.  The fact that the conference is at the beautiful Nines Hotel in downtown Portland doesn't hurt either. 

Perks of being a bossy lady attending this conference include: swag, pop up shops, professional headshots, and the best knowledge in the industry. I’d love for you to meet me there, and know we will have an amazing time. Click HERE for more information and to secure your seat! 

Instagram Stories vs. Snapchat For Business

Instagram stories vs. Snapchat as a whole is like comparing Holyfield to Tyson when they met up in the ring.  Both are powerhouses in their own right but I am about to give you my very personal opinion on each. 

Let's start with Snapchat shall we, I held off on the Snapchat train up until a year ago. So many people kept telling me to get the app that it was just so fun.  I gave into the peer pressure because I needed to see what all the kids were using, and try and figure out how to make it work as a platform for a business.  Snapchat is great, I snap my friends at least 10 times a day, the filters are equal parts fun and hilarious, my personal favorite is the one that smooths everything out, I like to call it the Barbie filter.  The down fall of Snapchat for a business is that people need to first find you by your user name and then add you, which you then need to approve them. So many steps. If Instagram stories did't exist I would 100% say you should be on Snapchat to give a "behind the scenes" of your day to day business. 

However, Instagram stories do exist.  Instagram is so much easier to gain followers as long as your business profile is set to public. There aren't the extra steps of searching, requesting and approving.  People can just search you, follow you and see both your well curated feed and your "behind the scenes" of your life stories.  The one thing Instagram stories is missing are the fun filters, but I wouldn't be completely surprised if those are on their way soon. 

In the end from a business standpoint I think doing Instagram stories is your best bet.  Your following wants to feel like they know you, they want to see the inner workings of your business, they want to see you as a real person, not a thought out and curated feed.  Let's save the Snapchat for being silly with your friends, because you do need to approve who can see your feed and you can individually send snaps to whomever you choose in your address book. 

If you are a business and need ideas of what you should be showing in your Instagram stories, shoot me an email and let's chat.