Chasing Simple Marketing for Entrepreneurs

If there is nothing else that you ever learn from me, the most important thing that I hope I can share with you is that your content is part of your business, but it’s not your entire business.

Not sure what I mean? I’ll explain more in just a moment.

Don’t forget to subscribe so that you never miss an episode! Also, if you would be willing to leave a review on Apple Podcasts, it would mean the world to me. It’s such a small thing that can make a big difference in helping me spread this message of simplicity to other overwhelmed women.

Have a comment about today’s episode, or a topic you’d like to suggest for a future episode? Shoot me an email over at [email protected]!

If there is nothing else that you ever learned from me, the most important thing that I hope I can share with you is that your content is part of your business. But it’s not your entire business. Not sure what I mean? I’ll explain more in just a moment. You’re listening to episode 224 of the Chasing Simple podcast, and I’m your host, Amanda Warfield.

This episode was brought to you by Gaffin Creative.

How do I find time to create content without overwhelming myself? Where should I even be showing up in my marketing? How do I come up with fresh content ideas? Where should I be focusing my marketing efforts? What is lead generation anyways and how do I do it? Are launches still a thing? And most importantly, how do I put it all together to market my business strategically?

Can I really grow my business without spending all of my time marketing? These are some of the questions that float around in your head when you think of marketing. Welcome, friend. This is Chasing Simple, where practical marketing strategy meets simplicity. I’m your host, Amanda Warfield, simplicity focused content marketing and launch strategist, speaker, educator, and author of Chasing Simple Marketing.

I traded in my classroom lesson plans for helping creative entrepreneurs sustainably fit marketing into their business without it taking over their business. So that they have time to grow their business, take time off, and live the life they dreamed about when they first decided to go out on their own.

When I’m working, you can find me working with one on one clients, such as The Contract Shop and Rebecca Rice Photography on their marketing strategy and copywriting, or helping my students simplify their marketing and launches. And when I’m not, you can find me spending time outside with my husband, Russell, Reading in our hammock, watching Gamecock Sports, traveling, or forcing our cats to snuggle me.

If you feel overwhelmed by marketing, you aren’t alone. Many entrepreneurs find marketing frustrating, overwhelming, and simply an obligation. They know they need it, but they don’t enjoy how easily it can suck up their time when what they really want to be doing is the thing that they started their business to do.

Which is why I’m here, to help make marketing simple and less time consuming, so that you can spend less time on your marketing, and more time growing your business and doing what you love. Each week I’ll bring you transparent conversations, actionable steps, and judgment free community to encourage and equip you.

So grab yourself a cup of coffee or whatever your drink of choice is, and meet me here each week for love, support, practical tips, and advice on uncomplicating your marketing and business. Let’s do this entrepreneurship thing together, shall we? Hey, sweet friend. It seems like I attract a lot of introverts with my marketing and if that’s you and you have been throwing around the idea of adding long form content to your marketing plan, you might have been thinking about a podcast.

Podcasts are great for introverts and just for those of us who want the easiest possible route for creating long form content because you can do it In your pajamas, you can do it no matter what you look like, and alls you need is, honestly you don’t even really need a microphone. I suggest you get one, but you just need something you can record on.

And, if you’re gonna go that route, you need a great editor. Now, whether you are thinking of starting a podcast or you’ve already started a podcast and you know how overwhelming the production side of having a podcast is, I want to introduce you to Gaffin Creative. Gaffin Creative is a podcast production company dedicated to empowering creatives like you and like me to use your voice and grow your brand.

They’re not just another production company, though. They’re your partners in creativity, community, and success. I have been working with Haley Gaffin and her team for, gosh, years now, and it is the best thing I spend money on in my business every single month. I love that I can hand off what I’ve recorded, and I know it’s in good hands.

I know that I can fully trust them With all of the audio aspects, they are so aware of how to improve your audio, but then they also do things like, hey, if you make this tweak while you’re recording, it’ll sound even better. And they’re just, they’re really dedicated to quality. And I knew that, but I really discovered it when I had them edit the audio book for my book, Chasing Simple Marketing.

They were just so dedicated to the quality, and they were so committed to that project. Honestly, more than I was. And it was just such a reminder of how amazing they are to work with. I know that when I hand over my content each month, that it’s going to be wonderful, and that you, as a listener, are going to get a great experience because of them.

So, whether you’re launching your first episode, or you need some ongoing support, they are on a mission to turn dreamers into doers. The founder of Gaffin Creative, Haley, actually, she joined us on episode 93, where we talk about cheering other women on in life and business and episode 202 to discuss visibility and podcast guesting.

So if you want to learn more about Haley, those are two great episodes to go check out. And if you’re ready to take your podcast to the next level, visit gaffincreative. com and discover how they can help you bring your podcast to life. What is your Largest roadblock when it comes to content marketing. I know that for me for a long time, it was the fact that I could not get ahead.

I would be sitting there on a Sunday night as I was. You know, working part time, trying to get this business up and running, this was my side hustle. And I was working part time, but I was working multiple jobs so that it meshed into a full time job. Or full time hours, I should say. But my main job at the time was teaching preschool.

And so I would sit there on Sunday nights, Because my blog post was supposed to go up the next day, and I would be so frustrated because I had this blog post to write, it wasn’t finished yet, and I didn’t want to do it. It was late, I wanted to go to bed, I knew that, you know, soon enough my alarm was going to go off and I was going to need to Get up and go teach a whole bunch of four year olds how to read and get along and sit for an age appropriate amount of time on our carpet for circle time.

And here I was trying to figure out what in the world to say in this blog that I had come up with a topic with but not written anything else for. And I’d finish the blog, it would not be great, let’s be real, because it’s the middle of the night. And then I’d go to bed and I’d be like, okay. No more. This week I’m gonna get ahead.

I’m not gonna fall behind on my content again. And I would promise myself that on Sunday night. And then you go for the week, and all of a sudden I’d get to Sunday night again, and I’d be in the same position. And I’d be like, what in the world is going on? I swore this was gonna be the week that I did not do this anymore, that I was gonna actually get my ish together and put my content up on time so that All I was doing, it felt like, and I didn’t want this to be the case anymore, all I was doing, it felt like, was creating content.

That’s it. That’s what my whole business was at that point, was just creating piece of content after piece of content after piece of content. But I knew that this couldn’t be it, right? Because all I was doing was creating content, which means I wasn’t seeing growth, I wasn’t seeing sales, I wasn’t seeing clients, I wasn’t seeing growth, right?

Growth in my email newsletter or my Instagram followers or anything like that. And mind you, when I started my business, I knew I wanted it to be an educational based business because teacher. And so when I started my business, I knew that I needed to be creating content in order to educate. And so I didn’t necessarily have, I wasn’t trying to get clients at the time.

I really wanted to focus on passive. We all know things aren’t really passive at this point, right? But I wanted to create more educational based things like workbooks and courses and things like that. That’s what I wanted to do. But all I was doing was creating content and I wasn’t doing anything to grow my business and it took me a really long time to figure that out.

Now the other side of that, if you’re someone who, you know, either started to start freelance, decided to start freelancing because you had skills or you Knew you want to start a business, but you saw right away, like one to one is the most profitable way forward, which it is right, because you can charge more for one on one clients.

If you want to get profitable quick, one on one services is a way to do it. If that is where you landed when you started your business, maybe what ended up happening for you is you were, you were doing all you could to serve clients, right? But then outside of serving clients, you were focusing on content.

And so no matter which way it fell, whether you were starting with clients or not, if you’re spending all of your outside client time or all of your time period just creating content, that’s a big problem. Because here’s the thing, content is part of your business. But it’s not your business and if all you’re doing outside of working with clients is creating content, you’re not doing anything to grow your business.

You have to make sure that you’ve got that nurture side of your content going out there, right? Because when we show up consistently, We are building the know, like and trust factor with our audience. And so that content, it’s so important. Don’t mishear me there. It is really important to be showing up with our content, but we also have to make sure that we are working on growth marketing as well, that we’ve got some sort of growth marketing tactic.

And maybe that means that you are writing guest blog posts for other websites. Maybe that means that you’re really focused on your SEO. Maybe that means that you are focused on getting on podcasts. Maybe that means you’re focused on ads, whatever it is that you’re doing to get in front of a new audience, that’s your growth strategy.

Here’s the thing. A lot of times. When it comes down to our marketing, we either, A, we don’t have time for it, period, or we think we don’t have time for it, period, and it falls to the bottom of our to do list, right? We’ve got clients to worry about, an inbox to check, all those things, and just, who has time for marketing?

That’s one way that that often ends up. But, the other thing that can end up happening is that, When it comes to marketing, we fall back on that nurture marketing because it is free or really low cost, right? It is free to start a YouTube channel and to just start going live on YouTube or putting up YouTube videos.

It’s free to, it’s not fully free to start a blog because in order to start a blog you typically need a website and most places you’ve got at least pay for hosting. But there are some, there are some website hosts that you can do for free, right? So, very low cost to start a blog, very low cost to start a podcast.

I think I pay 17 a month or something for my podcast hosting, and that’s it. Um, and I, I think I have to step up also, I don’t even have the lowest form. And so you can do all of your content marketing for really, really low cost, right? Social media, you can just start up an account and start posting away.

So we love content marketing because it’s free to low cost. I love content marketing because it’s free to low cost. It’s a great way to market your business. But it isn’t going to do a whole lot for you in terms of growth if you’re not actively working on that growth. Right? So YouTube is great for seeing growth, but also nurturing, but you have to actively be working on that SEO.

It’s not going to just happen accidentally. Right. We tend to fall back on that content marketing, right? The inertia marketing, because it’s free, it’s low cost. It is quote unquote easier because of those reasons, because we know, well, it builds my portfolio. It builds my space. It builds all of my things.

It’s free. I don’t have to put a lot of money into it, right? However, it is so important that we have that growth marketing as well, but when we fall back and our go to is always the nurture marketing, the content marketing, when that’s always our go to, we tend to not have time for the growth marketing.

As it is, it’s hard to find time for content marketing, right? Let alone finding time for growth marketing. How are we supposed to do that? The key to doing that is to making sure that you have a strategy and a plan in place. And content strategy and content plan are two very different things, and I can link to a video I’ve already done about that in the comments in the description later, but those are two different things.

But you’ve got to have that strategy or plan to make creating content so much simpler. I’ve got my content planner and within it I’ve got my plan for the whole month written out way ahead of time. It’s, what, it’s June 17th as I’m recording this and this is my July 2024 plan. I already have that written out so I can batch my content.

If you aren’t someone who batches your content you can at least have that plan ready to go and then, okay, well, as You find time in your schedule to work on marketing, you know, okay, this has got to be done next. Here’s the next email that goes out. Here’s the next Instagram post. You’ve already got it written down, having that plan in place.

How many of you have not created a plan for June content yet? And the reason I ask that is because often what we end up doing is we go, I want to create a plan for the month, but I don’t have time to do that right now. Let me just figure out this week and today and here and right now. And then what ends up happening is our content gets scattered all over the place because we end up talking about this topic on this week and then this topic on the next one and this topic on the next one and there’s nothing cohesive.

Now your action step this week is to start doing an informal tracking of your time and look at how much time you’re spending on marketing compared to other aspects of running your business. I think that what you find is going to surprise you. Your book recommendation for this week is Just for the Summer by Abby Jiménez.

If you have heard me talk about any of her books before, you know that I am, they are always five stars, they are so great. And this one is so fun because it starts off with this guy who, every single time he dates a woman, the very next guy she dates is the guy she ends up with forever. It’s a Reddit thread, which I, I don’t know, sometimes the modern elements make me so, it’s so fun.

Um, and this other girl finds it and she has the same problem and they start connecting and they have this whole idea to fake date and yada yada yada. Anyways, it’s so fun. Highly recommend Just for the Summer by Abbey Jimenez. As always, we will link to that in the show notes if you want to check it out.

And until next time, my friend, I hope that you go out and uncomplicate your marketing and business.

Thank you so much for joining me here today, friend. You can find this episode show notes, as well as all of the resources you need to simplify your marketing over at amandawarfield. com. If you liked what you heard here today, be sure to subscribe to the podcast so that you never miss an episode. And if you could take a moment to leave a rating and review, it would truly mean the world to me.

Ratings and reviews are the number one way that you can support a podcast podcast. And ensure that it sticks around for many more episodes to come. I’ll see you next time. Now go out and uncomplicate your marketing and business.

The post Episode 224: The Most Important Thing to Remember About Your Marketing appeared first on Amanda Warfield.

Tired of spending countless hours creating content for your blog, your podcast, your email list, and your social media but not seeing any results?

There’s likely one very specific reason why you aren’t seeing results – When it comes to a full marketing strategy, there should always be two parts to it, your nurture strategy and your growth strategy. and in today’s episode I’m going to share exactly what you need to do to get started with seeing those results.

Don’t forget to subscribe so that you never miss an episode! Also, if you would be willing to leave a review on Apple Podcasts, it would mean the world to me. It’s such a small thing that can make a big difference in helping me spread this message of simplicity to other overwhelmed women.

Have a comment about today’s episode, or a topic you’d like to suggest for a future episode? Shoot me an email over at [email protected]!

Tired of spending countless hours creating content for your blog, your podcast, your email list, and your social media but not seeing any results? There’s likely one very specific reason why you aren’t seeing those results and in today’s episode I’m going to share the why and also exactly what you need to do to get started with seeing those results.

You’re listening to episode 223 of the Chasing Simple podcast, and I’m your host, Amanda Warfield. This episode is brought to you by my book, Chasing Simple Marketing, and you can grab your own at amandawarfield. com / book.

How do I find time to create content without overwhelming myself? Where should I even be showing up in my marketing? How do I come up with fresh content ideas? Where should I be focusing my marketing efforts? What is lead generation anyways, and how do I do it? Are launches still a thing? And most importantly, How do I put it all together to market my business strategically?

Can I really grow my business without spending all of my time marketing? These are some of the questions that float around in your head. When you think of marketing welcome friend, this is chasing simple or practical marketing strategy meets simplicity. I’m your host, Amanda Warfield, simplicity focused content marketing and launch strategist, speaker, educator, and author of chasing simple marketing.

I traded in my classroom lesson plans for helping creative entrepreneurs sustainably fit marketing into their business without it taking over their business. So that they have time to grow their business, take time off, and live the life they dreamed about when they first decided to go out on their own.

When I’m working, you can find me working with one on one clients, such as The Contract Shop and Rebecca Rice Photography on their marketing strategy and copywriting, or helping my students simplify their marketing and launches. And when I’m not, you can find me spending time outside with my husband, Russell reading in our hammock, watching GameCock Sports, traveling, or forcing our cats to snuggle me. 

If you feel overwhelmed by marketing, you aren’t alone. Many entrepreneurs find marketing frustrating, overwhelming, and simply an obligation. They know they need it, but they don’t enjoy how easily it can suck up their time when what they really want to be doing Is the thing that they started their business to do, which is why I’m here to help make marketing simple and less time consuming so that you can spend less time on your marketing and more time growing your business and doing what you love each week, offer you transparent conversations, actionable steps.

And judgment free community to encourage and equip you. So grab yourself a cup of coffee or whatever your drink of choices, and meet me here each week for love, support, practical tips and advice on uncomplicating, your marketing and business. Let’s do this entrepreneurship thing together. Shall we? 

Want even more help simplifying your marketing and business. Love the Chasing Simple podcast. If so, I wanna invite you to join me on Monday evenings at 4:00 PM Pacific time, 7:00 PM Eastern time for my weekly YouTube lives. Each week, I’ll have a topic for the week, but after my short 5 minute teaching, you’ll have the chance to ask me questions about your marketing and get an answer from me in real time.

Until now, the only way to get this kind of access to me was through my membership, courses, or one on one services. But now, all you have to do is show up live with me on Mondays. You can find my channel by searching for my handle on YouTube at Mrs. Amanda Warfield, or by heading to amandawarfield. com / YouTube.

I hope to see you Monday! If you’re frustrated by a lack of results and a lack of reach with your content, the number one thing that you need to know is that content marketing isn’t enough. It’s not enough to only market your business with content. It’s not enough to only grow an audience with content.

And the reason that you see so much emphasis on content marketing from so many people is that content marketing is a free or really, really low cost way to market your business. And so it’s great. It’s such a great tool for solopreneurs and small business owners who don’t have the budget for marketing really.

And it’s an incredible tool for that reason, but we see so much emphasis on it that we can naturally come to think that, well, all I need to do. Is create content in order to market my business and that’s just not the case because yes Your content will give you some reach it will you will see growth in some ways with it but if you’re only Just putting content out there and hoping people are going to show up and find it.

It’s not really gonna be the case because The algorithm is not our friend. We’ve, we know that, we’ve learned that, this is a continuation of an old theme, right? The algorithm isn’t our friend, and it’s not as simple as build it and they will come. You have to do things to get that content in front of new people, and it used to be that you could use hashtags, and you could just simply continue.

Go comment on other people’s stuff and they would look at your profile, but that’s just not the case anymore and Not really how it works any longer. So in addition to our content marketing, which again is so important It’s such a vital part of marketing, especially for solopreneurs and those with really low marketing budgets It’s vital to your marketing But it can’t be the only marketing that you’re doing Now, when it comes to a full marketing strategy, there should always be two parts to it, your nurture strategy and your growth strategy, your nurture strategy or your nurture marketing.

That is your content marketing. It is meant to nurture the audience that you have. It’s meant to put it new marketing in front of audience members that have already said, yes, I’m interested in what this person is saying or doing in their business. On the other hand, your growth marketing. Those are marketing strategies.

Those are different types of strategies that will bring new audience members. Into your little nurture funnel, right? So people who say, Oh, I’m curious. Let me follow them on Instagram or let me follow their podcast or subscribe to their YouTube or join their email list. Growth marketing is getting in front of new people so that they will then come and join your various platforms, your various spaces online, where you can then nurture them with your nurture marketing, right?

And so you really need both. And. If you’re putting out content and you’re really like I’m not seeing any results, it’s likely because you’re not Utilizing growth marketing as well. It could be that you need better messaging or that you aren’t really actually putting as much out as you think you are, or that your marketing is confusing that very well could be the case, but if you’re seeing no results, it’s likely because you’re just not utilizing growth marketing.

So in order to start with growth marketing, where do you begin? That is always such a top question, right? Where do I even begin with getting out there in front of new people? A couple of really easy ways. One is guests blogging or guest podcasting for your own content. The other. Is guest blogging guest podcasting for someone else’s content?

So for your own content, whether you have a blog or you have a podcast or you have youtube or Your long form content is your email list, right? Whatever that may be having other people come on and And if you’re not able to get in front of your audience, inviting them to get in front of your audience, they then will most likely go back and share that episode, that blog, that YouTube video with their own audience, thus bringing some of their audience into your own audience.

So even just inviting people into your own marketing can be a great way to help start getting in front of new audience members. So if you’re like. I would love to do more. I don’t have the time and I’m really overwhelmed by even thinking about growth marketing. That’s a really, really, really great place to start.

On the other hand, you’ve got the idea of you going and being in other people’s content. So this is huge because then you’re getting in front of an even wider audience. Um, and it’s not just, oh, they shared about this on their Instagram story and a small percentage of their audience clicked through it’s, oh, this is their podcast and everyone who listens regularly is also getting to know you, right?

Or this is their blog and it’s helping with SEO. There’s so many different ways that that works. So let’s say that you think this is in theory great, but you’re like, I have no interest. Like, I’m terrified of. Being on someone’s podcast or being on video. Guest blogging is a really great way to start. If you’re just not sure that you’re comfortable in front of a microphone or a video camera, right?

So come up with some ideas for different blogs that you can write that you can then send off to people whose audiences are similar. And the best part about this is that. It gets you in front of a new audience. It gets you connected with someone in your, your network, right? It grows your network, but it also will give you an SEO backlink back to your own website, which helps your website’s SEO as well.

So guest blogging is an incredible way to get started with just kind of getting used to the idea of pitching yourself and getting used to the idea and the formatting of sharing with other people’s audiences versus your own. Now, if you’re like, I’m ready, I’m ready to jump in, I’m comfortable in front of a mic or a camera, pitch yourself for podcasting or YouTube, because not only are you more likely to get in front of a larger slice of someone’s audience that way, it also will most likely give you SEO backlinks to your own website as well.

So you’re able to do both. You’re able to say, okay, well, they’re hearing my voice or they’re hearing my voice and seeing my mannerisms, which builds that like and trust factor even faster, but also you get the SEO backlink. And the seo juice that a a blog would do as well again That’s not to say blogging isn’t a great start That’s how I started and that helped me get really really comfortable with pitching myself because that was something that was really scary to me was pitching and so I was able to Utilize getting really comfy with pitching.

I was also able to work within my own schedule because At the time, I was honestly doing a lot of my writing late at night and a lot of my work late at night or really early mornings and I just didn’t have the schedule to be a guest on podcasts. And so that was part of that too. Guest blogging is a great place to start.

Guest podcasting, be a guest on a YouTube channel, all of those are really great ways to start dipping your toes into growth marketing. But there are a few things that you need to have in place first. I have an entire podcast episode, last week’s episode, in fact, really does a great job of outlining the exact steps you want to take.

But, essentially, you want to make sure that you’ve got your email list ready. Because if you’re getting in front of these new audiences, you want to make sure you can capture these new audiences. So, Before you jump into trying to do growth marketing, I really, really recommend that at the very least you have a freebie of some sort that you can share when you go to do these guest opportunities, but again, if you haven’t listened to last week’s episode, I would go back and listen to episode 222 because I’m talking about what I would do and the steps I would take in what order if I was starting my email list over again.

And in fact, when I was running my travel agency for a little bit, which was my second business that I had running for about two years, this is the order that I took and it worked so well. And so I really recommend that this is the order you take when you’re starting your email list, go back and listen to that one.

And so you can hear it, but at the very, very least. If you have nothing else, have some way to get people onto your email list with your freebie. But again, that’s actually not the first step I would recommend. And I talk totally in depth about that in last week’s episode. But when you are guest blogging, guest podcasting, being a guest on a YouTube channel, you want to be able to say, Okay, at the end of the episode, here’s my freebie.

I would love for you guys to check it out. In order to get people to actually want your freebie, you need to center your topics that you’re pitching yourself with around the same topic as that freebie, right? So, have that freebie in place so you can give yourself a better idea of where to begin as far as topics go.

That way you’re able to go, okay, here’s my pitch. I’m going to either write or talk about this topic. And then at the end of said thing, also, if you want more about this, you want more help with this thing. I’ve got this freebie that will help you take the next step. Go ahead and check it out. And then people will go, Oh yeah, that sounds great.

I loved this episode or this blog post. I want to learn more about this. I’m going to get on their email list. You want to make sure you have that in place so that you can help people take the next step. Now, a quick rundown again of just. Content marketing is not enough, it’s not enough because you’re only nurturing people that are already in your audience.

So we have to practice growth marketing strategies as well, and the best way to get started, the easiest way to get started is by having people be a guest within your own content, but then also being a guest in other people’s content, guest blogging, guest podcasting. Before you start doing that, though, make sure you’ve got a freebie so that you can then gather more audience members, bring them back into your own nurture marketing, and that way you’re going to be able to see a lot more results with your marketing.

So if you’re just frustrated by how much time you’re spending on marketing, but you’re not seeing reach, you’re not seeing the growth you’re hoping to see, try following this outline for growth marketing as well, and that’ll help you grow your audience. If you’re like, this all sounds great, I’ll never be able to get a freebie set up.

I’ll never be able to get started on this. Pitching myself, I just, I want to do it but I know I’m not going to and you want that extra accountability, I really highly suggest that you come join us inside of Chase Simple Marketing, the community. The community is my membership where we meet every single Tuesday morning.

Well, every single Tuesday morning. Morning here 11 a. m. Eastern time. So still kind of morning, but every single Tuesday morning to Talk about marketing struggles to brainstorm marketing ideas to be held accountable to the marketing projects and practices that we’re working on and to Make sure that we’re showing up both with nurture marketing and growth marketing community members also have access to a private podcast where we have quarterly themes.

Our current quarterly theme right now is all about driving traffic and these growth practices. So, actually right now, if this is something that you’re wanting to see more of, more reach, now is a great time to join. But some of our past quarterly themes that you’ll also have access to are things like, you know, creating your Black Friday strategy, which, you know, It’s July, which means that it’s time to start thinking about that, right?

Creating your Black Friday strategy, setting that up, being really strategic with it. We’ve also got creating opt ins that convert into sales, we’ve got writing sales sequences, and so many more. So, I would love to see you inside, and If you would like to join the community, you can check out the link in the show notes.

It’s a special link that will take you to a special offer where you can get your first month totally free. So if you’d like to join make sure you use that link So you get that first month free and I would love to see you inside now your action step for this week I want you to choose either guest blogging or guest podcasting and I want you to start creating ideas for what you could write or talk about.

Make sure those ideas again are aligned with your freebie so that you can actually convert the listeners or the readers into audience members and just start a running list. That’s all you have to do right now. That is the one step that you want to take to get started and rolling with this. Okay. Now, your book recommendation is Just for the Summer by Abby Jimenez, five stars.

Five stars all the way around. This book is so good. Um, all of her stuff is. I mean, she is just one of the greatest authors out there. She truly writes such fun and engaging, but also intelligent books. There’s so much emotional intelligence that goes into these. They’re, I do want to put out a trigger warning for anyone who maybe deals with, you know, neglectful parenting in their past.

Um, there, there is some of that in this book. So just want to throw that out there, but man, such a good book. It just released. You probably have a million month wait list at your library, but it’s definitely worth the wait. So just for the summer by Abby Jimenez. And I’ll link to that in the show notes. If you want to check it out.

Alright, my friend, I hope that you’ll go out and uncomplicate your marketing and business.

Thank you so much for joining me here today, friend. You can find this episode’s show notes as well as all of the resources you need to simplify your marketing over at amandawarfield. com. If you liked what you heard here today, be sure to subscribe to the podcast so that you never miss an episode. And if you could take a moment to leave a rating and review, it would truly mean the world to me.

Ratings and reviews are the number one way that you can support a podcast and it’s And ensure that it sticks around for many more episodes to come. I’ll see you next time. Now go out and uncomplicate your marketing and business.

The post Episode 223: Why You Aren’t Seeing the Reach You’re Looking For appeared first on Amanda Warfield.

I started my email list 7 years ago, and when I did I researched the heck out of how to start one. How to get people to join your list, how to set one up, how to choose your email platform, how to create a freebie, what to send to your list … on and on it goes. I had an entire notebook dedicated just to the notes I was taking from my research.

And I did what all of the research says. I created a freebie, I created a welcome sequence, and I shared about the freebie.

But if I was starting my email list from scratch? I’d do things differently. And i’d do them in a way that I think a lot of marketers would disagree with. So I’m here to maybe ruffle a few feathers, but I’ll share the thought process behind WHY I’d do things differently as well.

Don’t forget to subscribe so that you never miss an episode! Also, if you would be willing to leave a review on Apple Podcasts, it would mean the world to me. It’s such a small thing that can make a big difference in helping me spread this message of simplicity to other overwhelmed women.

Have a comment about today’s episode, or a topic you’d like to suggest for a future episode? Shoot me an email over at [email protected]!

I started my email list seven years ago, and when I did, I researched the heck out of how to start one, how to get people to join your list, how to set one up, how to choose your email platform, how to create a freebie, what to send to your list. On and on and on it goes. I had an entire notebook dedicated just to the notes that I was taking from my research.

And I did what all of the research says. I created a freebie, I created a welcome sequence, I shared about the freebie, and it worked. But if I was starting my email list from scratch, I’d do things differently. And I’d do them in a way that I think a lot of marketers would actually disagree with. So I’m here to maybe ruffle a few feathers, but I’ll also share the thought process behind why I do things differently as well.

Bye. You’re listening to episode 222 of the Chasing Simple podcast, and I’m your host, Amanda Warfield. This episode was brought to you by my book, Chasing Simple Marketing, and you can grab your own at amandawarfield. com / book.

How do I find time to create content without overwhelming myself? Where should I even be showing up in my marketing? How do I come up with fresh content ideas? Where should I be focusing my marketing efforts? What is lead generation anyways and how do I do it? Are launches still a thing? And most importantly, how do I put it all together to market my business strategically?

Can I really grow my business without spending all of my time marketing? These are some of the questions that float around in your head when you think of marketing. Welcome, friend. This is Chasing Simple, where practical marketing strategy meets simplicity. I’m your host, Amanda Warfield, simplicity focused content marketing and launch strategist, speaker, educator, and author of Chasing Simple Marketing.

I traded in my classroom lesson plans for helping creative entrepreneurs sustainably fit marketing into their business without it taking over their business, so that they have time to grow their business, take time off, and live the life they dreamed about when they first decided to go out on their own.

When I’m working, you can find me working with one on one clients, such as The Contract Shop and Rebecca Rice Photography on their marketing strategy and copywriting, or helping my students simplify their marketing and launches. And when I’m not, you can find me spending time outside with my husband, Russell, reading in our hammock, watching Gamecock Sports, traveling, or forcing our cats to snuggle me.

If you feel overwhelmed by marketing, you aren’t alone. Many entrepreneurs find marketing frustrating, overwhelming, and simply an obligation. They know they need it, but they don’t enjoy how easily it can suck up their time when what they really want to be doing is the thing that they started their business to do.

Which is why I’m here, to help make marketing simple and less time consuming, so that you can spend less time on your marketing, and more time growing your business and doing what you love. Each week I’ll bring you transparent conversations, actionable steps, and judgment free community to encourage and equip you.

So grab yourself a cup of coffee or whatever your drink of choice is and meet me here each week for love, support, practical tips, and advice on uncomplicating your marketing and business. Let’s do this entrepreneurship thing together, shall we? Want even more help simplifying your marketing and business?

Love the Chasing Simple podcast? If so, I want to invite you to join me on Monday evenings at 4pm Pacific Time, 7pm Eastern Time for my weekly YouTube lives. Each week, I’ll have a topic for the week, but after my short 5 minute teaching, you’ll have the chance to ask me questions about your marketing and get an answer from me in real time.

Until now, the only way to get this kind of access to me was through my membership, courses, or one on one services. But now, all you have to do is show up live with me on Mondays. You can find my channel by searching for my handle on YouTube, at Mrs. Amanda Warfield, or by heading to amandawarfield. com / YouTube.

I hope to see you Monday! The first thing that I would focus on if I was to start my email list over and from the beginning would actually be my offer. And I say this because when I did first start, I took all the advice that was out there to just get started, to just create a freebie, get started, start emailing your list, start building your list, so that when you had an offer to sell, that you could then, you know, launch to said list.

Which in theory makes so much sense but my problem was and what I think a lot of us as entrepreneurs end up having our problem is that We have a hard time coming up with a freebie and coming up with things to say and things to send our audience because we don’t Know what to talk about because we’re not sure where we’re sending them.

Eventually. We haven’t figured out what our offer is and so I would actually Spend that time where I was initially researching email lists and researching what to send and researching how to create a freebie I would put all that on pause and just focus on getting my offer set up first and foremost because the reality is Before you even have your first offer What’s the point of having a list?

And I know that the idea is to build it up so that you have people to sell to, but you probably don’t have an audience big enough to really sell to anyways. Most of us, that’s not to say there are some that have an audience, you know, before they start their business, in which case this is a different conversation, but regardless, that would be my suggestion, because I find that it’s so much easier to create an opt in Thank you.

And to create newsletters for an audience when you know what you’re driving them to. So, first and foremost, I would focus on my offer. What is your offer going to be? And if it’s, you know, a one on one offer, that’s still an offer. You don’t need to have a digital product. You don’t need to have a course.

You don’t need to have any of that created yet. You just need to know what your offer is. Now, that being said, if you know, okay, my offer is going to be a course or something like that, and you want to go ahead and get started collecting emails and collecting leads while you’re building out said course, that is a good Is a different story.

You don’t need to have the offer totally complete and finished necessarily in that case As long as you know what the offer is going to be called And you have a general idea of what it’s going to be about and who it’s going to be for you can start a wait list And then as you’re driving people as we’ll talk about in a minute to set offer throughout these other parts of having your email list You’re driving them to the waitlist page.

And so you’re growing that audience for specifically when that course or whatever comes out. So in that case, you don’t need the offer fully figured out. But if it’s something like a one on one service or, you know, a digital offer, that’s not going to take you very long to create. That’s a totally different thing.

And I would say, let’s get the offer set up and let’s get the messaging around that offer created before we start working on some of these other things. The second thing, after you’ve got your offer figured out, whether it’s created or you’re driving to a waitlist page, once you have your offer messaging, then you can focus on your opt in.

And that way, you can make sure that your opt in is leading directly back to that offer. So, you will take whatever your offer is and whatever the goal of your offer is, right? What is that transformation? Well, what does your audience need to do before they can start your offer In order to be ready for your offer, what do they need, right?

How can they prepare themselves for your offer? That’s what your opt in should be about. So, for example, my big opt in for content patching bootcamp is An audio training all about how to get your content created more quickly And so once people have, you know worked through their current systems and they’ve you know Minimized their time spent and they’ve really simplified their current systems as much as possible Then they’re ready to create a system that will actually help them batch But they really need to cut that extra fluff off first.

So that is an opt in that leads directly into an offer So Or, for example, you’ve got my quiz that I’ve mentioned over and over again if you’ve listened to other podcast episodes where you can take the quiz and it’ll tell you what marketing strategies are going to fit your offer and your business best right now.

And so you take the quiz and it says, okay, here are growth strategies that you should focus on. Well, that leads directly into Chase and Simple the Community, my membership, because the membership is awesome. all about growing your audience and growing your business. That’s our focus is, okay, we’ve got our content, but also how do we see growth?

And so you want to make sure that your opt in leads directly into that offer, whether it’s the step before, or if it’s just giving them the knowledge they need, like, you know, The community to determine, or the quiz, I guess I should say, to determine what it is they need to do in order to see that growth.

And then you say, okay, great. The community is how you see that growth, right? So opt in would be next. You figure out what the step before your offer is and you create an opt in around it. Within the opt in, make sure you mention, you’re not hard selling, but you want to mention your offer, right? So that they at least hear about it.

It’s a touch point for your offer. After you’ve created your opt in, then I encourage you to create your sales sequence. This doesn’t have to be perfect, it doesn’t have to be a ton of emails, but just a few emails that talk about your offer and that sell your offer. That way, when people opt in, Then they go through your sales sequence and then hopefully they buy your offer, right?

And so once you have those three things set up and ready to go, then you want to really focus on driving traffic. Now as you’re doing all of this, you’re still, you’re creating your content, right? You’re still nurturing the people that are in your audience already, but doing these three things will really help you focus on that growth so that you can bring new people in and bring in the audience in a new way to your email list.

So offer opt in sales sequence. Then you want to drive traffic. Again, there are so many different ways that you can drive traffic and Honestly, the quiz is the best resource I have for you to figure out which ones work best for where you’re at in business I also have a whole section in my book Chasing Simple Marketing about Different growth marketing strategies and how you can use them.

So That’s a great resource as well if you’re like, I don’t even know how to begin driving traffic, but things like Pinterest, things like SEO, things like guest blogging, guest podcasting, sponsoring, ads. There’s so many different ways that you can really focus on growing your audience and driving traffic to the opt in.

So you drive that traffic to the opt in, then they go through the sales sequence, then hopefully they buy your offer. After you’ve done all that, you’ve started driving that traffic, once you have the rest of that set up and you’re driving the traffic, then I would recommend starting with your welcome sequence.

And I know that that seems a little out of order. A lot of people actually say, start with your opt in, then your welcome sequence, right? And I completely understand why they do, because you want to have something you can drive people to, you want people to get to know you. But frankly, what I see happen over and over again, is is business owners, especially solopreneurs, they start with the opt in, and they create an opt in that they’re not really sure about, that they’re not confident in, one that doesn’t actually drive sales to anything, and then they create the welcome sequence.

And the welcome sequence is great, and it is important to have, but it again doesn’t really drive sales all that much, and so what ends up happening is they’ve Put all this work in and then they’ve still got to find time to create an offer and create a sales sequence and they’re overwhelmed because they’re trying to do all the things with their marketing and all of a sudden they’re like, I’m putting all this time and effort into marketing and I’m not making any sales.

So I recommend setting yourself up for sales from the beginning and then go back and tweaking and improving and adding that welcome sequence in. So your action step for this week is to work your way down this list offer opt in sales sequence drive traffic Welcome sequence and whichever is the first thing that you don’t have in place already start there So if you don’t have an offer or at least an offer You know, outlined and messaging and waitlist page set up, start there.

If you have that, but you don’t have an opt in that leads directly into that offer, start there. If you have that opt in, but you don’t have a sales sequence, start there. So on and so forth. Right? So work your way down that list, whichever is first that you don’t have in place already. Start there with setting that up next as your next big marketing project.

Now I mentioned this briefly, but I also do want to encourage you to Join the community. This membership is built and geared towards accountability and action. We meet every single Tuesday and we have a call every single Tuesday so that you’re held accountable to actually taking steps to complete these Projects that are going to help you make those sales in your business.

You can have questions answered You can have your marketing looked over but the accountability is everyone’s favorite thing and just that Ability to brainstorm and strategize with other business owners If you head to the link in the show notes That link will take you to a special offer where you can get your first month free inside the community And try it out yourself But we have quarterly themes and we’ve already done a quarterly theme all about creating an opt in that’ll convert to sales.

We’ve, as I’m recording this, we’re wrapping up a quarterly theme all about sales sequences and we’re getting ready to start a quarterly theme all about driving traffic to your opt in. So, so many of what we’re talking about here in this episode, we’ve. Already covered or are in the process of covering right now in the community and you get access to all of the Old quote unquote information all of the past private podcast episodes everything so you have the ability to work your way through all of those at the pace that you need while also showing up weekly to Make sure that you’re getting what you need and getting that accountability.

So anyways, i’ll get off my soapbox with that. But if you You Know you need accountability. Know you need that little extra push to actually grow your audience and drive that traffic to your offers. I’d love to see you inside the community. And again, the link in the show notes is a special offer where you can get that first month free.

Now, your book recommendation for this week is Things We Never Got Over by Lucy Score. I am pretty sure this is a Kindle Unlimited book, so if you have Kindle Unlimited, There you go. I will say, the premise of this book is so cheesy. Like, ridiculously cheesy. A woman gets a call from her twin that’s like the black sheep of the family.

He’s cut off contact with her family. Like, total opposites, right? You’ve got the perfect perfectionist overachiever and then you’ve got the like, the bad girl that steals and does drugs and like, Total opposite twins. Like, that whole bit of cheesiness. But then, a little bit of a spoiler, the good twin, quote unquote, discovers that the twin has a 13 year old daughter that nobody ever knew about, and then she ends up taking her.

It’s a whole thing. The premise is cheesy. The actual writing is so good, though. I read this one so quickly. Uh, it’s actually a three book series. The first book, incredible. The second book was okay. Again, that’s just like, alright, second books are just never as good as the first and the last. Third one, amazing.

So, I recommend Things We Never Got Over by Lucy Skor. That entire, I don’t know what the like series is called, but that whole series is really, really good. So, I’ll link that in the show notes for you. And until next time, I hope you’ll go out and uncomplicate your marketing and business.

Thank you so much for joining me here today, friend. You can find this episode show notes as well as all of the resources you need to simplify your marketing [email protected]. If you liked what you heard here today, be sure to subscribe to the podcast so that you never miss an episode. And if you could take a moment to leave a rating and review, it would truly mean the world to me.

Ratings and reviews are the number one way that you can support a podcast, and ensure that it sticks around for many more episodes to come. I’ll see you next time, now go out and uncomplicate your marketing and business.

The post Episode 222: How I Would Start An Email List from the Beginning appeared first on Amanda Warfield.

There is a LOT of marketing advice out there. Some of it is truly incredible. Some of it is incredible for the right people at the right time. And some of it? Is a terrible hunk of garbage.

Today, I wanted to talk about 7 of the worst pieces of content advice that I’ve heard over the last 7 years of being in business. And yes, if you’ve listened to episode 071 this is a refresh of that episode. But it is newly recorded and not exactly the same, so I recommend sticking around anyways.

Don’t forget to subscribe so that you never miss an episode! Also, if you would be willing to leave a review on Apple Podcasts, it would mean the world to me. It’s such a small thing that can make a big difference in helping me spread this message of simplicity to other overwhelmed women.

Have a comment about today’s episode, or a topic you’d like to suggest for a future episode? Shoot me an email over at [email protected]!

There is a lot of marketing advice out there. Some of it is truly incredible. Some of it is incredible for the right people at the right time. And some of it is, well, a terrible hunk of garbage. And today I wanted to talk about seven of the worst pieces of content advice that I’ve heard over the last seven years of being in business.

And yes, if you’ve listened to episode 71, this is a refresh of that episode, but it is a newly recorded and not exactly the same refresh of that episode. So I recommend sticking around anyways, you’re listening to episode 221 of the chasing simple podcast, and I’m your host, Amanda Warfield. This episode was brought to you by my book, chasing simple marketing.

And you can grab your own at amandawarfield. com / book.

How do I find time to create content without overwhelming myself? Where should I even be showing up in my marketing? How do I come up with fresh content ideas? Where should I be focusing my marketing efforts? What is lead generation anyways and how do I do it? Are launches still a thing? And most importantly, How do I put it all together to market my business strategically?

Can I really grow my business without spending all of my time marketing? These are some of the questions that float around in your head. When you think of marketing, welcome friend, this is chasing simple where practical marketing strategy meets simplicity. I’m your host, Amanda Warfield, simplicity focused content marketing and launch strategist, speaker, educator, and author of chasing simple marketing.

I traded in my classroom lesson plans for helping creative entrepreneurs sustainably fit marketing into their business without it taking over their business. So that they have time to grow their business, take time off, and live the life they dreamed about when they first decided to go out on their own.

When I’m working, you can find me working with one on one clients such as the Contract Shop and Rebecca Rice Photography on their marketing strategy and copywriting, or helping my students simplify their marketing and launches. And when I’m not, you can find me spending time outside with my husband, Russell, reading in our hammock, watching Gamecock Sports, traveling, or forcing our cats to snuggle me.

If you feel overwhelmed by marketing, you aren’t alone. Many entrepreneurs find marketing frustrating, overwhelming, and simply an obligation. They know they need it, but they don’t enjoy how easily it can suck up their time when what they really want to be doing is the thing that they started their business to do.

Which is why I’m here to help make marketing simple and less time consuming so that you can spend less time on your marketing and more time growing your business and doing what you love each week. I’ll bring you transparent conversations, actionable steps, and judgment free community to encourage and equip you.

So grab yourself a cup of coffee or whatever your drink of choices and meet me here each week for love support. Practical tips and advice on uncomplicating your marketing and business. Let’s do this entrepreneurship thing together. Shall we want even more help? Simplifying your marketing and business love the chasing simple podcasts.

If so, I want to invite you to join me on Monday evenings at 4 p. m. Pacific time, 7 p. m. Eastern time for my weekly YouTube lives. Each week, I’ll have a topic for the week, but after my short 5 minute teaching, you’ll have the chance to ask me questions about your marketing and get an answer from me in real time.

Until now, the only way to get this kind of access to me was through my membership, courses, or one on one services. But now, all you have to do is show up live with me on Mondays. You can find my channel by searching for my handle on YouTube at Mrs. Amanda Warfield, or by heading to amandawarfield. com / YouTube.

I hope to see you Monday! So today I want to share some of the absolute worst advice that I have heard as a content marketing strategist. Now some of this is stuff that I heard and I believed when I first started my business. When I first started my business, I actually had no idea how to market my business, or so I thought.

I felt like I didn’t understand marketing. It didn’t make sense to me. I really struggled to, to grasp how to use it effectively, which I think is what makes me a great marketing strategist actually is because I don’t have that, that background training. I truly had to dig deep and figure out what works and what doesn’t.

And a lot of this advice is stuff that I did believe because I saw other people doing it. I saw other people talking about it. I believed what’s helpful. And so some of this. Um, and I’m going to be talking about some of the worst pieces of advice that I see. harmful advice in some ways. Some of this is just not really, it’s not harmful, but it’s not really helpful either and it’s kind of a waste of your time.

And so I just want to talk about some of the worst pieces of advice that I see. So one of the first pieces of advice I want to share that’s just not helpful. Again, not harmful, but just kind of a waste of your time and harmful in and of the fact that it is It’s a harmful mindset. I guess it doesn’t harm your business, but it’s a harmful mindset Which i’ll get to is the idea that you need to engage for the first 15 minutes after you put out a post and the belief that the algorithm is going to push your content better if you’re engaging, uh, within the first 15 minutes.

And I think if you are someone who has a massive audience and You immediately are getting comments on that specific post as soon as you’re putting it out. Maybe. It does help the algorithm some. Most of us are not going to have thousands and thousands and thousands of followers, right? We’re not going to have these massive 28, 45, 000 followers where we’re getting comments immediately and we need to sit there and comment as soon as it comes in.

Because if you’re just engaging on your profile, it’s probably not going to help that much. But two, even if you’re someone who has these massive amounts of followers and isn’t engaging right away, in theory, it could push it better for you. But in practice, those 15 minutes Aren’t really just 15 minutes because you have to take the time to either either you’ve scheduled your content out Which I hope you have but maybe you didn’t and even if you did schedule it out You have to stop what you’re doing at a specific time to put the post up Get it up and then stick around for 15 minutes scheduling it and for those of us that have some time blindness, maybe, um, that that could be really, really time consuming because it’s not just the 20 minutes or so where you’re putting the post up and engaging and making sure you’re interacting.

It’s the 10 minutes I need to make sure I don’t miss it. I want to make sure I’m on time. Let me maybe I’ll just scroll for a little bit. Right? And then that’s assuming you don’t get caught up in scrolling after you’re done engaging. It can become such a time consuming thing. And then you have to really ask yourself, is this 15 minutes, 30 minutes, however long that I’m spending each and every day engaging, is it truly moving the needle in my marketing?

Or could I spend that two hours a week doing something else to truly move the needle? Maybe instead you’re spending two hours a week pitching yourself to be on podcasts. Which of those is going to do more to grow your audience and move the needle? It’s definitely going to be being a guest on a podcast.

And so it’s not necessarily, it’s not going to harm your business to spend the first 15 minutes engaging, but it’s also not necessarily helping your business all that much. And there’s so much more you can do with your marketing time. Because again, we want to spend the least amount of time marketing and make the largest impact in those 15 minutes.

Two hours a week, however it ends up adding up, that you’re spending just Engaging right after you post just to push the algorithm a little bit more. You could spend that doing so many more things that are actually more helpful for your marketing and for your business. So that’s the first one, this whole idea that oh, I have to Engage right after I post.

It’s just not, it’s not worth it. The next one also has to do with the algorithm. The second worst piece of advice, and actually this one for some reason frustrates me most. And it’s again, not that it’s necessarily actually, no, this one is harmful to your business. We’ll just, we’ll just put that out there.

This one, I have a little bit of a soapbox for, so hang on tight. It’s the idea that the algorithm is going to punish you for scheduling out your content. It’s just not true It’s not true. Okay, so the idea that you have to schedule out your content in order to Or that you can’t because you’ll be punished by the algorithm It’s garbage.

First and foremost, uh, even if it was true, and similar to the last point, it’s not worth your time. It’s not worth your time to sit there and every single day stop what you’re doing in order to schedule out a piece of content. Especially on social media, where our reach is so low, our engagement is so low.

Instagram right now, engagement is just tanked. And that’s because they want you to pay, right? Like, they, they’ve rolled out these tiers where you have to pay X amount to get Engagement is tanked because they want you to pay. Period. Period. And so, worrying about if it was true, it’s not true, but if it was true that you would get docked by the algorithm for scheduling out your content.

The time you save in the long run and the mental capacity you end up with from scheduling out your content is so worth that dock. Again, it’s not real, but if it was, it’s so worth it because you gain so much more from not sitting there and having to put out your content yourself and instead being able to sit down and schedule it all out.

But, here’s the other thing, Facebook, which owns Instagram, it has a native scheduling tool. They, meaning Facebook, Meta, whatever they want to be called at this point, they did not put All of the manpower, the time, the energy, the money into creating a scheduling tool that they would then in effect punish you for using.

So the fact that they have a native scheduling tool in and of itself just shows us that that’s not true. The algorithm doesn’t dock you for using a scheduling tool. And. Even if it did, it’s really not worth your time to worry about. One of my biggest pet peeves in the marketing sphere is people who train other entrepreneurs to fear the algorithm.

And. To try to please the algorithm, because we’re never gonna please the algorithm. It just, we will not do it, because what the algorithm, what the algorithm wants is for you to pay. And if you’ve done Facebook ads or anything like that, you know that even then, it’s hard to know how to please the algorithm.

They don’t want you to figure it out, right? Because they want you to continue to give them money. So anyways, that’s a bit of a soapbox, but Worrying about the algorithm in general, especially with a scheduling tool, one of the worst pieces of content advice that I have ever heard. It’s just not worth your time.

It’s not worth the effort. And it’s so much better for you to just spend that time and energy doing other marketing things for your business. Now the third piece of just terrible marketing advice that I’m honestly, I’m not sure if there’s still a thing. Um, again, this is one that I can remember very vividly it being a thing for a long time around like 2019, early 2020.

And I’m not sure if I just don’t hang out the spaces where they’re talked about anymore or if they’re truly not a thing anymore. So if this is something that you see, Things like using bots to boost your engagement or boost your, your followers. And by bots, I don’t mean there are some native like AI technologies, which we can call bots that can help.

Increase your engagement so that you’re, I don’t love autoresponders, but you can set things like that up for your social media. That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about, and again, these may not exist anymore, but in case they do, and in case they’re still being pushed, the bots where it would be like, you would set it up so that it would comment, you know, you could give it X, Y, Z things, the comment, and it would go find other profiles.

To comment on their stuff in the hopes that they would then go look at your profile and follow you. But the problem was is that you’re having to comment such generic things in order to make these work. That most people probably aren’t going to go look at your profile anyways, because it’s not not doing anything for them.

Right? Like, we’ve gotten to the point where we’re almost desensitized to these, like, really generic comments and we can go, Oh, that’s a bot, right? But along with bots, and again, like, mini chat, you could call a bot. It’s different because you’re not going out and using it to find new followers. You’re using it to connect easier with your followers.

If that makes sense. So like bots or those follow for follow loops, where it’s this whole train of people who are like, all right, go follow all of these people and all these people will follow you. And all you’re doing is increasing your audience size or follow, unfollow that whole thing. That was a really big where you go and you follow a bunch of people.

And as soon as they follow you back, you unfollow them and you just hope that they don’t notice that you’re not following them. And people would do that to make it seem like. They had these big audiences and they weren’t following a lot of people. It was like a authority builder almost, but then when it’s not real, it’s not true authority.

And here’s the thing, all of these, the idea behind them, the premise behind them, the goal behind them is to grow your numbers versus focusing on growing your true audience. And A small but engaged audience is a million times better than having a massive following that isn’t engaged with you. Because at the end of the day, why do you want an audience?

You want an audience so that you can sell to people. Random people that follow you are not going to go, oh yeah, let me buy this thing that they’re launching, uh, because it showed up on my feed when they were talking about it. No, you’re only going to buy someone if you know, like, and trust them. And so for these people to actually buy from you.

They have to build a relationship with you and when you’re doing things like bots and follows for follows and the follow one follow thing, anything that is intended to just grow your, your numbers and not necessarily your audience and your relationships. It’s a terrible piece of advice because it’s not growing your bottom line and once again, you’re wasting time that could be better spent in other marketing areas.

A similar idea to that, the next just terrible piece of content advice number four that’s out there is the idea that you need to create a list of 10, 15, 20, however many people a day and reach out to those many new people each day on social media. That’s a terrible piece of advice, let’s be quite honest.

In a similar vein as the last point, uh, it’s simply just trying to grow your numbers without really trying to grow your audience. And you could argue, but if you’re reaching out to them, then it’s different because you’re actually trying to connect with them. And yes and no. So yes, it is different because in this case, you’re truly doing the research to find people that you want to reach out to.

And you’re trying to start an actual conversation with them. But no, because The goal is still the same. It’s still, how do I grow my network? How do I grow my audience and not, how do I connect with this person that I really want to connect with? And there’s such a difference there. And. The intent truly does shine through and it does make all the difference in the world.

And that’s not to say people that do this can’t be successful with it. But when we’re trying to simply copy someone else doing this because, Oh, I, you know, grew my revenue by XML because I got these new clients because I was doing reach outs. Trying to simply copy that method versus let me actually reach out to people that I really want to discuss and talk with and have questions for and love what they’re doing.

Those are two very different things. This is one of the pieces of advice that like a small tweak I feel like makes all the difference. If you have a list of people that you’re like, I truly want to connect with these people. And maybe once a day you’re making it your mission to actually go and connect with them and comment on their stuff and share their things and just be a cheerleader for them.

That’s totally different. Um, this piece of advice that I’m talking about here is strictly when you’re just simply trying to, I got to find 20 people to interact with today. Let me just search Instagram until I can find 20 different people, you know, there, there is a difference there. And that intent again, means everything.

So the Next, just awful piece of content advice, content marketing advice is getting rid of unengaged followers. Now, when this comes to your email list, I am 100 percent on board and I think you should do this regularly. I go through every single month and I remove unengaged people on my email list, people that aren’t opening my stuff, that aren’t interested in what I’m emailing them, that aren’t paying attention to the emails, that, you know, have.

Unsubscribed. I’m removing cold leads constantly from my email list every single month. That is something you should do for your email list because eventually you get to a point where the bigger your email list is the more you have to pay per month for a lot of these email providers and so you are sending Emails to people that are cold leads, that haven’t, that haven’t opened your emails in months, aren’t gonna open your emails probably, aren’t interested in what you’re sending them, and yet you’re essentially paying to send them these emails.

You want to clean those out. I don’t think, and this is one of those, Piece of advice that it’s honestly not terrible advice. I just personally think as someone whose focus is Simplicity and time management as far as it goes with marketing. I don’t think it’s worth your time to do So a lot of people will say oh I go in and I clean out my unengaged followers for my instagram following And it helps with my engagement on instagram.

And again, it probably does It’s not that that doesn’t work. It probably does help because You Again, a smaller, more engaged audience is going to do a lot more for you than a larger, unengaged audience. But, the amount of time it takes to go through and figure out who’s engaged and who isn’t is really, really time consuming for Instagram versus like your email list.

At least with Kartra, which is what I use, you can really simply go in and go, who hasn’t opened an email in the last three months? Okay, delete. And it’s really quick and simple. I go through and clean out my email list in less than 30 minutes every single month, right? But for Instagram, you’re having to go through and physically remove each and every single individual person, and if you have a lot of people on your list, that’s really, really time consuming.

And so once again, it goes back to the idea of Will it benefit your business? Probably. Will it benefit it enough to be worth the time that it’s going to take you to do it? It’s not going to. And so, that’s one of those where it’s like, You could do it. It could help with your engagement on Instagram. It’s probably not worth it.

That hour or more that you’re going to spend, however often, removing unengaged followers, you could spend it doing so many other things. That’s a whole guest podcast interview you could record where you’re getting in front of a brand new audience. That is however many five maybe podcast pitches that you could send.

That’s whatever it is that you’re doing a whole blog post that you wrote for guest blogging for someone’s blog, right? So it’s, it’s one of those, is it worth it? Is it worth what I could be doing? Because let’s face it, there’s never enough time to do everything. So how do you determine what the best things are for you to spend your time doing marketing wise?

So that is, I believe that was number five, uh, for some of the worst pieces of content marketing advice that I’ve heard as a content marketing strategist. The next one, number six, is that social media is the only type of marketing that you need. I have found it so interesting in the last year or two to see people who, their entire business was focused around a specific piece of social media content, have now started teaching about other types of marketing that have nothing to do with social media.

And that’s not an issue to anyone. Our businesses are always going to grow and evolve as they should, and I know plenty of people who started off, I mean, my business has grown and evolved where I started with this focus, and then this focus, and then this focus. That’s normal and natural for you to go, oh, well, this is the thing I’m really loving right now, and as that becomes no longer necessary, maybe you move into other things.

But it is just a super interesting trend right now, where we are all really sick and tired of social media in so many different ways. But there are still some people who, because it’s what they teach, uh, they are very focused on do XYZ and get these results from social media and it’s gonna expand your business.

Social media cannot be. Your only type of content and it cannot be your main type of content either, which is another thing I don’t think I don’t know if I ever really see anyone say this is the only type of content you should be putting out Sometimes rarely I have seen it a couple times, but for the most part It’s just someone gets so heavily focused on one type of content that they they kind of lose the force for the trees Right, and so they get stuck with Oh social media social media social media And because that’s all they’re seeing is they’re following all these people talking about social media that they end up feeling like that’s all they really need to focus on, or even what they need to spend more time focusing on, when in reality, your social media should kind of be your, your last resort.

Bit of effort when it comes to your marketing, your highest focus should be on your long form content. So whether that’s a blog, YouTube podcast, whatever your biggest focus, your, the time you most spend, the attention you give most to should be your long form content. And then you can take that long form content and repurpose it into your email newsletters and your social media content.

And then that way. You have this, this plethora of content because, you know, long form content gives you this much space to teach someone, and social media gives you this much space, right? You’ve got this plethora of content that you can send people back to, but you also have more time and ability to build that know, like, and trust factor, right?

To be realistic here right now, if you listen to my podcast, that is going to grow your relationship with me way more than just seeing a post on my Instagram feed. Now with doing YouTube, you’ve got my voice and my face and my weird mannerisms and the way I talk with my hands and all of the things, right?

That helps you get to know me a lot faster and a lot better than just a social media post. And so it’s important that social media is not your main focus. And Some people push it probably a little bit more than they should, uh, when they’re teaching other entrepreneurs how to market their business.

Again, we want to make sure my whole focus is to help you simplify your marketing so that you have the biggest impact in the least amount of time. And if you want to do that, social media should not be your focus. And then the final piece that I want to share today, number seven, of just terrible pieces of content marketing advice that I’ve heard is that any content is better than no content.

And this is another one that is a yes and no, because if we’re talking about, and we’re talking to someone who is a perfectionist, who continues to avoid putting content out there. Because they’re being a perfectionist, because they just don’t feel ready, because they are scared or fearful or whatever it may be that’s holding them back from putting content out there, yes.

Any content is better than no content. I have students, I have members in my membership, I have clients even. Stuff come to me and said I want to put content out help me out. I want to start a podcast I want to do X. I want to do why I want to do Z But I’m scared in that case get started get over that fear because once you start doing it It’s gonna feel so much easier any content is better than no content in that context 100 percent however If you are putting content out and it’s, it’s not a perfectionist struggle, any content is not better than no content.

I would rather see you take a step back for a bit, slow down, create a strategy, create quality content, and put less content out moving forward than simply putting content out for the sake of putting content out. You don’t have to be in this. I think often comes from this idea that we need to show up constantly, right?

We think that the more we show up, the better it’s going to be for our business. And that’s just not the case. As long as we’re consistent, those two constant and consistent, not the same thing, right? As long as we’re consistent, putting out quality content less often is going to be so much better for your business and so much better for your audience than constantly putting out mediocre content.

So, if you’re someone who is struggling to get your content out because you’re being a perfectionist, this is, this one’s not for you. You put that content out, any content is better than no content. If you are someone who is trying to constantly show up, who is trying to just put out as much content as they can, put a pause on your content.

Take a step back. Do a batch week, slow down, create strategic content, create quality content, schedule it out, and then moving forward, put out less content that’s better at a less, a lower frequency. So, those were the, the seven different awful pieces of advice I’ve heard as a content strategist. Any content is better than no content.

Social media should be your main focus or you should be spending the majority of your time working on your social media content. Getting rid of unengaged followers from social media specifically. Reaching out to X number of people per day. Any of the bots, the follow for follow loops, the follow unfollow game, those number games, where it’s just all about making sure that you’re just, you know, Just checking a box, really, instead of truly trying to connect with people.

Just having that list of people to check off and say, hey, XYZ, there you go. And then basically anything to do with the algorithm. If you’re worrying about the algorithm, you’re not worrying about the right thing with your marketing. And so any, that final, just, that’s it. Awful piece of advice is to worry about the algorithm.

Don’t worry about the algorithm. It’s not your friend. It’s not for you and it’s not worth your time. So if anything you’re doing, if you have any practices that you’re doing that are taking up time and mental space in your business that have to do with trying to police the algorithm, you can go ahead and just The wrong way.

Work them up, burn them. It’s done. We’re not going to worry about the algorithm anymore around here. Your action step for this week is to take a look at all of your current marketing activities and then get intentional about choosing just one or two to focus on. It’s really easy to take a look at all of the marketing advice out there and try to implement all of it.

But we want to make sure that what we’re actually doing is Taking in the marketing advice that’s out there and being really intentional about what’s going to work best for us right now. And if you need help figuring that out, if you go to amandawarfield. com slash quiz, I’ve got a quiz that’s going to help you determine what the best strategies for your business are right now where you’re at.

So highly recommend that if you have trouble figuring out where you should even begin, go take that quiz. Now, your book recommendation for this week is Bad Summer People by Emma Rosenblum. I don’t normally love these type of, I’m not even sure how to categorize this book really, but it’s, it’s very much There’s this group of families on an island.

Um, it’s not exactly like the Hamptons, but it’s sim like it’s not high society summer island, but still people who are able to summer somewhere, right? Um, so upper, upper, upper middle class, I guess you could call it, where it’s not like, it feels like these people could be people in your own circle, I guess you could say, where it’s, they’re not super high society, but also at the same time, like, who has a summer home?

I don’t know. Anyways, not the point. But it’s just these normal families, quote unquote, and they’re all living together for the summer on an island, uh, summering together. And it’s just about, you know, the entanglement of relationships, I guess, in as far as how people get along, social circles, things like that.

And you do start the book out with learning that someone has died, basically. And so you’re trying to figure out, you know, what leads up to that and how that happened. But it’s not like a, it’s not a mystery. It’s not a thriller. Someone else who put out a review on it called Domestic Suspense.

You’re like, who died now? But it’s not a whodunit. I don’t know. Anyways, that’s a lot of rambling about it, but it was a great read and I really enjoyed it. And so I wanted to recommend it to you. So I will link to that in the show notes if you’re interested. But again, that is called Bad Summer People by Emma Rosenblum.

And until next time, my friend, I hope that you’ll go out and uncomplicate your marketing and business.

Thank you so much for joining me here today, friend. You can find this episode show notes as well as all the resources you need to simplify your marketing over at amandawarfield. com. If you liked what you heard here today, be sure to subscribe to the podcast so that you never miss an episode. And if you could take a moment to leave a rating and review, it would truly mean the world to me.

Ratings and reviews are the number one way that you can support a podcast, and ensure that it sticks around for many more episodes to come. I’ll see you next time, now go out and uncomplicate your marketing and business.

The post Episode 221: Marketing Advice NOT to Take appeared first on Amanda Warfield.

We all love to see the behind the scenes of how other entrepreneurs spend their time. With so much freedom comes a bit of overwhelm and it’s always nice to hear how others are structuring the vast amount of time and vast amount of to-do lists and still finding time for marketing.

And now that I’ve started working part time as the Youth Director at my church, I thought now was a great time to share an updated routines schedule – especially with how I go about having time for marketing these days.

Don’t forget to subscribe so that you never miss an episode! Also, if you would be willing to leave a review on Apple Podcasts, it would mean the world to me. It’s such a small thing that can make a big difference in helping me spread this message of simplicity to other overwhelmed women.

Have a comment about today’s episode, or a topic you’d like to suggest for a future episode? Shoot me an email over at [email protected]!

We all love to see the behind the scenes of how other entrepreneurs spend their time. With so much freedom, it becomes a bit of overwhelm and it’s always nice to hear how others are structuring their vast amount of time and vast amount of to do lists. And now that I’ve started working part time as the youth director at my church, I thought now was a great time to share an updated routine schedule, especially with how I go about having time for marketing these days.

You’re listening to episode 220 of the Chasing Simple podcast, and I’m your host, Amanda Warfield. This episode was brought to you by my book, Chasing Simple Marketing, and you can grab your own at amandawarfield. com / book.

How do I find time to create content without overwhelming myself? Where should I even be showing up in my marketing? How do I come up with fresh content ideas? Where should I be focusing my marketing efforts? What is lead generation anyways, and how do I do it? Are launches still a thing? And most importantly, How do I put it all together to market my business strategically?

Can I really grow my business without spending all of my time marketing? These are some of the questions that float around in your head. When you think of marketing, welcome friend, this is chasing simple where practical marketing strategy meets simplicity. I’m your host, Amanda Warfield, simplicity focused content marketing and launch strategist, speaker, educator, and author of chasing simple marketing.

I traded in my classroom lesson plans for helping creative entrepreneurs sustainably fit marketing into their business without it taking over their business. So that they have time to grow their business, take time off, and live the life they dreamed about when they first decided to go out on their own.

When I’m working, you can find me working with one on one clients such as The Contract Shop and Rebecca Rice Photography on their marketing strategy and copywriting, or helping my students simplify their marketing and launches. And when I’m not, you can find me spending time outside with my husband, Russell, reading in our hammock, watching Gamecock Sports, traveling, or forcing our cats to snuggle me.

If you feel overwhelmed by marketing, you aren’t alone. Many entrepreneurs find marketing frustrating, overwhelming, and simply an obligation. They know they need it, but they don’t enjoy how easily it can suck up their time when what they really want to be doing is the thing that they started their business to do.

That’s Which is why I’m here to help make marketing simple and less time consuming so that you can spend less time on your marketing and more time growing your business and doing what you love each week offering you transparent conversations, actionable steps, and judgment free community to encourage and equip you.

So grab yourself a cup of coffee or whatever your drink of choices and meet me here each week for love, support, practical tips, and advice on uncomplicating your marketing and business. Let’s do this entrepreneurship thing together, shall we? Want even more help simplifying your marketing and business?

Love the Chasing Simple podcast? If so, I want to invite you to join me on Monday evenings at 4 p. m. Pacific Time, 7 p. m. Eastern Time for my weekly YouTube lives. Each week, I’ll have a topic for the week, but after my short 5 minute teaching, you’ll have the chance to ask me questions about your marketing and get an answer from me in real time.

Until now, the only way to get this kind of access to me was through my membership, courses, or one on one services. But now, All you have to do is show up live with me on Mondays. You can find my channel by searching for my handle on YouTube at Mrs. Amanda Warfield, or by heading to amandawarfield. com / YouTube.

I hope to see you Monday. Today, I want to talk all about how to find time for your marketing, because that is one of the things that I hear over and over and over again from students, from clients, is that they just have a really hard time finding the time. To market their business and to work on their marketing now that may mean that they are so busy with client work that they are focused on other projects that they just don’t like marketing and they prioritize it to the very bottom of their priority list and the time just never happens to come around because as business owners, our plates are always full and those things just never end, right?

And so today I’m going to share the behind the scenes of what. My schedule looks like on a monthly, weekly and daily basis to show you how I find the time to market my business. I have shared this previously on podcast episodes of mine, but due to some life changes, what I’m currently doing is different from what I’ve shared in the past.

So, even if you’ve listened to those, I think it would be super beneficial for you to stick around today. So, first things first. You will never find time for marketing. That’s just the nature of things. We are so busy as business owners. We have so much on our plate that if you are not prioritizing your marketing, you will never find time for it.

It’s just the reality. And, unfortunately, that means that we have to get really intentional about making time and making space for our marketing. Now, depending on where you’re at in your phase of business and your, you know, where your business is at, how much marketing you need to be doing, You may not need as much time, or you may need more time, and it just kind of depends on a few different factors.

But the truth of the matter is, is that we can’t find time to market. We have to make the time intentionally to work on marketing our business. If you’ve listened to any of my other stuff, you’ve read my book, listened to my podcast, whatever, you know that I am a huge proponent of the fact that there are two types of marketing that we need in every marketing strategy.

That’s nurture marketing, which is your content, and your growth marketing, which is all of the ways that you are getting your business name out there and in front of new people. So when it comes to making time and setting aside that time and space for marketing, you’ve got to make sure that you’re intentionally setting aside the time and space for both.

Okay. So on a monthly basis, I have, let’s say each month has four weeks, how many weeks there are. I have two different types of weeks. Currently right now in my business, I have my I guess we can call it A week, and my B week. B week being batch week, A week being non batch week. Now some people do A weeks, B weeks, and they do, A week is when they do all of their meetings, B week is when they’re only doing behind the scenes work.

There’s a lot of different ways you can set that up, but for me, I just have A week, which is anything that’s not batch week, and then I have my batch weeks. My batch week, having a batch week in place every single month allows me to make sure that I am intentionally setting aside that time for my nurture strategy.

Batch week is when I am doing all of the content creation, setting aside that time to do all of the content creation for the next month. I create a month’s worth of content in one week, and then I have all of next month’s nurture strategy ready to go. That is so key to making sure that I’m able to do both parts of this nurture and growth strategy this both parts of a marketing strategy because if I don’t have that we can place, I’m going to spend all of my marketing time only on content, and if I’m only spending time on content and only nurturing the people that are already in my audience, and I’m not spending that time growing my audience and then continuing to nurture them, and we don’t want to have to choose either or.

One week out of every month is my batch week. And what I do when I’m planning out my year is I sit down and I say, okay, this week in every month is going to be my batch week. I put it on my calendar and then I protect that week. I don’t take meetings during those weeks. I don’t work on client work most of the time during those weeks.

I have one exception to that and I’ll explain in a minute, but I’m not working on a ton of client work. I’m not working on other projects. I’m not, I don’t have doctor’s appointments. I don’t, I don’t do anything. Except, again, an exception I’ll talk about in a minute. Batch week is protected. And so when I set up my calendar for the year, I put batch week in every month.

I pay attention to where my vacations are, where my time off is, so that I’m not putting batch week over the top of those. But I put batch week in first and foremost before I put in promotions or anything else like that. For most of us, when we get started, that’s not going to be the case, right? We’re not going to be able to, Oh, well, Batch Week’s got nothing on me.

Or there’s nothing else on Batch Week because, well, I’ve already committed to these things, right? Like, the first few months as you’re getting started, it’s by the nature of getting started with any new rhythm, any new routine, you are going to have to do some conflict resolution in some cases, and that’s okay.

On a monthly basis, 2 weeks. Batch week, non batch week. Now, a little context about some of the changes that have been made. If you’ve listened to some of my past podcast episodes when I’ve shared about my schedule and things like that. Context to those changes if you haven’t already seen me talking about this anywhere.

We moved from South Carolina to Washington to Seattle, which is right now. I am not working only in my business. When we lived in South Carolina, I was working in my business full time. I wasn’t working full time hours, but that’s all I was doing, was working my business. I worked from home and That was that.

So I could really make my schedule however I saw fit. Since moving out here, I actually accepted the position at my own church as their youth director. And I’m working part time for that. I call that my side hustle, though, because this is still my full time income. This is still my I like to say that my business is my main job, my full time job, and that enables me to have this side hustle in ministry.

So I am working 20 hours a week for the church, which means my schedule is not fully my own. And I’ve had to get really intentional about, well, I can’t work 40 hours a week because when we were living in South Carolina, my husband was working 12 hour days and it was a shift schedule. So it was like, you know, three or four days a week, sometimes five days a week, depending on the week.

It was just the whole thing. And so I was able to work a ton because I wasn’t as involved outside of the house and things. I very much, I had a lot of time to work because he was working 12 hours, but it was also a 45 minute drive one way to work. So like he was gone 14 hours out of the day pretty much when he was working 3, 4, 5 different days a week, depending on how many shifts he had that week.

And I worked a ton and I was able to work on a ton of projects. And now I have to be really, really intentional about my time more so. And I’ve had to get back into some of these rhythms. So shared the monthly on a weekly basis now. My batch week schedule. I am just like I said, creating content, but my non batch week schedule.

I work with themed days. Now, my Mondays are always for clients. That’s always been the case. Um, it’s a day. I do the majority of my client work for the week. It’s the day where all of my clients and all of the members in my membership marketing the community, my VIP members have the ability and clients have the ability to submit content for feedback and review each week.

And copy. And that is always due Monday morning, 9 a. m. Eastern time. And so Monday’s the day I, I see, okay, what feedback and reviews do I need to do this week? Any client work that I need to do? Any client calls? Always happen on Mondays. It’s the Not something I like. It’s the only work day of the week that I don’t go into the church and do any work typically.

So, that client, Mondays are client days. That is my main focus. Tuesdays are for my community and for admin stuff. So, I’m doing my community calls on Tuesdays, but I’m also doing community improvements, community work, things like that. Anything community related happens on Tuesdays. As well as any administrative stuff, so that’s when I’m doing, like, file cleanup and spending a little bit extra time in my inbox.

I try to peek in my inbox every single day, but the day I really sit down and work on my inbox is on Tuesday. Moving the business from one state to another, there’s like administrative stuff that needs to get filed, taxes, all of that stuff happens on Tuesdays as well. Wednesdays are for projects. So the way I set up my Click up is I have my weekly plan of action.

I also have my Rocks for the year, which if you’ve ever read the book traction by gino wickman I believe really highly recommend they talk about rocks in your business and so each quarter you have different rocks that are like the big projects that are going to move you towards your overall goals for the year And so I have my rocks, and then I also have my, I have non rock projects as well, which are just like those little tasks and one off things that I need to get done to, you know, whether it’s, oh, I need to upload new testimonials to this page.

I have it broken down by marketing, customer experience, networking, education, and sales. So like, oh, this sales funnel needs to be updated. It’s not a rock. It’s not a moving me towards my major goals kind of thing, but it needs to get done education, all the courses that I have that I’m enrolled in working my way through those networking, different networking things that I want to be part of customer experience or things that I want to update, like there’s some different sales funnels that need to be updated or like, for some reason, there are certain things that aren’t adding people into my welcome sequence.

I need to go in and fix those. So different things like that, that. I would like to do these at some point, but they’re not this massive priority. Whereas my rocks, Q2 rocks, for example, uh, I wanted to take a workation. That was not happening. I wanted to launch this YouTube channel. That was a big rock. I Had a community promo where I Offered a discount for a certain amount of time for people who wanted to join my community I also was doing some retreat planning and a retreat launch.

I ended up scrapping that in the middle of the launch Which I just recorded a podcast episode today on that and it’ll be out shortly about why I did that But yeah things like that. I I don’t have my full like Q3 rocks planned out, but also I have workation on there. Jason’s a content planner, next year’s is going to launch in Q3, right?

And so there are things like that, like my promotions, my different things like that, that have helped that I do in my 2024 rocks. On my project day, on Wednesdays, I am working on first and foremost, my rocks. But also on some of those other projects, which I’ll explain more in how that works in a minute, on a daily basis.

But Wednesdays are for projects. My Thursdays are for marketing. But, this is for marketing that is not related to content marketing. When I end up Not finishing batch week for whatever reason. I will use Thursdays as a catch up, but usually it’s just one Thursday, a month that needs to be that catch up day.

And then the other two that are left, sometimes three, depending on the month, I get to work on those growth marketing strategies. So things like pitching myself to be on podcasts, finding speaking engagements, all of these different things that I can do to grow my audience. That’s what I’m doing on Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays, I don’t work.

Those are my weekend because. I work in a church now. I work Sundays. So Sunday mornings are dedicated to church stuff, obviously. Sunday afternoons, I typically come home and take a nap, if I’m being real honest. And then Sunday afternoons are like my, my catch all day. I do what I can to get prepared for the week, but I also, I’ll either start working on client work if I have a heavy client load that week, or I’ll start working on a project or something else that I just want to do for my business.

So that’s kind of what my week looks like. Sundays like the catch all day. Are there things that didn’t get finished last week? Can I prepare for the next week? So on and so forth. Mondays are for clients, Tuesdays are for the community and administrative work, Wednesdays are for projects, and Thursdays are for marketing.

So monthly basis, batch week, no batch week. Weekly basis, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, I’m off. So on and so forth. On a daily basis, what that looks like. I’ll say this is my goal. It doesn’t always happen, but my goal is outside of client days. Client days are just, it’s just client work.

Period. Like that’s, it just is what it is. But, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, My goal is to spend at least two hours doing deep work and That means working on a rock Basically if possible so on Tuesdays when I’m looking at community stuff or administrative stuff Are there any rocks that I can work on to move the needle on those rocks?

Based on those days, whatever the theme is. So Tuesday would be the community and administrative Wednesday is like, what are those rock projects? There’s, there would be a marketing rock project. So, for example, working on launch things, like creating a new freebie or something like that. That would be a marketing, a Thursday Deep Work project, right?

Working on the behind the scenes of a launch. How do I? So not the actual marketing part of the launch, but the behind the scenes things. The, that would be great for Wednesdays, basically. Or working on, for a long time I was updating my Year in Preview course. So long to do that. But that would be a project, right?

That’s a Wednesday project where I am updating a course. So that would be a Wednesday deep work. And then community stuff, if I’m adding new things to the community, same thing. So anyways, I try to do two hours of deep work each of those days. Then, I try to do an hour of, you know, daily admin slash like inbox stuff.

So checking my DMS, posting the stories, checking Facebook, checking all of those different, like, okay, where am I showing up? Let me check and make sure that I’m communicating with people. Checking comments on YouTube. Those are all like, those are daily administrative things. I have an hour for that. And then I try to have another two hour block where I’m just working on projects.

Small projects and small tasks that fall into those days. It doesn’t always happen like that, but that’s the goal that I have on a daily basis. And so things like working on one of those funnels that I need to work on that isn’t doing what it’s supposed to be doing. That would be a marketing type project, right?

Or pitching myself to podcast would be a Thursday project. Working on website updates could be, it could really fall under project or marketing, just depending on what the priorities are that week, working through education stuff, those different things that would be administrative, right? And so I try to spend two hours like, okay, what else can I do today?

What else is a priority? What else needs to get done that I can fit in? So it’s kind of like a sandwich of two hours of deep work. And then I usually go have some kind of break, come back, do that hour of administrative stuff, and then two hours of, okay, what are the other projects, tasks, et cetera, I need to do within today’s category.

And so that’s how I break out my days. So monthly, weekly, daily, doing that. Make sure all of that works together to make sure that I’m setting aside time and space for my marketing my batch week Ensures that I’m setting aside that time and space to create my nurture content, right? My nurture strategy is getting handled those Thursdays Ensure that I’m holding space for growth marketing and Wednesdays actually those project days ensure that I am Also on top of having the growth in the nurture strategies covered I’m also making sure that I’m working on improving Different marketing things that I’ve been working on different projects like those funnels that need to be improved improving the website things like that So that is how I ensure that I make time for my marketing Your action step for this week is to evaluate how you’re spending your time and look at what themes that you see commonly appear each week in your own to do list.

That way you can kind of make a similar schedule if you’d like where you have themed work days so that you’re able to get more done in less time. Your book recommendation for this week is The Women by Kristen Hanna. She recently, I believe this is a really recent release, so you may or may not have heard other people talking about it already, but it’s based on the, the women who served as nurses in Vietnam, which I didn’t know much about, to be honest, and that’s kind of a lot of the premise of the book is that so many of these women that served as nurses, you know, they came home and they had things like PTSD, and they had seen terrible things, and yet no one knew that they had served?

Like, if they told someone that they had served in Vietnam, they were, they were told, oh, no women were in, you know, so anyways, it’s a very, Can be hard to read at times, but also just a very well written, clearly well researched book, and it was not only a good read, but it was also really eye opening to things that had gone on in that time and over in Vietnam, but then also just like it’s The culture post Vietnam here in America, which, you know, I wasn’t around for, but I’ve heard, like, my grandfather talk about it and things like that, so anyways, I thought it was, it was wonderful, so I highly recommend, I believe I gave it 5 stars, which I never do, so, big, big, great book, big deal for me, um, and I highly recommend it, so I will link to that in the show notes for you.

And until next time, I hope you’ll go out and uncomplicate your marketing and business.

Thank you so much for joining me here today, friend. You can find this episode’s show notes as well as all of the resources you need to simplify your marketing over at amandawarfield. com. If you liked what you heard here today, be sure to subscribe to the podcast so that you never miss an episode. And if you could take a moment to leave a rating and review, it would truly mean the world to me.

Ratings and reviews are the number one way that you can support a podcast and it’s And ensure that it sticks around for many more episodes to come. I’ll see you next time. Now go out and uncomplicate your marketing and business.

The post Episode 220: Finding Time for Marketing [My Latest Weekly Schedule] appeared first on Amanda Warfield.

One of the best ways to make the most of your marketing time is by building a content engine. You want to power your engine with your content and drive people throughout your various platforms and spaces online (and your offers!). Essentially, you can think of a content engine as repurposing with strategy. Allowing you to make a bigger impact in less time.

Don’t forget to subscribe so that you never miss an episode! Also, if you would be willing to leave a review on Apple Podcasts, it would mean the world to me. It’s such a small thing that can make a big difference in helping me spread this message of simplicity to other overwhelmed women.

Have a comment about today’s episode, or a topic you’d like to suggest for a future episode? Shoot me an email over at [email protected]!

One of the best ways to make the most of your marketing time is by building a content engine. You want to power your engine with your content and drive people throughout your various platforms and spaces online and your offers. And essentially, you can think of a content engine as repurposing with strategy, allowing you to make a bigger impact in less time. You’re listening to episode 219 of The Chasing Simple Podcast, and I’m your host, Amanda Warfield. This episode was brought to you by my book, Chasing Simple Marketing, and you can grab your own at amandawarfield.com / book.

How do I find time to create content without overwhelming myself? Where should I even be showing up in my marketing? How do I come up with fresh content ideas? Where should I be focusing my marketing efforts? What is lead generation anyways, and how do I do it? Are launches still a thing? And most importantly, how do I put it all together to market my business strategically?

Can I really grow my business without spending all of my time marketing? These are some of the questions that float around in your head when you think of marketing. Welcome, friend. This is Chasing Simple, where practical marketing strategy meets simplicity. I’m your host, Amanda Warfield, simplicity focused content marketing and launch strategist, speaker, educator, and author of Chasing Simple Marketing.

I traded in my classroom lesson plans for helping creative entrepreneurs sustainably fit marketing into their business without it taking over their business. So that they have time to grow their business, take time off, and live the life they dreamed about when they first decided to go out on their own.

When I’m working, you can find me working with one on one clients, such as The Contract Shop and Rebecca Rice Photography on their marketing strategy and copywriting, or helping my students simplify their marketing and launches. And when I’m not, you can find me spending time outside with my husband, Russell.

Reading in our hammock, watching GameCock Sports, traveling, or forcing our cats to snuggle me. If you feel overwhelmed by marketing, you aren’t alone. Many entrepreneurs find marketing frustrating, overwhelming, and simply an obligation. They know they need it, but they don’t enjoy how easily it can suck up their time when what they really want to be doing, is the thing that they started their business to do.

Which is why I’m here. To help make marketing simple and less time consuming. So that you can spend less time on your marketing and more time growing your business and doing what you love. Each week I’ll bring you transparent conversations, actionable steps, and judgment free community to encourage and equip you.

So grab yourself a cup of coffee or whatever your drink of choice is and meet me here each week for love, support, practical tips, and advice on uncomplicating your marketing and business. Let’s do this entrepreneurship thing together, shall we? Want even more help simplifying your marketing and business?

Love the Chasing Simple podcast? If so, I want to invite you to join me on Monday evenings at 4pm Pacific Time, 7pm Eastern Time for my weekly YouTube lives. Each week, I’ll have a topic for the week, but after my short 5 minute teaching, you’ll have the chance to ask me questions about your marketing and get an answer from me in real time.

Until now, the only way to get this kind of access to me was through my membership, courses, or one on one services. But now, all you have to do is show up live with me on Mondays. You can find my channel by searching for my handle on YouTube, at Mrs. Amanda Warfield, or by heading to amandawarfield. com / YouTube.

I hope to see you Monday! So today we are going to chat about building a content engine. So when it comes to a marketing strategy, I’ve talked about this in a couple of videos already. When it comes to a marketing strategy, every marketing strategy should have two parts to it. So you have your nurture strategy and you also have your growth strategy.

Now your nurture strategy is what you’re doing It’s typically your content strategy, right? It’s what you’re doing to nurture the people that are already in your audience. And your growth strategy is what you’re doing to bring in new people to your audience. But what can happen a lot of times is we get so caught up in that nurture strategy that we don’t have time for the growth strategy, right?

We don’t have time to go be on Podcast and speak at things and be part of summits and bundles and do what we don’t have time for the growth marketing because we get so caught up in the nurture marketing that content strategy. So what a content engine does is it allows us to cycle through some of that content that we’re creating with our nurture strategy so that we don’t have to constantly be creating new content, new nurture content, right?

We don’t have to constantly be creating that new content and be stuck on that content creation hamster wheel, which no one wants to be on, right? So if you are looking at your nurture strategy, you’re looking at your content strategy, the entirety of your nurture strategy should be your content engine.

And the engine is essentially what makes your nurture strategy run. And realistically, what makes your marketing as a whole run. Because what you’ll do is, as you go out to these different growth strategies that you’re working on, As you go out and perform these different growth marketing strategies, you then send people into that engine, and then they’re being nurtured while you are able to focus more so on the growth marketing and less on the nurture marketing, without ghosting your people, because that’s what we don’t want to do, right?

We want to make sure that we’re, we’re not on that content creation hamster wheel, but we’re also not ghosting our audience at the same time. That’s a basic overview of what the purpose of a content engine is and how it works within the overall marketing strategy of your business, right? It’s part of your nurture strategy and you take that, your growth strategies and you fill them into the nurture strategies so that they can then, psh, into that engine.

Once they’re in the engine, I don’t really know how engines work, I’m going to be really honest with you. This metaphor, analogy, whatever you want to call it, Make sense in my brain? Hopefully it’ll make sense in yours too, because I don’t know anything about engines. So, once they get into the engine, then you’ve got all of this content in different areas that they can find, they may or may not find, but it’s there for them.

So, what I mean by that is, for a content engine, you realistically want three parts of your content strategy. You want your long form content, you want your short form content, and then you want your email newsletters. When it comes to your long form content, that typically is a podcast, YouTube, or blog post.

You may be thinking that sounds great. I’m a solopreneur. I don’t have time to create YouTube every week or to create a podcast every week or to write a blog post every week, to which I want to say, you don’t have to do it every week to be consistent, but also realistically, if you, I’m such a fan of knowing your limits and knowing what you truly can and cannot handle.

So if you know that you truly cannot handle creating a blog or YouTube video or podcast, and you know that once a month is just. Even that’s not realistic. Okay, so realistically let’s focus on your email marketing being your long form content And try to keep up with that if that is going to be your long form content, though I really would suggest at least every other week if not every week Um, you can work your way up to it and start every other week but You want to be able to make sure you’re staying top of mind with your people and social media is just not going to cut It for you for that.

So with that content engine I guess you’ve got that long form, which is probably YouTube blog or podcast, but maybe it’s your email marketing and you’ve got your email marketing, or maybe that’s your long form. And then you’ve also got your short form marketing. This is social media. Basically choose one social media platform.

And if you’re struggling with staying consistent, I would choose. One type of content within that one platform. So for example, with Instagram, you’ve got reels, you’ve got live, you’ve got feed posts, you’ve got stories. You know, you’ve got four different ways that you can show up on Instagram at minimum.

So choose one to start with, and then you can add on later, but maybe you really love creating graphics and carousel posts or how you’re going to show up and you’re just going to do a bunch of carousel posts and reshuffle them to your stories. Maybe you really like stories and you’re just going to have a static grid.

Okay. And it has all the information you need and you just say, okay, great. I’m going to show up on stories, and if you go look at my page, here’s information to know that, yeah, I’m still active. I just don’t post to the feed. There’s all kinds of different ways that you can do that, right? So, you’ll choose one.

Then, you’ve got all the components of your content engine, and you want to put them together. So, by doing that, you want to make sure that you have all the pieces working together cohesively. Because if your engine’s not working together, it’s not working. The car is not going to work, or the tractor, or whatever you want the engine to be in, I don’t know.

Again, we’re not getting too deep with this metaphor. But, you’ve got to have all the pieces, and they’ve got to work cohesively. What I mean by that is that you have to make sure that you are taking your long form content, whether that is blog, podcast, YouTube, or email, you’re taking that and you’re repurposing it into these other pieces.

So you want to take your long form content and you want to then create it and you’re going to take it and you’re going to repurpose it into an email if the email is not your long form content. And then you’re going to repurpose it into live. Social media posts, if you’re going to reverse it into two emails, maybe you’re going to repurpose it into as general.

I rule of thumb is generally 2 emails and then 5 social media posts, but that way you’re not spending hours and hours and hours. Writing all of these blogs and recording all of these podcasts and all of these YouTubes and then also writing all of these emails and then also creating all of these social media posts.

Instead, you’re able to take what you’ve already created once and just tweak it a little bit for each place. And it can literally be as simple as copy paste. For example, for a really long time, what I did with my podcast, that was my main type of long form content. I decided to do YouTube just because I wanted to be able to interact and say hi.

But I took my introduction to every podcast episode, I literally copy and pasted that introduction into an email. I took away the beginning, like I, I took away the like, you’re listening to episode whatever whatever, you know, all of those things. But I made sure that I wrote a great introduction. I wrote one great thing one time.

And then, I was able to copy paste that into an email, and I was able to just tweak it a little bit, maybe add a little more to it, and then add the link to the podcast episode to encourage people to go listen to it. So, someone who maybe hasn’t found my podcast yet, but has joined my email list by some other freebie, well, they’re able to then go, oh, she’s got a podcast as well, let me go listen to it.

And then they may be interested. You know, download the podcast, follow it, subscribe, whatever the new Apple term is, because they change it all the time. They’re able to then say, Oh, I’m going to go listen to this. And so I was able to send people from the email back to the podcast. Also from the podcast, I’m able to say, go download this freebie, go check out this product I have, go whatever.

And that gets people on my email list, whether they’re opting into a freebie, or they buy something from my shop. They’re able to go, oh, well now I’m on her email list and now I’m getting not only the information about the podcast each week and I can decide whether or not I want to listen, I’m also occasionally getting tips and tricks, I’m getting news about sales, all of those things, right?

And so I’m staying in the know by being on the email list. And so the podcast sends people the email list. So you can literally copy paste. When it comes to repurposing, you can take the main points, the main like, hey, here’s what happens in this. piece of content. Go watch, listen, read, or you can take main points.

So let’s say you’ve got, I mean, in this, I’ve got the three parts of a content engine, right? Long form, short form, and email newsletters. I could create a three different emails based off of each of those things and just an email out what long form content is and you know about what email marketing is and how to use it and so on and so forth.

And so you can take chunks of your main points essentially and write. That information up for an email and then the same goes with the social media post and you can take those main points and you can a send them back to the long form content be send them to an opt in to then get them on your email list, right?

Or see, add engagement calls to actions to encourage people to engage with you. So you show up in their feet more. You can take one piece of content, spread it out through all of your different parts of your nurture marketing strategy. And also be sending people back to the different parts of the engine as well.

So they’re not just going straight through it. It’s, it’s a cycle. It, so you’re going from long form content to, Oh, don’t forget to follow me on Instagram or Facebook or Twitter or wherever, or X or wherever you’re showing up, right? And then they go check out your social media and then they follow you on social media and you share about an opt in and they go to the email list.

Or they start in your email list and they follow you. You’re welcome sequences. Hey, follow me on this place. And so they follow you there. And then they learn about your long form content. You see how it kind of flows and you use all of your platforms to send people to all of the platforms using the same content that you used with the long form content, so your content engine, that’s what it is.

And as you, you create your content, hopefully you’re batching your content once a month. And so you’re able to just. Create that content for the next month, and then you’ve got three weeks to work on your growth marketing strategies Focusing on those things and then as you’re focusing on those and you’re sending people back from the growth into the nurture strategy They’re moving through your content engine And they’re beginning to know I can trust you.

They’re growing how much they trust you. They’re growing how much they, um, listen to what you’re doing, or they decide that you’re not a good fit. And that’s okay, too, because we want people to say, yes, I’m all in, or no, I don’t care what you have to say. We don’t want people to sit on the fence in our marketing and in our audience.

So you use those growth strategies. You work on them for three weeks, and You send them into that content engine and the people flow through the content engine without you having to focus on it for three weeks out of the month. And you just focus on the growth strategy so that you can send people into that content engine.

So that is how you build a content engine. A quick side note, or one last tip, I guess I should say, a great way to move people from whatever your growth strategies are into that nurture. Funnel is a either have a piece of long form content in mind that you’re going to send people to so if you have a piece of long form content that performed really well that you’ve gotten great feedback on that is like a core pillar of your business.

That’s a great piece of content to say, Hey, now that you watch this webinar, you viewed this summit presentation, you downloaded this thing that I put in a bundle, so on and so forth. You know, there are different strategies that work best for different growth strategies and different calls to actions that work best for different growth strategies, but in general, as you’re getting started, especially with those growth marketing strategies, a really great thing that you can do, especially if you’re doing like guest blog posting or something like that, or you’re just doing marketing.

Yeah. Especially if you’re just doing, like, lives on Instagram with people and you’re collaborating that way with growth strategies. A really great thing to have in your back pocket is one or two pieces of core content, pillar content you might say, to drive people back to. So if you have a blog post, or a YouTube video, or a podcast episode that people have loved that you’ve gotten a ton of listens or downloads or watches like, you know, it’s something that people are really interested in.

That’s a great thing to send people to because it gets them inside of that content engine. And the other thing is a freebie as well. Any freebie you have that you’ve created that leads to an offer, because It’s a day we want to make sure that we’re leading people to offers so that we’re eventually leading them to sales, which I talk about in another episode about the purpose of marketing and the sales precipice, but another episode, another podcast, but having a freebie that leads to your sales, having a couple of core pieces of content that you can lead people to, to get them inside of that content engine from those sort of things that that’s a great way to easily move them in.

And it’s a really great low pressure way, especially if you haven’t the ability to link to it. Have That’s just one bonus pro tip. So your action step for this week is that when you’re creating your next content plan, whether it’s this week or next or whenever, I want you to focus on your long form content and then use that content that you have planned and strategized for your long form content.

Use that to create your full content engine so that you’re spending The majority of your time, which is hopefully a lot less, of your marketing time on that really intentional strategic long form content, and you’re able to just simply repurpose that really intentionally throughout your other content.

Now, your book recommendation for this week is All the Ways We Said Goodbye by Beatrice Williams. I think I recently recommended another one of her books. I just am always, just obsessed with everything that she puts out. This one, if you can’t tell by the title, spoiler, doesn’t have a super happy ending.

It’s pretty, uh, honestly like the, not, it’s not, it’s pretty depressing. And I’m normally someone who cannot stand a book that ends. Without being a happy ending like the world is sad enough I want happy endings and everything I read like if I’m gonna be reading fiction give me fiction, you know but even with the sad ending I Adored this book.

I mean it like I even I walked away going man. That’s so sad But also like wow, that was so good. So highly recommend all the ways we said goodbye by Beatrice Williams I’ll link to that in the show notes for you if you want to check it out And until next time, I hope you’ll go out and uncomplicate your marketing and business.

Thank you so much for joining me here today, friend. You can find this episode show notes as well as all of the resources you need to simplify your marketing [email protected]. If you liked what you heard here today, be sure to subscribe to the podcast so that you’ve never missed an episode. And if you could take a moment to leave a rating and review, it would truly mean the world to me.

Ratings and reviews are the number one way that you can support a podcast. And ensure that it sticks around for many more episodes to come. I’ll see you next time. Now go out and uncomplicate your marketing and business.

The post Episode 219: Power Your Business with a Content Engine appeared first on Amanda Warfield.

One of the top reasons business owners tell me they couldn’t possibly batch is because they prefer to create their content only when they’re feeling inspired.

And while in theory that’s great, in practice, you’re actually doing more harm than good by waiting for creativity to strike in order to create your content.

So today, I’m covering why you should stop waiting for inspiration and instead learn how to bottle that inspiration when it does strike – and still be able to successfully batch your content.

Don’t forget to subscribe so that you never miss an episode! Also, if you would be willing to leave a review on Apple Podcasts, it would mean the world to me. It’s such a small thing that can make a big difference in helping me spread this message of simplicity to other overwhelmed women.

Have a comment about today’s episode, or a topic you’d like to suggest for a future episode? Shoot me an email over at [email protected]!

One of the top reasons business owners tell me that they couldn’t possibly batch is because they prefer to create their content only when they’re feeling inspired. And while, in theory, that’s great, in practice, you’re actually doing more harm than good by waiting for creativity to strike in order to create your content.

So today, I’m covering why you should stop waiting for inspiration, and instead, how to bottle that inspiration for when it does strike, and still be able to successfully batch your content. You’re listening to episode 218 of the Chasing Simple Podcast, and I’m your host, Amanda Warfield. This episode was brought to you by my book, Chasing Simple Marketing, and you can grab your own at amandawarfield. com / book.

How do I find time to create content without overwhelming myself? Where should I even be showing up in my marketing? How do I come up with fresh content ideas? Where should I be focusing my marketing efforts? What is lead generation anyways, and how do I do it? Are launches still a thing? And most importantly, How do I put it all together to market my business strategically?

Can I really grow my business without spending all of my time marketing? These are some of the questions that float around in your head. When you think of marketing, welcome friend, this is chasing simple where practical marketing strategy meets simplicity. I’m your host, Amanda Warfield, simplicity focused content marketing and launch strategist, speaker, educator, and author of chasing simple marketing.

I traded in my classroom lesson plans for helping creative entrepreneurs sustainably fit marketing into their business without it taking over their business. So that they have time to grow their business, take time off, and live the life they dreamed about when they first decided to go out on their own.

When I’m working, you can find me working with one on one clients, such as the Contract Shop and Rebecca Rice Photography on their marketing strategy and copywriting, or helping my students simplify their marketing and launches. And when I’m not, you can find me spending time outside with my husband, Russell, Reading in our hammock, watching Gamecock Sports, traveling, or forcing our cats to snuggle me.

If you feel overwhelmed by marketing, you aren’t alone. Many entrepreneurs find marketing frustrating, overwhelming, and simply an obligation. They know they need it, but they don’t enjoy how easily it can suck up their time when what they really want to be doing is the thing that they started their business to do.

Which is why I’m here to help make marketing simple and less time consuming so that you can spend less time on your marketing and more time growing your business and doing what you love each week. I’ll bring you transparent conversations, actionable steps, and judgment free community to encourage and equip you.

So grab yourself a cup of coffee or whatever your drink of choices and meet me here each week for love, support. Practical tips and advice on uncomplicating your marketing and business. Let’s do this entrepreneurship thing together, shall we? Want even more help simplifying your marketing and business?

Love the Chasing Simple podcast? If so, I want to invite you to join me on Monday evenings at 4 p. m. Pacific time, 7 p. m. Eastern time for my weekly YouTube lives. Each week, I’ll have a topic for the week, but after my short 5 minute teaching, you’ll have the chance to ask me questions about your marketing and get an answer from me in real time.

Until now, the only way to get this kind of access to me was through my membership, courses, or one on one services. But now, all you have to do is show up live with me on Mondays. You can find my channel by searching for my handle on YouTube, at Mrs. Amanda Warfield, or by heading to amandawarfield. com / YouTube.

I hope to see you Monday! In theory, waiting for inspiration to strike in order to create your marketing materials sounds great, right? You are able to sit down and make sure what you’re putting out is really high quality content and is really getting your point across, it’s helping your people, it’s, you know, it’s the best of what comes out of your mind.

Sounds great, right? However, the problems So, multiple problems with waiting for that consistency to strike are there many. And ultimately, waiting for inspiration to strike is going to do more harm to your marketing and your business than good. The harm and the cons will outweigh the pros and the benefits.

First and foremost, what happens when you’re feeling inspired and you can’t step away? What if you’re in the middle of volunteering in your child’s classroom, or you’re in the middle of a family walk, or you’re out and about running errands? There’s so many life things that could happen and interrupt that inspiration, or I guess more accurately, the inspiration could interrupt.

But make it impossible for you to actually sit down and create that content, right? And so then the inspiration is lost and that time slot is missed and you don’t know when you’ll get another one. The, I guess, part B of that same issue, that same stance, is that you can’t control your inspiration. You can’t decide when it might happen and not only is this frustrating just on a typical normal day to day week to week basis, but what happens when life What happens when you are so overwhelmed and you’ve got so much on your plate that, well, guess what’s not going to come visit?

Inspiration. That’s going to be the first thing to go. And so not being able to control when you feel inspired, what happens then when you’re not inspired and you’re not inspired for a long period of time? Well, you’re not consistent, right? Even if you’re getting inspired on a decent basis, you’re likely not going to be consistent because, well, your inspiration probably isn’t going to produce often enough and help you create enough content to stay consistent.

And what does it mean when you’re not consistent? Well, it means that you’re ghosting your audience. You are, if you’re ghosting them and they notice, you’re eroding the foundation of know, like, and trust that you’ve built with those that you already have built a foundation with. You erode that foundation, but you’re also not, if you’re not consistent, you’re not building know, like, and trust with new people.

And even within that point, you’ve got, okay, I’m inspired and I’m going to spend 30 minutes creating this amazing Instagram post and it’s going to get me engagement and blah, blah, blah, blah. But then it disappears within a day. And so you waited until you were inspired. You created an amazing post, high quality.

But did it actually really move the needle in your business? Probably not. Because your marketing is not your business. There’s so much more to your business than the marketing aspect of it. And marketing is both an art and a science. And the inspiration, that’s the art side of it, right? But, What often happens with our inspiration is we get inspired about different things and different topics.

And so what ends up happening is we’re inconsistent, both in how often we’re showing up, but also in the topics we’re talking about. Our topics are kind of all over the place when we’re waiting for inspiration, which means that we’re not moving people through the customer journey. We’re not moving people through the buyer’s journey.

We aren’t strategically showcasing our offers in our business. We don’t have that strategy, that science side of the marketing. And without that, you may grow followers, but you’re not going to grow your business, most likely. For all of those reasons, and probably many more, we cannot wait for inspiration to strike in order to create content.

We can utilize and bottle the inspiration that we receive and that comes to us to help improve our batch week and our marketing. What in the world does batch week have to do with this? I’m glad you asked. So when it comes to batching, we want to create a month’s worth of content in one week. Well, that is it.

Not a small amount of content. And so if we can bottle our inspiration, we can help leverage that inspiration during batch week, which makes batch week a whole lot easier. Now you might be thinking, you just said don’t wait for inspiration, you just said you can’t control inspiration, what are you talking about?

What I want you to do, when you feel inspired, instead of sitting down and creating the content itself, go to your content bank, Write down what your ideas are. Write down all the things that are swirling in your head in that moment when you have all of these ideas and you’re super inspired. Write it all down, brain dump it out into your content bank.

And then, wait, don’t create the content. But when your next batch week comes around, what you’ll do is you’ll open up that content bank and you’ll go, okay, here is. What I need to be talking about, here is my pillar topics. Here are, within those pillar topics, the different offers that I’m trying to lead to.

You look at your strategy and what you’re trying to talk about essentially, and then you look at the content bank, the content that you’ve curated when you were inspired And you go, okay, what makes sense for where I’m at in my strategy right now? Take that, that piece of content that you were inspired by, right?

You were inspired to write down and utilize that in your batching. And so that way, batching, you’ve already got ideas and it becomes so much simpler because you have ideas that are great because they came to you when they were inspired. So you’re able to bottle that inspiration and say, okay, here’s what’s next.

Here is this great piece of content, this great idea I have. I’ve bottled it. I’m not losing it, but I’m just not using it right this second. And then when it comes time to batching, you’ve got the art, you just add the art to the science aspect of it. So what should a content bank look like? I like to create mine in Trello.

Any project management tool should work for this realistically. I know some people like to do them on their notes app or in a Google doc. Those can work too. If that works for you, great. I love the user interface of Trello because what I do is I create lists and then cards. And I like the ability to move the cards around.

I like the ability to add images or links or attachments or whatever it may be that I want to add to a specific idea as I’m feeling inspired. And I just love that ability and I find that I can do that easier in Trello versus my Notes app or a Google Doc. So what I do logistically with my content bank is I have my Trello board.

The board is just called Content Bank. Within the board, I have a list for each of my pillar topics in my business. So for me, my pillar topics are simplifying your content creation, simplifying your marketing strategy, and simplifying your launches in your launch runway. So those are my three main pillar topics.

So I have a list for each of those, but then you could even take that a step further and you could go, okay, well, simplifying your content creation, I can talk about batching, right? I can talk about how to save time with creating content. I can talk about the importance of showing up consistently and consistency within those main lists.

I can have other. list as well. Or I could create a new list. I could create three lists or four lists for each of the main lists. But I also will add things like this would be really great to talk about this specific year during the holiday season, right? I also, outside of doing, okay, this specific year I’d like to talk about this thing at some point or during this specific quarter or something like that, I also use my annual survey, which I talk about in a previous episode really recently, I’ll link to it in the show notes if you want to listen to it and snag my annual survey strategy, but I take the results from my annual surveys and I put those.

in my Trello board as well. And so what I do is I have 2024 requests, 2023 requests, so on. It’s like each year I create a new list. And then within that I have a card that says questions about marketing strategy, questions about content creation, questions about launching, questions about offer creation and ask me anything.

I’ve also got just Just random questions that don’t really fit into any of those that I’ve been asked. And I take all of the responses in my annual survey. I Add them into each of these cards, and then anytime I get a question during the year as well on Instagram, or in person, or whatever, I will add it to these too.

And that way, I can always go back and say, okay, what questions are being asked about this specific thing? Okay, I am strategically needing to talk about content creation. So what are the questions that I’ve been asked recently about that? What am I seeing patterns of? So not only do I put all of my ideas as I’m feeling inspired into my content bank, I’m also putting in all of the questions that I’m asked and the bulk of those coming from My annual survey, but if you have the chasing simple content planner, there’s also in the back a place where it’s like questions.

I’ve been asked. You can jot those down as you get them within that and then go into your content bank once a month when you’re doing batching and go. Okay, what questions do I need to move over from my Okay. Content planner into my content bank. So by doing both my My inspiration and what people are asking about I’ve got that art and that science within the content bank itself and then the final thing that I do within my content bank that you can decide if you would like to do is When I repurpose a piece of content and I’m not using All of the repurposed content initially.

So, okay, if I have a blog post or a podcast episode or a YouTube video, typically what I like to do is I like to take one piece of long form content and repurpose it into two emails and at least five social media captions. I’m not going to post five social media captions all at once back to back to back though, about the same piece of content.

And so what I’ll do is I might use one or two of them. And if I create extra, I will put. Those already written captions in my content bank as well. And so then when I come to a batch week where I’m like, I don’t have the time or the space right now to do a full batch week, I can copy and paste content that I’ve already written fully out and use it in that batch week.

Those are the three big ways that I use my content bank to help simplify my batch week. Your action step this week is to start your content bank if you haven’t already. Go ahead. And even if it’s just as simple as you’ve opened up your project management system, you’ve created a board for it, and you’ve started a couple lists, it can be that simple.

And your book recommendation for this week is Winter in Paradise by Elin Hildebrand. I did not expect to love this one as much as I did. I read a lot of her books, and more often than not, they fall around the three star range for me. Sometimes she has a really great one that I really, really love, and I, I know I’ve recommended more of her stuff before, but often I’m like, yeah, it was good.

It was worth the read, for sure, but didn’t blow me out of the water. This one I found so intriguing. It’s about a wife whose husband all of a sudden dies in an accident, and she realizes after his death that he’s been leading a double life, and it’s this whole thing. Um, and I won’t do any spoilers, but I’ll link to it in the show notes if you’re interested.

Again, that’s Winter in Paradise by Helen Hildebrand. And until next time, my friend, I hope that you’ll go out and uncomplicate your marketing and business.

Thank you so much for joining me here today, friend. You can find this episode show notes as well as all the resources you need to simplify your marketing over at amandawarfield. com. If you liked what you heard here today, be sure to subscribe to the podcast so that you never miss an episode. And if you could take a moment to leave a rating and review, it would truly mean the world to me.

Ratings and reviews are the number one way that you can support a podcast and ensure that it sticks around for many more episodes to come. I’ll see you next time, now go out and uncomplicate your marketing and business.

The post Episode 218: Stop Waiting for Creativity to Strike: Use This Content Batching Tip appeared first on Amanda Warfield.

There’s nothing I love more than a great business tool that will help me simplify a process. And when it comes to marketing, I obviously love all of the tools.

Right now, everyone is talking about AI and ChatGPT – for good reason. But I wanted to go back to basics with you a bit and discuss 5 other tools that are helpful for simplifying your marketing outside of ChatGPT.

Don’t forget to subscribe so that you never miss an episode! Also, if you would be willing to leave a review on Apple Podcasts, it would mean the world to me. It’s such a small thing that can make a big difference in helping me spread this message of simplicity to other overwhelmed women.

Have a comment about today’s episode, or a topic you’d like to suggest for a future episode? Shoot me an email over at [email protected]!

There’s nothing I love more than a great business tool that will help me simplify a process. And when it comes to marketing, I obviously love all of the tools. Right now, everyone is talking about AI and ChatGPT, and for good reason. But I wanted to go back to basics with you a bit and discuss five other tools that are helpful for simplifying your marketing outside of chat GPT.

You’re listening to episode 217 of the Chasing Simple Podcast, and I’m your host, Amanda Warfield. This episode was brought to you by my book, Chasing Simple Marketing, and you can grab your own at amandawarfield. com / book.

How do I find time to create content without overwhelming myself? Where should I even be showing up in my marketing? How do I come up with fresh content ideas? Where should I be focusing my marketing efforts? What is lead generation anyways and how do I do it? Are launches still a thing? And most importantly, how do I put it all together to market my business strategically?

Can I really grow my business without spending all of my time marketing? These are some of the questions that float around in your head when you think of marketing. Welcome friend. This is Chasing Simple, where practical marketing strategy meets simplicity. I’m your host, Amanda Warfield, simplicity focused content marketing and launch strategist, speaker, educator, and author of Chasing Simple Marketing.

I traded in my classroom lesson plans for helping creative entrepreneurs sustainably fit marketing into their business without it taking over their business. So that they have time to grow their business, take time off, and live the life they dreamed about when they first decided to go out on their own.

When I’m working, you can find me working with one on one clients such as The Contract Shop and Rebecca Rice Photography on their marketing strategy and copywriting, or helping my students simplify their marketing and launches. And when I’m not, you can find me spending time outside with my husband, Russell, reading in our hammock, watching GameCock Sports, traveling, or forcing our cats to snuggle me.

If you feel overwhelmed by marketing, you aren’t alone. Many entrepreneurs find marketing frustrating, overwhelming, and simply an obligation. They know they need it, but they don’t enjoy how easily it can suck up their time when what they really want to be doing, they can’t. Is the thing that they started their business to do, which is why I’m here to help make marketing simple and less time consuming so that you can spend less time on your marketing and more time growing your business and doing what you love each week.

I’ll bring you transparent conversations. actionable steps, and judgment free community to encourage and equip you. So grab yourself a cup of coffee or whatever your drink of choice is and meet me here each week for love, support, practical tips, and advice on uncomplicating your marketing and business.

Let’s do this entrepreneurship thing together, shall we? Want even more help simplifying your marketing and business? Love the Chasing Simple podcast? If so, I want to invite you to join me on Monday evenings at 4pm Pacific Time, 7pm Eastern Time for my weekly YouTube lives. Each week, I’ll have a topic for the week, but after my short five minute teaching, you’ll have the chance to ask me questions about your marketing and get an answer from me in real time.

Until now, the only way to get this kind of access to me was through my membership, courses, or one on one services. But now, All you have to do is show up live with me on Mondays. You can find my channel by searching for my handle on YouTube at Mrs. Amanda Warfield or by heading to amandawarfield. com / YouTube.

I hope to see you Monday. So when it comes to keeping up with all of the marketing demands that are out there, and honestly, just, Staying afloat, it feels like. We want to try to make our content marketing especially as simple as possible. We want to be able to hit that easy button, right? So that we can then focus our marketing efforts on the things that are going to bring in new audience members.

Because our content is part of our nurture strategy. And the purpose of that is to nurture the people that are already in our audience. And sometimes, yes. It helps us grow, but it’s not a growth strategy. And so we want to make our nurture strategy as simple as possible so that we can show up consistently for our audience and we can say, Hey, let me pour into you without spending all of our time on our nurture strategy.

So that we can then focus on growth strategies to bring more people to our audience to nurture them, right? How do we do that? Well, we want to make sure that we use tools that are going to help us make our nurture marketing as simple as possible. So the first tool that I highly recommend everyone have is a content bank and you can create this however you please.

I currently have mine set up in Trello. I’m playing around with ClickUp. Trello seems to be. My favorite at this point for this right now, but you could use any project management tool. You could use a Google Doc I mean it can be really really simple to create this. So basically a content bank is Just a whole a place where you can organize your ideas for potential future content Now the reason I like Trello is because I can Create a new card for each topic, and I can add notes, I can add attachments, I can add links to go, Oh, I could link to this episode with this, or I could link to this blog post with this.

And I can just give myself a more full idea and really jot down everything I’m thinking as I’m brain dumping this. It makes it really easy that once you’ve used an idea, you can get rid of it quickly and easily. You also can organize it and categorize it with lists, which is why I like the way the user interface in Trello is, but any project management tool you can do this with.

That is why I don’t like using my notes app though. I know a lot of people like to use their notes app in their phone, but what ultimately ends up happening is you have this huge list of content ideas and it gets really overwhelming. So I like to actually, I’ve got my. Pillar topics, right in my business, simplifying your marketing strategy, simplifying your launches and simplifying your content creation.

Those are kind of my three big pillars, my overarching pillars of topics in my business. And so I can then have a list based on each of those. And it just makes it easier. You can definitely do that in your notes app too, but I don’t know. I just like a project management tool for that, but you want to use your content bank for anytime you’ve got an idea, write it down in there.

This is also for those of you that are like, oh, and we’ll talk more about this next week But if you’re like, oh, I can only batch when I’m inspired No, just when you’re inspired put things in your content bank, right? So your content bank is super useful so that when it comes time to sit down and create your content You have all of these ideas and you’re not starting from scratch It makes that first planning day and even the writing days and the recording days So much simpler because you’ve already written down a ton of stuff, right?

You So, highly recommend creating a content make for yourself. The second tool that I really recommend is a scheduling tool of some sort. Now, I know a lot of people are like, oh, I’ve heard scheduling tools will dock you in the algorithm, blah, blah, blah. It’s not true. Facebook has its own native scheduling tool.

You can use the native Facebook scheduling tool for Facebook and Instagram, if you’d like, they would have put all of that time and money into creating their own scheduling tool. If they were going to dock you for using scheduling tools, but also let’s be real, the algorithm. And it’s not there to help us, so it’s not worth worrying about.

I won’t get on that soapbox. But basically, use a scheduling tool. That way, you don’t have to sit there and make reminders every day to, oh yeah, I gotta go in and post this story, or oh yeah, I gotta go in and post this post, or whatever. Instead, you sit down, you create it, you schedule it, you don’t have to think about it again, and it naturally goes out and nurtures your audience, right?

I personally use Plan, P L A N N, uh, I believe they’re planthat. com, and I’ll put an affiliate link below in the show notes if you want to check that out, but I like Plan because I can do all of my scheduling there, including Pinterest. So, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, I can do all of those in there, which is really nice to just have one convenient tool that does all of them, but what I also like about Plan is that it allows for easy repurposing.

You can literally create an Instagram post and then click on it and say, okay, repurpose for LinkedIn, repurpose for this. And so you can still go in and tweak it and all of that, but it makes it really like, what, two, three clicks. And then you’ve got that really simply repurposed. Repurposed for other platforms as well, which is really nice.

Now, the third tool that I highly recommend is using Canva and Canva templates. This one seems obvious, but if you don’t have set branded templates for yourself for the content that you’re constantly putting out, like your blog posts, right? Those images should all look fairly similar and you can just quickly move Around the picture or change out the picture or change out what the font says Or your pinterest graphics.

There are so many different templates that you can create for yourself that makes creating graphics So simple and so you want to make sure you really utilize those campa also has a The ability to make reels and things. Now, I haven’t done too much with that, but there’s so much you can do with Canva that you can then use to quickly and simply create that nurture marketing for yourself.

And the fourth tool I have for you is Descript. We use Descript a ton in my business. It’s really great because you can take audio and video and transcribe it. And then once you have that transcription, you You can use it for a true transcript, you can also use it for closed captioning. You can export, I think it’s the VTT, I don’t remember exactly, but you can export the closed caption, which makes it so easy for creating course videos or any other videos you put up on your website and you want to make sure that you have that closed captioning on there.

It does the transcripts, it does that, but you can also edit your audio and video within Descript, which is so cool. I know that my virtual assistant does a ton of that for me in Descript for my private podcast and for other audio things and video things that I create for my business. She uses that a ton, and it’s so nice and simple to be able to edit it, transcribe it, and get the closed captions all in one spot.

And then the fifth tool, quote unquote, that I have for you is getting hired help. Like I just mentioned, I have my VA. She helps me a ton with my marketing. I do a lot of the creation aspect, and then she does a lot of the repurpose. Repurposing and scheduling for me and that cuts down on how much time I have to spend you doing a content creation each month I help so many of my clients with their marketing.

I’m writing for them. I’m doing the strategy for them Having hired help can help take so much time and also mental effort off of what you’re doing with your marketing So those are the five goals. I’ve got for you that can help make your marketing simple and help it easy And help you more easily keep up with those marketing demands.

So again, those are a content bank, a scheduling tool, templates, Descript, and then help, hired help. So your action step for this week is to send me a DM and tell me what your biggest struggle with keeping up with marketing is. And I’ll tell you my favorite tools that will help with that struggle. So send me a DM.

I’m at Mrs. Amanda Warfield over on Instagram. Now, this week’s book recommendation is Beyond the Wand by Tom Felton. I was shocked at how well written this was. I’m pretty sure he actually wrote this himself based on the Ford that Emma Watson wrote. It seems like he wrote it himself, like there wasn’t a ghostwriter.

But, it’s so well written, it’s such a, a quick read, it’s, he’s funny, I mean it just, it was really cool to get to see behind Draco Malfoy, quote unquote, um, and what his life looked like. And what I found so interesting was he talked about how life obviously changed for Rupert and Daniel and Emma. Because they couldn’t go anywhere without being recognized, but he said that that didn’t necessarily happen for him, which really surprised me.

Because part of me feels like he’s such a main character, and yet at the same time, I actually have probably, like, I’ve probably passed celebrities in real life and never noticed because I just live in my own little bubble, so maybe it’s not that surprising, but Anyways, total tangent, but it was such a great read.

I actually read it while we were in Japan and I don’t, unless we’re like at the beach, I don’t typically get through books quickly when we’re on vacation because we’re, we’re kind of like go, go, go vacationers. But because it was such an easy and fun read, I, I read the whole book while we were in Japan, which just also surprised me.

So anyways, Beyond the Wand by Tom Felton. If you haven’t read it and you’re a Harry Potter fan, I highly recommend it and I will link to that in the show notes. And until next time, my friend, I hope you’ll go out and uncomplicate your marketing and business.

Thank you so much for joining me here today, friend. You can find this episode show notes as well as all of the resources you need to simplify your marketing over at amandawarfield. com. If you liked what you heard here today, be sure to subscribe to the podcast so that you never miss an episode. And if you could take a moment to leave a rating and review, it would truly mean the world to me.

Ratings and reviews are the number one way that you can support a podcast And ensure that it sticks around for many more episodes to come. I’ll see you next time. Now go out and uncomplicate your marketing and business.

The post Episode 217: Tools that Help Keep Up with Marketing Demands appeared first on Amanda Warfield.

Ever since July, I have found myself stuck on the content creation hamster wheel.

Yes, the queen of batching has been inconsistent and all over the place with her own content. Why? Because I haven’t been following my own system.

Or, more correctly, because life has been life-ing and I didn’t take the time to re-evaluate my own system.

In today’s episode I’m sharing all of the things I finally figured out and wish I had done sooner to get myself back off the content creation hamster wheel and back into the content creation groove. Plus, a few extra tips that would help as well that you could try if you’ve found yourself in the same place.

Don’t forget to subscribe so that you never miss an episode! Also, if you would be willing to leave a review on Apple Podcasts, it would mean the world to me. It’s such a small thing that can make a big difference in helping me spread this message of simplicity to other overwhelmed women.

Have a comment about today’s episode, or a topic you’d like to suggest for a future episode? Shoot me an email over at [email protected]!

Ever since July, I have found myself stuck on the content creation hamster wheel. Yes, the queen of batching has been inconsistent and all over the place with her own content. Why? Because I haven’t been following my own system. Or, more correctly, because life has been lifing and I didn’t take the time to reevaluate my own system.

So in today’s episode, I’m sharing all of the things I finally figured out and wish I had done sooner to get myself back off that content creation hamster wheel. Plus, a few extra tips that would help as well, that you could try if you’ve found yourself in the same place. You’re listening to episode 216 of the Chasing Simple Podcast, and I’m your host, Amanda Warfield.

This episode was brought to you by my book, Chasing Simple Marketing, and you can grab your own at amandawarfield. com / book.

How do I find time to create content without the whelming How do I come up with fresh content ideas? Where should I be focusing my marketing efforts? What is lead generation anyways, and how do I do it? Are launches still a thing? And most importantly, How do I put it all together to market my business strategically?

Can I really grow my business without spending all of my time marketing? These are some of the questions that float around in your head. When you think of marketing, welcome friend, this is chasing simple where practical marketing strategy meets simplicity. I’m your host, Amanda Warfield, simplicity focused content marketing and launch strategist, speaker, educator, and author of chasing simple marketing.

I traded in my classroom lesson plans for helping creative entrepreneurs sustainably fit marketing into their business without it taking over their business. So that they have time to grow their business, take time off, and live the life they dreamed about when they first decided to go out on their own.

When I’m working, you can find me working with one on one clients such as The Contract Shop and Rebecca Rice Photography on their marketing strategy and copywriting, or helping my students simplify their marketing and launches. And when I’m not, you can find me spending time outside with my husband, Russell, reading in our hammock, watching Gamecock Sports, traveling, or forcing our cats to snuggle me.

If you feel overwhelmed by marketing, you aren’t alone. Many entrepreneurs find marketing frustrating, overwhelming, and simply an obligation. They know they need it, but they don’t enjoy how easily it can suck up their time when what they really want to be doing is the thing that they started their business to do.

Which is why I’m here, to help make marketing simple and less time consuming, so that you can spend less time on your marketing, and more time growing your business and doing what you love. Each week, I’ll bring you transparent conversations, actionable steps, and judgment free community to encourage and equip you.

So grab yourself a cup of coffee, or whatever your drink of choice is, and meet me here each week for love, support, and more. Practical tips and advice on uncomplicating your marketing and business. Let’s do this entrepreneurship thing together, shall we? Want even more help simplifying your marketing and business?

Love the Chasing Simple podcast? If so, I want to invite you to join me on Monday evenings at 4 p. m. Pacific time, 7 p. m. Eastern time for my weekly YouTube lives. Each week, I’ll have a topic for the week, but after my short five minute teaching, you’ll have the chance to ask me questions about your marketing and get an answer from me in real time.

Until now, the only way to get this kind of access to me was through my membership, courses, or one on one services. But now, All you have to do is show up live with me on Mondays. You can find my channel by searching for my handle on YouTube, at Mrs. Amanda Warfield, or by heading to amandawarfield. com / YouTube.

I hope to see you Monday! When I teach my students how to create their own batch week routines, and set up their own batch week, and then go through their own batch week, one of the things that I emphasize Batchweek doesn’t have to go perfectly in order to be successful because Life happens, life throws us curveballs, and so very rarely does our week ever go exactly how we plan for it to.

Meaning that often, our batch weeks don’t get as complete as we hope they would, right? And that’s okay. That’s normal, and what we end up doing is enough to keep us off of that content creation hamster wheel. However, What happens when life throws you curveballs? major major curveballs back to back to back and You find yourself essentially, you know treading water or possibly even drowning a bit and you just are able to do anything but the very bare minimum for life and business.

Well, that is where we end up in this place of being stuck back on that content creation hamster wheel, right? I, like I mentioned in the introduction, had this happen in the last year, and I am finally back in a place where I am no longer feeling like I’m on the content creation hamster wheel. And I wanted to share with you how I got back off of it so that maybe it doesn’t last quite so long for you.

So this started for me technically at the end of July, but because I had batched content August of last year, and it’s, Me, as I’m recording this, and I have been on the content creation hamster wheel for that long. If you’ve been around, you know my book launched in July of last year. And I launched on my birthday and I had, you know, everything prepped out for all of July, all of August, all of that content was scheduled, ready to go, right?

I was on my usual batching game. So for my birthday and for the book launch, we did this massive birthday, you know, thing where we spent time in Seattle and then we spent like with our friends, cause at the time we were living in South Carolina still, and then we flew down to Disneyland and it was.

Absolutely incredible. And because I had patched, it was no big deal, right? Taking time off, great, exciting, wonderful. Well then, day of my birthday, our final day of the trip, I came down with COVID. Now this was also the day of the book launch, where I was supposed to be showing up and going live and all of this stuff.

Didn’t happen. Five days later, my grandfather passes. So that was very end of, like, last day of July. He passes. Then, in August, Russell’s mother passes. And then, in September, we decide to move across the country. October, we’re dealing with buying a house that we’ve never seen. You know, it, all the stuff.

November, I moved, started a part time job. And December, there was flying back for Christmas, getting the other cat. So unfort like, every month was something. January, I had multiple conferences to attend. February, I don’t even know what happened in February. Oh, we had camp for my second job. My side hustle, I guess you can call it.

And, and then in March, we spent three weeks in Japan. Russell finally moved out here. April, we finally got our stuff and have spent the last month unpacking. I mean, it has literally been a month. major curveballs, even though some were planned, non stop since July of last year. And I have spent this entire time off of the content creation hamster, er, on the content creation hamster wheel off of my batch week schedule, and I have been desperately trying to get back.

The first thing that I wish I had done, and that I highly encourage you to do, is to acknowledge that life is difficult. extra full right now. It’s extra full right now. Give yourself grace that you don’t need to have it all figured out, that you don’t need to have your perfect batch week. This was something I really struggled with.

I kept thinking I needed to put out the exact same amount of content that I’ve always put out and if I could just, if I could just sit down and do a batch week it would be fine. But of course, wasn’t able to just sit down and do a batch week. That’s not how life works. When you have other things that are taking precedence and you’re, you’re treading water, you can’t just sit down and do a batch week, right?

It’s got to be something that you’ve intentionally planned for. And in this case, I needed to intentionally plan for a lot less than I was trying to fit in. And I wasn’t giving myself that grace and I wasn’t really acknowledging that life was extra full. Like I was. But then I would brush it off and say well life is really full, but man gotta get this batch week done You know, so that was something that I wish I had done.

I wish I just said you know what life is really full What can I do to get back on the schedule and get back to putting at least some content out consistently, right? the next thing that I needed to do is to schedule out batch week for the rest of the year. Now, putting batch week on the calendar for every single month is one of the things that I do when I plan out my year.

And so I did have batch week on the calendar, but what I really needed to do was go back in and re schedule batch week for the rest of the year. Because I, again, wasn’t giving myself the appropriate amount of grace, I wasn’t being realistic with myself, and There were new things that have been added to my calendar since I originally set up the calendar that made some of these batch weeks not really possible.

When you put your batch weeks on the calendar, it is important to know that the next few months, they may be chaotic, because realistically, when you put batch week on the calendar, ideally, the only thing you’re doing that week is batch week, right? But, realistically, We all put things in our calendar months out at a time and in advance.

And so when you put batch week on the calendar, it may conflict with some things. And so this is another moment of giving yourself grace and saying for the next few months, I may just do less during batch week. I may put out less content than I normally do as long as I’m showing up consistently and then after a few months go by because Once you have Batch Week on your calendar, you’re going to protect it, you’ll get to a point where Batch Week will just be Batch Week because you don’t have previous commitments already on that calendar.

And so I wish I had gone back and done that and given myself that grace to finish out. Okay, here’s what Batch Week is going to look like. These few are going to be a little chaotic. I need to cut back, right? That’s really what I needed to do. I needed to cut back on how much I was trying to do, I needed to give myself grace, and I needed to schedule out batch week, or reschedule, in my case, for the rest of the year.

The final thing that I wish I had done is I wish I had cut my losses. And by that I mean, so what I was essentially trying to do for every batch week is I was trying to finish up the content for the current month that never got created and also batch out the next month’s content. And I wish what I had done and said instead was just cut my losses for the current month, been inconsistent, just let it go, and then only focused on creating content for the next month.

That way I was able. Once I did this I was able to finally go, okay, I’ve created all the content for the next month I’m just not gonna be consistent for the rest of this month. That’s okay. It is what it is I’m gonna cut my losses and now I’m back on my batch week schedule instead of essentially trying to fit in two batch weeks into one or even less than one batch week because of the way that life was going so Those are the things that I wish I had done sooner than I finally did in order to get back off of the content creation hamster wheel and back onto my batch week schedule, but I wish I’d done them sooner, so I wanted to share that with you.

The other two options, if you just really cannot get off of that content creation hamster wheel, again, cutting back, cutting back permanently on how much you’re doing, is something you can do and then you can also hire help. You can hire people who are going to help take some of it off your plate and then be able to do less moving forward.

So those are two other options if you’re like, I really just cannot get off of this hamster wheel. I, I wasn’t on it and now I’m back on it and I just can’t find my way back off. Those are two things that you can also do. So here’s your action step. Put batch week on your calendar. for the rest of the year.

And if it’s already on there, reschedule it. Go in and give yourself grace to move things around. Maybe you need to make a change. If you’re in content batching bootcamp, I highly recommend that you go back in and watch the lessons about creating your own batch week schedule. And redo it. Re evaluate where you are in your life and business so that you can reschedule that batch week.

I had to change mine completely. I used to do Monday to Thursday for batch week and I’ve had to now start my batch week on Thursdays instead because of my new schedule and so I wouldn’t have known to do that if I hadn’t taken the step back to re evaluate, is what I’m currently doing working? Obviously it’s not, so what do I need to change?

So that’s your action step for this week, and then your book recommendation is The Lost Summers of Newport by Beatrice Williams, Lauren Willig, and Karen White. I can’t get enough of what these women write. If you like historical fiction, you will love this book. This one is set in a couple different time periods, which is really fun, and they overlap and I just highly recommend I will link to it in the show notes so you can check it out if you’d like.

And until next time, I hope you’ll go out and uncomplicate your marketing and business.

Thank you so much for joining me here today, friend. You can find this episode show notes as well as all the resources you need to simplify your marketing over at amandawarfield. com. If you liked what you heard here today, be sure to subscribe to the podcast so that you never miss an episode. And if you could take a moment to leave a rating and review, it would truly mean the world to me.

Ratings and reviews are the number one way that you can support a podcast and ensure that it sticks around for many more episodes to come. I’ll see you next time. Now go out and uncomplicate your marketing and business.

The post Episode 216: Finding a Content Creation Groove when Life is Throwing Curveballs appeared first on Amanda Warfield.

I scrapped my retreat launch last month. In fact, I scrapped the entire retreat (for 2024 at least).

This is something I always always advise clients to never do, and yet here I am breaking my own rules. So, I thought I’d pull back the curtain and share the two reasons I ultimately scrapped the retreat halfway through the launch.

Don’t forget to subscribe so that you never miss an episode! Also, if you would be willing to leave a review on Apple Podcasts, it would mean the world to me. It’s such a small thing that can make a big difference in helping me spread this message of simplicity to other overwhelmed women.

Have a comment about today’s episode, or a topic you’d like to suggest for a future episode? Shoot me an email over at [email protected]!

I scrapped my retreat launch last month. In fact, I scrapped the entire retreat for 2024 at least. This is something that I always advise clients to never do. I feel like that’s not correct grammar, but you know what I’m saying. And yet, here I am, breaking my own rules, so I thought I’d pull back the curtain and share the two reasons that I ultimately scrapped the retreat halfway through the launch.

You’re listening to episode 215 of the Chasing Simple podcast, and I’m your host, Amanda Warfield. This episode was brought to you by my book, Chasing Simple Marketing, and you can grab your own at amandawarfield. com / book.

How do I find time to create content without overwhelming myself? Where should I even be showing up in my marketing? How do I come up with fresh content ideas? Where should I be focusing my marketing efforts? What is lead generation anyways and how do I do it? Are launches still a thing? And most importantly, How do I put it all together to market my business strategically?

Can I really grow my business without spending all of my time marketing? These are some of the questions that float around in your head. When you think of marketing welcome friend, this is chasing simple or practical marketing strategy meets simplicity. I’m your host, Amanda Warfield, simplicity focused content, marketing and launch strategist, speaker, educator, and author of chasing simple marketing.

I traded in my classroom lesson plans for helping creative entrepreneurs sustainably fit marketing into their business without it taking over their business, so that they have time to grow their business, take time off, and live the life they dreamed about when they first decided to go out on their own.

When I’m working, you can find me working with one on one clients, such as The Contract Shop and Rebecca Rice Photography on their marketing strategy and copywriting, or helping my students simplify their marketing and launches. And when I’m not, you can find me spending time outside with my husband, Russell, reading in our hammock, watching Gamecock Sports, traveling, or forcing our cats to snuggle me.

If you feel overwhelmed by marketing, you aren’t alone. Many entrepreneurs find marketing frustrating, overwhelming, and simply an obligation. They know they need it, but they don’t enjoy how easily it can suck up their time when what they really want to be doing is the thing that they started their business to do.

Which is why I’m here to help make marketing simple and less time consuming so that you can spend less time on your marketing and more time growing your business and doing what you love each week, offer you transparent conversations, actionable steps, and judgment free community to encourage and equip you.

So grab yourself a cup of coffee or whatever your drink of choices and meet me here each week for love, support. Practical tips and advice on uncomplicating your marketing and business. Let’s do this entrepreneurship thing together. Shall we want even more help? Simplifying your marketing and business love the chasing simple podcasts.

If so, I want to invite you to join me on Monday evenings at 4 p. m. Pacific time, 7 p. m. Eastern time for my weekly YouTube lives. Each week I’ll have a topic for the week, but after my short five minute teaching, you’ll have the chance to ask me questions about your marketing and get an answer from me in real time.

Until now, the only way to get this kind of access to me was through my membership, courses, or one on one services. But now, All you have to do is show up live with me on Mondays. You can find my channel by searching for my handle on YouTube at Mrs. Amanda Warfield, or by heading to amandawarfield. com / YouTube.

I hope to see you Monday. I am a huge proponent of seeing a launch through. I. I always, always, always recommend to my clients that even when things are feeling like it’s not going as well as you’d hoped, which often happens at the midway point of a launch, that you keep pushing through. You continue consistently showing up, talking about the thing you’re launching, talking about your offer, talking about the doors open, doors closed, or end of bonus, or whatever it is that your, your scarcity piece is, right?

Never let clients stop a launch halfway through. And yet that’s exactly what I did with my own retreat launch this last month. So, it essentially came down to two things. two reasons that I decided about halfway through the launch that I was just gonna cut my losses and be done. The first of those was lack of interest.

Now, this honestly is usually never an excuse, and it’s one I don’t let my clients take, but here we are. So I had a waitlist for the retreat, and I had people I had talked to who had said they were going to purchase, who were going to come, and What ended up happening is I opened the doors to the waitlist, they got early access, so they got to save their spot first, which in this case there were only, I think, seven spots, and so that, that’s a big deal for this kind of launch.

They only, they were able to grab their seat first, and then they also got a bigger discount on that first day. And doors opened to the waitlist, doors closed to the waitlist, nobody from the waitlist purchased. Then I opened it to the rest of my list, and honestly, I had a ton of clicks. So when I say lack of interest, there truly was interest.

And do 100 percent plan to do a retreat at some point, I really do. But there was Lots of clicks, but no conversations were being started with me. No one was asking questions. No one was, no one was purchasing their ticket or putting down a deposit. And this lack of interest, quote unquote, really showed me that I had.

not prepared my audience well for this launch. And this lack of prep led to no tickets being sold, and no conversations being started, and questions not being asked. That, to me, made me realize that I really had done both my audience and myself a disservice. And I had done that lack of prep, A, because I personally have been stuck on the content creation hamster wheel myself.

As I’ve taken on more clients and as we’ve gone through this whole move and major life change, I have really struggled to find the balance between working in my business and working on my business. And so I have spent since October. Gosh, honestly, probably since last August, it feels like I have been working in my business.

I’ve been working for clients and that’s it. I haven’t been doing what I need to do for my own business. That has been a big struggle. And due to that, I, I have not been as consistent, the podcast has been consistent thankfully, but I haven’t been as consistent as I’d like on social media. I haven’t been consistent as I’d like through my emails and due to that it, I wasn’t able to truly prepare my audience well for this upcoming launch.

I also have been trying to talk about too many things at once, and that’s been an issue too. I really should have solely talked about this retreat for about three months ahead of time, and I just didn’t. So I didn’t prepare my audience well for this launch, and that was very, very, very clear with The the lack of quote unquote again interest that was happening and once we got a few days into the launch and No one had bought a ticket.

Even those that had said I’m definitely coming. I thought you know what I need to reevaluate and because this type of launch isn’t as simple as a you know a course launch or something like that where If one person buys the course, that’s all you need, right? That’s not really the case with retreats because I had already put down the deposit for our house.

Once I have someone’s money, it’s like, okay, well, then I have to do a refund if we end up cancelling. And so I started thinking about all of these things, and I started thinking about what would it look like to cancel this retreat. And, the more I thought about it, the more that felt like the right move.

Because of the lack of interest, which, let’s be clear, that is only part A of this, again, I normally would not let a client pull out of a launch like this, especially because with retreats, the initial launch period isn’t the end all be all. You still have up until the retreat to sell those tickets, right?

I started thinking about what that would look like for the next few months the retreat this launch happened in May The retreat was happening in September, which I honestly probably should have launched tickets sooner And I had waited because I told myself I was gonna do a good job of prepping that runway and then I didn’t so The other thing that I was thinking about as I’m thinking about, okay, well, I’m gonna have to really push for these tickets over the next few months and do all the prep work to prepare for it and all these other things that I have going on and I really just went, you know what?

I’m feeling so overwhelmed and this is the second reason that I ultimately truly decided to scrap the launch combined with the lack of interest of I am in May, feeling like I’m finally coming out of a hole that I have felt like I’ve been in since the beginning. August. Since July 26th when I came down with COVID and my grandfather died a few days later and the whole move process started.

Like, our life has been chaos since my birthday last year, the day I launched the book. And I was like, I feel like I’m finally coming up for air. I’m not spending Every spare second working on client work. I’m ahead on client work and the last couple of weeks. I’ve actually been able to take a step back and I’ve been able to do my client work and then have free space and I want to get to a place where I’m not feeling so overwhelmed and I’m able to, okay, I’m doing my client work and I’m also doing my other work, which as I’m recording this, it’s a Monday and this week is going to be that week.

I’m super pumped, but I’m just finally getting here. And at the time of Scrappy the launch, I wasn’t here yet. And I was like, man, like, I don’t want to go back into a state of overwhelm. And the idea of adding this major project to my plate and continuing to have to really push and not be able to push any of my other offers.

Which, I guess that’s a third reason, but I didn’t want to be stuck in that overwhelm, and I didn’t want to put myself back in that place, and frankly, the reason that I ended up deciding to go for the, there were a couple reasons I decided to go for the retreat this year, and none of them were truly smart business moves.

First, my friend Haley Gavin is hosting her retreat this year in June, and by the time this comes out. I think her retreat will like be happening, but she really inspired me to do it. I was like, man, you’re doing it. I can finally do it. I’ve been saying I wanted to do this in 2019 I said, I’m gonna host a retreat in 2020 and then we all know what happened, right?

So I’ve been wanting to do this for years. I’m so excited interested in doing a small retreat with just a small group of people and working on our content and having like a get it done weekend together. And Haley really inspired me. I was like, man, I really want to do this. Another reason was that frankly, I really wanted to have a good reason to go back to South Carolina.

We aren’t going to be able to make it back until Christmas this year. And I was like, man, it’d be so cool if we could do the retreat and I could make it back. Um, not a great business move, right? Just not smart. And because we were going to do it so far from where we are now. We wouldn’t really have profits from the retreat, which was reason number three, I guess, we can add in here, because paying for our airfare out there and all of the things needed for the retreat, we, we might’ve made a little bit of money, but really we wouldn’t have made much money for the business as far as profit goes.

Revenue, yes, but not profit. And so it would be like, I’m putting all this work in and hosting this retreat to break even essentially. Which is fine, and at some point, I will do it because, again, I want that community aspect. But, realistically, if I’m spending the next 5 6 months only focused on this event that’s gonna break even, I’m not bringing in the revenue I need to bring in.

I’m not able to talk about my other offers. And so, ultimately, the lack of interest. The lack of interest in putting myself back in overwhelm and the realization that I was going to be holding my own business back by hosting the retreat made me realize, okay, I need to go ahead and scrap this before anyone signs up because I’m ultimately probably going to end up cancelling.

And, uh, Because of that, I ended up scrapping the retreat launch, which didn’t feel great. I’m really sad about it, but I know that ultimately it’s the best thing to do. So, I just wanted to share those insights with you because I am such a proponent, like I’ve said over and over again, of not scrapping a launch, but There’s an exception for every rule.

So I wanted to talk through that with you and just really open the the curtains and pull ’em back and kind of show you what’s going on in the back end of my business. So your action step for this week is to evaluate what’s on your own plate, especially what is self-induced, and see where you can cut back in order to simplify for what matters.

Where are you working on things that aren’t actually moving your business forward? That are taking up a lot of time and essentially keeping your business in place. Now your book recommendation for this week is Pride by Allie Hazelwood. If you’ve read any of Allie’s books, you have probably heard people say she writes the same book in different fonts over and over again, which I love.

I’m here for it. I love the format of her books, but Pride is very, very, very different than anything she has ever written. I really hope she does more of this. It’s like fantasy, Sci fi fantasy, kind of, but still the romance that she’s known for and I highly enjoyed it. So, if you have read one or two of her books, if you put her stuff down because you’re like, eh, it’s always the same, this one is different and I highly recommend that you check that out.

I will link to it in the show notes below and you can also find it wherever you find your books. All right, my friends, until next time, I hope you’ll go out and uncomplicate your marketing and business.

Thank you so much for joining me here today, friend. You can find this episode show notes, as well as all the resources you need to simplify your marketing over at amandawarfield. com. If you liked what you heard here today, be sure to subscribe to the podcast so that you never miss an episode. And if you could take a moment to leave a rating and review, it would truly mean the world to me.

Ratings and reviews are the number one way that you can support a podcast And ensure that it sticks around for many more episodes to come. I’ll see you next time. Now go out and uncomplicate your marketing and business.

The post Episode 215: Why I Scrapped my Retreat Launch appeared first on Amanda Warfield.