More Profitable Podcast | Business Podcast Strategy for Coaches and Consultants

Welcome to episode 372 of Hit the Mic with the Stacey Harris. I'm really excited for today's episode because I know it's one that only the truest of action takers is going to listen to. Thank you for listening to this because I know it means that you are somebody who is going to get it done.

We're talking about LinkedIn today and LinkedIn is by far the least amusing social media network. However, it's also hugely valuable for pretty much everybody so we're going to talk about that a little bit today and I'm going to give you some tips on how to use it to score some business. Especially for those of you who are B2B but if you are not B2B, maybe you are business to consumer, there's still relevance because I'm guessing some part of your business could work B2B.

A great example of this is health coaches who work with, let's say, new moms. You're fairly business to consumer. You don't have to be a business owner to be a new mom or to need a health coach. Getting not necessarily physically back but your diet and feeling really good. Anyways, that's business to consumer.

However, a B2B component could be you handle a wellness trainings in corporate businesses or you want media exposure. You want to get on things like the Today Show. Guess where you can build those relationships? That's right, people. LinkedIn. So I'm pretty excited because, again, this is going to be something that's universally helpful for the people who take action.

Now before we jump in I do want to remind you, Hit the Mic Backstage is the sponsor of this here Hit the Mic podcast because it is the place to be, the best place to be, to stay up to date with all things social media, email, content marketing. That's why I need you to join me backstage this month because there is a brand new training inside of Hit the Mic Backstage that expands on exactly what we're talking about today.

It digs in on some of the LinkedIn strategies. In fact, one of the things we do in that training is I actually jump in on my computer and we go through your profile so you can do a self-guided profile review. Even better, you want to take it a step further? Go through that, make the changes, then submit it in the private community for me to take a look at, give you feedback where we can make adjustments and where you're just doing a super awesome job. All right? All right. Join us. HittheMicBackstage.com. Again, the place to be.

I love, love, love, love, love inviting you and people like you to join me backstage because it's the next step for this show. All right? All right. Let's jump in.

Communicate with them with that in mind. We run into clients all the time who are pretty strictly B to B and they're talking about Facebook. I go, "Not necessarily." You know, Facebook might not be the best option for you if you're B to B.

Now if you're a B2B and you're working with online entrepreneurs then, yeah, Facebook still does have some pretty good pull. However, there's still some quality to be had on LinkedIn and quite frankly with a lot smaller time investment. Pay attention to that but also pay attention to the language differences.

When I'm looking at writing content for LinkedIn I'm thinking about a slightly more professional tone. Now if you've spent any time listening to this podcast before you know

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Welcome to episode 371 of Hit the Mic with The Stacey Harris.

Welcome, welcome, welcome. This week we're going to talk about Facebook Ads. Some major changes and updates happening that I'm actually really excited about because I think they will make it easier for those of you who maybe are not super in love with Power Editor or even Ads Manager and the idea that there are two spaces that do different things. You're going to like today's news.

Before we jump into that though, I do want to remind you Hit the Mic Backstage is the place to go for all things Facebook ads trainings. In fact, I'm currently working on and outlining some brand new Facebook Ads trainings that are actually doing to launch in just a couple of months in December, actually December 1st. Some brand new Facebook ads videos will launch inside the membership. Until then, the ones that are in there now are super awesome.

And we have a brand new opportunity to grab a Facebook Ads training all around a strategy that's generally only available to Hit the Mic Backstage members, but I've made it available for you. If you head over to the show notes for this page you will see a link pointing you to the Facebook Ads strategy that will help you re-engage cold audience. I know, I know, you want to build a bigger audience. This is the first step to that. Get the people you already have interested actually talking to you. So head over and check that out. Again, thestaceyharris.com/episode371 to grab the show notes for this episode and while you're there, just listen to all the episodes, okay? Fantastic. I can't speak to the greatness of the first hundred, but since it's been all uphill. Or downhill? It's been all good, that's what I'm trying to say here. All right? Okay. Let's jump in.

Let's talk about the three changes I want you to be paying attention to when it comes to your Facebook Ads. FYI, I know some of you right now, right this second, are self-selecting out saying, "You know what, I don't want to know anything else. I want to hire someone to do this for me." I get that. I think that's fantastic. But I want you to make a good hiring decision. Good hiring decisions come from having just a little bit of information, so knowing and staying with me for the next 10-ish, 15-ish minutes, that's what's going to get you to a place where you can comfortably and confidently have these conversations so that you can make sure that you're hiring well. A little bit of knowledge goes a long way when it comes to hiring. And, if you're somebody who wants to DIY, what we're going to talk about is really going to set you up for success, so stay with me. Don't self-select out because you think Facebook ads are going to be boring. Stay with me, all right?

The Power Editor is still available. However, the Ads Manager is getting a lot of the Power Editor features, meaning we can do some really, really cool things like duplicate ads or campaigns in a way that we could not previously in Ads Manager. On the bright side, we have a lot of those analytics so that you can see if your ad campaign is working, making sure that we're getting that ever so important ROI, return on our investment, that comes from knowing our numbers. And so, an easy to read yet robust amount of information now resides in the Ads Manager so that you can check and make sure your ads are working.

Now, I want to throw this in there, four-and-a-half minutes after you launch your campaign, not the best time to check your numbers. In fact, ads tend to kind of work themselves out over the first probably 48 to 72 hours, so rig

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Welcome to episode 370 of Hit the Mic with The Stacey Harris.

So recently I was asked to give a 15 minute talk at an event. I was like, "Okay, so 15 minutes, what do you want me to talk about?" They were like, "Oh, well like digital marketing." I was like, "Okay, more specifically." And they were like, "Search engine optimization." I was like, "Okay, more specifically." They were like, "Social media." I was like, "Still gonna need us to narrow that down for 15 minutes." So what we came up with was the one thing you can do right now, to improve your digital marketing, also known as your online marketing, but really this applies to anything marketing. Your marketing in general, your social media, your content, whatever. This one thing will make all of them better, so that's what were going to talk about today.

Before we jump into that though, I want to remind you that this show is brought to you by its big brother, its natural upgrade, it's next step, and that's Hit the Mic Backstage. Hit the Mic Backstage is a one stop shop for all things social media marketing, trainings. We also have some email marketing trainings, and video, and we have an entire podcasting course. So it really is the place to be. If you love this show, and you want more of it, come join us at Hit the Mic Backstage. We've got two brand-new trainings that come up every month. They're either updates to previous trainings, meaning that all of the trainings in there are actually reflective of what's happening in social media now, and not two years ago when this community launched, or earlier than that.

So join us, hitthemicbackstage.com, we do have a couple spots left for the VIP level, as of the recording of this. That may not be true when it airs. If it isn't true, you can get on the wait list for the VIP option, and join us in the regular community in the meantime, which does give you access to me in the two private communities we have. One right on the website, and one over on Facebook. So there's lots of ways for you to connect with me, and the rest of the Backstage peeps. Also, hitthemicbackstage.com is the place to go. So I will see you there.

Let's jump in, and let's talk about this one thing, one thing you can do to improve your digital marketing right now. Are you ready for it? This could be the shortest episode ever. Are you ready? Now?

Seriously, the biggest digital marketing mistake I see people making, social media wise, content wise is, "If I just do XYZ, that'll solve all the problems." So they keep building on this total lack of a foundation. They say, "Oh, I saw at a conference that Instagram Stories, that's what I have to do. So I'm gonna do that. Oh, I saw that Facebook Live is where it's at, I'm gonna do that. Oh, I saw that podcasts are the only way to go. I'm gonna do that. Oh, that's not working, so I'm gonna do two episodes a week. Oh, that's not working so I'm gonna do two episodes, plus a blog post, plus a video, plus a whatever ever, ever, ever else."

Here is the real talk. Before you add anything else to your marketing plans, be it online marketing plans in general, be it just your email, be it in person networking, be it any part of your efforts to get customers, look at what you already have. Look at what's happening in those places, right now. Meaning, say okay, so I've got an email list of XYZ. I've got this many likes on my Facebook page. I have this much traffic going to my website. These are the kind of things that people are doing. If you can't tell

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Welcome to episode 369 of Hit the Mic with The Stacey Harris.

All right, so today I wanna talk about the three things you need to know for October. Yes, it's October, straight up, month one of Q4, holy macaroni. I can't believe it, where did this year go? It's a crazy month for me, I'm doing a lot, a lot, a lot of traveling, which, I'll be honest, I'm pretty excited about. I've got some vacation time planned, yay. I've got a business trip planned. It's gonna be a good month. So, I wanted to jump in and I wanted to give you guys the stuff for October right at the start of the moth, so you can make the most of your time this month, no matter what's going on.

Before we jump in, I wanna remind you that Hit the Mic with The Stacey Harris, this podcast you're listening to right now, where we talk about all things online marketing, and digital marketing, and social media marketing, and e-mail marketing ... Yes, a lot of that was the same thing. It's sponsored, it's brought to you thanks to Hit the Mic Backstage. Hit the Mic Backstage really is the upgrade for this podcast; it's where you get twice monthly trainings, constant updates on what's happening with networks, accountability from me and the rest of the community, and two different private forum areas, one right on the website and one in a private Facebook group.

It is the thing to have, the place to be if you are struggling right now, with knowing what to do, or where to do it, or when to do it. It really does cover all things strategy and implementation when it comes to getting your marketing on track, specifically your social media marketing, although we do cover some other pieces as well. It really goes in depth in all things social. Cool, cool, join us today, HittheMicBackstage.com. And we do have a couple spots left in our mastermind level, at the VIP level, which does include some one on one time with me. I will be closing the doors to that pretty quickly, either because it will fill up, or because I will be capping it a little bit lower going into the holiday time. So, if you want in, now is the time; HittheMicBackstage.com.

Let's jump into this month's three things you need to know, right?

It's gonna be really easy, in the next four to six weeks, to start thinking about Q1 of next year. And so, what I really encourage you to do, is take some time today, or this week, and reevaluate your Q4 plans. Maybe you don't have any, maybe you totally rocked the 12 week year, or 90 day planning, or whatever you call it, and you are working on building your Q4 plan because that's your next 12 weeks. Fantastic, you're right on mark.

But maybe you're one of those people who, at the beginning of the year you set up a plan for the whole 12 months. And, now is the time to check in and make sure that your Q4 plans that you came up with in January of this year, or honestly Q4 of last year, so October, November, December of last year, are still relevant. And not because you screwed up planning; if 12 month planning works for you, do it. Whatever works for you, that's what I want you to do. But, sometimes, and I know this is especially true for me, and I've talked to a couple clients about this and that's why I wanted to bring it up, maybe you've learned some things about your business this year, or your clients this year, or yourself this year, and you want to change something.

Maybe you had planned on launching something that you're not gonna launch, but you still have revenue goals, so what do you wanna launch in its place? Or promote in its place? Or do you wanna shift out of that completely and move into something else? Whatever that is, I really encourage you to take s

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Welcome to episode 367 of Hit the Mic with The Stacey Harris.

I wanna talk today about behind the scenes content. I freaking love behind the scenes content. I think it is such a fun way to connect with our audience, and so I wanna talk about what it is, why we use it, and then I wanna give some examples for some different industries on how you can use it. So stay tuned for that, 'cause this is gonna be a really cool, kind of quickie episode about a fresh way to start sharing content. So, let's get started.

So, behind the scenes content is any content that we're looking at, photos, videos, swipe files, anything where we're showing sort of the inner workings of our business, or maybe it's businesses that we work with, whatever it is. It's sort of, and this is the first thing that comes to mind, and it's a horrible, horrible phrase for this, but it's how the sausage is made; because sometimes people do wanna know. We're kind of in a time period where people like to know where stuff comes from, right? So let's show them. So that's exactly what behind the scenes content is, it's showing them how something is created.

So if you're a physical product, it's showing how your physical product is made, or what your factory looks like, or packaging, or shipping and distribution, and things like that. If you're a service based, it's behind the scenes of you working with clients, or how things are created, or websites, or whatever that is for you. For people like me, who sell digital products and information, it's showing the creation of that, it's showing building landing pages, or writing copy, and podcasting, and all those things I do to sort of make the wheels turn around here.

And I love that, because it is a connection point. So really, it's just any kind of content that shows what's happening behind closed doors. And it does not mean, by any stretch of the imagination, that you're giving away trade secrets here, or you're oversharing, or you're sharing sort of the negatives of business. Sometimes ... You know, I've seen some business coaches do this really well, and we'll talk about this more in examples, but I've seen some business coaches show really well sort of the chaos and stress behind running a business. You know, the crazy messy desk or something like that, and then sort of how they move past that. That's a great example that's both behind the scenes, and also an example of moving forward.

So it doesn't have to be just one thing. It doesn't have to be a video, or a graphic, or a text, doesn't have to be one of those things, it can be any of those things. It could be some combination of those things. So that's exactly what it is, it's behind the scenes, it's pulling back the curtain and showing them what's happening.

So, why does behind the scenes content matter, why is it valuable? Behind the scenes content is hugely valuable, because of that connection. It's your proof, it's your walk and talk, it's your taking your own medicine, eating your own dog food, whatever cliché horribleness you wanna use here, that's what behind the scenes content is. That's where, sort of the proof, it's right in front of you. "Here's what I do every day."

And it also allows people to feel really connected on a human level. They're the humanity in this business, there's not sort of robots running the machine, and everything just sort of comes out magic. No, it's the day to day, it's the real life, it's the minutiae of it all. You know, a lot of times that will be, you know, good, sometimes that will be stressed, sometimes that will be celebration, and sometimes that will be like, "Here is the reality of a normal Tuesday, recording content for you guys." Okay?

The reality of even that, "Here's a normal Tuesday, recording content for you guys," is, "Hey look, she sits there and takes the time, and re

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Welcome to episode 366 of Hit the Mic with The Stacey Harris.

As I talked about last week, we talked about the fact that it's a little bit launch season. People are launching. So one of the things I wanted to talk about today is what you need to do, on social, and really what you need to do about your social, before you launch something. This could be a new program. This could be a new offering. This could be a new opt in. This could be a new podcast. Whatever it is that you're launching, I want to talk about some things that I want to do in regards to your social, before you open up Facebook and say, "Hey guys I have a new XYZ, go buy it please." All right? All right.

I know, and you're going to notice a lot in these next three steps, or this one and the following two steps rather, that it sounds a lot like planning your launch. I want you to apply the same logic to your social. This is called building a social media strategy, and it's absolutely critical. So number one, build your plan. Know exactly what networks you're using, what kind of targeting your using. If you're targeting organic posts as well as your ads. What kind of content to share? When do you share? Where do you share it? How frequently do you share it? Where do you pull your other people's content from? Built that all out into a plan.

This does not have to take weeks, and months, and years. We build them for clients in the matter of about 10 days, because we're usually doing more than one, and we have other things going on. You could probably sit down and do yours in a couple of days. Maybe even a day. I'm not asking you to build out content. You're not gonna write content at this point, but what you're going to look at is, who is my audience. What are my networks? What are my types of content? The reason I want you to do this prelaunch, even if you have a general strategy in place, is now you're looking at a very specific topic.

So maybe you're launching a new podcast all about your subject, and you're gonna have really killer guests. Well, for the two weeks before the podcast launch, I would be featuring other people's content, from exclusively, those first few guests. That way, I'm getting my audience excited about hearing from this person. I'm giving my audience name recognition on whoever it is that going to be on the show. If this is a program, maybe you're building a program all around counting Macros. Maybe you're a health coach, or a personal trainer, and you are launching a program all about Macros. Great, I want to see Macro content. I want to see content about Macronutrients, Micronutrients, calculating them. I want to see content from you, and I want to see content from other sources. I want to see conversational content. So just engagement focused content, around Macros.

Maybe you are a business coach, and you have a killer sales call training coming up. It's all about executing a successful sales call. I want to hear, I went to see rather, content about sales calls. Facebook lives about sales call tips, podcasts, blog posts, guest posts, other people's content, everything is going to be around and supporting sales calls. That doesn't mean everything is gonna say, "This is how you do a sales call." But this is how sales calls make for a smoother sales process. This is the one fundamental tip to getting more sales calls. This is about doing more with sales calls. This is about best time of day to do a sales call. I don't know, whatever it is. How many sales calls do you do a day? Those kind of things. Do you see what I'm saying? It's focused, and that comes from really building a plan.

Also, really cool thing is when you build a plan, guess what, you know exactly what to do, and exactly when to do it. Is never going to be a point where you run into, "I have nothing to say today." And that's horrifying when you're at a launch. The reality is, launches are exhaustin

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Welcome to episode 365 of Hit the Mic the Stacey Harris.

Three things you need to know, September 2017 edition. It's that time of year, guys. Summer is over in the northern part of earth. Winter shoulder be coming to a close in the southern part of the earth, and it's launch time. I'm sure you guys are already getting inundated with emails about launches. I know I certainly am. I've been getting a ton of emails. Not just on promotion side of things, but potential clients and clients saying, "Hey. We want to do this in September. We don't want to do this in October, we want to do this in November," and I say, "Great. Welcome to launch season."

I wanted to talk about some launch-related things today for the three things you must know. Really, they're all kind of around Facebook and using Facebook as a tool to launch whatever it is you want to launch.

Don't just jump right in and be like, "Okay. It's launch time. Here you go." No. First of all, look at your audience as it is now. Are they engaging? Are they paying attention to you? If they're not, we need to make sure we run an engagement set of ads before we open up our ads for whatever pre-launch and launch content you have.

In fact, we talked about this in this month, we just went live on Friday, inside of Hit the Mic Backstage, we talk about a four-ad ad sequence to run to reengage a stale audience. If you are looking at launching, be sure to check that out because that really is going to be where we dive into what this four-ad sequence looks like, what these ads are, and how they really lead into your pre-launch and launch content. Check that out if this is something that's sort of hitting home for you. Be sure, be sure, be sure that you do whatever you need to do to make sure your audience is paying attention to you before you start selling them because if the first post they actually see from you in six months is an ad to buy something, it's going to be a tough sell.

On the flip side of that, the same is true for your email. If you haven't been sending any emails, make sure you start sending some content before your first email to your list is, "Hey. Here's my new program." I'm not just talking about here's a new mini-class and that mini-class is your launch content. No, I'm talking about just pure, unpitched, no-sale content. Just literal value. It's all it is because, again, if they're not used to hearing from you, if you maybe took the summer off, or the last three months off I should say, and you're like, "I should probably get back to emailing the old list-a-loo. I'll just send them this free mini-class that's going to then pitch my program. They'll all buy. They read my emails before." No.

First of all, you're going to get a massive unsubscribe, which is probably not horrible because they're cold leads, so why pay to have them on your list? On the flip side of that, they're not in a position to buy from you right now, so don't just jump in and sell. On the Facebook side of things, you want to make sure you're running some ads to reengage the audience. On the email side of things, you're going to want to make sure you're sending them some value. Be aware, if you haven't been emailing your list and you email them, even with just pure, undoctored value, you're going to get some unsubscribes because there are going to be people who forgot why they're on your list or who've full on forgot they were on your list. Be ready for that, b

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Welcome to Episode 364 of Hit the Mic with The Stacey Harris.

All right guys 364, and we're talking about tools. Social media tools and what to use and is this the right one or is that the right one; is probably the question type I spend the most time answering. Especially, when I'm at events, and I'm speaking to people. A lot of times it's not really about what should I be hosting, or where I should be hosting, it's literally what can I use to make this easier. What can I use to make this more painless? How can I automate this in a way that makes sense.

I want to talk about three types of tools that you need to have. Now, I will say that there are a whole plethora of options within these tool types to chose; I'm going to share my favorite in each category. Again, and I've said this before, and I guarantee I will say it again, maybe in this show; the best tool for the job is the one you are going to use. The smanciest, fanciest most wonderful tool that every expert recommends, is totally useless if you never open it. The best tools for the job is the one you will use, but I will tell you my three favorites the ones I use. Cool?

Now, I want to put a little asterisk next to this. Not everyone needs a scheduler. I do have a couple of coaching clients who focus mostly on Facebook and Instagram, and they don't use a scheduler. They use a scheduler inside Facebook, and they use an alarm reminder to schedule to their Instagram, and that's where they're at and that works perfectly for their demographic for their industry, for their ideal clients and for their set-up. There is no reason for them to pay X-Y-Z per month to have a scheduler, when that's the best option for them. That's my little side note there, but jumping back in, a scheduler

Some option of posting is the most-most necessary tool. I use eClincher. There are a ton of reviews of tool options, and if you go down to the resources on the Show Notes page I will list links to those episodes. We talk about Buffer, Hootsuite, eClincher and Sprout Social. We talked about CoSchedule, and a whole plethora of choices. Again, the right one is the one you'll use. I use eClincher, because it allows me to do a couple of things. A. It allows me to have something called queues, where my content is actually recycled. That allows me to put all 364 episodes of this show and content for that in a list. It gets shaken up like a snowball, and those tweets go out. When the snow all settles, and the tweets have all been sent it gets shaken up again, and the whole process happens again, without me or someone on my team going in and making that happen.

I really like eClincher. In addition to that, I have the option for social listening, because I've got my social inbox where all of my Facebook comments, LinkedIn messages Twitter replies and direct messages' sort of things come into one place. I can simply go in and monitor that space. I don't have to over and over and over and over again dig into each of those places. On the flip side of that, I can also schedule specific messages at specific times. If I'm a part of an affiliate promo, or I'm launching something, or there's something I need to go out on Tuesday at seven, I can schedule it to go out at one time. Tuesday at seven. I really like that. That's why I like eClincher. They've also got a lot of great built-in analytics and things like that.

So, that's what I use. But a scheduler, something that's goin

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Welcome to episode 363 of Hit the Mic with The Stacey Harris.

It’s that time of year again. We’re mid to late August, and here’s the deal guys, launch season, it’s right around the corner. Once September hits, that like back to school vibe, a lot, a lot, a lot of people go into launch mode, and maybe, just maybe, there’s something that you would like to launch this fall. If there is, this episode is a good one to listen to, ’cause we’re going to talk about some of the ways you can start using social now to prep for that launch and some of the ways that you can support your launch through your social media efforts, both paid and organic. Cool? Cool.

So let’s first start talking about why is this important to think about now? Often times when you’re thinking about a launch or when you’re planning a launch, you get so caught up in the production of sales pages, and e-mail copy, and maybe the actual creation of whatever it is you’re launching, the program, the video series, whatever, and sometimes we forget to think about the social media. In many cases, we’ll think about, “Oh, we’re going to create this ad campaign.” Or “I hired this person to do this ad campaign.” But there’s a lot of organic stuff that we can be doing during pre-launch to get the benefits going before the launch is ready. That can be everything from re-engaging your audience on social, just putting out really engagement focused content, running ads. That it’s purely about getting comments and shares versus getting clicks to a website. To putting out more of your content that is related to what it is you’re going to be launching, so that you can Pixel those people and re-target them with ads.

Now if you don’t know what any of the words I just said meant, you need to be joining us inside of Hit the Mic Backstage, but basically what it does is when somebody visits your website, if you have a Facebook Pixel installed, you can then re-target them with ads by creating an audience based on the traffic from that Pixel. Again, if those words do not make sense, you need to be in Backstage, ’cause that’s the kind of stuff we talk about. But, it doesn’t even need to be that you’re running Facebook ads for this content.

Now, pre-launch, I do like to run Facebook ads to focus content for the sake of Pixeling those people and re-targeting them with launch sequence stuff, meaning let’s say I’m doing a launch and I’ve got this group program, and the focus of the group program is really rocking out Q4 this year. So it’s all about accountability, and business strategy, and marketing strategy, and it’s going to be just the most epic program ever. I’m totally making this up by the way. This is not something I’m offering. I’m sure someone offers a really great one. I do not. With that said, I can start creating content that speaks to that in let’s say August for before my September launch, and then run ads to a cold audience to that content. Meaning, I’m not running an opt-in to them, I’m not running sign-up and you’ll get this blog post or podcast or video or whatever it is. It’s purely a link to the podcast episode, or the blog post, or, again, whatever it is. From there, I can Pixel them. Again, if you don’t know that that is, Backstage. We can Pixel them, and then when we are ready to start running maybe ads for a webinar or for a video series, or depending on whatever your actual launch content is, we have an audience primed and ready for that kind of content. So we’re making our ask a little bit later.

So now, before the launch, is the time to start thinking about using social to sell, to build your customer base, especially for those of you who are going, “I really want to launch something, but I don’t have a

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