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Welcome to Episode 302 of Hit The Mic with the Stacey Harris.

Hello, hello, Episode 302, and today we are talking about email marketing. There are a ton of email marketing tools to choose from, everything from MailChimp to ActiveCampaign to Infusionsoft and Ontraport and Mad Mimi and Constant Contact and all sorts of options. It can be a little overwhelming, how do you choose a tool and how do you know when it's time to change tools. That's what we're going to talk about today.

Changing email marketing tools is something I have done a few times, more than I would like. If I had to do it all over again, I would have probably done it a tiny bit differently. That's the lessons I'm sharing with you today, so aren't we glad that I made those mistakes, right? Oh, they weren't really mistakes. They were just not the right tool for me long-term. Let's talk about what you need to consider when you are choosing an email marketing tool. Yes, budget's a factor, a small factor, but I want you to remember that cost alone should not make this decision. You also want to consider some other things. With that said, you need to get the best tool you can afford.

I do not encourage you, in fact I actively discourage you from day 1 thinking Infusionsoft is the best option. Infusionsoft is not a bad option but it's not the best option ever. There are a lot of businesses, mine included, that function perfectly well without a tool like Infusionsoft or Ontraport where you have this whole collection of tools because for example, for me, I would use probably 5% of Infusionsoft because my business model doesn't need the other 95%. It's just the way it is. However, I know a lot of people who use and love and are obsessed with Infusionsoft and what it can do for their business. Here's the thing is there's not one right tool for everybody, but factor in your budget and then factor in a few other things we're going to talk about.

The first thing besides budget and this is something that I really, really encourage you to look at is, what are your long-term goals? What do you want to be able to do with your email list? Meaning, do you want to have things like multiple lists and be able to send them different follow-up emails depending on which list they signed up to? By the way, the correct answer to that is "yes." Not all tools can do that. For example, Constant Contact only gives you 1 welcome email option, meaning when someone new signs up for your list, they get the same welcome email no matter what list they sign up for. That's a problem. If you want to have multiple welcome emails or multiple followup sequences, for example, depending on what you sign up for when you sign up for the VIP list which is my email list, you get a different follow-up sequence.

If you sign up for the social media challenge, I'm delivering you something that if you sign up for a webinar or the Facebook ads campaign, you get something different in each of those cases. It doesn't make sense for there to be 1 follow-up option. If you want to have things like that down the road, you need to consider that. Do you prefer lists or tags? If you don't know what that means, then this might be worth having this conversation with somebody who does, whether that's a email marketing expert or a business coach or an email marketing virtual assistant or an online business manager, whatever, whoever the person is in your life. Honestly, maybe it's about talking to your accountability buddies or your mastermind and figuring out what tools they're using and why they love them. You got to think about what your goals are long-term. For me, I had always worked in lists.

Okay, so I started with ... The first thing I ever us

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Welcome to Episode 301. Our first episode since Episode 300, and the live show. If you missed the live show, well where have you been? You can catch it over at thestaceyharris.com/episode300. You can also see the sneak preview into the new website for Hit the Mic Backstage and all of that good stuff. Today, I'm so excited as a little celebratory gift to myself I upgraded the microphone. We are on the new Rode Podcaster mic today. This will be the mic moving forward on the show. Really, really excited about it, just got it earlier today. I'm really amped. It's going to be a lot of fun upgrading this new one because I'm kind of into the gear stuff. As much as I say you guys don't have to have fancy gear, it's fun to have it.

We're going to talk aboutLinkedIn Ads today. Let us jump into that.

Because it's Friday I've got three things that you must know. Today it is three things you must know about LinkedIn Ads. Here's the deal.LinkedIn Ads are well awesome, however, they don't tend to get as much attention as say Facebook Ads. For a lot of you, you're leaving some money on the table by glossing over LinkedIn Ads, especially for those of you who are working business to business, especially those of you who are looking for consulting with high-level clients off corporate speaking gigs, things like that. Health coaches who want to be a part of some of the corporate wellness plans,LinkedIn can be a great way to get in front of those types of people. I want you to pay attention toLinkedIn ads, especially this time of year we're getting ready to go into October at the end of next week. In fact, a week from today is the last day of September.

Quarter four is very much upon us. When that happens and I talked about this recently in another episode, Facebook Ads can get a little spendy and you just want more competition. Linkedin Ads, however, are not that way. When Facebook gets crowded, Linkedin is a great place to go. Again, especially if you're in the B to B space. If you're selling coaching or consulting or corporate speaking or you want to be part of a corporate wellness plan, you're trying out marketing stuff or social media stuff, whatever it is you teach and you speak about and you coach and you provide information, you provide services. I know we have a lot of freelancers who listen to this show. This is a good way to get in front of those peeps. There's a couple of things I want you to pay attention to but the first thing I want you to know this can be a really great alternative Facebook ad. One bit of pushback before I move into the second thing I get from people is that sometimes their LinkedIn Ads are a little more expensive and I'm not going to dispute that.

Sometimes Linkedin Ads you will see a higher cost per click, however, I find that those clicks convert at a higher frequency. I may be paying a little bit more for the click but when I get the click it converts. That's worth it to me. I end up making more on the back end even if I'm paying a little bit more on the front end. That's something to consider.

Number two thing I want you guys to know about Linkedin ads, just like Facebook, just like Pinterest, just like Instagram, just like Twitter, just like any kind of marketing period you need to know who you're talking to and you need to target those people from the perspective of that's going to influence what your copy is to the perspective of that is what's going to influence what your graphics are. To the perspective of literally who are you going to put these ad in front of?

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Welcome to episode 300 of Hit the Mic with The Stacey Harris.

I am so, so excited to be celebrating 300 episodes with you. I'm really excited. We're going to talk about 300 episodes, some of the lessons I've learned, some of the gear I've used and why you don't need to make it super complicated. We're going to talk a little bit about what's next and my commitment to you as the community. Then I'm going to be announcing a little giveaway which I'm really excited about because I love this community and I am so, so grateful for you guys listening each and every episode, each and every week. Whether you've been listening since the beginning or if maybe you're brand new, I am so grateful that you've taken the time to listen to the show and use the show and take action on what you listen to, right? Yeah? We're doing that? Awesome. I'm amped.

Thank you, thank you for listening to the show and for taking the time out of your day to celebrate with me here live on this episode 300 day. I'm so excited. I can't believe it. It feels a little nuts, a little nuts. We actually won't celebrate three years of the show until November. I think November was when we first went live with episode one, November of 2013, but we hit 300 episodes. That's the joy of doing two episodes a week. I'm just saying. Okay. Let's jump in.

I want to talk about some of the lessons I've learned over the course of 300 episodes because that's a lot of content to create. It's a lot of being in the creation space and a lot of having to show up and do it. The number one thing I've learned is consistency matters more than anything else. It's not always easy. I have been really, really consistent with the show. It has gone out twice a week every single week, come hell or high water, with holidays, vacations, impromptu moves, everything, every week, twice a week for the entire 300 episodes. A lot of that came from a really strong commitment to actually doing that. There has been no acceptable excuse to me to not get the show out, but also it's been about planning in a lot of cases and just doing the work. I've talked a lot about taking December off and the planning I do for that. We've done episodes about it. By the way, if you want to catch up on any of the first 300 episodes, hitthemic.com, there's a whole list of them. There's amazing search function coming to the website soon. Yay!

Those are almost easy because I see that time change coming or I need to prep for it. That stuff is easy. What's been hard is the stuff that I didn't plan for: being sick, especially ... I learned this probably my first year, maybe my second year. I went on vacation and I had pre-planned the show and pre-recorded the show and it was totally good to go except I didn't anticipate being sick when I got back. I had taken December off and we had gone to California. We lived in Arizona at the time. We'd come to California for vacation over New Years' Eve. I was going to be back in the office on Monday. The next podcast episode was supposed to go out Tuesday. Well in pre-recording all of my content I recorded all of December in November and October, but I hadn't planned on recording any January because I was like, "Oh, I'll be back in the office then. I can totally just wing it and I'll get caught back up. I don't need to go that far in advance."

Well, we got back from vacation and I was really, really sick. I had no voice. I couldn't keep anything down. I was really, really intensely sick. It was a couple of years ago when that really horrible flu virus was going around. I had to suck it up and get it done and do the work and record that podcast. I sounded God-awful on the podcast because I had no voice. It took me forever to record becau

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Welcome to episode 299 of Hit the Mic thee Stacey Harris.

Hello, hello, episode 299 is here and we're going to talk about maximizing your content today. I know you are producing amazing content each and every week, or month, or whenever you create content. Are you making the most of that content? Are you really making sure it's getting in front of the right eyes, or ears? Creation for creation's sake does not grow your business. That's not content marketing, that's just creation. I want to make sure that you are really maximizing that content, getting the most out of every single bit of it, and really using it to serve your audience. Ultimately that's why we create content, is to serve our audience. If we don't tell them about the content, or we don't produce it in a way that they consume it, or if we don't produce the kind of content they actually need, it's not going to do us or them any good.

Let's start with talking about the content they actually want and need to consume. I want to talk about this in 2 ways. I want to talk about it from the perspective of actually sort of building out your editorial calendar, and then also making it consumable for them.

First let's talk about your editorial calendar.

I know I've talked about editorial calendars on the show before, but it's worth remembering that there's not just 1 way to build that. There are a lot of ways. I use Google calendars, I just have a editorial calendar setup in my Google calendar. It's not on my regular appointment calendar, it's just sort of in it's own calendar. That's really nice because it makes it really easy for me to see what's ahead, what's coming up.

It also makes it really easy for me to move things around. Here's the deal, when it comes to editorial calendars, you are creating something that is just going to be there to make things easier. It is not sort of set in stone, rules to live by, the only options. If you get inspired, or you have a question that keeps coming up, or you just have something you have to talk about right then, move whatever was on the calendar. It's not sort of your commitment, and you have to do it, and it's the only way it can be. No, it's totally flexible. Remember again, this is to make things easier for you, not more difficult. That's why I like having Google calendar cause I can just move it around if I need to. I do probably once a month where I decide to shift around because I want to talk to somebody right then, or something new comes up, or whatever. That's first and foremost, find a tool that's going to let you build an editorial calendar.

If you're a paper and pencil person, use paper and pencil, that's cool. For a long time I actually had a monthly paper calendar, and I wrote it out on the days of the month. Next up, how do we find out what goes on in that editorial calendar? I like to use the content, and the questions I'm getting from my community already. The questions that come up in Hit the Mic backstage all the time, the questions that come up when I am engaging in other Facebook groups, the questions that come over and over again on client calls. If you're somebody who is doing discovery calls, sales calls, those kinds of things, the questions that come up over and over again there. The problems that are coming up in those calls over and over again, those are great content because it's content that's going to very easily feed into a discovery call. It's really easy to convert on that content.

Q and A's that you do, whether it's on a Facebook live, or in your Facebook group, or in other Facebook groups, or on your Facebook page, or over on Twitter. The things that people ar

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Welcome to episode 298 of Hit the Mic with The Stacey Harris.

Hello, hello, 298, here we are, and we're going to talk a little bit about if you're actually marketing on social media or if maybe you're just spending a lot of time on social media which, as a heads up, not the same thing. I want to dive in on this because I've been having a lot of conversations with people through consulting calls and networking things and this has been coming up for probably the last 6 or 8 months, where people will tell me that they're spending a lot of time on social and they're just not seeing results. They spend hours everyday in Facebook groups and on Twitter and on Facebook, or the really common one right now is Facebook and LinkedIn. "I was spending tonnes of time on LinkedIn, but I'm just not seeing results."

I asked them some questions. I say, "Well, what groups are you spending time in? What kind of content are you posting? What your analytics telling you about the content? How's it be reacted to? How's it being engaged with? How's it being seen? What networks are driving traffic back to your site?" They go, "Well, I can't think of any specific groups," or, "I'm in this group, and this group and this group, but I don't actually post that much in those ones." They can't tell me what information they're getting from their analytics because they're not getting any information from their analytics because they're not posting content consistently and if they are posting even irregularly, they're not checking their numbers.

They can't tell me anything they're actually doing on LinkedIn, any people they're engaging with or connecting with, the kind of connections and conversations they're trying to have, and that tells me that they're not actually using these tools to market. What's happening is they're lurking. They're reading a lot of posts, they're scrolling a lot, and scrolling is the enemy because what happens is it's like winding a clock. You're just moving time. You're not actually doing anything productive, and that's why I want you to do a few things differently with your social media time, and that's what we're going to break down today, and these are hints that I've given you guys some of them before. We're going to look at them a little differently today, but when you do these things, it gives you a clear course of action to follow.

It's all going to start with doing things like building a social media strategy, knowing where you're spending time, and then where within that channel you're spending time, what kind of content you're posting, who you're talking to. All of that's going to come from your social media strategy and I definitely encourage you to take a step back and build one of those if you haven't yet, but I want to talk more today about the tactile, spending your time on social, tracking it, using it wisely, and really making it work for you because, and I know you've heard me say this before, there is absolutely 1 finite resource for me. I cannot produce more time. I can make more money, I can meet new people, I can get new clients, I can find new people to support me, I can expand my team, I can outsource new things to contractors and automate things. I cannot actually produce more hours in my day. I can't even produce more seconds in my day, so I am ridiculously conscientious about how I spend my time.

When I feel like I am wasting time, that will drive me crazy faster than anything else because I only get so much in the day, especially when you're somebody who like me, is very intentional about not working all of the time, who is very specific about what hours I want to work and when I don't want to be working, because I don't want to go down that rabbit hol

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Welcome to episode 297 of Hit the Mic with The Stacey Harris.

All right guys, 297. We're going to talk about something that I feel like a lot of social media people are afraid to talk about, and that's the three things you must know about hating your social media. Sadly, many of you e-mail me and tweet me and send me notes on Facebook and things like that, and let me know you hate social media, and you hate doing it, and you hate everything about using it at as a marketing tool. I want to take a look at that, and tell you what you can do to make it better, maybe let you off the hook on a couple of things, and really establish the idea in your mind that you can like your social media.

It can be cool. It can be great. It can be fantastic. It can be powerful. It can be connected. It can be engaging. For as long as you hate it, your audience is probably going to feel that you hate it, which is not generally something we tend to want to engage in in any way, shape, or form. That's why I want to talk about the three things you must know about hating your social media.

Let's start with this. Number one thing you must know: Take a step back.

I want you to really look at your social media objectively, and that's going to mean turning off your computer and stepping back and really thinking about a couple of things. One, what do you hate about your social media? Don't just tell me you hate doing it. Don't just tell me you hate Facebook. Tell me what it is that rubs you the wrong way when it comes to social media. Is it a lack of engagement? It is that you feel like it's not working? Is it that you feel like you're doing it all the time? What is it specifically? I want you to actually write this down. What do you hate about your social media?

Then, I want you to tell me what you love about your social media. Is it that it's connected you to really amazing people? Is it that it's a great tool to help you grow your business? Is it that you just super love Snapchat like me? What is it that you love about your social media?

Write down both of those things, love and hate, because that's going to give you a really clear picture of where maybe some changes need to be made. That's what we're going to talk about step two, so I don't want to get too far ahead of myself, but once you have that brain dumped out you will probably feel better just instantaneously because you're not going to be twisting yourself about. You're not going to be twisting around this idea that it's this thing you have to do, and it's this thing you hate, because now you know exactly what you hate about it and exactly what you love about it. We can make less of what you hate, and more of what you love.

The next thing I want you to do as far as stepping back is really remember why you're doing this. I don't mean, "Oh, because it helps me get clients." Why do you want to get more clients? What change are you trying to make in the world? What impact are you trying to have on people's lives? What freedom are you trying to create in your own life? What are your revenue goals? What do those goals mean for you and your life and your family and your business? Think about your why's, your big picture stuff, and then go back to that list of things you love and hate and think about the things that you could more of on the love list and think about the things maybe you could mitigate on the hate list to make it worth it. Or, to step away from completely.

Then, I want you to turn your computer back on, and I want you to take a really honest look at your numbers. What networks are you on? Write those all down, a

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Welcome to episode 296 of Hit the Mic with the Stacey Harris.

Today I'm answering, possibly one of the most common Facebook ads questions. Which is how much should I be spending? There are a lot of questions around setting a Facebook ads budget and how much you should be spending and how often you should be spending it and how long you should be running ads for. Those are the 3 questions we're going to answer today.

We're going to start with setting your budget and what that budget means. We're going to talk about how often to be running the same ads and we're going to wrap it up by talking about your overall budget. How often you're going to be running ads from a budget of a monthly perspective or annually and sort of that perspective. Let's jump right in.

I want to start by talking about setting your ads budget and what that budget means. There really isn't any sort of magical number that your ads budget needs to be. You can a $50 ads budget, you could have a $50,000 ads budget. What's really relevant is how you work with that budget and what that budget means for things like targeting and frequency and placement. Also realizing that during different times your Facebook ads budget may go a little further or maybe not quite as far as you'd hoped. Really be aware of what your budget needs.

In this section I want to talk about an ads budget for a campaign. I have a couple of things that I want you to know when you're setting your ads budget. A, set your budget before you do anything else. Realize how much you are willing to invest in this Facebook ad. If it's $100, great. If it's $500, fantastic. If that's $5,000, whohoo for you. What it needs to be though is set, it needs to be known how much you're going to spend on this campaign. Once you've set that ads budget you need to stick with that ads budget.

Let's say you have a smaller budget, maybe you have $100 or $200 to spend on a list building campaign. A webinar or driving traffic through an opt in or a piece of content or whatever but the goal is list building. You have, let's say $200, to spend. $200 is a smaller budget, it may feel huge to you and that's okay but it is, in the grand scheme of Facebook ads, a smaller ad budget. It doesn't mean that it's impossible, it doesn't mean that you won't see results but you're likely not going to get 2,000 new people on your email listing from spending $200 on Facebook ads. Be aware of that, set your expectations.

Next, realize that with a smaller ad budget you really want to make sure that you're being really really clear on who you're targeting. You want that targeting to be pretty specific because you don't want to be spending money on ads that are not sitting in front of the right people. Not getting seen by the people who you want to be clicking and signing up for your email list. Know your targeting. The smaller your budget the less room you have for creative targeting. You want to be really really targeted so you know you're talking to the right people.

Next, you really want to make sure that you're setting your campaign up so it is a daily budget instead of a lifetime budget. This can really impact how you're positioned in the feed and the priority you get. I have found that daily budgets just seem to spend better, spend more consistently and get placement more consistently. I don't have any sort of information from Facebook saying this is true. They're really really tight lipped about what the algorithm is. I'm just saying, from testing, I've found that a daily budget that equals out to a lifetime budget works a lot easier.

Let's say you have

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Welcome to episode 295.

Today we're talking about three things you need to know about social media in September of 2016. Today, the day this episode is live, anyway, is depending on when you listen to it. It is officially September 2. If you follow the Starbucks calendar for season changing, it's fall. Pumpkin spice lattes are back. They come out every year on September 1. Every year, I want to tell you guys how to pay attention to what Starbucks is doing with social. You want to talk about building a community around a brand and an event. Just check out your Instagram, your Snapchat, your Facebook page, your Twitter, whatever. You will see the people using it #PSL. You will see people snapping and sharing photos of their pumpkin spice lattes and assorted fall beverages. You will also see people angrily in the anti-let us have our summer, leave us alone fall mood. Their voice heard as well.

This is not one of the three things, but I just want you guys to pay attention to what's happening on social with that. Starbucks does a very good job. As a brand, they have done a very good job of really getting their community fired up. If you check out their social channels, you're going to see that they're egging this along for sure. Have you gotten your pumpkin spice latte yet? I have not. I'm not a big Starbucks fan. Sorry. It's weird. I know. It's not my favorite place to get coffee. Pumpkin spice latte's not really my go to anyways.

Anywho, pay attention to that. Today we're going to talk about three things I want you to know going into this new month, the ninth month of the year. Here in the northern part of the world, anyways, it's going to be moving into fall. You've got kids going back to school. Before you know it it's going to be the holiday stuff rolling out. I already am seeing Halloween stuff everywhere. I'm sure Christmas stuff is not far behind. I want to start off today talking about your holiday ad spend. I know we talked a little bit in August about planning your social media for over the holidays and what you're going to do. Now, what I want you to start doing in September is really getting clear on what your budget is to spend on ads in the last part of this year. Really, really, really, really, in the next couple of weeks, you're going to start seeing holiday ads. You're going to start seeing gift ideas and content targeted towards end of the year promos and coaching packages to get you ready for 2017. All those things. That means your ad costs are going to be going up because there's going to be more competition.

Get really clear now on what your budget is because that's going to impact a lot of the things you're able to do and also maybe where you choose to spend those ad dollars. I think I mentioned this in the last episode, the three things you need to know in August. If you go to the show notes, I'll link to that episode. You really, really, really don't want to be relying on Facebook ads alone unless you really, really need to rely on Facebook ads alone. If that's the only place you're audience is, that's one thing. If your budget is smaller and you're not really sure you're going to be able to maximize them on Facebook, check out other networks. Check out Twitter. Check out Pinterest. Check out LinkedIn, especially if you're in the B to B space. Pay attention to those spaces because the ads are going to get a little more pricey, little more expensive on Facebook and probably not far off, Pinterest as well, because you're going to, again, see those gift ideas and things like that really increasing the price.

However, if this a busy time of year for you, you sort of make your bread and butter through the holiday season, make sure that your ads budget is equipped for that as

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Welcome to Episode 294 of Hit The Mic with The Stacey Harris.

Hello, hello, and today we're going to talk about social media. I know, I know, it's crazy, but I want to talk about something really, really important. It's actually something I kind of touched on in Episode 293 when we talked about Instagram stories, but I feel like it's not getting enough conversation right now. So guess what? We're going to have the conversation. This really is the one thing that makes your social media efforts, your time on Facebook, your groups, your SnapChats, your stories on Instagram, your tweets. All of it, totally useless. A complete and utter waste of time, and yes, it is in fact possible for your social media to be a EPIC waste of your time. When it happens, and it happens a lot, it's because of this thing. It's because of this one thing. Are you ready?

You don't know why.

And what I mean by that is not some sort of grandiose why in your business or some major movement you're making in the world. Those things are critical too I think from a larger business planning perspective, and it definitely trickles down into your marketing and into your social media. If you don't know those things it gets harder to make any steps I think in your business. But what I mean by this is really, really specific. Really, really tactical. Really, really brass tacks here. You don't know why you're posting it. It comes from posting for the sake of posting. Feeding the machine. I think we get so caught up in this urge to be doing something that makes us seem busy. To be doing something that someone told us we had to do to be successful. To be doing something period, maybe, because so, so often we get caught up in keeping the wheels on in our business. Keeping the wheels on in our marketing. Keeping the wheels on in our social media. That we forget that there's a reason for each and every post.

These posts have lots of reasons and we're going to go through some examples of what I mean by this and how to get there. Posting has lots of reasons, but if you don't know why you're posting each and every post, each and every tweet, each and every story, each and every video, each and every update that you're posting? Then don't post it. It's just noise and there's enough of that. That noise is probably going to do a lot more damage than it's going to do good for your business.

So let's talk about knowing some of these why's. Let's do some examples here. What I mean by "whys" are things like community growth, sales, driving traffic to a website, community engagement, driving traffic to some sort of third party thing, like maybe an interview or an affiliate or something like that. The most important ones are really about value. I think those come from content, driving traffic to content, driving content to information, value adds, actually engaging in value and information right there on the platform. And again, this isn't platform specific. This is going to look different on different channels. So on SnapChat for example or Instagram Stories it's going to be something a lot more digestible and consumable. It's going to be something like a quick tip or a quick takeaway, or a quick what not to do. I know for a lot of the people who watch my Snaps, I get a lot of feedback around when I kind of going go all randy, and I talk about one thing that someone is doing on social that's driving me a little crazy. But those are value adds. They're value adds very much still in line with my brain and my personality and my voice, but they are value adds.

So that may look li

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