When it comes to content and social media, most people are focused on surface-level metrics, like: 

• Clicks on your blog
• Podcast downloads
• Followers and likes
• Watches on your Instagram stories

But these metrics aren’t the definition of success because you don’t have complete control over them. They’re also not a good measure of whether your social media and content strategy is actually working. 

This week’s episode is the last in the 3-part series about content. We will redefine what getting traction on your content means by measuring it quantitatively and qualitatively. I’ll also be talking through some reasons why you aren’t getting traction in your content. You might be guilty of:

• Too little selling
• Not using calls to action
• Inconsistency
• Being impersonal
• Not focusing on serving your audience

Links

Marketing: A Love Story, Bernadette Jiwa

Learn more about my first-ever Implementation Workshop which is happening on February 18-19, all about Social Media and Content Creation here.

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Many people are creating content online, however not very many of them are doing it well, or even consistently. Consistency in content creation helps build trust with your audience and improve your content. The reason you might be having trouble staying consistent with your content creation is that you haven’t built the structure in your business to support you being a content creator. 

This week’s episode is part 2 in the 3-part series about content where I’m going to dive in and talk about building rituals in your business in order for you to create content consistently. I’m going to help you think through what can work best for you because everyone’s rhythms are different. 

So, here’s how you can build your own content rhythms into your business that you can actually stick to (and it works for both short-form and long-form content):

• Commit to Your Content Publishing Schedule
• Create a Promotional Calendar
• Create a Content Creation Ritual
• Block the Time on Your Calendar
• Create a System to Capture Ideas and Inspiration
• Stay Consistent Even When You Aren’t Brilliant

Links

Better Than Before, Gretchen Rubin

Get the free 90-day planning template so you can get focused on the most important things in order to grow your business. 

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A lot of people struggle with social media. You might be one of those people thinking:

• “I don’t know how to market myself well”
• “I struggle knowing what to post”
• “I can’t be consistent on social media”
• “It feels awkward and uncomfortable to get sales-y and promotional”
• “What will other people think

The reason could be is that you haven’t figured out what your strategy is behind social media. You aren’t sure what you’re trying to accomplish so you don’t know what to do next. While I’m not a content strategist or a social media expert, I am an expert in being strategic and making sure that the effort you’re putting into your business helps make you more money.

So for this week’s episode of the podcast which is the 1st in a 3-part series about content, I’m breaking down what you should be posting on social media. I’m going to be sharing four categories of things that will help you brainstorm ideas and posts for your own social media and business. The categories are:

• Connect
• Challenge
• Teach
• Tease 

Links

Creating Customer Evangelists: How Loyal Customers Become a Volunteer Salesforce, by Ben McConnell, Jackie Huba

Get the free 90-day planning template so you can get focused on the most important things in order to grow your business. 

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 What does it really mean when you work on your business as opposed to in it? 

To put it simply:

• Working in your business refers to the things you do in your business like client work, creating content – basic stuff you do to keep things moving.
• Working on your business refers to the things that you do in order to make your business more profitable – to grow it, get it to the next level.

What most creative entrepreneurs end up doing is spending too much time working in their business – doing client work because it’s what makes them money. However, this isn’t the only thing that will let you earn money, especially in the long term. 

In this week’s episode, we’ll be diving into what it looks like to work on your business. More importantly, I’ll be sharing different tips for how to create the time that you need in order for you to this. And these are:

1. Staying connected to your big vision.
2. Developing planning rituals.
3. Time blocking
4. Getting help.
5. Streamlining your clients and offerings.
6. Working with a coach.

Links

Get the free 90-day planning template so you can get focused on the most important things in order to grow your business. 

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 Last year in October, I was in LA for a conference with one of my business mentors, James Wedmore. And he walked us through this exercise where we wrote down all of the ideas that we had for our business—what we could do to grow? Then he posed the question:

 “What would you do if you weren’t afraid?”

The answer jumped out at me—the only thing that was holding me back from actually launching my podcast was fear.

Being challenged to move forward in spite of fear helped me build this podcast. I never would have done it if I hadn’t been specifically challenged to do something that I was afraid to do. 

As you’re thinking about 2021, there’s probably an idea that you have that scares you. Creating a course, starting a new program, hiring someone, re-branding, or even starting your business in the first place. However, don’t let fear hold you back from doing something that could have a huge impact on your business.

This week marks the 1-year anniversary of The Game Changer podcast. To celebrate this, we’ll be going through the highlights of my most popular episodes of 2020. Feel free to dive deeper into the episodes or check out the show notes for more information about the guest or topic discussed.

• Growing Your Business with Instagram with Tyler McCall
• Getting Started with Defining a Niche
• Branding Beyond “Pretty” with Web Designer Amanda Shuman
• 5 Principles to Attract Clients with Your Content

Additionally, I’m going to have a little giveaway as an expression of my gratitude. I’m giving away a $100 Amazon gift card. All you have to do to enter is leave a review of the show. 

Take a screenshot of your review and email it to me at [email protected]. If you’ve already left a review, you’re still eligible to join. Just screenshot your previous review and send that too.

Links

Follow Katie on Instagram or visit the website to learn more about her work.

Strategic goal-setting is setting the right priorities, the right kinds of goals for each, and the right actions that will help you make progress on those goals. This type of goal-setting helps you avoid just making a random to-do list. You won’t risk losing motivation and end up making a difference in your business because you set strategic goals.

Moving from last week’s episode which was about sharing what I’ve learned in 2020, this week is all about letting you know about my vision for my business this coming 2021. I’ll be talking about my priorities and hopefully give you examples that you can follow for your own business. So, for 2021, I will be:

• Spending WAY more time coaching
• Focusing on implementation
• Engaging in audience growth – quantitatively and qualitatively
• Working on my thought leadership

Enroll in Thrive in Five here.

Follow Katie on Instagram or visit the website to learn more about her work.

In order to get you and your business ready for 2021, I will be taking you behind the scenes of my own business and sharing the biggest lessons I have learned from 2020. These are also going to help me pave the direction I’ll be taking for the next year. 

The fourth in the series of episodes about strategic goal-setting, this week’s The Game Changer is all about my top lessons for the year. I’m letting you in on how I’m thinking about my own business, what I’ve learned, and where I’m headed.

Before coming up with these, I went through a process of reflection in order to learn what I needed to learn from the past year:

• I looked at the data
• Trusted my gut about where my business should go
• Asked wisdom from the Lord

And for 2020, my top lessons were:

• The power of shared values
• You can’t build an audience if you aren’t serving an audience
• Marketing isn’t magic
• Simpler is ALWAYS better
• Scalable doesn’t have to mean impersonal

Enroll in Thrive in Five here.

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An HBR article wrote about some goal-setting methods that managers should avoid and one of these is to stop setting S.M.A.R.T. goals. It only tells you how clearly written your goal is, not about if it’s actually a good idea. A goal can be S.M.A.R.T. but not strategic; smart, not wise. 

The purpose of goal-setting is not to predict the future perfectly. Instead, it’s to get you focused on the right things. Which begs the question: how do you know if you’re focusing on the right things? 

This week’s episode is the third in a row on the topic of strategic goal setting. Today, I’ll be sharing principles to help you understand how to make sure you are setting goals that aren’t just SMART, but also strategic. For 2021, you should be setting goals that are:

• Aligned with your priorities
• Reflective of your desired outcomes for your business, not just a list of tasks
• Attainable – something you can achieve for the year
• Challenging

Enroll in Thrive in Five here.

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HBR: 3 Popular Goal-Setting Methods that Managers Should Avoid

Before stepping into 2021 with your new goals, learning lessons from the past year is the very first step you need to take. And what it takes to be successful as an entrepreneur is an incredible amount of discipline. And by discipline, I mean the discipline to self-evaluate and self-assess. 

If you happen to have the discipline to evaluate your business, you also need the wisdom to draw the right conclusions. However, most people tend to over-correct for the things that go wrong in their business. The reason for this is because we don’t want to feel hurt when we fail. 

Because 2020 has brought more disappointment and failure than usual, we might be at risk of over-correcting. So for this week’s episode of The Game Changer, I’m going to provide 4 principles you can use in order to have the wisdom to learn the right lessons from 2020. These are:

• Collect the right quantity and quality of information;
• Put everything into the right context;
• Don’t try to force things to be black and white when they are gray; and,
• Get an outside perspective

Links

Enroll now in my brand new goal-setting course called Thrive in Five to get early bird pricing here until December 13. 

Follow Katie on Instagram or visit the website to learn more about her work.

It’s almost the end of the year. Which means it’s time to start thinking about what your business is going to look like next year. And that means setting goals. But it’s possible that you may be making the mistake of not setting goals for your business in the right way. You may even be guilty of being in these two extremes of goal-setting which are:

• Aspirations or “manifesting” approach – make lofty goals; think of your wildest dreams
• To-do list approach – goals are a list of actions you want to do instead of outcomes you want to achieve

If you set your goals this way – you’re doing it wrong. You’re just turning them into a list of all the things you wish you have time for. In this week’s episode, we’re going to challenge these flawed approaches with a new goal-setting approach, which is strategic goal-setting. This comprises outcomes and the related action steps you’re going to take in order to achieve them.

Also, before you go about setting strategic goals, here are some of the mental shifts that you need to take: 

• Shift 1: I don’t know what’s realistic.
• Shift 2: I don’t want to fail.
• Shift 3: I don’t have time.
• Shift 4: I know my plans will change.
• Shift 5: I don’t have any control over the outcomes.

Links

Get the free 90-day plan template here.

Follow Katie on Instagram or visit the website to learn more about her work.