EPISODE 3. AIR DATE: Friday, November 16, 2018
Whether you make plans based on calendar year or just want to think ahead, having a proper marketing strategy in place is an essential part of your business success.
Think of it like planning a vacation. You need to decide where you’re going to go and how long you’re going to stay there. You will need to buy plane tickets and make a hotel reservation. And some of you may cover your desk in post it notes with specific things to do.
You create the overall plan and the structure that’s needed for the vacation to be a success, then allow yourself to have a great time while you’re there.
Imagine if, however, instead of booking a hotel room, you simply decided to show up in Aspen one weekend. Would you be able to stay at the hotel you wanted? Probably not. And you’d waste a lot of time trying to find a room while you were supposed to be relaxing.
Social Media Marketing is the same way. Being flexible and timely and posting ‘in the moment’ are all great things. But without a strategy in place, you’ll waste a lot of time trying to figure out what to say, where, when you’re supposed to be executing and driving engagement.
That’s where the 360 Marketing Squad can help! Based on years of experience, Jenn Herman, Stephanie Liu, Amanda Robinson and Mike Allton are going to share with you their best practices and forward-thinking advice.
IN THIS EPISODE YOU WILL LEARN:
- Where to start your Marketing Strategy planning
- The key elements of a successful Marketing Strategy
- Pitfalls to avoid
- Great tools or techniques to use
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Mike Allton: I’ve, hey you guys, come on in. We’re here. I am Mike Allton and this is Jenn Herman.
Jenn Herman: Yay. Sorry, I’m over here trying to like push buttons and I’m like, Oh, you’re talking to me.
Mike Allton: Yeah, I’m talking to you. I’m talking to you and I’m talking to Oscar. You’re watching. We are obviously 50%
Jenn Herman: one 86. We’re, we’re one 80 of our three sixty.
Mike Allton: Amanda is traveling. God bless her. She is, I don’t know, can you drive a car from here to Africa because I think that’s where she’s headed.
Jenn Herman: I think she’s got enough miles at this point to have like almost circumference the planet. Um, at this point the girl has been doing some crazy driving. Uh, she’s going to, you know, definitely appreciate having a place to settle when that time comes because she has seen more time on the road than the average human being probably ever would in their lifetime. So, uh, if she can join us later, she will pop in and our other, uh, 90 degrees, Miss Stephanie Loo, uh, will be here shortly. So one minute
Mike Allton: at any minute I can add her. We’ll see. Pray into some tech gods that I can figure this out because I don’t typically do these lives with multiple people. Not that when I’m controlling. So we’ll see. We’ll see.
Jenn Herman: See, yeah, we left Mike in charge of the tech today cause he’s a highly capable individual and he’s like, okay, we’re going to make this work. So we’re glad that all of you are here. For those of you who are already three 60 marketing squad members, hey, hey, we are glad you are here. For those of you who are not officially three 60 marketing squad members, why not Hello, be amazing coming out with all of us. Uh, so three 60 marketing squad. Literally you go to three 60 marketing squad.com. It is our membership program, which is five bucks a month. That is it. That gets you in. That’s what you pay every month. That price will not go up next month or any point in the future that we know of. Uh, so five bucks a month you get in. We do a live training in the group once a month.
Jenn Herman: I just did a live training today about Instagram analytics. It was like an hour and 15 minutes deep dive into everything about Instagram analytics. It was so nice not to have a timer like I was like, yeah, I can just talk and just get through all of this information. So we did that last month. Mike did an incredible training session, uh, on blogging and content management and all of these like super smart things that he is super smart with. So, uh, that’s just the live videos. I mean that alone is worth five bucks a month, you guys like, not even joking, but then you get a, we’ve got downloads and resources and everything in the group. Plus it’s a full Facebook group with all four of us, me, Mike, Stephanie and Amanda at your fingertips to help you with all of your 360 degrees of marketing questions. So if you’re not already part three 60 marketing squad, come join us. Go to three 60 marketing squad.com and you can enroll today and be one of the cool kids with all of us. All right, so now that that’s out of the way. Yeah,
Mike Allton: thanks for that. We’ve got Tom Harness in the audience. Hey Tom, he is wonderful. Your top valuable members. And this isn’t going to be a big sales pitch for rob, but just to clear out some stuff. Yeah, Tom, it is, uh, this is an opportunity for you to ask questions. Absolutely. You asked whether or not we can ask questions, they can ask questions. And thank you for the support Tom Carroll Macpherson. How low Carol, good to see you and anybody else who’s watching live. Let us know where you’re watching from and to in particular, let us know what you plan to do in the coming year for marketing because that’s what you’re going to be talking about today. How to get that sorted out, what you should be focusing on. How do I even know what’s going to work, what isn’t going to work, what do you think about all these different trends, that sort of thing. Yup.
Jenn Herman: 2019. Marketing planning. That is what we’re here to talk about. So, uh, we do, uh, you know, have kind of a checklist of things we want to go through, an outline of things we want to discuss with you guys. But yeah, to Mike’s Point, um, and as Tom asks, please bring the questions. You know, we’re here to serve you guys as well. So if you have those questions, uh, on that housekeeping note, Mike, did you post the cam approval link in the chat or in the description Oh, we don’t need it for this one.
Mike Allton: The only need that inside group. So, hey, we’re good. Every single person who’s commenting, guys, see you. I can find on the screen like I did for Tom. We’re good unless I break it, in which case we won’t be good, but that’ll be on me,
Jenn Herman: in which case, you know, we all get to go home early. So Friday. Hello We’re already at home, but you know what I mean Alright, so why don’t we dive right in. Mike, what do you want to talk about first Yeah,
Mike Allton: well, the great place to start is where do we start, right If you’ve never created a marketing strategy or maybe we have and it’s been a while and we’re just not sure what to do with all this stuff that we could be doing. All these social networks, all this content. How do we figure out what we’re going to do next year Where do we start And I’ll let you kick it off. I look at some more of these comments.
Jenn Herman: Perfect. So one of the first things, um, there’s a couple things you want to do to get started. First of all, you need to answer the question why. And you may need to answer that why four or five times to really figure out what your why is. But his strategy is useless if you don’t know what it’s for. So your why needs to be, why are you using social media Why are you creating content Whatever that content is, why are you trying to build an audience However big that is, uh, you know, why are you doing any of the things online that you’re trying to do The why has to give your, your purpose to your strategy. So are you looking for, and it could be multiple things, but are you looking for brand awareness Are you a newer company, newer to the block and you kind of want people to know who you
Stephanie Liu: are. Are you specifically looking for sales and revenue increase it Are you looking for uh, to, you know, specifically build your audience for a certain reason Maybe you want to build your, you know, your email newsletter. Maybe you want to build your funnel. Stephanie, we’ve got 273 60. Stephanie is in the House.
Stephanie Liu: I get like a day off from being the producer. I don’t like that. I kind of late next month to be here. Next one.
Stephanie Liu: Um, so Steph, we kicked everything off and we’re talking first about how and where to get started in terms of if you don’t have a strategy or it’s been a long time since you’d look this social media strategy. So I was just kicking it off saying you need a why and to be able to answer that, why you’re using social media because you can’t craft your strategy if you don’t know what you’re using it for. So you want to look and see what those goals are. What is it that you want in a social media And if it’s that you want brand awareness, what type of grand awareness do you want Do you want people to know you because you’ve added a new product or a new division of Your Business Are you a brand new business and you just want people to know your business, your name, you are, you know, functionality, your product solution, whatever it is.
Stephanie Liu: If you’re looking for sales and revenue, what type of sales and revenue are you looking for Are you looking for new product sales Are you looking for legacy product sales Are you looking for a 20% increase in sales You need to have tangible ants for tangible goals that then social media can tie into because you can create all the strategy you want, but if you don’t have a goal for like you know, talking about, you know, a weird saying, Amanda has been basically driven around the world at this point. You know, she has a clear goal on each road trip, like she’s going to this destination. Then she can put literally plot out the map of how she’s going to get there. But if she didn’t know she was going to appoint a, then she’s just
Stephanie Liu: driving aimlessly around the country, which could be kind of fun. But we are using, I’m using GPS is are like business analogy. Yeah. So let’s talk about Amanda. She’s not here. Let’s do it and I’m just kidding. Let’s talk about her the whole time strategy. You guys, having a strategy in place is really kind of like your gps for your business and getting from a one destination to your business to the next. You know, sometimes on paper it looks really nice, right But then there’s shiny objects syndrome. You might see like a Ferris wheel or Disneyland on the side, you might like get off course a little bit, but your strategy is your gps to get you right back on there. Right Amanda So I hope to see you soon.
Stephanie Liu: I love that stuff. That was awesome. And that’s the thing because the strategy has to be something that has a little bit of flexibility, right It can’t be something that’s written in stone in the sense of like we are doing this and this is all we’re doing because new features we’ll roll out, features will disappear, a business, things will change. There will, you know your business may hit hiccups or growth or things that would change how the strategy is going to roll forward. So just because you’ve got your why, you know where you want to go, the strategy is going to be what gets you there. But there has to be room for that flexibility for those detours. When you know you see an outlet mall on the side of the freeway and you got to get off and get some new shoes. I’m just saying these Hay, right
Stephanie Liu: Or the days that I like guns or you know, whatever that Shiny Object Syndrome as or whatever that delay is or you know, things happen. You have to be able to have that flexibility in the strategy. Got It. Very cool. Um, all right, so that’s the kind of, you know, let’s say that’s, that’s to get us started, right So we’re going to, you know, we have to set the y. So once we’ve done that, um, one of the other things I always sit down and talk with my clients about is who, who are you talking to Because again, strategy is great, but if you’re catering it for, you know, a 45 year old male, but your target audience is a 25 year old female, the strategy is going to get you significantly off course and you’re never really gonna reach that destination. So basically you’re saying like, if your CML is like 15 up train a target, you know, a Gen z, you might not want to have them write the copy.
Stephanie Liu: You might, you might want to deal with it. Couldn’t be good at it. That’s true. That’s true. That’s true. But in general, yeah, you need to know who you’re talking to, right Because you know, even then like I tend to know like we all know our audiences. I tend to have a target audience of on average a 45 year old woman who is a mom who is running her own business. It may be a small business, she may have a team, she may be an entrepreneur. That’s traditionally who I’m talking to. So I craft my content as if I’m talking to someone of that general personality and style. That doesn’t mean that I don’t have 28 year olds following him. He doesn’t mean I don’t have men following me. It’s just that in general, that’s where my demographic is and that’s from creating content and I’m using that tone, that voice, that style, those analogies, those stories, those things that connect with that audience.
Stephanie Liu: So if you don’t know, if I was in there and talking like I was an 18 year old talking to a bunch of college kids, these 45 year old women who are traditionally my audience would be like, what do you do Like, they would not know what I was saying with all the emojis and the acronyms and all the, you know, Lmk is and all these things. Like they’d be like, what, what is this girl doing to me Like, so I would lose that audience. Doesn’t mean I couldn’t build an audience in the 20s demographic, but that’s not who my audience is. So, um, you guys have anything to add to that Well, let’s talk about like how do you know who your target audience is For many of us we have insights and analytics and dashboards where we can figure out who our audience is. I mean, you just did an amazing Badass live stream today in the group talking
Stephanie Liu: about Instagram analytics and how you could understand who looking at your content. Same thing with Facebook. You guys could easily go into your Facebook insights, see the split between men and women, see the split in between the actual age groups. That’s always helpful. You can even do that on Twitter. I mean, you could do that with the Corp Health, right And that, you know, and that’s super helpful. So knowing and understanding who your target audience is and you know, and I think even preface to say that sometimes when people work on their social media strategies, they, it, they treat it as if it’s an island. But I feel like you and I, Jen and Mike, like we’re all talking about like your overarching business marketing strategy, right Like not only simply just your Instagram and your or your Facebook, but really your overarching business strategy. And it is so weird not being the producer for this cause I don’t know when Mike is going to put the camera on me and I feel like, um, I feel like that Internet meme where it shows the little gopher and he’s all done, done, done. Right.
Stephanie Liu: I wanted to add too. I know, I don’t think Mike too, they end up liking this and he didn’t know what I want to do this more often. Um, but to add to the kind of stuffs point with knowing who your audience is, you know, it, it goes beyond just, you know, age, demographic or you know, male, female. It could be actual, like geographical locations. It could be hobbies and interests. Like you know, Mike is known. He built an entire brand awareness around star wars and people know him for star wars regardless of whether or not that has anything to do with blogging or social media context. He built brand awareness around that kind of tribe of people. That doesn’t mean that somebody who doesn’t Love Star Wars can’t love my golden, but there’s a brand awareness that ties in with that that automatically attracts certain audiences.
Stephanie Liu: So knowing if your audience has a hobby or an interest, being able to tie in with that. And you know, like I said, my, a lot of my audience are parents, so I into the parenting side of it and challenging, you know, the aspects of being a parent, which most of us all at one I know the three of us and most of the people watching can understand, you know, whether it’s a potty training thing or whether it’s, you know, a school thing or whether it’s a late night thing, like we’ve all had the same experiences. And those are ways that you can use that strategy to really build those relationships and communication throughout. You know, all of your content, but then also like Steph said, social media is never in silo, right Like social media is part of your entire media kit. It’s if, if someone’s looking at a TV ad and then they come to your social media, they shouldn’t be the same tone, tech style, logo, colors, voice, everything. Same thing goes for print ads, radio ads, your website, your business cards, your brochures, your window displays, whatever it is. These all need to be consistent so you can’t have a social media team that never talks to the rest of your business. They should be tied into your customer service. They should be tied into your marketing. They should be tied into your accounting. They should be a whole component of your business that everybody speaks the same language. I love it. Love it. Okay.
Mike Allton: You’re about a lot is not just understanding interest, but also understanding the pain points. What are the problems that your audience is going through Maybe it’s directly related to your product. Maybe it’s not. Maybe it’s a corollary, right So this coming holiday season, what are the major pain points that everybody has that every customer of yours might have is that they’re under a time crunch. It’s crazy at the holiday season because we stack all these abnormal things on top of our normal activities. So whether your product or your service directly speak to that, maybe you could at least help your target audience understand that by working with you, you’re going to help them save some time.
Stephanie Liu: Yeah, and that’s a great point, Mike. I totally, you know, I think so many times we, you’ll look for the, you know, the direct correlation, right Like it’s like, well, this is the service I offer and I offer dog grooming services or I offer, you know, consulting services for businesses or, you know, whatever it is. And we only think of what we do in, in kind of a linear fashion. Um, but let’s say it with a dog grooming thing. Okay. Well, it could still tie into a time saving thing where it’s like, hey, we have before and aftercare services where you can drop your dog off in the morning, have them groomed, and don’t worry, come back and pick them up when you’re done your Christmas shopping three hours later. We’re here to help alleviate your time constraints because no one wants to worry about, oh, I’ve got to drop the dog off.
Stephanie Liu: I have one hour, then I have to pick the dog back up and that doesn’t give me the time to go do this. Now I’m stuck in this location and I can’t do anything. So look and find ways that you can solve that pain point. Even if it’s not a direct correlation. There’s ways that you can tie that in. And that goes, you know, into an entire strategy overview, not just a singular event. Um, but that’s another thing to think about when you’re looking for, with your strategy. We always want to look at least a year out. So we have, you know, short term strategies and we’ve a long term strategies but you want to be looking a year out. Like we, I just did my Instagram live on Wednesday night talking about your holiday planning and really how you should have started your holiday can paint campaign planning like at least months ago.
Stephanie Liu: You should be starting this year to start looking at what next year’s holiday campaigns look like and you know you should be in the summer planning photo shoots and video shoots and and what you need to do for your holiday campaigns before anyone’s even thinking about the holidays. So you want to have that, that distance out where you can be picking up those key thoughts and and planning those photo shoots in the video shoots and your content strategies and making sure your team is on board and all the pieces that go into that well in advanced. And that ties into knowing what are you going to have for it. Are going to be a Valentine to promotion Are you doing summer campaigns Are you doing seasonal campaigns for back to school or graduation season All of the things you want to plan those out in advance that you can think about those pain points that Mike just mentioned and figure out how your campaign can tie into those may be true.
Mike Allton: So we’re going to think about who we’re talking to. We’re going to think about all the different things that we want to, uh, all the events that we want to take advantage of in the coming year, the seasons, whether they’re business, seasons, holiday seasons, whatever the case might be. What are some of the things that we want to be thinking about as we kind of build out our strategy for the coming year Any other particular topics from the mine
Stephanie Liu: I would say, and I think Steph can jump in on some of this too, but think about trends. You know, one of the big things going forward in 2019 is going to be video and live video. Um, regardless of whether or not you like it. I hate cardio. I don’t like watching them. For somebody who lives on life camera, right Yeah. I know these two over here, but under, but I’m always creating video. You guys, I for somebody who doesn’t like video, I’m alive on camera at least three times a month, you know, between groups and in my life and I’m recording podcasts and I’m recording training videos. I do a lot of video and I don’t like doing it in the sense of if I’m a blogger I’m like Mike, I would rather sit down at the computer and type up a blog post, wham Bam, done. But I have learned, I know and stuff is like the last thing she wants to do is type up a blog post. She’s like, who can I pay to just transcribe this entire video for me and God blog. Yes, you will already written this swipe file.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean Mike is crazy cause like I’ll have a Facebook live video and then like five minutes later he already has a written blog posts. I’m like, you’re insane. Literally typing as you’re talking. He’s like, thanks. Scribed it. No
Stephanie Liu: points taken out, but that’s the right now. And you don’t know. No, I’m not. Right. He’s using his feet. He’s down there. Just type.
Speaker 5: I just felt like a really crazy visual of like Mike having like really long toes. Oh my God. Sorry Mike. I’m sure you guys were like auto roll. You’re like, yeah, we’re gonna talk business strategy. And then like, here comes Stephanie, like, yeah.
Stephanie Liu: Oh No. Lardy warned everybody. We want everybody to like, you know, you have no idea what I was going to happen when you get at least two of us, let alone all of us on a call. You’ve no idea what’s coming your way. So just be prepared. Now we have visuals of Mike with long toes.
Speaker 5: Get us on camera. My goal for next year is to like to really, really master Photoshop because now I’m just gonna be like, all right, the next time I see you Mike, like wearing, he’s like 70, don’t you dare take pictures of my feet. I love you.
Stephanie Liu: Oh Gosh, yes, yes. Live video back to yes. Back to that. Um, but yeah, focusing on what those trends are for 2019 and one of those trends is obviously video, live video and making that part of your strategy, making a strategic commitment to actually film or video. And that doesn’t mean you have to film live video every week. It doesn’t mean you have to film a video every single day, but it means making a commitment to it, whether it’s a 32nd or a two minute tutorial, whether it’s a 15 minute interview or maybe it’s a webinar style for you know, a half hour, 45 minutes. Find a way to start incorporating that video component into your strategy. And then, you know, looking at what other trends may be related to you. Are there things like with chatbots that would relate to you Are there things with either augmented reality or virtual reality type components that could tie in to you
Stephanie Liu: Are there things related to uh, you know, and I don’t want to necessarily say like the whole snapchat thing, but they’re, you know, they’ve taken all those snapchat features and they’re tying in the men to all the other platforms where now, you know, the snapchat camera is available on the desktop. Obviously Instagram stories, Facebook stories, those sorts of things that, you know, not that they are popular now, but if you’re not using them now, how can you use them or use them better and more efficiently in 2019 Lucky your ad strategy, what are you going to do going forward with your ads that you can either start doing them, are you going to look at ways to use them more effectively, put better management behind campaigns. So these types of like trend type things or things that you want to look at in your strategy as well.
Stephanie Liu: Yeah, and I would even add, like if he does, you’re listening to the gender right now, you’re like, damn, she’s telling me all this shit that I gotta do. That’s like crazy. Right I started thinking about like your resources, right Like is next year, the time for you to step up and invest in a team, like what can you take off of your plate Because let’s be honest, many of you guys that are part of 60 you’re probably a solo preneur. You’re, you’re, you’re like the one man band, right So what can you put on your list that’s like, okay I’m going to be much more strategic next year and be much more proactive versus reactive and doing the tactical stuff, right There’s this one thing that Ascii had had put in her solo preneurs group and she’s like, what’s like your business hat Like how do you stay productive
Stephanie Liu: And I was one of those people are like I have to create process stocks for my intern. Right Cause then that way I can focus on bigger deals, bigger collaborations to drive that bigger revenue. So if Jen’s was just like, Yo, your ads, you’re a chaplain, augmented reality and you’re like, you know, write that down. But that’s like now’s a really good time for you guys to start brainstorming. Right And we haven’t even, I don’t know if you guys touched on this cause I jumped in a little bit late, but you know, did we talk about analytics Like what type of content is really resonating for um, for your audience Like having worked with Mike so much in terms of like the blogging piece of things, I’m constantly looking at Google analytics. I’m looking at like which, which landing page people go to and why does it really resonate with them
Stephanie Liu: Can I update it more Can I put more call to actions in there Or like optins and it was just folding that into your strategy of looking at like what’s currently working because maybe you want to add more resources to that, dedicate more time or even make it better. Or even just take a look at what’s not working and then deciding shit dry, sorry, shoots. Do I still want to like try to make this thing work right or use those resources for something else because I know that it’s really going to move the needle on my business. So thank you. Now back to Jen
Mike Allton: into a question that a grandma Pierson had. She said, is blogging necessary to build a service business If so, what’s the best way to build a content plan A, for instance, keyword research versus topics that I want to write about or a combo of both. So does anyone,
Stephanie Liu: no, I think separately are going to take a little break over here and we’re just going to let Mike, how do you do your keyword research yesterday Let me, let me tell you guys, the way that I do my keyword research is this. I write it all out and then I hit up Mike. I like Mike, what you my keywords be copied, paste. I’m like, all right, done. I’m good. So Mike is my keyword planner. It’s the ultimate keyword planner. But Mike, go for it.
Mike Allton: The service, right So to Carol’s point, should you be blogging Absolutely. Uh, pretty much no matter what kind of a business you are, there is a way that you can use content. Now, it doesn’t necessarily to be a blog, it can be articles, Faq is whatever kind of written content you want. But typically that’s the kind of content that’s going to rank well in a Google search and allow you to bring in organic traffic and then turn that traffic into leads and sales and we all want that. Right So for me, a big part of my strategy for each coming year and when I’m talking to clients, what I teach them to do in the coming years, think about what do I want to accomplish from an organic search, from an organic content perspective, what do I want to rank for What do I want to have people searching for
Mike Allton: And I’m the number one results that comes up because that’s the kind of content that you want to create and that’s what you need a plan for. You can’t just decide one day to write a blog post and it was that. That just doesn’t happen. It has to be strategic, it has to be planned and outlined. So typically for me, it starts by doing some keyword research. Carol is great. She comes from sites cell where they have a builtin keyword research tool. If you’re not a member of site sells product, then you can go to the keyword planner on Google. You can use SCM rush. Uh, there’s lots of tools out there that you can use, but you’re going to have to use a tool because it’s not about what you think people will search on because we’re often wrong, right We’re interested in something.
Mike Allton: We think something’s a great idea. We think something’s a, a wonderful topic to write about or do a video or on or, or whatever the case might be. But if no one else is actually searching for that, that’s probably not a good place to invest your time into creating that content. So you use a tool that will tell you how many times last month people were searching for that topic or the month before, the month before that. So then not only can you see volume, you can see trends. I wrote a huge article that went viral about vine shutting down and it was massive and there were tons of people searching for that. There are still people searching today for what happened to vine, but that’s going down. I can see it in the metrics, I can see it in Google trend analysis. So should I invest more time and writing about that topic, uh, knowing that I’m getting a lot of traffic today No, because six months from now there’ll be even fewer people writing about it then or reading about it or wanting to read about it that I had today. So I start by creating a, what I call a pyramid. And I really shouldn’t call it a pyramid because it’s really just an upside down triangle. It doesn’t have,
Speaker 6: it’s okay, it’s a slice of pizza
Mike Allton: and at the very tip at the top of the pizza is that keyword that you want to rank for. And maybe it’s the service that you provide or maybe it’s something else that’s really important and integral to your business. Um, sites that has a very similar philosophy that they, they teach us as part of their product. But the idea is that you’ve got this thing at the top that you want to rank for. And what I suggest you do is create a page that really invest heavily into talking about that particular thing. They keyword that service, whatever it is, and you come up with three major subtopics that helps support, help talk about that particular topic, and you turn those into three sub pages and those should just pages on your site, the end up linking up to that top page. Now this is all in your mind, right
Mike Allton: This is all not a physical structure because this is your website and they’re just pages or posts within your website, but the linking that goes on in between them, and you can document this out on paper so that you know how it works and you can see how it works and how that flows. That’s going to result in traffic flowing up to that top page. So for each one of those three subtopics, you write three blog posts, and again, I’m saying blog posts, but in your mind, just think I’m going to write content about that. These could be articles, Faq is videos, podcasts, whatever the case might be. Okay,
Speaker 6: you’re good content.
Mike Allton: Sure there’s nothing wrong with video content, but the caveat with video content or audio content here is that we do ultimately what that kind of content to live on the sites in a way that Google can see it. Because what we want is now nine blog posts around the bottom or the crust of the pizza that are going to attract people, right They’re going to come in, they’re gonna want to sit at your table and dying from your pizza. And as they enjoy the pizza, they’re going to want to learn more. The blog posts brought him in talking about how to do something that’s maybe somewhat tangential to your topic of choice, but as they learn about that, they’re going to learn about that topic and they’re going to learn about you when they’re going to want to learn more, if you’ve done it in a smart way. So that’ll lead them to the subtopic page and eventually up to the main topic page. So that brings traffic in. And as all that traffic comes in and all those things are established over time, that top page will become a number one ranking for that particular topic.
Speaker 7: Okay.
Stephanie Liu: Hello Danay go Mike. All didn’t go. Go, go. My Colton. Cool. Cool. Hey ps. By the way, I just noticed your background and I really like it. It’s like holiday festive. Yeah. Is that a, do you have a bike Get back there Is that supposed to like represent Paris Like what’s going on up at a wine bar He’s got like a whole thing going on
Mike Allton: ultima if you know. You see awesome.
Stephanie Liu: Yeah. I need a step up my holiday background.
Jenn Herman: I was like, no, I feel getting to get a Christmas tree back here. Like I feel like I’m missing out on the uh, the festivities. I need to get a fourth Griff mystery cause Mike Dalton wouldn’t put a Christmas tree up in full
Mike Allton: fancy. That’s the benefit of building a studio in the basement of your, in laws house. Okay.
Jenn Herman: Their entire, yeah.
Mike Allton: Life storage of stuff in front of you to go pick from. So I went diving.
Jenn Herman: It’s every week, you’ll have a different set my mind. I have plenty of furniture. Did you choose from next week it’ll all be about fitness cause all kinds of gear down here. Oh my God. That’s what happened. All right, so, so here we can make this totally, Mike dropped the a, the whole blogging content, uh, brother in funnel questions that have come in.
Mike Allton: Yeah. So let’s see. Tom, here’s a great question. Tom Hardy. This is asking, let me bring it on the screen. What about the three d photos with Facebook I see a lot of potential for brands.
Speaker 7: Hmm.
Jenn Herman: Okay. Any comment on your ticket
Stephanie Liu: You know, I think they’re cool. I mean, it definitely makes you slow. Your scroll, right Slow your scroll sister. Like check this out, right You’re just like, you scroll past it, like up and down. You’re like, okay, I see what’s happening. Um, I like it. I think there’s a lot of things that you can do. Like let’s say if you have a product, right I was going to pull something, but it’s like lotion. So I’m not going to show you the brand name, but why Why does Stephanie Have Lotion on her desk You got, you don’t ask questions, you’re going to have to watch the last episode but like you could, you could have a product like right there, here, this is even better. Right. You could have a product with its right there and then people can go ahead and check it out and that’s really cool. I think that it’s a ton of fun. Um, God see you guys. This is live video and I was like I wish I did not just put that lotion in there cause I actually had something really cool.
Stephanie Liu: It was awesome because this is, you literally get the real us like you get stuff. He’d be like, the closest thing to me is a lotion. That’s going to be the screenshot too. If you’d like to freeze frame going to be Stephanie holding up Heidi. I have a fish of any like crying as a blogger. I write a bad joke. I get it. I’m like okay dude that was stupid. Like legit Bitmoji to like pop it in place of a, in place of stop. So, so yeah. So for the three d photos, um, you know, it’s one of those things where I think they’re cool. Um, I think they need more widespread application. I think right now it’s too much of the, the Shiny Object Syndrome. Like just like whenever they launch any new feature, typically all of us markers, the first ones to jump on it and just like blatantly overuse these items because everybody got access to them and a lot of common users do too. And they’re just like, oh, there’s this new feature and everybody starts trying it out. And who common are these average folk
Stephanie Liu: But I always say, I’m like, marketers are the ones who ruined everything because we do. Um, but that’s the thing. I think right now, people as always happens when something new comes out. We just tried to do it with anything and everything. So right now everyone’s doing the three d photos with their dogs and themselves and trees and randomness and it’s there. It’s a cool feature that I haven’t got yet. Um, so I’m still waiting. I’m like, I don’t like it cause I don’t have it. Um, but no, I honestly I how much I plan on using it. I don’t know. It’s still one of those things that I do want to think about it more from a strategic business approach, like to steps point of what can you do in a way that use these three d photos to augment your visual content, not replacing your visual content, not creating a bunch of randomness just because you can, but augmenting what you currently have.
Stephanie Liu: And that will mean looking strategically at those things. Are you doing product placement shot Are you doing, you know, photos in a lifestyle type environment where the three d photo could make it better Or would it make it worse because some of the Three d photos I’ve seen when you move it really drags the background like and it’s totally blurred and there’s like this gray like shadow thing behind the object of focus. And so those ones I’m like, okay maybe we should think on three D on that one. That one didn’t turn out so well. And so playing with it and seeing how they work and then how that can augment your existing visual content strategy, not replacing it. Um, and not, like I said, just creating randomness for the sake of saying you can do it, then I definitely can see some good applications for it.
Mike Allton: Yeah. Steph mentioned earlier that, uh, you know, eve asked and her group, what are some of your business hacks And, and I jokingly responded, Yep. Not getting involved in those kinds of Facebook discussion because that’s going to drag you down, right It’s, it’s kind of Germane to what you guys were talking about right now. The reason you want to have a strategy in the reason you want to think through what you want to do in the coming year is so that you can stay focused on those things as a business and not get distracted by the newest thing that comes out in two months or six months that may have no business application for you at all. Maybe they’re fun, but as a business, we got to make sure that we’re balancing the fun with what’s going to impact the bottom line. Right.
Stephanie Liu: Well, and that goes to, you know, stuff’s point too. You know, when I was talking about all the trends that are coming out and what you should embrace, that doesn’t mean you have to embrace all of them. Yeah. Right. Like you may say, for the first six months of the year, we’re gonna focus on the video strategy. Get that off the ground, build that up. That’s our focus. Maybe the second half of the year you’re going to focus on, you know, maybe upping your ads. Or maybe that’s where you look at what a, if there’s a new tool that has come out, like you know, maybe you go, okay, there’s a whole new feature. We’re going to start working on augmented reality room. We’re on chatbots. Or maybe you just turn on and go, okay, Instagram wants a new feature, or Facebook launched a new feature.
Stephanie Liu: Now we’re going to focus on that. But like you said, that point, having that strategy keeps you focused. So when the shiny objects pop up, you’re not running in 93 different directions over the next six months. Trying to catch all of these random things, but just staying clear and focus. If it’s, if it really is a tangible new trend, it will be there in six months. It will be there in a year. It will be there in two years. You don’t have to be the first one on the platform to embrace it and if you have the time and the team and the resources to try out the new things, great, go for it. You know, if you’ve got, the interns are a staff of a marketing team that can say, hey, why don’t you run with this new feature and see what we can do with it
Stephanie Liu: Great. But if it’s you, if it you and your spouse, if it’s you know, you and one other person or whatever it is, you guys don’t have that kind of time to lose hours a day or days over months to focus on these random new things or to try and build a whole new platform. If you’ve never done video to now all of a sudden be like, oh, we’re going to create a video a week. That’s a major undertaking. So look at it in a way that’s realistic to you and have that strategy to give you that guidance forward. That to Mike’s Point, keeps you on that path allowing for a little bit in detours and deviations, but that you’re on that consistent path forward.
Mike Allton: Yeah. What I’m hearing is there’s basically three areas to avoid, right Within the existing networks or things that you’re doing. Sometimes there’ll be new features that come out that you want to be very careful of and be mindful of when you adopt those. There’s also, because we’re in social media, there’s new networks and there’s new opportunities for new platforms to jump in on and those might be really great, but again, that could be distracting from your business strategy and your business goals. And then the third thing is techniques. Cause you mentioned video in the same thing. I hear people all the time with blogging or podcasting or something like that. I want to start a podcast. Okay, well that’s great. Does that fit your business goals Do you have time to do it Do you have time to be good at it Are there other things that you’ve already started that you aren’t good at yet
Mike Allton: And that’s where you need to invest your time I mean, it’s, you know, projects around the house or a great analogy, right Someone starts to renovate their bathroom and they get some challenges and they run into some hurdles and then that project goes on for six months because they thought they could do it themselves. Well that’s okay if you’re going to finish, but if you’re not going to finish, don’t move onto the next thing. So those are some pitfalls to avoid. But what else when we’re thinking about the strategy that we want to have in place for the coming year, any other pitfalls or challenges or hurdles that you might avoid
Stephanie Liu: I was just going to throw in kind of to that one point where if there is something you want to embrace, like let’s say you really use it. Let’s say you want to start a podcast, figure out how much time, like there’s a reason Jen doesn’t own a podcast because I’m not a producer. I don’t have the time to produce that content. So you know what I do I go on everybody else’s podcast. I go be a guest if you don’t have time or the resources to create videos, find people that you can partner with that can do takeovers for your business, where they create the videos about your business and you just have to post them user generated content where your audience is creating the content on your behalf and you get to repost it to your content. So if there’s something you really want to embrace, but maybe it’s outside of your wheelhouse in terms of existing resources or capabilities, find ways that maybe you can embrace it where you don’t have to take on the full ownership of those projects as a way to get into that industry and maybe next year then you can say, okay, now we’ve seen huge results from this video component or from being a guest on podcasts.
Stephanie Liu: Now we’re ready and we have the infrastructure and we can do it ourselves.
Stephanie Liu: Very true. Did we, did we talk about like the other component that you should have in your strategy, which is really putting a timeline together or like your roadmap No, go for it. Yeah. Okay. So a lot of what we do for our clients is really like you guys just put the camera on me. Dammit. I sit back and put on some lotion.
Stephanie Liu: All right, so if you guys are already thinking about like timeline wise, right Like so January is coming up, what type of content typically works well for Your Business Like let’s say you’re in health and you’re probably thinking like, um, fitness tips to put back in there or healthy foods to put back in there. Or for those of us that are in social media, it’s always going to be like, what are the social media trends for 2019 what’s the new Facebook algorithm going to be like in 2019 with things that marketers should know about 2019 and start planning that content out there. Jen was gave the perfect example of if you’re not, if you didn’t plan for Black Friday back in the summer, you’re kind of already late to the game, but not if you want to plan for January. You could do that now January, February and March.
Stephanie Liu: In fact, I just got off the client call and sometimes they would send things over to me ad hoc and I’m like, you know what, this was not in our strategy doc. So let’s go ahead and add this Natalie. Next year we won’t be caught off guard and we could have the necessary, the necessary resources to go ahead and staff up for it. Right. And like you were asking earlier about, um, what are some pitfalls that you can avoid And yes, a lot of people fall into the shiny object syndrome and they want to try everything out. And let’s say you’re balancing your own personal brand and clients. I, Jen and Mike know this about me all the time and I’m like, ah, I haven’t made time for myself to do anything. Right. So I went back to what I used to do in the agency.
Stephanie Liu: And what I did was I would say, okay, there are 30 days in January. Okay. Of those 30 days, how many of those are actual working days So I’ll take out my vacation days, I’ll take out the Wednesdays, right Because I don’t work on Wednesdays. And that boils down to how many actual working days that I have in January. Then I break it out by, well, how long does it take me to actually do a Facebook live And I take those hours out and then whatever I have leftover to experiment with something new, that’s when I’ll dedicate it. Does that make sense Yeah, I get it. Could you guys hear what she just said I know, I’m like, she’s looking at
Mike Allton: all the available time that she’s got and she’s allocating what she knows she’s got to do and where she’s got tied to fit in other things and she’s planning her play.
Stephanie Liu: Exactly. And be mindful of also the fact that not everything is going to be work you want to add in your self care. Right Like as entrepreneurs, sometimes you want to hustle. And as a mom I can’t always do that. Like I need like staff time. I need time to just be my little field position with my gold ball. And just like you drink some water and recharge, you know, so factor that into your schedule and figure out what’s really going to work out. And if you have access to your analytics, which you should or if you have some of that does it, you know, get a report for them and just be like, you know what was really moving my business in Q one that I should focus on and then I’ll be adjusted that way. What tips do you guys have when it comes to putting together like the timeline and your strategy So for me, one of the things I always work with my clients is I say realistically Kinda to your point, but maybe not quite that dialed in, but I say how much time a day do you have for social media Realistically
Stephanie Liu: because you can make the best strategy in the whole wide world. And when you sit down, that’s going to take 12 hours and execution a day. And Ain’t nobody got time for 12 hours and execution of debt unless that is literally your only job. And then you just go to bed at night and then you get up and you start all over again. So the reality is you don’t have that much time and date. How much time do you legitimately have that you can commit Um, where is it something that you can say, okay, I can, I can do a half an hour a day. I could squeeze into hours day. And that may mean you do a half hour block in the morning and a half hour block in the evening. What, how much time Where can you legitimately put that time into your social media and then plan your strategy around that. So if you say, I have an hour a day, what can you do in each hour of that day
Stephanie Liu: And I always recommend calendaring it. Like I always, and book time in segments. So what I always tell people is is you’re scrolling through Facebook and you’re reading an article, you’re scrolling through linkedin and you come across an article, bookmark those articles. If you read them and find them interesting and there’s something you want to share to your audience, just bookmark them and then set that one hour aside on Tuesday per se. We’re now you go through and you read all of those articles. Then you take them and you put them into your dashboard, like in a Gwar pulsar or hoot suite and schedule them out in that one hour block on Tuesday, so you’re Tuesday. Our commitment was devoted to reading posts and scheduling your content for the next week. Then the next Tuesday you do the same thing. Then maybe on Wednesday you say, Wednesdays are my day to shoot photos, so I know in the next month I’m going to need this type of photo content.
Stephanie Liu: So Wednesdays I’m going to schedule a photo shoots. Maybe one week it’s a morning shoot, maybe one week it’s an evening shoe because you want different lighting. Maybe one day it’s raining and you kind of have to scrap that shoot. So maybe you do something different that you would have done an indoor shoot the following week, but every Wednesday you’re, our commitment is plan. It’s so you’re not just sitting there saying, okay, I have an hour to sit on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and just do all these engagements. And learning is instead, it’s strategic for the entire strategic component of all your content, not just the interaction. And if you do that after about a month, because it takes a month for things to become habit, it becomes routine. And you just know Tuesdays are your day to sit down and read. Wednesdays are your photo days, maybe Fridays or your day where you spend a little extra time going through and engaging with content and leaving more comments on people’s posts and all through this, you still need to be reacting to comments, you know, responding to messages.
Stephanie Liu: So you still have to leave time for that in your day to day activities, but calendar time on your schedule to do these chores and make that part of your strategy. In a sense of, you know, how much time you have and if your strategy says, you know, you want to, you know, increased sales by 80% and you want to get, you know, 10,000 new here and you want to get, you know, all of these optins and okay, can you realistically do that in 30 minutes a day or an hour a day Because most of us don’t have that much time and we set ourselves up for unrealistic goals and eventually what we deem to be failure because our strategy was way outside our scope.
Mike Allton: Yeah, I love that. Although you did say the h word in the middle of that, and I thought we had an understanding of this broad aren’t food to use the h word
Speaker 5: hoot suite. Oh yeah. Cause she was like, that’s right. And I was like Mike Alton, you know,
Mike Allton: now the one thing that I was going to mention though real quick is that you’re talking about people thinking about how much time they’re going to spend on social media or creating campaigns and all those kinds of things, which is very, very true. The other truth that I want to make sure people understand is that all these different things that you’re talking about doing, you will get better at them over time. Right Stephanie I know you create blog content so much faster than you used to. I do. I don’t create content at the same speed that I did when I first started 10 years ago because,
Speaker 5: which is why he writes five blog posts in five minutes. That’s right. You certainly like Britain two posts and publish them and the time we’ve been on. And you know what’s really funny is that like I’m, I’m very, I’m very much a competitive person and so as soon as I’m done with something and I know that Mike is interested in, I’m like fuck it, I’m going to go to try to write something and he’ll always be me. But at least I have, you know, I have so much we’ll compete with, which makes it a little bit fun and then I can always go back to him and get my key words from him.
Stephanie Liu: But that’s something you can do with your team too, right Like it could be something where if you’re, if the, if you are that competitive nature, if you have multiple people in your company or in your team say, okay, you need to record a video and I need to write a blog post and we need to see who can get it done first and whose content is better. Because in reality, the two contents combined are the best. But you’re giving yourself a challenge to see who can create it faster, who can create it better, who can put more data in there or research to back it up or validating points or whatever it is. And you’re both so committed to it that when it comes out, you both had these incredible pieces of work that now we’re fully publishable content. Or you turn around and take, you know, okay, we’ll publish the blog post and we’ll embed the video in there.
Stephanie Liu: So you have essentially two pieces of content in one, you know, and then you put it on youtube and that links back to the blog post and you do all this cross promotion and you know, you’re maximizing both pieces. But that’s a great idea is you know, in terms of finding what that motivation is because it’s so easy to like, and for those of you who don’t know, I work a full time job and I run JEN’s trends as a secondary business. So I go to work all day and then I come home and work all night and that isn’t always the most motivating thing in the world. Let’s just be real. So it’s easy to come home on Tuesday and be like, come on, just play hearing. Just catch up on some real housewives and not write a blog post, not answers to me emails. And so if you have that motivating factor of like, oh my God, I’m going to beat me to it, then you know I’m going to sit down when I get home, I’m going to crank out that Mike. Ah Gosh Man. Crushing Soul crusher.
Stephanie Liu: You know what I was going to add for you guys is that as you start planning out your timeline, this, this is what I do for my clients and feel free to steal this idea. So I’ll say like January key events. What are the key events that I should be aware of it like New Year’s Eve, New Year’s day, my mom’s birthday, my sister’s birthday, whatever. And then I put in my messaging, what’s my key messaging for the month Like what’s my theme Right This could totally apply to your Instagram stuff as well as your blogging and the, what am I planning for And usually when I say planning, it’s what am I planning for in terms of content creation or what do I need to go ahead and s like set the runway for February’s launch, right So I block that time out. I have an idea of what I’m gonna do for content creation and then I give myself, um, ideas for channel management as well. So do I need to update my cover photo Like how outdated is that bloody thing
Stephanie Liu: Um, I haven’t changed my in so long. Yeah.
Stephanie Liu: Then I also give myself time for monthly reporting because they want to know like how I’m doing, like Instagram followers or like Pinterest, all of that good stuff. And then compare it and see what’s working and move it around. And if I notice that like something they had planned for January didn’t get done, I can just copy and paste it and move it over to February. But the more that I see myself just keep moving it, I’m like, crap, is that actually a priority or am I just putting it on there because it’s the shiny object thing and I’m never going to do it. I’d rather just focus on things that I for sure I’m going to achieve. And you guys, I don’t know if we even talked about like smart goals. Did we chat about it that
Stephanie Liu: at all We didn’t, we didn’t really talk about that. And that was going to kind of say that what you were just talking about, that ties into ad campaigns to you guys where if you’re planning that calendar and that context and those campaigns and if you’re setting things up, you need to be thinking your ad campaigns before those, you know, periods come up as well because you need to think of what your ad spend is going to be. You need to think about, do you need to create any additional, you know, copy creative, who are the ad targets Are audiences going to be, are you going to have multiple ad sets running where you can do either ab testing or are you targeting multiple audiences with one ad in different capacities and all these things. So that’s going to tie into your planning. That’s going to tie into your budgeting as well.
Stephanie Liu: When you’re looking at the strategy, you know, it’s great to be like, Oh, I want to do all these things and here’s where I’m going to go, but you need to put the money behind it, not only for the ad set but for your time as well or for your team’s time. So if you’re going to be running a campaign that’s going to be, you know, you’re doing a February launch, you need to start thinking about that now. You need to start thinking about, okay, do you need to, you know, you’re going to hire an intern or attempt to help, you know, facilitate during that campaign. Is this something where you’re going to need more time during that campaign If anyone’s ever run a launch, you know it’s the most exhausting time suck on the planet and literally nothing else matters during the launch. So what do you need to do in advance so you don’t have to worry about those things during your launch week and you can just focus on the lunch and pull those, you know Okay, right A couple extra blog posts record a couple extra podcast. So they’re already in the theater during that launch week that you don’t have to worry about creating content and those sorts of things. So the timing and the budget all tie into what stuff was just saying about managing that component too.
Mike Allton: Okay, so hold up so well first of all I’m going through exactly what you’re talking about right now. We don’t have a product launch, but I’m doing the webinars as you guys know, because you guys are doing it. Couple of webinars for me and so are the Trulia does and other people next month. And so this is like all I’m thinking about is these, these webinars and launching this massive event that’s just going to be the most epic big on social media. But we’ve been talking about strategy, we’ve been talking about ad campaigns, we’ve been talking about planning content, how you do all that. How do you keep track of that And I know Stephanie you were kind of alluding that cause you were talking about copying and pasting stuff from January to February and I might, that doesn’t work unless you’ve got a tool.
Stephanie Liu: What do you listen for that I actually, I use a sauna for all of my clients and you know I used it, it depends on how like my clients think, right So majority of them like the, like the three columns, which is basically to do in progress and what’s completed. And then I have an extra column called the parking lot where it’s like, you know, ideas that we want to execute, execute, but we don’t really have a team to do it. And so sometimes like it’ll just fall over there. But if I notice that like something is still in the to do column and it’s red because it was like this deadline date that already passed. I’m like, dude, okay, like are you really going to do this or does this just need to be in the parking lot So that’s one way I use a sign it, but I also have like a strategy doc, I can actual keynote template and that’s, that’s easier to send to clients or if clients want to send that to other departments that they’re collaborating with because they want to know what’s on our schedule and what we’re planning for.
Stephanie Liu: Cause you guys, if you want to collaborate with other departments or even like other influencers and you don’t even know what’s on your calendar, how can they plan in advance with you Right So if, if I’m, if Mike is coming to me and saying like, Hey, we want to work something in January, it’s like, you know what I already know that come December, I’m only working five days in December. You guys, that’s insane. Like it’s insane to say that like I live with you have your schedule. She wow. Like I was, I was telling Jenn and I was telling Mike, I was like, come Thanksgiving, I’m gone for three weeks. And then there’s like that one week, I think it’s like the 17th I come back for work. I work four days and then it’s, and it’s Christmas. Christmas.
Speaker 5: Yeah. It’s for like one of those days. Yeah. I was like this one day you have me and then like I will be
Speaker 7: overloading
Speaker 5: candy canes and just,
Stephanie Liu: Oh yeah. Can you imagine step on a Webinar like a full on sugar rush O m g
Mike Allton: early in that week
Speaker 5: Yes. Juicy ps by the way. Like this is Stephanie now and then come like December. I’d be like, well yeah, like coming back home Disneyworld, low Truro and I feel like this is ridiculous. It welcome to the Chiro show with their goodness. It takes any other, Stephanie uses a sauna. Mike, what do you use
Mike Allton: Well, yeah, I’m all over the board, uh, because my work experiences a little bit different. I’m usually working for a company and not having a bunch of clients where I’m kind of telling them what to go do was, although that sounds really attractive. Uh, so we use a sauna. We also use Trello at a girl. Paul’s at some of the previous companies that I’ve worked with. It’s been a lot of Google docs, which yeah, water to Google docs is good. A lot of Google docs is not good. Uh, so I definitely would encourage people to kind of use a tool of some kind of base camp is one that I’ve used in the past that works very similarly to a soda.
Stephanie Liu: Cool. Yeah. So, and on one of those things, um, I, because I do my own projects again, I have consultations and I work with clients, but I don’t do manage it pretty. My clients, I don’t have, you know, checklists and things I need to run through with them. Uh, so for me, I live and die by my Google calendar. So everything goes on my Google calendar. Deadlines are listed on there. Every appointment, personal, professional, everything is listed on there. I block off chunks of time. Uh, so that I know when I can and can’t have personal time. So if I’ve got friends coming into town, I block those days off my calendar knowing that I have people in town, I’m not going to be getting work done, which means if I have client projects that are due or if I have deadlines for blog posts or submissions, I can plan my week around those saying, okay, I know I need to have everything done by Tuesday night because so and so’s coming into town on Wednesday and I’m not going to get any work done again because I only work on Jen’s trends Sunday through Wednesday cause I have my daughter on Thursday through Sunday and I try not to work on the weekends.
Stephanie Liu: So if I have someone coming into town on Wednesday, then that literally only leaves me, you’re like Monday and Tuesday to get work done, which means I’m not going to go out, you know, with friends or you know, take the night off and catch up on Dvr or watch a movie. I’m going to sit down and hustle and get everything done so that I know when my friend is here on Wednesday, I can go out with them. So for me, because I’m only managing my time and my projects, I can use a Google calendar and if I, and I color code everything, so I know if things are, you know, certain colors, they are either like a personal commitment or there when I’m doing a training session versus when I have a consultation. So I can just look at my calendar and even just by the color differentiation, no, what that commitment is and make sure that I’m planning ahead when I’m looking at that calendar and saying, or even when a client comes to me, like I have certain periods of the year where, especially in the springtime, I will have people contact me in March and I’m booking consultations into may because I can look at that calendar and say, nope, nope, nope, nope.
Stephanie Liu: And I’m looking down weeks and weeks ago. Okay, my next available is literally six weeks away. And they’re like, are you kidding me And I’m like, no, if you want to work with me, it’s going to be six weeks. And some people are like, okay, I’ll find somebody else. Great. Some people are like, get Greg your calendar. I don’t want to miss out and get stuck waiting even longer. So it’s just certain times of the year I have different, you know, requirements that tie into that. But all of that color coding, all of that in one calendar so I’m not going back and forth between, you know, different databases and different calendar is in a personal, you know, recording over here and a professional one over here. That’s what works for me.
Mike Allton: You’re one of the things that I’m hearing from you and Stephanie as well, this underlying idea of of commitment. You’re committed to using some tools. You’re committed to creating a strategy. You’re committed to getting the work done, which means for those of you listening, if you’re thinking like, wow, I don’t know if I can add another tool or at another platform or something like that. What’s most important is having that commitment to next year to being a business success and to coming up with a strategy, the tools and the platforms, that kind of stuff. We’ll make it a little bit easier for you. Maybe maybe not be committed though.
Stephanie Liu: And I think with that, uh, since we’re coming up on the one hour mark here, um, that that ties into three 60 marketing squad, you guys, you know, this is one of those things where you guys, you can’t do it all. The reason we have 360 and the threesome, we have four Aka Amanda sitting right over here and pretend I’m as she drives across the country. Uh, but the reason we have four of us is because even the four of us realize we can’t do all of this on our own. We have turned to each other in so many different ways that are happening in the back ends of our business where we lean on each other because no one can do all of these components themselves. You need a team for any sort of success. And three 60 marketing squad is what we want that to be for you.
Stephanie Liu: We want to help you. We want to be that resource where you can ask those questions, come into the group, get those answers. So you don’t have to spend six hours on Google researching something. You can come to the group and say, Hey, I needed this answer. Or Hey, my customer asked me this. Or Hey, I want to launch this. What do I need to know We will either answer the question directly, give you the directions and you know how to get you started or whatever you need. And for five bucks a month, you have all of the four of us, which cover 360 degrees of your marketing toolkit to answer all of those questions. So if you’re not already a member of three marketing squad, come hang out with us. Go to three 60 marketing squad.com. You can sign up right away, five bucks a month. That is it. Uh, you know, going into the holidays, you know, this is something that’s going to be valuable. And we talked about time saving. You know, we’re, we’re here to save you time. We’re here to help you with those content strategies to get you guys all set up so that going into the new year, you can build that content plan for yourself. You can build, you know, those, the resources and tools that you need to be successful in 2019 we got you. Got You. Ps, isn’t it in our one month anniversary today It is.
Stephanie Liu: Sorry.
Mike Allton: Yeah. So for those of you watching, we launched just 30 days ago and we already have about a hundred people in the group, which is great. That is an extra layer of networking and engagement that you can get on your posts. It’s not just the four of us feeding in to you and answering your questions. Other people chime in and some of them are really well, they’re all really knowledgeable and one way or another. Uh, so some of them are really able to chime in and answer a lot of those questions and give you some feedback beyond what you’re paying for.
Stephanie Liu: Absolutely. Cool. All right. All right guys. Sad. Can you guys get started on your 2019 strategy and if you need help, go hang out with this and the group. Cause I know that I want to share the big plans that I have for what I’m up to. Hey, hey teaser,
Mike Allton: we will be back in two weeks. Yes. Stephanie will not be with us.
Stephanie Liu: I will not be now. I’m sure it’s something special guest. We haven’t, we haven’t solidified the guest yet, but we will have a special guest with us. Um, ideally we always want to have four of us here for you guys, uh, giving you a full 360 degree perspective. Uh, so we will have a special guest next time in addition to Amanda, Mike and Myself. Uh, and so yeah, we’re doing these shows every two weeks, Fridays at 5:00 PM Eastern, so it’s next week is black Friday, thanksgiving week. So it’ll be the following week, uh, that we will be back here with our next show. Mike, did we line up that topic already
Mike Allton: I don’t think we have. So we’ll announce. Okay.
Stephanie Liu: We were tossing around ideas. We’ve got, we’ve got the Google doc going. Dot. Talking about Organization for team. We got a Google doc and you guys have ideas. By all means go ahead and suggest them. Like what are you, if there’s something that you’re trying to work on that you really want us to focus on, by all means, like this is interacting with them in the comments. Let us know what you want us to cover for topics. I’m thinking end of the year thinking, you know, going into 2019 that’s why we wanted to cover the, the 2019 in the strategy plan today because we want to give you time to start thinking about that before the end of the year. Um, but, or if there are any topics that you definitely want us to talk about, please leave those comments. We will add them to our list of, of options to cover for you guys.
Mike Allton: Awesome. And with that, I think we’re done.
Stephanie Liu: Yeah, next time.
Speaker 7: Bye. Bye.