Re-Evaluate Your Marketing Regularly

About a year ago, I decided that I wanted to have my content dripped on social media around the clock so I could always have a presence. For some reason, I thought that more volume would equal more traffic to my website. More traffic would mean a bigger list and more opportunities to serve and sell stuff.

I signed up for MeetEdgar and my team created an entire library of content that could be shared for me. They worked on building this content for weeks, and every week when I’d write a new blog, we’d slice and dice that piece of content into as many tweets and formats as we could for social sharing.

I’d log into social media and sometimes I’d see what we had done and think “that’s awesome” and other times I’d see it and cringe.

Eventually, it started to bother me.  It bothered me because the words weren’t mine.  When the posts were being scheduled, I wasn’t present.  The context wasn’t always the way I felt it should be and, sadly, I had succumbed to making more noise instead of being a quiet voice that people want to listen to.  I had sacrificed quality for quantity.

A couple months ago, I started re-evaluating everything in terms of how I market my business. I deleted all of the scheduled posts for my Facebook page and took back control. Every single post on my page since then has been written and posted in real time by me. The volume has gone down significantly and the engagement has never been stronger.

We’ve had great conversations and it feels authentic and real.

This week, I’ve decided to stop almost all scheduled content.  That means if you follow my work on social media it may not be as frequent because it will only be me posting it. The exception to this will be my LinkedIn published posts. They require a lot of time to set up and my team uses my content to do that for me.  I may also have someone do some posting for my upcoming event, Money, Mindset and Marketing, which I will be writing the content for.

It’s important to me to be present and engaged, and I want to stay true to my goal of not shouting the loudest, but saying what is worthy of being heard.

Social media is barely a decade old.

We’re all trying to figure out what works best for us and our businesses. That requires taking time to assess and evaluate if what you are doing is working. Therefore, what works for me, may not work for you. Please don’t interpret this as me telling you that you should do it my way – that’s not what I am saying.

I’m not saying scheduling or automation is bad.  For some people scheduling and automating their social media is the best and only way to do it.  That is okay for them. Every business has a different strategy, a different buyer, and different objectives.  You have to do what makes sense for you.

For me, I want to be present and involved. I want to be connected and communicating directly.

The reason I want to do this myself is two-fold:

1) I’ve connected with my real, paying clients on social media, so I know that I get a lot of business through the relationships I form online.  Therefore, it’s really important for me to be present to connect with these people.

2) My business is all about marketing and in the work I do, I advise business owners and thought leaders on how to use social media for their business.  I need to be a user of the platforms I recommend and be experimenting and figuring out what works in order to be good at what I help others with.

Now that I’ve explained this, here’s what I want you to consider:

What are you doing in your marketing that needs to change?

What are you doing in your marketing that isn’t working?

What are you doing in your marketing that doesn’t feel good?

What do you need to do more of to connect with your customers?

These are important questions, so grab a pen and paper and write down the answers to these questions.

As a business owner, it’s critical that you take time to assess, evaluate and course correct in your business if you’re doing something that isn’t working. Just because you started doing something one way, doesn’t mean you can’t make a decision to change the way you’ve always done it.

I’ve been blogging once a week for almost ten years now, and even that is on the table right now.  Do I need to blog weekly? Is this the best way to get my content in front of people? OR should I blog once a month and make it the best blog you’ve ever seen and then pay using social media ads to get greater distribution and readership?

My message today is about not getting stuck, it’s about figuring out what makes the most sense for you and do that.  Don’t be afraid to zig when everyone else is zagging.  Don’t be afraid to challenge the status quo and try something new.  People are looking for leaders to follow, not people who are doing what everyone else says is the best way to do it all.

Leave me a comment and let me know what you feel you need to do less of, and what you need to do more of in your business.