In today’s video I am sharing a tour of my business planner setup. Now, spoiler alert, this isn’t just my business planner. This is the planner I use to plan everything for my life and business.
That’s right! I’m a one planner, one person kind of a gal.
BUT, I know that doesn’t work for everyone! Some people have very legitimate reasons to keep their work or business planner separate from personal and if that is you, or if you are struggling to make one planner work for you- YOU DO YOU!
However, I do have some helpful tips in this video for how you can more easily achieve a one planner lifestyle.
You’ll see by watching this video that I keep a lot of inserts in my planner to organize different areas of my life. I am absolutely a minimalist when it comes to my planning style- meaning that I don’t overplan. I keep my planner focused on items or tasks that I need to remember. For that reason, you won’t see a ton of chores or personal care items in my planner. I am pretty good at keeping up my chores at home without the reminder of my planner. But I do use lots of different inserts to keep the essentials of my life organized.
If you are interested in anything you see in my planner, I will link as much as possible from the video below!
I sincerely hope you and yours are doing well, staying safe, healthy and productive at home. All is well with me and in my neck of the woods, and I’ve been focused a lot lately on keeping motivated with my new consistent work schedule.
As you know, earlier this year I got back on my three weekly blog post, one weekly video schedule, and since quarantine hit, I have been making those videos live classes. All of this new work has been a welcome distraction during this time for me, but, it’s still a habit I’m working to develop consistency around. So, I thought today I should share some of my insight with you on how I’ve been keeping consistent and disciplined over the past few weeks and months because I’d bet that with the drama on the world stage right now, many of you might feel like you have every reason not to do the tasks on your to do list. Am I right? So, if you have been feeling overwhelmed managing your time and expectations, hopefully I can share some tips for finding consistent motivation.
The first thing I wanted to talk to you about on this topic is actually a podcast episode I listened to recently that really resonated with something I’ve been thinking a lot about lately. The Podcast is You’re Welcome by Hilary Rushford if you want to check it out, and the episode I am going to be talking about today Ep. 58 Productivity Guilt During Quarantine + the Idealization of Time. It’s that last part that I want to talk to you all about, the idealization of time, because this is something I’ve been thinking a lot about.
So, I’ve mentioned before that I think right now, we’ve been given a tremendous opportunity with this pandemic to really go inward and work on ourselves and our goals. I’m not saying that the pandemic is a good thing, clearly it’s not, but I am saying that in every challenge comes an opportunity and suddenly, many of us who were once on the hamster wheel of time management have been given an influx of time. That’s not everyone, many people right now are more busy at home. especially parents who are now remote workers, plus teachers to their children, in addition to their myriad of other responsibilities. But, many of us do have more time in one way or another right now, and I see this as an opportunity for people to buckle down and execute on the goals they have firmly placed into the Someday category. You know what I am talking about- those goals you said you wanted to go after someday when you had more time. Well, we have more time right now, so are you doing all the things you said you were going to do once more time arrived?
My assumption is, and what Hilary discussed in her podcast episode was, that no, lots of us are not using the extra time we now have to go after our goals. There is a good reason for this- time was never the reason why you were not going after those goals to begin with. I say this all the time, but it’s truly evident right now in our current situation that time is a construct. You have, and always have had, the same 24 hours in a day that each and every other successful, goal oriented person has, but you aren’t executing on those objectives, not for a lack of time, but for a lack of motivation. Actually, it’s like a mix of motivation, discipline, clarity keeping you from executing, but all of it is a mental block and you are blaming it on time.
I want to be very clear, I am not saying this to judge or attack you if you happen to be getting triggered by this conversation. I am saying this as a friend and hopefully a trusted source of productivity advice who truly wants to see you succeed. But you can’t succeed if you don’t acknowledge the true issue here. Time was never the issue. What the exact issue is for each of you in this situation will be different, but it stems from a limiting belief you have held in your mind that is confining you to a pattern of behaviors in which you consistently prioritize other things (or nothing at all) over the completion of your goals.
You have the same amount of hours in a day as Beyonce (I love to use that quote) and, yes, right now Beyonce might have much better resources at her disposal than you, but she didn’t always. It was consistent planning and action that made Beyonce the woman she is today. And if you don’t resonate with Beyonce, substitute her for any number of successful individuals. The point is, all of us get the same amount of time and the same amount of opportunities in a day to go after our objectives, and so we have to stop using time as an excuse and start addresses the real issue holding us back from action.
I am not immune from this conversation myself, either! In fact, I want to use the example of myself to explain how I have been overcoming my own obstacles and taking more strategic action. Let’s go back to those three factors that I think really do impact our ability to take action and those are clarity, motivation and discipline. Without those three elements in alignment, it’s difficult to take strategic action that yields results.
# 1. Clarity: I define clarity as understanding where I am trying to go, what I am trying to achieve and having a set of parameters for how I want to achieve my goal. In her podcast episode Hilary talks about the fact that each of us has a list of things we believe we should do if we had the time, and yet many of us never do the things on that list. To me, this issue comes down to a lack of clarity and the importance of switching up the language we use to describe this very common issue. So, yes, we have all been faced with ideas of things we should do, but I think we need to start thinking of this list of shoulds as a list of coulds. If you are into Law of Attract you have probably heard Ester Hicks and Abraham talk about life being a series of experiences intended to highlight the contrasts of desires. Meaning, there are lots of different experiences we have in life and can have, and it’s up to us to filter through all of them and determine which we desire and which we do not. In the podcast, Hilary uses the example of her father, who is an author and speaker to illustrate the point that as humans we have more ideas than time to execute. She explains that her father knows he should turn his book into an audiobook but he hasn’t had the time to do it yet. But, time isn’t the issue, right, it’s desire. Whether or not he should turn the book into an audiobook isn’t the question, really the task is simply a could until he gets clear on whether or not that is a true priority for him. Plenty of people never turn their books into audiobooks and for good reason, maybe it’s not worth the time or effort, maybe there is a specific strategy they are following or perhaps they just don’t like audiobooks and prefer their book to be in physical form. This is what I mean when I say it’s important to have a set of parameters for how you want to achieve a goal because truthfully the options are endless for things we could do, but clarity around our values will help us define the path of execution for anything we do desire to accomplish. Let’s use an example from my own life and business. I am told all the time that I should sell my inserts as a physical product, not just a digital. Or I am told I should write a book, or I should start a podcast. But when I ask myself shouldI and I evaluate these ideas based on my values, I keep coming to the conclusion that those options are not in alignment with my objectives. So, it is very important that we treat these shoulds as coulds until they pass the litmus test of clarity and are formally identified as objectives we wish to pursue. If we don’t we run the risk of shoulding ourselves to death, meaning, we allow all the options that we have to overwhelm us and paralyze us into inaction.
#2. Motivation: To me, the next part of this equation is motivation, meaning that initial spark that triggers action to begin. Some people believe that motivation is required consistently in order to start and complete an objective, but that isn’t how I see it. I believe motivation just needs to inspire the start of an action. So, we need to feel like, yes, we can achieve the goal, it is possible and feasible. If you are someone who has an idea that you would like to take action on, perhaps you have had that moment of clarity and know what you want to achieve and have made a plan to get it done but haven’t been able to take action yet, what you need in this situation is that spark of motivation. For me, motivation comes from knowing that I am not the first person who has done anything in this world. So, if someone else can do it, so can I. A lot of inaction or the inability to start on a project for myself often comes because I am afraid of failure, but reminding myself that others have done something takes the edge off. Even if I can’t find an example of someone who has done the precise thing I am doing, I can usually find an example of someone who is doing something close to what I am doing. For example, recently, I have been hosting live classes on Saturday afternoon on my Youtube channel in a way I never have before. These classes are like nothing I have really seen on YouTube before within the planning and productivity community, and because of that fact and all the equipment and technology required on the back end, I get a little nervous doing the classes. But I know I am not reinventing the wheel here. I know there have been other creators in other genres who have gone live like this. Gaming streamers are the best equivalent I can think of who also have a complex tech setup and are managing an event on their own with a large live audience. So, I know I can do it. Just because other planner people don’t host these events doesn’t mean I can’t or shouldn’t. Most of the time, it is this sort of motivation that helps me put myself out there in new ways when I am afraid of trying something new for my audience.
#3. Discipline: As I mentioned earlier, I believe motivation is the initial spark required to overcome mental obstacles and take action, but it isn’t necessary after an objective has begun. What you need after you get started on a goal is discipline! Self- discipline is the mental muscle that keeps us coming back and working on an objective after the motivation has ended. For many people, including myself, this is where the struggle begins. It’s not in finding clarity and it’s not the motivation to get started, it’s the discipline required to show up over and over again until the work is complete. I know many of you reading this believe I am naturally very self-disciplined, but I would not agree. I have struggle often with discipline and have to find creative ways to get myself to execute and complete work all the time. The first element that helps me with this is having a plan and making sure I have clear visibility to everything I need to do. So writing out my top three tasks in a day and making sure I have that complete list of work with my next-action on it is crucial for me. But the list itself isn’t enough for me. I can stare at a to do list all day and never take action on a task, so I have developed a formula for myself to get to work. First, I need to slow down to understand what is holding me back that day. It can vary of course. Perhaps I see that the tasks aren’t what I desire to do, or I have another priority that has taken precedence. Often though, I am just feeling tired or overwhelmed with my work. So, I give myself permission to take a short break to get my head straight. Usually, if I spend this break relaxing in meditation I can calm the mental blocks enough that they dissolve and then I am no longer afraid to tackle the to do list. Or, sometimes I take a bath to relax my muscles physically. Or, other times, I will watch some funny videos on YouTube or TikTok to lift my energy and vibration. Once my energy is lifted, when I come back to my to do list, I can sense my increased capacity for the day and I’m ready to get down to work.
That is my formula and process for consistently motivation myself to start and complete my work. I’ve been using this process a lot lately because in these challenging times, it’s so easy to get down about what is happening in the world and it can drain your energy and capacity to get things done. It’s so important that we have grace with ourselves and acknowledge where we are struggling because when we dig deeper at that struggle we will find the obstacles that are holding us back from executing on those objectives we desire to achieve. It doesn’t matter why you want something, your desire is valid and you are worthy of it. Sometimes, it just takes some good self-awareness and analysis to understand what blocks are truly standing in our way.
So, this is the process I am going to continue to work on through the month of May as I develop that consistency and self-disciple to execute on my new content calendar and the other projects I have on my business plan to execute. I know I have big dreams for my life and where I am heading and its so important to me that I complete the work I plan for myself so that all the dominos fall properly throughout my year.
Okay, well with that here’s to another great month ahead! I hope this post has been insightful for you and I’d love to hear more about what you are working on this month in the comments below!
I had a pretty productive month all things considered, and I shared 16 awesome pieces of content, mostly business related, that you should really check out. So take a look at the titles below, what did you already see, what did you miss, and what you did you absolutely love?
I create this monthly recap of content to ensure that each and every one of you within my community do not miss out on the strategy, insight and advice I have to share because you never know when a blog post or a video is going to give you that one little element that will help you make tremendous connections with your ideas. That happens to me a lot actually, so I just want to make sure you don’t miss out on any topics that would be of value to you.
Also, just a thought- if you enjoy any of this content or want to help spread the word about my content because its been helpful or valuable to you in your life or business, than I highly recommend sharing any of my posts, of course, but sharing these recaps is a great way to let your friends, family or coworkers see a sampling of my content at one time! It’s like a smorgasbord of content to choose from and sharing is caring!
I hope this roundup helps you locate any content of mine you may have missed this month. I’d love to hear which content was your favorite from the month and what you’d like to see more of from me in the future. Please leave me a comment below and share your thoughts!
Well, I hope the last month has been productive for you and your goals. I know I have certainly had a jam packed month especially with my weekly live business classes happening on Saturdays. If you haven’t been following along with them, essentially, each Saturday I have been going Live on my YouTube channel and hosting a class covering an essential business topic. I know these classes aren’t for everyone, although all certainly are welcome, but I felt like sharing regular insight on business was something I could do during this challenging time to help ensure that those of you within my community with businesses or who aspire to run their own business, stay on track.
I myself have been very focused on my business as of late, as I am personally taking this unusual period of time to also buckle down and get clear on my path. Even though I have been in business for, wow, six years this month, I still don’t have it all figured out and need time to focus and plan and go over fundamental questions for my business foundation.
Since there do seem to be many of you who are following this path with me, I thought this month it would be great for me to give you a free download that helps make this process of managing our lives and our business objectives a little easier.
My CEO Strategy Day Template!
Now, I know this template isn’t exactly new, however, I have taken the template and turned it into downloadable inserts, so if you want to use the template in your planner to map our your own CEO Strategy Day, this freebie will help.
And of course, if there is anything you need from me, any questions you have for dealing with your productivity or life during this challenging time, please let me know how I can support you and bring you the solutions or resources to make things a little easier for you!
My philosophy to online business and digital marketing success is to work on the concept of iterations. Meaning, get started now with what you have, do what you can to make the most of what you’ve got to gain experience, and then update your marketing intentionally through strategic upgrades. Your business and content marketing doesn’t have to be perfect out of the gate to get started and begin growing, and using the concept of interactions means you can take your time building your business and customer base without feeling overwhelmed by perfectionism. Once your business has started selling some products or services successfully, and has begun creating regular content on platforms, then you can take the next step of investing in and upgrading your digital marketing strategically. You don’t want to upgrade everything all at once, take your time and choose upgrades that you believe will make your life easier, and help your content marketing stand out in the platforms that you use and rely on to sell. If you are at this point and ready to make some strategic investments in your content, here are 4 ways you can get started upgrading your digital marketing
Upgrade #1: Create custom branded graphics and images This was probably the first digital marketing upgrade I made for myself and my business when I was getting started because it was a small investment in my time more so than money. I’ve discussed before the perils of using graphics and images you find online for your business or blog because if you don’t own an image or it wasn’t created for your brand specifically your risking your brand recognition (and risking a lawsuit if you use copyrighted images without permission). So, if you haven’t started creating your own custom branded graphics and images yet I recommend it. Start taking your own images that are in line with your brand imagery, and start designing graphics for social platforms that use your brands specific colors, fonts and style. It might seem convenient to use in-platform design elements to send a message to your following in Instagram, for example, but as your followers scroll through their feeds or stories, nothing about those graphics will indicate your brand to them. You can take your own images on a smart phone, the cameras on them now are phenomenal and then edit the images in photo editing apps like FaceTune and Afterlight. You can create custom graphics as well in apps like Photoshop or Canva. There are lots of easy, inexpensive ways to get started creating your own customer images and graphics, so this is an upgrade you have no excuse not to make as soon as possible and it will go a long way for your brand recognition!
Upgrade #2: Invest in professional camera equipment Once you get used to creating your own custom branded graphics and images, it’s time to up the ante on your visual marketing and invest in professional grade camera equipment. I’m talking about a DSLR camera, a decent lens, and perhaps some professional lights. Although a smartphone camera will take you a long way in this day and age, most popular brands use DSLR or other professional grade cameras to create their visual marketing like images and videos. If you want to learn more about the exact tools I use for my visual marketing, I will leave you a link to my Female Entrepreneur Online Business Toolkit Video where you can learn about and get links to all my must have and most used tools!
Upgrade #3: Design your own gif’s and photo/video illustrations or graphic elements If you use social media like Instagram to promote your business and stay in contact with your customers, you are going to want to eventually upgrade your brand visuals by designing your own custom gifs, and illustrations. This is something simple you can do to increase brand awareness when it comes to your social media presence. If you’re not exactly sure what this means, I am talking about those stickers and added affects you can use on your IG stories feature. For more information, definitely check out my IG Story Hacks Video for better instructions and more examples.
Upgrade #4: Work with a professional copywriter on key marketing text When you are marketing your business online, there is a lot of messaging you need to put out to your audience and although copywriting is a skill that you can develop over time, once you reach the point of making consistent income from your digital marketing, it may be time to get a little outside help and work with a professional copywriter. You won’t need them to write everything for you, but it’s good to get help from someone who knows how to write digital marketing copy for certain aspects of your business. Sales pages, key email sequences and campaign copy would be the places I would start with some professional help. You have no idea how big of an impact little changes to messaging can be, and a pro will be able to help you craft your message in a more persuasive and market friendly way. Of course, make sure you work with someone who has a good reputation and track record for getting results with other business owners in the same or similar niche as yours.
So those are four ways to upgrade your digital marketing as your business begins to grow and develop. Again, I want to stress that it is so important that if you have an idea for a business online, to get started now with what you have and do what you can and then work your way up. No one said you have to be a success overnight and if you’re worried about making mistakes, now is the time to make them while you are small and have far less eyes on your content! Use the concept of interactions to make improvements as you learn and as your business grows, and you will end up building a very sustainable business for yourself step by step! I do hope these ideas give you some key inspiration to get started with or get upgrading your own business. I would love to hear about any other ideas you have for upgrades to digital marketing that you think moves the needle, so leave me a comment below.
36 Business or Sidehustle Ideas You Can Start from Home Today!
Now more than ever, the concept of working for oneself and starting an online business is extremely appealing. With the advent of the “gig” economy, where the popularity of on demand services have shown just how easy it is to make money through an app on your phone, I believe we are about to see a revolution in the way people work. Over the next decade I firmly believe there will be less people commuting to work for the typical 9 to 5, and more people performing remote services at home and on their own schedules. The days of the structured path of college degree, corporate job security and retirement at 65 are ending and making way for a more flexible, work from home, entrepreneurial economy. So, if you have been thinking about starting your own business, but want to explore some ideas and options before getting started, here are 36 business or side hustle ideas you can start from home today!
Coaching If you are looking to get a business up and running quickly and you have an area of expertise that you could use to support others on a similar journey, becoming a coach might be a great option for you. Coaching is an area that has gained a lot of popularity in the last few years online, and you don’t necessarily need any sort of accreditation to get started, you just need a clear niche and a reliable process for working with clients to help them get clear on their goals and support their growth. Here are some common coaching business’ you might consider starting.
Life Coach
Health Coach
Nutrition Coach
Business Coach
Self Care Coach
Success Coach
Consulting As with coaching, consulting is another business or side hustle idea that you can begin with quickly if you have specialized knowledge in a specific field. The key difference here with consulting however, is that you need to have the knowledge and experience to get results for your clients. Where coaches are there for guidance and support, consultants need strategic knowledge and the confidence to make recommendations that will lead their clients to their desired outcomes. Here are some common consulting business’ you might consider starting.
Design Consultant
Business Consultant
Management Consultant
Financial Consultant
Style Consultant
Family Life Consultant
Writing As much as we live in a visually driven society, everywhere you look you will find the written word, and if you have strong written communication skills, you could use them to create a business. Don’t underestimate the amount of small business owners out there who desperately need help with various writing tasks in their businesses, and if you want to use your skills for your own benefit, there are plenty of ways to use your writing skills to earn an income through product or content creation. Here are a few business ideas you might consider if you are interested in writing.
Assisting As I eluded to already, there is a tremendous market online for small business support services, and just because writing might not be your strong suit doesn’t mean you don’t have other skills or qualities that would be valuable in creating your own business around assisting other businesses. Here are a few b2b (business-to-business) style ideas that are always in high demand.
Virtual Assistant
Bookkeeper
Project Manager
Marketing Coordinator
Video Editing
Content Planning
Creating Are you a natural born creator? If you love taking an artistic idea from vision to fruition you might want to consider starting a business around your craft. As with writing, creating is a skill that you can use as the basis for your own business or to provide a service to others. Here are a few creative business ideas you might want to consider starting.
Crafts
Artwork
Music
Graphic Design
Build Websites
Photography
Teaching Some people, myself included, are just natural born teachers. They can take a subject and break it down in a way that makes it manageable for others to understand and learn. And depending on the areas you have a skill in teaching, you can create any number of information based tools to help share you skills with others. Here are a few teaching based business ideas that you can use to create products or content that you can sell online.
Video Lectures
ECourse
YouTube video series
Virtual Master Class
Tutoring
Podcast
So, those are 36 business or side hustle ideas you can start from home today. I hope this list gave you some inspiration for a business you could begin for yourself utilizing your natural talents and interests. I’d love to hear which appeal to you and which you might want me to provide more information on in the future!
As I am writing this post, I have now spent over five weeks in social isolation at home due to the recent world pandemic, and I know each of you are likely in the same situation. At this point, it looks like some countries might begin loosening social distancing regulations soon, but we’re still going to be inside for a while longer and I wanted to share with you how I’ve been spending my time at home productively, to give you some ideas or inspiration for how you also could make good use of this time.
First let’s talk about my mindset during this pandemic, because I think its good to start with your head in the right place. I know there is a lot of anxiety going around, and fear for our health, safety and future economic security, but I pretty much refuse to give into that fear and lack mentality. Things aren’t perfect right now, thats true, and it feels like there is a lot of uncertainty in the world, sure, but honestly, life itself is a lot of uncertainty. Nothing has really changed about that, anyone could leave us at any moment, we could loose our financial security because of a job loss or downturn in an industry or market, really the only thing that has changed is that we are now seeing the truth. The world was never a certain place. I get that can be frightening for people. Humans have what is called a cognitive need for closure, which means we like to know what’s going on, we like to understand situations, good or bad, we don’t like to be left hanging with unknowns. Right now, the world seems like a big unknown, but I promise you, just as life is filled with uncertainty, it also has a persistent way of fighting on. When we look at history we know this is true. After world wars and pandemics in the past, we have been faced again with prosperity. Things will get better, they will go back to normal, nothing lasts forever. Because every time we overcome a hurdle, we are better for it.
So, I’m not feeding into the false idea that we should be afraid or worried- all of that is a waste of time and energy. Honestly, if we really did have significant cause for worry, worrying would be the absolute worst use of our energy in that situation. We need to keep calm cool heads. Which is why I’ve been doing a lot of meditation during this time. To keep myself calm and focused, and grounded in my knowing that this is just a temporary situation, a construction that is going to lead to new expansion.
Task #1: Meditate daily Spending just 30 minutes a day in the morning when you wake up or just before you fall asleep relaxing to a meditation track will do wonders for managing any anxiety or stress that you might be experiencing during this time. YouTube has free meditations for every situation, so I recommend using one of those to start.
Now that we have our heads in the right place, let me explain a bit about my strategy during this period of time. Strangely enough, I truly believe that this reordering of the world is an opportunity for each of us to take our focus off the outside world and outer expectations, and start focusing inward. How many times have you or I said “I wish I had more time for x?” X being some long held personal goal, project or objective that you just didn’t have time for in the busy-ness of our former lives. Well, guess what? Now, stuck at home all day, we have an opportunity to focus on those other goals. While the past five weeks haven’t been an all expenses paid vacation, the new challenge of making life work from home has also come with great new opportunities. The vast majority of us now no longer have a commute, regular social obligations, events or other distractions on our time. So, if you are home feeling a little stir crazy running out of ideas of things to do, it’s time to put your energy into that project you’ve been putting off. I don’t know about you, but I’m thinking that this is the perfect time for me to focus on my health and the back end of my business. I can’t go out to eat, I’m not distracted by dinners or brunches with friends who might derail a diet, so I should focus on sticking to my meal plan and getting in shape. With the economy taking a hit, although I am very blessed that my business hasn’t been affected, I should take this opportunity to take a step back and work on those lingering tasks and upgrades I’ve been putting off for too long. Focus less on selling and more on what I can do to create better systems that will eventually make my life easier in the future. That would really be a productive use of time right now for me, so determine what would be a productive use of time for you. How can you use this time to set a goal, map out a plan and track an objective that will make your life better once we are on the other side of this pandemic?
The final thing I’ve been doing during this pandemic to help me stay motivated and productive is having video dates with friends and family. I don’t know about you, but before the pandemic hit I remember shaking my head at all the memes that would go around poking fun at how people would make plans with friends but then either cancel or prefer to stay home. I know you have seen at least a few of these graphics yourself, and I have definitely been on both sides of that situation. Having friends cancel on me at the last minute because they don’t want to go out or personally feeling too drained to get myself up and ready for a night out. I feel like what is happening with social distancing is almost like all those memes have finally come to fruition. All our social calendars are clear, we are all spending quiet evenings at home. As much as I would say I have been taking well to the social isolation, I know that I do need social interaction to keep sane. For the first few weeks this wasn’t a priority, but after a friend invited me to my first pandemic girls night via zoom, I realized that I had been sorely missing social activities. So, I have been prioritizing them now. It really has made such a difference just to see and talk to people, and scheduling a date out ahead of time gives you something to look forward to in a time when all the days of the week start to blur together.
Task #3: Schedule a weekly video date with a friend or family member. Don’t just play this by ear, set a scheduled day and time to devote to this so you have something to look forward to and to get ready for. Put a but of effort in getting ready, especially if you haven’t had many reasons to get yourself dressed up to be on camera.
So, that is how I have been spending my time productively during the pandemic. I hope this post gave you some inspiration for things you could do while you are stuck at home to continue living your best life! I’d love to hear what you’ve been up to, so leave me a comment below, and check out my Live Events schedule and consider joining me for my next free class to hang out and learn together!
Recently, as part of my content marketing strategy, I’ve been reaching back into the archives for my platforms to identify and reuse some older pieces of content. If you are an OG follower, perhaps you noticed this, but my guess is that most of you had no clue I was doing this and have done this from time to time. So, today I wanted to explain more about this strategy to you by sharing 5 reasons why reusing content is great for your business!
Reason #1: Reusing old content saves you time and energy on content creation
I don’t know about your editorial calendar but mine is back on a pretty tight schedule. Three blog posts, a new video, and at least one email a week. That’s a lot of content to produce on a weekly basis. And of course, that’s not even bringing social media posts into consideration. Of course, not each and every piece of content is wholly unique. I have some consistent messages that I reiterate, but the truth is much of my content is created the week it goes out and that takes a lot of time, creative ideas and energy to make happen. So, when I can find and reuse an old piece of my content, it conserves some of that energy for higher priority work. This may look like reposting an old blog post, using a blog post as an outline for a video script (or visa versa) or reworking a blog post for an email and although I don’t replace 100% of my content creation with old posts, just integrating one old piece a week into my calendar is a major time saver!
Reason #2: Most of your audience isn’t seeing everything you’ve created
Believe it or not, as much as your current audience may love what you produce, the vast majority of them aren’t seeing everything you create. That means, they likely missed some older posts that you worked really hard on at the time, so serving them up some older ideas will still seem new and fresh to the majority of your following. This is especially true if you’ve been creating for years and have a backlog of old content just sitting their unloved. Yes, thanks to SEO those great posts aren’t completely covered in cobwebs, but by reposting or repurposing that content you will get extra life out of it.
Reason #3: Reposting is a great way to update content or test out different keywords
Although a majority of my content is evergreen, meaning that it is applicable to the right audience at any time of the year and doesn’t necessarily show it’s age, it is still a good idea to keep some key content up to date. This is something I like to do with old blog posts that may walkthrough older versions of my inserts. The post itself may perform well in terms of SEO but old pictures or examples can date the content, and older links can be broken or lead to no where. Reposting is a great way to keep valuable content up to date and at the same time, test out new keywords on your content as well. This is a strategy you will often see me use on post or video titles. I will change the title of a blog post during an update and post the new information, then see if the new title with slightly different keywords performs better or worse than the original title.
Reason #4: If content didn’t perform well on one platform it may do better on another
Sometimes we work hard to create valuable content but it flops. One reason that may have happened is because the content itself wasn’t right for the platform. Perhaps you created a youtube video that would have done better on Instagram, or recorded a podcast that should have been a blog post. Factors across platforms vary and some content just performs better in certain settings. So, if you took the time to create some great content, but you don’t see it getting the attention you believe it deserves, repurpose it to another platform and see if it does better somewhere else. Although most of my content and platforms are pretty consistent, I find that I have a slightly different audience on my Instagram, Blog and YouTube. It doesn’t matter how much I cross promote my platforms, different people will prefer different styles of content, and perhaps that underperforming post can be quickly repurposed and shared elsewhere to a warmer reception.
Reason #5: If content performed well, repurpose it on other platforms
Likewise, sometimes we create content that does very very well on a platform. In which case we know we hit the nail on the head with the topic and value and there is really no reason not to share it on other platforms. Don’t worry about cannibalizing SEO, overall it’s always better to share a message that resonates with your audience as much as possible. Plus, you don’t have to reuse the entire piece of content. If you have a video or blog post that does well, take the main message and share it on social or another platform. Consider summarizing longer content and then redirecting your audience to view the full content elsewhere. You just want to get as much mileage out of the successful content as possible because it is marketing gold!
So, those are five very excellent reasons why I like to reuse or repurpose old content from my archives and why I think this is a strategy you should consider as well. Of course, I’m not talking about making all your content ongoing a repost of something old, but reusing some old pieces in new ways along with new original ideas can be a great way to manage your time, energy and expectations as a content creator! I’d love to hear how this strategy works for you, so do leave me a comment below with your thoughts!
Today I want to talk to you about a very common situation that people face when they are setting and working towards their goals. The situation is this: you are busy, doing the work, executing, but you’re still not hitting your goal. You are trying, their is effort and organization, but the results aren’t coming.
I know when I talk about setting goals and working towards objectives, it can seen overly simplified sometimes. See the goal, set the precise objective, make sure it’s a SMART goal, and then do the work, but sometimes we can go through that process in earnest and it gets us no where.
So, I wanted to share with you my take on why this happens.
From experience with hundreds of productivity students, I have seen first hand that when we are taking action but not seeing the results, the primary issue is that your plans were made on expectations not actions.
What do I mean by this?
Sometimes we can set goals against outcomes that we can affect, but don’t have complete control over. We believe if we do x we can achieve y result. And while that may be true, when we set goals against our expectation of results and not against the precise actions we will take, we can find ourselves in situations where we don’t meet the result.
Let’s consider an example.
You would like to grow your following on a social platform, let’s say Instagram. So, you set the goal to hit your first 1,000 followers in 90 days. Now, realistically, that’s feasible. Someone getting started with Instagram right now could reach a following of 1,000 subscribers in a 90 day period for sure. However reasonable this expectation is, though, it’s not actually a good objective to set. The reason being, you can’t control whether 1,000 people hit follow. All you can do is post great content in order to attract those followers. So, really the proper objective to set in this situation is something like “post daily to a specific niche on IG for 90 days.” That is something you can do and you have control over, you don’t have control over whether people follow you or not.
Let’s try another example.
This time, you set the goal to sell 100 copies of your ebook this month. Again, you’re not the one controlling the outcome here. So you work and you work, write blog posts, make content, send emails, all that jazz, and at the end of the month, your sales goal comes up short. It’s a disappointment for sure, doing all that work and not hitting the target, but that’s because your target was for an outcome you didn’t control. So, next time, you choose a different target. Make a sales pitch to 100 target customers in your audience. As they say in sales, “if you want to make a million dollars, seek first to help a million people.” This is practical advice, because you can’t control how many people purchase your product but you can control how many people you reach out and pitch to. What this might look like practically would vary depending on your business. For someone it may be sending DMs to followers on IG, for another it may mean hosting some live streams where you can talk to followers on an individual level. Yet another business owner might open their schedule to free 15 minute consults. There is certainly work involved in each of these situations, but the objective is within your control and focused on the actions you will take, not the actions others will take.
Do you see the shift in approach necessary here? That we are going to change the objectives we set to be based on our own actions and not based on the expected or anticipated actions of others. We can’t control other people, but we can control ourselves. Once you make this shift you will see more and more than your work pays off. And when it doesn’t you can see where your shortcomings directly led to your results.
No more guessing or wondering what went wrong. When you set objectives against your own actions, you will know exactly what went right and what went wrong. You will either meet your own expectations or you will not, but you will see how your choices impact your results.
So, I hope you found this article enlightening, especially if you are someone who struggles to meet their objectives. I would love to hear how this advice and information helps you change your personal productivity strategies, so please do leave me a comment and share your thoughts.
There is a lot of chatter out there in terms of different advice or strategies for marketing your business. It can definitely be overwhelming deciding where to start, what your strategy is going to be and which platforms to use, but there is one single element of your marketing that you have to have in place before you even get to those questions. In fact, this one marketing element is the single factor that is going to help you choose those strategies, those platforms and nearly every single element of your brand marketing.
That number one most essential marketing element is your Ideal Customer Avatar. Also known as an ideal or target customer profile, however you want to think about it, this is a model for the precise customer you are looking to attract, sell to and serve.
Knowing your Ideal Customer Avatar is the step one for all business marketing, but if you have already started your business and still haven’t clearly defined that ideal customer yet there are many problems that doing so can solve.
Defining your ideal customer avatar will help you:
Choose the right platforms to use
Build an audience
Grow a stagnant audience
Increase engagement from your existing audience
Create content ideas
Fill your editorial calendar
Secure new leads and sales
Identify new products or services to expand your revenue
Determine your price structure for your products and services
That’s like every element of your business marketing, right?
I know it might sound too good to be true, but I’m totally serious when I say that having this one marketing element decided on, knowing who your idea customer is, can impact everything about the direction and success of your business. This is such an important aspect of all businesses that in order to fully explain this concept and help you define your customer avatar, I have built a free video workshop on the topic that I highly recommend you watch and take notes on immediately!
I can’t wait to hear how this simple marketing element transforms your business and your brand marketing for the better. Let me know how it goes and if you have further questions I can address for you on the concept!
