Over the past couple of weeks, I have featured in a couple of blog posts on the WIRE (Women in Rural Enterprise) blog, courtesy of the lovely Carrie Eddins of theblondemarketinggoddess.com. Carrie’s blog on WIRE is helping women market successfully to other women, and she asked for my thoughts on using social media for a blog post…this then led to another 2 blog posts for the ladies at Wire. Over the next couple of weeks, I’ll be posting these posts here so you can enjoy them too. Here’s the first:
Long time, no speak, well I must be completely honest with you, this is because…. I have been rather overwhelmed… with strageties…. .. and so I procrastinated and procrastinated and then did a LOT of clutter clearing realising that I have far too many files of information that no longer resonated with me from courses that I have attended both in person and virtually worldwide…
Then, one day, as if by magic I had quite an ‘aha moment,’ as I just realised that in essence relationships are built on how that other person or product makes u feel, and when you have a heart-felt connection with them and their service or product you find them irresistible! I know you all know this and so do I, especially as women this is instinctive for us but I had lost touch with this, as I had been very much in overdrive about social media, which resulted in overwhelm!
I felt that tweeting so much and facebooking was a bit too much like shouting when nobody was really listening, and I was getting annoyed with all the tweets and fb updates from others myself too!!Who really needs to know what everybody is doing ALL the time?! I certainly don’t not everyone, maybe a few people I would like to know some of the time, but not all of the time!!
Then… I just so happened to..re-connect with the lovely Donnaonthebeach who, for me, is the business discovery of the decade as she’s so much fun, and so talented in quite a humble way! She epitomised heart-felt connections, and her energy makes her positively irresitible, let alone her wonderful business insights ladies, I cannot recommend this lovely lady enough!
I truly understand about how to systemise and leverage my work! Really. And, I know that there are certain steps that would help me to bring in consistent income, ie a membership site, but much of the technical stuff ie structuring my work in autoresponders, building my visibility on facebook, twitter, blogging and linked in was becoming such a headache! Added to my own blonde reality that through learning about the technical bits of driving traffic to my site, with the lovely and talented Nicola Cairncross, ( she’s AMAAZING BTW, i whole-heartedly recommend her!) I managed to delete my own blog! At the time this was not funny as I did not back it up, at all though I thankfully have 90% of my blog posts printed out so I just need set it all up again!!!
So, ladies, I asked Donna if she would kindly share a few words of wisdom to help you feel less overwhelmed with your social media presence. I trust this helps you, it most certainly helped me!
Donna – what are your current feelings on the overwhelm, especially with Social Media that our members might feel?
“It is overwhelming when you try to become an overnight expert in something you have no experience with! So here’s my advice: when you’re feeling overwhelmed, stop, breathe, relax, go have some fun and come back to it when you feel better. If you still feel overwhelmed, break it down into a step by step process and just do one step at a time. I find when people are overwhelmed by social media, they are usually trying to do too much too quick, they don’t know what they are doing or they’re confused by the conflicting advice of the “experts”. So taking a step by step approach will help you reduce the overwhelm. Also, give yourself a chance! Women in particular have a tendency to be way too hard on themselves – don’t beat yourself up for being overwhelmed by social media!”
Donna – how do you cope with it?
“I cope with it by doing exactly as I recommend – I stop, breathe, relax and take a ‘time out’ to do something fun – 10 minutes playing with my dog, reading, connecting with friends, dancing round the office, whatever will get me out of the immediate stress. Then when I come back I figure out what the next step is and do that. Sometimes the next step is “figure out what I’m doing” or “make this more fun” – if you don’t know what you’re doing, how can you do it effectively?! And if it’s not fun, why do it?! I also make sure I set myself up for success – caring for myself, managing my energy, enjoying life and connected to my vision for my business and to the energy of life. Most of the time when I am overwhelmed, I notice that I am pushing myself too hard so it’s good to stop and re-connect.”
Donna – what strategies have helped you which you would wholeheartedly recommend?
“Here are my top five social media strategies:
1. HAVE FUN! Find a way to make your social media activities fun, then you’re more likely to do them in the first instance and keep them up in the second.
2. Experiment. Try things out. Don’t expect to become a social media expert in 2 days flat! Allow yourself to be a beginner for a while…and give the social media experiment time to work, rather than giving up without giving it a good chance. Also make your experiments one at a time – eg try Facebook for a few months, then add twitter. Trying to do everything at once puts too much pressure on you. Give your experiments some parameters that give you a good chance of success!
3. Trust your instincts. Some experts will tell you that you need to tweet 1000 times an hour…I don’t follow anyone who does this, even if I like their product or service. It’s annoying. And the only ‘followers’ you’ll get are ‘collect-a-friend’ marketing types! Trust yourself to know what your customers will appreciate. (tip: they’ll often be people like you, so what do you like in a Tweet?)
4. Set reasonable expectations and know why you have social media. For example, I tweet, facebook, linkedin and blog because it is a way for me to reach new people who can get to know me. My reason for doing it is to give some fun/useful/inspiring information and entice them to find out more! I don’t expect them to buy from me instantly – I’m still there to build a relationship.
5. Ask for help. Find people you like who are doing the Social Media you want to do well and ask them for advice. There is a lot of bull written about social media, but if you find someone who is using it effectively, their advice will be more realistic.”
Namaste, giggles & light,
Carrie Eddins xx
theblondemarketinggoddess.com