Hit The Mic With The Stacey Harris

Welcome to Episode 364 of Hit the Mic with The Stacey Harris. All right guys 364, and we're talking about tools. Social media tools and what to use and is this the right one or is that the right one; is probably the question type I spend the most time answering. Especially, when I'm at events, and I'm speaking to people. A lot of times it's not really about what should I be hosting, or where I should be hosting, it's literally what can I use to make this easier. What can I use to make this more painless? How can I automate this in a way that makes sense. I want to talk about three types of tools that you need to have. Now, I will say that there are a whole plethora of options within these tool types to chose; I'm going to share my favorite in each category. Again, and I've said this before, and I guarantee I will say it again, maybe in this show; the best tool for the job is the one you are going to use. The smanciest, fanciest most wonderful tool that every expert recommend

Welcome to episode 363 of Hit the Mic with The Stacey Harris. It’s that time of year again. We’re mid to late August, and here’s the deal guys, launch season, it’s right around the corner. Once September hits, that like back to school vibe, a lot, a lot, a lot of people go into launch mode, and maybe, just maybe, there’s something that you would like to launch this fall. If there is, this episode is a good one to listen to, ’cause we’re going to talk about some of the ways you can start using social now to prep for that launch and some of the ways that you can support your launch through your social media efforts, both paid and organic. Cool? Cool. So let’s first start talking about why is this important to think about now? Often times when you’re thinking about a launch or when you’re planning a launch, you get so caught up in the production of sales pages, and e-mail copy, and maybe the actual creation of whatever it is you’re launching, the program, the video series, whatever, and sometimes we forget to th

Welcome to episode 362 of Hit the Mic with The Stacey Harris. We are celebrating. Yes, that's right. This month marks two years since the launch of Hit the Mic Backstage, so we're starting the whole month celebrating the anniversary. I wanted to talk about what I have learned and has taken for me and the lessons I've had in running this community for the last two years and in continuing to run this community. I see a lot of the membership sites that started just after I launched or in the year after I launched, a lot of them aren't around anymore. I think a lot of that comes from not really being super clear on what it takes to maintain a membership site. We spend a lot of time curious about what it will take to launch, what tech we need to build it on, and how big our list size needs to be and how to process recurring payments and all of those things. Sometimes, I know this was definitely true for me, I didn't think nearly as much about what it would take to run a membership site. Th

Welcome to Episode 361 of Hit the Mic, with The Stacey Harris. All right, guys, I want to talk Facebook Ads today, because there are some things I would like you to know, right now. I know we're going into that time of year. It's August now, we're looking at fall launches, and end of the year promos, and things like that. And that means a lot of Facebook ads. Maybe you're even look at your list growth goals for this third quarter, and you're realizing it's gonna be over soon. Whatever it is, you want to run some Facebook ads, here are the things I want you to know, right now. We've got three things for you today. Number one, Messenger ads. So we haven't talked a ton about Messenger ads, here, yet, but basically, they're ads that run a lot like News Feed ads they've got the same sort of description photo layout. They run in the Messenger area, and destinations, can be, and by destinations I mean wherever they end up when they click, can be a Messenger, meaning

Welcome to episode 360 of Hit the Mic with The Stacey Harris. All right guys, episode 360, first episode of August 2017. It's August 1st today and I'm like, "Dude, where is the year going?" Oh, it's killing me. But we've got some cool, cool stuff to talk about today. I want to talk about three things I want you to know right now when it comes to your online marketing, when it comes to your social media time, all three things are social media related today. We've got two Facebook things and a LinkedIn update, which I'm very excited about so let's jump right in. Number one, Facebook bots, do you need to be paying attention? Okay, so real talk, Facebook bots are amazing. I'm absolutely obsessed. I think they're really, really cool. I think they're going to be a really powerful way for us to connect in a new way with our community and they're going to be a really powerful way to serve our community on Facebook in a different way. However, like all n

Welcome to episode 359 of Hit the Mic with The Stacey Harris. I'm really excited to talk about e-mail marketing today because inside of Hit the Mic Backstage right now, you'll find a full version of best practices, tips, tools, all of that stuff to grow your e-mail list and to actually use your e-mail list. Because as we're gonna talk about, it's not just about growth, it's about using it. And so you can check that out at HittheMicBackstage.com. Let's jump in on today. So, we're gonna talk about four things today. The first being goals, and the reason we're gonna talk about goals is because literally everything else we're gonna talk about ... In fact, growing your e-mail list at all doesn't matter if you're not clear on this part. I want you to really think about why you need an e-mail list, and we talked about this a couple of weeks ago, but really, like what is the purpose of your e-mail list? Now, I don't want you to tell me or yourself or whoever

Welcome to episode 358 of Hit the Mic with The Stacey Harris. All right, we're going to shift gears a little bit. I want to talk about landing pages. So often, I get emails or I'm talking to clients and they're talking about their Facebook ad's not working. One of the most common things that comes up is it's really not about the ad. The ad is killer, the targeting is killer. Everything from the ad perspective is on point. The problem falls into that what's next category. That is generally a lot of times, not all the times, but a lot of times a landing page. Whether you're running ads to an opt in or a webinar intro or whatever that landing page is for, maybe it's even a sales page and you're running a retargeting ad, whatever it is, a lot of times the problem falls to the landing page. That's why I want to talk about some landing page best practices today. First of all, what is a landing page, because sometimes these terms are used to represent different thing

Welcome to episode 357 of Hit the Mic with The Stacey Harris. I had a really interesting question sent to me through the website not too long ago, and I decided in addition to emailing this person an answer, I would bring it here, because I think several of you probably have this question. So we're going to talk about, does Twitter still matter? I have gotten a lot of pushback from people lately saying that Twitter is becoming sort of irrelevant and they're not getting traffic or they're not growing their followers, or they feel like it's a waster of time because they're just starting out there, and they don't know how to grow in any way. And so I wanted to talk about why Twitter can still totally be relevant for you, and why it might not be. Twitter does matter So number one, yes, Twitter overall is still currently, as of today, relevant. Like every social network, I'm sure it will come a point where it is not relevant, although I think social channels have done a better jo

Welcome to episode 356 of Hit the Mic with The Stacey Harris. All right, 356 and it’s another three things you must know, this time for July 2017. Holy moly. I’m really, really excited because we’re going to talk about some cool stuff today including a massage change to Facebook groups. Actually, two changes to Facebook groups. Facebook groups are two of the things we’re talking about today, but one of them is way more exciting than the other. If you want to be the first to always find this stuff out, listening to the podcast is amazing, but here’s the deal. Hit the Mic Backstage members not only heard about this stuff a month ago, but they got it with tutorials. There’s actually a video walk-through inside of the community pages and now inside of the training area to use the changes we’re talking about today. There’s a definite upside to membership, so be sure to upgrade your life and your marketing knowledge by joining us at hitthemicbackstage.com. Again, that is the best way to find out about this stuff fi

Welcome to episode 355 of Hit the Mic with The Stacey Harris. Welcome again. Today we're going to talk about growing your e-mail list, but I want to shift the conversation slightly away from tactics or strategies. If you need those and some best practices check us out in Hit the Mic Backstage.  The July training, which will go up in just a couple of days, is all about best practices with your e-mail marketing, that's the place to get that. What I want to talk about today is this idea that you have to grow your list to do X, Y, Z, whether that's launching your program or building a membership site or writing your book or even launching a podcast. Some people are even saying to me, "You know, well, once I grow my e-mail list then I'll start really worrying about getting my content consistent." No, shift that perspective. What I really want to do is I want to challenge the way we think about the order in which we have to, and I'm totally doing air quotes right now, "we hav

Welcome to Episode 353 of Hit the Mic With the Stacey Harris. I feel an intense need to sing school's out for summer right now because my mom did every year when I got out of school. The kid's officially on summer break and I am also on summer break. Now full disclosure, I'm totally working right now, however, content for the summer has been created. It's done, it's ready, it's waiting for you. It's waiting for you because I want to be able to focus on, that's right, summer stuff. Now I am totally working this summer, with the exception of a ten day trip we're taking in July. I am totally in the office. My schedule looks different in the summer, I tend to work weekends and take days off during the week because one of the perks of our flexibility is that I don't have to try and entertain my kid when literally everyone else is trying to get their kid out of the house. We tend to go into hibernation on the weekends but it's lots of trips to the beach and Dis

Welcome to episode 352 of Hit the Mic with the Stacey Harris. Hello, hello. Let's talk ... New month, new three things you need to know. Today we're going to talk about the things I want you to be paying attention to in June. The things I want you to have on your radar and the things I want you to be - are you ready for this - taking action on. Yes, I said it, taking action on. Every month, every single first Tuesday of each and every month, we do an episode like this where we talk about the three things you need to know right now. Up until now, it's been pretty social media focused. I think we're going to widen it a little bit. Just the three things you need to know right now and the reason you need to know these things is not necessarily because it's brand new information, some of it is, but some of it is just the things I want you to be paying attention to right now. For example, today we have one thing where there's an update and we have two things I want you to be taking act

Welcome to Episode 351 of Hit the Mic with me, Stacey Harris. All right, guys, so we've been doing the Facebook Live experiment all year. We've had a couple of weeks where we didn't go live, for one reason or another, but mostly, I want to say there's been like three weeks we didn't go live all year, but here we are, five months into the year, it's the end of May now, and I wanted to talk about some of the things I'm doing with the eyeballs that I'm getting. So I've talked a little bit about why I'm using live, and the things I'm doing inside of lives, but I want to talk a little bit about how I'm using that content to support the other parts of my business, whether it's repurposing or driving traffic or promoting things or whatever, so I wanted to talk about what to do after you go live with your live content. One thing to note is, this doesn't have to be Facebook Lives. It can be YouTube. It can be Periscopes. Whatever it is you're u

Welcome to episode 350 of Hit the Mic with The Stacey Harris. Content calendars, content calendars. Yes, I love them. Yes, I talk about them a lot. It's because of very, very important reason. Are you ready? They are critical to your consistency, and thus your success when it comes to not just content marketing, not just email marketing, not just social media marketing, but all of these things. When you can be consistent with your content, you can impact more people, you can grow your reach, you can grow your business. Why Use a Content Calendar Here is why content calendars really matter, because not only do they allow you to be consistent in execution, they let you be consistent in messaging across these different types of marketing, meaning I'm able to really easily keep the same consistent message across my social media channels, across my content, across my guest content meaning podcast guesting, guest posts, LinkedIn Publisher stuff, as well as my emails. All of it really relies on each other.

Welcome to episode 349 of Hit the Mic with The Stacey Harris. Today I want to talk about the newest option for custom audiences on Facebook. I'm ridiculously excited about this. These are some really cool options and we're going to talk about what they are, when to use them, and the one that I want you to implement right away. First things first, what are these new choices? I want to take a step back, because I realize I've mentioned these briefly in past episodes and we've talked about them in backstage, but in case you haven't watched the video of Inside Hit the Mic Backstage about custom audiences, let me just briefly say what custom audiences are. What are Custom Audiences Custom audiences allow you to save a group of people that you want to target as a demographic for your ad. These could be from an email or from a lead magnet or from a look alike audience, or they could be a saved audience that you've built with your targeting that you have figured out. Basically it's

Welcome to episode 348 of Hit the Mic with the Stacey Harris. With all the changes in the last year with Instagram, I wanted to help get clear on how you can use it right now, how you can make these pieces, like Instagram stories and Instagram lives, and of course your good old faithful, your actual profile to work for you now. I thought I'd talk a little bit about how I'm using it, how some of my clients are using it, how we sort of mend these pieces together. We're going to do that by really talking about each of the three pieces, starting with Instagram stories. Then, we'll talk about Instagram live, and we'll wrap it up with our profile page. Okay? Let's jump in with Instagram stories. Instagram stories are a really powerful way for you to share what's happening that day. I do like having some plan if this is something that you are really going to be using. Even as far as actually planning what shots are going to happen or what chunks of video are going to go out. The co

Welcome to Episode 347 of Hit The Mic with The Stacey Harris. It's a new month and that's means today we're talking about three things you need to know right now. Often these are network updates and things like that. But, this month I actually want to talk about some more strategy stuff, because there are a lot of questions coming up in some one-on-one calls I've had and in Backstage about when to do these things or if an idea is crazy. I want to just dispel all of that right up front, all right? Running Ads to Content Three things you must know right now in May. First things first, the idea of running ads to content. This is a really great brand awareness goal, because again, you can lead with value by leading with your content. Often times, we think an ad can only be run if it's immediately going to pay off in an opt-in or immediately going to pay off in a purchase. That's not the case. In fact, I often run ads that really have no larger goal in the immediate future than gettin

Welcome to Episode 346 of Hit The Mic with The Stacey Harris. So Facebook launched stories much like we've seen on Snapchat for a longer time now and Instagram for quite a while now. We now have the option to share stories on Facebook and so today I wanted to have a little bit of a conversation around this idea of short-term content and its value in our overall marketing plans. Where does this content fit in our big-picture strategy? Does it really hold any value for us from a marketing perspective if it disappears? Goes away so quickly. 24 hours is not that long of a time obviously. So let's talk about that. And I encourage you to come into the private community on Backstage and share your thoughts, especially as we go into next week. while on May 1st you guys will get access to the full training on how to use this stuff and how to make this stuff work for you. We'll do a quick Snapchat review on there, quick Instagram review on there. Facebook stories review and we'll have some training

Welcome to episode 345 of Hit the Mic with the Stacey Harris. As important as creating quality content is and it's massively, hugely amazingly, foundationally important, so is curating content. Unfortunately, a lot of the conversations I've been having on coaching calls and with clients and at speaking engagements, and through e-mail, there's really a disconnect in understanding why other people's content, or OPC, is so important. Even more so than that, how does it make sense in your strategy to be driving traffic to somebody else? That's exactly what we're going to talk about in this episode. Because OPC, or other people's content, is hugely valuable, hugely important, and can still do a lot for your brand because you're still a resource, even if what the value they're connecting them with is not your own. People still attach you to having gained that knowledge or that insight. Often times you can share content that supports your message or supports your customer

Welcome to episode 344 of Hit the Mic with the Stacey Harris. All right, beginning of a new quarter means it's time to check in on your social media numbers, if you haven't yet. And yes, I don't just mean your social media numbers. I want you to check in on how your content's doing, how your website is doing, how things are converting, where your revenue goals are. I like to check in on all the things a lot because there is a wealth of information and answers to a lot of our pressing questions that we're spending thousands of dollars asking coaches and consultants and paying people to execute on things. A lot of times the answers to the question are in the data and other times it's good to check in to see if the things they're telling us or doing for us are, you know, well, working. So that's what we're gonna start with. I want to talk about some of the social media numbers you need to be paying attention to and why they matter. Daily, I like to check in on my vani