Hit The Mic With The Stacey Harris

Welcome to episode 324 of Hit the Mic with The Stacey Harris. Let's do it guys, let's talk about the money. I sit back at the end of every year and I try to pay attention to what I spend. I do this more regularly than once a year now that Charles handles the bookkeeping, just full transparency. I'm much better at it when somebody else does the day-to-day of it, but I do like to evaluate what's going out because I want to know that I'm getting the value and that value may not be dollar-for-dollar, but I want to make sure that I'm getting what I need out of the financial exchange. I sat down and I've been looking at the investments I made this year and so I want to tell you guys about the four best investments I made in 2016. I'm not going to be naming physical things you can buy, really more the mental investments I made that were financial investments as well, but they may be different for you as far as the specific thing. That will make more sense once I go on so I wil

Welcome to episode 323 of Hit the Mic with The Stacey Harris. Welcome, welcome, to another episode. This week we're going to talk content marketing, and really I want to talk about three things you must know when it comes to your content marketing, because there's a lot of information out there about how you have to do X, Y, Z. If you don't do A, B, C, you're going to fail terribly. I want to do a little reality check with what is actually necessary for your content marketing. We're going to break down the three things I want you to know when it comes to content marketing. Again, we're going to keep this short and sweet, because I want you to take action on this stuff. What I want you to do is I want you to do me a solid, I want you to listen to this episode, and then I want you to come over to Facebook.com/TheStaceyHarris, and let's hang out. Hit the post about this episode, and let me know your thoughts. How will you deal with this and if there are any truths I missed, and

Welcome to episode 322 of Hit the Mic with The Stacey Harris. It's once again that time, real talk time. I want to talk about membership sites today because we passed our year anniversary of Hit the Mic Backstage a few months ago and I have spent probably almost the entirety of the second half and for sure the bulk so far of the fourth quarter this year all in on making my community better in every way I can, upgrading things, like the sales page, like the checkout system, the onboarding sequence, all of that stuff because of these lessons that I have learned. The three things I want to talk about today, the three lessons that I want to talk about today are the things that I feel I don't get enough conversation, enough highlighting. I think we talk a lot about tech and plugins and content even, but I don't know that we talk enough about these things, certainly before you launch. These are things that I don't think I really digested before I started and so I want to talk about them with you

Welcome to episode 321 of Hit the Mic with The Stacey Harris. It's real talk time, guys. We're going to talk about the three things you must know about not having a Facebook group, because there seems to be this myth that the only way to get seen on Facebook is to have a group, and/or the only way to build your funnel or find success on Facebook or make more sales or grow your program or support your community is to have a Facebook group. It's not true. Even kind of true. Now in many cases, Facebook groups can be incredibly powerful. I've talked about them immensely on this show. We've got trainings about them inside Hit the Mic Backstage. I am a big fan of Facebook groups. I use them a lot; however, like literally everything else, there's not one right way and one wrong way to use these tools in your business. There's not a "You have to do this" and "You have to do that." No. It's just not true, guys. The first things you have to know is that you do

Welcome to episode 320 of Hit the Mic with The Stacey Harris.  All right, so recently we talked about repurposing content and recycling content for social media. Today I want to talk about actually breathing life into the content that's on your website. Finding new ways to drive traffic to it or just straight up reviving it, updating it, repurposing it. That's what we're going to talk about today because your value continues to be valuable. I want to make sure that you are getting every last drop of value for your own business out of the value you're providing your community because the struggle is real when it comes to creating content. As you may know, if you've listened to this show for a while, I'm actually recording this at the very beginning of November and this will go live at the very end of November and I am in ... This week has been back to back to back to back recording days where I'm recording 4, 5, 6 episodes a day of the podcast. That just reminds me how import

Welcome to episode 319 of Hit the Mic with The Stacey Harris. It's Friday and that means another 3 things episode. This week we're going a little bit left of center and we're going to talk about personal branding. I think this is such an important topic because there are some misconceptions around personal branding and having shifted to a personal brand a couple of years ago, I have learned a lot. A lot, a lot, so I want to share that with you because I know that there are a lot of questions about what's involved with being a personal brand and if you have any sense of yourself left. That's what we're going to talk about. These are the 3 things you must know about personal branding. Number 1, it's not actually about you. I know, it seems strange, almost counter-intuitive because personal branding, I'm a person, on the brand, it's about me, but it's not really about you. It still ultimately about how you serve your community, whether you are a company that serv

Welcome to episode 318 of Hit the Mic with The Stacey Harris. All right, guys. We're going to talk about sales funnels today, because I have been getting some push back on the idea of sales funnels. I was actually in a Facebook group, and I was talking about sales funnels, and stating that one of my goals was improving my sales funnels for Hit the Mic Backstage. I got some negative feedback about how sales funnels were, like, manipulative, and it was really, really interesting to me. I wanted to talk about this, because sales funnels are actually an amazing thing for you to do for your community, because they serve two purposes. One for your business growth, and one for your community. I want to break down those two things, and I want to just quick and dirty get rid of this illusion that sales funnels are bad. Sales funnels are your friend. All right? First, let's talk about how sales funnels serve your community. Here's the deal. No one, no one at all, knows your business, knows your offerings

Welcome to episode 317 of Hit The Mic with The Stacey Harris. Let's talk podcasting. I get a lot of questions about podcasting, especially now that we're 300, now 317 episodes into the show which apparently means I know stuff. One of the most common hurdles for podcasters, or wannabe podcasters rather, is what to talk about. That's what we're going to cover today. We're going to talk about the 3 things you must know about choosing a podcast topic because A, it is not as difficult as you think it is and B, I want you to stop using this as an excuse to no hit record on a podcast because that's what some of you guys are doing. I know things. Let's talk about choosing a podcast topic and let's jump right in. I want to keep this episode pretty brief because I want you guys to be taking action on it, so we're going to jump right in today. Number 1, what problem do you want to solve for your audience? What problem do they have that they are looking to you for? That could

Welcome to episode 316 of Hit the Mic with The Stacey Harris. We all know that social media is a great way to connect, a great way to provide value, a great way to get to know your audience and their needs except what are you supposed to post? What are you supposed to share? Well that's what we're going to talk about today. We're actually going to breakdown building your content calendar because that is actually going to tell you exactly what to post. How awesome does that sound? Sounds pretty good right? All right, so let's jump in.   First things first, why have one? Why do this work? Real talk, we are very rarely creative on demand. Very rarely do I log into Facebook and I'm just struck by a wonderful amount of genius things to share. Even more rarely am I struck with something to share that's completely on point with the rest of the things happening in my editorial and marketing calendars, so I have a content calendar. Here's the thing. A content calendar is not the same

Welcome to episode 315 of Hit the Mic with The Stacey Harris. This episode is for those of you who feel like you just can't figure out where to get started. For those of you who are struggling along with social media, this is also worth giving a listen to because sometimes the struggle stems from a lack of foundation in our social media. I really want to talk about the three things you need to know, you have to know and you have to execute on when it comes to getting started with your social media because again, a lot of the struggles I see clients having, a lot of the struggles I see with our members at Hit the Mic Backstage, it really stems from not having those foundations in place. From not having these things figured out. Number one, I think this applies to literally everything and not just social media. That could just be me raising my hand on that one. Stop trying to do all the things. You don't need to be on every single network. You don't need to be doing social media 24 hours a day. Y

Welcome to episode 314 of Hit the Mic with The Stacey Harris. I'm really excited today because I'm going to empower you to really look at your Facebook page objectively. I'm going to walk you through the three things that I really want you to be doing whenever you assess what's happening with your profile on Facebook and by profile I should say page because remember we're using our Facebook pages for marketing and not our Facebook profile. Basically I'm going to teach you to DIY a Facebook page review. I love, love, love talking about reviews. We actually do them once a month inside of Hit the Mic Backstage. Every month we do profile reviews so members leave me a link and we review absolutely any profile. Basically, what I'm going to do is I'm going to walk you through the steps I take and the three major things I look for. There's definitely other things I look for but these are the three biggest missteps I see people making and so I want you to DIY yourself an ob

Welcome to Episode 313 of Hit the Mic with The Stacey Harris. All right guys, so last month in Hit the Mic Backstage I answered a very common question by doing a training all around free challenges. We see these all over the place, they're a huge list growing opportunity. Basically, what they are is a challenge to actually grow your email list. You're providing value for your audience, you're getting them engaged right from the start, and it's totally free for them. All it costs is an email address. Usually this up sells to some sort of paid program or coaching opportunity, something like that. It doesn't have to I guess but generally speaking I like to do something on the other side of that opt-in, right? That's what we're going to talk about today. We're going to talk about the three things you need to know about running a free challenge to grow your list. All right, let's do it. Thing number one that you need to know about running a free challenge is getting p

Welcome to episode 312 of Hit the Mic with The Stacey Harris. Today we're pulling back the curtain on a big part of Hit the Mic Backstage actually. I get a lot of questions about running a membership and how I started it and things like that. What I want to talk about today is not so much how I started something but why I'm changing something. Up until now, the community part of Hit the Mic Backstage, which I guess I should rewind and say this. Hit the Mic Backstage is a private community full of a library of trainings on everything from Facebook to Twitter to LinkedIn to SnapChat to all the major networks. Plus some content marketing stuff like blogging and video. We have guest experts who have joined us to talk about Facebook groups, to talk about getting publicity from major publications and finances and all sorts of things. It's a really cool part of my business that I absolutely love running. It's without a doubt my favorite offering. I have the most fun doing it. It's a little m

Welcome to episode 311 of Hit the Mic with The Stacey Harris. Yay Facebook changes! I know you're excited, I'm excited, we can hardly contain it. Let's jump right in. We're going to talk about three big Facebook changes happening rolling out now, and over the coming weeks. They're all going to have an impact directly on you. I want you to pay attention. This one would be a good one to bookmark, and maybe highlight for your Evernote some spots in the show notes. We've got the full transcript. Because these are going to be some things that are going to impact you again as they roll out in the next few weeks.   Update number one. There are some brand new call to action buttons coming to Facebook pages. Up until now you could do things like visit a website, sign up, watch video, call, those kind of things. Now, Facebook is actually hooking up with some third party apps to make that call to action button even cooler. Right now, they're talking about the current list of services f

Welcome to episode 310 of Hit the Mic with The Stacey Harris. Let's talk hiring, so a lot of us tend to, and I'm totally raising my hand on this one, guys, wait too long to hire help, and so today I want to talk about some ways you might know it's time to hire help, and some different ways that you can get help, because I think there's a lot of perception around, "You have to have XYZ, and that has to work," and that doesn't necessarily work for everybody, because we all have our different needs. We all have our different strengths, and that's okay. That's totally okay.   All right, so let's start with how you might know it's time to hire someone? Number one, you want to make more money, and you have no time. Not in a you need to trade more of your time of money, kind of one to one thing, but it's hard when you're slammed with keeping up with the business you've got, to do two things. A, market your business, so you continue to have consist

Welcome to episode 309 of Hit the Mic with The Stacey Harris. All right guys, time to answer one of the most common questions I get. This comes up all the time at Hit the Mic Backstage. It comes up all the time at speaking events, when I work one on one with people. It's hands down, top five most common question. That's how to actually get seen on Facebook. How do you actually get eyes on your content, on your value? It can feel kind of like you're screaming into the abyss, like you're yelling into either a very crowded or a very empty room, depending on the day. I want to talk about actually getting connected. Actually getting eyes on your content. We're going to talk about the three things you must know about getting seen on Facebook.   The first one is a "what not to do," because what happens is people tell me, "You know, I'm not getting any traction with my page. I can't get any sort of reach. No one's seeing it, but when I'm posting to my profil

Welcome to episode 308 of Hit The Mic with The Stacey Harris. All right guys. It's 308 and today we're going to talk about online summits. Humblebrag here. I get asked to do a lot of these online summits, virtual summits where an organizer brings together 5, 10, 15, 50, it just depends on the summit, experts in their industries and does video interviews, audio interviews, and then offers them sometimes for free, sometimes paid, but usually the ones I get asked to be a part of are a free short term thing and then there's a paid upgrade, so you can get the recordings or extended trainings or something like that. Here's the deal. They're really common. I notice they're making a resurgence now. They had gone down a little bit in frequency, I noticed, for a while, and they seem to be coming back. They can be really valuable, both from a listener participant perspective as well as a host perspective, as well as a guest expert perspective. They can be, in some situations, so today I wan

Welcome to episode 307 of "Hit the Mic with The Stacey Harris. All right guys, 307, and we are doing another tool review. I love social media tools, I think they're super fun to play with but here's the deal. There are a ton of them, a ton of them, we've reviewed a bunch of them before. I talked about this last week. The one that's going to work is the one you use. For some of you that might be CoSchedule, and CoSchedule's what we're going to talk about today. I'm going to show you the three things you need to know about CoSchedule and I really want you to pay attention. If you are somebody who uses Wordpress.org, as in it's self-hosted, because on .com you can't have plug-ins. If you use Wordpress.org and you need help managing not just your social content but helping with your overall content strategy, and scheduling, and editorial calendar and stuff like that, this is going to be worth listening to because I'm going to break down why this might be the

Welcome to episode 306 of Hit the Mic with the Stacey Harris. Real talk time, guys. How many of you are having a little bit of a tough time getting back into social media? Summer can sometimes mean we take a little time off, we slow down a little, and one of the things that can sometimes fall through is social media. Or maybe in September you launch, you hit that back-to-school vibe, launched a program, so you were feeling a little burned out, took a little time off, and now you're still trying to get back into it. You're not alone. Actually, I get this question a lot. Today I want to talk about the three things I want you to do when it's time to get back on track with social media, because it's not bad to step back. It's not impossible to get back into it. However, a lot of times the most painful part is the stress we put on ourselves about, like, "Why isn't this done? Why am I not doing this? This has to happen and I haven't done it. I suck." Then, now you'v

Welcome to episode 305 of Hit the Mic with The Stacey Harris. Hello, hello, it's a new month and I'm super excited to share 3 things you must know about social media in October, 2016. We're going to touch on a few things that are really good anytime, but they've come up a lot in either one on one calls, and that actually the second 2 things we're going to talk about both came up in Hit the Mic Backstage over the course of September. I answered out for them, and now I wanted to bring it to you, because I find when these things come up for me over and over again, it's because I need to share it with you, so that's what we're doing. We're going to touch on again, 3 things you need to know. Let's jump right in.   Number 1, this actually came up, I spoke at WordCamp Phoenix, which is a WordPress event in Phoenix, Arizona, this last weekend? Yeah, last weekend. This came up in a couple of conversations I had with people, either they were asking me a question about t