I am going to let you in on a little secret. I have been doing social media wrong for years. Years people! Drawing from the dynamic Ina Coveney's "10 Days to Hot Leads" course, I am going to share 4 tips to help you generate hot leads and boost engagement without burning yourself out. For entrepreneurs, online business owners, and influencers eager to make a mark, this episode is your blueprint for cultivating a community that not only listens but actively participates in your brand's journey. Join me as I talk about the mistakes I've made and map out the path to social media success that will resonate deeply with your audience.
I am going to let you in on a little secret. I have been doing social media wrong for years. Years people! Drawing from the dynamic Ina Coveney's "10 Days to Hot Leads" course, I am going to share 4 tips to help you generate hot leads and boost engagement without burning yourself out. For entrepreneurs, online business owners, and influencers eager to make a mark, this episode is your blueprint for cultivating a community that not only listens but actively participates in your brand's journey. Join me as I talk about the mistakes I've made and map out the path to social media success that will resonate deeply with your audience.
Did she really do that? You, betcha? She did. Hello, and welcome back to another episode of you, betcha.
Speaker 1:
She Did the podcast where women learn how to elevate their voice, grow their brand and earn their worth. I'm your host, rainer Kicke. Today we are talking about four tips to generate hot leads and boost engagement without the burnout. I don't know about you, but I've been in the social media world for a couple years now, and it was only recently when I realized I think I'm doing things wrong and I have the wrong focus, and whenever I learn something new, I want to share it with you guys. My you, you, betcha, she Did. Listeners. You're out there making a difference in the world. A lot of you are entrepreneurs, online business owners and also just really rad women trying to make the world better. So I'm in an effort to share those tips with you. So today we are focusing on using social media to elevate your voice and grow your brand, but doing it, maybe, in a way that you hadn't thought about. So today, like I said, I'm going to share those four tips.
Speaker 1:
Shout out to my monetizing small audiences coach, ina Coveney. These tips are from Ina's 10 Days to Hot Leads. It was a free email and podcast course that I took, and it was actually through this course that I began to really like what she had to say and I was like you know what? I'm going to work with her. I'm only going to go through some of these tips four of them but if you want to check them all out, please check the show notes. I'll have the link so you can get that free email or podcast course. I love that there's options too, because you know it's great to have something in your email, but it's also nice to be able to listen to it. All right, so let's dive in to our four tips.
Speaker 1:
The first tip, about generating hot leads and boosting engagement, is to shift your mindset around social media, and this is something in particular I had to do. So get ready, here we go equal, more engagements and clients. I don't know about you, but for the first couple of years on you, betcha, she Did and then also on my social media account for my business, ladies First Digital Media Company, I was always trying to get more and more followers and I wasn't really that focused on engagement. I mean, it's awesome to get engagement, it's great to get comments and feedback and mess DMs, but I really wanted to get my follower count up and I don't know where this came from. Not that I ever wanted to be an influencer. I still don't want to be an influencer.
Speaker 1:
Most of us are in that niche, right? You want to have an account, a social media account that has followers, so you have some prestige, right, some social proof that people like you. But we're not out there to be influencers with millions and millions of followers. What we do want is we do want to make meaningful change in the world with a specific audience. So think about yourself. Think about when you post. You know, are you trying to get more followers or are you trying to get more engagement? You don't need a gigantic audience to make a difference. In fact, a small audience can be really, really powerful.
Speaker 1:
So shift your mindset. Don't think about gaining followers, think about engagement. And, especially if you're someone who is using social media for a business, you know more followers isn't going to bring you more business, more clients. It's just going to bring you more followers and that's it. But you want that engagement to really get your business going. So that's tip number one shift your mindset. Tip number two let's look at your profile strategy. So you've all been on Instagram. You've looked at different accounts and it's really easy to tell a professional looking account from like an amateur one, right, and you have to think about it. What is it about those professional accounts that look so polished, so nice? We're going to break it down.
Speaker 1:
The first part, of course, is the profile picture. You do want to put a nice picture of yourself. For a while, for Ladies First Digital Media Company, I just had my logo and I didn't realize that. I was like, oh you know what, I should probably put a picture of me on it, just so people have someone to connect to. And when we're talking about a picture, you don't want to just take a selfie. You want a really nice looking picture. If you can afford it, get some professional photos done. There's great people everywhere.
Speaker 1:
If you're in the Sheboygan area, I'm going to give a shout out to Whitney Morales. She does great branded photographs. So does John Erlein. Both of them are top notch, do amazing work. So heads up. If you're in Sheboygan, check out those two. If you're other places, just reach out. I'm sure find a friend who you know, who lives in your area. See who they had their photographs taken from. But you want a professional looking photo and you want it, I would say, from the shoulders up. You don't want it too far or too close. If it's far away, people can't connect with you. Remember, most people are looking on phones. You're gonna wanna have something a little closer. Okay so, profile picture we talked about that.
Speaker 1:
Let's talk about the profile description. You know, on Instagram, for example, they have three lines and you need to be really intentional with those lines. You want to use descriptive words, active words. You want to be really specific with who your audience is. At a professional account, you are going to see that those word choices are super intentional. Usually they have some emojis before them to kind of make it pop and stand out. If you go on the social media for you Betcha she Did this Week I will show you a screenshot of my old profile for Ladies First Digital Media and my new one, and you can clearly see which one is better, which one looks more professional.
Speaker 1:
So for my new profile for Ladies First can clearly see which one is better, which one looks more professional. So for my new profile for Ladies First Digital Media, for those three lines, I put producer for rad women and I put a little like microphone emoji. Next, I have like a like a stock market emoji and it says podcast strategy nerd. And then below that, on the third line, I've got a high fives because I love the high fives and it says master engagement down pointed arrow going down that says let's connect. And then for my actual name you know I have my name, raina Rokicki. I also have it split up where it says podcast growth coach, podcast growth coach and then podcast producer. So it tells you know who I am, what I do and who I want to work with. It's very specific.
Speaker 1:
So take a look at yours. Maybe this is something you've already done, you've already made it really polished, but if not, this is an easy action step you can do to make your profile stand out, to make a great first impression and to make you look more professional because you are right, all right. So that was tip number two Check your profile strategy. And tip number three we really want to encourage engagement. And you know, if we want to encourage engagement, what are some things we can do? So when people make content, you have to be really intentional right. You have to give people, your audience, some context to relate to. You can also ask for engagement. You can ask them a question. You can put a sticker on, you could write a poll. Come up with three things they might be thinking about. Put them in a poll. Do you see where we're getting at with this? We want to transition from posting whatever we want on social media and crossing our fingers to give our audience a chance to tell us what they think.
Speaker 1:
And again I fell into this trap. I would post stuff and people would heart it and that's great, but it's not giving the audience to give their opinion, it's not getting them to share things. It's not really fostering true engagement. So you want them to engage more. So, like I said, ask them a question. Ina has this great example in hers about how she was going to post a picture of like look at my new haircut and think about that. The most engagement you're going to get is just some people hearting it. Like oh, I like your new haircut, heart, heart, heart. But if you post something like that gives a little more context. So she said something like I used to think getting my haircut was a waste of time, but now I look at it as an essential form of self-care where every two months. I take time out of my day to make sure I look my best and treat myself right, and then it's kind of a question can you relate? Again, this gives people a better opportunity to engage, to talk, to have a discussion, and I think you know, like most things in life, this takes fine tuning, this takes practice. But the more we can be intentional about encouraging engagement with our audience, the more engagement we're going to get and instead of just having followers, we're going to build a community, we're going to build a network and if you have a business, this will eventually lead to clients.
Speaker 1:
The fourth tip for today about how to boost engagement without the burnout is to come up with your content centerpieces. So for a lot of us, when we're thinking about social media, you kind of get brain stuck right. It's Monday morning. You're like, oh, what am I going to post about this week? I know there were some of you out there who are hyper organized and have this all planned out, but most of us are not there. So what you want to do is think about your business. Think about, I would say, three to four like pillars of your business, or content centerpieces, or like anchors where you can anchor every piece of content you create that week to the same idea, same idea.
Speaker 1:
So, for example, for me, the content centerpieces for Ladies First, digital Media they all center around how to launch a podcast, how to grow a podcast, podcast tools and technology and then, lastly, how to monetize podcasts. So when I'm thinking about my social media, my content for that week, I can make one long form piece of content, like, maybe I give a couple tips about launching a podcast and I can take that long form and turn it into a real, turn it into a story. I can take like those tips, make them into a carousel. I can repurpose it for LinkedIn, for other social media platforms, I can put it in a newsletter, a quick newsletter. So when I learned about this it was a little bit of an eye opener. I was like, oh okay, if I have four content pillars you know, launching a podcast, growing a podcast, podcast tools and tech and how to monetize podcasts each week I'll choose one of those. I will give, you know, some great tips, some things I've learned, I'll share them, I'll make a long form and then I'll repurpose it to all these others so that it seems so much better. Right, I'm not getting that burnout and I'm not getting stuck with it. So, and that's what we all want, right? We want life to be easier. So that that's kind of the four tips in a nutshell.
Speaker 1:
So, to rewind, tip number one is shift your mindset. We don't want followers, we want engagement. Tip number two is check your profile strategy. Make it look like a professional's. Think about the headshot, think about that description. Again, check the social media for you betches she did this week. I'll show you my old one versus my new one. Tip number three encourage engagement. Give people something they can relate to, ask for engagement, ask for questions, do polls, that kind of thing. And then, lastly, define what your content centerpieces are. What are the three or four areas that your business, your profile, should be talking about? And then choose one of those, make a long form and repurpose it. So I hope these four tips really help.
Speaker 1:
Again, if you want all of all 10 of Ina's tips, check the show notes. I'll have a link so you can check out her free email or podcast course about this. And, of course, as you've noticed, I've been giving homework out. I hope you're doing it. I'm trying to help you. I'm trying to help you make things easier, get better. So this week I want you to look at your Instagram profile or any profile it could be Facebook, it could be LinkedIn and I want you to send me a picture of your profile now and then what it looks like when you change it up, when you add that better picture, when you add a more intentional description. Even if you want someone to give you feedback, send it to me on a DM. I'll be happy to look at it and say this looks really good, but think about changing this or adding this. I love helping, so don't be afraid to do that.
Speaker 1:
Stay tuned, because next week I will be shelling out advice in the form of a pep talk for the perpetually tired, and this was inspired by last week's Lazy Genius podcast episode. If you haven't listened to the Lazy Genius with Kendra Adachi, you got to check it out. She is a genius at making life easier and being able to let things go so you can focus on what really matters in the world. So I'll be sharing my key takeaways from her episode about why we're all perpetually tired, as well as discussing the seven different kinds of rest out there to help you recharge. This was another episode that came out last year from her and it really made me rethink. Like when I am feeling tired or burned out, I have to think through, like what kind of rest is really gonna help me, because different moments need different kinds of rest.
Speaker 1:
And thinking ahead to May, which is right around the corner. May is a super busy month. It's a really exciting month, but it's busy especially if you are a mom with kids in school. May is like all of the end of the year. Things, all these events start to ramp up and it's kind of chaotic before summer starts. And summer is amazing, it's beautiful, but it's also a little crazy. So next week we're going to be really talking about how to build in more rest and then also how to find out which type of rest will benefit you most. So again, stay tuned. This is coming up next week. Until then, keep sharing. Don't forget to leave us a positive review wherever you listen. Those reviews really do help more listeners find us. Also, I don't know if you saw on social media we just made Jamaica's top podcast charts for business. Thank you, jamaica. I'm pumped for any listener from there. Let's keep those numbers going up and lift women up everywhere. Until next time, take care. Bye.